by Tash Aw
I stood watching the clouds of red dust and the bulldozers in the distance, the grit in my mouth and throat starting to itch. She hadn’t said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to let you go.’ Or, ‘You’re lazy, I’m going to sack you.’ Or, ‘Business is bad, I can’t afford to employ you any more.’ She’d just said, You can’t work here any more. She’d said it as if it was inevitable, as if nothing on earth could prevent the termination of my employment at Restoran Fatty Crab – as if the end of my time there was as natural as the monsoon season that arrives and disappears without fail each year. But even that wasn’t guaranteed. Some years we didn’t get any rain, others we got too much. Why couldn’t I continue working there, even for just a few months longer? Because the city was going to be destroyed by an earthquake? Because we were going to be invaded by extra-terrestrials? If so, I could accept it. No one would have a job, so why should I? I’m not an unreasonable man. Give me one good reason and I always walk away quietly.
‘Ah Hock, why are you just standing there?’ she said at last. ‘Don’t be like that, it’s not my fault.’
I looked at her. Didn’t do anything else, just looked at her – and that was enough to get her worked up, because she thought I was being insolent. Challenging her for a better reason, or financial compensation, or something else she couldn’t provide. She started talking – shouting, really. About things that weren’t important to me, explaining about her balance sheet and her daughter on the other side of the world, who still needed money, about the pressures of the job, of being a mother. About how I was so ignorant I didn’t know how the world worked. Didn’t I know about this thing called the Asian Financial Crisis? Why didn’t I read the papers a bit more, and take an interest in the world? That was the kind of thing she was shouting at me. Every country in Asia had been suffering, and there I was behaving like a spoilt child. Twenty-two years old, still acting like a kid! All the bribes she had to pay, protection money, price hikes – did I even know about all that? I had no idea how tough running a business in this shithole country could be, she said; I had no idea what it was like to be a woman her age, all alone, trying to run a stupid restaurant. ‘When you get to my age you’ll know what it feels like.’
‘What about the others?’
‘Go back to Myanmar lor. Nepal, Bangla – like you care?’ Then she cursed, just one rude word, not a big deal, but coming from a nice lady like her it sounded so funny that I started to laugh, and then I couldn’t stop. I was standing in the middle of the restaurant, the tables and chairs in piles around me, laughing like a demon in an old kung-fu movie, and I could see the others who’d arrived for work staring at me as if I was dangerous. ‘Crazy! What the hell are you laughing about?’ Ah Leng Chee was shouting. ‘What’s so funny?’ The more she yelled at me, the harder it was for me to stop. I closed my eyes, and all I could see was the image of her, sweet old auntie, saying that bad word, and I laughed so hard I was crying and feeling my ribcage compress so much that I had trouble breathing; and the dust in my throat was getting worse, so I was laughing and coughing at the same time. Some of the other workers were giggling too, and Ah Leng Chee said, ‘That’s it, he’s gone mad.’ When I walked out of the place I was still laughing.
I thought that was the end of the matter. But at the trial, nearly ten years later, the prosecution brought up this episode. I was amazed that anyone remembered it, but they did – they spent a long time asking questions about that day. About my laughing – somehow it had become proof of my madness. My instability. My inability to recognise the gravity of serious situations. They’d found the girl from Yangon who washed the dishes, her plump boyfriend who worked on the satay grill. How did the police find them? I didn’t think they’d last more than a few months in the country, I didn’t think they even had papers – but here they were, just short of a decade later, answering questions in passable Malay. Would you say that the defendant was disconnected from reality? When I’d known them all those years before, I’d sometimes joke with them, call them rude names in Malay, but they just smiled – they didn’t understand a word.
When it was Ah Leng Chee’s turn to take the witness stand I knew she wanted to help me, to tell everyone that I wasn’t crazy or dangerous. Several times she started to say, ‘He’s a good boy, hard-working…’ but each time they cut her short. ‘Just answer the question, Madam Wong. What was his reaction when you told him you were sacking him?’
How long did he laugh? Five–six–seven minutes without stopping?
So, would you say he was … hysterical? Out of control?
You said at the time he’d … gone mad?
She looked at me from across the courtroom, and I got the feeling she was asking for forgiveness, which was strange, because she had done nothing wrong. She was answering the questions truthfully, just as she was expected to do – there was nothing for her to be sorry about, nothing for me to forgive. I remembered her yelling at me that day, remembered the other people arriving at work, the restaurant starting to come to life – the two Indian guys delivering gas canisters, the booming metallic sound they made as they lowered them to the concrete floor in the kitchen, the Tamil song they were singing, Nila, nila odivaa … and the waiters, Bhim and the others, pulling back the shutters, the light falling on the sacks of vegetables. Sujan struggling to set up a table on his own, his right arm healed now but stiff, like a puppet’s. Ah Leng Chee’s single, sharp swear word. As I remembered the sensation of laughing at how beautiful and ridiculous it had all been, I put my hand over my mouth to hide my smile, but I couldn’t stifle the laughter that was starting to force its way out. Ah Leng Chee looked at me from the witness stand and smiled back. I remembered, also, the folded notes of cash that she used to give me now and then – just ten, twenty ringgit – and the little gifts, like a bar of chocolate or a keychain, whenever she came back from a trip out of town. I started laughing. [Pause.] I covered my face with my hands.
The prosecutor had been speaking in long elegant sentences that rumbled gently like distant thunder, but he interrupted himself for a second to turn and look at me. Through the tiny gaps in my fingers I saw him glance at me before starting to talk again. The tone of his voice changed slightly, as if to say: You see? I was right – this guy is mad.
After I left Restoran Fatty Crab I drifted about for a few days, and got turned down for a couple of jobs. There wasn’t a lot of work available, but in truth I wasn’t looking too hard. I know this sounds like one of the stories you’re interested in, about a boy from the village who comes to the big capital city and gets crushed by how brutal it is, but that’s not exactly right. I wasn’t defeated by KL, I got bored of it – I wanted something better. A couple of weeks later I was back in Klang, and quite quickly found the job at the fish farm. If I hadn’t left KL, I wouldn’t have started making a decent living so soon. Someone like me, with no qualifications at all – I didn’t think anyone would want to marry me, but they did.
The thought comes to me suddenly, in the middle of a sentence.
It’s a normal session, nothing out of the ordinary. I’m talking, she’s sitting back in her chair with her notebook in her lap. I can see her handwriting, tiny and perfectly neat. Now and then she stops to underline a word. I guess it’s something I’ve said. All at once I think: I’ve talked too much. I talk all the time, while she remains silent. She knows everything about me, I know nothing about her.
Are you all right? she says.
I nod.
You were starting to tell me about your mother and the relationship she had with your uncle.
Can I ask you a question?
Sure.
What’s your family like? I mean – you have sisters or brothers? How old are your parents? Do they still work?
That’s a lot of questions. I have kind of a normal family. Parents still around, still at loggerheads like the proverbial black sheep and white sheep on a bridge. Three brothers, all doing different things.
Three brothers? Must have been tricky being the only gir
l.
Yeah. I had to learn to survive. Actually, they’re quite sweet. When they’re not being assholes.
Your parents work?
Dad still does, yes. Anyway, enough about me. I’m interested to know about your mother, the time she started living with another man.
But I’m interested in your background too. Your life.
She smiles and shrugs her shoulders.
We’re here for your story. This is about you.
You said we’d have a conversation. That’s a two-way thing, isn’t it?
It’s nice of you to ask. But yours is the story that counts. I’m here to listen to you.
I wait for a few moments, hoping she’ll change her mind. In the pause, I can hear an ambulance somewhere in the distance.
All right, she says. You were talking about your mother?
October 19th
Why? That’s what you want to know, just like everyone else. But like the others, you’re going to be disappointed. Many people asked me the same question. My lawyer did, numerous times – ‘just to establish a motive’, she explained. The other lawyer, the one prosecuting, asked all kinds of questions, some of which seemed to be unconnected to the actual crime, like, ‘Where did you have dinner that evening?’ and ‘How would you describe your mood that night?’ but I understood that they were aimed at the same thing: trying to figure out why I did it.
My wife – my ex-wife, I mean – didn’t come to the trial. Why would she, after all? But I saw her photo in the newspapers. Some journalists found out where she lived and wanted to speak to her, perhaps just the way you’re talking to me now, in the hope of understanding a little more about me. If you manage to locate the newspapers I’m talking about, you’ll see a series of photos of her walking hurriedly, the journalists holding their microphones a couple of steps behind her. But she doesn’t want to say anything, she pushes past them at the front gate, shielding her face from the cameras with her handbag. But once she’s inside and tries to lock the gate, she has to use both hands. She’s forced to lower the handbag, and that’s why they were able to get those photos of her face, crumpled from the heat, from discomfort and frustration and many other things I can’t put my finger on. In the main picture she looks up, straight at the camera, and although – according to the report – she never uttered a single word, her expression screams out the same question: Why?
When I looked at the image, I knew that the question was not directed at the journalists but at me. She didn’t need to know why they were harassing her – that was obvious. Her why was meant for me. Why did I do it? Why why why why.
I met Jenny by mistake. She was destined for someone else, someone better, but ended up with me. I first saw her name on invoices we’d been sent. Jenny Teoh, Accounts Manager – she always made sure to include her title, even on the smallest bill, and when we started to use email, hers were still signed with her name and position. Received with thx, Jenny Teoh ACCOUNTS MANAGER, so I always knew she had an important position. This was a few years after I joined the fish farm, when business was growing fast and we were starting to sell our products to restaurants and supermarkets all over the Klang Valley, even as far south as Johor. I was working outdoors all the time, supervising the construction of the new cages and the growing number of outbuildings, and back then we were even considering building staff quarters within the compound for the Indonesian workers. The closer they were to work, the less likely they were to run away, the boss said. Mr Lai had firm ideas about how to run the business. He didn’t like it when workers quit suddenly, when they disappeared and none of the others could tell us what had happened to them. One day they were working normally, next day they were gone. It was because they had to travel a long way to work, two to a scooter, sometimes even on foot – a journey like that gives you time to think about what you’re doing, and when you reflect on your life, it isn’t pretty. That’s when people bail out.
Not long before that I noticed a flimsy camp appear on the edge of the jungle, about twenty feet from the road, built around a small abandoned concrete block that must once have been a grocery store or coffee shop. A few bits of tarpaulin stretched from tree trunks to the derelict house. A fire was burning, small children sat around it idly throwing sticks into the flame. You could tell in an instant that it was a migrant camp, and Mr Lai was worried that one or two of our men might have been living there. ‘The rains come, they’re gone. Police come, they’re gone.’ He wanted them as close to work as possible, so they wouldn’t have any excuses for not turning up.
That month alone we’d lost two men and were struggling with the workload. Mr Lai was pushing us all the time, and he’d just bought the piece of land that backed onto our existing plot – the men spent all day cutting down the trees, and Mr Lai himself was on site to plan the dormitory block as well as a new generator plant. I was doing everything – hours in the sun again, doing the work of the two men who’d just disappeared, then trying to help out with the paperwork. The sales manager, a city-boy type called Toh, was complaining that he was always on the road, always driving, always arriving home after dinner, that he never saw his young children because they had long since gone to bed by the time he got home. One day he’d be in Seremban, next day in Rawang, last week he even had to go to Tapah. What the hell. On top of all that he had to call in at the farm at least three times a week to collect samples, make sure the paperwork and money were in order, check his messages. ‘Everyone’s pulling me in different directions. Soon I’m going to snap,’ he said. ‘Break into a thousand small pieces.’
‘Still complaining meh?’ Mr Lai shouted. ‘No work – cry. Too much work – also cry. Go die, eh.’
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. Toh earned a lot more than me – I don’t know how much but it was substantial, at least twice as much, I’d guess. I didn’t ever make a thing of it, not to him or to Mr Lai – it was only normal: he had an education, he was good with computers and numbers and papers, quicker and more at ease than me in the office. Those things count in life, I understood that. Still, it gave me a small feeling of satisfaction to hear Mr Lai slap him down like that. Two days later he called in sick – or rather, his wife did. He was too ill to get to the phone, she said, had barely been out of bed for thirty-six hours. ‘What a feeble excuse,’ I said to Jezmine, the secretary, who’d answered the phone. ‘Such a coward, had to ask his wife to call.’ He could have done it himself from bed – everyone knew he had a mobile phone by then.
Pok kai, ham ka chan, sei lun tao. Mr Lai couldn’t stop cursing, the worst words you can imagine. Just as well you don’t understand Cantonese – I’m too shy to translate that. There was a big contract that we needed to close, our main client was thinking about doubling the amount of stock they bought from us for distribution in Singapore, and that lazy wimp Toh had fallen ill just when he was due to conclude the deal. When Mr Lai had regained his breath he stood in the office with his hands on his hips and looked at us – me and Jezmine – as if he was noticing us for the very first time. The top button of his shirt was undone, and he was fanning himself with a folded copy of that day’s Nanyang Siang Pau. ‘You two will have to attend the meeting this afternoon. Don’t screw up.’
Jezmine shrugged. She was twenty-three years old, only a couple of years younger than me then, but she wasn’t ruffled. She looked at her watch and said, ‘We leave in an hour.’ Then she returned to her desk and started reading the Nüyou magazine that she’d been poring over earlier.
‘Don’t we have to do some … I don’t know, preparations?’ I asked.
‘Sure. Do whatever you want.’
As we walked into the client’s office – two floors of a modern air-conditioned row of shophouses in Taman Bukit Kuda – I silently repeated the key figures that I’d memorised earlier – our annual sales, turnover, and so on. I’d highlighted them in green fluorescent ink so I wouldn’t forget them, and placed them in a folder of documents I’d prepared for the meeting. I’d put on the clea
n shirt I kept at the farm in case of unexpected visits from clients – in the past, there’d been occasions when I’d been helping the labourers dig the soil or prepare the foundations for new buildings, and had been surprised by the sudden arrival of buyers who wanted to inspect the farm. When fancy people turn up, it’s better not to greet them with half-dried cement on your hands, walking around barefoot with your trousers rolled up to your knees like a peasant, so I learned to keep a spare set of clothes in case of emergencies. Now, as we walked up the stairs, I felt that I at least looked convincingly professional.
It didn’t take me long to realise that the Jenny who greeted us was the same one who signed all the invoices. The fact that she didn’t speak much, the directness of her tone when she did, the matter-of-fact manner of asking questions that sounded ironic, like ‘So, is your business actually profitable these days?’ – all that was exactly the way she wrote her messages to us. She didn’t intend to be rude or sarcastic, that was just the way she was. She looked at me and said, ‘If you’re the foreman, I guess your job’s just to look after all the manual stuff – so why are you here?’
I started to reel off the facts and figures I’d learned by heart, but even as I was speaking I knew I was getting it all wrong, all the numbers and terminology I’d rehearsed silently in the car, trying not to move my lips so Jezmine wouldn’t catch on to what I was doing – I was messing it all up, stumbling over my words and flicking through the documents in my file to try to find the relevant information. But paperwork and me, we’ve never got along, and I knew that the answers I was looking for were not going to surrender themselves to me, no matter how hard I searched. I could see her watching me struggle – she was only a few years older than me, about thirty, I’d guess, but her neat blouse and dark businesswoman-type trousers, with sharp creases down the front, made her seem older and wiser. For a few minutes, no one spoke – only the shuffling of my papers broke the silence in that small glassed-off meeting room.