by Tiffany Tsao
Inspiration overwhelmed her. Demanding the use of a notepad and a pen from a waiter, she began scribbling furiously, pausing only to take hurried and ferocious bites of her sashimi. Images of solemn executions flashed before her mind’s eye: the grandeur of the Roman Coliseum, the terror of the guillotine, the sinister Tower of London. She scrawled down phrases and words indecipherable to anyone but her: “One at a time.” “Executioners must wear black.” “What to do about excessive blood?” She sketched rudimentary variations of what she had in mind: a raised wooden platform in the middle of a medieval-style banquet hall, a miniature version of a Greek amphitheatre with the stage surrounded by glass panes. Finally, she arrived at something that would eventually evolve into the final blueprints that would make L’Abattoir the preferred restaurant of the rich, the famous, the glitzy, the glamorous, and all aspirants thereto.
She had drawn that sketch six years ago. Six years before the restaurant became so adored by the crème de la crème of Singaporean high society that it became known affectionately as “L’Abs.” Six years before L’Abattoir earned a place on the San Pellegrino World’s Fifty Best Restaurants list. Six years before Success with a capital S had finally scooped up Shakti Vithani, flopping and flailing about in her little pond, and deposited her in international waters to swim with the rest of the big-fish restaurateurs. And now, this very evening, it stood gleaming in the middle of her restaurant in all its glory: a circular arena about ten metres in diameter, walled in soundproof glass, surrounded by tables at which excited patrons perched on the edges of their black velvet chairs, craning their necks in anticipation of the evening’s grisly entertainment. The arena floor was covered in white sand. A heavy black curtain on one side of the arena concealed a corridor to the restaurant kitchen from which the players in the night’s performance could make their entrances and exits.
Even after all this time, Mrs. Vithani had not tired of watching the spectacle for which L’Abs was so famous. And now, with her calorie-free caffeinated beverage in hand, she sauntered over from the bar to the small table that was always kept specially reserved for her. The deep, rolling rumble of Japanese taiko drums, one in each corner of the restaurant, swelled, announcing that it was time for the show to begin. The restaurant grew quiet, and everyone turned their hungry eyes to the entrance of the arena. The curtains parted, and a tall, bony man clad in form-fitting black clothes strode in, a long, thin sword hanging at a sheath by his side. The bottom part of his face was covered with black silk wrapped snugly around his nose, mouth, and chin. The audience murmured appreciatively. It was the restaurant’s star butcher—the most infamous of L’Abattoir’s meat-slaughtering fleet. And he was not alone. At arm’s length, he held a flailing duck firmly by the neck. The soundproof glass rendered the whole scene mute—a silent film or a moving work of art on canvas, a visual narrative unfolding to the ominous reverberation of the drums.
For what seemed like eternity frozen, the figure stood motionless in the centre of the arena, head bowed downwards, hand outstretched. The only movements were made by the desperate duck, who was now beating her wings weakly and listlessly, as if her struggle were merely an obligatory gesture rather than an actual attempt to free herself. A few of the diners lowered their gaze or averted their heads slightly as the tension mounted. Shakti couldn’t tear her eyes away.
The executioner lifted his head and assessed his victim calmly and evenly. He looked long into her wide, terror-stricken pupils, which darted every which way in a flurry of motion. Mrs. Vithani held her breath. Everybody did. The drums swelled and subsided, swelled and subsided, like a great heart heaving, pulsing, throbbing. Faster. Faster. Faster. Then silence.
In one swift, seamless movement, the executioner threw the duck upward. A sword flashed from its scabbard and swung into an arc, severing her throat before she even had time to flutter. A streak of crimson lightning split the air and scattered into droplets on the white sand. The headless body fell at his feet, the head landing a metre to his left. An attendant, also clad in black, swiftly entered the arena, bundled the head and flopping body into a black basket, and exited just as quickly to present the chef with the fresh meat.
The executioner remained for a moment longer. Wiping his sword with a black rag that he then let drop to the floor, he made one solemn bow, turned sharply, and made his exit. Over the next few minutes, the atmosphere of silent awe dissolved and the clink of silverware and light-hearted chatter prevailed once more. Or at least it would for the next fifteen minutes, until the black-clad minions now cleaning the glass panels and scooping up the bloodstained sand had prepared the arena for the next performance.
The L’Abattoir waitstaff had been trained to never ever serve food and drink during performances, and like most of the other waitstaff, Murgatroyd had been standing against a wall to the side of the arena, watching the performance until it was over and service was resumed. Unlike his fellow waiters, however, Murgatroyd wasn’t really paying attention to what was going on in the arena. Instead, his mind was adrift somewhere else, dwelling on something that, unbeknownst to him, he spent the rest of his life forgetting: the revelation he had received at the age of nine. A period of sixteen years had made the revelation vaguer, dimmer, dustier, but it was still there, floating about like a little paper boat in the flooded subterranean caverns of his consciousness. Something extraordinarily stupendous is waiting for me. There it was. How could he have forgotten? Then the performance ended and life picked up where it left off. The other waiters resumed their activities, but Murgatroyd remained leaning against the wall for a few more seconds, staring abstractedly into the distance, holding the two plates of fig and rocket salad that the Tans had ordered.
A terrible screeching sound caused him to recall himself with a sudden jolt, and he looked up to see where it had come from: a Chinese woman sitting alone at a table, scraping her butter knife over her bread plate as if she were drawing a bow over the bowstring of a violin. She appeared to be completely absorbed in this activity, oblivious to everyone and everything else, including the scowling patrons around her. Yet, her other hand, as if acting with a mind of its own, pointed at him and beckoned him over with an impatient gesture.
Murgatroyd approached the table. “Yes, madam?” he asked politely, masking his shock as best he could. Only as he came closer, and only as she turned to look at him full in the face, did he see the black velvet patch covering her right eye, which seemed to accentuate rather than draw attention away from a startlingly green left eye, brilliant and garish, as if an emerald had been lodged there in place of the iris.
She put the knife down and took a sip of water. “Enjoying the show?”
There was nothing funny about the question, but he chuckled softly, as if she had made some witty joke. “Quite, madam. Can I get you anything?”
“Well, you could drop the ‘polite waiter’ persona.”
Murgatroyd coughed. “Excuse me, madam?”
The woman took another sip of water.
“Tell me something, Murgatroyd.”
He was getting a little nervous. Perhaps Shakti Vithani had told her about him. How else would she know his name? But how did she know that name? He was Shwet Foo to everyone except his parents. Even Shakti called him that.
“Erh. What, madam?”
“Do you belong here?”
“Where, madam?”
She fished an ice cube out of her glass with her fingers and began rolling it around between her palms. “Oh, you know. Here. Working in this restaurant. Living with your parents. Hanging out with your best friend. Every now and then, secretly dreaming that something will alter the course of your entire existence, like you were doing just now.” She looked up at him again. “Is this life where you belong?”
Her intimate knowledge of his life’s particulars startled Murgatroyd. “Hah? What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it, Murgatroyd.” The ice cube completely melted, she wiped her hands elegantly on her serv
iette. “Nothing at all. And I mean that. I’m just asking you if you’re happy.”
“I—I suppose I am.”
“Oh,” the woman replied. Then, hunching over her bread plate, she turned all her attention to shredding her bread roll into a pile of crumbs. Murgatroyd was utterly bewildered.
“So . . .” he ventured.
“So what?” she replied, not bothering to look up.
“Is . . . is that all?”
“I suppose. You just told me this is where you belong, didn’t you? Nothing more to say.” Turning towards him, she regarded him with her good eye. “However.”
“However?”
“However. Here’s my card.” With a quick flick of the wrist, a green card was produced out of thin air and slipped into the pocket of his waiter’s jacket. The woman turned her attention to arranging the crumbs on her bread plate into a seven-pointed star. “You’d better go, Murgatroyd. I imagine those salads you’re carrying are eventually meant for someone’s consumption.”
“Oh. Right.” Still in a daze, Murgatroyd drifted over to the Tans’ table to serve them their first course. On the way back to the kitchen, he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder. It was a familiar sensation: as if a falcon had alighted there and dug its talons into his flesh. It was Shakti.
“Oi, Shwet Foo. Who was that woman?”
Murgatroyd feigned ignorance, though he wasn’t sure why. “Which woman?”
“The one talking to you for so long. Chinese. All in green.”
“Ah, yes. I don’t know.”
“What did she want?”
He hesitated. “Erh. Nothing really. Just to chat.”
“Well, guess what?” Murgatroyd waited for her to continue until she burst out impatiently, “Well?! GUESS!”
Murgatroyd always felt uneasy around Shakti, even though he knew he was her star employee. He always felt like a mouse being pawed about by a playful cat. He took a deep breath and uttered the most plausible thing that came to mind. “She’s eating her dinner?”
In return for his stupid reply, the talons grabbed his shoulder again and gave him a short shake. “No, idiot. She’s GONE!”
“Hah?”
“She didn’t even order anything! Drank our water, ate our bread, swallowed our amuse-bouche and vanished without a trace! Bloody vagabonds, I tell you! Didn’t think there were any in Singapore! Thought economic prosperity had gotten rid of them all.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, gone! What, your ears aren’t working or something?” Abruptly, Shakti’s expression softened. She seemed to sense that she had been a little too rough on him, a little too cruel. She tried to make it all into a joke, and putting on a heavy Singaporean accent, she playfully wagged a scolding finger at him. “Oi, next time you want to flirt with customer, must flirt with paying one, okay? You remember, Shwet Foo: boss knows all!” Using the palm of her hand, she gave him a maternal pat on the cheek, and shoved him lightly in the direction of the kitchen.
Shakti could still remember the day she hired this strange ang moh boy as a waiter for the Colonial Table. Blonde as a Swede, but his speech was peppered with the Singaporean slang and accent of a local. He had puzzled her exceedingly. Shakti admitted that she had hired him purely for his looks. Well, not exactly his looks—he was rather pasty and sickly-looking, and had terrible posture besides. She had hired him purely for his race. A white waiter painted brown serving brown and yellow guests powdered white—it was all too absolutely bloody brilliant to be true. Other than that, he’d had no outstanding qualifications whatsoever. He seemed to have somehow gotten through the education system without learning very much at all. He was, frankly, rather dim-witted and uninteresting. When asked about his most memorable dining experience, he’d replied that the Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream Shop had served very good ice cream before they closed down. He also said that he liked the little paper parasols they gave him with his sundaes because they were very “high class.” He had never been a waiter before, and had been retrenched from his previous job as a shoe store clerk. He unconsciously picked his ears when he wasn’t talking. Despite all that, as Shakti’s red pen hovered over his application, waiting to mark it with a large red X, she could only think to herself: a white waiter painted brown, serving brown and yellow guests painted white. It was absolutely too bloody brilliant to be true.
“And your first name really is Murgatroyd?” she had asked.
“Erh,” he had replied uneasily, rubbing the nape of his neck. “Easier to call me Shwet Foo, lor. Everybody call me Shwet Foo.”
Unfortunately, it turned out that it was too brilliant to be true—mostly because the Colonial Table failed miserably, and Murgatroyd’s brown-skinned waiting career dressed as a turbanned Indian manservant came to an end. But by that time, Murgatroyd had been exhaustively trained by Shakti Vithani herself. She had urged him to imitate his parents’ speech as best he could (although he could never get rid of the Singaporean lilt.) She bought him volumes and volumes of the Jeeves and Wooster books by P. G. Wodehouse, insisting that he make the impeccable and witty butler, Jeeves, his role model. When it was discovered that a blind snail with a primary-two education could probably get through the Braille version of Anna Karenina faster than he could read a single page of Wodehouse, she bought him the BBC TV serialization of the stories on DVD.
She told him the various ways escargots were prepared; the proper spoons to use with caviar (mother of pearl), the correct pronunciation of exotic words like foie gras (not “foy-ee-grass”), entrée (not “N-Tree”), and “Thai” (not “thigh”). Through it all, he still stubbornly insisted that the small paper parasols were the very pinnacle of “high class.”
Shakti’s rigorous education left him more than just a better waiter; it left him a fantastic one. And yet, whenever he changed out of his waiters’ garb at the end of evening (or depending on how long the patrons lingered, the wee hours of the morning), he was incapable of taking his improvement with him. It remained behind, hanging on a coat peg in the back room, along with his black waiter’s jacket. All of the attributes that made him the best waiter at the restaurant faded away—the quiet and collected sophistication, the flawless sensitivity to others’ moods and whims, the confidence and poise. Away from the restaurant, he was once again the hapless, witless Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo in the photo on his government-issued identity card, staring stupidly at the camera through half-closed eyes, his mouth slightly agape.
As Murgatroyd sat on the late-night bus, he examined his IC to pass the time. Tonight he sighed, tracing his finger over his signature, and thought how much the photo made him look like an idiot. He remembered the strange woman in green and her question. Was this life where he belonged? He lifted his head and surveyed the pale yellow interior of the bus, as if looking around could somehow answer his question. The only other passenger—a beefy Chinese man who had fallen asleep with his head slumped against the window—gave a loud grunt in response. Murgatroyd sighed again and pressed the buzzer for his stop.
He continued to mull over this question as he disembarked from the bus and walked the length of the quiet, lamp-lit street to his flat, the shrill singing of the cicadas in his ears. He enjoyed walking home in the dark, cool night. And sometimes he pretended that the cicadas were singing just for him. As the waitstaff were never allowed to leave the restaurant before the last guest had departed, he normally returned to find that his parents had already gone to bed, but not before thoughtfully leaving some dinner for him waiting on the table. He entered the flat, turned on the lights, and shambled into the kitchen—quietly—so as not to wake them. Hands in pockets, Murgatroyd stared glumly at the plate of raw green beans smothered in peanut butter and strawberry jam, and thought of how odd his parents’ tastes had become since his job had prevented him from eating dinner with them. One night, it had been sausage slices floating in apple juice. The night before, it had been boiled garlic cloves and what looked and tasted suspiciously like shoe rubber. Still, he thought.
It was nice of them to set aside some for him every night. It had been busy at the restaurant, and even though he was hungry, he felt queasy just looking at the beans. He sighed, stored them away in a Tupperware container to eat the next day, and made himself a comforting mug of hot Milo. Stirring in two heaping teaspoons of salt, he remembered the green card in his trouser pocket and placed it on the table in front of him. In stylish jet-black script, it read:
Ann.
THE QUEST
mobile: +65-97277055
Ann? Just Ann? What a funny name, thought Murgatroyd, pouring more salt into his Milo. And what exactly was the Quest? Maybe a software or computing company? What could he do for them? He didn’t know anything about technological stuff. He hadn’t even made it to junior college. Maybe they were a magazine? What did they do? And what did getting a job with them have to do with making him happy? What a strange thing this all was! Nothing like this had ever happened to him before! It was probably nothing. But maybe it was something. Maybe she worked for a talent agency. Maybe she thought he had what it took to be an actor! Or a model! But wouldn’t a talent scout have been friendlier? Less abrupt? Less insulting? And how did she know his name? Except for his parents, nobody called him Murgatroyd anymore.
He wasn’t used to this much thinking. He felt dizzy. He gulped down the rest of his Milo, and the warm, salty chocolate sensation in the pit of his stomach stopped the world from spinning and reassured him. Anyway, it was too late to call her, especially for a Thursday night. Yes, it was far too late. Perhaps he would wait until tomorrow, when he could ask his best friend Kay Huat for his opinion on the matter. Kay Huat was smart. He always knew what to do. Yes, he would wait until tomorrow. He felt calmer now. Much calmer. As he washed his mug and placed it on the dish rack to dry, his mind wandered off into the stars.