Maid In Singapore

by Kishore Modak

  It was my turn to pause, a long one, mind racing with possibilities.

  ‘It’s okay don’t worry, maybe it is better this way, anyway you wanted her off the island, right? I will arrange for her tickets et cetera and send you the invoice later; once you receive the same, just drop her to the airport. Then we can all move on,’ Ms Goh took charge, sighing almost in pity, knowing that I had been disarmed into silence. ‘Don’t mention anything about the medical-test-results to Mary, I will speak to her separately,’ she added.

  I mumbled okays and hung up.

  Yes, I had witnessed the act, but I did not know what stage of completion they were in when I found them. Had David ejaculated inside her, finishing just- in-time before he made a hasty exit when he was caught? Or had he still been in the build-up phase, revving up for the explosion?

  Whatever it was that Mary had, was it also ours? I panicked, becoming restless and anxious, starting to pace around mindlessly.

  As regards infectious diseases, did Ms Goh mean the ones that are transmitted by sexual acts, or the ones delivered by sneezes and handshakes? It is obvious isn’t it, which kind of disease puts a government off?

  ‘Call back, URGENT,’ I sms’d David, walking aimlessly about, trying hard to rein in my anxiety.

  ‘Did you come inside her?’ I asked when he called. ‘What? No, I mean I don’t know. What is going on? We went over this, right? Let us leave it behind now, please,’ he was taken aback by my line of questioning, stumbling and stuttering as he spoke.

  ‘David, why can’t you give me a simple yes or no answer this once? Did you or did you not come inside her?’ I repeated myself, a bit more authoritatively.

  ‘Please, it is behind us.’

  ‘No, it is not. In fact I also need to know if you were wearing any protection,’ I cut him off, explaining the situation.

  He wasn’t wearing any, I soon found out, leaving us exposed.

  That evening, he came home early from work and hit the bottle immediately, staring through the tele in the second bedroom, while the household wound down for the night around him. We couldn’t discuss the turn of events, since Mary and Jay were at home.

  At night, he unlocked the cupboard and was playing with the gun, again.

  ‘No, David, not tonight. Please, there is just too much happening.’ I knew exactly what the man wanted after he had had a few drinks.

  He did not reply, getting the message, keeping the empty weapon back into the cabinet. Before he shut the safe, inside the cabinet, I caught site of another bag. It was right next to the pistol.

  ‘What is that? Yes, there in the bag. Let me see it,’ I reached out, grabbing the bag, spilling its contents onto the bed.

  An assortment of a few objects, mostly metallic with leather accompaniments no bigger than large keys spilt out. They were curious looking, not easily attributable to any practical use, except one item, the smallest one – that was clearly a bullet.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked him, not meaning any particular item, more of a general query, in what seemed like a day of questions, questions with no answers.

  ‘Stuff, that I got from Bangkok recently, when I visited for work,’ he replied, Dutch-courage making his voice measured, yet forceful.

  I picked up what seemed an accoutrement, unrecognizable. It looked like a cross between a clip and a clamp, with a pea shaped pod at the end. The lower part could be pressed like the sprung legs of a clothes clip, opening out its pea-pod head into two neat hemispheres. The pod was sliced off at the top, like the earth flattened at its poles. I held it up to him, questioningly.

  ‘That is a c-clip,’ he replied.

  For fear of the young straying onto these pages, I leave it for you to expand the letter ‘c’. Suffice it to say, my husband had bought sadomasochistic sex toys into our bedroom with the intention of using them, right away.

  Some of the young will eventually stray with or without visiting these pages, so might as well do justice to these words—it was a clitoral-clip along with an array of nipple clamps, plugs and mouth gags. I picked them up, touching them, leather and steel sending a twitch of excitement to my groin. My nipples puckered under my night dress, their mottled surface catching the fabric as they teased and shrivelled, like drying raisins.

  He rose from the bed and shut the bedroom door. ‘Come here,’ was all that he said.

  In the morning, with tea, I looked back; it hadn’t been like this at all in the beginning, things had been normal. David and I met, and dated, and went dancing with our friends, went through all the motions of a happy young love life. We got married, with concerned parents on my side; after all it was a dilution of their genealogy, which is how they viewed marriage outside of our community. At first they grew angry and upset, arguing with histrionics, before pondering and finally laughing through the wedding reception, merry at the imminent arrival of a grandson, accepting before moving on.

  It was years after marriage that our sex life evolved; or shall we says devolved to what we have today. What triggered it, I cannot say. But, with dead certainty, I can tell you that he led all of our experimentation, teaching me to accept and enjoy the fruits of his carnal lessons. The carnality was mostly non-violent; he just evoked an aura of a situation that otherwise lives trapped in the mind, a personal fantasy. He simply brought his fantasies to the party, without really hurting me in any physically claimable way. It was the enactment, and not the committing of the actual act that I played along with.

  But, a fantasy that comes true dies instantly. Living them, kills them, leaving our imagination to fill the vacuum left behind, with new unreachable debasement. To be desirable, a fantasy has to be elusive and beyond reach, weaving a cat and mouse between what we have and what we think we want.

  Where do dead fantasies go? They simply pass on, preying on new receptive hosts.

  He never sodomized me. Did that make him gentle? In my eyes, yes it did.

  What was at the genesis of David’s sexual revolution? Again I can’t say, but it was an area that I wanted to move towards. I went there, curious to find what was hidden, because I saw no anomalies in his life. It seemed all well laid-out, with normalcy of childhood, youth and now the middle years. Childhood, isn’t that the recess in which most of the answers lie, waiting to be pried and found, explaining most of our adult deviance.

  ‘David, I think we should see a shrink. This whole thing needs untangling, it is moving us backwards,’ I said, teacup in one hand, gently clinking onto the saucer, in the other.

  ‘Hmm, why? What is wrong?’ David looked up, edge of his newspaper curling over as if cross with me for distracting its reader.

  ‘It’s just that we seemed to have crossed a line last night, a barrier beyond which lies trouble. Let us just see a shrink?’ I asked again.

  ‘Don’t be silly, if this kind of a thing bothers you, we can simply take a break from it, or even stop altogether. Don’t worry so much.’ He got up, gently touching my face, going in to fetch his office-bag before leaving, for work.

  See, this was the thing; he was a kind-hearted man who simply liked to have fun, particularly when he was a bit drunk.

  Fun, it had become the cause and the solution of all our current problems.

  Last night, instead of discussing the situation, we had simply had wild kinky sex, before sleeping through things. I have to confess—sometimes I, too, tied him up.

  By the beep of the phone, I knew Ms Goh was calling . . . the ring-tone was set that way.

  ‘Okay, I have told her she will need to leave the island, no reasons given, just that she will have to leave,’ she said, after exchanging pleasantries. ‘She is distraught, it seems they have a lot of debts to pay back home and she really needed the money. No choice, she will have to go.’

  ‘That is okay, but do we know what is wrong with her, what does she have, is she pregnant or is she unwell?’ I could not conceal my anxiety.

  ‘That we cannot say, unless you take her for a private examinatio
n. But in that case, she will get to know and may create all sorts of trouble.’

  An exam is always taken, but in this case we would have to give it, since we may have to give up with it.

  ‘Trouble, what sorts?’

  ‘For one, she will want to know who the father is, assuming she is expecting; or which of her partners gave her the contagion; after all, she did pass her medical exam when she landed,’ Ms Goh was bordering on rude, becoming matter-of-fact.

  Partner, an inappropriate word, since it does not reflect the casualness of the fling. A casual fling with no heart in it, wasn’t that the bedrock of forgiveness and acceptance that my mind had settled upon?

  ‘I will call you if she says anything to me,’ I hung up, banging the phone rudely.

  I caught sight of Mary in the doorway of the kitchen, her face just peeping out as I hung the phone up.

  ‘Please, mum, can you please let me be in Singapore?’ her eyes were welling.

  I waved for her to come to me; she sat on the carpet while I looked down from the divan, senior muse at an appropriate high ground.

  ‘Why, Mary, you know you can’t be here. Ms Goh insists that you leave the island. We told her we were fine with you continuing in another home in Singapore, but her agency insists that you leave.’ My voice was calm. It was the first conversation of reason with her, since I had snuck up on them.

  ‘But why, mum, it is my medical examination? Is something wrong?’ My left big toe twitched, like when one is drawn into the awkward end of a subject, unexpectedly. She did not notice it; otherwise her expression would have changed, since it would have answered her question without me having to reply.

  ‘No, these are just routine tests. I am sure Ms Goh has her reasons, she will tell you soon,’ I hoped I sounded convincing. I couldn’t have, since I was not giving any clarity of facts or reasons that could anchor conviction.

  ‘Mum, I have a lot of debts in Manila. If I go home now, my husband will not accept me. Please, mum. At least let me finish my two-year contract with my agency. Then I will go away. I promise you, mum, I will not say a word of it to anyone. I cannot afford to talk about it. If the men at home come to know, they will kill me,’ she sounded pitiable and slutty, speaking of feminine honour.

  She was pitiable and slutty, why? Because, she committed the same acts outside her marriage, exactly the same ones which I commit within my marriage. A weak soggy straw of marital-morality to hang onto, I clung to it, justifying what was not justifiable.

  ‘Let me see, how much will you make in a couple of years, about ten thousand dollars. Right?’ with concrete facts, conviction crept back into my voice.

  ‘Yes, mum,’ she looked up, a glint of hope in her eyes.

  ‘But then your first six months’ of salary goes to the agents, right, so you would make about seven- thousand-five-hundred before your own expenses.’

  ‘Yes, mum, but I do have other income as well,’ she added, knowing well, what would jump to my mind as sources of income—Bongla boys.

  I gave up, ‘Okay, I will speak to sir about a total of ten thousand, but then you need to leave within the week and just go away forever, at least from our lives.’

  Sir, why did I bother calling him that? Wouldn’t ‘David’ be just fine, after all he had done enough with her to drop any pretence of false respect or formality.

  ‘Okay, mum. Thank you, mum. You have saved my life. I will never know how to repay you, but at any time if I can, I will do what I can for you.’ She got up and left for the kitchen, from where kitchen sounds resumed.

  I informed David of the settlement.

  ‘Wow, thanks dear, you have saved our lives. I would never make it through without you,’ he was relieved, and asked if we could head to the club for a swim and some dinner that Friday evening.

  They both sounded just the same with their thank-yous, like two cheaters cowering in front of the cheated, which was me.

  At the club, we spent what became one of our last happy evenings together, because what happened at home and in our lives afterwards redefined our remainder, at least mine, since David did not have much longer, in any case.

  After the drinks and the swims, we headed to the bar where I, too, got fortified, with wine. We left the car at the club, a Honda Civic, a hundred thousand in local dollars, parking being free for members if one ignored the monthly fees, and walked home past the malls with the lights and the people. We laughed and snuggled even though the air was humid and sticky.

  At home, it was inevitable, with me and he under the influence, the toys surfaced. I felt horny, wanting to vent sexually what was pent up inside me; I should have avoided the last couple of drinks.

  Later, I dressed in leather, sitting on the chair in the bedroom, legs spread wide, like a watery oasis in the desert of my brown thighs, looking up at him across the room, inviting, as he toyed up the gun and pulled the trigger.

  The pistol did not go off in a blank vacant thud; it emitted a full-bodied blast, negating all the effects of alcohol, leaving me completely sober. Things became confusing and entangled.

  In the air, hung the unmistakable smell like from firecrackers and a thin ribbon of smoke rising from the gun. David looked stunned; the pistol was lying on the ground, after recoiling out of control like a stubborn child. Behind me, I heard a crackle of glass from the window pane; in it was a neat hole about ten millimetres in diameter, cracks growing radially from the hole, spreading away like a spiders web in the glass, reaching the edge where they gave way, sending the pane crashing twenty floors below. Time stood still while the pane plummeted through the air, then from below came the sounds of glass shattering; from this height, it was mere tinkles like from the wands of fairies.

  ‘David, was the gun loaded?’ I was shivering, looking at him. He, too, was shaken by the unexpected recoil of the weapon. I touched my hair, realizing that a few locks were singed with a slight smell of burnt hair about them.

  He was mumbling. I rushed to the gun and picked it up, it was hot, except at the grip frame.

  Just outside the bedroom door there were sounds of footsteps and a voice ‘Mum, mum, please help me,’ it was Mary. I opened the door; she stood there, holding her right shoulder, blood all over the door and the floor.

  ‘David, quick, call an ambulance, quickly,’ I screamed, waking Jay up, inadvertently. He started crying, at the sight of the blood and Mary passing out in the doorway.

  David rushed to the phone in the living room, stepping through the blood, leaving a trail of red dribbling from his slippers. He was fumbling with the phone, not knowing which number to dial. ‘999,’ I simply shouted, sensing his dilemma.

  ‘Jay, stay in your room,’ I said, cradling Mary’s head in my lap, still in my leather straps and black satin underwear. David was repeating our address into the phone when the intercom rang aloud in the background. It must be the security guard from the guardroom, checking the source of the crashing windowpane.

  The police arrived before the ambulance, but it was time enough for me to change into a gown and tell David to be calm and stick to the story of ‘Accidental Discharge’. We left the gun on the bedroom floor and made no attempts to clean the blood from the floor and the walls.

  The police in Singapore come in deep navy blue, reassuring as they take charge of situations. They locked me and David in separate rooms. With me was a policewoman who started taking my statement. I stuck to my story – we had been drinking and came home late, in the course of playing with the gun, it went off accidentally while in David’s hand, we had no idea about the injured maid or what might have caused it.

  We - that was the operative word in my statement, sticking on together through our travails in this foreign city.

  I avoided the bits about sadomasochism altogether; it was irrelevant, wasn’t it?

  David stayed calm, sticking to the plan, not cracking under pressure and pretty much gave the same account of events as me.

  In a couple of hours we were together
again, sitting on the couch holding hands as the detectives photographed and collected their evidence. The ambulance had carried Mary away.

  Inspector Tan introduced himself and slapped a grey acrylic bracelet on David’s wrist. ‘Please don’t leave the house till you hear from us. We will be tracking your movements so don’t take this off.’ The inspector pointed at the bracelet. It had an electronic tracking device. ‘If you do leave, we will have to arrest you and put you behind bars,’ he added. ‘Also, your phones will be tapped and no visitors will be allowed. One of my officers will wait outside your house. If you need to reach us, just call me or speak to the officer outside,’ Inspector Tan held out his cards, one for each one of us. For good measure, he left a few near the phone as well.

  They left close to dawn, leaving me to clean up all morning. I asked David to be with Jay in the kid’s bedroom till I was done. Naturally, Jay was distraught and full of questions; we tried our best to answer them, evasively, since we did not have answers.

  Afterwards, only the white-police-tape remained on the floor, the one that the police had stuck, marking the shape of Mary’s body where she had fallen. I knew she was alive and breathing when the police arrived. We prayed that she got well, for our sakes. I covered the white tape with a rug, before letting Jay out of his room, into the living room, where he turned on the tele.

  At the guardhouse, I saw a few photographers and journalists gathering, pointing up to our apartment as they spoke to the guards and clicked pictures. I drew the curtains and lay down.

  Later that afternoon, Inspector Tan called. Mary was out of danger but still at the hospital. He did not say much more but promised he would call regularly. The relief of her being alive allowed us to finally entertain logical thinking.

  ‘David, did you ever load the gun, accidentally or by mistake, forgetting that it was loaded?’ I asked him, after the High Commissioner had called and consoled us, ensuring that we would be protected to the best of his abilities. We begged to be sent back as quickly as possible, back to London. He could not promise but said he would try.