by Alfian Sa'at
“Sure.”
“You have everything. You know that? I didn’t grow up this way. My radio ran on batteries. It was a transistor radio. My mother listened to Chinese Opera.”
“I didn’t have everything until I met you,” Teck How said.
Karen smiled. She looked at the ring on her finger and managed to keep the smile for a few seconds. She wanted to close her eyes and let the broken shadows of trees fall across her face and her hands, which were folded contentedly on her lap. On the BBC World Service they were talking about babies who were dying of AIDS in Romania. Karen felt her heart move as she heard the words “orphanages, overcrowded, abandoned children”. She suddenly felt the pity of someone who was a thousand miles away from all the action and couldn’t hear any sound of suffering except through the clipped accent of a newsreader.
“Teck How, would you adopt an AIDS baby?”
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Depends on whether people will like it.”
“Your parents?”
“Your parents, our friends, neighbours, relatives.”
“Does it matter what they think?”
“Maybe.”
“It wouldn’t matter to me. They need our love.”
Teck How winced a little listening to Karen talk that way. Maybe it was the way she said the word ‘love’.
“They don’t live very long. You want to love something for three years at most and watch them die on you?”
“Well, maybe if they had people to love them they might live longer.”
“That might happen or something else might happen.”
“Like what?”
On the radio, the news had shifted from abandoned babies to stock market reports. Teck How was going steady at the wheel, 80 kilometres per hour.
“Like we die a little earlier,” Teck How said.
“Not if we’re careful,” Karen replied.” I don’t think there’s any risk, Teck How. I don’t think we can get AIDS from babies. It’s not something that happens. They’re innocent. We don’t catch things from them.”
“I wasn’t talking about the disease. I was talking about giving all you’ve got to something that hasn’t got much going for it in the first place.”
“And you will die earlier because of that?”
“Maybe.”
“That was selfish, Teck How,” Karen said, her hand tugging at the wrinkles on her skirt. “I’m not saying that you’re a selfish person but that was a selfish thing to say. You have everything. Look at these stickers on your windshield. Two country clubs and one condominium. It’s not wrong to want to share them with other people.”
Teck How smiled good-naturedly and turned to look at Karen for an instant.
“Let’s drop the subject. Okay? Shall we drop the subject?”
“If you want to.”
“You’ve decided where we’re going for dinner later?”
“No.”
“Never mind. We can decide later.”
Karen looked at Teck How and smiled back. She switched the radio back to the channel that was playing love songs to show that she was serious about changing the subject. Karen opened the glove compartment to look for sweets but only found a street directory, parking coupons and a comb. It was then she realised that she was not riding in her father’s nineyearold Daihatsu but her fiancé’s BMW.
“Teck How?” Karen asked, stretching lazily.
“Hmmm?”
“I’m sorry for saying what I said just now. You’re not a selfish person. You know that.”
“It’s nothing to get worked up over.”
“I have everything to thank you for. Did I tell you how happy I was? I’m happy, Teck How.”
“I’m happy for you too.”
“No, you have to be happy for yourself. Then it will all make sense. I was thinking of all the times that I had to wake up in the morning while my parents were still sleeping to have a cold shower. I would eat breakfast while waiting for my hair to dry. And then I would watch a bit of AM Singapore, not really watching, but the house was just so quiet. And then walk to the MRT station. Sometimes when I saw taxis pass by I had to stop myself from reaching my finger out for one. And inside the train there would be this wind coming from somewhere, and I would try to figure out how it got in, and why it was so cold. I would be so afraid to fall asleep, even though everybody else was sleeping.”
“You were afraid you’d miss your stop?”
“No, I was scared that I would start talking in my sleep. When I was small my mother used to say I did that. I would talk about a lot of things, and sometimes I would cry and shake my shoulders as if somebody’s dirty hands were on them. Won’t you feel strange if you talked in your sleep? You could say bad words or bad things about people and you could make a lot of funny expressions. So sometimes even if there were seats in the train I would stand up. And if it got tiring I would read the advertisements. I would read the poems sometimes too. But half of them I couldn’t understand. Did you ever read them?”
“No, I never read any of them,” Teck How said.
“You have a car.”
“It was my father’s actually.”
“But it’s yours now. It’s a beautiful car. It’s a beautiful car, Teck How. What’s the horsepower thing again? Is that what you call it? Horsepower?”
“2000cc.”
“A 2000cc car. My God. It feels different sitting here.
I want you to know that, Teck How. This is all so new to me. That day when we went to choose the wallpaper and the guy rolled out the samples, you shouldn’t have just left me there. I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know a thing about wallpaper. The man there just looked at me and all I could say was… this is beautiful. They’re all beautiful. I’ll wait for my husband and see what he says.”
“Husband?” Teck How asked.
“I mean, fiancé. But I didn’t know whether he understood what fiancé means. And I didn’t want to spend a lot of time explaining it to him. Why, you’re not happy with me using the word?”
“No, it’s just that maybe if we’re not husband and wife yet, it’s not proper to tell people that we are.”
“Okay.”
“You know what I mean, right?”
“I know.”
“And I’m sure a lot of people know what fiancé means.”
“Maybe.” Karen nodded thoughtfully. “Teck How?”
“What?”
“We should get a maid.”
“What for?”
“I never had one.”
“If you want to.”
“A maid will mean there’s always someone at home.”
“Sure.”
They drove on in silence. Teck How kept to the right lane and overtook a few cars. Karen looked out of the window and whenever there was a dark patch on the glass she could see her own face. At one point of time a bird, black and small, flew across her forehead.
“Teck How,” Karen suddenly said.
“Yes,” Teck How answered.
“I’m happy. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Karen, I know.”
“I don’t think you really know. I like this car, Teck How, I really like this car. I was a secretary before this. And last week you helped me write my resignation letter. Do you think they’ll miss me at the office?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because everything’s going to change, right? Because I deserve this. Do I deserve this, Teck How?”
Teck How kept quiet and checked all the meters in front of him. The oil tank was still full. He was going at one hundred an hour. On the radio, callers were supposed to call in to give their views on ‘What makes a man sexy?’.
“If I had half as much as you did, Teck How, I know what I’ll do,” Karen said.
“You do?” Teck How said.
“I’ll give half of it to charity. I don’t need much to live by. I could live with just one car. Would we really need a maid? I�
�m serious. All my life I’ve realised that I’ve liked money because I could give it away.”
“So you think that just because people have money they should be giving it away?”
“The ones who give to charity are always the rich ones.”
“So that’s how it works?”
“I think so.”
“And the minute you get your hands on money you’re going to start throwing 50 dollar notes at beggars? Hey, why don’t I give half of my life savings to that blind guy in that underpass, so he can put solid gold trimmings on his accordion?”
“I’m not saying that people who are poor can’t give to the poor. I’m saying it’s easier if you’re rich.”
“Karen, the problem with you is that you think everything’s so easy.”
“We can sell this car and get a smaller one.”
“And after that let’s just go ahead and adopt a baby! Now why didn’t I think of that before? Because I had an easy life? Because I don’t know what it’s like to live without things, unlike you? Because I had BBC?”
“Will you stop raising your voice, Teck How?”
“Turn down that fucking radio and I’ll stop raising it.”
“It was just an idea that came to my head! It was the news, Teck How. It was the BBC World News. Why are you shouting?”
When Karen turned off the radio she knew that they were not going to say another word for a long time, both of them. It was the radio that had kept them talking. They were in love as long as the radio kept on playing love songs. Teck How huffed now and then but he made no effort to adjust his tie. Karen tried to pull her mind away from the silence in the car and decided that on Saturday, she would go for a good shampoo at Takashimaya salon, a cut and blow-dry. She would read magazines while listening in on idle, happy chatter. She would breathe in the sharp smell of dye chemicals and conditioners while they fussed over her hair.
It was already evening when they reached Queenstown. They passed by a school where a long row of cars were parked alongside the main gates. They passed a bus interchange where there were schoolboys with their shirts tucked out and schoolgirls with their skirts hitched high up their waists, as if it were the latest fashion. They passed over the cracked shadows of rain trees and the long shadows of street lamps. They passed under a darkening sky. Karen looked outside her window and frowned.
“Weren’t you supposed to make a turning there?” she asked.
“Was I?” Teck How asked her back.
“Aren’t we going to my parents’ house first?” Karen asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Where are we going?”
“Can you just shut up and let me drive?”
They kept on driving and since the radio was turned off they missed the evening news. As Karen was picking soundlessly at a balled up piece of tissue paper in her hands she missed the exact moment when the street lamps came to life. After a while she started sniffing and turned down the small louvres on the air-con vent. Then she wiped her fingers on her piece of tissue paper. She thought it had been unfair for Teck How to think that she wanted to marry him just so that she could share his money with other people. All she wanted to do was share this newfound happiness which she couldn’t understand and which she had lost in the time it took to drive from Raffles Place to Queenstown.
“Teck How,” she suddenly said.
Teck How was silent.
“I just want to know one thing.”
Without looking at her, Teck How asked, “What?”
Karen started to laugh. “I have no idea where Romania is. Where is it? What do they do in Romania?”
“I bet you don’t even know what the capital of Romania is.”
She had expected Teck How to laugh along with her. When Teck How did not answer she peered out of the window, her forehead on the glass. She squinted at the horizon. It was broken by cranes and flyovers and half-built buildings still veiled in green gauze. Karen scanned the sky for all things, an aeroplane, as if it were a sign she had been waiting for all her life.
PILLOW
I saw his eyes flash for a moment, and the next minute I saw tears.
“Haven’t I been good to you?” he asked, looking around. There was only another couple in the teahouse, and they were hidden behind a cabinet of tea sets.
“You’re crying,” I sighed. “You’re crying again.”
“Yes, I know I am! Why do you keep doing this to me?”
I looked away, looked at steam rising from the spout of a small clay teapot, looked at clear water bubbling in a Pyrex pot over a stove, looked at the blue flame.
“Is this what you like to see? A 50 year old man? Looking like this?”
“No.”
“Then why?” He reached out to touch my forearm, which was resting on the table. He had well-manicured nails, and rings on his fingers. I shrank away, but not forcefully, in disgust. Mechanically, like it was a reflex.
He blinked, and knitted his brow. I looked at a rice paper scroll of Chinese calligraphy and imagined his tears smearing it, forming runny streaks. I imagined myself swallowing the tea although it tasted like seawater. I remembered those tears when I kissed his face and he told me how happy he was, in a voice so soft it was like a girlish whisper.
“I paged you at least ten times, but you never returned any of them.” His voice was low, the way people’s voices were when they want to convince themselves that they are talking with reason and not emotion.
“I was busy.”
“Busy with what? Busy with whom?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t what? What is wrong?”
“Stop asking me these questions,” I finally said. I said it softer the second time, although it wasn’t so harsh the first time round. “Just stop asking me these questions. I’m tired.”
“You’re 18! What is there to be tired about? I’ll take care of you. What are you tired of?”
“You,” I told him, looking away, to the window where drops of rain had gathered. “You’re making me tired.” There should have been a certain sense of triumph in the way I said it, as if it was something I had been meaning to say for a long time. But when it came out it sounded so truthful that there was no way I could have intended it to hurt.
* * *
I remembered the first time it happened. He was my father’s friend. He came over to our house one day and he caught me looking out from my room. The next week he told me to stop calling him ‘uncle’. The week after he touched my thigh while we were driving down Changi Road in his Mercedes. He had picked me up from school earlier in the evening. I had closed my eyes and let him.
“What is this music playing now?” I had asked him.
“You like it? It’s Mahler. Gustav Mahler.” He inched his hand to the inside of my thighs. I didn’t move.
“I don’t listen to classical.”
“You should,” he said, his voice a little unsteady. “You should because,” his hand was working on my zip now, “you should, because classical music is good.”
My eyes were still shut and in my mind I could see the street lamps that stretched and sloped ahead, a million birthday candles I could puff out the moment I lifted my eyelids. When I did just that we were in a car park under a rain tree, and he was crying.
“I didn’t mean to,” he sobbed. “I’ll drive you home.”
“No, it’s all right,” I told him.
“I’m an old man,” he said, looking at me only from his rear view mirror. “Most of my friends, they’re married, they have kids. One of them is seeing his son graduate next week. I eat out a lot. I don’t have holiday photographs, I don’t have cards done in crayons, I’ve got this king size bed, cost me a lot, but you know what? It’s got only one pillow.”
“Why didn’t you get married?”
He turned on the headlamps and illuminated the tree that stood in front of us. Then, he turned it on brighter and I could almost see the ants scurrying on the forlorn bark of the tree. Fin
ally he turned it off and the tree fell back into shadows. He frowned, as if wondering what that show of light was all about.
“Some things just don’t happen. Some things don’t work out like they should. When you get to my age you’ll know.”
“I think I already know.” I ran a finger against the edge of the dashboard and wiped it from side to side, as if I were erasing a name.
“I have a lot of money,” he said, his eyes glued to the mirror. “But nobody to spend it on. I open my bank book and I see so many zeros. You know, sometimes I watch these commercials and I actually dial in. I think it’s what happens when you think you have too much money. I’ve bought myself an Abdomenizer, a kitchen helper that’s supposed to turn cucumber slices into flowers, a treadmill, a tube of white stuff that gets rid of every stain. It’s amazing, the things you can buy. And last week I bought this tray, you can put frozen food on it and it melts fast. I tried it, I put an ice cube on it and it turned to water in three minutes flat.”
“That’s nice,” I said, not really knowing what to say, “it really does that?”
“Yeah. But you know, spending on yourself isn’t the same as spending on someone else. I’d love to go buy things for people, things they’d appreciate.” He paused for a while. “I’m an old man.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It doesn’t matter to you?”
His apartment was well-kept, clean, uncluttered. If he wanted to move I guess he could have packed everything into five boxes. He was right about his bed; there was only one pillow on it. At least he wasn’t a liar, I thought, before I let him melt in my arms, his face gently nudging, his fingers moving around the trunk of my body, like someone clawing at shadows. I kept thinking of the tree in the car park, and the ants, and whether the tree knew anything when the ants chewed off crumbs of bark. I wondered if plants were capable of pain. I let his tears fall on my shoulders, his lips planting wet ovals on my skin. With my eyes closed I pictured his mouth opening and closing like the sphincter of a sea anemone. When I was about to fall asleep he lifted my head and eased the one pillow under my head.
