Spirits Abroad (ebook)

by Zen Cho

  "What happened to Boris?" said Jia Qi.

  "Oh, he's working at Goldman Sachs now," said Coco. "I see him sometimes when I go to London. He wants to be a millionaire by the time he's thirty."

  This seemed to Jia Qi a somewhat disappointing ending to the story. "Does he still do lion dance?"

  "He gets about four hours of sleep a night," said Coco. "I don't think he does much of anything besides work. Anyway, the last time I saw him Boris said he wasn't into it anymore."

  "Lion dance for fun, OK," Boris had said. "To kill the hantu, not so much anymore lah."

  "But that's why you got into it, isn't it?" said Coco.

  "Yes, but," said Boris. His eyes went filmy and distant — though maybe that was just the redness of sleep deprivation.

  "Actually, no," he said. "I started because of love. I really love that lion. You ask me if I love my girlfriend more than that lion, I also won't know how to answer you. And you know the story about the origins of the lion dance? Why they all started doing it in ancient China?"

  "They wanted to get rid of the Nian, didn't they?" said Coco, who had read the Wikipedia page. "This monster came to the village and the lion fought it off."

  "That's one story," said Boris. "But the other story is, maybe the lion is the Nian. You look at the lion. It doesn't look much like real lion, right? Where got real lion got horn? Maybe the Nian has horn. In the end maybe it's the same thing.

  "Somehow doesn't seem right," said Boris, "getting the lion to eat spirit. It's like cannibal, right? That's why I stopped."

  Coco shrugged. "Fish feed is made of fish."

  "You ask me if I love my mother as much as that lion, I don't know if I would say yes or not," was all Boris would say.

  But to be fair to Boris, he was pretty drunk at the time.

  Read the author's notes

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  The Mystery of the Suet Swain

  Belinda was having boy problems again.

  "How?" She'd unboxed the iPhone and laid it on her desk. They both regarded it as if it was a snake.

  "I don't know what to do," said Belinda. "I told Euric to take it back. But he said if I give him back he'll sell it on eBay."

  "Give back and let him sell on eBay lah," said Sham.

  "But that'll hurt his feelings," said Belinda.

  Sham snorted.

  Belinda and Sham were best friends. On Sham's side, this was because she did not have any other friends. Belinda's reasons were more mysterious.

  They'd met at the Malaysian Society freshers' tea party in their first week at Cambridge. Sham had been filling a backpack with Walkers crisps from the table of refreshments when Belinda had said to her:

  "I'm so sorry! I took the last prawn cocktail. But I didn't eat much. You want?"

  Sham had looked down her impressive length of nose at Belinda. Belinda had glowed back, offering the packet of crisps with one trusting hand. She bore an extraordinary resemblance to a Shih Tzu puppy.

  "I find prawn cocktail revolting," Sham informed her. "You can keep it."

  Belinda had put her hand on her chest.

  "Xing hao!" she'd said.

  Belinda made a great best friend: she was considerate, humble, and infinitely anxious to please. But the same characteristics sometimes made her tiring.

  "I don't know why you're so concerned about Euric," said Sham. "He's a dick."

  "But he's my friend."

  "Just because people want you to be their girlfriend doesn't mean they are your friend," said Sham. "This is, what, the fourth unwanted present this year?"

  "The others were from other people," said Belinda. "This is the first thing Euric give me."

  "But isn't he the one who printed out a picture of you and stuck it on his bolster?" said Sham. She paused. "Wait a minute, isn't he the guy who told you he has wet dreams about you?"

  "That make me very uncomfortable," admitted Belinda.

  "Give the thing back," said Sham. "If you don't nip this in the bud, next thing you know, the presents will be flooding through your door."

  Outside the window there was a tinkling noise, followed by a dull thud.

  They were two floors up. On the ledge outside lay a necklace, glinting in the orange lamplight. There was a note attached to it:

  For the most beautiful girl in the world — Belinda.

  "Oh my god," said Belinda.

  "Next thing you know, bags of money will be falling out of the sky into my lap," said Sham hopefully, but nothing happened.

  Belinda was training Sham to be normal. Her first step had been to create a Facebook account for Sham.

  "How can you live without Facebook?" Belinda had marvelled. "How d'you keep in touch with everybody back home?"

  "I don't have an ‘everybody'," said Sham.

  "If you want to meet people here you have to have an account," said Belinda, ignoring the fact that Sham had never expressed an interest in meeting people. "Anyway, I put all our photos up there so you gotta log on to see."

  Belinda loved having photographs taken of her and was constantly coaxing Sham into self-portraits. It was all right for Belinda. She came out looking twice as cute as in real life. In photos Sham was mostly nose and acne. Her face, lurking behind all of this, looked like an enraged hawk's.

  But Facebook turned out to be more fun than Sham had expected. By scrolling through her feed for fifteen minutes every other night, she extracted more information about her compatriots than the sociable Belinda had any idea of.

  "Hui Fern used to date Josiah back when they were at sec school," she told Belinda.

  "Kidding? But Hui Fern and Josiah are so different!"

  "She reminds him of his mother. He's still in love with her, but nowadays Hui Fern tells people she has no idea what she was thinking when she was going out with him," said Sham.

  Belinda was round-eyed. "How you know all this stuff?"

  Sham steepled her hands. "It would spoil the fun if I told you my methods."

  "You FB stalk them, is it," said Belinda wisely.

  "Hui Fern's put Josiah on limited profile. He always comments on photos posted by mutual friends where Hui Fern's been tagged, but you never see him commenting on her wall," said Sham. "Josiah has long conversations with his mother in the comments to his status updates, and his mom 'likes' all his pictures. She's an obstetrician with a perm. Hui Fern is a medic with curly hair. It's elementary, my dear Belinda."

  "Stalker."

  "It's not about the availability of the raw data, but the quality of the analysis," said Sham, with dignity.

  She was browsing Facebook when she saw the pictures. They were of Belinda, and had been posted by a name Sham didn't recognize.

  That in itself would have been nothing unusual. Belinda had tons of friends Sham didn't know. But there was something strange about these photographs.

  The first picture in the album was of Belinda standing on one leg, flamingo-like, outside Sainsbury's, chatting to the Big Issue seller. The next was of Belinda playing frisbee, frozen in mid-air. Another was of Belinda with a group of friends, walking out of the law faculty.

  These were all taken from a distance. Belinda didn't seem to be aware that she was being photographed — she had a preferred angle for photos, one that made her face look sharper and her eyes larger. She hadn't arranged her face in these pictures.

  It got weirder. Here was Belinda applying eyeliner in the bathroom. Belinda's hair spilling over her arm as she drowsed in bed, a textbook propped on her stomach. Belinda studying with her elbows on her desk, her room lit only by the table lamp. It looked like the picture had been taken from outside her window.

  The window which was two floors up. The ledge was wide enough for a pigeon or a necklace, but not to support a human being with a camera.

  Sham lifted her hands from the keyboard and touched her neck. Her hands were freezing cold.

  "Sham, do you know where the necklace is?" said Belinda.

  She had begg
ed Sham to keep it. "What if I lose it before we figure out who it's from? I bet it's super expensive."

  "If you lose it, so what?" Sham had said. "It's not like you paid for it what."

  But Belinda had insisted, so Sham had taken the necklace. She'd put it in a box under her bed, behind the eleven toilet paper rolls her mother had given her when she'd left home to go overseas.

  Sham lived up the steep slope of a hill, half an hour's walk from Belinda's college, and it looked like Belinda had run all the way. She was panting, looking so discombobulated that Sham didn't even scold her for coming into the room with her shoes on.

  "You found out who gave it, is it?" Sham said.

  "No," said Belinda. She put her arms around herself.

  Sham pulled the box out from under her bed, saying, "If you're cold, turn on the heater lah."

  She opened the box. There was nothing inside it.

  "Huh," Sham said. "I know I put it in here."

  "Are you sure?" said Belinda. "Are you sure I passed it to you? Did I just keep it? You sure you remember or not?"

  "You know I have an eidetic memory," said Sham.

  "Then how did this happen?" said Belinda. She opened her bag and took out the necklace.

  It glittered like ice in her hand.

  "I found it in my closet," said Belinda. "You know how one of my closets, you open it and there's my sink inside? This morning this was hanging over the mirror. And got note."

  The note said: It's for YOU.

  "Creepy," said Sham.

  "How?" wailed Belinda. "What should I do?"

  Sham was not well-equipped for this kind of situation. The division of labour in their friendship meant that Belinda did the cooking and feelings, and Sham did the cynicism and proofreading.

  What would Belinda do?

  "Take off your shoes and sit down," said Sham. "I'll make Milo."

  She didn't have condensed milk, so it wasn't quite as good as home Milo. Still, there was nothing as comforting. Sham waited till Belinda had gulped down a mouthful and was beginning to look less wild-eyed. Then she announced:

  "I know the answer to this mystery."

  "What?"

  "A bedder has fallen in love with you," said Sham. "Who else could get in?"

  "Porter," Belinda pointed out. "They have all the keys."

  "OK, a bedder or a porter has fallen in love with you," said Sham. "This is progress. We've narrowed the field down from everyone to two groups of people, both of whom you should be able to identify. You don't like this theory?"

  Belinda hesitated.

  "Lately sometimes I've been seeing, like, as if got something outside my window," she said.

  If Belinda was being obscure, it showed she was frightened of what clarity could bring. Belinda seemed to think that using tactful words for unfortunate things could make unpleasantness go away. The tactic had not worked with the eleven boys unrequitedly in love with her, but she kept trying — as did they.

  "A face," whispered Belinda. "Sometimes I see it at night."

  "Who is it?" said Sham.

  "Cannot see," said Belinda. "Can see face only, out of the corner of my eye. But when I look, he's gone. As if — as if he just vanish like that."

  "A bedder, a porter or a night shift window cleaner is in love with you," said Sham. She sighed. "Your mom would be disappointed. Should've stuck to ensnaring Econs PhDs."

  "Don't joke!" said Belinda. She put her mug down and drew her sleeve across her eyes. "It's not funny!"

  "Cry for what?" said Sham. "Did I say it was funny? Of course it's not your fault whether some new idiot starts to like you. But don't you wish it was just Euric Liew and Harminder Singh? You look at those guys' physiques, no way they're gonna be able to get up the side of a building."

  Belinda started laughing through her tears. Sham handed her a tissue.

  "Don't freak out first," Sham said. "I got something worse to show you."

  To her relief, Belinda didn't freak out when she saw the Facebook pictures. She seemed sunk in the calm of despair.

  "Who is this guy?" she said.

  "Don't know what kind of name is this," said Sham, peering at the screen. "He's called Bullet Sri Kaya. He's friends with all the Malaysians, see."

  They scrolled through his friends list. Bullet Sri Kaya seemed to be acquainted with every Malaysian at Cambridge.

  "Bullet must be a flower name," said Belinda. "Where got parents give such name, right? Is he our year? I haven't seen him around."

  "I think you have seen him," said Sham. "I think he's the face outside your window. How else can he get these photos?"

  "But how did he get there?" said Belinda. "And some of these photos, it's impossible, nobody could have get them. When I'm wearing my make-up, nobody is there! And the bathroom got no window!"

  "Don't freak out first," said Sham again.

  "You got more to show me?"

  "No," said Sham. "Don't freak out, 'cos I'm gonna fix it."

  There had to be things they could do about Bullet Sri Kaya. Official things. Sham didn't like to ask Belinda because Belinda wasn't very good at law and it stressed her out when people assumed she knew anything about it just because she was studying it. But there had to be some kind of law against hanging around outside strangers' windows taking photos of them and putting them up on Facebook.

  She would figure out what the offence was that they were going to charge him with later. First she had to find out who this guy was.

  It was strange that Belinda had never met him. She knew everybody in the claustrophobic core of the Malaysian student community, and everybody seemed to know Bullet. Sham studied his Facebook profile picture, but it was unhelpful: a dimly-lit artsy shot of a guy with a baseball cap drawn low over his eyes.

  Out of the shadow veiling his face, his teeth gleamed in a yellow-white smile.

  The next day in the chemistry department lounge Sham put her hand on the back of Khoo May Ling's chair and said,

  "Do you know this guy called Bullet Sri Kaya?"

  May Ling jumped. Sham had once sat next to May Ling for the duration of three lectures without saying a word. It took a lot to make Sham feel awkward, but it seemed May Ling was more sensitive. She'd avoided Sham from that day onward.

  But she was a nice girl. After a moment of astonishment she pulled herself together and said, "Oh, hi, Shamini. Sorry, what did you say about Bullet?"

  "Is his real name Bullet?" said Sham. She sat down.

  "No lah, must be his real name is something else, right?" said May Ling. "But he asks everybody to call him Bullet. Alwyn is at his college. He says even their supervisor calls him Bullet."

  "He's doing engineering?" said Sham. "Which year is he?"

  "Same year as us," said May Ling. "You really don't know him?"

  It was as if Sham had confessed to never having heard of David Beckham, or Siti Nurhaliza.

  "Is he very popular?" said Sham.

  "No lah, it's not that," said May Ling. Sham took mental note of the second of hesitation before she'd spoken. "But he's everywhere. He's at all the Malaysian Society things."

  "Maybe I just never notice him," said Sham.

  "He's a loud guy. Hard to miss. Don't you go to a lot of the events? Me and Alwyn always see you there with Belinda. Eh—" she leaned closer — "is Belinda going out with Euric?"

  "Do you think Euric and Belinda should get together?" said Sham.

  May Ling blinked. "He's a nice guy."

  "Is Bullet a nice guy?" said Sham.

  "Yes," said May Ling. "Very friendly."

  But there was that hesitation again. Sham pressed her advantage.

  "Sometimes too friendly?" she suggested.

  "He's kind of a buaya," May Ling admitted. "But he's OK lah. Means well."

  Bullet was chasing four different girls at the last count, was adopted "big brother" to another three. ("All skinny Chinese chicks," said someone, with a knowing look.) He was a regular participant in the engineers' week
ly online gaming sessions. Everyone Sham spoke to had heard of him, and everyone had an opinion.

  "He's funny," said Alwyn. "Wouldn't say we're BFF lah, but we're close enough. He's close to a lot of people."

  "Wah, Bullet really likes girls, man," sniggered Rohan. "I've met some gatal guys but that bugger is like king of the hamsap lo."

  "He's a hero to the engineers," said Ambika. She snorted. "Mascot for all desperate single guys everywhere."

  "That guy is dangerous," said Fairuz.

  "Dangerous?" said Sham.

  Fairuz was a tiny, pretty, soft-voiced girl, with a round face framed by a gauzy tudung. The way she pressed her lips together did not make her look any fiercer, but her voice was grim.

  "My mother always told me, don't trust men who don't respect boundaries," said Fairuz. "Bullet tu, either he doesn't know or he doesn't care what is boundaries. Men like that is dangerous."

  Fairuz was only half right, thought Sham. It wasn't just men who didn't understand boundaries that were the problem. What made them dangerous was the people who found their lack of understanding funny, endearing, normal. The danger lay in everyone else.

  "I know a secret about Bullet Sri Kaya," said Sham.

  Belinda had crawled under her desk to search for something. Sham could only see the upturned soles of her feet, clad in polka-dot socks. The socks quivered.

  "Not sure I want to know Bullet's secrets," said Belinda.

  "Since he knows so much about you, better know as much about him as you can," said Sham. "That's called strategy. Ignoring him won't make him go away."

  "But—"

  "I see you still have Euric's iPhone," Sham observed. "Gonna give it back to him?"

  Belinda emerged from under the desk. She looked rueful. "OK, OK. What's the secret?"

  "I talked to a few people about Bullet," said Sham. "It's like everybody knows him except us. Bit weird, right? I thought you knew all the Malaysians. You even know the postgrads who have kids and live out in Grantchester. Party Malaysian, hermit Malaysian, hangs out with Mat Salleh only Malaysian ... whoever they are also you know.