by S. L. Lim
‘It’s OK,’ Yannie said lightly. ‘I thought so too.’
‘I thought you’d missed out on everything in life. Shan said you used to be bright when you were at school. You did so well, and he was proud of you.’ Yannie gave an involuntary start. ‘Yes, that’s right – your brother cared for you. You might not understand, but some of us still have feelings for our families. Even when they do something wrong. We love them, because that’s what people do.’ Evelyn bowed her head, shuddered with grief, and wiped her nose across her sleeve. Yannie offered her the tissue box, which she accepted, pulling out a thick wad to blot her eyes.
Yannie said after a pause, ‘Don’t you see – Meng just wants to find out what really happened. The way you feel about your family – he loves the company dearly, you know. It’s the only thing he cares about …’
‘Oh, what total bullshit.’ Profanity sounded strange coming from Evelyn’s mouth. Yannie was rather impressed. ‘That old hypocrite – oh, he’s the worst kind. The ones with good intentions are the worst! He doesn’t even know how hypocritical he is. All those pretentious ideas – really, it was no better than high school, it was just a clique! But meanwhile, someone had to do the work, to make the money. To keep the whole ridiculous edifice going. And when Shan finally asks only for what he deserves – some little bit of financial recognition, after all his years working so hard – oh, then they turn on him! Oh, they’re such perfect friends, so loyal, just so long as you know your place!’
Is this what it means to be in love? Yannie thought. You accept your beloved’s view of reality, no matter how much confounding evidence there may be. ‘I don’t know enough about these things. I don’t know what went on in the business. All I know is, if what Soo Kim has said is right, then Shan may have broken the law. And you know, maybe Soo Kim is mistaken. But there’s at least some smoke. And now Meng wants to look into it, and I agree.’
‘Do you know what goes on in jails? Prisoners get raped, that’s what happens! Grown men raping one another.’
‘Oh.’ Yannie blinked. ‘Yes, I have heard of that. I always thought it was exaggerated, though.’
‘That’s just it! You have no idea. You’re completely naive, and also dangerous. Even worse than Kat, in your own way.’ Evelyn pushed a strand of hair behind her ear: a small, futile gesture to maintain her dignity, which Yannie found rather touching. ‘Do you know what Shan would do if that happened? He would kill himself. He would rather commit suicide than be publicly shamed like this.’
‘Stop exaggerating,’ Yannie said sharply. Then she felt bad about saying it. Who knew, Evelyn might be right. Personally, she doubted her brother was the type to hurt himself. She’d always had him pegged as someone with a strong sense of self-preservation.
Evelyn closed her eyes and went silent for a while. At last she said, ‘Why do you hate me?’
‘Of course I don’t hate you.’
‘Why do you hate us? All of us? Our whole family? When did it start? – that’s what I want to know. Did you hate us at the wedding? When you first moved here into my house?’ Evelyn spoke wonderingly. ‘When I paid for the air ticket so you could go home for your old friend’s funeral? Did you hate us then, the way you obviously hate us now?’
In spite of herself, Yannie felt her eyes begin to well. ‘I’ve never hated you, Evelyn. Never.’
‘No, you can’t say that. It doesn’t work. You can’t just hate my husband by himself, and not me as well, and Kat. They are part of me. You can’t –’
‘Really? You’re all the same person? One happy family unit?’ Yannie looked at her sister-in-law in disbelief. ‘Evelyn, you’re a smart, good person. So how can you not have noticed? The way Shan shouts, blames you for things, the way he yells at Kat? Stamps around the house, throwing things around. Even Kat can tell – and he’s her father, her own flesh and blood. Shan is a total asshole.’ Cathartic, to finally say it out loud.
‘Don’t you dare use that word about my husband! Stay out of things that don’t concern you. What would you know, anyway – what would you know about being married?’ Evelyn’s voice rose – It’s a little too loud, Yannie thought. Too emphatic for someone genuinely convinced of the truth of what she was saying. For a moment she flew out of herself, saw how it was for her sister-in-law: this lovely house, one lovely daughter, three investment properties, two cars. Shan behind her while she stood in the kitchen, one warm hand pressed into the small of her lower back …
And among all of this, the thumping feet and flying crumpets. Cars and elephants, elephants and cars. A lifetime of mental training – one half of the brain used to placate, soothe and avoid, and the other to pretend that it never happened. What does it take, to see and not see these things at the same time?
She said, not expecting to be heard: ‘You could still leave, you know. Leave Shan, I mean. I would help, Kat would help – it would be hard, but I’m sure we’d find a way.’ She looked into Evelyn’s eyes, trying to put all the love she still felt into her gaze. It seemed like too much, and yet she had to say it. ‘I know I’m not rich, but I will do what I can. I am your friend. Even after this – I’ll always be your friend, Evelyn.’
‘Burn in hell. Don’t pretend to feel remorse. And don’t look at me like that! Crocodile tears – eating our food, staying here on the visa I paid for …’ It took a moment for Yannie to recognise the reasoning was analogous to that which Evelyn had previously applied to Kat, before hitting her daughter in the face. I paid for your lodgings, now your behaviour is mine. I fed you, therefore you renounce the right to independent preferences.
But whereas Evelyn’s treatment of her daughter had been ugly, here her words seemed almost childlike. Like a small girl repeating a spell that her elders have taught her and then wondering why it failed to have the desired effect. ‘I enjoyed your company, that’s the worst part! I enjoyed spending time with you! And all the while you were making me into a laughing stock.’
‘No, I wasn’t! I loved living here with you.’ Saying the word brought home the magnitude of her loss. ‘I haven’t had the greatest life, Evelyn. I haven’t had another friend as kind as you. Even now, I won’t forget it.’
‘Get out of my sight, Yannie. Just go.’
‘Yes, I think that’s better.’ But still Yannie hovered at the door. A phrase began to beat round and round her head: the necessary ruthlessness. ‘How far …’ How far do you want me to go? she wanted to ask. Out of the room, out of the country? ‘Should I get out of your house?’ Should I leave your life forever?
Evelyn shrugged wearily. ‘Go. Stay. I don’t care.’ She pressed her face into the couch. ‘Everything is over.’
Yannie retreated to her room – or rather, to the room which would not be hers for much longer. She felt sick with the extent of her own betrayal.
11
Revenge
Yannie started packing her belongings. There was not much to pack and yet she did it carefully – sticking her face under the bed to find stray socks, feeling the backs of drawers for small valuables she might theoretically have hidden. She fluffed the doona, rolling it back to check if any clothes were trapped against the mattress, and whether her body had made an imprint over all these months. Her sparse little toothbrush, a leaking tube of toothpaste, one small roll of dental floss. A USB which Kat had given her, onto which she’d uploaded several hundred of her niece’s favourite songs. A pair of good headphones which Kat, in a fit of careless generosity, had told Yannie she could keep. Some pretty scarves which Evelyn had bought, scarves the colour of peacocks, fabric gathered in her hand and then floating loose like a spray of mist when she shook them out.
She stood her suitcase vertically, locked it, and started to haul it into the corridor. Kat’s door was closed, and she did not knock – she had already decided, with a mixture of cowardice and pragmatism, that there was no point telling Kat she was going. She had a disorienting feeling, unsure of where all this had come from, and even what it was. It seemed very separa
te from her, as if all that had happened was imposed from without, and had nothing whatsoever to do with her actions, her own choices.
Shan was standing in the kitchen when she came past. She jumped when she saw him.
‘Hello,’ she said stupidly.
He was leaning on the counter, eating Pringles by the fistful from the can. Even slouched and munching against the countertop, his body loomed over hers. It was a peculiar thing, this way he had of looming: it seemed independent of his actual physical size. He had always been like that, even as a child – it was something about his gait, his way of standing. Half of his shirt had escaped his pants, and crumbs clung to the corners of his lips, but still he exuded an aura of power. Like Tony Soprano, she thought. He was frightening not in spite of being ridiculous, but because of it.
‘Mei mei, hello’ he said. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Away. I’m leaving your house, and the country soon. Away from the two of you, from here. No, don’t look at me that way –’ his gaze slid over her features, languid with contempt – ‘I’ll be gone before you know it.’
‘I see. But you know, I think that you are making a big mistake.’ He said it quietly but accentuated the k at the end of the word. It reminded her of childhood. Whenever he wanted to frighten her, he always exaggerated his consonants. ‘You think you can just disappear like that? Just run away?’
‘Well, yes, I do. I’ve taken all my things. I’m going to stay at a hotel. Meng is expecting me. He is going to pick me up.’
It wasn’t true, but she thought that it would give him pause to know a man was looking out for her. She was right. As if buying time, he turned his attention back to the Pringles, making ostentatious crunching noises. She could see the mass of food bulging in his cheek.
She was halfway across the room when he said, ‘Do you think I’m going to just let you walk out the door like that? You seem to forget, you’re very small.’
‘Don’t be stupid, there’s nothing you can do. You’re only bluffing.’ She hated the quaver in her voice. At the same time, it registered that for the first time in more than forty years she had called her brother ‘stupid’. The sensation was surprisingly pleasurable. ‘What good would it do to hurt me now? Meng already knows all about the thing you’ve done. He’s talked to people at the nursing home. You can’t bully all of us. Sooner or later, the truth will come out.’
She knew him so well – his anger was her anger. There was something not only familiar about it, but intimate. She liked the way his eyes narrowed, the way his lips seemed to bulge outwards with rage. She heard the words cross her mind without knowing exactly what they referred to: I can use this. She had a sense, a kind of disturbed elation, that he was under her control.
Her brother tilted his head, looking at her appraisingly. ‘You really know how to take care of yourself,’ he said at last. ‘Silly me. I thought that you were so innocent. Should have read the writing on the wall. You and I share the same blood. That should have warned me, but it didn’t.’
‘Not such a great businessman after all, then. Shouldn’t have spent so much time making YouTube videos.’
She knew at once that she had stepped across a line. If I was being sensible, I wouldn’t humiliate him – it only makes things worse. Even now, I could still be safe – if I just creep out like a frightened child, the way he wants me to. Hold on to the actual power, but leave him with his ego intact. Still, why must I always be the pragmatic one, the defuser? Can’t I be the one who brings a bit of theatre – a bit of pride?
And then again, the disembodied words: If he strikes first, it won’t be my fault. I’ll still be allowed to sleep at night.
Her brother set down the can of Pringles. He did it slowly, with his back to her, so she could study the dense flesh of his arms and shoulders. Slowly he turned around to face her, narrowing his eyes, so she felt their intense myopic focus.
He said, once again emphasising the consonants, ‘You have to make the investigation stop.’
‘I can’t. I told you, it’s too late. I already told Soo Kim, the nurse – you know. She may have already reported it to the higher-ups.’
‘I don’t care what you said. You are going to bring a halt to this whole thing. Tell them that none of it is true. Tell them you pressured the nurse – paid her to make it up. Tell them some story!’ He was moving round a lot – or at least a lot for him, her proudly sedentary brother – agitated movements, agitated hands. He’s actually afraid, she realised. He’s really frightened of me and what I have wrought. He’s always been like that: a lion at home, but terrified of outsiders, of authority. My mother was like that too.
He reached into the kitchen drawer and withdrew a knife. Yannie recognised the object: she had often used it for slicing meat, preparing chicken rice, Evelyn’s favourite dish. For a moment he let it dangle between his fingers, oddly casually, as if it were a necktie. Then he closed his hand round the base.
‘I’ll kill you,’ he said.
She knew he had always been like this. He would up the ante, bring on the theatre, so that eventually whoever was standing by would become afraid, have to give in – his wife, his sister: ‘OK, that’s far enough, you can stop now.’ Always some woman on hand to give him what he wanted. Back down, defuse the situation. It was just a performance; in a moment the lights would come on, and they would both blink back into their ordinary lives.
She knew too how impossible it was to know for certain that this was what was going on. Maybe this was the time Shan would really lose his temper, knife her and slice her, leave her bleeding on the floor – which was what made the tactic so effective. The value of a threat equals its power plus uncertainty. The victim has to believe there’s a chance you might actually do it – even though, practically speaking, it would be easier on everyone if you didn’t. Violence is morally and legally inconvenient, and physically gross – and yet it must be done, or else your victims will get wise, and not be afraid of you anymore. And they know this, and they know that you know, and that’s what makes them so afraid. Every now and then the threat must eventuate, and actual rather than imaginary blood must be spilled, even though nobody wants it to be.
‘Just be sensible,’ her mother used to say when she complained about how her brother bullied her. ‘You know how he is.’ As if her brother were some elementary force. A fact of nature, absent of volition – it didn’t make sense to talk of such a person in terms of decisions and behaviour, of things he could be made or persuaded not to do to her anymore. No, it was up to Yannie to exercise such qualities as compunction and morality. To make life bearable, survivable for all.
‘Come on,’ she said quietly. ‘Come at me, Shan.’
Her brother squinted back at her. His expression was difficult to read. Confusion; disorientation, maybe. An unexpected reversal of roles: this wasn’t how it was supposed to be, the dominant brother should tower above the quaking, supplicant sister. That was the order of things, the ancient diorama. How to understand this bizarre inversion? Or maybe it was just myopia, what she had mistaken for hate, his piggy eyes narrowing to slits behind his glasses. It seemed too pat, too appropriate, almost, that the individual most horrible to her in the world was also the most physically repulsive. If they had both lived longer, maybe one day she would have asked herself the question: What is it about this man that is really so terrible? Is my brother truly evil incarnate, or is he a middle-aged man with a loving wife and a successful business? True, he’d treated her badly as a child – but childhood is meant to be horrible, that’s what it’s for. Older children bully younger ones, the strong rule the weak – how else can the social ecosystem function? And yet all over the world there are brothers and sisters who like, or at the very least tolerate, each other, and who feel no compulsion to slit one another’s throats.
She added: ‘You pathetic human being.’
This is the point where fiction and reality must diverge. In real life, to disagree violently is usually a
metaphor. Most human beings are lazy, conflict-averse and not especially imaginative. They stay out of trouble, defer to authority, and hope any anomalous situation will resolve without much intervention on their part. By contrast, characters in novels murder each other left and right for fairly trivial reasons. To understand why it must be so, think of it as an efficiency problem. Imagine a turbine designed to convert the heat of burning coal into electricity. The coal burns, the heat turns water into steam, the steam drives the turbine, which is connected to the generator, where magnets spin within coils to create electric power. But no matter how careful you are, not all of the potential in the coal can be used. Some of the heat will be absorbed by the air or lost into the immediate surroundings. Which is why we’ll all be dead or extremely cold in a few billion years or so …
– that’s entropy, man –
Imagine: the cooling of the universe, the slow transition from order to disorder. Think of it as I seek to convey what I must, from Yannie’s brain to yours. If I could plug your mind via some fleshy cable straight into her cortex; if I could only show, with no loss of immediacy, how she loathed Shan and all he represented: ‘Yannie hated her brother.’ There it would be: four words, no leakage of meaning, no need to exaggerate for effect. You could feel for yourself how awful his existence was to Yannie. How awful it would always be, regardless of what he did or did not do, or how he did or did not redeem himself. Her loathing of him had grown beyond reason, beyond her own powers of analysis. How many times she had dreamed of this violence, all the more gruesome for coming at the end of a cushy life. Dreams of viciousness congealing in her throat.
Her brother’s eyes met her own, and she saw that he knew what she was capable of. Theatre versus theatre. They were both confused: they could not see how they had got to this point, but neither of them felt they had a choice. Shan, still holding the knife in one hand, lunged at Yannie’s torso. Curiously, the hand with which he reached for her was not the one which grasped the weapon, but she did not allow this to dissuade her. In her mind he was no longer human – a physical obstacle, a bodily threat denuded of intention, human malice. An unexploded bomb, a wall collapsing. She felt exhilarated: drenched in youth, back from a time when solving problems was her forte, when a life of the mind came to her as easily as breathing. As he came she stepped sideways, grabbed the wrist of the hand which held the knife, and jerked it up towards his face. This was not a graceful motion, but it took advantage of his own forward momentum. There was a moment when she could have stopped, and she chose not to. The knife went straight into his throat, and she was looking right at him as it happened: confusion, a sudden pained look of surprise – of disappointment, even. And then her brother’s life gushed out onto the walls, and onto her hands, and with copious colour and an unholy smell upon the floor.
