by Joan Silber
I really did not want to hear any more. Owen was talking too much anyway, as he did when he was excited. “Did you get to see Noo Whatever Her Name Is?” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “I had quite a good visit.”
“She’s well?”
“Very well.”
Perhaps I was too hard on my brother, but his life seemed twisted to me, his dearest friendship a force for ruination, his savor of beauty a coolly limited contract. He could not keep from talking about the final triumphs of his outing—the men had cut frontier lines through hills and gorges and had taken measurements to sink shafts. He was buoyed by his own heartiness and drank more beer than usual, and then suddenly he ran out of interest in what he was saying and his eyelids slid half closed. “It’s very late, isn’t it?” he said.
IN THE MORNING he did not get out of bed for breakfast. I found him in his room at noon, shivering as if he were in Alaska. “Why in hell,” he wailed, “doesn’t this house have wool blankets? What do any of you do with the money I bring you?”
I made him take quinine, and I sent Som to the school to see if they knew a doctor. “You’re a stupid girl,” Owen said. “It’s just malaria.” Christopher, the science teacher, came later in the day. By this time Owen was sweating and wet-headed and flushed a brilliant pink under his beard. He sat up in bed bare-chested. “Nothing to be done,” he said. “My sister’s an ignoramus.”
Christopher seemed to agree with the first part. He took me aside and told me what I already knew about giving quinine and lots of fluids. The kindness in his tone alarmed me.
THE NEXT MORNING Owen was vastly better—he ate a bowl of rice and joked with Som—but by nightfall he’d fallen into a fever again. His eyes were glassy and his breathing came out as a labored whistling. The task of being sick took all his attention—he was lost to me, staring elsewhere. Where was my brother? How was I to carry on without him?
“Owen?” I called out, and he looked at me with such annoyance that I hated being so afraid for myself, which I would have time for later, whatever later was. Most people did not die of malaria but a few did; I knew that. Everyone knew that. Som had a grandmother who’d died. It hit worst, she said, just at the time of year when people needed to be out plowing and planting.
Each day, Owen had a few good hours in the morning. I made him drink glass after glass of water while he could lift his head. Dilys came by to offer English tea and pandanus-leaf pudding. “Everybody gets this, you know, Corinna,” she said.
“Right she is,” Owen said. “And Zain always says white men are too fat to die.” Owen was far from fat. No one knew how to get hold of Zain.
The nights were very bad. Owen shouted in his sleep and no one in the house slept. I pushed away my mosquito netting and got up and went into his room. I tried sponging his brow with a soaked cloth, but he lashed out and swung his arm at my chest. It seemed to be an illness that agitated its victims, as if the mosquito’s bite left a drop of desperation.
In the afternoon, with the rain beating against the shutters, Owen said, “I wish Mother could make something better than this rice. What’s the matter with her?”
“I’ll speak to her,” I said.
Every night I woke to hear his roughened voice trying to yell. His fever was full of protests. “Bugs away! All away!” “I said stop!” “Stupid! Don’t ever! Get the box!”
SOM TRIED TO FEED my brother a soupy dessert of bananas in coconut milk. “She’s getting old, isn’t she?” Owen said. “Her cream pies used to be much better.” It was a new terror to me that he thought my mother was hovering near us, like lines from a gloomy hymn my own family would’ve laughed at.
ONE NIGHT OWEN didn’t shout but only whimpered. I wondered if he was whimpering for Noo Kiang, whom he did love, in his way. How useless I was to him. Only just keep breathing, Owen, I thought. In our Unitarian house we didn’t do much formal praying at home—we thought God was beyond heeding direct pleas, no matter how ardent they were—but my father used to say it was good to pray now and then to remind yourself you weren’t God. My poor brother, look at him, I thought, with all the ardor in me.
In the morning, when Som brought in tea and rice, I asked her if she knew how to summon Noo Kiang. Som gave me a tiny smile. There was very little that Som didn’t know about.
And in the afternoon of the next day a young woman in a blue-patterned sarong stood at our door. She was truly very pretty, and when she gave her little bow with her hands together, I saw how scared she was.
“Is it you?” Owen said, when I sent her inside. His pleasure was cracking his beaten face. He said something in Siamese that made her laugh.
“You’re not so sick after all,” I said from the doorway.
“Not a bit.” He raised one eyebrow, a spectral rogue.
AND NOO KIANG WAS a great help to us. She stayed in Owen’s room, and she changed his cotton Chinese trousers and his linens all through the day, to keep him from shivering in his own sweat. She slept with him on the narrow mattress and murmured back to his shouts. She led him to the bath and washed him all over and wrapped him in towels. All this bodily closeness, all this intimate tending, could have come from only a lover. I had never had a lover, but I saw the advantage of knowing each other’s nakedness. Noo Kiang pulled Owen’s robe around him and patted his bony chest.
Dilys did not come to the house anymore, now that Noo Kiang was in residence. But Christopher the science teacher came. He liked me, I could see that. He had an angular, intelligent look and I was getting used to his red hair. He came after dinner one evening when Owen was ranting about the box again. “Don’t drop it!” Owen raged from the bedroom. “Watch what you’re doing! It’s falling in the river!”
“It’s his money box,” I said. “It’s always in peril.”
“Do you know where it is?” Christopher said. “Perhaps he’ll feel better if we can show it to him.”
I was fairly sure it was in the cabinet by my brother’s bed. I brought Christopher into the room, where Noo Kiang was kneeling by the bed eating her own supper. She had to put down her plate to wai to him, the bow of courtesy. She was looking a little ghostly herself. I opened the cabinet and brought the dented yellow metal box to my brother’s bedside. “See, it’s safe. It’s fine, Owen.”
Owen tugged the padlock to check that it was shut fast. He beckoned me closer. “Please,” he whispered under his sick breath, “don’t let Noo Kiang see where it is. Understand?”
I was terribly embarrassed. “Don’t worry, I’m hiding it,” I said, putting the box away. I could not look at Noo Kiang, who I hoped had not understood.
“A word to the wise,” Owen said, and winked.
“HE WAS A QUIETER boy at home,” I said to Christopher. “Growing more sure of himself hasn’t been all good.”
Som had already gone to sleep and I was in the kitchen trying to make tea. The ants had gotten into the sugar.
“It’s not always the best thing for people to be here, is it?” Christopher said. “But I like it so much already.” His voice was deep, with an agreeable softness.
“You’re planning on staying, then?” I said. “That would be very nice.”
He did not break into a smile, as I’d thought he might; he looked suddenly very wary and uncomfortable. Perhaps he had someone back home, promises to keep.
We carried in the tea for Owen. Noo Kiang had fallen asleep under the netting, and Owen was sitting up against the pillows with his eyes closed, moaning about hurrying up, everyone had better hurry up. “He’s the boss of his dreams,” I said.
WHEN I CAME INTO the room the next morning, Noo Kiang was sobbing quietly. “Oh, no,” I said.
“Pay no attention to her,” Owen rasped from his pillows. “I was a little short with her and I said I was sorry. It will pass.”
I took Noo Kiang’s arm and led her onto the veranda. I wanted to ask her if my brother was dying, but it seemed unfair to make her tell me. I gave her tea and rice and fruit. “It
doesn’t rain in the morning,” I said in my poorly toned Siamese, “but it rains in the afternoon.” She thanked me for the food. “This is good tea,” she said. It was a fond little conversation.
My brother shouted and shouted all through that night. “Idiots!” he cried out. “You think I don’t see your tricks?” There were three women in the room—Som stayed awake—and we spelled each other giving him water and quinine, drowsing between our turns. We had one another to be scared out of our wits with, but Owen was alone, yelling his objections into the dark, making himself hoarse.
At dawn he fell asleep, and the wheezing rattle of his breathing did not sound good. At around nine he woke and asked for noodles. “You don’t give me enough food,” he said. “Why is that?”
He stayed alert all day, and at the end of the afternoon he asked if I would read to him. “Nothing dull, please.” Christopher had brought a newspaper and I did the news in different voices. I was doing a flutey Mrs. Hoover when the door opened and Zain stood in the room.
“Selamat petang,” Owen said, and then Zain said something that made my brother snort. “He wants to know,” Owen said, “how a man as fat as I am could con so many grown-ups into believing he was dead.”
OWEN STAYED BETTER. He was weak and could not do much more than sit up, but I saw him reach around to tickle Noo Kiang under her dainty armpit. A day later he was bouncing her on his lap. I had not seen him play the fool like this. She scolded him merrily and slipped from his grasp. They were radiant now in their silliness. I would have been glad for her to move into the bungalow for good, I thought the two of us could manage Owen well, and I liked to think of having a Siamese sister.
It was not a bad plan, really. Noo Kiang had said she liked our house, which would no longer be just the house of foreigners. I would speak Siamese better, I would understand everything better; my sister-in-law would take me to her village. What an interesting family I’d have. It made much more sense than my ridiculous hope of eloping with Zain. I would keep my own routines and have company too. Years could be spent very cozily inside such a household.
DAY BY DAY OWEN got stronger—he was eating many bowls of Som’s soups and chatting between his naps. At the end of the week, he made a little speech to Noo Kiang that made her gasp while he was speaking and get tearful when he finished. He asked me to fetch his yellow metal box out of the cabinet; he turned the combination lock, lifted the dented lid, and gave her some coins. She had clearly not expected this—she yelled what seemed to be an insult at him—and then she turned away and went to her corner and folded the money into a cloth. He was sending her away. I tried to thank her many times while she was gathering her few things together to leave. I didn’t imagine she cared. I had wanted her to be my sister, but that was just a pipe dream.
ZAIN CAME TO VISIT Owen in the evening. I left the two men alone, and after Zain left, Owen complained that he was very tired. He was still weakest after dark. I brought him more limeade, and he sat up in bed, under the white netting, drinking glass after glass.
“This climate,” he said, “isn’t healthy for us. We don’t belong here.”
“Where do we belong, then?”
“Zain thinks he belongs in Kota Bharu. That’s where he’s going.”
“Ah,” I said. “That’s an end to a chapter, isn’t it?”
“It’s a great disappointment. These people can surprise you.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s his privilege to go.”
My brother snickered. “You’re very charitable.” I could tell he thought I was a ninny twice over, fallen and loyal. Generous to a fault. A mismanager of my own accounts.
“Don’t you miss winter?” my brother said.
“I do not,” I said. “Not at all.”
THE NEXT DAY, while Owen napped in the hot part of the day, I went to visit Dilys at the school. Didn’t they still need a drama coach? There had been no productions since Tess’s departure. I could also teach English—my grounding in American and English literature was very solid—and I had studied four years of French in school.
“Aren’t you the useful little thing?” Dilys said. “Well, it’s a thought. I’ll speak to Gerald. We don’t give much salary—it’s mostly just room and board.”
“Perhaps board,” I said. “Meals would be a help.”
“I see. Is Owen going home, then? Is that it?”
“He’s tilting that way, I think.”
“You want to stay on alone? Don’t become eccentric, Corinna. It’s a bit of a danger here.”
“Yes. I’m looking forward to it.”
“And at least try not to be a pushover with the students, please.”
“THIS PLACE TRIED TO KILL ME,” Owen said. “Europeans don’t have the constitutions for it. Malaria, cholera, typhus, tuberculosis. Stay long enough and something comes after you.” Owen didn’t mind repeating every doughty old colonial’s stouthearted clichés.
But some days he thought he might, after all, stay on. What had he ever loved as much as those treks, day after day, into rain forest no white man had seen? He could never have as free a life at home. Someone else would be tuan to him at home.
But his health was gone. And people had not been loyal. “Time to go back, Cory,” he said. “It’s come to that. It always does.”
He didn’t believe I really wanted to stay.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “What will you live on? You can’t stay on alone.”
“A person doesn’t need that much here. That’s the beauty of the place.”
“You’re not just lingering to wait around for Zain, are you? Please say no.”
“Owen. No. Absolutely, no.”
“It’s not Christopher you’re after it, is it? The man doesn’t have two cents to rub together. You have to do better than that.’
“You have this all wrong,” I said.
“Then who will it be? I won’t be here to protect you. It’s against nature for you to be alone, Cory.”
“Everybody is so sure what nature is. The hurricane in Florida was nature. The crocodile that ate your pony was nature. All the rich people think it’s a law of nature all the others are poor. Do I look like some freakish aberration?”
“You will,” he said.
IT TOOK HIM two months to gather himself together to leave. He said, “You’ll get tired of sitting on the floor like a perennial picnicker. You think the tropics make you free—you and Gaugin—but all that wears off.” But he didn’t try to order me home once he saw it was no use. “Only come back,” he said, “before the sun shrivels you into old-maidhood. Which is soon.”
“Who’ll rail at me when you go?” I said.
“Perhaps you’ll find a nice orangutan to elope with,” he said. “Though they’re only in Borneo and Sumatra. I don’t know what I’ll find at home.”
“No Noo Kiangs in the U.S.”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly,” he said. “But this place is a paradise for a man. I don’t quite know what you see in it.”
AFTER OWEN LEFT, my evenings were different. I came back from supper at the school and the bungalow was perfectly empty. Som was back working for Dilys. In bed, I could hear every termite in the walls. I sat up under the gauze net and read my books—Shakespeare, for the students—with the humid ticking spookiness around me. I wandered into the kitchen to eat a piece of jackfruit. I loved the private disorder of these hours, and I thought I had been very lucky to fall into this liberty. I woke very early and sketched a lizard, who posed without moving on my bedroom wall. He was grayish green with yellow eyes; perhaps only a foreigner would admire such a lizard.
I HAD TO TAKE my walks before school hours, soon after dawn. They were shorter walks than I’d had before, but certain spots drew me—I liked the light over the shadowed outer garden of a mosque, I liked a sandy patch on the river where I saw hornbills in the trees, and I liked to watch the market vendors stack their stalls with fruit and greens and squawking chickens. It came as a surprise if
anyone spoke to me, because I was so absorbed in seeing that I forgot that I was there—forgot that I, Corinna, was a visible feature of the scene. I liked very much losing track of myself, and I was sorry to be startled out of those moments. I thought how right I’d been to stay on alone.
MY BROTHER WROTE to me from the States:
I’ve bored many Americans talking on about my wild adventures in the fabled East. But they like me fine at Father’s bank and seem to think I’m doing my job, thoughI probably am not. I can’t remember why anyone bothers with most of what people bother with here.
I MADE OWEN’S old bedroom into a sewing room, and I sent him a letter with silly sketches of the raggle-taggle curtains I stitched for the windows. The curtains took me forever to make—I saw why machines were invented—and the labor made me think of my mother, who had taught me to embroider, an art now useless to me.
Sometimes the memories of my parents were very sharp to me, as if I had spoken to them only the day before, and sometimes I could scarcely remember a time when I was not on my own, free of encumbrance and free of support. I didn’t think my mother could have imagined the life I had at present, which was more satisfying than I could have explained to her.
SOM COULD NEVER believe that I spoke so blithely about the prospect of never marrying. It was not an idea that made any sense to her at all. Owen had once told me that this simple life I was so entranced with had no room for a person alone and unconnected. “Villages are made of families,” he said. “How else could they come about?” He always thought I misunderstood everything about Siam, with my disdain for his work and my sentimental crushes on the looks of the locals. But he was lonely at home these days, wasn’t he, and I was where I wanted to be. Dilys said I wasn’t the worst teacher either. Much to her surprise.