All the Fabulous Beasts

by Priya Sharma

  Lunette strips down, bathed in soft blur light. She sits on the edge of the bed, open legged in bra and pants that are no more than gauzy triangles. He lets her unbutton his shirt and kiss his chest and stomach. A sigh comes from deep inside her, as though she genuinely desires him. She reaches for his fly but he stops her. He’s not ready yet.

  He slips his hands inside the thin pieces of fabric and works the flesh beneath. That distracts her. He pushes her back, tilting her head away from him. At that angle she looks more like Umbra which makes him suddenly hard. He tears open a condom packet and throws the empty wrapper on the floor. She reaches up to help him put it on.

  “No, stay there,” he whispers. “Just like that.”

  Lunette bites her lower lip as he plunges into her.

  It’s easier with her than his wife. Easier to imagine that it’s Umbra beneath him. When Thomas climaxes he thinks he feels something but he’s not entirely sure.

  *

  “The next few days are very important.”

  Thomas sat opposite his mother. Mai Yuen had no idea just how important, how long a shadow those days would cast.

  A row of low copper lampshades hung over the dining room table, casting soft, diffuse light. The city outside the window was vibrant in neon, rather than garish. A hierarchy existed on Hong Kong island. The closer to Victoria Peak the property, the higher up the social scale the owner was. The Leungs, who lived in Dragonfly Mansions, were sufficiently placed to have a view.

  “Your father’s coming home. He’s back tomorrow night. There’s an important dinner that we’re going to on Monday evening.”

  Umbra brought out their meal, placing a bowl of broth before Mai Yuen who took it without thanks.

  “You’re sixteen, Thomas. It’s time that you started to behave, especially when your father’s back.”

  “I do behave.”

  “No, you provoke him.” He watched as she took a spoonful of the clear liquid with soundless delicacy. “You’re doing it now instead of listening. No wonder he never wants to come home.”

  She glared at Thomas as he slurped his noodles.

  “Don’t make him angry. I’m busy tomorrow at the gallery so I’ll have to pick up some shoes to go with my new dress on Sunday.” She put down her spoon as if laying down a weapon to negotiate a truce. “Come with me and I’ll take you to the cinema on the understanding that you’ll be good while he’s here.”

  Umbra’s shadow stretched along the floor. It gathered together the multiple, muted shadows cast by the various lights. Mai Yuen’s shadow was transformed into a parody of a preening woman at a dressing table, as if she were no more than Umbra’s puppet. Thomas didn’t smile. He’d learnt to hide his amusement at Umbra’s jokes.

  Umbra’s shadow reached out and ruffled Mai Yuen’s shadow-hair until it came out of its smooth knot. It surprised Thomas. He hadn’t realised that Umbra could exert such an effect because his mother turned to look in a mirror, frowning as she tried to smooth down her already perfect hair.

  *

  There’s something that Thomas is putting off.

  He sits in tatty dim sum restaurants that serve the finest food in the city. He drinks espresso martinis. He buys his wife expensive shoes that look exquisite and crippling. He’s missed this king of cities. Its plazas and alleyways contain everything. As much as he understands its rhythms, he doesn’t belong anymore.

  He tells himself that he’s looking for Umbra. He watches the crowd. Foreign bankers, men and women in suits that look the same regardless of whether they work in Hong Kong, London or New York. Then there are the young fashionistas. This season they’re eschewing Gucci for Harris Tweed. The Chinese mainlanders that can afford to stay here are easy to distinguish because of their expensive, tasteless bling, having grown rich on corruption, mining and property speculation. Their wealth will be gone within a generation because of ridiculous spending. And finally there are the helpers, peripheral and unseen, wheeling prams and carrying shopping.

  Wherever Thomas is in the world, he seeks Umbra’s face. Or he hopes to find someone like her, someone with a denser shadow that could turn abruptly in his direction, recognising that he’s different.

  If he ever saw such a person he would ask them if they could fix him.

  *

  Thomas’s parents seemed so old to him when Umbra started to work for his family but his mother was only twenty-five and his father thirty-four. Thomas only knew him through the women in his life—Mother, Umbra and then Marcia. Chun Hin was a stranger that came in and out of the apartment in Dragonfly Mansions demanding to know why he wasn’t doing better at school and making Mai Yuen more fractious than normal.

  Thomas used to go to his father’s closet, trying to fathom who he was. All his clothes were sealed in dry cleaner bags. He tore one open and put his face against Chun Hin’s jacket but all he could smell were wool and chemicals.

  The closest he’d ever been to his father was that weekend, when he was sixteen and he didn’t even know Thomas was there.

  Thomas had gone out to a Mandarin tutorial that morning but halfway there he’d called the man, claiming sickness. He felt unsettled and wanted a morning alone with Umbra while his mother was at the gallery and before his father’s flight landed.

  A mop and bucket were abandoned in the hall. His father’s suitcases were close by. He was back earlier than expected.

  Thomas slipped off his shoes and stood, listening. Nothing. He walked through the kitchen. A half-drunk cup of tea sat on the work top. Thomas put a hand around it. It was cold.

  Umbra’s door was ajar. Thomas could hear breathy moans and soft cries coming from within. In that narrow gap he could see his father. Chun Hin’s white shirt was tangled around his torso, his trousers and shorts pushed down around his thighs. The muscles of his buttocks strained with each thrust. Umbra head was tilted at an angle that made the sinews of her neck taut. Her eyes were closed.

  An involuntary thrill shot through Thomas’ groin. When the sharp spasm passed a dull ache remained. He hated that watching them could make him feel that way, hated what his father was doing to Umbra and that she was allowing him to.

  Thomas imagined himself a man because he’d had sex with older girls and drunk beer late into the night, but he wasn’t yet man enough to understand the meaning of the shadows on the wall. Umbra’s wasn’t entwined with Chun Hin’s but was sat in a corner with its arms wrapped around its drawn up knees.

  *

  “Your mother wants you to go out with her today. Remember?” Umbra asked, as if Thomas could forget.

  Umbra was laying out breakfast trays for his parents who were still in bed. It was Sunday and she would have to be gone before they got up.

  “Yes.” Thomas nodded, unhappy. He didn’t know how to act with any of them after what he’d seen.

  “He’s only here until Thursday. The time will pass quickly.”

  “I don’t care when he leaves.”

  “Don’t upset them. It’ll only make your mother unbearable for weeks.”

  “Will you always be there for me?” Thomas blurted out. “Will you promise that you’ll never leave me?”

  Will you always put me first?

  “That’s an odd question.”

  She was stalling, knowing that words like always and never should be handled with care.

  When he was younger she would stand behind him whenever he was frightened or sad, her arms forming a protective circle around him and her chin resting on the top of his head.

  He’d been too tall for this sort of comfort for some time but now he was sat down in front of a bowl and soggy, uneaten cereal, she held him. He could feel her breasts against his back, her warmth burning him, and it made him furious.

  *

  Thomas stared out of the store window into the mall. Potted orange trees were festooned with red envelopes. A man played a piano under a herd of horses. It was a few weeks before the advent of the Year of the Horse. The largest one was twenty
feet high, red velvet, with a golden bridle and saddle. The others were an array of sizes and colours, some satin, some mirror glass. A few had wings or a unicorn horn.

  “Will these match my dress? I think they’ll look nice with the earrings that your father wants me to wear. The diamond and pearl ones.”

  He turned to look at what his mother was wearing. Black ankle boots, the leather cut away in delicate patterns, the heels golden spikes. A shop assistant brought her more boxes. Mai Yuen tried on another pair, ignoring the girl because she was young and beautiful.

  “What about these?”

  The sandals were intricate constructions of straps and buckles that wound around her ankles.

  She’d promised to take him to the cinema but now it was too late for the film he wanted to see. He wasn’t interested in her shoes. He didn’t really care about the film either. He cared that she made so few promises to him and never kept any of them. He kicked out at the wooden panelling. Everyone turned to stare.

  Mai Yuen came over and shook him by the shoulders. “You’re an ungrateful little brat. Now sit and wait.”

  His cheeks burnt at being reprimanded like a child, especially in front of the young, pretty assistants. His mother threw down the shoes that she was carrying. The girl knelt down to pick them up.

  “I’ll take the boots, the sandals and the grey suede pumps. I want them delivered. Tonight.” They were approximately three thousand dollars a pair. Mai Yuen was a conspicuous spender.

  The girl packaged the boxes with ribbons so that they looked like presents, not purchases.

  Thomas left the shop ahead of his mother, willing himself not to cry. Her heels clipped along behind him. They left the mall, heading back to Dragonfly Mansions.

  Thomas heard the collective sound of women when the mall doors slid open.

  It was a hum, as though a great flock had gathered. Every Sunday, in every season, thousands of helpers were evicted from where they lived. They had a day off but nowhere to go so they communed all over Central’s walkways and squares. They sat on corrugated cardboard or used it as windbreakers. They covered themselves with blankets. They knitted, they played cards, they sang and danced.

  Thomas knew they were the reason why his mother hated shopping on Sundays. It was in the way that she held her head up, refusing to look at the women beneath her. Pinoy girls, she’d call them, a phrase for domestic servants from the Philippines that smacked of insult.

  Among all those Pinoy girls was Umbra. Thomas stopped. She stood there with a young man, a year or two older than Thomas. He had Umbra’s wide smile. He sat on a wall and she stood, her chin resting on the top of his head.

  Thomas could feel his mother hovering at his elbow, her body turned in the same direction as his. She put a hand on his shoulder but he stepped away from her, unwilling to be comforted or consoled. Umbra was the only person who normally touched him and he didn’t want to share her. Not with his father and not with her son.

  *

  Mai Yuen’s dying. She’s been dying for years but now Thomas thinks it will be very soon.

  He can’t put it off any longer. He flies out tomorrow.

  *

  The foyer attendant at Dragonfly Mansions watches him as he walks to the lifts. It’s a relief to be inside the air-conditioned building after the humidity and the sun.

  A helper lets him into the apartment.

  His mother is on the sofa, swaddled in cashmere. The joints of her hands are blown out in gnarled lumps, her fingers slipping sideways at the knuckles. Rheumatoid disease has wracked her joints, her lungs and kidneys. She has an artificial knee and shoulder joint. The light’s clarity is unkind to her thinning hair and papery skin but she’s made an effort, all coiffed and made up. It occurs to Thomas that he could be kind and give her a death that’s as quiet and comfortable as falling asleep but decides against it. One of his rules is that work should never be personal.

  He hands the flowers—tea roses which are her favourites—to the helper. It’s what people do in these circumstances.

  “Come and kiss me.”

  Her perfume’s an overpowering a mix of ambergris and jasmine, that she’s worn in an attempt to mask the smell of her demise.

  “How are you?” he asks.

  She shrugs and he doesn’t press her.

  “Nice of you to come. It’s been so long.” At least two years. “How are Viola and the children?”

  “Fine.” Viola is so like his mother. Thomas wonders if that means he’s like Chun Hin.

  “And your father?” She can’t help herself.

  “I called him about six weeks ago but he was in Taiwan. I spoke to Marcia instead.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  Mai Yuen looks out of the window, down on the other apartments and across the bay to Kowloon’s waterfront.

  “Men can do that, I suppose.” Her eyes are hard and dry. She’s bitter that, at ten years her senior, her ex-husband has a new life with a lovely young thing. “A father again at sixty. Well, it won’t be him looking after it anyway. How’s your work?”

  “Excellent.”

  “That’s something then. Do you like what I’ve done with the place?”

  Thomas gives the apartment a cursory glance, deliberately disinterested in the décor as his mother is in him. Her flawless taste lacks personality. The neutral palette is accented with beiges and browns, colours dubbed mocha and caramel by the stores to make the prices more palatable.

  They talk nonsense over tea. The machinations of the residents committee, the new developments on Kowloon and the unseasonable hot weather. All the while Thomas thinks about the desolation and destruction of family life. How they have trampled one another.

  He waits until the visit’s nearly done to make what he’s really come here to ask her sound like a throw away comment. It’s not from sensitivity. It’s just that she’ll be more likely to talk.

  “Do you remember Umbra? Whatever happened to her?”

  “Umbra?” She says the name as if it’s of no consequence, and in her studied nonchalance is the full weight of her years of feeling alone.

  “She had a son, didn’t she?” He pours them both another cup of tea. “Where did he live?”

  “No idea. It was a long time ago.”

  “It was my fault.” He tries to disarm her with honesty. “I hid your earrings in her room.”

  “Of course you did. She had too much to lose to do something so stupid. You were furious that day when we saw her with her son. Did you imagine that you were the centre of her universe?”

  “You sent her back, to somewhere dangerous, because Dad was sleeping with her.”

  “Yes but it wasn’t just that. You always looked at her like she was your mother. You always wanted her, never me.” She snorts. “We’re a fine pair, aren’t we?”

  There was no solidarity in that comment. Even if there was, she was right. Thomas doesn’t know how to let her in.

  “You were such a precocious child. You remembered every slight. You bore grudges. You never liked to be with other children. All your rage disappeared when Umbra left. Your father said you became cold, like me.”

  “How would he know? He was never there?”

  Thomas wasn’t trying to make her happy but that pleased her.

  “I love him. Or I did once. To the point of madness.” It took Thomas a moment to realise that she was talking about his father. “I was too young to understand that he puts women in different compartments, one for pleasure and the other for procreation.”

  Thomas is his opposite, which is why Umbra has become everything. He’s confused her in his mind even though she wasn’t his mother, sister or lover. It’s too many roles for one person but his every memory of emotion relates to her. He imagines her at forty-six and him at thirty. An age difference to cause comment but not an unimaginable one. Sometimes he marries her. Sometimes he kills her. He’s used every connection that he has but he’s never found her. He�
��s even asked his father at one of their rare father-son lunches but Chun Hin’s fork paused, then he continued to eat as though Thomas hadn’t spoken.

  The helper comes in and puts down a tray of pills and a tumbler of water.

  “Later,” Mai Yuen tells her.

  “No,” the woman insists. “Now.”

  Thomas is impressed at how his mother complies, the fine gold bangles tinkling on her bony wrist as she lifts the glass. She lets the helper arrange the cushions behind her.

  At least his mother has her. He shouldn’t begrudge her that.

  *

  Thomas lay on his bed, facing the wall.

  Chun Hin had gone out hours before. He hadn’t shouted or slammed doors, he’d simply walked away from them all, having somewhere more important to be. Oh, the luxury of just being able to get up and leave.

  Mai Yuen sat in the lounge, still wearing her new dress with a deep plunge at the front and pattern cut boots. Her metallic eyeshadow was smeared by tears. She stared at the wall, the television muted and the colours bright in the darkened room.

  Her earrings were on the coffee table. Each one was a diamond stud from which a pearl dangled by a gold chain.

  Earlier, Thomas had hung about in the doorway of Mai Yuen’s bedroom, drawn by the sound of slamming drawers. The room was wallpapered in embossed grey silk with mirrored wardrobes that reflected her. Her jewellery case was open and there were boxes piled up on the floor. She knelt on the floor, rummaging through boxes. Chun Hin was downstairs in the lounge, on the phone.

  “Have you seen my earrings?” she asked.

  “Which ones?”

  A ruse on Thomas’ part.

  “The pearl drops your father bought me from Japan.” She opened another box and then threw it down in frustration. “He expects me to wear them.”

  Thomas shrugged. Then, Little Judas, he said, “Have you looked in Umbra’s room?”

  Mai Yuen froze, another box in her hand, looking at him. The idea gathered enough momentum to get his mother to her feet and send her marching from the room.