by Mike Stoner
‘Someone has to,’ snaps Geoff. ‘Anyway, I’m going up to prepare my class.’ Geoff nods to himself, picks up his books, and heads to his class. The rest of us nod to each other, pick up our books, and head to our classes.
The day doesn’t improve. Once the class has arrived there’s a hole the size of China in the group.
‘Anyone seen Johnny?’
There’s a lot of shaking heads and one or two negative mutterings.
‘OK. Perhaps he’s ill. What shall we talk about today, then?’ I walk around the horseshoe of tables expecting prompts.
Silence.
‘Any questions about my life, England, anything?’
Everyone is looking at their desks. The class has lost its ring-leader.
Oh shit. And I’ve got nothing prepared. The photocopies are just for show for Pak and the staff. I haven’t had to plan for this lot since day one.
‘So today, at last we can have a normal lesson, yes?’ says Franz, the serious boy.
‘Ah, yes. Of course. Page—er.’ I fumble through the course book and feel heat spreading across my face. Lucky dip. ‘Chapter Seven. Reading exercise: The Royal Wedding. Read it then answer the questions.’
There are a few sighs as the pages turn, but at least three of the students sit up straight, pick up pens and start making notes as they read. There are some serious learners here. My body feels strange on me as I shrink yet further into it.
Eka’s hands work their way down my back, squeezing and kneading and pulling as they go. My face is buried in the pillow. The smell of stale sweat and damp, almost hidden by perfumed washing powder, fills my nose.
‘What will your friend do?’ Knuckles rotate in the small of my back.
I open my mouth to answer and get a mouthful of musky pillow case. I turn my head to one side.
‘Knowing Geoff, probably work the month then leave quietly. Then we all carry on and he’s forgotten in a week.’
‘Not nice.’ A palm thwacks my left bum cheek.
‘Ow. What was that for?’
‘Because you are friend. You must help him.’
‘He’s not my friend. None of them are my friends.’
Thwack across my other cheek.
‘If they not your friends, I not your friend too. You care for nobody?’
All hand contact leaves my body. I can feel her sitting upright as the weight shifts on the back of my legs.
‘You are my friend. I don’t talk to them. They know nothing about me. You know a lot.’ I argue.
‘They do not know about your ghost girl? They do not know you are crazy man?’ The weight shifts again as she reaches for a cigarette and then I jump as she places a cold ashtray on my back.
‘They probably think I’m a little crazy, but no one knows about, about her.’ I try to move so I can sit up, but Eka pushes my head back down.
‘No move. I’m talking and smoking, so you not to move.’ She bounces up and down on me once to make sure I get the message. ‘You stupid, you know?’
‘Oh? Why’s that? Can you give me a cigarette, please?’
‘No. Because they like you. They invite you, who they never know a few months ago, to join at Toba and Bukit and in bars. They make you friend, but you say they are not friends. You not a nice crazy man.’
From the angle my head is turned I can see into the bathroom. A small green gecko clings to the wall above the squat, eavesdropping. I wonder what he makes of it all.
‘OK. You’re right. Maybe they are my friends and maybe I like them, I’m not sure, but how can I help Geoff?’
Her hand is in front of my lips holding the cigarette there.
‘Go on. You get nicer. You allowed one smoke.’
I suck on it while she holds it between her fingers. I smell cheap moisturiser and tobacco. Then she takes it away.
‘You help him is all. I don’t know how. He your friend, not mine.’
She rolls off my legs and lies down next to me. Her naked breasts fall towards her sides. I sigh at the beauty of her. What is she to me? It’s not love, I know that. She is a sounding board, someone to tell my pathetic woes to, someone who is mine and not connected to anything else. She is my release and my fantasy. She is my sanity too.
‘Promise you will help him.’ She turns her face to mine. Black eyes framed by curling soft black hair. Thick lips that pass on wise advice. Does she know what she is, what she could be in the other half of the world? Men would fight for her, any job would be hers. Her life would be easy. But instead she sells herself when she needs and befriends a strange bule man with a dead ex who lurks somewhere under his skin and makes surprise appearances at the strangest of times. Although I wonder if Laura has finally had enough of my forced personality change and disappeared; I’ve never known her be so quiet. I’m pleased. I’m sad. I’m empty. I’m lonely.
‘You think of her again.’
‘No. I don’t.’ I roll onto my back so she can’t see my eyes.
‘You think of her. I know. It’s OK, crazy man. One day I find rich normal bule and you never see me after. OK?’
‘OK.’ I go up on an elbow and look at her face. Now she looks away. ‘And it will happen. You are so very beautiful and very clever. Any man would be happy to have you.’
‘But not you? You not happy to have me?’ She continues looking away. Perhaps she’s watching the gecko too.
‘I don’t “want” anyone. But you are my friend, my best friend here.’
‘So that is good. And you must help your friends.’
‘I know. I must.’
I kiss her but she doesn’t kiss back. An unusual moment. Is Eka actually pissed off at me? Suddenly she is up.
‘I hungry. We go for food.’
She walks on tiptoes to the mandi. A long, dark, perfect form. She disappears and I hear her scoop up water and throw it over herself. The gecko scrambles up the wall. I reach over and get a cigarette. The smoke hangs motionless in the heat.
She is perfect. Why is she stuck here? How did that happen? Just one of those people born unlucky. Made even more unlucky by the fact that had she been born a few thousand miles away, she would be living at the other end of the social scale. Perhaps I should take her with me. Fly her back to England, parade her beauty around the streets, make her my little Eliza Doolittle. But I won’t. Selfish as I am, I know it would change her. I don’t want her changed. And I don’t want anyone anyway. What I have lost is irreplaceable. Because of that I don’t see that I could ever love her, and she should be loved, although something tells me she never will be. In some ways I want her all for me and me alone, but in others I don’t want her at all. We aren’t meant to be together. I think she knows that.
—So not only are you forgetting the slice-of-cake rule, you’re becoming a chauvinistic twat.
—Why now, Laura? Why do you come now?
—I’ve had to watch you with this girl. Be ignored while you bury yourself in her sex. Use her for your own selfish needs. Well, I feel responsible. If it wasn’t for me she wouldn’t be falling for my Ice-Cream Boy. Because of me she’s going to be heartbroken and abused by you. I’m trying to be your conscience.
—You lost that right when you died.
—I didn’t ask for it.
—I know. I’m sorry. But I didn’t ask for what you left me.
—Do you have any idea how I feel? How I feel when you sleep with this beautiful girl? When you do it without love, but with anger. And it’s my fault. Do you know how sad this makes me feel?
—I’m sorry, Laura. I’m sorry. I just need to forget you, and with her, it happens. Just for a short while the pain is gone. Without that break, that rest, I will break. I’ll shatter.
—Man up. Just man up and deal with me.
—Don’t you think I would if I could?
I’m aware the pillow is getting wet around my face. Tears are running down my cheeks. What am I doing?
‘Leave me be. Please fucking leave me alone,’ I shout to the room
and the gecko and the crazy voice that can’t be.
‘Come here, Crazy. Stop talking to her. Come here,’ comes a voice from the mandi.
I swing my legs off the bed onto the dusty floor, take a long drag on the cigarette and let the smoke out in a sigh before stubbing it out. Geoff and his black eye flash across my mind. He’s got balls, more than either of me. I smile. I will help him. I just need to think how.
‘Come, before I angry.’
But my dead girlfriend, her wishes and my conscience lose. Eka brings sanity of a type. I’m not ready to break. Not yet.
I don’t bother tip-toeing. Trying to stay clean here is a lost cause. Flat feet plop across the dusty shed skin of people unknown, limbs of dead insects, and dirt walked in by rodents. I walk to the naked beauty waiting with a bucket of cold water in the blue-tiled room. Even when she throws scoopfuls of water over me, lathers me, rinses me and leaves me shivering in the icy cold fluid of the mandi, the dirt still sticks to my soles.
I look at the plates of food laid out on the plastic tablecloth. A fly buzzes from a dish of boiled rice and then lands on a fried chicken thigh. Eka picks the thigh up and the fly buzzes onto the next dish. There are about eight more for it to taste. They have all been placed on our table by the open-shirted waiter. They are dishes from the window display where they’ve been sweating in the heat and been walked on by countless more flies. There is no one else in this small eatery and I wonder how long the food has been sitting there.
‘Eat.’ She tears a strip off the thigh.
‘It’s all meat. I don’t eat meat.’
‘That not meat.’ She points at the rice. ‘That not meat.’ She points at boiled eggs in a yellow sauce. ‘That not meat.’ She points at something wrapped in leaves. ‘But no matter because today you eat meat. Man eat meat. Chicken die to be eat, so you eat. You,’ her finger is now directed at me, between the eyes, ‘eat.’
Those massive eyes of hers accuse me of everything; being a coward, being untrue to my friends, being untrue to her, being untrue to me, and a lot of other things that I don’t know I’m guilty of, but no doubt, without a shadow, I am.
‘That looks like cow.’ I point at a dish of brown flesh.
‘It is. You can eat, but I don’t eat. I am Hindu.’
‘I know and that’s my point; you won’t eat it, so why must I?’
‘Because you think you are good, but you are not. You have no goodness for others, you have no…’ She chews the chicken slowly while her mind hunts for the word. I get it first.
‘Principles?’
‘Principles? Maybe. Is principles goodness in life? Care for things? Belief in gods?’
‘Yes. Maybe. But not the god bit.’
‘So you can eat meat. You not care for things, not care for animals, not care for friends, you no principles. You only care for your problems. So eat meat.’
She waves the chicken in front of my face. The fly buzzes around it trying to get on.
‘Eat.’ She waves it again. ‘And it is enak enak. Tasty.’
Have my principles gone? What were they to begin with? Vegetarian because of what? Pacifist? Really? In this age where everyone has guns and everyone has an alleged cause to fight, is there room for pacifism? And what about treating people with respect? So few people deserve respect. Don’t they?
Do I still care about these things? About animal welfare? About wars being fought for oil and water and fuck anyone who lives in the vicinity? Have I ever cared? Have I just been a bullshitter, because having principles is cool?
‘Padang food very tasty food. Special from Sumatra. Very spicy.’ She brings me back from my internal soliloquy. ‘Eat chicken, Mr Crazy Chicken.’
I smell the spices and chilli coming off it. Why not eat it? What do I care for a chicken? What do I care for anything? Laura has gone. I have no real love for this girl sitting opposite; no love for me; no love for anyone. Why not eat the bird?
—Go on, eat the bird, dickless.
—Great. So you’re suddenly back and joining sides with the mad Hindu, are you?
—I’m saying nothing. I’m dead. The bird’s dead. What does any of it matter?
I look at the other dishes on the table, at all the various parts of cows and sheep and chicken marinated in all sorts of spices and herbs.
—Do what the hell you want. That’s why you’re here. Care for nothing and no one anymore. Hurt who you want. Eat that little chick-chick-chick-chick-chicken.
Eka is holding it so close to my mouth I can almost taste it. No meat for eight years; why not have it now? What does any of it matter?
‘It matters,’ I say and push Eka’s hand away and pick up a stuffed cassava leaf. It tastes good and chilli heat sears my mouth. I take a gulp of water from a smeared glass.
Eka nods and smiles and a hand strokes my face, but not Eka’s. Hers still hold the chicken.
—Still got some cares, then, Ice-Cream Boy.
I nod and smile back at Eka.
‘First you help friends, you help people you can. Then you help her. You help crazy dead girl who still loves you.’
—I think I’m beyond help, but she has a point. You could try. I nod again.
‘I care for you, Eka.’
‘No you not. Shut up and eat.’
I pick up an egg and take a bite. More mouth burning. My head is on fire.
‘Egg is animal,’ she says.
‘I’m vegetarian, not vegan,’ I say through the pain. The inside of my mouth is near blistering. ‘I’m not that crazy.’
STATIVE
AND ACTIVE
F itri is dangling her feet in the pool while Benny floats tummy-side down on a gently turning airbed in the middle. His arms are drooped over the front and slowly rotate in the water. Although guards still patrol around outside these walls, the rest of the house is silent and empty. I feel more like a babysitter than a teacher. My feet swing in the water next to Fitri’s.
‘Does your father miss your mother and sister?’
‘Sometimes you English people are really stupid.’
‘I guess we are. But how do you know he misses them?’
‘He is my father. Yes he is big boss man too, but first he is my father.’
‘Your mother’s name is Su-chin, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘I just want to make sure I’ve got it right. It makes someone more of a person, more human and real, when you know their name.’
‘Please don’t mention her again. It makes me sad.’
‘OK.’ I steer back to the straight and narrow. ‘What’s the past participle of drive?’
Fitri looks at me, all open eyes and open mouth.
‘Well, I am being paid to teach you English.’
‘But I know nearly all in English.’
‘Nearly everything. You know nearly everything in English.’
She kicks me under the water.
‘Benny,’ she shouts, ‘what is the past participle of drive?’
‘Driven,’ he shouts back.
‘Even he knows. We don’t need lessons.’
‘So why not ask your father to take you to Singapore to meet your mum?’ She doesn’t want to learn, fine. I’ll spin it back into dangerous bends.
‘He is too proud. Too busy. Too scared. And I think my mother will not talk to him.’
Something tickles my knee, and before I see what it is, I flick my hand across it. A small moth flitters off my skin and lands in the water. Leaning forward I try to pluck it out, but the mini-waves from my waggling legs push it out of my reach. It flutters a little more, wings weighted with water, then it’s still. Guilt prickles me like nettles. We both stare at the moth for a long moment.
‘You should ask him.’ I pull my eyes away from the death and look at Fitri’s profile. ‘You should tell him to go with you. It hurts him all the time. He needs resolution.’
‘I know.’ The only sound is the gentle lapping of water around the pool edge and the faint hum
of traffic from outside the house.
‘Can you use stative verbs in the continuous?’
‘OK, Mr Teacher. What is a stative verb?’
Benny shouts from his plastic lily pad, ‘A verb like, like, hate, love. It describes a state. My sister is sooo stupid. And you cannot use in continuous.’
‘Is he right?’ she whispers to me.
I nod.
‘Little shit.’
‘Fitri, where do you get this language?’
‘American TV. We cannot see kissing, it is all cut out, but we can hear all the bad words in the world.’ She picks the can up from beside her. ‘So I cannot say “I am loving this Coke”?’
‘No. You can’t. Love should be permanent and not short-lived. Not just this moment. You don’t love one thing one day and not the next.’
She nods.
‘But language is always changing and no doubt one day someone, or some big company or something, will create a slogan and change the rules overnight. Then everyone will go around saying “I’m loving you right now” or some such bullshit.’
‘You are right, love should be for always. And watch your language.’
‘Sorry. That’s exactly why you should convince your dad to see your mum.’
Fitri is about to say something more when the sound of the front door slamming reverberates around the house. Shoes clip-clop in a regular fast beat across the tiled floor. Charles appears by the pool in business trousers and short-sleeved white shirt. He looks at us for a moment through a smoke haze wafting from the cigarette clamped between tight lips. He takes it from his mouth.
‘These English lessons are becoming very relaxed. Maybe I pay you too much, Englishman.’ He leans against the wall and stares some more.
‘I’ve learnt a lot today, Father,’ says Fitri, ‘about stative verbs and love.’
‘Love? Huh. That can’t be taught in day. It can’t be taught in a lifetime.’ He sighs and pushes himself off the wall.
‘Do you have time for me to ask you something after the lesson, Charles?’ I ask.
‘Yes. Come and talk now. My lazy children can wait for you.’
I stand up and wet feet marks follow me into the main room. I look back at the trail I have made. They are already disappearing in the heat.
