by Sandi Tan
Our eyes met, and during that moment I thought he wasn’t so bad.
“Lucky for me, then, he’s a sentimental fool,” I said.
“I keep telling him he should disappoint people once in a while. It’d make his life much more interesting. In fact, it’d make him much more interesting.” He paused, realizing he might have said the wrong thing to me. “Bubbly?”
I let him refill my glass.
“Shall I show you what I brought him from England?” Reaching into his trouser pocket, he pulled out a tiny stack of cards held together with a rubber band. “He’s going to be so cross with me. He’s probably expecting either a hunting cap or a basket of jam from Fortnum and Mason. But I spent six months collecting this set, I did.”
“What are they?” The cards were two inches long and an inch wide, and each sported a different drawing printed in color. Some had soldiers operating searchlights and dousing fires; others had civilians trying on gas masks.
“Cigarette cards. They put one in each pack of fags so fools like me would murder our lungs just to collect all fifty. It’s a mania, I know. Once I found two in a pack and I was so thrilled I couldn’t sleep for days. That’s undergraduate life for you! But I told myself there’s at least some philosophical value to this set. The theme is Air Raid Precautions—a little prenuptial humor.” He laughed blackly. “The set with the blond bombshells I kept for myself.”
I liked his sense of humor. I even liked the cards. But I doubted that Daniel would appreciate them—he’d have preferred the hunting cap.
“Well, I should get back outside,” I said. “It was lovely meeting you.”
“Wait.” He plucked a random book from the shelf and, like a magician, brandished from behind it a green hat with comical earflaps. He cackled triumphantly—he had brought Daniel a hunting cap after all. “I, too, am a bit of a sentimental fool.”
The peculiar boy decided to follow me outside and rejoin society. But one glimpse of Violet and Agnes from the doorway and his face turned ashen.
“Actually, I may stay inside for a bit.”
I laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of dogs!”
“No, no, it’s not Agnes that I’m afraid of…That horrible girl’s been chasing me for ten years. She can be a bit relentless.”
“Violet? After you?” This tickled me even more. “Well, she can be okay at times.”
“I’m sure even Herr Hitler’s okay sometimes. Please, don’t even say her name in my presence.”
“Violet! Violet! Violet! Shall I call her in here?”
“Stop it! You’re too cruel!” He ran maniacally along the main hallway of the house until he spotted the folding screen in the far corner of the sitting room. Making a beeline for it, he reached behind the lacquered panels, grimacing until I heard the unlatching of a stiff bolt.
“Voila.” He grinned, pulling the screen aside to reveal a hidden door to the garden. He clearly relished surprising me with his privileged information. I followed him outside and caught up with him on the flagstone path hugging the side of the house.
“When I was a youngster, I always made a point of visiting these.” He pointed to the slabs lining the footpath. “I pretended each one was a tombstone for a forgotten pet. Dan always said I was being morbid.” He went on one foot and hopscotched his way along a line of them. “Cat, cat, dog…rat, rat, dog. Goldfish. Hamster.” The drink had compromised his balance and he tripped, giggling. Riding the momentum of his stumble, he careened like a fighter plane until he crashed into a rambutan tree. Flopping down on the grass, he emptied the last of the champagne into his mouth and set the drooling bottle upside down in a broken flower pot.
“So when’s the big day?” he asked.
“We haven’t quite decided. There’s no hurry, not really. We talked about going on a holiday first. Maybe Paris.”
“Paris? Perhaps, my dear, you’ve heard about the war?”
“I know. I said maybe. We’ll go when it all ends.” I giggled frivolously. The champagne had gone to my head.
I joined him in the rambutan grove, the massive house casting us in shadows. We watched the guests in the back garden, standing around in genteel little groups, not missing us a bit. Sunlight glinted off bracelets, necklaces, and luxurious Swiss watches. These people were as pretty as a postcard—more picture-perfect perhaps because I wasn’t in frame to spoil it.
“Daniel must have had an idyllic childhood here.” I’d only seen photographs. Here was hope that his old chum might tell me a story or two.
Kenneth smirked. “There was no way a happy childhood could have occurred in this house. His father was generous to a fault yet distant. Mother was temperamental and insecure, followed by a stepmother even more temperamental and even more insecure. Not to mention the hideously needy sibling with the name I shall not let pass my lips. On top of all this, our Dan’s cursed with a ridiculous sense of guilt. I say ridiculous because, though he always felt miserable about lolling around in air-conditioned comfort reading adventure yarns while some of his classmates had to go to work, he never once lifted a finger to right the injustice. All he did was wallow in more guilt. In fact, guilt is the very essence of our Danny Boy’s character, as you may or may not know.”
“I’ll bet you were just the same,” I said with a bit of an edge. “Anyway, Daniel can’t help his background, no more than you can.”
“No, you’re right. I can’t help my background either. I grew up in an attap hut. Eight to a room, if one can call that a room. Worked at my father’s fish stall at Ellenborough Market after school, every day for ten years. Ikan bilis, pomfret, stingray. Even today I can still smell them on me.” He took a long sniff of his right hand. “Mackerel’s the pits.”
I now recognized the strained, slightly forced quality in his voice to be carefully buried anger. The arrogance, the knowingness—all of it was a cover. But I also felt a stab of instant kinship. He, too, had lived in more than one world; he, too, had known the high price of keeping those worlds separate.
The moment of confession over, Kenneth’s cockiness returned. “I can proudly say that I’ve never spent a single night in an air-conditioned room in all my twenty-one years. Yet I’m no worse for it, am I? Look, I don’t even perspire!”
“And why is that?”
He grinned like the Cheshire cat. “Because God made me special.”
I hadn’t heard any footsteps, but all at once, Daniel and three of his friends—two girls and a very spoiled-looking boy—appeared before us, bearing pink lemonade.
“That’s where you’ve been hiding,” Daniel said, a bit confused at our unlikely comradeship, since he hadn’t introduced us. “Kenny. I didn’t even know you were here. When did you get back?”
“Your father invited me,” Kenneth said, as if that explained everything.
“Did you know each other from before?” Daniel asked us, still perplexed.
“Before? You mean from the fish market?” Kenneth pulled out a loaded smile.
Daniel laughed uneasily, and I suddenly felt the need to protect him.
“Kenneth was just telling me about life at Oxford,” I said. “Apparently quite dull.”
Daniel tried to smile, but it was more of a wince.
“Oh, Kenny,” said one of Daniel’s friends, a flirtatious girl with arms as thin as bamboo, “you speak four languages, you run, you swim, you’re good at games, reasonably good-looking, and, I’m told, a magnificent dancer. What can’t you do?”
“I’m rather poor at forgiveness,” Kenneth replied without missing a beat. He shot a quick look at Daniel, who cast his eyes away.
“Heavens, Kenny!” exclaimed the other girl, even more affected than the first. She’d spotted the empty bottle. “What have you done with the champers?”
I had spent months avoiding Issa. It was all right when somebody else rode in the car with us—I usually asked one of the servants—and I arranged my chores so I never had to be left alone with him. Those looks he threw me in
the mirror when nobody was paying attention, those insidious, knowing smiles, I dreaded them. It was as if we’d shared some terrible, sordid history, not just a chance encounter at a public fairground.
One day, the inevitable arrived. The tailor called for me to pick up my new collection of dresses, and I had to show up in person for the final fitting. It was a Thursday, which meant Daniel was swimming laps at the club. Violet was taking her afternoon nap, so I invited Little Girl along for the ride—Little Girl, who liked me even less after the engagement than during the earrings debacle. As we pulled out of the driveway, she decided she had some sudden chore to attend to and jumped out.
I was alone with Issa. Even the slick knot of hair at the back of his head repulsed me. He was male arrogance personified, with his long mane and silly gold gypsy earrings. It was a wonder that the Wees, such sticklers with the other servants, hadn’t held him to a more orthodox dress code. But the rules didn’t seem to apply to him, and his renegade status only gave him more cause to gloat. As we drove, I kept my sunglasses on despite the cloudy, overcast sky.
The journey to the tailor’s passed in a taut, bearable silence. But once I had collected my dresses and returned to the car, the silence was no more.
“So, Cassandra,” he boomed. “It’s been three months. Our little chat. When can we have it?”
“We have nothing to talk about.” I tried to be neutral yet firm, neither hostile nor evasive. Hostility would only make the ride—and all future rides—intolerable.
“You’re wrong. You know you’re wrong. We have plenty to talk about.”
“So what if you saw me at Wonder World.”
“Wonder World?” he guffawed. “I saw you that night in the rain. Near the roses. Digging like a dog.”
My spine tensed for a long second. Issa’s driving remained steady, hand over hand as he made deft turns on the winding road, giving no external indication that he’d said anything provocative. But I knew that he knew he had shaken me.
Was he the one who’d sprung me from the room that night? Was he expecting a reward?
“Nobody cares about those stupid earrings anymore.”
“The earrings?” He laughed again. “You were dancing, inside the darkness.” At the next stop sign, he turned his face to me. To my surprise, he looked concerned. “You see, we are not so different.”
His smooth brown face brought to mind a warrior from another time and place, maybe Tongan, maybe Maori. Or perhaps an indigenous tribe that preceded the rest of us invaders, exiles, and immigrants.
“I saw it all,” he said gently.
I froze. How could he know about my dance, my hallucination? Odell’s visitation had only been a memory—my memory—and there was no way Issa could have witnessed any of it. Unless…
The car behind us honked twice, a Mercedes carrying a suite of anxious Europeans. The traffic policeman had flipped the sign to GO. With the tranquillity of the superior man, Issa pulled aside and allowed the car behind to overtake us. Then he drove us into a private residential cul-de-sac and switched off the engine.
“Trust me,” he said. “I can help you.”
What was he saying? That he, too, was cursed? Or was I reading too much into his words?
“I know you are scared. But I can teach you how to take control. I come from many generations of bomoh. Medicine men. Seers.”
Witch doctors. Black magic was the last thing I wanted to hear about. I led a clean life now. That world no longer touched me.
“I don’t need your help,” I said. “And I’m not scared. Start the car, will you, and take me home.”
“You think they are gone, yah? They are not gone. You can never get rid of them.” His eyes creased with unearned intimacy. “They are still here, only they are waiting and waiting. And you can’t blame them. Death is the most difficult thing we’ll ever have to accept.”
What did this shaman want? Why was he trying to subvert my new happiness?
“Do you want money? I can pay you.”
“Oh no,” he chuckled. “Money won’t solve anything. You should know that.”
He shot me a suggestive smile that made me chillingly aware of my vulnerability. I looked outside. We were parked in a dead end—nobody drove by. The bungalows around us were abandoned, empty shells slated for demolition, their lawns in disarray.
“Issa, I order you to start the car and take me home.”
“As you wish, madam,” he said, and very slowly turned on the ignition. Driving, however, did not stop his taunts. “Just remember they’re waiting. Hell is going to happen, and all of them will be unleashed, the good ones as well as the bad ones.”
“Then perhaps I should wish you the best of luck.” Thank goodness we were approaching the resplendent rain trees of Tanglewood.
“If you don’t believe me, I’ll bring you a candle that’s been blessed by a bomoh. Watch how quickly it burns and you’ll know. Or the next time you look in the mirror, look closely. They are still here, hiding behind your shoulder. They are everywhere. They are just waiting for the gates to open…”
Our gates were finally here. I prepared to sprint from the car as soon as Issa rolled it to a stop. But before pulling up the handbrake, the pirate turned to me once more. “I am here. But if you come too late”—he pursed his lips—“sorry.”
I slammed the back door and dashed into the house, nearly bowling over the servants who had scurried out to carry my dresses. I felt Issa’s eyes burning into my back as I ran all the way upstairs and slumped into bed.
That night, when Daniel and I were alone in our room, I tipped the long antique mirror on its stand so we could see the both of us. Me, in the foreground wearing my new red silk kimono, Daniel behind me reclining on the bed, naked. Despite Issa’s words, there were no ghosts. It was just the two of us.
“Take off your robe.”
My coat fell to the floor with a whisper and Daniel eyed me like a connoisseur.
“Flawless.” He smiled. “You’re good enough to eat.”
I must admit that, in the nude, we made a glamorous couple. I almost couldn’t recognize my own reflection. There was a very handsome man in the picture, almost a Siberian prince, gazing at me with pure desire. And my face showed such joy. Amazement, even. I wanted to freeze this perfect tableau in a photograph—our bodies supple and eager, our eyes seeing only each other. In old age, we could both look upon such an image and marvel at our firm flesh, our immodest innocence.
Then I saw it.
A hand, yellow and sinewy. It reached up from behind the headboard and rested itself on Daniel’s cheek, letting its long, bony fingers flail like a skeletal drape across his eyes. Daniel clearly felt nothing and saw nothing. I spun around, and it was gone.
Daniel lay stretched out in the same position, unchanged and untouched. He wore the lazy smile of a cat reclining in the sun, eager to be stroked.
“Come here,” he purred.
I turned back to the mirror. Again, the yellow claw, caressing his cheek. Another unknown hand was reaching around his waist and running its fingers down his thigh. His flesh looked so defenseless, so soft, so human.
They are still here.
Issa was right. I hadn’t outrun them.
“Stop admiring yourself.” Daniel patted the empty half of the bed. “Come to me.”
I tilted the mirror away from us and leapt into his arms, the strong, familiar swimmer’s arms I believed had saved me from the darkness of the world. Rolling us over, he propped himself up on top of me. Our faces were inches apart.
“My dearest, why are you crying?”
It was then that I realized I was looking at him through a new veil—and not just of tears. Daniel was every bit as gorgeous, every bit as kind, every bit as loveable as before, but the enchanting quality that I’d attributed to him, the special sheen that had made him my knight and savior, that had vanished.
“I’m crying because I’m so happy.” This wasn’t a lie, but I knew now that this happiness
couldn’t last.
“You’re even more beautiful when you cry, you know that? It’s such an irony. Such a wicked irony.” He kissed the corners of my eyes, and soon our kisses were mingled with the salt of my deep, unspeakable sorrow.
When he entered me, I held him so tightly that it seemed impossible two people had ever been closer. I clutched his face with both hands, reclaiming him from those defiling, monstrous claws. I kissed and licked his eyes and ears and cheeks, cleansing them of the horror that had tried to taint him. I wrapped my legs around his back and pulled us even closer, letting his every movement and every shudder reverberate through all of me. I wanted him to hurt me, to make me even more alert to the sacred intensity of the present.
“Bite me,” I begged him. “Bruise me.”
“No.” He stroked my cheek and kissed me tenderly.
“Please, Dan, I want you to hurt me…”
“Absolutely not,” he whispered. “I love you.”
We made love through the night, drifting to sleep only to wake each other up every hour or so with a murmur, a kiss, or a caress. We had spent many nights together but never one with this kind of sensual compulsion. Yet, as much as I pleaded, he refused to mark my flesh with even the smallest nibble.
In the morning, I woke up the instant I felt Daniel pry my arms off his waist.
“Darling, you’re holding me so tight I can barely breathe.”
“Don’t ever leave me.” I hugged him tighter yet. “I couldn’t live without you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I nuzzled his arm with its dark, curly hairs and pores filled with the familiar, reassuring essence of Daniel: chlorine and Cussons Imperial Leather, musky with a full night of love. There was crust in his eyes and his lips were chapped—yet I had never seen a more alluring face.
“I want to bottle your scent,” I said.
“Be my guest.”
“Stay with me forever.”