Maid In Singapore

by Kishore Modak

  ‘This was such a good suggestion. Beats sitting in the chairs of the restaurant, with table linen,’ I said, ‘and it brings back such wonderful memories of—’ your cooking, I almost blurted, checking myself just in time, swallowing words midsentence.

  ‘Thank you. So glad you like it,’ she smiled, thankfully not latching on to my verbal slip.

  My mood changed, and I tied myself to a deeper resolve at remaining secretive as regards my past was concerned. The alcohol does not help with such resolve and I decided to simply become quiet for the rest of the evening—a change, which she picked up, noticeably concerned with the gloom that seemed to have descended upon me, like with a flash dark storm.

  The need to either escape from her or to simply have her, gripped me once again, but I checked it, remaining silent.

  ‘Are you okay, Eve, you seem to have become very quiet?’ she reached out and touched my arm, moving closer before taking my hand in hers.

  ‘Yes, I am fine, and have not been happier in many

  days,’ I smiled, gently taking her hand, and pulling myself closer to her.

  In Cebuano, Mary asked Rafael to carry a plate of rice and fish for the old man inside. He did so with smiling obedience, without any juvenile complaints that are expected from boys of his age, who are asked to run chores. He was a good boy.

  Through the evening colours, a few tourists drifted onto the beach in front of us. I offered them some beer, which by now was lying in the water left by the ice. Best to give it away before things became tepid and the beer undrinkable. Mary threw in some grilled fish and rice, making for an unexpected feast for the tourists. With their company, the evening livened up again. They offered fifty dollars before they left, which I accepted and passed to Mary, who was shocked at having me accept money from her guests. ‘Why, it is okay and it made them feel good, which is why they left a small token. Just take it as a gift, and forget about it,’ I said.

  Fifty dollars is small fortune, infinite buying power in places where most existence is off the sea and the land.

  Rafael and I helped her clear up. In about half an hour, Rafael went in and got to bed, after he had looked out for the old man inside, eventually lying beside him. We lingered on the beach in the moonlight, finishing off the warm beer before I took off my blouse and went for a swim in the shallows, in my bra and beach shorts. She watched me from the waterline as everything became quiet except for the surf. It was a sea sky, awash with light from the heavens, like you can never imagine in cities with land light.

  ‘Come in for a swim,’ I reached for her hand, pulling her gently, inviting her into my designs. She joined me, standing in the surf, with the water up to her knees while I frolicked around her, in the water.

  I was playful, wanting to smile and laugh, on this last evening with them, the boatman would be back tomorrow and I would be carried away, back to Cebu, where I would be left to make new plans.

  ‘You know what you should do, forget about working in London, just set up a restaurant here, and I can promise you all the tourists from the resort will end up having at least one meal everyday at your restaurant,’ I said, still swimming around her.

  ‘No, I can’t do that. Thanks to Mrs Kettlewood, I have now got some money that I will use to educate Rafael. I can’t risk losing it all in any business,’ she said, like a cautious investor.

  ‘Well, I think the question is, would you want to do it, say, if someone else invested the money along with you, or do you prefer working in the big cities, leaving Rafael here to go fishing each day, in which case he may never reach the University?’ I stood up, throwing my hair behind me, letting the water run from my hair, down my back.

  ‘Yes and I worry about that all the time. Maybe I will quit in about a year and come back here to build his future,’ she said.

  ‘I really think a restaurant here will grow to become a lot more than an eating place and make a lot of money if you want it to grow. If not, it will simply remain of a manageable size, making money each month, while we all grow old,’ I said, as we walked back to the beach, and sat down on the wet sand.

  ‘We, what do you mean we?’ she asked, throwing me a bit off-guard.

  ‘You, me and Rafael, our son. I would not mind investing in a place like this, returning for a few months each year, like a secret holiday home and a sound investment?’ I said, with honesty and a slight tremble to my voice, which had crept in with the suspicion that was laden in her question and the honesty steeped in my response.

  ‘You are the same Eve, Eve Costello, from mum’s email, aren’t you?’ she finally tied things up, without any anger or hatred, knowing now that she was with me, the female form of her male lover.

  ‘Have you read her email?’ I asked, not knowing what to say, now that I had been discovered.

  ‘Yes, and you?’

  ‘She wanted me to look after you and Rafael after she was gone. She knew Jay would never do that, so she entrusted me with helping you in the best way possible,’ I answered, wanting to take her in my arms, wanting to be with her.

  ‘You have changed?’ she said.

  I had moved close to her, gently brushing her hair from her face, confident she could not tell him from her even at such close quarters. The back of my fingers touched her cheeks and the tips of them gently brushed past her lips. She did not recoil and neither did she advance, simply remaining as we were, close and comfortable on the sand. Her head bent low in submission.

  ‘Yes I have and I shall be gone tomorrow, leaving a son and a woman behind, for whom I will care all through my life,’ I kissed her gently on her lips for a few seconds before we went inside the un-private single room of hers.

  We went to bed on the floor; I did not turn away from her as I had done on the previous night, I soaked in her moonlit image before falling asleep easily.

  In the morning, things were happening in Cebuano amongst the old man, Mary, Rafael and the boatman, who had appeared as if through the morning mist. She filled me in about her plans to come with me to Cebu for a few days, and see me off before she returned to the village.

  She told me later that the gypsy had come in late at night while we were asleep and finding rice, ate it and then slept on the beach, while we slept indoors all the while.

  I was happy to have her to myself for a few days, hidden in crowded urban settings, free from the singular un-private room.

  Plans, and their making, pulled us away in the water taxi on the seas, first towards the yacht, and finally beyond, to Cebu city where we stayed at a quiet hotel amidst the chaos of an Asian city, in separate rooms on Mary’s insistence, creeping into one another’s bed well after the night had left the corridors empty, and the city quiet.

  On the yacht in, she had remained inhibited, since she was sailing in her maritime neighbourhood, but in bed, at the decrepit hotel, she shed what she had repressed all day. She attacked with the claws of an untouched panthress, using all of the five senses and the sixth, which I think is misconstrued as psycho- mental-telepathic. In reality, it is sexual, sewing all the other senses together.

  In the morning, there was no remorse, just a longing as we made love again with sour morning mouths, before brushing and dressing for a breakfast of bak-kuh-teh.

  She had no questions; she was happy in answers that her hands and tongue had explored all night.

  ‘Try the vinegar chilli with the pork ribs. It’s nice,’ she said.

  ‘I am Hindu,’ I replied. ‘So what?’

  ‘I have had enough eating for one day, happy?’ I replied, pushing my tongue between my fingers, like Jimi Hendrix’s, gesticulating to the row of girls upfront at the wild concerts, while he performed the wailing lead on Hey Joe.

  The male role, it had to be me, because she was incapable of playing it, having never been a male in her life, and given her soft feminine temperament, which kept me taken in. Each time I saw or spoke to her, she remained female. I assumed my new hidden maleness with a poise that was surprising, since
it did not bother me anymore. Our loving, too, was unaided as regards objects are concerned; salvation simply lay in the embracing and the devouring.

  In the streets, we browsed in shops, buying knick- knacks, before settling for beer at the café near the hotel. We avoided any public display. It was unnecessary and suicidal with respect to the new life that I had found.

  ‘I can stay here for a while,’ I said, lifting the lager to my lips.

  ‘You know we can’t carry on for much longer, don’t you?’ she asked, being quite practical, as regards the nature of socially illicit relations went, because living publicly with her, as a couple, was out of the question. It would involve too many civic brickbats for the relationship to remain intact. It was in the secret nature that the pleasure was hidden, worth searching for and worth consuming secretly.

  ‘I know the answer. Furniture,’ I said, sipping. ‘Furniture?’

  ‘Yes furniture, along with a diesel generator, pots, pans, maybe a few helping hands, stoves and a beach,’ I said, throwing my hair back in a practiced feminine move, letting her smile as she pushed her chair back, making space, folding her leg and allowing her left ankle to seat comfortably on her right knee. ‘It will let us see each other, at least for the period that it takes for the furniture to reach the beach and fail, and if the beach shack succeeds, in a year we will know if we, too, have a second chance. Just nice, either way, win-lose, fail-succeed, we can be happy having tried,’ I said, waving gently for attention, asking for my lager to be replenished.

  Asians remain calculative when it comes to money and its investment, like Mary, who ran the numbers right there in the café, first in her mind and then on the napkins, making the afternoon classic. The inheritance, ours, would not feel the dent from the experiment of the year ahead. In that conclusion, she picked up the phone and cancelled the contract of what my mum had termed as domestic servitude, informing her local agent in Manila and her international agent in London. I insisted that she also call her employer, informing her that she was leaving them in the lurch, just as the schools would reopen that year, herself, rather than the agent bearing burdens that were hers.

  In the evening, she insisted that we visit the church, where she cried, kneeling, almost curled in tears as she begged for forgiveness in front of her God, who in my mind would have been merciful, like any God should be.

  At night we did not sin, because what we had was clean and comfortable. She slipped out of my bed near dawn and went back to her room, through the corridor of sin. It was the corridor of the hotel that was sinful, existing to separate us, trap us till we adventured beyond a line where someone finally spotted us, and blew the whistle that no God, no matter how forgiving, could silence.

  They should have noticed us earlier, because there is something amiss in two ladies checking into the same hotel, preferring separate rooms when the charges are put on a single personal card, mine, on the following day.

  We moved hotels to a farther district of the city, avoiding problems that the conformity of sexual norms thrust, hoping to exist unnoticed, which is impossible for any meaningful periods of time, without being on the move. Then we made a list and went shopping, business-like, looking for deals.

  - Beach furniture, for lounging and for dining (Capacity twenty people)

  - Generator of an appropriate power rating

  - Metal, industrial cooking grill

  - Indoor games

  - A supplier of consumables, beer and fresh produce, fuel

  - Signboard and its illumination

  - Old books and magazines by the kilo, including cookbooks

  - A used TV and a media player, along with a collection of discs

  - Utensils, pots and pans

  - Used refrigerators

  - Mobile Internet and a laptop

  - Construction costs, for a new life

  When we thought we were ready, she called for the boatman, carrying what we could with us, leaving the rest to be brought to us when it could be, with unsuspecting smiles all around.

  ‘What if it rains?’ she asked, on our way back home.

  ‘We will close, for the rainy season, for light rain we will have awnings and large beach umbrellas,’ I replied.

  ‘Hmm, where will you sleep?’

  ‘In the kitchen and store room, after it is built.’ I became lazy, like the tourists with us on the silly cruise back home.

  Lately she was given to silence, often thinking about us and the tangle that she had found herself in. It was understandable, because a change needs time to settle into. Some of her thoughts may be around escape, ejection from the change of newness, which I understood and promised to adhere to, if she really wanted me to disappear.

  I never felt like becoming a male again, even

  though I was the male partner in a lesbian relationship. Maleness remains ugly, with curly chest hair and a false bravado, which I had left behind me.

  The year that followed became busy, mostly due to success, which our little establishment met with. Unwittingly, we welcomed health inspectors and safety regulators, who were pointed to our end of the beach by the resort manager and their dwindling F&B revenue, which had instigated competition.

  Yes, it was ours, our place with a Philippine flag, and a happy Filipino spirit that the inspectors picked up and respected, hanging with us for a while before getting carried away by our Filipino-ness.

  The running of the place, especially at dinner service, was stressful, far more demanding than lawyering about on Wall Street. We learnt, and we applied ourselves to the enterprise, giving ourselves a necessary diversion, necessary for our relationship to mature through the critical first year.

  At the six-month-mark, the monthly bribes, and the balance of truce struck with the resort helped us settle into a daily rhythm of quietness, which I invested in the writing of this last chapter, slowly and unhurriedly, before marketing it with publishers, unlike my mum who died vindictive, un-sharing and in pain.

  With the Internet, the university came to Rafael, who headed to sea almost each day, with a small gang of fisher folk in upgraded boats, netting in the catch of the day, which flew off the counters within the hour that it got announced on the menu boards outside.

  The old man was happy, sometimes perching behind the counter, smiling at everyone, as business became brisk each evening. He smiled a lot at me, and I liked him.

  Through the lean rainy season, we simply sat around the tables by ourselves, chatting and sometimes smoking as the stereo gave rock music. I had started venturing with loved ones in Cebuano, much to their delight, and their laughter-ridden corrections.

  Before the year ran out, Rafael developed feelings for one of our waitresses, which he decided to confide in me, becoming trusting of me, unlike me with my parents. I heard him out and had nothing to offer, except for him to follow the drive of his own will and the path it might carve out.

  In the past year, the place had also cluttered. I gathered the staff one rainy day, about four of us, and decided to use the time to clear the place, mainly throwing things that we did not need but lay in our daily path.

  That evening, I asked for the lights to be left on, even though we were shut. The rain hammered on the beach outside and on my name, which was in lights—Jay’s Café.