Corridor

by Alfian Sa'at

  CORRIDOR

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  PLAYS

  Bisik: Antologi Drama [Melayu Singapura [Whisper: Anthology of Malay Singaporean Drama] (2003)

  Collected Plays One: The Optic Trilogy, Fugitives, Homesick, sex.violence.blood.gore (2010)

  Collected Plays Two: The Asian Boys Trilogy – Dreamplay/ Landmarks/ Happy Endings (2010)

  Cooling-Off Day (2012)

  POETRY

  One Fierce Hour (1998)

  A History of Amnesia (2001)

  The Invisible Manuscript (2012)

  PROSE

  Malay Sketches (2012)

  CORRIDOR

  12 SHORT STORIES BY ALFIAN SA’AT

  Corridor

  © Alfian Sa’at, 2015, 1999

  First published in 1999 by SNP Editions Pte Ltd

  Second edition, 2015

  ISBN 978-981-07-7993-1 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-981-14-0473-3 (e-book)

  Published under the imprint Ethos Books by Pagesetters Services Pte Ltd

  28 Sin Ming Lane #06-131

  Singapore 573972

  www.ethosbooks.com.sg

  www.facebook.com/ethosbooks

  With the support of

  The publisher reserves all rights to this title.

  Cover design and photography by CK Chia

  Design and layout by Pagesetters Services Pte Ltd

  Printed by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd, Singapore

  6 5 4 3 21 20 19 18 17

  First published under this imprint in 2015

  Source of extracts by Paul Tan and Ong Sor Fern on the backcover: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Extracts reprinted with permission.

  National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Alfian Sa’at, author.

  Corridor : 12 short stories / Alfian Sa’at. – Second edition.

  – Singapore : Ethos Books, 2015.

  pages cm

  ISBN : 978-981-07-7993-1 (paperback)

  1. Singapore – Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9570.S53

  S823 -- dc23 OCN904384880

  Great movies have remakes; great books - reprints.

  The Ethos Evergreens series aims to

  keep good Singaporean literature

  in the public eye.

  For Boo Junfeng

  CONTENTS

  PROJECT

  VIDEO

  ORPHANS

  PILLOW

  CORRIDOR

  DUEL

  WINNERS

  CUBICLE

  UMBRELLA

  BUGIS

  BIRTHDAY

  DISCO

  GLOSSARY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROJECT

  Salim needed to go to the toilet again. It was the Coke, he swore. And the fries. The more he ate the fries, the more thirsty he got. And the air-con.˚ And his friends. They kept making him laugh! They were never going to finish the History project on time. The last time they met together at YMCA McDonald’s to do their project they only managed to decide what font to use for the cover.

  “Eh, guys, high tide lah.”˚

  “Wahlau,”˚ Wei Cheng went, “Again?”

  “Yah lah, yah lah, excuse…” Salim made his way between his friend’s knees and the table. There were four of them, including himself. They were all classmates: Wei Cheng, Esther, Mark. They were quite a clique. Mark had always had a thing for Esther but she treated him like a friend. The closest he ever got to her was when she called him ‘my god-brother’ and gave him a friendship band which she had worked on for three whole weeks. Wei Cheng and Salim had been best friends since primary school. Even their mothers knew each other.

  Salim tried to push the toilet door open but realised that he was pushing the wrong end. He hoped that nobody noticed him and casually leaned on the correct side. Before entering the cubicle he took a glance at the mirror and decided that there would be time later to adjust his fringe. A little wetting would do the job.

  The toilet was small; there was only one urinal, a cubicle with one toilet bowl, a washbasin and a mirror. A dusty fan, socketed into the wall, hummed above him. It was laced with cobwebs. Inside the cubicle, Salim had a look at the walls while he was peeing. There were discoloured patches that had been abraded by scouring brushes and cleaning fluids. However, a few graffiti messages remained. They were either fresh or difficult to remove. One read something like ‘PAP˚… Pay and Pay’. There was one that went, in red marker, ‘All smokers are bastards! If can die if don’t smoke, then die!’. Another one advertised, complete with a pager number, a ‘Free Fuck and Suck. Call Adrian’. Salim always wondered whether these were prank jobs or whether they were actually people who would plaster themselves on toilet walls that way. They needed to get a life, he thought. They needed to meet more girls. They definitely needed help.

  Salim walked out of the cubicle towards the washbasin to wash his hands. He looked at himself in the mirror, and turned his head from side to side to see how his sideburns were doing. They looked even enough, he thought. Then with a wet thumb and forefinger he teased strands on his fringe, pulling them to his right. That was when the Chinese boy came through the door, stopped short, and caught him preening.

  Salim got annoyed, stopped doing his hair and pretended to scrape crusts off the sides of his eyes. The boy simply stood there, watching him. The boy looked like he was in his early teens; he was plump, but something in his eyes told Salim that he was probably much younger. Salim turned around and walked towards the door, turning his face away from the boy.

  The boy leaned stubbornly against the door. Still not looking at him, Salim said, “Excuse me.”

  The boy crossed his arms in a gesture that was almost petulant. He shook his head. Salim finally stepped back and looked at him. The boy was wearing a dusk blue T-shirt with the words ‘Choose Health’ on it. He was wearing khaki bermudas.

  “You stay here with me,” the boy said. His voice was slurred, and he was restlessly shaking his right thigh from side to side.

  Salim pretended not to have heard him. He tried to reach out for the door handle, but the boy blocked him.

  “You wait for me. I shee-shee˚ for a while. You wait here first, okay?” The boy gave Salim a pleading look.

  “Boy, excuse me please.”

  “No.” The boy’s face crumpled, and his lower lip was protruding. “You stay here first. I scared.”

  Salim was getting impatient. He pushed the cubicle door open, and made sure he slammed it against the wall. He looked at the boy.

  “What are you scared of? Inside got what? Nothing. No ghost. Nothing inside.”

  The boy shook his head, more forcefully this time. “You wait for me.” He sounded desperate. He dropped the ‘t’ in ‘wait’.

  “I have to go. Look, my friends are waiting.” Salim gave the boy an expression that insisted he was being reasonable.

  “Just wait a while. Wait a while only.” The boy was unzipping his bermudas. Salim could see the boy’s white cotton briefs.

  Salim clutched the hefty boy by his left shoulder and tried to push him. He resisted. Salim suddenly realised he did not want to see the boy’s penis. He was a Chinese boy, there was foreskin on his penis. He also smelt of stale sweat. Salim tried harder, and eventually the boy was jerked aside.

  Salim turned to the boy. “There’s nothing, just go, okay?”

  The boy stared at Salim. He shuddered for a second, and then Salim saw a dark patch blooming on the front of his bermudas, and streaks trickling down his left thigh. Salim watched in shock, and for a moment remembered that sensation, the warmth of urine haloing his legs as he stood alone with the cold currents of the seas lapping around him.

  “I ask you to wait.” The boy was sobb
ing now, his breath jumping in starts.

  Salim turned away from the boy and pulled the right side of the door. The boy made way for him and went to the washbasin to scoop some water to bathe his thigh. He was also wiping his face with the back of his hands. When Salim got back to the table he grinned at everyone and asked, “What did I miss?”

  * * *

  “Wahlau, seow˚ man, that woman,” Wei Cheng’s voice was on the other line, and in the background Salim could hear Wei Cheng’s father singing karaoke.

  “Yah,” Salim replied. He was in his room using the cordless phone. His computer was on but he had not touched it for the past 20 minutes.

  “Beat the boy until like that. But the boy also a bit Chao Yang ah?”

  Salim wanted to protest but held himself back. There would be a time to talk to his best friend about it later. Chao Yang was a name of a school that taught educationally subnormal children. Both of them often passed it on their way to the Language Centre, where they took French lessons. There was that time when Wei Cheng had asked Salim what the word ‘retarded’ was in French.

  “Damn violent, man,” Wei Cheng went on. “Seow, man that woman. Her son just pee in his pants only what. She can go to the shop and buy another pair what, right?”

  “Hey,” Salim interrupted, “project how?”

  “Like that lor.˚ Don’t worry lah. We’ll meet the deadline. At the most ask for one or two days extension.”

  “Okay… Wei Cheng ah?”˚

  “Yeah?”

  It seemed as if the world suddenly got quieter. Salim was glad for the hum of the computer.

  “Do you think I’m a bad person?”

  “Why? Aiyah,˚ why ask me this type of question?”

  “Because I’ve heard that when bad people die they die with their eyes open.”

  “Wah… I never see before. So that means this whole world everyone good people lah?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think…”

  “No lah, you’re not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re my friend what!”

  Salim leaned his cheek hard against the telephone, and managed to press the button that disengaged the call.

  There would be time later for explanations, or excuses. He didn’t feel like playing computer games anymore, and moved to the window. He pressed his face against the grilles and they bit into his cheeks, cold. He shut his eyes against the wind and the sounds of vehicles on the street.

  Suddenly he missed the sea and realised that he had not been to the beach for a year. He thought for a moment and it came back to him; the last time he swam at the East Coast Beach he almost drowned. A Chinese man had seen him flailing in the water and had brought him back to shore. The man had pumped his chest until he spat out seawater and gasped. He remembered the man’s face, frowning, the way people who were praying often looked. He recalled that the man was wearing a gold chain. While he was being brought to life, Salim’s eyes had been wide open: gazing at the casuarina treetops, the edge of the sun eclipsed by the man’s head, the blindingly blue sky.

  He had never told anyone about that day.

  Salim reached out for the telephone and dialled Wei Cheng’s number. The ringing went on for one whole minute, and then another, by which time Salim was gripping the handset. He paced up and down his room, and realised there was a tightening in his loins.

  “Wei Cheng,” he muttered into the receiver. His voice became more urgent. “It was me. It’s me. Pick up the phone. Please.”

  VIDEO

  If not for some last minute changes Maimon would have been Hajah Maimon Binte Putih by now. She would have been able to sit in her living room while passing trinkets to her daughter, her relatives, neighbours even. She would go as far as to offer some of her souvenirs from Mecca to Zainab, who once spread the word that Maimon’s husband was a divorcee, as if there was something shameful about that. She would let Zainab have her pick of a tasbih, the Muslim rosary with 33 beads, or a prayer mat with a tapestry of the Ka’abah.˚ The holy zam-zam˚ water she would store in plastic bottles to distribute to her friends’ grandchildren. She would encourage them to drink the water before their exams, so they will be terang hati or have hearts incandescent with the light of knowledge.

  The last minute change was of course something that only the rain could bring. Maimon had been awoken by the sound of water on glass, slapping on brick, a sound which she had never gotten used to. This was because her earliest memory of rain was the sound of droplets on a zinc roof. “It’s raining,” she told her sleeping husband, Abu Bakar, as she got off her bed to fasten the sliding windows. The ceramic tiles were cold against her feet and wet where the wind blew mists of rain into the kitchen. Outside, the trees were swaying darkly, as if welcoming someone’s arrival. When Maimon got back to her bed she was sulking and complaining, “You can’t even get up to help me.” One minute later, with the sound of wind lashing against the walls of her home to drown her sobbing, Maimon realised that there was no way her husband could have given her a hand because he had stopped breathing.

  The funeral was a quiet affair; a congregation of slippers and shoes gathered at the door, the female relatives wearing headscarves taken out of mothball-minty cupboards only for special occasions like deaths, and the male relatives at the corridors, leaning over the ledge to smoke. Strangely, as Maimon was crying, she never once thought of her husband. The only thing that was inside her head was the rain. Why did it come at the same time her husband was dying? And why did it take her away from his side? She should have been there during his last moments, to hold his hand and tell him to think of God, to finish up his sentences for him. She wanted him to know that she would pray for him every day. The rain had been spiteful. It crowded at the windows and pulled the house into darkness. The moment Maimon knew her husband was gone was when she switched on the fluorescent light and his eyes failed to wince. That sight was something she would carry with her for the rest of her life.

  * * *

  Abu Bakar had married a girl he had met working at a department store when he was 18. During the wedding they had seven costume changes. There was one where she was dressed in a kimono and one where Abu Bakar was done up like an Arab sheik. They also received a blue swan made up entirely of one dollar notes. What he remembered most about their wedding dais was the pink satin, because he didn’t like pink, but the girl’s mother had insisted on the colour. Two years later they were divorced.

  After that Abu Bakar held odd jobs: working for a while at the end of a car wash, polishing windscreens and later as a mechanic in an auto repair shop. He would return home every day with grease under his fingernails. Five years later his mother decided that it was time for him to find another wife. Through a cousin, she managed to find someone who was two years older than Abu Bakar. The girl was then working as a stacker at the supermarket near her home. Her name was Maimon.

  This much was what Abu Bakar told his new wife, and this much was what she lived with for 44 years of marriage.

  * * *

  One week after the funeral, Jamilah went down to visit her mother. She had moved out of the flat in Choa Chu Kang when she managed to get married at 26, to Azhar. Azhar was a man five years older than Jamilah who worked at the post office. Azhar was an orphan. His parents had passed away three years ago, within a day of each other. On some Singapore Post Family Days he would ask Jamilah’s parents to join them. He was childless and having his in-laws with him on Family Day made up the numbers. After moving out, Jamilah visited her parents about twice a month. Part of it was because she was busy as a leading member of her Community Centre’s aerobics group. She was responsible for holding activities like jogging on Fridays and for bigger events like getting people down for the Great Singapore Workout at the Padang, where even the Prime Minister was involved. Part of it was also because when daughters visit their mothers they usually bring their children along.

  “Assalaamualaikum,”˚ Jamilah greeted at the door. It was Ma
imon who answered her and opened the door. Jamilah reflected on how from now on, it would always be Maimon opening the door.

  “I’ve just finished praying,” Maimon told her. At this point Jamilah would usually ask if her father was sleeping, and her mother would grumble how the only thing the old man did was sleep. But now there was only silence.

  “I bought these,” Jamilah said. “When I came out of the MRT,˚ I smelt them. Quite expensive, ten dollars one kilo. Better be good.” Jamilah handed a bag of chestnuts over to Maimon. Then she went to seat herself at the dining table, beside the vase of plastic flowers she had bought from Geylang for her mother.

  “You’ve been cleaning, it seems,” said Jamilah.

  “I have many things to give away,” Maimon replied.

  “How about the tickets?” Jamilah was referring to the two tickets for the Haj˚ which had been reserved for her parents. They were supposed to have gone in two months’ time.

  “The agency managed to get people who wanted those tickets. Nowadays it seems a lot of people want to go for the Haj.”

  “At least the tickets aren’t wasted.”

  “Do you know, I learnt during my Haj course that if you die while performing the pilgrimage you go straight to heaven?”

  “I know.”

  “But what to do? It’s God’s will.”

  “All in God’s hands,” said Jamilah. Then she continued, “God loves Ayah˚ more than we love him.”

  Jamilah had heard that phrase from someone, and she thought that it was an appropriate time to use it. Maimon flinched a little because somehow she heard the statement as: we never loved him enough. After touching a petal on one of the plastic flowers, a violet one, Jamilah spoke again.

  “Mak,˚ do you remember Makcik˚ Som?”

  Who could forget, thought Maimon. That was her husband’s first wife.