by Tiffany Tsao
“I suppose it doesn’t matter what this ‘Quest’ thing is, does it?” she whispered once their lips had parted. “The important thing is that the boy must be stopped.”
Back in the flat, Murgatroyd had made a phone call. And in the Madagascar-Aplomb Territory of the More Known World, Ann had received it. She had been in the kitchen of her abode, indulging in a glass of sparkling wood-scented water. The early hours of her morning had been spent composing detailed reports on the two new Territories she had been helping explore during the past month, and it was time for a break. Luckily, sparkling wood-scented water was her favourite drink, for in the archipelagos of Madagascar-Aplomb, there was little else available. Some of the more populated Territories had settlements of up to a hundred people and were able to facilitate regular imports of food and beverages from the Known World. The Territories that were widely chosen for settlement also tended to have plants that could be eaten or made into drink. Madagascar-Aplomb, on the other hand, had no edible plants—at least, as far as she knew. And it had only one resident: herself. She had chosen the Territory for its tranquillity rather than its practicality. In Madagascar-Aplomb, there was no dry land. Only water stretching out as far as the eye could see. Floating on the eternally calm waters were enormous blocks of pale-coloured wood—islands, one could call them. There was also sky—a cloudless stretch of pale blue that turned lilac with the rising and setting of the sun. That was all there was.
In one of these floating wooden islands, Ann had created her abode. Although waterproof, the wood was soft, and readily yielded under the pressure of any sharp metal object. Ann had used a gardening spade and a spoon. The block of wood she had chosen was so large that she had been able to hollow out for herself a bedroom, two sitting rooms, a kitchen, and a series of filing closets where she kept important documents in meticulously organized stacks, each one up to two metres high. Her bathroom was a small open-air deck fitted with a set of wooden stairs that led into the surrounding seas.
There were never storms in Madagascar-Aplomb, only the light showers that provided Ann with her drinking supply. A catchment area Ann had carved out on the top of her abode collected the fizzy water that fell from the skies, and funnelled it through a long tube Ann had drilled through the wood to a little basin in her kitchen. And it was from this little basin that Ann filled her cup—the only cup she possessed. She lived on this water and a small supply of groceries she would bring back weekly from another Territory. Some would have called the place inconvenient, but Ann didn’t really think so. “Simple.” That was the word for it.
The dwelling had taken her a little over fourteen months to complete in full, and although her handiwork was simple, crude even, she felt completely satisfied. The feature that gave her the most pleasure was the floors and ceilings, which she had shaved so thin as to be almost transparent. Through the translucent wood above she could see the sky, and through the translucent floor below, the gentle lapping of the waves. And at a certain time of day, the sunlight would stream through the room, through the ceiling and floor, hitting the water beneath and making it shimmer and flash.
Ann had been standing in her kitchen, staring at the sky, sipping water, and thinking of how she should call Murgatroyd to check on his wellbeing. The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hello? Can I please speak to Ann?”
“This is she.”
“This is Murgatroyd.”
Ann was pleasantly surprised by the coincidence and she tried to let it show in her response. “I know. Why are you calling?”
Like her mentor, Ann had never been very good at expressing warmth.
Murgatroyd hesitated. “I . . . I can’t go on the Quest.”
Ann set her cup down on the floor, instantly on the alert. “That’s a shame. Why can’t you go?”
“I can’t leave my parents.”
“Can’t leave them?” she asked. “Why on earth not?”
Murgatroyd took a deep breath. “My father has cancer.”
Ann was silent for a moment. “Oh. That is a shame. I’m really sorry to hear that, Murgatroyd. When did you find out?”
“Just now.”
“I see.” Taking the mobile phone with her, Ann walked briskly to the filing closets.
Murgatroyd continued. “My parents said I should still go, but I think they actually want me to stay.”
“Do they now?”
Entering the fifth closet, she cradled the phone between her chin and shoulder. She took down a tall stepladder hanging on the wall to her right and set it next to Stack 6M.
Murgatroyd gave a little cough. “Erh. I’m sorry about all this.”
“Sorry?” she repeated. Climbing the stepladder, she examined the colour-coded alphabetized tabs lining one side of the column of files. Lightning quick, she whisked a file out of the stack, leaving the rest of the column undisturbed.
“You know, lah. All the trouble you had to go through. But I should stay. My father is more important than the Quest.”
Ann descended the stepladder carefully, Murgatroyd’s file tucked underneath her right arm. “Quite.”
“I’m sorry,” Murgatroyd said, feeling compelled to apologize again.
Ann sighed. It was a sigh of disappointment and frustration. “I’m terribly sorry to hear the bad news about your father. But Murgatroyd, may I ask you something?”
There was no reason for Murgatroyd to say no. “Erh. Yes?”
Ann was now sitting on the floor, spreading out the contents of Murgatroyd’s file in front of her. “Do you believe everything your parents tell you?”
Murgatroyd was stunned. “Say again?” he asked, though he had heard her perfectly.
“Just a question. If you do change your mind, I’ll be at Bedok Jetty on Friday anyway. Perhaps I’ll see you then. Goodbye.”
She hung up and surveyed the documents before her. She wasn’t quite sure what looking at them again would do. Unable to push the matter from her mind, and unassured by the One’s conclusion that all was fine, she had perused the file several times since. Now she looked through its contents for the ninth time since Sunday: copies of school transcripts for Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo, a clipping of a newspaper interview with “promising Singaporean teen” Seng Kay Huat, dental records and medical checkup results, restaurant reviews for the Colonial Table and L’Abattoir, a thick sheaf of research and observation notes, and the like.
She felt now what she had felt each time she had looked over the file since her meeting with the One: puzzled. She couldn’t believe that she had somehow missed it all before. Murgatroyd’s life simply wasn’t unfolding according to the expected pattern. It wasn’t just the fact that he possessed such a high level of oddfittingness and that he had somehow managed to retain it for so long—that was only the first peculiarity. The second was his obvious emotional attachment to the people in his life, and his life in the Known World itself—entirely out of keeping with his extreme oddfittingness. The more oddfitting you were, the greater the sense that you didn’t belong, the greater the unhappiness, the restlessness, the acute emotional and mental isolation. And the greater the desire to leave it all behind. Oddfits with Murgatroyd’s levels of oddfittingness didn’t ask for more time once they found out who they were; they left the Known World without a second thought.
Then there was the third peculiarity—perhaps the peculiarest of all: the unhealthy, downright harmful relationships he had with his employer, his best friend, and above all, his parents. At the heights of their oddfittingness, Oddfits inspired feelings of mild disdain and were perceived as awkward and eccentric. But this (and here, she reached for the photocopy of the photograph she had scrutinized so many times before—a little terrified Murgatroyd and his gleeful parents by the hyena exhibit at the zoo) she never seen or heard the like of.
Something was terribly wrong.
Murgatroyd had to be removed before it was too late.
She made up her mind. She would contact the One and
the Other and arrange an emergency meeting. She would request that an exception to the guidelines be made for Murgatroyd. But first, she had some other calls to make.
Stunned by what Ann had said about his parents being liars, an uncharacteristically angry Murgatroyd had redialled Ann’s number to give her a piece of his mind. What did she mean? Was she accusing his parents of lying to him? About cancer? There had been very few times in his life where Murgatroyd had been provoked to feelings of outrage, and this was one of them. To his surprise, he found himself speaking with someone from the KFC delivery hotline. In his confusion, he ended up ordering a twenty-four piece family meal, all drumsticks and thigh meat, with extra whipped potatoes and coleslaw.
After Murgatroyd hung up, the phone rang again.
“Murgatroyd, it’s Ann. Could you do me a favour?”
Murgatroyd sputtered, too caught off guard to remember the exact words he wanted to use to express his indignation. All he could come up with was: “You know, what you said just now about my parents was not very nice.”
“Yes. Unfortunately, niceness is not one of my strong points. In any case, tomorrow morning, I want you to go to the 7-Eleven convenience store on Tampines Street 81.”
The specificity and unexpectedness of the request surprised Murgatroyd. “Hah? What for?”
“Just to visit a friend. Trust me. He’ll be expecting you.”
“But—” It was too late. She had hung up again.
Murgatroyd felt very confused. His mind replayed the two conversations he had just had with Ann, but in reverse. Visit a friend at the 7-Eleven? Why did she want him to do that? Did he believe everything his parents told him? Why shouldn’t he believe them? Weren’t they his parents, after all? Of course the right thing to do was to stay with his cancer-stricken father.
He consoled himself. If he didn’t have the Quest, at least he had his job. He counted himself extremely lucky that his attempt to talk to Shakti that night about quitting had been so unsuccessful. At least he was still employed, and he was sure that would help a little with his father’s medical bills. But in the meantime, he sat in the kitchen, concentrating hard—as per his father’s request—on all the good times that they had shared, and on all of his father’s admirable qualities in general. The KFC deliveryman arrived, and not knowing what else to do, Murgatroyd paid him and took the food with a sigh. The faint nausea that had seized him at the sight of his mother’s heavy, eggy omelette after he had learned about the cancer, was now intensified ten times over by the greasy smell of deep-fried chicken. He ran to his bathroom to throw up. Feeling somewhat better, he then retired to his new bed and recommenced thinking loving thoughts about his father.
Or at least, that was what he tried, with the utmost discipline, to keep his mind on. Lying in bed, the covers pulled up to his neck, he nestled his head against the soft blue pillow and tried to think of how good his father and mother were to let him indulge in such luxury. But then again, wasn’t it normal for everybody to have a bed? Hadn’t his parents been sleeping in a bed all this time? And didn’t they already have hot water in their bathroom? Kay Huat had always had a bed and hot water. Squinching his eyes shut, he tried to remember how happy he had felt that morning of his first day at school when his father had personally given him a haircut for the occasion. He could only remember feeling distressed and disappointed at what he had seen in the mirror. Taking up his father’s reminder that morning of the blind man’s bluff game they used to play, he tried to recall what fun it had been. His most vivid recollection was of one time where he had scrambled around in the jungle alone and terrified until a tall, dark-skinned, moustachioed stranger wearing big rubber boots and gardening gloves, and wielding enormous pruning shears, had discovered him whimpering in a dark, dank grove of trees. Gently taking up little Murgatroyd in his arms, he had carried him to his lorry and called the police, who had returned him to his parents.
Even worse than these unhappy and ungrateful memories, Murgatroyd found his thoughts straying in the direction of self-pity, frustration, and even anger at not being able to go on the Quest at all; at being forced by this unfortunate turn of events to give it all up and stay with a mother and father who never seemed interested in spending time with him or talking with him, and who seemed, despite all their professions of affection and love for him, distant somehow—cold, and at times, cruel.
There! He had dared to think it! And his eyes and heart grew large with fright at the dreadful things he had just thought. What was wrong with him? He jumped up and hastily began to make the bed, smoothing and stroking the sheets and pillows, meditating deliberately on how soft and beautiful they were. He squatted down to glance at his alarm clock, which was still sitting in its usual place on the floor. It was almost time to leave for work! Nearly six hours had passed and he still had to change out of his pyjamas and clean up the flat! With a feeling akin to relief, he changed his clothes, washed the dishes, and, fleeing the swarm of disquieting thoughts, dashed off to catch his bus.
Once at work, Murgatroyd threw his whole grief-stricken self into his role as waiter extraordinaire. He found an unexpected amount of comfort in the seamlessly placid and elegant demeanour he assumed as a matter of course. It felt as if he were in a protective shell—no, even more than that—a protective, form-fitting bodysuit, for the role fit him so snugly that it muffled the emotional tumult brewing inside him. The anguish and sorrow, the rage and confusion, all felt muted, as if something heavy and soft had been wrapped around them so that they couldn’t cause him pain.
It was in this emotionally numb state that he was descended upon by Shakti, who waylaid him as he returned from the dining room to deliver an order from one of his tables.
“So, Shwet Foo. How are you this evening?”
The question—uncharacteristic for Shakti—jolted him unpleasantly out of his muffled consciousness. He wasn’t quite sure what to say. So, uncharacteristically, he lied. “Well.”
“Still thinking about leaving?”
“Erh.” Murgatroyd shook his head and stared down at his shoes. “No, no. Actually, I’m not leaving at all.”
This piece of information caught Shakti by surprise, but she did her best to act as if she didn’t care. “Really?”
“Erh. Yes?”
“So you’re not leaving.”
“No.”
Shakti was silent for a long time, as if she were carefully weighing his answer. She decided that he needed to be taught a lesson.
“‘No’? But you thought you’d waste my valuable time on Monday by telling me that you were thinking of leaving?”
“Yes. I mean, no. Erh. What I—”
“What you? Never mind what you.” Shakti leaned closer. “What I want to do is impress upon your soft, soft brain the gravity of your situation. You’re walking on the very thin ice of my patience, Shwet Foo. And if I were you . . .” she tried to think of a good way to end her warning. “If I were you, I’d get off the ice.”
Murgatroyd lowered his head. “Yes, Mrs. Vithani.”
Shakti smiled thinly. She couldn’t resist giving a last wounding swipe. “It’s always a difficult quest, don’t you agree, Shwet Foo?”
He froze in surprise. “Erh. Say again?”
“A difficult quest. Finding new employment, that is.”
“Oh. Yes. Erh. Yes, it is.”
Thoroughly rattled, Murgatroyd ran to the back room to regain his composure. In the meantime, unbeknownst to him, Ann was bringing his plight to the attention of the One and the Other.
CHAPTER 17
The Aminah Caves of the Himalaya-Ablaze Territory were the first caves to be discovered in the More Known World. Yusuf had found them in his third year on the Quest. He loved the Caves. He wasn’t sure why, but then again, no Oddfit ever knew the exact reasons why he or she felt more drawn to some Territories than others. There were many things that they didn’t know yet, and Yusuf was sure there were many things that they would never truly be able to understand. All Yu
suf knew when he happened upon these caves was that they were his. Or perhaps he was theirs. He didn’t quite know. What he was certain of, however, was that they were the one place he could remain for long periods of time without feeling, too acutely, the anxious and perpetual homesickness that was the curse and the blessing of the Oddfit.
In the chilly depths of the Aminah Caves, which he had discovered and therefore had the honour of naming, a young Yusuf had set up his abode: a small bedroom well-stocked with heavy blankets and candles, a kitchen chamber more than cool enough to keep food and store drinking water in, and a passageway that no one else knew about until after Yusuf had passed away. At the end of this downward-sloping passageway, the Questians who had come to sort through his possessions found that there was more to Yusuf’s abode than he had ever told anyone, even those who had visited him often. There were four rooms, all of them at a natural constant temperature of negative 28.9 degrees Celsius—the perfect temperature for storing ice cream. Two of the rooms appeared to have functioned as experimenting chambers. One of the rooms contained five large ingenious-looking machines for churning ice cream using manpower alone. And the last room was greater and its contents more wonderful than anyone in the history of the Worlds could have ever believed possible.
How Yusuf had managed to produce so much ice cream, the means by which he had managed to distribute it throughout the Territories, and how he had dared to discover a space so large that it defied any attempts to calculate its height and breadth and depth and keep it to himself remained a mystery—a knot yet to be unravelled.
It was in the space that had once been the Great Freezer that Ann had arranged to meet with the One and the Other to discuss the case of Murgatroyd Floyd.
“That’s a bit out of the way, don’t you think?” the One had asked. “Why can’t we just meet at one of our abodes?”
Ann had been adamant, arguing that the extra exercise would do them all good and that there was something especially invigorating about the air in the Aminah Caves. She was right, but those weren’t really the reasons she had chosen to meet where the Great Freezer had once been. There was a superstitious part of her that wanted to use its associations with Yusuf and the undeniable mystery of the space to strengthen the proposal she was about to put forth to the One and the Other. (How the One shied away from that word: “mystery.”) What she was proposing would defy one of the few rules governing the recruitment of new Questians, but she believed that Murgatroyd’s wellbeing—nay, his very life—was at stake.