by Yangsze Choo
“Are you asleep?” The way he said it, so softly, made my heart break. It wasn’t fair for Shin to use that tone of voice with me. I exhaled, but it came out as a strangled sob.
“What’s the matter? Are you crying?” He sat up suddenly.
It was useless to hide it, not when Shin pulled the pillow off my face. The street lamp shone in through the rain-flecked windows and he could see my disheveled hair, the tearstains on my face.
“Is it Robert?”
Shin, you idiot, I thought, rubbing my face. Robert was the least of my worries, but Shin leaned over me. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and I had that feeling again. That breathless, churning sensation whenever he got too close to me. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Do you really like him that much? He’s not worth it.”
“I’m not crying about Robert.”
“Then what is it? Are you in pain?”
This was so ludicrous that I didn’t know whether to laugh or start crying again, while in the meantime, Shin was sitting half naked next to me. I could only say, “Why did you go away just now?”
“I was thinking.” He was watching me, eyes dark and unreadable. My stomach twisted, hard. I couldn’t lie on my back and have him lean over me like that; it was a disadvantage for me. When had the muscles of his arms and chest become so lean, so beautifully cut in the half-light from the window?
I struggled to sit up. “Again? About what?”
“I’ve been waiting for years. I don’t think I can wait anymore.” He put his hand on my waist, beneath the shirt. I could see the pulse throbbing in the hollow of Shin’s throat, the half-anxious, half-questioning look in his eyes. I couldn’t breathe.
“Has Robert kissed you?”
I nodded, wordlessly.
A flash of anger. “Well, I’m better.”
I was sure he was going to say something else rude but instead he put the other hand behind my neck and kissed me.
There was a weak feeling in my legs, spreading up slowly towards the center of my body. A hot, melting sensation. His lips were soft and fierce. They trailed over my skin, forced my mouth open. I could feel the beating of his heart, the grip of his hand as it slid dangerously up my waist. “Shin!” I drew my breath in sharply, but he kissed me harder, on my mouth, my neck, pulling impatiently at the shirt I wore. This was everything I’d hoped for, yet so much faster and more urgent that it almost frightened me. “Wait!” I said, breathlessly, as we slid back onto the bed.
“Why?” He was tugging at the buttons now.
“Because we can’t. We shouldn’t.” My thoughts were jumbled, falling apart even as I wrapped my arms around him.
“Yes, we should. Otherwise you won’t be mine.” Shin buried his face in my neck again, his hands cupping my breasts. An electric current shot through me; I gasped and smacked them away.
“I’ve always been yours. So please stop.”
“No, you haven’t.” He sat up, running his hand through the dark hair that fell across his face. “This past month is the first time you’ve ever looked at me like this—it’s always been Ming with you!”
Cheeks blazing, I couldn’t think of what to say.
“Though if it were Ming, I’d be willing to give up. But not for someone like Robert,” he said bitterly.
“Shin,” I touched his face. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
“Of course I do. It’s always been you.”
“Then what about all those other girls?” I said indignantly. “What were you doing with them?”
“Trying to forget you, you idiot.”
His mouth lit a slow, fevered trail between my breasts. To my shame, a moan escaped my lips and I bit them hard. Shin went on kissing me deliberately, taking his time. Touching me expertly, filling me with a yearning, slippery ache. There was a buzzing in my ears; my skin burned. I had that strange feeling again, that twisting mixture of curiosity, fear, and unbearable excitement. I didn’t know this Shin, this stranger with the lean, hard body of a man, not a boy. I didn’t know myself, either. That part of me that wanted to bite him, suck the tips of his fingers, consume him. He groaned softly as I dug my fingers into his back, feeling dizzy with triumph and pleasure. Then I felt his knees nudging my legs apart, that urgent heat pressed against my thigh, and I realized he was serious.
“I said, wait!” With an effort, I shoved him off.
“I told you,” his eyes were hot and soft, “I’d make you mine.”
“There isn’t any ‘mine’ about it!” I sat up and buttoned up the shirt, right up to the neck, although my heart was racing. My head felt foggy. Shin flopped over and put an arm over his face.
“Robert won’t want you if you’re not a virgin.” His voice was muffled.
“Is that what this is all about?” Enraged, I said, “He doesn’t want me anyway. I’m not that popular!”
“Are you blind? You’ve no idea how much trouble I’ve had, getting rid of your admirers over the years.”
“You did what?”
“Ah Hing from the dry-goods store. Seng Huat from my school. Oh, and the math tutor next door.” He counted them off on his fingers.
Furious, I hit him with a pillow. “You mean to say I had a chance with the math tutor?” I’d had a crush on him one summer because he wore glasses and parted his hair the same way that Ming did. “You beast, Shin! You selfish, selfish beast!”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me down on top of him.
“What was I supposed to do? You never looked at me. And anyway, if they didn’t have the guts to stick around they weren’t worth it.”
We were so close, our faces not six inches from each other. My heart was hammering, my breath coming in faint gasps. Despite my best efforts to glare at him, a dizzy happiness was seeping through me.
“Do you hate me?” That half-anxious look again. I’d never seen Shin like this—between the two of us, he was always the cool one—and I flushed. He must have noticed, because he said, “If you don’t hate me, then let me do it,” and started kissing me again.
It would be easy to give in, let this slow ache consume me. My arms slid around him, feeling the muscles of his back flex as he rolled over, so that he was on top of me now. An alarm went off in my head; every warning my mother had given me. What was I doing?
“No!” This time I shoved him so hard that he fell off the bed.
“Are you worried about getting pregnant?” Shin was kneeling, looking up at me. In the rainy half-light that poured in through the shutters, he was impossibly handsome. “Because you needn’t be. I bought something from the pharmacy.”
“So you were planning this right from the start?”
“Of course,” he said. “I told you I was doing some thinking.”
“Is that why you came along with me today?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to hit him. “And all of that helping out with burying the finger, that was a lie?”
“I don’t really care about the finger. I just wanted to be with you.”
“You could have been with me anytime,” I said. “You didn’t have to lie about it.”
“No, I promised my father.” He stopped, as though he’d said too much.
“What did you promise him?” A feeling of dread descended on me. I remembered crooked blue shadows, the darkness of a chicken coop, and the way Shin’s broken arm had dangled grotesquely. “Tell me or I’ll never forgive you! What happened that night?”
In a flat low voice that was suddenly tired, Shin said, “He said he’d seen the way I looked at you; it set him off so we got into a fight. That’s when he broke my arm. I promised I wouldn’t lay a hand on you. Not in that house. In return, he was to leave you alone.” He sighed. “And that’s all.”
I put my hand on his hair, the way I’d always wanted to. “What are we going to do now?” I said softly.
Shin buried his face in my lap, his arms wrapped around my waist. “You can let me sleep with you. Tonight.”
I thoug
ht about it. “All right. But just sleeping. Nothing else.”
He lifted an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything, just climbed back into bed and put his arms around me. My chest was filled with a sweet painful turmoil, like a bird beating its wings. Turning over the scenes of our childhood, our many arguments and rivalries. Had I managed to catch up to Shin, or had he, by playing a cool and patient game, ensnared me instead? I lay on my side, listening to the rain and Shin’s breathing, feeling ridiculously happy.
43
Batu Gajah
Sunday, June 28th
The call comes on Sunday evening, interrupting the cool hush of the veranda, where William is sitting in a cotton shirt and a sarong. The air feels heavy and sticky, prelude to a monsoon. He lies in a woven rattan chair, the ice in his glass tinkling as he tilts it. William remembers walking by a frozen lake and hearing the loose chunks of floating ice ringing against the shore. Like bells chiming, Iris had said, her charming face pink with cold. That was right before she accused him of infidelity, of kissing another woman. Of all the things he’s done, he was never untrue to her. It must have been a mistake, he’d told her. “I know what I saw,” she’d said coldly. “At the Piersons’ party.” The only person he’d kissed that night in the darkness of the hallway, no witness save the grave ticking of a grandfather clock, was Iris herself. And ironically, it was because he’d been filled with sudden affection for her after a day spent, enjoyably, with friends. Recalling this injustice, a surge of resentment rises in William. So much for Iris’s neuroses, her uncanny ability to ruin good moments. But it’s a memory from another time, another life, and William presses the icy whisky glass against his forehead, listening as the telephone rings and rings through the empty bungalow.
On the eighth ring, Ah Long picks up the receiver. He’s not as fast as Ren was, scampering to pick up the telephone. Then he’s at the veranda door.
“Lady, Tuan.”
Right on time, William thinks. After all, he didn’t go to church this morning; Lydia would have missed her chance to speak to him then. He takes a deep breath. “Hello?”
Her voice is faint and uncertain, even if you discount the crackling of the telephone line. “William? It’s Lydia. Will you be in early tomorrow morning?”
“How early?” This is both annoying and alarming. “Surely it can wait?”
More crackles on the line. “—talk about Iris.”
A strong wind is blowing, whipping the thin cotton of his sarong around his ankles. The smell of rain.
“What did you say?” he shouts.
“Meet me at seven. At the European wing.”
There’s a crooked flash of lightning and the phone goes dead. William stares at it. Tomorrow morning then. Despite the poor reception, there was a note of triumph in Lydia’s voice that makes the bile rise in his throat. What else has she been up to, sleuthing around in her amateur way? Squeezing his eyes shut, he prays for the dark fortune that has followed him, to favor him again.
* * *
By six on Monday morning, William is up and dressed. The storm that raged all night is gone, leaving only swathes of flooded grass and a steady dripping from the eaves. Ah Long serves a tepid breakfast of toast with tinned baked beans in tomato sauce. No eggs. William can’t stomach them this morning and besides, he misses Ren’s delicate omelets. The whole house misses Ren. In the gloom, it’s empty and full of shadows. Ah Long says gruffly, “When is the boy coming back?”
“I’ll look in on him today.”
Ren’s condition has been so strange, his deterioration so precipitate, that William is filled with sick dread that he’ll arrive at the hospital and find Ren dead. But he mustn’t mention such thoughts to Ah Long, who’s superstitious.
Darkness on the winding road before sunrise. The Austin’s headlamps scatter shadows that melt into the bushes and trees. What does Lydia want from him? He has a bad feeling, one that only intensifies when he gets to the hospital. A milky blush seeps from the horizon, and though the buildings are quiet, there’s the indefinable sensation that people are beginning to stir. It’s 6:45 a.m. He’s early.
The district hospital, built in a tropical half-timbered style, has a whimsical charm. Glancing up, William approaches the dark bulk of the administrative offices in the European wing. It’s one of the few two-story buildings in the low, gardenlike hospital—surely Lydia must be somewhere around here. Instinct takes him round the corner. And there she is, her bright hair recognizable from a distance.
Lydia stands on the wet grass beside the building, head turned towards a young Chinese man with a crooked jaw. Judging from his white uniform, he’s an orderly coming off the night shift, but the tension in the way they face each other alerts William. In the dim light, they don’t notice his quiet approach.
“—nothing to do with me,” says Lydia. “You can tell Dr. Rawlings all you like.”
The man opens his mouth, but William never hears what he says because there’s a crash. A flickering shadow that plummets, smashing into the young man’s head. He drops, dead weight crumpling. William runs. Gets on his knees, but it’s no good. He can see it right away. The skull has been smashed in, there are bits of nameless splatter on his hands, his shirt. The iron smell of blood and brains. Someone is screaming, a high hysterical sound. Whatever fell has shattered, but William recognizes the fragments. A heavy terra-cotta roof tile, the kind on the roofs in the hospital, the covered walkways, and wards. He stares upward. There’s nothing to be seen, only the open windows on the second floor and above them, the unbroken ridge of the roofline.
* * *
The whole affair is horrible, shocking even to William to whom blood and open wounds are no strangers. He can’t imagine what it’s like for Lydia, who’s led, crying and trembling, from the scene. The police arrive and take statements. They go up on the roof and note that a couple of tiles are missing, though whether that’s due to last night’s storm or whether they were gone months earlier, no one can say.
“Looks like the roof was being repaired,” says the sergeant, pointing out some tiles stacked in a corner of the building. “It might have hit you, sir.”
“Miss Thomson is the lucky one.” Indeed, Lydia could have easily been killed. A mere two feet separated her from the unfortunate orderly whose head was split like a watermelon.
“Did you know him?” asks the sergeant. “Wong Yun Kiong, also known as Y. K. Wong. Aged twenty-three.”
“He did a lot of work for Dr. Rawlings, I believe.” Remembering Lydia’s words, you can tell Dr. Rawlings all you like, he wonders at this.
“Will you take the day off?”
William shakes his head. “I’ve patients to see.”
When he’s finally released, he notes the tremor in his hands, the weakness in his knees. It’s a tragic, freak accident, but he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong. The instinct that told him, just as the shadow fell, that doom was coming. For after the shock of seeing the body, his first reaction was that the wrong person had died. It should have been Lydia, he thinks, even as he’s filled with sickening guilt. That dark fortune that follows him, rearranging events to save him, has taken an inexplicable turn. Something’s wrong with the pattern, he thinks, even as he walks, dazed and nauseated, back to his office. Or has he been seeing everything upside down?
He stops. There is indeed something wrong, something that registered as a flicker in his vision even in the dimness of the early morning. William turns back to the police officer.
44
Taiping/Falim
Sunday, June 28th
I lay in that double bed with its unyielding pillows, my head on Shin’s chest and wished that time would stop, in this moment, forever. It was morning. The rain had ceased, and there was a clear, bright hush in the air. Shin was asleep.
The darkness was gone. As though the months and years that we’d lived in that long, narrow shophouse over the tin-ore dealership had turned into something else, though what it was e
xactly, I couldn’t say. I only knew that I was happier than I’d ever been. Dangerously happy. I pressed my lips to Shin’s collarbone. His skin was warm and tasted like salt.
Suddenly worried, I sat up, but the shirt I was wearing was still buttoned and my underwear was in place. In the bathroom, I examined myself seriously in the black-speckled mirror. Love hadn’t done anything miraculous, though my cheeks went pink when I recalled how Shin had pinned me down last night. If he’d kept insisting, I might well have given in though I gave myself a stern talking-to. What were we going to do? I couldn’t see any clear path for us.
When I went back into the room, Shin was still lying in bed. I bent over him, admiring his long lashes, and he grabbed me by the waist. Several breathless minutes ensued. “We have to catch a train.” With an effort, I disentangled myself.
“Why do you always say no to me?”
“I just don’t think this is right for us to do.”
“You’ll regret it,” he said. “Do you know how hard it is to get away like this? To go to a different town, find a hotel where nobody knows us?”
I thought at first he was joking, but the look in his eyes was deadly serious. He unbuttoned the shirt I was wearing and began to kiss my throat. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t resist as his hands roamed over my skin, touching me skillfully, making my legs weak, my stomach clench.
“Stop!” I gasped.
Shin’s face was flushed. “Ji Lin, please,” he said, in a husky voice I’d never heard before. “Please, please.”
I knew what he was asking. My heart gave a treacherous lurch, but I was sure that if we did this, it would be the wrong way, the wrong order. Miserably, I said, “I’m sorry. We can’t. Won’t you wait?”
He got up abruptly and went to the bathroom. I could hear the water running as he stayed in there a good long time. I put my head down on the warm place where Shin had lain, feeling obscurely wretched. Perhaps he’d think that I didn’t really love him. After all, Fong Lan had been so willing to give herself to him. Thinking of Shin’s other girlfriends made my chest tighten painfully. How had he learned to kiss like that and what else had he done with them? But I wasn’t going to be jealous, I thought. I wouldn’t be like that, clinging and crying, even if he left me one day.
