Asia Literary Review No. 13, Autumn 2009

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW AUTUMN 2009 No. 13

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW AUTUMN 2009 No. 13 PUBLISHER Ilyas Khan EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Chris Wood

MANAGING EDITOR Duncan Jepson DEPUTY EDITOR Tim Cribb POETRY EDITOR Martin Alexander CONSULTING EDITORS

Ian Jack, Peter Koenig

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Justin Hill, Nam Le, Karl Taro Greenfeld, John Batten (An) PRODUCTION

Sandra Kong, Alan Sargent, Jenny Xie

DESIGNER CIRCULATION, SALES

&

Steffan Leyshon-Jones

MARKETING Anil Kumar

COVER IMAGE

Palani Mohan

Asia Literary Review is published by Print Work Limited 2401, Winsome House, 73 Wyndham Street, Central, Hong Kong www.asialiteraryreview.com To subscribe email subs@asialiteraryreview.com Editorial: 852.2167.8947 Email: chris.wood@asialiteraryreview.com Advertising: 852.2167.8910 Email: anil.kumar@asialiteraryreview.com Typeset in Adobe Garamond Printed in China by C&C Offset Printing Co. Ltd. ISBN: 978-988-99669-0-4 ISSN: 1999-8511 Individual stories © 2009 the Authors This compilation © 2009 Print Work Limited

Contents

ChrisWood

Editor's Notes

7

Fiction

Pham HaiAnh

The Collector ofEphemera

13

Translated by N guyen Qui Due Fiction

NamLe

19

The Yczrra Poem

John Mateer

Homelessness

47

Interview

James Kidd

Rana Dasgupta

Catherine Candano

Acapella A Chinese Lady

49

Poems

3

59

60

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Essay Wen Huang

Liao Yiwu - 'Lunatic' Outcast

61

Memoir Liao Yiwu

Memories ofMy Flute Teacher

67

Translated by Wen Huang Poems Phoebe Tsang

Palani Mohan

The Princess and the Pauper Cemetery on Tsz wan Shan Broken Heart House Farm His Mistress the Witch

83 84 85 85

Photo Essay Hanuman's Army

89

Poems Gillian Sze

Missing Portrait Where My Mouth Came From Red Rice Soup

117 118 119

Fiction Jaina Sanga

The Good Price

121

Poems Davld McKirdy

Jill Widner

Digging Heaney Outward Bound

141 142

Fiction

Mina and Fina and Lotte wattimena

145

Poem Tammy Ho Lai-Ming

Glory, Repentance

4

169

Contents

Poem

Madeleine Lee

171

blue Poems

Ronny Someck

Rice Paradise Patriotic Poem TestifYing to Beauty Napkin The Father's Speech to his Daughter's Suitors

173 174 174 175 175

Essay

Duncan Hewitt

Goodbye to Shanghai jim

176

Contributors

189

5

FACTORY GIRLS :::;,~;-. ' ;'; -~-:?

'IClCf 5 F~a'~ FiE >-tEA,) O!

,'I'('!c[~N Cl!i~;"

~~'"

..

,•

"-

'. I

...

....... -

~

~

--.J_

"

~

~"'I

.....~ r j . .

.5 Format Januar,Y 2010

Trade Paperback September 2009

Editors Notes

early to a morning chorus of piston hammers - Beijing 2007 was transforming itself into Beijing 2008. The Olympic Games were coming to town and across the landscape cranes swung in the pall of yellow-white smog that would soon lift to reveal glinting edifices rising on building sites around the city. Historic hutongs were reduced to rubble; buildings were daubed in pink with the Chinese character for 'demolish'.

As I explored the streets outside the hotel and wondered at China's new dawn and where it all might lead, I found myself diverted by a small wooden sign nailed to a tree, the Chinese characters underwritten in thick red ink with the words INTERMET CAFE. Following the arrows, I came to the foot of a narrow stair rising sharply between two nondescript office buildings, the same red lettering ushering me up. What I expected bore no relation to what I found - 300 personal computers in neat rows, each terminal occupied, China's young 'netizens' hunched busily before screens. The reconstruction of Beijing outside was monumental, but this was the nation's true future China's virtual new world.

Duncan Hewitt writes in Getting Rich First - Life in a Changing China (2007):

!

WOKE

In a quiet Shanghai side street, near the city's old Jesuit cathedral, a young man emerged from an unassuming office building and ushered

7

ASIA LiTERARY REVIEW

me inside. Friendly and softly spoken, he led me upstairs and into a small office where a number of staff sat at their computers. Everyone was rather busy at the moment, he explained, a little apologetically.

He had only recently returned to China after studying abroad, but he was finding plenty of demand for the services of the new business which he had set up with a friend. Their focus was Internet security - mainly helping big companies to protect themselves from hackers and information theft. But now they had a new role too. The Chinese government had recently decided that all Internet cafes would have to install software linking them to local police stations - enabling the police to keep tabs on the websites people were visiting, and the messages they sent. His company had won one of the contracts to design this software.

Of course the government could simply block access to specific sites, the young man acknowledged, since it controlled the servers which people used to get online. But there were so many of these sites, he said, and new ones were appearing every day. The software his firm was writing would scan the pages being viewed on each computer in every Internet cafe for words programmed in by the authorities. If it found them it would set alarm bells ringing at the local police station - almost literally in fact. 'Beep beep beep,' said the young man, explaining the sound it would make. 'It's like a trigger,' he said. 'If you breach the database or keyword, a record will be sent to the police, showing them which computer in which cafe is on which website.'

Battle lines have been dra,wn in the cyberspace war and nowhere are they more apparent than here, where the 'Great Firewall of China', the world's most advanced system ofInternet censorship, contends daily with more than 340 million Internet users and some 180 million blogs. Web searches are frozen; sites, forums and blogs blocked. As many as 40,000 'Web police' monitor the net as canny users vault the Great Fire Wall using proxy servers or burrow their way through with HTTP tunnels. Bloggers can quickly change IP addresses if blocked by the authorities.

The Internet is arguably having a faster and greater impact on society in China than in any other country in the world, as dissident Liu Xiaobo noted in 2006: 'As someone who writes for a liVing, and as someone who participated in the 1989 democracy movement, my gratitude towards the Internet cannot be easily expressed.' It had brought about an 'awakening of ideas among the Chinese', and he described it as 'God's present to China'.

8

Editors Notes

'The Internet is an information channel that the Chinese dictators cannot fully censor, allowing people to speak and communicate, and it offers a platform for spontaneous organisation,' he wrote. Scandals that would otherwise go unreported in the traditional media are quickly disseminated online, forcing the government to release information and hold officials accountable for their actions.

Ping Ke, writing in the Southern Daily newspaper in January, observed, 'the Internet's function as monitor reached unprecedented levels [in 2008].

It is no longer difficult for netizens to monitor government officials. Netizens have these words of warning for government officials: "The netizens are everywhere. We are watching you. You better be worried for your job!'"

The Internet has challenged and emboldened the mainstream media, which now more readily carries such headlines as 'Death toll disputed, officials under fire'; 'Public sceptical of per capita wage rise'; 'Public raises questions over car-crash conviction'. The new 'Fifth Estate' it seems is taking the Fourth Estate along for the ride.

Beijing bans writers whose work the Communist Party deems unacceptable. Wen Huang says in his essay on dissident writer Liao Yiwu, which precedes his translation of Liao's previously unpublished 'Memories of My Flute Teacher' in this edition of Asia Literary Review: Much of Liao's work is banned in China and he is forbidden to publish. He lives in Chengdu and is watched by the Public Security Bureau .. . Liao continues to write and his interviews, essays and poems are published on Chinese language websites ... Barred from leaving China, he continues to be harassed by the police and subjected to short-term detention.

Liao's story can also be read online atALRs website which, as I write, can be accessed in mainland China.

Chris Wood

9

Preparing for Market (2008) by Nguyen Thi Kim Thuong. Gouache on paper. tcm x 14cm.

Image courtesy ofEn/ranee Gallery, Ho Chi Minh City, Vie/nam.

"This debut novel, inspired by the life of the authors Korean mother, is

a beautiful, deliberate and satisfying story spanning 30 years oJ Korean history."

-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW

vivid, heartfelt portrait of faith love and life for one Ij\

liE

CA L L I ~rR A P I-I ER' S

DAUGHTER

family during a pivotal time in history."-BoOKPAGE

"o\' r I.

Et;

. NIA KIM 978-0-8050-8912-7 1 $26.00

Henry Holt and Company

"M!J parents' stories seemed to carr!J an

urgenc!J meant to instill a Korean identit!J that was seeping from us with each new American word learned, each Korean word lost."

-EUGENIA KIM

www.TheCalligraphersDaughter.oom

GRANTA THE MAGAZINE OF NEW WRITING

For everybody who cares about good writing

T

his year, Granta celebrates its thirtieth birthday - three decades of ground-breaking reportage, investigative journalism, fiction, memoir and photography.

GRANTA

With every issue still in print, Granta is proof that outstanding writing never goes out of style. So join us and we'll continue to bring you the very best of it.

SPECIAL SUBSCRIPTION OFFER To celebrate Granta's thirtieth anniversary we will be producing five issues - your first issue will be included free of charge with this subscription offer.

,

Crusading, entertaining, journalistically valuable, but above all else, accessible , I SUNDAY TIMES

Nothing compares to Granta.

( If GRANTA

SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR ÂŁ45.95, and we will send you your first issue FREE and an ethically produced cotton canvas tote bag with our compliments. Just visit www.granta.com/ALR4 or call +44 (0) 20 8955 7011.

?!I CALL NOW +44 (0) 20 8955 7011 (Quote source code ALR4)

or visit

111. www.granta.ComlALR4

The Collector ofEphemera PhamHaiAnh Translated by N guyen Qui Duc

T

wo WRITERS in conversation:

- My female character just left.

- Where did she go?

- To become a nun, or to be with a man.

- Why or'? The two possibilities are really diffirent!

- It's all the same. If she was chasing after a man, sooner or later she would be disillusioned and become a nun. On the other hand, ifshe becomes a nun, she would soon realise how boring it is and chase after a man. She just has to leave for now.

- So complicated. Maybe you can introduce her to my character. Pm writing about a martyred saint.

- Is he Muslim?

- No. His religion is Love. Just imagine, married and divorced nine times.

An extraordinary man!

- A fickle man!

- What do you mean, fickle? Each time, he had a proper wedding, and then went to court for a proper divorce. And he looked after his former wives. But his house kept shrinking year by year because he shared it with them. Right now, he's moved out and is living in a twelve-square-metre apartment in central Ha Noi. He's decided to stay single. Ifyour character doesn't know where to go yet, she can stay at his apartmentfor a while. She should be safe. Apparently he's tired ofwomen.

13

ASlA LITERARY REVIEW

* * * Hoa stands up and says, 'I'm going.'

'Don't go,' says Nguyen, 'it's raining really hard.'

Outside, the rain is weaving an obvious excuse. Before Hoa answers, Nguyen crosses the room and makes a fresh pot of tea, making the decision for her. Stay in the dry room, exchange a few silly stories, drink hot tea and wait for the rain to stop.

N guyen takes a book of his poetry down from a shelf Hoa knows the book. One of the poems was written for another woman, but he is now reading it to her. It's said that five of Nguyen's nine wives fell in love with him because of his poetry - and then they fought with him and left him because in the end they discovered the poems weren't written for them.

Nguyen's a very talented man, but it's not like he can just come up with one poem after another. So the same poem came to mean moments of happiness and moments of pain.

Nguyen says, 'I've been lucky with women ... ' 'So lucky!' Hoa laughs. 'And yet, you're now single.'

'That's also another lucky thing. Family life is always complicated.'

'Yet you have been married nine times.'

'Because I am a proper man,' he says. 'If I love a woman, I must marry her.'

Nguyen freshens up their tea. 'I've been thinking about this and you know what's strange? All of my wives are named after flowers. The first was Cactus Flower, then Royal Poinciana, Rose, Lily, Orchid ...

'Whichever the flower, I brought them home, admired them, watered them, fed them. Ask any of them; they were happy and content.'

'Then why do you leave those you love?'

'A flower blooms for just a short time and, no matter what you do, it withers and what was there is gone and there's nothing more I can do, while another flower needs my care and attention.'

Hoa's husband once made a similar pronouncement, but though Hoa is nodding now as Nguyen talks about his nine wives, she did not nod then.

She consigned her husband to purgatory and he would kneel until his knees were shaking, begging her forgiveness. It's not that Nguyen's story is more eloquent; because she has no real connections now, perhaps she can afford 14

The Collector ofEphemera

to be free with her sympathy, like lending out someone else's money. Hoa finds Nguyen's history with the nine wives charming. Such a sensitive man, she thinks, always in love with women, and always responsible. Nguyen has been talking all the while, and she realises she has been absorbed with the sound of his voice rather than what he is saying. ' ... and now I am at peace. Did I tell you? I'm studying to be a monk.'

Nguyen isn't joking. His face is solemn, his eyes looking straight ahead.

Hoa notices it's gone past midnight, notices how narrow the apartment is, how hard it is raining outside. And here she is, inviting but left untouched by him. Maybe N guyen's serious about becoming a monk.

'What religion have you chosen?'

'No religion. I'm only interested in training my soul. I'm not after passion; I have no wish for anything. Perhaps I've experienced enough.'

Yes, enough. During the time of the Three Kingdoms, Kong Ming captured Meng Huo, the leader of a rebellion. Though Meng Huo refused to kow tow, Kong Ming released him, only to capture him again, but again Meng Huo would not kow tow. After being captured for the seventh time, Meng Huo became an admirer of Kong Ming and ceased his rebellions forever.

Hoa thinks it's a good idea for Nguyen to become a monk; they'd have more to talk about. A fortune-teller once told her she was destined to become a nun. Maybe that's true, maybe not. But Hoa has to admit to herself that she's become more detached. She doesn't much care either way about her husband, though they have been together for many years, or her job, and she doesn't like money. Truth be told, she doesn't know what she wants.

During the nights lying next to her snoring husband, she stares at the darkness and wonders if it's possible to be a nun in your own home without even knowing it.

Thia, the nun in her hometown, shaved her head at the age of twelve. In those days, people were hungry and her parents weren't able to take care of her. They sent her to the temple to beg for food at Buddha's gates. That's how she became a nun. All her life she ate pickled vegetables, and the smell of meat terrifies her. She can't read, but she knows the sutras by heart, as if they were part of her. She is old now and uses a brown scarf to cover the unruly patches of grey hair on her head; she hasn't shaved her head in a long time.

Sometimes she forgets she's a nun and simply lives, going about her work each day mechanically, like a public servant. Hoa often wishes to be like the 15

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

nun, curling up on the wooden platform on darkening afternoons, carefully grinding betel nuts to chew, trickles of smoke rising from the incense burning on the altar behind her.

Hoa imagines herself just like that, curled up in her armchair - chewing gum, though, instead of betel nut - and feeling a little detached from normal life. She remembers the afternoon she went to the temple and found the nun crying and clutching a portrait of herself to her chest. The abbot had said that, when the nun dies, her portrait cannot be placed on the altar, but only on a lower shelf, because, even after all those years of practice, she had not earned a single title, and the temple had to stick to the rules. The nun cried and cried until she became ill.

The whole village talked about it. Mostly, people couldn't understand why, after almost a lifetime spent as a nun, she should be concerned with what happens after she dies. If a lifetime of practice wasn't enough to develop a detached heart, what must one do?

It stopped raining a while ago, Hoa notices, just drops now, echoing in the tin gutters. Hoa debates whether to go home or to accept the glass of wine Nguyen is offering her.

'Why worry,' N guyen says, waving his hand. He might have been talking about the nine times he's fallen in love, the nine weddings and the nine divorces. 'It's all ephemeral.'

N guyen doesn't know that what may appear to be ephemeral can often be real. Hoa had two fish, which she named Hatred and Delusion. She noticed Delusion's belly was swelling and decided she needed to organise a wedding for them, otherwise Delusion would be accused of having offspring out of wedlock. Her husband joined her in her plans and decorated the fish tank with some seaweed, 'ephemeral weed' he called it. Its tiny green leaves floated on the water like a thousand dots. Hatred and Delusion swam up and began eating and eating; they wouldn't stop.

It was a fun night, Hoa remembers. Husband and wife frolicked in the bath like the fish. In her moments of ecstasy, Hoa felt herself sinking under a deep green wave, the colour of ephemera. The next morning, Hoa found Delusion swollen and floating in the tank. Perhaps it ate too much of the ephemera weed, Hoa's husband said, clicking his tongue, and flushed Delusion down the toilet. Hoa watched as the fish swirled in the toilet before being sucked away. She said nothing. That afternoon, Hoa took Hatred to 16

1he Collector ofEphemera

Heavenly Park and released it in the pond. Hoa's husband turned the empty fish tank into an ashtray. A convenient solution as he started to smoke a lot after that night and there weren't any ashtrays for all his butts. In the long nights that followed, Hoa would close her eyes and see Delusion all swollen up in the toilet, or Hatred swimming among unnamed fish in the pond at Heavenly Park. She never saw the wave of ephemera again.

Nguyen says he's bored with flowers now, and only collects things that have turned to stone, things that last a long time and don't change. Nguyen holds up a grey stone with the shape of a fish slightly larger than a finger.

'This is the fossil of a fish. It's 290 million years old. Just imagine, how many lives we would pass through in 290 million years?

Hoa fingers the piece of stone. The fish fossil feels rough on her skin.

Its mouth is open, its profiled fin spread. Perhaps it died while hunting for food. Hoa raises her wine glass and takes several small gulps, forgetting the image of the golden Delusion vanishing down the toilet.

She drinks some more, and her cheeks feel hot and red, as if she's kneeling in front of an open fire. Nguyen dear, don't look at me that way! Learn to be a monk. I'm going home, leaving you this stone fish. Nguyen whispers, it's all ephemeral. Nine times I've experienced ephemera. The wine ripples a deep red. The stone fish shivers, wiggling inside her palm, 290 million years of stone beginning to melt.

Swim, small fish; eat the ephemera; kiss the reflection of sunshine; you are not turning into stone ...

* * * Two writers in conversation:

- My female character is unhappy.

- Because ofwhat happened last night? My male character's quite sad too.

- Why's he sad?

- She left, taking the fossil with her. You should know that's the only thing of value he has in his house. What more can your female character ask for?

- She says he's taken responsibility nine times before, so he must take responsibility this time too. Her name's also Hoa. - But he saidfrom the start that he's done with flowers. Only fossils ...

- Doesn't matter. You die, whatever your game.

17

ASM LITERARY REVIEW

- But his house is now just twelve square metres.

- It doesn't matter. She said this time he needn't worry about sharing the house.

* * * Hoa leaves the big house to her husband; it is only his first divorce and he might need the space. Hoa moves to the room of twelve square metres and turns it into something pretty and neat. The fossil swims above the blue frame of the window. Nguyen no longer collects fossils, or anything else. He has only one room left.

18

The Ytzrra NamLe

H

before sunrise my body's already soaked with sweat, as though in anticipation of the real heat. Melbourne's in drought. The city a plain of dust and fire. I wake amidst dreams of Saturday sports as a schoolboy, shin guards and box chafing where the sheets have twisted; noise, collision down the pitch as faraway as a deeper dream.

There are Tupperware containers at half-time, frozen wedges of orange.

Then a sudden switch and charge, players all around me, the rising breathing in my ears - I am sprinting, dread-filled, from here to there, and here the ball is kicked to there, and there it's booted - at the very moment I've chased it down - somewhere else. The sun is on my face and then it is dark. My brother, my blood and bones, confessor and protector, came in last night, he must be sleeping downstairs, and - as always when he comes - I find my hand on my heart and my mind wide open and wheeling.

I get up and wash my face. The water from the cold faucet is warm, and smells of dirt. Downstairs, a reflexive propriety forestalls me looking at the sleeping form on the couch, and then I look. My brother, Thuan, comes bringing no dues to where he's been. AB always, he lies on his back. His mouth is open, his eyelids violent with their shuddered thoughts, and even under the thin sheet I can see the heavy limbs, flat and parallel as though in state. He has a powerful body.

OURS

19

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

I make some coffee in a plunger - not bothering to keep the noise down - and take it outside to the back deck. Surrounded by cicada song I sit down, stare out. Something is wrong. Why else would he have come? I wonder where he's been but then why does it matter? Away is where he's been. I think of his last visit three years ago, then Baby's visit a few months later - how quiet and uncertain she was, how unlike his girlfriend from those rowdier times. Before leaving she hesitated, then asked for thirty dollars; I gave it to her and never saw her again.

Against the darkness, other faces from that shared past occur to my mind with stunning vividness. Even closer, thicker, than the dark is the heat.

Another scorcher on the way. Somewhere out there a forest is burning, and a family crouching under wet towels in a bathtub, waiting as their green lungs fill with steam and soot muck. I test the coffee's temperature. As often happens at this time of morning I find myself in a strange sleep-bleared funk that's not quite sadness. It's not quite anything. Through the trees below, the river sucks in the lambency of city, creeps it back up the bank, and slowly, in this way, as I have seen and cherished it for years, the darkness reacquaints itself into new morning.

He's there now, I sense him, but I say nothing. Minutes pass. A line of second lightness rises into view beside the river: the bike trail.

'You still got myoId T-shirt,' Thuan says. Even his voice sounds humid.

He comes out, barefoot and bare-chested, stepping around my punching bag without even feinting assault.

'Sleep okay?'

'If you mean did I drown in my own sweat.'

He's feeling talkative. 'You came in late,' I say. 'There's a fan.'

He pads around the deck, inspecting it. Since he was last here I've jerryrigged a small workout area, a tarpaulin overhang. I painted the concrete underfoot in bright, now faded, colours. He lowers himself onto the flat bench. Then under his breath he says, 'All right,' as though sceptically conceding a point. He shakes his head. 'This bloody drought,' he says.

'I know, I've been going down there,' I say, nodding at the river. 'Bringing water up - for the garden and whatnot.'

'Why?' 'You know.' He's making me self-conscious. 'The herbs and stuff.'

'I mean why not just use the hose?'

20

The Yrlrra

1 glance at him. Where has he been that there aren't water restrictions?

Then 1 catch his meaning: who cared about the water restrictions? What could they do to you?

A shyness takes hold of me, then 1 say, 'I dreamt about Saturday sports.'

To my surprise he starts laughing. He lifts up his face, already sweatglossed, and bares his mouth widely. Yes, he's changed since 1 saw him last.

'Remember when you broke that guy's leg? And they wanted us to forfeit?'

1 tell him 1 remember, though in my memory it was he, and not I, who had done the leg breaking. We'd played on the same team some years. For a confusing moment I'm shuttled back into my morning's dream: the brittle sky, the sun a pale yolk broken across it. Then the specific memory finds me - the specific faces - the injured kid with what seemed an expression of short-breathed delight, as if someone had just told a hugely off-colour joke; the odd, elsewhere smirk playing on our father's lips as he came onto the field to collect us, batting off the coach's earnest officialese, the rising rancour of the opposing parents.

'The look on his face,' 1 scoff.

I wait for Thuan to go on with the story but apparently he's done. He's chuckling still, but the sound has no teeth in it and that makes me wary. I feel tested by him.

'Coffee?'

He thinks about it. Then, as though shoved, he falls backwards along the bench, twisting his upper body at the last second beneath the barbell.

Hurriedly I count up the weight - one-twenty kilos on a fifteen-kilo bar not shameful, but nor is it my personal best.

'Wanna spot?' I ask, trying to make it clear from my tone that I'm joking.

He jerks the bar off the stand and correctly, easily, completes three presses.

When he's done he remains on his back, arms gone loose on either side of the narrow bench as though parodying one of the weekend kayakers on the river below. I follow his long breaths. For some time he doesn't move or speak, and in the half-dark I wonder if it's possible he's fallen back asleep. All around us the cicadas beat on, their timbre unsteady, deranged by the interminable heat of the night. I settle back too. A strong whiff of sage from the garden.

Trees and bushes sliding into their outlines. Buying this place when I came into my inheritance was the smartest thing I ever did - despite its rundown 21

ASlA LITERARY REVIEW

state, subsiding foundations, the light-industrial mills and factories on every side. I couldn't have known then that ten years on, at thirty-three, I'd be living here alone, jobless. I couldn't have reasoned that I'd end up folding each of my days into this early-morning mood, trained on the dark river below, sensing that the mood, though ineffable, was one less of sorrow than of loss - and that what I called my life would be answerable to it. I know this: my brother, when he comes, muddies this mood in me. For this I am glad, as for the fact that we are bound to each other in all the ways that matter.

As though invoked, he speaks up. 'I'll be out of your hair in a couple of days,' he says. Then he gets up and goes into the dark bushes, presumably to take a piss.

* * * Physical excellence has always been important between us. As a boy, I remember pushing myself in sports because my brother did - following him blindly into school and street games of every type. Unlike me, he didn't read, or even listen to music; for him the pursuit of physical betterment was its own reason and reward. I remember witnessing - when I was eleven and he thirteen - a push-up contest between my brother and the four Ngo boys. Later, of course, the four of them would be media-tarred as members of that night's notorious 'Asian gang' but in truth they were no gang - they were barely even friends - and famously never on speaking terms. What they were, were brothers. And even back then, in the kids' room at some family friends' party in St Albans, squatting around the prone figure of my brother who was younger than all but one of them, they'd already learned to stick together. The contest carried on. With no clear winner emerging, they progressed to push-ups on their knuckles, then push-ups on five fingertips, then one-armed push-ups incorporating these variants the Ngos dropping out until only Hai, the eldest, remained alongside my brother. Then Hai collapsed. All of us watched in incredulity as Thuan went on to demonstrate a one-armed push-up, left hand tightly clutching his right wrist, his body's weight borne entirely by the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. I was stricken - as much by my brother's single-mindedness as his strength, the fact he must have practised, in secret, for months. (I say this with confidence because it was only after three months, when I'd 22

The Ytlrra

buffed two coin-sized spots into the bathroom floorboard, that I managed it myself) My brother believed that nothing could make you ridiculous if you were strong. His way was to go at things directly; entering a new school, for example, he would do what movie lore says to do upon entering jail: pick a fight - and win. I wondered what he did in jail. Our father, in his own way, failed to beat this into us, and so my brother beat it into me. I thought then I hated him for it but I was wrong. I wanted to know him - I always have.

Now I realise it was only when he asserted himself in physical motion - then, ineluctably, in violence - that I came closest to doing so.

I am on the street of my childhood. I am running late, without any time to scavenge through the disused paddock, veer in and out from under lawn sprinklers - even to catch a breather at the bottom of our steep hill. He's by himself, waiting for me. Both our parents at work. I'm late, and when I come in the front door he'll punish me - those are his rules, and they're clear enough. I come in and there he is, right in front of me, his face almost unbearably inscrutable. He allows me time to put down my schoolbag and deadlock the door. I fumble off my shoes. The hot cord bunches up from my gut into my throat, clogging my breathing. I lift my arms to my face as he slubs me with a big backhander.

'Where've you been. You're late.'

I nod, lick my cracked lips, crabwalk quickly into the living room. He follows me to the couch where I hunch my back and bury my face in the dark red cushion. Over and over he hits me, his knuckles pounding the hard part of my head where I won't bruise. The cushion smells of old blood, and spit, and sweat from both our bodies. If I reach behind to feel for the arm, the punishing fist - try to glove it with my own smaller, sweaty palms he'll twist and sprain my fingers. If I turn to plead, I'll meet his face absent of heavy intent, as if his attention is somewhere else, as if he's bashing my skull to reach something just beyond it. He's utterly without pity and in my stronger moments I envy that. I'm sorry, I tell him. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. He drives his knee into my lower back. At the height of panic and pain something comes free in me. Afterwards, I wipe my face on the cushion and try not to track blood, if there is blood, all over the carpet. I search my reflection in the bathroom mirror. If there's visible damage, he'll barter with me, he'll let me off next time, he'll do my chores, buy me jam doughnuts 23

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

at the tuckshop - so long as I don't dob him in. But only rarely are there visible signs.

'What happened?' Mum asks. She's had a long day and her face is closed and loose.

'Nothing.'

She pauses. 'I'll tell your dad.'

I look at her scornfully. Even she knows that doesn't deserve an answer.

One of the common tacks in media accounts of my brother, I noticed - beyond the routine designation of 'monster' - was to call attention to his inscrutability. None of the other culprits merited such consideration.

The Ngo boys, for instance, always looked thuggishly guilty. But courtroom reporters and sketch artists described, artfully and self-consciously, their failure of scrutiny in the face of Thuan Xuan Nguyen; a face typically depicted as 'smooth', or 'mask-like', on someone whose very name rebuffed pronunciation in each of its three syllables. I could understand their frustration. My brother was a person in whom deep faults ran, yet always he seemed to conduct them into something like charisma. All my life I never judged him; to me he represented the fulfilment of my own genomic seed and tatter. I never suspected, after all that happened, at the trial and beyond, that complete strangers might also be capable of my reservation. This is not to defend what he did. This is to say I understood, completely, the media's macabre, manic insistence on the details of that night. The facts of the matter. The altercation and eviction from the nightclub. The first victim chased down and hacked to death by a gang wielding machetes, meat cleavers and samurai swords. The sickening count of wounds on his body. Victims two and three fleeing into the Yarra, carried by the water approximately two hundred metres to the west - shadowed along the shore by the gang.

One with gashes on his wrists and forearms, three fingers missing below the knuckle, from a presumed attempt to return ashore. Chances are you may recall these details. The sober-faced, riverside TV reports, the strongly worded declarations by members of the mayor's office, the Homicide Squad, the Asian Squad - while in the wintry background, day on day, the grieving families held vigil, wailing in Vietnamese as they proffered incense sticks, lit and let go of tissue paper. You may have even heard me speak, in one of my presentations, about this incident. Most people recognise my brother only through one of his tabloid nicknames: the Meat Cleaver Murderer. He was 24

The Yarra

there on the bank that night. Here's what most people won't know - what I've never spoken about: I was there with him.

* * * When it gets light my brother showers and heads out. I laze on the couch in the living room, windows open but curtains drawn, shirtless in front of the rickety fan, rolling a chilled glass bottle of water back and forth across my chest. Otherwise, I try not to move. When the phone rings, it's Mum - one of her friends has just spotted Thuan on Victoria Street. Is it true? Has he come back?

I'm waiting for him when he returns. We have to go visit Mum, I tell him.

He stops, then nods, puts his sunglasses back on. Outside, the air is so hot it immediately dries out my lungs; I can feel the bitumen boiling through my sandals. This is a killing sun. We walk south, through the Abbotsford chop shops and factories, the streets made slow, strange with heat vapour, the sudden assaultive glare of metal surfaces. People move, then pause in scant shadows. On the main street the tramlines look as though they're liquefYing. Too hot to think, let alone speak, we make our way towards the high-rise flats.

'Child?' our mother asks when she opens the door. She's wearing brown silk pyjamas and there's absolutely no sweat on her face.

'Hello, Ma.' My brother touches her shoulder for a second. She reaches up and cups his ear, then turns to smile at me.

When our father died I advised her to sell the house and car and move here - the flat was government-subsidised, located in the heart of a Vietnamese neighbourhood. During that period she was used to doing whatever I said.

I see, looking back, it must have been hard-going for her - moving from a family home with yard, driveway and garden to living alone in an inner-city warren sentried by closed-circuit cameras. Up urine-doused lifts and down fumigated corridors. Since then, though, she's grown to like it. She likes the proximity to her new circle of friends, to Victoria Street a block away, and - a few blocks behind that - to me. After all that happened, I sometimes wondered how her friendships suffered - I loathed the thought of her being judged by that array of flat faces and slit eyes, besieged by their silent, hostile curiosities - but of course she'd never have discussed any of that with me.

25

ASiA LITERARY REVIEW

The dining table, predictably and yet astonishingly, is covered with food.

Mum comes out of the kitchen with a jug full of mint leaves and cut lemon halves. She pouts our drinks, enquires after my herb garden, brings out a colander brimming over with fresh basil and purple mint and coriander.

She'll send some cuttings home with me, she says; the residents picked the community garden clean due to the drought. Every now and then, as she speaks, she'll stop to look at my brother.

'You've been in the sun,' she says. She wets a cloth under the kitchen tap and lays it across the back of his neck.

We eat with courteous gusto. These are all our favourite dishes: spring rolls, shredded chicken coleslaw, a plain winter melon soup offset by caramelised salty pork. My brother doesn't talk, so neither do 1. The silence becomes the outside wind: up here on the eighteenth Roor it's a constant commotion, driving dust and sound through the metal window jambs, shaking the very light. Every so often I see smallish cockroaches stopping, as though disoriented, in the middle of their skittering. Oblivious, we eat, and before we're done with any given dish Mum carts it off - brings forth a new one. For a moment it's as though we've ducked out of our near past; we're back in our St Albans kitchen, nothing to say, waiting for Mum to finish up. Not knowing it would chase us all down - this past still in front of us. Then, she cooked and we ate. Later, she sat down and couldn't stand up again in a Victorian Supreme Court public toilet, her eldest son counted push-ups in his cell, body wet with heft and speed, I stood in front of strangers and spoke them both down into small dots of sense. Later, she sat with her back straight and head bent, I stood in front of people and delivered up her dead husband.

In cold weather you find the dead roaches behind the radiators, under the electric kettle, microwave, fridge, where they group for warmth. When it's this hot where do they go?

'Child is well?' Finally she's seated, facing Thuan. The dishes are cleared and there's a platter of fruit on the table.

'I'm fine,' he says.

She starts to respond, then stops. Her fingers reach out to test the lacquer of a cut lemon face, left open to the air.

'Really,' he says. He sounds like he means it.

'It's so sad what happened to Baby,' she says. She, too, is thinking about death. 'I didn't even know she was sick like that.'

26

The Yarra

'Baby? What happened?' he asks.

'Thank you for coming to see me. I know you're very busy.'

'You don't know about Baby?' I ask despite myselE Thuan frowns, then reaches over and squeezes our mother's shoulder.

'Ma. Guess what.'

'Where you have been, or what you've been doing, is your own business,' she continues. She says this shyly and forthrightly, a settlement of fact. 'I don't need you to look after me.'

'I know, Ma.' 'And Lan, he is very good. He can look after himselE' 'He is very good,' repeats Thuan, completely deadpan.

'I hear about Lan speaking at universities, at the community centre, and it makes me very happy.' My brother throws me an offhand smile, and in a ritual manner she follows up his smile, almost too sweetly. Turning her attention to me: 'He has become a brave and caring man.'

I get up, go to the window. There has always been a touch of formal drama about my mother, and a situation like this - her prodigal son's return after three long years - is bound to draw it out. Through the wind-rattled window I watch some seagulls, hovering in the air the way seagulls do. The air is runny with heat and bleaches the blue sky.

Mum's speaking again. 'I know I can't tell you what to do. But I'm your mother and I don't want my sons to be angry with each other.'

I turn around. My brother's mouth is slightly open, sly at one corner.

'I don't know how much longer I'll be here. I want my sons to look after each other.' She speaks with care, a prepared grace. 'Your father would want that, too. Remember when you were children, you looked after each other.'

In grade three, when my parents found out I was being bullied, they left it to my brother to beat up the malefactor. Recess the next day Thuan climbed out of the concrete playground tunnel from one end, then, a long minute later, Matty Fletcher from the other, smiling with his mouth full and one hand low on his gut. My family used to bring this up at every chance.

Now, Mum stops, following the thought to its logical implication. Another track cut off next to a night river. Nothing, during the trial, was so cruel as watching the jury coaxed and coerced by weeks of 'similar fact evidence' alleging Thuan's propensity for violence - until it was all anyone could see of him. She must have been confounded, afterwards, by the new plot of her 27

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

life - how, whether forward or back, it inescapably led her, as it did both her sons, to that one night - as though it were exactly where we were all meant to be.

'I've been saving some money,' she says.

'Ma.' His insouciance has settled now.

'I need you to come to the bank with me later. To sign some papers. If you have time.'

'Listen, Ma, I don't need money.'

'You're the oldest, so I want you to look after it.'

For a moment no one speaks. In the yellow emptiness behind the window I hear voices, strains of Vietnamese opera riding the hot red wind from a different floor, maybe a different building. The glass-warmed sun on my face. I'm brought back to mornings waking up when my pillow is so suffused with sun, the air through the open window so full of a sense oflost summer, that I close my eyes again, coach those voices at the bottom of my hearing to sing louder, bear higher their meaning.

'Child,' says Mum, her tone finally relaxing. 'You're too good for money now?'

Thuan leans back at the table, slightly embarrassed.

Mum stands up, brushing smooth her silk pyjama top. 'Heavens,' she says, 'it's been so long since I saw you. I'm going to tell you the truth - I didn't know if I would see you again.' Then, with her usual restraint, she checks herself. Smiling privately, as though she's decided she has all the time she needs, she picks up the jug and heads into the kitchen to make more iced tea.

* * * 'So Baby.'

The lift drops with the sound of metal squealing against itself.

'Two or three years ago,' I say. 'It was an accident, they think.'

He looks straight ahead. 'OD?' I nod.

'She was still in Footscray?'

'Yeah, probably. I think so. I saw her - she was all straightened out.'

He frowns, maybe sensing my lie. 'Not if she was still hanging out in 28

The Ytzrra

Footscray she wasn't.' It's the first time I've heard an edge of the old hard tone. 'Jesus,' he mutters. The lift opens, and I follow him through the two security doors back out into the heat.

In the presentations I've been asked to give, I generally concentrate on sociological factors until the inevitable moment I find myself nudged towards the incident. The cops at our door two days later, their duteous, scornful faces, all the scorn sucked into their eyes and the edges of their mouths as if to curb them from asking, What kind of animals are you? That you could do this to your own? These are not, I think, unfair questions.

But the people who turn to me for answers aren't looking to my Master's in political science, they're looking at my one-of-them face, they're looking at my pedigree of proximity: the fact I'm my brother's brother. Not that I'm one of them, of course. I'm articulate and deferential, I'm charming to just the right degree. It's that they trust me to tell them the inside story. They want to know - beneath the affidavits and agreed facts - how it happened.

And so when I talk about socioeconomic disadvantage, about ghenoisation and tribal acting-out, about inexorable cycles of escalation, I say these things and I mean them, but even to me they start to sound insincere. What I mean to say but don't - can't - is that everything always starts with a girl, and in this case the girl was Baby.

My brother was nineteen and one night came home drunk, flushed, probably high, and with a girl. This last had never happened before. There was a shadow on his jaw which I assumed was a bruise. After some time the girl said to me, 'I'm Baby,' then turned to him and exclaimed, 'I can't believe you weren't gonna introduce me!' then kissed him, all the while still talking into his mouth. He made some joke and she laughed and I was relieved, hearing her laugh, that it wasn't the cutesy, infant squeaking so many Asian girls liked to perform in front of guys.

'He talks about you all the time,' she said, and laughed again.

I decided I liked her.

How long they'd been together wasn't clear. It seemed, from Baby's comfort with him, that it might have been a while. She was my brother's first girlfriend, I think, and I'm not sure why that didn't surprise me at the time. They'd just come home from a fight. I mentally staged it during their telling: Baby's ex had been at the club, an Asian night, stewing deeper and hotter in Hennessy the longer he watched them until, at the final, emptying 29

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

hour - the lights switched on and music off, bartenders wiping down bars, tallying the take - he'd called up his mates and followed them outside.

Something flew out of the night towards Thuan's head. He ducked, the bottle smashing against a car, setting off the alarm. 1 knew that club: its main entrance fed onto a cul-de-sac backed in by warehouses, steel roller doors, a multi-storey car park giving out the only light. Under that spotty, gas-like glow, my brother turned around and saw them - maybe a dozen of them. Their movements loose and stiff with alcohol. He had Baby with him, and the four Ngo brothers - that was it. Breath shortening, the great engine of his heart pumping till he felt the thick twists of hormones through his body, he fended Baby back against the blaring car, made quick eye contact with the Ngos, for whom he felt himself flooding with a feeling of deep loyalty, and waited. You can always tell the seriousness of a fight by the speed of first approach. Baby's ex feinted forward, then his crew herkyjerked at them, and instantly my brother knew in his body the entire shape of what would follow. The only surprise was the set of strangers who jumped in to help them; it was only later, in the nervy racing-away euphoria, that they were introduced as Baby's friends from Footscray; only later still, well past the point of ready return, that he learned the guy in the red baseball cap - as affable afterwards as he was vicious during the fight - was another of Baby's exes.

'You should've been there,' Thuan said magnanimously, rubbing the sore spot on his jaw. 'We could have used you out there tonight.'

'You did okay,' said Baby.

1 studied her closely - this girl they'd all fought over. She had a face struck together by contrasts: the Asian hair - so black it looked wet - offset by almost European features: chalky skin, sunken cheeks, lips in a burnished shade of red that belonged to some earlier, jazz-smoked era. Her body was slight and wonderfully slouched. She had, all in all, the look of a good girl gone a bit grungy. Thinking of their story, 1 saw her arms lined by light in the alley, locked crossed amid the scudding bodies, the car alarm caterwauling through her skull. Then 1 saw my brother watching her. He looked the happiest I'd ever seen him.

'1 wish 1 had been there,' 1 said, and meant it.

That summer, 1 spent more time with Thuan than ever before or since; Baby liked my company, insisted on it, and my brother was surprisingly 30

1he Yttrra

acquiescent - especially given we'd never really had any mutual friends.

She called him 'Little T' and so, with even less reason, I became 'Big T'.

I came to need her, and probably what I needed most about her was him: the emergent, intricate person he became around her. He developed a way of talking to me through her, in third-person - Look at him - and he reckons he's not on steroids! She kept him kind to me like that. At Brighton Beach she stripped to a grey bikini. When he caught me staring, he gave me a look that was warning and mockery, shy and full of braggadocio, knowing and forgiving all at once. Do you see what I mean? We lived then in slow-time; the light more viscous, the breath drawn deeper into our bodies. I had a new brother and a new name - how would I not rally to both?

* * * When we get back, Thuan breaks the silence and tells me to head inside he's going to keep wandering. There's no invitation in his announcement so I go in - glad to escape the punishing heat - strip to my boxers, splash water over my face and chest. I think for a droll moment of working out. Then I resume my place on the couch, following the creak of the fan, the odd foolhardy cyclist whizzing by on the track below.

The wind sears my face awake. I'm sodden and sticky. I find myself incredibly aroused. The wind feels as though it's passed through fire. I press my face into the cushion and reach for myself, drowsing into the familiar memory of Baby, that one time. The habitual quickening. She came over to our house wheeling a large suitcase full of clothes to launder. Yes. These trips were timed so both our parents would be out working the night shift. My brother steered and shut her up in his room, not knowing I could hear their every other sound. At the end of the night she unloaded the dryer and folded her clothes into the suitcase.

'Need any help with that?' he asked.

'I'll be right.'

'You can carry it down the stairs?'

A flirtatious pause.

'Sure, you can help me bring it down.'

I glided to the window and lifted the hem of the blinds. I was nearly seventeen. They left, as usual, by the small unlit walkway between the fence 31

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

and my side of the house. And as usual, they tarried in the dark, swaying in and away from each other, whispering, and 1 cracked open the window to listen in from above.

'So what's the going tip for a bellboy here?' she asked.

Outside the night was cool and a wind blew full and quiet along the empty street, carrying with it the scent of new flowers, jasmine and hibiscus and bougainvillea. A wood chime sounded from a neighbour's porch.

'Just a quick blow job,' he said.

She spluttered out a low laugh, pushed and punched him. Then they kissed. She kissed him soft and then she kissed him hard, and after some abortive fumbling she spun around and folded herself over the standing suitcase. She wriggled her pants down to her knees.

'Make it quick,' her voice hissed.

He shoved down his own pants and grabbed her pale hips. He leaned and rocked over her. The wheels scrabbled wildly across the concrete but the suitcase stayed upright. From where 1 was watching, all 1 could see of Baby was the side of her head, curtained offby her jogging black hair. She nodded and nodded and nodded and 1 watched. Finally they stopped, remaining locked together, almost statue-like. Then she unbent herself, bobbed her knees in a little curtsey, and reached between her legs with two fingers.

'You,' she said, grinning delightedly, jabbing her fingers at his chest, 'are going to get me pregnant.'

He shushed her and automatically she looked around, scoping the street.

Then she looked up - and saw me. 1 jerked back but didn't dare release the blinds. After an appalling hesitation, she lowered her gaze, then straightened her clothes. She took possession of her suitcase handle. My brother stood there half-slouched and stupid. 1 ignored him. 1 watched instead the new self-consciousness in Baby's body - or did 1 imagine it? - as she walked away, leaning her weight forward, scraping and sledding her suitcase across the street.

'1 never want to see you again,' my brother abruptly shouted into the night. 'Take your stuff and get out of here!'

With a wicked smile she turned in our direction. 'I'm never coming back!' she called out. She heaved the suitcase into the boot and slammed it shut.

Something occurs to me from my childhood 1 haven't thought about for years. After a particularly nasty beating, if 1 swore to tell our parents - and 32

The Ytlrra

his bribes and proofs of contrition weren't enough to dissuade me - my brother would threaten to run away. How strange I now remember this with something like nostalgia. He would stalk to the closet and take out a suitcase and then he'd start packing it, leaving me mute-stricken as I tagged helplessly and furiously behind him, horrified by the thought of being responsible for his loss - and, far more deeply, of losing him. I'd break, of course, and agree to anything if only he agreed to stay. Was this what it was to love somebody?

I guessed it had to be.

A few weeks after my brother's open-air tryst with Baby, we received word that the Ngo brothers had been ambushed at the casino. The crew from that nightclub fight was responsible; they'd driven all the way in, we later learned, from Sunshine. The youngest Ngo, Peter, had had two of his ribs broken with a cricket bat. They'd been out with the Footscray crew from the same fight - the one with Baby's red-capped ex - with whom they'd since become mates. Straight away there was talk of revenge, and soon enough there was another fight, at another Asian night, when Red Cap recognised one of the Sunshine boys. This time, knives were produced, and two people cut.

To Thuan and me, none of this, in itself, seemed critical. These fights happened all the time without ever reaching the hospitals, let alone the courts or headlines. The Ngos were known hotheads. And everyone accepted that the club scene was booby-trapped with grudges and grievances, blood ties and vendettas and bonds of blind loyalty. Asian nights had been banned in Sydney for exactly this reason. The shock of what followed in this case lay mostly in the speed and savagery of its escalation. Afterwards, there was a fair bit of carry-on about who could have done what, when, to whom, to excite such action - but I'll confess that, as irrational and unfair as it may sound, and though it can't really be said to have presaged anything, as soon as Baby looked up that cool night, and commanded my-eye, and showed me how dangerous her desire was, how matter-of-fact her recklessness - I knew right then I could no longer be shocked by anything that touched her.

For Thuan it was already too late. First, it emerged that she'd been in contact with Red Cap, her ex, all along - that in fact he was her on-again, off-again dealer. I saw my brother's face when he found out, felt the shock and deep retreat as though it were my own. He broke it off with her. She contacted me and pleaded her innocence. She was crying, and had never looked more beautiful. It was over, she said; she'd been clean the whole 33

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

time, she said, and, still believing her, I passed it on. They reconciled. I was wracked with strong ambivalence seeing, even momentarily, my brother so vulnerable. A week later, a friend of mine spotted Baby in Sunshine with her other ex - the one who'd picked the first fight with my brother. I confronted her. At first she denied it, then she stopped short. It was impossible to go anywhere in a Vietnamese enclave without being seen and noted - she understood that.

'Okay,' she sighed. 'I went there.'

I didn't say anything.

'I heard ... ' She paused, reconsidered. 'Him and his mates are planning an attack. A big one.'

'On who?'

'Johnny. My ex. And all the rest of his friends. Your friends too - the brothers.'

We were in her car, on our way to pick Thuan up from somewhere, and she spoke straight ahead, into the busy windscreen.

'You know this? You gotta tell them.'

'I don't know.' She frowned, chewed at her lower lip. 'I know him. He just wants to be the big man. That's all it was, I just went there to ask him to stop all this.'

'What'd he say?'

She glanced over at me, and there was a small, strange crease around her eyes I hadn't seen before.

'He said he'd think about it.'

'Okay.'

She drove on a while, then, as though resolving some internal question, she swung her head from side to side. 'Big T, he wanted me to beg.'

All my life I've been told I'm not very good at reading people. There is, I think, some truth to this. Baby; in particular, was so changeable that any attempt would usually be offside and out of step. But in that moment, I was inspired by an intense insight to say nothing, to sit still and let her ravelled thinking tease itself out. In my concentration my face must have lapsed into a frown.

She looked over, cringed slightly. 'I guess you already know,' she murmured. 'I don't know what to do.'

'Do you wanna pull over? Talk about this?'

34

The Yarra

'I would love that.'

She pulled into a petrol station and parked by the air pump. Again, I waited for her to speak.

'You're sweet,' she said nervously. She tilted the rear view mirror down and checked her face. Then she told me how, when she'd gone back to plead with her ex, one thing had led to another. Not like that. But she still wasn't sure how it had happened.

'What happened?'

She paused. 'I don't want your brother to think I'm a slut.' Her voice was small but quickly hardening. 'That's what he called me last time.'

We sat in silence as the car ticked. Slut. The word led me to the image of her bent over a wobbling suitcase, pants scrunched down to her knees. Sand and salt on her wet skin. The lie of the bikini on her body.

'Yeah but you did fuck him, didn't you?' I could feel my heart throttling my ribs as I thought this, and then, unbelievably - as I said it. Now the new word - the new image it called up -landed heavy and wet between us.

Baby jutted out her jaw. She jerked her head in my direction but didn't look at me. 'You can't ... Look, it's not like I'm going out with you.'

'Right.'

'You can't talk to me like that.'

'Right. It's not like he's my brother. Like the last time you fucked around, who was it that patched everything up for you?'

She inhaled sharply. She said, 'I screwed up.' Then she turned to me, her face gone cunning. 'But what's the deal with you two anyway. What sort of fucked-up thing is that?' Her skin was clenched tight around the eyes, her jaw muscles working her thoughts. 'I don't even know why he lets you follow him around. Almost like he's scared of you or something. Like you've got something on him - the way you've got something on me - ' cos that's what you do, right, Big T? Spy on everyone? Get all the dirt?' fu she spoke, the space inside the hatchback seemed to shrink. It was as though everything real, dimensional, was happening here, inside, while the windows were actually screens broadcasting a programme of outside movement and colour. In this enclosure I became acutely aware of her smell- sweat from where her body had kneaded the seat, the chemical tang of her shampoo.

Without thinking I reached for her.

35

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

She flinched. 'I'm sorry,' she coughed, and then she undid her seat belt, leaned forward, and peeled her cardigan off. I realised her cheeks were wet. I didn't know what I wanted. 'Sorry,' she repeated, and offered both her naked arms to me. She was sobbing now, quietly. And then I saw what it was she was trying to show me. The two dark mottled bands around her wrist, and two more around her biceps. The bruises yellow and orange and green, and myself enraptured and repulsed by them. The rot and ripe of them. Most strangely, I felt myself powerfully flushed with a sense that I only much later recognised - and ultimately accepted - as betrayal.

I told my brother a friend had seen her go into the ex's house. I told him to ask her himself. I told him - thinking he'd be happy to hear it - that this ex was gearing up for a major attack against the Footscray crew. I told him my source was unimpeachable.

* * * The afternoon, finally, is cooling down when Thuan returns. He catches me half-naked in the kitchen. 'I've washed up in plenty of kitchen sinks,' he assures me. He's carrying a slab of Carlton Bitter under one arm and holding a supermarket bag in the other. 'Meat,' he explains, 'for the barbie.'

'Where'd you go?'

He ignores me, sets the bag down, rips a couple of cans out of their tight plastic trap. When he throws me a beer I realise it's exactly what I feel like. The rest of the cans he tips into a cooler. By silent consensus we head outside and sit on the deck. Through the gums and melaleucas, the thick pelt of scrub and sedge along its banks, the river is light brown, slow, milky. This river that flows upside down. The day's heat hangs in the air but is no longer suffocating. The brightness no longer angry. We finish the beers, and then the next ones, and the next. I hadn't realised how thirsty I was. He tells me he walked along the river, up to the falls. He saw kayakers there, rehearsing their moves, and uni students doing water tests. He stops, losing interest in his own story. I picture the concrete-capped, rubbish-choked weir, the graffitied basalt boulders, all dominated by the Eastern Freeway roaring overhead. I wonder whether it brought to his mind another river - the same river - running beside and below a different freeway. I wonder whether, when he stares out at this river now, he connects it to that other river a few k's dead south of here; if he follows

The Ytlrra

it, in his mind's eye, through its windings and loops, through Collingwood, and Abbotsford, and Richmond, and Burnley - to South Yarra.

He throws me another beer. The barbecue is all but forgotten. I'm getting a bit dreamy with alcohol, my mind draggling in the heat.

'So what's going on with you anyway?'

'What?' I say, even though I heard him. I have no idea why I said this. I start to audition sentences to make my answer over but this only affirms the silence. My brother snorts, then hoists his drink in a wry toast. I skol my can, stand up and torpedo it into the bush. I'll pick it up later. A pair of rowers glance at us from the river and wave.

'Jesus,' my brother says, 'I really screwed her up.'

'Nothing you could have done. She was on edge the whole time.' After my last chance, I'm now eager to speak. 'Probably junk too. And those friends of hers - in Footscray.'

'What?' His brow creases. 'Nah, I meant Mum.' He looks at me curiously for a second, then scoffs at himself. 'Though her too, I guess.'

I recall a story Baby told me during her last visit, how a friend of hers in detention had collapsed from withdrawal; the male guards had grabbed her, double-cuffed her, stuck a motorbike helmet on her head for two days so she couldn't 'hurt herself'.

'Mum still going up to that temple?'

He'd come back from jail and I'd fantasised about recelVlng his confidences. He'd copped the time for both of us - knowing, surely, that I would've done the same. But he hadn't grown more open at all. Nor the couple of other times he'd visited. Only this time seemed different. This was the most communicative I'd ever seen him.

'In Sunshine? I think so.' He doesn't react, so I go on, 'I think once she ran into one of the families there. I heard one of them spat in her face.'

He nods absently. 'And you? You okay?'

The side-stepped directness of his question stuns me. I saunter my arm out along the view. 'What's not to be okay about?'

'Listen,' he says. 'Can I ask you something?'

'What?'

'That stuff Mum said about you doing talks.'

'It's nothing. Just uni stuf[' I feel myself smirking. 'They just need someone with slanty eyes who can speak in their language.'

37

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

'What sort of stuff do you say?'

'You know - just whatever they wanna hear.'

'Like what?'

'Like poverty, or language issues. Cultural marginalisation ... ' 'They don't ask about what happened that night?'

'You mean do I talk about you.'

He shakes his head impatiently. He's working himself up to something and it puts me on edge. 'I mean, don't they ask why? Why I did it? I mean, isn't all the rest of it bullshit?'

'Why we did it. I was there too.'

'Yeah,' he says, visibly annoyed at having been interrupted. 'You're right.

I forget. I'm sorry.' I wait for him to go on but now I've mucked up his thinking. 'It's all bullshit,' he says again, struggling to recall his argument, and out of some old fraternal deference I find myself looking away. I listen to the frogs gulping for air down by the rushes. The black ducks and reed warblers. My heart is beating harder and harder. I know, of course, what he's referring to - it's the same thing that brings him here each time, and each time strikes him silent: the mind-boggling bullshit of me, years on, still with nothing but time, still cashing in, ever more deeply, on his time.

Those twelve bullshit years piled on the back of a single night's spur of the moment. Then, too, I'd felt the same sick, heady exhilaration talking to him like this - like we were friends.

'You're shaking,' he had pointed out. We'd made it home and both showered; he'd scrubbed his face, I noticed, until it was bright pink. The corners of his temple were lined with delicate blue veins.

'I can't piss. My bladder feels heavy, but nothing comes out.'

He'd frowned, then reached out and clutched my neck with one of his strong pink hands. I knew the strength of those hands. My stomach hitched.

He didn't say anything, and at the physical contact I was shuddered back to our surreal, silent trip in the car; the fog descending upon the freeway canyons, the red blinking lights of radio towers blooming like blood corollas in the mist. The streets had sucked us through the city and shot us home.

'If they come for us,' my brother had said to me.

'No one saw us.'

'You weren't there. If they come for us, you weren't there.'

'Hai and Long and Quang saw me.'

The Yarra

'No they didn't. I'll talk to them.'

'What about you?'

'No matter what they say - so-and-so saw you, so-and-so ratted you out.

Don't listen to them. You weren't there.'

'What about you?'

He patted my neck, then removed his hand. The absence was a cold burn.

He was my rough flesh, he was rooted in the same soil, his heart and brain fed by the same blood, and never before had I felt so needful of him. He stood up and abruptly grimaced, clutching his right knee. Then his face smoothed over again. 'I don't think anyone who saw me will talk,' he said. 'But it shouldn't take them long. To find out about the Ngos. And then me.'

'You mean Baby?'

He nodded, then let out a short burst of air.

'What?'

'I'm not saying she'll talk,' he said.

'She's the one who called me.'

To this day I remember how, when I told him this, he'd shaken his head and smiled, as though unexpectedly amused. 'I know,' he said. 'Everything always goes back to Baby.' Now it is summer, my brother sits with me on the deck of my own house and his face, sweaty and cooked well past pink, confirms itself in that same expression - bemused, sardonic, slightly otherwise occupied.

'Listen to me,' he says. 'I'm glad you didn't have to go down with me.'

His tone is flat with finality. 'That was the best thing that happened this whole mess.'

'Okay.'

'That was the opposite of bullshit.'

'I'm sorry.'

He waves it off. The light is dimming now and he turns away, but not before I catch a brief tensile movement in his expression. There's a discipline holding his face together. I'm horrified by the sudden realisation that maybe he's lying to me. 'But see,' he goes on, 'what I mean is this. I was there, you were there. I don't remember hardly anything. I was off my head but still ... ' He pauses, perhaps suspicious of his own earnestness. Neither of us looks at the other. 'Haven't you tried to think about it, why we did it, and you can't tell what's what?'

39

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

1 decide, in the brief silence that follows, that he's not actually asking me this question.

'What happened,' he goes on, 'and what everyone else says that happened?'

My face has reverted to its little-brother mask - imploring his censure and contempt, his instruction.

'You'd think you'd remember everything.'

1 nod. 1 approximate a wry sound. Then 1 venture, 'I do. 1 do remember.'

He stops to absorb this. Then slowly, and to my great relief, his face slides back into its ironic smile. 'Well, you have to. Otherwise, who's gonna give those bloody speeches?'

* * * That night. 1 remembered that night very clearly. I'd been at a different club.

They'd all gone to Jade - another Asian night - and 1 hated Asian nights.

Too many try-hards, too much attitude. 1 was in the toilets when 1 got the call. There was a guy next to me pissing with both hands in his pockets. It was one of the most intimidating things I'd ever seen. 1 was pretty buzzed by that time, and when 1 answered the phone, Baby's tinny laughing was of a piece with the cackling going on and off in one of the stalls, and then - out in the club - the Dj's chop to a bass-heavy loop, the dewy, overripe smell of teenage girls. 1 found a quieter corner so 1 could hear her.

'Swords!' she was saying. Then I realised she wasn't laughing. 'They've got fucking swords!'

Outside, it was drizzling. 1 ran down the road, past the shawled girls with clopping heels, the corners and culverts reeking of piss, the darkened power poles specked with staples. Overhead, the wet telephone wires gleamed completely gold in the streetlight, like charged filaments, even though my mind insisted on them as black, sheathed in black plastic. 1 reached the car, which I'd parked at a defunct petrol station - now just a low, flat, broken roof spewing water onto the oil-stained concrete. As soon as 1 stopped running, 1 vomited. I got in the car and caught my breath. I called Baby. She didn't answer. I called my brother.

'Fuck,' he panted. 'Fucking fuck.'

40

The larra

'What happened? Where are you?'

He was running, his breath loud and jagged. The wind took his voice.

There was no time to explain. He told me where to pick him up, down near the river. It was only a few minutes away. I arrived at the corner of Church and Alexandra. Across the road from the brightly lit car dealership, human shapes were scampering in every direction. They were all guys, all Asians - some carrying glinting weapons and cudgels. I saw one pull down the beak of his baseball cap over his eyes. Not daring to stop, I slowed the car as I passed, made out what looked like a small pile of dirty clothes on the nature strip. Then I saw, pale and inverted, the tell-tale hand. There was no blood. The head must have been concealed by a piece of flapping fabric, or maybe the ground fell away. There was nothing to indicate a body that had been smashed and stabbed to bits, but even then I knew that was what I was looking at, and the knowledge rocked in my skull, riled up my blood.

I drove on a bit further and parked on the grassy shoulder, making sure to turn off the engine and lights. I took out my phone, my hands trembling, saw three missed calls from Baby. I tried her again but again no one answered.

Then the phone rang. My brother. Where was I? I told him what I'd seen, we had to get the fuck out of there. Not yet. Where was I? Okay, I should meet him on the other side of the bridge. When? Now. Right now.

I got out of the car. The wind had picked up, gusting sideways on my face. I spat and could see my slag sail forever. Behind me the faux-Gothic columns of Melbourne High School were upwardly lit. I crossed the road to the riverbank and ran along the bike path, under bare tree boughs creaking and contending in the wind. Some distance ahead of me, windows in condominium buildings glowed in what seemed secret patterns. I ran into the wind. A car bore down on me, its headlights tunnelling through the thickening fog, changing the shape of the road. It passed in a vicious swipe of noise. By the time I reached the body, which had been left strangely unattended, a veneer had been ripped away within me, an innate excuse brought full-blooded to life. I crossed the bridge.

My brother was three-quarters across. He wore an open-necked shirt as though it wasn't the heart of winter, and leaned against a lamp-lit column as though bored, as though waiting for a late tram. As soon as I reached him he spun around without a word and sprinted down some white-glowing 41

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

stairs that led to the north bank of the river. There was another track down there, squeezed between the Monash Freeway on one side and the river on the other.

I can't tell you what it felt like, racing through the cold night with my brother. On our right the concrete and plastic freeway barricade flickering our progress, on our left the river, and beneath us the paved path springing our feet forward and fast. The wind kicking at our backs. At no point did I second guess what we were doing. I spent my life waiting for him to talk me into something and now the wash of adrenaline through my veins urged me on, faster and faster, as though to chase down, catch my own breath. A voice floated across the river. My brother slowed down, then stopped. His face haggard with exertion but steely, the set of his jaw exuberant.

I turned, breathing heavily, towards the voice. Under the high moon, the river was a trough of light and it was difficult to see behind it. Then I saw. There were two black shapes in the shine. In the darkness opposite there were three more shapes. I soon recognised their voices - the three elder Ngos. They spat and swore into the river.

'Who are they?' I asked, pointing to the two black heads bobbing next to each other. 'Is that Baby's ex?'

Thuan nodded. 'And his brother.'

The two of them seemed to roll and ride over each other on the same spot of river. Every now and then an arm would flail up. Their occasional cries made no sense.

'They're pissed as,' I said.

'Swim over here,' Hai sang out. 'I dare you, come on.'

'Jesus,' I said. 'He's got a fucking samurai sword.'

Instinctively I turned to Thuan and saw, for the first time, his fist gripping a meat cleaver. Looking more closely, I noticed his pants gashed above one knee. His sock beneath that knee was discoloured by blood; on his other foot the sock was white. My lungs filled with air.

'Please,' one of the swimmers beseeched. His voice was low and shaky.

Then, as though they'd just made us out, the two of them began to splash their way towards our bank. My brother looked on impassively. A mist was beginning to settle over the water and the faster swimmer side-stroked awkwardly beneath it.

'That's him,' my brother murmured.

42

The Yarra

The swimmer came closer. His mouth was wild above and below the water, his eyes blinking non-stop. Vapour sputtering from between his teeth.

'Please,' he croaked.

I watched my brother for weakness.

'He can't swim. My brother can't swim.'

'Don't come any closer,' Thuan said. 'You had your chance.'

'Fuck him up,' Hai shouted from the other bank.

'What chance? Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh fuck.'

The icy water weighted his clothes, forcing him to kick hard to stay aRoat. Behind him, his brother moved more erratically. I could hear him hyperventilating loudly.

'Please,' Baby's ex said. 'Please, he can't swim. He's got asthma. Please, it's enough.'

My brother shook his head.

'She's not worth it, man. Oh God.' My brother looked at him again, paying new attention. He murmured, 'You don't talk about Baby.'

Baby's ex started moaning. He swallowed some water, thrashed around for a moment. Then, lifting his face and staring directly at us, he kicked in our direction, desperately dragging his body to one of the beams supporting the path. He clutched the edge, then tried to lift himself up, his eyes wild and goggly. As soon as I saw him close up - the thick, straight hair, the snub face and buck teeth - I knew him, and I knew that I hated him. Jeers and catcalls wafted over through the mist. Thuan kicked at him but Baby's ex grabbed his ankle. My brother tried to stomp him with his other leg but it was the injured one, and Baby's ex clung on fiercely, fixedly. Hopping in a weird dance, my brother raised the meat cleaver. He looked at it. Then he looked at me and there was an odd new uncertainty in his expression. I drank in that look. It fed my heart roar, my blood rapids. I was filled with strange rage and I wanted to be as big as my feeling. I accepted the meat cleaver from my brother's outstretched hand, fell down in a swift crouch, the ground rearing up at my shins, and felt my arm go back and then forward, the blade biting into the wet jacket, and when Baby's ex released my brother's foot and hung on to the path's edge, I worked the blade at his fingers until they too let go.

They drifted, in a weakening, wordless flurry, back out to the middle of the river. At one point the river raised the legs of the brother, and he lay on 43

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

his back, head bent forward, looking at the evidence of his body as though in disbelief To this day people wonder why they didn't swim a few more metres to the west, where they might easily have held onto a leg or abutment of the railway bridge. Or back eastward, to the Church Street bridge. Further east yet, they could have struck out for Herring Island, accessible only by water, and made sanctuary there. As it happened, they stayed in the deep middle of the Yarra. They were drunk, injured, freezing, one asthmatic and unable to swim, and after some desperate horseplay and muffled splashing their eyes went loose and their bodies calm, as though their feet had finally found a shelf in the water, and then they sank, their bodies spinning in slow dark minutes of motion, and they did not re-emerge until two days later when the police divers dragged them out.

My brother bent down at the path's edge. The new silence rendered the brothers' moments-ago breathing clotted and monstrous in its memory.

Thuan took off his shoes, dipped them into the slow-moving river, then took them out and wrung the blood and water out of them. He dipped them in, took them out, and wrung them again. Our shoulders touched and pushed off each other as we ran back to the car.

* * * 'What else do you say?'

'I talk about revenge. Honour. Loyalty and betrayal.'

'That's all bullshit too.'

'Not to me it isn't.'

'Wouldn't you rather just forget everything?'

'I wouldn't change a thing.'

'More bullshit. This is what you want? This life?'

'I'd do it again.'

'Why?' 'For you. Because you couldn't. Because you wanted to.'

'I didn't know what I wanted. It was stupid. Jesus, it's easy for you to say.'

'No it's not.'

'You didn't cop the twelve years.'

'That's why you came back?'

44

The Yttrra

'No.' 'To rub that in my face?'

'No.' 'Sorry.'

'Actually.'

'I would've done that, I would've copped it.'

'Actually, I came back to ask for your forgiveness.'

'What?'

'You heard me.'

'You don't have to. I told you I'd do it again.'

'That's what I mean. I'm sorry I made you that way.'

* * * The next morning he was gone. In hot February my brother came back to me, and stayed for only one day and two nights. I haven't seen him since.

My life, such as it is, I owe to him. If guilt is for what you've done and shame for who you are, then how could I feel shame? I was a brother, and my brother's brother. Forget, he tells me, but does he taste them in his tap water, the savour of their hair and skin in his herbs? They too were brothers.

Melbourne's in drought. The city a plain of dust and fire. The river hasn't water enough to wash the foreign matter out.

I have my work, and my garden, my mother in her glassy loneliness to attend. I have my mornings. Who knows if he'll come back? I have my dreams, too, which have come to co-exist with my memories. My sleep is shallow, and my dreams never seem to go all the way down. I step out of my night window and the river wipes the field before me, a smear of silver noise, great fishes climbing the water by the plate-glass glint of their eyes, in their indigo and orange glows, mastering the dark. I am underneath, plunging as the grey scrim of surface blackens above me. Breathe, lungs, and let me time.

We live our lives atop the body of emotion of which we're capable. I follow my dim thought-embryos, I see by my feeling, I sink with my words, for words are shadow, and shadow cannot explain light.

Where've you been.

You started a thought and you could end up anywhere. Like watching a fire: its false grabs and reachings, its licks and twists, you stared into the guts 45

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

of it and came out in the nightlight glow of a shared childhood room, the cheap groan of a bunk bed, you're awake and listening to the breath snagging in your brother's nostrils, the low whistle of his open-mouthed sleep, the insideness of his life and its promise of protection from the harmful world outside.

Where've you been. You're late.

He's dragging a suitcase into the street. He makes it all the way out of the driveway, to the cherry tree, before I stop him. The air is full of pollen and sunscreen. He emerges from the concrete tunnel with a rueful smile on his face. He's bent over me on the couch - he rooted in his terrible motion and I in him.

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.

I bite the red cushion. I feel his ribs on my ribs. My body an anvil and he's beating something upon it, shaping it into a truer shape, seeking to prove it, the strength, the ductility, the temper of his love.

Poem John Mateer

Homelessness Striving after the gentle among the sleeping homeless stretched out on every bench in Veno Park, I am not in zazen, not in the polluted heart of a mega-city, not patiently inhaling, rising from the murky depths of Shinobazu Pond, the blurry leaves and white butterflies thoughtful on my blind eyes.

I am a sou4 golden, elongating, ten metres high, a flame hurtling down the hills towards Canberra.

No, Tm God flaring up briefly in the dark mind ofFernando Pessoa, that poet ensconced here on the bench among his homeless brothers.

47

Expanded Disc: Tabernacle (2007) by Tony Twigg.

Oil and enamel paint on timber construction in six parts. 140cm x 140cm.

Image courtesy the artist and TAKSU Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Interview: Rana Dasgupta

n

ANA DASGUPTA, writes Salman Rushdie, is 'the most unexpected and ~riginal Indian writer of his generation'. High praise indeed from the master of magical realism, if not entirely correct. 'I'm British!' says Dasgupta, who lives in Delhi. Certainly, Dasgupta's father is Bengali and there are close ties with the family in Calcutta, but his mother is British, he was born in November 1971 in Canterbury, he received an English establishment education and he traces his literary lineage to Chaucer.

Dasgupta enjoyed the 'secret' side to this English upbringing and cross-cultural undercurrents guided his formative experiences of literature.

European writers such as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky 49

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

informed him as a reader, but as a writer he felt too the influence of Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy and Arundhati Roy's The

God ofSmall Things.

Educated at a Cambridge public school, Dasgupta read French at Oxford and completed his post-graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin in the US. He flirted with academia before moving into the commercial world of marketing, first in London, and later in New York and Kuala Lumpur.

His first book, Tokyo Cancelled (2005), a collection of thirteen stories exchanged in an airport lounge as a disparate group of travellers await a delayed flight, is a literary mosaic, comprising one overarching narrative of interrelated parts. Set variously in London, Detroit, Delhi, Hunan province, Frankfurt, Buenos Alres and Lagos, it enacts a world view as well as a personal or aesthetic one, reflecting Dasgupta's sense of a globalised culture embracing many localised ones. A singular work, it is likened to both The Arabian Nights and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Complex questions of identity, origins and home resound throughout Tokyo Cancelled. An Indian billionaire, owner of a string of call centres in Delhi, is swept into a fantastic tale of genetic cloning, oral storytelling and sibling incest. A Frankfurt cartographer 'inherits' a mute Turkish woman, driven mad by the otherness of her new surroundings. And then there is the story of Pave1. Abandoned as a baby and raised by Polish airport workers, he drives a taxi and falls in love with Isabella, who is transformed into a store on Madison Avenue by a magic Oreo cookie. In this convoluted context, it almost goes without saying that Pavel's father is Robert de Niro and his mother a Chinese woman working in a laundromat in rural America.

Dasgupta's debut novel Solo (2009) is, too, woven from intertwined narrative strands. Like Tokyo Cancelled, its very setting - the Bulgarian capital, Sofia - seems to hover between different worlds, cultures and moments in history: 'As the Ottoman Empire's tide retreated, Sofia found itself beached in Europe - and these men plotted to turn their provincial Turkish town into a new European capital city.' Yet, as it is portrayed in Solo, Sofia could be one of any number of international cities of the past two centuries. Defined by a centralised, socialist past, and a deregulated capitalist present, it bears a striking resemblance to the Delhi described by Dasgupta in his essay 'Capital Gains', which appeared in Granta 107.

50

Interview: Rana Dasgupta

The first half of Solo is narrated by the hundred-year-old Ulrich. A former scientist and engineer reduced in old age to blindness and poverty, he reviews the history of his life and nation from the confines of a small apartment. As his elliptical autobiography unravels, Ulrich emerges as an individual- with parents, friends, an estranged wife and child - and as a pawn in a neverending game of geo-political chess.

Inspired by the disembodied voices that surround him - neighbours, a newly self-confident generation of Bulgarians on television and in the streets outside his apartment - Ulrich begins to create the characters who inhabit the second half of Solo, where they take on lives of their own: Kakha Sabadze, a former Georgian footballer turned billionaire oligarch; Khatuna, an ambitious and vindictive young woman forced to flee Tbilisi for a new life in New York; her brother Irakli, a young poet alienated and driven insane by life in America; and Boris, a brilliant Bulgarian violinist who gains international acclaim when his folk songs are 'updated' for a global audience.

The stories Ulrich invents seem eerily similar to those spun by Dasgupta himself, hybrids of myth and modernity, the past and the present, the local and the global.

Dasgupta spoke to Asia Literary Review from his Delhi home where he has been exploring essays, journalism and photography as vehicles for expressing his perception of the world. In conversation he celebrates the roles his dual heritage have played in shaping his imagination, whilst insisting upon his independence from the claims of either. What emerges is a world view that seeks to make sense of the ever-shifting narratives of the twentyfirst century.

JamesKidd

51

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Rana Dasgupta ... ... on being English.

I am thoroughly English in many respects. I was born in Canterbury and grew up in Cambridge, where we moved when I was five. I went to a very white public boys' school there. My mother is British, and my father was born in Calcutta. That meant I had a completely different cultural world, secret stuff my friends didn't have. It wasn't completely me, but I couldn't ever leave it behind. I have very deep attachments to my family in Calcutta.

A lot of these aspects of my personality became far more significant when I left school. I discovered that I was more comfortable living outside England.

I felt very at home in New York. I liked cosmopolitan environments, an expanding sense of the possibilities of the world. Any national epithet seems alienating to me because I don't really feel I am speaking for anyone.

Certainly not for India. I usually call myself a British writer living in Delhi, because this seems like a real description: it's significant that I came from there, and I wouldn't write as I do ifI didn't live here . ... on being perceived as an Indian novelist.

The idea that you have an Indian name and live in Delhi and so will write about this and this does not, for me, set up particularly exciting expectations.

It assumes a narrower consciousness, a narrower sense of history and geography and a much narrower inner life than one would expect of someone who lives, say, in New York.

When Tokyo Cancelledwas just coming out and I was beginning Solo, my French publisher came to Delhi. He was extremely 'into' India. He was the editor of all foreign fiction, but he devoted a lot of his time to Indian books.

He asked what I was writing next. I said a Bulgarian novel, and he freaked out. He thought that after this great set of short stories - he liked Tokyo Cancelled very much - the pay-off would be a big Indian novel. He literally psychoanalysed me. 'Do you hate your father? You must hate your father to reject his culture so completely.' I couldn't believe it. 'You do realise that I am not actually Indian, I am British? I grew up in England? That it is perfectly normal that I would at some point write a European novel?' This fact - that I was British - never seemed to stick with him. On inviting me to a festival in France, he said, 'Please confirm your dates quickly because I need to organise 52

Interview: Rana Dasgupta

your visa.' I wrote back, 'I have told you million times - I'm British! I don't need a visa to go to France!'

The fact is, though, that many south Asian writers are beginning to write about places other than south Asia. Kamilla Shamsie's novel [Broken verses, 2009] - she has traditionally dealt with Pakistani issues - contains a large section set in Japan in the 1940s. And Nadeem Aslam [The Wasted Vigil, 2008] writes about Afghanistan, which is not his country either. In part this has to do with the opening out of everyday geography. The idea that 'the Indian reality' is located, say, in the confines of the Indian middle-class family is becoming increasingly obsolete, simply because of the nature of experience, which is multinational for everyone. People are doing business with other countries and buying products from every part of the world and, even relatively far down the social hierarchy, people are travelling abroad.

The question has become: How does this place relate to every other place?

And that enters the literary enterprise too . ... on living in Delhi.

I live in Delhi because I fell in love with someone and this is where she is. I didn't intend to stay this long. But Delhi has much that is good for writers.

When I arrived here, it was very cheap and there were people arriving from other places to write screenplays or novels. You could rent a nice apartment for US$200 a month - you couldn't do that in New York or London - and be in a big, dynamic city. It is much more expensive now. The first advantage of the dty is disappearing fast.

Delhi was a good place for someone starting out on an artistic career who didn't want others looking over their shoulder, or to be assailed by very successful people in the same field. It was a long way from the London literary scene and what was trendy that season in literature. I liked that.

While I was living in New York, I felt that the media scene, be it film or literature or whatever, was so impressive and so wildly beyond my reach. It was difficult to take oneself seriously at the computer writing a novel.

Delhi is also an emerging place, with all kinds of unresolved problems and ambitions. It's a place of discussion, a place where people are talking about the future - the future of the city, of the nation state, the future of the world - in ways that are different from other places I have lived in.

There's a feeling of being at the centre of something. Reality here is complex 53

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

and ambiguous. It can't easily be explained, and it may still go in many directions. It is precisely that openness that creates a fertile environment for ideas; nothing is foreclosed . ... on life before Tokyo Cancelled.

I wrote for my friends when I was a teenager and then, when I was twenty, I began a novel called Lost Birds. I read it recently and quite liked it. It's very free compared with how I write today. Writing took something of a back seat while I was in the corporate world, writing articles for a marketing company, the 'creative work' of the commercial world, stories about companies and products. Ultimately, I felt bad about how poor these fictions were, and how deceptive. I wanted to write truer things. In 2000, I began the stories that later became Tokyo Cancelled. ... on writers.

I look to writers like Thomas Mann, Dostoevsky and Kafka for models of what I want to do. They made me feel that the novel can do big things, amazing things. It can transform our sense of the world. Present too are the Arthurian legends, the Bible, Chaucer, French fabliaux. I'm old-fashioned.

Rushdie, with Midnight's Children, gave me the sense that the novel was not a dead thing, that it could continue still in our age to produce that sense of scale and magnitude. Midnight's Children was perhaps most directly responsible for me seeing myself writing novels too.

I have no problem with commercial fiction - I like it and read it. But the reason I write books is to communicate with people on as many levels as possible, and to talk about the things that are most intricate in life . ... on the writer as storyteller.

Tokyo Cancelled is a meditation on the nature of storytelling and its fate in the modern era. The modern middle class do not sit around telling stories in the way their forebears did. Is it possible to narrate our experience in the language of myth and folk tale? That language seems to have been adequate for the majority of human history, so what is it about modern times that we feel we have grown beyond it? Why do we feel we cannot narrate our experience in such tropes? Do we feel that modern people are impoverished in comparison with those who went before? Or do we have 54

Interview: Rana Dasgupta

other forms of wealth, other forms of sophistication that make this kind of story unnecessary? We don't find it difficult to take in Chaucer. But many found it difficult to take in Tokyo Cancelled, and to accept that contemporary people would speak in this form . ... on his debut novel, Solo.

I wanted to write a novel with a large canvas, speaking simultaneously of yesterday and tomorrow. Often the ambitions one has for a book are shut down by formal decisions; with Solo I wanted to find a form elastic enough re house a great sweep. Th ruvision between Book One, a book of hisrory. and Book Two, one of prophecy and fantasy, allowed me to do many thjngs.

One of the reasons for situating Solo in Bulgaria is that it captures something about emerging countries - of which India is also one. In Europe and America, there is a paralysis that arises from the search for something pure and uncontaminated by commercialism. That paralysis is not found in eastern Europe, where there is an immense comfort with money and the need for it. The same applies to India. The energy of the twenty-first century is the energy of all those people who were deprived by the twentieth. They have an enormous sense of possibility. The way Polish and Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants are talked about in the UK speaks directly to that.

They come with unbelievable life stories and display an incredible energy - an ability to learn languages, to merge with a new country, to make new lives and to send money back home. They are better adapted human beings - knowing nothing of the welfare state and acutely aware they will always have to survive on their own - than their British contemporaries, who will never replicate their parents' standard of living and for whom the decline of the welfare state is a tragedy.

Solo's critical edge lies in its second half; a desire to write against a conventional geography of the world that perceives the East as nothing more than a parasite on the West and its achievement. In that second halfwe see how intensely burns the energy that arises from this historical marginalisation . ... on the state of the modern novel.

I am uninterested by the idea of the novel as something that encapsulates a certain cultural identity and gives voice to what it means to be Indian or anything else. A great deal of energy has been expended on this in 55

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

contemporary literature. I'm doing an injustice to nearly everything that is written in this genre, but it seems too often to be a story of a pure, unspoiled cultural identity degraded by modern life. What we are left with are orphans in the modern world, migrants longing to return to what they once had; a kind of melancholy of cultural alienation and degradation.

In Solo, Ulrich begins his coming into consciousness with the death of his grandmother - the death of fable, the death of her incredible memory and grasp of her own cultural history. He marvels at how she remembered all those names she carried with her from her village. But I find that's not a very interesting place to end. We do not live in the nineteenth century looking forward. We live now, and all this has happened. We must find narratives of our own contemporary world that provide us a viable way of existing, not just a melancholy looking back. In Book Two of Solo, I wanted to exchange a life of perpetual decline for one that offers much more energy and with different moral components, a pure energy offering a way of travelling into an imaginative future . ... on his contemporaries in literature.

Writers who lay claim to two or three backgrounds are, I think, suspicious of local narratives that present themselves as universal and are often more ready to ask a question about what the other guy thinks. Many novelists of my generation fit this discription - Hari Kunzru, Nadeem Aslam, Tahmima Anam - and one characteristic of their sensibility is that they write perpendicularly to what we know. They recover the thoughts and the characters that are written off in the conventional narrative. That is a good faculty to have when writing about the contemporary world. But perhaps I'm placing too much emphasis on genetics. What I'm describing here is essentially the defining quality of all good novelists . .. , on Pico Iyer's view that India is the centre of the new literary world.

It's a view that requires a fairly big leap in the imagination. There are many people writing in India, there are many things to write about, and there are Indian writers who have had marked literary successes in recent years, but I wouldn't say that English-language writing has yet produced a broad literary culture comparable to that of Britain in the nineteenth century, or America in the twentieth. Neither English-language literature nor its writers

Interview: Rana Dasgupta

play a particularly significant role in contemporary Indian society. This may change. But one should not assume that, just because India is emerging as a major power in the twenty-first century, its social and intellectual life will take the same form as elsewhere. For a start, English is the language of a minority in India and so its literature occupies a very different position.

At the same time the English language no longer comes laden with guilt or baggage as it did for earlier generations of English-language writers. Until the eighties and nineties, it was generally assumed that if there were to be a true Indian literature it would not be in English, and those who did write in English often found themselves charged with inauthenticity. There was a constant and very tedious opposition between writers in English, who were deemed cosmopolitan and alienated, and writers in other languages, who were supposed to be authentic and rooted. Of course the reality was never so simple. But this continued for a long time. There are still echoes of it today. If you look at people like Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga, who don't live in India, this fact is often held against them. They are accused of being alienated writers who can't speak properly for this place. But I don't find this now burdens young English-language writers in a city like Delhi. English is probably their first language, they live in an environment of English-language literature, media and debate - and the older moral imperatives towards writing in an Indian language have faded away.

... on the flexibility of English.

Rushdie and Arundhati Roy display an amazing creativity with language that is in no way apologetic for not being British English. A driving force in Indian writing is to find a way to reflect in English a bigger reality dominated by other languages, and to capture some of nuances of those languages is an important part of the craft.

Mridula Koshy recently published a collection of short stories titled If It Is Sweet. It is a beautiful collection dealing primarily with working-class Delhi, and we know that the people she writes about don't speak English, but Hindi, to each other. Without making them sound like they speak bad or imperfect English, which is a problem in a book like Brick Lane, Koshy manages to give a strong sense to the reader that this is not English, but English in translation, and the awareness that different textures are possible in the language is very important.

57

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

... on the new concerns of the novel.

In the past five years, the Indian novel has moved away from, 'Let's write about three generations of an Indian family and what they go through', which now seems a somewhat secluded kind of novel, to novels that are saying, 'Let's see how this whole thing that we call India links together. How do the rich and the poor connect together? What consequences do decisions taken in Delhi have for the lives of those living far from the cities? How do you connect it all?'

I do think this project, this trying to describe and document, and morally account for all that is happening in this vast sphere of India, is extremely important and interesting. Dickens devoted himself to such a project. It may lead in the next few years to a kind of renaissance. The real ties of this country are so mind-blowing and difficult to put together, so many worlds one atop the other, that I'm sure the challenge will produce some fascinating books as it has in China. I recently read Yu Hua's Brothers. It is crazier, more satirical and over the top, than similar Indian novels, and for me it succeeds because it has a sense of a time, of the market, of what huge financial explosions do to a society. ... on writing an India novel.

The reason I wrote 'Capital Gains' [Granta 107] about the super-rich in Delhi - and I'm writing more such essays on different themes - is that although I have thought about writing a novel set in India, just dealing with the reality of India is itself sufficient. Philip Roth wrote: 'The American writer in the middle of the twentieth century has his hands full in trying to understand, and then describe, and then make credible much of the American reality the actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures daily that are the envy of any novelist'.

India, now, feels similar. Every time one thinks one has it, reality exceeds the imagination. I could never invent some of what I find around me, the characters I encounter; in a novel they would be unbelievable. That's perhaps why I find it difficult to write an Indian novel, not from any sense of not belonging, but because it's too excessive to capture in that form. For now I can only talk about India in non-fiction.

58

Poems Catherine Candano

Acapella There are so many things that remind me of how you laughed - all of which I thought I had either burnt cinder crisp or scrubbed well enough to have washed away. Among the things I thought to have now turned ash-white: the songsongsong in the car, in the bar drunk as drunk as drunk as, songs from me to you and you to me on bar-stamped napkins where we sangsangsang giddy, wicked, gay songsongsongs. Among the things I have thought to have rinsed by now all the rote textures in brine: sand, sandsandsand - everywhere - where skin met sea and sea and sea: the womb of my socks, the fold of matchbook from the hotel whose key was lost twice, thrice, 59

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

twice, twice, then my secret pocket, zippered in handbag, you stuck your fingers in when you faked fishing for the keys, and you laughedlaughedloudloudlaughedoudoud, grating teeth punctuating the breath that couldn't have ever caught up with us.

A Chinese Lady Central Kingdom Ltd, in trademark red and gold, has told me to 'take a piece of Orient home'. Their monopoly's in vintage postcards, at 50 yuan apiece for former muses of Madam Li Chin's.

A set gets you an assortment. Twelve Chinese ladies, in various stages of blush and undress, hawking Delight of Shanghai cigarettes with charm.

One, in particular, held her tobacco stick like incense, slanted for smoke to fly straight-up. You held yours at the temple like thatfingers on tiptoe, with three bows for your Mother, after I had been named a flower. In the mother tongue, flower and squander share the same thick strokes. You cried for the heavens to hear you, once the ashes fell.

I buy the card, without enough stamps to reach anywhere in the world.

60

Liao Yiwu - 'Lunatic' Outcast Wen Huang

had started to remind me of the anniversary in May. They came to see me frequently, telling me to be "low key" and not to do anything subversive. On the afternoon of June 1, public security officers invited me to their office and interrogated me. They had heard that I had written an article called "Nineteen Days". They wanted to know what my motives were.'

That postscript to the piece Liao Yiwu wrote for the summer 2009 issue of The Paris Review underscores the uneasy relationship the poet, novelist and screenwriter has with the powers that be in China since he composed his poem 'Massacre', which portrayed with stark imagery the night that People's Liberation Army tanks rolled into Beijing on June 3, 1989 and the killings that followed; his was as vivid a depiction as Picasso's of the bombing of Guernica by the Nazis during the Spanish Civil War. Liao knew his poem would never be published in China, so he recorded it on audiotape, using Chinese ritualistic chanting and howling to invoke the spirits of the dead. Copied and passed on, his words were everywhere.

' T H E POLICE

We live under bright sunlight, But we have lost our eyesight.

We find ourselves on a street, so wide.

But no one can take a stride.

61

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

We stand in a crowd, supposed to be loud.

But people open their mouths without sound.

We are tortured with thirst, But everyone refuses water.

The tape of 'Massacre', as well as a film he made with friends of its sequel, 'Requiem', did not go unnoticed by China's security police and, in February 1990, as Liao was boarding a train to Beijing, he and six others, including his pregnant wife, were arrested. Liao was sentenced to four years' imprisonment.

In another poem written at that time, he described his sense of frustration at being unable to fight back.

You were born with the soul of an assassin, But at time of action, You are at a loss, doing nothing.

You have no sword to draw, Your body a sheath rusted, Your hands shaking, Your bones rotten, Your near-sighted eyes cannot do the shooting.

Much of Liao's work is banned in China and he is forbidden to publish. He lives in Chengdu and is watched by the Public Security Bureau. He has been detained numerous times, for giving 'illegal interviews' and for exposing the dark side of China's Communist society in his book Interviews with People

from the Bottom Rung ofSociety.

* * * Llao was born in 1958, the year that Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward, a campaign aimed at industrialising China's backward peasant economy. The forced collectivisation of agriculture and the blind mobilisation of the entire country to produce iron and steel led to a famine in 1960 some thirty million people died. Liao, then aged three, barely survived.

In 1966, at the start of the Cultural Revolution, Llao's father, a school teacher, was accused of being a counter-revolutionary. His parents divorced 62

Liao Yiwu - 'Lunatic' Outcast

to protect their children. Life without father was hard and often brutal.

When his mother tried to sell some cloth on the black market to buy food, he recalls, she was caught by the police 'and was paraded, along with other criminals, on the stage of the Sichuan Opera House in front of thousands of people.

'After several of my classmates who had seen my mother told me about it, I was devastated.'

Liao completed high school and went travelling around the country, working as a cook, and then as a truck driver on the Sichuan-Tibet Highway.

He read western poets, from Keats to Baudelaire, and began to compose his own poetry. By the 1980s, he had become one of the most popular new poets in China and contributed regularly to influential literary magazines. His work also appeared in 'underground' publications that carried contemporary western-style poems deemed by the authorities to be 'spiritual pollution'.

In the spring of 1989, two prominent magazines published 'The Yellow City' and 'Idol', in which Liao used allegory to criticise a paralysed system that was being eaten away by a collective leukaemia. He considered Mao to be a symptom of this cancer. The poems were deemed to be anti-Communist and police searched Liao's home. He was repeatedly detained and interrogated.

One of the magazines was closed, the other disciplined.

Liao's imprisonment in 1990 for condemning what happened in and around Tiananmen Square was a defining chapter in his life. Ostracised and depressed during his four-year incarceration, he rebelled against prison rules.

Punishment included torture with electric batons and being forced to stand in the hot summer sun for hours. On one occasion in solitary confinement his hands were tied behind his back for twenty-three days. By the end of this punishment, abscesses covered his armpits. He suffered several mental collapses and twice attempted suicide. But he refused to be cowed, and he became known among the inmates as 'the big lunatic'.

In response to international pressure, Liao was released in 1994 for 'good behaviour' with fifty days left to serve out his sentence. He returned home to find that his wife had left him, taking their child. He was also unemployed, his city residential registration having been cancelled. His former literary friends avoided him. His only possession now was a flute, which he had learned to play while in prison. Liao became a musician on the noisy streets ofChengdu.

ASlA LITERARY REVIEW

In 1998, he compiled an anthology of underground poems of the 1970s; The Fall o/the Holy Temple included or made references to numerous Chinese dissidents. One of China's vice-premiers ordered an investigation into the book, calling it a 'premeditated attempt to overthrow the government, and ... supported by powerful anti-China groups'. Liao was again detained and his publisher in China was forbidden to release any new books for one year.

Unable to find anyone willing to publish his work, and unable to secure steady employment, Liao struggled to survive, picking up odd jobs in restaurants, nightclubs, teahouses and bookstores, and learning first hand what life is like for the socially marginalised in China. He turned his experiences in prison and on the streets into a book, Interviews with People .from the Bottom Rung 0/ Society. In it, he told the stories of sixty people, among them a professional mourner, a murderer, a beggar, a fortune teller, a thief, a dissident, a homosexual, a pimp, a former landlord and a school teacher. Like the author himself, all were cast out of mainstream society during the various political purges of the Mao era or were products of the tumultuous generational changes sweeping China.

In 2001, the Yangzi Publishing House published a 'sanitised' version of the book and it became a best-seller. The independent Beijing literary critic Yu Jie called it 'an historical record of contemporary China'. Another independent critic, Ren Momei, told Radio Free Asia, 'All the characters depicted in the book have one thing in common - they have all been deprived of their right to speak out. This book is a loud condemnation of the deprivation of their rights to speak and an excellent portrayal of this group of unique individuals.'

Liao introduced the character di-ceng, meaning 'bottom rung of society', to the national vocabulary. The Department of Propaganda and the China News and Publishing Administration ordered all of Liao's books off the shelves, punished the editor at the publishing house, and fired key staff at a popular Chinese weekly, The Southern Weekend, which had carried an interview with Liao and featured his book.

In 2002, Kang Zhengguo, a writer and lecturer at Yale University, met Liao in China and, with Kang's help, the Taiwan-based Rye Field Publishing Company released Interviews in three volumes.

* * *

Liao Yiwu - 'Lunatic' Outcast

I first heard ofLiao in June 2001 when I was asked to translate an interview he gave to Radio Free Asia not long after his book was banned in China. I read his book and it reminded me of Studs Terkel's Working, which had been translated into Chinese in the 1980s. Working introduced me and many other Chinese to the real America and lives of ordinary Americans, about whom I knew very little. I believe Liao's book serves the same purpose for western readers and helps them to understand China from the perspective of the ordinary Chinese.

It took me nearly two years to track down Liao, who was constantly on the move to avoid police harassment. I was told that one time, in Chengdu, he had to jump from a second-storey window to escape arrest after interviewing a member of an outlawed religious group.

In early 2004, I received an email from a friend, a former visiting scholar at Harvard. She said Liao had agreed to let me translate his work into English and gave me a mobile phone number to call. The area code was for somewhere near the China-Burma border.

Our first conversation lasted two hours, and over time we developed a system of collaboration that involved 'coded' conversations via email and telephone, and 'drops' by mutual friends.

In September 2005, the first issue of The Paris Review under new editor Philip Gourevitch included three interviews from our initial translation of

Interviews with People.from the Bottom Rung ofSociety.

Buoyed by its reception, we stepped up our work on The Corpse "Walker - Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up (Random House, 2008), a selection of twenty-seven stories we hoped would be both representative of Liao's work and of interest to western readers. The book, and here I quote the paperback blurb, which I rather like, ranges from 'hustlers to drifters, outlaws and street performers, the officially renegade and the physically handicapped, those who deal with human waste and with the wasting of humans, artists and shamans, crooks, even cannibals'.

In May 2008, Liao went to earthquake-hit Sichuan, where he spent several months interviewing those who lived in the disaster zone, recording their fight to expose corrupt officials and seek justice. The stories gave rise to Chronicles ofthe Big Earthquake, published in Chinese in Hong Kong earlier this year.

Liao continues to write and his interviews, essays and poems are published on Chinese lauguage websites. He has been honoured by the Independent 65

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Chinese PEN Centre and Human Rights Watch. Barred from leaving China, he continues to be harassed by the police and subjected to short-term detention.

Recalling recently his prison days, Liao wrote: Squatting like a dog, crawling, The unwritten prison rules forbid My back from straightening Dynasty after dynasty, Chinese intellectuals Spineless, never dared to stand up, back stretching.

How many times have our assholes been prodded, By dynasties and regimes Five thousand years, our spirit castrated This nation That procreates like ants Produces no real men.

I'm the only man With the ability to procreate But this lone virgin Violated, meeting the same fate.

Dear Heaven, Cover me with darkness Send me my fig leaf to cover my humiliation.

'I am trying to overcome, little by little, the fear that's been inflicted on me,' he says. 'By doing so, 1 try to preserve my sanity and inner freedom.'

66

Memories ofMy Flute Teacher Liao Yiwu Translated by Wen Huang

S

was the oldest inmate at Tumen prison, which is up in the Daba mountains in the southwestern province of Sichuan; he was eighty-four when I met him. He had a janitorial job at the clinic where, for more than a decade, he could be seen holding either a broom or a xiao flute with eight holes. His sweeping was precise, measured, and during breaks he would sit out in the courtyard and play his flute, as though emptying himself of desolation and loneliness. The sadness that came from that hollow bamboo stick seemed out of character for someone who was, or at least had been, a Buddhist monk, supposedly detached from worldly suffering. The other prisoners used to mock him as an illiterate, 'That old monk probably doesn't know how to read, so he thinks if he plays his flute it will make up for not studying scripture.'

Monk Sima's past was a mystery to me and to the others, although there was much speculation; one version had the ring of truth: formerly abbot at a nearby temple, he was accused by the government of belonging to a huidaomen - 'superstitious sect' - that was rumoured to be still active in many parts of the countryside, even though huidaomen were declared illegal as 'subversive' cults after the Communists took over China in 1949. When Monk Sima's case was first brought to police attention in 1982, investigators initially doubted a venerated abbot could be a cultist, but under interrogation Sima refused to speak, so he was deprived of sleep and tortured. After a IMA

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

month, he gave them just three sentences: cl have committed sins. So have you. We are all sinful.' The court sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Our paths first crossed one winter morning in 1992, soon after I was transferred to Tumen from a detention centre outside a big metropolis in Sichuan. I had been sentenced to four years' prison for condemning the government's crackdown at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. The prosecutor called me a counter-revolutionary.

It was a transitional period in my life. I was recovering from the injuries and trauma inflicted upon me during my incarceration at the detention centre and, as part of the healing process, I had begun writing what would become volume one of my autobiography, To Live. I was in prison and would need to look inward for freedom. As I hunched pen over paper on my bunk and immersed myself in my thoughts, what my mother called my wind-catching ears picked up the almost imperceptible sounds of weeping on the breeze that reached through the tiny window of my second-floor cell.

I rose from the bed - not weeping, but a flute playing music unlike anything I had heard in concert halls.

I took a half-carton of cheap cigarettes from my locker and went down to the courtyard, where I bribed the guard to tell me where the music had come from - the clinic, he said, and tucked the cigarettes inside his jacket.

Through an archway off the courtyard, I followed a long corridor that, after three turns, led me to an open space. To the right was the entrance to the prison clinic. I winced at the stench of pungent antiseptic mixed with that of a nearby ditch of excrement.

I found the flautist leaning against a steep wall topped by tendrils of barbed wire and ivy reaching into the sky. His big round bald head sat atop an emaciated body. He seemed oblivious to my presence. As he blew, his shoulders heaved up and down inside his blue cotton-padded uniform jacket.

The tune meandered like a mountain stream, its volume surging in parts, then trickling away to become almost inaudible, drying up into virtually nothing, because while I could see him playing I could not, then, hear any sound. What I heard on that day was actually a short tune, but it wound on and on, unrushed, as if it would take a lifetime to finish.

Time glided by and soon I felt the dampness from the frozen ground travel up through my body, and seep into my bones. My knees began shaking, my teeth chattering. Though the upper half of the prison walls was 68

Memories ofMy Flute Teacher

bathed in sunlight and several sparrows perched quietly on the barbed wire, it was shaded and cold where we were and a sharp wind blew.

The old monk wiped away what seemed to be tears, from the cold wind or the raw emotion I could not tell, and wrapped his flute in a ragged piece of worn cloth. He raised his head and smiled at me, an idiotic young man shivering but happy. I smiled back. I guess that was karma.

'You want to learn how to play?' he asked.

I nodded.

'You need to find a decent flute,' he said, then turned and hurried away.

I guess, in Buddhist terms, I was to be his student and he my teacher. As it were always thus.

I walked back to my cell in what I can only describe as a trance, the monk's bamboo flute dancing in my mind. For a whole day, that black shining wooden stick wouldn't go away. I drew it on a piece of paper with some instructions and mailed it with a letter to my mother, who said she had run around the city for several days and managed to find five flutes of different designs, which she brought me on her next visit.

'None of these works,' the old monk said, barely glancing at them.

A month later, my mother came back with five more. The monk examined each of them carefully and selected one he said might make a 'half decent' sound. He had me soak the flute in water for seven days, scrape the paint and ornaments from the surface, bury it in the snow for a couple more days and then let ir dry our in the wind.

On a sUllny day following a big winter storm, we began. He was in the courtyard. r could see rum from my cell. I put my hands in front of my chest, palm to palm, and prayed silently. When I opened my eyes again, I saw my teacher raise his flute to his lips.

'Breathe ... ' he instructed. I needed to take the air I inhaled and direct it to my 'dantian', a place beneath my lower abdo men, and then gradually let it out. The process, well paced and controlled, wouLd transform the air inside my lungs into an energy flow, which could cil'culate through my body and heart.

I put aside my writing.

At the beginning, the bamboo flute was stubborn; no matter how hard I blew into it, no sound came out. When I finally managed to produce some awkward notes, they reminded me of the noise villagers make when they blow 69

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

through a hollowed bamboo stick to fan the flames in the cooking stove. Even so, the noise brought me hope and encouraged me to blow harder. Soon I felt a pain in my chest, my head was about to explode. The monk stood outside my window: 'Control your breathing,' he said. I grew despondent.

I was focusing on my flute when my cellmates from the night shift swarmed in. As they disrobed and lay down on their bunk beds to sleep it was made clear that I should leave. I took my flute and went down to the courtyard where, looking directly at the dazzling sun, I saw seven or eight images of my teacher within the blinding fireball. The cold unceasing wind massaged his face. 'You are such a wimp,' he said inside my head. 'You don't even have the strength to make the flute work.'

An inmate I knew as Crazy Wino was jogging around the courtyard, his feet pounding on the snow-covered ground. He ran all year around, always wearing the same cotton-padded hat with ear flaps and a scarf Everyone compared him to Hua Ziliang, a character in a well-known revolutionary novel about a group of underground Communists in the 1940s. In the book, Hua was imprisoned by the Nationalists but refused to betray his comrades and to protect himself feigned insanity by jogging up and down the courtyard all day long in all weather. I wonder what Crazy Wino was up to and decided to join him. I easily outpaced him and then began lapping him around the courtyard. We soon drew a crowd. 'Wow, there is another crazy hero here, an iron man!' They wooed and wowed. They applauded each lap I gained and I was basking in their attention when Crazy Wino turned around and began running toward me. Before I knew what was happening, a row of yellow teeth flashed in front of my eyes and sank into my forehead.

Crazy Wino was an angry rabbit gone wild. We fell in a writhing mass into a pile of snow and a roar went up from the crowd. It took several of my fellow 1989 counter-revolutionaries to break up the fight. Crazy Wino wore a mad smile on his face, his protruding teeth showing traces of blood.

I picked up my flute and walked away tending the wound on my forehead, but felt nothing of what should have been its searing pain.

The fight got me into trouble with the prison authorities. 'A country is governed by law and the prison is managed by rules,' the warden told the assembled prisoners soon after the courtyard incident. 'Liao is a political prisoner but he should be subjected to the same punishment accorded a common criminal.'

70

Memories ofMy Flute Teacher

Amid thunderous applause, two inmates came forward, shackled my hands and feet and escorted me from the well-lit common areas of the prison to a section shrouded in darkness. I was pushed tottering along a corridor that reeked of mildew and urine. My escorts turned on a flashlight as we passed a row of doors, behind which those who violated prison rules were locked.

At the end of the corridor a door clanked open and in I went. My head hit the low damp ceiling, sending cold shivers down my spine, and as I reached up to touch it drops of water ran like a slimy snake into my sleeve. I was trembling. 'Hello? Anybody in here?'

The door clanged shut and, after the sound of footsteps was gone, there was nothing but silence, and emptiness. I felt around me and touched on a stone bed. I sat. I could hear rats squealing and jumping, and as I swept the floor with my foot the shackles around my leg caught a metal toilet container, knocking it over onto the floor.

Several hours must have passed. The rancid air was stifling. Bugs were biting all over my body and my scratching became incessant. I grew as hungry as the insects.

We were fed twice a day - a small bowl of rotten rice - and the hunger gnawed at my stomach. I wrapped myself in a quilt, assumed the lotus position, and took to meditating. 'Breathe,' the monk whispered in my ear. I inhaled, trying to push the air down deep and then carefully exhaled. Again.

Again. Again. Cold sweat trickled down my spine, the bugs droning around me. I suppressed the urge to gag at the stench as I held my imaginary flute, fingers pressed to the holes, and began to play. The world was nothing.

In ancient times King Wen, imprisoned in a cellar for three years, took to observing the movements of the sun and the moon through an air hole no bigger than his fist. His perseverance gave birth to a masterpiece, the I Ching, which revealed a comprehensive system of divination. l\m I to compose my I Ching in music?' I wondered.

Between my exertions I lay down on the stone bed, at rest like a pool of still water hidden inside a deep dark cave. Inside this big stomach called the Universe the Earth was only a tiny pearl of undigested grain, human beings merely the grain's molecules. Breathe. I drifted into unconsciousness.

I spent two weeks in the dark. Outside, there was nearly a riot as my fellow 1989 counter-revolutionaries went on a hunger strike in protest 71

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

against my punishment. When I emerged, like a veteran soldier returning from the battlefield, I was given a hero's welcome, my fellow inmates piling on my bed food they had saved for me from their daily rations. 'We will always act as one,' said Lao Lei, a big brother among our group, as he shook my hands. I was overwhelmed with gratitude.

I now had the cell to myself for long periods during the day and I directed my attention to the courtyard outside - everything seemed so familiar, the tall drab walls, the entangled barbed wire, the stern-looking guards and their patrol dogs. Once, for a moment, I saw the back of a woman flash by. It had been so long and I was tortured with desire. The woman's buttocks inflated in my mind. Slapping myself, I took up my flute to the sound of a weepy tune in the distance. 'Teacher,' I called out.

It took three months, but I learned to master the flow of air and energy inside my body. If nothing else, my circulation had improved and my face glowed with health. My job was to get up early, register the names of inmates working at the prison factory and then deliver lunches of rice and soup to them. Under normal circumstances I would finish my duties by early afternoon and then devote the rest of my time to the flute. Every few days, Monk Sima would appear outside my window, gesture some brief instructions to me and then leave. Not long after I would hear a tune rising from the place where I first saw him. I would listen, trying to appreciate and absorb the essence of the piece.

* * * When my younger sister, Xiao Fei, came to visit, bringing packages of food, before saying goodbye she told me, 'Mum and dad hope you don't give up your writing.'

Yu Tian, a poet friend, showed up unexpectedly, arguing and begging his way past the guards. He told them I was his cousin.

'Your cousin is doing pretty well here,' Yu Tian was told. 'He plays the flute every day, like some free-spirited deity.'

I hadn't seen Yu Tian for many years and his visit brought back a flood of memories. 'You still have this long beard,' I greeted him.

'Where's yours?' he said, proudly playing with his own.

'It's all gone.'

72

Memories ofMy Flute Teacher

Yu Tian filled me in on what news and gossip he knew of our former poet friends. 'By the way, your old mistress has been asking about you,' he said.

'She insisted on coming along. It took me quite a while to get rid of her '" Hey, how come you act so indifferently to everything now?'

'All the things you just told me ... don't seem to have anything to do with me anymore,' I stammered. '1 feel like 1 have no past.'

'No past?' he barked. 'You are in jail because of your past.'

I took in his dishevelled hair, his tired bloodshot eyes, not knowing how to respond. He had travelled thousands of miles to see me, a disgraced poet, who used to be like him. How disappointed he must have been in me.

* * * In April, green vines crawled over the prison walls. The sky was a clear blue.

And Monk Sima almost succumbed to an often fatal disease. 1 was not allowed to look after him, but I made sure he received some of the food my family sent.

Returning one afternoon from my usual lunch delivery duties, 1 snuck into the ward to see him and was surprised to find he was sitting outside, dozing in the sun, his flute between his knees. He woke at the sound of my approaching footsteps. 1 bowed, gently shook his hands, and asked about his health.

'I was about to play a tune to let you know that the illness has receded,' he said.

He struggled [Q his feer and raised his Bute, bur seemed to lack the strength to begin. After failing several t imes to draw a sound he flung the flute against his chair. <You and 1 have accompanied each other for decades.

You, damn fucker, are now taunting me for getting old.'

When he tried again the flute came to life, the jagged and blunt notes conjuring up the image of an aging warrior sharpeni ng his knife by the river; even though a glimmer of the setting sun highlights the rusty surface of the sword, the warrior's mind remains sharp. As the runc wavered in the air I cringed. 'Teacher, don't be too hard on yourself' The old monk sighed, '1 don't care if I'm alive or dead. I have to play a couple of tunes a day before I can calm down and rest. Oh well.'

And with that, he returned to his chair, placing the flute horizontal on his lap. Teacher and student sat silently, face to face. 1 could see he had reached the autumn of his life and thought to try to lift his spirits. 'Teacher, 73

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

the tune you just played was about autumn. Why not perform something for the spring?'

'What are you talking about?' he replied. 'There is no season here. For the flute, it is always autumn.'

'Can I name this tune, then, ''Autumn''?'

The monk dismissed my suggestion. His laughter embarrassed me. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

'You are flattering me. Secular tunes popular in the rural areas are what I play. They've been passed down from generation to generation; most don't have proper names. I'm sure you will preserve them and pass them on. I am a monk, but you are a man with a heart and feelings.'

'What do you mean "heart and feelings"?' I asked.

'Worldly feelings,' he answered.

His words came as a revelation to me. 'I understand. Thank you for reminding me, teacher.'

I thought about what my sister and Yu Tlan had said to me. I knew that I probably should resume my writing, but the flute prevailed over my pen. I sensed a conflict within me, a conflict between spiritual yearning and worldly ambition.

With the arrival of summer my musical technique improved. I practised afternoon and evening, my repetitions annoying inmate and guard alike, to the point that the merest peep of a note was met with loud protests. I moved my practice sessions to the latrines, where I hoped to cause less of an inconvenience. One evening, someone squatting over the pit called out mockingly for a popular romantic tune to help ease his bowel movement.

I took the request seriously and played 'My Home Bathed in Moonlight'.

Midway through the piece the moon broke through the clouds and those out strolling in the cool air, on hearing my music, were drawn toward the latrines. I was surprised by their applause when I reached the end of the tune.

An inmate at the urinal slapped his stomach and went about his business.

A joke quickly spread about how my music 'stinks' and my sessions in the latrines began to draw crowds. Someone would ask for their favourite tune and, if I knew it, I would comply, if I didn't, I promised to learn it for the next time. It was suggested that I join some of the other musicians among the inmates - players of the guitar, the erhu, and even the suona, though I couldn't recall ever hearing any horns played in the prison. When we were 74

Memories ofMy Flute Teacher

asked to rehearse a concerto and present the piece at a holiday celebration party to showcase our talents and please the authorities I abandoned whatever dignity and principles I had left and performed like an ingratiating dog.

* * * The first sign of trouble was a growing tension. It was sensed by all. Then came the armed guards, rounding us up, ordering us to sit. Minutes passed.

A precise tromp echoed from the corridor and the warden emerged, accompanied by the Party secretary and a squad of police. He called out the name 'Lao Lei', a fellow political prisoner, who stood and was taken away.

The following afternoon we were summoned for a public meeting where Lao Lei was paraded along with several others accused of violating prison rules, their hands tied behind their backs, their ankles shackled. Lao Lei looked dejected and miserable as he stood before the podium. The Party secretary said he had been writing secret letters to a British spy agency.

How could that be? Was Lao Lei insane? Was he mentally ill? He had to have known that no letters left the prison unchecked, and even outside there was no respect for privacy; postal inspectors opened all mail sent abroad.

What had happened, we later found out, was this: Lao Lei had written a short letter in English to a foreign professor who used to teach at his college.

The letter was no more than a few lines of simple greetings but, with the prison short on language talent, the Party secretary had sent it to the county tourist bureau for translation and, to protect himself, sent Lao Lei to the 'dark hole'. That much we understood, but two weeks passed and Lao Lei was still in the hole. A secret meeting of the 1989 counter-revolutionaries was called during a break and plans were laid for a hunger strike.

The protest began on the day we received our only meal with meat for the week, a special day for everyone. My comrades each collected their lunchtime meal - fragrant rice and the saliva-inducing meat - and gathered in the middle of the courtyard where, one by one, they left their untouched bowls and retreated to their cells. I was not among them. A despicable traitor, greedy as a pig, I ate every last grain of rice, chewed every shred of meat, and even licked the bowl. I wiped my mouth and went to practise the flute.

It was Ll Bifeng, a fellow counter-revolutionary, who snatched the bamboo flute from my hands. He was furious, and so, he said, were all the 75

ASiA LITERARY REVIEW

other political prisoners. I could only apologise. 'I suffered acute hunger as a child and at the detention centre,' I said, by way of explanation. 'Just the thought of a hunger strike gives me headaches and an irregular heartbeat.'

Li was unimpressed and launched into an angry tirade. 'When you were locked up in the dark room, everyone else showed solidarity ... ' I cut him off. 'I'll do anything, anything, except a hunger strike.'

Li Bifeng glared at me, but could see the strength of my resolve and knew better than to waste his energy on my stubbornness. He was clever at finding compromises. 'Right, then; you can represent all of us in negotiations with the prison authorities for Lao Lds release. We will not accept anything less.'

I was now committed to an impossible task, and recalled an old saying: 'A man honours his credibility more than life.' I abandoned all thoughts of practice and sat down to consider the problem, and that's when I remembered reading something about prisoners' rights in the People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper. 1 tracked down an old copy of the paper, and in it a report that said inmates found to have violated prison rules should be subject to solitary confinement for no more than fifteen days. I counted on my fingers. It had been eighteen days since Lao Lei was taken away. I was sure I had them.

'Are you the representative sent by the 1989 counter-revolutionaries?' the Party secretary asked as I stood before him.

'I represent only myself,' I said, 'and under the law, every prisoner is entitled to question the actions of the prison authorities.' I then set out my case, that our very own People's Daily supported the argument that Lao Lei had been punished enough and should be released from the hole immediately.

'Let me be clear. We will strictly apply the law to anyone who dares to organise and conspire to sabotage and undermine the rules and regulations here. How did you manage to become their representative? Is it because they like how you play the flute?'

'I represent only myself,' I repeated.

'Then if it's just you, I can have you locked up in the dark room too.'

'If you try, I will have to dash out to the balcony and jump to my death.'

With both hands, I held above my head the crumpled copy of the People's Daily and shouted, melodramatically, aping those revolutionary heroes in old Communist movies: 'I'm willing to defend with my blood and my life the purity and dignity of our country's socialist law!'

Memories ofMy Flute Teacher

The Party secretary did not like being challenged, but at the same time he couldn't suppress his laughter, clearly seeing the absurdity of my tactic.

In the end, he relented and Lao Lei was released that night. My comrades proclaimed me a hero.

I often wonder if! have ever been in control of my own life. Always I seem to be led or pushed into doing things that, on reflection, were not altogether wise. Take the spring of 1989 and the protest movement that sprang up around Tiananmen Square. When students took to the streets I was merely an indifferent onlooker. But after the bloody crackdown, I couldn't contain my anger. I worked through the night composing my poem, 'Massacre', then read it into a tape recorder and had copies distributed across the country.

That tape formed the basis of the charges against me: counter-revolutionary instigation and conspiracy. The media crowned me 'a poet with dissenting views', but, to be honest, I wasn't even sure what my political views were. I know now - four years of prison life have a way of forming and hardening one's political opinions.

I must admit I got drunk on my new 'hero' status and the exhilaration of my unexpected victory. Brandishing my flute, I played light-hearted tunes with vigour, gyrating like a rock musician, eyes closed and head bobbing up and down, soaking up the applause. We human beings can be so frivolous.

Monk Sima was clearly not impressed by my new swagger; gently, he asked me to put my flute down. 'You have established quite a reputation lately.'

It was like a bucket of icy cold water pouring over my head.

'Life in prison is really no different from life outside,' he said. 'Here, the circle that confines you is merely smaller.'

I stared down at the mouth of my flute. A thousand words clogged my throat, but not a single one came out.

'You can go now,' my teacher said. I turned like an automaton and left.

For days after, I felt lost.

I don't know who is blowing smoke, I thought. If the whole world is another prison, a bigger circle of confinement, what's the point of living?

What I had failed to grasp was that Monk Sima had resigned himself to playing the flute. I, on the other hand, in my prime, my blood boiling inside my veins, had a choice. I realised that I could not hope to inherit his techniques and philosophy because we were on different sides of the river of age. We could build bridges to span that river, but there could be no crossing them. I 77

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

began to approach my music from a different, if not opposite, direction.

'Your music radiates vitaliry and energy,' the old monk said when our paths crossed in the courryard. 'You must be serving out your sentence soon.'

'Yes, teacher.'

'What are you planning to do when you leave here?'

'Find something to do so I can make ends meet, I suppose,' I said. 'Now that I have learned how to play flute from you, what else can I do?'

'You are lighting fake incense in front of Buddha,' he smiled. 'Your music conveys a different story, one of more aggressive impulses.'

I was taken by surprise. 'Please, offer your guidance,' I asked.

'I'm not blaming you for your worldly ambitions. I have had fourteen students. You are the fifteenth. They abide by the rules; none dare to commit blasphemy and step outside the boundaries. Therefore, none has gone or will go anywhere. You will preserve and pass down the tradition and carry it to fame and success.'

I bowed my head.

'You are educated and intelligent. You still need practice and guidance in your technique, but you give meaning to meaningless tunes and vitaliry to the tired and familiar. That's pretry good ... really good. You can be on your , own now.

I buried my head between my knees. After that, I was too embarrassed to look my teacher in the eye. Our relationship had come to an end.

* * * Monk Sima stopped coming to the courryard to give instruction; I no longer heard his flute. He shut himself in his room, refusing visitors, and even my attempts to see him ended with disappointment. I practised alone in the snow, consumed by sadness, until my energy was gone and I lay shivering in bed, my temperature soaring. 'Our lunatic iron man is finally wilting,' the inmates joked as they exchanged news of my worsening condition, their concern tempered by the excitement my illness injected into the tedium of prison life. Old Yang, the nurse, came by and prescribed some herbs and antibiotics. He told Li Bifeng to give him regular updates.

Li Bifeng stood by my side for hours at a time, like a loyal guard of the imperial army, moistening my lips with drops of water, forcing me to

Memories ofMy Flute Teacher

swallow tonics of herbs to make me sweat out the fever. I was covered with a heavy quilt and several times my temperature climbed precipitously, then plunged. My undergarments were soaked and had to be changed every few hours until I simply wrapped myself naked in the quilt when cold, and threw it off when the heat became unbearable, at which Li Bifeng would climb up to my bunk bed, pin me down like a slab of meat to be butchered, and wrap me up again. Soon I would be too weak to struggle and, panting for breath, surrendered.

At one point I asked for my flute, which hung on the wall near my bed, and hugged it to my chest. Li Bifeng morphed into Monk Sima and I pleaded with him, 'Teacher, you made me what I am now. When you play, you play you. I am me and can only play me.'

Li Bifeng told me I went on and on about 'Su Wu Herding the Sheep' and how Monk Sima played it back and forth with dozens of variations of rhythms, making it heart-wrenching, yet uplifting, and transformed the famous tune he had acquired from his own teacher by infusing it with his own life until it was not Su Wu, of the ancient legend, who tended the sheep while exiled in the remote enemy land, but Monk Sima himself 'I'm sure it made sense to you at the time,' he chuckled.

My fever broke, but I was very weak and when I was finally able to slide off my bunk and stand before the window, I realised seven days had passed and I had been given an insight into life. I felt transformed, that I was starting afresh.

I tried my flute but my lungs were weak, my wind little more than a wisp.

I thought I would jog around the courtyard but was gasping for air after only two circuits, then racked by a coughing fit. When it passed, my eyes streaming with tears, I heard the familiar flute music, but it sounded '" empty, devoid of any worldly feeling or attachment. 'The monk is only an illusion,' I said to no one. 'He doesn't belong to this world.'

As my lungs recovered I resumed my practice, and gradually I felt my music rise more and more from my heart. 'A tune is like a corpse,' I told myself. 'Once you blow your essence into it, it comes to life and dances at your will.' I tried my hand at the popular revolutionary song 'The East is Red'. Li Bifeng told me I had turned our Communist anthem into a memorable rural funeral requiem.

* * * 19

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

On January 31, 1994, a week before the New Year, I was informed I was being considered for early release. I emptied my wallet buying dried sausages and beef, and began planning a big party for my fellow 1989 counter-revolutionaries to mark the holiday. I heard nothing more until, late one evening, the guards fetched me from my cell and took me to a room packed with police. I was puzzled. 'What crimes have I committed this time?'

An officer patted me on the shoulder. 'No crimes; your family is here.

Let's go meet with them.' I feared this was a trick. 'Prisoners are not allowed to step out of their cells in the evenings,' I said. Everyone laughed, and one of my guards said, 'When did you start to understand the rules so well?'

I was escorted ourside, through several check pointS and down a slope to the path that led to the ourer buildings of the pri on. It was a windy night and I crossed my arms tightly over my chest to hold closed my winter coat.

My eyes darted among the shadows cast by the dim lights around us and I drew my head down into my collar, fearful I was being led into a death trap.

When we approached the prison administrative building, I realised that I had stopped breathing. We took the stairs to the third floor and an office from which emerged a bright light.

I did not see my relatives in the room. Instead, the Party secretary sat behind a big desk, waving and beckoning me forward. I was thirsty and he handed me a glass of water. I gulped it down. I could feel the heat of the high-powered camera lights scorching my head.

'How are things going with your flute?' He had a big smile splattered across his face. He gave me no time to respond. 'Do you want to spend the New Year's holiday with your family?'

'Of course,' I said. 'But I still have forty-six days to go and, before I leave, I want my diploma.'

'Diploma?' The Party secretary looked puzzled.

'Yes, a diploma, to show I have served out my sentence. In this life, I didn't have the luck to attend a real university. Instead, I got this prison.

I've been here for four years. That's equivalent to an undergraduate degree.

I want my diploma.'

'You do have a good sense of humour,' the Party secretary said, but his smile had vanished. He shuffled some papers on his desk. 'Okay, let's get down to some serious business. During the past four years, you have abided 80

Memories ofMy Flute Teacher

by the rules and done a good job in reforming yourself Based on your good performance, the government has decided to grant you an early release.

Before we proceed, we need your cooperation on a couple of things.'

'1 said before and 1 will repeat again: I refuse to write a confession.'

'No one is asking you to give up your previous views and opinions, but you need to express your willingness to change.'

It is easy to say one is willing to change; whether one actually does so is entirely another matter. So, standing to attention, I said smartly, and the Party secretary took it as assent, 'I am grateful to the government for releasing me ahead of schedule.'

'What are you planning to do after you get out of here?'

'Make a living and support myself' 'How would you describe your life in here?'

'Better than life at the detention centre.'

'Is there anything you want the government to do?'

'I want to move in with my parents. I hope the government can transfer my city residential card from Fuling to Chengdu.'

'But your wife and daughter are in Fuling. You also had a job there.'

'My wife and children have left me, and that city has given me only nightmares.'

I don't know how long the 'interview' lasted. We were being filmed the whole time and under the camera lights I felt like I was sitting too close to a fireplace. When I thought 1 could smell smoke, I removed my winter coat to find there was a charred patch on the back. I glared at the cameraman, downed another glass of water and stood. Sweat streaming down my cheeks, I asked permission to leave. The Party secretary waved his hands, said yes, and the show was over.

* * * We didn't return to my cell. Instead, two guards escorted me to the prison guest house where 1 was given a single room, all to myself It was the first time I had slept alone since my arrest. It was a deep sleep. The next morning, I got up and went outside for my routine exercise. The guest house stood wedged between two parallel walls that separated the prisoners from the administrators and the outside - worlds within worlds.

81

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Two of the inmates delivered my things and, while the guards weren't watching, one of them slipped me a scrap of paper. 'We have moved all your manuscripts to a safe place. Someone will deliver them to you later. Don't worry about us. Your friend, XU Wanping.'

I felt at once grateful, and guilty. I also felt solidarity with those brought together by the Tiananmen Massacre, bound by the same faith.

Three days and three nights passed. I played the flute, read, stared at the sky, at the tall walls that still held me. My mind was a jumble of prison memories so sharp and vivid that my head ached. Monk Sima, his flute as a walking stick, came to me. I grabbed the front of his shirt, but it changed into a long umbilical cord in a tangle of all my prison memories. Like a clam, heaven and earth sucked my whole being into its shell.

'Teacher!' I screamed, and woke from a high fall. It was nothing I had ever experienced before, nor expected to again, no matter how long I lived.

The world outside my window resembled a mirror; the moon a placenta in a shiny glass bottle. There was frost in the air, whitening the leaves in the yard.

I took up my flute, weathered with time, and wetted its mouth, innocent and tender like the mouth of a newborn baby. It tasted salty. Did amniotic fluid taste of salt? I sat facing the prison clinic and played a tune named 'Guest'. A fat shiny bug squirmed up an old tall tree. My heart danced wildly and my ear drums popped. But all I could hear was nothing. I played 'Yearning', and sat still for a time, twenty minutes that felt like two centuries. I wasn't sure at first of the faint sound that reached my ears. But floating out and over the mountain-high walls, the tune was unmistakable. It was 'World Unity', or 'Opening the Gate'.

Tears welled in my eyes.

Go. Go until you disappear into oblivion.

82

Poems Phoebe Tsang

The Princess and the Pauper Pulled by the moon and the past I keep coming back to this small town.

It's the misty season before the snow.

The hunchbacked bulk of the cathedral broods like a giant crow alone in its square of darkness the streetlamps can't reach while cobblestones gleam like cowbells silent until the strike of hoof or wheel.

If I were a boy I'd ride away not stay a spinster spinning loneliness inside this domed tower the tourists call fairytale imagining that inside lies a three hundred years old beauty not these dank shadows where suddenly a flock of black birds will rise

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

and scatter from the eaves in a flurry of feathers, cries, and bits of old leaves as if the child who still wanders the ruins of castle walls had thrown a pebble at the dark lake face of night only for it to heal again blank as a mirror. And this is the closest I ever get to living, here in Fulda.

Authors note: The Baroque city of Fufda in Hesse, Gennany, was the impiration for 'The Princess and the Pauper: Hesse is also the birthplace ofthe Brothers Grimm.

Cemetery on Tsz Wan Shan How do the dead feel, fenced halfway up the mountain in no man's land? A crowd of jostling headstones, all crammed together.

How do they like the view? Between shady foothills and clouded peaks where electric pylons weave through mist like horsemen in a science-fiction apocalypse.

Under trees at the edge of the plateau, practitioners of Cantonese opera and t' ai chi are scattered like follies in a mad emperor's ruined garden - unfinished statues, one-legged scarecrows unshakeable in their solitude - along the path that rides the river's fall down rugged steps of mountain rock.

I jog past on the winding track that keeps bringing me back to these stork-poised figures, cricket-humming with industrylittle has changed with each lap. Do we return to the mountain each morning to learn stillness?

Poems by Phoebe Tsang

It's 8arn, 30 degrees plus humidity, and I'm soaked with sweat from running in circles.

Broken Heart House Farm sometimes you can hear coyotes circling in the fields, a ragged noose shrinking round smaller, weakened prey. spotting deer is backyard magic here; aurora borealis, almost guaranteed. a tour of the sugar maple plant is a sweet drop at five bucks a sip - i can't resist - what else can you spend your hard earned heft on? play poker at night? curled in my sleeping bag i think back: the mottled hills stubbed with vagrant birch, tapped maples hooked up like an intravenous cordon of sapped junkies, their wasted grey arms, the snow moulting in parched clumps to marshy meltdown the sixteenth of march should be calder.

His Mistress the Witch She tastes like gingerbread fresh from the oven after the icing's licked offand suddenly it was worth the journey through the forest though all you ate for days were breadcrumbs 85

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

(the better to preserve your appetite) and you didn't dare look away from the skeleton map of keys she'd graIned you, a way in or out but no way through, no leeway to stop and savour the once-in-a-lifetime view beyond the shadow-reach of trees: realms of wild lavender and niblets of unripe corn, the first colours at the cusp of those bee-drowsy summers.

She promised you'd never grow old or forgetful in a world that didn't exist before yesterday how would you recall you ever felt doubt as night fell, musty old velvet wafting across treetops, catching on branches, shaking out the dust of dead insects that tickled your ears like secrets had you gone too far?

And how could you forget the thirsty miles alone in the desert before the woods were grown with sand still turning up everywhere: under your fingernails, in your shoes and all you could think of was

86

Poems by Phoebe Tsang

brown sugar When your tongue finally reached her nectar all you could do was lap faster greedy as a kitten for the sweet cream liquid sugar ebbing to reveal her nutmeg and cinnamon skin, and as the glucose-high kicked in, it seemed all of life's questions had simmered to one longing distilled: how does it feel to sleep with a witch inside a witch's bed, under a witch's candied canopy (that melts peppermint relief onto your raw red face), while heat rises from the oven, where your own children are being fed like kindling, daily bread to keep your home-fires burning.

87

Bang Bang (2008) by Shen Hua. Oil on canvas, 180cm x70cm.

Image courte5Y ofSchoeni Art o...:....:....._ _ _~_ _~_____ Gallery, Hong Kong.

Hanuman's Army Palani Mohan

L

ORD Hanuman, the monkey god of the Ramayana, is revered in Kolhapur. It was Hanuman who helped rescue Sita, Rama's wife, from the demon Ravana. And it was Hanuman who flew to the Himalayas and carried back a mountain with medicinal herbs to save Rama's brother, Laksmana. He symbolises immense strength and fearlessness and it is to him that India's wrestlers pray for victory.

Since India's wrestlers took home medals from the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the spotlight has been turned on kushti, a 3,000-year-old martial art still practised in small pockets of India, Pakistan and Iran; a relic, if you like, of shared Aryan traditions and with a rich moral, ethical, philosophical and mystical heritage. Its ancestry is that of the warrior and it finds mention in the historical record of Parthia, which prevailed as an empire from 132BCE-226CE, a thorn in the side of Rome until vanquished in the time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. But by then kushti had spread throughout the Roman empire; it is arguably the antecedent of the Graeco-Roman style.

Kushti is under threat as India's sporting authorities, buoyed by Olympic success, seek to force its best practitioners to abandon the mud pits for the wrestling mat and train in the more recognised styles of wrestling.

89

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Kolhapur is a small city by India's standards with a population of some 700,000 nestled in the southwest corner of the state of Maharashtra and an hour's flight from Mumbai.

It is said that the best wrestlers come from this city because of the climate

and the water, which is cool and reputed to be rich in iron and other minerals, and Kolhapur is today the main centre of the martial art. And it is here that the best fighters, trainers and akhadas, or wrestling schools, are to be found.

Kushti's history in Kolhapur is relatively recent - only since the eighteenth century has it been practised here - but the sport flourished during the rein ofShri Chatrapati Shahu Maharaj, the king ofKolhapur, who ascended the throne in 1894. During this golden age, the monarch built hundreds of akhadas across the city and held tournaments, inviting the best wrestlers from around India and beyond.

Little has changed in the way the sport is staged. The bouts take place in an earthen pit lined with red soil dredged from a river and mixed with ghee and water. Each morning Hindu prayers - pujas - are said in the circular pit, which has among wrestlers a revered status and is treated as if it were a temple.

go

Hanuman's Army

91

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

There are at least six major akhada scattered around Kolhapur, mostly hidden down small lanes of homes and shops. There used to be hundreds, but their numbers have dwindled with neglect and disuse, and as the numbers of schools decline, so do the numbers of wrestlers. Old-timers complain that younger wrestlers lack the commitment to keep the sport alive.

Kushti is a demanding sport. Wrestlers live, cook, eat and sleep together in the akhada, forming small communities of as few as a couple of dozen to as many as one hundred, with ages ranging from as young as seven to their mid-twenties.

They come from across India. Many have been away from their homes for much of their lives and look on fellow fighters as family.

The day begins at 5am with a group run before a punishing regimen of weightlifting and push-ups, perhaps more than five hundred over the course of a morning. Then the trainers arrive, and the wrestlers are paired for practice bouts.

After prayers are said and the pit prepared, the wrestlers rub their faces and bodies, and those of their opponents, with red dirt, which serves both as a blessing and to improve grip during the bout. The wrestlers spar for several hours. They eat and rest and, in the evening, the routine is repeated.

The wrestlers' diet is designed to maintain muscle bulk and is heavy on crushed almonds, milk and ghee. They cook their own chapattis over an open fire after a day's training. They are not required to be vegetarian and eat chicken and eggs.

Most of the boys come from poor families; for many, kushti is their one chance to break out of the cycle of poverty, to make a name for themselves and their families.

92

Hanuman's Army

93

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

94

Hanuman's Army

95

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

96

Hanuman's Army

97

ASiA LITERARY REVIEW

98

Hanuman's Army

99

ASUI LITERARY REVIEW

100

Hanuman's Army

101

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

102

Hanuman's Army

103

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

104

Hanuman's Army

,

We have to train twice a day every day - it is very hard work but we love it. My father and his father were all palawans [champions] and this is what I want to be. The best fighter I can be.

Ifyou win a big title like the state or even the national championships [the tournament takes place in the first or second week in November], then you are set up for life. You receive not only money but also a respected place in society, even long after death. It is a great thing which I dream about.

But it is not easy.

We cannot drink, smoke or have sex. We cannot even think of girls. Even in our dreams it's forbidden. We are like sadhus [Hindu holy men] and if we want to be good wrestlers we must live a pure life. Marriage and children can come afterwards.

Jathar Vaidbhav, sixteen years old

105

,

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

In tiny Karamba, a thirty-minute drive from Kolhapur, a shallow pit of red soil is under construction in the middle of the village for the day's match. The soil was collected that morning from a nearby river bed and an old tractor drives over it to pack and soften the earth.

Throughout the year, the wrestlers from Kolhapur engage in competitions in the city and surrounding villages. Kushti is a menonly affair, and every man and boy from the village will be there to watch; women are forbidden, but their faces can be seen peeking through the windows of their homes for a glimpse of the champions.

Even small, local competitions attract wrestlers from all over India for a chance to fight the biggest and the best.

There are no television cameras, no billboards.

Past champions, or palawans, arrive to the cheer of the crowds and are showered with garlands and given sweets as they take front-row seats. The villagers and wrestlers fall at their feet to receive their blessings. All of them have cauliflower ears, an easily recognisable badge of honour that marks the wrestler apart from others.

First are the fights between the youngest and lightest. By nightfall, the pit lit by a couple of floodlights, the wrestlers weigh more than a hundred kilograms, the heaviest class topping 115kg. No one leaves until the end. Winners receive prestige, and cash prizes.

106

Hanuman's Army

107

ASlA LITERARY REVIEW

108

Hanuman's Army

109

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

'Modern life has many temptations,' a heavy-set palawan told me ringside as we discussed the future of this ancient sport.

The young men are being drawn away from the villages to jobs in the cities and turning their backs on many of the traditional arts. Few want to put in the hard work required to become a true wrestler.

Even those who stay and undergo the rigours of training are becoming corrupted by money - bouts are rigged and wrestlers compete for material gain, not for prestige.

'Everything has changed dramatically,' the palawan tells me.

'Nowadays people are not putting in much effort. Even with all these modern trappings the young people are still not happy.

'We had very little but we were content, we were very happy.'

The future looks bleak for kushti. India's sporting authorities want wrestlers to fight on modern mats rather than on red clay, saying that the practice is outdated and that wrestling in India should catch up to the rest of the world.

It is said that whoever worships Hanuman will be granted fortitude and strength. India's palawans are fighting what they know will be the death knell of kushti, and the end of Hanuman's army.

110

Hanuman's Army

111

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

112

Hanuman's Army

113

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

114

Hanuman's Army

~ )

I

115

Poems Gillian Sze

Missing Portrait Who has seen the portrait of my mother taken when she was twenty?

It was taped to the studio window in Shanghai, put up without permission to attract business sometime in the late sixties, when my mother discovered that even beauty for her could be possible.

The image forgave the incorrect colours, (the shirt actually yellow, not green, lips flesh-toned, not harlot red).

It probably wished to be left alone staring out at the street.

The image didn't appreciate my aunts, barging in, their demands for it back.

To have to witness what was to come: marriage, motherhood, life.

117

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

What part of you stayed?

The pin-up, the glassed-off stranger, the bittersweet briefing with fame.

Where My Mouth Came From As a child, my grandma would pinch my lips together and we all knew nothing would help my mouth was full like my father's, my nose blunt like his these curvy quirks working against my mother's fine, tapered chin.

It's an old mouth.

Travelled, polyglot, and from a photo, I discover that it's a hand-me-down from my grandfather.

But I've owned it all my life, mastered its uses in ways impossible for my father or his father to learn.

This mouth, its salt, its nectar dribble and ample sound, its points and prickles.

It can bend, flip a person across the street 118

Poems by Giffian Sze

off his wheelchair.

I've heard it make you moan in cries so urgent they break your knees.

My mouth, untwisted from between finger and thumb.

Irreverent and indelible.

Its set of teeth.

Its morning-glory sheen.

Red Rice Soup This month's blood is over and my aunt is at the stove hovering over the pot.

She's making soup to replace the blood, a ruddy thick brew of black rice, Chinese dates, dragon eyes, red beans.

A red Bow, I've stained the white tub.

I always compared it to death, a tireless crimson descent but I never die.

Red mends blood, she tells me.

A bowl of white china.

A tip of scarlet at the end of my spoon.

119

Saffron Revolution XI (2008) by Htien Lin. Acrylic on canvas, iOicm x 102 cm. image courtesy ofKarin Weber Gallery, Hong Kong.

The Good Price Jaina Sanga

wiped his brow with a folded white handkerchief and stared at the statue of Ganesh that sat on the beach just below the compound wall of his bungalow. The elephant-headed deity, with its trunk curled playfully upward and its rotund body painted in exuberant shades of pink and orange and blue, was almost as tall as he was. The statue had been there for a week, but today the forehead was anointed with red unguent and sandalwood paste, and an array of offerings - flowers, coconuts, camphor, incense -lay at its feet in the sand.

A passenger jet on approach to Bombay drowned out the whispers and sighs of the few people who had gathered behind Tarachand. The jet passed, and his groundskeeper, Khalit, said quietly, 'What is to be done, sahib? No one has come for it.' It was clear that whoever had left the Ganesh there had no intention of removing it. There was even a canopy of plantain leaves, tied together with twine in a sheltering arc over the deity.

Tarachand tried to shake the sand from his chap pals. He was a thin man of fifty-one, and although he never exercised he had the graceful physique of an athlete. He wiped his brow again, and slipped the handkerchief into the pocket of his kurta. The blue smoke of the incense swirled in the breeze and sent a flowery smell to his nostrils. What a nuisance, he thought. If he didn't get rid of this Ganesh today, by tomorrow there would be bricks and cement and a full-fledged temple.

T

ARACHAND

121

ASlA LITERARY REVIEW

It was still early morning, a hazy sun coming up slowly above the palms that loomed in the space between Tarachand's house and the beach. The house, where Tarachand lived with his wife and a retinue of servants, was a sprawling white single-storey structure with a veranda facing the sea. The beach below was strewn with the usual tidal refuse - broken seashells, crab carcasses and stranded squid, plastic bags and sodden cigarette boxes.

Tarachand glanced at his watch; he had a meeting this morning at his city office. He turned to face the few people standing behind him, men in dirty lungis and women in saris hitched to their knees, slum-dwellers who always appeared from nowhere. A young boy, ten or twelve, his wiry arms folded across his bare chest, eyed Tarachand sceptically. He wore a necklace made of shells and coconut bark.

Behind the people, the sea stretched vast and limitless. A couple of fishing boats were setting out for the day. Tarachand gestured to Khalit and the groundskeeper waved his stick to urge them on, 'Go home everyone, there's nothing here.' The men and women bowed to the deity and wandered away, but the boy with the necklace dug his calloused heels into the sand, his blue shorts, old and filthy, hanging loosely on him. 'What are you going to do?' the boy, arms still folded over his chest, said to Tarachand. 'Looks like Ganesh-ji is here to stay.'

Tarachand, striding toward the gate that led to his bungalow, ignored him and Khalit tapped the boy's shoulder with his stick. 'Go away, kid.' The boy shrugged off the stick in a dramatic gesture, then glared at Khalit. 'Oh, sahib,' he called after Tarachand, 'Ganesh-ji is going to stay here, no? I'll come everyday to take care of him. Even if it rains, I'll come. I know many puja songs. I'll give you the good price. One hundred rupees per day. Pay in advance, sahib. Pay now!'

'Get out, you fool,' Khalit yelled, taking a swipe at the boy's legs.

'Wait, sahib,' he shouted, running after Tarachand, his necklace bouncing and clattering on his narrow chest.

Tarachand quickened his pace, more sand seeping into his chappals, getting between his toes and sticking to the soles of his feet. The drone of another jet began to fill the sky. The boy shouted, his voice shrill and eager, 'Final price! Five rupees per day!'

* * * 122

The Good Price

Tarachand laid out his beige Nehru jacket on the bed and contemplated the shiny buttons, wondering whether they made the jacket too formal, too flashy for the office. He gazed at the photograph of Shankari, his wife, which sat on the bureau in a filigree frame. It had been taken more than twenty years ago.

She was in her wedding sari, gold jewellery on her neck and arms, her eyes and mouth made up to look like those of a film heroine. She was away now, on her yearly sojourn to the ashram in the foothills of Mount Kailash, where she spent hour after hour in meditation, subsisting on a single meal each day, sleeping on a thin mat on the floor. Once Tarachand had been curious and had gone with her, but after a week the austerity seemed pointless so he cut short his stay, feigning altitude sickness.

She said she would be away for two months this time. 'Whatever makes you happy,' he said. Each day he looked at the calendar, counting the squares until her return to the real world. For a day or two she would be critical of everything in the house - the television, the phone, the fridge, the bathtub - but by the third day she would accept it all, even him, until the next year. They were childless, so it was no major inconvenience.

He had broached the subject with her just once, concerned that it was the source of her sadness. 'There are more than enough children in India,' she'd said.

Shankari had her large house to tend, and her ashram. Tarachand had his work. He was a successful man.

He had taken his architecture degree at Oxford and spent many years in London in the firm of Gregson & Batley. Mr Gregson and Mr Batley found his work to be profitable to the firm, but they always spoke to him in a patronising manner; and whenever there were clients in the office they found cause to shout at him, as if he were a wallah. He was a hard worker and thought himself to be unusually imaginative in solving structural and aesthetic problems, but they denied him a partnership and chose instead Alfred King, not because Mr King was European, they assured him a little too quickly. Tarachand returned to Bombay where he started his own company specialising in the heritage properties that dotted the city and its sprawling environs, the neglected colonial edifices of a long-gone Britain, all still beautiful in their way and all in dire need of rescue. He found allies in Bombay's newly rich who had money to lavish on grandeur, but it was the prestige he coveted.

123

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Mr and Mrs Singhani were waiting for him in his office on the top floor of a five-storey building that overlooked the main roundabout at Flora Fountain. He liked the room: air-conditioned, a low teak table at its centre reflecting the rich patina of the deep upholstered chairs, framed black-andwhite photographs on the walls his orderly desk and organised drafting board positioned away from the windows in a corner. A glass door separated the office from an anteroom where his four assistams went quietly about their work.

The Singhanis made a stately couple, both tall and middle-aged. Tarachand offered them more tea and settled himself with them at the teak table. The Singhanis had purchased a bungalow in Karjat, about fifty kilometres from Bombay, and Tarachand had been commissioned to undertake its restoration and renovation. He had made several trips to survey the property and now laid out the drawings for their final approval - first, the sketches of the outside; then the interior, JOom by rOom. The Singhanis followed Tarachand's capped gold pen as he poimed to particular details, attentive to their comments, rising now and then to march to the glass door of the anteroom with fresh instructions for his staff. It was a carefully cultivated part of his act, to assure clients that they were in control. His voice was low and smooth, his demeanour one of exacting courtesy. His services were expensive and much in demand.

Mrs Singhani, bejewelled and stylish, had a much younger bearing than her husband. She was wearing a pink sari and he liked the way the folds fell from her shoulder and rested loosely in the crook of her arm. He glanced at her slim wrist as she absently touched the earrings that swayed at her cheeks, and he n.oticed how Mr Singhani looked at her, with devotion certainly bur also with a hint ofboredom. The husband travelled and Tarachand was aware of rUlTIOW's of his dalliances with foreign ladies, which led him to conjecture that Mr Singhani was restoring the house to atone for his culpability, to mollify his wife, to keep her satisfied while he roamed.

Tarachand stared openly at Mrs Singhani. If she was his, he would never want to be parted from her. For a brazen moment he imagined himselfliving with her in the house in Karjat, a picture of perfection. Shankari wasn't as stunning and sophisticated as Mrs Singhani, but there was a wholesome beauty to her face. Did other men look at his wife the way he was looking at Mrs Singhani? He felt his face flush slightly. He could never be unfaithful; 124

The Good Price

he just wasn't that sort of man. Tarachand shifted his attention back to the drawings on the table and Mrs Singhani marvelled at the proposed English garden behind the house.

'A pergola in the centre of the garden is a wonderful idea,' she said. 'Will the master suite have a view of the garden?' Tarachand nodded as he traced the outlines of the garden with his gold pen and shuffled some sheets until he found his sketch of it from the perspective of the upper windows. 'Oh, yes, it's quite lovely,' she gushed.

'Now, let's talk about this very large terrace,' Tarachand said, for time was getting on and there were decisions to be made. The floor tiles were weathered and cracked beyond repair; they could be replaced with the same type of tile, but these would have to be imported from Italy, 'which will be a bit expensive'. Mr Singhani's eyes narrowed as Tarachand quoted a figure, his lips set in a firm line. 'It is essential,' Tarachand said to Mrs Singhani, touching his fingers lightly to her arm just at the place where the sari folds were resting, 'that we preserve the character of the house.' She smiled and nodded, and Tarachand discreetly uncapped his pen and made a little tick next to 'Italian Tiles'.

* * * At the traffic signal near Metro Cinema that evening Tarachand had his driver stop and let him out. He wanted to see Ramdas, the astrologer. He wasn't sure why, but he often felt compelled to call on the old man whenever Shankari was away. Tarachand threaded his way through the crowded bazaar, turning into a warren of lanes bursting with stalls selling used car parts, plumbing fixtures and cooking utensils. The air, thick and dusty, smelled of sweat and oil and garbage, and Tarachand, buttoned up in his fine Nehru jacket, suddenly wished he hadn't come. He could be at home on the veranda sipping a gimlet and enjoying his sunset over the Arabian Sea; instead he was dodging handcarts and perspiring like a coolie.

A narrow flight of stairs wedged in a spit of space between two tailoring shops went up to Ramdas's place. A sign nailed to the door read VEDIC ASTROLOGY ExPERT - RAM:DAS NASIBWALLA. Beyond the door was a single small but unexpectedly bright room, a large window held open with stoppers letting in the sounds and smells of the alley below. A metal cot was pushed 125

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

against the wall; stacks of books covered in brown paper were lined up neatly underneath.

Ramdas, frail and stooped, with a white beard and thick glasses in heavy black frames, sat on the floor before the tin trunk that he used as a desk.

Next to him, in a wooden cage, a parrot perched, its head tilted sideways and seemingly asleep. Surprised at Tarachand's arrival, Ramdas laboured to his feet, switching on the ceiling fan and offering his good cushion. 'Please, bhai-ji, don't trouble with tea,' Tarachand said to Ramdas's back as he hobbled to a kitchen space in the corner. The old man shrugged and started pumping the kerosene stove.

Tarachand eyed the sleeping parrot as he drank his tea and Ramdas brought out a square wooden box. Inside were thirty cards, each in a frayed, yellowed sheath. Ramdas began laying the cards in rows across his desk, his movements unhurried, methodical, all the while Tarachand staring at the old man's hands, at the bony knuckles, the bluntly cut fingernails. With the cards in place Ramdas closed his eyes, his body swaying back and forth as he recited Vedic verses, his voice loud and soft and loud again. Tarachand tried to follow the words. A nerve began to twitch in his left leg, which he had crossed atop the right. The recitation ended and as Ramdas's voice trailed into silence the parrot, motionless thus far, flapped and splayed the feathers ofits wings. 'What a smart bird!' Ramdas said to Tarachand, as he always did at this moment. 'He knows his turn has come.'

Ramdas opened the cage and, with considerable care, lifted out the parrot. Its vibrant green body was marked at the neck by a dark band of orange. The beak was brilliant red. He held the bird, stroked its back, and set it on the tin-trunk desk next to the cards. The parrot contemplated the cards, bobbing its head toward each as if counting, before strutting to the second row and picking up with its beak a single one, which it carried over to Ramdas. Tarachand held his breath.

As Ramdas slid the card from its sheath a little gasp escaped his lips.

'What is it?' Tarachand whispered.

With a flourish, Ramdas set the card before Tarachand.

Shiva and Parvati, the eternal couple, in dance - Shiva with one hand stretched across his chest and pointed toward his uplifted foot, his other hand spinning a trident; Parvati, small-waisted and voluptuous, one arm reaching for Shiva's shoulder, the other resting flirtatiously on her hip.

126

The Good Price

The parrot craned at the card and let out a screech. Ramdas held out his palms and the bird, ÂŁlapping and squawking, hopped into his hands.

Tarachand looked at the card and was confused. The last time he had visited Ramdas, the parrot had drawn a card from a pack with typewritten words on them - 'guru', 'agni', 'moksha', 'karma' and so forth. Tarachand had never understood what bearing, if any, the word he had selected would have on his future. Still, he had gone home and written it down, thinking about it over the next few days, and then had put it out of his mind. He rubbed his hand over his chin, looked toward the window for several moments, and sighed loudly.

'What is the meaning of this?' he said, 'Shiva and Parvati?'

'It is not for me to explain!' Ramdas looked offended by Tarachand's rather sharp tone. 'We must row our own boats.'

'Forgive me, bhai-ji.' Tarachand's knees creaked as he stood up. He reached for his wallet. 'What is the fee these days, bhai-ji?'

Ramdas shook his head. 'Nothing today,' he said, 'When you come tomorrow, bring money.' Ramdas patted the bird, tickling its neck, coaxing it back into the cage.

'Tomorrow?' Tarachand frowned, 'I wasn't planning ... ' 'Of course you weren't planning,' Ramdas said. He picked up the card, smiled at the image of Shiva and Parvati, touching it to his forehead before slipping it back into its sheath.

The parrot hiccupped and stuck its head under a wing. As Ramdas gathered the other cards Hindi film music drifted into the room from the alley below.

* * * Tarachand sat on his veranda and considered writing a letter to Shankari.

He'd heard from her only once since her departure. There was no phone at the ashram, but she had walked to the post office in Kathmandu and made a trunk call to tell him of her safe arrival. He wondered if she might telephone again. It was October, almost Diwali, and although it was still hot in Bombay he knew that in the foothills of Mount Kailash the air was bitingly cold. He imagined her now, wrapped in a shawl, sitting stoically in the lotus position with the other disciples. They would be chanting, or observing a 12]

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

deep silence. He felt guilry all of a l1dd~ for his routine indulgences - his gin, salted cashews, imported cheese - and wondered ifhe should give them up as a gesture of solidarlry with his wifes spi.ritual cleansing.

He went inco the bedroom and searc11ed in the bureau for some letter paper. He kept thinking of the card of Shiva and Parvati. Shiva's ascetic abode was Mount Kailash - Tarac11and knew dlat. Perhaps the card had something to do with Shankari and the ashram. Perhaps it had something to do with husbands not accompanying their wives to ashrams. Perhaps the card meant nothing at all. To hell with Ramdas Nasibwalla! Tarachand slammed the bureau drawer shut. And to hell with his bloody bird!

Calmed by the evening air and the sound of the sea Tarachand had JUSt written the date on rhe letterhead when the phone rang. He was surprised by Mr inghani's voice. She asked whether he was available the next day, and might she please come to the office in the afternoon? 'Certainly, it would be a pleasure.' And will Mr Singhani be with you? he wanted to ask.

'Oh good, see you tomorrow,' she said. Tarachand told himself the trace of seduction in her voice was entirely in his imagination.

Returning to his letter he couldn't think what to write, and so he folded the paper in half and slipped it into the pages of a book.

* * * Khalir, the groundskeeper, approached Tarachand while he was taking his morning tea in the sitting room. Taxachand wa in his pyjama-kurra, face unshaven, hair unbrushed. He'd taken a Restyl in the middle of the night and felt slighdy lethargic. If Shankari had been at home sl:te would have sat with him in the night. She would have discouraged the tablet and instead brought him warm milk with saffron.

Sunlight streamed into the room through the open windows and fell in elongated patterns acros tl:te white marble Hoor and in oblique lines over the Sankheda furniture that Shankari' parents had sent from Baroda many years ago. 'Sofas and chairs should be comfortable,' Tarachand had complained when the furniture arrived. 'Just because it is handmade and looks ethnic does not mean it is good.' But Shankari had traced her fingers over the delicately painted patterns in the smooth wood and set a vase and some magazines on the low table.

128

The Good Price

'The people are gathered on the beach, sahib,' Khalit reported in an even tone, looking crisp in his khaki uniform, stick in hand, at attention in the doorway.

'What for?' Tarachand was sitting in the middle of the Sankheda sofa, one leg crossed over the other, sipping tea from a flower-patterned teacup.

Khalit cleared his throat, 'I tried to move the statue, but it's very heavy.'

'Break it with a hammer,' Tarachand said, annoyed. 'I don't care, just get rid of it.' He reached for the Indian Express folded neatly on the tea tray and flapped it open. He remembered suddenly that the Singhanis were coming to the office at three o'clock; perhaps Mrs Singhani would be alone. The thought made him smile.

'But, sahib ... ' There was a protracted silence. A few sparrows rustled about in the bamboo outside the window. In the dining room down the hall, a servant was setting the table for Tarachand's breakfast. A faint smell of frying onions drifted toward the sitting room. Khalit remained at attention in the doorway.

'The people are saying ... ' Khalit began again, 'they are saying that Ganesh-ji should be immersed into the sea.'

'Which people?' Tarachand's bored voice came from behind the newspaper.

'The same people who were there yesterday. And more.'

Tarachand huffed and sighed in exasperation. 'Tell them to go away,' he said.

'Sahib, I tried to send them away, but they are insisting. They will not leave until Ganesh-ji is sent to the sea.'

Tarachand flung the paper on the sofa, uncrossed his legs. 'Then send Ganesh-ji into the sea! What is the big problem?'

Khalit lowered his eyes to the floor, his stick twisting uneasily in his hand.

'But sahib, the things is, we would need a boat ... and I cannot swim ... ' Tarachand's face clouded with irritation. 'Then get one of those slum people to do it. Give them a few rupees if you have to.'

'But, sahib, the thing is ... ' 'Oh, stop it with your "thing is, thing is",' Tarachand snapped. 'Say it straight.'

'Yes, sahib.' Khalit took a step forward. 'The people are saying that since it is our Ganesh-ji - that is, since he is near our house - we are responsible 129

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

for Ganesh-ji's immersion. Otherwise, it will be a bad omen for the world.

That is all.'

Tarachand threw his hands in the air and let out a sarcastic laugh of disbelief Khalit, passing his stick from one hand to the other, tried to force a laugh, but managed only to look strained. 'Please come to the beach, sahib.

You will see if what I am saying is true or not.'

'All right!' Tarachand was quite furious now, his morning peace entirely gone. 'A bad omen for the world,' he muttered. 'What next? A bunch of superstitious melodramatic baboons, that's what we have in India. That's what is wrong with this country. And no one does anything. They just sit back and watch the show. Do you understand what I'm talking about?' Khalit nodded uncertainly. Tarachand strode toward the dining room. 'I'm going to eat my breakfast,' he said. 'I will come to the beach in half an hour.' He turned and pointed an index finger at Khalit. 'Go to the fishing village and find a boat.'

* * * Where there had been ten or twelve people the day before, there were now at least a hundred. He knew that this would happen. They had formed a ragged line and were shuffiing across the sand towards the statue, bowing deeply to the deity. Some of them had brought coconuts, flowers, handfuls of rice, which had begun to pile up at the deity's feet. At a distance from the slum folk, Tarachand made out a knot of well-dressed people, he thought probably residents of the new flats down the road. Well, no matter, the big gaudy statue would soon be gone.

'It is ready,' Khalit said to Tarachand, pointing to the water where a fisherman waited patiently by his boat. There was no shortage of volunteers from among the men in the crowd, who vied for the honour of hoisting the Ganesh into the boat. Khalit tapped two of them with his stick to stay and waved the others off.

Tarachand surveyed the boat. 'Couldn't you find a bigger one?' he said to Khalit. The fisherman, a stocky bald man, looked hurt; he stood beside his small boat, brushing at a patch of crusty grime on its hull.

On Khalit's cue and largely at odds to his shouted instructions, the two men heaved the Ganesh up and into the boat, settling it between the 130

lhe Good Price

two seat planks amidships. The crowd cheered and clapped. 'Okay, sahib,' Khalit said. Tarachand looked at the expectant faces turned toward him and, holding on to the side, climbed into the boat and edged his way around the statue.

He had to sit with his knees apart, and, as the boat rocked and swayed on the water, he held on to the statue's big pink belly. The fisherman pushed the boat and it slipped free of the sand. H e jumped aboard and began the fir t of several attempts to start the motor, which finally sputtered to life, sending black puffs of smoke into the air. 'He's quite big,' the fisherman said to Tarachand. 'We will need to go far out.' Tarachand nodded. 'Do you have enough petrol?' he shouted slowly over the din of the engine. The fisherman grunted his assent.

Tarachand scanned the shoreline. The sun was still lenient in the sky and the crowd on the beach was slowly dispersing. Off to the right, he took in the chaotic eruption of concrete and steel that was the new development of flats.

It was further from his house than he'd imagined, but he felt disorientated by the sight of two big cranes in such close proximity to his property - a long slice of white amid the lush greenery. Each year after the monsoons he considered repainting the house in yellow or light green, but in the end he always chose white.

'Wait, sahib, wait for me.' Tarachand looked back to the beach and saw the boy in short pants, the one with the necklace of shells and coconut bark from the day before, splashing through the water towards the boat, his thin legs rising comically higher and higher as the water grew deeper.

The fisherman followed Tarachand's surprised look and gasped as the boy, now waist deep, was engulfed by a wave. Shaking his head and wiping his eyes, the boy used the back swell to lunge at the boar, his tiny bands snatching hold. They were moving swiftly bur he was determined. 'Sahib,' the boy said, breathin g heavily and looking directly at Tarachand, can I come wi th you?' Tarachand blinked, at a loss for wo rds, and looked at the fisherman, who slowed the motor and let the boat drift for a few moments with the panting boy clinging to the side.

Before Tarachand could formulate an answer the boy had clambered aboard, the boat pitching perilously. 'Aaaiii,' the fisherman yelled, as water washed over the side, already riding low under the burden of the Ganesh and Tarachand. 'There's no space,' he shouted looking down at his feet, which 131

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

were now immersed. But the boy was already in and crouched on the floor, seawater streaming from his dark, sleek body. Tarachand's white cotton pyjama was soaked to the knees. The boat regained its balance as the boy wiped the water from his arms and chest and settled himself on his haunches next to the statue. He grinned up at the fisherman and turned to Tarachand, who pointedly looked the other way.

The sky had been hazy when they set out but now the morning sun brought up a glistening grey sea. The boy began singing a Hindi film tune, 'Hum turn, ek kamre me bandh ho, aur chabi kho jaai.' The fisherman poked him with his foot, 'Be quiet,' he said. But the boy kept on, alternately humming and singing snatches from different songs.

After a while the fisherman shut down the throttle. '1 think this is far enough,' he said. The boy looked around and pointed, 'Little more, go up to there,' he said, as though he were now the one in charge. He ran his fingers over his shell and bark necklace, reached behind his neck, untied the knot.

'Do you like my necklace?' he asked Tarachand, 'It brings happiness.' The boy held the necklace in his hand, jangling it at Tarachand, '1 can give it to you for the good price.'

Tarachand ignored him. He was uncertain how they were going to get the statue off the boat. Would he have to get in the water? He should have brought a towel. Although he had swum in the sea many times before, he'd always stayed close to shore. He thought the water was very deep. Were there sea snakes and jellyfish? Perhaps they could just push the thing' over the side.

The boy set his necklace on the floor near Tarachand's feet. 'We can talk about the good price later, okay sahib?'

The fisherman switched off the motor and they sat in silence, the three of them in a small boat sitting around a coloutful statue. Tarachand thought they would make a very odd sight indeed. He could hear no sound of airplanes or waves, only the rocking of the boat. A balmy breeze played over the water.

The fisherman stood up slowly. 'Move out of the way,' he said to the boy, nudging him with his knee. The boy straightened his shoulders. 'Your boat is small,' he said in a condescending tone. Then, to Tarachand, he said, 'What can I do?' The fisherman slapped the back of the boy's head. 'Who asked you to come?'

132

The Good Price

Tarachand cook off his kurta and stood next co rhe statue. He and the fisherman tried to tip it toward the side. It tilted, as did the boar. Come on,' the fisherman grunted at the boy, 'can:'t you help?' The boy stood up. ~k me niOOy,' he said. The fisherman glared at him, 'Do you think this i your futher's boat or what?'

The three of them began pushing and for an instam Tarachand's hands brushed the boy's. Th.e boat began to list, first to POrt and then to starboard.

Which way was the statue going? The boat tilted sharply and Taradland, at the stern, saw the statue rip into the sea, taking the boy with it. The boat almost at a right angle, the fisherman dutchlng the seat plank, the boy ... oh god, the boy ... TaJ:achand reached our bopelessly as water poured over the side. He saw [he boy's h ad bobbil1g in the slight swell, up and down, up and down.

Ta.rachand jumped; a few swift strokes and he could reach him, just a few strokes more. The boy's hand, barely more than flesh-covered bones, went up and Tarachand could see each ohhe little fingers distinctly. Just a few more makes; no time to blink; no time to breathe; lWlgs burning; he must get there, now. The boy, hjs eyes ablaze with fear, opened his mouth . .And then there was only the grey sea.

Tarachand swam th is way aJld thar, and groped in the underwater darkness until he thought his lungs would explode. On the boat the fisherman sobbed and cursed and begged Ganesh-ji to send back che boy.

* * * 1hey pushed the boat up ontO the beach and Tarachand reached in to gather up his soaked kurta. Under it, he found the boy's necklace. He held the string of shell and coconut bark in his palm.

He telephoned the police from thehouse. Could they send out search boats?

The senior inspector was on tea break, he was informed, the junior inspector was out training to become a senior inspector, the chief commissioner was Muslim and today was Friday. Did Tarachand have money? Of course; yes, he would pay. No, he didn't know the boy's name. What was the boy doing on the boat? Why this? Why that? Tarachand sent Khalit to the slum colony to enquire after the boy's family. Someone said the boy's name was Vinayak.

No parents. He lived with a bedridden aunty.

133

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Khallt had not been gone long before Tarachand heard shouting from the main road outside his front gates. A mutinous crowd had gathered and rabble rousers were stirring them to burn Tarachand's house, burn his office. They should call the Shiv Sena; have Tarachand thrown in jail.

TIlere was no space for the buses and lorries and rickshaws to pass. An itinerant chanawalla set down his basket and hawked his peanuts for fifty paisas.

Tarachand came out and addressed the crowd with empathy and genuine sorcow. He described what had happened that mOrniJ1g at ea. He pledged money to the boy's aunty. He pledged money to the mun.icipal school in the boy's name. The crowd grew sombre. an acknowledgment that Tarachand was not at fault. He was a respectable salub. he was trying to help. The crowd thinned. They had meals to cook, clothes to wash. hms to clean. jobs to be ar, gods to pray co, old parents to tend, and children ... they would beat their children if they went near the sea.

* * * That afternoon Mrs Singhani, dressed in a cream salwar-khameez, arrived at Tarachand's city office, alone. Tarachand noticed her high-heeled sandals.

His gaze rested for a moment on the wisps of hair that escaped her bun and fell so delightfully around her face. He felt suddenly awkward, and wished he had cancelled their appointment.

'You seem ill,' she said, 'is everything alright?'

'I'm fine,' he said, sitting down in a chair. He was dressed in a beige linen suit, a brown paisley tie. She remained standing. 'What can I do for you?' he said, a little gruffly, and immediately regretted his tone. He stood up. 'Please, excuse me, where are my manners? Have a seat, Mrs Singhani. Would you like tea or coffee, or perhaps some sugar-cane juice? It's a little early for gin and tonic .,. but if you'd like? Whatever you want.'

Mrs Singhani said she wanted peacocks. For her house in Karjat, she envisioned a pair of them in the garden. She'd always been fond of their brilliant feathers, she told Tarachand, 'And have you ever seen the male pheasant dance?' Tarachand was too shocked to reply. 'Iridescent tails,' she said, 'and they spin their feathers like this ... ' She reached over her shoulder, picked up one end of her duppatta, held the gossamer fabric behind her 134

The Good Price

head, and mimed a dance. 'They're outrageous,' she laughed happily, '1 must have them.'

Tarachand stared at her, not knowing what to say. She had seemed so poised and dignified the last time, and now, she appeared fanciful, daring even. 'But, Mrs Singhani ... ' He didn't understand. What was he supposed to say? Why was she asking for peacocks? And what did it matter to him whether she had peacocks in her garden, or macaws, for that matter, or cockatoos and kingfishers? She could replicate the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary; what did he care?

She continued talking, but he wasn't paying attention. He could think only of the boy in the water, Vinayak. His name was Vinayak. Such zeal; the way he had almost thrown himselfinto the boat, how he squatted comfortably on his haunches, the care with which he untied his necklace and offered if up for sale. Tarachand had given it to Khalit, to take to Vinayak's aunty; but she had sent it back. What need had she of cheap roadside trinkets? She needed the boy, to help her sit up in bed and take her to the public latrine and fetch her medicines from the government clinic and stand for hours in the ration line. Of what use was a shoddy necklace!

The last expression on the boy's face - the lightness of youth exploding into the universe - was the most frightening thing Tarachand had ever seen, and it filled him now with a strange humility. He looked at Mrs Singhani distractedly. , ... and we should have a fountain,' she said, 'for the peacocks ... ' '1 have felt,' he said, his shoulders hunching forward in sudden weariness, '1 have felt the unbounded power of the sea.'

'Pardon me?' Mrs Singhanl looked at him, sincerely puzzled. 'The sea, you say? Tarachand-ji? Are you alright? Perhaps ... perhaps 1 should come back tomorrow?'

There was silence. She took a sip from the glass of sugar-cane juice set before her, eyeing him over the rim. Tarachand remembered something about peacocks. She shifted in her chair and when he looked at her he noticed the lace of her brassiere under her khameez. Indeed, peacocks would add a nice touch to the garden, he thought, and there was ample room for fountains. But .. , He fiddled with the cap of his gold pen. Seconds ticked by. He straightened himself in his chair, put down his pen, and looked at her intensely.

135

ASIA LiTERARY REVIEW

'Mrs Singhani,' he said, 'What we have here is a fine colonial mansion. I have designed an English garden for you. Forgive me, I mean no disrespect, but I just can't imagine peacocks frolicking in an English garden.'

'Frolicking?' she said, 'Oh, Taracnand-ji, what a lovely word.' She sighed and let the duppatta drop behind her. Tarachand's gaze slid between her face and the duppatta now casually draping the back of the chair.

'Peacocks are .. , outrageous,' he laughed. And then he was kneeling beside her, his palms cupping the lacy-frilly roundness over her khameez, his hands finding her neck, her shoulders, her waist, he was lifting her off the chair and onto the floor, her scent filling his face, her hair knot unravelling.

He wanted what was irrevocably lost, he wanted the cruelty of passion, he wanted sweetness. And she, with her earlier formality stripped away and the modesty of the duppatta discarded on the chair, clasped her arms around him, her breaths as urgent and unbridled as his. When his lips found hers, and even as a wild ardour raced through his veins and made him believe he could change the past, the lustful image on a small tattered card, Shiva and Parvati, flashed in his mind.

'The door,' she said, gasping, pointing to the opaque frame of glass that separated them from his assistants.

Tarachand helped her to the chair. She turned and reached for her duppatta, raising a shaking hand to tie her hair. 'Are you okay, Mrs Singhani?' he said, his voice a terrified whisper. She nodded, inching away from the sugar-cane juice that was now pooling on the table and dripping to the floor.

'I'll fetch a napkin,' he said, and ran from the room.

* * * Tarachand was in no rush to return home and sent the driver on ahead. He wandered the seedy bylanes ofLuharchawl, passing, several times he noticed, the flight of stairs that went up to Ramdas's room. Stopping at a cold-drink stall, he ordered a Mangola and drank slowly. He remained standing on the footpath even after the bottle was empty, pinching the straw absently between thumb and forefinger.

He returned to the stairs and began climbing. How did that damn Ramdas know that he would seek him out today? He loathed the parrot, but he had to see the next card. He wanted everything to be set right again. He

The Good Price

wanted a card with a word, one of those wonderful innocuous words that he could write down and ponder at leisure.

Ramdas had on a broad smile when he entered. 'No tea, bhai-ji,' Tarachand said, but he was given a glass, and two sweet biscuits on a chipped blue saucer. The parrot was awake, bobbing and squawking in the cage until Ramdas took it out. Tarachand's nose wrinkled at its rank odour.

Throughout Ramdas's ritual recitation the parrot stared at Tarachand, who fought the urge to throw his empty tea glass at its quizzical head. But he knew better than to aggravate a bird about to determine his future.

Ramdas opened his eyes. The parrot, without hesitation, trotted to the third row, picking up the third card. Ramdas unsheathed the card. 'Arn~ wah!' he said, laying it ceremoniously before Tarachand.

A picture of Ganesh.

Tarachand felt the blood drain from his head. His vision blurred. He thought he would faint. 'No!' he shouted, and pushed back the card.

'Yesterday Shiva and Parvati; today Ganesh. You are indeed a lucky man.'

The parrot screeched.

'What do you mean by "lucky"?' If only Ramdas knew. 'Please, bhai-ji?'

Ramdas picked up the parrot, stroking its chest. 'Between the earth and sky there is much that happens, no? But try not to forget the small gestures of children.'

Tarachand nodded uncertainly; his eyes were stinging.

* * * Tarachand told the kitchen he did not want any dinner, only his drinks, and some salted cashews and cuts of cheese. From the veranda, he saw that night had encroached on the sea and the beach. He was working on his third gimlet when he heard Khalit shouting from the back garden. He leaned over the railing and called into the darkness, 'What is it?'

'There are two fishermen on the beach, sahib.'

'And so?'

'Sahib ... the thing is, they found the Ganesh-ji. The statue got caught in their nets and, the thing is, they've brought it here. I'm telling them to take it back to the sea but ... ' 'No ... wait!'

13?

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Tarachand ran down to the beach and, confirming it was indeed the Ganesh, had them carry it up to the garden and place it under the palm fronds. The statue was dented and scraped, a piece of the trunk was missing, and the pink and orange paint had bled here and there. Tarachand had no idea what he was going to do with the Ganesh. But he was certain it was not going back into the sea. Still dressed in his office clothes, he looked somewhat incongruous next to the crusty and dishevelled fishermen. He stared at the wet, disfigured deity. A slow salty breeze sifted through the garden. Mosquitoes spiralled at the garden lamps. Khalit coughed. 'Sahib,' he said quietly. 'The fishermen want money because their nets are torn.'

Tarachand went into the house and came out with a wad of rupees.

* * * It was early when the jangle of the telephone echoed through the house.

A trunk call from Kathmandu. Tarachand's heart soared when he heard Shankari's voice. She was fine, she said, and yes, it was rather cold there. The line crackled and buzzed as she spoke. She asked how he was. There was a slight echo.

He could tell her about the boy and the boat and the statue of Ganesh in their garden. It had been weeks since they had spoken. She was more than two thousand kilometres away. He wanted only to stay quietly on the phone with her. In the midst of the silence, the idea came to Tarachand: a small temple in the garden; she would like that. He mulled the thought over for a few seconds and then began to drift.

Shankari's voice sounded strong and resolute when she explained her decision to stay on at the ashram. 'For how long?' he asked. 'When will you return?'

He imagined her shrug, 'I don't know.'

There was a beep on the line and the operator cut in to ask if she would like to extend the call for another three minutes. 'No,' Shankari said.

Tarachand replaced the receiver and stood, his hand shaking, staring at the phone. He glanced at Shankari's wedding photo in the filigree frame on his bureau, then ambled into the sitting room, sat on the Sankheda sofa, and put his head in his hands.

138

The Good Price

* * * Each morning Tarachand scanned the beach below his house for the boy's body. He telephoned the police daily, but there was never any news. Nothing had washed up on the beaches of Bombay, even as far as Alibaug and Marway, other than dead fish and mounds of rubbish.

Once or twice Khalit reminded Tarachand about the statue in the back garden under the palm trees. 'What is to be done, sahib?' Tarachand only shook his head. Whenever Khalit found a fallen rose or marigold in the garden, he tossed it at the Ganesh's feet.

A servant was readying his evening cocktail tray when Tarachand said, 'Don't bring any of that. Just a cold glass of water.' He sat on the veranda, sipping the water. With the sun falling into the horizon, and the sky the colour of fire, Tarachand made up his mind. He would go to Mount Kailash.

He would give the ashram another try. He would stay there as long as ... He would stay there for the rest of his life, if that was what she wanted of him.

He went inside, drafted a telegram, and then searched in the armoire for his shawls and sweaters.

At the office the next morning he offered his four assistants partnerships in the firm. At the end of the week he was going out of town, and no, he said, he didn't know when he would be back. His assistants took the afternoon off to celebrate their good fortune and the office was empty save for Tarachand when Mr and Mrs Singhani stopped by for another discussion about Karjat.

For a moment, all he could do was stare at Mrs Singhani. An orange sari, a clip in her hair, long earrings - she was lovely. He watched her remove her sunglasses and slip them into her purse. She nodded to him in greeting, her gestures measured and composed, as though their recent indiscretion had never occurred.

They settled around the teak table as Tarachand made to shout out to his assistants, then fetched the drawings himself, handing them to Mr Singhani, who, lips pursed, perused the pages.

Tarachand edged closer to Mrs Singhani, touching his fingers lightly to her arm. She leaned slightly. His heart thrilled. 'You were right,' he said to her, letting his finger rest a few more seconds. 'There should be peacocks in your garden in Karjat.'

Mrs Singhani tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. 'Let's forget about 139

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

the peacocks,' she said, pointedly. 'It was an impetuous idea. Let us go back to the English garden.' Mr Singhani paid them no heed; he was absorbed in the drawings.

Tarachand shook his head, smiled slightly, and told her he had redesigned the back of the house. 'You'll be quite pleased, I assure you,' he said. 'English gardens are so overrated. Moghul gardens are far better, more fitting in the ..

Indian climate. I have designed a fountain for you in the middle, and,' he smiled again, more broadly, 'it must have peacocks.' Mrs Singhani averted her eyes at the mention of peacocks. Tarachand rose, took a few steps and stopped, his hands resting on the back of his chair. 'I have a special surprise for you,' he said. 'I've found, with great difficulty I might add, the perfect statue to compliment your fountain. I have taken the liberty of sending it to Karjat.'

'Oh!' said Mrs Singhani, her face alight.

'There is just one thing,' he said. 'There's a necklace on the statue. It might not look like much, but it is rather special and rather valuable. Please don't remove it. If you do, it will be ... ' Tarachand hesitated, ' ... if you remove it, Mrs Singhani; it will be a bad omen for the world.'

'Oh?' She looked at once intrigued and perplexed. 'What kind of necklace is it?'

'You'll see. It's quite rare. It belongs on the statue. You do understand?'

'Yes, of course I understand,' she said, happily.

Mr Singhani looked up. 'And the price of this ... this Moghul garden and its fountain and its special statue?'

Tarachand laughed. 'The good price, Mr Singhani,' he said, throwing his hands in the air, 'always the good price.'

140

Poems David McKirdy

Digging Heaney Between my finger and my thumb the camera rests; poised for posterity.

Up on the stage the saintly silver halo pauses, priest-like behind the rostrum, then rips a poem off the page and slaps it into life like a recalcitrant baby at birthing.

Three hundred fertile minds finally hear the verse that all had heard a dozen times.

By god the great man can handle a stanza, deliver a poem like you'd drive a stolen car.

141

ASL4 LITERARY REVIEW

Riding on waves of adolescent adulation he paints with words; agrarian landscapes and homely hearths a world view, condensed in one loamy sod.

The master at work passing on, preserving an ancient oral tradition.

Between my finger and my thumb the camera rests; Seamus! Smile.

Outward Bound Hannibal crossed The Alps for conquest and glory.

We - Carthaginians of a different stripe crossed the sea.

Destination Hong Kong on The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company's S.S. Carthage.

Built by fellow-Scots, launched on our own River Clyde.

Up the gangway hand in hand we boarded, working class folk with boot-strap aspirations, to cabins second class the apartheid of imperial caste.

No P'O.S.H. travel for us but 'starboard out, staying out' unlike that great general, never coming home to disappointment and betrayal.

s.o.s.o.:

142

Poems by David McKirdy

As we waved goodbye streamers severed our links leaving monochrome memories and the 1950s in our wake through Port Said, Suez, Aden and beyond.

Black and white Britain displaced, obscured forgotten by senses now shaken by shocking, pungent, grating colours, odours and sounds familiarity growing as we travelled ever Eastward warm and wet like a return to the womb.

Perhaps I'll linger here a while.

143

Inu & Spiirykdo: the Rebirth (2009) by Mai Long. Charcoal on Stonehenge with collage, 76cm x 112cm. Image courtesy a/the artist and SLOT, Sydney, Australia.

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena Jill Widner

T

HE FERRY landing is

an iron platform that appears to float on the milky brown surface of the river until her brother points to the pilings, the oil drums, the tangle of cable and rope. The air is thick with the smell of mud, crude oil and low tide. She smells something else, something spoiled, something burning. She sniffs at the air - dried grass, smoke, garbage .. , molasses? She listens to the river lapping against the oil drums that bump the waterlogged and rotten pilings, the tension in the rusted cable, the creak of the worn braided rope that somehow holds it all together.

Several thatch-roofed sampans are tied to the dock. They appear to be made of little more than scrap wood nailed together at uneven angles and float low on the water. At the stern of one, a teak-brown bare-chested boy in ragged shorts sits squeezing and twisting a rubber-handled throttle, revving a small outboard motor. Another boy makes his way to the bow, his movements swift and agile, fingertips gripping the edge of the roof. toes splayed on the splintery gunwale. There he squats, pulls out an empty tin can, and begins bailing over the side. When he is done, he catches the girl's eye, beckons her with an upside-down wave of his hand.

'Mari. Mari sini, Tuan. Kita berangkat. Here, Mister. You like go Sungai Gerong? Come. We go. You ride sampan?'

'I think they want us to go with them,' the girl's brother says to their father, who is standing behind them now.

145

ASL4 LITERARY REVIEW

'We'll wait for the ferry.'

Along the shore, children are yelling back and forth, laughing and sinking to their knees or sliding on their heels over the sticky mud of the low-tide river bed. From the muddy water below where they stand on the dock, a small head breaks the surface and a wiry boy lifts himself onto the bow of another of the sampans. The girl marvels at the water streaming down his slick body. He coughs and spits, clears his nose with a snort through thumb and forefinger, and shakes his hand at the water. He slides his hand across the top of his head and over his flaring nostrils and open mouth. Then he turns to the girl, makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger, and slides the forefinger of his other hand in and out through the hole. He laughs, dives back into the river.

The ferry when it comes chugging slowly into view is a dirty-white, flatbottomed barge with a yellow roof There are no windows. The girl and her brother have to stand in the open doorway of the cabin, behind a chain, to see the river. For a while, a sampan races the ferry. She sees the boy at the throttle; he waves at the two white children. But as the ferry gains speed, the sampan is left bumping over its wake and eventually disappears from sight.

Her brother settles beside their father on a wooden bench bolted to the iron floor. The girl remains standing, watching the foam churn as the river rolls away from the sides. The river is brown, but it has a yellow smell. She wants to ask her father why this is - what it is - but she asks too many questions; everyone tells her so.

On the other side of the river, across from the wharves where the oil tankers are moored, a row of whitewashed cottages, identical in every way save for the chalky hues of their shutters, faces a tree-lined pavement.

At the end of the sidewalk stands a sign. The words contain long rows of a's and p's and f's and g's and combinations of consonants the girl has never seen. Sometimes she stares at the white letters and wonders if she has forgotten how to read. One day she copies the word at the top of the sign onto a pad of paper and waits for her father to come home from the office.

'What does this say?' she asks.

'Pasanggrahan.' Her father is listening to the BBC on a short-wave radio and doesn't want to talk. 'It's a Dutch word.'

'Dutch? We're in Indonesia. Why is the sign in Dutch?'

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

He pulls his glasses down from his eyes. 'The only thing you need to know, Elizabeth, is that you live in the "pa-sang-gra-han".'

'But what does it mean?'

'It means guest house, Elizabeth. If it's too hard for you to pronounce, just say that you live in the second to the last guest house in Old Camp.'

'I'll say the one with pink shutters. Ours is the only one with pink shutters,' she says, pleased with her observation.

'You could say the one that comes with a houseboy,' says her brother, Michael, who now insists on being called 'Mick', prying his eyes open with his thumbs and forefingers, imitating the way the houseboy's eyes bulge from their sockets. He bares his teeth and stares at his little sister until she looks away.

'They all have houseboys. And I'm not afraid of his eyes anymore,' she says to her brother. 'And I know something else. It isn't called Old Camp; it's called Kampung Lama. Mina told me. And it isn't called New Camp, either, Dad. It's called Kampung Baru.' Her father is listening to the radio; her brother is making faces at himself in a shiny pewter platter.

There is a room for each of them, one on either side of a long hallway, at the end of which a swinging door opens onto the kitchen, or the 'dapur', as Mina, their cook, calls it. At night the long fluorescent glass tubes attached to the ceiling crackle slightly and cast a pale greenish light onto the bare white cupboards and walls.

Behind the kitchen, a breezeway overgrown with bougainvillea connects the back of the guest house to the belakang, a row of rooms where the houseboy, though he hasn't been a boy for a long time, lives with Mina.

Elizabeth thinks she must be his grandmother. The houseboy's name is Mangoon. It is his job to answer the door and bring cold drinks on a tray when anyone, even one of the children, presses a buzzer on the wall in the living room. The children's parents refer to them as the servants, though Mina has told Elizabeth that, in thei~ language, Bahasa Indonesia, Mangoon is the 'jongos' and she is the 'koki'.

Elizabeth is learning to recognise the sounds of the night she hears from her bed. On the walls, the dak of dcaks. Her brother says they are house lizards and they eat mosquitoes and they can keep you company, like a pet.

Broad leaves brush the window screens and she imagines she lives in the jungle. A door opens on the belakang. Through the open window she hears 147

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

the sound of metal on metal, the strike of a match, the hiss of a propane stove. Then the rancid smell that never quite disappears from the back of the house floats through the screen. Coconut oil.

Each morning at dawn, Mangoon makes his rounds, setting the sprinklers in the garden, opening the shutters. Then he walks to the belakang, where he steps out of his rubber slippers and enters the back of the house through the kitchen door. Elizabeth feels his presence, barefoot now, padding soundlessly down the hallway, passing the closed bedroom doors to the living room, where he tips open the glass-louvred windows to let in the air and the yellowbrown smell of the river.

The clank of the tea kettle against the burner in the kitchen tells her that Mina is awake. She gets dressed, unbolts the front door, and waits on the front doorstep for Mina to bring her a ring of pineapple on a small white plate.

The guest house faces the river, but instead of the river all Elizabeth can see is a tangle of oil pipes bolted to a concrete platform and, behind that, the rust-streaked black hull of an oil tanker. She can see its crew leaning against the rail at the back of the ship that very moment, talking softly and smoking and looking at the view she doesn't have of the river.

Sometimes a few American boys come by to pick up her brother.

Sometimes they climb the concrete platform and run along the pipes on the wharves, pretending to be tightrope artists. Sometimes, when the sailors are watching, they do handstands, double kicks in midair. The sailors applaud, calling out to them in languages she doesn't recognise. Sometimes, if the boys are lucky, the sailors toss them packs of cigarettes.

Some of the pipes, her father says, carry crude oil from the oilfield to the refinery. Elizabeth has tried to imagine an oilfield, but doesn't understand how something that is liquid can grow out of the ground. Others carry the refined oil to the ships, and when the ships are full they leave and are replaced by others; there are always ships waiting. Elizabeth's father is a petroleum engineer, but she doesn't know what he actually does, except that what goes through the pipes is the reason they live in an oil camp Sungai Gerong - on the Musi River on the island of Sumatra in the country of Indonesia.

Mina uses a wide-toothed bamboo rake to scrape at the concrete path, which has been warped and broken in places by the thick roots of the frangipani trees.

Flowers fall to the ground faster than she can gather them into a pile. Elizabeth

Mi na and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

tells Mina she's thirsty and the old woman leans the rake against the trunk of one of the trees and beckons the girl to follow her to the belakang. They enter the kitchen through the back door, the only door Mina ever uses. She rinses her hands at the sink, wipes her wet palms across the front of her sarong, and begins to perform what looks like alchemy, like magic.

Mina opens the refrigerator and removes what appears to be a jar of water. 'Air gula,' she says, letting a little drip into the lid, which she holds for Elizabeth to taste. Sugar water. She presses the juice from a yellow-skinned lime into a glass. In the evening, Mangoon brings her parents drinks he calls gin jeruk. The girl searches her new vocabulary, puts together the words for water and lime. 'Air jeruk?' she asks.

Mina nods.

Sitting outside on the grass beneath a frangipani tree with her sour-sweet drink, Elizabeth watches Mina, whose body is old and not much bigger than her own, and she is only seven. Mina is squatting now on the backs of bare flat feet. Her sarong has been washed so many times that the colour is nearly gone. Her long grey hair is twisted into a knot at the back of her head. There are holes in her ear lobes the size of a small coin. Mina points to a duster of flowers; they are too high for her to reach. She breaks off a stalk and holds it for Elizabeth to inspect the sticky milk that oozes from the end. Smaller pink stems radiate from the tip. From these the flowers grow. Some are pink spires furled dosed, the pink so bright it is nearly purple, holding tight their blossom of soft petals shot with different shades of pink like spiral ribbons swirling through ice cream from edge to centre. Elizabeth counts the petals.

Five, like a star. Mina plucks off a flower and places it on the girl's shoulder.

Elizabeth watches, mesmerised, as Mina lifts her arm. Then, as if she has commanded it to do so, the flower cartwheels end over end to the girl's wrist, which Mina turns over at just the right moment for the flower to fall into the palm of her hand.

* * * Elizabeth is kneeling on the couch beneath the living-room window, her face pressed to the louvres, imagining the space between two of them to be a slot in an otherwise solid wall through which she can spy on the rain dripping from the eaves onto the doorstep.

149

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Michael walks into the room, eating a piece of toast smeared with peanut butter. 'What are you doing?'

'Nothing.'

'Why do you always sit like that?'

'Like what?'

'Backwards. On top of your feet.'

Elizabeth looks down at her knees pushed into the crack between the cushions.

'I always sit like this?'

'Mina wants you.'

'Why?' 'How should I know. I don't speak Chinese.'

'It isn't Chinese.'

'Bahasa then.'

Michael licks his thumb and wipes the crumbs from his face with the back of his hand. A streak of made-up sounds slides out of his sneering mouth. 'Bekin-bekin main-main tak-tak. Why do they always have to say everything twice?'

'You're not even saying anything.'

'I think your little Indo friend is waiting for you.'

'Fina is here? Why didn't you tell me?'

'I did tell you. I said Mina wants you.'

'Fina isn't Indonesian, she's Filipina.'

'What's the dim' 'Her father is the customs officer.'

'Who cares.'

'Where is she?'

'On the belakang. In the kitchen. I don't know. Go look.'

Elizabeth starts to take a step when her legs buckle at the knee. She meets her brother's eyes and holds them, pretending that nothing has happened.

'Your foot's gone to sleep,' he says, laughing, then pushes the screen door open and holds it for a moment, surveying the rain. He looks back at his sister, sitting on the floor now, stamping her bare foot against the tile. He shakes his head. 'You should act more like a girl, Elizabeth. And you should try making friends with the other Americans. You think you're going to want a Filipino friend when we move to New Camp?' The screen door slams behind him.

150

Mina and Rna and Lotte Wattimena

Through the louvres she hears the rubber soles of his tennis shoes slapping toward the bowling alley at the end of the rain-soaked sidewalk.

Elizabeth stamps her foot a few times, limps down the hallway, and shoulders her way through the swinging door into the kitchen.

Mina is startled and reaches for her chest. 'What is it?' she asks, In Bahasa.

'Where is Fina?' She hears her brother's impatience in her voice.

Mina is wiping water marks from a glass with a white tea towel. Five glasses stand upside down in a row on a cloth beside the sink. Even in the fluorescent light, they gleam. She ignores Elizabeth's question, or maybe it is the tone she ignores. She examines the glass she is holding before she sets it beside the others. She looks through the screen in the door. 'Hujan lebat,' she says.

Elizabeth doesn't understand. She listens to the rain striking the metal roof through the screen. 'Where is Fina?' she asks again, quietly this time.

Mina points to the back door. Fina is waiting on the back step, sheltered from the rain by the roof of the breezeway behind the house. The rain is louder here, falling on all of the different surfaces, the tin roof, the concrete walkway, the mud in the garden, the branches and leaves of the bougainvillea plant climbing the trellis.

Fina's long black hair looks very shiny in the rain-drenched light. Her bare elbows are resting on her bare knees, which she holds apart. Her fingers hang down from her wrists, and her bare feet are planted evenly on the concrete step. Over her head where the tangled thorny branches have gone wild, the purple-red bougainvillea flowers look more purple than red. She does not say hello. Maybe it is because they are looking at the flowers, but it feels to Elizabeth as though Fina has read her mind.

'There is a name for that colour,' Fina says. 'Do you know what it is?'

Elizabeth shakes her head no.

'Magenta. Almost. It is a cross. Something between Magenta and Purple Madder.'

'How do you know that?'

'They are paint names. My mother is a painter. She buys oil paints from a catalogue. They sent her a colour chart so that she can know which ones to buy. 1 like to look at it. 1 like the smell of oil paints. Do you?'

'1 don't know. 1 don't think I've ever smelled paint.'

151

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

'You never had the chance to finger-paint in school?'

Of course - Elizabeth has forgotten.

'I love to finger-paint,' says Fina. 'I like the way you have to wet the paper first and how slick and shiny it gets. I like reaching into the jar. I like to use a lot, and I like to smear it.'

'I never knew whether you were supposed to make a picture out of the paint or out of the streaks your fingers left on the paper.'

'It can be whatever you want. There aren't rules.'

'Why do you always wait outside?' Elizabeth asks.

'I was watching the rain. I like rain.'

Elizabeth sits on the step beside Fina. 'I like rain too. Fina?'

'Yes.' 'What is hujan lebat?'

'Hujan lebat?'

'Mina said it when I asked where you were.'

'Hujan lebat is when rain falls hard, then stops suddenly. It is almost ready to stop now.' Fina turns to her. 'I know someone who has a goat. Do you want to see it?'

Elizabeth looks at Fina. 'A goat?'

* * * Mrs Wattimena's house is a clapboard cottage, painted rusty red, with faded yellow shutters. At the top of the steps, on a clean swept porch the same red as the walls, two rattan chairs face a low wooden table. Along one wall stands a row of concrete pots brimming with knotted roots. Above the roots, tall slender stems bend with the small weight of orchids suspended from the tips like purple lanterns. Behind the plants, on the wall, two house lizards blink.

'I love cicaks!' says Elizabeth.

'Have you ever looked at their feet close up?' Fina asks.

'I know. You can see through them.'

'Sometimes .. .' Fina looks into Elizabeth's eyes. 'Sometimes you can see the heart beating. Sometimes you can see the blood moving.'

'In the throat, ya? There is a little bump in the throat that moves. Like when you swallow.'

152

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

'The pulse.'

'Ya, the pulse,' Elizabeth says.

A tall, large-boned, light-skinned woman unlatches the screen door and pushes it open. Her knee-length skirt rides high on her waist. Through the transparent fabric of her blouse, Elizabeth can see her ample low-slung breasts inside a lace brassiere. She wears her hair pulled back from her face and, perhaps because it is twisted into a loose knot at the back of her head, her forehead appears exceptionally high. Her skin is a soft, pale brown; her eyes, heavy-lidded and dark. Restful, patient, kind.

'Fina? Selamat siang, Fina.'

'Selamat siang, bu.' Fina reaches for Elizabeth's hand. '1ni, teman saya dari Amerika.'

'What did you say?' Elizabeth whispers.

'I told her you are my friend from America. Mrs Wattimena is the librarian at the American school. She will be your librarian when your school begins.'

Elizabeth looks from Mrs Wattimena's face to Fina's. 'She doesn't speak English?'

'Of course she speaks English.'

'Fina. Speak English,' says Mrs Wattimena in an amused tone.

'We came to visit the goat,' Fina says.

'Why do you have a goat?' Elizabeth asks.

'The gardener gave it to us. It belongs to the children.'

'How old are your children?' Elizabeth asks.

'Fritz is nineteen. Charlotte is fifteen, and Nicolas is nearly thirteen.'

'My brother is thirteen,' Elizabeth says.

'But that isn't what we call them,' Fina explains. 'Except for Fritz.

Charlotte is Lotte. Nicolas is Nico, or sometimes Coco. Fritz is Fritz.'

'Why so many names?' Elizabeth asks.

'They are sometimes too long. So we just take the front or the back and use that. My friend Dian, I call Deh. My other friend Fitri, I call Fit.' Fina studies Elizabeth's face, then looks her up and down. 'E-liz-a-beth - your name is too long.'

'What should it be?'

'Eliza?' Mrs Wattimena offers.

'Still too long,' Fina says.

153

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

'You don't have to decide today,' Mrs Wattimena says. 'We can think about it.' She looks from one girl to the other. 'Now, I will show you the goat cart.'

Fina's eyes widen. 'You have a cart for the goat?'

'Coco hasn't told you? Come. I will show you.'

Mrs Wattimena leads the girls through an opening in the hibiscus hedge to the belakang behind the house. Fina ducks beneath the bed sheets stretched tight and pinned to a clothes line. One of the sheets brushes Elizabeth's face as it flaps back. She catches the smell of sunlight and presses her face into the bone-dry cloth, inhaling deeply.

Fina and Mrs Wattimena are already at the other end of the breezeway, past the row of rooms where the servants live, and Elizabeth trots to catch up. The walls of the rooms are windowless. In each doorway hangs a long piece of cloth from a bamboo rod.

Elizabeth hears water, then the sound of a latch. A barefoot, bareshouldered, dark-skinned woman in a sarong knotted under her arms pushes open the rough-hewn door. The woman is young and unafraid to meet Elizabeth's eyes. She says nothing.

Just inside, a few inches above the wet concrete floor, stands an ivory coloured block of cast iron with a rusty opening in the centre, down which a trickle of water is circling. Except for the light coming through the wire grate covering a vent cut high in the cinderblock wall, the room is dark. The walls are spotted with patterns of mould and the air smells dank. In the corner, a concrete tub is filled with water. A tin can, which has a wooden handle nailed to the side, stands on the ledge. Beside it is a bar of yellow soap. The woman says something that Elizabeth doesn't understand and lets the door bang shut.

Mrs Wattimena is speaking to the houseboy, a man the age of Elizabeth's father. He is wearing a pair of canvas shoes and the same black felt box of a cap, and a looser, more wrinkled version of the uniform Mangoon wears.

The man nods as Mrs Wattimena speaks. He glances at the girls, says a few words, nods again.

The goat pen is a three-sided structure that backs onto the side of the work shed. A sheet of tin serves as a lean-to shelter for the goat. Fina is peering through the chicken wire, trying to coax the goat closer. Elizabeth kneels beside her. 'It has a beard,' she laughs.

154

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

'Sini,' Fina calls quietly to the goat as if that is its name, patting at her chest. 'Look. He is coming.'

Except for the white tip of its tail, the goat is black. It has a long, stringy, black beard, a handsome greying muzzle, and soft, nearly black eyes.

'I like his horns,' Elizabeth says, reaching over the fence. She strokes what feels like the surface of a stone. 'They're warm.' The goat's horns are short and broad and thick, and the way they grow back and out rather than up into a curve makes her think of a head emerging from water, hair slicked back.

Fina says, 'Look how long the hairs on his legs are. And how black and shiny and nicely shaped his hooves are. Like little boots. You are very handsome, little goat. You are very strong.'

The houseboy pulls the cart from the shed. It is a deep metal box with rivets along the seams. Inside, a wooden bench divides the cart into two compartments. The wheels are circles of wood, the discarded ends of old cable spools, Mrs Wattimena explains, salvaged by her husband from the maintenance garage at the refinery. The goat is led out of its pen on a short rope and the houseboy nudges it into a simple rope harness, calling over his son to take the yoke while he goes behind the little cart, ready to push if necessary.

Fina climbs onto the bench and Elizabeth is ready to follow when she notices a small girl watching from behind a door curtain. Her mother, the woman Elizabeth saw in the washroom, is sitting on the sidewalk at the end of the breezeway. Elizabeth looks from the girl to Fina. Fina shrugs.

'Come,' Elizabeth calls to the girl, waving her hand toward the cart. She asks the girl's mother with her eyes if it is permitted. The woman looks at her daughter. 'Do you want to go with them?' The little girl nods. 'Okay-lah,' the mother says.

Elizabeth takes the girl by the hand and lifts her into the cart. Fina wraps one arm around her and grips the side of the cart with her free hand.

Elizabeth squeezes in beside them.

The houseboy's son is older than Elizabeth, but younger than Fina. She thinks he might be nine or ten. Barefoot and wearing only a loose pair of shorts, he scratches the goat's back with a bamboo cane. He tests the weight of the cart, then shortens the rope. He hands Elizabeth the stick and she understands she is to use it as a crop in case the goat needs a prod.

155

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

The goat walks forward and the cart begins to move, the wheels wobbling unevenly as they roll down the road. The boy takes his job seriously, looking back to inspect the goat, the cart, the girls and his little sister sitting between them on the bench. Then he looks forward to check where he is walking. His father pushes from behind, taking much of the load for the goat, keeping his eyes on the wheels. The boy turns around and Elizabeth thinks she's caught him in a smile, but he instead bites the inside of his cheek.

Their trip is short, no more than five minutes around the yard and the house, but it feels much longer to Elizabeth and Fina, especially with the little girl between them, who delights in the cart's little lurches. Then it is over and the boy lifts his little sister onto his hip and carries her back to their room. He is whispering to her and she giggles back while their father returns the goat to its pen and the cart to the shed. Their mother is in the kitchen, preparing drinks and snacks for Mrs Wattimena and her two young guests.

In the living room, Mrs Wattimena directs the girls to sit on the couch.

Elizabeth's attention wanders to a wall of books that reaches from the floor to the ceiling. 'Your living room looks like a library.'

'It does, doesn't it?' Mrs Wattimena answers.

'She is a librarian,' Fina explains impatiently. 'I told you that.'

'It is because we like to read,' Mrs Wattimena says. 'Do you like to read, Elizabeth?'

Before she can answer, the babu appears, carrying a tray laden with glasses of tea and small plates of food. Fina looks at Mrs Wattimena. 'I don't think Elizabeth will eat Indonesian food.'

'Is that so?'

Elizabeth doesn't know how to respond.

Mrs Wattimena ignores Fina and picks up a plate of what look like thick, deep-fried chips, which she holds in front of Elizabeth. 'This is called emping. Emping is something like your potato chip, but it is made of a local nut called belinjo. And this type is kerupuk. Kerupuk is made of fish or shrimp.'

Elizabeth stares at the plate, sips from her glass. Mrs Wattimena withdraws the plate. The tea is bitter and the same temperature as the still air in the room. She looks to the dormant ceiling fan, then bends and squeezes the Band-Aid around her toe, which she sees now is stained with blood.

156

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

'I like ting-ting the best,' Fina says. 'Ting-ting is a kind of candy made of peanuts and sugar.'

'Sometimes it is made of peanuts and sugar,' Mrs Wattimena says, and points to another plate. 'This ting-ting is made of rice and brown sugar and sesame seeds.'

Elizabeth feels queasy. She can concentrate only on the sheer curtains moving almost imperceptibly in the slight breeze drifting through the screen.

The curtains are threadbare, almost transparent.

'Elizabeth?'

Mrs Wattimena's voice sounds far away, as though it is coming from another room.

'She is afraid,' Fina murmurs in Bahasa.

Mrs Wattimena frowns. 'What is there to be afraid of?' She lifts the plate from the table. 'Try a piece, Elizabeth.'

Elizabeth looks at the plate, at Fina, at Mrs Wattimena. 'I don't like rice.'

'This is different,' Fina tells her. 'It's sweet. It's chewy. It doesn't taste like rice. It tastes like candy. Just try.'

'I don't want to.'

'If you won't try it,' Fina says with resolve, 'I'll think you have no courage.'

Mrs Wattimena frowns at Fina. 'What happened to your toe, Elizabeth?'

'I stubbed it.'

'Perhaps we should wash it. Come. I will help you in the bathroom.'

'1 have to go home now.'

Mrs Wattimena presses her hands through her skirt to her knees to stand.

Fina stands. 'Terima kasih, bu.' Fina nudges Elizabeth, who stammers, 'Thank you for letting us go for a ride in your goat cart.'

'You are welcome, Elizabeth. You may come again any time you wish.'

Walking the girls through the kitchen to the back door, she changes the subject. 'Elizabeth?'

'Yes?' 'Fina tells me your family goes to the Protestant service at the church. Is this correct?'

'Sometimes.'

'And you attend the Sunday school class at the American school?'

157

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

'Sometimes my brother and I go.'

'I would like you to ask your mother if Nicolas and Charlotte might go with you next week to your Sunday school.'

Elizabeth stares into her face. 'I don't know if we're going next week.'

'You are a good girl, Elizabeth. I know you will ask your mother.'

* * * From the doorstep where she is waiting, Elizabeth studies the sidewalk.

Wet with rain only moments before, the glistening concrete is beginning to steam. She sees them turn the corner; a girl of fifteen and a boy, thirteen.

Elizabeth bangs the door with the heel of her hand and calls through the screen to her brother, 'They're here.'

He is arguing with their mother at the end of the hall. 'She can walk by herself. She can walk with them. I'm not going to Sunday school.'

Charlotte's skin is light, like her mother's, her black hair, crinkly and buoyant, like braids let loose. Elizabeth notes her dress, not yellow, not white, but ivory, pin-tucks running like a cummerbund around her slender waist. There is piping at the hem of the puffed sleeves, making them billow around her thin arms. Her small breasts make the fabric rise and fall as she breathes. The skirt of the dress Butters where it grazes her knees. Elizabeth follows the lines of her legs, browner than her face, to white socks, folded at the ankle above patent leather shoes.

Charlotte takes Elizabeth's hand in both of hers and says, formally and with marked courtesy, 'Good morning.' Her voice is like a morning bird. 'I am Charlotte.'

'I know.'

'And where is your brother?'

Charlotte's hand, the feel of her skin, reminds Elizabeth of something: The wing of a moth? The dust of the wing of a moth? 'He's inside.'

'This is my brother, Nicolas,' Charlotte says, and Nicolas, who is darker than Charlotte and, like his mother, taller than most Indonesians, gives an awkward nod. His face looks drawn and worried; an outbreak of acne across his cheeks.

Michael arrives with a bang of the screen door. Elizabeth looks from the long-sleeved white shirt Nicolas is wearing to her brother's madras shirt; 158

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

from the ironed crease in Nicolas's shiny black dress pants to her brother's white Levis; from Nicolas's polished leather shoes to the curved blue line at the tip of her brother's white sneakers.

Nicolas extends his hand.

Michael ignores it. 'Let's go,' he says.

They walk without speaking toward New Camp, under the leafY branches of the frangipani trees that form a canopy of green over the sidewalk, past Mina scraping the concrete with the bamboo rake, past the hibiscus hedge, past the bowling alley inside the narrow cinderblock building at the shady end of the sidewalk, and into the hot bright light of the sun, where the sidewalk continues beside a chain-link fence, through which they can see the silver sprawl of the refinery and hear the pulse and groan of heavy machinery inside metal-roofed buildings, and smell the sulphur in the white fog rising from smokestacks in the distance.

'My mother said your name is Michael,' Charlotte says to break the silence.

'It's Mick,' he says, a little too ungraciously, Elizabeth thinks. 'I go by Mick.'

'Mike?'

'Not Mike. Mick.'

'Oh.' At the end of the sidewalk, an unpaved road separates the refinery from a soccer field. Beyond the expanse of green, the red tile roofs and tree-lined streets of New Camp are visible. Elizabeth knows the way to the American school and steps from the kerb, listening as she walks to the sound the thin leather soles of her Sunday school shoes make against the gravel, which is sticky with tar and smells of crude oil in the heat. She stops when she sees that Mick has turned to the river. He stares long at the oil tanker moored to the wharf across the street. He pats his shirt pocket briefly, and, finding it empty, his hand drops to his belt buckle where he pulls a pack ofMarlboros from inside the front of his jeans. He lifts the flip top, sniffs at the tight rows of filters, closes it again, and slides the pack into his shirt pocket where it can be seen by anyone they might run into.

Untucking his shirt, he asks Nicolas, 'Ever been in the river?'

Nicolas shakes his head no.

'Know anyone who has?'

159

ASlA LITERARY REVIEW

'No.' 'See the anchor chain?' Mick asks. 'See the opening at the top of the hull?'

Nicolas nods. Elizabeth is nervous about the cigarettes. Charlotte glances at the gold watch on her narrow wrist.

'At night ... If you're really quiet, you can climb on board through the opening without being seen.'

'Why?' 'Just to walk around. Just to see what it's like.'

Mick starts to lead the way down the gravel road, then changes his mind and cuts across the soccer field. The three follow.

'What do you do in your Sunday school class, Elizabeth?' Charlotte asks.

'I don't know. I guess they tell us stories.'

'Do you sing?'

'Sometimes.'

'Do you like to sing?'

'Not that much. Not Sunday school songs. I always yawn when I sing Sunday school songs. I don't know why.'

Charlotte laughs. 'I love to sing. If you had to choose, which would be your favourite hymn?'

Elizabeth likes the cadence of Charlotte's voice, her precise diction, the same accent as her mother but with a softer lilt and pleasantly higher pitch.

She is unsure of the question, and gives Charlotte a sideward glance. 'My favourite Sunday school song?'

Charlotte nods.

'I don't know. I guess I like the one that goes, "I come to the garden alone when the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear, falling on my ear ... '" Charlotte is humming the melody. 'That is a beautiful song, Elizabeth.

"In the Garden". What do you do at your Sunday school when you are not singing?'

Elizabeth tries to remember. 'Sometimes the teacher asks us questions.

One time he asked us to imagine what hell is like. No one could.'

Charlotte's pause is grave. 'I can imagine what hell is like.'

'Do you want to know what he did?'

'If you want to tell me.'

160

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

'He asked for a volunteer. I like to volunteer, so I raised my hand. He told everyone to follow him into the hallway. There is a closet in the hall.

He opened the door and told me to go inside. Everyone was watching. He told me to close my eyes and to keep them closed. He told me not to speak.

And then he shut the door. I heard the key turning in the latch. No one said anything.'

'It doesn't sound like a very nice game.' The look on Charlotte's face is sombre.

'I didn't know how long I was supposed to wait.'

Nicolas interrupts, his eyes very serious. 'Who did this to you?'

'One of the teachers. I don't remember his name. The one who rides the Vespa. He isn't a real teacher. He only teaches Sunday school. Sometimes he takes us for rides on his Vespa. Sometimes he lets us steer. Sometimes he makes it sway. It's fun.'

'It's after he's had a few Bloody Marys,' Mick interrupts, 'that he lets you steer.'

'What did you do?' Charlotte asks.

'After a little while, I told him I wanted to come out. He opened the door when I asked him to. Then he asked me to tell everyone what it was like.'

'What did you say?'

'I said it was dark. He asked me how it felt. I wanted to say I felt hungry, but I said I felt alone and afraid. I think that's what he wanted me to say.

Sometimes I can guess what people want me to say. Then he turned to the class and told them, "That is what hell is like".'

'Elizabeth?' her brother says. 'Are you sure all of that really happened?

Because I think you might be making part of that up.'

'It did happen.'

Mick shrugs. 'I doubt it.'

'Who is that?' Elizabeth asks, pointing across the soccer field to three boys approaching on bicycles.

The boy in the lead, on a gold ten-speed, lets his bicycle steer itself, his arms crossed over his chest. As he approaches the centre of the field, he looks over his shoulder, and, seeing that the other two boys are still far behind, standing on their pedals now, pumping hard to make their way through the thick wet grass, he reaches for the handlebars and circles back. At first it looks as if he is zigzagging to avoid the bare patches in the field that the 161

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

rain has turned to puddles. He bends over the bar of his racing bike, then, leaning away from the frame, he juts his bottom into the air, and sends a spray of mud from his rear tyre onto the arms and knees and into the faces of the two boys lagging behind. He looks over his shoulder and grins, and, though they are red-faced and sweating and splattered with mud, they smile back, their teeth bared like dogs.

When they reach Mick and Elizabeth and the two Indonesians, the boys bring their bikes to a halt. They look from Mick to his sister through their handlebars, which they have wrenched upside down so that they look like the long curved horns of a Texas bull.

The boy on the racing bike leans forward, chest parallel to the bar, rear end cocked above the seat, and, gripping his handbrakes, balances for a moment, pedalling backwards, the lines of his long lean back visible through his damp T-shirt. He drops to the seat and plants his bare feet on the ground.

Elizabeth glances from his feet to his knees to his loose shorts, which are the colour of his skin, the colour of his eyebrows, the colour of his hair, wet now from his sweat and rippling across his scalp.

'I see you've brought the goods.'

Elizabeth's brother pats his shirt pocket.

'Pass them around.'

'Later,' Mick mutters, rolling his eyes in the direction of Charlotte and Nicolas, standing to the side in their Sunday school clothes, so quiet they are nearly invisible.

'Aren't you going to introduce us to your friends?' one of the red-faced boys says to Elizabeth's brother.

'They're my little sister's friends.'

Elizabeth looks at her brother. 'We have to go now, Mick.'

'I know who she is,' the boy on the racing bike cuts in, nodding at Charlotte. 'Your mother is Mrs Wattimena. The librarian.'

The red-faced boy with the freckles sneers. 'You let your little sister have Indonesian friends? Better keep your eye on her or she'll end up like the Yoder sisters. You ever seen them walking down the street? With their Indonesian girlfriends? Holding hands?' He lifts his chin at Charlotte. 'Why do you all do that? Does that mean you like each other?'

Charlotte doesn't answer. Her face remains serene.

162

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

'The guys do it too,' the other boy says. 'Do you do that?' he asks, raising his eyebrows at Nicolas. 'Hold hands with your friends?' He starts to laugh.

Nicolas's face has turned to ash. He says something only his sister can hear. Turns his back on the group and walks away. Charlotte calls after him, but he doesn't respond, and she doesn't persist.

Elizabeth turns to her brother. 'Let's go, Mick.' She offers his new name as a concession. 'We're going to be late.'

'Let's not, and say we did. Okay?'

The boys laugh.

'We said we were going to take Charlotte and Nicolas to Sunday school.'

'Maybe you did. I didn't. Let's get out of here,' he says to his friends.

The two red-faced brothers push their bikes across the field, walking this time. The boy on the racing bike raises his eyebrows at Charlotte and pats the gold bar between his legs. 'Want to go for a ride first?'

Charlotte turns away.

He turns to Elizabeth. 'Do you want to go for a ride?'

'We have to go.'

* * * 'Shall I teach you something, Elizabeth?' Charlotte resumes humming one of the songs they sang earlier at Sunday school. Michael didn't meet Elizabeth as he said he would, and it's just the two of them on the walk home. The sun is high and bright. Elizabeth shades her eyes and looks at Charlotte.

'Okay.'

1\re you hungry?'

Elizabeth knows this isn't a question about food from the way Charlotte asks, more matter of fact than concerned. 'Yes.' 'That is "laper, saya". Say it.'

'Laper, saya.'

'Good! Your pronunciation is very good. Are you tired?'

Again, Elizabeth understands this is not a real question. She nods.

'Do you know the way your body feels when you are so tired that you think you might fall asleep with your eyes open? And your skin feels hot.

And your muscles feel sore.' She circles her waist with her hands 'Here.'

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

She slides her palms over her buttocks. 'And here. The word for that feeling is lemah.'

'Lemah.'

'More like a question, so the voice goes up at the end.'

'Lemah?'

Charlotte nods. 'Also ... I don't know how to say it in English ... when a word can have more than one meaning.'

Elizabeth knows the word for that, but can't find it in her memory. 'I know what you mean.'

'Lemah is also what we say when an argument is ... weak ... ' Elizabeth is silent. , . .. unconvincing. I don't know how to say what I mean. When someone has a belief that is not accurate.' She pauses. 'For example, the misunderstanding your brother's friends have about Indonesian people.'

'My brother is different when he is with them. Even with me.'

Charlotte looks at Elizabeth. 'You love your brother?'

Elizabeth nods.

'I believe you.' Charlotte shakes her hair away from her face, lifts it away from the back of her neck. 'Shall I tell you more?'

Elizabeth nods.

'Do you know the sound of a fading radio? Or the way a flashlight behaves when the batteries are running low?'

Elizabeth smiles.

'Lemah can also mean that.' She looks at Elizabeth. 'Lemah is a kind of hunger. Like a flower that wants water. A kind of thirst.' Charlotte can see that Elizabeth does not understand.

Elizabeth smiles. 'I don't really get it. But I like to listen to you talk. I like your accent.'

'My mother's grandmother was Dutch. She married an Indonesian, so my mother is one-quarter Dutch. Her grandmother returned to Holland, but when my mother was about my age, her grandmother sent for her. She travelled to Holland and also to England. Her grandmother wanted her to be fluent in both languages. When my mother returned to Indonesia and married my father, she wanted us also to know several languages. I'm only comfortable with English.'

'I like the way your voice sounds. It's very nice,' says Elizabeth.

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

When they reach the hibiscus hedge that borders the pasanggrahan, Charlotte pauses at a path Elizabeth has not noticed before.

'I will leave you here. It is a shortcut to my house.'

'Do you have to go home?' Elizabeth asks.

Charlotte looks into Elizabeth's eyes. 'Would you like to see something?'

Elizabeth nods.

'Tidak laper? You are not hungry?'

Elizabeth smiles. 'Not yet: 'Belum. "Belum" means not yet. Then come.'

* * * The path is a dirt track between the bowling alley and the hibiscus hedge.

The stucco wall is spattered with mud where groundwater has stained the foundations. The roof is made of sheets of corrugated iron, now rusting and full of holes. The ridges of the corrugations are thick with moss, the furrows full of rainwater. Elizabeth hadn't known there were rooms behind the bowling alley. Through the windows she can see cardboard boxes stacked on a table, the tops folded over and tucked closed. Upended school desks and a few broken chairs pushed against a wall. Rolls of maps, unfurled across a wooden table. Beneath the table, a bundle of broken-down cardboard boxes.

One of them is flattened. It lies in the middle of the floor like a mattress.

'This building used to be part of the Dutch school.'

'The Dutch school?'

'Before the Americans, it was the British. Before the British, the Dutch.'

Elizabeth doesn't understand. 'What was?'

'The oil company. First it belonged to the Dutch, then the British. Now it's the Americans' turn.'

Charlotte points over the low metal roof of the bowling alley to the highpitched red tile of the building behind. 'The nice white buildings? They were built by the Dutch.'

'And this is where the Dutch children went to school?' Elizabeth asks.

Charlotte nods. She points to the end of the path, her finger arching to the left. 'The classrooms were in the nice white buildings. I think maybe this part behind the bowling alley was the belakang for the school. Maybe the night watchman lived in these rooms. Or the gardener. That was before.

165

ASL4 LITERARY REVIEW

Now it is used only for storage. Sometimes boys go inside to smoke cigarettes.

Sometimes they make a fire in a can. Sometimes they write bad words on the walls with a burnt stick.'

'The American boys?'

'Indonesian boys. The American boys go inside other buildings in Kampung Baru. Do you know the empty houses behind the American school in Kampung Baru?'

Elizabeth shakes her head no.

'You will know,' Charlotte says.

To the right of the path, a chain-link fence leans under the weight of an entangled climbing vine. Elizabeth can see the three diving blocks of the old swimming pool, which brims with dark green water. She looks around her and gets her bearings. 'Now I know where we are - we're on the other side of the old pool.'

When they reach the end of the path, Elizabeth follows Charlotte across a green lawn to a tall wooden gate. Charlotte pulls a bamboo handle tied to a string. A latch lifts on the other side, the gate swings open, and, inside, bordered on three sides by the white stucco walls and the tall windows of the abandoned classrooms of the Dutch school, is a courtyard, and in its corner, a fish pond surrounded by rocks.

Charlotte tucks her dress between her knees and climbs onto one of the boulders. She slips off her shoes and socks. Elizabeth does the same and crouches beside Charlotte, watching the way she dips the tips of her fingers in and out of the pond. The water is full of life and movement. Bluewinged damselflies drift above a surface-skimming water skater. Charlotte stretches for a cluster of lily pads, but they float just out of reach.

'If you tap the surface of the water, the carp will kiss your fingers.'

Elizabeth tries, and a fish rises to the surface. She feels it bump her fingertip and she takes a sharp, open-mouthed breath, delighted by the unexpected sensation.

'My mother told us that you are looking for another name.'

'Not another name. Fina thinks it should be something shorter. E-liz-abeth is too long. But I want something different. The way Mick is different from Michael.'

'There's Liza. Or Liz? Or Za? I kind of like Za. Shall I call you Za, then?'

'Okay. Maybe for today.'

166

Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena

'You can call me Lotte.'

Elizabeth's eyes widen. 'Fina told me that. I forgot. She said sometimes you call Nicolas Nico.'

'Sometimes we call him Coco. It depends on his mood.'

'Just like my brother.'

Elizabeth points to the pink buds of the not-yet-open flowers standing upright, rolled tight, floating among the lily pads. 'What kind of flower is that?' she asks.

'It is a lotus flower. There is a myth about a group of people called the lotus-eaters. When the lotus-eaters ate the root of the lotus, it looked as if they had fallen asleep. But really it was a trance. And while under the spell of the trance, they sometimes had visions.'

Elizabeth looks into Charlotte's eyes.

'A vision is something like a dream. The ancient Greeks believed that the root of the lotus had the power to expand the soul. A door in the mind would open, and they could understand things better. About themselves and other people.'

'Have you ever eaten the lotus root?' Elizabeth asks.

Charlotte smiles. 'I have only read about it. I think there is something to learn from this flower. I like the way the blossoms are delicate and open, while the stems and roots underwater are strong and indestructible.'

Elizabeth and Charlotte sit quietly then, both looking at the water, both feeling calm and still. Elizabeth likes the feeling. 'Lotte?' she says. Charlotte turns to her. 'I was just thinking that you are like your mother.'

Charlotte smiles. 'Thank you, Elizabeth - I mean, Za.' 'What is her name?'

'My mother's name?'

Elizabeth nods.

'Frida. Frida Wattimena.'

'When you talk to me everything sounds like a song.'

Domestic Prayer Flags (2006) by Stephen Eastaugh.

Acrylic and thread on Belgian linen, 140cm x 140cm. Image courtesy of the artist and William Mora Galleries, Melbourne, Australia.

Poem Tammy Ho Lai-Ming

Glory, Repentance The bow-tie stands stiff, recites from his script, relies too heavily on the codes from Up North: I speak for you.

We don't think so.

Oh no, you don't.

We know your appointment was predicted, that you were cooked in a black box.

We know that the codes aren't only yours.

That they are ours too.

We cheered, when the world was belittled by the tidy choreography of thousands dressed in light-bulbs, of a drummed synchronised welcome of men in tight-fitting boxes punching 'Peace' into the air again and again.

169

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

We cried, when China was served collapsing tofu schools and contaminated milk.

We are not heartless.

Our heartbeat is tied to the nation's.

Still, something is not forgotten.

Something nags, has pulled our pulse out of beat, for twenty years.

Shamed by your denial, we wait: Glory and repentance, we seek both. we need both.

170

Poem Madeleine Lee

blue i look what the choice of a chasoba brought even if as an after thought a quail's egg perched on a daikon slice a spotted trophy atop a supplicant root when emptied inside was the palest blue like the colour of far away sky ii when i was little they brought to me a small nest woven of roots of fern strands of string extensions of grass remains of hay in a perfect circle in it was a small egg in baby blue like candied almond from a sweet shop

iii at eleven the driver gave me two budgies one turquoise blue the other bright green granny came to plead for their release without luck. later that night under covers i heard a cage door creak and saw them fly shooting stars in the smudged night

171

Karen, Make-up Artist (2009) by Anne Zahalka. Type c photograph, 84cm x 59cm. Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia.

Poems Ronny Someck

Rice Paradise My grandmother didn't let us leave rice in the plate.

Instead of telling us about hunger in India and the children with swollen bellies, who would have opened mouths wide for each grain she with a screeching fork would drag all the leftovers to the centre of the plate and nearly in tears tell us how the uneaten rice would rise to the heavens to complain to God. Now she's dead and I imagine the joy of the encounter between her false teeth and the angels with the flaming sword at the gates of rice paradise.

They will spread, beneath her feet, a carpet of red rice and the yellow rice sun will beat down on the white bodies of the Garden's lovelies.

My grandmother will spread olive oil on their skin and slip Them one by one into the cosmic pots of God's kitchen.

Grandma, I feel like telling her, rice is a seashell that shrunk and like it you rose from the sea.

The water of my life.

173

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Patriotic Poem I'm a pajama Iraqi, my wife's a Romanian gal and our daughter is the thief of Baghdad.

My mother still boils the Euphrates and the Tigris, my sister has learned how to make piroshki from her Russian mother-in-law.

Our friend, a knife Moroccan, stabs an English steel fork into a fish born on Norwegian shores.

All of us are workers sacked from the scaffoldings of the tower we wanted to build in Babel.

All of us are rusty spears that Don Quixote threw at the windmills.

All of us are still shooting at dazzling stars a moment before they are swallowed up into the Milky Way.

Testifying to Beauty The most beautiful girl in the world used the pad of her finger to wipe the dust off the label of a bottle in a wine shop in Bordeaux.

The fan of this movement is taught at archaeology schools. when eyes open wide to identifY the year of Creation.

Inside the bottles all traces of the hand that squeezed the grapes have vanished and from the grapes the scent of the shady roofs of the vine leaves has been forgotten.

In the leaves nostalgia has shut down the wind turbines of the grains of sand, and the sand no longer covers the roots that crept through the earth like snakes that shed their skin every season.

And the girl? Nine months, I guess from the brushstrokes on her body, nine months Leonardo da Vinci sat between her mother's legs and painted her.

174

Poems by Ronny Someck

Napkin Time is as thin as a napkin wiping away crumbs of words from under the lip.

'Have you enjoyed yourselÂŁ?' it asks. 'Tell your friends.'

'You haven't? Tell us.'

And we, like the mouth, are never satisfied with the menu of the body and love at night's end is a chair reversed on a restaurant table.

Its legs in the air, its head in clouds of floor.

The Father's Speech to his Daughter's Suitors You, who will soon be touching her hands and taking her to wherever you take her, do not forget the piano lessons her fingers knew at the age of nine, the basketballs that were caressed on the way to the net that filtered dreams and the plasters on the imaginary cut on the tip of her thumb.

In your imaginations draw her hand as a golden triangle of which the sides are: Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Mozart and God, and when you see her finger pointing at the moon, look at the finger.

175

ASlA LITERARY REVIEW

Goodbye to Shanghai jim Duncan Hewitt

there's a restaurant festooned with neon lights that proudly promoting itself as a chance for patrons to enjoy the atmosphere of old Shanghai, to 'imagine the historical stories which took place in this house'. In a dty with a rich and intense modern history, it's an appealing offer. And a glance around the corner, away from the garish entrance, makes it clear that this is a house with history - the ivy-clad walls and mock-Tudor framing speak of a time when the dty looked to the West for its influences.

Yet of its previous residents, the restaurant's promotional material gives no hint. Ask the young waitress about the house, and she offers only a look of confusion. The diners in the luxury rooms upstairs have no idea what these 'historical stories' might be; nor do those out on the terrace overlooking the garden with its high fir trees seem aware that this house has been recreated in fiction and immortalised in celluloid, that this is the childhood home of James Graham Ballard, and they are eating in the bedrooms where he slept, and looking over the lawn where he rode his bicycle and spent childhood hours acting out battles between Japanese and British warplanes.

Shanghai, for all its efforts to repackage the glamour of the 1930s for modern consumers, is a dtywhere the pre-revolutionary past remains largely unspoken - particularly where its former foreign residents are concerned. In April 2009, when Ballard died, there was not a murmur ofit in the Shanghai media. It's as he would have liked it, no doubt. A great enemy of sentiment,

I

N THE west of Shanghai

177

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

in his writing at least, Ballard had not long before suggested that the owners of the restaurant should erect a sign saying, 'Forget about Shanghai Jim enjoy the dim sum'. Yet the link between Ballard and the city where he was born will live long in the world of letters.

The obvious examples of this, of course, are the novels Empire of the Sun (1984) and The Kindness ofWomen (1991), both of which draw deeply on Ballard's childhood as the son of a British businessman working in Shanghai, and his family's experiences in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as their privileged world was gradually undermined by the Japanese takeover of eastern China. Eventually they were interned in a prison camp on the outskirts of the city where they spent the last two and a half years of the war.

These novels - and the Hollywood-movie version of the former, directed by Steven Spielberg - have arguably done more than any other work to cement an image of Shanghai, as it was in those decades, in the global imagination.

Yet it's the influence of Shanghai on Ballard's writing throughout his career that may; from a literary point of view, be of deeper significance. In his last years, Ballard was increasingly open about the importance of the Shanghai of his youth to his work. Indeed, in his admirably dispassionate memoir, Miracles of Life (2008), published just a year before his death, he acknowledged that 'a large part of my fiction has been an attempt to evoke it [pre-war Shanghai] by means other than memory'.

Thus there is a direct link between pre-war Shanghai and one of the major literary voices and most distinctive visions of modern English fiction.

In his later years Ballard, once dismissed by the establishment as a fringe science-fiction writer and still loathed in some quarters for such works as The Atrocity Exhibition (1969), which was the subject of an obscenity trial, and Crash (1973) - the film of which had its release delayed for a year in the UK by the censors - was increasingly hailed as a major literary figure. 'Mr Ballard, you are wonderful,' proclaimed The Sunday Times in its review of Miracles of Life - while even the arch-conservative Mail on Sunday described the author of such works as Cocaine Nights (1996) and the notorious parody 'Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan' as 'the greatest of living English writers'. And while the zeal of his fans has long been legendary - for years there have been fan clubs and websites devoted to every aspect of his work - there have recently also been mainstream academic conferences dedicated to his writing, and a major retrospective at the Barcelona Centre of

Goodbye to Shanghai j im

Contemporary Culture in 2008. He was even one of the few writers to enter the lexicon in his own lifetime - 'Ballardian', defined by the Collins English Dictionary as 'resembling or suggestive of ... dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments'.

So how did the Shanghai of Ballard's youth contribute to this singular vision? For sure, it was a unique place in a unique time: when Ballard was born, at the General Hospital of the International Settlement, beside the Suzhou Creek, in November 1930, almost a century of development, since the forced opening of the city to international trade at the end of the first Opium War, had made Shanghai one of Asia's biggest and most modern cities - and one of the world's major industrial powerhouses. That, indeed, was what brought Ballard's family there: his father, also James, was a chemist who began his career at the Calico Printers' Association - the 'ICI of the cotton world' - in his native Lancashire. But by the late 1920s, British cotton mills were finding it hard to compete with the cheaper products of the giant Japanese textile mills of Shanghai - and so, in 1929, James Ballard senior was sent to Shanghai to oversee a new factory for the CPA, which would be known as the China Printing and Finishing Company.

The life of an expatriate family in Shanghai in those days was one of great privilege. The company found the Ballards a home in Amherst Avenue.

Now known as Xinhua Road, it's just inside Shanghai's inner ring road and hemmed in by high-rises. But in those days, Ballard recalled, he could see rice fields and traditional grave mounds from the upstairs windows.

Every morning, a chauffeur-driven Buick delivered his father to his office in Szechuen Road just behind the city's famous waterfront, the Bund, and young Jim, as he was known, to the Cathedral School around the corner.

The school was attached to the Holy Trinity Cathedral, the city's main Anglican place of worship, which had been designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, architect of London's Albert Memorial and St Pancras Hotel. To complete the British flavour, the school taught two hours of Latin every other day, and was presided over by a Reverend Matthews, described by Ballard as 'a violent sadist'.

As a small boy, Ballard's spare time was taken up with riding lessons, swimming at the Country Club not far from their home, and playing with his mainly English friends. Interaction with the Chinese world was limited.

179

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

Of the seventy staff of the China Printing Company listed in the 1939 Shanghai company directory, only five were Chinese. The family employed ten Chinese servants, but Ballard notes in Miracles ofLife that neither of his parents ever tried to speak ta them in Mandarin. Young Jim was supposedly introduced to Soong Ching-ling - the widow of Sun Yat-sen, leader of China's republican revolution - as a small boy. But he did not learn a word of Mandarin or Shanghainese, and never ate a single Chinese meal until he moved to Britain at the age of sixteen in 1946.

Yet still, Shanghai's cosmopolitanism impinged on the family's consciousness. His parents and their friends may have played cricket and subscribed to British journals, but Ballard noted that they 'drove American cars and cooled their vermouth in American refrigerators'. 'Despite themselves,' he suggested, 'they had been internationalised by Shanghai.' At China Printing, there were Russian staff, presumably drawn from the many refugees who had fled to China after the Bolshevik revolution. And if they counted only a few well-ta-do Chinese families among their neighbours in Amherst Avenue, there were plenty of Americans and Europeans, notably the Swedish consul general, Baron Johan Beck-Friis, scattered among the British business people and sundry commanders of the British military and naval forces stationed in Shanghai.

And despite all, for young Jim, the wider world of Shanghai was never far away. For most of the 1930s, Shanghai's International Settlement and French Concession continued to grow at breakneck pace, although the city was increasingly beset by tension between Communist and Nationalist, Chinese and Japanese - and indeed between the local population and the city's foreign residents. Ballard recalls his father keeping a gun in his bedroom for protection, having been threatened by labour unions at the company's factory in Pudong.

The city's startling combination of extreme wealth and poverty, political and social instability, and extravagant spectacle left a deep impression on Ballard. With its firework displays, clanking trams, Chinese gangsters, British soldiers suppressing worker protests, Russian prostitutes in fur coats among crowds of beggars, it was, he wrote later, 'a bright but bloody kaleidoscope', a place where 'anything was possible, and everything could be bought and sold' - where 'unlimited venture capitalism rode in gaudy style down streets lined with beggars showing off their sores and wounds'. In Shanghai, he said, 180

Goodbye to Shanghai jim

'the fantastic, which for most people lies inside their heads, lay all around me'. Every time he drove across the city, Ballard recalled, 'I'd see something strange and mysterious, but treat it as normal'.

All of this was to have a profound influence on his imagination: to Ballard, Shanghai, then home to one of the world's great movie industries, along with dazzling department stores, mass-circulation tabloid newspapers and popular radio stations, was 'a media city before its time', 'a portent of the media cities of the future' - a subject that was to become a lifelong preoccupation.

Ballard, who would go to the movies at the Grand Theatre, an art-deco palace in Nanking Road, wrote that 'bizarre advertising displays were part of the everyday reality of the city', adding with admirable understatement, 'the honour guard of fifty Chinese hunchbacks outside the film premiere of The Hunchback ofNotre Dame sticks in my mind'. For a young child, he noted, it 181

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

was 'a magical place, a self-generating fantasy that left my own little mind far behind'. By the age of eight or nine he would spend hours cycling alone up and down the city's main streets, the Avenue Joffre in the French Concession and Nanking Road in the International Settlement, 'always on the lookout for something new, and rarely disappointed'.

Yet Shanghai was a dangerous place. It was riven with disease; cholera, typhoid and smallpox claimed many lives. 'Unlimited Coca-Cola and ice-cream' soothed Ballard and his friends when earaches were contracted swimming in the infected waters of the Country Club swimming pool. At one point he caught dysentery and spent weeks recovering in the General Hospital. And it was a place of brutal harshness: the image of the old beggar, freezing to death on the pavement just outside the gate of young Jim's family house - one of the most memorable in Empire ofthe Sun - is from memory.

On journeys by ferry across the Huangpu River to the China Printing factory in Pudong, Ballard and his father would pass, floating downstream, the corpses of those whose families were too poor to afford a proper funeral.

The sight, along with that of 'orphans left to starve in doorways', he recalled, 'unsettled me as it must have unsettled my parents' .

And once the Japanese attacks on the cities of eastern China intensified in 1937 - the Japanese fought fierce and costly battles with Chinese troops in the Shanghai suburbs, and went on to massacre several hundred thousand people in Nanjing, just a few hours to the north - Ballard was confronted with even more gruesome scenes. He witnessed peasants bayoneted as they tried to reach the sanctuary of the 'neutral' International Settlement.

At weekends, his parents and their friends sometimes drove out to recent battlefields in the subutbs, where they found blown-up horses by the roadsides, and dead soldiers in the creeks. 'Violence was so pervasive that my parents never tried to shield me from all the brutality going on,' he wrote.

Later, when the family was interned at Lunghua, Ballard was exposed to more cruelty at close quarters. He watched as two of the camp's Japanese guards beat a Chinese rickshaw driver to death, and in Miracles of Life he describes how, in the dying days of World War Il, after the atom bombs were dropped and internees were free to leave the camp, he set off to walk back to the family house in Amherst Avenue. As he made his way along a suburban railway line, he came upon a group of Japanese soldiers. One of them had tied a Chinese man to a telegraph pole and was slowly strangling 182

Goodbye to Shanghai jim

him with telegraph wire. Only once the man had uttered his last whimpers did Ballard dare pass.

It's hardly surprising that such experiences encouraged him, as he told one interviewer in later life, 'to regard the human race as potentially quite dangerous '" People brought up in the comfortable suburbs of western Europe and North America tend to think that human beings '" are thoughtful and humane above all.' However, his own experiences, combined with his knowledge of subsequent wars, including the attempted genocide in Bosnia, left him 'not convinced that human beings can be trusted beyond a certain point'.

Ballard's fascination with the violence and anger he saw beneath the surface of even the most seemingly perfect urban environments, and with the manipulative power of the media and advertising, informed his writing throughout his career. His last two novels present a bleak and disturbing vision of contemporary Britain. In Millennium People (2004), middle-class frustration turns to anarchism in the well-heeled private estates of Chelsea. In Kingdom Come (2006), mass consumer culture takes on dangerously fascist overtones in the shopping malls of the commuter towns of the M25. Both were hailed as unusually perceptive depictions of the faultlines in British society; both arguably owed much to Ballard's childhood experiences.

Some of the most characteristic imagery of Ballard's fiction can be traced directly back to Shanghai. Images of smashed cars, deserted runways, abandoned buildings and drained swimming pools haunt his earlier writing in particular. The connection was one he initially resisted. Eventually though, he had to accept that it was real: 'The memories of Shanghai that I had tried to repress had been knocking at the floorboards under my feet, and had slipped quietly into my fiction,' he admitted in Miracles of Life. Wrecked cars were memories from an early age, when bombs fell on central Shanghai.

In his memoir, he recalls going to visit a friend at his home on the Avenue Joffre, only to find the apartment had been abandoned, the toys left behind in his friend's bedroom - the family had fled the city only hours earlier.

Similarly, at the end of the war, on returning to the family home he tried to visit old friends who lived nearby, only to find their house stripped bare; even the roof was gone.

Such scenes, Ballard said, added to his sense of the 'surrealism of everyday life' - and he admitted that 'abandoned houses and office buildings held a

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

special magic' for him. Another familiar motif first surfaced when fighting between Chinese and Japanese troops forced the family to move temporarily to a rented house in the French Concession with a drained swimming pool in the garden. This, Ballard recalled, 'struck me as strangely significant in a way I have never fully grasped'. Perhaps, he suggested, it represented the 'unknown' - though there was also, in the context of Shanghai, 'the obvious symbolism that British power was ebbing away'. One of the most vivid depictions in his memoirs is of how, when he was eleven or twelve, he and his father found themselves in an abandoned casino and nightclub - one of the pleasure palaces for which Shanghai was famous - and Ballard was left alone to wander among the gilded statues, overturned roulette wheels and fallen chandeliers. He came to believe 'that reality was a stage set that could be dismantled at any moment, and that no matter how magnificent anything appeared, it could be swept aside into the debris of the past'.

The Japanese occupation of Shanghai's foreign settlements, completed in late 1941 in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, further undermined the young Ballard's faith in British authority - and in the confident bluster of the British adults who had surrounded him throughout his childhood years. Previously, though always fascinated by the Japanese military, Ballard claims to have been 'intensely patriotic'. Now, 'I felt fairly sceptical about the adult world ... I could see that the British Empire had failed. I began to look at A.A. Milne and the Chums annuals with a far more sceptical eye.'

His perceptions were changed too by his time in the Lunghua camp, where the extreme formality of his traditional British upbringing was significantly eroded. While the majority of internees in Lunghua, originally a school set in large grounds on the southern edge of the city, were British, many of the conventions of Shanghai expatriate life soon broke down. Even the Reverend Matthews, Ballard's feared headmaster, 'abandoned his clerical collar ... and became something of a ladies' man'. Most significantly to Ballard, he and his family were forced to live together in a small room. 'I flourished in this intimacy,' he wrote. Previously, the children of well-todo families in Shanghai had 'lived in large houses where no one shared a bedroom, they never saw their parents dressing or undressing, never saw them brush their teeth ... The vistas of polished furniture turned a family home into a deserted museum, with a few partly colonised rooms where people slept alone, read and bathed alone.'

Goodbye to Shanghai jim

His mother in particular had always seemed distant; she was busy with lunch or bridge parties, and Ballard was often left with his Russian nanny 'in a large house where the Chinese servants never looked at me and never spoke to me'. It was, he suggested, evidence of the fact that, in British families of this period, 'children were an appendage to the parents '" and were never seen as a significant measure of a family's health or the centre of its life'. Now Ballard, twelve years old at the time of the family's internment, 'revelled in this closeness'. Indeed, he claimed that it had a major influence on the way he brought up his own children, and his decision to remain in a relatively small house in Shepperton, Surrey, even after his literary success.

The camp also brought the opportunity to make new friends, from the young Japanese guards with whom he practised duelling, to the US merchant seamen - represented by the character Basie in Empire of the Sun - who lent him copies of Time and Life. There he also encountered some of the less respectable British residents of Shanghai, the 'rogues' as his mother called them, petty conmen 'who were very good company, and often far more generous with a sweet potato than the tight-fisted Church of England missionaries'. Though he still had to attend school, the atmosphere was far less formal. Lunghua was a 'prison where I found freedom', a 'relaxed and easy-going world that I'd never known'. He described his time there, despite sickness, cold and, in the last months, severe food shortages, as 'largely happy'.

When the family returned to Amherst Avenue, it was to find they now had US military officers for neighbours. Ballard went back to school. In 1946, he, his mother and sister moved to Britain. After the cosmopolitanism of Shanghai and the intimacy of the years in Lunghua, Ballard found England, which he had never visited before, to be a cold, drab place, and claims to have 'spent five years learning to decode the strange, introverted world of English life'. There's no doubt that his singular upbringing left him with the lingering sense of being an outsider, which undoubtedly played a part in his dispassionate, and often cynical, vision of British society. 'As a writer, I've treated England as if it were a strange fiction,' he said. His medical studies at Cambridge were, he said, a response to the brutality, death and sickness with which he was surrounded during his childhood. He had hoped to become a psychiatrist, but abandoned medicine in 1952 to focus on his writing.

185

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

In his first decades in England, the period during which he established himself as a writer, Ballard made little public reference to his Shanghai connection. Not that he had forgotten the past - nor could he have done: 'I hoarded my memories of Shanghai, a city that soon seemed as remote and glamorous as ancient Rome. Its magic never faded.' The influence of his experiences may, in retrospect, be seen in some of his early writing, the 'surrealism' of his early life surely reflected in works like The Drowned World (1952), which established Ballard as a rising star of the New Wave movement. But it was only in the years leading up to the publication in 1984 of Empire of the Sun, short-listed for the Booker Prize, that he began to reconnect consciously with his past. 'I waited forty years,' he wrote in Miracles ofLife, 'twenty years to forget, and then twenty years to remember.'

Even then, the telling of Empire of the Sun, in which the Lunghua camp plays so central a role, was a challenge; family relationships and a 'thirteenyear-old's infatuation with war' were not so difficult to depict. 'But how do you convey the casual surrealism of war ... the strange normality of a dead Japanese soldier lying by the road like an unwanted piece ofluggage?'

Perhaps appropriately, the surrealism continued when Empire of the Sun was turned into a movie, a Hollywood film company descending upon him 'like a jumbo jet crash-landing in a suburban park'; some of the scenes were filmed at Shepperton Studios, just a short distance from the home where he lived for most of his adult life, and Ballard played a party guest in one of the opening shots.

For all that the version of the story conceived by Spielberg and screenwriter Tom Stoppard was even further removed from his memories, and the success of Empire ofthe Sun and its sequel, The Kindness ofWomen, eventually led Ballard back to Shanghai for the one and only time. Alas, it was not for the filming of several of the movie's street scenes in early 1987, a first for a foreign production since the 1949 revolution: Ballard would have appreciated the giant portrait of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek suspended from one of the city's tallest buildings, and the People's Liberation Army units marching through the city in Japanese uniforms. Ballard was brought to Shanghai in 1991 by the BBC, visiting his old house, which had been turned into a technical library, and the Lunghua camp. Both remained largely intact. China's decades of isolation had curtailed urban development, and so Ballard found that his 'memories had been remarkably resilient'.

186

Goodbye to Shanghai jim

For a man who once described nostalgia as 'that most detestable of all emotions', there was 'a great sense of release' at confronting his memories.

'I had visited those shrines to my younger self, stood in silence for a few minutes with my head bowed, and driven straight to the airport.' As a result, he wrote in Miracles of Life, the next decade was among the happiest of his life.

Now, Shanghai is much changed. At Lunghua, once again a high school, G Block, where Ballard lived with his family, has been demolished, apparently to make way for a swimming pool- and the former family home is a highclass restaurant. When he learned of the fate of the house, Ballard wrote to aficionado Rick McGrath, who maintains the website www.jgballard.ca - 'If it is a restaurant, let's hope it's a McDonald's or a KFC.' 'In an odd way it's quite reassuring that everything has changed so much,' he added. 'The Shanghai I knew, along with 31 Amherst Avenue and Lunghua camp, only survive inside my head.'

Yet on the printed page, Ballard's Shanghai, and the literary visions it inspired - a body of work that extends to eighteen novels and twenty-three collections of stories - will surely endure. Perhaps the one cause for sadness, sorrow at his passing not being something Ballard would have approved of, is that he never returned to the new Shanghai to capture in writing a city and a nation - where the surface glamour and submerged social tensions he so excelled at portraying are arguably more pronounced than anywhere else in the world today.

Discover Astrara's best conversation.

Each themed quarterly edition of Griffith REVIEW presents the best Australian and international writers who tease out the complexity of current events through essays, memoir and fiction.

Subscribe online

GriffithREVIEW2S

GriffithREVIEW26

today with the promo code ATC2009 for special savings on one, two or three-year subscriptions. www.griffithreview.com

After the Crisis

Stories for Today

~twgh,BlrbltaGl.n1ll.

HId'lIIII~lOnyBlnwl,

THrFlCTlONISSUe

"'-""" ~ ,..,.,~

~ ~s.

"

.

~GrmviIIIIt,an..C.-1/Q,

F,...,HDorhouse,

Hl.H~o..w.~

Edition 25: After the Crisis provides

Edition 26: Stories for Today will be a

In the words of one

a timely analysis of the impact of the

special summer fiction

a rich banquet. It always stretches my thinking and gets me away from the usual goat tracks if my mind. Thank you.'

global financial crisis on real economies,

edition brimming with short stories from some of Australia's

communities and

most talented authors

ecosystems.

and introducing a

reader, 'I love it - it is

selection of exciting emerging writers.

(f) text publishing

Contributors

CATHERINE CANDANO is a research scholar with National University of Singapore's Communication and New Media Programme. Her literary work has been published in Crowns and Oranges: New Philippine Poetry (Anvil Publishing), At Home in Unhomeliness: An Anthology ofPostcolonial Poetry in English (Philippine PEN), Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and ANI.

DUNCAN HEWITT is a former BBC China correspondent, now writing from Shanghai. He first lived in China in 1986-87 while studying Chinese at Edinburgh University. He later worked as an editor and translator of Chinese literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His book Getting Rich First: Life in a Changing China (Vintage, 2008) focuses on how ordinary Chinese people have coped with the social changes that have accompanied economic reform.

TAMMYHO LAI-MING is a Hong Kong-born writer currently living in London. She is an assistant poetry editor of Sotto Voce Magazine and a founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

lAMES KIDD studied English literature at Liverpool University and University College London. Based in London, he writes for the South China Morning Post, The Jerusalem Post and the Daily Telegraph. He recently contributed to the Little Black Book ofBooks: A Century ofthe Greatest Books, Writers, Characters, Passages and Events that Rocked the Literary World.

189

turkish book review , .. .it is the first source that publishing houses , agencies and translators who search for books to translate from Turkish can refer to . What's going on in Turkish literary and cultural world, which books are notable, who are the major names on the road of Turkish literature .. , You can find answers to all those questions in Turkish Book Review,' Mehmet KALPAKLI Bilkent University

The first and only English-language book review magazine covering Turkish literature.

Turkish Book Review contains information on a wealth of areas of interest, such as Ottoman Architecture, Turkish music, art, history, language and Turkish cuisine with the goal of presenting Turkish literature within its broader cultural context.

Contributors

....

~ ..-~--

o

---,

NAM LE's debut collection of short stories, The Boat (Knopf), was published in the US in 2008. Born in Vietnam and raised in Australia, he has received the Pushcart Prize and the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award. His fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies including NPR's Selected Shorts, the Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best New American Voices and Best Australian Stories. He is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review.

MADELEINE LEE has four books of poetry published by First Fruits Publications: a single headlamp (2003), fifty three/zero three (2004), y grr:c (co-written wirh Elcanof Wong) and most recently, synaesthesia published in 2008, She is cum:ntly working on a translation of her poerry imo Chinese. Madcleine has read at poetry festivals in Singapore, Kurua Lumpur, Jakun:l Adelaide. Melbourne. Ubud and Taipei. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies.

LIAO YIWU is a poet, novelist and screenwriter. His collection of interviews, The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up, was published by Pantheon in 2008 . Other non-fiction works include Testimonials, The Earthquake Chronicle and Report on Chinas Victims of Injustice. In 2003, he received a Human Rights Watch Hellman-Hammett grant, and in 2007, he received a Freedom to Write Award from the Independent Chinese PEN Center.

JOHN MATEER was born in South Mrica and lives in Australia.

He has published five books in Australia and booklets in Medan, Kyoto, Johannesburg, Perth, Sydney, Macau and Lisbon. Publications include Elsewhere (Salt), with Layli Rakhsha, The Language, and Ex-White (Sisyphus), a volume containing all of his South Mrican poems. Forthcoming are The west (Fremantle Press), and Southern Barbariam (Giramondo and T41) .

¡ . ¡'1 ,

' f; \

DAVID McKIRDY was born in Scotland and raised and educated in Hong Kong. An organiser of Hong Kong poetry group OutLoud and a former director of the Man Hong Kong International Literary ,IJ, Festival, his work has appeared in anthologies and literary journals.

His collection of poetry, Accidental Occidental, was published in 2005.

He repairs and rebuilds vintage cars for a living.

d~.l . ~, ~-

191

I ssu e 34

FICTION

ADAM BRAVER KEVIN MOFFETT

Is s ue 35 SPECIAL FEATURE: NEW ZEALAND

ESSAYS

MICHAEL COHEN JAMES MARCUS

PATRICIA GRACE C.K. STEAD IAN WEDDE POETRY

POETRY

KATY LEDERER GARRETT HONGO

JILL BIALOSKY NICK FLYNN KEVIN YOUNG

_ _ _ _ .IIlIl.lJt

Issu e 3 3

FICTION

ANNA SOLOMON DAN POPE ESSAYS

Harvard Review publishes award winning poetry,

RICHARD GOOD MAN NINA DE GRAMONT

fiction, essays, drama, graphics, and reviews.

POETRY

Work from Harvard Review has been honored in:

DENISE DUHAMEL ILYA KAMINSKY

BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2002, 2006, 2008 BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2003. 2005 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2003. 2004 BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2006 BEST NEW POETS 2008 PUSHCART PRIZE 2001, 2004

Is s ue 32 FICTION

NAM LE WILLlAM LYCHACK

It is published twice yearLy, in spring and

ESSAYS

autumn, and is avaiLabLe by subscription and from seLect bookstores.

HARVARD R~VI~W

J. KATES AKIKO BUSCH POETRY

KATHRYN STARBUCK RAY DI PALMA

Visit us online at: http:// hc L.ha rv a rd.ed ul ha rv a rd revi e w

Harvard Review, Lamont library, LeveL 5, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 ,

Ph: 617-495-9775 Fax: 617-496-3692

Contributors PALANI MOHAN was born in Chennai, India, moved to Australia as a child, and currently lives in Malaysia. His photography has featured in many of the world's leading magazines and newspapers. He has published three books, the latest being Vanishing Giants, Elephants of Asia, and has won a number of international awards.

NGUYEN QUI DUC is the author of Where The Ashes Are, The Odyssey 0/ a Vietnamese Family (Addison-Wesley, 1994), and the co-editor of Vietnam: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, 1995) and Once Upon A Dream, the Vietnamese American Experience (Andrews and McMeel, 1995). He is the translator of the novella Behind The Red Mist by Ho Anh Thai (Curbstone Press, 1997) and of The Time Tree, Poems by Huu Thinh (Curbstone Press, 2004).

~, ...

~ .

I

¡ !. , :f':..\¡11 f"i

PHAM HA! ANH was born in Hanoi, Vietnam in 1970. She has a PhD in Language Studies and taught at the University of Pedagogy in Hanoi between 1991 and 1997. She has published four collections of short stories in the US and in Vietnam, including To the End o/the Rainy Road (2002) and Lookingfor the Moon at the Bottom o/the Witter (2003), and was awarded the National Literature Prize by the Writer's Association in Vietnam in 2003.

I

JAINA SANGA grew up in Bombay and moved to the US in 1980 as a student. After receiving a PhD in English from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, she taught English and Cultural Studies for sev~ral years. She is the author of a critical book on Salman Rushdie's fiction and editor of two volumes on south Asian literature.

'The Good Price' is her first published fiction. She lives with her husband in Dallas and travels to India frequently.

RONNY SOMECK was born in Baghdad and immigrated to Israel with his family as a child. He has a BA in Hebrew Literature and Jewish Philosophy, has worked as a counsellor for street children, and currently teaches Literature in a secondary school as well as running writing workshops.

193

GOLD SPONSORS

amandari

$.

FOUR SEASONS RESORT

MEDIA PARTNERS

!he "aklm Post

SOFIT<=:L SEMINVAK SAL!

MEIR~JY

$u1..;.9"",....

~

plesenled

n..AJrlItIeollotdOlllw.

aoo!)

Ganula Indonesia

bv Mudro SWOIl SoraswoIl fCHIr.douon

Ubud

Writers & ""!!!_.w" Readers Festival

MEDCoENERGI

THANKYOU

ASIA UTERARY REVIEW

Bali

IndonesIa

Contributors GILLIAN SZE is a native of Winnipeg, Canada. She studied in Montreal where she earned a Master ofArts degree in Creative Writing at Concordia University in 2008. Her graduate thesis, a collection of poems based on visual art from a range of cultures, is the basis of Fish Bones (DC Books, 2009) . She has two chapbooks published by Withwords Press and her poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals.

PHOEBE TSANG was born in Hong Kong, educated in England and currently resides in Canada. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies including Atlas 02, Garden \-ariety (Quattro Books) and Not a Muse (Haven Books). Her full-length collection, Contents ofa Mermaids Purse (Tightrope Books), will be released in October 2009. A professional violinist, she is a multi-genre artist who holds a BSc in Architecture.

WEN HUANG is a writer and freelance journalist whose articles and translations have appeared in The Wall Street Journal Asia, the Chicago Tribune, the South China Morning Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Paris Review. His translations include The Corpse Walker (Pantheon, 2008) by Liao Yiwu and W0man from Shanghai (Pantheon, 2009) by Yang Xianhui.

,~r rI. 't'.\ '. l

~

.

"

,.

â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘ ~

JILL WIDNER grew up in Sumatra, Indonesia, where her father was a petroleum engineer in the 1960s. Excerpts from her novel in progress, The Smell of Sulphur, which fictionalises her experience, have been published in Hobart, Kartika Review, and North American Review, and two different forms of the piece published here appeared in Willesden Herald; New Short Stories 3 (pretend genius press) and Kyoto Journal. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

195

Kinokuniya Book Stores of Singapore Pte. Ltd.

The largest cross-cultural bookstore in Singapore with a range of 500.000 titles in 5 languages - English. Japanese. Chinese. French and German.

Books Kinokuniya Asia Pacific Singapore. Malaysia. Thailand. Australia. Taiwan. Indonesia

11 Kinokuniya • Asia Pacific Heild Offlc(' :l91B Orchard Road #1]-OG/07/08 Ngce Ann City Towcr B Singapore 238874 lel: (G5) G27G 5558 Fax: (G5) G27G 55/0 • Singapore Main Storc #03-10/15 Takashimaya Shopping Centre kl: (G5) G737 5021' Liang Court Store #03-50 Liang Court Te!: (G5) G337 1300 • Bugls JunctIOn Store n03-09/1 L Bugls Juncllon Td: (65) 6339 1790 • Visit our websltc: www.kinukunlya.cum.sg