A Chinese Affair

by Isabelle Li

  ‘Let the birthday girl order what she likes,’ Fanny said, her fingertips tapping Luke’s forearm.

  My spirit waned. ‘Whatever everyone likes.’

  Luke brushed Fanny off. ‘Yun, it’s your forte.’

  ‘Sure.’ Yun had a low and crackling voice, as if accustomed to conspiracies. ‘It’s hard to order in a small place like this. No guarantee what I order will be what the dishes are supposed to be.’ She signalled to one of the white shirts and placed the order, which included drunken prawns, lobster noodles and black pepper crabs.

  ‘Can you eat seafood? It doesn’t help with healing,’ Fanny said, pointing to Yun’s bandaged hand.

  ‘It’s not a deep cut,’ Yun said.

  ‘What happened?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Not a big deal. Someone’s trying to give me a warning.’

  ‘Warning about what?’ Qing asked, his head tilting.

  ‘Not to get involved with Luke.’ Yun shrugged.

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ Luke said. There was tension in his voice. ‘Since you’re all here, can we be open about it?’

  ‘About what?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe we should choose another day.’ Fanny touched Luke’s arm again, and he did not seem to notice.

  ‘Little Brother, no matter what happens, you have friends.’

  ‘Paper cannot contain fire,’ Qing said with apocalyptic wisdom.

  ‘But what’s this all about?’ I was confused.

  ‘No point in skirting around the issue.’ Luke’s face was turning green, his chiselled features stern. ‘Don’t act innocent anymore.’

  I realised he had been talking to me, his eyes on my shoulder. The others were watching me as well. My face turned very hot. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you be more specific?’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t prove it’s you. Only you would know.’ Luke’s chest was heaving, ready to burst. He pulled out a stack of yellow paper and slammed it onto the table. ‘We met two years ago and they’ve started to come in since then.’

  The letters were printed in Chinese. I glanced at the page on top: ‘As a friend, I am warning you not to get involved with a particular woman (you know who), for the sake of your own reputation. She has been going around telling people that she wears lacy dresses for you and cooks aphrodisiac food to boost your sexual energy’. I felt a jolt in my stomach, and my eyes became blurry. Blood rushed to my eardrums, and I heard my own heart throbbing.

  ‘Luke, the information in these letters, is it true?’ Qing’s head tilted so much that his neck was parallel with the ground.

  ‘What if it is?’

  ‘This is Singapore and we have laws,’ Poet said indignantly, the first time I ever heard him speak positively about his country. ‘Little Brother, I have friends in the police.’ He had to report to them once a week as part of the conditions for parole. ‘Would you like me to refer your case for investigation?’

  ‘Let’s not make too big a fuss,’ Qing said. He continued with his analysis. ‘Who knows so much?’

  ‘The woman in the story, of course, who has a big mouth.’ Luke gestured at Fanny.

  Fanny giggled and hid her face behind her hair. ‘Someone’s also written to my boss, telling him about my moonlighting during office hours.’

  Yun said nothing, looking into her injured hand.

  ‘Someone has pretended to be everyone’s friend, and backstabbed us.’ Qing looked at me, his eyes cold and sharp.

  My body was filled with lead and the heaviness had reached my chest. I wanted to scream: ‘It’s not me!’ But the words were compressed behind my throat.

  The dishes arrived and everyone started eating. There was a momentary silence except the sound of vigorous crunching. Shellfish, shellfish, shellfish … I tried to behave innocently, even though I was not guilty of anything. Yet something dark was pushing its way up from inside and my body was reaching a tipping point. The surrounding voices were amplified, and at the same time confined to an echoing space. My mind went blank.

  ‘Excuse me.’ I stumbled across the dining room.

  The bathroom was empty. I lifted the toilet seat and threw up.

  I sat down on the toilet lid and folded forward, resting my torso on my thighs, head in my hands. My legs splayed like the arms of a clock, hanging on to time. There was no air-conditioning. I was at once sweating and shivering. No reason for me to go back. I should disappear from their lives, and if the anonymous letters continued, they would know it was not me.

  The fluorescent light buzzed, and the door slammed. I had to vacate the cubicle. The middle-aged woman was taken aback when she saw me. I rinsed the bitterness from my mouth. In the mirror I saw a grey face with red lumps, eyes so sad that I could not bear to look into them.

  I walked out the fire exit. At a pedestrian crossing, the traffic lights were blinking, and a red sign was counting down by the seconds. Something was about to happen. Or had it happened already? I walked a long way under the streetlights, among the deathly fragrance of the night flowers, in my new locust-green outfit.

  I crashed into bed, soaked in perspiration. From the open window I heard the traffic, the dispersing throng of the coffee shop, English sitcoms on TV, and Indian dance music. The mattress yielded under my weight, and the bed capsized in space, while I slid slowly into an abyss.

  The desk phone rang. I must have fallen asleep. There was the noise of television from the living room.

  ‘Hello.’

  Sound of a click. ‘Please stay away from my husband.’ It was a woman’s voice, in Chinese with a local accent.

  ‘Who’s your husband?’

  ‘You know who he is. You had dinner with him.’

  ‘Luke’s not married. He’s divorced.’

  ‘He married me in Malaysia. I’m in Malacca, about to give birth.’

  ‘Luke and I are friends. I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Don’t do this to me.’ She started to cry. ‘I’ll let my father speak to you.’

  ‘My daughter has attempted suicide,’ said the voice of an old man with the same accent.

  ‘You are making it up.’

  ‘If anything happens, I’ll come after you. I know where you live and where you work.’ Pause. ‘Just you wait, slut!’ He hung up.

  I turned on the light and for a moment could not recognise the room. The furniture was transfixed by the sudden brightness, as if caught in the middle of an abject, illicit act. I turned the light off.

  I dragged myself to the bathroom. In the living room, my landlord was watching TV, his white singlet and his face changing colour with the screen.

  I came back, closed the curtain and lay down in bed. But I could not go back to sleep.

  The phone rang again at two in the morning.

  ‘Sorry I wake you.’ A man’s voice, in Chinese with a local accent, flat and anonymous. ‘The night has been quite hot and I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I wondered if it was my landlord ringing me from his room. The television had stopped a moment ago. My landlady might have gone back to Malaysia.

  ‘Everyone works long hours in Singapore.’

  ‘Life is stressful here. Who are you?’

  ‘Sometimes I feel like going somewhere. But where can I go?’

  ‘I feel the same and I’m thinking further south.’

  I unplugged the phone, and pushed the chair behind the bolted door.

  Why did I say ‘further south’? I sat on my bed, leaned on the windowsill, and opened a corner of the curtain. The city was asleep and I was peeping into a dream that belonged to someone else. I had gone from northern China to southern China for university, then to Singapore for work. Where would be my next stop? There were two countries that accepted independent migrants, Canada and Australia. Not Canada. Qing would be there.

  I lay down again and started to remember my dream from the morning. I was submerged in a liquid heat and had to paddle to avoid sinking, and my limbs were heavy. I was not afraid, just curious
. I stopped, and fell into the deep, dark unknown.

  ‘One step back, the sea is broad and the sky wide.’

  Six months later I left Singapore. Apart from resigning from work, I did not tell anyone. I left before dawn.

  4

  Two Tongues

  Lyrebird

  I share a two-bedroom, one-bathroom unit with Sam, on the middle floor of the block. There are four such brown buildings in our compound, with a hundred and six units in all. Most residents are migrants living in their first bought home, or renting. Because of the proximity to the airport, we hear the planes thundering over our heads on two days of the week at six o’clock in the morning. On the other days, the planes take off in other directions, but still I am woken up at around six by the ravens’ chorus: ‘aarh, aarh, aaarh’.

  Sam is a safety manager for a container company at Port Botany. He is one size bigger than an ordinary person. He wears T-shirts and baggy pants throughout the year, with a stained overcoat during the cold days in winter, and a pair of thongs in summer. He gives the impression of moving slowly, even though he is quite efficient. Sometimes after the evening news I watch him playing computer games on the TV screen. His avatar is a man of slim build, with melancholy eyes, a sensitive chin, and long hair the colour of maize.

  Living next door to us is a young couple with a small baby. The Australian husband drives a utility van that provides road assistance. His Korean wife has an enormous face, punctuated by tiny smiling eyes and a red cherry mouth. The baby cries occasionally in short bursts at night, and by the time I become aware of it in my sleep, it is already over.

  Above us is a young Lebanese couple. They fight often, shaking the ceiling, sometimes in one room, sometimes in another, and scream at each other. But the woman looks perfectly fine whenever I see her, usually on her way to the gym. Her bottom and thighs are rock solid from kickboxing.

  Next to them live a Serbian father and son, who take the day and night shifts to drive the same taxi. The father has small warts all over his face and I cannot understand a word he says. The son lights a cigarette every time he leaves the unit and I can smell him walking by on the staircase, even with our door closed.

  Living underneath us is a Filipino family with three children. They have a piano, and the eldest daughter is learning from the mother. Occasionally the mother plays for a long time. When both parents are out on night shifts, the kids play indoor soccer. Our rubbish bin is often filled with garbage that we have not produced, and we suspect they are the culprits.

  Their next-door neighbours are an Indonesian-Chinese father and son. The father does general cleaning in the compound. He knows all the gossip and never hesitates to fill me in. The son practises martial arts behind the block near the clothesline. When the father sleeps over at his girlfriend’s, the son brings back his own girlfriend to stay.

  Our compound is located behind a petrol station on a busy road, where many container trucks travel to and from the port. It is divided in the middle by a concrete strip with iron poles, on which the blue and white council flags flap in the wind. There is a shortcut from our building to the main road via the petrol station’s private car park. I look around whenever I enter the main road to avoid the wandering veteran soldier who spits at me and calls me ‘Bloody Asian’.

  I live here because the rent is cheap and Sam is an introvert. Also, I often live elsewhere.

  ‘Where are you going this time?’ Sam asks.

  ‘St Ives.’

  ‘Watch out for ticks in the backyard.’

  Sam ambles back to his room and shuts the door. I wonder what he does in there. Does he masturbate?

  I often live elsewhere because I housesit. Some people have come to realise that it is a traumatic experience for their beloved pets to stay in temporary lodgings. Depending on their requirements, I also collect their mail, tidy up the house, water the pot plants and mow the lawn, so when they return, their home is in order. ‘Experienced. Locally based. Short term at short notice. References upon request.’ I have natural advantages over the backpackers from overseas.

  Some owners are fastidious. I once looked after a doctor’s apartment for four weeks. He had not been overseas for twenty years and had started to look for a house-sitter two months beforehand. He conducted a thorough interview and had lengthy conversations with all my referees. His anxiety was mainly about the six budgies that flew freely around the apartment. Items in the living room that were not cleanable had to be covered with drop cloths. Despite the magnificent harbour view, a thin curtain was drawn at all times so the birds would not fly into the glass. At night, a low-voltage lamp had to be kept on in case they were startled. The doctor left me three pages of instructions and various numbers for contacting him. The birds soon befriended me, particularly the youngest one, Stormy, who had hatched in the apartment—on the bookshelf, actually, as the doctor had told me during one of the ‘orientation’ sessions. Stormy could not wait for me to drop my bag before starting to play. I carried out training lessons as requested: ‘Don’t worry, be happy,’ I said to their fluffy faces. I was in tears when I had to go. The doctor paid me a fee, which was not a common practice. One day he rang to tell me that a tradesman had left the window open and Stormy flew away.

  The doctor recommended me to a friend of his who was going on a trip to France. That’s how I came to a house where everything was pink. Before introducing me to the two cats, the lady warned me not to mention the word ‘fat’ because it was bad for their self-esteem. The cats rubbed their furry behinds on my legs, probably because of the synthetic material I was wearing. So I was hired. For six weeks I battled with cat hair in the inch-thick pink carpet. The cats were so overweight that they could hardly jump up and down and do cat things. I restricted their diet, and helped them to exercise. It was obvious to me that they did not like the pink ribbon and silver bells on their necks, so I took them off. The pink lady returned, and when she saw the cats with their rejuvenated healthier look, she burst out crying and apologised to them. ‘Please leave us,’ she said, without looking up, while I stood there in the middle of the living room, waiting for praise.

  One spring I looked after a dozen bonsai trees for an architect. I’d grown up among bonsai trees, so caring for them, while hard work, was a treat. The trident maples were densely covered in a delicate red, and the elms in a cheerful green. My favourite was a young ginkgo with fan-shaped tender leaves, shy like butterfly wings. I caressed the trees every morning on the balcony, and they looked so happy, as if they were going to sing. The architect paid me, which was much cheaper for him than boarding the trees in a bonsai nursery.

  I have built up a clientele and get referrals for jobs rather than only relying on agents. I move from one place to another, sharing the unit with Sam in between. ‘Don’t you want stability?’ Sam asks. He does not know that all the while I am saving up to buy my own place. It will be a small apartment with an elevated outlook on a quiet street, where I will rise with the sun and sleep among the stars.

  Apart from the houses and the pets, I also like to get to know the owners. They are usually well-off but do not have someone convenient to rely upon. Unless they lock things up, I do a thorough search of the house, combing through every corner. Most of the time I find common items; people are more alike than they think. But sometimes there are surprises.

  Before I open anything, I always have a good look at how it is packed: the direction of the latch, the order of the documents. I do not interfere with them. I only want to see what is there. For example, a professional couple had kinky toys hidden under their bed. I just pulled out the box and looked at the pink dildo and black gag, not touching them. In the house of a man who looked very successful, I found a half-empty packet of Prozac in a drawer. There was a teacher who had decided to go on her dream trip after she had breast cancer and a mastectomy. In her drawer I saw half a dozen red lacy bras.

  The pink lady had kept a stack of letters from fifty years ago. They were tied together
with a pink ribbon. I had assumed they were love letters, but they were practical, terse, with nothing amorous. Was it an unrequited love? They were in a music box, which played ‘Greensleeves’ and had a mirror on the inside of the lid. Did she look at herself ageing in the mirror, lines of resentment and contempt being added to her once innocent and vulnerable face?

  While at the doctor’s house, looking among his collection of non-medical books, I found one about art. On the inside of the cover page, it read: ‘To dear Mark, for all the afternoon teas at your kitchen table, for all the front seats at performances, for the rainbows we witnessed many times over the harbour, for your generous offer of looking after my birds. Farewell. Forever yours, Marianne.’

  The void of loneliness is everywhere. When I discover it in other people, I feel connected with them, as if my void is filled by theirs.

  I do not take photographs of the places for fear that photos will interfere with the natural process of memory. Looking back in time is like looking into a fun mirror: things are exaggerated, altered, manipulated. But the essence is still there, and that is what I like to preserve.

  I record the sound that is unique to a place—say, a grandfather clock striking at each hour, an old dog’s throaty bark, or the scratchy gramophone coming from a neighbour at night. Once I recorded the sound of waves breaking on the rocks where I walked two dogs. In a terrace house, I recorded the sound of someone tentatively practising piano. In the wind, gum trees clap while conifers whistle. Rain on a metal roof is louder than rain on tiles. I upload the recordings onto my computer, label them, and play them back occasionally.

  ‘What do you hear?’ I play a recording for Sam.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘It’s the fruit bats at dusk.’

  I try to find places that are accessible via public transport from work. This limits the area I can cover.