Asia Literary Review No. 32, Winter 2016

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The Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) runs a wide range of programs to help Korean literature reach more readers across the globe.

We provide grants to translators and publishers, support international literary exchanges and provide training programs for literary translators. Our doors are wide open to everyone interested in Korean literature.

We welcome participation and suggestions from all quarters.

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International Events LTI Korea hosts various international events, including LTI Korea Forums, Overseas Residency Programs, International Workshop for the Translation and Publication of Korean Literature, the Seoul International Writers’ Festival, and more.

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DŽƌĞ ŝŶĨŽƌŵĂƟŽŶ ĂǀĂŝůĂďůĞ Ăƚ ůƟŬŽƌĞĂ͘ŽƌŐ ; ŶŐůŝƐŚͿ͕ ůƟŬŽƌĞĂ͘Žƌ͘Ŭƌ ;<ŽƌĞĂŶͿ Yeongdong-daero 112-gil 32(Samseong-dong), Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea (06083) Tel: +82-2-6919-7714 / Fax: +82-2-3448-4247

No. 32, Winter 2016

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No. 32, Winter 2016

Publisher Greater Talent Limited Managing Editor Phillip Kim Editor in Chief Martin Alexander Senior Editors Kavita A. Jindal, Michael Vatikiotis, Zheng Danyi Special Acknowledgement Ilyas Khan, co-founder of the Asia Literary Review Production Alan Sargent Front cover image with kind permission of Maganbhai ‘Masterji’ Patel, whose 2016 exhibition in Coventry is curated by Photo Miners and supported by Coventry 2021 Back cover image ‘Masterji’ Patel at Master’s Art Studio, 2016, with kind permission of Ravindra Patel The Asia Literary Review is published by Greater Talent Limited 2504 Universal Trade Centre, 3 Arbuthnot Road, Central, Hong Kong asialiteraryreview.com Managing.Editor@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Editor@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Submissions@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Subscriptions and Advertising: Admin@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro Printed by Charlesworth Press ISBN: 978-988-14782-7-6 (print) ISBN: 978-988-14782-8-3 (e-book) ISSN: 1999-8511 ‘A World History of Second Sons’ and ‘Death of Hong’ were provided to the ALR through the generous support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, ltikorea.org ‘Stitches’, ‘Next of Kin’ and ‘In Water My Dreams’ are published with kind permission of AfterParty Press. The anthology Afterness was published in 2016 with the support of City University of Hong Kong as a legacy project of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing programme at the Department of English, facebook.com/AfternessAnthology Individual contents © 2016 the contributors/Greater Talent Limited This compilation © 2016 Greater Talent Limited

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Contents Editorial

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Fiction Esmeralda

8

John Thieme

from A World History of Second Sons

38

Lee Kiho translated by Jae Won Edward Chung

The Memsahib and the Panther: Being a Humble Beaterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Notes on a Shikar

61

Deepa Anappara

The Last Men

88

O Thiam Chin

Death of Hong

129

Cho Haejin translated by Yoonna Cho

Notes from the Ward

160

Shagufta Sharmeen Tania

Early June

180

Flora Qian

In Water My Dreams

195

Kamana Srikanth

Photo Essay Masterji

111

Maganbhai Patel introduction by Ben Kyneswood

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Non-fiction Interview: Madeleine Thien

32

Asia Literary Review

Next of Kin

77

Sarah Vallance

Arrival: Notes from a Migrant Goan

151

Jessica Faleiro

Stitches: Excerpt from a Memoir

172

Ember Swift

Poetry Radio Rokujo Jesus in the Jing

27 29 31

Judith Huang

Koan In This Deserted Part of Your Heart Mandala

58 59 60

Chiang Yomei

Tempo Rubato Luminoso Con Moto or: Notes from The Field Guide of Post-Lapsarian Instruction

84

Lisa Russ Spaar and Ravi Shankar

All Tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ancestors

86

Alvin Pang and Ravi Shankar

The Path Between Parakeet

125 127

Kavita A. Jindal

Whitechapel Dreaming Bethnal Green . . .

148 149

Amlanjyoti Goswami

Southall Blues

158

Reshma Ruia

Lata Sings a Love Song

170

Anuradha Gupta

Contributors

203

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Editorial Edit orial

Edit orial

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his issue’s theme is ‘Diaspora and Migration’. We at the Asia Literary Review chose it before immigration became one of the most explosive socio-political topics of the year. We set out simply to explore how the combining of cultures and ethnicities can shape or rattle personal identities, and to consider how the mingling of East and West have led to captivating and often disconcerting story lines. However, Brexit, Trump and heartwrenching pictures of displaced refugees have raised the volume of debate about human migration to a fever pitch that reverberates from Tibet to Tijuana. Empathy has clashed against self-interest, idealism against subconscious bias, tradition against modernity. As much as we at the ALR and many others in the international writing community believe that human commonality can prevail over division, the world is clearly in no kumbaya mood of racial harmony.

Faced in the past with similar challenges, humanity has never tended to move backwards – at least, not for long. As much as global migration has led to thorny implications, reversing it (dare the ‘D’ word, ‘deportation’, be uttered?) is both impractical and deplorable. And actually building walls?

Be serious. Periods in history blighted by the segregation of populations have been among the darkest. Looking ahead, races, religions and cultures are destined to continue to commingle as borders remain porous. But how peacefully or confrontationally that trend will progress is an unsettling question that lacks a clear answer.

Much of this issue of the ALR is devoted to examining the impact of migration on individuals’ emotions and psyches. ALR32 employs a broad definition of ‘immigrant’ to include diasporas, refugees and Western expatriates. The last group is too often excluded in the definition of the term. In reality, for Westerners seeking wealth, adventure and social freedoms, the

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exploitation of faraway lands and exotic colonies has long been irresistible.

A similar traffic from the West to fast-growing Asian countries over the past few decades represents a relentless migratory force.

A number of the pieces in this issue deal with South Asians in Britain, by far the UK’s largest ethnic minority, constituting almost five per cent of the country’s population. It’s difficult to imagine British society without citizens ethnically linked to the subcontinent. Without them, the stew that is modern Britain would be insipid – porridge rather than rogan josh. South Asian contributions to British society are far too numerous to detail here.

Yet, many South Asians continue to feel shackled by Otherness. The arresting portrait of the young girl on our cover (by ninety-four-year-old Coventrian photographer Maganbhai Patel) perfectly captures an individual bewildered by a world with so many unanswered questions. South Asians in Britain face a similar predicament – that of a people endowed with a rich cultural heritage who nonetheless still strive for identity and acceptance in their chosen home.

This volume also includes accounts of lives transplanted to and from China, bringing to light the complexities of a society that has been precariously juggling change and constraint. The ALR is especially pleased to present an interview with Madeleine Thien, the Canadian author whose acclaim has gone global in 2016 due to her novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing being shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winning Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award and Scotiabank Giller Award. Her novel, which weaves intricate portraits of Shanghainese families navigating the upheavals of modern China, is particularly noteworthy given that Madeleine is a writer in the Chinese diaspora with few personal ties to mainland China.

Her work is an admirable testimony to the power of combining committed passion with meticulous research.

Stories of migration and diaspora are compelling because they provide the opportunity for each of us to peer both outwards and in. We are drawn to the inherent adventure of facing new challenges and experiences. As the stories unfold, none of us can help but ask fundamental questions of ourselves – what would I do, how would I cope? We cheer fulfilled hopes and mourn crushed dreams. These stories resonate at our core because there are bits of the Immigrant in every individual. None of us is wholly native

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to any one place; we are collected pieces from both here and there. Just because we choose to gather in groups based on perceived commonalities does not negate this universality. As a socially turbulent 2016 draws to a close, we at the ALR hope that people will strive occasionally to look out beyond the prevailing melĂŠe and keep sight of this enduring truth.

Phillip Kim Martin Alexander

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Esmeralda Esm eralda

John Thiem e

John Thieme

Tuesday

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erbena. What kind of a name is that? I s’pose it’s OK in Guyana or one of them Caribbean places, but in Haringey? No way. My bloody parents’ fault. I shoulda had a British name, not something that makes out like I’m some kinda tropical flower, so that they can harp back to those ‘good good days’ before they came here. If they were so bloody ‘good good’, why on earth did they up sticks and em-ee-grate to London in the first place?

Anywayz there’s no street cred to being named Verbena and I sure as hell ain’t no sorta flower, so I call meself Vee and that’s OK, until someone asks me what Vee stands for and then I comes right out and tells them. That’s me. I’m not always all that gabby, though I have my moments, but if I get asked about something I can never keep my trap shut. I just blurt out the truth. I’ve always been like that. Some people say it’s one of my good points (ha ha), but I think I’d be better off if I could keep shtum. If only. The first time I ever went out with that slimeball Winston, there I was, at that time of the month and, well, ’course there was no way I was going to talk to him about that sorta thing, but somehow he sussed it out and he bugged me until I told him. That’s how he was. He wouldn’t leave a subject alone, once he got the bit between his teeth. Anywayz he asked me and so I just said, ‘Yeah, oh sure. No big thing.’ That’s me. ’Course, it’s been very different with Sudhir, ’cos we met on the Internet and so I was hiding behind a screen, without actually meaning to be hiding,

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if you know what I mean. There’s been piles of stuff I never told him, but that’s just ’cos of the way it is when you chat online and besides, he never asked me. You don’t exactly hide things on the Net, but you become a different person, don’t you? Anywayz Sudhir and I seemed to hit it off. I think he musta liked my pic. I use that one that shows my face from the right, my best side, and the light is behind me, so you don’t see none of those blotchy spots on the left. Then, when we’d been chatting for two or three months, Sudhir said to come and meet him and his family in Mumbai.

Well, that came out of the blue. I woulda said you coulda knocked me down with a feather, but I’m not that easy to knock down, you know. I’m not real heavy, but I’m no lightweight either. Anywayz I didn’t hesitate. That’s me.

Impulsive me. I just said yeah, like right away, without a second or third or fourth thought. ’Course I didn’t know then what a hassle it would be, getting time off work, having to tell the visa people half my life story, send them photos that ain’t even the same size as passport pix and, on top of that, paying them quite a few quid for the privilege. Seems they think the English give them a tough time and so they decided to play them at their own game.

Fair enough in a way, but a bloody nuisance all the same. And I could see it wouldn’t be no use telling them that I was brown like most of them. So I just did it. I coughed up and went ahead and booked the flights, even though I’d never really thought much about India before and I certainly never planned to get into any sorta relationship with an Indian boy. I mean, it’s not that I’m prejudiced against Asians or anything like that. I just hadn’t ever really thought much about them. We had the usual Muslims in our school and I s’pose I took them for granted. Didn’t really think too much about them at all, even after all the Islamopheebia business and the terrorism talk started. They were just normal. Like anybody else. And Sudhir, well he’s some sorta Hindu, though I don’t think he’s very big on religious stuff.

I wonder if I’d met Sudhir in the real world, in London or here or anywhere, whether we woulda got into any kinda relationship. I mean he’s very nice and all, but deaf-ee-nightly not my type and I don’t think I’m his, now that he’s seen me in the flesh, if you know what I mean. Jesus Christ, I wouldn’t actually show him much of my flesh, ’specially where it bulges.

He’s a bit weird compared with what I’m used to. I mean you woulda thought he mighta told me his parents were filthy rich and that he was going

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Esmeralda

to pay for my plane fare when I got here. Still he’s all right really, I s’pose, and his family are nice people in their own way. And they speak such bloody marvellous English. Makes you feel a bit ashamed to be British, when you can’t talk good like them. They say I’m their guest as long as I’m in their country. I can tell they know how to bullshit and all, but they seem to mean this. I s’pose I coulda been a source of worry to them, if they thought I might hook up with Sudhir, but once they realised I was no sorta threat, they relaxed, and maybe I’m even getting treated better ’cos of it. I dunno.

Anywayz they can still find him a nice Hindu girl and being ‘modern’ they will probably see he gets someone he likes. What a world! I ask you. Give me London any day. But then again you don’t get their kinda caringfulness in London, do you? It’s quaint, India, like it’s from some other century, but I kinda like it. And family. Where mine are concerned, I can take them or leave them, and most of the time I leave them, but Sudhir, he’s got something special going for him when it comes to family. All power to him.

Come to think of it, he’ll probably inherit all their money one day, if it don’t go to his sis Esmeralda, and if I hadda got in with him, well who knows, I mighta ended up a billion-heiress. But nah. Not me. I’m not like that. I never did care much about money. Easy come, easy go. That’s me.

Anywayz now I’ve been here in Mumbai for three weeks and I’m going home on Friday. It’s been different being Verbena here, ’cos Verbena don’t mean shit in India. I could just as well be Mary Smith instead of Verbena Sandiford for all they care. Sudhir is the only one who says anything about it. He says that if I was white they might kowtow to me and talk about me behind my back. If I was black, I’d be a hubshi. I dunno exactly what that means but it seems to me it’s a bit like calling someone by the N-word.

Funny how the N-word has become worse than the F-word these days, ain’t it? Not that I use that sorta language meself. That’s me. Never prim and proper, but steering clear of real bad talk, though I’m seeing things here that make me want to say shit, bugger and balls and a good deal worse. Anywayz it seems that they see me as half a hubshi and maybe they look down on that half. But here I am, a brownskin gal – OK, I’m a bit darker than that, what you might call a blacker shade of pale – and I’m sorta tolerated, as long as I keep my hands off the boys. So far so good, and now I’m going home in a couple of days. So, no problem. Just joking. I’ve been going

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through this abstentioneering phase at home and sex is the last thing on my mind. Here they don’t do much touching anywayz. They just give youze one of these namaste greetings instead. Palms together. Respectful like, but no handshaking, unless they’re used to Western ways. They namaste me and so I namaste them back. Tit for tat. That’s me. I’m a quick learner and I like to fit in. Life’s easier that way, ain’t it?

I’ve had no good experiences since I left Winston. A couple of one-nighters that leave you asking y’self, ‘Oh gawd, did I really do that?’ the next morning. Like some kinda pathetic soap opera character. Catch me in the next episode and I’ll be into something else. But I was sorta marking time until I came here to Mumbai and wrote meself out of the soap script and started feeling different. And now today Sudhir’s telling me being different don’t have much to do with colour. It’s the way you walk and the way you talk. I walk seriously, he says – like I’m going somewhere on a mission even when I’m not. And to think I’ve always thought of meself as pretty laid back. He says, people also know I don’t belong as soon as I open my mouth.

He’s a bloody marvel, ain’t he? You don’t need to be no Sherlock Holmes to work that out, do you? I’ve got a proper London accent, haven’t I? So I’m not exactly going to talk goodness gracious me English, am I? Anywayz overall it’s OK being Verbena here. People just let you get on with things most of the time. So I s’pose you could say so far, so bloody good. ’Course, tomorrow’s another day. And they’re talking to me about going out to ‘the development’, whatever that is, on Thursday, so I can see the ‘good work’ before I go home. Maybe I’ll find out what it is tomorrow. I always like to know what I’m getting into in advance. It does make you curious, though.

Maybe there’s one more eye-opener for me before I leave. Never a dull moment here. Yesterday I saw a vintage Roller going by one of them slum people who was pissing at the side of the street. And then there’s the shitting too. But don’t get me started on that. I mentioned it to Sudhir and he said how you view it ‘all depends’. Some people here think toilet paper is a dirty habit. It makes you think, don’t it? None of this gets to me too much, though, like it does to some people, who think it’s wrong to see all this wealth and all this poverty ’longside one another. As if we don’t have that in London. It’s the same kinda thing. Just more so here. And the project –

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‘the development’ – I dunno what the hell it is, but the way they talk about it is a bit weird. Like it’s really important to them and they go a bit starry-eyed when they mention it. But then there’s a bit of foot-shuffling too and they get sorta tense and nervous when they get onto the subject, like there’s something big riding on it. It’s the one thing here that’s made me uneasy so far. I tend to smell rats when people get secretive. But then that’s me. And sometimes I’m much too quick to start rat-sniffing. They are kind people. Maybe it’s all OK.

Wednesday Rain. Bloody rain everywhere. Why didn’t someone tell me about the monsoon? I know Sudhir ain’t devious but, though he’s full of piss and vinegar, he didn’t mention a single word about the monsoon. How the hell was I s’posed to know? It seems like they just assumed I would. Mumbai.

July. It means rain. Now they tell me, though they’re quick to add that this global warming business is turning the world upside down and the rains don’t necessarily turn up on time.

There’s rain over Churchgate, there’s rain over Marine Drive and there’s rain over Colaba Causeway, where I’m staying. Everywhere is wet, wet, wet.

Raining cats and dogs is what we’d say back in the UK. But this rain – it’s more like elephants and rhinos, if you ask me. I got into a taxi to take me over to their place. The driver said it usually takes ‘fifteen-twenty minutes’, but today it was an hour. I ask you. You’d think someone woulda worked out a way to keep the roads clear. I mean, this is a big business, go-ahead sorta city and even back there in Guyana, where the economy ain’t so good, they know how to do drainage – if you believe me mum and dad, that is.

It seems the Dutch got there before the British and fixed up all that kinda thing, and here they only had the stupid British colonials, apart from some Portugooses in the early days. Anywayz these days there is money, money, money here. You can see it all around you. So why don’t somebody spend some of it on the ruddy streets? Rain on the pavements, rain in the gutters, rain on the roads, rain dripping from the trees. And sodden, squelchy mud.

So much rain you feel you could drown. Still it ain’t like our English drizzle.

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I mean, when it rains here it really rains. No farting around. You have to say that for it. It’s falling-down-straight-as-an-arrow-like-it’s-planning-toflood rain.

Sudhir is quieter than yesterday and his mum and dad have gone out to their business place. Something to do with motorbike parts, but I haven’t quite sussed out what. It must bring in a fortune, though, unless they’re into other things too. Who knows? They’ll be back before lunch, he says.

There’s a lot to do if they’re going to be out of town tomorrow, and tomorrow may be a long day, ’cos some of the roads aren’t good like here. I want to say, ‘If this is good. . . .’ but I bite my tongue. I’m wondering just how bad the country roads must be. Maybe they have potholes in the potholes. Who knows? Meanwhilze Sudhir is babbling on about all the new highways and flyovers that they’ve built and saying of course these developments raise ‘ethical issues’, ’specially when they move some of the slum-dwellers out.

‘Where do they go?’ I ask. He smiles, shrugs his shoulders and says the new government is trying to do more. Well, I might have guessed I wouldn’t exactly get a straight answer to that one. And then I start to tease him a bit.

‘I betcha you would do more, if they put you in charge of the country, wouldn’t you, Sudhir?’ He gives me one of his simpering smiles and shakes his head from right to left, which seems to be a kinda non-committal ‘yes’ here, not a ‘no’, like it would be back in the good old bad old UK. Then he says, ‘Yes, of course. It wouldn’t be easy, but I would try.’ I don’t think he realises I’m pulling his leg. He don’t have much sensa humour.

He asks me if the hotel is OK, to change the subject I guess. He asked me the same thing yesterday and the day before and before that, just after I first arrived. The day he took me sightseeing and bored me stiff by making it seem like some sorta school lesson. When he gets going he has this kinda tour-guide-for-children manner. The only thing that grabbed me was when he told me about the vultures eating the Parzee people’s corpses up at the Towers of Silence. I said to him, ‘You’re putting me on, ain’t you?’ but he wasn’t. Ohmigod. Anywayz I keep telling him the hotel is fine. Not that I have much to go on. It’s only the second time I’ve ever been in a hotel and the other time was one of those nights with Winston, and we didn’t exactly spend much time inspecting the wallpaper or checking out whether they had room service. What a moron I was to stick with an arsehole like

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Winston for as long as I did, but anywayz that’s history now. Onward and upward. I don’t really know how this hotel shapes up compared to others, but it’s OK by me. There’s a bit of a musty smell and the aircon leaves the room damp, but there’s loadsa space and you can see they’re trying real hard.

There are room-boys hovering outside me door most of the time. One of them is a bit of an ogler, but the rest just seem to be doing their best to please. Probably hoping for a bit of baksheesh. That’s a word I always knew, but the other day I found out that it started out in this part of the world.

Who woulda thought it! I can’t quite tell whether I get special treatment ’cos I’m a brown-skinned woman from another place, but I think the main thing is that I’m a woman alone. I mean, I don’t think they’re too used to unmarried women travelling on their own. So I have to be careful not to be too nice, just in case they get hold of the wrong end of the stick and in this case the stick in question might be this girl’s backside . . . or worse! But I think I’m probably safe and they’ll stay well behaved, ’cos if they didn’t they would be out of a job before you could blink your eyes. They have one or two maids who clean up the rooms and they aren’t easy to chat to, but you know me. Once I’m in the mood, I try to get everyone talking and one of them told me it was OK for her to come into me room alone, but when she does a man’s room, she has to have one of the male staff with her to watch. A kinda chaperone. I ask you. In London, who would pay to have someone watch someone else work? Of course, loadsa work-watching happens, ’cos we’ve got so many skivers, but it’s off-the-record. Officially everyone who is on the job is w-o-r-k-i-n-g.

Anywayz here’s Sudhir asking me about the hotel again and here’s me saying it’s ‘fine’ again and I’m very grateful, which is kinda true in a way, though everything is getting a bit mixed up now, ’cos it seems like there wasn’t too much point in me coming here, though it’s certainly been an experience. You can say that again. It’s certainly been an experience. I ask Sudhir about tomorrow and whether we’ll be going to see the development.

His tone is hushed when he answers. He speaks in a slow, careful sorta way, like he’s trying to make sure he don’t say a word outa turn. Is he scared his parents may disapprove or is it something else? Who knows?

‘It’s an idea we started thinking about five years ago and then last year we decided to go ahead. We’re trying to develop an area about twelve square

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kilometres to help the local people. It’s in another part of the state. About 220 kilometres from here.’

‘Not real far away then?’

‘Well, not if we could fly, but there’s no landing strip and if we go by boat up the river that takes a bit longer. So we go by road and, as I said, some of the roads aren’t great.’

‘You could go by boat?’ I’m surprised. ‘You mean there’s some kinda ferry or regular boat-ride service?’

‘No, I have my own power-boat. It’s moored up near the Taj. Not far from where you’re staying.’

And my sarcastic side makes me blurt out, ‘And I expect you have a couple of planes, too, so if there ever was a landing strip, you could just hop in one of your planes and be up there in less than an hour.’

‘Exactly.’ He’s not joking. They really must be obscenely rich. ‘We hope to get a runway built next year. Then it’ll be easy to go by air. Fifty minutes, instead of five hours.’

‘Five hours? You said it’s just 220 kilometres. Or is that both ways?’ ‘’Fraid not.’ He’s giving me one of those weak smiles again. ‘The roads aren’t at all good in that part of the world. But to start with, there’s a good highway and if we leave early it won’t take too long to get out of the city.’

‘And if we don’t leave early?’

‘Maybe six hours.’

‘Bloody hell. Excuse my French.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘It’s just an expression. It don’t really mean nothing.’

His parents come back just after noon and tell me the same story. Five or six hours each way. So we have to leave at 6 a.m. and make sure we don’t start back too early or we’ll hit the tail end of the evening rush hour. They’re going to send the driver for me at 5.45 and then he’ll pick them up as we head outa town. And I’m thinking, ‘Ohmigod, I have to get up at five.’ Still I wanted to see India away from the sights and all, and it looks like I’m going to get a gander at what it’s like outside the city tomorrow, though I haven’t got the slightest idea what I’m letting meself in for. That’s half the fun of it, though, ain’t it? I always did like the idea of mystery tours. You know me.

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The maid brings some lunch in. Half a dozen dishes. I pretend to try everything, but mainly I stick to the dhal and rice. Someone told me that dhal is easy on the stomach and I don’t want to go off on tomorrow’s trip with a dodgy tummy. I’ve seen some Indian loos outside the hotel and the flat here and I’m wondering what’s in store when we’re out in the middle of nowhere tomorrow. Perhaps me face is a giveaway. I dunno. Certainly, Saresh, Sudhir’s mum, seems to have twigged what I’m thinking, ’cos she says, ‘Don’t worry, Verbena. There aren’t too many places to stop along the way, but we know two or three where the food is safe and the bathrooms are clean and we’re taking a picnic basket with us for lunch. You’ll enjoy it.’

I’m almost reassured. Not quite.

Lunch done, I pluck up courage to ask Sudhir’s parents a bit about the development. Not like me to be shy, but well, the vibes I’ve been getting have told me that I’m walking on eggshells here. I don’t think they’d let me know in as many words if I said something out of turn, but all the same it’s better to be safe than sorry. Sudhir’s dad, Sanjit, is a bit more forthcoming than Sudhir was. He speaks slowly and precisely. What you might call joo-dee-ciously. I mean kinda like a judge, who’s weighed up all the pros and cons and is telling it like it is now.

‘It’s in an area where most of the people are farmers, cultivating very small plots of land. There are also fishermen who have small boats with outboard motors. They don’t get great catches because the river’s more polluted than it used to be. None of them makes much money, because they can’t transport their food to Mumbai or any other town. So they sell locally, or exchange with one another, and that keeps them going, but for most of them it means a subsistence livelihood. It hasn’t changed much in a hundred years, but times are getting harder for them and, with our assistance, they will have higher incomes and more security. The poorest of them are close to starving and one crop failure or an oil discharge into the river puts them in danger.

So we’re trying to help them by starting the development. On balance, we feel it’s the right thing to be doing.’

‘What exactly is it, though?’ I s’pose there could be more roundabout ways of asking, but I’m not going to hold back now, am I? You know me.

‘There are several strands. We plan to keep their farming and fishing intact, but we’re buying up land from those who are happy to sell and we’re

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building a few villas, from local renewable materials, for tourists to visit and see their traditional way of life – their culture, their dances and their arts and crafts as well as their work, which they’ll continue to do just as before, except that we’ll now help them to market their produce and sell their fish.

So, it’s a win-win situation for them. They get to do what they’ve always done and we make sure they get a decent income from it.’

Once I get on a roll, there’s no stopping me. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked but anywayz I did, ‘And youze yourselves? Will you make some money out of it, too?’

‘Well, we have to cover expenses, particularly what we have to pay out to buy the land, and some of the start-up costs are high, of course, but we’re keeping them to a minimum and we’re using the locals for clearing the terrain and for most of the basic building work. We have to bring in specialists and skilled tradesmen for some things – electricity, plumbing and those sorts of jobs. But it’s working out well for everyone. The electricity will be hydro-powered from the river or wind-generated. This is the way to bring India forward and we’re just honoured to be playing a part.’

I think that all of this is a kinda ‘yes’ to my question, but then maybe I’m rat-smelling. I can tell he’s persuaded himself he’s doing a good thing, and sure as hell Sudhir, dear serious Sudhir, believes they are, even if he’s nervy about it. So now I manage to button up me lips. After all, they are good people and they’re being kind to me for no particular reason.

The rest of the afternoon is quiet. They play Western and some kinda Indian classical music, not to impress me or anything – they dunno that big pop ballads are more my style – but ’cos this is how they naturally see the traditional and the modern getting together and I guess you could say that’s the story of their lives. Esmeralda comes home. I ask her about tomorrow’s outing and she says she won’t be coming. Far too busy. Has she ever been to the development? Well, ‘as a matter of fact’, she hasn’t. She’s not letting on whether she approves or disapproves. She seems to be on a different planet, though. Search me, I’ve no idea whether it’s Mars, Mercury or Jupiter. All I can tell is that she’s somewhere else, maybe even orbiting a different sun. I don’t think she’s on a high or anything like that, but she’s light years away. I go back to the hotel in the early evening and decide to have a sandwich sent up. The room service ‘boy’ is nice. He lingers for a bit

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and then I realise why – give him a hundred-rupee note and he seems more than satisfied. Thank goodness the ogler ain’t here this evening. Then early to bed so as to be up at 5 a.m. in the morning. What a malarkey!

Thursday It’s begun with another surprise. I was ready on cue, but no sign of the driver. Then just before 6 a.m., Esmeralda bowls up to collect me. She’s driving a fancy air-con Audi and tells me she’s decided to come with us.

After all, she’s never been to the development and so it’s ‘high time’. She won’t be driving, though. The chauffeur will be taking us in the four-wheel drive and we’ll ‘link up’ with him and the family at her parents’ flat. On the way, she starts to talk about my name and I go into my Verbena routine, explaining that it’s a flower and I wish I’d been called something else, anything else. But I’m fed up with explaining this to people, so I change the subject to her name as quickly as I can.

‘How did you get to be called Esmeralda? It ain’t an Indian name, is it?’

‘No, I was born in Paris and my mum was into French things then. She was reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame just before I arrived and so she decided I should be Esmeralda. I think Sudhir was lucky to be born a bit earlier.’

‘How d’ya mean?’

‘Well, who knows? He might have been called Quasimodo if he’d been born then, mightn’t he?’ And Esmeralda is coming alive for me. She has a sense of humour. Well, in an average family there’s always at least one, ain’t there? All of a sudden I’m really looking forward to the day, ’cos I think I’m going to enjoy her company and having her as a guide to what’s going on at the development and all. She’s only nineteen, four years younger than me, but smart as hell and I can tell that she don’t take no shit from no-one.

At this moment, I’m really glad to be in India. Sudhir – Quasimodo. As if.

I saw the movie and I know his parents would never have gone for that.

Not for their favourite little boy.

Esmeralda’s sorta very Indian and not Indian at all, and so I try to find out more about her, by asking her what languages she speaks.

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‘Well there’s English, of course, and Marathi and Hindi; and I know a bit of Tamil, which is very different. And then school made me fluent in French and I picked up a bit of German.’

‘School made you fluent in French?’

‘Yes, they sent me to finishing school in Switzerland. It nearly finished me off, but somehow I survived. Now I’ve been back here a year and they haven’t yet tried to marry me off, though there are rumblings of discontent, but I think they’re gonna find it difficult to pair me off with anyone, because I’m really very finished. Not your average rich Mumbai girl at all anymore.’

‘Would you let them marry you off?’ I know it’s common enough here, but Esmeralda don’t look as though she would take that kinda crap from anyone for one minute.

‘Probably not, but they’re understanding. They may let me find my own husband, if and when the time comes. I have no intention whatsoever of getting pinned down in the next few zillion years, though.’ I really like her.

She’s a bit like me, though we’re worlds apart. Worlds apart, not ’cos of where we come from, more ’cos her family are so well-heeled.

The others aren’t quite ready, and it seems Sanjit is still sleeping when we get to the block of flats where they live, but somewhere aroundabouts 6.45 we set off. Five of us, including the driver. Sanjit is coming separately, with another driver, but he ‘won’t be far behind’. Saresh is busy busy with applying her make-up. She’s got this fancy vanity case on her lap and is so busy peering into the compact mirror inside it that she’s blind to the rest of us. Sudhir is a straight-faced mine of information on all the ins and outs of Mumbai’s suburbs. Esmeralda and I sit together in the back, stifling giggles over his tour-guide spiel. After about forty minutes, we stop at a McDonald’s for breakfast and, although this is very deaf-ee-nightly not my idea of India, I’m pleased to visit the clean loo, wondering when we’ll next see another one. Someone once told me Queen Mary’s advice. Never pass up a chance to go. But who the hell was Queen Mary? I ask Esmeralda. She hasn’t got a clue. I ask her when we’ll next see sanitation, but she don’t know this either. She just says, ‘Let’s pray,’ and turns a namaste gesture into praying hands.

The road varies. There are stretches where it’s rough, stretches where it’s very rough and stretches where the bumps lift your guts into your throat.

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But there’s something about it that I like. It’s democratic. Lorries, cars, motor rickshaws, bicycles, scooters – often with women riding side-saddle, perilously perched behind their men. They don’t look the least bit worried though. This is normal. And there are cows. And dogs. And monkeys. As we get further on, sections of the road are worse still and some of the potholes are like craters. I ask Esmeralda how the driver manages to avoid the worst of them or slow to a crawl, so the bumps are barely felt.

Sudhir chips in – predictably! ‘He’s used to the road. He brings us, me and Dad, here two or three times a month.’

‘So youze come a lot. You have a real hands-on involvement with the project?’

‘Sure. Success comes from attention to detail. You have to look after your workers and watch over them all the time. It wouldn’t work any other way.’

I’m wondering what watching over consists of. Esmeralda is stifling another giggle. Saresh, who’s beside us in the back, seemed to have been asleep for a whilze, but now she’s on the case again, busy touching up her make-up. God knows why, since we’re going to the back of beyond. I’m wishing we weren’t all together in the car. If I was alone with Esmeralda, I could find out so much more. About the development. About her. About her parents. About India. Maybe there’ll be a chance when we finally get there. I’m prepping questions to pump her with, but keeping them to meself for the moment.

We’re nearly there. We’ve had one more stop along the way and the loo wasn’t too bad, but then again it wasn’t too good either. I’ll spare youze the details. The last few miles have been the worst of all. There’s a few hundred yards of paved road leading into the development, but before that we’ve had four or five miles of ab-so-loot-ly godawful mud to contend with. There’s been no rain whilze we’ve been travelling today, but by the looks of it yesterday must have been as wet here as it was in Mumbai. Sudhir explains that next year all this stretch of road will be asphalted, provided they can buy up the land from the owners. The mud-track is there already, so they’re ‘not really changing anything’, are they? I glance at Esmeralda to see how she’s taking this, but she’s looking straight ahead. Not a glimmer of emotion.

I get the impression that Sudhir’s dad has told him to do deals to buy the

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property from the farmers and the strain is getting to him, but I’m only guessing. I can’t tell, can I? Not even a rat-smeller like me.

And now we’re at the development. All I can see to begin with is the shell of a half-built, medium-sized, two-storey house on a sloping hillside, with loadsa scrubland around it. The river’s in the distance. Some of the land has trees. Like a kinda forest. Other bits have something growing on them, a rough kinda plant but I haven’t got the faintest what it is. Maybe I’m too much of a townie to know. I’ve lived in London all me life and we don’t have too much aggro-culture in London, do we? I’m real ignorant about country stuff. I don’t know what a verbena looks like, and I couldn’t tell youze the names of many of our English plants if my life depended on it. I see several birds and the only type I sorta recognise is a crow, but it don’t look the same as an English crow. So I may be wrong. But s’pose it is a crow.

I wonder if it knows it’s an Indian crow. I like crows. They are a-po-lee-tical and they’re no respecters of persons. They swoop and eat when and where they want, though they’re a bit nervy. A bit like Sudhir really.

At last I can wander away from the others with Esmeralda and I ask her what she thinks about it all. Is Sudhir really looking after the locals?

‘I don’t know. Let’s hope we can meet some of them. You’ll be a surprise for them. They won’t have seen anyone like you before. But they won’t show it. They will just clam up. Probably not even make eye contact with you.’

‘Will they speak to you? Do you know their lingo?’

‘Let’s see.’ She’s smiling. ‘They probably have their own dialect of Marathi, but maybe I’ll understand them well enough.’

After a whilze, a village headman appears and Sudhir introduces us, explaining that he’s not the only headman in the area, but that he represents the people who live in the fields to the right of us. He’s a strongly built man of about fifty and he’s with three other men, one fortyish, two who look a fair bit younger. I smile at them to try to make some kinda contact, but Esmeralda’s right. They don’t look at me directly and they don’t respond. I don’t exactly feel insulted. It’s just as if I’m not here, though I’m within touching distance of them. Something else occurs to me. This is an all-male occasion, but me, Esmeralda and Saresh, who is still busy with her mirror, are tolerated – like as if we’re kinda honorary men. I s’pose this is what happens with outsiders from another class. I was saying that Esmeralda is

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like she’s from another planet and now I feel I am too. Pluto. That was always my favourite planet until they downgraded it and said it wasn’t really a planet, after all. I think I liked it best, ’cos I imagined it being inhabited by lots of Mickey Mouse dogs.

Sudhir launches into a load of discussions with the locals. It seems he’s asking about progress, but on what exactly? Who knows? Esmeralda looks on, with raised eyebrows.

She’s my only way of establishing any sorta dialogue with the locals and so I ask her to ask them if they’re happy with the scheme.

‘Pas devant les enfants,’ she answers, nodding at Sudhir. And I have to tell her that, although I did two years of French in school, I need to be reminded what this means. She translates by whispering in my ear, adding that her older brother is ‘just a big kid’ really.

But then Sudhir wanders off with the headman towards a water tank behind the ‘house’ and we’re left with the other three. Esmeralda asks them about their reactions to the development. The fortyish man, who’s tall, very dark and handsome in a countrified kinda way, answers her at some length.

When he finishes, I turn to her to find out what he’s said. She says that he says it’s ‘necessary’.

‘It sounded like he said a lot more than that.’ With her, I don’t worry about being blunt.

‘Yes, he did, but it was all ifs and buts. They can’t survive without it, but then they could in the past and who knows what the future will bring.’

‘Do they like the idea of being a show for tourists?’ And I dunno quite why but the image of the ogler in the hotel is popping up in my mind.

‘I’ll ask them, if you like, but you know the answer, don’t you? They’re avoiding your gaze and I think that says it all. You’re a tourist to them.’ I don’t like to hear it put like this, but I guess she’s right.

She does ask them and the younger men respond by giving her those side-to-side head gestures. The fortyish man keeps shtum.

And then I have what you might call a brainwave. There are people who think I don’t have much of a brain, but whatever I do have between my ears does sometimes wave. ‘Ask them if we can see their women. Ask them to bring their wives and daughters to see us.’

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Esmeralda smiles. ‘I don’t think that will wash with Dad and Sudhir. But let’s try something. I’ll ask them where their homes are.’

Twenty minutes later, we’re sitting on the mud floor of the fortyish man’s hut, with his wife and four daughters, who range from around fifteen down to three, and Esmeralda is asking the wife and the older girls what the development will mean for them. Will things be better or worse? She interprets for me, but even when she don’t I pick up the gist of some of what’s being said. I can tell she goes straight to the nub of things by keeping her questions simple. And their answers? They hope for electricity, TV, a better water supply, having their father and brothers come home earlier in the evenings . . . and maybe education, but of course the boys will come first.

‘Don’t they want mobile phones and computers? They’re often the number one choices.’

She asks the question and the oldest of the daughters reaches inside the layers of her dirty sari and brings out a phone. Then to my amazement she says, in English, ‘Samsung. Very nice, but reception not good here. Sometimes OK. Sometimes no good. You tell your men, we like this. Our Baba not so worry, but it change everything for us. Good reception.’ And she looks at me directly, meeting my eyes in a way that none of the men has and says, ‘I like talk with you. Talk English.’

I’m gobsmacked. Sisterhood rules – OK? And it turns out that, along with technology, this is what they want most.

Learning the language of the Internet. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, but where the hell did she pick up her English?

We don’t stay much longer. They offer us tea. I cry off, even though I’ve seen the water boiled on their fire. Esmeralda takes a few sips. She’s very polite. And then we leave to go back to the others. On the way, I ask Esmeralda if the girls will be married off against their wishes and she tells me, ‘Yes and no. They’ll be married off to someone their parents find for them. That’s for sure – in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, maybe more.

Someone from the same sub-caste who looks a good prospect. It probably won’t be against their wishes, because they’re good girls. They’ll want to do what they’re told, what their parents want. They’ll probably take the first suitor that’s offered them and be married off young. If not, they may get a

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second choice, but they won’t hang around for too long. They’ll fit in with what their parents want – almost always.’

‘And if they get the Internet and all the latest stuff, will that change things?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s going to open up windows, isn’t it? They’ll see the world, get into chats with boys in the States, Malaysia, Brazil, anywhere, everywhere. They’ll have dreams of studying and probably have those dreams dashed. Not like us in the middle classes. But by the time the little girls get big, who knows where the technology will have got to and how it’ll affect the way they see the world. Changes are coming. Sooner or later.’

‘And what about you, Esmeralda? Ain’t you going to have to buckle down eventually?’ It’s the second time today we’ve talked about this. Maybe I should be keeping my nebby-nose out, but somehow I need to get her to tell me how she feels about it again.

‘Like a good Indian girl?’

‘Yeah, like a good Indian girl.’

‘Then nope. I’m not an Indian girl anymore, am I? I’m a Parisian-Swiss Bombayite, who will do what she wants, when she wants. Catch me if you can.’ She’s smiling, but I get the feeling some of this is brave talk, ’cos I’ve seen her parents and I know what family means to all of them. That’s the real difference between me and them.

Sudhir is anxious ’cos we’ve been away so long he thought we’d ‘got lost’.

But a minute later he’s busy conversing with one of his ‘experts’, a be-jeaned woman with a degree in forestry, who has just arrived on the scene, goodness knows where from. She’s going to be managing the logging on the eastern edge of the development and the trees will all be recycled. It’s certainly all politically correct, but maybe it’s actually correct too, if you know what I mean.

Sudhir opens up the picnic basket. They’ve brought some pretty fancy food and lots of bottled water and they’ve kept it all refrigerated whilze we’ve been travelling. Some of the locals look on – a group of a dozen or so men now. No women. A couple of the men must have some special rank, ’cos they get invited to join us and the forestry woman. And as we eat, Esmeralda manoeuvres the conversation. She suggests to her brother that it will be ‘absolutely essential’ to make sure that there’s good phone reception and

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Internet connections for the eco-tourists who will be coming to the development. And ‘besides, that will help with getting the locals who are holding out over the sale of their land onside’. Sudhir don’t see the wisdom of this. He thinks he’s dealing with farmers and fishermen who simply want to live the lives they’ve always led. He don’t know about our brief snapshot of life in the hut. But then again maybe he’s right. Maybe the fathers are set in their ways, though the daughters sure as hell want more. His own father must be earwigging all of this, but he says nothing. I have the feeling that Sudhir is answerable to his dad and this affects what he says, but here I am hypothesiserating again. That’s me.

On the drive back, which goes on and on forever and seems even longer than it did on the way out, Saresh seems really really tired. For an hour or so she stops worrying about her make-up, which seems to be her way of masking what she feels about life, though I don’t have a clue what that might be. I guess it’s one way of coping with the kinda Indian woman she has to be. She’s not the only tired one, though. We’re all pretty zonked out and I find meself nodding off for a few seconds here and there and then getting jolted awake again. It’s been a long day. Only the driver seems fully awake – thank God – though some of the time his eyes wander to incoming texts on his mobile. And Esmeralda remains alert enough to return to the issue of a good connection at the development. By the time we get back she’s persuaded Sudhir, who don’t have his dad listening in now, that it’s crucial to their plans, if they’re to attract ‘the right kind of tourists’. He’s no match for her and he don’t realise she’s playing him. At least that’s how I see it.

Then she drives me back to the hotel and along the way she says, ‘Well, that should all be OK then, shouldn’t it, Verbena? It will all be much better for Sudhir and Mum and Dad this way.’ I’d started the day trying to work out who stood to gain most from the development. Then this had turned into worrying about the local women’s situation and sorta admiring what Esmeralda was trying to do for them, but now I’m not sure who’s doing what for who and why. You know me, I’m no feminist, but I do want to see girls getting a fair crack of the whip. I like Esmeralda. I really do, but I’m starting to think that maybe she’s just another real good family member, after all. Family comes first, even if she’ll be pleased to see those country girls getting a bit of a start in life. Me? I’d put it the other way round.

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Sort that loada crap out first and then, after you’ve put in your two cents to change the world, if you can do the right thing by your family too, well that’s a bonus.

I’m not sorry to be going back to London tomorrow. Maybe I can change meself a bit. Maybe I’ll start calling meself Esmeralda or some sorta different name from a story-book. Antigone sounds pretty good to me, too. One of our teachers in school said she was a bolshie kinda girl who wouldn’t do what she was told. A new name could give me a new lease of life and maybe with a name like Esmeralda I wouldn’t get involved with scum like Winston.

But then again maybe I’d get caught up with some Quasimodos and I’m not sure I’m into that either. Not just at the moment anywayz, thank you very much. It must be a helluva lot easier to have a fixer-up sort your love life out for you. My mum says she used to know a kinda marriage broker woman back there in Guyana, but that was years ago. She’s probably passed on to marriage broker heaven by now. No, let’s face it, you’re on your own in London. Sink or swim.

Ohmigod. Winston has just texted me. He wants to meet me at the airport. I think I’d better try to change my flight. Maybe I should stay on here a bit. Maybe Sudhir’s family would like to adopt me. Now there’s a thought.

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Poetry

Judith Huang

Judit h Huang

Radio I’m typing at my computer and it sounds like 2000 and Radiohead’s dropped Kid A which I leave on indefinite spin while dreaming of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman those two things inextricably linked with being fourteen and feeling the edges of what a comic with nudity is like because Kinokuniya just came to town and the government lifted the ban although of course there is plenty of that on the internet filled with bondage scat golden showers big black anal Asian even Annabel Chong with her own web domain sounding still so coherent about her crush on Alan Greenspan that my classmates are surprised all that sex didn’t melt her brain listening to Jamie Yeo on the radio with her fake American accent telling us who are the members of the Mickey Mouse Club and how they’re now all grown up and are mega mega pop stars celebrating their triumph over and over with wide eyes of wonder at the ultimate pop culture pop culture pop culture mechanized machine where alternative and mainstream are two indistinguishable teats so much of my youth spent sitting at that desk with pride of control over the Hi5 occasionally punching down to record the mixtape though of course

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the sound of the click coming down under your finger was recorded too thinking Blink-182 and Sixpence none the richer are singing about you and feeling all guerrilla to have things published in the2ndrule waiting for Bengliang to turn up like Che Guevara at Orchard in my pinafore glasses braces to get the free T-shirt and everywhere on the radio it’s Millennium Millennium Millennium Backstreet Boys are thinking it’s cool and futuristic to have an album in which they wear all white though of course in Singapore all white is PAP and the skinny third-world politician predecessors never figured that it makes everybody look fat listening to the boy on my surreptitious first date say confidently I love my country but that doesn’t mean I love my government and my senior studying overseas says she’s coming home sweet home to work for government sweet government and let’s face it we are on the civil servant factory pipeline, otherwise how can we afford our dream expensive overseas educations but at fourteen those things are far from my mind it is 2000 and I just want to get my project work done and I want to hear my dedication read out

by X’Ho to the guy I have a crush on on ICQ and I wonder if his friends are listening too and it is anonymous but I made it in the shape of a bottle of XO so he’d better read it and listening to 987 makes me feel somehow cosmically connected with the world, the world outside the window where the raintrees grow and the hum of the electric fan and the National desk lamp that is supposed to help stall my myopia.

And that is the perfect metaphor myopia myopia thinking that we can see far into the future when we can’t see beyond the tips of our noses drafting policy on butcher sheets diagnosing S21 visions because of course Singapore in the 21st century needs its own acronym and I am hating on geography because we don’t have any and that is the entire problem: the tyranny of geography

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on a dot that cannot stretch out yearning for spaces where bands can make it big where books sell more than a thousand copies where fortunes are sold and made beyond the small trinity of skyscrapers that makes up the CBD tell me that you’re with me read my blog read my email hover over my alt text and tell me I’m deep doubleclick my message and wait for the SMS beep beep beep BEEP BEEP beep beep beep still thinking it’s possible to die an artist in the middle of the PIE strumming your electric guitar in the lightning storm I mean, come on – we, fed on a steady diet of popup gif porn and waiting to sublimate our desires on the debate floor or failing that when we’re finally co-ed at our JC mass dance orientation; least we can do is leave the radio on.

Rokujo I can imagine the look on her face now filled with fright as something clutches her from somewhere out of nowhere, catching in her throat, just as you enter her, the look on your face printed in her eye. In there, in that eye, you will see my face, my ghost, glaring back.

I am somewhere about, not fuming, merely biding my time. I know I can get you back anytime with the smallest gesture of my finger – it is merely a matter of exercising the will, an exercise in self-indulgence, because after all, I never knew what to do with you when I had you to myself.

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Somewhere in the courtyard of my old house is the spurt where you came behind the maple and I am sure something has grown there now, has taken root, and I am sure if you saw it you would be sure too that that was probably the pinnacle of your whole life, knotting helplessly with me, my hair brushing against the stone of the step, wetting the arc of your back.

I am without, now, a neck; without, now, my arms.

You have tied them back – stretched out, voluptuous against the trunk of our favourite spot, the one where you first saw me in the half-light, or glimpsed my calligraphy on a fan, in a neighbour’s house, on a jaunt, on a hunch, on a whim – and decided to investigate the possibility.

Why did I ever think I could hide myself from cruelty, from the cold, from emptiness, from the capricious hormonal affectations of some gorgeous boy? I was a grown woman, a woman of substance, shut in a tree the size of your soul, when you broke me out and made me a new kind of banshee – O! how I screamed and screamed so – And now, as then, you go and go, going at it with some new slut, and here I am, haunting, stupidly, the avenue with the bloody maples.

My love, I have been waiting all my life to do this, to do you, to do her in. There are too many people in this bloody picture don’t you think? You will have to eliminate one, or I will, my hands cold as icicles on a winter’s night, on a night when my high-handed speech, my illiterate screech breaks and skitters like a thousand pearls falling into a thousand broken bowls.

Lady Rokujo is a character in The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari).

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Judith Huang

Jesus in the Jing Ah Jesus I approach you through image but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how I know you, except through the uncertain howl of my heart like a bitch I am yowling in the urine-laced hutongs of this city under ginkgo trees you may or may not have planted.

Ah Jesus they are repaving the sidewalks today I cannot skip over my blisters from walking too quickly in heels.

Ah Jesus will you pull me close or remain far away holding your piss your eyes closed or lowered on that plaster cross?

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Interview: Madeleine Thien Interview: Madeleine Interview: Thien Madeleine Thien

T

his year, Madeleine Thien has been honoured with Canada’s Governor General’s Award and the Scotiabank Giller prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

She took time out recently to speak to the ALR about her novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, and about the role of a writer in a changing world.

Madeleine Thien

Photo: Rawi Hage

To paraphrase Luke: ‘No writer is accepted in her own country.’ What does the recognition you’ve received through the Governor General’s Award and the Scotiabank

Giller Prize mean to you and for your work?

To be honest, nothing has quite settled in yet. It’s been a difficult year for me, unrelated to the book (which has brought extraordinary joy), and so I think, emotionally, I haven’t accepted all the honours that have come.

I think, too, because I’ve been writing for twenty years and have never had this kind of response to one of my books, it’s an adjustment. The strange

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thing is, I still feel exactly like myself, still grappling with another novel in the back of my mind, still wondering how to find the structure and language and world that will allow the new book to come into existence.

You’ve lived most of your life in Canada, but have also spent time in the Netherlands, in Hong Kong and in Singapore; and you’ve travelled widely, notably in China. If you were to move to another country, which do you think might feel comfortably like home or at least intriguing enough to settle in – and write?

I think I would like to live in Hong Kong. The situation is unique, unprecedented and unpredictable. People are facing so many questions – what kind of society do they want, what does it mean for citizens to have fair political representation, how to reach the desired consensus in the current system, what are the obligations of a government to its people, and the people to a government. The transformation of its civic and national politics, its future, has been weighing on my mind.

I would also like to spend time in the north, in the Arctic, another place where change, in this case environmental change, is happening astonishingly quickly.

You’ve talked about the obsession with power and victimhood in North America, and with dignity and shame in Asia: what are your thoughts about these qualities in a shrinking world?

I think there’s a conceptual framework that’s still quite different in North America and Asia, and each place has different codes that describe the world in very particular ways. Power, for instance. Here in North America, there’s a pervasive belief that power and fortune are connected to work ethic, spiritual fortitude, character, etc. This is the rags-to-riches, pull-oneself-upby-the-bootstraps ethos. Powerlessness and poverty become, consciously or subconsciously, equated to spiritual weakness and failure of the individual, as opposed to, for example, systems, histories and policies. In other words, powerlessness is made to seem ahistorical. Before long, politics becomes ahistorical as well.

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In Asia, fate is still seen as a force in people’s lives. History is cyclical and time is not a straight line. In some ways, history and fate become part the same thing, like a circle being drawn in two directions, enclosing individuals.

You’ve spoken about the ‘deep bonds’ that hold families together but can also tear them apart, and the idea of parents as exemplars – how much more difficult are these factors in families uprooted by immigration?

I think I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be a daughter. Families are a world within a world, almost a planet unto themselves. Immigrant parents sometimes rely heavily on their children (for translation or cultural decoding), and the children learn to protect their parents, and even to speak on their behalf. I think I became adept at moving between worlds, translating all sorts of things, and trying to hear both the spoken and unspoken.

I suspect that every child of immigrants has seen their parents humiliated at least once. It’s something you can never forget.

In my twenties, I lived in a small Frisian village in the Netherlands where the families had a deep sense of rootedness and belonging. It was such a different experience from my own childhood. There are many ways to live.

There’s fragmentation of identity in displacement, and that increases the importance of memory and the stories a family tells itself – often unreliable ones. How much is your narrator in Do Not Say We Have Nothing a reflection of your younger self?

It’s such an interesting question. I had never thought of Marie (Li-ling) as a reflection of my younger self. She has a very particular way of experiencing things, she loves numbers and patterns, she has a prodigious memory (unlike me). I think a lot of Do Not Say is about the act of storytelling and use of fiction, music and different forms of art to hold unofficial history and unofficial memory, terms that have resonance when thinking about China’s relationship with the political events of the twentieth century. I think one of the repeating ideas in my novels has been the use of the imagination, or invention, or art, to hide oneself, to survive, to attempt to live in ways that are not predetermined by history.

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Interview: Madeleine Thien

Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a transliteration from the Chinese and is a first indication of how your book deals with attempts to translate and interpret, to record and preserve, and to resist erasure. The elusive Book of Records is a compelling feature in the novel: copied, hidden, lost and destroyed, it shows the fragility of narrative as well as its power and magic.

Tell us how you came to choose The Book of Records as a vehicle for all this.

The title is a translation of a line of the Chinese version of the Internationale.

The Book of Records is first and foremost a novel that falls into the hands of two of the characters, Wen the Dreamer and Swirl, and is eventually passed from hand to hand. It’s a concrete thing, a story, an escape, a distraction, which takes on a life of its own. The reader and the characters project ideas onto it, and that, I think, is where the resonances come from – how we project into the books we love, how we catch a glimpse of parts of ourselves that were heretofore unknown to us, and what we do with that.

I don’t know if it’s magical; I think all forms of art refract our lives, ideas and societies back to us.

Your stories take on setting and characters in a variety of cultures and national identities – Chinese, Canadian, Cambodian, Lebanese – a blend of insider and Other. How does your background provide you with the facility to forge stories from the outside looking in?

That’s a really difficult question. I think what I write is simply human.

I may carry multiple cultures but they are part of a single fabric. To me, that continuity and overlap, rather than a binary of inside/outside, is closer to the way I experience the world.

When you construct dialogue for local characters, particularly the Chinese ones, how much do you consider the differences in speech patterns and habits between their languages and your English? Are you ever concerned that your characters may not speak ‘authentically’ from a native speaker’s perspective?

I guess my question to your question is: in Canada, who is a ‘local character’? In Do Not Say, Marie’s mother speaks to her in English, and speaks to Ai-ming in Cantonese mixed with Mandarin. She speaks in her

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own voice. I question the loaded word of authenticity here, and who is being considered the native speaker. And if the ‘local speaker’ being referred to is in China, I think my answer would be that in China, there are ten thousand thousand ways to be, to speak, to joke, to imagine, to love, to exist.

In the current global debate about migration, what do you think the key conversational themes need to be to properly articulate its promises and challenges?

I write fiction, I create worlds and I hope the work is attentive to the way we live now. Novelists spend a long time listening to the world, but they are not policy analysts. We’re invested not in broad generalisations but in details, in people, the jokes they make, what they hold onto for dear life, what they abandon, what they live for. To write specifically – to think about lives other than my own, and to do so for many, many years – is what I do.

You said earlier that ‘there’s a pervasive belief that power and fortune are connected to work ethic, spiritual fortitude, character, etc.’ and ‘powerlessness and poverty become, consciously or subconsciously, equated to spiritual weakness and failure of the individual’ – any thoughts on the shifting of politics to the right and the rise of populist demagoguery?

In the summer, I spent time in Israel and Palestine, and I saw something that I’ve been thinking about ever since. In Palestine, Israelis are under civilian law and Palestinians are under military law. I met Israeli activists who were doing difficult but necessary work in Palestine, and doing so by making use of the additional rights they were guaranteed – rights which their counterparts, Palestinian activists, are denied. Those of us, who by birth or privilege or class or race have been prioritised in our countries, need to use our freedom on behalf of others. It is up to the majority to stand up for the rights of the minority. I think Bertolt Brecht was right in this: All of us or none.

The soundtrack of Do Not Say We Have Nothing is Bach, a Western composer, played by a Canadian, Glenn Gould. What are you listening to now, as you write, and how important is music to you?

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J. S. Bach’s music and the German baroque composers have a particular resonance for Sparrow, the composer in Do Not Say. Aside from Bach, the music in the novel is drawn from the composers (Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Beethoven, etc.) and works that would have been readily available to Chinese musicians at particular moments. I love music – as a language, as another form of expression, as an abstract art. Sadly I’m not listening to anything as I’m writing, as I’m not writing right now. The book tour, the travelling, and the response to the novel, have all been unexpectedly powerful and intense.

Leonard Cohen was another fellow-Canadian musician and his recent death has been a shock, if not entirely a surprise. We know how much Bach means to you – what are your thoughts and feelings about Cohen and his work?

I cried. I wanted him to still be in this world, to be making his music that has spoken to me and to so many for a long, long time. Just a couple days before, I had done a long interview with the CBC, our public radio network, in which I brought in six pieces of music that meant a lot to me.

One of those was Dance me to the end of love. The words speak volumes in these difficult days: Dance me to the children who are asking to be born Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn Raise a tent of shelter now though every thread is torn Dance me to the end of love.

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from A World History of Second Sons from A Wor ldLee History Kihoof SecondSons

Lee Kiho translated by Jae Won Edward Chung

L

1

isten. Here’s a story from the era of General Chun Doo-hwan – one of the more preposterous dictators to have ruled our land.

Thirty-odd years have passed since these events transpired. Yet as the fate of our protagonist-hero demonstrably shows, sometimes it makes no difference at all that whole decades have gone by. Today he’s still a wanted man, just as he was then. His name: Na Bogmahn. Na was twenty-nine when the order came down for his arrest. If he’s alive somewhere, he’s got to be over sixty by now. He was chased through his thirties. He spent his forties trying to shake his foes. In his fifties, he always had to watch his back.

This is how the years passed him by, with his shoulders hunched forward, as if preparing to confront a violent gust of wind in an alleyway. Later, even when he’s seventy or eighty, he’ll be living out his years as a wanted man.

Now that I think about it, maybe the real protagonist of this story isn’t Na Bogmahn, but what it means to be ‘a wanted man’. What I mean is, if these unfortunate incidents that befell Na Bogmahn had happened to you or me over so many decades (you, me, or any one of us really), we would’ve had no choice but to become another Na Bogmahn. Even if it had happened to General Chun himself. . . . Thirty years later I can tell you that much still hasn’t changed.

That’s the story I’m here to tell.

Now listen with a slow, leisurely heart.

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Na Bogmahn, contrary to what his name literally says in Korean (‘Nothing but luck for me’), was truly a guy without a single iota of good fortune.

The reason he paid a visit to the Wonju Police Station was because of a minor early-morning traffic accident he’d been involved in.

Around five o’clock that morning, Na Bogmahn’s light-green taxi (a Pony) got the signal to make a left at the Wonju Medical Center crossroads and was involved in a minor collision with a cyclist who had tried to cross the street in spite of the red light. The sun hadn’t risen yet, so the streets were still dark, and no other cars were on the road. Since it hadn’t been long since oil prices had spiked, the street lamps had all been shut off. It was the season for forsythia to blossom, but the early morning wind still had teeth, so that Na Bogmahn gripped the steering wheel and wore a thick navy jumper emblazoned with the taxi company logo. He had the zipper pulled all the way up to his chin. According to company policy, the heating had to be kept off so he was also wearing two layers of cotton work gloves.

Na Bogmahn immediately slammed on the brakes and for a good while did nothing but stare ahead through the windshield. Since he was rounding a corner, he hadn’t been moving fast, but a feeling of something squishy had shot through his ankle bone, the cartilage of his knee, the curve of his buttocks, and his waist, shoulders and wrists. The taxi’s headlights shone against the spinning spokes of the bicycle, confusing his eyes. Ever since he’d started driving a taxi, he’d never violated a traffic signal, sped, or even committed a parking offence. The idea that a taxi driver might have such a spotless record might be doubtful to all of you, but this is Na Bogmahn we’re talking about. (We might say that this is Na in a nutshell.) He sat there as still as a tree, gripping the steering wheel.

How long did he sit like this? (Actually, it wasn’t very long, but for Na it felt like an eternity.) A dark shape emerged in the headlights to pick up the fallen bicycle. Only then did Na switch off the engine and hurry out of the car for a look.

He was just a boy, small in stature, with his hair cropped short. Maybe in middle school. He had on his school-uniform trousers with a black jumper. Before Na could get any closer, he crouched down by the taxi, trying to yank out a pile of newspapers that had become lodged under a wheel.

All the while, he kept checking the time on his watch.

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‘Hey, kid. You all right?’

Na reached out to hold the bicycle with one hand as he spoke to the boy, whose face, lit by the headlights, showed blooming patches of psoriasis.

‘Would you mind backing up a bit?’ the boy said, without even looking at Na. The boy was wearing the same kind of work gloves – made of cotton, the palms reinforced with a coating of red rubber.

As soon as Na restarted the engine and backed up, the boy loaded the back of the bicycle with the bundle of newspapers. He limped towards the other side of the street. Maybe there was something wrong with the handle, because instead of getting on the bike, he walked it forward as he hobbled along, making sure to keep an eye on the newspaper heap. Na Bogmahn went on sitting in the driver’s seat, watching the boy. Sitting in the car, he lowered the window a little and called out a few more times, ‘Hey kid, you really OK?’ After the boy had completely vanished into the dark, he got out of the taxi and for a long time ran his hand over the front bumper and the headlight to see if there were any scratches or dents. Except for a hairline crack on the headlight, there didn’t seem to be any damage. Na looked across the street again to where the boy had vanished. He then looked to his left and right. As before, there wasn’t a single person or a car in sight. He quickly hopped back in the driver’s seat and steered the taxi back to where he lived.

Back home, he fell into a long, dreamless sleep. That was it. This is everything that happened on that early morning, without omission or embellishment.

If Na had treated the early-morning accident as nothing significant (as every other taxi driver in the world would have done) – if this had been within the realm of possibility for him – he probably would have received his first-class private taxi licence seven years down the line as originally planned and lived out the rest of his life as a taxi driver. He would’ve married the woman he was living with, and they would’ve had four children – boys and girls – just as she wanted, and maybe he would’ve managed to send all of them to university. He might’ve bought a house for himself with his own name plate by the gate. Maybe he would’ve even managed a title or two for himself, such as President of the Neighbourhood Village Association, Student Disciplinary Committee or Neighbourhood Patrol. But unfortunately . . .

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none of this happened for him. (What kind of story would this be if his life had turned out like that?)

Na woke up that afternoon covered in cold sweat. No different than usual, he washed his hair, threw water on his face, polished off the bowl of rice his girlfriend had prepared for him and climbed into the taxi he’d parked by the fence outside his flat. He was still unaware of anything different about himself. It didn’t seem as though anything had changed at all. As per usual, before leaving for work, his girlfriend had spotlessly cleaned the interior of his taxi while he’d been asleep (there was a faint odour of moisture lingering in the cushions). Extra change had been placed where it was supposed to be. Na extended his arms as far as he could to stretch his limbs and steered the taxi on to the road. It seemed like any other day.

He only realised something was different after he’d driven his first customer of the afternoon. A middle-aged man wearing a fedora hat who had got in by the front gate of Wonju Middle School told Na he wanted to get to the intercity bus terminal. Getting the first customer of the day to call out the terminal as his destination definitely put Na in a cheerful mood.

Maybe I’ll check out the situation at the terminal. Maybe I’ll get someone headed to Hoengseong or Munmak. Even snag a customer going all the way to Yeongwol?

Every time he was stopped at a light, he would count the cash by his knees and think to himself. There was news on the radio (which the customer had asked him to turn on) about four arsonists who’d been arrested in Suwon, and the passenger clicked his tongue in the back as if in pity. But Na’s mind was on picking up another passenger who would go the distance. The matter was simple for him: they’d started a fire, so they were arsonists. They’d committed a crime, so they deserved to be punished.

Back in those days, the route from Wonju Middle School to Usan-dong Intercity Bus Terminal was almost a straight line. There were no complicated turns or detours; you followed the road cutting through the city and made a left at the three-way intersection and the terminal was right there (This wasn’t because of excellent city planning. The city just happened to have only one major road). There was no congestion (back then in Wonju, except for when there were military exercises, there was little to no traffic – though the training did occur fairly frequently). The traffic lights weren’t

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bad either. Na Bogmahn could make the trip to the Usan-dong intersection in a little over twenty minutes. But that’s when he encountered a problem.

When Na was about to turn the steering wheel as the signal changed, he felt something squishy come in contact with the tyre so he slammed on the brakes. The taxi hiccupped to a halt. He’d seen nothing on the road. There weren’t any cats or pigeons that had suddenly got in the way. That squishy sensation under the tyres passed through Na’s ankle bone, knee cartilage, the curve of his buttocks, and his waist, shoulders and wrists. What’s this?

Na pulled the handbrake and got out of the cab. He began looking at the front bumper and the tyre. A few people waiting for the light craned their necks to look at Na and his taxi.

There was nothing on the road. There were no potholes, no speed bumps or small rocks or anything like that. The road’s surface, on the contrary, was smooth and solid, like a freshly-baked brick. Na cocked his neck to get another look and, for no particular reason, gave his tyre a kick. What’s going on here? he mumbled to himself as he climbed into the driver’s seat. Na sniffled, slowly turned the steering wheel and released his foot from the pedal. . . . But soon enough, he had to press down on the brakes again. That mushy, billowy feeling had gently flowed up his whole body again. The cars that had been waiting patiently behind Na couldn’t take it anymore, and all at once began blaring their horns. After trying to turn the steering wheel a few more times, Na had no choice but to drive straight ahead.

‘What are you doing?’ The passenger was grimacing. He had a large envelope in his hands and was ready to get out.

‘I – I’m sorry. I think there’s something wrong with the car. . . .’

Na tried cooking up an excuse, but the passenger still looked annoyed.

What’s wrong with this guy? the man complained in a low voice. (Maybe this is what made Na even more flustered. He’d never heard a customer say anything like that before.) Whether he was going to do a U-turn or take a left, he had to get to the station, but this wasn’t so easy to pull off. At the next crossroads, and the next, every time he tried making a left turn, he felt he was hitting something squishy, and he couldn’t help but slam on the brakes. He had no choice but to stop and proceed in the forward direction.

The man in the grey fedora lost his temper. But soon enough, he began to wonder if he was being kidnapped, so he would only steal glimpses of

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Na’s face in the rear-view mirror without saying anything. Even though he never made it to the bus station, eventually coming to a stop near Taejangdong Hakdari, he even bowed goodbye (and paid the fare) before hurriedly hopping out of the cab. After taking a few quick steps away from the cab, he turned to yell, ‘Hey fucker! I’m going to report you! I know your number plate!’ and ran as fast as he could towards the terminal.

Once the passenger had disappeared, Na steered the car to the nearby Taejang Primary School and tried turning left. He popped the hood to check if there was enough coolant and brake fluid. He was fine with turning right, but every time he turned the wheel left, he still had the mushy feeling.

His heart pound louder than the radio, louder even than the engine, so that he could hear it in his eardrums.

Na got out of the taxi and sat by the edge of the empty lot and smoked for a long time. While smoking, he kept staring at the taxi. A gust of wind brushed against his face, and Taejang Primary School sounded its bell in two long peals. Forsythia continued to shed its flowers in clumps over the fence dividing the military camp from the primary school. Na went on crouching even when a pack of children ran through the school gates. And when his surroundings had grown dark, he quietly got up from where he’d been sitting. Then he muttered to himself several times in a low voice: ‘It’s because you’re guilty . . . you’re guilty. . . .’

It was just before the morning shift change when Na paid a visit to the Wonju Police Station. He still couldn’t easily make a left turn.

Rest your chin on your hand and listen.

The following passage comes from the textbook of a four-hour long driver’s education course Na attended annually: In the event of an accident, do not try to arrive at a settlement at the scene. Even if the injured party claims he or she is OK, you must report the incident to the authorities voluntarily. This is the only way to avoid further trouble. If the injured party suffers from some after-effect from the accident, or reports it to the police station inspired by some sinister motive, then you can guarantee the case will be considered a hit-andrun. This won’t be the case if the report is made by you voluntarily.

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So, when Na Bogmahn realised the cause of these symptoms and voluntarily visited the police station, it was less out of a desire to give himself up for punishment and more out of a desire to prevent future trouble. He was also thinking that if doing this put his conscience at ease, he’d be able to make left turns again.

Why, then, had he not gone to the transport section? Why had he felt so compelled to poke his head around the crammed offices of Wonju Police Station’s intelligence section, sit down on the bench and give a rambling confession of his blunder to Detective Choi Sanggi, who happened to be flipping through the Catholic Cultural Center’s expense report? Though the detective didn’t glance at him even once and went on flipping through the files, why did Na go on muttering, as if in prayer, ‘I swear to you, Detective, it wasn’t my fault.’ And why did he jot down his full name and date of birth and the company where he worked on the white sheet of paper that Detective Choi handed over in irritation, before ambling out of the station again?

To answer these questions, we must go further back into the past. It’s possible that the very root of the problem is already there, fully formed, waiting for us. . . . What root? What do you think? I’m talking about the source of his guilt of course! The original sin of poor blameless Na Bogmahn who never took anything in his life that wasn’t his.

Switch to the other hand and listen.

Na Bogmahn was born in June of 1953 as the only son of a primary school Korean-language teacher who crossed the border to the North after Korea’s liberation from Japan. When he was seven years old, his mother left him at a Wonju orphanage called the House of Brotherhood. He lived there for nearly a decade, until he turned seventeen. (Thankfully, he graduated from primary school, but he didn’t make it to middle school.) He was tall, but extremely thin, and he gave an impression of severity. His eyebrows drooped and his lips were small so that, overall, he grew up with the appearance of someone ailing from some terrible disease. Naturally, this didn’t make him the best candidate for adoption.

People remembered Na Bogmahn from his orphanage days with his head drooped between his shoulders, shifty-eyed, like someone trying to overhear

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another person’s conversation. This was because he’d had too many ‘big brother’ figures around him. (‘House of Brotherhood’, Na was informed by a kid slightly older than him, meant a house with a lot of big brothers.)

What did it mean to have so many big brothers? It meant that, depending on the mood of all the different older brothers in the house, the fate of your day-to-day life would be decided. Na would be sleeping when the oldest brother, or the third oldest, or the one that was adopted and then sent back, or the one who didn’t score any goals at the school soccer match, or the one who was slightly older than Na, would tap him on the shoulder and wake him up. Then they would quietly drag him into the back of the bathroom or a storage shed next to the restaurant and abuse him without any particular reason or make him drop his underpants or make him watch as they masturbated next to him. Ever since Na had entered the orphanage, he had to endure these incidents nearly every day, so that if he gained anything from these ordeals, it was his capacity to take a beating and ‘internalise’ these older brothers (in other words, if you took out ‘older brothers’ from his inner life, or to be more accurate, ‘the fists of these older brothers’, you might say he didn’t get much out of his relationship with them).

Fortunately, in the year Na turned seventeen, he received help from a pastor and his wife who volunteered weekly at the House of Brotherhood, and he was finally able to get a place of his own. Thanks to the caring couple, he secured a small room in the church annex. That’s when he began spending early mornings delivering newspapers and evenings as a fry cook at the neighbourhood chicken joint.

In April 1975, the pastor introduced Na to Kim Sunhee. As it turned out, she was an alumnus of the House of Sisterhood, which was just 500 metres from House of Brotherhood. (The House of Sisterhood had its share of ‘older sisters’ but there weren’t any of those problems, if you get my drift.)

Also an orphan, Sunhee was two years younger than Na. She was a devout Christian who, after being baptised at sixteen, hadn’t skipped a single week’s service and was also a member of the choir. Her only hobby was writing out the contents of the Bible word for word in a college-rule composition book. From the age of sixteen she’d filled up twenty-three notebooks in all.

The early stage of their romance was boring and bland. They couldn’t meet for very long (their dates consisted of walking together once a week

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after church, when Na Bogmahn was heading off to his shift at the fried chicken place – at least at the beginning.) The bigger reason lay with Na’s attitude. He treated her almost like his ‘older brothers’ from the orphanage.

Even when they walked together, he would keep his head down, stealing glances from time to time. (At first, he’d only met with her because the pastor’s wife had told him to; he’d feared that if he didn’t he would have to move out of his room.) Sunhee always spoke first (she walked with her hands folded before her, in the gait of an evangelist. The peal of her voice had a pastor’s purity.). Na would answer briefly, in a voice barely audible.

Around March of 1977, Na, upon Sunhee’s suggestion, began taking the Class 1 Driver’s Licence exam. After failing it eleven times, in September of 1980, he successfully attained a licence. And the following March, he acquired a position at Safe Taxi Service in Tangu-dong.

There was a pretty good reason why Na Bogmahn had failed the driver’s education exam for three years. He’d always failed his exams in school. This was because he could barely read or write any Hangul. He was an illiterate, basically. (He could write the characters of his name, his address, and the words for ‘whole chicken’, ‘raw chicken’, ‘young chicken’, ‘Ottugi-brand frying oil’, ‘pub’, ‘Kyonghyang Daily’, and ‘Financial Daily’. Thankfully, he was able to make out all the Arabic numerals.) How could this happen to a primary school graduate? To answer properly, you’d have to consider the nation’s educational system at the time, the education environment, as well as the operating conditions of the House of Brotherhood where he grew up, but I think this might serve as sufficient explanation: nobody gave a damn about Na. It wasn’t as though his teacher had been dead set on singling him out for punishment. It was just frustrating that the boy had slipped through the cracks, missed his window, so to speak, and there were too many other students for him to be taught all the things he was already supposed to know. Na Bogmahn had never felt any discomfort in his disability. And he’d gone on living like this.

Finally, in July 1980, he got some help from a broker in that neighbourhood (he forked out 150,000 won, a hefty sum back then) and he finally passed. The money he spent on the bribe was half of his entire savings – from nine years of delivering newspaper and frying up chickens that looked like they were praying.

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While driving, Na didn’t dare violate any traffic signs. He hadn’t so much as a parking ticket to his name. He feared he wasn’t well-enough acquainted with the traffic laws. Even when he was with the taxi company, he was always trembling in fear (after entering the company, he managed to add another term to his lexicon after hours of ‘drawing’ the Korean letters for ‘Safe Taxi Service’).

So that night, when Na went over to Wonju Police Station’s intelligence section rather than to the transport office, there hadn’t been some other ulterior motive. It was simply because he couldn’t read the Hangul properly.

It was simply because he couldn’t make out the signs hanging on the office entrance. (As soon as he went into the intelligence section, he could tell he was at the wrong office, but this only made him want to get his business squared away as soon as possible. All the police are the same, he was thinking. The best thing would be to just talk to the first busy-looking man he saw and leave.) So he told Detective Choi his name and where he was employed, and left through the front entrance with a sense of relief.

Everything that happened later was because of this rather trivial mistake.

Even years later, when Na looked back on it, he would think about how this had been the extent of his guilt.

Why don’t you lie down now and listen.

The reason Na’s name made its way into the intelligence section’s briefing folder from the Wonju Police Station’s meeting room was a simple mistake/error/typo by the staff. Na Bogmahn’s name was in there along with the name of the Catholic Cultural Service’s Father Choi Kisik, who had helped the arsonists involved in the US Cultural Center fire in Busan hide away for four days, as well as a few other names of those who’d shown sympathy to the suspects. The name was printed on a yellow piece of pulp paper and distributed to the reporters who attended the news briefing. The chief superintendent Kwag Yongpil realised this only after taking the reporters’ questions. If Kwag had made the correction right there and then, saying it was a simple mistake by personnel, we’re sorry, this name shouldn’t be in there, please remove it from the list, then maybe the countless incidents surrounding Na Bogmahn and the others in his life might have vanished

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into the void, as if expunged neatly by the ‘delete’ key. (But I know full well that’s not what you want, you merciless person, you.)

There was a number of reasons for this error. One was Superintendent Kwag’s personal health. On April 1, after the arsonists had turned themselves in at Wonju, he’d been camped out at the station for four days straight, without being able to set foot in his own house. So that two days earlier, he’d called home one afternoon to get his wife to bring a change of underwear and a clean shirt. But for two days, his wife hadn’t bothered to come to the police station, and neither would she answer the phone.

Superintendent Kwag, who’d been suffering from chronic anal fistula was about to snap from his underwear situation, and he was eager to wrap up the briefing so he could rush home to rain down abuse on his wife and his anal fistula as soon as possible.

The reporters were also part of the problem. Once they had received the briefing materials, they kept firing questions at the superintendent in their cynical tone, ‘So are you really going to arrest the boiler man?’ ‘Then this, this Na Bogmahn person – is he also a suspect? According to the listed profession, he appears to be a taxi driver?’

That was the first time Kwag saw Na Bogmahn’s name. It was definitely an unfamiliar name. Prior to the briefing, there hadn’t been any discussion about this figure at the intelligence section meeting. Kwag Yongpil wasn’t able to answer right away, and looked briefly at Detective Choi, but the detective kept his head down, passing materials over to the reporters and averting his eyes.

‘Well, yes, this individual. . . . We’d prefer it if you didn’t report his name at this point. . . . We’re currently conducting an internal investigation about him . . . based on some suspicion.’

Kwag left his explanation at that for the time being, then brushed his hair back.

‘When you say he’s under suspicion, is it in relation to Father Choi or with the arsonists?’ A female reporter raised her hand with a question.

‘Well, with this individual, there are both possibilities. . .so, well, we would appreciate it if you could refrain from reporting. . . .’

Kwag made his request again and wrapped up the briefing in a hurry. If he called Detective Choi into his office before calling a taxi home, and

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dished out three quick blows to his shins and two to the cheeks (a total of five) then it was because he realised Na Bogmahn’s name had got on the list because of a simple mistake/error/typo. (The reason he didn’t call every one of the reporters right away to explain the mistake/error/typo was because he trusted them. He’d specifically requested that they withhold the name from their report. Anyway, at the time, what was most urgent for Kwag was getting to a clean change of underwear.)

The following morning, Na Bogmahn’s full name and profession appeared in two regional papers, followed by the description: ‘Under Internal Investigation’.

Lean on your left side and listen.

There was still one more opportunity to set things right. Na Bogmahn was completely fixated on the question of why he could not make a left.

Why, even when he finally confessed to his crime, couldn’t he turn the damned steering wheel?

Though his full name and profession had been printed in the paper (obviously, he hadn’t read the paper. Even at the taxi company where he was employed, they did not subscribe to the regional newspapers where his name had been printed) nothing had changed. No reporters paid him a visit for additional questions. There were no passionate readers with nothing better to do than call up the company to see if Na actually worked there. So that was that. Though Na had lost two days’ worth of fares, his day-to-day life didn’t change a whole lot. But then. . . .

But then why did Detective Choi search out Na in the waiting room of the taxi service and say a lot of things in front of the drivers? And why did he make the problem even more complicated?

Actually, before Detective Choi met with Na Bogmahn face-to-face, he had no idea who Na was, and neither did he even recall why he’d put Na’s name in his briefing folder. It was true that Detective Choi had gone searching for Na to apologise, to explain that he didn’t know what happened but that he was sorry, and that there was nothing to worry about and that all Na had to do was just concentrate on his driving. (Actually, Choi had gone looking for him wondering if he wasn’t somebody he used to know – maybe a schoolmate or someone like that). But after he caught a glimpse

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of Na Bogmahn’s face in the waiting room, the moment he remembered that this was that guy who’d come by blabbing about some kid he’d run over when Choi was going crazy with all the files he had to review, his mind changed in a heartbeat. The area around his shins where the Kwag had beaten him began aching. This may be why detective Choi ended up blurting out something like that in front of Na Bogmahn and all those other drivers.

‘Hey, did you see today’s paper?’

Detective Choi took out a cigarette from his leather jacket (it was spring but he wasn’t ready to put away the jumper just yet). Instead of answering, Na shook his head.

‘You’ll see when you read the paper, but we’re watching you very carefully right now.’

Detective Choi shoved his hand in his trouser pocket as he said this.

Behind Na, the taxi drivers began whispering amongst themselves, stealing glances at detective Choi. Their gaze only made him thrust his hand deeper into his pocket.

It’s hard to know what Na’s thought might have been at this time. For most people, a normal response would’ve been to say, at the very least, ‘What’s all this about, Officer. . . ?’ or ‘Where’s all this coming from?’ but Na just kept his head down without saying anything. Standing there in the position of ‘attention’, all he did was furtively squirm his toes a few times.

So that. . . . (Actually, Na’s attitude made the detective panic a little. Maybe he’s up to something after all? he thought briefly to himself.) Detective Choi didn’t have much else he could say.

‘You better behave from now on, you hear me? Don’t forget we’re watching you.’

Detective Choi gave Na’s shoulders a squeeze, whacked him on the shins for good measure, and left the waiting room. Na’s fellow drivers split like the Red Sea, giving the detective clear passage. After Choi was completely out of sight, they began whispering amongst themselves. What do you think he did? If it was in the paper, it’s got to be something serious, don’t you think? I always thought there was something off about him. You thought so too? They went on chattering like this. Not one of them went over to Na Bogmahn to talk to him as he sat on the floor of the waiting room, stroking his shin.

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There wasn’t any particular reason for this except that they were frightened.

The detective had said he’d be watching. . . .

The matter became increasingly complicated as more people were involved.

Soon things got so mixed up that you couldn’t even blame any specific person.

Lie on your stomach and listen.

We shift our attention to another problematic figure, Pak Byung-cheol.

Pak wasn’t so different from Na in his unluckiness, but in Pak’s case, he was one of those ‘loudmouths’ who thought his life’s mission was to stick his nose into other people’s business (like the UN Security Council) and blabbing about it. Since a fellow like this had entered the company around the same time as Na, and he happened to be the only guy who was chummy with Na, things could only get messier, swelling up like the debt from a private loan, or better yet, a bowl of ramen you made for yourself an hour ago but forget to eat for some reason.

The same with what happened that afternoon.

That afternoon when detective Choi came by and kicked Na in the shin, Na was summoned by the company’s manager to sit down for a heart-toheart. Only when Na’d sat down to talk did he realise his name appearing in the paper had nothing to do with his involvement in a traffic accident or his dishonest acquisition of a driver’s licence, but that it had something to do with a possible violation of the National Security Law. ‘Well, it’s not like they’ve handed down any rulings, so it’s not up to me to say anything to you but. . . .’ the manager said, tapping on the desk with his finger, while looking out the window.

‘I heard from others that you’ve been acting a bit strange the past few days. Apparently, you’ve been driving around quite a lot, but you are not making the daily payments for your runs so we’re docking your pay. . . .’

Na wanted to say, That’s not it actually, the truth is I can’t make a left turn, I hit a kid and I think that’s the reason, it’ll get better soon enough, I’m sure of it, and as for the accident, it was definitely that kid’s fault. . . . But Na didn’t say any of these things. . . . At the time, he was actually feeling pretty relieved. He’d thought he was in trouble because of the traffic offence, but it was just some National Security Law? The muscles in his body seemed

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to relax so that he felt suddenly all weak and had no energy to explain anything. (To him the term ‘National Security Law’ sounded strange and exotic, like ‘Papua New Guinea’ or ‘Costa Rica’ – names of distant countries that had nothing to do with him.) So he just went on listening to the manager jabbering on.

‘Anyway, we just don’t want you to bring any harm to our company, that’s all. If you’re involved with this case and get called here and there. . . . Well what can we do about that? You know how many people want to drive for us?’

After that, the manager rapped the top of the desk a few times with his knuckles and concluded the meeting. Na left the manager’s office with his head down. He felt briefly nauseous, but his mind was at peace. I thought it was some traffic offence, but it’s just the National Security Law. . . . There was no need to worry after all. . . . What a complete moron, you’re probably thinking, but. . . . But this is how Na went on thinking.

It was Pak Byung-cheol who wanted to explain the gravity of the situation more properly – no, with more grandiosity. Pak took Na’s hand when he’d just come out of the manager’s office shuffling his feet, and half-forced him to follow him to the maintenance shed behind the company building. Pak got up in his face, showing his tightened fist, saying, ‘It’s very impressive. I knew from the start you weren’t some average guy.’

At the time, Pak had grown out the hair behind his ears, flicking it up with some wax so that it looked like a serrated wheel. For some, the hair-style might’ve looked a little too greasy, a little overbearing. The scent of the wax hit Na in the gut. He stepped back, grimacing, and said, ‘What are you talking about?’

‘No, no, don’t worry about it. Do you know who you’re talking to, man?’

Pak scanned his surroundings and said, ‘I really don’t tell people this usually. . . . The truth is I’m an . . . Anti-American.’

Pak made a face and showed his clenched fist again. Na kept looking back and forth between Pak’s long hair and his fist. He went on feeling the churning in his stomach from the smell of the wax.

Pak was, in fact, an anti-American. He was a regular at a red-light district in Hakseong-dong by Wonju Station (he would go there roughly once a week. He’d frequented the place so much that, even though the concept of

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the Frequent Buyer’s Card hadn’t been invented yet, he got one out of every ten visits free.) It was here that Pak’s anti-American sentiment (to be more exact his ‘anti-black awareness’) had first blossomed.

‘When did you start going around with those people, eh? And you didn’t even tell me about it?’

Pak put a cigarette in his mouth and took out a folded newspaper. It was the regional paper where Na Bogmahn’s name had appeared. After reading the article over and over again in the restaurant, he’d secretively torn out the section and left. He was going to laminate it and give it to Na as a gift.

‘I’m not going around with anyone,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving now. I’m sleepy.’

Na rubbed the back of his neck and tried to walk away. Pak got in his path.

‘Come here, man. You’re such a stubborn bastard, you know that? You think you have the luxury to be sleepy? After pulling something that huge?’

‘What? You talking about that National Security Law thing too?’

Pak Byung-cheol just stood there stupefied, hearing Na talk like this about such a serious matter. Na’s nonchalant tone made him more anxious.

‘That’s not me. . . .’ Na went on. ‘It’s a mistake. Besides a traffic offence, what kind of trouble could we taxi drivers get into?’

He walked a few more steps after saying this. Pak grabbed him by the arm.

‘Fuckin’ hell, you don’t even know what the National Security Law is, do you?’ Pak said, looking into Na Bogmahn’s eyes. Na blinked a few times as he stared back at Pak, like a freshly awoken cow. Na slowly nodded, feeling himself shrouded in a strange sensation.

Why don’t you sip some coffee and listen.

What Pak told Na while sitting on a discarded tyre by the Safe Taxi Service maintenance shed was serious and shocking business. The gist of what he said is well known to us, but as the content passed through Pak’s mouth, it swelled disproportionately like a balloon and got all stretched out like the waistband of the underpants of a wrestler who’s just been dumped by his lover. What would come after all this swelling and stretching out?

Explosion, obviously. And severance. This is what Na’s situation had come to.

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He had already stepped firmly into a trap, so that from Pak Byung-cheol’s perspective, there was nothing else he could tell the guy beside passing on his speculations and exaggerations. If we’re going to have any complaints, we might’ve asked Pak to be more theatrical with his improv. For example, ‘You think we’re talking about some stupid traffic violation here? But you, man, you done raped the government. You slipped the government a roofie and went to town on the government’s ass, you get me? That’s what the National Security Law is about. Do you think a fine’s going to take care of that? Do you think the government is going to just say, “OK, we’re even”?’

Or something like, ‘People say, pulling off something like this, you can’t even get your pecker up, the repercussions are so terrifying. If they get you, it’s going to be a death sentence or life in prison, at least. But you got it up and went through with it! It’s actually quite remarkable.’

Or even something like, ‘Well the reason why this gets really problematic is . . . it’s almost like you raped the United States of America, you see. It’s like you molested an American girl. . . . That’s why this is such an issue.

How dare you feel up America. . . . That’s the case you’re implicated in, asshole.’

‘That’s not it,’ Na said, waving his hand, and he denied what Pak said, but his voice was shaking. ‘I didn’t feel up anyone, OK? I didn’t touch anything.’

‘Of course you didn’t. Maybe you were the look-out. Or you provided the getaway ride. Because that’s the suspicion you’re under.’

‘I’m not involved in it! Why would I help people I don’t even know?’

‘You don’t know Father Choi? The father who was living in that Catholic Cultural Center by the Pongsan-dong precinct?’

‘Father Choi?’

Na cocked his head, trying to recall the name. Was he someone who’d visited Na when he was still living in the House of Brotherhood? No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t place the name. Maybe the man had come by in the past. It was a place where countless people had come and gone.

‘Take a careful look at this. This is your name, isn’t it? Why won’t you look at the paper? I brought it over to give it to you.’

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Pak shoved the paper in Na’s face. Na Bogmahn pretended to read the newspaper. That was definitely his own name printed there. Those were the only letters he could make out.

‘I really . . . I don’t know these people. . . .’

‘Don’t worry, man. You’re looking at Pak Byung-cheol here. I won’t tell anyone, so you can tell me. What did you do for them? What was your job, hmmm?’

‘No I really. . . .’

‘Fucking hell, man, if you didn’t do anything, why would you be in the paper? Why would that detective come by? You’re not going to tell your friend?’

‘That’s not it . . . I really don’t know. . . .’

Na looked as though he might burst into tears. He examined the paper more carefully. In the black-and-white photograph printed at the top of the page, a priest was smiling brightly, surrounded by detectives. Na had definitely never met or seen this man in his whole life.

‘You’re telling me you really don’t know this person?’

Na went on nodding his head silently. Honestly, Na wasn’t completely confident in his answer. Because he couldn’t read the names of the other people who appeared in the paper. He was bothered by a sense of unease that maybe among those other names was someone he did know. Sitting down next to Na, Pak put a cigarette in his mouth and felt the hair behind his ears. Then. . . .

Pak Byung-cheol said in a more serious voice, ‘Maybe you’re connected to these people in some way that you don’t even understand? Maybe they used you, or maybe they tried to frame you. Something like that?’

‘Use me?’

‘Yeah, if you really don’t know them, what other explanation is there?

That’s why the detectives didn’t arrest you straight away and said they were going to watch you. . . . Fuckin’ hell, that’s gotta be it.’

Pak took the cigarette out of his mouth and made a fist again. He shut his lips tight and shook his head a few times.

‘How would they even know about me?’

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‘Hey, did you maybe give a ride to someone going in that direction? Even if it wasn’t the Catholic Cultural Center. You didn’t see anyone suspicious?

Nobody said anything weird? Or asked you to do something for them?’

‘Well. . . . The thing is. . . . It’s not like I remember the faces of all the customers. . . .’

‘Think carefully, man. If you can remember something, then they might make a deal.’

Na took out a cigarette from his shirt pocket and put it in his mouth. A few faces did come to mind, but he could not place who was who, where they’d got on and where they’d been going. Now he felt even more uneasy.

‘Hey listen. . . .’

When Pak flicked his cigarette butt towards the back of the maintenance shed, Na asked him, ‘If I didn’t know who they were and gave them a ride, is that a crime? I really never gave anyone like that a ride on purpose!’ Na went on talking, slapping his own chest with the hand holding the cigarette.

‘I even made sure everyone paid up.’

‘You don’t get it, do you? That’s why I’m telling you to read the paper carefully. Look at this boiler guy. You think he knew anything about what those kids were up to when he was keeping that place warm? What would he know about those kids when he was delivering blankets? With something like this, if you’re even the slightest involved, it’s the end for you. If you bump into their shoulder, you’ve already committed a crime. That’s why I’m telling you this thing’s much scarier than some traffic offence. There’s no such thing as “conscious involvement by both parties”.’

Na inhaled the cigarette and exhaled. He felt wronged. More than this feeling of having been wronged, he felt afraid. This was more so because he didn’t understand the crime itself. To him, this was definitely beyond the realm of ‘known’ crimes. This was a kind of sorcery, where worrying about one thing turned into having to worry about everything, and one source of fear was now connected to dozens of other frightening things. He was finally caught in the snare.

‘What am I going to do now?’

Na buried his face between his knees. Sunhee’s face flitted by. If he explained his situation to her. . . . Would she ever sleep with him again. . . ?

This was Na’s thought, even amidst all this. It made him a little more sad.

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‘Listen,’ Pak Byung-cheol said in a low voice, looking around. ‘There’s still hope. The detectives didn’t arrest you right away and said they were watching you. This means there’s a possibility that someone will come for you. Someone might have left something with you without you even realising it. . . . The detective might be watching for the right moment to strike. We have to figure out what that is, first. If we find out something incriminating first and turn it over to the detectives, you’ll be considered innocent.’

Pak’s heart was beating fast. It seemed that he’d been embroiled in some tremendous case (something definitely big enough to appear in the paper) and he was the only person who could resolve it. In his whole life he’d never experienced something like this. . . . The case had nothing to do with him, but it made him excited as if it were his own business. Even then, Pak couldn’t have anticipated all the terrible things that would follow because of him. Even if he’d brought all of it upon himself.

Three months after that day, on a Saturday morning, Pak Byung-cheol was found murdered.

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Poetry

Chiang Yomei

Chiang Yomei

Koan When light strikes the point of reflection everything falls into place: you and I are no more there is only one space loose yet confined empty yet full.

I am that space as are you.

We are the same event.

Together we are a trillion particles of gold reflecting one another shimmering in our nakedness meeting and parting forever counter-transmuting.

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Chiang Yomei

In This Deserted Part of Your Heart In this deserted part of your heart I will wait for you You must descend as I have into these shadowlands We shall meet at the familiar place and ascend together like new-born phoenixes towards the sun In an instant we will know everything for in the falling we were born of each other to be two yet One â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all mysteries undone.

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Poetry

Mandala From the point of view of autumn: the harsh blade of winter cuts mercilessly into its fragile heart littering the earth with the season’s bones From the point of view of winter: it no longer boasts the easy innocence of spring Yet the seasons wash into one another with knowing grace; they become one sacred wave rising like a serpent into the sky ready to swallow itself to be renewed again and again.

‘Koan’, ‘In This Deserted Part of Your Heart’, ‘Mandala’ appear in In Vishnu’s Dream, published by INK Literary Monthly Publishing.

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The Memsahib and the Panther: Being a Humble Beater’s Notes on a Shikar The Memsahib Deepa and the Anappar Panther a : Being a Humble Beat er’s Not es on a Shikar

Deepa Anappara

1 The Thieving Outsiders – A Temperamental Memsahib – The Dog-Lifter – Another Narrow Escape – More Than a Talisman

I

n the summer of 1875, exactly a year after my wife died, an English hunting party set up camp by our village in the Satpuras. I was twenty years old, and woke up each day hoping it would be my last. My parents thought me mad. Every year, all across the hills, people died of ailments for which we had no names. We buried our dead, and then we forgot about them. But I could not forget. My fingers were still stained yellow from the turmeric my wife had applied on her skin; I heard the clatter of her bangles as I ploughed the landlord’s fields. Men whispered as I passed them, and plotted exorcisms with my parents. I took to walking on tracks that had known only the hooves of deer; I learnt to summon clouds of quiet in my head that softened the shrillness of other people’s voices. Then the English arrived and I made up my mind to leave with them.

Twenty-two years have passed since then, but how dreadful this confession sounds even now. If I kept it cooped up inside my chest all these years, it was because I was ashamed of it. But now I look at the smooth scar that curves like a panther’s tail on the back of my right hand; I think of my elder brother who has laid himself open to penalty by calling for a rebellion to

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oust the English from our hills; and I know the time has come for this story of a hunt to be told.

I first visited the hunting camp with my brother. Lakhan was never one for propriety, and he was not concerned that I avoided others or had no wish to remarry or have children of my own. For this reason, I did not mind his company.

The camp was in a vast clearing on the outskirts of our village, edging the forest. The English had sent their men ahead to get it ready. The shadowy figures of their servants flitted around in the yellow evening light, sprinkling water on the ground to stop dust from rising and scything the dry grass around the clearing. Heaped high on one side of the camp, waiting to be fitted inside the tents, were beds and chest of drawers that bearers must have carried there on their heads. There were tables too, and on them lay chessboards and cards for the afternoons when the sun would scorch the pallid skin of the English if they were to step outside.

The crimson in the sky was beginning to fade by the time the servants started to pitch the palatial tents. Other villagers came to watch them. I bridled at the crowd, the stench of sweat and tobacco, and the high-pitched eagerness in the chatter of men that was louder than the squawking of birds returning to their nests.

‘The Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, William Mackenzie, is coming,’ the village headman told us. ‘What an honour this is for our village.’

‘Why is it an honour?’ Lakhan wanted to know.

The headman looked at him with sadness. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘I’m planning to burn down the camp,’ Lakhan said, and laughed. The headman coughed nervously, or perhaps it was me.

‘You should take him home,’ the headman told me. ‘You can hear, can’t you?’ he asked, pointing at his left ear and raising his voice. ‘Or have you gone deaf too?’

I did not care for this man but he was right. My brother was, even then, bitter about the English and the plainsmen they had brought to our hills.

At every clan gathering, Lakhan would speak of how they had grabbed our

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land and made us tenants. He had a way of making us listen. His voice would drop and the air would crackle as if expecting lightning. We would lean forward so that we could hear him better, and then, just as we were on the verge of giving up, he would roar: ‘Our teak trees are only timber for the English, our animals mere trophies for their contingents that turn up every summer with shikaris and cooks.’ As I write these words, I am struck by his prescience. He knew, over two decades ago, that the actions of the English would result in the famine that now forces mothers to sell their children, and fathers to fling themselves off cliffs so that death will be swift.

In those days, however, I did not want Lakhan to speak so freely. Unlike me, he had a wife who was besotted with him, three children and a fourth on the way. I led Lakhan back to our village, considering how best to approach the commissioner’s servants. I wanted to find out from them if I too could secure work in the commissioner’s office or residence. With the English I had learnt at an evening class run by a missionary, I fancied myself fit for the city. Then I remembered the pot of mahua I had secreted behind a pile of logs in the hut that I shared with my parents.

I eventually made my way back to the camp with the mahua. Other villagers had gone home by then. A moon rose ghostly and white above the dark outlines of leafless trees. Four white tents had been pitched in the centre of the clearing. Some of the commissioner’s servants were sitting in front of the tents, throwing kindling into a fire, talking or kneading their legs.

Others rested their heads on their sacks, their faces turned up to the stars.

There must have been fifteen or twenty men; I did not count. They looked up nervously and raised their lanterns when they heard a rustling in the forest, or the plaintive wail of a peacock in the distance. I announced my presence loudly to a man I guessed was the cook, as he was sifting stones from a bowl of rice or lentils.

‘Mahua,’ I said, and lifted the clay pot so that he could see it. ‘From the headman.’

He called me over and, to my relief, fell upon the mahua with great enthusiasm. After taking a couple of sips, he passed the pot around and soon the men seemed to forget about me. Their tongues loosened by the liquor, they started gossiping about their employers, the commissioner and his sister, Mary.

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‘Did you hear,’ the cook said, giggling, ‘last week, the memsahib flung a mug of hot water at punkawallah Ramu? He fell asleep while fanning her.’

‘Remember the time a woman came looking for work as an ayah?’ a man asked, as a swarm of insects threw themselves into the fire. ‘She said, “I’ve heard that you flog your servants, and I would like to assure you, I don’t mind being flogged at all.” How red the memsahib’s face turned then!’

‘The woman thought the memsahib had given birth to a boy,’ the cook said.

‘Our memsahib and a baby? She’ll spend all her life with her brother,’ a man said, and everyone agreed that their memsahib was more devoted to the commissioner than a wife or a mother could have been. She had left England to be with him when he was posted to the Central Provinces five summers ago, but the men said she still behaved as if she had just stepped off the ship at Calcutta.

I listened to them talk for an hour or more, after which they started to fall asleep, under the glazed eye of the moon. I had not sought or procured employment, but I had spent several hours without thinking about my wife.

It was not a matter of surprise then that I returned to the camp the next evening, after a day of working in the fields. The English had installed themselves in their tents by that hour, so there was no question of repeating my mahua trick. Instead, I climbed a mango tree several feet away that faced the camp and stretched myself on a thick branch. A kitchen had been set up to the left of the camp, and I could see the cook and his helpers stirring pots of various sizes on wood fires.

An owl hooted somewhere above me. The memsahib came out of her tent, wiping her forehead with her handkerchief. She was a frail woman whose full-sleeved shirt and long, thick skirt seemed to have been made for the coldest winter night. The foul expression on her face suggested that she was strained by the summer heat or flies. Her obvious discomfort made me wonder if she had been confined under a mosquito net in her brother’s official residence all these years, curtains drawn over the windows, rush mats on the floor sprayed with water to keep the rooms cool.

Circling her feet was a white, fleecy dog that barked loudly at the slightest sound from the forest. She bent down often to stroke its head. I hoped to witness the antics that the servants had mentioned, but the memsahib and

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the commissioner, who joined her later, did not do anything out of the ordinary. They sat on the chairs set out in front of the tents and talked. The memsahib occasionally cooed to the dog and scratched behind its ears.

When darkness swooped down, the servants lit a fire by their chairs. Bright lanterns swung from poles, casting dancing shadows on the tents.

I had only meant to stay for an hour or two but I fell asleep in the tree.

A nightjar chanted in my ear sometime afterwards, waking me up. At the camp, the lanterns had been snuffed out and the fire was dying. Next to it, two sentries slept sitting up on their master’s chairs, chins slumped on their chests.

My legs were cramped from having sat in the same position for long. I was about to climb down when I saw a panther steal into the memsahib’s tent and pad out, almost immediately, with the memsahib’s dog between its teeth. The panther’s black coat glistened in the moonlight and its sickle-shaped tail dipped and rose as it skirted the still-sleeping sentries. The dog whimpered between the panther’s jaws.

A warm gust wove through the forest and the trees shuddered. I tightened my grip around the tree trunk, and the rough ridges on its bark splintered under my fingers. One shout from me would have sufficed to alert the sentries, but I found that my jaw was locked. Perhaps it was because I could not think of a reason to explain my presence. Perhaps it was because I did not care much for the dog, a creature so small and noisy it should never have been brought along on a hunt.

The panther disappeared into the blackness of the night. I shook the leaves out of my hair and slid down the tree, disturbing a troop of monkeys that lingered close to the camp to steal food. Their alarm calls masked the sound of my feet.

I said a prayer for the dog. It could easily have been me. It should have been me. In this forest, no one’s neck was more on the line than an unarmed man on foot, with neither elephants nor carriages at his command.

I touched the amulet that I always carried, a small metal box containing a tiger’s bristle that my wife had found in a bazaar as a child. Soon after we were married, she made me promise that I would not leave the house without it. If a man was as indifferent to life as I claimed to be, he would have set the box aside, but I could not bring myself to dishonour her wish

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or memory. It had been far easier for me to ignore her when she was alive.

I was embarrassed to admit it then, but I can say it now, when my hair is turning white and my teeth are falling out and I cannot walk for an hour without pain nipping at my knees.

2 An Evening at the Hut – Visitors at the Camp – The Sad Fate of a Goat – A Shot in the Dark

The day after the panther’s raid, I kept to myself in the kodo fields, pulling up weeds as the coarse millet stalks scratched against my legs. I did not tell anyone about what I had witnessed. When I went home that evening, I found my brother and my sister-in-law there, talking to my parents about the memsahib’s dog. They had learnt about its demise from the commissioner’s servants, who visited the village each day to replenish the camp’s supplies of eggs and milk.

‘A tiger took on the English,’ Lakhan told my father. ‘Its fangs were as long as an elephant’s tusk.’

‘Tiger, tiger, tiger,’ his children shouted, and my sister-in-law clouted her daughter on the head.

They were too engrossed in the story to notice me, so I slipped to the back of the hut and tossed a few mango stones into the pigsty. I watched the pigs suck the flesh from the stones and tried to disregard the sounds made by Lakhan’s children. Babies arrived in his wife’s womb every year with the certainty of mango trees blossoming in spring. To this fact I attributed my neglect of his children. On reflection, though, it was more likely due to the pails of the village healer’s bitter potion that my wife and I had had to consume to rid us of our barrenness. We had rowed often about the inefficacy of the medicines and, more than once, I had told her in anger that I would take another woman as my wife.

‘Here you are,’ Lakhan said, striding purposefully towards me with his pouch of dried tobacco leaves. He offered me a pipe made from a hollow bamboo stalk and we shared a smoke, watching the pigs snort and wallow

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in the dust. He was working as a logger then, and he resented it. I remember he had a long gash across his shoulder blade that day, which his wife had dressed with green paste. I had stopped asking him about his wounds; he always said the trees were punishing him for what he was doing to them.

‘Did you hear about the tiger?’ Lakhan asked.

I nodded.

‘We should learn from these animals,’ he said. ‘If we were half as clever as that tiger – we would have thrown out the English by now.’

‘You should stop talking like this,’ I said, flicking away the tobacco ash that had fallen on my waistcloth. I worried that Lakhan would be tried for treason; no doubt this charge will fall on us now, but at least his children are old enough to take care of themselves and their mother.

‘How long can we keep quiet?’ Lakhan asked. ‘What is everyone waiting for?’

‘We are not equipped to fight the English,’ I said. They had formidable firearms and we had fletched arrows and bamboo-twine bowstrings.

‘How many of us are there?’ Lakhan asked. ‘They cannot kill everyone.

Who will wash their clothes and pack their trunks?’

I did not want to encourage this conversation, so I made my way to the front of the hut. Lakhan came along with me. My mother was feeding gruel to Lakhan’s children. His daughter ran up to me, clung to my knees, and smiled up at me. White pieces of a twig that she had been chewing were caught in the gaps between her front teeth. I felt as if a shard of metal were pressing against my neck, slowly slickening with my blood. I could not look at her without thinking of the children my wife wanted to have. Bending down, I gently loosened her hold on me and hurried out of the front yard.

Another day of oppressive sunshine had given way to a warm evening thick with the musky scent of mahua flowers. With a stick, I prodded a snakeskin away from my feet. I walked until I heard the whine of knives being sharpened and the thwack of wood being chopped.

I clambered up my mango tree. The commissioner and his sister had visitors, two men attired in the red coats of soldiers. They occupied the chairs on which the sentries had slept the night before, and I wondered if they could still see the tracks of the panther on the ground. The memsahib, as far as I could discern from my hiding place, looked composed. A rifle

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leaned against her chair and, occasionally, she reached for it as if to reassure herself that it was still there. She did not speak much, but seemed to listen to the visitors intently, leaning forward from time to time, and smiling when the men laughed.

The bright orange of the sky was slowly growing dim. To the right of the camp, close to the commissioner’s tent, a group of servants were on their hands and knees, curing the skin of a mongoose that the commissioner must have shot earlier. With knives, they scraped off the remnants of flesh from the skin and rubbed it with wood ash and burnt alum. The commissioner must have been a poor shot if a mongoose was all that he had bagged.

I thought of my father, whose hunting skills had been so precise in his youth that his arrow could have pierced the eye of a fish darting through muddy water.

The bleat of a goat made me cast my eyes to the left of the camp. The animal was tied to a pole, and chomped on leaves in the no man’s land between the clearing and the forest, beyond the kitchen. I realised that the luckless goat was meant to lure the panther.

Night fell in an instant. The camp was well-lit but even then the memsahib got up several times to check on the goat. She was wearing a khaki skirt and a full-sleeved jacket with its white collars fastened tightly around her neck. Each time she stood up there was a flash of skin just above her knee, where her long socks ended.

When the cook had finished preparing dinner, she led her visitors and her brother into one of the tents. A procession of servants entered and left the tent with bowls and plates. Then a servant started shouting frantically, and the English rushed outside. In the distance, I glimpsed what seemed to be a phantom in the shape of a panther. The goat looked up, and then, foolishly or valiantly, continued to eat. The memsahib picked up the rifle that had been leaning against the chair and edged towards the camp’s makeshift kitchen, where black smoke was rising from burning wood. The men stayed behind, though I heard the commissioner shout frantically: ‘Mary, Mary, wait!’

I could not decide whom to watch – the goat or the memsahib – but the second my eyes were on her, the panther burst out of the forest, a fact I realised only from the sound of gunfire. The servants, who had scattered by

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then, dived to the ground, hands covering their ears. The bullets raised a cloud of dust. Birds flew shrieking into the sky and the forest rippled with the cries of animals.

When the dust settled, the goat was gone, and so was the panther. The pole to which the goat had been tethered lay on the ground along with a length of rope. The memsahib stamped her feet and kicked a pot that promptly overturned, spilling water on the ground. She turned around, saw the men watching her, and lowered her rifle. In that brief moment, she reminded me of my wife, though my wife was more considerate than the memsahib, and certainly more beautiful. But she too had a temper. Once, armed only with a sling and a stone, she had killed a jackal that had taken to stealing her chickens from the coop at night. After her death, I sacrificed her chickens so that her spirit would find peace, but perhaps I irritated her instead by killing her pets.

That night, in the forest, I asked my wife for a sign that she was not displeased, be it through a tap on my shoulder, a falling star in the sky, or the clink of her anklets. But all was quiet. I went home and slept. All night I dreamt of panthers.

3 A Shikari in Our Village – Contrast Between English and Tribal Hunting – The True Nature of the English – The Beat

The next evening, a couple of boys sent by the headman knocked on the door of our hut and mumbled that all the young men in the village had been asked to assemble by the sacred tree under which we honoured our dead with memorials carved on stone. Lakhan was among the men waiting under the tree, and I sidled next to him. In front of us stood the headman and Commissioner Mackenzie’s shikari, dressed like an Englishman in a shirt and grey trousers. I learnt soon that we had been gathered for the shikari’s benefit: he wanted to hire beaters, young men who could shin up a tree in seconds should the need arise. Our task would be to beat out of the forest the panther that had been raiding the English camp.

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The shikari leaned forward to peer into the faces of those who stood closest to him and said, ‘I followed the panther’s tracks into the forest and found blood. The memsahib put a bullet in its leg yesterday. Soon it will be too weak to hunt.’ He paused to make sure we were listening closely.

‘Then it will attack your cattle, your chicken, your pigs, your . . .’ he raised his voice and pointed a finger at us ‘. . . children. Maybe even you.’

Man-eating animals were rare but not so rare that we did not remember what it was like to have one roaming around our village at night. Fear, however, was not why most men agreed to be leased to the hunting party.

Rather, it was the thought of holding two warm annas in their closed palms at the end of the beat – four if the beat was successful – that made them jostle with each other, shout their names, and signal their impatience to be foot soldiers or bait goats, to be whatever creatures the English required them to be. As for myself, I joined because I was intrigued by the idea of watching the English hunt. I had never been on a beat before because my wife had been against it. Now there was no one to stop me.

Lakhan watched me with disdain. He alone did not join, though he needed the money more than I did. ‘Why would you help them ruin our forest?’ he asked, but then he seemed to remember that he made a living cutting down trees and added, ‘We do not need an extra four annas.’

The shikari asked us to be at the clearing well before dawn the next day: by 4.30, he said, as if we had a way to tell the exact time.

I was the first one at the camp in the morning, my feet damp with the dew on the grass. The sky was still dark, though the air was pungent with the scent of laburnum flowers. I decided to wait some distance away until the others arrived, and found a good seat in the dipping bough of a tree.

Crickets screeched in the forest and pots clattered at the camp.

The days were growing warmer, and the trees balder. Dry leaves came up to my ankles. I bent down and searched in the darkness for a stone. Finding one, I sat up to sharpen one end of a long stick that I had brought along for the beat.

My stick was my weapon. I needed neither a rifle nor a knife. I did not envy the English their guns. Their hunts were meticulously planned so as to shun uncertainty, the most rousing aspect of the sport. What thrill could be found in lying atop a machan affixed to the sturdiest of trees, waiting

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for hundreds of beaters to march through the forest, shouting and beating our drums? What skill lay in shooting an animal that then rushed out of the forest, frightened, confounded by our noise, into the very space where the English waited safely on their machans, guns ready to fire?

When our ancestors hunted in the forest, they had sought no help except from the gods they propitiated with flowers and chickens. They moved according to the wind so that the animals would not smell them. Their eyes were as sharp as those of hawks: they could spot the lone man ploughing on the shaved head of a hill or a twig on the forest floor bent by the hoof of a gaur. They waited for hours in silence for a deer to cross their path. In the forest, it had been an equal and honest fight between them and the animal.

I sharpened the end of my stick until it was as pointed as the tip of a spear. Then I tossed the stone into a bush where it made no more noise than an overripe fruit falling from a branch. It was then that I heard a peculiar sound. I got up to explore and encountered the most astonishing of sights â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the memsahib, sitting amidst the rotting leaves on the ground, her long grey skirt spread around her, blowing her nose loudly into her handkerchief, and examining the slime before folding the cloth and blowing her nose again.

I cleared my throat and discreetly stepped out of the undergrowth, not wishing to startle her. I did not presume to proffer sympathy or comfort but I thought she might ask me to fetch someone from the camp.

Instead, she screamed so loudly that I nearly lost my balance. I extended my hand to indicate that I meant no harm but it seemed to make her more fearful. She scooped up pebbles from the ground and threw them at my head, narrowly missing my eyes. I stumbled back through the bushes and away from her and, on touching my forehead, found a faint dot of blood on my fingertips. I decided to return home, but met others from the village who asked me why I was walking in the wrong direction. I did not want to offer them an explanation, so I went back with them to the clearing.

By then the sun was rising above the hills that cut through the forest. I was certain that the memsahib would spot me, but there was no cause to worry as a huge group had gathered at the clearing. Some of the men said they had forded brooks and rivers to be part of the beat. I could not see the

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shikari, but I could hear him complain that we were late. ‘Do you want the English to take us for sluggards?’ the village headman asked.

‘Silence!’ the shikari shouted, and the consequent lowering of voices made me realise how loudly the others had been jabbering. Flies buzzed in the air and hyenas cackled somewhere near us. In the distance, a sambar stamped its foot, signalling our presence to other deer tempted to graze near the village. A woodpecker flew in an undulating line above us, the dark sky lightening behind its wings.

The memsahib asked us to sit in orderly rows, in an ever-widening semi-circle. She looked composed, and not as if she had been crying only moments before. She had changed into a knee-length skirt and a green shirt, and on her head was a grey hat that looked like an inverted pot with a wide, circular brim. Behind her was a coolie holding her rifle and field glasses, standing in the servile position that Lakhan said our people always assumed in the presence of the English: back bent, shoulders stooped, head bowed.

With her eyebrows furrowed, she pointed at certain men and asked the shikari to send them home for being too old or too frail or, in one case, too short. I was in the last row and I lowered my head so that she would not spot me. The commissioner, who was by her side, seemed incapable of speech. After dismissing the men they perceived as weak, the English headed to their machans, the coolies carrying their rifles and bags.

The village headman gave each one of us a scrap of paper with the commissioner’s initials printed on it. After the beat, only men in possession of these tickets would be paid. I placed my ticket inside the box that held my amulet and tucked it into a corner of my waistcloth. The headman then handed out stout sticks to all the beaters. I declined – I was content with the one I had.

We waited for a signal that the English were in position. The shikari’s assistant told us the direction in which the beat would proceed, drawing a map in the air as if he expected his lines to be visible. Presently, a long whistle had us up on our feet. We started to rap our sticks against tree trunks and thumped the ground as we walked forward, advancing against the forest in the crescent shape of the moon. Already the sun was hot and the salt of sweat crusted on my dry lips.

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I cut through the branches as hare and deer ran out of the shrubbery in terror. Some of the beaters had brought drums, which they played with abandon. No two notes were the same, but the sound, enhanced by the rattle of our sticks, cast a spell that propelled us forward. The forest shook with the noises we made and with the alarm calls of animals and birds.

The clamour did not disturb me. Instead, my fingers twitched as if I were a hound eager to tear a carcass apart.

The shikariâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assistant, ensconced in a tree, shouted at us to spread out so that we would cover more of the forest. But most men stuck with each other, in groups of three or four, not because they were arrant cowards but because they had someone waiting for them back home. I lagged behind a group of men who worked in the same fields as I did. It had been a while since I had exchanged pleasantries with them, but now we were all brothers.

The panther snarled somewhere ahead of me. Some men staggered back as the growls grew louder but others marched forward as if determined to drive the animal out. Another roar and each man nudged his friend or neighbour, gesticulating that someone else should be in front. I pushed forward alongside a wiry man with a drum that he played brashly, all the while singing a song in his brittle voice. His verses were gibberish; he could well have been picking one line from a lewd song and another from a prayer.

The drummer and I came to the end of a treeline; other beaters were scattered through the forest. In front of us was a tussock where grass and yellow reeds grew long and wild, and the Englishâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s machans were on two banyan trees that overlooked it. The shikari was perched on a branch next to the commissioner while the memsahib sat by herself on a machan about thirty feet to the left, her feet dangling over its edge as if she were dipping her toes in a cool lake.

We were about to stamp through the grass when we heard the panther roar again, as if it might scalp each one of us. My hand reached for the amulet but I could not find it. Alarmed, I tugged so frantically at my waistcloth that it nearly came loose â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but it was clear to me that I had lost the box.

By now, every one of the beaters had climbed into a tree, except for me and the drummer, who sang in a low voice, swaying like a swing in the

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wind. The grass moved in front of us, and I knew then that my time had come.

Instead of lying down on the ground to welcome my fate, I turned to flee but stopped on account of the drummer. Fear had rendered him motionless. I tried to pull him away. The men in their trees shouted frantically. Monkeys barked, violently shaking branches. Dead leaves swirled around us. The panther broke through the grass and charged, its agility suggesting that the shikari had vastly exaggerated its injuries. With the sun in my eyes, all I could see was a dark-brown shape leaping towards me.

Holding my stick like a spear, I tried to ward it off, dancing first to the right and then to the left to baffle the animal. A sharp claw tore at my hand and I felt the dampness of blood between my fingers but no pain as yet, just a mild sting.

The English fired, despite the risks to our lives. Dust and grass rose up in the air. The panther disappeared back into the grass, and the shooting ceased.

To this day, a part of me feels ashamed that I survived such a grave risk while my wife died of a mere fever. On the day the illness began to possess her, she asked to rest, but I ordered her to do the household chores instead, so that her limbs might have reason to tire of a malady other than an imagined illness. She called me a brute and, in the argument that ensued, I told her to die and be done with it. I had not imagined that of all my ill-advised words, she would consider these worth heeding.

A moan that could only have come from a dying man alerted me to the sight of the drummer collapsed on the ground. He was clutching his right shoulder and his drum lay balanced on his stomach, rising and falling with his breath.

‘Dead,’ he shouted. ‘I’m dead.’

‘Is the man dead?’ I heard the memsahib ask from her machan.

Crouching low, I lifted the drummer’s head with my left hand. He winked at me and hissed, ‘Shh-hh, let me lie here.’

‘The commissioner will give you five rupees if you’re alive,’ the shikari shouted.

I could hear the grass moving and, afraid the panther would attack again, I encouraged the drummer to stand. But with surprising vigour he pushed

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me aside and pointed to his wound. I saw that the bullet had not lodged itself inside his flesh; it had only nicked his skin before hitting a tree trunk or the ground.

The shikari raised the reward to twenty, from where it galloped to forty, a sum the drummer considered equal to the value of his life, for he then stood up and leaned against me, the drum hanging loosely from its cord.

‘Come to the camp later and collect your reward,’ the shikari shouted.

‘Bring your ticket.’

The absurd turn of events made me smile for the first time in a year. At that very moment, the memsahib started to fire her gun again. We hastily concealed ourselves behind a tree, frightened that she was aiming at us. My wound began to hurt. When there was a lull in the shooting, I looked out and decided my eyes were deceiving me – the panther was climbing the memsahib’s tree. Her rifle seemed to be jammed. She was shaking it furiously, standing at the edge of the machan. The commissioner fired at the panther, but he missed what should have been an easy shot.

The animal clamped its teeth on the barrel of the memsahib’s gun and wrenched it so forcefully that she toppled down. The commissioner stood up on the machan, screaming, and made as if to get down, at which point the shikari restrained him with his hands locked around his chest. The panther sat on the machan, surveying us as if from its rightful home. Then it leapt to the ground and vanished into the forest.

The commissioner scrambled down and began to search for his sister in the grass.

‘Mary, Mary,’ he shouted, his timid voice stretched thin as a fraying rope.

The men in the trees descended too, albeit warily.

‘Good lord, are you all right?’ I heard the commissioner say to the memsahib, who was alive and well, if bruised. She looked bare and fragile without her hat but only anger was writ large in her face. Brushing the grass from her clothes, she asked, ‘Did you kill it by any chance?’

The commissioner shook his head. The memsahib’s eyes fell upon us beaters.

‘They were all over the jungle,’ she said, shaking her scratched fists at the shikari. ‘We won’t be paying your men for . . . for climbing trees. Monkeys would have been much more suitable for such a task.’

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Unable to grasp the conversation, the other men nodded their heads as if to share the memsahib’s grievance. I wondered how I had imagined that I might start my life anew by serving those like her. Here at least I was amongst my own kind, in the land where I was born, whose scent I could recognise from a speck of dust on a leaf, whose earth I could taste in the nectar sold in a bazaar five days and three mountains away. Lakhan was right. This forest belonged not to the English but to us, to the animals and the birds; it belonged to our dead, whose absence coated us like the yellow dust of flowers; whose lost dreams were inscribed on our skin like tattoos, whose names we swallowed when we wanted to call out to them because they no longer existed separate from us.

The beaters dispersed. With his arm around my neck for support, the drummer and I returned to the village. I felt certain that my wife had sent the panther to show me the error of my ways.

‘Twenty rupees and four annas each,’ the drummer said. ‘That is more than my earnings for a whole year.’

‘I cannot take what is owed to you,’ I said. Without my ticket, I would not be paid, but I was more worried about the amulet. I hoped to find it on our way home but I can say now that I did not. Perhaps I was not worthy of it. Perhaps the forest needed it more than I did.

That day our hands were red with blood and our feet sliced by stones and thorns. Still, the drummer found the strength to tap the skin of his drum with one hand. Leaves spun like dancers in the slanting light of the sun. We walked home to the soft beat of the drum, a sound as steady and pleasing as the heartbeat of my wife pulsing in my ears.

‘Did you see,’ I asked the drummer, ‘that the black panther is not black at all?’

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Next of Kin Next of Kin Sarah Vallance

Sarah Vallance

L

ife sometimes has a way of chewing you up and spitting you out. After eleven years in Singapore and Hong Kong, I made the curious decision to move back to Australia. I left my home in a seething metropolis for a new home in a sleepy seaside village, and my world shrank to the size of a postage stamp.

Pearl Beach is a pristine strip of coast nestled beside thick bushland, an hour and a half ’s drive north of Sydney. There is nothing here but a café, a general store, an upmarket restaurant with limited opening hours and a community hall offering seniors’ yoga, seniors’ stretching and seniors’ Pilates, depending on the day. The neighbouring beach towns offer little in the way of attractions, but each has a shop selling motorised scooters. Then there are the funeral parlours, each with slight variations on the same shopfront display: a vase of white flowers standing on a wooden coffin, set behind a wispy white curtain. I did not come here to die, but in the short time I have been here, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Like most introverts, I have low social needs. I did not realise this until I moved home, but I am someone who feels most comfortable in sprawling, crowded cities like Mumbai, Manila or Mexico City, where I can wander the streets in complete anonymity. Not so in Pearl Beach, where the sight of a stranger arouses alarm. ‘What is she doing here?’ I heard an elderly woman ask her companion as we passed each other in the street, days after I arrived. It was a good question.

I moved home at the age of fifty-one with a broken heart and a withering bank balance. It had been three years since my girlfriend had broken up

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with me, and I couldn’t seem to let her go. I had hung around too long, hoping she would change her mind. Finally, it struck me that our relationship was over, that she was never coming back. I took my three dogs and two cats to the vet for their rabies tests and started to organise my move home.

Twelve years earlier I had bought a beach house over the Internet. I rented it out while I was away, and paid off the mortgage. It was the only place I knew where I could live rent-free.

The house was in dire need of renovation. I had arranged for a new kitchen and bathroom to be installed before I left Hong Kong, but four weeks after the supposed finish date, I was still waiting on lights, a bath, a sink, an oven and a dishwasher. The floors had been sanded and polished but the house needed painting. I moved into the cabin at the rear of my garden, empty but for a bed, and spent a lot of time wondering why I seem to make the most important decisions in my life with the least amount of forethought.

In the absence of a better idea, I decided to wake each morning at six to paint the inside of my house. It would be another four weeks before my dogs and cats arrived from Hong Kong, and at least another six weeks before my furniture would be delivered. I had nothing else to do.

Every morning at eight o’clock, when the café opened, I wandered across the road dressed in the same pair of paint-splattered jeans and the same soiled T-shirt, and ordered muesli and two café lattes. For lunch I had ice cream and chocolate. Each evening I visited an Indian restaurant in a nearby town and ordered takeaway. I ate vegetable curry from a plastic box with a plastic fork, propped up on my bed in the cabin, under the glare of a long strip of fluorescent lighting. If this was home, it didn’t feel much like it.

The house had not been painted in decades. The walls soaked up four coats of paint and the scabby woodwork required a process of scraping, sanding, patching, more sanding, a coat of primer and three coats of oil paint. My task seemed endless. Then one day, when I’d almost finished the living room ceiling, I decided to put my mental health first and stop painting. Could I live in a house that was only partly painted? Of course I could. Painting taught me two important things. The first was that I am lazy by nature and, in spite of a fondness for grandiose plans, not a great ‘finisher’. I knew this already. The second was that to save time and effort

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in the future, one should always make use of drop-sheets when painting a room with freshly polished floorboards.

Four weeks alone in the cabin reminded me that I am scared of the dark.

The streetlights in Pearl Beach have been set out stingily, and from my bed in the cabin it was black outside. One of the things people like most about the neighbourhood is that the houses here do not have fences. I used to like the idea too, until I spent a month in that cabin and realised a drunk could have opened the flimsy lock on the sliding door with a toothpick. A fence might have slowed him down. From the hardware store I bought a small wrench and a large torch, and kept them beside my bed.

I had been gone a long time and I was unaccustomed to the sounds of the bush: the squabbling of possums and their strangulated hissing; the lashing of branches against my roof; and the silent procession to my front door of funnel-web spiders searching for a crack in the masonry through which they could squeeze and hop over towards my bed. Each night I heard something that sounded like a small Labrador walking across the roof of my cabin. Eventually, I summoned the courage to go outside with my torch.

The culprit was a bush turkey, a large charcoal-coloured bird with a yellow chest and a head that resembled an old manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s penis, sauntering up and down in search of food or somewhere to rest. Or maybe he was just trying to fuck with me.

No one had come to the airport to meet me when I landed in Sydney. I had told my mother and brother my arrival date but I hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t expected to see them. We had barely spoken in the eleven years I was gone. Our family had always felt like a broken plate, with my father and me on one side and my mother and brother on the other. After my fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s death some twenty years earlier, the gap between us had developed into a chasm. They had grown even closer, and I had let them be. Walking out into the arrivals hall, into the jaws of a city that was no longer my home, made me feel like turning around, marching back into the airport, and buying a ticket for the next flight out.

I caught a taxi to a serviced apartment in Zetland, a dingy suburb on the outskirts of the airport, and checked myself in for the night. Dinner was a squashed piece of almond cake I had kept from the plane and a bottle of water bought from a vending machine in the hallway outside my room.

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It was a strange homecoming. The next morning, I rented a car and drove up the coast.

I had visited Pearl Beach three times in my life before deciding to buy a house here. In twelve years, the value of the house had dropped sharply.

‘I’d be lucky to get my money back, wouldn’t I?’ I asked the estate agent when I went to collect the keys.

‘It’s been a bit flat here,’ he nodded.

I did not recognise my house. I had only been inside it once, and had no recollection of the layout of the place, or its size. I’d thought the garden was bigger, the house smaller. It was a ridiculous size for one person. It had too many bedrooms. Too much space. I had spent a long time purging myself of belongings so I could live in Hong Kong where space is at a premium.

Now I needed clutter to fill the void.

I visited the local pharmacy to buy an oral contraceptive. Not because I have been entertaining prospects of sex here – though it should be noted that I am not without options: one gentleman in his late seventies asked me if I would like to go for a bushwalk with him (he winked at the suggestion and squeezed my forearm), and an older gentlemen I met in the vegetable section at Woolworths invited me home to help him make tomato sauce – but because I have reached an age where without a dose of hormones each day to keep me balanced, my moods swing with a ferocity that frightens even me.

The pharmacist looked at me as though I had fallen from another planet and said, ‘You need a prescription for that.’

‘Not in Hong Kong, you don’t,’ I said. He rocked back on his heels and shot me a look that said, ‘Well tell someone who gives a shit.’

There was a doctor’s next door. I registered at the counter and the receptionist, who looked to be in her sixties, snapped at me and told me I needed to make an appointment. I was happy to wait, I said. All I needed was a prescription.

‘It doesn’t matter what you need,’ she hissed. ‘You still have to see a doctor.’

She glowered at me and asked how I liked to be addressed. Ms? Mrs? ‘Doctor, thank you,’ I said. I can’t recall the last time I used the honorific or even the last time I told anyone I had a PhD. But now, I wanted this woman, with her big blond hair and crumpled face, to call me Doctor. As soon as the word left my mouth, I realised my pettiness.

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Her tone changed instantly. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said.

And I wanted to lean across the counter and shout, ‘You should be, you rude bitch,’ because I had run out of my hormone pills and it had been five days since I had taken one and I was at risk of doing something rash.

‘And Doctor,’ she said, smiling, ‘can I ask for your next of kin?’

I looked at her and my mouth fell open.

The fact was I had no next of kin, or at least none with whom I had any kind of relationship. I had a brother to whom I never spoke and a mother I had seen four times in twelve years. I had no kin at all except a cousin who lived a twelve-hour drive away on the Sunshine Coast. We had seen each other once in twenty years. Every person I knew had a next of kin but me.

I had three dogs, two cats, and an ex-girlfriend I still loved who lived in Hong Kong. My closest friends were scattered around the world in Hong Kong, Singapore, Phnom Penh, Mexico City and Amsterdam.

‘I’m sorry,’ I ended up saying. ‘Can I get back to you? I don’t have my phone with me and I can’t remember anyone’s number.’

‘Of course, Doctor.’

In the twelve years I had been away from Sydney I had been a sloppy friend and kept in touch with only two people. One was weathering serious marital problems while his house was being renovated. He was setting up a business and had no free time at all. The other spent his days caring for his two young grandchildren. My life seemed to have taken a dogleg turn away from theirs, and I wondered if we still had anything in common.

At least I had the Internet. I could Skype with friends as often as I wanted.

Or so I thought. I was unaware that Internet coverage outside the big cities in Australia is extremely poor. After seven visits to the local Telstra store, begging for any kind of help they could offer me, I was told my best option would be to wait two years.

‘You should be fine by then,’ a young man, with a name badge that read ‘Chris’ above the words ‘It’s how we connect’, told me.

I cancelled my online subscription to the New York Times. And without the papers and magazines I used to read online, without Facebook, which I had always hated until I ended up alone and isolated and decided it wasn’t so bad after all, and without a means to communicate with my friends, my loneliness grew worse.

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I went ten days without having a single conversation with a human other than Brian, the checkout boy with the unusually small head at Woolworths who asked, ‘How’s your day?’ as he packed up my groceries. My only other conversations were with myself or with friends on the phone. I worried that I was starting to lose it.

My three dogs and two cats arrived from Hong Kong in two batches, a fortnight apart. Finally, I had company. For three dogs who had never known the sensation of grass underfoot, much less visited a beach, their new home was paradise. On their first visit to the beach, they stepped gingerly on the sand, sniffing it and looking at one another in surprise. Moments later, they were racing up and down the shoreline, dodging the waves, chasing after each other in huge loops. I had never seen them so happy. And from then on, their joy became mine. Until one evening, when I assembled them around me on the sofa and took up a pen and a piece of paper.

‘I need to show you something,’ I said. I drew a graph with two intersecting lines. I pointed to the rising, positively sloped line. ‘That’s your happiness here,’ I said, as they shuffled around me yawning, trying to get comfortable. ‘And that,’ I said, pointing to the descending, negatively sloped line, ‘is mine.’

The next morning one of my dogs tried to savage an elderly man riding past us on his bicycle. I apologised and explained that the dogs were skittish after their trip from Hong Kong and ten days in quarantine. Two nights later I found myself sitting opposite the same man in a restaurant that served ‘Burgers, Italian, Chinese, Thai, and Fish and Chips’. He seemed lonely – and old, lonely people gnaw at my soul. At eighty-two, he was thirty years my senior. Keen to manage his expectations, I had told him I was gay. He nodded, and I had given him an awkward shrug. Over dinner – some of the most disgusting food I can remember eating – it dawned on me that he had either misheard me or had no idea what ‘gay’ meant.

At lunch time the next day, I walked the dogs to the empty beach, sat on the sand, and watched the waves crash along the shoreline and retreat into the sea. How could I not be happy here? That evening the boyfriend of one of my oldest friends texted me from London. ‘You’re living the dream!’ he wrote. ‘Most people would kill to be doing what you’re doing.’

‘Most people,’ I said out loud.

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I decided to focus on the things I loved about being home. I loved bright blue skies: most days in Hong Kong, the sky is smothered by a thick, brown cloud. I loved fresh fruit and vegetables that had not spent months inside a deep freeze, or been coated in some pernicious pesticide that had long been banned in the developed world. I loved fresh seafood that had been caught in pristine waters, and buying milk that had an expiry date of one week instead of six months, and water I could drink from a tap. I loved living near a beach where my dogs could frolic and I could put my head underwater and not have to worry about meningitis. At Big Wave Bay in Hong Kong, a sign tells you whether the water quality is extremely poor, very poor or merely poor. And yet people still swim amid the plastic bags and drink cans, and the odd lump of human poo.

Twelve weeks have passed since I moved to Pearl Beach. It is winter now, and dark outside at five-thirty in the morning when my youngest dog, Scout, starts digging me out of bed for our first walk of the day. I throw on some clothes and trudge along behind her towards the beach, my other two dogs looking up at me wearily, wondering, as I do, why we couldn’t have spent another two hours in bed. We walk one length of the beach in darkness, guided by the stars, but as we turn to walk home, the sun begins to rise. The sky is smeared with crimson and orange. I stop and stare at the horizon, and I am reminded of why I dreamed of living here. It is paradise.

But coming home is hard when you’ve been gone so long.

Back at the house, I feed the dogs, feed the cats, make some toast and an espresso, and wander through the living room, inspecting the paintspeckled floorboards, marvelling at my stupidity in neglecting to use drop-sheets. A baby kookaburra perches on the railing of my balcony, a safe distance from the spot where Luca, my cat, lies sleeping in the sun. I reach for my phone to take a photo, but by the time I am close enough, the bird disappears. I make a second coffee and ease myself into the sliver of space my dogs have left me on the sofa. I turn to Scout and ask, ‘Well, what on earth are we going to do now?’

‘Next of Kin’ is included in the Afterness anthology (AfterParty Press, Hong Kong, 2016).

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Poetry

Lisa Rus s Spaar and Ravi Shankar

Lisa Russ Spaar and Ravi Shankar

Tempo Rubato Luminoso Con Moto or: Notes from The Field Guide of Post-Lapsarian Instruction The woodpecker’s catechism, doctrinal, drilling the house, is the discordance between thinking and thought, is the candelabra of your hand, there, effacing thought, is the clock’s cluck-clucking: What is the chief end of man?

Like egg whites into batter, each mammal brain furrowing folds in layers better to fit the foetal growth – rapid, bastular – leaving petroglyphs of spidery, chromosomal pictograms abraded deep into grooved walls for your someday senescent mind to decipher. Please, your hand again.

There. There, there. Another furrow of knowing.

What rule hath God given to direct us? Inklings, and so forth.

O, pileated hammerer of post, oak, rood, making feast of this attic dormer, what reason have you for saying so? Seconds eat seconds from your palm, another grain in the sand mandala the wind whisks,

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itself whittled raw by such unseen imminence that each shape pours from a glass to be absorbed.

A: You shall have no other gods. Q: What does this mean?

I have seen your body pendant with eon.

The desire-devoured story; the roof given wings.

There. Not there. Like silt and ash from consideration of fire, on fingertips the catechesis of the fossil bed.

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Poetry

Alvin Pang and Ravi Shankar

Alvin Pang and Ravi Shankar

All Tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ancestors Burnt-out taxis rust like lozenges on a tongue of rain, the road last travelled barely road, nearly desert now, parched coarse as a lunar surface, erasing the footprints of people whose ancestors once drank yakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s milk tea.

Prayer flags, hunting horns, folk remedies, a childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first toy on the broken counter, coins spilt unsmiling on the floor to oxidise coppery green in the ensuing years with a value far from intrinsic. If those relics store a certain ritual magic, a way of perceiving the world foreign to the wired generation, then to tap the trapped energies outwits time.

Time was, Grandpa says, the sea came all the way up here, where your uncle lost his faith to silence. Its ebb a breaking into form as of a canvas marred by paint to create another wholeness. Stained hours, fibrous days the span of sutures between bones of the skull

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glimpsed through teeming blood cells unsensed by microscope for millennia until an unschooled Dutch linen-draper stretched soda-lime glass in a flame to magnify a universe of corkscrewing cascading microbial creatures in a single drop of pond water.

See, we all came up, the way was time, says Grandpa wrapped in a blanket, gesticulating eyes turned inward, here, where faith lost silence, the shoreline abrades the ear. What do we know of time but its departures?

The fossil air stiffens into breeze, into heat, folds light over itself in waves, impossible to trace without smearing the instruments with agency. Particularising whatever will be.

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The Last Men The Last MenO Thiam Chin

O Thiam Chin

‘A

re you ready?’

Wee Kiong turns his body in the direction of the voice coming from the ceiling speakers, and then looks at the room-length mirror on the opposite wall. He does not say anything, so I have to: ‘Yes, we are.’

‘Please get ready. Number 36.’

We move into position, me behind Wee Kiong. He bends low, legs apart.

The sensors on us light up and begin clicking. Those embedded in us – the permanent ones – start ticking, the wiggle of worm-crawl under our skins.

It is not an unpleasant sensation; in fact, it is mildly sensual.

I prepare myself, using the lube. The air-con in the room dries it up quickly. I apply a dollop on Wee Kiong. His muscles clench, then relax.

‘OK?’ I ask. No response from Wee Kiong, though he lowers his chest to the steel bed. I proceed.

The cameras whirl around us, angling for a better capture. They move almost soundlessly, darting forward, retracting, hovering perfectly still in the air. I must be careful around them, to give them full, unobstructed views – I don’t want to have to redo the recording again and again to get it right.

One camera above, two under, one behind. The tracker on my chest clicks: heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory count, muscular reflexes. All the information is transmitted to the other side of the room, behind the wide mirror. I glance sideways at the mirror: who’s monitoring the session this morning – Ed or Henry?

‘Go slower.’ The voice again.

‘Like this?’ I lengthen my strokes, moving in slow motion.

‘Yes, affirmative.’

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I keep at it, my mind already straying. Wee Kiong barely moves or makes a sound. He’s having one of his moody spells; it will take a day or two for him to break out of it. There is nothing much I can do.

I move my hands down his back, which is already beaded with perspiration. His body is warm, tense. I regulate my breathing; I start to count backwards. I keep my thoughts simple, easy, loose. Focus, be here, you’re almost there. The waves surge inside me, building up, rising, cresting. My gut – a hollow of sounds, echoing. There, there, almost there.

‘Permission.’ I utter the words between breaths. The cameras click, hover nearer, alert, anticipative.

‘Granted.’

I let go. A tremble of spasms; my vision blackens, repossesses itself. Wee Kiong adjusts himself, loosening up. He looks back at me – his eyes wet, sorrowful – then turns away. The tracker whirrs, a phantom weight inside me, heavy, aching. The cameras flit across the room, station themselves in a row against the wall and enter an open chute.

Wee Kiong gets up, his pale chest flushed a ruddy pink, and shakes out his legs. He still possesses a lean, athletic built, fleshed out in firm edges and muscular lines, despite his age, forty-five. He looks at me looking at him.

The instructions come through the speakers.

‘Is everything OK?’ ‘Yup,’ I say, taking up the cue again.

‘Ready to go?’

‘Sure.’

The two doors slide open. We step through them separately.

In the sanitation room, the lab tech takes swipes of sample from my body: saliva from the back of my throat, sweat from my armpits, residual cum from the tip of my penis. He measures and clocks my stats. Under his breath, he hums a song, something raspy, something familiar. He passes me a small wet towel to wipe myself down. I clean up, step into a pair of clean shorts.

Henry enters the room, smiling. Twenty-three, a head of floppy dark hair, bespectacled, sonorous voice.

‘So how’s everything today?’ he says.

‘It’s OK, as usual. Are you on duty today?’ I ask.

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‘Yes, for the next two days.’

‘Great.’

‘How was the session this morning?’

‘It went well, I think.’

‘How’s Wee Kiong?’

‘Fine, I guess. I don’t know. Why?’ ‘He seems a bit off today, don’t you think?’

‘One of those days. We all have them, eh?’

‘I guess we do.’ Henry gives a polite laugh and picks up a screen-pad from the table, waiting for me to acknowledge.

‘Go ahead, shoot,’ I say.

Henry begins, rattling off the first question, one of fifty, a standard procedure after our daily sessions. The questions are the same and I have my replies ready. There are the yes-or-no questions, followed by the rating ones (scale of one to ten), and lastly, the ‘how do you feel?’ questions. I answer them as accurately as I can, rarely varying in my replies. Henry ticks off the questions, nods his head encouragingly. His eyes say: Go on, I’m listening, take your time.

I keep to the script, keep my voice steady, unhurried. I smile, look aside in deliberate moments of contemplation (timing it appropriately, sparingly), and return an answer. I’m not sure whether they have any use for my replies, but still I do what I have to do. My mind sometimes goes to Wee Kiong: what does he think of these Q&A sessions? What are his replies? The same all the time, or varied? Not that I’d be able to find out, in any case. Knowing him – the little I can grasp – over the past ten months, I’d have a better chance of extracting an extra dose of ClearLight after a session than a half-decent reply from him.

‘And we’re done here. Anything you want to add?’ Henry asks, placing the screen-pad face-down on the table. I shake my head, looking down at my hands.

‘OK then. Thank you for the replies, and for your time.’

Henry signals to the lab tech, who gives a thumbs-up.

‘Ready to receive?’ Henry asks.

‘Yup. Can I have, you know, an extra?’ I say.

Henry smiles, and replies without hesitation. ‘Sure, of course.’

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Another signal; the lab tech punches a key on the screen in front of him.

‘Thanks.’

Two sharp pulses of ClearLight stream into my body, obliterate everything. My body dissolves, loses its boundaries. No thoughts, just sensations: fluid, molten, vivifying. I gasp, cry out in agony/pleasure. I become nothing/everything; I snap alive: all that is in me shivers with glints of light, with possibilities.

And for as long as it lasts – and it never seems to last long enough – I’m all aglow, pure, invincible.

It has not always been only Wee Kiong and me. There were others – six of us in all – including Andrew, Wee Kiong’s lover, apparently – something I found out shortly before Andrew was terminated from the programme two months ago. There weren’t many of us left after the third – and final – purge, and we were rounded up and assigned to assist in research studies. Few of us resisted; those who did were put down immediately and quietly. The last purge had silenced us in many ways.

In the facility where we were housed there was little chance of interaction away from the daily sessions in the lab. We were each given a room, a sterile rat-box consisting of a steel bed, a foldable chair and a bathroom. Everything we needed was given daily: food, exercise, medicine. For meals, we ate alone, and at different times.

We were never told whom we would be with for our daily lab sessions – whether it would be just two of us, or three, or all of us together. At first, we were tentative, wary, but this arrangement had soon given way to a more comfortable – or, less awkward – familiarity. We soon grew accustomed to one another’s bodies, which of course made it easier for us to accomplish our assignments, though not without complications. Some weeks we were with the same person, going through the same drills, and then, out of the blue, we would be paired with a different person every day, for different sets of drills. Naturally, strong feelings sometimes arose but, as always, these were tamped down with a simple regime of drugs therapy. Highs and lows, troughs and peaks – they were all there in the numbers, screened and processed, in the stats and charts and graphs, our lives broken down into

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hard data. There was no room for other, lesser, frivolous things. Other needs – personal, intimate – were pushed aside, ignored.

Not everyone could endure the tedium of the tests; some fell apart rather quickly. Travis, the youngest of us at twenty-five, just out of university with an honours degree in social work, hanged himself with a bedsheet two months into the programme. Hee Chun, OD’ing on his meds, gave up three weeks later. And when it seemed everything was finally back to normal, Sebastian, a podiatrist in another life, broke the mirror in his room and slashed himself up. Where he went after that was anyone’s guess; it’s not something we chose to think about. And for the past four months or so, it had been just me, Wee Kiong and Andrew, rotating our roles, keeping at it. And now it’s just me and Wee Kiong. We tried not to talk about who was no longer with us; it would be unthinkable, unbearable.

Not every session is about getting into the sexual act; sometimes we are observed for other forms of intimacy: foreplay or kissing; sometimes cuddling. They want to observe the whole spectrum, the entire mix of acts and rituals and passions, in order to document everything fully in the name of science and posterity. We are, after all, the last of our kind.

‘Proceed when you’re ready,’ the voice says.

Today, we kiss. Wee Kiong and I move towards one another, locking lips.

He tastes of mint and coffee and something buttery. I brush against his teeth, his tongue; he pushes back, slipping his tongue into my mouth. My hands move up his chest, fondling. We kiss for five minutes or so, then break away. A hovering camera/sensor scans our faces, processes the early signs of arousal: pupil dilation, saliva secretion, increased air intake. My hand stays on his chest. Wee Kiong manages a smile, his eyes soft, dark orbs.

He seems better than yesterday, less pensive.

‘OK, please continue.’ We kiss for another five minutes. And the camera/ sensor scans again.

‘Feeling better today?’ I whisper.

‘Yes, much better,’ Wee Kiong says.

I nod without saying more. Conversations in the lab are monitored and recorded, along with any other sound we make during the sessions. Small talk, yes, but never anything too personal or probing. We may have lost our

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reserve in many things, but a direct, intimate chat in front of the cameras is still too much to handle. Who knows what it might lead to, or expose?

We turn our eyes to the two-way mirror; we know better than to risk it.

‘Again, when you’re ready.’

We kiss, but with less urgency now. Wee Kiong’s lips soften, turn pliable.

I move my hands across his back, stroking. My mind skips a few steps ahead of my consciousness, leaps, falters. Flesh meets imagination; a wild, lethal beast. I let it get away; I move to hide my erection. Wee Kiong senses the shift, a tilt of diversion, and adjusts to mask my discomfort. The camera clicks, registers, transmits.

A voice over the speakers: ‘That’s all for today, gentlemen.’

We split apart, await instructions. The doors open; we enter separate sanitation rooms. More swipes. A short Q&A. A burst of ClearLight. Then a shower and lunch: beef and mushroom risotto, pumpkin soup, brownie with a scoop of peppermint ice-cream. I eat quickly, mixing everything up.

Back in my room, I sit on the bed and masturbate. I come quickly; the images swirl in my head, muddled, furtive. I think about Wee Kiong, and about Andrew; the long sessions we have had as a pair or threesome. I try to remember whether it has been different with the both of them – the specific impressions, the exact feelings – how they are with me, or with each other. I can summon up the individual images and scenes, but the synapses to connect them are shorted, dead. What am I missing?

The warm buzz from ClearLight is gone. The fog lingers.

The next day, back in the lab, Wee Kiong is told to take the helm. We get into position Number 14. I lie back on the cold, metal table, hold my legs to my chest. The cameras whirr into place and station themselves beside us.

‘Ready when you are,’ the voice announces.

Wee Kiong edges towards me, holds the backs of my legs. He closes his eyes, straining with effort, his breathing deepening. He pushes against me several times, soft, dull prods. Nothing. I angle my body, tilting it slightly upwards. He tries, fails.

‘Is everything OK?’ The voice again.

‘Yes, yes,’ Wee Kiong says, and then looking at me, whispers: ‘I’m sorry.’

Lines crinkle the corners of his eyes.

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‘It’s OK. Take your time,’ I say.

I lube up, spread wider. A few more attempts; nothing. I offer to help, but Wee Kiong declines. He looks despondent, tired. I stare up at the horizontal pole-lights on the ceiling, trying not to blink; the white glare kills the vision in my eyes, temporarily blinding me. The lube dries on my skin, turns gummy. The cameras hover patiently, mechanical hummingbirds, clicking with anticipation. Wee Kiong fails again and slumps against me.

‘It’s OK,’ I say.

Then the voice: ‘Prepare to receive.’

A small drone flies out of the chute on the opposite wall towards Wee Kiong. He lifts his right arm; the drone lands, jabs a tiny shaft of light into him, returns to the chute. The veins on his arm thicken – dark green and blue – trailing up to his shoulder. A look of release ripples across Wee Kiong’s face; a grunt escapes from his mouth. A quick, sideways glance; the effect has kicked in: he’s hard. He puts his hands on the backs of my legs and penetrates me, pounding at a rapid pace. I gasp, grip the sides of the table, bearing the first rush of pain. The cameras record and transmit the images back to the control room.

I study Wee Kiong, planked against me, warm bursts of breath on my face. I lift my head, kiss him on the lips. He turns his gaze on me, puzzled.

I shut my eyes, distance myself. What’s real, what’s feigned – it’s hard to tell.

A fierce longing claws inside me, bucking madly. We prep ourselves for the end.

‘Permission,’ Wee Kiong says.

‘Granted.’

I watch the tide of expressions sweep across Wee Kiong’s face: scrunched up, frenzied, and then a long unfurling release. He pants hard, body still taut. I rest my hands on his waist, patting him lightly. He runs a hand through the stubble of his buzz-cut, palm wet with sweat. We get up, stretch our limbs, our actions involuntary, economical, not looking at each other.

The voice comes on through the speakers.

‘Ready?’ We nod and leave the lab.

At the Q&A, the same questions. This time, it’s Ed. Fine, angular features, almost feline; razor-thin brows, a low slow drawl. He smells of antiseptic

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this morning, as if he’s been scrubbed with alcohol and floor cleaner. His uniform is starched, form-fitting; his manners friendly, reserved. He crosses his legs when he sits, angled sideways, one foot dangling loosely. Since he has been with the programme from the start, we are at ease around him. I sometimes wonder about him too, but keep my views to myself; we have been told – publicly and officially – that our g-gene was eradicated after the first purge three years ago, that it’s next to impossible to find anyone with a g-gene in the general population now. All that deviates from the norm can now be corrected, rectified at the second trimester of pregnancy with a protein-fortified DNA vaccine; the treatment caught fire right from the start, with heavily-rotated public-service announcements on prime-time TV slots at the peak of the purge. Prices for the vaccine went through the roof in the first three weeks, giving rise to a thriving black market. Counterfeits mushroomed overnight, and that led to crackdowns and bans. Fear bred and spread, unchecked, wildly.

‘How was today’s session?’ Ed asks.

‘Good. Everything went well.’

Ed turns to read some lines of figures on his screen-pad, tilting the screen away from me. He looks at me.

‘Nothing else?’

‘No.’ ‘OK.’ He powers off the screen-pad, leans in, whispers: ‘Give him some time. He’s still coping.’

I hold the expression on my face, smiling, inscrutable. What does he know about Wee Kiong? What has Wee Kiong told him? Is it about Andrew?

He offers nothing more. I nod briefly, acknowledging him. Ed evens out his face, sinks back into his usual mode.

‘You’ve been doing great.’

‘Thanks.’

‘ClearLight?’

‘Yes. An extra?’

‘Sure.’

My mind lights up, a two-pulse explosion. The tight grip of sadness is no longer there – dissolved. I float, drift off; the borders merge – all

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brightness, seamless. Everything throbs; everything’s real. The moment holds for a long time. And then the slow dip, the crash.

The sadness returns, reasserts itself, stays.

Every month we went into the BlackBox – not unlike a coffin – for an hour.

It’s a room big enough for two grown men to sit or lie side by side, in complete darkness. And what we had to do in there was simple: talk. And as with everything we did, we knew every word we said would be recorded.

At the start, most of us chatted a little and took cat-naps. Sometimes, we let the other person talk, and murmured a response now and then in reassurance. Occasionally one of us would cry, and the other would reach out with a word or a touch of comfort. Sometimes we would simply lie there and pass the time in silence, listening to each other’s breathing.

Though we knew the conversations were monitored, it became less of an issue as time passed, when we saw that there were, apparently, no follow-ups or consequences to whatever we said or did in the BlackBox. In the dark, we were allowed a smidgen of freedom, or so we assumed. In the dark, we were left alone, mostly.

I have never been comfortable in the tight, confined space of the BlackBox, but the darkness is something I looked forward to. I kept my eyes wide open the whole time and pretended to be elsewhere – not in the world outside, which is no longer as I have known it, but somewhere beyond the visible eye – mine – where my mind, my thoughts, could finally have their firm, secure footing. However, the words I uttered aloud sometimes resounded in my ears, beating frantically like trapped, shrill creatures around me. Yes, I had my moments in the BlackBox. Everyone was different in the BlackBox, as if the dark gave each of us something – courage, assurance, security – to be who we could not be in front of one another, during our lab sessions, at the Q&As. Our bodies loosened, we softened our words, we spoke to each other with a tenderness that we could afford to summon up at times like this, only because we knew it was what we wanted or could offer. We learn of our deepest needs only when there’s no other choice, when everything else in our lives has deadended, come apart.

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Once, I was in the BlackBox with Hee Chun, the one who overdosed, and he told me about the life he’d had outside. In his early forties at the time, he had been an architect for fifteen years, and was once married (‘thankfully, there were no kids’). His wife had initiated the divorce (‘she hated that I was never really there in the marriage, always distracted, aloof, always finding excuses; she couldn’t bear it one more second’), but they had remained on cordial terms. He met his first boyfriend at a company function three months before the first purge. The man was a junior draftsman in the construction firm that oversaw the project that Hee Chun was responsible for – a three-storey conservation shophouse in Arab Street – and they had hit it off almost instantly. Imagine me, at my age, in love with a man ten years younger, he’d said, his voice trembling, breaking up. He asked the younger man to move in with him a week before the purge began; shortly after that the man was taken, and Hee Chun did not see him again.

‘You never know how things might turn out in the end, right? How things can quickly change? And there I thought I had all the time in the world to work everything out, to make this work somehow?’

Hee Chun let out a suppressed laugh then, and in the dark, I could sense him shaking his head. I put a gentle hand on him. He leant into my touch, sighing. We stayed like this till the end of the session, not talking, just drinking in the silence. Two weeks later, Hee Chun was gone.

Once a month, we are taken in for an individual review and assessment, conducted either by Ed or Henry. It’s held in one of the control labs with soft recessed lighting and wood panelling. There are reproductions of Rothko and Reinhardt on the walls, bright canvases of solid blocks and shapes, and I’d often turn to them when there was a lull in the conversations.

As in the other labs, there is a mirror that take up a large part of one of the walls, and it’s impossible not to see my own reflection wherever I turn in the room.

Since it’s just Wee Kiong and me now, the sessions are longer than usual, though it is hard to tell how much time it takes. One hour, they say, but somehow it always feels much longer than that. We do not wear watches or have any other means to tell time in here: there’s no need. We know it is night when the lights go out in our rooms, and morning when they come

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back on. We move through our daily schedules systematically, with time divided into one-hour blocks – manageable, bearable. On my part, I try not to think about time and its effects, though it can be hard when the language of time occasionally creeps in, from Ed, Henry or one of the lab techs: Monday, weekend, fortnight, three months, half a year.

‘How are you feeling this morning?’ Ed says.

‘Good, good.’

‘Everything going well?’

‘Best time of my life. Can’t complain.’

Ed laughs, a gargle of high-pitched yelps, then quickly restrains himself.

He nods and takes up his screen-pad. I glance at his long pale fingers, tapered like chopsticks, slender at the ends. I catch a whiff of his aftershave, and the deeper, more subtle tone of the moisturiser. I smile, leaning in. Ed straightens himself on the chair, recomposing his posture, sneaking a glance at the mirror.

‘OK then, let’s begin.’

‘Ready when you are.’

Unlike the Q&As conducted after our lab sessions, the questions asked during the review and assessment are more personal and open-ended, with many ‘how-do-you-feel’s and ‘what-do-you-think’s. In the earlier sessions, we were asked about our pasts, our histories, our beginnings. Some of us were generous, even candid, with our replies; other hesitated, beating around the bush and, even then, were reluctant to share beyond what they were comfortable about. I was reserved at the start, but slowly became more relaxed as time passed. I have said enough to last several lifetimes, I feel; what more would they want to know?

‘If it’s OK with you, I’d like to talk about Andrew,’ Ed says.

I flinch and stare at him. Where is this going? I muster a stiff smile, nod.

‘From what you told us in the last session, about the feelings you have.

For him,’ he adds.

‘Yes, what do you want to know?’

‘How do you feel now, now that he’s gone?’

‘Nothing. People come and go, nothing new.’

‘You seemed to have a much more intense feeling the last time we talked, if I remember correctly.’

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‘I was overreacting, as I always do. You know it’s in our blood, being overly dramatic.’

I laugh, make a face, going for levity. Ed smiles, as if in pity. I hold the smile, unable to let it go.

‘Do you feel sad?’

‘Sure, I think so.’

‘Do you still have strong feelings for him?’

‘Not really. Not as much now, I guess.’

‘Do you miss him?’

‘Yup, I do, of course.’

Ed scans my face for a while, looking for some signs that would tell him something more, something that he’s hoping to hear. I give him nothing.

‘Let’s move on. How do you feel about Wee Kiong?’

‘He’s OK. Pleasant, nice.’

‘Do you like him?’

‘Sure, I like him.’

‘How much do you like him?’

‘Sufficiently. I like him enough.’

Putting his screen-pad away, Ed moves his face closer to mine, knitting his brows.

‘You do know about Andrew and Wee Kiong, right? That they were a couple?’

‘Of course.’

‘And how do you feel about it, to know this?’

‘Happy for them.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘What else is there to feel?’

‘How do you feel knowing that Andrew liked him, and not you?’

‘Like it’s the story of my life, like the oldest story in the goddamn fucking world. I feel fine.’

I laugh, and throw all of myself into keeping that laugh. It sounds like something carved out from somewhere dark inside me. Ed watches me intently now, as if studying my every move, weighing each of my words. A hollowness rings in my ears. I come back to myself, shaken, defiant.

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‘You can’t force love on someone, can you? It’s there, or it’s not. You either feel for someone, or you don’t,’ I say.

‘There is more than one way to get that feeling of love. The correcting of imbalances in the body, different drug treatments, hormonal tweaks, even the regularity of sex – how many times you have it, and with whom. The kind of love you have is not natural at all; an anomaly, in fact. A blip in the system, so to speak. Yes, it’s highly irregular, unpredictable, but it can be induced, nurtured, controlled, and even measured. The love you feel is an internal flaw that can be eradicated, or at the very least, rectified. That’s what we’re doing: trying to understand it, to assess what went wrong, and to make appropriate modifications.’

‘I thought there were already vaccines to do all that?’

‘They are not always effective, not a hundred per cent anyway. There are now several mutations to the gene that are more resistant to these vaccines.

We inhibit them for as long as we can, but we can’t eradicate them completely, yet.’

‘Good luck with that, on getting rid of all of us.’

Ed smiles and turns back to his screen-pad, his fingers tapping silently.

I look away, turn to the mirror. I stare at the face looking straight at me, a stranger’s face. This is not me; this is not who I am.

‘I think that should be it for the day.’

I give a nod, not meeting his eyes.

‘ClearLight?’ he says.

‘Sure.’

In the BlackBox, we lie in silence, not touching. I can sense that Wee Kiong is awake, his eyes open in the dark. He has barely moved since we stepped in here.

‘Give yourself a break,’ he finally says.

‘What?’ I say.

‘From ClearLight.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You look a mess.’

‘Me, a mess? And you?’

‘What about me?’

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‘You don’t look so good yourself.’

‘It’s different.’

‘As if you can tell.’

‘I can. You look like shit right now, your eyes, your skin. Just stop taking it for a while. You don’t know what they put in there.’

‘It’s nothing. You also take it, right? Nothing wrong with you yet?’

‘I fucking hate it. It messes with the head, fucks it up.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It fucks with my head, that’s how. It’s not real, whatever we feel when we take it. It creates all this nonsense that’s not real, in our heads, don’t you know?’

‘So? What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with feeling a bit better? I mean, look around, look at us. What’s so wrong with feeling better, to feel like this is the best thing to ever happen to us, just for a moment, really?

I’ll take that rather than feel like shit all the time.’

Wee Kiong sinks back into himself, his short, agitated breaths leavening the air between us. I hold my tongue, quietly filing the rough edges of my outburst. A long drag of silence, before I speak.

‘I’m sorry about Andrew.’

‘OK.’ ‘I am, I’m really sorry.’

‘Nothing you can do about it. It’s over. He’s gone.’

‘If you need to. . . .’

‘No, no, don’t, just . . . enough.’

We leave it as it is; there seems to be no way to move forward. The sepulchral darkness of the BlackBox has never felt more oppressive, hemming me in. And I’ve never craved more for a hit of ClearLight.

The next day, we are told to get into Position Number 7. I bend over Wee Kiong, my face close to his. He holds my arms to adjust his hips, to grant me more room for movement. We start slowly, haltingly. The cameras hover near the lower halves of our bodies, recording.

‘Is this better?’ I say, slowing down.

‘Yeah,’ he says.

A voice from the speakers: ‘Please proceed to kiss.’

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I look at Wee Kiong, trying to read his expression. He lifts his head, brings his lips to mine. A camera starts clicking, inches from our faces.

‘Please proceed to fondle.’

Wee Kiong moves his hand over my chest, finds my nipple and rubs it.

I run my hand through the prickly stubble of his hair and nibble the edge of his ear. We move with economy, with efficacy; we stay the course.

At one point, I catch Wee Kiong’s eyes on me. A sphinx-like look, drawing me in – silent, arctic, familiar. What is it you want? I almost blurt out. He leans in, pressing his lips to mine. What are you doing? Why are you doing this?

‘Permission.’ I quicken my pace, building up.

‘Granted.’

Wee Kiong tightens his legs around my waist, gripping it. When I’m done, he holds my face to his chest, whispering. I sink into the heat of his body, heaving. When we move to get up from the steel bed, we avoid looking at each other, our movements brisk but bashful. When he leaves the room, I slow for half a second, watching his retreating figure, feeling an inexplicable pang in my gut.

At the Q&A, Henry is all business, running down the list of questions with a spry promptness. Halfway through, when he turns to address a query from the lab tech, I steal a glance at one of the virtual screens that is playing the session from multiple angles, in close-up. Figures float on the screen, in long lines of numbers, in percentages and rates. Looking at the bodies – our bodies – I feel only a strange sense of disconnectedness and fascination, as if I am watching parts of me from a different existence, severed from my current self. I watch my own face on the screen – eyes scrunched tight, deep creases on the forehead – barely recognising it.

Henry turns back and catches me watching the replay. He shifts the screen out of my line of sight.

‘We are still processing it. But it looks good, everything’s in order, the readings in line with our predictions. Did you enjoy the session today?’

‘It’s good, I think.’

Henry sneaks a quick glance at something on his screen-pad.

‘Just good?’

‘Yes.’

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He hesitates, and then says: ‘Well then, we’ll take your word for it.’

I wait for his last word: ‘ClearLight?’

‘Yes. Thanks.’

In the bright open space of my mind, I’m with Andrew, and we are back in the BlackBox. He has his arm over my shoulder and we are talking, his breath landing on my face like warm pulses of light. The soft words move around us, across our bodies, enter our skin.

In his words, there is a story, his past: a quiet, lonely childhood, the youngest child (two older brothers), lost his parents in his twenties, estranged from his siblings (both married), a language teacher in a special-education school, interests in wushu (specifically, changquan) and childhood psychology, two ex-lovers (incompatibility; infidelity), single for four years before the purge.

In return, I offer my own story: an only child, single-parent family (father missing from the start), star student from primary school to university (scholarships), software engineer in a games-development MNC, a history of alcoholism and depression (under control, no relapse), a long-forgotten succession of lovers through my twenties and thirties (experimental phase, later indifferent); and a mother who died from a heart seizure during the second purge, after I was taken.

The talk goes on, fluid, uninterrupted; the words slip easily from our mouths, like air, like breath. We bend our heads together; we whisper. The words build themselves up, into weaving strands of a bigger story, made flesh, beating alive. We give and give, as if it had always been in our nature to be kind, generous, compassionate. We hold back nothing; everything seems possible in the BlackBox – the hope and the yearning, the union, all seemingly within reach.

And then the darkening, the crash.

Andrew moves away, his mind withdrawn into itself. He pushes his body aside, draws back his arm, his leg. He barbs his words, all spikes and thorns: No, no, no, it’s impossible, it’s not you, it’s nothing, it’s someone else, no.

They won’t allow it. Not here, I say, bitterly.

You don’t know that.

They will find out.

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They won’t.

They will.

I told them in the end.

It’s been another month, and Wee Kiong and I are back in the BlackBox. We’ve had a morning session, and I’m feeling a little sore. I try not to move around too much in the dark space, to keep my body tight, compact.

‘Have you ever thought about why we were chosen? For this?’ Wee Kiong asks.

‘All the time, in the beginning. Not so much now,’ I say.

‘Why?’ ‘No point thinking about it. It doesn’t make any difference.’

‘It doesn’t bother you?’

‘Which part? Why we are chosen, or knowing that it doesn’t make a difference?’

‘Both.’

‘I used to, every single moment, but all the speculation did nothing good in the end. They brought us here, they said it’s for scientific research, they said it’s for the greater good, for humanity. I don’t know, it all sound like BS to me. I never once believed it, but then, what does my belief have anything to do with everything that’s happened here? It means nothing – at least, nothing you and I can do anything about. They don’t care a rat’s arse about what happens to us, only what we can do for them in the name of science. We are only lab rats, to be used and discarded. We are nothing to them, only tools in their great scientific experiments.’

I draw in several deep, audible breaths, let the silence simmer between us, deepening.

‘What will happen to us after all this is done?’ Wee Kiong says, his voice breaking in.

‘I don’t know. I don’t even want to think about it.’

‘This can’t go on forever.’

‘It won’t.’

Something shifts between us then, something huge and intractable that each of us feels intensely but has no words to give it a form, a skin or

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anything visible or real to make it known. We hold our thoughts quiet, and the moment drains itself out.

‘I miss them,’ Wee Kiong says. ‘I miss Andrew.’

I close my eyes, say nothing.

The echo of his voice dies off, and then it’s just emptiness, darkness all around.

The next day, I’m alone in the lab, and the session that morning is cancelled, unexpectedly. No word on why or what happened. Later, during Q&A, I ask Ed, who’s on duty, for the reason.

‘Wee Kiong needs a break,’ he says.

‘A break?’ I eye him with doubt.

‘He needs to recover.’

‘From what? What’s going on?’ My voice raises in pitch, in alarm.

Ed keeps smiling, offers a shrug. He turns to his screen-pad.

‘What happened to him?’

‘He’s OK. He needs some time to rest.’

‘You’re not telling me anything. I want to know.’

‘Nothing to worry about, I assure you. He’s recovering.’

I rise from my seat, my body breaking out in shivers of rage, unsure of how to react. Two of the lab techs come closer, ready with their Taser-batons.

Ed gets up, puts a hand on my shoulder, looking unruffled.

‘Give him some time. He’ll be back to himself soon,’ he says.

He leaves his hand on me, holding it firmly in place with a fair amount of pressure. The initial burst of excitement seeps slowly out of me, fizzling out.

‘ClearLight?’ Ed says.

I do not acknowledge.

‘You’ll feel better.’

I hold still. Ed punches a button on his screen-pad.

The hit comes fast, full and inundating. A flood, a complete whiteout – and I’m suddenly floating, adrift, blissful. The light pulses and pulses, all gentleness, all sweetness. The air feels soft, kind, soothing. I see the faces before me – Travis, Hee Chun, Sebastian, Wee Kiong, Andrew – and they are looking at me and smiling and nodding their heads. I wave at them, and

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they draw nearer to me, holding out their hands, their bodies illuminated.

I hold out my hand in return and reach for a point of contact, stretching.

My body/mind leaps across the desert of space between us, bridging the distance. I’m here, this is me, don’t go.

I’m still reaching out when the light fades, turns into night.

The sessions for the rest of the week are subsequently cancelled. No news, otherwise, about Wee Kiong. Henry takes over the Q&A duties for the next few days, and he’s tight-lipped, not giving in to my requests for information.

He pushes away my questions evasively, sharply, as if they are emitting something foul and unpleasant, a terrible stench. He gives me extra hits of ClearLight without my asking for it.

In the dazzle of one of the hits, I see Andrew, in the BlackBox, our last time together, although I did not know it then. He is there, and I’m beside him, leaning into his body. He’s telling me about Wee Kiong, and in his words, there is a hint of something newly born, like hope, rising like fresh, tender buds from the dark soil. He feels it – this kindling sense of love – and he’s trying to find the right words. He’s breathless with the rush of emotions, his feelings – in this place, of all places, this shithole! Can you believe it?

I listen to everything he’s saying, but it hardly makes any sense. Only terrible sounds vibrating in the dark, tearing up the silence. My heart clenches and releases, clenches harder and harder. I swallow the bitterness that rises from the pit inside me; I bite down on the words, my own confession.

Now, through the shiny glare of ClearLight, I see this clearly, but there’s nothing left to feel. The words, the love, Andrew – the images and sounds surrendered to the air, falling like dust, blown away. There’s no sadness in what’s no longer there – only a blankness to fall into. The light, all bright, incandescent.

In another hit: I’m in Andrew, and he’s looking up at me, his eyes imploring, blazing. He says: Go gentle. And I go as tenderly as I can, feeling the all-too-familiar ache of love ticking into life inside me, beating senselessly, irresistibly. Stay with me, I’m here.

Permission, granted.

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Everything’s good. The light blinks, on and on, absolves.

All is good.

A week later, I’m taken back to the lab. Henry and Ed sit in front of me, their faces devoid of expression, hands on their screen-pads. They look at each other, nod their heads by way of acknowledgement, and Ed begins to speak. A fringe of hair falls across his smooth, unlined forehead as he leans forward, clearing his throat. I stare at him, slipping my hands under my legs on the chair, stilling them. Looking across at the wall-sized mirror behind them, I note my reflection, dead-pale, stony. I catch my own eyes, and quickly look away.

‘Firstly, we would like to thank you for your contribution to the programme. Your help has been invaluable and vital, and we have benefitted greatly from it. There are many things that we’ve learnt, things that have helped us to understand and deepen our knowledge of the diversity in nature and, of course, the diverse nature of life. We have been able to make so much progress only because of what you have generously offered – your efforts and commitment to this vision, to this common vision of a shared humanity. Without your help, and the help of your counterparts, we wouldn’t have come so far, or been able to take such a leap. And for that, we are truly appreciative.’

He pauses, watches my face for reaction. I move my eyes from him to Henry, who is nodding in agreement, and back again. I wait for him to continue.

‘Unfortunately, there has been an unforeseen circumstance that necessitates a temporary cessation of the programme. We’re resolving the issue now, and it may take some time before we can come up with a solution.

But as it is now, the situation is only temporary. Of that, we can assure you.’

‘What do you mean?’ I say.

‘It means that we have ceased the lab tests as of now, as well as the BlackBox sessions. We will still continue the personal assessments with you and also the rest of your regular health check-ups. There will be no disruption to those.’

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‘I don’t fucking care about that! I want to know what’s happened. Where’s Wee Kiong? What the fuck happened to him? Why are you not telling me?’

I say, rising from my chair.

Henry and Ed stand, their bodies suddenly rigid, their voices placating.

Ed places his hand on my shoulder, and I see a glimpse of something – pity? sadness? – skirt across his face.

‘Please calm down. Please,’ one says.

‘He’s no longer in the programme,’ the other adds.

As I ball my fist and swing it into one of their faces, I see, out of the corner of my eye, a rush of movements, the lab techs leaping into action, wielding Taser-batons. I see someone – Henry? – falling across the chairs, tumbling into a tangle of metal and flesh, the dry crunch of the punch pulsating in my ears. I leap onto the body, ram my fist repeatedly into the face, pulverising it. Hands reach out into the air, grabbing, tearing, weakening.

When the first blast-shot hits me, I’m already gone, slipped away. In the peephole of my mind, I see my hands, the swing and land of my punches – but I have no control over them: they go on, on their own volition. The shot reverberates through my body, throws me to the ground.

And then another shot, on my back.

The world dissolves.

I open my eyes and burn them in the harsh lights of the room – where am I? I open them slowly again, keeping them half-lidded; the light spikes into my retina, raising shadows and dancing smoke-wisps across my vision.

There are straps on my wrists and ankles, across my chest. My body flares into a cackle of fireworks when I try to move.

Someone moves in the room, approaches the bed, looms over me. The blots of colours, merging, coalesces into a face: Ed. ‘Hey,’ he says.

I close my eyes again.

‘Welcome back.’

I do not respond. A movement away from me, retreating. Ed pulls a chair near to the bed, sits heavily on it.

‘I’m sorry it had to come to this.’

The monitoring machines beside the bed hum. Ed clears his throat.

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‘I’m very sorry about Wee Kiong. We didn’t see him taking such a drastic turn. We know he had been depressed, but still. We didn’t foresee that he would. . . .’

A pause, a moment of hesitation.

‘We know how you feel about him. And Andrew, too. We know and we understand. I know it must be hard. . . .’

I drift under the fog of my stupor, move into its folds. The words hover above me, a muffle of sounds, as if I were hearing them from the depth of a sea, indecipherable, veiled. I fall deeper, and there are now faces before me, bodies suspended, outstretched. I know the faces, the names – I can’t call out to them – and still I fall. They watch in silence as I slip through them – ‘Once you’ve recovered, we will move you to the LivingCare Facility.

There, you will have everything you need: a flat of your own, 24/7 medical supervision, utilities, and amenities like therapy pools, a mini-library, even a games room. There are also health professionals on standby to provide you with assistance on any activity of daily living. . . .’

How far have I gone? The faces are no longer there.

I stand alone.

The world is still.

A voice breaks the silence.

‘Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?’

The light is everywhere. And I’m standing in the room, not unlike the room I’m always in during the lab sessions. But there are no mirrors or cameras or doors. There is no way in or out. The steel bed in the middle of the room gleams with a force of its own.

And on it: Wee Kiong and Andrew, lying side by side.

They turn to me, smiling.

The waves of light against my body, moving through it, radiating. No more thoughts – and yet there’s no absence of awareness. I move towards them.

They open up a space between them, and I slide in. The gap narrows, closes. The edges and contours of their bodies merge into mine, borders erased, overlapped. Our skins fall open, stretch wide, swallowed into each

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other; all their sensations creep into me, aching with memory, with recognition.

And the force of the memories: they sweep back all at once. The lab sessions, the BlackBox. And in all of them, we are there: Travis, Hee Chun, Sebastian, Andrew, Wee Kiong.

Another hit: everything sharpens, becomes clearer. All our faces.

I open my mouth; nothing comes out. They smile, their hands on me, guiding me somewhere. I fall into stride and follow them. The light breaks around us, and we move freely, our movements smooth, unfettered. The vastness of the distance before us – how far? – yet everything seems possible.

We pull one another along, forward, and onwards. We are aflutter, lustrous, lucent.

Ah, the light, the light—

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Masterji Mas ter ji

Maganbhai Patel

Maganbhai Patel introduction by Ben Kyneswood

Masterji and family

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M

aganbhai Patel is better known as Masterji, a portrait photographer of the Coventry South-Asian community. In November 2016 his first solo exhibition opened to massive acclaim, with features on local, national and international television, online and in local and national newspapers. In March 2017 his black and white photographs will be a centrepiece of the Mumbai Focus International Photography Festival. This from a man celebrating his ninety-fourth year. In this article, we reflect on the art of the Master through his portrayal of the lives of South-Asian migrants to Coventry during the second half of the twentieth century.

Departure and arrival Masterji left his home and job as a schoolmaster in Surat, Gujarat soon after India gained independence from the British, meeting up in Coventry with friends in 1951. Unfulfilled by work on the factory floor at the General Electric Company (GEC), Masterji sought the company of photographic creatives, buying a new Kodak Box Brownie to replace the one heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d left in India. He spent evenings on courses at Lanchester College of Technology and weekends with the GEC Photographic Society, becoming friends with now legendary British photographer John Blakemore. He learned to hone his skills and knowledge: not just how to use an enlarger, but how to think about photography as interpretation, as his way of writing.

Coventry In the years after the Second World War, Coventry sought to maintain its place as a wealthy industrial city despite the devastation wrought by Nazi bombs. This was a city of fifty motor manufacturers, including Triumph, Jaguar and Rover; it was the home of jet engine inventor Sir Frank Whittle and to international companies Courtaulds, Alfred Herbert and GEC. Workers were attracted by the jobs and the wages: Coventrians earned at least 20 per cent more than the UK average thanks to demand for labour, strong union representation and a socialist local government. To support industry and its workers, local government invested heavily in public services and new housing, and oversaw a renewed city centre based on the

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modernist principles of Le Corbusier: Coventry promised a machine of a city for work and living, a blueprint for the future.

Despite the grand vision, some areas remained in need of renewal.

Because properties were cheaper to buy, migrants moved into bombdamaged areas like Spon End and Hillfields, with their tight Victorian streets and lack of amenities like indoor bathrooms. Masterji was no different. He moved to Widdrington Road, Radford, near the city centre and close to the Daimler motorcar factories that had been targeted by German bombers. These areas, previously home to the Victorian entrepreneurs that gave Coventry its industrial base, became stigmatised by ignorance of migrant cultures and by criminality thriving in the derelict houses and streets.

Migrants came to Coventry as engineers and teachers, with enough money to get them to England and start working. Yet work could be precarious, and often was, on the buses or factory floor. In the 1950s, the gleaming tiles and consumer goods of Coventry’s new houses and the smart offices of industry were as out of reach for the migrants as if they had stayed in India. Further, social attitudes didn’t adapt to change at the same pace as the planned physical landscape. Masterji sought to challenge public perceptions of the migrant community. His photography gave migrants status, a right to physical space to claim their own. In doing so, his customers were not portrayed as invisible and poor, but confident, smart and full of potential. In Masterji’s photographs, these were not migrants but Coventrians.

Settling in – black and white portraits Masterji initially took portraits in his living room in Widdrington Road.

His subjects included visitors such as Gordanbhai Bhakta who later moved to America, and Kelly, a handsome bus conductor. These men are not photographed to focus on their features but rather on the physical space they inhabit: the props, curtains, walls and flooring place them in Coventry as real people. Gordanbhai is amused, amusing and confident, the book and glasses hinting at knowledge and study. Kelly poses like he owns the stage on which he stands and one can imagine the assured stride of this

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well-dressed man as he later walked towards the city centre. Other images present different sides to the same story: Mr Khan in his sunglasses with his white wife; Mr Samra and his beautiful Alsatian dog; three well-presented young children, the boys with books suggesting a bright future; and a young man sitting solo, wearing a leather jacket. These were not the invisible migrants of popular myth but people given a stake by Masterji, photographed not as models but as people.

‘People, they came to me,’ says Masterji. ‘I made them happy. They liked me.’

Master’s Art Studio Masterji’s local success led in 1969 to a licence to start Master’s Art Studio.

The name tells us he did not consider himself merely as a studio photographer but as one with a message. Customer demand precipitated a move to include 35mm colour, and in colour he continued to place his customers in a space they are invited to own. This is true of the defiant older lady in an expensive fur coat. The teenage pairs, however, pose a little apprehensively, uncertain, perhaps caught between their heritage and the future, between youth and adulthood. Their clothes, colourful but formal, and in the case of the young women, a mix of Eastern and Western styles, reflect the dilemmas faced by the children of migrants.

Now ninety-four, Masterji has spent more than a lifetime in one of England’s most historic cities, photographing a community as it settled and changed against a backdrop of economic and social uncertainty. Masterji presents his customers as real people in a real space, not as ciphers or labels.

His photographs serve as social documents to tell us that here was an artist working with the people to give them the confidence to stake a claim not as migrants but as Coventrians. The photographs teach a lesson that needs to resonate loudly in a divided Brexit Britain: if we are to heal the wounds in our culture, we must begin by seeing our neighbours as individuals.

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Boy in a leather jacket Portrait of Pradeep, son of Ratilalbhai Patel, a family friend.

Home studio, Widdrington Road, 1957.

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Gordanbhai Bhakta Gordanbhai Bhakta was a guest of mine who stayed for two weeks, and had travelled from Preston to see me. He eventually moved to America.

Home studio, Widdrington Road, 1957â&#x20AC;&#x201C;68.

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Mr Samra and his Alsatian Mr Samra died in 1975. His wife came to my exhibition in Coventry this year and had her photograph taken next to this one. His whole family travelled to see the picture in the exhibition.

Home studio, Widdrington Road, late 1950s.

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Kelly Portrait of Kelly, a bus conductor, who later went on to buy an off-licence and move to London. He lived well and loved fashion; my wife remembers him as a handsome, talkative man. The background, studio curtain and valance were made especially for the room by an African-Indian tailor. Home studio, Widdrington Road, 1957â&#x20AC;&#x201C;68.

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Mr Khan and his wife Mr Khan was a bus conductor. He and his wife had one daughter and left their house to her when they moved to Canada.

Home visit, late 1950s.

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Masterjiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son, Ravindra Patel Portrait of my son, Ravindra, in natural light from the window.

My wife would have got the toys either from Woolworths or the large department store, Owen Owen.

Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Studio, 1970.

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Vimlaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mother in a fur coat Vimla worked in a sewing factory. The family loved having their photographs taken and I was invited to take photographs at their house, as well as at weddings and parties.

Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Studio, 1970s.

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Two teenage girls Sitters unknown. They would have come to the shop by themselves.

Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Studio, 1974.

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Two teenage boys Sitters unknown. These Bengali boys wanted to send photographs to relatives back home. A lot of customers visited the studio to do this.

They loved having their photographs taken.

Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Studio, 1974.

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Khan from Pakistan Khan was a handsome young man who loved fashion. The hand-painted background is by a Hungarian artist I befriended in a cafĂŠ by the Coventry Registry Office, in the 1960s. He painted three large scenic screens for me, including this one.

Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Studio, 1982.

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Poetry

Kavita A. Jindal

Kavita A. J indal

The Path Between Where the river bends I’ve made my home Sauntering quotidian on the towpath From Hammersmith Bridge, clad in green and gold To Barnes Bridge, steel-grey-painted; The colour of the water beneath.

I’ve studied fat rivets on the bridges Imagined the tools and dextrous hands Of the men who fastened them; once Years ago, I glimpsed otters that lived below.

I’ve waved to rowers, Sunday sailboats, Patted the police horses that clop Always two nodding together On the vital track of spirit and energy Cyclists, runners, dogs, children.

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A trail of cherished natural history Ancient trees in silent observance Hidden blackcurrants, flowering hawthorn, Mud puddles, nesting kestrel.

The Thames once curved deeper Looped even closer To my home; Marshes lay at the door.

Aged one hundred and nine The house keeps itself as it was built.

I live with the taste of the family â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hepburnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Their fondness for embellishment For hearts carved in woodwork For green and red stained glass.

Their fireplace tiles were patterned With peacocks and paisley Inspired by faraway India.

The river ran to the sea.

One of them took that route Travelling to the distant East.

I arrived by plane. Here, I am now Shielding local heritage.

Ignoring new interior-fashions.

The 200-year lime trees stand thickened and unbowed.

The sea glides in and flows out Pulled by the moon.

As are we?

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Parakeet You were brought here caged then let go you stayed your mewls and chweek chweek are incessant youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re scarcely still flap flap perch flap flap you invader you drove out the weaker your obnoxious brightness streaming against the grey weather Where can you go other than to roost in the trees after you found yourself in unfamiliar terrain you cannot roll back to the moment of the capturing hand in that other land you settle and multiply your pattern unchanged being lustrous being avian

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You’re noisy because you like gatherings all squawking together morning and dusk when you feed midday saved for preening and loafing nights for some quiet you break out at dawn how well you’ve adapted to being non-tropical.

‘Parakeet’ and ‘The Path Between’ appear in Home Thoughts, a forthcoming anthology of British Indian poetry from Cyberwit India, www.cyberwit.net.

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Death of Hong Deat h of Hong Cho Haejin

Cho Haejin translated by Yoonna Cho

T

1

he sound of dogs barking woke him up. Ahn reached out reflexively for his phone, which he had placed at the head of his bed. It felt familiar and solid in his hand, but his ears were still mistaking his ringtone for the barking of dogs.

Coincidentally, he had been dreaming that he was being chased by a pack of black dogs and had just ducked into a phone booth with broken glass.

The barking dogs were slavering at the mouth, sharp teeth bared. Ahn clutched the phone with trembling hands as his knees nearly buckled from a sharp urge to urinate.

Hello? Is s-somebody there? Ahn sputtered, when the signal finally went through. The dogs vanished as suddenly as if theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been swallowed by a thick fog. Not just the dogs, but the streetlights, the vandalised phone booth, and the handset he had been clutching, leaving Ahn standing alone in a deserted field.

Hello? Hello! Ahn yelled, darting back and forth. The field was dark and completely silent, without so much as a breath of wind, but the sky was a sight to see â&#x20AC;&#x201C; curtains of green and purple light rippling over each other like the aurora borealis. It reminded him of a story he had read long before.

Once upon a time, there was a wanderer who travelled to the end of the world and, finding nowhere else to go, tore a hole in the sky and disappeared through it. Ahn stretched his arms up to the sky, wondering if it was his

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only exit out of the strange field. The mysterious lights in the sky looked close enough to touch, but he could not reach them.

Hello? Finally, someone spoke in a deep voice from the other side of the sky. He could not see the speaker’s face, but the reverberating voice lingered across the field. Was it his doctor? Relief washed over him when the possibility crossed his mind.

The comfort was short-lived, however, and resentment took over at the thought that his doctor had allowed him to suffer for such a long time, trapped in the deserted field, before answering his pleas for help. It’s too late, Ahn muttered, sinking to the ground with his head in his hands as he slowly realised that his emotions were blown out of proportion.

Only then did Ahn open his eyes and take in his surroundings. The interior of his room was floating around him in perfectly square fragments.

When he squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, the pieces flew back together into place.

Hello? Can you hear me? somebody kept asking at the other end of his phone. The person spoke in a deep voice that gave the feeling one could trust him unconditionally, as in the dream; yet it was slightly different from his doctor’s voice. The subtle distinction drove home to Ahn that his dream was over.

Yes, I hear you very well. What is this about? Ahn replied in a hoarse voice, kicking away the covers so as not to fall asleep again.

I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but were you a member of the hiking club at Y University? In the fifteenth recruitment?

Surprised at the question, Ahn threw one leg out of bed and stared into the mirror hanging on the wall across from him. Ahn had attended Y University and had been a member of the hiking club, but that was already more than ten years ago, and he did not see anyone from those days except for Hyun. It felt strange to hear, after so much time, the names of those he had once considered integral to his identity. He could not possibly guess who it might be.

Yes, I was. May I ask who’s calling?

Excuse me. Hong was my younger sister.

Hong?

Yes. Hong died, last night.

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Oh. . . . Ahn exhaled, unsure of what to say.

It was early on a Monday morning, and he was not prepared to be woken by news of a death. He wondered whether he should express grief for the dead first, or offer condolence to the family member who was calling. To complicate matters, he was not even sure if Hong was the woman’s last or first name, but he could hardly ask the caller to provide more information.

We’re having the wake at S Hospital, in district K. The burial is tomorrow, the man continued, as if the matter of Ahn’s attendance were already settled. The caller’s voice was so dry it made Ahn uncomfortable.

I’ll see you later, the man said, and hung up.

Right on cue, his alarm went off. He picked up the clock to turn it off and noticed the three white plastic prescription bottles lined up on his bedside table. Ahn went to see a neuropsychiatrist every two weeks, after which he went to the pharmacist to refill his prescription and get another one of those plastic bottles. Come to think of it, he had lately been going to bed at midnight and sleeping soundly until the alarm woke him at seven in the morning. His prescription bottles had piled up because his body had already recognised that his sleeping disorder was gone. Wasn’t the body usually more aware than the mind, and more responsive to change? His next session was scheduled in two days. He would tell the doctor that his sleeping disorder was cured, as par for the course, except it hardly seemed ordinary for Ahn. On the contrary, he felt tremendously excited to think that he would see his doctor in two days. His doctor was about the only person he could have a conversation with that did not involve words like late payment or foreclosure. And the doctor did know more about Ahn than anyone else in the world. He knew that Ahn stuttered under duress, that he had a phobia of sharp objects like knives or scissors, that he was sexually attracted to women with smooth, pink skin on the heels of their feet. Surely the doctor would listen patiently to everything he had to say about the remarkably vivid dream he had last night, the death of a university classmate he did not remember and the fantasies he was entertaining at that very moment about his own wake.

Ahn saw everything clearly in his mind: his family keeping vigil at the nearly deserted funeral home looking slightly bewildered, his friends offering conventional words of condolences, even the sharp scent of chrysanthemums

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delivered by the undertakers as part of the package. In his imagination, it was not very different from any of the wakes he had been to, and Ahn found the ordinariness offensive. Would it be his older brother, two years his senior, or his younger sister, three years his junior, who would take the responsibility of huddling in a secluded corner with their phone to notify friends and family members? Would his brother or sister, like Hong’s brother, make their calls in a voice increasingly devoid of sadness or regret as they conveyed the news that a person had ceased to exist? An icy pain seemed to penetrate through Ahn’s very bones, and at that moment he realised that all his fantasies amounted to nothing more than idle self-pity, pricking his heart where it was weakest.

Ahn picked up one of the prescription bottles from his nightstand, wrested off the cap, put one pill in his mouth and leaned against the wall.

He needed the tiny, round comfort embedded in the 200mg pill, even if only for an instant. Perhaps the pill would reveal a long-forgotten memory, like a secret package. Something like a day in the mountains in early summer, sunlight filtering through the pale green leaves, so bright that he had to close one eye, and when he looked behind there would be the members of Y University’s hiking club standing around. And perhaps, if he looked closely, he might find Hong smiling quietly among them. Ahn was ready to pursue this fantasy in greater detail, but the pill he swallowed refused to spread out from its small, round confines, merely settling somewhere inside him. He let the coolness of the wall seep into his back for another moment before going to the bathroom, where he let out a long pee.

2 Hyun answered the door. In his living room, the coffee table was covered with beer cans, sweet and spicy fried chicken, and a bowl of bloated noodles.

Ahn walked to the sofa, took off his black suit jacket, and was sitting down when Hyun offered him a fresh can of beer. He said he did not really feel like a beer but Hyun would hear nothing of it, so Ahn took the can and cracked it open. The television was tuned to a news story about a series of

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killings. Ahn had heard about the killings, as had everyone else in the city.

It had been all over the media for weeks, the hottest subject of conversation in offices, restaurants, any place where people gathered. Everyone wanted a piece of the fear that they could be killed at any moment by the group of unknown killers. The killers’ method was simple. They would corner their target, male or female, and beat them to death with two-by-two sticks and lead pipes, crushing flesh and bone and guts to a pulp until the victim drew their last breath.

All the killings have been group assaults by five or six burly males, motive unknown. A number of criminologists have expressed the opinion that the suspects are recreational killers, judging from the brutal and unprofessional nature of their handiwork. This is Choi for YTN News. . . .

Like a pack of dogs, Hyun muttered as he switched the television off.

Ahn grimaced, remembering the dogs from his nightmare. Didn’t you say over the phone that you wanted to talk about something? Hyun asked.

D-d-did I? Ahn stuttered, surprised by his own confusion. He had spent the whole day at the office trying to decide whether to go to the wake, and had called Hyun at the last minute, hoping that he knew something about Hong. Why was it so hard to bring up the question he had come specifically to ask? Why did his tongue trip over the words, unable to form a single sentence? Ahn gave up. It was not as if any answer Hyun might give him could solve the problem that had been gnawing at his mind all day. Either he would be left questioning his own memory if Hyun remembered something he did not, or the woman’s identity would remain a mystery if Hyun knew nothing. Neither situation appealed to Ahn. Have you gone stupid or something? Here, have some food if you haven’t eaten, Hyun grunted, handing him a pair of unused chopsticks. Ahn accepted the chopsticks but hesitated from digging in. Hyun was already working on a piece of chicken, smearing the red sauce around his mouth in the process. Ahn felt what little appetite he had leaving him. Hyun had gained weight noticeably since his divorce last spring. He was so out of shape it raised the question of how, with that massive paunch, he could

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possibly rescue people who jumped or fell into the Han River. Or rather, it was a wonder that they made wetsuits that fit him at all. Hyun worked for the Han River Rescue Brigade.

You look tired. Did you have an emergency? Ahn asked perfunctorily.

Last night, Hyun answered. I thought it was getting too cold for that sort of thing, but I guess it’s not. No, people jump all the time.

Why did the person last night want to die?

How would I know? Hyun snapped, throwing his unfinished piece of chicken down on the coffee table. Ahn flushed as if he had been yelled at just for doing his job, which happened often. He got cursed on the phone every day for reminding debtors that they were late.

Maybe she got a call from you, Hyun said with a sneer. It was gone in a flash, but Ahn did not miss it.

I’m not some k-k-kind of crook, I’m not a loan sh-shark. I’m a p-p-perfectly legal. . . .

I know, I know. You’re overreacting again, Hyun interrupted, an inane grin on his face. Ahn did not smile. He wanted to know. Did Hyun know about the incident, had he known all this time, and if he had, why then was he torturing him in such a pitifully transparent way?

A year ago a famous actor had jumped into the Han River, riddled by poverty and credit card debt after a failed business venture. By the time the rescue brigade fished the body out of the murky depths, it was nothing but a bloated corpse. Ahn had never asked Hyun if he had been one of the rescuers. Nor had Ahn ever revealed that he had been responsible for collecting the actor’s debts. And so, it was meaningless to protest that his actions were perfectly legal, that he had been merely carrying out instructions as an employee, and that, for whatever reason, the actor had not taken responsibility for his debt. He could also say that to feel guilt is meaningless, as nobody acts out of spite or vengeance within the system and therefore cannot be blamed for committing a crime, but what was the point of that?

Ahn had no desire to bring up the incident after all that time, and neither did he look forward to Hyun’s reaction.

Relenting to Ahn’s discomfort, Hyun shuffled over to the sofa, sat next to Ahn, and began to recount what had happened the previous night.

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A woman in her forties had jumped from Mapo Bridge after an hour of weeping and wailing over her sorry fate. Hyun and another rescuer were already there, waiting in their wetsuits in an electric boat. They strapped on their oxygen tanks and plunged into the water the moment the woman jumped. It is easy to admire a river from above, but from underneath, the water is dark and dirty and the current is overpowering. Tons of waste are dumped into the water every day, and God knows how many souls.

Television dramas showing couples whispering sweet nothings and serenading each other against the backdrop of the river, lights of the bridge glimmering against the surface of the water in soft focus, made Hyun want to puke.

Anyway, the middle-aged woman held on to the rescuers for dear life, as did most people who jumped into the river. Gone was the woman loudly pleading to everyone to please just let her die. It would have been somewhat easier to rescue her had she lost consciousness, but she did not even close her eyes and clutched Hyun’s body with mindless strength. Like some kind of monster, Hyun thought. There was no doubt that her intentions were equally sincere either way. She had jumped into the black depths to kill herself, and she had been ready to put her rescuer’s life at risk to save herself.

Of the two outcomes, it was impossible for Hyun to guess which she truly preferred. Hyun did not understand, and neither did he want to understand, why anyone would choose to die so conspicuously, jumping into the Han River, when there were plenty of ways to die unnoticed and undisturbed. Sometimes he imagined holding the jumper’s head and pushing it under the water. No, make that all the time.

Forcing that fantasy out of his mind, he dragged the woman out of the water and onto the boat, exerting himself to the point that he felt all the energy in his body had drained away, as he always did. She sat for a moment, stunned, and then began sobbing inconsolably.

Why? Ahn asked.

Because why did we have to go and rescue her, that’s why, Hyun replied, the tension gone from his voice. Hyun picked up his can of beer again, looking considerably more relaxed after finishing his story. Neither of them spoke. In the silence, Hyun downed his beer in one gulp and turned his

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eyes towards Ahn. Hyun’s face was empty, like a hole gaping in the earth, a void without form.

Hong is dead, Ahn blurted. He felt his voice reverberating as if he had spoken into a fathomless pit.

Who? Hong. You know Hong. She was in the hiking club. Don’t you remember her? Ahn pressed, accusingly.

Ooh, Hyun exhaled, an expression of recognition finally lighting his face.

What happened?

I don’t know. I just got a call this morning from her brother.

Do you remember what department she was in? Pharmacy? Hyun asked.

Ahn narrowed his eyes. As far as Ahn could recall, there hadn’t been any pharmacy students in their hiking club.

You know, Hong – she was a year behind us, always laughing at the stupid jokes we made, Hyun elaborated.

Ahn felt the urge to fish for more details. You mean the one who was afraid of knives?

Yes! Do you remember when we went hiking in Bukhansan, or was it Dobongsan? Anyway, somebody asked her to peel an apple, and she started to do it but her hands were shaking so badly she cut herself and bled onto everything.

Hyun warmed up to his own story, and Ahn struggled to keep himself from bursting into hollow laughter. It was Ahn who was afraid of knives and had cut himself on that occasion. Resisting the urge to point out that they had actually been hiking in Gwanaksan, Ahn said instead, I remember that she had nice feet. Her heels were so smooth and pink.

Were they?

Oh, yes, she wasn’t much of a looker but she had great legs and ankles.

She drove the boys wild when she wore short skirts in the summer.

I didn’t think you’d remember that, Hyun said, grinning lecherously, as if a scantily-dressed female had appeared at that instant.

Ahn was confused. Could it be that Hyun’s memory was intact, and that part of his was missing? Perhaps there really had been a Hong as similar to him as a twin, and his notions of sexual attractiveness were tied to her. Once the doubts began, he felt a strange tickling sensation come over his body,

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as if Hong had crept into his head and was tiptoeing over the debris of his half-crumbled memories. No, it was as if he could see her with his own eyes.

She was barefoot and everything was blurred about her except the pink skin of her heels. The closer Ahn tried to approach, the further she walked away, never looking back. She was walking towards a vanishing point and the next thing he knew, she was gone. The horizontal distance between them flipped itself into a vertical depth, and Ahn found himself standing on the edge of a cliff. He could make out nothing in the cracks of his memories, only darkness. Reeling from a vertigo that felt closer to fear, Ahn raised his head slowly.

Hyun yawned, exposing the depths of his throat. If he reached deep into that throat, Ahn thought, his hand would touch not the innards and bones of a human being but the most horrifying, wretched memories known to man, sealed in something like a chilled sack. The hair rose on the back of Ahn’s neck. He did not recognise this man. Was this lump of lard really the Hyun he thought he knew? Ahn regretted asking Hyun about Hong, regretted visiting him at all, until it struck him that even such regret was pointless.

Ahn collected his jacket and bag and got up from the sofa. His only thought was to go to the wake, where there would be a portrait of the deceased, and see for himself. It was already past eight so he would have to move quickly if he wanted to be home by midnight, the time he usually went to bed. Oh, you’re leaving? Hyun asked, getting up belatedly.

I have to go to the wake. Would . . . you like to come, too?

Me? I wasn’t close to Hong and nobody called me. Hyun made the predictable excuses, scratching the flat back of his flat head. Ahn just nodded and trudged to the entrance.

Why don’t you take Min, if you don’t feel like going by yourself? Hyun asked from behind Ahn. Min was best friends with Hong, so I’m sure she’s going.

Min? Yes, she runs a pharmacy down the road, at the intersection in front of the subway station. You know, she’s just as dowdy as she was in school. I went to that pharmacy by chance, to buy some aspirin, and there was no

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mistake that it was her. Still likes to talk your ear off, too. She kept me there for an hour, can you believe it, the first time I’ve seen her in ten years!

Ahn wondered who Min was, but did not ask. There was nothing more he wanted to ask Hyun. He walked out of the foyer and was tying his shoelaces when Hyun’s voice fell on his ears with all the sharpness of a blade.

By the way, you should watch out.

Ahn turned around but the sensor light in the foyer had already gone out, obscuring Hyun’s expression. You saw the news, too. Seoul isn’t safe these days. Don’t be going around by yourself.

Pack of dogs. . . . Ahn murmured. What? You mean them?

They really are like a pack of dogs, aren’t they? Hyun said, absentmindedly. Ahn scrutinised the other man’s face as if he were looking in a mirror.

The sensor light went on. Under the orange glow, Hyun’s face looked deeply afraid. The sensor light went off again and Ahn reached out, as if to make sure that Hyun was really there. Before he knew it, however, the door had swung shut with a metallic click.

Do I know Hong? Let’s see. . . . Oh, you mean Hong! Yes, I went to university with her. And high school. But I think you’re mistaken about one thing. Hong wasn’t a pharmacy student; she was a chemistry student.

And I never signed up for a hiking club. I can’t stand hiking myself. Come to think of it, Hong always liked the mountains. There was a pretty big hill behind our high school and she used to climb it when she had something on her mind. By herself, mind you. She’s always been reckless like that. But I never knew she belonged to a hiking club. I guess it’s only natural, but we completely lost touch after a certain incident. What happened? Well, the truth is. . . . It feels a bit silly to speak of it now, after more than ten years.

Looking back, it wasn’t even such a big deal.

So, it must have been . . . I think it was the winter holidays of our first year. Hong called me, saying that she was emigrating to Canada all of a sudden. I was devastated, I tell you. I even gave her some cash as a going-away present, all the money I could spare, changed into dollars. I cried like a baby because I thought it was the last time I would ever see her.

And you know what, the next semester I saw her on campus, at the cafeteria.

She didn’t see me, but I saw her. I saw her quite often after that, on campus.

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I wasn’t even angry, just completely blown away. Can you imagine going to those lengths to break up with one of your friends? The whole thing was so immature I just let it go. I never understood what I’d done to her that was so wrong. Still don’t. Anyway, after that I never contacted Hong again, and I pretended not to see her when we crossed paths. Until we graduated. And after that, too.

How do I know Hyun? Hyun was the TA for my swimming class. What?

Hyun told you that Hong and I were best friends? Well, I guess Hyun didn’t know anything about what happened between us, so it’s understandable that he was mistaken. I was the one who introduced him to Hong, after all.

He saw me talking to Hong on campus one day – this was before we stopped being friends, of course. He begged me to invite him for a drink with Hong.

He was so persistent, even though I told him Hong had a boyfriend.

Isn’t it funny, though. I’ve been thinking about Hong all day today. . . .

It must’ve been because of this article I read. It’s right here, look. This man, the human rights lawyer who opened his own practice in district J, he used to be Hong’s boyfriend. Everybody knew them, even at high school. They were the perfect couple – looks, brains, money, you name it. So of course, they were famous and everybody was jealous of them.

But anyway, why are you asking all these questions about Hong? Are you with the police? Or a private investigator? Is Hong involved in a scam or something? It isn’t adultery, is it? What? She. . . . She’s dead? Oh, my goodness, how. . . ? What do you mean, Hong had a phobia of sharp objects?

What on earth are you going on about! Oh, I’m sorry, it’s been such a shock. . . . Please, don’t mind me. You know, Hong was always in such good health. I never saw her sick. Sound of body, sound of mind, that was Hong.

I think I’ll sit down for a bit.

Do you think that he knows? That man wouldn’t blink an eye to hear that Hong was dead. Hong and I had our differences, but I still heard about her from other friends. I know all about what he did to Hong, that bastard.

The stories I’ve heard, they don’t bear repeating. Human rights lawyer, what a joke. Try hypocrite scum instead!

A picture of Hong? No, I’m not the sentimental kind, especially with our history. About the wake, let me see, I . . . don’t think I can make it. This is all so sudden, I’m not ready at all. And I don’t think Hong wants me – I

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mean, would have wanted me – to be there. Could you make a donation for me, instead? Here, and if you could find an envelope for it, oh, thank you.

May I ask you something? I’ve been wondering since you came in, are you quite all right? No, it’s just that you look so pale and clammy. I bet you could use something to calm down. Would you like to try one of these pills?

It’s something I take for anxiety sometimes; it really helps to calm the mind.

Being a pharmacist has its perks. I don’t need a prescription for any of these.

Of course, I have to be careful about it, but still. Oh, come on, you won’t try one? I’m telling you, you don’t know what you’re missing . . . I guess you’re not really a pill person. If you were, you’d know that some pills are like a person. A very precise, discreet person who keeps their mouth shut, who comforts you without making a big fuss about it. Like a true friend.

But I’m keeping you here with all this chitchat. Yes, of course, you must be going. Before the wake is over. Right, a wake is all night. How silly of me, ha, ha. Oh, and be careful on the streets at night. You know how it is in Seoul these days.

Out of the pharmacy, Ahn looked back after a few steps. Min was gazing down at the pill she had wanted to give Ahn, holding it in the palm of her hand. She happened to raise her head when Ahn looked at her, and their eyes met. Ahn tipped up his head in greeting, but she continued to stare at him without any recognition that she had seen the gesture, even after tossing back the pill she had been holding. Ahn gave her a dry smile that she did answer, her lips curling up in an unnatural way. The two held their smiles for a moment. Perhaps because of the pill she had just taken, Min’s eyes looked out of focus, like an empty boat rocking in the water. As if she knew that she suffered from an anxiety that could not be cured by any pill.

Ahn was forced to remember the small, round pill he had taken that morning. Perhaps it was not Hong but Min that resembled him, Ahn thought. If that were true, they had been smiling so contemptuously not at each other but at their own reflections in the pharmacy’s shop window. Ahn turned back, his face expressionless. He walked away, hailed a cab, and did not look back.

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In the cab Ahn asked the driver to go to district J, not K. The wake would be all night long, as Min had reminded him, so he still had time to make a brief stop in district J to see Hong’s ex-boyfriend. And if the ex was a lawyer as Min had said, he might well have saved a picture of Hong. Ahn felt his heart racing as the taxi sped to his destination.

Once out of the cab, he searched for directions to the lawyer’s office using his phone’s map application. Less than five minutes along the way, Ahn realised that he no longer needed to look at his phone. The lawyer’s office was a mere three blocks away from the neuropsychiatrist’s office that he visited every two weeks. Summoning up an image of his doctor and his office had an instantly calming effect, and made him wonder what his doctor was up to. He was sure that if he were to go see him, saying that he had been in the area and thought he’d drop by, the doctor would give him a warm welcome. Perhaps they might even go out for a drink and share an intimate conversation, like old friends. The light was still on in his office.

Ahn loped to the building where the office was located, a serene smile on his face, before a second thought gave him pause. Come to think of it, he had never seen his doctor outside office hours, and the only thing he knew about him was his profession. It was not inconceivable that he might have a drink with his doctor in a setting other than in his office, but it would probably be awkward and not fun at all. Ahn turned back and quickened his step. He told himself that he would see his doctor in a couple of days anyway, so there was no reason to rush.

The lawyer’s office was on the ninth floor of an impressively modern building. Ahn got out of the elevator on the ninth floor and immediately recognised the lawyer leaving his office.

Excuse me. . . . he trailed off, as the lawyer passed him, and the other man slowly turned back.

Yes? Pardon me, but do you work here as a lawyer?

Yes, I do. Is this about a consultation? I’m afraid I’m in a rush now. Could you come back again tomorrow?

Oh, no, it’s not that. . . .

The lawyer looked on quizzically as Ahn struggled to find the right words to bring up the matter of Hong. Encouragingly, the lawyer was also wearing

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a black suit. There was a chance, however unlikely, that he was going to the wake as well. Ahn decided to take the plunge.

I wanted to ask, do you know Hong? She studied chemistry at Y University.

Excuse me? Yes, I know Hong, but who are you?

I heard from one of Hong’s friends that you were close to Hong.

The lawyer took a step closer. Ahn shrank back when he saw that the lawyer’s face had suddenly become guarded, but it was too late to back away.

Who are you? What do you want with my wife?

Your . . . wife? Hong is y-your wife now?

Yes, how many times do you need to ask? You still haven’t told me who you are.

D-do you mean that Hong is . . . a-alive?

What? The lawyer fixed a hostile gaze on Ahn, raking him from head to foot. My wife is none of your business. Who the hell do you think you are, asking questions like that?

The lawyer was visibly angry now, and Ahn took a large gulp. He should really watch his stammer. The lawyer would think he was soft in the head if he tripped up again, and he’d be forced to leave with no more information than he had now.

Actually, this morning I heard that Hong had passed away. I had a phone call saying that she used to be in the hiking club at Y University, or something like that. You see, the person said he was Hong’s brother. He said that. . . .

Look, you’ve made a mistake. Hiking club, indeed. My wife was in the volunteer club, with me. We met there.

Then, you weren’t together at high school?

I keep telling you, you’ve got the wrong person! Go somewhere else if you want to find your Hong that died. I am going to meet my wife, who is very much alive. The lawyer turned abruptly and stamped off.

Ahn hurried after him. Excuse me!

What is it now?

Could you show me a picture of your wife, if you have one on you? Or if you don’t, do you mind if I come with you now? I won’t take any of your time; I just need to see your wife’s face.

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What?

I, I just don’t understand what’s going on with this situation. . . .

The lawyer grabbed Ahn by the collar and slammed him against the wall.

I don’t care about your situation. Tell me who sent you. Who is it? The police? The prosecutor’s office? Did they send you to get a picture because they heard that Kang, the lawyer, was hitting his wife? Answer me!

The lawyer’s voice was so loud that it rang throughout the empty hallway, and his face was flushed with rage. Ahn felt as if he were gazing up at him from underwater, vision clouded and ears plugged.

If the man is speaking the truth, Ahn thought, I must be a lie. But if the other man was lying, I must also be a lie. Wasn’t it funny that even if the other man was lying, I can never be true, only an illusion?

Ahn grabbed the lawyer’s wrists and thrust them away. Startled by Ahn’s reaction, the lawyer staggered backwards. He was breathing heavily, as if it were not Ahn who had sunk into a pool with a clouded surface reflecting only lies and illusions, but the lawyer. An immense fatigue settled into Ahn. The long corridor that he was standing in – no, all the streets he had been walking that day – felt like they belonged in a maze. He felt as if he had been chasing a thread of lies that he thought would lead to the exit, only to find out that there was none. It tired him to think that, in somebody else’s maze, he too was already dead or had never existed at all. For Ahn, the only real Hong was the one he had come to know that day.

Let me tell you about Hong, Ahn began calmly, levelling his gaze at the lawyer. Hong was a year behind me in school. She laughed at my stupid jokes, and she was so scared of knives she couldn’t even peel an apple. She’d liked mountains since she was at high school and she went out with a future lawyer who broke her heart. And she died, yesterday night.

Finishing his speech, Ahn straightened his collar and walked casually towards the elevator. A stream of abuse followed him, mostly words like sue and lawsuit, as the doors opened and closed.

Die, you crazy motherfucker! The lawyer hurled his last insult.

For the first time since hearing about Hong’s death, Ahn felt sorry for her.

Outside the building that housed the lawyer’s office, a gust of cold wind came rushing at him through the thick darkness. On his way to the main

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road, Ahn stopped dead and twisted his head to one side. What he saw gripped him so completely his eyes began to water from the effort of not being able to look away.

His doctor was walking toward an expensive black sedan, clicking his key remote, while a schoolgirl in uniform trailed after him. She walked in exaggeratedly small, slow steps, perhaps hampered by her too-tight skirt.

The doctor waited impatiently before he threw his arm around her shoulders and guided her to the passenger seat. Short and of slight build, the doctor did not make a very convincing guardian – he looked more like a spirit that had attached itself to the girl. A malevolent one, at that.

The girl opened the door on the passenger’s side and was lowering herself into the seat when the doctor groped her bottom. She reacted with an idiotic giggle. The doctor then slammed the door for no apparent reason, cutting off the sound of the girl’s childish laughter.

Stupid bitch. The doctor’s words crystallised in the early winter air and flew at Ahn on an icy gust, slapping his cheek. Though he didn’t actually feel pain, Ahn couldn’t stop himself from letting out a gasp. The sound alerted the doctor to Ahn’s presence, causing him to freeze on his way to the driver’s side. Ahn wanted to believe that the man must have looked startled, but that belief was plunged in darkness. A darkness unsettling in its impenetrability, but also strangely comforting in that it excused him from certainty. It took him right back to the day when he’d gone for his first consultation. The doctor had wanted to get to the bottom of Ahn’s depression and insomnia, while Ahn only wanted a prescription. I don’t know what happened, but I’m sure that it wasn’t entirely your fault, the doctor had said dispassionately, writing the prescription Ahn had asked for.

It was a standard enough piece of advice for someone in his profession, but Ahn had burst into tears and wept for a long time, holding his face in his hands. He went for regular sessions after that, giving up his plan to rely on medication to tide him over for the time being. He had never been late for a session.

Just then a truck appeared, its headlights illuminating the two men’s faces as it passed by. The darkness lifted, Ahn felt the pain of his throat clenching.

When had he seen that expression on his doctor’s face before? Why was it

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so familiar, that sardonic smile that suggested his deed was nothing compared to killing a man?

Sensing that something was amiss, the schoolgirl rolled down her window and glanced from Ahn to the doctor. The doctor got into the car without saying a word. The sedan growled to life and zoomed off; in a few seconds, even its tail-lights had disappeared.

Two days, Ahn muttered to himself. In two days, I will be able to talk about all of this with you.

Ahn walked to the main road, flagged down a taxi, and sank into the back seat. He was tired. It was already nearly eleven o’clock at night. He told the driver to take him to S Hospital in district K and then dozed off.

3 M-Mister! Did you see that?

The driver’s frantic voice roused Ahn from his sleep. He had dreamed of nothing. Although he had hoped to forget, he could still recall precisely the look on his doctor’s face when he’d caught him on the street.

Mister! The taxi driver persisted, when Ahn did not reply.

Did I see what? Ahn asked, in a tired voice.

Y-you didn’t see what was happening when we passed that empty lot just now?

No, I just woke up.

It’s them.

Them?

Mister, don’t you watch the news? It’s them, the serial killers.

Not again about those serial killers, Ahn thought. Out loud he muttered, They just don’t give up, do they, the pack of dogs.

More to humour the driver than anything else, he gave a cursory look out of the window. They were in a deserted alley that had seen better days, what with the run-down buildings and the asphalt dug up here and there, but lights still shone through a few windows. Nobody would commit a murder in a neighbourhood lot with people nearby, Ahn thought. The driver’s words made no sense.

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Are you sure you saw something?

Yes! I saw it with my own eyes. They had two-by-twos and lead pipes, just like on the news. They were beating the daylights out of someone!

Ahn cocked his head in the rear-view mirror to signal his scepticism. The driver, who had been waiting for a response, returned a look of searing contempt.

I’m going to turn around, so make sure you keep your eyes open this time!

With that, the car turned so suddenly that Ahn toppled onto his side. A few seconds later, the taxi stopped.

They’re over there, the driver said under his breath.

Following the driver’s instruction, Ahn scooted close to the window. He could see a circle of men standing in a lot about twenty metres away from the cab, but it was impossible to see what they were doing in the darkness.

There were no sounds of somebody being beaten, nor were there cries of distress. The driver was clearly mistaken but Ahn did not feel like arguing with him.

I came this way to find a shortcut because the traffic was so bad; must have been an accident or something. And look what I found! The driver chirped happily, like a boy who had managed to score tickets for a game he wanted to watch.

At that moment, a splitting headache and a wave of nausea overwhelmed Ahn. Mister, what’s the matter?

I think I’m going to throw up. I need to get out of the car for a moment.

What? You’re going to open the door when there are serial killers standing right there? Are you crazy?

Ahn ignored the driver and scrambled out of the back seat, hand clapped over his mouth. He was squatted on the ground vomiting the contents of his stomach when something dropped with a thud in front of him. It was his bag. Having tossed Ahn’s bag out the window, the driver drove away without a second glance. Watching the taxi disappear into the distance, Ahn realised that he was alone with a group of suspicious men.

He suddenly heard footsteps behind him. No, he thought that he heard them. He did not have the courage to look around. Ahn stood up, leaned

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forward and broke into a sprint, not bothering to pick up his bag. The footsteps behind him gave chase, getting faster and drawing closer. They could have belonged to one person or many, human or beast. No matter how fast Ahn ran, the footsteps were always behind him. No other people appeared, no cars, no brightly lit shops.

Ahn slipped as the road turned downhill, rolling over a few times before coming to a stop. His trousers were torn, his palms bleeding and his back strained. The footsteps were practically upon him now. He fancied he could see the bloodshot eyes of the serial killer, dribbling at the mouth as he bared his sharp canines to tear a chunk out of Ahn’s earlobe. Ahn began to crawl, too overcome even to try getting up.

He raised his head to see a young woman looking down at him, her face as pale as a ghost’s. Ahn finally looked around, his teeth chattering. The alley he had just passed was completely empty. The woman kept her head down as she walked quickly past him.

Ahn rose to his feet, then grimaced with pain. He had barely limped a few steps when, unbelievably, an eight-lane highway appeared. Where was he? Which direction would lead him safely to S Hospital, in district K? Ahn did not know, but he stumbled along, keeping his eyes straight ahead. It was almost midnight, with everything quiet and the night sky hanging low.

Close enough to the ground that, if one stretched up far enough, one might almost touch it.

Ahn stopped and looked up at the sky. He wondered what had happened to the wanderer who came to the end of the earth and disappeared through a hole he tore through the sky. Perhaps he had gained the ultimate wisdom of life. Or perhaps he had condemned himself to a darkness so black he might as well have been blind, with every instant of his life weighing him down for eternity. No matter which path the wanderer’s life took, the final sum of pain and regret at the bottom of his heart must have been the same, Ahn thought.

He closed his eyes. Soon, the phone would ring somewhere and Ahn would awaken to the news that Hong was dead. It would be early in the morning, before anything or anyone had ever happened. A moment later, Ahn slowly opened his eyes.

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Poetry

Amlanjyoti Goswami

Am lanjyoti Goswami

Whitechapel Dreaming I saw him clear as yesterday, my old teacher, pockmarked with time.

He was asking about rents, the old survival instinct.

His daughter-in-law, heavy with tomorrow, hushed me.

She said the old printer was gone, the living room where time flowed like easy pennies.

A maid stole what was left â&#x20AC;&#x201C; tools and trinkets, things to plough and furrow the mind.

I said I worked nearby, but there too, the rents were shooting up the stars

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Bethnal Green . . . . . . is no longer as lively, as green as those evenings when for a solitary step, you danced.

Memory is a desert, she takes us to the dust of construction sites, a broken trail of bricks and Banksies, hiding on the corner wall.

Real estate climbs, a slow growl, the building stairs sprawling with graffiti.

The embers glow – this night our last?

Tea bars, plush flush, replace frozen samosas sitting on the pharaoh’s pyramid in the ramshackle shop with the television above.

But the Minar is like us, it stays where we are.

The fish curry is still the same – the same tangy taste of home, the lash of Ma’s tongue, and that photograph on the wall – the crowded train rushing in a blur through rice fields, waves of gold and green, is a Turner painting.

A sign promises to send money in seconds – the time it takes for you to remember me Your smartphone sings familiar though I am no longer the apple of those lovely brown eyes.

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Things are down these days, but they will pick up.

They always do.

In the meantime, we wait for fresh orders and crowded afternoons, we wear the dusk of sorry news â&#x20AC;&#x201C; gunfire in other streets, other cities.

We pray, in the silence of our kitchens, simmering, that nothing must take us down, nothing that greed ever blessed.

We pray, none of that will ever reach us â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this sanctuary, this shuttle of weaves, this breeze . . .

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Arrival: Notes from a Migrant Goan Arrival: N otesJessica from aFaleir Migrant o Goan

Jessica Faleiro

N

obody tells you how vulnerable you’re about to become. The plane lands and your emotions start to heighten once you pass through immigration. Even if someone is waiting for you in Arrivals, you know somewhere deep within that your whole world is about to change. You just have no idea how, or how much.

It is 1997 and I’ve landed at Heathrow airport’s Terminal 3 from Goa, India, where my parents are from. The England I anticipate meeting is the clichéd version, with tweed-clad gentlemen standing by rose bushes in front of cosy thatched cottages. In my mind, the women sit daintily at tables in the back garden, smelling of Yardley talcum powder and pouring tea from their flowery tea sets. Children have picnics of ham sandwiches and fresh apples at the seaside and on clifftops, just as they do in Enid Blyton’s books.

By now, I’ve lived in many places, including the conservative Islamic state of Kuwait (where I grew up) and cocaine-fuelled Miami (where I began studying for my bachelor’s degree). But nothing has quite prepared me for the culture shock of watching eighteen-year-old British boys and girls chugging beer and then violently throwing up in the university student bar at 5 p.m. after winning a rugby game and trying to drown themselves in their body weight of beer. The students have alcohol and sex on the brain, an obvious riposte to the controlled, conservative family environments they were raised in. I search desperately for a clique of sober nerds and find that ‘my people’ are the fifty or so international students scattered around the campus.

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My belief is that I am starting my second year at Nottingham University (having had to transfer from my university in Florida after my F1 student visa was unexpectedly cancelled) and I’m excited by the thought of a huge sprawling campus like the one I’d been attending in Miami. But the School of Biological Sciences, where my course is taught, is in the tiny village of Sutton Bonington, where there is a little sub-campus of Nottingham University. It consists of about 700 people and is about half an hour’s drive from the city. I want to rail at Fortune for abandoning me in a village.

Instead I swallow another deep disappointment so soon after being blackballed from the United States.

The professors turn out to be staid, cold and merciless. The campus is so tiny that it takes on the characteristics of a provincial village – everybody knows everyone else’s business. Students (and even some professors) keep boredom at bay with drink and sexual promiscuity. This is the first time that I’ve felt compelled to cut out a large section of myself to fit into a world that I can’t fathom. I’ve been raised with conservative, middle-class values but I’ve also lived in extreme environments. In Miami, my friends were from middle-class Haiti, Belize and Nicaragua. They had escaped difficult living conditions and were on study scholarships and financial aid. They studied full-time while they worked at extra jobs to pay off college tuition bills. In contrast, Sutton Bonington is full of over-privileged, spoiled brats who are being groomed to take over top posts in Britain’s corporate and landed hierarchy. The level of culture shock I experience tells me that I am going to stand out like a sore thumb.

The international students here become my tribe. We are individuals cast adrift in the same foreign boat. We look for and find solace in each other’s familiar sense of abandonment and individuality. Perhaps we have all cut away sections of ourselves to fit in. Instead, we fit together. Culture shock unites us. We marvel at the strange adherence to punctuality and the ultra-politeness that the British insist is characteristic of a civilised society.

It all goes over our heads. I can’t tell when someone is angry with me anymore – real emotion is contained behind a patina of politeness and civility. It becomes a game I must learn, and start to play. Eventually, it leads to a job in London, but the process of getting there involves killing off more parts of myself to fit into professional life in England.

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I’ve grown up in a Goan family that taught me that he who speaks the loudest is heard first. In professional Britain, the opposite applies. Passion in your voice gets you dismissed, not noticed, because people take it for aggression or rudeness. One doesn’t have a sense of humour unless one excels at sarcasm. Wit is revered. I become quiet around Brits. I tell myself that I’m learning by observing. I realise only much later that silence has become my coping mechanism.

I am under the impression that people here are burdened by a lack of emotion that might have been spent in the Second World War, an event that continues to colour the memories of everyone around me. Oral histories of the war are etched in their psyches and I watch their eyes brim as they recount stories of rationing and memories of grandfathers who served during the British Raj. These images unobtrusively play over and over in their hearts and minds. My interactions are inadvertently coloured by ‘Othering’. I’m not sure who’s doing the labelling, them or me.

This isn’t diverse, multi-racial London I’m in. This is the boondocks of provincial, elitist England. Unfortunately, much of it is lost on me during the two years it takes to complete my bachelor’s degree. When I graduate, I realise that I have friends who have no idea what it means to live as an Indian in Britain. They’re all Caucasian European and I’m likely the brownest friend most of them have ever had. I feel disconnected from their childhood stories of horse-riding or of holidays spent in Mallorca, Nice or Bournemouth.

I make the decision to apply only for jobs in London, where I can escape provinciality and I’m more likely to find people ‘of my ilk’. I take the first job that comes my way, without having any idea if the salary is enough to keep me in food, accommodation and savings. It isn’t. I find myself living from one salary payment to another. Transport on the tube is expensive and I didn’t even know to factor that in. I don’t want to live with strangers in London, so I rent a cheap studio flat in East London which costs over half my monthly salary. After about nine months, it is broken into one Saturday while I’m out.

I can’t let myself cry as two policemen scan the tiny space, asking me to list all the electronic and personal items that have been stolen.

‘There are no glass surfaces.’

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I look at the policeman, confused.

‘It’s difficult to lift fingerprints off any surfaces, unless they’re glass.

Everything here is made of plastic and wood.’

Here are a few of the things I will never recover because I don’t live in a greenhouse. The tiny Mac computer my brother has lent me; my prized CD collection, including the one of Rachmaninoff ’s second – played by the composer himself and recorded in 1929 – which was a gift; my radio – the only one I could afford with my first salary – even the suitcases where I’d been storing my winter clothes, personal diaries and photographs; are all stolen. Strangers have rifled through my personal belongings, including my underwear. The police tell me that there has been a rash of burglaries lately by a group in search for any valuables they can sell to buy drugs. I hold on till the locksmith comes and then try to think of someone I can call who can help, or at least someone with whom I could stay for a couple of days until I can feel safe again. One is an Anglo-Indian friend who says Yes when she means No. I am no stranger to subtext. Another is entertaining friends and gives me a clear No. A third is an elderly Indian gentleman, a closet homosexual, who blesses me with a Yes. I arrive at his flat with a toothbrush and a change of clothes, and sit on his couch, letting the shock of being burgled wash over me. The only thing I feel like doing is stroking the stray ginger cat he has recently adopted. He pushes something my way. I look down at the cup in his hand.

‘What is it?’ I ask blankly.

‘Tea. It’s good for you.’

‘No, thank you.’ I return to stroking the cat on my lap.

‘Have it. It’s hot and sweet.’ He gentles his voice. ‘It will help soothe your nerves.’

I take it and sip gingerly from the flowery teacup he’s handed me. He’s right. It helps.

‘Have you called your parents yet?’ he asks.

‘No. But I will, later. After I know they’ll be reassured that I’m handling it and I’m OK.’

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They couldn’t do anything even if they wanted to. They are too far away to be of any help. People rarely talk about how traumatising it is to be an immigrant; how vulnerable you really are. At least, no one in my family does. My parents were immigrants in Kuwait. I can’t recall them ever using that word to define themselves, though they often use it to define other non-Goan immigrants. As I said, I cut off bits of myself to survive living in England. No one warned me that this would be a requirement.

Going on an annual holiday to Goa means spending a huge chunk of my savings. Nobody had prepared me for that, either. I can’t seem to figure out how to live in a positive, healthy environment or at least work towards building one and save up something for my future. My savings are spent on not being alone for Christmas. Not once do my parents suggest spending Christmas with me. The cold is their biggest gripe. I don’t blame them. I’m desperate to be immersed in warm weather, heat, sunshine and some sense of family for at least a couple of weeks each year. Though several years have passed, I still feel that I am a stranger in Britain and a visitor in my parent’s home in Goa, where they have retired. I don’t feel able to tell them about what life in Britain is really like for me. Nobody wants to hear the sob story of a privileged middle-class girl who has been given a chance to get out, but is flailing.

However, I do try, thinking that my father might be sympathetic. ‘Papa, England isn’t really working out for me.’

He looks up from his newspaper. ‘Is it the weather?’

‘Er . . . not really. It’s more than that.’

‘Why don’t you migrate to Australia instead? The weather is better there.’

I sit there, confused, and stare at him. This is the man who once told me and my brother how in the early sixties he travelled for a week by ship to get from Karachi to Kuwait to work as a bank clerk and make coffee for his seniors; he couldn’t afford a sweater to keep himself warm in the cold, desert winter and slept on a mat on a terrace when endless power cuts couldn’t provide any relief during the sweltering heat of summer months. He went into cinemas when he could afford it, just to enjoy the air-conditioning when nights were too hot. He got married because he was bored hanging out with bachelors who gambled and drank homemade wine because they couldn’t tolerate living in a dry country. I heard about the years of sacrifice,

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Arrival: Notes from a Migrant Goan

indignity and prejudice that my father put up with while he slowly ascended through the ranks to become chief accountant at the bank. All the while, this same man dreamed of a Utopian Goa where he would one day retire, a Utopia where he now lives and that frustrates him on a daily basis.

Bribery, rife corruption, endless bureaucracy and worse inefficiency keep him in a cycle of rage and bitterness. He had dreamed of living a better life by the time he retired and returned to the land of his birth. Does he realise that the same dreams he’d had, he is pushing onto me? To get away from the corruption and inefficiency at any cost. As a mother who’s gone through hours of labour pains soon forgets and wants another baby, my father wants the same that he’s had, for me. It’s the bittersweet dream of every middleclass parent to have a child who studies abroad (meaning USA, UK, Canada or Australia) and if they’re lucky and work hard, gets to ‘settle’ there too.

Never mind the price.

I am at lunch with a colleague in a café in Soho, London, when a middle-aged Indian man with a faded suitcase walks past the café’s glass front, sees me through the window and with a beaming smile walks through the door and straight up to me. In clear Hindi, a language I’m hardly fluent in, he says something, then shows me an address scribbled on a piece of paper. Looking at the address, my heart plummets. There is no house number or street name, just the name of a place I’ve never heard of, a comma and ‘Soho, London’. I know that he’s been had. Someone has made him promises, taken his money, given him a fake address, promised him help on the other side and left him to the wolves. I shake my head and, when he doesn’t budge, I stand up and lead him to the door. I look up and down the street and see a policeman at the end near Soho Market. I point to the policemen and in the best Hindi I can muster say, ‘Isko pucho’ (Ask him), in the hope that the policeman has encountered something similar before and will know how to handle it better than I do.

I live in England for fourteen years, in London for eleven of those. I stay put, always hoping it will get easier somehow, that I’ll be able to build something for myself. But, I don’t see signs of this happening. With every passing year, things only get harder. It gets harder to build, maintain and then save relationships of any kind, friendships too. The corporate life is too cold and calculating – it cuts away at bits of me until I move into

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working with charities and start again from the beginning. It is a much better fit than corporate Britain. But, when long term contracts shift into contract extensions that dwindle from nine months to six to three and I find myself being expected to work on different projects for three months at a time, I decide to throw in the towel. I realise that job security is a myth in today’s world. The recession is hitting charities hard.

By then, I have an MA in Creative Writing and have carved a collection of stories into publishable form. I cash in my redundancy cheque, move to a beach in Goa and live off my savings while I search for a literary agent and a publisher. The sound of crashing waves, the sunshine and the heat are like balm to my cut-up self. I begin to put myself back together again.

Four years and a published novel later, I’m still living on a Goan beach in India. I miss friends back in London, the museums and theatres, the dining-out and the easier living; but then I remember how difficult it is to fit in, to find warmth, to earn a living as a creative without a strong support system to rely on. I’ve been privileged in many ways, lucky in others. All said and done, I can still recall the difference in my emotions when I was a fresh arrival on England’s shores and when I arrived in Goa to live there for the first time in my life. The feelings are miles apart. The first arrival made me want to throw up in anxiety. The other felt like a welcoming womb I could snuggle into.

Perhaps your sense of arrival and emotional response to it varies depending on the phase of life you’re in or what experience you’re going through.

It certainly helps if you have a support system to catch you when you fall, and help you feel protected and safe at least through tough times. In a world where migration appears to be a way of life common to most, it is surprising how little one hears about the vulnerability migrants face. Families that have experienced this need to be able to talk openly about their migrant experiences, both the bad and the good, if only to lessen the traumatic effect that others may face. It’s taken some distance, but I now consider myself lucky to have had the experience that I did of being a migrant Goan in Britain. However, I can’t help wondering about the fate of others who end up standing in Soho Market with a suitcase in one hand, a useless piece of paper in the other and a feeling of deep despair that even a policeman cannot assuage.

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Poetry

Reshma Ruia

Reshma Ruia

Southall Blues My son he crossed the black water ate beef and woke each morning to the razor-cut breath of cold I heard him calling me in my sleep So, my sari wrapped tight around my hips I too leapt across the black waters It was hard at first the language like an alphabet soup bubbling in my mouth the grey days that shut me in like a wall But by God I learnt damn fast Stopped waiting for the street vendor’s call to haggle over onions and potatoes in the bazaar to leave my gold bangles behind when I caught the 151 bus to Asda each week I don’t go on the roof anymore to spot the moon of karva-chauth The landlord filed a complaint I’ve learnt to love the rain that falls feeble and timid upon my skin

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Reshma Ruia

I’ve learnt to forget the bare-breast joy of the monsoon back home that left wet clumsy footprints behind Diwali comes and goes but I see no shut shops no little boys lighting crackers on the streets The English are organised and most up-to-date my son tells me every day No dripping roof or tap no wild flower or tree no unnecessary smile or hug Everything trimmed. To the point – what’s not to love?

He gets up for work as the world shuts its eye A graduate at home he drives lorries for a living scowls anger when I watch my Zee TV I must find a wife for my son A girl from back home with cheeks plump and skin so fair I need someone to share these walls

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Notes from the Ward Notes from the Shagufta Ward Shar meen Tania

Shagufta Sharmeen Tania ‘I love the clouds. . . the clouds that pass . . . up there . . .’

Baudelaire (‘L’étranger’)

Labour Ward, Homerton Hospital:

I

can hear crickets, luminous crickets singing inside my veins, singing and telling stories of sun-baked earth and marshlands and bogs, crickets merrily taking those stories into my pumping heart.

I wake up in a cabin floating in blue darkness. I do exactly what I would do normally, I take the hand-mirror in my hand . . . as if I were about to discover that I have changed. But no, there is no change. My face is my mum’s face, a perfect Cupid’s bow sits on my mouth, eyes somewhat floating with joy, a liquid joy reflected from deep within the cavity of my body. The hairline encircles an ageless face . . . my eyes in the mirror follow my chin (like luminous crickets), then come down the neck on to my shoulders. . . .

Suddenly they stumble on the length of the shoulders, suddenly they stumble on my hands hanging from the shoulders like two over-ripe snake-gourds that tell my actual age. It always made me feel that someone started to draw me with the delightful brush of an Impressionist, but somehow left it unfinished (to be completed by Daumier or Goya as a caricature). The rest of my body is about three-and-a-half-feet long. I

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struggle to touch my fingers with my thumb; I struggle to grip a cup of coffee or a paintbrush. It seems everything has been placed just a little out of my reach.

Lord Shiva blessed the King of Manipur, promising that his dynasty would bring forth boys only. Despite His blessings, a princess was born to the King of Manipur, princess Chitrangada. The king reared her as a son – she learnt to fight, she learnt to dress like men, to love and hate like men. So it was that the absence of ultra-sonogram in Lord Shiva’s maternity clinic gave birth to the first trend of cross-dressing!

The curtains of this ward have bubbles printed on them as if they were curtains of carbonated water. I keep staring at the curtains and suddenly I feel one bubble is swimming up to meet another; the membrane of two bubbles meet . . . then one bubble bursts the other and swims all the way up the surface. Hmmm, it reminds me of sperm and eggs, I keep thinking of the wonderful journey of a lonesome sperm and succumb to slumber.

Senior Registrar bends down to see me, she looks like one of the three witches from Macbeth and I wait patiently for her to serve me a hotpot of jackdaw and bull’s eyes and frogs. Without warning she inserts her fingers right into my body – and I thought only the Sudanese dayas performed this to feel a girl’s virginity was intact!

A group of doctors come to visit me; I smile at them, my very own sugar-candy smile, and I swear beneath my breath. I cannot stand them, these doctors. Sherlock Holmes said it right – that they can turn into the first of criminals. They have the nerve and they have the knowledge.

Although Anton Chekhov, my favourite author, was a doctor. So was John Keats, wasn’t he?

I feel sleepy. Should I sleep or should I wait for the next steroid injection?

I believe I can tolerate more mental pain than physical. Someone comes to me, swimming through the ocean of delirium. I try to shift.

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My midwife’s name is Stella. I feel like shouting in Brando’s voice – ‘Hey Stellaaaaaaaaa!’

My mum has lost her gamma-ray eyes, the eyes that beamed like a lighthouse and always made me feel like a thief. She stays seated by me, her eyes soft and sad and dreary like soggy bread. I don’t know why it is a sad thing that I am giving birth; I thought the world rejoices at a birth. I thought. My mother hissed and asked me – ‘Is this the price I pay for my unconditional trust?’ So my mum trusted that I would never give birth!

I sink into my pillow; it smells of detergent; it smells of cleanliness. I am fond of hospital beds, though I hate the tedious custom of people coming to see me in hospitals. It makes me feel like Emily Dickinson’s frog.

All the gods are polygamous and so are the yogis of old tales – they could impregnate rivers. Making love with a saint always led to a baby. I wonder what lovemaking with a devil makes? A baby, of course! Mia Farrow might know!

The tree at my window has leaves like bay, and luminous green berries.

The doctors visit me again, they smile in unison, I smile back. One of them suddenly says – ‘Oh, you know, your baby will be beautiful!’ I slyly try to see whether she said it seeing me or my mum. My mum is still sitting near me, starved-worried-dishevelled and still she sparkles like a dewdrop, a perfect, pleasantly rounded dewdrop on a petal. I feel a sudden streak of jealousy.

My mum is wearing pale yellow silk, with a wide border of fine silver threads. The locks on her forehead are cut short like a schoolboy’s. Her mouth sits tiny and pink on a heart-shaped face. She is not wearing any jewellery in her ears, her hands are bare too, her eyelids are glossy. She looks sad. Sadness makes her beautiful.

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I try my best to keep looking at the scanned images. I say excitedly, ‘I can see the nose and the chubby chops!’ The sonographer chews the inside of her mouth and says, ‘It is the placenta.’

A marmalade cat saunters down the lane towards the Department of Sexual Health. I call him Cottontail. Ha, ha, ha, how would a cat describe his STD to the doctors there? Would it purr? Would it frown? Would it occasionally lick a paw?

Stella wakes me up and announces that I am to be transferred to the antenatal ward. As I struggle to get down from the bed, Stella picks me up.

In good times, my general reaction to this kind of thing is somewhat like spontaneous combustion. But this time I swallow my anger.

Antenatal Ward, Homerton Hospital: There are thirty pregnant women in the ward. Every woman has a CTG machine attached to her belly. Every machine makes the sound of horses racing. (Kits, cats, sacks, wives/How many are going to St Ives?) Which one of those babies will be welcomed? Which one of those is cherished? Which one of those is merely a coital product? They all float in their seas of amniotic fluid, resting assured that mum is going to let them live and keep beating a strange orchestra of drums, the drums of a strange tribe. What does the drumming indicate? That the world is creeping close? That you are in danger? Or that they just beat like merry notes of church bells in May? I can hear the whining of the newborns from my bed; some sound like angry kittens, some sound like saws cutting into digging on the wood. Though I am mentally far off from the revelation of birth, I have been captivated by the rosy glow of a newborn or two being carried by on a transparent plastic tray.

Mum sponged me a little bit later. Then she towelled me and powdered me and brought my chair to the window. I smelt of soap-bubbles and lavender.

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There was a warm June wind blowing and my bump and breasts (they look like little steamed buns) protruded from the soft dress I was wearing. My mum, I could feel, sighed under her breath when she eyed the bump.

Outside, London was writhing in heat. The sky looked as if it were dyed blue. Mum touched me softly and whispered, ‘Do you want to sleep, dear?’

My eyes were tingling; I nodded my head and said, ‘Yes.’ I could not sleep. My thoughts rambled and brought back memories of Manzurul. He was nimble and willowy; he wore glasses and looked somewhat like Jesus Christ with those long tresses and beard. Only the chosen ones could look like that – crunchy as celery, smooth as mushroom-stalks and hairy like a peach; a rounded, about-to-burst peach. He used to write poems, his pseudonym was Manzuvaash.

The woman next to my bed is squirming in pain. I can hear her groaning, a Jewish housewife who has come to give birth to her ninth. When my mum goes to the toilet, I talk to her a bit. I ask her, ‘Don’t you feel pain giving birth every year?’ She smiles and says, ‘Almond oil is THE thing, you know.

It loosens the muscles; you try straining a bit and you bring forth your little one! Why, I do not take any drugs while doing it!’

I was drifting in my sleep; I could remember the lady doctor’s voice, the doctor from my university. She was doing her regular check-ups and grunted, ‘How do you think she will get hold of the drafting table? How do you think she will work on it and manage yards and yards of tracing paper?’ My mum turned crimson with rage and fumbled and said, ‘My daughter has undergone one of the toughest exams to get a chance to study here. We should give her a chance to prove herself. If it doesn’t suit her, she will leave it of her own accord.’ I left it of my own accord – well, after a while.

My mum is an architect herself. She did not approve of the fact that I wanted to study the same profession. She used to say, architecture only referred to a certain acquired taste, or the snobbery of a certain acquired taste. She used to say every architect pretended to see what a wonderful robe the king wore;

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to which she would add, ‘If only you could speak the truth, you would yell, “The king is naked!” ’ My mum was quite opinionated, as always.

She said a lot of things. She said, ‘A house of your own is like a birthmark, it is so personal. It is the hub of your hopes and aspirations. How on earth can someone else translate something so personal for you?’ She said a lot of things I struggled to understand.

Stella comes again to ask if I need tea or coffee. Mum asks for a jug of water, with loads of ice. Stella brings the jug in no time. A crystal-clear jug, the ice cubes floating. The moment I drink icy cold water, the baby in my body somersaults – the little one says, ‘Roll over, roll over.’ Mum is going to get lost in another world now, chewing the ice with her teeth, a small crunching sound to indicate that she has drifted again, her eyes on the tree with bay leaves and berries.

There is a Somali woman on the ward, just one bed away. Her slightly elongated head is full of closely cropped curls, her mouth reminds me of the peeled Champa-bananas of my country, fleshy and full and she has a beautiful body: her hips have the gentle curve of the hind of a wasp. The doctor is asking her the routine questions: ‘Is this your first pregnancy?’ She scrambles to find words, takes awkward pauses and says, ‘Well, I would like to think of it as so.’ The doctor’s jaw drops. After a pause, he asks, ‘What do you mean when you say you want to think of it as so?’ She says, ‘Long time ago, oh yes, I remember, I had a son. He is fourteen years old now and he is in Somalia.’ The doctor remains silent for a few seconds and then says, ‘Shall we try to bring him back here to you? Do you need our help?’ The woman bursts into tears, shakes her head and says, ‘Please, I do not want to see him . . . this baby that I have now is my first-born. That was another life. That was a life ago almost. . . .’ I try to hear what she says, but she only cries, even after the doctor has left. I keep fiddling with the thought of experiencing ‘a life ago’ in the single journey of a life.

I had a horrible childhood. At school, I existed like a moth, ugly and almost motionless on a wall that might hide its existence. My classmates at school would trample on the moth, tear its wings and throw it over the hedge. . . .

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They would pick me up and drop me down quicker than a rollercoaster ride. They would call me semi-colon. The women on the bank counters struggled to see me. . . . Our maths tutor used to call me ‘Pinky’ – what a horrid way to remind me of something that I had once struggled to come to terms with almost every day. I used to sob and cry, Why would Sumona be called ‘Sumona’, Nazia be called ‘Nazia’ but I would be called ‘Pinky’, after the smallest of the fingers? I could tell them now, I looked small but I had experienced so many joys of life that could never be called ‘dwarfed’.

Mum and I would go to an Indian curry house; its name was Dewan-eKhaas. We would swallow voluptuous mouthfuls of saag-paneer sitting under a discoloured copy of The Night Café.

When I first came in London, the posters of Grease and The Far Pavilion used to escalate with me on the escalators of the underground. Nobody else was with me then. Just them lot.

My mum used to have a gorgeous grey silk sari with a vermillion border.

The border was full of paisleys and lines and circles, and tentacles coming out of the fat paisleys. I had a secret wish to wear it and go somewhere nice with Manzurul. I could never tell Mum; if I did, she would tailor the six yards of sari into a stupid sun-dress for me and the wonderful spectacle of my mum wearing that silk sari would be lost forever. I didn’t want that.

The first time I went to Manzurul’s family home, I wore white. I wore a small red bindi between my eyebrows, a very insignificant way to express the significance of what was happening inside me. . . . The house was in shambles. There were winter squashes piled under the sofa. The veranda was crowded with full of big pots of dried meat. The moment his mum saw me, all three-and-a-half feet of my existence, she ran into the house. I heard someone falling. The maid came out and told Manzurul that his mum had fainted. He ran inside, and so did I. Manzurul’s mum was staring blankly, his dad was leaning over her face, asking, ‘Can you recognise us?’ Can you?’

Quite a metaphysical question, I suppose. Her sari was soaked in urine. I cleaned her up and we all waited for the ambulance to come.

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Sometimes you feel as if you’ve been lifted onto another plane and are looking at the Earth with Yuri Gagarin’s eyes – forlorn and grave. That’s how I always felt, whenever I felt love, looking through the eyes of Gagarin at the blue-green planet – floating in the middle of nowhere . . . I remember a dull foggy day, a day of dead leaves and brown twigs and looming clouds, when Joshua and I went to Hampstead Heath. There were old ladies walking their woolly dogs. The ponds had the colour of slow-cooked lentil soup. Joshua spent a happy time in those ponds that summer. In the winter, he left my life.

One night, under the golden statue of Freddie Mercury in Tottenham Court Road, Joshua and I decided to roam around the city. It was dark, it was windy, the roads were empty apart from the homeless people hovering around. It was a cold night, but deep down inside I felt warm as a freshly laid egg nestled by the mother bird’s bosom. He took me to Covent Garden, deserted then. We stopped before Thornton’s. There was a watercolour of a woman clad in pink. London turned out to be a necropolis that night; somehow I cannot remember a soul on the streets, only the headlights of cars in central London, looking like the green night-visions of an endless flock of sheep. . . . (Well, if there were cars there should have been people; why do I remember it to be a dead city that night?)

To me Joshua was Ichtyandr, the amphibian man . . . he used to remind me of an old sketch of that amphibian man, drenched through, hiding in the darkness of a back garden, oblivious to the man-made cities and their norms. . . . Then again, he was so untouched by his time and the maddening bustle of the great city, I thought he must have the lungs of the Great White shark – that would make you a loner – roaming on a dolphin in the bays of Buenos Aires. I remember us in a single bed in a small room, the walls flashing with every roll of thunder – the clouds had the mad intent of cavemen striving to light a fire with embers. Joshua pressed me close, he asked, ‘What do you love most?’ I guess I said, ‘Thundering clouds and fireworks.’ Well, that was all I could feel then . . . thunder and fireworks.

In normal times, I would have said, ‘Hyacinths, and maybe smoked fish.’

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Labour Ward, Homerton Hospital: It’s a month since I came here last. The skirting boards are the same. So are the blue curtains with bubbles printed on them, the smell of bleach, the smell of white sauce in hot food, the sour-faced midwives. I love hospitals; people do not have names here (just surnames), do not have titles, do not have expressions playing on their faces. Every mortal feeling has sterilized pills scattered around it. Nothing is spilled, nothing is wasted, nothing is left to be corrected. Hospitals have bodies. I always loved bodies.

They served dinner. I pricked the bonsai of the boiled broccoli with my fork and held it closer to my eyes. Hospital food reminded me of Joshua’s cooking, plain and simple as the gaze of a baby. He didn’t have cooking oil in his flat; neither did he have any salt.

I got a bed at three in the morning. I kept awake, so did my mum. The night sky on the window of the hospital lightened up, dawn was breaking, there was a chimney far away, and an aeroplane flew past the chimney. The duck-egg-blue moon was in the sky. At six o’clock the chimney brought up a puff of smoke. So, another day started.

They said I would need surgery . . . I would be shaved, pricked, pierced and bundled. I know one song perfectly apt for this: ‘Shaat ta kaake daar baay khokon re tui ghore ay. . . .’ (The seven crows row the boat, come home my child. . . .)

The doctor who came to explain to me about the drugs to be injected has a stutter. He gave pauses pregnant with expression . . . he explained what could happen to me (was I ever bothered about ‘could-happen’s?), that half of my body might go numb for the rest of my life, (ah, when did I actually have the whole of my body anyway?) Someone started to draw me with the delightful brush of an Impressionist, but somehow left it unfinished (or maybe just to be finished as a caricature by Daumier or Goya). . . .

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What is the exact Bengali phrase for spherical aberration? I remember now, it’s ‘goliyo operon’. That means I am still awake.

I am brown, Joshua was white, the midwives who will help bring the baby in the world are black.

I wish someone else would be there with me to hug me after childbirth.

Not someone with a pale yellow silk sari and locks cut short like a schoolboy and a heart-shaped face and glossy eyelids. . . . Someone crunchy as celery, smooth as the muddy mushrooms and hairy like a peach, a round, aboutto-burst peach.

I know what I would call the baby. I know how its downy lanugo would shine in the light; the colour of its eyes would be the dark blue-brown of the lenses of a camera. . . . I would hold it in my hands, I know I would hum an ABBA song – ‘I’ve been waiting for you . . . I’ve been waiting for you’.

Something will leave me like the way the leaves and bark of a deciduous tree leave the tree; I know it, I have lived it. I addressed the darkness of the postnatal ward and said, ‘Coming in a jiffy!’

Written 15 September – 3 January 2011, Homerton Hospital.

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Poetry

Anuradha Gupta

Anur adha Gupta

Lata Sings a Love Song I should have kept it – the tongue I grew up with, the language of my mother and her mother before her Not so much for my own sake as for my daughter’s, and for the sake of the songs I carried with me when we left All else may be passed on in a foreign tongue; the stories, the memories, but the songs won’t stand the tampering, the tweaking, the translating

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Anuradha Gupta

Listen to this one, I say Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it beautiful?

Glancing at her sideways, one eye on the road, my voice hopeful They all sound the same she says, tossing it aside We are quiet then for the rest of the ride while in the background Lata sings a love song

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Stitches: Excerpt from a Memoir Stitches : Excerpt Ember fromSwift a Mem oir

Ember Swift

M

y mother-in-law, Wang Wei, has a key to our flat. She moved to Beijing when I was very pregnant with Echo, our daughter, but she didn’t move in with us as most Chinese mothers-in-law do. Instead, she rented a flat in the same compound, just a building over, because, she said, living with us would be bu fangbian (inconvenient). The unspoken reason was our cultural differences, but I didn’t care about the why; I just exhaled, gratefully.

That didn’t stop her from entering our flat first thing in the morning and not leaving until after dinner every day. You see, in Chinese culture, a child’s home must be fully accessible to his or her parents. But for twelve hours a day? There were no boundaries.

She entered our bedroom, a space I think of as private, whenever she wanted. Picture me in there, propped up on the bed in the first few months of awkward motherhood, discreetly breastfeeding my daughter. My mother -in-law regularly barged in to hover over her suckling grandchild and criticise how I was holding her. I once bit my tongue so hard it bled.

On one of those early days, I came back to the room from the shower only to find my bed fully made, my recently stepped-out-of clothes retrieved from the floor and neatly folded on the bed and a puttering mother-in-law still in the room. Even when I clung to my towel, humiliated that she had just folded my dirty underwear, it still took her a good three minutes to get the message that I wasn’t going to get dressed in front of her.

It took a lot of getting used to – this culture, these presumptions. When she had finally retreated to her flat at night, I barked at my husband several

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times about this absence of privacy, her kindness in helping us with domestic chores notwithstanding. Eventually, he spoke to her. Somehow that produced an unspoken code: if the door is closed or the interior curtains on the outer rooms are drawn, she doesn’t come in. Not anymore.

You see, our flat has windowed doors and walls on the inner walls of each of our outer rooms, which are the only rooms that get the sunlight. Without those interior windows, our central living areas would never get any natural light.

She’s the one who stitched the curtains.

Wang Wei is sitting at our table sipping green tea. She has chosen a small teapot from Guo Jian’s collection – a brown earthenware one with a cute pouting lip for a spout. It sits before her on the bamboo tea tray, wet from having been heated with boiling water. The little teapot is overflowing with the second pouring over its leaves, the first having been both to wash the leaves and rinse out the cups and pot. Even its outside had been doused in boiling water.

‘The dust has to come off the teapot first!’ she said, clicking her tongue at the triangular glass shelf that lacks regular dusting.

My daughter is playing on the floor with some blocks and my swollen midriff and I are sitting next to her. I’m repeating the names of their colours to her in English, trying desperately to infuse her environment with this household’s minority language.

Dinner has just ended. It is just the three of us, like most nights, because Guo Jian is out. If he shares a meal with me once a week, it’s an occasion.

I’ve already whisked the dishes away and washed them, swatting away my mother-in-law’s protests. I now know, after several experiences of her backlash criticism, that these are her polite protestations; my act of washing up is evidence that I dong shi (know what’s right and wrong). She, the culinary queen, made the meal of course, so I should clean up. Besides, she rules the kitchen whenever she’s at our house. I have tried and failed to maintain dominion over my cooking space.

The point that it’s technically my kitchen is moot. She may not live here, but she has deemed anything not Chinese to be strange and foreign. She’s particularly prejudiced against cinnamon. Once she fished out and discarded

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all the paper labels in my glass canisters of dried goods from Canada, calling them ‘rubbish’.

‘Those were labels!’ I said, horrified. ‘They tell me what’s in the jars!’

‘There are no words on them!’ she squawked, defensively.

‘Yes there are,’ I said, fishing them out of the bin. ‘Look, right here! English words!’

She hadn’t registered these as language. To her, with no Chinese characters, there was simply no language present, just visual design.

She didn’t apologise for that, either. Apologies are not her style. She is a matriarch, after all, and she would lose too much face if she were to admit errors. As a result, I spent the next six months unsure as to whether I was making gluten-free, rye or wheat-flour bread, and having to stick my finger into the white powdered canisters to know if I was scooping up baking soda, sugar or salt. I had to laugh. But I haven’t always.

While her food is delicious, her organisational habits in a kitchen are infuriating. She puts unwashed pots on the floor; she rarely refrigerates leftovers; once I found a bowl of something I was partway through making balanced on the mouth of the rubbish bin to make more room on the countertop. She keeps vegetables in their plastic bags until they’re sweating with condensation. She stubbornly refuses to use my vegetable or fruit baskets, bought from Ikea and in plain view. Instead, I discover rotting vegetables on the floor beside the hot water heater in winter, or a bag of greens buried within my pots inside the cupboard. The soy sauces and cooking oil also seem to live on the floor when she’s around, leaving rings from their dripping sides on the tiles that then stick to the bottom of my socks.

‘Wear tuoxie!’ she says, when I complain.

She is constantly solving floor issues with the idea of slipper-wearing, a deflection of the point – another thing she’s extremely good at. But she came here to help us, so my complaints must be delicate. Knowing her has been an enormous lesson in patience. Sometimes I’ve failed miserably.

She is not in a good mood today. We fought last night. It was about my work schedule and why she feels overworked as the ‘helper’, but it wasn’t about that for me; it was about the absentee third party here – so absent

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that he has become the third party. She swats at my mention of him, as if he were an errant fly invading the conversation. To her, I have obligations to this household and to the kids; but he’s a man. The sexism makes my skin crawl. I have planned to have dinner out with a friend at the end of this week. ‘You don’t have to stay late, Ma. Guo Jian will be here. Just leave after dinner,’ I tell her.

‘He doesn’t know how to take care of children,’ she says, clicking her tongue.

‘He needs a chance to learn,’ I snap back.

‘I think you should go out with your friends in the daytime. What if she wakes up and wants her mother? What then? A good mother is available to her children. I never went out at night. If I had, my parents would have lectured me up and down.’

The ball of violence that bubbles up in my body when confronted with such double standards is like a churning, backed-up, overflowing toilet.

Toxic. I stop speaking. Wisely. My mother-in-law sighs a huge sigh. She is hopelessly dramatic. She stands up from her tea tray and walks into the kitchen where I hear her moving things around in a noisy expression of disapproval.

I sigh in mimicry. I know she can hear me. I don’t disguise that it’s in reaction to her sigh – I even placed it at the same pitch in my throat for emphasis – and I continue playing with my daughter.

Just before leaving, Wang Wei turns and says, ‘Don’t forget to make sure she’s warm. Get up a few times and check that she hasn’t kicked off her blankets. It’s a mother’s job to prevent her child from freezing in the night.’

Then she is gone, pointedly making it impossible for me to respond by pulling the door shut as punctuation. I have been getting these kinds of condescending titbits of advice for twenty-one months now, and though I’m long past having my competence insulted by them, they’re still annoying; in any case, the relief to see her finally gone is my primary emotion.

I notice she left me the teapot and tea service to tidy up, which is quite out of character. I pessimistically register that she has likely done this on purpose, in protest. The spout of the teapot is no longer cute. Having a disappointing daughter-in-law unwilling to simply nod and accept the traditional Chinese ways is, well, very unfortunate for her.

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But we are stuck with each other. Tied in matrimony. Knotted together.

No one ever marries a person; I married a family.

I leave the tea service where it is. In protest.

Since my daughter’s arrival, my visits back to Canada always include a mass purchase of kids’ clothes in solid colours. I also enjoy dungarees with buckles, plain black patent leather shoes, leotards, snow suits – you just can’t find those kinds of kids’ clothes in China. Chinese children’s fashion looks like it was all donated by the circus.

When I return to Beijing, I pull out new acquisitions from my swollen suitcase, its insides spilling into our living room, and I listen as my mother-in-law deems the garments ‘not warm enough’ or ‘uncomfortable’ or made from materials ‘not good for the skin’. As the older generation, it is her job to be in charge of all things. My desire to dress my own child is quite obviously out of line. Clearly, I must be stopped.

When I do it anyway and she protests, I play a familiar card in reverse: ‘It’s cultural,’ I say. ‘In my culture, because I’m the mother, I make the decisions.’

She pretends she hasn’t heard me.

They say that fashion speaks volumes. Maybe our egos are just stitched into the seams of everything we wear or stuff our children’s limbs into, stubbornly. My daughter’s wardrobe is deafening. It’s like a screaming cultural debate.

In China, the word ‘fashion’ has come into the lexicon and retained its English pronunciation, itself a rare occurrence. Few English words have been absorbed into Chinese, so the fashion industry should be patting its own well-dressed back for this.

What’s funny is that it has been reconstructed as an adjective rather than a noun. People will say, ‘Na hen fashion’ (‘That’s really fashion’) about a fashionable outfit.

When I first met Guo Jian, he regularly pulled out new outfits – the guy has twice the volume of clothes that I do – and asked me if I liked his new ‘fashion’ shirt or jeans or boots. Before we went out, I watched him working the runways between our flat’s mirrors assessing his colour schemes and ensemble choices. He has more matching bags than I can count. His shoes

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fill four storage containers. His T-shirts alone, if piled one on top of the other on the floor, would easily reach up to my chest. ‘ “Fashionable”,’ I’d say, gently trying to correct the use of the word, but he was too busy getting ready and I was too amused to push grammar.

Eventually I started to wonder if the word ‘fashionable’ really existed in English. It sounded strange in my mouth, like my own linguistic invention.

Everyone kept using ‘fashion’ as an adjective, even on television, and one day I accidentally did the same while speaking Chinese to a friend of Guo Jian’s. It tumbled out and its incorrect use had no impact whatsoever on the conversation. Because, in fact, I had used it correctly by Chinese standards.

‘Incorrect’ is culturally subjective. Rules differ; standards aren’t universal.

One thing from one culture can be absorbed and then redefined by another.

While at first it’s an exchange (like the word ‘fashion’ as it travelled into this language), once the borders have been crossed, the ownership rights shift, too. The new owner gets to make the decisions.

It’s a bit like giving someone the gift of a tablecloth and then returning later to discover that they’ve cut up the fabric and used it to line their drawers. There’s nothing to say. It was their gift, their right to determine its use. But a small part of you can’t help but feel injured.

Then again, language mutates. It changes, even within the same culture.

So when this happens across cultures, who am I to get all ‘cut up’ about it?

Maybe I’m sensitive because that’s what happened to me, too – me and my Western standards. But who’s holding the scissors? The culture? Guo Jian? His mother?

Me? Last year, Wang Wei stitched a pair of denim overalls purchased in Canada that were too long for my daughter because Echo loved the ‘pretty flowers’ embroidered on the bib and the fasteners she could manipulate. The message in this stitching was this: even though they’d been blacklisted as ‘uncomfortable’, she was going to permit Echo to wear them because a granddaughter’s desires trump a daughter-in-law’s. I dressed her in them often, with a satisfied grin.

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I pulled them out again this winter and held them up to show my mother-in-law while she was cooking, asking her if it would be all right if I took down the stitched cuffs. That was my first mistake.

‘She can’t wear those this year! They’re too small!’

She scuttled this response into the space between us, hastily, turning away from me the moment she pitched the words from her mouth. She completely evaded the question. That’s because I had directly addressed the stitching in the first place. I exposed her silent compromise – a loss of face for her. I left the kitchen, a familiar barb of frustration scratching sharply from inside my right temple. There must be a seam-ripper in this house somewhere.

I keep bringing up his absenteeism in the realm of childcare. The presence of his mother ‘to replace him’ is not acceptable to me, I tell him. He and his mother may share a birthday and too many traits, but that doesn’t make them interchangeable. He’s still the father. He’s still the one who should be present. These are my Western values – standards I can’t allow my current Eastern environment to silence, like a mouth sewn shut.

It’s Saturday. He’s spontaneously decided to devote the whole day to the family. I do a double-take. Wordlessly. I’m sitting at the kitchen table messing with Echo’s overalls, trying to get the cuffs unstitched with a pair of scissors. Guo Jian comes over and calmly removes the scissors from my hands. And the jeans.

‘What are you doing?’ I am irritable at being interrupted.

‘I’ll do it. The scissors are too close to Echo. I can do it.’

His sudden need to control the safety sphere around his child reminds me of his mother, laced with suspicion about my competence. Whatever, I think, but don’t protest, grateful for one less task. Hands idle, I watch him, curiously.

‘Besides, Echo thinks these are her most fashion jeans, right?’ He winks at me as he deftly removes the remaining stitches from the left trouser leg.

He has undone the cuff in half the time it took me to do the right side.

We decide to go to the aquarium. Echo happily puts on her overalls with the ‘pretty flowers’ so that she can go see the ‘big fish’. The sun is bright and I throw open all the flat’s curtains and flood the house with natural light.

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Guo Jian dances with his daughter in the sunbeams. She is all drama and poses which makes us both start to laugh. The giggling escalates until we’re doubled over in stitches, Echo squealing and crawling all over us in a bath of glee.

Maybe he’s changing.

When my daughter is sleeping, Wang Wei often sits on a low stool in front of her Chinese soap operas, sewing or knitting. She’s a wizard at both. The wool or thread spirals around the needles in a helix of creation and I am mesmerised.

Stitching is really just a means of attachment. Several pieces of fabric, arranged together, and then we cover ourselves up with these attachments.

We call them clothing. We see each garment as a new whole. Itself.

Likewise, fabric neatly stitched to hang along a rod before glass does not change the fact that the window or door is still an entranceway, curtain drawn or not. I have grown so attached to this idea of separateness that I believe I am alone when I shut myself in – a singular, attachment-free being in my own space.

But people assembled together by blood or marriage, as incompatible and ill-matched as they might seem, are nevertheless invisibly tied by a series of complicated stitches. Especially after children arrive. If you take family and break it apart – willingly or forcibly – it will leave an indisputable scar, just as stitches do to flesh.

But which scars are deeper: the ones from the stitching or those from the ripping? This is my current question. Behind it rings another: Am I brave enough to find out?

‘Stitches: Excerpt from a Memoir’ is included in the Afterness anthology (AfterParty Press, Hong Kong, 2016).

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Flora Qian

E

veryone was talking about the bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade.

Yun and her classmates had seen angry commentators dominating the news every day since the event had occurred, a month before, in May 1999.

‘It was a deliberate and barbaric attack,’ most of the news reporters concluded, disregarding US President Bill Clinton and his defence secretary’s remarks that the NATO plane ‘bombed the wrong target because of an outdated map.’

‘It was a lie,’ declared some of the teachers in her secondary school. ‘The US was afraid that we would help Milosevic develop defences against their missiles.’ They often discussed what patriotism meant and how young people should be angry with their imperialist enemies. The terms teachers used, such as ‘imperialist’, sounded outdated and foreign to her. But like everyone else, she saw bodies covered with white cloths in the news clips shown in classrooms, and she made donations to those who had lost family members.

That was in Shanghai, the city of Yun’s birth, a place which she would later make a great effort to leave behind. Yun’s father was a Confucian scholar, but his work was no longer at the centre of their culture. He told Yun that the Confucian li, or decorum, had been considered degenerate during the Cultural Revolution. And now it was hard to simply bring things back. He had also said that the tedious debate about the embassy attack was just a trick played by the Chinese government and everybody had been fooled.

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But at that time, Yun didn’t really care about politics. She had just turned fifteen and was one of only ten girls who got into the advanced science class at her boarding school, after several rounds of brutal exams. They had the best teachers in the district and competed in international maths and physics olympiads. What was happening in a faraway, unsettled place in Eastern Europe wasn’t her main concern.

But those young boys in her class talked about the attack every day and it annoyed her. They had finally stopped hiding her pencil box and messing with the tea in her flask. Instead, they joined in the overwhelmingly anti-US sentiment. They stopped going to KFC, which had been considered a cool hang-out place when the chain first opened in China, and tried to poke a hole in the only foreign teacher’s bicycle tyre so he would fall and hit his big Clinton-like nose. Poor music teacher Mr Eriksson, she thought. He was from Sweden and married to a local woman. His Chinese was almost flawless, and he had nothing to do with the US or NATO. The only other person who didn’t join in the school’s patriotic activities was her physics teacher, Mr Yang.

He was very tall and fit, and one could easily mistake him for a PE teacher.

In his mid-thirties, he was also younger than most of the other teachers in her school. He spoke Mandarin instead of Shanghainese, and Yun found his deep voice magnetic. She had heard that before coming to her school, he had been a university lecturer in Beijing. The girls in her class called him by the nickname ‘college professor’ and thought he was not as good at disciplining them as other teachers. He didn’t seem to talk much to Ms Zhu and Mr Tang sitting next to him when Yun went to their office to hand in homework. Maybe he just couldn’t fit in an office filled with Shanghainese speakers, she thought. Maybe he was just not interested in discussing the recent news.

It was autumn in Yun’s first year when he first became her teacher.

Sometimes she saw him taking the same route as her to school on Monday mornings, and she would follow him. He always wore a beige trench coat and walked quickly, not fully aware of the traffic in a city where drivers didn’t pay much attention to the red and green traffic lights. Strangely, Yun even felt protective of Mr Yang. A few times she caught a glimpse of him from her car window, and would ask her mother to let her out earlier, just

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to walk behind him. She wondered why he didn’t ever take a bus or drive.

Did he live near the school way out in the suburbs?

She also noticed that there were more and more fancy cars waiting outside her school on Friday afternoons. Lots of her classmates’ parents had ventured into the stock market or had started lucrative small businesses since the children had become teenagers. In their essays, some people read out stories about their summer trips to Venice or Sydney. Yun’s parents were barely keeping up with the average among her peers in this school and they were not keen on international travel but, like the others, they had also moved a few times, each time ending up in a bigger place. The world had changed since she was a child, and Yun finally grasped that truth at secondary school. She had heard that parents could pay to get their children into the school now, to help expand the new dorms and campus, and that gutted her, as she had studied so hard for the entrance exams. No wonder there were so many rich kids around and no wonder each of the classrooms had a brand new TV. One of her friends, Lily, always wore amazing clothes. Her father was a top executive in a Chinese bank. She preferred to be called Lily instead of her double-character Chinese name ‘Li Li’, and once told Yun of a scandal involving one of their classmates who was caught calling on a prostitute, but his family managed to cover it up. ‘His father is an old business acquaintance of my father, and I just overheard them talking about it,’ she said.

Things like that disgusted Yun. Sometimes she wondered why Mr Yang had left his university job in Beijing and come to teach this bunch of spoiled kids here. She’d heard that he didn’t have family in Shanghai.

‘You know, Mr Yang was married once,’ Lily told her one day as they were walking down the corridor together and saw Mr Yang passing by with an armful of books. ‘I know everything,’ she said proudly, brushing her hair back from her forehead when they greeted him.

She could tell that Lily adored him too.

Her father was in Germany that year as a visiting fellow and it was the first time he had lived abroad for so long. Yun grew quiet at home as she usually didn’t have much to talk about with her mother, who was busy working for her promotion to head pharmacist at the district hospital.

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One day in late May, when her father was calling home, he mentioned an hour-long video he had seen with some Chinese professors at a gathering.

It was about an incident that had happened ten years earlier in Beijing, where university students were protesting in Tiananmen Square. Yun didn’t recall any mention of that in her contemporary history textbook, and neither did the former General Secretary’s name Zhao Ziyang ring a bell.

He must not have been such an important leader in their history, she guessed.

But Yun’s father was enthusiastic that night, telling her mother that this was the first time he had seen a video showing everything. He said he was shocked, even though he had had a vague idea of what had happened at that time. ‘Some students offered soldiers food and shelter, and tried to talk them into joining the cause when the troops first entered the city. All of them . . . just young kids.’ His voice sometimes lagged through the international call, and would pause for a second on hearing her reply. Her mother was quiet most of the time and reminded him not to talk too much over the phone. ‘You never know who’s listening,’ she said.

Yun’s father said something about her being silly and that the Cultural Revolution was long behind them. However, he had lowered his voice to make her mother more comfortable.

He continued. ‘Why do you think the government made such a big deal about the bombing of our embassy in Yugoslavia? Not that this isn’t newsworthy, but it seems that they put too much emphasis on it. It is all about playing a trick at a critical time to distract people’s attention, since it is the tenth anniversary of that event.’

‘What event?’ Yun asked. She was using the phone in her own room so they could all talk together. Her curiosity grew. As long as she could remember, her parents had seldom discussed things other than their daily life or her performance at school. They had had a hard time during the Cultural Revolution since both of their parents were ‘bourgeois’ who had worked for the Kuomingtang, but they didn’t talk much about it. All she knew at that age was that they had wasted many years working in factories or in the countryside, and they were in their thirties before they were finally able to go back to university.

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Remembering that Yun was on the line as well, her father brought up his recent trip to Switzerland and said he had bought them both new watches.

Her mother must have been happy and relieved. Yun didn’t pay attention to the rest of the conversation, as her mother talked about her forthcoming school reunion, and about so-and-so, who had done extremely well. She said she could wear the watch then. Yun remembered that in her childhood, her parents had watches with ‘Shanghai’ as a brand name, the only brand people knew at that time. But now things were different. Putting down the phone, she couldn’t concentrate on the mock exams she was doing. She felt that she was close to understanding something very important, something that had changed her parents’ lives, and something in their ambivalence made her anxious.

Yun’s physics grades were getting worse. By the end of the autumn term, she was barely passing.

Her class teacher, Ms Zhu, was anxious that this would affect her place in the cohort, and that she might be kicked out of the advanced science class in the following year. But Mr Yang assured her that he wouldn’t mind tutoring Yun during the winter holidays. Ms Zhu also mentioned Lily and another student, Stephanie, who were also doing poorly. Mr Yang said tutoring one wouldn’t be much different from tutoring three.

The winter holidays soon arrived. They spent days shivering in Mr Yang’s small, unheated flat. Stephanie, wearing only a thin designer blouse after she took off her fleece jacket, kept sneezing, unprepared for an unheated room. Mr Yang told the three of them that his landlords were relatives of one of his students in another class. Yun noticed that instead of a normal wardrobe, he used something like an instant plastic box with a zip in the middle to store his clothes. His flat was quite humble. Lily and Stephanie also seemed surprised by this.

When they took a break, Mr Yang would make them dumplings. The girls ate and drank the hot soup as their eyes wandered. They asked him inappropriate questions such as how much do you earn at our school, why were you divorced, and do you find it awful not speaking Shanghainese.

He answered these questions with patience and an art of omission. But interest

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persisted about his marriage, which had lasted for just one year, in his twenties. He finally said something about it.

‘Her family was among those high-ranking officials in Beijing. Well, my advice is not to marry one from that group,’ he said, wryly.

‘Why?’ Lily asked. Yun imagined that some of the uncles she had to visit on Chinese New Year with her family might not be too far away from the group Mr Yang was referring to. He looked embarrassed, not expecting her to be so forward.

‘She had a dozen lovers. I only found out after we got married.’

‘Wow!’ Lily was convinced by the answer, nodding with a smile. ‘I know most officials send their kids abroad now. They speak English like Americans, and live a life like them. Decadent, I mean.’

Stephanie then brought up a story from her older brother, who studied at a university in Canada. Despite the one-child policy, her family had somehow managed to have two children. ‘My brother had a classmate whose father was a provincial governor. And the classmate was invited to a school gala every year, until his father lost his position a year ago. Nobody has bothered to invite him since. Those foreigners were just as snobbish.’

‘Maybe the trend will stop now,’ Lily said, ‘after the bombing.’

‘I would never go to America,’ Stephanie said, bobbing her head in agreement, not knowing then that she would be one of the first of Yun’s classmates to move abroad with her family, to Los Angeles.

Yun felt that Mr Yang was looking at her the whole time, as she stayed silent during this conversation. It was in silence, she later learned from him, that he believed that they shared an understanding. An understanding of the matter’s complexity that was beyond her formal education. Mr Yang would sometimes say Yun was the brightest among the three, and this made Lily and Stephanie quite hostile towards her. He shouldn’t have said that in public, she thought. Part of him still behaved like the juvenile boys she knew.

Their story would have been different if it hadn’t been for what happened one day in early June. On that morning, Mr Yang came to class as usual, but Yun noticed that he was dressed all in white. A white shirt is common, but she considered it a bit unusual to wear white trousers too, unless it was

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in mourning. But who was he mourning? He had a stern look in his eye throughout the lesson. Even the most talkative boys seemed to sense the mood and the atmosphere was subdued.

Ten minutes had passed when Mr Yang suddenly excused himself and said that he couldn’t carry on. It was a special day for him, he explained to the confused classroom. Some good people he knew had died on this day ten years ago, he added. His neck stiffened and his fingers gripped the edge of the lectern. It seemed that this thirty-seven-year-old man was about to burst into tears. Yun was surprised that he seemed so sentimental and didn’t try to hide anything.

He left the students in shock and one of the girls had to call Ms Zhu to manage the situation. They spent the rest of the lesson in private study. Yun heard later that Mr Yang was told off by the headmaster for his ‘irresponsibility’ in the classroom and had his pay docked. He took sick leave and didn’t come to school for a week. Ms Zhu arranged for an older and more experienced teacher to step in, but Yun didn’t like it when he used Shanghainese to express the terminology of physics.

On the fourth day of Mr Yang’s absence, Yun went to his small sixth-floor walk-up flat. She bought a plant from the flower shop and thought he would like it. Mr Yang seemed surprised when he opened the door, but he invited her in. He didn’t look sick at all.

‘So you’ve been hiding here,’ Yun said, using the opening line she had rehearsed on the way. She noticed that he was wearing more casual clothing than usual, an old, long-sleeved T-shirt and faded jeans. The flat was not as tidy as it had been when they came for tutoring. It was cold and damp, and had a strange smell. She looked around for wine bottles, but didn’t see any.

‘What happened? I’ve heard there was a protest organised by university staff and students ten years ago, but it ended badly. What exactly happened?

Was that why you left Beijing?’

‘I shouldn’t have cancelled class like that,’ he said. Maybe he wasn’t really listening, suddenly having this girl walking into the part of his flat that nobody other than himself had occupied. But it didn’t occur to Yun then how far she had seeped into his life, and she didn’t consider the vulnerability of people as people despite their social roles, or the significance her visit might have to someone who had paid special attention to her.

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She thought about what her father had said over the phone regarding the Beijing incident. She told Mr Yang that she understood, even though she was not sure what she knew. Maybe leaving Beijing had been a good decision for him.

Mr Yang came over and took her in his arms. ‘You are like a little sweetheart to me,’ he said in a low voice. He started to kiss her and put his tongue between her parted lips. It was the first time Yun had ever been kissed, and it was not what she had imagined. More salacious and possessive.

His tongue moved slowly over her lips and she felt a bit queasy.

What happened later didn’t seem to register for a few days. He put her on his single bed and took off her uniform. He entered her body while she still had her socks on, and moved and shook on top of her. Yun didn’t bleed and he said that was normal for girls nowadays who played so much sport at school. He said he had wanted her ever since he first saw her in class, and she had given him the impression that she felt the same. He said they were not living within a good system, and he didn’t care too much about the age difference.

Yun was still in pain and felt that she was not in love with him anymore.

She felt that she couldn’t close her legs together as she walked home afterwards.

That evening, she looked into the mirror for a long time, worrying that her eyebrows would betray her new physical experience. Girls at school always said that a non-virgin would stop frowning and her eyebrows would grow further apart as time went by. ‘Has something to do with spreading your legs,’ said the all-knowing Lily.

But Yun was mostly afraid that her mother was going to see it and report to her father, who was still living in Germany. She wished she could talk to one of them, even if it were about other things. Something irrelevant. Just a long, warm talk.

But when the weekend arrived, she realised that her mother hadn’t noticed anything. Since she’d become the head pharmacist, her mother had more conferences and drug company presentations to attend.

After a while, Mr Yang came back to class. He didn’t behave any differently towards Yun in front of the other students. He even called her name once for a question, a thing that an adult was capable of doing that

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comforted her and frightened her at the same time. Sometimes, though, she thought she caught a look from him while he was talking, and there was something desperate in it. She would turn her head away, pretending to look out of the window. Their first night was still vivid in her mind. Yun couldn’t understand her own feelings. What was he trying to do when he did that to her? What was he trying to say? Now that they were so intimate, she wondered if she had earned the right to know more about the world, about him. She wasn’t old enough to give a name to that passion, but found herself unable to turn him down when he wanted to see her again.

‘I think your body should be able to climax soon,’ he said after doing the same thing over again the second time, though Yun had still hoped that their meetings would turn out to be different. But she breathed onto his chest when his hands tested her. On his chest, her hair was no longer a ponytail that students were required to either cut short or tie up at school.

‘A lot of women don’t really know that pleasure. But I’m sure it will come soon for you.’

They had a few more encounters in his flat, always after school, but they never walked together. Sometimes he liked Yun to sit on his lap as he told her stories about Beijing, especially how the city looked after the snow, when the streets were empty and the Forbidden City and Summer Palace evoked their quiet beauty of a hundred years before. He told her how his generation had been idealistic and innocent, and different from hers. ‘Maybe too innocent,’ he said. ‘People don’t care about those things any more, as long as business goes well. And your parents have the money to send you abroad, so you don’t have to worry.’ Yun assumed that he must have been involved in the student movement at that time. She thought it was quite foolish to live in a utopia like that without recognising the waves of time pushing them forward. Sometimes she didn’t respond.

Yun learned that he was born in Henan Province towards the end of the Great Famine in the early 1960s, and soon orphaned. He was adopted by a relative in Beijing. He believed the Great Famine wasn’t a ‘natural disaster’ at all as the textbooks claimed, but the result of Mao’s ill-judged Great Leap Forward, when all the private farmers had to abandon their farmland to produce steel.

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Yun learned too that he had always liked classical Chinese poetry and said that now you could only find that kind of aesthetic in Japan. ‘Whether it’s in haiku, flower arrangement or social structure,’ he said, ‘it’s all the things we’ve thrown away over the past hundred years.’

But Yun wasn’t sure that what they were doing was so conservative. In the Confucian doctrine, the only emotion a student should have for her teacher is respect. She should respect him all her life, even though she might have been his student for just a single day. She wasn’t really torn by this, she told Mr Yang, perhaps because their culture didn’t have a centre anymore.

They just had to admit that they had also thrown some old traditions away.

And then, one evening, the climax came. It came so unexpectedly that her body was not hers anymore. Yun realised that she had only known devotion of the mind before. But after all, the devotion of the body was not separate, or even different, from that of the mind. She fell asleep on his shoulder afterwards, ashamed when she woke up that she didn’t even know when she had lost consciousness.

They made love a lot, and Mr Yang always complimented her on her body, even the scars on her knee where she had fallen in a PE class. He ran his fingers over the scars and kissed them. He told her he kept working out to retain the physique of a young man. She didn’t really care. He bent her over into different positions, and sometimes she stayed so late that he had to call a taxi to take her back to the dorm before curfew.

Lily had stopped being her friend. One day, Yun saw her crying in the classroom, burying her head in both arms. Some classmates gathered around Lily but she refused to raise her face. Yun didn’t have the courage to ask what was wrong, but watched her from the back row all morning.

She had an intuition that something had finally been brought to the foreground that would eventually unravel their lives. Stephanie came up to her after the break, frowning, and told Yun that Lily had found out that she ‘stole a boy from her’.

‘She called you some of the worst names,’ Stephanie said. ‘But she didn’t want to tell me who the boy is. I guess you two have some friends out of school. I’ve heard you always go out after class these days.’ Although Stephanie had spent the whole winter in tutoring sessions with them, she was a bit slow. But it wouldn’t take long for her to figure it out.

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Yun went to Mr Yang’s place that evening and told him about Lily. Yun guessed that his landlords’ relatives had seen her, and the student from another class told Lily. It was not surprising that Lily would have her sources.

Mr Yang seemed frightened.

‘Does anyone else know about us?’

‘Lily didn’t say your name,’ she said.

Yun realised that he was much more afraid of being discovered than she was. She didn’t remember why she had liked him in the first place.

‘If the school finds out, I might go to jail for this,’ he said.

‘Maybe you should marry me if everyone finds out.’ She meant this as revenge for his cowardliness, but regretted it the moment the words escaped from her mouth.

‘Nonsense,’ he said quickly. And then, after a few seconds, ‘It’s not possible.’

He moved close to take her clothes off and they didn’t say much to each other that night. A few days later, he asked her to pee on a stick to make sure that she was not pregnant. It was he who had been calculating the timing of her period.

She grew tired of all those sex positions, and of the small, empty room.

When Yun entered the second year of secondary school, she told her parents that she wanted to switch to art instead of science at college, and because of this she wanted to leave the advanced science class and replace it with history as her minor. She wasn’t particularly interested in history, especially the kind of history that was taught at school, but she knew that this was Lily’s least favourite subject.

Her mother wasn’t supportive at first, but after several phone calls with her father, they finally agreed on the change. Dropping physics and adding history, Yun’s overall marks started to soar and she even got into the top ten of the 400-student cohort in no time. She told Mr Yang that the decision was also partly for the two of them, so he wouldn’t get distracted in class, and nobody would suspect them.

But she went to his place less and less. In her new class, Yun made friends with a few of the athletes, and they played volleyball together. She grew close to one of them, a boy who wore glasses and seemed more of a gentleman than his peers.

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One day Jeremy and Yun went together to a coffee shop in the French Concession district, and did some shopping for records. Heading back, he held her hand as they walked together. His palm became wet, and he kept quiet the whole time. The late autumn day was beautiful, and they stepped on the fallen phoenix tree leaves, making soft, crackling sounds.

At one crossroads, they ran into Lily. She was chatting with a group of university-age boys and girls in front of a convenience store, a cigarette in one hand. Feeling embarrassed, Yun let go of her athlete friend’s hand when Lily walked across the street towards them.

‘Are you two friends now?’ She stared at Yun for a while, and that made her uncomfortable. This was the first time that she had talked to Yun since the day she had cried in the classroom. Lily sized Jeremy up. ‘What about Mr Yang, then?’

‘Stop it. This has nothing to do with Mr Yang.’

Lily turned to him. ‘Do you know that your girlfriend is sleeping with our physics teacher?’

After that, neither Jeremy nor Yun pursued the relationship. Yun thought he was a nice boy, quite a looker and not a stereotypically shallow athlete.

But perhaps something had left a shadow in their minds. He didn’t even question her; instead, he let his hand drop when she pulled hers away in front of Lily. But that was probably what any boy that age would do.

A few evenings after meeting Lily on the street, Yun went to Mr Yang’s place. They had been seeing each other secretly for over half a year now.

‘I can’t come here anymore,’ she said, avoiding his embrace and walking straight into the room. He leaned back against the desk in front of her.

‘Soon it will be my final year at secondary school and I need to concentrate on my studies.’ She hadn’t expected to make this lame excuse, but continued, ‘You said before that we didn’t have a future. We are not going to marry or anything.’

‘I think I always knew that this day would come,’ he said, looking down at his open palms, as if he were counting the crossing lines. ‘You have all of your twenties in front of you, and I’m almost forty. There’s no reason for me to keep you here, really.’

Yun waited but he didn’t say anything else. He accepted the breakup calmly, making her hardened heart ache again.

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Three weeks passed. She avoided places at school where she might meet him. Only once she saw him from a distance in assembly, talking to the foreign music teacher, Mr Eriksson, and couldn’t tell whether he was sad or not. Yun wandered the streets for half an hour after school that night, afraid that she would end up at Mr Yang’s door again. What was she looking for in him? Whatever it was, she couldn’t admit it. She had made up her mind a few days before to apply to universities in Hong Kong, far away from the city of her birth. But, in the end, Yun called him.

‘How have you been?’ Even though it had only been weeks, his voice sounded different. ‘I heard that Ms Zhu was writing recommendation letters for you and a few others. You never told me.’

‘I didn’t know at that time,’ she said.

‘So how can I help you?’

Yun listened to the cars passing by for a few seconds. The little phone booth stood in the middle of nowhere. And finally she asked, ‘Can I come over?’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ He said it clearly. For a moment Yun thought he was angry, and he was trying to hurt her, to get revenge. But his voice was calm. ‘I’ve thought about you all the time over these days, and I couldn’t stand it. But, you are right. We shouldn’t see each other again. It was not good for us.’

Her tears fell in that little phone booth, three weeks after breaking up with Mr Yang. She didn’t realise that she had made her parting from him so official.

‘I lost my job in Beijing after ’89,’ he said. ‘Two of my students were killed. Two girls, only a few years older than you. I had always encouraged them to be more active. I should have been there with them when it happened, since I was the one who planted the idea in their minds. But my wife talked me into giving up during the last few days. And I did. After that, I couldn’t bear to stay at the university any longer, and neither could I remain in that marriage. But I don’t want to lose my job again. Mr Eriksson told me what he has heard lately among the students. Some didn’t think he understood Chinese. It was kind of him to come and warn me.’

He told Yun that he loved her. Yun couldn’t believe it, and found it too painful to believe. But he said he loved her. He said she had her own future

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and sometimes life was what it was. Yun didn’t know how to respond to the idea of not being able to see him ever again. Nothing came out of her except the silent flow of tears. After a while, he hung up.

That was the last time she spoke to Mr Yang.

The world entered the new millennium and the scars on Yun’s knee began to fade. She didn’t allow herself to be sad. She dived into her studies and went to university in Hong Kong. After graduation, Yun became a young professional in Hong Kong’s Central business district. Sometimes, walking on the overhead bridges between the skyscrapers, she looked at all the business women in high heels like her and wondered how long it had taken for each of them to arrive here, how much they had had to leave behind, and how many things she didn’t know about were behind those confident strides.

One year in early June, she went to Victoria Park with some friends. Over a hundred thousand people had gathered for the city’s annual candlelight vigil. The night was humid and her friends’ foreheads glowed with the warm candles in their hands. Peacefully, they sat cross-legged on the grass and watched videos about the incident that had happened two decades earlier.

She had heard the stories during her years in Hong Kong, but this was the first time she’d seen tanks rolling on Tiananmen Square and young soldiers firing at students her own age. Injured civilians were carried on bicycles to hospital. Ambulance drivers were shot dead. Her father must have watched something similar when she was fifteen, she realised. After showing the videos, some of the former student leaders walked onto the stage and made speeches. Most of them had been foreign citizens for years and couldn’t go back to the city where they had left their childhood friends. With the rest of the crowd, Yun sang songs with lyrics about democracy and flowers.

That night, moving slowly on the crowded streets of Causeway Bay, she thought of Mr Yang. As she’d come to know more about politics over the years, she wondered what he had felt on that June day, witnessing his students lying cold on the street in Beijing. The brave and foolish students that he couldn’t get out of his mind. She wondered whether this had made him the sentimental person that her younger self had started to despise as she got to know him better. She wondered about his loss, which she only came to understand more clearly now; that it was a loss they shared, even

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then. She remembered those nights while they were doing forbidden things, twisting their naked bodies into different positions and finding refuge in each other. She regretted that she had never actually loved him, or had never loved enough.

The MTR station was always full after the candlelight vigil. Some secondary-school students in uniforms were debating loudly nearby. Slim girls in cheongsams had faces and figures that seemed too young for secondary school.

Feeling nostalgic, Yun remembered the chilly winters in Shanghai, the month-long news coverage of the embassy bombing, and the morning in early June 1999 when Mr Yang, dressed all in white, had refused to teach and walked out of the classroom, leaving her for the first time in the enchantment of a bittersweet feeling.

The train began to move. She searched for those cheongsam girls but realised they hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t boarded the same train. Still on the platform, they waited obediently behind the yellow line as the train accelerated down the track. Yun looked out of the window, fixing her eyes briefly on the white-knot buttons of their cheongsam uniforms. The overhead speaker announced the next stop in Hong Kongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s three standard languages. And then she couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see the girls anymore.

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In Water My Dreams In Water My Kam Dr eams ana Srikant h

Kamana Srikanth

W

e float and swim, we boat and punt on the storm waters aglow in the weak sunlight. In a freak occurrence, an accident of the El Niño year, warm and cold currents met and mingled, a dance of opposites that birthed the rains in gleaming rivers. If there is a line that separates land from warm turquoise, it blurs, and we fall into our shadows or perhaps our shadows swallow us, the outlines of boat and people, wavy lines of form.

We are liquid, one with the water, in the water and on the water, and I believe I only know that it is winter because my sister was born in early January and with the year coming to an end, it will soon be her first birthday.

My mother used to say that my sister had not yet decided if she belonged here in this place, or if she wanted to be once more within my mother, safe in her water sac. She said that’s why my sister resembled a wide-eyed baby fish, with small nostrils and small ears and a soft head that had so little hair.

At first I thought she was very ugly – her squashed face with its gummy mouth and the starfish fingers that couldn’t hold anything – but then within her eyes lay a spell that called me with the soundless voices of the water people who live below us, in grottos of coral, hiding behind curtains of iridescent shell and seaweed. When her hair grew out in little fluffy patches my mother announced that she had joined our family, that soon my sister’s legs and arms would begin to look like ours, and she would even grow teeth.

I was suspicious. It really does not seem likely that this strange squid of a thing can come to look anything like the three of us, though I am told that even I started out like that.

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The living mirror beneath our boat refuses to stay still – for some days now I only know of the presence of my limbs and face by touch, not sight – it rolls into little waves and bumps our boat, admonishing me, reassuring me. You know who you are, say the waters, as do your mother, your father and your sister; what are you looking for?

I count my toes and count my sister’s toes which are much smaller, flipper-like and delicate. I can tell she will be a strong swimmer like her people. I have seen them, they come to the surface sometimes with faces of pale rose, the older ones bulky and graceful and the younger ones quicksilver and excitable. I am sure I have seen my sister wave at them. They don’t see me, though, or my parents, who tell me to hush and watch my sister and entertain her. I am dutiful, I entertain her, I hold her and we watch our city.

Silver spires pierce the air, tall arches that seem shorter now with the water levels rising. Cars and auto rickshaws dance by, lopsided, rusting a little but with smiles, the half-open windows winking in the sun. I see a cyclist atop one of the cars, he has found himself a boat, an old Fiat, the one my father liked to call the steel bucket, its roof dented into a comfortable hammock. He sits sunning himself as he passes us and I would like to join him. Sometimes we see billboards hanging from their steel skeletons – revenants from another age, with bangles on a dangling arm, a neck dragged down by gold and emerald, or a waist, bare to the navel, flashing a belt of silver and aquamarine. She must have been a beautiful woman once, I tell my sister, though I cannot be sure without seeing the woman’s face. I am encouraged when my sister claps her hands.

My parents spend a lot of time holding hands, far more than they used to. My mother presses up against my father’s side and they speak in whispers.

My mother reaches beneath the blouse of her sari, a secret movement, and pulls out her purse. It is leather, a dull purple with a faint red border. She carefully smooths it open and they peer inside, their heads together, a completed circuit, a closed circle of comfort and some other emotion that I cannot identify. The 500-rupee bill looks insubstantial in my father’s large hand. Milk, my mother says, and smiles thinly, it is what the baby needs and what we can manage. I wish that they would ask me what I want.

A coconut seller appears close by, his cart afloat. He is still, lying on the fresh green pile, his arms wide, hugging them, his head a black, curly circle.

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The coconuts look heavy and I can taste the liquid, a little thick, sweet and filling, and then the white flesh, slippery and cool. I imagine the feel of it in my stomach and I envy the man as he lies motionless, pressed close to his treasure. The water is lapping at the edges of the cart, demanding, creeping upwards. He will have to share his hoard with the water people whether he wants to or not, but he doesn’t stir. I point him out to my parents. My father looks very sad and immediately picks me up and sets me looking in the opposite direction. I tell him that if we call out loudly enough, the coconut man may be willing to sell us some of his wares before the water takes it all. My father is not listening, he rarely does anymore, in these days since we left our home.

Home. It’s under water now. They came slowly, sneaking into the skies above us, these big clouds – intense, brimming, darkening. It happened on a day when I had a homework assignment for my art class – to draw my favourite person. I chose my sister, though she didn’t look quite human yet.

I gave her fins, long, frilled and translucent, and a tail extending away from her waist down to where her feet should be. The tail was the colour of her pyjamas, there were teddy bears on it, pink and green, and she carved lazy circles in a fish tank before coming up to spout water through her mouth.

That was the image in my mind, but on paper it was all squiggly. When my mother came and looked over my shoulder I covered the picture with my hand. She tried to pull my hand away but I would not show it to her.

My sister had just started to lose her tadpole look and my mother was happier. Even the doctor had stopped coming to see us in his rumpled shirt and stethoscope garland. My sister was asleep and on the television our fat chief minister waved to a large crowd, the road in front of the vehicle buried in flowers, a happy electorate fed on gifts of gas cylinders, mixies and, my father muttered, ‘country liquor’. The chief minister looked as though she might burst out of her odd purple coat. The TV died, sputtered out and the lights followed. It was an odd sort of darkness. Nobody said anything for a moment. I was startled; there was no warning, just the sudden absence of everything. I heard my sister yawn widely and then my mother giggled. My father asked if everyone was all right and went outside to check the electricity box. I realised what was odd about the darkness. It was total.

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There was no light for miles around us, impenetrable. If there were stars, they were hiding that night.

Then those silent clouds exploded above us, and the drumming rain deafened. I felt it through every part of my body. I knew it would never stop and it didn’t. I hugged my sister and we sat in the dark until my mother found a candle, so bright, a fallen star, a dazzling pinprick of light. I didn’t hear the match, the quick rush to fire; it just appeared, disorienting and welcome. We watched it burn down to a stub, the wax trickle down the sides; time itself was melting but in here we were stationary. We counted the days by the candles and by the emptying of the kitchen cupboards, and the spoiled food in the refrigerator. I worried that the only one who could ever leave this house would be my sister. I could feel her spirit long for the world outside, her form so still beside me. My mother’s soup prepared on the gas from a packet did nothing to warm her. When I put my head to her chest, her breath was quick but complete, soft cycles, the barely perceptible beat of butterfly wings that I could hear even through the sound of the rain.

She had not yet grown a tail.

Something cold plopped onto my head and trickled down the side of my face. I reached up and my hand came away wet. I raised my hand to my nose and it smelled of damp and cement. I told my mother that the house was leaking. ‘Three days,’ my father murmured. Time without electricity, a weak sun that filtered in through the window, the murmur of a journey that we were not a part of. The radio gave us instructions in its static voice; my father said he hadn’t used the thing since my grandfather’s days. The sound was barely audible over the rain but the government said that we were to stay in our houses. The water had entered the house, seeping up through the floor, down from the ceiling. Our furniture was disappearing by inches as if by magic. The water was erasing everything. My sister occasionally became energetic and tried to dive off her high chair. It was not the time, I told her sternly, she still belonged with us. I can’t say that she heard me, those thin membranes in her ears may have been tuned in to the calls of her people waiting outside.

Men in boats came to rescue us. Inflated rubber, army colours, strong arms and wet bodies. I wanted to join the army. The brown faces that peered at us and smiled were brighter than the candles we’d lit earlier; they carried

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the warmth and assurance of the sun itself. My sister was given milk in a feeding bottle and she cried as she gulped it down, coughed and puked and made more noise than she had in almost five days. My mother hid her face against my fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoulder and we watched the house slide out of view. I did not think I would miss it at all. The rain had not stopped. The army men told us that it was 430 millimetres of rain in a day, more rain than the city had had in a hundred years. My grandfather used to say that rains like this happened when the gods wanted to piss on us humans. That was sure a lot of piss.

We were taken to a long queue at a bus terminus where the buses, submerged, only their green roofs still above water, formed a sort of awkward walkway for people to reach the government help depot. Here we were given our own boat and a map and told to row out of the city, past the railway tracks to the border of the next state where food and shelter awaited us. A man hopped along the queues carrying a long wooden pole, a sort of food tree from which packets hung, tied to it with strings. He plucked off the packets and distributed them, and quickly, like a whisper, pocketed the small green bills that people held out. He looked satisfied and furtive, and then I saw another man, the twin of this one; they mirrored each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s movements and soon the food trees were almost bare. No, said my mother, we will not buy those. She pointed to one of the packets trailing in the water, see there, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disease waiting to happen.

How could rain cause our homes to float? To drown? I felt a little silly asking the question, for the water from above was filling our boat, weighing us down.

Soon we had a routine. I would bail out the water and my father would row, while my mother held my sister under her raincoat, solemnly watching for some indication of where we were going. The map in her hand was soon a rag, a sodden mass, but my father said he knew the general direction and under his breath he hummed a little. I could only tell because of the way he breathed as he pulled the oar free of the water and then pushed it back in. An extra beat to the movement. I even expected to see him smile, a rueful curl to his lips, like the one that appeared when my mother said that she had cooked his favourite dish and he poked at the slightly burnt vegetables and said thank you.

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It stopped raining a little later but we heard from another boat that some of the reservoirs were full to bursting and the government would release the waters. They must have been right. The waters around us swelled again, a massive expanding, an ocean, and we were swept away from our path and on to the outskirts, swept away under railway bridges and under a highway broken in the middle, a gaping entrance to the drowned world below. That was the first time I saw the water people and the first time I saw my sister wave at them.

The city belonged to them, though I doubted they would find anything useful: tangled telephone wires, beds, mattresses spilling their contents as offerings to the water gods, televisions, refrigerators and clothes, trailing out of wooden or steel wardrobes like the unexpected generosity of a miser.

The water people did not need these things. I heard them speak of fireworm, sea cucumber and the insides of molluscs as they pressed their lips against our boat from below. Maybe I shared some of my sister’s powers, for how else could I hear them?

The coconut man is away behind us now and we buy milk from a food tree. My mother is not worried about disease anymore. She eyes my sister and then she looks at me, her eyes round, larger than when we left the house – or is it her face that is smaller? Like my stomach, which always stuck out a little and now it’s back, back and inside. The milk tastes strange but I am distracted by a man on a log of wood, lying on it, his hand making gentle designs in the water as he passes. He seems to be talking to the water people and he doesn’t see us, doesn’t respond when my father calls out to him.

My father does not prevent me from climbing out of the boat and paddling alongside. He allows me to look around for the water people. But he asks me to be careful as I chase the patterns of the sun around and around the boat and am distracted from my hunger. My sister rests against my mother’s chest in deep sleep. She has been sleeping for some time now and when I call her, my mother puts a finger to her lips. My father’s rowing has become very slow. We move, but only because the water people are pushing us along. Then we are in the centre of the city, I can tell, I have seen pictures of the red brick building before, the towers on four sides. The boat comes up to the steps, bumps against them gently and I climb out. There are

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suddenly thousands of people. They get out of their boats and as one we step forward.

I think my sister gurgles a few words, and my mother’s soft breath is on my neck, my hand in my father’s. We walk through chambers flooded with water. Sometimes a book floats by. Soon I am not able to see ahead; it has darkened. It is long since I have seen myself, since I saw my parents and my sister, though I still feel my father’s hand. I can hear from the water people that in this place we leave behind our faces, we only carry ourselves; and then in the depths, in the quiet, in the dark, there is sleep and forgetfulness.

I think we will join the water people, and my sister will be back where she belongs, in this place without names and where voices are heard in the mind.

‘In Water My Dreams’ is included in the Afterness anthology (AfterParty Press, Hong Kong, 2016).

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Contributors Contribut ors Contribut ors

DEEPA ANAPPARA is a freelance writer and editor from India currently studying for an MA in creative writing (prose fiction) at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. Her short stories have won or been shortlisted for several awards and appear in The Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Vol. 6, Once Upon a Time There was a Traveller: Asham Award-winning Stories, and Five Degrees: The Asian Writer Short Story Prize 2012, among others.

CHIANG YOMEI was born in 1961 to Eurasian parents in Taipei, Taiwan, and had a traditional Chinese education before pursuing further studies in America and the UK. A bilingual writer, she is also a visual artist exhibiting regularly in the UK and Asia. Yomei is a student of philosophy and a practising Buddhist.

Her publications include In Vishnu’s Dream (INK Publishing, 2013) and Every Now and Then a Solitary Bell (INK Publishing, 2015).

O THIAM CHIN is the winner of the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize, the richest literary award in Singapore, with a prize of S$20,000 and a publishing contract with Epigram Books. He is also the author of five collections of short fiction: Free-Falling Man (2006), Never Been Better (2009), Under The Sun (2010), The Rest Of Your Life and Everything That Comes With It (2011) and Love, or Something Like Love (2013, shortlisted for the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction).

CHO HAEJIN has published six books; ‘Death of Hong’ is from her second short-story collection and fifth book, Meet Me on Thursday. A Russian translation of one of her novels, I Met Loh Kiwan, was published in the winter of 2015, and French and English translations are under way. Cho splits her time between writing and teaching creative writing.

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YOONNA CHO (translator of Cho Haejin) studied English literature at Yonsei University and conference interpreting at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies GSIT. Her translation of Youn Dae-Nyeong’s The Camel Pouch was shortlisted for the 2008 Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators.

She has worked on numerous Korean novels and children’s books, as well as on subtitles for Korean films.

JAE WON EDWARD CHUNG (translator of Lee Kiho) was born in Seoul and lives in New York, where he is currently a doctoral student in Korean literature at Columbia University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

His research and teaching interests include modern Korean literature, culture, film and media.

JESSICA FALEIRO is a novelist and a poet. Her debut novel Afterlife (2012) is about a family from Goa and their ’ghostly’ encounters. Her poems, fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Indian Quarterly, Rockland Lit, Mascara Literary Review, Muse India, IndiaCurrents, TimesCrest, tambdimati and in various anthologies. Jessica also hosts talks on the writing life and runs writing workshops in Goa. She has an MA in creative writing from Kingston University, UK. More information at jessicafaleiro.wordpress.com.

AMLANJYOTI GOSWAMI’s poems have appeared in publications in India, Nepal, the UK, South Africa, Kenya and the USA, including the recent Forty under Forty: An Anthology of Post-Globalisation Poetry (Poetrywala, 2016). He grew up in Guwahati, Assam and lives in Delhi.

ANURADHA GUPTA was born and grew up in India. After moving across three continents she is now settled in London, her home away from home. She was once a travel writer but now she dabbles in fiction, poetry and translation.

She loves exploring different cultures through their myths and folklore.

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JUDITH HUANG is a Singaporean writer, translator and editor currently living in Beijing. A recipient of the Foyle Young Poet of the Year Award in 2001, 2003 and 2004, her writing has been published in Prairie Schooner, QLRS, Loreli China, Ceriph, LONTAR, and Stylus. She graduated from Harvard University in 2010, and is a member of the Signet Society of Arts and Letters. Her online portfolio is at judithhuang.com.

KAVITA A. JINDAL is an acclaimed poet and a prize-winning short-fiction writer, as well as an essayist and reviewer. She is the author of Raincheck Renewed (Chameleon Press, 2004). Her work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies and newspapers around the world and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and European cultural radio stations. She is a senior editor at the Asia Literary Review. See kavitajindal.com and @writerkavita.

LEE KIHO was born in 1972 in Wonju, South Korea. He debuted in 1999 with the short story â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Bunnyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, which was published in Contemporary Literature. His short-story collections include Who is Doctor Park? and It was Bound to End Up Like This. His novels are At Least We Can Apologize (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013) and A World History of Second Sons. He has been awarded the Yi Hyo-seok Literary Prize, the Kim Seung-ok Literary Prize and the Hanguk Ilbo Literary Prize. He currently teaches creative writing at Gwangju University.

BENJAMIN KYNESWOOD is a director of Photo Miners and lectures in Sociology at Coventry University. His recent work includes the Masterji exhibition in Coventry, (UK) and Mumbai (India) and an exhibition on the historic photographers of Hillfields in Coventry. Placing the public in the position of curator, the Photo Miners co-produce exhibitions to present a communitydeveloped narrative that often challenges stereotypical perceptions of people and place.

ALVIN PANG is a poet, writer and editor who has featured in festivals and publications worldwide. A Fellow of the Iowa International Writing Program, he is an advisor to the International Poetry Studies Institute and a founding director of the Literary Centre, Singapore. His recent books include Tumasik: Contemporary Writing from Singapore (Autumn Hill, USA, 2009), Other Things and Other Poems (Brutal, Croatia, 2012) and When the Barbarians Arrive (Arc Publications, UK, 2012). His work has been translated into over twenty languages.

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MAGANBHAI PATEL, also known as Masterji, is a Coventry photographer originally from Surat, in India. He trained as a school teacher but, arriving in Coventry in 1951, only found work in factories. He moved between a succession of houses before settling into Widdrington Road, Radford, Coventry where his skill as a photographer became known. His success enabled him to work professionally, and he opened Master’s Art Studio in 1969. He has remained there ever since. His son Ravindra now runs the business.

FLORA QIAN is a writer and translator. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and an MA in translation from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her short stories can be found in Eastlit and in the Hong Kong Writers’ Circle anthologies.

RESHMA RUIA is an Indian writer based in Manchester, England. She is the author of Something Black in the Lentil Soup. Her second novel, A Mouthful of Silence was shortlisted for the 2014 SI Leeds Literary Prize. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in anthologies and on BBC Radio 4.

RAVI SHANKAR founded the international online journal of the arts Drunken Boat and is author/editor/translator of twelve books of poetry, including W. W. Norton’s Language for a New Century, the National Poetry Review Prize winner, Deepening Groove, and the forthcoming Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honouring Gwendolyn Brooks (University of Arkansas Press, 2017). He teaches and performs around the world.

SHAGUFTA SHARMEEN TANIA is the author of two novels and two short-story collections. She translated Susan Fletcher’s Whitbread Award-winning novel, Eve Green, into Bengali and one of her short stories was featured in Wasafiri Issue 84, Autumn 2015. Most of her work focuses on the Asian diaspora.

Currently she is working on a historical novel set during the failed Bengal Partition of 1905.

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LISA RUSS SPAAR is the author/editor of over ten books of poetry and criticism, including the forthcoming Orexia: Poems (2017). Her honours include a Rona Jaffe Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, a 2016 Pushcart Prize, and the Library of Virginia Award for Poetry. She is professor of English and creative writing at the University of Virginia.

KAMANA SRIKANTH, a native of Chennai in South India, is a lawyer and writer currently living in San Francisco. She earned her MFA at City University of Hong Kong and is now working on a collection of short stories and a novel.

Her work has appeared in the anthology Afterness: Literature from the New Transnational Asia.

EMBER SWIFT is a Canadian artist, musician and writer living in Beijing. She currently writes for Beijing Kids, Mami, and Women in China magazines, and Canadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Feminist Quarterly: Herizons. Her own blog Queer Girl Gets Married was the winner of the 2013 Lotus Blossom Best Love Blog award. She has recently completed a memoir. More at emberswift.com.

JOHN THIEME is a British author, of part-Canadian parentage, whose journalistic, academic and creative writing has been published in some twenty-five countries. He has held chairs in British universities and has also taught in the Caribbean and, as a visiting professor, in Hong Kong and Italy. His most recent book, Postcolonial Literary Geographies: Out of Place, was published by Palgrave Macmillan.

SARAH VALLANCE won a Pushcart prize in 2015 and received a special mention in Best American Essays 2015 and Pushcart XL. She is currently undertaking a PhD on Philip Roth at Sydney University. Sarah now lives in Sydney with her partner and their three dogs and three cats.

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Essential Reading | Subscribe to the

Register and subscribe online for access to exclusive new material, gems from the archive and regular updates: www.asialiteraryreview.com Email Subscriptions@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Visit the ALR Bookshop to buy books by authors featured in this and other issues www.asialiteraryreview.com/alr-bookshop Keep in touch on twitter @AsiaLitReview facebook.com/AsiaLitReview

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Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing The Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing is the first and currently the only one of its kind in China for teaching and promoting creative writing in English as a second/foreign language. It combines the teaching of English with creative writing techniques to enable students to write about China from an insiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective.

Under the Sun Yat-sen University Creative Writing Education Program, the Center organizes readings by international writers and a book club to promote the reading and writing of world literature. From October 2015, it will start the Sun Yat-sen University International Writersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Residency, which moves from the campuses of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and Zhuhai to Jiangmen in Guangdong Province and Yangshuo in Guangxi Autonomous Region, and gives between ten and fifteen writers the time and space to write as well as providing them with the opportunity to get to know Chinese people and culture. Contact: daifan@mail.sysu.edu.cn

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From the original publisher of the New York Times bestselling graphic novel THE ART OF CHARLIE CHAN HOCK CHYE

“Jaswal’s wonderful debut didn’t merely transport me to a country I knew nothing about, or introduce me to a family the likes of which I’d never meet. She made me long for her Singapore like a lost home, and miss her characters like departed friends. What an extraordinary thing for a novel to do.”

—Alexander Yates, author of Moondogs Sydney Morning Herald

BEST YOUNG AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST 2014

“Located somewhere between the shattered filmic worlds of David Lynch and Satoshi Kon’s apocalyptic anime, Yam’s narrative hypnotises us into questioning our reality in ways that are terrifying, revelatory and fundamentally profound.”

—Cyril Wong, award-winning author of Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE LONGLIST 2015

Publishing in the UK in 2017

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Immigration has been one of the most explosive themes of 2016. Populists talk of closing borders and deporting refugees. Whether human commonality can prevail over cultural and ethnic division is a question without a clear answer. In this issue, the ALR examines the impact of migration and diaspora on individual lives and psyches and our authors confront a foundational issue – whether any of us are wholly native to any one place.

Asia Literary Review | Essential Reading Featuring: An exclusive interview with Madeleine Thien – Chinese-Canadian writer shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and winner of the Governor General’s Award and Scotiabank Giller Prize South Asia in Britain – a selection of writings and Masterji’s arresting photo essay An extract from South Korean Li Kiho’s novel of a man falsely accused by an autocratic regime Singaporean O Thiam Chin’s nightmare of medical experimentation Lives confronted by the challenges of integrating a rapidly changing China ‘The ALR fills an important gap. We’ve grown used to reading about Asia. But through a kaleidoscope of stories, essays, poems, polemics and photographs, finally we can hear Asians talking about themselves.’ – David Pilling, former Asia Editor, Financial Times asialiteraryreview.com

674x476 pt spine 31pt

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