Moonrise, Sunset

by Gopal Baratham

  By the time I got back to Vanita the world was turning grey. Away to the west I heard the city sigh and stretch itself as the first wheels began to roll. Soon pink cracks would appear in the east and I would begin the first day of my life without the woman for whom I had waited so long.

  I knelt beside her and put my hand on her breast. The skin was cold and beginning to tighten in death. It already seemed improbable that she had ever been alive. I wanted to kiss her one last time. I was looking into her face wondering if I dared to, when the two uniformed policemen arrived.

  As soon as I looked into their faces, I knew that something was terribly wrong. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. Nor could I understand why the cops looked at me in the way they did; staring straight ahead without speaking, hands just touching their revolvers. I looked at Vanita’s body and then up at the policeman.

  I wanted to burst into tears then, tell them of the cataclysm that had destroyed my world, shaken apart the pieces I had so painstakingly put together. If they waited, things would again fall into place and I would talk to them, explain things. Right now I couldn’t find the will to do so.

  I looked around me hoping that even this grey world, this mindless dawning would say something to me. When it didn’t, I told myself that I would begin to see if I were patient, if I could force myself to wait.

  The cops, however, weren’t waiting. They moved forward and took up positions, one in front and one behind me. They were both Chinese though different in appearance.

  The one standing behind me was fair and chubby. The man facing me was long and lean. He was darker than I and, surprisingly for a Chinese, sported a thick moustache. He was clearly in charge and on his shoulder I noticed three metal chevrons.

  The moustachioed sergeant was the first to speak. “Do you have the weapon with you?”

  I was bewildered by the question; more by the way he asked it: standing stiffly in front of me, not a muscle moving, eyes staring into the distance. I had read somewhere that our police force were trying out a new interrogation technique where they asked questions which had no direct relation to the crime but which told them something of the psychology of the persons affected by it. This, I thought, was what they were doing. I had become so removed from what was going on that it took me a while to realise that the sergeant stared straight ahead to avoid looking at Vanita’s naked body beside which I was still kneeling.

  “No,” I replied. “I haven’t looked for a weapon. I merely called the police.” I wanted to add that finding murder weapons was police business but didn’t. The sergeant’s manner did not encourage chat.

  He took a step closer to me and I heard the man behind me do the same. The sergeant drew his right leg back a little and even in my confused state I realised that he was getting ready to kick me in the face should this become necessary. There was a change in his voice and he snapped, “IC? Have you got your identity card on you?”

  Before I started going with Vanita, I rarely carried my IC with me though we are required by law to do so. Vanita insisted that I should. She said that the police were peeping Toms who spied on lovers then justified their voyeurism by arresting those who did not have their ICs on them. I didn’t ask her how she got to know all this but saw to it that I had my IC with me whenever we were together.

  “In the back pocket of my jeans.” I began to rise so I could fish out the laminated plastic card.

  “Don’t move,” the man behind me commanded. I knew that his revolver was out of its holster. “Just take it out with your left hand then pass to Sergeant Wong.”

  The sergeant studied my IC for a bit then handed it over to his partner. I sensed that they disbelieved the document in their hands was genuine and I understood why.

  My mental processes are peculiar and in times of crisis tend to drift from the immediate. Instead of dwelling on the immediate situation, I found myself thinking about how it came about that I got my name and various other features of my life.

  I am called How Kum Menon. My name, as with so many things in my life, was the result of a string of mishaps.

  My father, Ma tells me, was a man called O.K. Menon. He was a Malayalee from the west coast of India. Ma spoke of him infrequently and always referred to him as that “Malayalee scoundrel”. I think with good cause.

  Menon had seduced her when she was fifteen and abandoned her as soon as she got pregnant. We have not heard of him since, though I am convinced that it is in the nature of things that some day we will meet. My maternal grandparents, traditional Hokkien folk, aghast at having an unmarried pregnant daughter on their hands, demanded that Ma leave home rather than bring shame into it.

  Abandoned by parents and lover, Lim Li Lian, as Ma was and still is, was given sanctuary by a kindly creature called Oscar Wellington Wu, who was then thirty-two and more than twice her age. To him Ma became cook and housekeeper among other things, though she never admits to being anything other than the first two and to this day tends to call Oscar “Mr Wu” in the company of strangers. He has always been “Uncle Oscar” to me and more of a father than anyone has a right to ask for.

  Oscar was born into money and lived off the family business. Much to the relief of his brothers, he took little interest in this, for Oscar was a drunk. That is not to say he was messy about his drinking. He never turned violent and was rarely incapable of looking after himself. I have, however, seldom seen Oscar without a drink in his hand and alcohol fumes seemed to follow him around like a private atmosphere. His drunkenness did not prevent him from giving my pregnant, teenage mother the support she needed and to this he added generous helpings of loving concern, which he had in abundance.

  Ma recalls that, as the time for my birth drew near, Oscar became increasingly nervous and needed to drink even more than usual. On the morning when her labour pains began, he was quite drunk and had difficulty getting her to hospital. He sobered up somewhat when the crisis was over and, on seeing me for the first time, remarked that I was an uncommonly handsome fellow. Ma agreed and as she did not have a name for me thought to call me “Hao Kan”, which in Mandarin means goodlooking. Uncle Oscar, because he heard wrong or for some reasons which are no longer clear, wrote “How Kum” on the certificate registering my birth.

  That has been my name since. I know that I can change it by deed poll but have never bothered to. I tell myself that this is because the deed poll involves a tedious legal process but this is not really the case. I have grown to like the name and, what is more, it is a name that suits me and seems to fit me better into the scheme of things.

  A name like “How Kum” inspires puns even in those not given to word play. The obvious, like “How come, you’re late”, I look upon with resignation. Those with a semblance of originality I enjoyed. I generally tend to ask a lot of questions: inspired by my name, perhaps.

  At a barbecue once, I pestered a young lady with questions, asking, several times over, how her beauty remained unaffected by the heat and smoke around. My style was, however, not to her taste and she replied, “How come doesn’t turn me on.” I enjoyed the rebuff more than any encouragement she may have offered. It was something that was specially designed for me: a tiny piece of the pattern falling into place.

  Right now, with a man holding a gun to my back and his mate trying not to laugh at my name, it was difficult to explain the circumstances under which I came by it. All I could manage was, “Yes. My name is How Kum Menon.”

  “You Indian?” he asked staring at my IC. “You look Chinese.”

  “I know, lah,” I said, lapsing into the vernacular. I was not clear what was happening but could not fail to sense the hostility of the cops. Perhaps, using the local patois would make them more friendly. “My mother Chinese, what.”

  The ploy did not work.

  “You stay still,” snapped the sergeant. “PC Yeo has a revolver, yah. He will shoot if you try anything funny. You stay here. I go phone OC in station.”

  I could not understand what was
happening. The woman I loved had been killed and, instead of looking for the man who had killed her, these men were being unkind to me. I looked at Vanita lying on the ground and felt more sorry for myself than ever. Her mouth was open and brownish spittle trickled from it. The puddles of her blood on the waterproof sheet were beginning to dry, their edges turning crinkly and black. My eyes were pricked by little thorns. I wiped them with the back of my hand. It was only a slight movement but I felt the man behind me stir. I knew that he did not need too much of an excuse to shoot me. I wondered why.

  Then it hit me. It should have been obvious from the outset. I was indeed an idiot. Vanita was right to call me a dumbo. Only an idiot would take so long to figure out what was happening. The question about the murder weapon, the sergeant’s hard voice, the nervousness of the man behind me … It all made sense. These men actually suspected me of murdering Vanita.

  When Sergeant Wong returned I had no doubts whatsoever.

  “Up,” shouted Wong, grabbing me by the hair and pulling me to my feet. “Hands on backside.”

  I was handcuffed and dragged unceremoniously to the police car. There we waited for the forensic team to arrive before driving off to the station.

  MY DREAMS FORM with my waking life a composite where contradictions no longer exist, where patterns form which are beautifully perfect: patterns that have no corners, no edges, no beginning, no end. Usually, that is. Sometimes the pieces don’t fit. Images are mindless and ugly, grating against each other instead of sliding together and coalescing. Events proceed in a sequence whose logic is beyond my grasp. I know then that I am not in a dream. I am in a nightmare.

  I was in one now. With one difference. I was wide awake.

  “You’re a piece of shit,” said Inspector D’Cruz and punched me in the stomach to make his point. “A slime covered piece of shit.” He hit me again, as though the point he had just made needed emphasising.

  I crashed to the ground retching. I had vomited when he had first hit me and the floor was dotted with stains. My stomach was now empty; empty of everything except a burning pain which the cold cement of the floor did nothing to relieve. I heard the door of the room open, managed to roll over slightly and saw Sergeant Wong re-enter the room.

  He began talking to D’Cruz. I could not catch what they were saying. From their gestures, it seemed that the inspector was not happy with what his sergeant was telling him. I was too disturbed by the pain, too overwhelmed by the nightmare to follow what was happening.

  I realised I was in trouble as soon as I set eyes on Ozzie D’Cruz.

  I had been hurried directly from the police car into the inspector’s office. This was a high-ceilinged room with bare floors and green-enamelled walls. D’Cruz sat at a large desk in the centre of the room. He was surrounded by stacks of stained and tattered files and the one he was studying looked the shabbiest of the lot. He continued studying it for several minutes while the two policemen stood to attention on either side of me. They said nothing. My hands, cuffed behind me, had begun to ache. I shifted from one foot to the other then coughed tentatively. The inspector continued reading for a further minute, made some notes on the margin of the page before looking up.

  “Get some kind of a preliminary statement from this mother-fucking bastard, Wong, then get him into the Special Interrogation Room. There, we’ll really find out what happened in the park.” D’Cruz was oily-skinned and near black. Paunchy and heavy-shouldered. We were so different that I knew he would have no problems about making me suffer.

  I had met men like D’Cruz before. They hated my type and found no difficulty in being cruel to the likes of me. I understood why. I was physically so different from them that I could be regarded as something alien, something from another species, and therefore undeserving of consideration.

  The world, increasingly scrambled in the last few hours, had now become a horror film with no end in sight. I was suspected of murdering the person I most loved, a person without whom the world was incomplete. I hadn’t killed Vanita but I was sure that, if I had not come into her life, she would still be alive. I was guilty, in some roundabout way, for her being murdered and would suffer for my sin. D’Cruz was the person ordained to see to this.

  As though to confirm what was going on in my head, the inspector said, “Get this fucker to make an upfront report at the desk, Wong, then take him to the Special Interrogation Room. And do an internal examination for starters. He looks the kind of pervert who needs drugs to get him going.” I heard him mutter in a voice loud enough to me to hear, “God knows what the world is coming to these days. Fucking murder-rapists look like fairies and the blokes who like it up the bum prance around flexing their biceps and showing off the hairs on their chest.”

  I was escorted to the front desk. Neither Wong nor the duty officer seemed interested in what I had to say. Wong inserted several pieces of carbon paper into a thick pad then wrote down in longhand my account of what had happened at East Coast Park.

  I asked him how far back I should go and he said, “As far as you like. This is only the prelim. No value in court or in making out the charge. We’ll make a full report after Inspector D’Cruz has interrogated you.”

  The paperwork was over quickly and I was led to the Special Interrogation Room. This was a tiny windowless box. The door which was its entrance and exit had SIR marked on it in ornate capitals. It could have been the entrance to the gents in a high-class restaurant except that there was no accompanying door marked MADAM.

  The fear which had been building up in me became unbearable as soon as I entered the room. It numbed my senses and overcame the little will I had left. My actions became automatic. I looked to Sergeant Wong to tell me what to do. Animals became this way in slaughterhouses, I have heard, as did men on their way to the gallows.

  Yet, there was nothing particularly frightening about the room: no bloodstains on the floor, no instruments of torture on its walls. The single neon tube on the ceiling illuminated it shadowlessly. At its exact centre was a small wooden table. On this was a box of Kleenex, a tube of KY jelly and several outsize plastic gloves, the kind used by handlers of food in supermarkets. Under the table were several pairs of boxing-gloves, an assortment of jogging shoes, and a skipping rope with knots in the strangest places. I wondered what the sporting paraphernalia was doing here. The room did not seem to be the kind of place to which policemen came for their workouts.

  “We uncuff now but don’t try anything funny,” Wong warned.

  My hands should have been cramped and painful from being held behind me for such a long time. They weren’t. I knew why. With terror comes a sense of disembodiment; a disaffiliation from one’s body and its purposes. I examined my fingers. Their tips were a little blue. They seemed otherwise okay.

  “Take off your clothes,” Wong ordered.

  In my present state of mind, the request did not seem unusual. I kicked off my joggers and peeled off my shirt then my jeans. As I stood naked before them I noticed a look of envy pass between the policemen.

  When we made love for the first time, Vanita confirmed what I had long suspected from the hostile glances of men in showers and changing-rooms: I have an exceptionally large penis. I had inherited my skin, my eyes, my shape and just about everything else from my slender Chinese mother; everything except my high nose and, perhaps, the size of my cock. The genes for both these must have come from my father for the Chinese have flat noses and oriental men are said to be somewhat under-endowed in the cock department. I had examined myself in the mirror often enough. I did not think I was particularly big but accepted in this, as in most things, the judgement of others.

  As soon as he got over his surprise, Wong said, “Kneel on the floor and bend over.”

  I did, but not before I saw the sergeant put on one of the outsize gloves and smear his index finger with KY jelly. I felt hands, presumably those of PC Yeo, spread open my buttocks and a finger enter my rectum.

  “Clean,” said Wong withdrawi
ng his finger. “No drugs hidden.” I was relieved. I don’t use drugs. I certainly didn’t have any stuck up my arse. I had heard of the police framing the innocent when it suited them. I knew that anyone found to be carrying more than 15 grams of heroin was deemed a pusher, and in Singapore the penalty for drug-peddling was death.

  I was still kneeling on the floor, bum stuck in the air, when Ozzie D’Cruz entered the room.

  “Clean, yah, Wong,” he said, not bothering to hide his disappointment. Then he brightened. “But not to worry, my friend. If we can’t get this mother-fucker to swing for pushing, we’ll have him dangling for murder-rape.” He casually put a boot against the side of my chest and kicked me as I lay on my back. “I just can’t wait…” I knew what had stopped him in mid-sentence. “Sweet mother of God, you mean he shoved that monster into the girl before stabbing her?”

  Trembling with rage he kicked off his boots and slipped on a pair of joggers. Then, making sure that I saw what he was doing, he put a boxing-glove on his right hand and got Sergeant Wong to tie up the laces. With his left hand he yanked me up by the hair.

  “On your feet you shit-bag,” he shouted, his voice high pitched and unnatural like that of the masked actors in a Japanese Noh play. “You combination of scum and slime.” His voice rose to a scream and he punched me in the solar plexus.

  I stopped breathing. Everything dimmed as I hit the floor. I was aware of jogging shoes kicking me, boxing-gloves thumping me. My mind, disconnected from my body, registered and recorded instead of feeling, screaming, working out means of avoiding punishment. Thump. My kidneys were wrenched from their moorings and shoved into my chest. Thump. An electric shock shot from the base of my spine to my head. Thump. A heel landed, ground itself into my testicles and a balloon of pain exploded in my abdomen.