Asia Literary Review No. 35, Autumn 2018

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No. 35, Autumn 2018

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No. 35, Autumn 2018

Publisher Greater Talent Limited Managing Editor Phillip Kim Editor in Chief Martin Alexander Senior Editors Kavita A. Jindal, Anurima Roy, Michael Vatikiotis, Zheng Danyi Special Acknowledgement Ilyas Khan, co-founder of the Asia Literary Review Production Alan Sargent Front cover image ‘Pink Bamboo’ by Ramona Galardi © 2018 (instagram.com/ramona_galardi) Back cover image ‘Conversations with a Tree’ by Ramona Galardi © 2018 (saatchiart.com/ramona_galardi) The Asia Literary Review is published by Greater Talent Limited asialiteraryreview.com Editor@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Submissions@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Subscriptions and Advertising: Admin@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

ISBN: 978-988-12154-1-3 (print) ISBN: 978-988-12154-2-0 (e-book) ISSN: 1999-8511

Individual contents © 2018 the contributors/Greater Talent Limited This compilation © 2018 Greater Talent Limited

Extract from Arriving in a Thick Fog was provided to the ALR through the generous support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea http://ltikorea.org Extract from Once We We Were There is published with kind permission of Epigram Books ‘No Eulogy for the Living’ is published with kind permission of Boston Review ‘The Loan’, from Insignificance, is published with kind permission of Signal8Press Extract from City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir is published with kind permission of Penguin Random House

Contents Editorial: Haven’t we seen this before?

5

Fiction Mausam

9

Kamana Srikanth

Arriving in a Thick Fog

24

Jung Young Moon translated by Jeffrey Karvonen and Eunji Mah

A Happy Ending

45

Zach MacDonald

From Once We Were There

71

Bernice Chauly

Play of Puppets

80

Kunwar Narain translated by John Vater

The Chamber Burial

90

Jeff Hu translated by Jenny Chen

The Loan

108

Xu Xi

Shimoyama and the Absent Ghost

121

Nicolas Gattig

Ruffled Feathers

131

Murzban F. Shroff

From City of Devils

150

Paul French

Those Old Instincts

156

Shilpi Suneja

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Non-fiction Interview: Anuradha Roy

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Asia Literary Review

No Eulogy for the Living – An Open Letter to the Philippines

97

Miguel Syjuco

Poetry Contemplating a Sketch of Me Made by a Chinese Poet-friend Horsemen Angkor Wat The Arrival of the Barbarians Postscript: So Close to Me: Land’s End, Nainital

61 63 65 67 69

Kunwar Narain translated by Apurva Narain

Saraswati

106

John Thieme

are you here?

Confessions of a Cloud-Watcher Black Hair

117 119 120

Katherine Wu

The Settlement Uncle Francis Harkiman of Medan

145 147 149

John Mateer

Contributors

173

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Editorial: Haven’t we seen this before?

Editorial

Editorial

T

hroughout 2018, the news from Asia has taken on a distinctly ‘déjà vu’ or Groundhog Day circularity. In Malaysia, the dynamic duo of Mahathir Mohamad and his on-again-off-again-on-again partnership with protégé Anwar Ibrahim have been back on centre stage after over a decade in the political wilderness, promising to restore a national pride that rival political parties have degraded through scandal and abuse of power. Meanwhile further north, the extraordinary images of the leaders of North and South Korea meeting for the first time since the peninsula’s division after World War II, embracing each other, and standing side-by-side with signed declarations herald yet another attempt at Sunshine Policy–like rapprochement rather than verbal sabre-rattling. As in the past, the spectacle of a tiny number of long-separated family members from across the divide tearfully being briefly reunited after sixty-plus years is both heart-warming and heartwrenching. Elsewhere in the region, the resurgence of strongman-style leadership continues to stamp its imprint. Xi Jinping presses forth with his twenty-first-century version of a Mao personality cult. The state-endorsed terror and martial law under Rodrigo ‘Duterte Harry’ lengthens its dark shadow over the Philippines, decades after the dictatorial Marcos era was washed out by a yellow-ribbon tide of People Power democracy.

No country’s history moves in a straight line. Progress – as ‘development’ might be characterised – is a series of twists and turns, fits and starts, and dead-end detours, some with devastating consequences. But Asian nations over the past half century have experienced particularly pronounced, headspinning loops of forward then regressive movement. Naturally, such turbulent histories are inevitable when tradition-bound, patriarchal societies rush headfirst into globalised economic policies and the promotion of Western-style democracies. Social and interpersonal hierarchies and family

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relationships cannot help but be radically transformed, sometimes faster than the collective eye can blink. As dislocation, misallocation and alienation take hold, people often tend to look back rather than forward, seeking answers in what is familiar. Traditions will always form a bedrock on which societies flourish. However, though Faulkner’s assertion that ‘the past is never dead; it’s not even past’ enduringly rings true, nostalgia alone is hardly an adequate prescription to deal with a world in constant flux.

Several of the writers in this issue of the ALR have contributed pieces that directly reflect the historical circularity characterising their home countries’ politics. Miguel Syjuco’s essay laments the returning spectre of martial law to the Philippines and implores his fellow citizens to stem the bleeding of his country’s moribund democracy. In an excerpt from her recently published debut novel Once We Were There, Malaysia’s Bernice Chauly reimagines the violence that Dr. Mahathir wrought on the public when he was first in power some twenty years ago, warning us that the latest version of the Mahathir/ Anwar show might be fraught with overly high expectations.

Other articles in this issue depict ordinary lives trapped by the polarities of tradition and modernity, resulting in endless loops between futility and small triumphs. Paul French’s new book City of Devils brings back to life the seediness of 1930s Shanghai and the enterprising spirits who forged storied lives plying the vice trade, evoking the modern remaking of Macau as a cosmopolitan id of the Wild East. Tales of romantic relationships by Xu Xi and Shilpi Suneja depict ways that lovers’ chemistry is both fuelled and deceived by faith and trust. Nicholas Gattig’s ghost story set in post-tsunami Japan reminds us that modernity and its conveniences cannot assuage age-old psychological ailments such as survivor’s guilt.

Our three stories from India hum with portrayals of destiny that are simultaneously unique to the subcontinent and yet universal in their resonance. Murzban Shroff ’s lead character Major Anirudh Sood struggles to maintain self-respect as a former military man relegated to expending much effort in his current job quieting the cacophonous griping of nouveau riche women in an upscale Mumbai apartment block. On the other end of the economic spectrum, a young Indian woman in Kamana Srikanth’s poignant story is named Mausam, meaning ‘seasons’, but her life knows only the bleakness of being born an unwanted village girl whose only glimmers of warmth are the memories of a lost childhood friend and the pride in eventually giving birth to a son. Finally, the young puppet-maker in Kunwar

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Narain’s story believes that love and happiness must be as easily manufactured as her puppets. ‘Happiness isn’t something that happens: it’s made’, she proclaims. We can only wish that our expectations might be as optimistic and trusting as hers.

The two stories set in Korea – one in the South and one in the North, by Jung Young Moon and Zach MacDonald, respectively – starkly contrast the plight of people living on either side of the border. The South’s affluence and consumerism have bred nihilism and a debilitating ennui, while the North’s desperate circumstances elevate basic necessities to the status of unattainable luxuries.

Kunwar Narain also features in our selection of poetry for this issue. His work makes history intimately present. Our other selections similarly convey intimacy across time and cultures that both acknowledges and contradicts the alienating impulse of our lives today.

In Jeff Hu’s whimsical story set in China’s Hou village, the locals cannot seem to figure out if when Fourth Great-Granny periodically loses consciousness, she has in fact died. Each time, the villagers arrange a funeral for her, only to then find her resurrected and as feisty as ever. In a similar way, the profound upheaval that Asians across the region tussle with are partially due to never being sure how much of the past still lingers as they try to move forward. But while the tumble of past, present and future often confuses the issue of whether any progress is truly being made, the indomitable human qualities of imagination and perseverance occasionally coalesce to snap the pattern. The breakouts, we hope, may then lead to a future that is brighter and, dare we hope, more fulfilling.

The ALR Editorial Staff

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Mausam Mausam

Kamana Srikanth

Kamana Srikanth

Birth

I

was born at a strange hour. It was a Friday night. All was quiet in the village of Mihalpur and, I believe, within the small one-room hut, too.

The threadbare curtains must have been closed. I am told that my mother never held me, and I suspect that she never looked into my face. A girl child.

I can see her now, dark like me, her long hair matted with the sweat of labour, curled up in a corner on a hard, bare cot as tears leak down the sides of her face, limp with exhaustion and misery. That particular sequence of events is not such a mystery to me. I saw it happen many times, with other women.

I was the silent witness at these funeral-like affairs.

I was also there on other days – when the entire village celebrated, and sweets were handed out and people danced in the streets. I danced too and shouted for joy. The world was brighter on those days, the sky so blue, the pale blue that comforts at the same time as it hurts the eyes, the earth beneath my feet almost soft, as if she were smiling, that great mother to whom we are all bonded in life. We were allowed to sleep outside on cots, the stars swirling in the skies overhead our colourful night blanket. We barely slept, for our hearts hurt from being too full. Those were the days on which a boy child was born. He was special, he came marked for the benefits of this world, palms open in trust, knowing he would receive. His cries were loud and lusty – the clarion call to all who could hear that he had arrived. The mothers of the boy babies were queens, crowned with such joy. I remember those little circles of exclusive membership – mothers and sons, small dark heads nestled against brown breasts, maternal arms that held and cradled, and fathers who smiled and walked tall.

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Seasons I was happy often, I think. While the boys went to school, we girls would go with our mothers to collect water from the river that flowed through our village. Dip the pot, wait for the water to pour into it, and then slowly pull it out. Settle it on your head or on your hip. I carried it on my hip. It made me feel like I was older, like I had seen things through my mother’s eyes. I walked delicately; I walked like my mother. The water played against the sides of my pot in time to my every step. I would not race ahead like the other girls and break my pot, or trip and fall and spill all the water. Sometimes I carried the pot on my head, cushioned on a folded cloth. I would stand straight, with one hand supporting the pot, and I would look neither left nor right but only ahead, and I would count my steps. To the river and back, to the river and back.

I belonged everywhere and nowhere. I was Mausam, ‘season’. Not one season, not summer or winter, but all seasons. I was the leaf that fell as the weather grew cooler, that floated in the river, sometimes alone and sometimes with other leaves; I was the tide of the river as she swelled her banks when it rained, and I was the cricket on hot summer nights, creating rustic music.

Radha Radha was my closest friend and I stayed as often in her house as I did in mine. She was fair and had strongly marked eyebrows. Once, a fortune-teller came to the village and he told Radha that her eyebrows would bring her family luck. All the people present scoffed to hear this. What girl could bring luck? If you hoped to catch a fish, you did not throw a stone into the water.

Radha smiled at the fortune-teller’s words and she brought him a large glass of fragrant chai.

Radha was older than me and she was beautiful. I liked to touch the little dark spot on her cheek. We held hands and sang as we walked back to the village from the river, and her mother sometimes gave me food in the evenings.

I ate in this house or that house; there was always food and I never went hungry. My mother expected me to help her with the chores during the day, and after that I was free. To my mother, I was like the girl in a picture I had

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once seen – only the girl’s hair and her skirt were visible among the high grasses and you could not see her face.

Most nights, I did not like to stay in my house. I would hear sounds from the corner of the hut where my parents slept. Behind the draped cloth that screened them from my gaze, my mother often sounded as if she were in pain. The noises caused a strange pressure to build up in my chest. So I would slip out and go to Radha and curl up beside her on her cot. She would stroke my hair and tell me about the stars.

I hardly ever saw my father. He was usually with the other men of the village, ploughing the fields, planting the crops: a thin, energetic man, dark and serious, who came to our home, stayed the night, and left each morning just as my mother woke me. If he was home in time for a meal, I would place his tumbler of water next to his plate. I would stand very straight if his glance fell upon me. Sometimes in the evenings he sat outside our house, smoking, while my mother sang from within, her voice like the shallows of the river where it played over rounded stones close to the bank. Other men came and sat with my father, and they spoke in low voices, the tips of their cigarettes glowing like sleepy fireflies. I did not seek Radha on those evenings but slept peacefully in my corner of the room. My parents’ side of the room behind the curtain would be silent.

Sister I heard talk of Radha’s marriage one day.

The girls in front of me as we walked back from the river, the older girls, spoke in hushed tones about it. It was to be soon. Radha, who was beside me, carried two pots, one in each arm, and she had a faraway look in her eyes. I worried that she would trip, and only when I touched her arm did she look at me. Pest, she said, and smiled. I loved it when Radha smiled, and I liked it when she called me ‘pest’. It made me feel special. I skipped a little, pot free, and asked her if it was true what the girls were saying. Was she getting married and going to a distant place? I don’t want to, she said, but I have to. I was very curious and at the same time I had a weight upon my chest. Why do you have to? Why must you leave? Why can’t your future husband come to our village and live with us? She smiled at me, through eyes brimming with tears, and then she laughed.

Because it is the way, she said.

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As the festivities in the village proceeded apace, I withdrew into myself. I spent time with the boys. After chores at home, I followed the boys to play cricket and came home each day sweaty and dirty. The boys cursed me good-naturedly. They called me a tomboy, but included me in their games.

My father beat me for the first time. I was nine. He used the branch of a neem tree. I bore the marks for days. My mother never raised her hand to me. Instead, she pointed to the metal rod used to poke at the coal and wood in the stove that warmed us in winter. She would burn me, she said, her eyes flat, a dull surface like water slicked over with oil.

I waded in the shallows of the river all that evening, the stones smooth and round beneath my feet. If there were words within me, I could not speak them. Radha found me there. We sat together on her cot outside in the night air. She whispered stories and the stars hung so low I thought I caught the smell of them: coconut oil, talcum powder and crisp cotton. There was no one to disturb us and perhaps we slept.

I remember only bits of Radha’s wedding. Her groom, a tall man with a long nose and teeth like those of the old men in my village, took her away on a tired-looking horse. The horse wore blinkers and its head was decorated with faded gold spangles that swung back and forth in response to its slow amble. Before they left, Radha nodded at me from beneath her veil; I could not see her expression. Her husband smiled at me kindly, patted my cheek, asked me to open my mouth and fed me a sweet.

Mother Sometimes my mother would come out to the central courtyard of the village and tell stories. People would gather there to listen to her. She did this when she was happy. She would sit with her legs crossed and when she spoke she would gesture with her hands. In those moments her face came alive and, if I sat close to her, I could see the light in her eyes. I never knew why some days were different from others, just that they were; and on those days she would not frown when she saw me; she would even smile. Her stories stretched from late noon to evening, when the sun sank. There was the fat woman who spoke to the walls of an abandoned old house and grew thinner with each secret that she revealed; the man who mistook the ghost of his wife’s sister for his real living wife and paid dearly for his foolishness; There was the story about the girl who tried to make a pillow out of a cloud, and

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the one about the daughter-in-law who was haunted by her mother-in-law’s ghost.

I remember one such day. My mother finished her story session and, on our way back home, she took my hand and held it. My heart beat very fast.

My mother had never held my hand, and she had never smiled so openly at me. Mausam, she said, you will have a little brother and you must help me care for him. Yes, I said, I will help.

I wanted her to have a son. I could then be her daughter, I hoped. But in my heart, I wanted a sister who would come with me on the walks from the river and would play hide and seek with me in the fields. A sister who would grow up beautiful like Radha. Our mother would tell us stories each night, and my sister would sleep on my cot, and I on a mat spread out on the ground.

My mother’s smiles lasted for six months. And then she lost the baby. It was the girl I had wished for. So small, my little sister. I watched my father bury her in the back yard. There was another one soon after that, another girl baby, and again my mother lost her. Each time my mother sparkled and wove stories, like a small orb spider dancing on her gossamer web in the sunlight, and each time that delicate web was swept away. In my house, we were in mourning for a long time. My mother became smaller and smaller and I had more sisters than I had hoped for.

I would speak to them at night, under the light of the stars. There were four of them, but only two were buried in the little of plot of land behind our hut. My mother must have wept, cried to the moon, begged that her prayers be answered, asked if she was cursed – I do not know. My last two sisters came and stayed with us for a year each, little guests who cried sadly and weakly, and flew away because they knew they were not wanted. But I wanted them to stay. I imagined their dark heads against my skinny chest. I wept. The stars above danced on. They did not believe me.

Exile The people in the village became afraid of my home. Four dead children, one after another – they believed we carried some evil. We had to farm our own vegetables, mostly tiny potatoes, and some other roots, thin and scraggly.

The vegetable shop owner wanted nothing to do with us. He raised his broom and shook it threateningly if my mother and I walked past. My father could find no work. Prospective employers pushed him off their front steps like

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yesterday’s leaves. He finally took the only job that he could find; labour was needed at the cremation ground a few hours from the village. Bodies were taken there from the big city a hundred miles away.

One of our neighbours, a nosy old man whose wife periodically threw him out of the house, saw my father on his way back from work. My father’s face was blackened by soot, his skin imprinted with that peculiar burn that comes from too many hours of staring at the flames. The news flew around the village in minutes – my father was working at the cremation grounds! He was a scavenger, the lowest order of existence.

That night, someone banged on our door and we heard shouts. Some of the people who lived close by were gathered outside. My father hastily bundled us out into the night air. I was bewildered and a little annoyed, still stuffed with sleep and dreams until I turned and saw the roof of our home.

A portion of it was on fire and it spread quickly. Flames leapt upward, and I can hear the sounds even now if I think about it – the hungry roar and suck of the fire. In no time, all that was left was the smoke that rose lazily upward.

There was a crowd around us, silent; and, while some people looked sad, others looked angry, and the nosy old neighbour cleared his throat and shouted, telling us to begone from the village.

I did not understand what had happened. How had our roof caught fire?

Surely, no one in the village was cruel enough as to have caused it. Or was everyone right? Was something so wrong with us that our misfortunes continued unceasing?

Bhuvan – I will call my father by his name, for I am older now than he was the last time I saw him – tried to argue with the old man, with the village elders who soon stood behind the old man, a battalion in support of him.

Stony-faced and blank-eyed, the crowd waited. Fear took hold of me and I reached for my mother’s hand. She looked down when she felt my touch, saw that I had wrapped my hand around four of her fingers and she gently withdrew from my grasp. I was watching Bhuvan plead with the elders and had not been conscious of my actions. I was filled with burning shame. I held her sari from the back, a small piece of cotton between my thumb and forefinger.

Bhuvan knelt and begged. My father was a young man, perhaps thirty, but at that moment he looked much older. He bowed his head and spoke words that I did not understand. There was no one there to hear him. He gave in to anguish: he pummelled the earth, beating at it with his fists, and

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created furrows with his fingers. In a few years he had become an outcast, and I learnt that sometimes even sons don’t get what they want.

I do not believe my mother spoke at all. She had that quality of stillness, of absence almost, as if there was just enough inside of her to remain standing and all the rest of her was hidden away. She looked straight ahead, her sari neatly tied about her, the one that was both faded and soft that she wore to sleep at night. My mother stayed where she was, some distance behind Bhuvan.

A child wandered out of one of the houses and came and settled down at my mother’s feet, his thumb in his mouth, the small head heavy with sleep.

Immediately my mother bent to pick him up but stopped when a shriek split the air. A woman, whom I had sometimes seen speaking to my mother, rushed out from among the onlookers and grabbed the child before my mother could touch him, and backed away.

It seemed that Bhuvan’s words and emotions dried up within him. He stayed quiet with his head bent for a very long time, and then he prostrated himself. He asked the village elders to consider another request – let us remain on the outskirts of the village, for we had nowhere else to go. I dropped my mother’s sari and walked with legs that shook to where my father lay on the ground. I was foolish. I knew that nothing I did would make any difference.

I knelt, bowed my head, and clasped my hands together. My thoughts rang together like madly pealing temple bells. I bit my lip. The earth covered my shamed face as I followed my father and lowered myself, my stomach and chest finally resting on the hard and rocky surface. I was carried back to a moment from a year ago, when I had stood at Bhuvan’s side and watched him bury my last-born sister. When I saw her disappear under layers of ash and turmeric, salt and cow dung and finally that red earth, I was terrified.

But I thought as I lay there that it might not have been so bad, to be safe, to be covered by many layers, like blankets.

The loudly whispered conversation of the elders came to a stop. I think they must all have looked at me. Hands lifted me and placed me on my feet.

My father also stood now. I waited hopefully. Someone in my village would support us. The old neighbour spoke to Bhuvan and my mother. If we were to live on the outskirts, we should be invisible like the dead that Bhuvan hauled to the funeral pyres. The Gods would have to speak differently of us before we were allowed back into the village.

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Mausam

Departure The central courtyard was deserted in minutes. We were expected to leave quietly and immediately. The moon was adrift on a boat of clouds, her light dim. We stood looking at the remnants of our home. My corner of it was nothing more than a blackened patch. One did not cremate the very young, and there on the other side of where the hut had stood were the little graves of my sisters marked by stones. They were somewhere I could not follow.

We walked for an hour or so, Bhuvan in front, and my mother behind him, his faithful shadow. I looked into some of the houses as we passed them.

Many of the doors were open and the smells of cooking permeated the air. I don’t know if people were aware of us as we left the village. It became cooler as we reached the outskirts, with dense jungle to one side, where the men of the village went hunting to supplement our meals. Bhuvan guided us right to the mouth of the forest and suggested that we stay there for the remainder of the night. I rested thankfully against a tree, comforted by the roughness of the bark.

Boy We built our new home in the forest. Soft earth and moist, ripe with the smell of things that live and grow in secret close to the forest floor; my bare feet stepped gently on thick carpets of decaying leaves and became inured to the skitter of centipede and scorpion. By day I foraged for food with my mother and by night we ate over a low fire, bright enough to warn the animals away and keep us warm.

One evening a few months later, when Bhuvan came home from the cremation grounds, he spoke to my mother in harsh tones. I heard snatches – ‘extra mouth to feed’, ‘a waste of food’.

I slowly turned the small rabbit around and around over the fire. The meat must cook, not burn, I told myself.

Bhuvan’s voice rose to a shout. Some startled birds burst out of a nearby thicket, calling to each other, and flapped skyward. I never heard my mother’s replies. Most of the time she held to silence.

My father stalked over to me and dragged me up by my hair. The carefully constructed spit broke and the rabbit fell into the fire. His fingers dug into my scalp and my neck felt stretched to breaking point. Then he took out his

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hunting knife and sliced off my braid. It fell to the forest floor and he released his hold on me. I dropped to my knees and watched the tender flesh of the rabbit turn crisp and crackle.

‘She will be a boy,’ my father said. He pointed to a small parcel that lay next to him. ‘There are some clothes in that. Wear those from now on. You will come with me to work.’

I was a boy. I wore trousers (torn and too big) and a shirt; and for my feet Bhuvan gave me a pair of his old rubber chappals. It was a long road. I got used to the strange feeling of wearing something that encased both my legs.

The wind lifted my newly short hair and cooled the back of my neck. The loose shirt enveloped me, and I did not miss the blouse that I had worn till then. On that day I alternately walked and ran. I gulped lungsful of air. I thought I could do anything. We travelled for three hours in the morning: out of the forest, through long stretches of boggy paddy fields, over a new road which was being constructed, until we came to the cremation grounds.

Death Even from a distance, you could feel the heat of the lit pyres. I was given a cloth to tie around my face. That first day, I wheeled logs of wood to the pyres. Bhuvan showed me how to arrange them after a body was placed on the pyre; layers of dried cow dung, wood, and oil, and then more wood until the body was fully hidden with just enough spaces between the blocks to allow the wind to aid the flames. Then the fires were lit. Families of the dead stood for hours and watched as the fires ate away at wood, then flesh and, finally, bone. I waited with them, with Bhuvan. We didn’t go back home that night or the next. We were covered in white powder, that fine dust of bone and ashes that we waited to collect for the families, one with the ghosts that wandered there, caught between this world and the next.

We went home after four days. Bhuvan told me that I did not have to do anything to disguise myself as a boy – I already looked the dirtiest specimen of one. He patted me on the back as he said this. At home my mother laid two plates of food. One for Bhuvan and one for me. It was the first time I ate with Bhuvan and not with my mother. My mother would wait to clear the plates before she sat to eat herself. It became a routine. We were gone for three or four days at a time and stayed in the house for one day to rest before we began the cycle again. Sometimes I did not speak a word from sunset to

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sunrise. While Bhuvan acknowledged my usefulness, I was never really safe from his uncertain temper. There was a father who brought his dead daughter once and stood quiet and dry-eyed as he saw her consumed by the flames.

When it was over, he paid for our services and left. A little later, as I shovelled the remnants of wood, ash and bone off the platform, Bhuvan grabbed me, threw me to the ground and threatened to beat me with the shovel. That girl would have been like you, an unnecessary expense, and look, her poor father even had to pay for her funeral!

In the forest, there were pools that glimmered in the sun, clear cool waters in which little fish played, and I searched for my reflection once more when I bathed in one of the pools. A clump of dirt to mask my face, now boy; a clean face, now girl? I touched my chest, but it looked nothing like the breasts that women had. Now boy? I thought Radha would know about this. How was she? Would she remember me? If I left this place I could go in search of her, and the two of us would run away – from women, from men, from families, from boys and it would be just us, sisters of the heart.

My mother did not have any more children and Bhuvan beat her regularly for it. I never saw her cry in those years. Her tears had long since dried up.

I could not work at the cremation ground forever. Bhuvan had made up his mind to marry me off; a married daughter, though still a daughter, was more useful than an unmarried one.

Girl My mother undressed me, removed my now-beloved shirt and trousers. She ran her hands over my arms and looked at my chest. You will be going to another place, daughter. See that you are well, she said. I was presented with a single new skirt and blouse. I hated the feel of the blouse: it hugged my arms and stomach, and the skirt was too long; I tripped with each step I took.

It was strange that the differences between boy and girl were not written in our bones, in those small shards that I had collected for disposal at the cremation ground. I had strung some of those pieces of bone into a necklace.

I liked the sounds they made as they clinked together. It reminded me that someday someone would collect my own bones. A girl like me, perhaps, in shirt and trousers. She would watch the march of death every day; and whoever accompanied me on my final journey would press a note into her

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hand and she would take it, and perhaps her family would eat with that money.

I was not anxious when I left with Bhuvan to meet the man I was to marry.

I was fourteen, a woman grown, I thought. My mother was inside our little hut preparing the morning meal. She said nothing to me, either in farewell or in encouragement.

The man my father sold me to was not like the old man whom Radha had married. He was young and from a village where there were more men than women. They needed girls and were willing to pay to acquire them. I believe Bhuvan was paid handsomely for his daughter. The wedding was short, and I did not see my husband until after the ceremony. Bhuvan said in a relieved voice that I should be a good wife and bear my husband many strong sons.

I wished for his words to come true. Boys could shine in the night, providing light for the weary traveller. I watched Bhuvan leave; my eyes stayed fixed upon him until he vanished in the distance.

My husband enjoyed me every night, vigorously, and I understood what I had heard from behind that screen that shielded my parents. At first there was such pain. I held my breath, closed my eyes, clenched my teeth and prayed. The fields hid me during the day and my body performed the tasks that were set before it. I did not know the language of the people in this village. To them I was an outsider and so no one bothered me. My conversations were with the goats and chickens that I fed. But at night there was nowhere to hide. When I refused my husband’s demands, he said that he would send me to his brothers. There were so few women in this place, they would be all too happy to have me. I accepted him into my body and my mind shielded me from the pain. It was, as Radha had said, the way. But the pain was not forever, and I was, I discovered, more and more my mother’s daughter. I had her gift for silence. I had her ability to store myself in another place, in a room with no doors and no windows.

I was uncomfortable with my mother-in-law. She was a good lady, and wore the wrinkles of age with dignity. Sometimes when my husband beat me, she would feed me bitter liquids and treat my bruises with hot compresses of turmeric and salt. When I looked into her eyes, I saw understanding there.

She made me shrink. I was sure that if I accepted her comfort, that little room in which I hid myself would disappear forever. But I was grateful to her and, in the evenings, I would sit with her and massage her fingers when her bones ached from the cold.

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Mausam

I spoke to Radha every day, long conversations as I walked the fields, my feet ankle-deep in water, a cool blessing on hot summer days. I always started these conversations with the same question. Where are you? She never answered. In my mind, we sat on the river bank in my old village. She combed my hair, set a rhythm that made me sleepy and spoke to me of the secrets of this world. She lent me wisdom and smiled when she spoke my name. She told me of her marriage to the old man. He was kind to her and wanted her to be happy. She gave him one son before he died, and he passed with a blessing for her on his lips. Though she was a widow early, her husband’s family treated with her with respect. Sometimes Radha asked me to come and stay with her. I will look after you, she said. She kissed my cheek and embraced me, and the river flowed past us, the silent witness to our secrets.

Son and daughter Two years after my marriage to him, I bore my husband a son. When I looked at my child my heart felt lighter, and the celebrations lasted a week. I was now a member of that exclusive circle: I was mother to a son. The strong suck on my nipple and his little hands as they pushed and squeezed at my breast demanded my attention. My husband walked tall: his seed was good and strong. I became precious to him. I fed his son and perhaps, if the Gods were truly merciful, I would bear him a second boy. I fell in love with my child. He was mine in a way that nothing else truly was.

I told Radha about him. I took him out to the paddy fields and introduced him to her, and Radha played with him. She held him in her arms and put his little feet into the river water. My son was happy. I spoke to him in the language of my home and he watched me with black, fascinated eyes. My mother did not have a son, and I did. I dreamt at night of the little graves outside my old house and woke with a fist around my heart. I held my child close.

I told my son that his mother’s name was ‘Mausam’ and that it meant ‘season’. I wanted him to know my name. At least one person in this, my husband’s land, should know my name. I had all but forgotten it. Here I was my husband’s wife and now I was my son’s mother. I was both alive and a woman only by connection.

Three years later I gave birth to my daughter. I did not refuse to feed her with my milk the way my mother had with me. Her little head lay heavy

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against my breast and she suckled strongly, just like her brother. She was rosy-cheeked and easily satisfied and I wept with each pull of her mouth on my nipple.

If I walked a little distance from my home to a neighbouring village, there was a medicine woman there who would take care of my girl. The woman would put her to sleep. I stroked the little head and my tears flowed free, sliding into my mouth and into my baby’s hair. I would atone for it all my life.

There were no celebrations when my daughter was born, and my husband was inclined to ignore her. It doesn’t matter, he said. The next one will surely be another boy.

I visited the medicine woman. She worked her toothless mouth over some betel leaves. Many like me had crossed over her threshold and into her house.

Her old eyes, like half peeled lychees, gazed at me shrewdly. Her voice reached me in a whisper. It is a crime, she said. The police ask questions sometimes.

I shook my head. It doesn’t matter, I said. I knew that in these parts no policemen would come. There was no money here for them. Hot chicken broth, she said. Pour it straight into the baby’s throat, and don’t come back to me. I walked home in a daze. The medicine woman’s words moved within me, nerve poison, a blight that paralyzed my hands. I fed my chickens with those hands and they grew fat. My daughter grew bigger and my breasts became smaller.

I took my little girl to meet Radha the way I had taken her brother. Once more Radha held a child of mine in her arms and they played by the river bank. Where are you, I asked Radha, and her face smiled widely but, as always, she refused to answer. I’m going to the medicine woman once more, I told her. Radha set my baby down carefully, her mouth tight with anger, and then she slapped me. The way my mother had once slapped me. Was that blood in my mouth? I pressed a finger to my mouth and there was no blood. I was standing in a wide field where there was no river and there was no Radha and my child screamed in distress, demanding to be fed.

I did go to the medicine woman again, but I did not take my daughter. I walked into a haze of strong smelling incense and she asked me to wait while she went into her storeroom and retrieved a piece of paper that she thrust into my hand. It had a number on it and a name. There are some people, she said, they take our girl children and place them in good homes where they will be looked after. I laughed bitterly. The medicine woman looked at

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me solemnly and told me to call the number on the paper and talk to them.

Finally, she pressed a neatly folded packet of something into my hand. It is to prevent you from having any more, she said. Come to me each month for this medicine and never let your husband find out. I was afraid to believe in a future for my daughter and in a solution for myself. I left quickly.

I asked my mother-in-law and then my husband for permission to visit a relative. I planned to be gone for two days. I said I was taking my daughter.

My husband questioned my closely and then grunted acquiescence. I dialled the number the medicine woman had given me from a telephone at a store.

When a man answered, I mumbled a greeting. There were people in the store now, and I could barely speak. Who gave you this number, he asked, and I said I would explain if we could meet. In the clipped accents of a city-dweller, he gave me directions to the place and I was soaked in sweat as I tried to remember each word.

I travelled on a bus for the first time in my life. The motion of the wheels beneath me made me sick and dizzy. My daughter, however, was hungry. Her little fingers groped my face and then my breast. She grunted and squirmed and then latched on too hard and my nipples were soon sore.

I walked for a long time from the bus stop to the address the man had given me, my daughter slung on my back – the size and weight of one of the large stones that I used to find on the river banks in Mihalpur – where she dozed, warmed by the sun. We reached a large building, white, and it shimmered in the afternoon sun. I waited in a room cooled by a ceiling fan while a doctor examined my baby. A lady in white starched cotton brought me some water and I marvelled at this place.

The lady in charge of the premises spoke to me for a long time. She told me that I would have an opportunity to meet the prospective parents if I wanted to. She took me to where twenty or so children slept peacefully, some of them being fed from little bottles. I held the lady’s hand and cried. Why should I feel such gratitude? I, who had contemplated with such ease the death of my own child?

I asked my husband if we could give my daughter away.

How much would they pay us? He sat on the small cot that we shared, one leg curled beneath him, his arm resting on the knee of the other, while he smoked his beedi.

Nothing.

He insisted that he could do better than that if he looked around.

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I waited, while my mother-in-law regarded us impassively from her place near the stove.

Finally, he shrugged and said I could do as I pleased, though in a few years my daughter would be worth more. She would be useful to the men of the village.

I visited the white building in the city once more after that. They showed me papers, tried to explain the words on them. I left the impression of my thumb on the papers, my signature, the lady explained, inky whorls at the bottom of each page, quick, like milk squirts from my breasts into a bottle.

They would store just a little of my milk for my daughter’s next feeding; the doctor said it would also mean less pain for me if I was empty.

I thought I would speak of her at least to my son. But as I walk in the paddy fields with him now grown, there is a shrinking within me, and my mouth has long closed over the words. Radha is still beside me, more silent now than she used to be. We both prefer it that way.

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Arriving in a Thick Fog Arriving in a Thick J ung Young Fog Moon

Jung Young Moon translated by Jeffrey Karvonen and Eunji Mah

I

was in a top-floor unit of a fifteen-storey apartment building with a view of nothing but identical apartment buildings, sitting on a living-room sofa with a Maltese puppy on my lap, folding and unfolding its left ear repeatedly, the dog gazing up at me expressionlessly as I gazed back at it. Before being on my lap, the dog had been lying on its stomach on the living room floor.

The dog had not ended up on my lap of its own volition, because it was still too young to get up on the sofa without someone’s help. From the sofa, I had half-heartedly picked up the dog and placed it on my lap, gazed down at it for a moment and, as if I had suddenly thought of origami, I had begun folding and unfolding its ear, like I was doing origami.

I enjoyed thinking this and that about dogs and, once in a while, when I thought too much of this and that about dogs, it felt as though, in my head, I was raising a bunch of small and large dogs that were fierce, shrill, loud, distracting, or funny, but I did not especially love or hate dogs in reality, and this was true of other kinds of pets, and almost everything else. I have little interest in the things many people take great interest in, such as a dog’s appearance, poise, habits, and temperament, or in anything else that one might find interesting about a dog, but I take every opportunity to fold and unfold a dog’s ears. I have folded and unfolded the ears of many dogs, but I cannot say that I especially like doing so, and it is difficult to say that folding and unfolding dog ears is a kind of hobby for me, because I do not fold and unfold dog ears as a hobby. Still, I know which dog’s ears fold easily and stay folded, and which dog’s ears do not fold easily and unfold as soon as they are folded. Among the dogs whose ears fold easily and stay folded, there are some dogs whose ears stop folding easily or staying folded once they reach maturity.

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A little bit later, the owner of the dog and the apartment walked out of the kitchen as if appearing on stage, carrying tea, apple slices, and dog treats, and sat on the living room floor. I put the puppy down on the floor, and the puppy began eating the treats in the bowl, but it did not appear to be enjoying them very much. Rather, its eyes were fixed covetously on the apple slices.

The plate of apple slices was placed equidistantly from the three of us, but it was not clear if the apple slices were to be shared with the dog. I sipped the tea, which had almost no taste. It was the kind of tea that does not acquire complexity with age, and in fact loses its aroma with age. It was some kind of floral tea, but its original taste had all but dissipated, and whatever little taste was left in it was not enough for one to even guess what kind of tea it had been to begin with. I did not seem to be alone in feeling that way. I took a sip and did not drink any more, but she did not even take a sip. I was not in a position to complain about the tastelessness of the tea, because I was the one who had given it to her. Even though I did not complain to her face, I could complain in my head, so I complained freely in my head. It was not like I had given her tea that had already lost its aroma, so she was ultimately at fault for setting out tea that she was not even going to drink herself.

She gave the dog an apple slice, which it savoured. The moment I thought, Oh, the apple slices are for the dog, she ate a slice too, as she offered a second slice to the dog, as if to prove me wrong. Strangely, even though they were within my reach, I did not dare touch the apple slices. The apple slices on the plate had come from not two, but one apple, cut into six slices, which she and the dog shared equally, three slices each. As a result, I never got any apple slices. Looking at the plate that had been picked clean, I felt as though there had never been any apple slices for me, that I had hallucinated an apple-shaped something on the empty plate, and that the hallucination of six geometric pieces had vanished into thin air. In the end, I was relieved that I had not touched the apple slices that I dared not touch and, feeling slightly embarrassed, I stayed on the couch, placed the Maltese, which had finished off the apple slices, back on my lap, and resumed folding and unfolding its ear.

She and I sat in awkward silence. but I was unsure whether the awkwardness stemmed from a story I had told. She had responded coldly, and I could see, having told the story, that the story deserved a cold response, and that even I might have responded coldly to my own story. I wanted to say something, but I could not think of anything appropriate. No words seemed

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appropriate, and there seemed to be nothing I could say. I had so little to say, and I felt as though I could go on and on about that very topic but did not know how to begin. She had not invited me over to her apartment, but I had come anyway, without knowing why, and even though I had thought I should leave as soon as I arrived, I continued not leaving, the reason for which was also unclear, though I was vaguely thinking that there was nowhere else to go.

As if she could not stand the awkward mood any longer, she stood up and headed to the bathroom, saying that she was going to take a shower. The Maltese looked up at me, seemingly wanting something. I could not tell what it wanted, but I thought, I might stop folding and unfolding the dog’s ear since it might be annoying the dog, as it would annoy me, and pet its head instead since all animals like to have their heads stroked. However, I immediately rejoined, All animals cannot possibly love being petted on the head. Some animals must despise having their heads stroked. Other animals have heads that are so small that they can hardly be distinguished in order to pet them. Perhaps tiny animals like ants and beetles cannot stand having their heads petted. Oddly, I had no urge to comb the snow-white fur of the dog, and I decided not to think deeply about the reason. I have no choice but to keep folding and unfolding the dog’s ear. I might quit if I had a choice, I thought, and this time started folding and unfolding the puppy’s right ear. When the folding and unfolding suddenly switched from the left ear to the right, without the puppy’s consent and without notice or explanation, the puppy seemed bewildered, though I might have been mistaken.

I could not tell whether the puppy liked having its ears folded and unfolded; whether it took pleasure in the sensation or felt humiliated. I had no way to ask, and I could gather nothing from the puppy’s expression alone.

The fact that I had no way of knowing how the puppy felt did not cause me to stop or slow down, but to quicken the folding and unfolding of its ear.

Now the puppy seemed a bit confused, but I could not be sure. When I reached a certain speed of folding and unfolding the puppy’s ear, I felt that I was doing it habitually, and I thought that it was a rather inappropriate thing to do habitually, but this thought was not enough to make me stop. I adjusted my speed, gradually slowing the folding and unfolding until I stopped. A moment later, I began again and sped up incrementally until I could do it no faster, only to slow down to what I thought was a proper speed and maintain it – controlling my speed in this way, I felt like I was operating

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some kind of accelerator – but I did not think, At this rate, I could keep going forever.

Truly, I wanted the puppy to convey whether it was suffering or in pain by barking or showing its discontent, or by biting me or rebelling strongly, but the puppy remained still. It seemed somehow that the puppy had never barked, or did not know how to bark yet, but I did not think the puppy was mute. It appeared to me that the puppy was choosing not to bark, even though it could. The puppy neither tried to bite my hand, revealing its discomfort, nor to leave, so I had no choice but to continue folding and unfolding the puppy’s ear. The puppy now seemed slightly frightened, and I could more than understand that the puppy was frightened by what was happening to it, something it had perhaps never experienced before, and by the fact that it was impossible to know when it would be over. However, the expression on the puppy’s face was not definitely fright and, if I had to guess, it was closer to puzzlement.

I had nodded off early the previous evening, and dreamt that I combed my hair with care, then put on an old apron to fight a war. The war, the purpose of which was unclear, was somewhat like a field day, and everyone who took part was wearing an apron. The aprons seemed to have a function, and some people snatched aprons away from one another, but snatching aprons was not the purpose of the war. This war felt like another one of those wars with cause but without meaning. The enemy uniforms were newlooking aprons with vivid vertical stripes, but those on my side were sorry old aprons that seemed to have been brought from home. It was only by the aprons that we could distinguish friendly forces from the enemy. The friendly aprons all had colourful floral patterns but, because they were so worn, the flowers looked past their prime, wilted, devoid of all life, and abandoned on the aprons, rotting away on the aprons, and even reeking of decay. I thought that our floral aprons were no match for the enemy aprons, that their stripes were bringing shame to our floral patterns and overpowering them, and this alone was enough for me to sense that we were obviously going to lose. We suffered a dumbfounding loss, and the enemy appeared as dumbfounded as we were by the outcome. They did not take the old aprons that they had snatched as trophies, but instead hung them on tree branches in the forest where the battle had been fought. They departed, singing a mournful song that I had never heard before. Here and there, on the tree branches, hung many things in addition to the aprons. Flattened people, who were either

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dead or sleeping, hung like pieces of clothing. Some of them were absurdly fluttering in the wind, like pieces of clothing. Below some of the trees were people who had blown off like pieces of laundry, and they too seemed dumbfounded. All of it seemed to tell of the absurdity of the war that was being fought. After the enemy had taken away my sorry old apron, which I had treasured but thought it was time to discard, feeling a delightful humiliation that nearly put me on cloud nine, I deserted my troop and snuck into a vacated house, stole a turkey, and carried it home in my arms. The following day, I went off to a different war and died fighting, which marked the end of my dream. I suspect that the dream had something to do with becoming drunk early in the evening, wearing a colourful apron that makes me look impertinent, which someone had given me for some reason and, standing in the kitchen in a slightly manic state, having the sudden thought that it would be rather comical if I tried to learn classical ballet at my age. I wondered if I could bear the comedy and actually learn classical ballet, imagined my ankle joints rotating with great difficulty, thought about the hilarious genre of classical ballet and about practising ballet – after learning the basic poses of classical ballet, I would eschew classical ballet, not practising ballet for any reason, set to music or without music, and thus the movements of classical ballet would rust away in my body and eventually become obsolete, and would not bring about an unexpected transition in my life – and fell asleep in the middle of doing days-old dishes.

I woke up about an hour later, dimmed the living room light and proceeded to get drunk, making my eyes bleary and my heart glum, and dyeing my nose and earlobes red (my nose and earlobes turn red when I drink). I thought, Today the alcohol is making my head feel abundant with the Holy Spirit; my head is spinning, but why don’t I use the Holy Spirit’s deceptive force to drink more and fall asleep drunker? I kept on drinking until I was completely inebriated and, as I fell asleep, I thought about the melon and watermelon in the refrigerator and hoped that I would have another dream about fighting and dying in a war, this one featuring an ostrich, a partisan, a peach, a cheetah, a trench, a nipple, a poisonous mushroom, vodka, tomato ketchup, a balance scale, a morning glory flower and a secret code – or at least a few of those elements, or even just one of them. For example, I hoped for a partisan sacrificing himself for an ostrich, an ostrich betraying a partisan, a balance scale and a morning glory flower conspiring to protect a poisonous mushroom, or my witnessing an event that could be called the death of a

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morning glory flower. But none of the things I hoped for appeared, and I merely dreamt about a battlefield that was decisively missing the indispensable elements of war, though it was difficult to know what those were. The battlefield was clouded over, not by ominous energy signalling war, but rather by comical energy, which made me worry, This comical energy must dissipate to make room for ominous energy signalling war, which will then have to gather thickly like a dark rain cloud for the war to start, and the war must start in order for me to fight or something. In this very anticlimactic dream, I kept expecting a war to break out. Finally, it seemed that a war did break out somewhere, but I never had a chance to face the enemy or die in war. I escaped like a straggler and returned home without any loot. I usually felt uplifted when I dreamt about dying in war, but a dream about merely going to war made me feel uninspired. For some reason, after dreaming about dying in any way, my head felt the slightest bit clearer and my body refreshed.

Continuing to fold and unfold the dog’s ear, I remembered pausing as I ate a mushroom dish at home, a few days before, to think about the eccentric Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, who told the people who pestered him to leave him to pick his homegrown mushrooms, who had solved the Poincaré conjecture, which had been the biggest mathematical challenge of the time, but who had in the end become disappointed with mathematics and given it up, turned down prizes awarded to the greatest mathematicians, and was known to be living with his old mother on her pension. Specifically, I was imagining Perelman picking mushrooms at home, and quietly chewing on one, or holding one in his mouth. He is said to have abandoned mathematics, but I imagined that he had not been able to give it up, and was living with his head full of antagonism toward mathematics, growing mushrooms at home as if within those mushrooms lay answers to other difficult mathematical problems, spending the majority of his days quietly chewing on mushrooms, or holding one in his mouth, harbouring unspeakable antagonism toward the mushrooms, which he was sick and tired of looking at or even thinking about. Although it did not affect me in any way, I hoped that he would continue living like that, because that life seemed most suitable to him. I conjectured that his extreme antagonism toward mathematics would possibly lead him to another great mathematical discovery, and that the mushrooms toward which he harboured unspeakable antagonism would inevitably play a role in that outcome. In my opinion, there are musicians who write music while overcome by antagonism toward music and, quietly

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listening to their music, I feel extreme antagonism toward music. Likewise, there are authors who write while overcome by antagonism toward literature and, quietly reading their prose, I feel extreme antagonism toward literature.

For the most part, I can only stand the works of such musicians and authors.

As I continued folding and unfolding the dog’s ear, one random thought led to another until I remembered an evening before a reading of my recently published novel at a certain café, an event that I had reluctantly agreed to, at a time when heavy snow was forecast. Yet again, I was drinking, unable to sleep, and I thought that it would be best if no one came to the reading, but that some people would show up inexplicably, and I probably could not stop them from coming. I was curious whether they would be furious or pleased if, instead of reading, I stood at the entrance and handed each one a page ripped out of the novel that I was supposed to read from, and sent them away.

In preparation for the heavy snow and a reading scheduled on a day when heavy snow was forecast, I tried to emulate the sentence that uses all the letters of the English alphabet, ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’ (This sentence is widely used for testing typewriters and computer keyboards.

During the Cold War, when a hotline between the former Soviet Union and the USA was first installed, in a test of the teletype machinery, the American side wired the sentence ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890’ and the former Soviet Union famously responded, ‘What is the meaning of The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog?’ because they genuinely did not know what the sentence meant. Perhaps the former Soviet Union’s personnel and officers racked their brains searching for the hidden meaning of this enigmatic sentence from the enemy state.) I tried to make a sentence or phrase using all the consonants and vowels of Hangul, which was no easy task. I thought I might come up with one if I stayed up for several nights, but I did not see why I should take it upon myself to perform such a difficult task, so I gave up in the end, and thought that such a useless and annoying task could be delegated to an artificial intelligence that did not mind doing any useless or annoying task, a not-so-smart, or even a rather stupid, artificial intelligence, and decided to prepare, by unpreparedness, for the heavy snow and a reading on a day when heavy snow was forecast.

One night during the previous summer, after a long drought, with heavy rain forecast for the following day, I was hoping for heavy rain accompanied by thunder and lightning, or a downpour of something like heavy rain – hail, countless frogs, or anything that pours from the sky – and in anticipation

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and preparation, I thought about the Aramaic script, which is composed only of twenty-two consonants. I wondered what it would sound like if read without adding vowels, and whether that would make it like a primate’s call or birdsong. I never prepare for things like my future, for which I should necessarily prepare, but things that I have no say in, for example heavy snow and heavy rain, always make me prepare with strange anticipation, and I prepare with anticipation in my own totally useless way for those events, which I think is the best I can do.

The following day, ploughing through the heaviest snow in several years, a small number of people gathered. I never managed to ask why they had come, thus I never found out their reasons. I did not end up handing each person a page ripped out of my book and sending them away, because I got soft at the final moment, and I ended up reading while still intoxicated, reeking of alcohol after drinking again in the morning. Reading my own work is one of the things I do that feels so wrong. The act is very awkward and even embarrassing to me. There are authors who are good at reading, and therefore enjoy reading, and they read their works like actors, with the addition of body language and with total confidence; but, for some reason, I do not trust such authors. As an alternative to reading inside the café, I thought that it would not be terrible to give the reading in the heavy snow, in the corner of an alley, in a forest, or in a cemetery, together with an audience of my own choosing, getting blanketed by snow, the snow piling as high as our knees, perhaps until just before our feet became completely frozen, dedicating the event, above all else, to our poor feet, which were suffering the pain of freezing through no fault of their own, which would make it possible to call the event ‘A Reading for the Poor, Freezing Feet’, but I was unable to execute this. As another alternative, I thought about opening the book I was supposed to read to a random page, and then merely pretending to read, giving a silent reading, but I was unable to do that, either. As I read, I wondered whether the audience would catch on if my thoughts were all about how wrong it felt to be reading, but I could not tell if the audience caught on to this fact. I did not ask, so no one told me, but I hoped that someone had caught on. Ultimately, I did not get to wonder many times over about whether the people would be furious or pleased if I handed each one a page ripped out of my book and sent them away, which I regretted many times over.

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Going through such memories while almost mechanically folding and unfolding the dog’s ear, it did not seem that folding and unfolding the dog’s ear was helping me think, nor did there seem to be particularly good things to think about while folding and unfolding a dog’s ear; and therefore I was able to conclude that the thoughts that occurred had no relation to my folding and unfolding the dog’s ear.

Experiencing these thoughts while folding and unfolding the ear of the Maltese puppy, I felt like a person who has become sick and tired of something, and I even saw myself that way. I really was folding and unfolding the ear of the Maltese puppy like a person who is sick and tired of something.

But of course, I was not sick and tired of folding and unfolding the ear of the Maltese puppy, or of the Maltese puppy who let me borrow its compliant ear. By folding and unfolding the dog’s ear, I felt that I was facing tedious things, all things tedious or, in other words, the tedium in everything in life, the tedium that oppresses everything in life so much that without it there is little left in life, and what little remains might as well be called part of the tedium, the specific tedium of this life that will continue until the end of this life. The more I folded and unfolded the dog’s ear, the more unknowable was the state, the abyss, that I seemed to be falling tragically into and, as if I could not stop falling, as if to add to the depth of the abyss, I continued to fold and unfold the dog’s ear. Before I knew it, I was folding and unfolding the dog’s ear with a rigid mindset, which made me feel as though I was stringently planning an unsurprising and impossible life in which all determination and hope was futile.

While I was falling miserably into an unknowable state, all the while folding and unfolding the dog’s ear, the dog’s owner, who had taken an unnecessarily long shower – I assume because she did not want to face me in the living room – came out of the bathroom and stared at me incredulously, seeing that her dog’s ear was still being repeatedly folded and unfolded. In response, I looked incredulously at the dog, and then at her. The puppy had fallen asleep.

I thought about waking the puppy, but I decided not to. It did not seem that waking the puppy would help in that embarrassing situation.

Meanwhile, through the thin, white T-shirt that she had changed into, her stiff, dark nipples caught my eye. Her nipples were unbelievably firm, as if she had splashed cold water on them. Rather than looking sexually aroused, her nipples looked angry, expressing their anger along with their angry owner.

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Looking at her nipples, thinking that they were angry nipples, I felt strange.

Like strangers, we looked at each other for a time without words. In the middle of all of this, I could not keep my hands from folding and unfolding the dog’s ear. It felt like a task that I needed to see to the end. Feeling very awkward, I tapped the puppy’s head lightly to wake it up, but the puppy did not wake up right away, so I had to shake its head somewhat firmly. Just as I was thinking, What if it doesn’t wake up no matter how much I shake its head? the puppy woke up, to my relief. As if trying to comprehend the situation, it looked at me and its owner alternately, but it did not seem to comprehend anything. The puppy was unhelpful in so many ways.

It looked like she was going to say something, but then, as if giving up, she began to dry her hair with a towel. Even as she was doing so, she looked incredulously at the dog’s ear and me, as though she could not believe that her dog’s ear was being folded and unfolded endlessly. The puppy looked at her, seeming to seek help, but it did not bark or do anything. Not barking or doing anything seemed to make the puppy’s plea for help even louder. I thought that she might run up and snatch her puppy away from me and, if she did, I would not give up the puppy without a fight, though if she used brute force to take it away, I would likely give it up readily. However, she merely looked crossly at me and returned to the bathroom. A moment later, I heard her using the blow-dryer to finish drying her hair. The Maltese and I looked at each other and listened to the faint sound of the blow-dryer. I wondered, Does the Maltese know that to be the sound of a person drying her hair? Perhaps it had seen her drying her hair many times and knew the sound well. Perhaps she blow-dried the Maltese’s fur after bathing it, and the puppy liked when she blow-dried its fur and the sound of the dryer. But the puppy did not show a special reaction. It seemed nearly impossible to get a reaction out of the puppy, either to please it or to aggravate it. I was very curious what kind of dog this puppy would become in the future, and this was the first time I had wondered about a dog’s future. I thought that it might reach nirvana, though I was not sure whether that was a good thing for a dog. It did not seem that the dog had a lot of thoughts in its head that it was merely not expressing. It seemed more likely that it did not have any thoughts, and was expressing its thoughtlessness. In a way, it felt as though I was seeing an aspect of myself in the dog, an aspect that I was constantly lacking and therefore was trying to fill. The puppy, which was showing almost no reaction

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Arriving in a Thick Fog

to most things, resembled a plush toy of a puppy. It was as if this unusual puppy was living a double life as both a puppy and a plush toy of a puppy.

Suddenly, I felt like leaving the puppy toy and leaving the apartment quietly. I asked myself, Before I leave, should I hide the puppy toy somewhere where its owner cannot find it easily? Should I hide it in a place that may or may not be good for hiding a puppy toy, so as to make the owner of the puppy play hide-and-seek with the puppy toy? I looked at the puppy as if to convey my thoughts. The puppy looked blankly up at me. Looking down at the puppy, I wondered, Should I kidnap it instead? The puppy did not look at me as though it had read my mind and liked the idea, but I looked at the puppy and thought, It likes the idea. Assuming that I was going to go through with the kidnapping, putting the puppy on a leash and taking it out as if for a stroll somehow did not seem fitting. On top of that, the dog was too young, so unless I walked very slowly, dragging my feet like a disabled veteran, I was likely going to have a hard time adjusting my stride to the dog’s slow pace. I looked around for a bag that I might take the dog in, but there was none in sight. I saw one small handbag, but unless the puppy or the handbag employed magic, the puppy could not possibly fit in the bag. I blinked, thinking of a magic trick that would put the puppy into the handbag, but the puppy and the handbag remained separate. I was considering whether to hold the dog in my arms or to place it on my shoulder like a parrot or a mynah or an iguana, when I thought of a better idea. I grasped the dog by the scruff of its neck. I felt its small, soft, warm neck in my hand. When I picked it up, it felt as though I was holding a small, soft, warm dog-shaped bag. It was a kind of handbag. Thrown into confusion, the dog struggled a little and then went limp, plainly resigning to its helplessness – excessively so, in my opinion. I thought, It’s overreacting. Holding the dog up by its scruff, I felt like I was holding a dog-shaped bag, a thing that no one had ever carried as a bag, which was odd-looking but fabulous in its own way.

What is more, although holding it was slightly awkward, the bag was alive and moving, and could even bark, though I had yet to see it, and above all, it had ears that one could fold and unfold, making it a potentially fun and amazing bag. However, one could not put anything into the bag, and thus it stood no comparison to other bags, and more importantly it served no function as a bag. Still, I thought, It would be nice to roam the streets in the middle of the day carrying this dog like a bag.

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I would have had no problem ignoring the disapproving, cold gazes of the people on the noonday street, who would never in their dreams imagine that I was carrying a dog-shaped bag, but it seemed like a better idea to walk deserted streets in the middle of the night. Then the bag would languidly fill its blank eyes with the boring, deserted night street until it yawned and fell asleep, and after a nightmare about someone folding and unfolding its ear endlessly, it would wake up and bark. Then I would wake up from the sound and realise that I had been walking the deserted night streets in a somnambulant state, carrying a dog-shaped bag, let out a long sigh, fold and unfold the ear of the bag one time, and mumble, I may or may not wish that it was all a dream. In the end, I thought to myself, Although I can grasp the dog’s scruff like a handle, a dog is not a bag, so I probably couldn’t carry a dog by its scruff like a small bag and walk the streets at midday or in the middle of the night. I put the dog down on the living room floor. By setting the dog down, I intended to end the string of thoughts about the dog as a bag, but another thought flashed in my head. I thought, as another possibility, about taking the dog to a meeting place, explaining that I had recently created a work of art titled ‘Duchamp’s Dog Kidnapped by Duchamp’, skipping the story behind how the dog became ‘Duchamp’s Dog Kidnapped by Duchamp’, since there was no worthy story, stating that the dog reacts to almost nothing and is on the verge of transcendence, and demonstrating how unreactive the dog is, but ripping off Duchamp in that way felt like a shameful act, and I thought to myself, I cannot engage in such a shameful act.

Still, if I kidnapped the Maltese puppy, I thought I might, after much consideration, name the dog Funny Dog or Any Dog, since a name is important, even for a dog. Funny Dog or Any Dog, which I would spend most nights looking at crossly while drinking, as it slept on its stomach on the living room floor, would be disallowed from barking and making funny noises. Additionally, it might receive intensive training, regardless of its will, with the goal of making it the world’s best dog athlete in the triple jump, and compete under the name, Funny Dog or Any Dog. Although Funny Dog or Any Dog would not need to become a sceptic like me, it is possible that it would become an unusual dog, which, when its name was called, Funny Dog or Any Dog, or Any Dog or Funny Dog, would not come, but instead would hide itself as if to disappear forever, then reappear as a changed dog that only looked like the original dog, like a reincarnated dog.

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Arriving in a Thick Fog

Funny Dog or Any Dog would have to learn, either on its own or with my help, to morph, and when I was drunk and out of it, perform the magic of splitting from one dog into two, three, four, or even nine dogs – preferably no more than that, since any more than that would make it difficult to count, though I would not mind if each of the nine split again into nine dogs and ran amok, making it impossible to count – before gradually decreasing in number and returning to being one dog, so that I could hardly speak from the absurdity of it all, and would think, Oh, the things that Funny Dog or Any Dog gets itself into! However, transforming the dog into such a dog would not only require effort on the dog’s part, but also considerable effort on mine.

Having arrived at this thought, everything that would happen after kidnapping the dog felt too cumbersome, and so I was able to drop the whole matter.

I did not understand why I did not leave the dog alone, and leave the dog’s owner to dry her hair in the bathroom, and just leave the apartment.

Inevitably, I looked at the dog again, as if to ask for help, but the dog looked up at me as if it had only one expression, as if with just that one expression, it could express everything. Looking at the dog, which looked as though it was showing some kind of reaction, at the same time giving the impression that it might not be, I wondered, What sort of dog is this? The way the dog looked at me, it was as though it had read my mind and was saying, ‘This is the sort of dog I am.’ I thought, It is telling me that it is the sort of dog that could not be any more blank. The dog did not look at me as if it had read my mind again, and was saying, ‘You got it!’ Still, I interpreted it that way, and finally I exclaimed, How in the world did this dog come to have no expression except a blank look?

The sound of the blow-dryer faded to silence. A moment later, she came out of the bathroom. She looked at me as though she could not believe that I had still not left. I tried unsuccessfully to not interpret it that way, and was rather regretful that I had not left after all that time. It seemed that she had given me a chance to leave while she was drying her hair in the bathroom, and I had not taken that chance. Seeing that I was still folding and unfolding the dog’s ear, she told me that I had better stop, which felt like a request, a warning, and a threat at the same time. Nevertheless, I ignored her request, warning, or threat, and did not stop what I was doing. She frowned and looked crossly at me. I avoided her gaze, and my eyes, in need of a place to linger, searched, and landed, of all places, on her two dark nipples, which were still stiff underneath her T-shirt. Strangely, as if those small, dark nipples

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possessed the power to unsettle a person’s mind, I became very unsettled looking at them. I looked at them as if I could not believe that those two small, dark nipples could unsettle my mind so severely. Her nipples, which were too big to call small dots but still appeared to be two dots, held my gaze, and seemed to be telling me that if I looked at them more closely, I might become even more unsettled, which is why I did not turn my head, but looked at them more closely, and became more unsettled. I could not take my eyes off of them. Conscious of my gaze, she moved her arms slightly to cover her nipples.

In the end, she went away, this time to the kitchen, and the two dark nipples that had unsettled me disappeared with her. I let out a sigh of relief.

I did not know when the two nipples that held my gaze would reappear, or in what ways they would unsettle me. I felt as though I needed to be mentally prepared, but I was clueless as to how to mentally prepare to face a pair of nipples that unsettled me so severely. A moment later, I heard the sound of something being cut with a knife in the kitchen. It sounded like she was cutting a daikon radish, but I did not smell radish. If it was not a radish, it was probably some other hard vegetable, like a potato or a carrot. I focused my auditory and olfactory senses to figure out what was being cut on the cutting board, but I failed. There was a faint smell, but it was impossible to identify. I imagined that there was a hint of animosity in the smell.

Suddenly the sound of cutting became louder. It sounded like she was wielding the knife with great force to chop something to pieces. I imagined that a large chicken, with its head and feet still attached, was being butchered.

If it was not a chicken, perhaps she was butchering a white radish, as if lopping off its limbs. I expected her to appear before me at any moment, perhaps holding a freshly sharpened knife, which she had been using to butcher a large chicken, or a large white radish, as if lopping off its limbs.

Running away at the thought of this seemed like something a coward would do, and I wanted to be a coward and run away, but I did not run away, not because my feet would not move, but for some other reason. I was still folding and unfolding the ear of the Maltese, and I thought that it was not the time for that, but at the same time, strangely, I wanted to see her appear, holding a freshly sharpened knife. I thought it would be a nice sight to see, and I had not seen a nice sight for a long time, so I thought that it was actually the right time to be doing what I was doing, and I continued to fold and unfold the dog’s ear. It felt as though the cutting sound would not stop as long as I did

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not leave, but soon the cutting sound stopped. I had a hunch that she was not actually cutting or chopping anything, but was just striking the cutting board with a knife, as if chopping it to pieces. After a few moments, I heard a loud noise that sounded like a knife being slammed down onto the cutting board.

She reappeared, not holding a knife, and told me that I should leave. I was rather sorry to see that she was not holding a large, freshly sharpened knife.

She had put on an apron with blue vertical stripes. Because of the apron, I could not see the nipples that had so unsettled me, which was both a relief and a pity. Her apron with vertical stripes looked quite similar to the ones that the enemy was wearing in my dream the previous night, and it seemed to be plainly displaying animosity toward me. I could hardly bear the animosity that the stripes on the apron were plainly revealing in the form of thick, repeating, vivid, blue, vertical lines, but I did not leap to my feet as if I had been waiting for her words. My hand, which was folding and unfolding the dog’s ear, seemed attached to the dog. I felt that as long as my hand wanted to linger, I could not get up. I could not leave without my hand. Steeling myself and thinking that it was my last chance, I folded and unfolded the dog’s ear three more times, then folded it down one final time, and sat like that for a moment. It was as if I had tied up some loose end, but no loose end seemed to have been tied in actuality. On the contrary, it was as if all knots had been loosened.

She told me that she had to get ready to go out but, somehow, she did not look like a person who was about to go out. However, staying there any longer was difficult to even think about. Without a word, I slowly set the Maltese puppy on the living room floor, got up slowly, and walked slowly to the foyer.

I was taking slow steps, but my heart was darting away. In the foyer, I tied my shoelaces, as slowly as I could. Because I tied one shoe too tight, I had to untie it and retie it. She and her dog stood there, watching me struggle with my shoelaces. To them, I seemed to have become a spectacle. I marvelled, Depending on the case, even the tying of shoelaces can be a spectacle to someone.

Having become a spectacle, I opened the door very slowly and walked out.

She and her dog stood there and watched me, their spectacle, walk out. We did not even say goodbye. The dog did not bark noisily like some dogs do when people leave, but looked at me very blankly. It seemed to have no regrets at all about having to part with me, after I had so painstakingly folded and unfolded its ears. I hoped that the dog would look at me scornfully, as if its

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blank expression had been a trick all along, but it still looked blank. I thought that the unchanging blank expression was an extraordinary trick, and this made the dog seem like an extraordinary dog. It is possible that the whole time I was in the apartment, I had been nothing more than a spectacle for a dog.

Abridged from Arriving in a Thick Fog, to be published by Deep Vellum (Dallas, 2020).

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Interview: Anuradha Roy I nter view: Anuradha I nter view: RoyAnuradha Roy

A

S WE GO TO PRESS, Anuradha Roy’s All the Lives We Never Lived has just

been announced winner of the 2018 TATA Book of the Year Award for fiction. One of India’s most successful and prominent writers, she is no stranger to literary acclaim. An Atlas of Impossible Longing and The Folded Earth won prizes and praise internationally, and in 2015 she was longlisted for the Booker with Sleeping on Jupiter, which went on to win the 2016 DSC South Asian Prize.

You’ve worked in publishing, are a publisher in your own right and are now a writer. Tell us a bit about your experience as someone closely involved in all aspects of the trade.

Yes, it’s curious how book production and selling have been a part of my life. My father-in-law had a bookshop, Ram Advani Booksellers, where I’d do counter duty when I happened to be in town; and when I was in college in Calcutta I did a summer job with an independent press, Stree, where I was taught the ropes by my cousin Mandira Sen, who runs it still. The first thing she made me do was an inventory of all the books in the storeroom, just to show me publishing wasn’t a glamour job about

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Interview: Anuradha Roy

meeting famous authors. Much of it is drudge work, and that was useful to know early on.

I ended up as acquisitions editor for literature at the OUP, and then, in 2000, my husband Rukun Advani and I started our own press, Permanent Black. Once I began writing fiction I found it hard to edit. It’s difficult to carry two or more books in my head simultaneously, so I stopped and focused on design, which is what I still do for our press. I do all our cover designs. I think working with visuals rather than words uses a totally different part of the brain, that is how it feels.

Who are the writers, from India or elsewhere, from the present or the past, whom you most admire or consider to have had an influence on you?

The books I read as a child are still with me: Sukumar Roy’s Nonsense Verse, Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s The Golden Goblet, Gone with the Wind, books by Nevil Shute, Dickens, Hardy and Jane Austen. Cheap translations of Dostoevsky and Chekhov used to be all over when I was growing up, and their writing had a huge impact on me. Later in life, I came to know Pather Panchali by Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhaya, a book I first read in translation and then relearned the Bengali script in order to read it in the original.

Today – I love the enigmatic, beautiful short stories of Alice Munro, the mingling of fact and fiction in the nonfiction of Ryszard Kapuscinski. I admire and envy the gifts of many contemporary writers: I have just been reading Maya Jasanoff ’s Dawn Watch and Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fires, which are both breath-taking.

There are too many writers to mention: you soak in the books that matter to you and they become part of your bloodstream and your writing.

Each of your novels has a very atmospheric sense of place, whether it is Nomi’s first home in the jungle, the sea by Jarmuli, the Scandinavian forest, or the ‘para’ in which Myshkin lived. What is the importance of a sense of place, and the imagery used to create it, in your novels?

I had the sound of the sea in my head along with Nomi – she was sort of washed up by the sea in the short story that was the seed of that novel – she is a girl some elderly women spot on a beach. I had no idea then why she was there, how she got there, and the process of writing was one of finding her and finding her landscapes, whether in Scandinavia or in an imagined beach town. All the fictional places in my novels come partly from the imagination

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and partly from experience – I came to know a Scandinavian forest at midnight during a walk through one and it changed a lot in the writing of course, but I drew from that walk when I was writing that section. This goes for my other fictional places too. Aspects of those places never existed other than in my mind, though others did, in altered forms; and all of it comes together in a process I can’t quite analyse, during the writing.

I love the titles of each of your novels. Tell us about how you came to choose them and about the wordplay in ‘folded earth’ and ‘impossible longing’.

I was talking to a poet recently, and she said she always arrived at the titles of her books right at the start – it helped her to get a grip on the book somehow. For me it’s the opposite – I arrive at the title right at the end, when I feel I have the book there and can begin to think of a way to capture it in a fistful – which will be the title – something that will both explain as well as hold back. Something that will unfurl into a whole novel.

With The Folded Earth, the title refers to the geological folds in the earth when tectonic plates hit each other. My father was a geologist; he had told us as children that the Himalaya came about as a result of such a collision of landmasses and, since Folded Earth is set in the Himalaya, it was a natural title for me – it also works perfectly in a metaphoric sense. The other titles were much harder to reach, days of thinking and trying out and rejecting.

The women characters in your novels – Maya, Latika, Vidya, Gouri, Gayatri, to name a few – are both particularly strong and strikingly distinct from one another and from the norms of traditional society. Tell us something about the experience of creating them.

Women who break rules, even in very subtle and understated ways as Gouri does, interest me. The women you mention are all women I would have been drawn to in real life – they are often contradictory, they may not even be entirely likeable at times, but they are vital and real and interesting.

Some readers, for example, have had a strong reaction to Gayatri, calling her selfish and spoilt for leaving her son to be able to paint. The same people don’t blame Nek, Gayatri’s husband, for leaving too. In India particularly, the tradition of valorising men for putting spiritual or scholarly or political pursuits over wife and family is very strong – such men are revered as monastic and single-minded. Yet the same single-mindedness in a woman shocks even some women readers. That’s good. I like making women

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characters who hit where it hurts, who might make you question your own attitudes.

In All The Lives We Never Lived, there are several historical characters, including Walter Spies, Rabindranath Tagore, Percy Lancaster, Beryl de Zoete and Begum Akhtar. What led you to bring them into the novel and blend their reality into your fiction?

The book began with a boy’s immersion in paintings – and the magical thing was how the historical interconnections became apparent to me during the research. I started out with a boy; then as I stood in a museum in Bali before the paintings of Walter Spies, I discovered that he died on 19 January, the very day my beloved old dog had died, only a few months earlier. I know this sounds whimsical, but instantly it felt as if my life, the novel and one real life character were all connected. Spies became the painter who would enter the life of the boy. Slowly these ripples of connectedness spread wider – via Tagore, the writer Maitreyi Debi, and Beryl de Zoete, who wrote a book with Spies; and it became even clearer that this world which we think of as past is close to ours, and very present even in mundane ways: travel, hopes and dreams, health, the discovery of new countries, unlikely friendships.

Where there is a striving for happiness in hostile surroundings, and where overwhelming forces of history can sweep everything aside.

You have achieved a lot as a literary writer from India who has attracted global acclaim. In an age where most writers promote themselves heavily on social media, you have maintained a low profile. Do you not feel the pressure to be on social media all the time?

I live in a remote area and I can blame my relative absence from social media on the bad internet connection there! Seriously though, social media demands far too much time and a kind of creativity I don’t have.

As a writer of literary fiction, is there any particular audience you have in mind and how do you think literary writers can widen their readership in the sub-continent?

I can’t write with an audience in mind. I have characters, places, ideas in my mind and I need to figure out how best to transform these into fiction.

When you are struggling – sometimes over a long period, years maybe – to create a fictional world, complete with its language and architecture, that is

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Interview: Anuradha Roy

enough battle. What happens to the book in the market, how to widen readership: these things can’t and don’t interest me when I am writing. The sales worry me somewhat after a book is out – because I know what a struggle it is for my publisher to sell books in a largely indifferent literary landscape.

I am not sure what is meant by literary fiction – I take it to mean books with themes and language that are somewhat demanding – and sales figures for such books will always be lower than for pulp fiction.

Last but not least, you started your journey as a writer rather later in life than many of your contemporaries. How did you decide to write An Atlas of Impossible Longing and do you feel the pressure to ‘perform’ that seems to affect most Indian writers? Please add something on this for our readers and especially for people those who aspire to be literary writers in India today.

I’ve actually written, published and earned from stories since my childhood and later from reviewing and writing non-fiction, but had never felt the need to write a novel, never wanted a career in writing, only wanted one in publishing. It was when we were struggling to set up Permanent Black and things were really tough that somehow the space opened up for a novel. It came out of the blue and at that point it was what I just had to do. I wrote it over a period of – I think – two or three years and by the time it was published (which took ages) I was forty.

I’m not sure exactly what is meant by ‘pressure to perform’ – do you mean to succeed, win prizes, etc. and deal with the festivals and publicity events?

I try to limit the number of events and festivals I attend because I need quiet time at home to be able to write. I also try to start work on something new while a book is still in press so that I am occupied with something quite different by the time it is published. That way the whole business of prizes and reviews is kept at a distance. If you can’t disconnect once a book is out, it is crippling. My pottery and design work, my dogs and my remote location, all help I think to keep the literary world at a distance.

I think the best part of the making of a book is over once my first draft is done. The time with the first draft feels like the solitary, pure, incandescent time, discovering my own book.

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A Happy Ending A Happy Ending Zach MacDonald

Zach MacDonald

T

his story has a happy ending, but first Ye-lim must crawl on her belly through a swamp of icy mud. The mud is viscous and sucking, calling her to join the grave of those who came to this place before her. There are bones: a femur here, shards of what may be skull there. Human or animal, she can’t tell about the skull shards. She finds a tooth, its enamel yellowed like an old corn kernel, embedded in the muck that squelches between her raw fingers. It reminds her of the teeth on the man – a soldier – who shattered her father’s body and mind, leaving him a vegetable to wither slowly away, spine broken not far above the tailbone.

The skull shards are all from animals, she decides. Like that man. Like her.

She coats herself from head to toe with the mud, for camouflage, but it begins to snow and a dusting of white powder now covers this patch of earth, this graveyard for those fleeing, whose bodies the border guards buried in the mire and left. The white is broken only by her passing, so that she leaves behind a brown slug trail, leading any observer’s eye directly to her, here in the open, an easy target. If an eye should fall upon her – an eye whose body holds a gun – she will die. She will be scattered teeth and two femurs. A rib cage. If she’s lucky her flesh will be eaten by crows and part of her will one day be carried aloft on summer breezes into the blue.

Behind her are the mountains of her homeland, covered with that same dusting of new snow, making them bluish-white in the clear air, as though the sky is as much a part of them as the earth itself. They rise part of the way to heaven, and perhaps the highest summits do reach that realm. Her brother had always said that he would climb one someday, when he had more energy.

She and her brother had always spoken of the future, as though the present were an interim stage, long but temporary, like the evening shadow of a tree

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stretched across a meadow. After their father died in the night, already a skeleton, drooling on the mat in the corner, their mother took to speaking mostly in the past tense. You would think, listening to her, that the past had been a time of great contentment – and maybe it had been before Ye-lim existed. Either way, the present was insubstantial for all of them. A shadow.

Ye-lim’s brother won’t speak of the future anymore. He was killed that morning as they fled: a bullet to the back of the head and he was gone. He’d held the last coils of razor wire up for her as she slithered beneath them, his hands wrapped in pieces of cut-up trousers. They were spotted from a distance. Shots were fired. She managed to get through, and when she looked back he was already falling into the nest of wire his hands had held seconds before. She’s seen two public executions in her life, and recognised the obliteration of his forehead as the exit wound. She rolled down the hill, protecting her head with her arms, hoping to become a blur, rolling so fast that the sight of a rifle couldn’t be trained on her, and when she was able to gain her feet she ran, because he’d told her before they made their run for it that morning – and in the nights leading up to it, during which they’d clipped a path through those rows of razor wire at the end of the valley – to make sure she got away no matter what, to live, and that he would do the same.

No matter what.

This story has a happy ending, but first Ye-lim must cross the Tumen River.

China is on the other side: freedom and safety, if the stories are to be believed – stories so potent, so poisonous, that being caught spreading them means the disappearance of entire families. If you aren’t disappeared, you’re beaten within an inch of your life, like Father, and if you’re not beaten, you’re killed.

Usually it’s by gunshot. They make the village watch. As an example.

Ye-lim and her brother didn’t tell anyone when their mother died. She died weeping, and the last thing she said was that it was happy weeping, because she was on her way to see Father. In the night, during her fever, she’d met him at Arirang Pass in a dream, and he’d told her that they’d be together very soon. Her body grew cold after she expired, colder than it seemed it should be, as if it were turning to ice, but her brother told her it was just the same temperature as the air, which living things never feel as it really is. They buried her in the middle of the night, in the soil of their floor, after peeling back the thick rugs. They used a pickaxe to break up the dry, hard-packed dirt before switching to shovels. If the authorities found out she’d died, there

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Zach MacDonald

was no telling what they might do to them; it was said parentless children ran a greater risk of fleeing for the border.

Wherever her brother’s body is, it’s the same temperature as the air now, thinks Ye-lim. The water of the river is surely even colder, yet she must cross.

This is what her brother wanted her to do. She looks behind her to make sure there are no border guards, and no one in general who might seek a reward for reporting an imminent escape. Instead of seeing people, her gaze falls on the mountains, the trees that blanket them leafless now, like thick dark whiskers, but which are vibrant green in the summer, and ablaze with oranges, reds and yellows in the autumn. The mountains are home, but if they could speak they would tell her to go; they are older than time, and their crowns bear witness to heaven.

She splashes into the Tumen, black water pulling at her frail body. She is thin as a blade of grass, without insulation, muscle all burned up by her heart, her lungs, her brain. She’s eaten a handful of rice in two days, and chewed on dead straw in a field. She’s starving to death, but if she can make it there might be food, and people who will part with it for her.

The river is fifty metres across here. It comes up to her thighs. Her head grows light and she worries she might faint. If she faints, it’s over: her body will be found on the river bank, and it won’t matter then which country it’s in. With the lightness in her head comes an unexpected surge of sharpened vision, and the mountains of China pop out at her. They aren’t so different from the ones behind. They reach for heaven. They are an expression of the earth’s longing for the sky, to meld with the world where birds soar.

The riverbed goes out from under her. She paddles furiously, now swims.

The heat is whisked from her body like wind blowing out the flame of a kerosene lamp. She thrusts her limbs against the swirling water. I’m stronger than you, she thinks, and as her feet brush against pebbles again, gaining purchase, carrying her on beyond the halfway point of the river, she chokes the words out against the water’s babble: I’m stronger than you.

This story has a happy ending, but first Ye-lim must learn that China does not mean freedom and safety. When she wanders into town, hypothermic, hair frozen against her scalp, she’s taken by an old woman with sad, sympathetic eyes to a man who only calls himself Lee. Ye-lim sees Lee push some crumpled notes into the old woman’s hand, and she nods and leaves his room without casting another look at the girl on the floor, bathed in the

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amber light of an electric heat lamp, shivering uncontrollably. Even through her exhaustion, and the agonising cold in her feet, so complete that she feels they may never thaw in the centre, she notes that the old woman looks ashamed as she hobbles quickly out the door.

Lee feeds her for days. Hot soup. Rice. Crackers. Bits of pork and sweet potato. He brings her warm clothes. He tells her in Korean that he can protect her, that she needs him, because if the police were to discover her she’d be sent back to North Korea, and he’d be fined, even imprisoned, for harbouring an illegal economic migrant. Lee’s taking a big risk for her, he says, and she doesn’t even have any money to pay him with, does she?

But that’s OK, says Lee, because she can compensate him in a different way, if she’d like to avoid discovery in this gossipy town, where no one is quite so nice and hospitable as him.

If Ye-lim is sent back to North Korea, she’ll be executed. If not executed, she’ll go to one of the camps that people are disappeared to. She’s heard stories since she was only small, that the camps can be worse than death itself.

When her health has improved a little, Lee exacts his payment. That’s the first time Ye-lim is raped. She shrieks at a burst of pain when he pushes himself into her, and he slaps a pudgy hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. The skin of his fingers is winter-dry, the palm coarse. There is an oily feeling where he’s entered her, and the smell of blood is in the frosty air, but Lee doesn’t stop, his face frightening in its excitement, in its wrinkled grimaces of what might be pleasure, and in the warning it flashes not to oppose what has begun.

When he’s finished he grunts and rolls off her, and points to the washroom with the shower. Inside, there’s a button to press on a plastic box that makes the water warm.

Clean yourself up, he tells her, frowning at the dark red spot on the blanket.

One morning Ye-lim awakens to voices. There is a man at the front door in a uniform that looks a bit like a North Korean soldier’s, but different. By his swagger and tone as he speaks to Lee, it’s clear he’s an authority figure, and she guesses that he is police. As Lee speaks, he steps back to open up the officer’s view into the room, and the latter peers at Ye-lim with stony and inscrutable eyes. Fear settles on her like frost on a windowpane: there’s no telling what this man is capable of. To her relief, he looks back at Lee, nods, and leaves without another word. Lee closes the door but doesn’t speak to Ye-lim for the rest of the day, except to grunt at her to eat when he brings her a plate of rice and vegetable soup.

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In the evening the officer comes back, hardly recognisable. He no longer has his uniform on, and looks smaller, skinnier, his face pinched and rat-like.

Lee turns to Ye-lim, the frowning lines of his expression elongated by the bare low-wattage bulb above, and tells her to be good and do what she’s told.

Then he leaves through the same door the officer just entered. That night is the second time Ye-lim is raped, and through it all, and afterward, she feels not only less than human, but less than an animal. She is mere animated matter, muck from the swamp she crawled through gathered into the form of a girl. She is filled up with filth, composed of it. Her eyes are holes. She wonders if her memories from before the mud, of her escape and all the years of her life preceding it, are even real.

Afterward, as she holds herself on the floor of the shower, too tired and sickened even to weep, she thinks of her brother holding up the razor wire.

It was all real. She is real. He was real. If her brother were here now he’d kill Lee and the officer for what they’ve done, or else die trying. But he’s not: he’s already dead, his skull obliterated by a bullet. Her stomach heaves at the recollection, and she vomits bile and bits of rice onto her own legs, then directs the stream of hot water over it, watching the yellowish matter circle the drain and disappear into its hair-choked black maw. She finds her feet, steam rising from her dripping body in this air that never warms.

Her brother had told her to live, no matter what – and if their fates had been reversed, if it were she who had been shot instead, he would have done the same. That was their agreement.

The front door is opened in the next room. Ye-lim hears the clumping sound of Lee stamping the snow off his boots.

I’m stronger than you, thinks Ye-lim, directing her thoughts toward him, mouthing the words with trembling lips. And then, no longer concerned with whether he hears her, she says it out loud: I’m stronger than you.

This story has a happy ending, but first Ye-lim must beg Lee to help her leave the border town. She wants to get to South Korea. She believes in her heart that it’s where she’s meant to go. She’s seen the pamphlets and other documents that are said to have come from giant balloons floated to the North from the South. She’s seen the pictures of shining cities and skyscrapers, the gluttonous abundance of food, the photos of fleshy smiling faces, aglow with good health; she’s read the South Korean constitution and understood much of it. To be caught in possession of these materials is, of course, a crime

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in the North. If not burned outright by cover of night, after they’ve been read, such documents are hidden away in the most secret crannies of homes, even buried or tucked deep into the hollows of trees, kept as sacred treasures in the underground religion of Hope.

As Ye-lim begs, Lee slaps her across the face so hard that it loosens one of her teeth – a weak one that was starting to rot. After that he ignores her for the rest of the evening, but the next morning he comes to her and says that he’s thought about her request, and yes, it’s time for her to go. He will take her to the bus station and put her on a bus to the city, where he’s arranged for a refugee care team to take her in.

That night, and again just before dawn, Lee uses her flesh to exact his final payments, in the same manner as before. He takes her to the station early, without breakfast, and puts her on the first bus out, pushing a small bag of rice crackers into her hand. Unlike the other passengers, she has no belongings with her, nothing. It will be a long ride, Lee tells her, and then the bus is pulling out of the station, onto the cracked pavement of a two-way road, and she is gone from him.

She can’t read Chinese characters, and the text on the back of the seat in front of her is indecipherable. She can speak to no one. She tries to make herself small in the seat, curling up to be out of sight of the driver’s suspicious eyes in the rear-view mirror, and watches the landscape of forests and dormant rice paddies speed past the window. Brown mountains observe the bus from a distance, the heads of the highest adorned with platinum clouds that seem frozen in place. Go on, they whisper to her, their voices soft in her head. They know nothing of the religion of Hope, but they have gazed into their own heavens, and bid her reach her own.

The bus ride lasts for many hours, and evening is approaching when it enters a city far larger than any Ye-lim has ever seen. At the terminal where she’s told by the driver to get off the bus, there is no one to meet her. She waits patiently near the place where she disembarked, hands folded in front of her, wondering if Lee’s contacts will recognise the thin Korean girl in the oversized jacket and pants. The sky gets darker and electric lights buzz to life.

Still no one comes, and Ye-lim understands she’s been lied to. She sleeps in a locked toilet stall that night, huddled in the corner, in a washroom that has no door. It’s too cold for her to fall asleep, so she hovers in a place between unconsciousness and lucidity, rubbing her arms and legs and blowing on her fingers.

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She survives for a few days by drinking out of the cleanest looking puddles she can find. When the puddles are frozen, she breaks off chunks of ice and places them in a discarded tin she found, then slowly melts them in the exhalations of a hot air vent next to a building made of glass.

Except for half a dumpling she found dropped on the sidewalk, she doesn’t eat for those three days. The tooth loosened by Lee falls out as she fiddles at it with her starving tongue. The top of it, above the root, is a shrivelled yellow corn kernel, like the one that squelched between her fingers in the grave-mud.

She wonders if the rest of her teeth are still white, or if she’s becoming rotted through and through.

On a bleak mid-morning, as she searches desperately for food, shivering violently in a well-swept, affluent-looking square, a young Chinese man passing by her stops and calls out, Annyeong. Though it’s only a greeting in Korean, he gives it the upper inflection of a question. Ye-lim turns to him, says annyeong back, and at the young man’s handsome and gentle smile she feels tears prick her eyes.

From the South or the North? he asks slowly, in choppy, accented Korean, studying her emaciated frame and bedraggled outerwear.

The North, she answers, and becomes instantly terrified that this man’s demeanour is all a fraud, that’s he’s an undercover authority of some sort, tracking down defectors from the DPRK. But the man’s smile doesn’t change, and he seems to sense her panic.

Come with me, he tells her.

She is led down many streets, which grow increasingly uneven and winding, dingier, where dogs with sad eyes roam aimlessly about, sniffing at tangled piles of refuse.

It’s far, says the man, walking in front with his back to her. So we can be away from the government’s eyes.

Ye-lim guesses that means away from officers, like the man who came to Lee’s house in the border town.

They come to a dark flight of stairs, leading down, in a narrow alley where high walls mire them in artificial dusk. At the bottom is a clean basement room with space heaters that thaw the air. There Ye-lim meets several others, one of whom is an ethnic Korean woman, middle-aged, from the DPRK; she was brought to China by her mother, she tells Ye-lim, when she was no more than six, but maintained a conversational ability in Korean all her life. She explains how she was granted refugee status as a child, but that times have

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changed, and the authorities will deport Ye-lim back to North Korea if she is caught.

Ye-lim tells her she wants to go to South Korea, at which the Korean woman draws air through her teeth with a hiss.

We know how to get you there, says a man seated nearby, glancing at his phone screen when it makes a sound. You have to go through Laos into Thailand. From Thailand you can be deported to South Korea.

Ye-lim tells them she has nothing. Her brother had been carrying the money for both of them when he’d been shot: a fistful of paper notes folded into the front pocket of his trousers.

It grows very quiet in the room. Eyes become distant, or fall to the floor.

You will have to sell something, says the young man who brought her here, not looking at her, his face robbed of its handsomeness by a disquieting solemnity.

What is it? Ye-lim begins to ask – but the answer is already dawning on her. She sees it in the Korean woman’s haunted gaze. There are decades of suffering floating inside it, like clouds of sediment in dirty water, only truly visible in this moment.

I’m sorry, the woman tells her. The journey is expensive, and you have nothing else.

This story has a happy ending, but first Ye-lim will be prostituted for a month.

The secret aid organisation, with its subterranean base of operations, makes the arrangements. Any of them, they tell Ye-lim, will be arrested on the spot for complicity in helping North Korean defectors, should they be caught.

They station Ye-lim for sixteen hours a day in a nondescript apartment with several Chinese girls. Each room has a bed with sheets that are changed twice a week. There are dark plastic bags over the windows and the dusty curtains are drawn tight as well, so the only light in the rooms comes from dim lamps with red and orange shades. Specific features are not clear in the apartment, and as a rule none of the girls speak with the clients, so at any hour the place is filled only with the mumbles of men as they undress, their grunts, the quivering of mattresses, and low, passionless gasps. It is a place of anonymity. Here the girls are simply bodies, complicit, undesirable save for their sexual function. No one comes there to ask questions and no one, Ye-lim is assured, will identify her origins.

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She is fed three times a day, hardly tasting the food, but no longer feeling hunger so great that it aches. For a while the sensation of being satiated is alien to her. She has felt physical fullness in her stomach, but never satisfied in this way, her belly warm inside, as if it’s filled with soft, smouldering coals that radiate warmth through her limbs.

The empty socket in her jaw begins to throb. When the side of her face swells, and the throbs reach a crescendo of agonising hammer blows that prevent her from sleeping, someone from the Organisation brings her pills, and after some days the swelling goes down and the pain fades. The men who came to have their way with her never noticed the swelling, nor sensed her hurt. For them her face was a shadow realm, swaying silent beyond the reach of their attention, like tree branches in the night.

She doesn’t know how much clients are charged at the nebulous apartment, but after four weeks she is brought back to the basement operations room of the Organisation, where they inform her that she’s made enough for the journey, including the costs of a fellow traveller as far as Laos. The Korean woman, who goes by the Chinese name Ming, will be the one to accompany her on the long journey.

They travel only by bus, gradually working their way south, keeping to themselves as much as possible. Ming asks Ye-lim why she stares out the window for hours at a time, when there’s nothing to see but mountains, but Ye-lim only shrugs. She tries to sleep, but when she does her mind becomes disoriented, believing she’s back in the city, about to wake up for another shift of mute men thrusting themselves into her, lubricated with cold gel from a plastic tube.

Several days into the journey she is struck by a mysterious bout of nausea, accompanied by vomiting. The first time she vomits is on the bus, onto the floor, and the driver yells something at her when he sees it at a rest stop. She and Ming clean it up with toilet paper. Ye-lim thinks it might be food poisoning, but the sickness persists and Ming suspects otherwise; Ming buys a stick for her to urinate on and Ye-lim learns that she’s pregnant.

All the men at the apartment had to use protection, Ming says. Did one of them not?

Ye-lim doesn’t think so. She knows in the pit of her stomach that it was one of her rapists in the border town, either Lee or the officer. They filled her up with filth.

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You’ll need an abortion, says Ming, but there’s no way we can afford it now. You only made enough money to get to Thailand.

I don’t need an abortion, Ye-lim tells her.

You’re in no position to have a child, argues Ming.

I can do it. I won’t kill what’s inside me.

Ye-lim has had enough of death, both outside and within. The life inside her, she tells herself, if it persists in growing, will be beautiful and good. It will not be its father.

They cross into Laos together, in the back of a moving van driven by local members of the wider Organisation. They have agreements worked out with certain border guards, some of which require portions of the cash that Ming has carried for she and Ye-lim, in order for those agreements to be honoured.

The cargo area they are seated in is stiflingly hot. When the doors of the truck are opened, stinging Ye-lim’s eyes with brilliant tropical sunlight, she is in Laos. Greenery abounds outside, and a dark-skinned man in jeans and a torn T-shirt bearing indecipherable words in English lettering ushers her and Ming out.

This is where we part, says Ming, and presses four banknotes into Ye-lim’s hand. This is Thai money. Into your pocket now, hurry. Everything for Laos is taken care of. You go with these men now. I have to go back the way we came.

Unexpectedly, the stoic Ming embraces Ye-lim in a hug, and Ye-lim is momentarily confused, keeping her arms protectively against her sides.

When Ming pulls back her eyes are watering with tears.

Good luck to you, Ye-lim. We won’t meet again, and you must never tell anyone about us, or how you reached Thailand. Lie if you have to, make up a story, but do not speak about us.

OK, says Ye-lim.

Go. May you reach Korea and find your freedom.

OK, says Ye-lim again, overwhelmed, and it is only later, as she sits in the dark compartment of another windowless van, creeping through the back roads of the humid Lao countryside, that she begins to cry. She nurses a bottle of drinking water, given to her as the men closed her up alone in the steel box.

Much later the van stops, the engine continuing to idle, and gruff voices come to her, muted by the sides of the van, and speaking in the singsong tongue of this simmering land. There are a series of bangs along the wall at

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her back, and she clutches tight the water bottle, now nearly empty, watching shadows flicker across the crack of light between the double doors that stand between her and the blue sky, her and discovery, perhaps even between her and life itself. Then the van starts to move again and, though she doesn’t know it at the time, that is when they cross over the Mekong, into the Kingdom of Thailand.

Once turned over to the authorities, Ye-lim is taken to Bangkok by military escort, where she is registered as a defector. She has no documents to identify her. On her first day in Bangkok there is no one available who can speak Korean, and she knows no other languages. She can communicate only through gestures and expressions. In humiliation, she must point at her crotch the first time she needs to use the toilet.

When a Thai woman who is fluent in Korean is brought in, Ye-lim provides her name, age and birthday. She describes where she crossed into China, but refuses to detail how she arrived in Thailand, except to say that she received help. The interviewer appears to understand, as though she’s encountered this response before. She asks if there’s anything else Ye-lim wants to declare. Ye-lim nods, placing a hand unconsciously on her stomach, and tells the woman that she is pregnant.

The Thais smile a lot, sometimes even at unpleasant things, it seems. She tries to smile back at them, but her face refuses to obey, and it twists at the core of her heart to force it, because the last time she can remember smiling was at home with her family, secure in their togetherness, days before the soldier with corn kernel teeth, having stamped on her wailing father’s back, kicked his head to extinguish the last flames of happiness that were guttering doggedly inside it.

The soldier had heard that Ye-lim’s father was in possession of enemy propaganda, but afterward neither he nor his men ever found the pamphlets, sealed in plastic bags and carefully lodged in a pile of rocks at the edge of the potato field. After her father died, Ye-lim cut into the inner lining of his winter coat and slipped the pamphlets, one by one, through the slit. They buried him in it.

She is placed in the female dormitory of a holding centre on the outskirts of Bangkok, where she awaits deportation to South Korea. South Korea will accept her as a citizen on the basis that she is a Korean person, regardless of which side of the demarcation line she is from. She learned this from the

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pamphlets that floated to them on giant balloons, those scriptures of the religion of Hope, which her father coveted and read to her by candlelight.

No one seems to know how long she will have to stay at the centre. She shares a room with women and girls from many different places. A few are scarred by burns and slashes on parts of their body. Some wear veils over their hair and pray several times a day, touching their heads to the floor. Most of them speak some English, which they use as a common tongue, but Ye-lim cannot participate in conversation. In the absence of words, the others smile to show their kindness, and she at last forces herself to smile back, until the hands of the dead, reaching up from the past, ease their wrenching on that tender cord that runs through the centre of her soul. She realises, then, that those hands belong only to herself, and that her family, who did not make it this far, would have wanted her to be happy. Perhaps they still do, she thinks, watching over her from a place no one can detect.

When Ye-lim goes outside she cannot see any mountains. This is a flat, gentle land, and the only bridges to the sky are the towers of the colossal city, etched into the sultry haze of the immediate horizon.

As months go by, the centre’s residents are taken away and replaced by new ones, but Ye-lim’s time to move on does not come. She is small, but her belly grows large, stretching the skin until it looks waxy, and she sees concern flash across the faces of the centre staff from time to time. She is taken to a hospital for an ultrasound and learns that the baby is a boy.

The child starts to move in her womb, as though to affirm its existence – its will to come forth into the world – and Ye-lim begins to fear what will happen when it’s time. In her life she’s witnessed several deaths due to childbirth, of both women and babies. She’s seen cloth bundles that contain the blue corpses of stillbirths, especially from pregnancies that came to term in winter, or during the hungriest times, when flood or drought had destroyed the crops. She’s seen the results of an emergency caesarean section, performed by earnest but amateur hands, that became infected; the baby, arriving prematurely, did not survive the delivery, and its would-be mother died three weeks later, crying out in agony from her house, with rumours in the air that her midsection had swelled once again, and a foul fluid was leaking through the stitched-up flesh.

One day the centre’s staff inform her that she’s been approved for transport to South Korea, and just in time. Your son can be born in Korea, they enthuse through a translator, and their smiles shine. She is given hugs as she departs,

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and boards an airplane for the first time in her life, which, upon its thunderous lift-off, is unnerving and exhilarating at the same time. Her seat is beside the window; as the world drops away below her and they pass into the kingdom of the clouds, she stares in awe, unblinking, until her eyes itch in the dry air. It’s the most beautiful sight she’s ever seen. The man sitting next to her frowns when he notices tears running down her face.

In South Korea she has no time to rejoice, subjected to relentless interrogation by agents of the National Intelligence Service. They want to know if she has any connections to the North Korean regime, where she grew up, how and when she escaped, who was with her, who impregnated her, how she reached Thailand. Under threat of imprisonment, she answers all their questions, pleading with them, to their initial confusion, not to hurt Ming or the others in China. They barrage her with questions about developments within the DPRK that she has no clue about – discussing actions by the government that come as revelations to her, and shocking her sensibilities with their irreverence when mentioning the Supreme Leader.

After a week of interrogation, she is moved to a resettlement centre, where she will learn to adjust to life in South Korea. Here she begins her training in the basics needed to navigate the modern world, whose complexity and freedoms she has yet to fully comprehend. She is learning about using bank accounts when her water breaks.

She is rushed to a hospital, into a delivery room of radiant whiteness. Her contractions grow in strength. She loses track of time as the nurses try to talk her through the birthing process. Compared to the nurses, well-nourished all their lives in a land of plenty, she feels tiny, half-formed, ancient despite her youth. Her belly bulges before her. The baby is kicking. It needs to come out, to breath the air of this world, where Ye-lim will do anything to ensure that it never knows the deprivations she has.

She begins to push when she is told to, though her body already knows what to do.

Push, the nurses say. Breathe.

The pain grows, becomes blinding in waves as the child is forced toward the world. There is no one to hold Ye-lim’s hand, so she grips the steel railing that runs along the side of the bed.

Breathe, they tell her. Push. Breathe.

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She is burning, from her breasts to her thighs. Fire rips through her insides, incinerating without killing, torching her with each strained inhalation. She is breaking apart.

Push. Breathe. Push.

The doctor has gleaming scissors in his hand. She’s not large enough. The baby cannot get out. He cuts at her vagina. There is a smell of blood in the room. There is the stench of shit. The faces of the nurses and doctor become indistinct and all Ye-lim can see is her belly, in hyper-clarity: this home that created a human being, this home that is being left behind as she burns up with hellfire.

They are leaning over her, telling her to stay calm. Telling her she must listen, because she’s panicking. Listen, they say. Listen! It’s going to be all right.

Does that mean it’s all going wrong? She can’t see what they can. Is she losing the baby? Is her child dying right now, to be thrust into existence as another blue corpse?

No, she whimpers.

Breathe out! In again!

A great cloud of ash billows up behind her eyes, stinging her with volcanic acridity, shrouding some horrendous darkness that has tried to destroy her, grinding its fateful gears against her every day of her life.

It has never been able to overcome her, that darkness. It has not won.

I’m stronger than you, she tells it. She draws another breath and speaks the words again: I’m stronger than you.

She pushes with every bit of strength she has. Stars spark to life against the ash cloud. She screams and hears it as one hears a scream from underwater.

She breathes, pushes, ripping open the hidden seams of her flesh.

I’m stronger than you, she cries. I watched my father die, I watched my mother die, I watched my brother die, I cut through the razor wire, I became an animal, I crawled on my belly through mud and bones, I crossed the Tumen, I was raped, I was filled up with filth, I starved, I became a whore, I became tree branches in the night, I crossed China, I was the ghost in a steel box – and you will not destroy me.

The black rushes forth from the ash, eating the room, the yin of yin and yang, and she is the spot of brightness within it, ever pushing it back, fighting to maintain this new child’s place, if not her own, amidst the eternal duality

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of existence. She will invert this gross proportion of death to life, of despair to Hope. She will raise this child in the light of freedom.

Ye-lim squeezes the railings, her face filling with blood as she strains. They can see the baby, the nurses tell her. You must push, keep pushing! And all present in the room think this frail North Korean girl, mumbling aloud about mud and rape and China, with her wet eyes fixed on some distant place beyond the ceiling, has gone completely mad.

Push! Push!

She pushes as hard as she can. There is sudden release.

The sound of a baby’s wail pierces the thudding in her ears.

The darkness recedes.

This story has a happy ending, thinks Ye-lim, if one believes hope and happiness are intertwined. It’s happy if one believes that human beings are meant to forge a better existence for their children than the one they had.

She names her son Seung-gi, after her brother. She doesn’t see either of her rapists in his face, and when those men appear in her dreams they never have any real features to speak of: they are like clouds of smoke, ever changing but never distinct. Seung-gi’s face is simply that of a child, with her eyes.

She raises him with all the love she can. She tries not to spoil him. In time, she acquires a secondary school education and finds work, and makes enough money to take care of them both, living in a small city a few hours south of Seoul. She has no close friends. Her North Korean accent is hard to lose, and some are wary of her when they hear it, despite that her face is honest, and her smile, when it appears, is genuine.

Seung-gi is a perceptive child. He knows there’s something different about his mother, and perhaps about himself as well. After he starts school, Ye-lim hears that other students may be telling him things about his mother’s origins.

Word gets around. Parents gossip, sometimes in earshot of their children.

One day Ye-lim hears of a mountain called Sobaeksan, located a short trip from her city, which has a well-maintained trail to the top of it. Apparently, the view from the top is wonderful. At seven years old, Seung-gi is old enough to hike it with her. On a hot Saturday in July, she hires a taxi to take them on a drive through the countryside to the start of the trail. The walk up is long, and Seung-gi complains of the heat, and that his legs are tired, and that

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he’s hungry and thirsty, and while Ye-lim scolds him for his whining, she is content, because he has such trivial things to complain about.

As they climb beyond the trees, the land opens up all around them. At the summit Ye-lim turns and turns, gazing at the green panorama, the world resplendent under a soft blue sky. Mountains beyond mountains stretch to the horizon as far as the eye can see, and here, on this gentle crown, they stand above them all. Even Seung-gi falls silent for a time, taking in the view.

The breeze caresses them, cooler at this altitude, carrying a summer smell rich with greenery and wildflowers. Swallows wheel and soar through the bright air, for a moment level with the two people standing atop the mountain.

The boy studies his mother and is reminded of something that kids have teased him about at school. Mum? he asks. Where did we come from?

Ye-lim laughs, unable to contain herself, and when she does, Seung-gi laughs too. From here, she tells him, squinting in the dazzling light. We came from here.

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Kunwar Narain translated by Apurva Narain Poet ry

Kunwar Narain

Contemplating a Sketch of Me Made by a Chinese Poet-friend On a sketch by Yang Lian, Rome 2006 I did not know that I was being drawn I was hearing something seeing something thinking something At the same time through the measure of lines someone was seeing, hearing and thinking me too There is a levity in lines playing with the paper’s emptiness

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Poetry

When the colour of imagination fills it the picture changes into the rough and rugged travels of a nameless traveller Perhaps I was wandering, connecting countries, on some silk road

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Kunwar Narain translated by Apurva Narain

Kunwar Narain

Horsemen One wishes to come out of that first school book on whose cover even today an ancient epoch with a bared sword in hand is haughtily mounted on horseback One wishes to enter some such century for which we have been waiting for centuries In the streets and alleys houses are lined up facing each other like books in libraries Daily, at daybreak the door of each house opens like a new book

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And from it comes out a man of today But mounted on horseback just like before he runs his horse around the whole long day

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Poet ry

Kunwar Narain translated by Apurva Narain

Kunwar Narain

Angkor Wat down the banyan tree roots descend silently disquiet souls in the vast forest of temples devotee roots enter with folded hands incantations echo in the rustle of trees distant supplications temples sway in the slow air branches become the sculpture of rocks rocks become the body of branches both one with each other in sempiternity in a meditative trance for centuries beneath the banyan tree Buddha in contemplation

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against the reality of a Pol Pot a surreality of supreme compassion that this artful forest of tranquillity begets

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Poet ry

Kunwar Narain translated by Apurva Narain

Kunwar Narain

The Arrival of the Barbarians After Cavafy’s ‘Waiting for the barbarians’ It is no use worrying now.

They have arrived. Once again they have conquered us.

Their officers, generals and soldiers advisors, henchmen and jesters their lackeys and their courtiers soothsayers, agents and flatterers They are there all around us everywhere. All of them have come back again.

They have taken over all the usual and the special places in the city.

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Their hordes are impatient now for a free hand to despoil.

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Poet ry

Kunwar Narain translated by Apurva Narain

Kunwar Narain

Postscript: So Close to Me Land’s End, Nainital There is little time, yet I wish to live with you for a few days and so attach a sub-world to this narrative of life Like a rare interlude suddenly remembered, postscript . . .

In the August days a sojourn in the hills, in the hushed rain by a half-forgotten lake in some nameless retreat I wish to spend the remaining days of this ending epoch, to bathe in your musky fragrance to live in fascination

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of something intoxicating and even more thrilling than the first love . . .

Why has this tiny patch of sunlight that was about to leave the room now suddenly moved so close to me

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From Once We Were There From Once WeBernice Wer e There Chauly

Bernice Chauly

Prologue

M

y name is Delonix Regia. I am named after the most flamboyant of all tropical trees, the flame of the forest. My father, a well-known lawyer and an avid naturalist, had a particular passion for tropical flora and their Latin names.

On the day I was born, he planted a seedling in our garden. Today, it stands taller than our house, where the end of the garden meets Gasing Hill, and where the red flowers fall onto the grass like a magical cloak. As a child, I once saw a black cobra weave in and out of the flowers, this glittery black slash easing the crimson cover left and right. I was struck with fright and watched it slither into the leafy green undergrowth and disappear into the jungle.

I have long memories of rain. Soft tropical showers, majestic, thunderous storms, and itinerant drizzles, which would come and go for hours, days. The Malaysian monsoon is a vehement creature, powerful and glorious, yet tender enough to soothe one into the most delicious of sleeps.

This is how I remember the rains. My childhood came with the rains.

And this, my father’s garden.

Standing in the Eyes of the World Kuala Lumpur. KL. Kala Lumpa or Kala Lampur to the white man, the Mat Sallehs. City of sinners and sex. Sodom and Gomorrah. It was 1998, and the city was the ‘party central’ of Asia. Of the world. Drugs had opened up the minds of this one-time placid society and bayed in a new revolution, in a

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time when people hungered for freedom from authoritarian politicians, from the police, from their mindless jobs, from themselves.

Ecstasy had hit the town, in a way that could only be described as monumental. There were feng tau clubs in Bukit Bintang, Cheras, and Jinjang that catered to the Chinese riffraff, the ah bengs and ah lians who felt ill at ease in the posh, uppity bars like Museum and the Backroom Club.

There were clubs for Indian gangsters in Sentul and Selayang; there were dodgy dangdut clubs on Jalan Ipoh and Brickfields, where the girls would dance with you, get high with you, and then go down on you; there were underground clubs that opened up after the other ones closed, then stayed open till people had come down from their highs.

Dealers were raking it in. MDMA was on everyone’s lips and tongues. There was pussy and dick everywhere. Pink. Brown. Yellow. Black.

Everybody was high.

DJs flew in from all over the world to play to hundreds – no, thousands of people who swallowed pink, blue, white pills. Everybody wanted E. Nobody drank alcohol, water was the salve for the days and nights on sweaty dance floors.

Ecstasy was prayer. Ecstasy was the new god.

The great Asian financial crisis was crawling out. Billions were lost, millions gained. The ringgit had been pegged at RM 3.80 against the US dollar.

It saved us. Our ASEAN neighbours didn’t fare so well.

The Petronas Twin Towers were finally complete. The towering phallic monstrosities had transformed the city. And there were stories that bled upon storeys for fodder. It was the topic of conversation at every dinner table, every mamak stall, every kopitiam between Bangsar and Cheras, how ugly it looked.

How sterile, how un-KL, how Western.

Aiyoh, so sci-fi.

Like Gotham City.

So ugly lah.

Celaka betul.

Celaka. Cursed.

Cursed to never be built.

Before the Towers, the site was the Turf Club. Built by the British because they knew the land was unsafe for any structure taller than a coconut tree.

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Underneath the turf was a network of limestone caves. To build the world’s tallest twin structures above hollow caves was an act of folly, of utter stupidity.

It was a disaster in the making. Mahathir’s ‘twin pricks’, that’s what they were. A sign that Malaysia had come into its own. That ‘we’ had arrived. That our quest to have the world’s tallest flagpole, its longest beef murtabak, and the biggest mall in Asia had succeeded – and that Malaysians had something, finally, something, to be proud of.

These towers, designed by a New Yorker of Argentinean descent and built by rival Japanese and Korean engineering companies who had to pump millions upon millions of tonnes of concrete into miles of limestone caves, had validated our feeling that Malaysia had arrived. Never mind that it was built by thousands of Bangladeshi and Indonesian workers slaving away on meagre wages, some of whom had been crushed to death in hushed-up accidents. That they’d died senselessly like frogs, mati-katak, for another notch in our country’s race to become a First-World nation by looking like a First-World nation.

The towers loomed over KL, a new symbol for the city, like the Sears Tower, like the Empire State Building. We had come to be defined by two eightyeight-storey shards of concrete, aluminium, glass, and steel. Two towering octagons inspired by sacred Islamic geometry. From distant suburbs to the Golden Triangle, the Twin Towers rose above everything else, flanked by the KL Tower, now dwarfed and comical with its pink shaft. This was engineering at its best, this was the strongest steel in the world, capable of withstanding tremors, because its steel beams could bend under pressure.

It was haunted, like every other building in KL. Yet the ghosts of the fallen would never be venerated here. Instead, people would flock to Gucci, Bally, Prada, British India, Chanel, Dior and Aseana to proselytise the gods of haute couture.

The newly built Bukit Jalil Sports Complex was sprawled out and ready for the Commonwealth Games. Malaysians were gearing up for the world stage, our time had come to show the world that we were capable, that Malaysia Boleh! Yes, we can! That we had arrived.

In September, everything changed. On 2 September, Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was sacked by Mahathir Mohamad, the dictatorial, authoritarian prime minister who had ruled for seventeen years.

On 11 September, the Commonwealth Games opened with no-expensespared fireworks, pomp, and circumstance. Ella, the pint-sized Malaysian

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songstress, performed the theme song of the games, ‘Standing in the Eyes of the World’, with smouldering black eyeliner and poor diction.

I hope you enjois! – to screaming multitudes.

On 20 September, Anwar Ibrahim was arrested.

On 29 September, he appeared in court with a black eye.

Malaysia, the beloved country of my birth, would never be the same again.

Run! The gas is coming again!

The mosque! Get into the mosque!

We ran, like thousands of crazed rats. Our clothes were drenched and I realised immediately that it was impossible to run with soggy shoes. My hand instinctively covered my camera lens. A wet lens is a dead lens. My feet slipped and slid inside my drenched sneakers. I did not need or want a sprain or a broken limb. Sumi grabbed my hand, her eyes wild.

Are you OK? I nodded. Our slippery hands held fast. I heard screams as some tried to rub the tear gas from their eyes, giving in to instinct. There is nothing like tear gas to make you angry. Politicise you. Our politicians had no idea what they were doing. Revolutionaries were created on the street, that very day.

The protest took place a few hours before Anwar’s arrest that night. We had gathered outside the National Mosque, getting handphone messages that he was going to be there. I picked Sumi up from her apartment in Sri Petaling and we drove into the city. The traffic jam was bumper to bumper all the way from Jalan Parlimen, cars inching up against each other, as we snaked along the road, all the way to Dataran Merdeka, Independence Square. A detour towards Central Market enabled us to find a spot in the parking lot.

There were thousands of people already walking towards the mosque. You could sense the excitement, the anger. It was brittle, electrifying.

Anwar was sacked for supposed sexual misconduct – specifically, adultery and sodomy. In a country where draconian laws still harked back to the time of the British, giving someone a blowjob or having anal sex was a heinous crime.

The daily papers barked out offensive headline after headline, demonising Anwar.

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SODOMITE! ADULTERER! THE RISE AND FALL OF ANWAR IBRAHIM.

These words unleashed a national fury and Malaysians of all ages took to the streets. It was Reformasi. The Malaysian Reformation had begun.

Mahathir’s regime had created a generation of Malaysians who were complicit and afraid. The Internal Security Act ensured that. Detention without trial. Guilty until proven innocent. You were always guilty. And even if you weren’t, you’d still be.

Sumi was angry. We all were. She had studied law in the UK and we’d both been writers at The Review – ‘The smartest men’s magazine in town’ – for two years. We liked each other from the start, we understood each other. We liked to drink and talk. We knew that what was happening was historic. And that it would change us forever.

By the time we got to the mosque, we could barely see Anwar, who was perched on a makeshift podium. We could only hear him through the loudhailer. All around me, I saw faces twisted in anger. I started taking pictures.

Let them do their job! The media is showing us who they really are! Dogs!

Anjing! Liars! Penipu! They supported me and now they want to see me guilty.

Guilty! Do you think I am guilty?

The crowd roared.

Some fifty thousand voices, all shouting in unison.

No! HE is guilty!

Allahu Akhbar! Allahu Akhbar!

Together our fists rose in solidarity.

We who are gathered here in Kuala Lumpur pledge to defend the freedom and sanctity of the nation to the last drop of our blood. . . . We resolve to revive the spirit of freedom. . . . We will not suffer injustice and oppression in the land. . . .

We will not suffer the replacement of foreign oppressors with those raised from among ourselves. . . . We oppose all cruel and oppressive laws which deny the people their fundamental rights and freedoms. . . . We denounce those who corrupt our system of justice. . . . We denounce corruption, abuse of power and the conspiracy devised by a greedy elite to blind the people to the truth in order to maintain their grip on power and wealth!

The crowd roared.

Reformasi! Reformasi!

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Anwar, voice hoarse and fist raised, continued.

We raise the spirit of freedom! We are united against oppression! We are united in our resolve to establish justice! Long live the people! Give victory to Reform!

We demand the resignation of Mahathir Mohamad!

Sumi and I looked at each other. We grinned widely. The revolution had begun.

Behind us, the Federal Reserve Unit trucks rolled up and the clanging started.

As if out of politeness, the bell rang three times. And then jets of water hit us like a torrent of stones. A merciless pounding. Water bullets. We were getting a beating.

We screamed. I fell against a man behind me. He fell against someone else and together we tumbled to the ground like tiddlywinks. Arms, legs, hair, everywhere. All flailing. We got up and we started running. Or tried to. There was panic, confusion. We ran into each other, smacking into arms, chests, elbows. No escape. There was water in my mouth, in my ears. My camera was under my shirt. Sumi had vanished.

The crowd moved like a school of fish; it swayed to the right to repel a predator, then to the left to consolidate with greater strength. Right. Left.

Right. Then another gust of water came and the configuration broke. I was in a sea of wet beasts, sweaty and angry in a swirling, hot sea.

I heard the hailer again.

Undur! Undur!

Retreat! Retreat now!

The crowd moaned. It was low, gurgly, like fish out of water, drowning in air. The water ceased. Bodies were exposed, stunned. Brown. Yellow. Black.

Soggy eyes stared ahead at the figure on the podium. He was still there. Anwar stood strong and resolute.

We will fight this. We will overcome this. Malaysians will rise, now! This is the time to rise!

A tide of drenched people. We could smell one another’s unravelling scents: salty, raw, ripe.

Reformasi!

Reformasi!

Reformasi!

Tens of thousands of voices, screaming in unison. With our lungs, our hearts, our faces. Our bellies, our tongues.

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Then Sumi was there, by my side. She had blood on the side of her face.

What happened? It’s OK. Run. It’s coming. Now! And then we saw it. A canister flying above us, a metal bird, wingless.

Then another. We swirled again to avoid it, but the configuration was broken, the moment was gone. Too late. As it fell, slivers of gas escaped streaming out like thin white fingers.

Then, it started.

Your breath stops. Your eyes sting, like they’re being gouged out by an interning dentist. The nerves in your nose begin to explode. Panic. Panic sets in.

I grabbed Sumi.

I can’t see!

I got you.

Just hang on!

Run! Lari!

Run! To the mosque! Shit! The gas is in the mosque!

We ran up the stairs. My slimy sneakers slipped and I crashed onto the steps. My knee hit the white marble floor. My camera fell, heavy; my zoom lens thudded, then bounced with a splintering sound. Then, darkness.

My cheek was shoved onto coarse carpet. I opened my eyes, lungs heaving.

I tasted gas in my mouth and I raised my nose upward to breathe. Above me, the cloud of gas still hung like a grey shroud. Others were on the ground, retching.

Loud weeping. Strangers vomiting. A large woman in a scarf sprawled on the floor, sobbing.

Ya Allah, Ya Tuhanku, tolonglah kami.

God, help us all.

The bastards had tear-gassed the National Mosque. A sacred sanctuary.

Fucking assholes! Fuckers!

Sumi hissed through a dirty towel. Her eyes were wild.

Here, breathe! It’s still damp.

She took it off and gave it to me.

Take it! You’re OK. You’re going to get a motherfucking bruise, but you’ll live.

She managed a muffled laugh.

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I grabbed the towel and shoved it against my nose. Took deep breaths. It was pungent, sweaty, sharp, I almost gagged. Bile was threatening its way up my gut; I forced it back down.

I looked up to the domed ceiling, and its stark, lean curvature gave me a shiver of comfort. I turned around. The floor was covered with men and women, some prostrate, some lying down, some curled up in the foetal position. There was a dull ringing in my ears and the heavy sounds of my laboured breath.

You’re fine. You’re safe. . . . Sumi muttered.

I nodded. Everything hurt. The insides of my head felt scorched. Fried.

Slowly we got up. Some rubbed their eyes in wonder, some were still in shock. Shouts of acute pain.

The cloud had dissipated; the air was clear again. As the air conditioning kicked in, vents sucked out the angry gas. Many had started praying, prostrate on the ground. Soft murmurs surrounded me.

I pulled myself up. Shivered. Everything was still wet and my knee hurt like hell. I turned and retched; out came clear yellow bile. I wanted a cold beer.

Sumi nodded. She felt the same. We stumbled out, Sumi supporting my arm. All along the street, hundreds huddled up against each other. Hugs were shared, some brave smiles. I clicked again and again, my lens still intact, images of solidarity after tear gas. Weak shouts of Reformasi!

The rallying cry had to continue. I set the camera to autofocus and let it capture continuous frames of people stealthily disappearing into the folds of the city.

It was dusk. Then, sudden music. A relief, a comfort. The azan, blaring out of the minaret above us. The mosque still had its voice.

Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar. . . .

We grabbed each other and walked slowly, shoes still squelching, as silently as we could into the damp twilight.

Two hours later, at exactly 9 p.m., masked policemen armed with submachine guns stormed into Anwar’s house in Damansara Heights, frightening his wealthy neighbours, startling well-dressed diners sipping Chianti in nearby restaurants, as they arrested him under the Internal Security Act in plain sight of his four terrified children and his wife.

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Nine days later, he appeared in public again. He stood there, in front of the High Court, waving his hand while cameras of the press from all over the world captured him. That image.

Our Deputy Prime Minister, right there, brutalised, beaten. His black eye was printed on every major newspaper in the world. Kuala Lumpur, city of mud, city of sin, of tear gas and riot police, would erupt again and again.

And again.

Once We Were There is published by Epigram Books, Singapore-London (2017).

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Play of Puppets P lay of Puppets Kunwar Nar ain

Kunwar Narain translated by John Vater

E

ven when the stand was kicked out from under it, the marionette remained in place – with its hands and feet thrown up in mid-air. At the sight of this miracle, you’d expect that the onlookers would have jumped back in amazement. But aside from a few children and childlike adults, the crowd showed only polite appreciation and continued on their way. It must have been utterly devastating to the boy running the puppet show. For when people don’t even take a passing interest in the greatest of miracles, what is the poor miracle maker to do? What’s more, though they’d stopped on the road to watch in the full knowledge that every show carries with it some special trick, they couldn’t bear to be fooled by such a young, untested child.

To buy a puppet from him, or to reward his circus, would have meant acknowledging his artistry, whereas it was clear to all of the adults present that it’d be years before he was capable of pulling the wool over their eyes.

I stood quietly apart from that crowd, trying to read the emotions on the boy’s face. I don’t know why, but even more than the show, it was the beauty of his puppets that attracted me. There isn’t anything special about a circus: I’d seen this kind of show before, in which a puppetmaster makes a marionette, or a joker, flip in the air with nothing to prop it up. It’s mostly a trick of the eyes; if anyone wanted to figure out how the technique really worked, the answer probably wouldn’t be hard to find. That being said, I hadn’t exactly figured it out either. But it was clear that the secret lay hidden in that black cloth, which had been converted into a screen, and against which black strings could occasionally be seen moving. If anyone leapt forward to snatch up those strings, the jig would be up, and the boy would be shamed.

Everybody’s relationship – the boy’s, the puppet’s, the viewers’ – would flip

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in that moment of unveiling. But it would have been an unnecessary cruelty – more so than the game, it was the boy’s efforts that deserved kindness. The crowd’s vulgarity filled me with hatred – but what could I do? Inconsideration is, at worst, ranked amongst those crimes of ill-breeding, against which no direct action can be taken. If it were up to me, I’d have handed down a punishment to them equal to the suffering they’d caused that ignorant child.

Involuntarily, it struck me that I stood accused before the boy as a proxy for the crowd, and that, somehow or other, I needed to find a way to make up for their baseless cruelty.

A ridiculous solution presented itself: I’d buy all his puppets! But a moment later: what would I do with them all? Better that I should stuff a few rupees into the boy’s hands, and leave the puppets be. Dignified, I might say: ‘Your show pleased me. Now take your reward and return again next year with an even greater show. . . .’ Oof! Does a man’s pride know no limits?

Who am I to be handing out awards? Are we in some ancient age of kings when, one day, when it pleases me, I should give away a sultanate for charity, and the next, a bit miffed, scream, ‘Off with their heads!’ And why should this boy be made to feel that only those capable of bestowing awards deserve flattery? No, this award-giving business is all wrong. Better for me to buy all his puppets, even if they’ll just rot on the floor in a corner back home. Even if, starting tomorrow, I’d have to squat in the boy’s place and set up my own puppet shop . . . and why not?

But the question I asked him came as a surprise, even to me. ‘Your puppets are beautiful. You could sell them exactly as they are. Why run a circus with them?’

‘Because customers for beauty are few, customers for circuses greater, and customers for circuses of beauty greatest of all. That’s why.’

‘Then you make them, these puppets?’

‘No, my sister does. I just put on the show and sell them.’ He hesitated.

‘Would you like to buy one?’

‘One? I could buy them all.’

His eyes widened, half from happiness, half disbelief. He looked at me from an entirely new perspective.

‘You’d really buy all of these puppets?’

His answer slightly disappointed me. He wasn’t interested in me at all – just in his puppets! Otherwise, wouldn’t he have asked what I planned to do

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with them? But deftly masking my disappointment, I let his self-interest win the day.

‘How many puppets do you have there?’

‘Around twenty, I guess.’

‘And at home?’

‘Lots more at home! As many as you need! We can make more, too, if you want to put in an order.’

By his talk, he struck me as a consummate salesman. And it wasn’t only the boy’s circumstances that made him this way: possibly, he’d been good at selling things since birth, and on the back of that strength, had managed to make his own circumstances – or others had for him.

The boy’s sister was alone at home. I lost my breath at the sight of all the beautiful puppets lining the wall. Compared to the puppets in the market, these were of a different variety. I found her bustling little factory endearing: that very moment, she was busily putting together the face of some puppet.

I suspected she was watching me from the corner of her eye, but she kept her attention on her work. Craning forward, the hem of her sari suddenly slipped from her shoulders and came to rest over the curves of her well-formed breasts. She looked up at me, then quickly tossed the anchal back over her shoulders with a flick of her hand. The colour of her sari struck me as intensely lurid. Maybe she only exercised good judgment insofar as her puppets were concerned. In all other life matters she was possibly irresponsible. In sexual matters, for instance. But she wasn’t immodest. It was an unsullied innocence, which permitted her body its each and every need.

I selected a few of my favourite puppets from the wall and shoved my shop address into the boy’s hand. Not once did he object when he learned I’d be selling his puppets at twice the price – he was simply happy to know they’d sell themselves while he kicked up his legs!

Later that week, the boy’s sister gazed at her puppets now lining my shop window from out in the street. She lowered her eyes and became lost in thought. I was wrong in my initial belief that she was thinking about the future of her puppets. She was thinking about me.

She stopped halfway down the road – as if suddenly forgetting where she was going, or as if losing the desire to arrive anywhere or go back home. She sat on a drainage pipe that formed a culvert in the road. A cluster of Gulmohar

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trees blazed brilliantly before her. She gazed at their branches absently for a long time . . . or through them. If I were to have stood right in front of her or sat beside her just then, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘You don’t want to look inside?’

‘No.’ ‘Okay, then, I’ll walk you home.’

‘Do we need to go anywhere?’

‘Whatever you want. Should I leave, then?’

‘No, stay! There’s something I want to ask you.’

‘Ask away. . . .’

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, ‘What time is it?’

‘Six.’ ‘Let’s wait till seven, then.’ This surprised me. Strange girl. She really wasn’t kidding.

‘Why seven?’

‘Because it’ll be dark then. In the dark we won’t be able to see each other, only hear each other. Maybe touch each other. Then I’ll know who you really are. During the day we only get to see the faces we put on for other people.’

‘What will we do until then?’

‘Sit right here, looking or thinking about anything that reminds us of beauty. Me, I could go on thinking about the open sky forever. You?’ ‘I’ll try to think about . . . the puppets you make.’

She made some space for me on the pipe. This was the first sign she’d given that I should sit beside her. I lowered myself, keeping some distance. She giggled and slid up beside me. We sat there together, side by side, waiting in silence for the strike of seven. What an unusual girl, I thought, who could make something like the strike of seven so important.

She then nestled against me, lacing her arms in mine. It was a heartfelt touch, simple and full of meaning. What is this inexplicable intimacy I’m feeling?

Essentially, God isn’t a noun or pronoun. He’s an adjective, an adverb, or at best only an action. That’s why this girl was unable to believe in Ishwar, only in His abstraction.

‘You wanted to ask me something?’

‘I already did.’

‘Are you happy with your answer?’

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‘Not yet.’

Her patience drove me to it. She didn’t once object and she won over my unsteady desire. Despite all reasoning, I couldn’t make sense of this simple conviction she had – that it wasn’t only a matter of my self-control, but also of hers. From the start she knew I’d try to dissuade her with some compelling argument. She quietly watched me with her innocent eyes, and halfway through my argument, plucked a kiss from my lips, rendering the rest meaningless.

‘We have to stop,’ I said, glancing around.

‘Why? What’s wrong with what we’re doing?’

‘We’re only thinking about ourselves, not everyone else.’

‘Do any of them matter?’

‘Shouldn’t they? This world belongs to them too. And this isn’t the only happiness we have to live. We also have to live for that happiness after.’

‘Happiness after? We have to ‘live’ for that too?’

‘What other option is there?’

‘This same life with everything in it, and a world that belongs to everyone.

For this I’ll make my puppets and you will sell them. I’m not willing to give them anything else.’

‘You’ve got a lot of confidence. I’m not nearly so sure. . . .’

‘I’m sure all your thinking will bring you to that same good turn I reach through my feelings.’

‘How do you know that all my thinking won’t lead me to some awful dead end?’

‘That’s where my feelings are right, and your thinking wrong. I know what kind of man you are. You could do good for a bad reason; but you could never do wrong for a good reason.’

‘What’s right, what’s wrong . . . isn’t this for us to decide? Otherwise, what karma is there?’

‘Our decisions have nothing to do with karma, just as who we are is entirely separate from who we want to be. A lot was going on in the world long before we were ever tossed here. Karma isn’t only free will – it’s also the decisions we’re forced to make. We’re tied not only to our own karmas, but also to the karmas of others. All action and reaction is bound up in this destiny. Outside of it, all of us are innocent.’ She paused, as if stumbling on some deep thought. ‘I’m pretty familiar with the puppets I make, the ones I use to run the circus. When they turn over, their clothes fall off – or rather, are forced off.’

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A mischievous smile flashed across her face. ‘Like your community, I also think nudity is obscene. That’s why I don’t give my puppets any sign showing they might be female. Helpless before the demands of the circus, where will these poor, brainless girls go looking for a reason to explain their nakedness?

Aren’t I more merciful than that God who sent us here with nothing to clothe ourselves? Or maybe nakedness isn’t something God has to worry about.’

‘I’m certain he does – otherwise, why didn’t he make us brainless too, like your puppets? Why burden us with the responsibility of finding reasons to cover ourselves up? And if you’ve made your puppets so that they can’t be naked, why put them in beautiful clothes to begin with?’

‘So others will think they’re dignified, and no one will go looking for the secret underneath.’

‘People might call you crazy, you know.’

‘People say all sorts of things without thinking. But if you think about it, the only one we can call crazy is our Creator.’

Her thinking didn’t run in the usual circles: it was taking us further and further away from the world and bringing us closer and closer to one another.

She paid no mind to the culvert on which she sat. Though that place might have become important for her in the future too. Between what she said and what I heard stretched a vast ditch . . . no, not a ditch, but a chasm, teeming with the squirming centipedes of the earth. From all that surrounded us, and could be seen in our immediate vicinity, not a single thing could have been called deep. The deepest thing was the upper half of the sewage pipe, which we both sat on together.

Today she was particularly happy to see me. Rushing forward, she cried, ‘I went and got married – this morning!’

‘What!’

‘Why so surprised?’

‘With who?’

‘Who else? Some idiot.’

‘But why?’

‘I’m going to be a mother, aren’t I? My child needs a father.’

‘But who with?’

‘Why do you care?’ she flashed.

‘What do you mean?’

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‘It could be anybody. If you don’t want to be a father, what do you have to worry about?’

‘When did I say I didn’t want to be the father? If it’s my child, I should. . . .’

‘Maybe it’s not yours! Maybe it’s his, the one about to become a father. Or if not his, then. . . .’

‘Hai Ishwar! Are you even human?’

‘I’m human and nothing else, whatever God might be. Not Ishwar, or. . . .’

‘Didn’t you have faith in me?’

‘Faith? I had faith in you, just not in your circumstances.’

‘That’s not fair. I would have married you no matter what.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Why?’ ‘Because I love you.’

‘Love . . . some reason! All sorts of little things beat love every day, which is why love doesn’t manage to happen, or marriage. . . .’

‘It hurts me that you can’t accept this simple truth. . . .’

‘Simple truths I can accept, because then there’s the chance they’ll actually come true. It’s big truths I don’t trust. So you’re really ready to marry me, then?’

‘Of course. But I thought you just said. . . .’

‘I haven’t married anybody.’

‘And the child?’

‘I’m not going to be a mother, either.’

‘Then it was all a lie?’

‘Not a lie, but the truth – just one that hasn’t yet happened. For a few minutes I wanted to flip a foolish conclusion into a beautiful cause. I wasn’t fooling you, only myself. You say you love me, that you want to marry me – what could be more beautiful than that? Were you lying just now?’

‘No.’ ‘You don’t have to look so frightened. I’m not going to marry you.’

‘Now wait just a second. Now that we’ve arrived at such a beautiful reason together, why turn it into an unhappy conclusion?’

‘What happens isn’t in my hands – but I’m free to interpret how I like. If I can make my own puppets, surely I can make my own happiness.’

‘Are you unhappy?’

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‘Happiness isn’t something that happens: it’s made. Whenever I feel like it I can fashion life into a puppet-like happiness. Then when I get bored, I’ll throw it away and start over. And when I get tired of happiness altogether, I’ll mope about and won’t do anything – I’ll drape a long, stupid sadness over my shoulders and rethink some silly thing from scratch.’

‘And how will that help you?’

‘Because it will give me the sense that beyond this world something exists greater than happiness.’

‘God?’ ‘God! God! It’s endlessly God with you! Why do you keep ending my sentences with this great period? God is a thing of this world. What I’m talking about is something else. Something that can’t be seen.’

‘Life can’t be lived at the level of such subtlety.’

‘If life has any meaning at all, then it’s at the level of such subtlety.

Otherwise, the world might as well end after a few tears and loud laughs!’

A month later, when I finally made it to her house, a group of men were wringing their hands outside her door. News had arrived that her brother had fallen beneath the wheels of a car and had been taken to the hospital.

When we reached the hospital, he was being given blood. Maybe recognising his sister’s touch, the boy opened his eyes. It was as if he searched for some reassurance on her face. He then closed them again. She left him and joined me on the balcony.

‘You should stay by his side.’

‘He’s asleep.’

‘Still. . . .’

‘If it makes you happy, I’ll go back in.’

‘Makes me happy? Wouldn’t it give you comfort too?’

‘It’s not about my comfort. It’s about the comfort of the person whose headboard I share.’

The boy didn’t wake up again. The next day, when I went to check on her, she was sitting in her brother’s room, gazing off into space. I didn’t say a word and sat down beside her. After a few seconds she noticed me. ‘What just happened. . . .’ she said, ‘Would you say it’s of this world, or beyond it?’

‘Depends on how you look at it. From up close, then worldly. When looked at from faraway, the beyond.’

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‘I can’t stop thinking about him. . . .’ she said. ‘Can you give me some worldly remedy?’ She ran her hand over my face. ‘Can you . . . love me? Right here? Right now? In this room?’

‘Oof. Beast!’

‘Beast! Then this worldliness of yours is horrible to me too. Just like my brother’s early death, your untimely love! And more horrifying than both is the possibility that love and death are really the same thing – that either can happen anytime, anywhere, regardless of my wishes! It’s not my worldly needs, but the needs of others that ruin me.’

After several days I returned to see how she was doing. She sat on the floor lost in thought. Her puppet shop was gone. I wanted to encourage her to pick up work again, but she spoke before I got the chance. ‘I’ll start tomorrow,’ she told me.

‘Why not today?’

‘Because tomorrow will never come.’

‘You can’t keep going on like this.’ She didn’t respond. I entreated, ‘Come home with me.’

‘What about all those people there? What are they going to say?’

‘They can say what they want. I’m not going to leave you alone.’

‘Who says I’m alone? My hands and head are right here. I can use them to make puppets whenever I like.’

‘And if anything happened to them?’

‘If I can’t believe in my own hands and head, what faith can I have in you?’

She worked her reasoning into a knot when she talked this way. In real life matters, such idealism simply wouldn’t do. I went home that day without pressing the subject. I thought: I’ll return in a week. Maybe by then she’ll have had a change of heart.

But when I returned, I had to grab the wall for support when I learned she’d left the city. No one knew where she’d gone. My heart brimmed with self-loathing. I should have been more compassionate to that poor, helpless girl. By leaving her alone all that week, I’d perhaps committed the greatest cruelty of my life.

I was driving home with my wife and children that day. A street-side festival was being set up. I turned my head to back up the car when, all of the sudden, I spotted a puppet theatre on the pavement. The shape of the puppets looked

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somehow familiar to me. In a flash, the events from twenty years past flooded through my mind. My daughter chirruped from the back seat, ‘Oh, puppets!

Papa, let’s get some! Papa, stop the car.’

A boy was selling the puppets. Her brother?

‘Were you the one who made these?’

‘No, my mum did.’

I paused for a moment, then asked him, ‘Do they put on a show?’

He stared at me like a seraph had dropped to earth. I intensely felt the stupidity of my question. I examined the puppets . . . they’d changed considerably. But they still had the same eerie beauty. They called to mind that artist, whose puppets had once performed in the circus. But they’d lost their cheer. It was as if, by drawing a long, dull sadness around herself, she’d started to think over some trivial thing from scratch. . . .

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The Chamber Burial The ChamberJ Bur eff Hu ial

Jeff Hu translated by Jenny Chen

R

umour had it that Fourth Great-Granny of Hou Village was dead, but no one dared to confirm the news. What if she wasn’t really dead? It would take just one rat to squeal, ‘Fourth Great-Granny, he said you were dead!’ and you can be sure she’d have his head on a plate.

The Hou clan was the biggest in the eponymous village, boasting courtyard upon courtyard – and several candidates for the Highest Imperial Exams in their ancestry to boot – and though by the Qing dynasty the House of Hou was no longer what it had once been, its sway in the village remained unquestionable. Here, it seemed, everybody was related one way or another, and one couldn’t walk two feet without bumping into some kind of kin. But ask them exactly how they were related, and chances are they wouldn’t always be able to tell you, so intricate and sprawling were the branches of the great family tree.

This is where the village know-all enters the picture. Know-All needed only to come down the road, point at one villager and announce to another, ‘This here’s your Third Great-Uncle. Your ma’s pa’s first cousin on his pa’s side, third one down the line’ and, without a moment’s hesitation, the trusting recipient of this revelation would bow down to his newfound ma’s pa’s first cousin on his pa’s side.

Know-All never did a day’s work in the fields. His other duties were quite enough to occupy him. Besides memorising family trees and social connections, he spent his days presiding over all the ceremonies and rituals in the village, playing peacemaker and mediator, and standing as witness for lending, borrowing, and all the other business of the village.

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A common sight was Know-All standing smack in the middle of the village square, pointing at a girl crouched in the wicker weighing basket hanging from an enormous set of scales.

‘The feet aren’t bound perfectly, I’m not denying that. But look at the girl!

Seventy kilos. Nice and plump. You ever thought of how much work she’d do? How many sons she’d give you? Here’s a girl that hasn’t so much as sneezed since the day she was born. Now you look me in the eye and tell me again you think that measly bride price offer’s enough!’

The heads of the surrounding villagers bobbed in a sea of agreement. The girl and her family wore a look of long-deserved exculpation. The irrefutable logic of Know-All’s speech dawned on the prospective husband, and love sprang fresh from his eyes.

But no hanging about the streets today for Know-All. He was already on his way to Fourth Great-Granny’s compound, for Fourth Great-Granny had just died – for the third time.

Fourth Great-Granny inspired mixed feelings among the villagers. That woman had one hell of a temper, and when she blew her lid nobody escaped her wrath, not even monks or priests – she could go from a tongue-lashing to a real lashing and walk away without a qualm. As for normal folks, their fates were best left to the imagination. Getting slapped till you’re black and blue was nothing new.

Yet once, she had saved all their lives. The young Fourth Great-Granny had been devout to a fault, fasting and praying the first and fifteenth of every month, ladling out congee for the poor and donating necessities at every turn. Whenever she had the opportunity, she’d visit the local Xiangshui Monastery next to the village to offer incense and contribute what she could, and this meant she had a hand in practically everything the place owned, from the statues of the Buddha to the monastery halls.

But when bandits swept across the southwest of Shandong ransacking the region, her husband wasn’t spared, charity or no charity. He was the first to be beaten to death, and Fourth Great-Granny herself, dragged through a long, bitter illness, ended up bedridden and half-paralyzed. The village was ravaged and stripped down to the bone. The bandits left no house un-looted and no morsel untaken, and the whole village was close to starvation. In their desperation, it was inevitable that they would have to go up to the monastery and beg for alms.

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For days Fourth Great-Granny lay in bed, taking in the sighs of the remaining men mingled with the hollow sobs of hungry children. Then, one stormy night, her eyes snapped wide open and, staring straight into space, she had a revelation.

‘Buddha ain’t the kind to punish folks for no real reason. It’s not his fault.

It’s got to be them baldy arses at Xiangshui. The tragedy that has befallen us must be their fault, and I’m going to make them pay!’

Convinced that she was right, Fourth Great-Granny mounted a burly farmhand. He was to piggyback her to Xiangshui Monastery so she could have her rant, which boiled down to one statement: ‘Ya swore ya’d work wonders with our donations but look what we got, ya cheatin’ liars! I want my money back!’

The abbot knew that things were not looking propitious for the monastery when he saw the enormous figure of the farmhand charging at him faster than the wind with Fourth Great-Granny looming ominously atop his back.

Discarding his broom, the abbot fled decorously in the direction of the meditation room but, since the rules forbade any monk at Xiangshui Monastery from the indignity of running, the best he could actually manage was an awkward scurry. To run would be to break the sacred code: rush was rash and thus a grave threat to self-cultivation. But there was no alternative for the abbot but to try to out-stride the pair hot on his heels. Hands clapping together in prayer and furiously muttering a mantra, he raised his knocking knees and scuttled ahead.

Fourth Great-Granny seized the back of her farmhand’s shirt as she would have grasped the reins of a horse, and she gave a mighty roar. At this signal, the farmhand cut loose and broke into a gallop. This was his moment. Fourth Great-Granny hadn’t been keeping him at the ready for nothing. In two long bounds he was brushing the monk’s shoulder and, as they bore down on him, Fourth Great-Granny’s curses came pouring down from the heavens. In a relentless hailstorm, her small, withered hand slapped and bounced against the bald pate racing next to her, and they rushed down the mountain path, a trio on four legs.

It wasn’t long before Xiangshui Monastery made its decision. It agreed to a refund and asked how much. Fourth Great-Granny demanded the towering statue of Buddha, solid copper painted gold, cast with money donated years before by the Hous. They’d take it apart and cart the scrap metal away to sell.

The proceeds would go towards grain for the whole village.

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The monks baulked. It was sacrilege. Deicide, no less. Worse than the bandits even – at least they hadn’t tried to abduct the Buddha and chop him into pieces!

It was at this point that Fourth Great-Granny lost her temper.

‘The bodhisattva fed himself to starving tigers, but yer sayin’ here he can’t do the same for dyin’ people, an’ ya call yerself a monk? Get some sense into that damn shiny head of yers. Who d’ya think you are, the Buddha himself?

I’ll tell ya what y’can do, ya pig-headed old fool, y’can just go an’. . . .’

Buddha was accordingly sawn up and traded for rice, and the villagers survived that year on watery gruel. Granted, they couldn’t save everyone.

Some were beyond saving, and many still starved to death, but at least no family in the village had entirely died out by the time the year was through.

Over at Xiangshui Monastery, no Buddha has graced the empty niche in the Mahavira Hall since that day. Where’s the Buddha gone? Worshippers from outside these areas sometimes wondered aloud as they peered around the main hall.

‘They ate him. Food for famine.’

Fourth Great-Granny went at a time when things were starting to look up again in the village. The head of the clan, after consulting Know-All and the township magistrate, decided on the grandest funeral they could afford, everything the best and biggest, and hang the expense. The village had got back on its feet.

Fourth Great-Granny was laid in an open casket for the time being, with dishes of fruit, meat, and other offerings set out before her. The family came forward to say their goodbyes, one generation after another. The abbot from Xiangshui Monastery arrived too. Know-All went up to him all smiles.

‘Ah, our Venerable Master. Didn’t think you’d be here.’

‘Amitabha. Mrs Hou, our benefactress, has departed on her journey westward. I thought I should come for a last farewell.’

‘Such magnanimity. . . . What with all the times Great-Granny’s raised a ruckus. . . . Your coming here’s very . . . very . . . ahem, you know what I mean.’

‘Benefactress Hou meant well, perhaps, but with destroying the Buddha comes a price one must pay.’ He glanced at Fourth Great-Granny, resting peacefully in her shroud, ‘Surprisingly sudden, you see?’

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Know-All was nodding when Fourth Great-Granny gave a great wheeze in her coffin, louder than a donkey blasted out a terrific bray. She lurched up, bolt upright, straight in the face of our dependable friend the abbot, who staggered, head thrown back, and fainted dead away. The scene became very quiet. No one made a move. The only exception, his eyes directed skyward and knowing nothing of what was going on before him, was the sword swallower, still slowly feeding the blade down his throat.

Fourth Great-Granny, her senses finally coming back to her, lost no time in launching a tirade against the younger Hous, bawling her eyes out and shrieking.

‘Ungrateful wretches! Thought me dead already!? All for buryin’ me alive!?

Itchin’ for murder so y’can split everythin’, make off with the family fortune!?

Ha! Ya wish, ya rats! It’s not happenin’, not even over my dead body!’

A grin creeping onto their dazed faces, the younger Hous took in the situation. This was Fourth Great-Granny all right. No corpse sitting up in this coffin. One, because you never heard about a corpse coming alive in broad daylight, and two because on top of that, no corpse would bother to take all that trouble and come back to life just to give somebody hell. They crowded over and went down on their knees, kowtowing for forgiveness.

Fourth Great-Granny paid them no heed and went on raving. She raved and raved until she remembered with a start – ‘My pipe! My great big pipe! Where d’ya put my pipe? Pawned it? Pawned it already? Scoundrels! Useless blockheads! Little bastards! That was old!’

‘No, no, no! No one’s pawned anything. You there, quick! Light it up for Granny!’

And so, Fourth Great-Granny leaned back against her coffin, smoking opium and cursing all the while. Getting hungry after her smoke, she casually swiped a roast chicken from the offerings table before the coffin and started tearing away. Nobody ever saw funeral offerings devoured with such gusto and confidence.

Having had her rest, Fourth Great-Granny was officially alive again and, riding the same farmhand, continued her rounds of the village. However, only a few years had passed before she died again. The family arranged another funeral, but the very next day she was up once more, telling off the entire extended family. Local word had it that she was too tough a deal for even the underworld to stomach. Who knew what hell she’d raise in hell?

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Each time she died, the Hous berated each other in turn. Why couldn’t someone have taken a closer look? and Look at the scrape we’re in again – everybody’s in for another dressing-down! In all fairness, though, none of them was to blame. They’d felt her breath and pulse, the local practitioner had sworn she was dead as a nail and, lo and behold, she’d given them all the scare again.

The third time around, the family made no announcement in the village.

For fear of yet another miraculous recovery, and yet another storm from the lady of the house, no one dared even to consider suggesting funeral arrangements. They waited some days. Nothing. Then Know-All called on the clan and spoke for them, ‘What do you say to burying her? It’s starting to smell in here.’

Still no Hou would venture forward. The smell couldn’t prove a thing, since Fourth Great-Granny was never one for personal hygiene. In the end it again took Know-All, sizing up the vast courtyards and the maze of chambers and halls, to come up with an idea: a chamber burial.

In a chamber burial the family rests the coffin in the room and bricks up every door and window, but leaves the coffin un-nailed, with a gong laid on the lid. The joints of the undead are stiff, and so can’t ring the gong. If the gong does ring, then it must surely mean that Granny’s up again, at which point they will tear down the walls and ready themselves for a celebration.

A year or two passed in silence after the burial. Fourth Great-Granny was gone for good this time, or so it seemed.

Then, a few years later, they heard the gong ring. It was quite a few of them that heard it, too – too many for the family to dismiss it as a hallucination. Some of the bolder ones piped up, saying, ‘Why don’t we break the door down?’

But then Fourth Great-Granny’s erstwhile steed, the burly farmhand, went down on his knees.

‘I wouldn’t try that,’ he said.

Everyone turned to him. ‘Why not?’

He confessed that his attention had slipped the year they buried Fourth Great-Granny in the chamber. He’d put the gong on the coffin lid, but had forgotten the mallet. How on earth could that gong be ringing now, its clangs so bright and urgent?

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After that, they dropped the matter.

The southwest section of Shandong was no stranger to unrest. The time from the last days of the Great Qing Empire to the Republican Era, the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and all the way up to the Liberation lasted close on a hundred years, and there was rarely, if ever, a single day of complete peace. The Hous, too, declined with the times. Swiftly their fortunes went tumbling down, and the servants trickled away until every one of them had gone. Weeds overran the courtyards. Foxes, bats, weasels and the like ran riot, slinking through the tall grasses, preferring Fourth GreatGranny’s chamber to the others, staying close to the building no one had dared to approach since her death. The mansions of the Hous decayed and crumbled with time, and only Fourth Great-Granny’s chamber stood rockfirm. Some said all the bricks they’d laid in the doors and windows had helped reinforce the structure. Some swore that it was a miracle, that Fourth Great-Granny was still watching over the place.

Eventually, in 1964, Red Guards from Shangqiu caught wind of the myth and decided to tear the building down. ‘Dashing Superstitious Feudalistic Trash To Pieces’, they called it. Then, the night before they were due to arrive on the scene, the chamber went up in flames, fiery tongues of red licking the sky clean. The building and everything in it burned right down to the ground, leaving not a trace.

No one’s ever seen anything quite like it. Some chalk it up to her descendants, who didn’t want to see her remains dragged out, thrown starkly under the sun and displayed before unfriendly eyes. Some say that Fourth Great-Granny was at last on her way to the next stage, having reached the end of her time in this one. Maybe they had a point, for eternally missing from the village from that day to this is the echoing clamour of a midnight gong.

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No Eulogy for the Living – An Open Letter to the Philippines No Eulogy forMiguel the Living Syjuco – An Open Let ter to the Philippines

Miguel Syjuco

W

e cannot turn away. When something bleeds, you watch it carefully.

This last year doctors found in my brainstem a cerebral cavernous malformation: an inaccessible, blackberry-shaped lesion of leak-prone capillaries that tend to bleed and expand places where there’s no space for expansion. Turns out those who dislike me were right: I have a hole in my head.

Annual MRI scans will reveal my cavernoma – as it’s cutely called – to be dangerously increasing or harmlessly stable. The chance of either at this point is fifty-fifty, which are worse odds than in blackjack (at which I’ve stubbornly lost). It could mean nothing, it could just as well mean everything.

Such things lead you to take measure. Let me please tell you what I discovered.

There are a few things still that I’d like to see. The things I broke, fixed.

Thanks, given to those to whom I’m grateful. Books, written. Laughter, with loved ones. The Northern Lights. And the entire length of the Philippines, on foot. I’d like to live to see all that.

Most of all I want to witness politics working the way it promises. That’s partly because I was raised in the midst of it, with my parents as members of Congress. But mostly it’s because it is human to want promises kept.

Earlier this year, indefinite military rule was declared across a third of the Philippines, with the threat that it might be expanded nationwide; it’s been forty-five years since it’s been used so readily. It’s hard for me to not be

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concerned. I was born under martial law and I could now die during martial law. Don’t we all hope to end in a better state than we began?

When Filipinos of a certain age speak of martial law, they refer less to a system of rule than to a troubled era of communal but intensely personal experience. For so many, it remains a wound that still bleeds. For me, it is how I began to learn what democracy is – by hearing true stories about how it dies.

At first, dictatorship was said to have worked. It brought order across the Philippines. Protests ceased. Politics became straightforward. The unopposed regime built many good things. Manila was peaceful and secure. Evening curfew was effective, and even fun, when it stranded you at a friend’s house or at a party. If you weren’t a communist, terrorist or destabiliser, then you had nothing to fear. At first.

By 1977, five years after martial law began, my family packed a few suitcases for a short holiday to California’s Disneyland. A short time after, we arrived in Vancouver, Canada, to begin a new life – among the lucky few who could.

The regime in the Philippines had long turned abusive, with media controlled, the legislature locked down, and many businesses sequestered.

Governance had been shared among cronies, while opposition politicians were imprisoned. Dissenters were arrested without warrant and detained without trial, with many tortured, raped, or even killed and dumped on the streets in a practice known, ironically, as ‘salvaging’.

My family, like many exiles, watched from afar martial law’s expanding violence against others and, like many émigrés, we suffered wounds that even we could not see. Gone was not only our democracy, but our home, our country. I grew up in a purgatory of in-betweenness, never learning the language of being Filipino but never thinking for a second that I was anything else.

In 1986, nine years after we had left, it was the dictator’s family’s turn to lose what they had stolen from us. In what became known as the People Power Revolution, Filipinos of all backgrounds flooded the capital. The ailing strongman faced a tough decision. Members of the military were abandoning him. His son and heir allegedly urged him to open fire on the peaceful protestors. The American president offered his family asylum in Hawaii.

In the middle of the night, they fled in disgrace. Not long after, my family returned to the Philippines.

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Three decades have passed since democracy was restored, and that distance tempts us to see the dictatorship as a fourteen-year blip in the country’s history. But remember that for those who endured it, martial law seemed interminable. They could only hope for its end. Thousands who were pulled into military camps, prisons, and shadows did not live to see its demise.

How much longer, wider, and bloodier might it have been had the dictator bequeathed power to his wife and children? But there were things the strongman could not control. His body was failing him.

Death always takes a lifetime, and it usually arrives too early. Mortality may warn with baldness and back pain, reading glasses and regrettable griefs – until it’s suddenly quick. Some diagnoses you see coming, inherited from your elders. Others, you don’t expect.

All my life I’ve suffered chronic migraines and my new doctor suggested an MRI scan. I agreed because, after years lost in the world building my career as a writer, I suddenly had health insurance from my new university job in the Middle East. Plus I thought it would be cool to look inside my head.

Some people are reminded of a coffin when faced with the claustrophobic confines of an MRI machine. My hospital softens that with a charming lie of faux windows framing life-size images of clouds in the sky, back-lit on the ceiling, and a beach with palm trees along one wall. Onto the platform that slid into a tunnel, I laid myself horizontal. I was fitted with earmuffs which piped in the Koran in Arabic, as well as a contraption of angled mirrors that magicked my gaze towards my feet and to the technicians beyond, comfortingly. It was routine, and so it was fun. The machine thrummed like a drill.

I drifted to sleep and was disappointed when finally woken by an orderly.

Throughout, I’d felt no fear. Why would I? Weeks later, in a white room with a neurosurgeon, I saw my brain and spinal cord dissected digitally on a screen, stacked in layers in black-andwhite. In the middle of my brain stem was a dark blot. ‘For now, we can only wait for your next scan in December,’ the doctor said. ‘But call us if you have symptoms.’ Symptoms? ‘Seizures, blindness,’ he said. ‘Paralysis – even if just partial.’ He shook my hand goodbye.

Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months seeped into each other, like ink smearing across newspapers to obscure the daily troubles of the rest of the world. The year trudged into that part of the calendar which I associate with spring and rebirth – but in Abu Dhabi, where I work as a professor, the season

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rolls into withering heat, as if the end will come not in ice but in fire. As friends on social media elsewhere celebrated the encroaching efflorescence of summer, I hid in the artificially frigid indoors, kept to myself, and drank too much every night. I look back and wonder how I didn’t break down. But what else do we do but get through it, right? I did. Sort of. I struggled. Still do. Then I feel guilty.

Some nights, when I close my eyes, I see a young stranger, almost half my age, slumped on a sidewalk. It was about 10 p.m. on a beautiful Saturday evening in January, on a dark highway in the north of my hometown, near the fish port on Manila Bay. I was researching an article on the reporters documenting abuses of power in a government’s attempt to clean up the streets. In the shadows, a black halo of blood surrounded that young man who would now never get older than his twenty-two years. In his head, a hole. In his hand, a cap. The hole was from a close-range bullet. The cap was from the NBA. He clutched it against his chest, as if he’d taken it off to treasure it. Or to obligingly make way.

Writers tell the world what we see, but sometimes I wish it weren’t so. Our job may render us unpopular. In my seeing, our democracy still bleeds from the dictator’s martial law and the chronic failures that stumbled after it. We have forgotten our troubled past because we were too busy watching the new present and the uncertain future – too busy watching ourselves be let down by our leaders. All of them. The good ones failed to mitigate the bad ones, and the bad ones refused to compromise for the greater good.

All used our hopes, votes, and support to legitimise their control, and they have mostly proven either arguably incompetent, inarguably corrupt, absolutely self-serving, or all of the above. Yes, they did oversee improved but unequal economic development, a widened but disaffected middle class, and greater opportunities for those willing to work for too little and sacrifice too much. Yet our democracy, as a form of representation and a system for change, has hardly progressed. Politics is indeed a tough job, but our politicians have either refused or failed to empower us to help them.

Everyone knows that most elected positions in the Philippines are controlled by dynasties, just like we all know that blood is always thicker than water. The clans band together to safeguard fiefdoms, shape legislation, refine governance in their favour, and jealously share control with other powerful families – justifying it all as they go along, because that’s what we humans

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must do when we put our loved ones before strangers. Every national election ends up like musical chairs played by crotchety old politicians and their gloating sycophants – all of whom promise change, because they know that we know that change is needed.

After the dictatorship ended, there was a great sense of optimism that I remember well. My father was a businessman, a soft-drink bottler from the Filipino-Chinese minority, with neither fame nor public office to inherit; despite our deep differences, I admire how he was able to simply will himself into the closed world of politics. That buoyant era opened our democracy in that new way – however limited and ultimately wasted that change may have proven.

I learned much, all my years observing, and avoiding, the campaigns, speeches, grand plans, and behind-the-scenes of governance. I saw enough to know that it wasn’t for me, but I witnessed enough to know that politics needs me – because it needs all of us, every single one who wants to be counted, no matter our profession or persuasion. With our participation, democracy remains the best apparatus to advocate for our concerns and peacefully change bad leaders.

But I, like so many of us, refused to take part sufficiently. There was life to be lived, young love to be pursued – and anyway, what good could I, or any of us, do against such a complex and corrupt system? So you turn your back and hope that someone will fix it. Especially because someone is always promising that they’re the most qualified do so. Sometimes it’s just easier to believe a lie, especially when we’re given little choice.

What happened to the notion that any citizen with good ideas, integrity, and community support can rise up from whatever background to help lead the country? How has politics become the domain of dynasts, celebrities, oligarchs, and scions? We cast our votes, swell the ranks at rallies, pay our taxes and are made to shut up and do as we’re told, with no recourse. We are helpless against impunity. Participation via opposition is interpreted as a threat. Dissent is cast as destabilising. We are ruled, not led.

Something stinks. We all smell it.

Near the fish port on Manila Bay, at that crime scene, one thing stayed with me more than the rest. It wasn’t the abundance of blood – I’d already seen enough dead bodies shot through the head. It wasn’t its particular funk when

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mixed with the daily dust of the city – redolent of rotten flowers. It wasn’t the police report that said vigilantes killed the young man as he fled on his motor scooter – a story contradicted by eyewitnesses. Nor was it the way his body sagged between two men wearing blue latex gloves as they heaved him into a black vinyl bag. Or the way they unceremoniously plopped his filthy flip-flops onto his shins just before they zipped him away – a step I’ve seen repeated at every crime scene, like tossing in errant debris that falls from a trashcan as it’s hoisted to the curb.

What has stayed with me indelibly is how that dead young man held that NBA cap against his chest – as if a funeral was passing or the Philippine flag was flying. When a cop tried to remove it, to examine the body, he had to pry it away finger by finger. Even he seemed surprised at how tightly those who will die can hold on.

When I was about the age of that young man, I stubbornly thought that we could change our country by vesting others with the strength of our faith.

Youth is nothing if not optimistic, even when angry, and at the turn of the millennium I was one of thousands in the streets of Metro Manila, ousting yet another obesely plunderous president – this time halfway through his six-year term. As young people do, I believed our chants had power, and I saw our popular will as democracy in action – a parliament of the streets.

The system had faltered, it could not punish the guilty, and we had to work extrajudicially to save it. We contributed to a better future by empowering a new leader with our hope.

But there is a vital difference between popular opinion and democracy – and authoritarianism has always benefited by confusing the two. Democracy is a system of foundational laws that ensure representation and a functioning opposition so that neither individual ego nor popular opinion can ever deny the basic rights of anyone who has differing perspectives, faiths, or concerns.

Democracy is not consensus; it is consensual disagreement – defined by the pursuit of equality, not unfettered in service to the largest mob. Transparency, co-equal branches of government, dissent, and checks and balances against unchecked and unbalanced authority all work to prohibit a monopoly of power by spreading it as widely as possible into the hands of all the people.

A good leader would not just wield that on our behalf; a good leader would teach us how to use it.

I’d never wish on anyone the disillusionment I felt after my president, for whom I had rallied, proved to rival her predecessor in perfidy. She dragged

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us through nine years of corruption, dysfunctional governance, allegations of electoral fraud, and the impunity that saw it go unpunished. Yet I supported her longer than I dare admit, because it is easier, as they say, to fool someone than to convince them they’ve been fooled.

Frustration is like radiation – it accumulates, poisons, and wanes slowly.

Our dissatisfaction with our rulers put into place the next saviour. But after she failed, another came, and he failed, too, in many other ways. Now our frustration has put another into power, with his shallow solutions to deep problems. He will inevitably fall short, too. They always do, because our problems are bigger than any one person.

However bitterly we may disagree, we citizens are in this together. Those who follow my work know I try to treat my many detractors with the compassion they rarely extend my way. That’s because I know well what they’re going through, and what they’ll go through, eventually. Hope sings.

Reality bites. And in bitterness we turn our backs, eventually. Something fades when we do. Our cynicism becomes a eulogy for the living.

These nights it scares me sleepless that we’re doubting the mechanisms meant to keep us empowered, rather than revising our faith in rulers who do not maintain those fail-safes for us. When we study history from the perspective of those who suffered – rather than those who flourished or steered – it’s clear that things like martial law are not solutions but symptoms.

Healthy societies need neither propaganda nor military rule. When such are imposed we are not wrong to watch carefully.

Especially when we’re watching that slow bleed, now familiar, from which authoritarianism can sprout. That death by a thousand tiny ruptures – the piecemeal surrender of seemingly insignificant rights that together form significant protections. We’ve seen before that steady acquiescence, and witnessed the quiet but gradual results that became loud and clear in the flames of the Reichstag, and the ruined harvests in China that killed tens of millions, and our dictator’s suspension of habeas corpus in 1972, and the seizing of Zimbabwean farms, and the mass arrests in Turkey, and the current poverty and unrest in Venezuela.

We know that the resulting rule may do well while it is benevolent, as in some young undemocratic countries today. But we’ve never, anywhere, known the willing abdication by one that’s turned abusive – at least not without destruction or death. It’s always been this way, in civilisations come

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and gone. In Greece, Plato predicted it. In Rome, Juvenal articulated it: ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ Who will guard the guards themselves?

We all know what the answer should be.

Never in my lifetime have we Filipinos been, as we are now, so political, so engaged, so enraged. Our current crop of rulers is sometimes credited for that, but that overlooks the fact that we are the ones who put them there.

And it is we who can hold them relentlessly to account. It is we who can leave them to their short-game shenanigans while we focus on the long game. It is we who can shine light on our young leaders so that their idealism does not corrode in the darkness. It is we who can start conversations about democracy with those who’ve never really had it. And it is we who can refuse to let right and wrong be redrawn by those who benefit from its redrawing.

They have turned our democracy into a lie so that we’d believe in them instead of believing in each other. But in that, at least, we can still choose.

I’m writing to you now about all this not because I want your sympathy for this time-bomb in my brain, but because I don’t want to talk about it ever again. There’s too much work for all of us to do.

Tonight, there are people dying in the dark corners of the Philippines. It’s been like that for as long as we can remember. I think of that young man, half my age, who died from a hole in his head. In the morgue, on a slab, with his one eye half open and his other eye half closed, he looked like he was pretending – like he would stand up and laugh at his practical joke then saunter home to those who love him. I think of how he died, untried as a criminal, yet sentenced to death because of the tiny stone of crystal meth allegedly in his pocket and our fear and the chance circumstances of his birth – while all the untried, and the convicted, criminals in our government live and laugh and practically make a joke of it all before standing up to saunter home to those whom they love.

I, for one, refuse to cede our democracy to the murderers, plunderers, rapists, paedophiles, thieves, plagiarists, narcissists, electoral cheats, philanderers, wife beaters, misogynists, liars, prescription drug abusers, hypocrites, religious zealots, warlords, charlatans, gas-lighters, gambling kingpins, oligarchs, monopolists, spoiled brats, mutineers, shirkers of responsibility, executioners, cronies, rubber stampers, carpetbaggers, lapdogs, opportunists, and incompetents who comprise our executive, legislative, judicial, and local government institutions.

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Until my final breath, whether in forty years or forty days, I will fight them. Unafraid, because I know I am not alone. Unbowed, because we all deserve better. Politics is too important to leave to the politicians. And though we all share culpability for the state of our nation, a huge difference remains between us and them: We regular citizens are not the ones empowered. Don’t you think we should get together and demand, seriously: Why not?

Now that would be change. How I’d love to live to see just that.

First published in Boston Review (Sept 2017).

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John Thieme

J ohn Thieme

Saraswati I hide.

Behind the unloved cluttered bookshelves, camouflaged in a dark salwar kameez, I elude prying eyes, until my time can come again.

I hide.

Within the sunless north wing of this library, sixteen padded desks have sixteen cushioned chairs, where sixteen well-fed scholar gypsies, my one-time devotees, their eyes made dim by screens, rush to fill work stations with their games of war.

It’s years since they last turned a page.

Their whispered chatter echoes down the hall.

Its echoes pay lip service to my name.

I hide.

I took a vow of silence many years ago.

I gather wisdom in the twilight gloom.

I pace closed corridors at night.

I travel future centuries in dreams.

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Concealed behind the shelves, my thumb-nailed pages clear a space for the entry of a dog-eared bookworm, a reborn relic of the world’s myopic past.

He will return to read with me again, vast alphabets of upright types of love.

From Paco’s Atlas and Other Poems, published by Setu Publications (Pittsburgh, 2018).

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XuXi

Xu Xi for Wilma & Merly, my ᆂᆂ

C

han Lai-tai tugged at her skirt belt as she readied herself for work. No way to cinch it tighter. Should losing only five pounds make such a difference?

Xiong would repay her today. He had brought it up this morning, the only thing he said after kissing her, just before dashing out to catch the early train to Guangzhou. Never time to make love when he was in a hurry. Did he remember his keys? He’d left a set in Guangzhou last trip, and she’d had to scramble to make him a new one. So forgetful! But that wasn’t important because something else nagged. What? Something at work? Her boss, Mrs Lung, was playing catch-up after her trip to Thailand. Which meant, as usual, that too much work got piled onto Lai-tai.

As she headed towards the MTR, she felt in her jacket pocket for the ticket.

Its magnetic stripe caressed her finger, reassuring that yes, Xiong could remember if he chose to do so. All it took was a row – and it had been nasty, loud, her slamming the door on the way out – when she accused him of taking her tickets because he couldn’t keep track of his own, and worse, not telling her, causing her unnecessary stress and embarrassment when she stood at the barrier searching for her ticket, holding up the line behind her.

Or had he simply not found this one in her jacket?

The MTR hum momentarily stilled her own and Ma’s unrelenting voices.

Did I work so hard after leaving China just so my daughter would be worse off than a prostitute? At least a prostitute only sacrifices her body. Her mother, a first wife, walked out on Lai-tai’s father some thirty years earlier after he’d married a siu tai-tai in the late sixties, back when concubine marriages were

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still legal. She later refused to ever let him meet Lai-tai, with whom she had been pregnant at the time. Ma was apoplectic when she first learned that Xiong already had a wife and family in Guangzhou. Now, over two years since Lai-tai first got together with Xiong, she thought it was clear he really loved her and couldn’t do without her. Yet Ma wouldn’t relent. Stupid girl, you’re young, only twenty-nine. Intelligent and pretty, a good figure except when you don’t eat enough and lose too much weight. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t waste your life.

Didn’t his love count for anything?

She arrived early at work but already, Mrs Lung was there. If only she could beat the old dragon into the office! Just once. After four years, Lai-tai had almost quit trying.

Her boss glanced up at her as she settled at her desk. ‘Oh, so early. Yang Xiong must be in Guangzhou, hah? She always used his full name, assigning him a distinct, yet somehow tenuous, reality.

‘Only for the day. He’s back tonight.’

‘Oh yeah?’ But she left it at that.

Lai-tai tried to ignore the unspoken jibe, that Xiong knew where his dick slept best. Her boss could be crude. Fei Loong Pao who’d sleep with you? All the staff called their boss ‘fatty dragon dumpling’ behind her back, the homonymic pun on her name being too irresistible. She was just jealous.

Lai-tai tried to imagine that mass of middle-aged womanhood having sex with her hen-pecked, emaciated husband. Grotesque. She set about her day’s work. It bugged her how everyone exaggerated her ‘situation’. Even her older sister, Lai-li, who usually was an ally against Ma, derided her. It’s already 1998.

Don’t you know concubines are unfashionable now? They belong in the Mainland, not here! Besides, for all his big talk about business and Guangzhou ‘connections’, he’s just another ‘big six bumpkin’ struggling to send money back home. Lai-li was too mercenary and insensitive for her own good, which was why, at over thirty, she was still without either a husband or regular boyfriend.

Probably jealous, Lai-li having once had designs of her own on Xiong before she found out he was married. Lai-tai hadn’t told her about the loan, afraid of her censorious laughter. Her sister simply no longer had proper feelings.

Her sister would laugh even more if she knew how much Xiong actually expressed concern for her. He said Lai-li, who managed sales for a very successful Chinese electronics manufacturer in Shenzhen, needed a less stressful job. It was true her sister worked extremely long hours. Between

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business trips to China and Europe as well as all the entertainment of buyers in the evenings, she hardly had time for herself. But when Xiong recently suggested Lai-li should come work for him, she angrily squelched that idea.

If he needed a loan to keep his business going, then the last thing he could afford was to employ her sister who made very good money at her job. They had fought over that. Bitterly. She hated it when he condescended because he was twelve years her senior, saying she didn’t understand how business worked, because after all, her work experience was only in companies with limited potential. He had vision. He was trying to expand internationally, to Europe and even America, unlike Fei Loong Pao’s small trading company which only sold trinkets around Asia. It was so unfair! He had no real idea what her employer did, how she sourced and produced promotional items for large Asian companies, because she knew many purchasing and procurement managers. Lai-tai knew how profitable the company was, unlike Xiong’s business. His failing business.

At around a quarter to one, just before lunch, Xiong called, surprising her.

Peter, the IT guy from shipping, was standing by her desk, but she signalled for him to come back later. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she began. ‘You have to stay the night, don’t you?’ This had been the case the last three trips, always with some ‘urgent’ excuse that sounded fake.

‘Why do you always think the worst? I said I was coming back and I am.’

The hurt in his voice got her the way it always did. ‘I’m sorry.’ Another apology, even though she told herself she would stop apologising to him. Yet somehow, he’d done it again, made it seem entirely her fault.

‘I just need your help.’

She bristled. ‘What is it this time?’

‘Calm down, it’s for a very dear family friend, Yin-fei. You know, the one who’s almost like a sister to me? She was in Hong Kong a few months ago trying to apply for a job and stayed with us? She’s so smart, she’ll get one eventually. Anyway, she’s quite ill, badly needs to see a doctor in Hong Kong.

It might be something serious and you know how hopeless the hospitals here are. But you know how it is, she didn’t get her exit permit till today, so that’s why it’s all last minute. I’m so sorry about this, and she’d also apologise for the inconvenience, for sure. Obviously, she can’t travel by herself, so it’s best if she comes with me. We’re taking the five o’clock.’

Another drama rationally explained. So perfectly understandable that he did not even have to justify his unspoken demand – that she should erase

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her presence in their home by the time he got back and stay elsewhere, her mother’s most likely, until Yin-fei left. A huge inconvenience, especially right now when work was so busy, and an imposition on Ma. An unreasonable, worse, hypocritical demand, to pretend that Yin-fei was staying with ‘us.’ She flinched in anticipation of Ma’s harangue which would inevitably happen and wondered if she could crash with Lai-li instead.

‘Listen, must go, I’m going to be cut off.’

‘Xiong, wait. . . .’ but the line went dead. Damned payphones. Of course, he couldn’t call from his home, not with his wife hovering, as Xiong said she did.

Lai-tai knew also that she would have to leave the office too early just to hurry home, incurring Fei Loong Pao’s wrath.

‘Hey birthday girl, are you coming or not? You’ll lose us our table. We’re only generous once a year.’ Maria Tang’s voice, a tad too shrill, assailed her from across the office. She managed shipping, where all the staff operated in perpetual panic, scrambling to fulfil orders and mollify customers because their Shenzhen supplier was, predictably, late again.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming.’ Lai-tai grabbed her purse and ran to catch up with the group as they headed towards their usual restaurant.

At lunch, the bamboo steamers of dim sum piled to an all-time high. Lai-tai picked at her food, saying little. She barely registered the raucous laughter and conversation, and it wasn’t till Maria nudged her, saying ‘Wei! Peter’s talking to you,’ that she looked across the table at her colleague.

‘Ms Chan, you’re eating too little today.’ He was dividing up the platter of fried noodles into bowls, and had heaped an especially large one for her, complete with two juicy shrimps on top.

‘Oh too much, too much,’ she protested as he passed it round to her. ‘I can’t eat all that. One of the guys should take it.’

Ah Chun stuck his hand out, but Peter slapped it back. ‘Don’t be a hog, you. Come on,’ he coaxed, ‘six of you could fit into one Fei Loong Pao.’ Everyone laughed. Ah Chun pulled a face. ‘Ahh, quit trying to sweet-talk her. She doesn’t need your attention on her birthday when she has better prospects than you. After all, Mrs Chan-Yang is already spoken for.’ He guffawed at his own joke.

Peter turned red, his crush on Lai-tai too publicly called out. An uneasy silence settled over the table. Maria shot Ah Chun a dirty look. ‘Talking

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rubbish again, aren’t you? Shut that hog mouth!’ He shrugged, unconcerned, took the offending bowl of noodles, and commenced eating.

Normally, Lai-tai would have dismissed his remark. Ah Chun was just being his usual blunt, clunky self. But today, instead of joining Maria’s banter with a pointed comeback to make everyone laugh, she glared defiantly at her colleagues and declared, ‘A siu tai-tai is also a wife, you know.’

No one said a word. Maria rolled her eyes then waved her chopsticks at everyone and blurted out, ‘Why all this yapping today? Come on, let’s eat.

Food’s getting cold.’

Lunch hastened towards its finale.

Back at the office, Maria tugged Lai-tai’s sleeve just before they returned to their desks. ‘You can fire him, you know. He really crossed the line.’ As office manager, Lai-tai’s power over the lower-level administrative staff was paramount. Ah Chun was lazy and sometimes rude to customers. But he had been with the company since its inception and could be trusted with petty cash and the daily banking and knew where all the supplies in the closet were stacked. He even cleaned the toilets the time Fei Loong Pao forgot to renew the cleaning services contract and generally kept the kitchen clean. It would be impossible to hire a replacement who did his mix of jobs for the relatively low salary he was paid.

‘Forget it, he didn’t mean anything by it. And neither did I.’ She was about to say more but Maria’s face, sympathetic yet slightly disdainful, stopped her short.

‘OK, whatever,’ Maria responded. ‘It’s your face.’

Embarrassed, Lai-tai returned to her desk. How she wished she hadn’t said that and made a fool of herself in front of everyone.

The afternoon dragged. She tried to concentrate but everything distracted.

Damn Ah Chun. And Maria. And even Peter, whom she wished would stop with his unrequited heart. After all, she had never encouraged him, never led him on. What did they all know, anyway? It’s all about love, nothing else really.

Especially for a woman. Love is fundamental to a woman’s nature, something you can’t deny. You and I, we can’t change our histories, our lives. But we need each other Lai-tai, we belong together. What we do is our business, no one else’s.

In the intimacy of their love, through all the tears she couldn’t squelch, she desperately hoped Xiong was right, especially when he gripped her buttocks in his large hands, possessing the moment, as if he never wanted to let her go.

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Her thoughts returned to the loan. How long had it been? Three, no four months? More than four. Xiong hadn’t exactly asked to borrow. In fact, how had it happened? Sick daughter, medical bills eating into savings, a run of bad luck with business partners who cheated him. At first, he cut back on expenses, performed nobly for her benefit. I’ll skip dinner tonight, I can’t contribute my share to groceries. Of course she dismissed that, told him not to be silly. Yes, it had begun like that, these remarks about economising. Walking instead of taking a bus or taxi, not buying new underwear even though his were almost threadbare. At first, she simply helped him out with these small expenses, and he would always be effusive in his gratitude, saying this was temporary which she assured him she knew. The sex that followed would be amazing, but soon all his protests began to feel like a kind of performance.

Yet she vanquished such unkind thoughts – she loved him, didn’t she? – but for now, she was paying all their utilities, the entire rent, and all day-to-day expenses and. . . .

‘Ms Chan, did you hear me?’ Peter had been standing by her desk for several minutes. ‘You were supposed to give me cash for the shipment today?’

She stared back blankly until it clicked. Of course! That was what she was supposed to do this morning. ‘Yes, sorry,’ she said, pretending to rummage in her desk drawer, knowing full well she hadn’t prepared it. ‘I’ll bring it round in a few minutes.’

He didn’t budge. ‘That’s what you said yesterday. It’s already four thirty.’

Fuck! The bank was closed. And, she knew, Peter was supposed to go to Shenzhen early tomorrow morning, before the bank opened, to deliver the promised computer to their supplier and pick up that shipment of plaques for one of their largest customers, which was what he needed the cash for.

He would catch hell from Fei Loong Pao if he didn’t go. ‘How much was it again?’ He told her. Lai-tai made a quick mental calculation, thinking she could perhaps cover it from her own account, which, unlike the company’s account, she could access with her ATM card. She couldn’t, not till after payday next week. If only . . . previously, she could have solved the problem easily enough, but that loan had depleted so much of her savings that she no longer had any contingency for larger amounts. Her face must have betrayed something, because Peter winced and backed away, saying, ‘Look, don’t worry, I’ll go the day after tomorrow, OK? But I really must by then. It is, uh, kinda urgent.’

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‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll take care of it first thing tomorrow. And I’ll tell Fei Loong Pao it was my fault.’

‘Ms Chan, it’s no big deal. Forget about it. It was my own fault for not reminding you earlier.’ He paused, an uncertain look on his face. ‘You have a lot on your mind, for sure.’ He left quickly. The pity in his eyes shamed her.

She left work fifteen minutes later, much earlier than she should, having first acknowledged her mistake to Mrs Lung who started with a tantrum but then softened. ‘OK, fine, I forgive you, but only because it’s your birthday.

Go on home to your lover and tell him to take you somewhere nice for dinner.

You’re only young once.’ Peter’s face haunted her as she left. Tomorrow, mustn’t forget. It wasn’t fair to cause her colleague such anxiety. All she needed was a clearer head and she would be fine. She could do that. She must. This determination lifted her mood as she headed towards the MTR. In less than two hours, Xiong would be back with Yin-fei, and she would have cleaned up their home and eradicated her presence so that no one could actually tell a woman lived there. It was a trick she had mastered, easily accomplished without fuss, something Xiong said he loved her dearly for even as he apologised for the necessary deception, temporary, as he always repeated, only for old friends from Guangzhou who knew his family, the ones who couldn’t possibly understand. Everyone in Hong Kong knew they were a couple. It was nothing, she told him, she could handle this minor inconvenience, and besides, guests who needed to stay had only come a few times, six or seven perhaps since they decided to live together a year and a half ago and moved into a flat and began to share their lives. No one has ever loved me as much as you, he would say, just before making her climax with such force that she would agree to anything afterward. Just like the loan that she’d offered one night in bed, a loan he accepted almost too quickly considering his loud protests (I really shouldn’t, you really mustn’t, I feel so bad about this, it’s just a temporary bridge loan), a loan he promised fervently to repay within a month, with interest. He even signed an IOU right away, getting out of bed naked to write it, to prove his sincerity. When a month passed, and nothing happened, she hadn’t said anything at first, thinking, any day now, it’s just a question of timing, for sure. Cash flow in business is like that.

After the second month, she lodged a gentle reminder, and he had been so sad and apologetic, bowing to her, saying how embarrassed he was but things were still difficult although he knew that was no excuse and how terrible he felt.

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His humbling himself so shamed her that she dropped the subject completely.

Then the promises, always unexpected, that he would manage something that day. The day would pass and nothing. The days and weeks passed, until the loan became this thing, unspoken, that hung between them.

But today was different. Even though he hadn’t remembered her birthday, there was something in his voice this morning. Lai-tai was sure of it.

Everything would be resolved after Yin-fei left. She recalled the photo he showed her several months earlier, before the loan, before Yin-fei’s last visit which had also been a last minute scramble for Lai-tai to move out for . . . it had been four nights that time. Xiong did say when he called earlier this trip might be a little longer, a week or so. In the photo, Xiong and Yin-fei were standing under a tree in their swimsuits at a beach and he had his arm around her. An attractive woman, a year younger than him, whom he’d known since high school. My wife’s so jealous of her, isn’t that silly, there’s really never been anything between us, we’re just very close friends and Lai-tai had swelled with pride, thinking how much better a wife she was to him, how much real trust there was between them, the way a marriage should be. One day, he would find a way, as he promised, to divorce his wife and marry her. They could even buy the flat they were renting, and it would become their home and then maybe they could finally have a child. How badly she wanted that. One day, one day. Patience, it will happen, Xiong promised.

The journey home was zipping along, and felt much quicker than her morning’s commute. It was a long ride from the office in Kowloon Bay back home to Sai Wan Ho on the island side, which was another contentious issue about Xiong for Ma. Why does he want you to move so far away? What’s wrong with Kwun Tong? It’s much closer to your job. She thought Lai-tai didn’t want to be near her anymore, because she had raised both girls in her tiny Kwun Tong flat. But that wasn’t true. Ma didn’t understand how important it was for Xiong to be at a more prestigious address, for his business image. She had tried to explain but Ma simply wouldn’t listen, comparing her to Lai-li who bought a flat close by, complaining, and why so much money on decoration?

You could have put a down payment on a flat instead and owned a home by now.

I would have helped you, you know that. It was different for her sister though.

She made a lot more money, and she wasn’t in love.

A strange relief overtook her. Xiong had said of Yin-fei – she was kind and sweet and trusting like Lai-tai, which was why he loved her, adding, but only like a sister of course. She even told Lai-li the first time Yin-fei stayed over and

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she crashed at her sister’s so as not to suffer Ma’s recriminations, saying, he’s so loyal to his close friends it really speaks well of his character, but Lai-li said, ahhh you’re naïve, he’s probably fucking her, and she, horrified, protested, don’t say that you just don’t know him, he’s honest and faithful to me. You just don’t know how to trust anyone. Her sister sniffed, saying, how can you talk about fidelity when he has a wife?

The hum of the MTR was eerily quiet. In fifteen minutes or so, she would be home. Xiong would have some if not all of the money to repay her. She knew he would. He said so and somehow she knew, this time, it would happen. As the train pulled into her station, she also hoped Yin-fei wouldn’t need to stay too long once her visit to the doctor’s was over.

‘The Loan’ is included in Insignificance by Xu Xi, published by Signal8Press (Hong Kong, 2018).

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Katherine Wu

Katherine Wu

are you here? are you here? can you talk about the curvature of the plants that grow from the cracks in the pavement you walk upon, furtively, eagerly, like the local children who unravel sealed leaves containing first memories – or have they fallen from attention, only existing on the periphery? do you know the number of walls in your home by heart without your tiptoeing through its halls eyes wide, somehow not knowing where the walls’ edges were and where the opening to the world was – or must you look up, chin cocked, wondering what secrets you missed? could you muse about how the soil kissed by your feet was fought over in a vicious war over things that two men both wanted to wield the gift of a sensitive trade, a most dangerous handshake – or have the soles of your feet only trod, and never felt? could you tell me which direction you face when you are asleep at night is it north, towards the flitting green lights

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or is it a delicate equilibrium between south-west and something else, a detail only a native could grasp – or do you fumble, unable to retrieve knowledge never considered? if you answered no to any of my queries, ask yourself: are you here?

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Poet ry

Katherine Wu

Katherine Wu

Confessions of a Cloud-Watcher A cloud I saw last Tuesday moved like the smoke from your cigar.

It was insistent on rolling upwards, sullying only blank space at both ends.

I watched a few smile the way you did, tears bubbling silently on the inside until they boiled over in secret and showed up on your skin instead, in dark spots.

There was one that strode as if shackled to the sky. I think its invisible ankles must’ve been rubbed raw from trying to untie your noose, winning only in rope burns.

Every day I go to the field down by the fence I spread out a blanket I watch the rolling clouds And I hope to see you again.

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Katherine Wu

Kather ine Wu

Black Hair Every once in a while a little girl clenches her chubby fingers shaking her small fist with the strength of a thousand women defiant that her hair is a shade lighter than it actually is.

She is beginning to stake things on it, first ceding a dollar, then the rice her mother prepared for her, and sets of chopsticks then sit parallel in silence listening for the first word that the little girl is proud of her black hair and thinks her skin is sunny like saffron diffusing in the hot tea sipped by the farmers who grew rice like it was pearls.

But she is now willing to bet her life on the fact that her hair is brown.

She caresses it only when it is in the sun, diluting the blinding black that was gifted to her but never opened, because she saw that the world liked lighter hair, hair grown from different soils, hair that was not black.

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Shimoyama and the Absent Ghost Shimoyama and Nicolas t he Absent Gattig Ghost

Nicolas Gattig

I

t was important that the prostitute be foreign, ideally newly arrived, not conversant in Japanese. Shimoyama wished to keep talk to a minimum.

Furthermore, a foreigner would have more of an enterprising nature – or perhaps, as he was coldly aware, be economically deprived of choice – to agree to the service he desired.

His planning was scrupulous: take the local to Sendai, then the bullet train on to Tokyo, arrival at six, find the pleasure district near Ueno station and let himself be approached on the stroll; after a show of reluctance, negotiation and deal. A simple enough transaction. And yet he was apprehensive. Was the pleasure district, run by yakuza mobsters and patrolled at night by a token police beat, safe for a schoolteacher from the sticks? Could he trust the woman not to attempt a grab at his wallet, or worse, short-change him on the service he desired? He shuddered to think the excursion might come to nothing.

At the local station, a mannerly spat ensued. Ando waived any pay but Shimoyama insisted, aware that his father-in-law needed cash. Fares had dropped since the great tsunami and Ando refused to drive out to the devastated areas – half of Yamamoto was such – for fear that the passengers might be ghosts returning to their homes, addresses no longer in existence.

Moreover, Shimoyama wanted no more debt, no more favours to repay Ando after everything he’d already incurred: the shelter and food, the assistance with the insurance, the old bicycle to get around. The tsunami had claimed Shimoyama’s house and every last possession inside, leaving him – who had escaped the wave gunning his truck up a nearby hill – with just the clothes on his back and a satchel full of history quizzes, useless now that there was nothing where the school had once stood.

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‘Be careful in Tokyo.’ Ando’s breath steamed like motor exhaust. ‘The food there’s weak for Tohoku people.’

Beyond the lamppost and the snow-covered tracks, in the darkness of the cedar woods leading all the way down to the sea, a face floated up for an instant. Muddied and torn, a dress flitted behind the trees.

As the two men bowed and came up without their eyes meeting, neither displayed any emotion, not betraying in the slightest manner that they assumed the goodbye to be final, that for a long time and for reasons never voiced or reassessed, they wouldn’t see each other again.

The lights came on in the train. He opened his trolley and found the obento – a lacquer box with rice and salmon, a side dish of tsukemono. Minami had liked the salted pickles more than he, and sometimes at the end of the month, when his teacher salary couldn’t cover any meat, she would serve them with rice and miso soup, teasing him to humour the staple as the pickles crunched happily in her mouth.

Every day Minami ate tsukemono, and now she can never eat tsukemono again. But I still sit here and eat tsukemono.

He felt relief at surviving his wife, then a pang of guilt about feeling relief, and then, along with a dreadful sense of his own mortality (if Minami could end, so could he), a surge of resolve. He knew the tsunami hadn’t cared who it took, that his outliving others was a fluke in a horrible drawing of straws.

But like an animal shot in the hills, panicked and mean, searching for safety as it pressed on the gaping hurt, he was clear in his mind – not about right and wrong or what people might think, but the demands of self-preservation, the steps he needed to take so as not to go quietly mad. He was afraid to go quietly mad; he was a burden on others already.

As the world grew huge, Shimoyama grew small. Now the only thing left to do was to eat salmon and pickles on his way to a thrill that had snaked through his mind for years. He hated the self-restraint, the repressed sobs and wails that had sickened the people around him who thought any mourning selfish. After another suicide last week, an old woman who refused to leave her shelter, Shimoyama was filled with defiance, the strange sense of superiority that the living have over the dead. I can still watch the news and my favourite films, I can still play a game of Go and eat a bowl of chashumen ramen. There is still some time left. I am still here. I am still here.

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His eyes turning inward, Shimoyama chewed on the tsukemono. If he could savour them to the fullest, reach the essence of the salt-and-sour by centring his consciousness on the pickles, perhaps he could live more fully, perhaps pause his obsession with the darkness awaiting him too.

The tsukemono, however, tasted as always.

Beyond the window appeared the past, unbidden. Silent dirt, an absence of dwellings and man, changed into heaps of rubble that were mocking all earthly purpose. Shimoyama saw cars amongst trees, stranded like jetsam.

He saw cows roaming winter fields after destitute farmers had had to release them, and if he kept training his eyes, as the past made him do, he saw Minami’s face among faces of former students, some his favourites, others pests who napped openly through his history class, now so many of them rendered ghosts hailing taxis to the devastated areas.

He loved her long eyes, their sheen of mysterious passion. He was warmed as they turned towards him.

‘I am sorry, Shin-chan, I cannot say what it’s like.’

‘I just wonder. . . .’

‘It is different from what we imagine, from movies and books.’

‘Are there other people? Anyone that we know?’

The warm eyes gazed down, then back up.

‘Shin-chan . . . do you miss me?’

‘Why, of course.’

‘I cannot see you in my dream. I don’t know why.’ She felt for his hand in the rattling car, her touch like a breeze that passed through a leafless tree.

‘You are cold,’ she said, worried. ‘Are you lonely?’

In the silence, his hand slipped from her fingers.

‘Tokyo must be exciting. It is what you’ve always wanted.’

‘I have to go where the work is.’

‘Be careful, Shin-chan.’ She paused, then said abruptly, ‘Look – mother made you obento. Please enjoy before you get to Tokyo. The food there is weak for Tohoku people.’

His expression grew stern as he smoothed his hair, appeasing an unruly tuft. Minami had thought it cute when his hair stood up, but Shimoyama hated the cowlick, convinced that behind his back some students called him ‘porcupine’. As the part fell in line at last and he turned back from the empty car to the darkness behind the window, the tightness of his face became soft, the lines round his mouth less pronounced.

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He was thinking of the foreign woman, the service that he desired.

Winter was milder in Tokyo than up north. The sole woollen hats on the street were Santa Claus red, worn by vendors at the 7-Eleven selling discounted Christmas cake. There were remnants of snow in the shades of the endless avenues, surreal sculptures of frozen grey.

An arrival from the sticks, he was lost in the pleasure district. Men were roaming the narrow alleys in solemn focus, scanning the signs on the buildings that reached up floor after floor, marking soaplands and shot bars and soaplands and karaoke. On the street were noodle and curry shops with entrances curtained, the air aromatic with steaming grilled pork.

‘First time around? Looking for a scrub and tug?’

Shimoyama felt repelled. Though on the lookout for a scrub-and-tug variant, he ignored the man with the fedora who had towels clamped under his arm.

For two hours he slummed through the neon in diminishing hopes of finding what he desired, the luggage wheels squeaking behind him as he searched for eyes to meet his, a shape in a doorway shadow or under a pachinko marquee – ‘your favourite machines wait for you, nice and clean’ – calling out to him in hushed tones and approaching with hips swaying a proposition. It can’t be this stupidly hard, he thought, ashamed to ask for directions, slinking down the same alley yet one more time. I have money for this – I can pay!

Minami sat in a small café, absorbed in a book. As she turned a page, smoothing it with her slender fingers, her face shimmered pale in the sheen of a lamp at her side. As always, she was alone.

So strange that she kept appearing, when in their four years of marriage he had needed to chase her – a cloud eluding his hold, afraid to be known.

The quest to be close, to solve her enigma and see who was there, had intrigued and vexed him. ‘She will adore you,’ Ando had told Shimoyama, emotional after the wedding. ‘She just won’t let it show, not ever.’

Only once had her guard come down, on their honeymoon at a Sendai inn, when coming out of the bath she had cast off her robe and with a sudden terrifying lust offered herself on all fours, for once overcome by her needs, for once nude to his hungry eye and begging that he give her something. She was drunk, weak at last. Transfixed, he had stared at her from behind, the curve of her back like an ivory bow in the dark – waist narrow, hips wide,

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and her long black hair, now sensuously mussed, tossed over her shoulder and down her spine in the manner of a slutty empress. With a shock of helpless self-hatred, he realised he couldn’t perform.

The grudge welled up like mud from deep in the sea. Then, near where Minami sat in the cafe, he saw the large stain on her seat.

The wetness had spread from her back – the blue cotton house dress she had worn on the day of the tsunami – onto the mauve velour of the upholstery, darkening it by a shade. Shimoyama, heart pounding with guilt, turned around and rushed back down the alley.

‘From up north?’ asked the manager of the capsule hotel, a student in a cheap suit and tie, his hair moussed into a sassy ducktail. Shimoyama disliked him immediately.

‘Yamamoto. Near Sendai.’

In the silence that still followed mention of Sendai, Shimoyama took in the lobby. Beside a shelf with old manga was a kadomatsu, a pot with three cut bamboo shoots, adorned with pine and roped together with straw, that ushered in the new year. A row of slippers lined the tatami, tips pointing away from the shoeboxes.

‘The area near the station seems sketchy,’ Shimoyama said, beating the small of his back.

The manager looked up, comprehending. ‘It doesn’t bother me,’ he sneered. ‘I don’t, you know . . . pay for sex.’

Less sex for you, Shimoyama thought grimly. He slid back the wooden partition that led to the hall with the capsules.

As he shuffled through the stagnant warmth, past the rows of pods that appeared like coffins for the living, he felt strangely at home, like a sailor in a submarine. It was after midnight and the pods were all taken, curtains drawn behind thick oval glass, except for one at the end of the hall. A can of whiskey or nuts clunked down a vending machine.

It was the smartphone trembling, not an aftershock or the rumblings of another quake, that yanked him out of the dream. He fumbled at his pyjamas, then the walls, checking feverishly for any wetness or a tendril of ocean seaweed, until he outlined the console for the lights, the TV set in the wall.

The screen of his phone, perched on history manga books next to his stack of underwear, shone ‘ID unsent’ for incoming calls.

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A sudden fear up his spine, he raised himself up on the futon, staring at the phone display. The call was missed, impossible to return.

The supernatural became eerie here in Tokyo, as if the glare of the neon insisted it couldn’t be real, that the sighting of ghosts wasn’t possible. He was shocked that Minami had followed him from Tohoku, a possible wrench in his plan, a possible sign that his mind indeed wasn’t right.

As he wrapped himself back into the sheets, he didn’t mind the smell of linoleum or the hum of the vending machine, the snores coming from other capsules or the drunk shifting bodies returned from their year-end parties.

He was safe from the reach of the ocean, with everything that he needed in the world.

Many people had seen dead loved ones, ghosts whose bodies were lost to the sea and couldn’t be claimed, unable to move on to heaven. They roamed the streets, unfocused and dim, their backs always to the shore. Or they might show up for tea, uninvited, dripping onto the tatami. As a rule, they were greeted with matter-of-factness, a faith in the supernatural, the way spirits were in Tohoku. And wasn’t it just like Minami? To emerge from the sea and ask, almost bashfully, ‘Did you miss me?’ Just for the look on his face, to see how much he cared? And then leave again, needing solitude. She had savoured separations in their marriage, when he left for days for a conference or visited family in Kyushu, as though it were easier to miss him from a distance. To love him when he wasn’t there.

The first encounter, a month after the tsunami, had filled him with joyous surprise. There were so many questions, so many things that he wanted to say, that he relished the chance to see her. But as Minami kept appearing, always wearing her faded slippers and the same cotton dress, and then as gradually, shyly, they began to talk, she never shared any revelations, never mentioned the past or their memories. She gave no indication of anguish, nor was there anything she seemed to want. She never said what had happened, where she had been or what she was feeling: it was all weather and food and small things, her same old evasion of questions. Foiled again, he was at a loss – a man starved for connection with a maddeningly private ghost.

A week before the tsunami, Minami had come home from a check-up, undone by a test result, a shadowy speck in her breast. Shimoyama couldn’t

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believe it: her breasts were so small, almost non-existent, how could they possibly harbour a tumour? Embracing her like a long-stemmed vase, he said not to worry, surely a false alarm.

He knew that Minami listened. Not to the words, which she knew couldn’t help, but the comfort of his embrace. He knew she waited for his arms to go limp, his warmth to pull back. It was he who ended their hugs, his choice to let go, every time. If he lingered for another moment, if, for once, the embrace would end at her timing, would that be what she needed to still the yearning inside her? But how long would that moment be? Alone in his arms, what was the thing she was yearning for?

She had been scared of cancer because she desperately wanted to live and keep doing the things she liked doing, like studying herbal medicine or watching animal videos on her phone. She couldn’t face her vulnerability, her loss of control in the relationship. Her oval face, sun-spotted from travels all over Asia in her youth, had suddenly showed her age.

She was scared of dying, and then she died – alone in a cold black wave. And now she keeps showing up saying hello and I don’t know what to do with her.

He did not have the heart to tell her she was dead.

The city was endless distraction. Unlike the lumbering shells in Tohoku, the people here moved as though arrival had meaning, as though each delay were of consequence. Shimoyama loved the lights, the shops and the things that they sold, the purpose it all implied. He took the underground trains just to see where they went – the Tozai and Ginza and Marunouchi. He would exit at random stops in a spirit of exploration, then sit in station cafés until late, next to men in dark suits sipping coffee and absorbing each word of their papers, smoking through crumpled packs until it was time to go home.

The night train was full of desires. Eyes on their phones, men thought of rest and sex, while women slept on their seats like dolls in a dream, as beautiful as escape. In the press of silent humanity, he too closed his eyes, his mind on the foreign woman.

A mantle of snow lay over Ueno Park, the stone steps at the southern entrance and the statue of Saigo Takamori, a samurai with a dog. There were patches of ice on his bronze face and dress, like a patina of the Satsuma rebellion.

Shimoyama paced up and down the street across from the Yamanote station, beating the small of his back with his fist, scanning the empty crossing

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for a female shape in high heels. It was the first day of the new year: the city lay under enchantment, for once stripped of life and activity. Someone had turned off the neon at last, creating a magical stillness.

‘Are you eating well?’ Minami looked worried. She wore a scarf with the blossom housedress, which made it look even more worn. ‘Have you found any work?’

‘A few leads. Will need to keep at it.’

‘Please tell me, Shin-chan . . .’ She played with the muddied hem of the dress, then suddenly found the courage. ‘How can it be so important? Why did you come all this way . . . just for that?’

When he said nothing, Minami went on breathlessly, ‘You know, the poor things are lured from the countryside. They’re naïve. The yakuza take their passports and force them to pay off a debt. They don’t want this. Not at all.’

Who does? Shimoyama thought. As if to steel himself to do what he had come to do with Minami right by his side, he recalled all the things she had withheld for years, the ways she had dictated, subtly but stubbornly, what was possible for them as a couple – the people she didn’t like, the places she wouldn’t go, the fact that she couldn’t sleep next to him and rejected the service he desired. With a surge of perversion, a mean pettiness flashed through his mind.

‘It is better if you don’t go. You shouldn’t go, Shin-chan.’ Minami looked up, distraught. Behind her stood dark office towers with the solemn emptiness that marked the first days of a new year.

‘Oh my – your hair is funny again.’ She reached over and, with the clumsy affected laugh that he hated, tried to brush over the tuft on his parting. ‘It looks cute, like a signal. Just a moment. . . .’

He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, but then words escaped from his lips. ‘Are you there, Minami?’ His face turned ashen.

She looked scared to the bone. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You are . . . not there.’ He pulled back from her outstretched hand. ‘Don’t you understand?’

It was the most hurtful thing he had ever said to her. He turned away, his eyes welling up, and then stumbled off to the entrance that led into the park.

A pair of slippers flapped on the concrete behind him, mixed with her plaintive cry, ‘Shin-chan! Please stay – please don’t go!’

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The small space was partitioned by portable drapes. On the wall hung a cheap, faded poster, three yellow roses in obscenely full bloom.

He was showered and towelled off, his clothes on a chair, the sole furniture in the room. A smell of baby oil hovered, and when the woman, who he realised now was not a foreigner, pushed through the drapes and approached with dreamy assurance, the voice of a man and another woman carried over from behind the partition. The hustler with the fedora had greeted him at the door of the apartment, showing no sign of recognition. He had politely asked for payment up front, then handed him a white towel and a basket for his clothes.

Shimoyama didn’t find the woman desirable – the short hair dyed brown, the wide chubby cheeks with a layer of too much foundation – and this somehow made him aroused.

‘From up north, oni-san?’

‘Yamamoto.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Near Sendai.’

She looked down at him. Her teeth were uneven, the colour of faded snow.

‘I was there once, on a school trip. The ramen was good. But the people were silent and cold.’ She paused, then looked down at her sandals. ‘I am sorry.’

She removed the small towel that covered his front, then took a bottle of baby oil from her pocket. She squeezed an excessive amount on her hand, then his midriff. With no wasted move and no thought for the awkwardness, she began massaging his genitals.

Suddenly she stopped. ‘You want stronger feeling than this, oni-san?’

After a deep breath he said please, thinking of the service he desired.

‘You have more money? It isn’t cheap, oni-san. . . .’

He nodded at his jacket on the chair. ‘In there.’

The woman fished out his wallet, counted out bills in front of him, then looked up. Shimoyama nodded – it was now or never. With a soft, disappointed smile, she kept rummaging through his wallet, took out three more bills, all that was left, then shook out the coins and stuffed everything into her pocket. Seeing his watch on the chair, she looked at him and he nodded consent. There was no shame between them, just the intimacy of strangers, the silent acceptance of circumstance. The watch disappeared into her pocket, then she took the bottle with oil and poured out the rest. As she slipped out of her rubber sandals, Shimoyama closed his eyes, turning his focus inward, projecting Minami’s fingers, her small and strong feet, onto the woman.

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The yellow roses on the wall became vague, fraught with eternity. He had beaten oblivion. He had what others no longer had – he was alive and would never die.

The car was empty, the train a local to Saitama. The new year saw everyone home with their families, pouring sake from early in the morning and visiting shrines for auspicious beginnings. With no money left and no more watch to tell him the time, Shimoyama planned to arrive early for the job, a teaching position at a junior high school in Misato.

Minami sat across the aisle, her abstracted gaze on the dusk. Inexplicably, her dress was clean, as if she had found a chance to launder and iron it.

She had been silent since the argument in Ueno – no response when he asked her if she was cold or if she wanted the tsukemono from his obento, the salmon he had bought at the station. At some point he even pretended to brush his part, to tempt her to come over and help, yet Minami remained in her seat. He had to wait for the right moment to tell her about the new job.

Eventually she would acknowledge him. He just needed to wait.

For an hour he sat in silence, his recent exhilaration dampened by a sense of sheepishness. As the train rattled past an abandoned stop, he got up and crossed the aisle and sat down in the seat beside his wife, taking pains not to touch her.

Minami looked out of the window, her head against her hand, the elbow on the wooden sill. Her eyes looked dreamy, lost in the fields that would soon be worked by the farmers.

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Ruffled Feathers Ruffled FeatherMur s zban F. Shroff

Murzban F. Shroff

I

t was one of the finest buildings in South Mumbai. Not a fly could enter unnoticed. Though it had been constructed on slum land, today it bore an elite address. The affluent and the successful aspired to stay here. And stay they did, after paying a fortune for their apartments. There were twenty storeys in all, with three levels of parking, three lifts for the owners, and a separate lift for the domestic help.

Security was watertight. Five sturdy guards in uniform patrolled the premises, maintaining a vigil twenty-four hours a day. Not that the neighbourhood was dangerous, but every precaution had to be taken. That’s why the maintenance charges were high: fifty thousand rupees a month. But no one minded, no one complained. And there was CCTV, too, eagle-eyed scanners that spotted every movement.

The male servants were frisked and their identities checked before they entered and left the premises. The maids got away with a bit of flirting: they knew how to soften the men in uniform. But the chauffeurs were checked morning and evening, and this would annoy them, for they had their pride, these men of spotless appearance.

There were strict rules. Every visitor would have to enter his name and address into a logbook and on leaving would have to sign out. This would annoy the visitors, but rules were rules, and security could not be compromised.

It was surprising, then, that a pigeon got into the shaft. This was the long vertical enclosure that ran down the bathrooms, carrying the plumbing pipes all the way from the first floor to the twentieth. It was a wonder how the bird got in, considering that the shaft was covered with a special bird mesh. It could be inferred that the pigeon had been looking for a safe place to lay her eggs and, in her quest for childbearing privacy, had torn through the mesh.

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The bird was noisy. It cooed without pause, its cooing growing louder with every passing minute. Sometimes, as though seized by some terrible impulse, it would flap its wings and fly up, beating its wings so furiously that feathers from its body would dislodge and float into the bathrooms.

Fed up with the noise, the women of the building decided to take their complaint to the property manager, Major Anirudh Sood, who had his office on the ground floor. The major was a broad-chested man with a jowly face, small, alert eyes, and a faint ironic smile. He ordered tea for the ladies, who had begun to talk among themselves. They spoke for about ten minutes, discussing servants, chauffeurs, and noise levels from the adjoining chawls, before realising they were there for an important matter.

Kamal Suchanti was the first to speak. She was a glum-faced woman, seventy years of age, residing alone on the third floor. She said that the bird had added to her constipation problem. As it was, unloading at her age was such a problem. And just when she would get the urge the damn bird would start its song of oppression – hootoo, hootoo, it would go, and she would freeze up. Then the bird would rise to a higher level and, still going hootoo, hootoo, would excrete onto her bathroom window. It seemed to be mocking her, this bird.

The other women offered suggestions. Had she tried bananas, papaya, plums, or black grapes, all time-trusted remedies in the battle against constipation? Then someone asked: Had she tried throwing water at the bird before she began her business?

‘Not just water,’ said Major Sood quickly. ‘Piping hot water! To shock, to stun!’

‘Of course not!’ said Kamal Suchanti, horrified. ‘That would be cruel.

Horrendously cruel.’

‘Maybe we can fumigate the shaft?’ said Mrs Vyas helpfully. ‘That should help get rid of the bird.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Bansal. ‘That pigeon is pregnant, and we don’t want to harm her babies. That would be like the Bhopal Gas tragedy. We don’t want that on our conscience.’

‘No, surely not!’ said Mrs Venkatraman. ‘Whatever we do, we shouldn’t endanger the bird or its eggs. After all, we are civilised people.’

‘What about tempting the bird with some seeds?’ said Mrs Thakore. ‘We could place some seeds on the ledge of a toilet window, and when it comes to eat those, we could try to trap it,’

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‘No, no,’ said Mrs Kashyap. ‘Once the bird knows there is food available, it is never going to go. It will simply stay put.’

‘Which reminds me,’ said Mrs Adenwalla, stiffly. ‘I must bring it to your attention, Mr Sood, that someone continues to feed the crows every morning.

They throw bread and chapattis on the ledge below my apartment, and the crows flock there and make a terrible nuisance. Caw, caw, they go, for over an hour. Which disturbs my meditation. May I request you to send a circular to all the flat-owners requesting them to stop this at once? And, if that doesn’t work, perhaps you could focus a CCTV upward, to catch the culprit.’

‘There is nothing wrong in feeding crows, Mrs Adenwalla. In case you didn’t know, crows are nothing but your ancestors reborn, and when you feed them, they shower you with blessings,’ said Mrs Doshi. Short and stout, Sheetal Doshi had a grim face that belied her thirty years of age. She sucked in her lips and glared at Mrs Adenwalla through round glasses.

But Mrs Adenwalla was not be intimidated by a woman twenty years her junior. Coldly she said, ‘I can assure you, Mrs Doshi, that if my ancestors are reborn they are certainly not going to be crows. They are going to be civilised, cultured human beings in London or Paris. In fact, I find it insulting that you’d think my ancestors were scavengers. I will have you know, that we, the Parsees, have excellent tastes in food.’

‘Oh, we know all about your tastes in food, Mrs Adenwalla; don’t remind us! You eat the brains and the liver and the kidneys of goats, and their private parts, too. Why, just the other day, the whole elevator was stinking when you returned from the bazaar. I could tell it was some awful flesh you had brought back. So don’t talk to me about your fine tastes. We know all about that!’

‘Well, if you know that much, Mrs Doshi, perhaps you would also like to tell us who it is who is feeding the crows. Who is following this uncivilised practice, day after day?’ Mrs Adenwalla’s eyes glinted. The room bristled with tension.

‘Ladies, ladies!’ said Major Sood, stretching out his hands in a calming gesture. He felt like a man who had been invaded on his own turf, drawn into a battle not his own. Yet he smiled.

‘Please stay out of this, Major,’ said Mrs Adenwalla angrily. ‘I think Mrs Doshi and I have something to settle, and it might as well be here and now!’

‘Well, first, let me tell you, Mrs Adenwalla, that you have no business bringing all your foul-smelling meats into the elevator. Most of us here are religious people. We go to the temple; we do puja daily; we don’t even allow

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our servants to eat non-veg food. And then you just walk into the elevator with your stinking meats and pollute it. That is not proper. You should think of our feelings, too.’

Mrs Adenwalla crossed her legs elegantly. At fifty-two, she had the body of a gymnast. Sitting erect, hands over her knees, she spoke coolly. ‘I don’t believe it, Mrs Doshi. You are acting as though being non-vegetarian is some sort of a crime. You are trying to make me feel guilty, make me feel small.

Well, you are not going to succeed. Let me tell you what it is like to bite into tender, flavoured meat. It makes your palate sing, your senses soar. You eat not just to fill your stomach, but to celebrate life, to feast on it. Something that nature has intended for you. But you can’t imagine that, can you? How could you? You are so closed to the idea that you don’t even know what you are missing. And another thing: Please stop saying ‘elevator’. The correct word is ‘lift’. If you must use the English language, use it correctly.’

Mrs Doshi flushed red. With a sudden jerk, she moved her chair closer to her opponent. Then, through clenched teeth, she spoke. ‘Well, what do you think non-vegetarianism is, if not a crime? Let me ask you one thing, Mrs Adenwalla, just one thing, huh? And you try and answer me. You think you are very clever, no, with all your fancy airs and your ideas about the English language, then you answer me one thing from common sense. My guruji told me this, and now I am asking you, and if you answer me, I will acknowledge you in front of all these ladies. Yes, I will! If human beings are meant to eat flesh, then why we don’t have claws and fangs like all those flesh-eating animals? Why are we made so differently? Come on! Answer me! I am waiting.’

‘I don’t see why I have to justify myself to you, Mrs Doshi,’ said Mrs Adenwalla. ‘As far as I am concerned, non-vegetarianism is a matter of individual choice, and you had better learn to respect that. We live in a cosmopolitan society and, if you have a problem with that, then buzz off, move, I say! Go somewhere where you can be with your own kind.’

‘Hah, you are trying to change the topic because you can’t answer my question. How can you? You don’t even know what you are stuffing into your body, what you are serving your family. If you really loved your family, would you give them dead offerings? Tell me, would you?’ Mrs Doshi turned and looked around at the other women, her face thick with victory.

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‘Ladies, ladies, please! We have strayed from the main subject. We need to decide the fate of the pigeon.’ Major Sood was polite, but his smile had disappeared.

‘Well, what are you here for, Mr Sood, if you can’t solve this problem. Our duty was to bring it to your attention. Now you decide how you want to solve it. All we know is: it has to go! The bird has to be removed gently, without hurting it. I am told a pigeon’s breath is bad for the health. It can lead to asthma and lung infections. And we have so many children in the building, and old people, too. So you must act promptly. Wouldn’t you agree, ladies? Major Sood is the best man for the job. We should leave it to him.’

This was Minoti, Minoti the painter, who was known for her exquisite depictions of old Mumbai. It was a beautiful day, full of warm natural light, and Minoti was eager to return to her canvases.

The other women agreed. Yes, the major was the right man for the job.

Major Sood shot Minoti a grateful look. He had a busy day ahead and liked to maintain a brisk schedule. He rose to his feet and assured the women that the pigeon would be removed. Within twenty-four hours it would be evicted. They had his word on that.

Alone in his office, the major thought what a close shave it had been. It could have turned nasty, like the last time. Mrs Doshi and Mrs Adenwalla were old foes, their animosity having begun over a parking spot. Not their fault, really.

In Mumbai, parking space was always in short supply. In the building, for instance, each flat-owner was entitled to two parking spots on the raised podium. But how was that to suffice when almost every person in a family owned a car? The space along the driveway was an open parking lot – anyone could park there, as long as you got in first. Yet, there was always a scramble for the spots, and sometimes arguments, which invariably got sorted out in the end.

But one night, things had got out of control. Sheetal Doshi’s husband, Chetan, had steered his BMW into the place where Soli Adenwalla usually parked his Jaguar. Now, you don’t do that to a man like Soli, a big man, a successful man, with an ego as big as his belly. Not for nothing was Soli paying the security guards an additional ten thousand rupees a month. For that price, they were supposed to keep an eye on his car and discourage other flat-owners from occupying his spot. But that night Soli was out, and Chetan Doshi had rolled in from Pune, having driven three hours non-stop to get home in time

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for an India-Pakistan cricket match. Chetan was tired, and though he had two reserved spots on the podium above, he thought: why not make use of the open parking?

The security guards had protested. This was Soli Sahib’s parking. He always parked there.

Where, where was it written? Chetan Doshi had demanded. And before his gaze the security guards had withdrawn.

Two hours later, Soli cruised in, from a Parsi wedding, where he had knocked back four large single malts and gorged on chicken farcha, patra fish, salli par eedoo, and a spicy pulao dal that reminded him of the one his grandmother would make. Craving the luxury of his four-poster bed, he was aghast to find his parking spot occupied. Calling the security guards, he let fly at them, and all they could do was listen stupefied. ‘What could we do, sahib?’ they said glumly. ‘We tried explaining, but Doshi Sahib just would not listen.’

That sent Soli into a rage. He ordered them to call Chetan Doshi and tell him to remove his car that minute before he, Soli, did something drastic.

And Silla Adenwalla, standing beside her husband, in her finery, pleaded, ‘Soli, please, calm down, my darling. You know what Dr Balaporia said about your blood pressure. You don’t want to take chances. You have to take care.

You don’t want to ruin your health, do you, my sweet potato?’

The guards called up Chetan Doshi, who was equally furious at being asked to abandon an exciting match. Slipping out of his shorts and into his trousers, he swore that he would teach that arrogant bawa a lesson; he would take him down a peg or two. And listening to him was his wife, Sheetal, who decided to accompany her husband, just in case things got out of hand.

Face to face, the two men had argued, had stood their ground and, when that failed, they traded insults, then blows. When the security guards tried to intervene, they were ordered to stay away. And soon the wives joined in, screaming at each other.

Just then a cop van passed by. It stopped, and three cops stepped out and questioned the men – why the hell were they brawling like hooligans and why were their clothes torn, their faces bloodied? The cops asked them to accompany them to the station. And, naturally, the wives went too, angry and shrill with accusations.

Complaints were registered. Criminal complaints. On the basis of these, cases were filed in the Bombay High Court. If one of the complainants

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alleged threat to life and property (meaning car), the other said he had been subjected to a common slur; he had been insulted to the point where he suffered a loss of self-esteem.

Each complainant offered the security guards a bribe to testify in his favour. The guards reported this to Major Sood, who thought it prudent to transfer them out and bring in a new lot.

The matter came up for hearing in the Bombay High Court. Justice Nyay Sundaram clubbed all the cases filed by the complainants and brought them to a single hearing. The court didn’t have time for petty matters, he said, matters that sprang from the ego.

Hearing both sides, the honourable judge delivered his judgment. The fault lay not with either party but with the civic authorities who blindly allowed builders to build skyscrapers without taking into account the number of cars. He fined the two complainants five thousand rupees each for wasting the court’s time and suggested that they collectively file a public interest litigation asking the civic authorities to give a complete report on how they planned to provide parking space for the new development projects they had sanctioned.

The case made headlines and brought Soli Adenwalla and Chetan Doshi into the limelight. Overnight, they became known, and were now seen as people who had brought to light an important civic issue. The two had to also work together on the public interest litigation. And, in so doing, they buried their hostility, discovering, into the bargain, a common love for cricket. But somehow their wives could not forget that the two men had traded blows, inflicted insults and injuries, and been whisked away, in the dead of night, to the police station, like common criminals. The women were too proud to forget that night.

And that’s how matters had come to a boil this morning, thought Major Sood. The argument was simply an offshoot of the main issue. But that was their problem, he thought. He had work to do, important work. He had better get started.

First, he had to get an estimate for installing a sewage water treatment plant in the building. The plant would recycle and treat wastewater, and utilise it for flushing, gardening, and washing cars. It was his idea, the plant, and would result in huge savings on water bills. He was sure that it would impress the flat-owners. Show them the foresight he could bring to his job.

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Then he had to visit the municipality and request them to level the access road to the building, which was full of potholes. For that, he should remember to take some money from the bank. Because those jokers at the municipality wouldn’t budge without a bribe.

While at the municipality, he also had to complain about the stray dogs who kept up their barking all night. Recently, they had attacked Mrs Sippy’s pug, and Mrs Sippy had simply refused to pay the monthly maintenance charges until the strays were removed.

He also had to get the water tanks cleaned, the main gate painted, and the chandeliers in the lobby polished. And, besides all that, there was the matter of that damned bird.

At the municipality, he had to wait for two hours outside the chief engineer’s office. Seated on a hard wooden bench, he could see the chief engineer – a small, wiry man with a foxy face – through the swivelling half-doors.

In passing, a peon suggested to him that he stand up. If the chief engineer saw him standing, his ego would be appeased. The peon paused, lingered, and the major sighed and reached for his wallet.

Standing, the major wondered if he missed army life if, in some way, he still hankered for the thrills of action. For him, it was never about the glory but the need to be of service to his country. Even as a teenager he had wept over the patriotic songs and felt something stir in his throat and chest during the singing of the national anthem. A twitch in his hip reminded him why he had left the army and, as though to get away from the memory, he began pacing.

Operation Lone Star, it was called, and it was a clandestine operation. An operation that saw him venture into enemy lines, take risks that would have been considered a breach of treaties and peace pacts. The mission was nowhere to be found in any army records. Not so much as a word. They had been told that even their families would not know their location and, should something happen, their bodies would be declared missing in action.

There were five of them on the strike force: Pushpinder Sinha, Banwari Lal, Vivek Mathur, and Rajindra Singh Khosla. He, of course, was the most senior, the man in charge, and together they were known as Sher-e-Parbat, Lions of the Mountain, because it was their job to move out after dark and

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comb the mountains for hidden bunkers and snipers and render them inactive.

It was almost midnight when they had come upon the house on the mountain, a solitary hut that looked deserted.

And then he had seen a flash and knew that it was occupied. They were being watched, yes! Targeted? Perhaps.

And he knew, too, that his men were exhausted. They had been on the move for days, walking along treacherous ledges, crossing mountain walls ripped by shells and mortars. Their feet and fingers were stiff, like logs. Their boots and weapons felt like a burden. They were low on sleep, low on rations, and their breathing was slow and heavy.

So he had decided to check out the hut himself. Ordering his men to cover him, he had begun his climb, one hand cupped over a torch, the other holding a rifle.

Twice he had seen the flash, and knew he had to get there quickly. But the hut was higher than what it had seemed from below. At five thousand metres, the eyes and the mind could play tricks. That much he knew about the mountains.

Glad of the bulletproof jacket he wore and for the sheltering dark, he had inched his way up, expecting any moment to catch a burst of gunfire. They lived with that feeling always: the tacit presence of death. Like knowing they could be consumed anytime by these jagged white peaks, where nothing in nature survived.

Then, luckily, he had found a path that led to the house, and he had brought out his pickaxe and lurched forward, man against nature, and nature allowing itself to be conquered, slowly, grudgingly.

Working his way up, he couldn’t breathe freely. His breath came in pants, short and hard, and he was sure that the enemy could hear him wheezing.

Finally he was there, outside the hut, at the side entrance. He did not care if someone were to shoot him now. He was that tired, that numb. Besides, he could not see his men and knew not what awaited him on the other side.

Mustering all his strength, he kicked at the door, and the first thing he saw were the white of eyes, startled, and a rifle point clumsily at him.

Then he felt a searing pain in his thigh, the ground wobbled under him, and he, falling, had emptied out his rifle.

When he was sure that it was all over, he had swung his torch around and was seized by a terrible panic. What had he done? What, indeed? The figure

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before him was that of a boy no more than seven or eight years in age, slumped dead against the wall of the hut.

He crawled across the room, wondering how the boy had come to be there.

What was he doing at that height? Was he an Indian or a Pakistani? Or the son of a terrorist?

Under the torchlight, he had gazed at that face and realised it was not a face he would ever forget. A sweet, angelic face, with long, feathery eyelashes.

Removing his gloves, he touched the boy’s forehead with his palm. It was still warm, and the hair so soft and moist.

He felt his thigh swell and his groin and hip throb mercilessly. But he knew that if he was to ever feel any paternal instinct, any pangs of fatherhood, it was in these moments only.

He had shouted to his men that it was all over, and even as the peaks carried his voice back to him, he knew that it was, indeed, all over. He had done his bit for the country, but it was life that had tripped him. He would have to live with that face now – and a bad leg to remind him.

Heavyhearted and numb with pain, he had lifted the boy’s body and carried it outside. And even whilst he struggled with the weight something fell to the ground. Something, he felt, that did not deserve his attention.

He had buried the boy but did not have the heart to cover the face. Who was he to cover anything so beautiful, so pure? He left that to the mountains and to the Gods above.

And then he had said a silent prayer and asked the mountains to forgive him. But the mountains were, as usual, unresponsive.

And then he remembered the fallen object and went back for it.

The light from his torch fell onto a mountain-runner’s badge. A badge worn by the brave men who carried news in this part of the world, who trod the narrow paths and the slippery slopes to deliver letters and parcels. The boy had been using the badge to signal someone, to tell him that he was alive and well.

It made him sick to think of what he had delivered to the boy, instead.

His leg felt heavy now, heavy and unmovable, but not as heavy as his heart.

On the way down, his leg had given way twice, and then he had fainted, and when he woke up, days later, it was in a military hospital, at the foot of the mountains.

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There he had been told it was all over. His career, that is. He would never know about the fate of his men and was instructed to forget about the mission. To simply erase it from his mind.

As though it was that easy. But then, he was a bachelor, and was used to silence. So getting back to civilian life was something he took in his stride.

Besides, the army compensated him well. He was given a one-bedroom apartment in Colaba, a membership to the US club, and a card that entitled him to subsidised rations and free train travel across the country.

He got the first job he applied for. It was with an international property management company where the pay scales were world-class. And the first building to which he was assigned was a prestigious one, one of the best in South Mumbai. So, in a sense, life had worked out well for him. It had made him a bed as comfortable as he could expect at his age. And, here, no one considered him handicapped. With a little bit of pride and effort, he got around. He made himself useful, valuable.

And now the chief engineer called him in. He had two of his assistants with him. They noticed his limp, but said nothing. Just pointed to a rickety chair.

The room smelled of a freshly-consumed lunch. Pickles. Onions. Papads.

It reminded the major of what had been enjoyed while he was waiting, standing, pacing.

He explained why he was there. If the access road could be repaired and levelled?

They laughed and said that was for their bosses to decide, their big bosses.

Looking at their impassive faces, Major Sood was tempted to throw a chair at them. It would be so easy, he thought, to topple the desk and crush them.

Instead, he bit back his anger and said, ‘Sahib, is there any way you can do some basic repairs? All our flat-owners have expensive cars. And they have important guests visiting. It doesn’t look good for a premium building to have this kind of an access road.’ He brought out an envelope from his pocket and placed it on the desk.

Without touching it, the chief engineer said, ‘Tell me, sir, what would be the total value of all the cars in your building?’ Then without pause he added, ‘I hope your gift is in proportion to that. You see, our own tank is very large.

It has a very big capacity.’ And then they had started laughing, and the major was forced to laugh, too. And in that laughter, they had all seemed united.

At least for a while.

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No sooner had he returned then there was a call from Mrs Sippy. She said her maid had refused to take the pug for a walk; she was petrified of the strays.

So could Major Sood come and walk the pug? He could arm himself with a stick and teach the strays a lesson.

And Major Sood had felt a swamping anger in his heart. What sort of job was this that denied him his rank and his twenty years of military service?

And what had the country come to that it chose to expose a man of his stature to petty bribes and tawdry humour?

At 5:30 that evening a circular went out to all the flat-owners. It said: ‘You are hereby requested to cooperate in the matter of the pigeon eviction. The pigeon is a bird known to cause breathing problems and lung infections.

Hence, please don’t take this lightly. Please switch on your exhaust fan in the toilet at 9:00 p.m. sharp. With all fans on, this will force the bird to seek refuge at the bottom of the shaft, from where it will be removed by the housekeeping boys. I have personally instructed the boys, who will work as per my instructions. All we need is your cooperation and support. So help us help you. – By Order of the Property Manager, Major Anirudh Sood, Sher-e-Parbat.’ He hoped that someone would ask him what that last bit meant. Not that he would reveal much. Perhaps give just a hint of who he had been. A special man on a special duty.

A security guard went from apartment to apartment, handing out the circular. In most places, the circular was collected by a domestic helper, the lady of the house either having gone out or sitting engrossed before the television set.

Minoti collected hers, only to wipe her paint-stained fingers on it and crush it into a ball. This was a distraction in the face of some serious art waiting to be created.

Kamal Suchanti, heavy in the stomach and compelled to forsake her lunch, peered at it sullenly and said, ‘How, how will this help? If nothing else, more feathers, more nuisance!’

Sheetal Doshi took it absent-mindedly, at the door, while in conversation with her neighbour. ‘Tell me, Mrs Venkatraman,’ she said. ‘Tell me one thing, huh. About these non-vegetarians! Why do they call other animals wild animals when they themselves eat defenceless animals? Animals who can’t protect themselves, who can’t fight back! Is that normal, you tell me?’

And Mrs Venkatraman replied, ‘You are so right, Mrs Doshi. You were right this morning, too. But I could not say that openly. You know how that

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Mrs Adenwalla is. A real fighter-cock! She would have argued, fought, and made us all feel small. My husband always says, ‘A human being is what he eats. You eat satvic food and you will be calm and pleasant, but eat spicy food and you will generate heat and anger.’’

Sheetal Doshi’s voice turned soft. She said, ‘Why, that is exactly what my guruji says. Only, he explains it so beautifully. Why don’t you and Mr Venkatraman come one day to one of Guruji’s discourses? You will enjoy, I tell you. It will change your lives.’

Mrs Venkatraman stiffened. She said coldly, ‘Why, thank you, Mrs Doshi, but we don’t need our lives changed. We are very happy the way we are.

Simple living and high thinking: that is what we practice. And never to harm others or to speak ill of them. Even if they are different from us. Now, if you will excuse me, I will go and start preparing dinner. Mr Venkatraman likes to eat early.’

And so the two neighbours went to their respective duties and, of course, they forgot to switch on their exhaust fans. As did many others in the building.

The next morning, all the young housekeeping boys were called to the property manager’s office. There they stood, gazing at the object on Major Sood’s desk and listening to a lecture.

‘The pigeon, by and large, is a dirty bird, a noisy bird,’ said Major Sood, standing upright, his hands behind his back. ‘But, in times of war, it has its uses. In World War I, for instance, it was a pigeon, Cher Ami, who, despite being shot in the eye and breast, continued its flight and delivered a message that saved the lives of a hundred-and-ninety-four British soldiers. And, again, in World War II, it was a pigeon who saved the lives of a thousand British soldiers. It flew twenty miles in twenty minutes to warn the soldiers that the town they occupied was going to be bombed. But that was in war, mind you, and those were special pigeons.’

From the giant cage on his desk, a big, fat pigeon, the pigeon he had taken such pains to capture, let out its first coo of the day, cocking its neck upward, then sideways, to reveal a curious orange-rimmed eye. Later, it would be given finely chopped almonds and pistachios and the thick, battle-worn finger of Major Sood would enter its cage and rub its head and neck gently. And that evening it would be removed to the one-bedroom apartment of Major Sood, where it would be positioned on a balcony facing the sea, the balcony on

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which Major Sood enjoyed his three rum-and-Cokes of the day while listening to old Hindi songs from the sixties and seventies, his fingers drumming away on his white wicker armchair. And once he had finished his drinks, and the ocean before him had turned dark and foaming, dark and noisy, the major would rise, stand before the cage, and whisper softly, ‘Mother, little Mother, are you ready? Will you be ready soon?’

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John Mateer

John Mateer

The Settlement There, at the Portuguese Settlement, after being told by the restaurant owner’s wife that their Chinese shrine was dedicated not to the usual gods, but to two brothers, spirits from the nearby islands, and, being Roman Catholic, that she doesn’t understand why someone could be possessed there, by the spirits there, right there, at the shrine in the half of the restaurant that’s vacant, open to the patio, after that we entered De Mello’s, the village bar, its walls hung with crests of those Lusitanian noble clans that landed and conquered, their men marrying locals, hung with scarves of Benfica and Porto, those football tribes.

And there in a corner is a yellowing newspaper cutting about Andrew’s country-and-western band, famous in Penang in the nineties, Andrew who objects to his mother-tongue being called Kristang: ‘It’s Malaccan Portuguese!

I can speak with anyone who comes here from Lisbon, and they will understand. Even the former President of Portugal, now Secretary General of the UN. He was in my bar and we spoke together.’ Andrew de Mello, who years ago

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was notorious for sometimes dressing as a Sioux chieftain and who is now in red vest and matching jeans, his rockers’ haircut seventies-style. Face lit by his laptop screen, he’s crooning obscure ballads to a poppy backing-track, being timeless, Portuguese, and at home.

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John Mateer

John Mateer

Uncle Francis He introduces himself as an Englishman would, this Chinese man, Francis, named after the founder of Penang or Xavier, the Saint whose route I one day will have followed from Shangchuan to Lisbon. Francis, nearly eighty, a former serviceman, says he has been to Hong Kong and Africa, yet prefers Adelaide, and takes from my proffered packet only one cashew nut, explaining a spiritual economy, that weekly he runs errands for bedridden pensioners. He must – his own recovery from cancer was a miracle. From the sports-bag on his lap he removes one of his phones, saying he will later give his sister a tinkle. He holds the tiny screen up between us to play a video of Doris Day singing his favourite song. And, eyes closed, he listens, as if to memory itself: ‘Enjoy yourself . . . Enjoy yourself . . . It’s later

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than you think . . .’ That Hokkien uncle, Francis, leaving the bus at the hawker-stalls, on the junction before the old tin-mining town of Taiping, bids me farewell with: ‘Merry Christmas!’

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John Mateer

John Mateer

Harkiman of Medan Every time I enter a temple not Buddhist, I recall Harkiman, translator of Charil Anwar, enthusiastic poet, and my tutor in Bahasa. One morning he wrote his Chinese name on the whiteboard, immediately erased the characters.

Years later I confirmed his Indonesian name is that of the Shinto god of war, or defence. When we’d talked about the local temples he had been aghast at those statues of dark, bearded Chinese gods, saying they’re frightening, only folklore. I hadn’t known then to ask about the mass-killings in his city, Medan, in the year before his birth.

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From City of Devils fr om City of De P aul vils French

Paul French

J

ack Riley liked Manila on his two navy tours. First, he stays at the Seamen’s Mission, but then gets wise to where things are really happening. He hangs out at Ed Mitchell’s Rhonda Grill, swings by a hole-in-the-wall called Tom’s Dixie Kitchen that cooks tender steaks and sells imported Scotch for nine pesos a shot. He laps up the scene at the Metro Garden and Grill Ballroom, watching the navy boys of the United States Asiatic Fleet drinking iced Pabst.

On Christmas Day, the joints round Manila Bay and the Metro are a sea of white hats. It seems those boys can’t spend their wages fast enough – booze, girls, dope.

Jack trades up to a room at the Manila Hotel. Gets himself into some craps games and wins himself a stake with those magic Oklahoma State Pen dice.

He attends the afternoon tea dances at the genteel Bayview Hotel to tickle the ears of the navy wives, and buys himself some Saigon linen suits to smarten up his act. Early afternoon he takes in the movies at the theatres near the Malacanyan Palace until he realises the seat cushions are teeming with lice; he has to wash his hair with kerosene to kill the bastards. He likes walking the wealthy streets where the rich mestizos and the expat Americans live: the quiet, wide, tree-lined thoroughfares by the Bay or Dewey Boulevard with high-end American compounds, a Lasalle convertible in every driveway.

Down at the Metro Jack hooks up with a local called Paco who shows him the sights. Paco has a British gal called Evelyn who’s got a Russian surname, Oleaga, on account of once having been married to a Russian some time back. Paco and Evelyn spot Jack for a bucko-mate-on-the-lam right off the bat. They hang out nightly at Ed Mitchell’s before hitting the Metro: determinedly teetotal Jack on the seltzer, Evelyn on the house Dubonnet cocktails. Paco invariably gets shit-faced with his Manilamen brothers,

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leaving Jack and Evelyn to talk. Jack breathes in her chypre perfume and digs her fancy cut-glass accent. He tells her he wants out. Manila is a steamy version of Tulsa, but Shanghai is the real deal. She confesses she hates this swamp and wants to go to Shanghai too. Jack tells her to look him up.

A couple of weeks later Paco pulls a bank heist with his brothers on Evelyn’s tip-off and walks away with 40,000 pesos. Evelyn had her claws into the manager and sweet-talked everything out of him that Paco needed to know to rob the place right when the teller’s drawers were full to bursting. Evelyn asks for her share and Paco laughs, spits in her face, and slaps her across the room before throwing her out on the street and calling her evil. Evelyn, black-eyed, finds Jack drinking coffee in the Rhonda Grill and tells him the sorry story. Jack takes umbrage on her behalf and walks her back to her Chinatown apartment, where he finds Paco liquored up and smooching a Japanese whore. Jack beats the living crap out of Paco and hands Evelyn her cut, only to watch while she kicks Paco repeatedly in the cojones. Paco was right, Jack thinks, you are evil, Evil Evelyn. She stays the night in his hotel room, leaving the scent of chypre on Jack’s sheets. The next morning he takes her to the harbour and watches her board a steamer for Shanghai, Paco already forgotten. Evil Evelyn pecks him on the cheek and says she owes him one.

In Manila Jack sees his first real industrial-sized slot-machine operation and the gawk-eyed leatherneck marines lining up to lose their coin on payday.

He’s seen slots in Tulsa, but only one at a time in a speakeasy or a blind pig.

Nobody had much coin to spare back there. But in Manila, they cover whole floors. He watches the coins go in, the wheels spin, and a fuck of a lot less coins come out. Later, a thick-necked guy comes over and empties the back of the machine into a bucket, right up to the brim. Sweet business. Jack gets friendly with the lanky overseer, some ex-army Canadian called Penfold, or Pinfold. He explains the slots business to Jack. Easiest money on God’s green earth, no wages wasted on croupiers, machines don’t thieve the take, the dumbest hick could figure it out: just pop a peso in the slot, pull the lever and wave it goodbye. Then do it again . . . and again . . . and again. It’s rigged to the house and pays out ten per cent max on a good day.

It’s time to move on. Jack buddies up with the navy boys and jumps a US Army transport heading for Shanghai. The USS Chaumont does the run regular and the crew are always willing to do a favour for a Yang Pat vet.

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Maybe they could carry the odd cargo from Manila for an old US Navy man trying to make a go of it on the China Coast? Maybe they could at that.

The cold weather lingers late in Shanghai the spring of 1930. Jack Riley’s fingers feel the cold bad. He’s got a one-room flop with a shared can up in Hongkew that’s a pay-by-the-day establishment. It’s run by an old Swedish seaman’s widow who’s soft on sailors and doesn’t hassle for the rent. He keeps warm in his single divan with a leaky old kerosene heater and stashes his clothes in a mothball-smelling closet pushed against the mouldy blue walls.

By night Jack’s got a gig bouncing the door of the Venus Café, a late-late-night cabaret up on the North Szechuen Road, close by the dive-bars of Jukong Alley. Babylonian Jewish Sam Levy runs the joint with his sister-in-law, Girgee, and they take a liking to Jack. Sam schmoozes the patrons while Girgee keeps the business side of things ticking over – ten cents a dance with the White Russian hostesses. Sam’s happy to have Jack take care of the door, pay him some, and have his company for the Venus’s traditional 4 a.m. ham and eggs, when the riff-raff is sent on its way.

The Venus is a quiet joint till about midnight, when it becomes a bad-news mix of off-duty marines, British squaddies, Shanghai’s foreign lowlife, and slumming swells. Jack’s packing knuckledusters and a leather cosh, and there’s a cutthroat Bengal razor in his breast pocket if things go truly south. Feet and fists will deal with 99 per cent of the trouble at the Venus, and Jack’s rep as a tasty amateur navy boxer helps some. He’s partnered with another ex-navy tough guy called Mickey O’Brien, who’s solid backup. The two hit it off from day one.

He’s taken up with a regular at the Venus, Babe Sadlir, who’s been in Shanghai ‘since Christ only knows when’. Brown-eyed Babe’s originally from Nevada via some dark times in San Francisco after stabbing a girl who took her man. She ditched the man, dodged the police, and lit out for Shanghai.

Babe is one of the legion of ‘White Flowers’ of the China Coast, semi-highclass tramps who drift the Settlement, grifting the newly arrived British ‘griffins’, those young businessmen with money to spend who work at the great corporations, or hongs, as they’re known, or the soldiers with pay to waste and the sojourners looking for company while they’re in port.

By day you’ll find Babe topping up her tan by the pool at the Columbia Country Club, scandalising the taipan wives with her Mei Li Bah cigarettes and short shorts that don’t leave much to the imagination. By night you’ll

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find her drinking champagne and snaffling free caviar in her tight-fitting linen dresses – all on some British or French officer’s tab at the Cercle Sportif Français. She stays out all night a lot and lets Jack crash at her place in the Young Allen apartments on Chapoo Road. They even get it together occasionally. Jack likes Babe: the jagged scar on her neck from some ancient catfight, how she can’t speak without cursing, her blond ringlets. She teaches him the funny-sounding China Coast pidgin English and a smattering of Shanghainese patter. But she’s got an awful bad dope habit and disappears for days, getting glassy-eyed on the divans in Leong’s opium den out back of the Moon Palace dancehall, a ballroom with a mostly Chinese clientele, on the Hongkew Broadway. Leong’s sweet on her blond hair, calls her a ‘fox spirit girl’ and lets her have dope gratis till she can find another sucker to sub her.

Jack finds Sam’s 4 a.m. crew are mostly Jewish. There’s Al Israel, who runs the Del Monte Café out in the Western External Roads on Avenue Haig; the Wiengarten brothers, who front the Red Rose Cabaret and a bunch of hooch shacks north of the Soochow Creek; Albert Rosenbaum, who’d come to Shanghai from Mexico City via New York; a Swiss heist merchant called Elly Widler, who has you counting your fingers after you’ve shaken hands with him; and the exhibition dancers Joe and Nellie Farren. Babe knows Nellie from the Majestic; Joe’s in tight with the Israelites, being of that persuasion himself.

One night after the ham and eggs Joe tells Jack there’s a long-standing craps game close by, out back of the Isis Cinema, organised by the White Russian band that accompanies the silent flicks. There’s an old army blanket, instead of felt, for a shooting surface. Get low down against the wall and roll them dice. The suckers fresh out of California or just off the boat from England let Jack Riley use his very own special rolling bones, his sole souvenir of the Oklahoma State Pen. Six the hard way, easy eight, hard ten. Jack rolls a four, ‘Little Joe from Kokomo’; a snake-eyes, comes up with three on each die and calls it ‘Jimmie Hicks from the sticks’. He keeps up the patter to keep the dice flying, the money moving and nobody looking too closely. The sailor boys and the griffins are in awe of Jack, and they lap up his schtick.

They’re long games; they go on till way past dawn. Jack ups the stakes, lures the mugs in, stares down anyone who would like to suggest Jack Riley’s dice ain’t straight. He prowls the Trenches bar strip after the Venus closes, hearing the Chinese touts crying ‘Poluski girls, Poluski girls’, taking the

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punters in the craps games out back of the shacks that run the length of the Scott Road and always building his stake a little higher. The next step is to gain some real estate of his own, put down some Shanghai roots.

In the shadow of the North Station train lines, the filth and driftwood of Shanghai piles into bug-infested lodgings along Jukong Alley, a ghetto no decent resident of foreign Shanghai – that’s a Shanghailander to you – would stand for. It’s a million miles from the top joints like the Majestic Ballroom with smoothly mixed whisky sodas – stengahs, as everyone calls them – and a cloakroom stacked with Siberian furs. Or about a mile and a half in reality.

The rows of tenements with shacks out back and passages between like veins on a doper’s arm is a disgrace to the good name of Shanghai, says the uptight Municipal Council; a festering dunghill of sin and vice, says the two-faced Shanghai Municipal Police; a rookery no honest white man should enter and expect to leave alive, says the pompous North-China Daily News. Yet it stays because it pays – the SMP takes the squeeze and lets it run.

The Alley’s pretty much sewn up. The boys from the back room of the Venus own it all, with the Wiengarten brothers, originally from Romania, ruling the roost. Hard for a newcomer to get any of the action there, but just over the Soochow Creek and then across the Avenue Eddy, across the Settlement lines and into Frenchtown, there’s Rue Chao Pao San – that’s Blood Alley to you, sailor boy – and Jack knows that sordid strip of old from his Yang Pat days.

Opportunity knocks. Jack chows nightly with Sam, Girgee and Joe at the Venus. While Nellie and Babe swap gossip Joe tells Jack there’s a lush on Blood Alley for the taking: a dipsomaniac ex-navy cook discharged in Shanghai who’s bought himself a bar. He’s got a taste for the dice and the bourbon but a firm belief that Lady Luck is with him. Joe makes the introductions and swears Jack’s kosher; Jack drops tales of his Yang Pat past, acts like a hopeful naïve civilian and he’s in the game. Jack plays the lush nightly for a fortnight, losing, winning some back, always coming out slightly worse off than the heel. Then he ups the stakes until he gets the guy into debt, bad debt, and now the only way the sucker can get out of the hole is to play some more and hope for the best. But soon he gets in so deep all he’s got left is his bar – and then he doesn’t even have that. Jack subs him the price of the Dollar Line steamer ticket back to San Fran and waves him off with a genuine au revoir.

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And just like that, Jack Riley becomes the owner of one of Blood Alley’s lowest and most knock-down-and-drag-out shebeens – the Manhattan Bar, proprietor Jack T. Riley, Esq. He invites Joe, Nellie, Sam and the after-hours Venus crew for a drink. Mickey changes the locks while Babe sets them all up at the cigarette-burned mahogany bar. Sam tells Jack that it’s a shithole sailor bar on Blood Alley . . . and Joe finishes his sentence: ‘You’ll make a fortune – mazeltov!’ They all toast to that.

This extract from City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir (Viking, 2018) is published with kind permission of Penguin Random House.

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Those Old Instincts Those Old InsShilpi tinct sSuneja

Shilpi Suneja

A

unty Sumana’s Flushing seethed with thieves. The stores along Union Street robbed her blind on calling cards, the ladies outside Macy’s nearly filched her purse while trying to sell her a worse-looking one. The chickenover-rice guys diddled her out of fair portions. Men lurked in the shadows, ready to murder her in cold blood and run away with her cane. Flushing mirrored Gotham City before Batman, Bombay in the days of Varadarajan, the Tamil gangster. The upshot was that Meera had resigned to fetching her aunt from the subway station. Some nights she tried to reason with her, warn her against the dangers of badmouthing the neighbours and the neighbourhood. To do so would only attract attention. ‘You are only hurting yourself, chinnamma. You are the notorious one, the true rowdy pilla. What if someone complains? What if ICE gets wind?’ She left unsaid how much she would despair if something were to happen to her. Aunty Sumana was the only family she had this side of the Atlantic, and for the past year her aunt had been putting her up rent-free while she attended NYU for a Masters in English.

But Aunty Sumana was impervious to all of Meera’s concerns. ‘What ICE?’ she exclaimed, tapping her cane against the pavement. ‘Haven’t I overcome worse things than ICE?’ Meera shut her eyes, knowing where the discussion was headed. ‘See, yen ponnu. My mother got me married to the first gainfully employed man she spotted on the train. She got his phone number, and the next thing I know, his parents are presiding in our living room like King and Queen and I am carrying tea and murukku on a tray, and getting engaged.’

Meera knew the story by heart. On the night of the wedding the couple had argued and the husband had snatched the vase on the bedside table and hit Aunty Sumana across the face. She had walked out on her husband that same night. ‘You have to make sure you don’t end up with someone like that,’

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Aunty Sumana said, unlocking the metal gate of the apartment. ‘Don’t marry someone off the train. Before you even think of long term, make sure you know where his heart is. And the size of his big toe. Measure that. If it is shorter than his second toe, you are in for trouble. There isn’t a worse thing in this world for a woman than a bad marriage.’

Men from over a hundred and fifty countries rode the 7-train each morning – a variety of noses, toe-sizes and 401(k)s – many who caught Meera’s eye and some who even returned her gaze. But Meera wasn’t interested in any of them. For the past two months she had been seeing her professor of Modernist Poetry in his third-floor walkup in Brooklyn. He was three, maybe four decades her senior, although to Meera he looked only forty-five. The affair, if it could be called that, had started at his wife’s wake.

Aunty Sumana didn’t know. Aunty Sumana would never know.

Meera still wasn’t sure why she had responded to the e-vite sent in error by the programme coordinator to the entire English Department when it was meant only for the faculty. Perhaps it was the fact that other than the orientation at the beginning of fall semester, she hadn’t attended any events in the department. Or the fact that she was desperate to make friends – any friends – outside the NGO. NYU was a commuter school in denial. This was evident in the way even the professors in her department, men and women in caftans and Kufi caps, in Nehru jackets and khadi saris, never congregated in the hallways. Their offices were bare, despite their abundant scholarships.

The few books on the shelves belonged to previous tenants. The conversations she’d had with them, from behind computer monitors, left Meera feeling even more isolated. Unchallenged.

The e-vite had been personalised, the clean cut of the font and the sombre messaging giving it allure. Meera had borrowed her aunt’s black silk top that no longer fit her. From a grocer on University Place she had bought a bunch of white lilies.

In the foyer she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror, and saw that her aunt’s top had aged her, given her a seriousness and a bust heretofore hidden in the loose-fitting army jackets she wore. The door to Bart’s apartment was open, and she followed the cloud of voices into the living room, where a hundred or so people were gathered. By the fireplace a huge photo of a white-blond-haired lady leaned on an easel. Classical music played from invisible speakers. Bart was receiving condolences. The GPD towered over him, shaking hands. Meera could tell Bart did not like the guy much, the

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way he evaded his eyes and needlessly thanked him for coming. Twice, she thought of leaving – she seemed to be the only MA student, aside from Tom, the guy she had Bart’s class with. A while later she saw the Spanish sisters from Literary Theory, and relaxed. But they said a quick hello and disappeared into the kitchen where the wine was. She followed them and sipped some herself. Moscato D’Asti from Italy. The bubbles distracted from the bitterness.

Soon after the GPD left, the apartment began to clear of faculty. The MA and PhD students gathered by the wine and discussed bike routes in Brooklyn. The few people still in the living room were engrossed in conversations clearly unrelated to the wake. Meera was on her way to pick up her coat when she saw Bart. In his red suede jacket and bow tie he looked extremely brave. And handsome. His concerted effort at shaving and forgoing his glasses had given him a glow Meera hadn’t seen in the classroom. She realised she had been carrying the lilies all this time; she’d been too afraid to approach the dais where, under another photo of Mary, grew a garden of expensive bouquets.

‘Meera?’ Bart said. ‘Right?’

She took a step forward and let him hug her. He bent low, held her and kissed her on the cheek, making her aware of her own body, its inhibitions.

He brought his face to her ear and said, not, thank you for coming, or thank you for the flowers, but, ‘You look pretty.’ As though she were the one needing assurance. She felt herself inclining toward his voice, leaning into him.

‘I’m glad you came,’ he said, his eyes on hers as he accepted the flowers.

‘Of course, Professor,’ she said.

‘Please. Call me Bart.’

On her way home she recalled little details from the evening, and realised how extraordinary it had felt, going to a professor’s wife’s wake. In India there would have been no question of not attending. Still, on the G-train, a train she never until now knew existed, connecting two peripheral boroughs, she could sense the out-of-the-ordinary-ness of it. Of going to a professor’s house, of attending his wife’s wake, of hugging him and being hugged by him, of drinking wine. It had all been a little out of the ordinary.

As soon as she got home her aunt smelled the flowers on her but, strangely, not the wine. Meera lied and said she had been to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. After all, she’d been in the same neighbourhood.

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Aunty Sumana took another long sniff of Meera’s shirt before she hobbled into the kitchen like a penguin, leaning left, leaning right, taking her time to reach the fridge from which she took a cup of yogurt. She wore a thin white petticoat and a maxi without a bra, and Meera could see the downturned nipples, dark and sturdy, through the thin material. ‘On the day I got married,’ she said turning toward the bedroom, ‘they covered my bed with tuberoses. Do you remember the smell of tuberoses?’

Meera, made defenceless by her aunt’s recollection, said that she wasn’t sure she’d ever smelled tuberoses.

‘Next time you go to the gardens take me also.’

Meera made her bed on the pull-out couch. It was hard to imagine Aunty Sumana as a bride, sitting in a gleaming red sari on a bed covered with a sheet of tuberoses, her face decorated with kumkum, kohl in her eyes, rouge on her cheeks. She worked as a cashier at Costco in Far Rockaway, pulling two shifts in a row on most days. On the evenings she came home early she sat in the backyard with Mrs Ng, the landlady, denouncing the neighbours. Later, she retired into her room where she watched Hindi soaps, Because Mothers-in-Law Were Once Daughters-in-Law, even though she had been a daughter-in-law for only a day, and would never in her life become a mother-in-law. Except for oiling her hair, which was still long and black, Aunty Sumana didn’t indulge in self-care.

Still, the tuberoses. She remembered the tuberoses. Perhaps she still had some sweet recollections from those otherwise horrid forty-four hours. Was Aunty Sumana thinking of falling in love again?

At school in her classes in postcolonial theory, they never analysed romance in Indian television shows or in novels, never read them as cultural artefacts to discuss gender roles in transition. They learned about the Indian caste system and colonial policies, about the freedom movement of the 1920s, and the constitution. Meera didn’t hear any poetry until Thursday afternoon when she had Modernist Poetry with Bart. For this reason alone, she anticipated his class all week.

That particular Thursday, five days after the wake, they were reading Eliot.

Bart was reciting the last lines of ‘The Waste Land’. There was passion on his face and pain, and with that passion and pain he looked at Meera. But the moment passed. When the class ended he didn’t stop her, even though

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she lingered, slipping her books into her bag. There had been no missives on the margins of her response paper, either.

But the week after next she received an email. The Film Forum was screening The Idiot and Bart wondered if Meera might like to come along.

She was at the NGO, writing to urge donors to give money for clean water in South Sudan. As soon as she saw Bart’s email she locked her computer and went into the kitchen. Her boss came in for an espresso. While the coffee machine gurgled and grunted, he asked Meera about her plans for the evening. Was she taking it easy? Or burying her head in books? He himself was taking his girlfriend to a local bistro, dinner and some wine, nothing too fancy. Meera tried to picture their Park Slope loft crammed with furnishings and music, the tall windows, the skirt-like lampshades that threw a circle of yellow light on warm hardwood floors. She returned to her desk, opened Bart’s email and typed a response: See you there.

On the 6-train she wondered how he had figured she was available, that she wasn’t seeing anyone. Perhaps, she decided, he didn’t care.

He was waiting at the corner of W Houston and 6th, and when she walked up to him he kissed her on the cheek. He was wearing a corduroy jacket and a dark shirt, the top three buttons undone. Without the bow tie that he sometimes wore to class, he looked much younger.

After the movie they walked to Bombay Duck Co. where Bart ordered red wine and plantain curry. He noticed she wasn’t drinking, and Meera, too afraid to tell him she’d never had alcohol until the wake, took a sip just to show him she could. Once her meal was over, she gulped down her glass.

Bart, suppressing a chuckle, waved to the waiter and said, ‘The lady would like to try your mango ice-cream.’

The dessert was brought to them, three slices of a cone sprinkled with fronds of saffron and pistachio dust, on a silver plate with two spoons.

‘How do you like it?’ Bart asked. ‘It is lovely, isn’t it?’

The flavour lacked authenticity, didn’t match the standard set by the brands sold at the grocery stores in Jackson Heights, but Meera told him it was exceptional.

On the 7-train that night she watched the glistening Manhattan skyline, visible briefly before the train took a sharp turn to face Queens for the rest of the journey. She tried to find the exact spot where she’d just been, south of the Chrysler building, but couldn’t, and soon she was separated from the evening out with Bart by a river and a medley of languages.

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Her aunt wasn’t home when she got back. A voicemail told her she was working overtime that night. Meera tried to read some Arendt for the class on Otherness, but could not concentrate. She cleaned the living room and prepared fried rice for her aunt to take to lunch the next day.

For as long as Meera could remember, her aunt had held a job. She’d worked in delis, in banks, in cafés and restaurants, moving sure-footedly from one identity to the next. Meera’s mother was nothing like that. She wouldn’t be able to get from Flushing to Jackson Heights without Meera’s father to guide her. This must be why her parents had entrusted her to Aunty Sumana: so that she could learn to be tough. She was already saving her salary from the NGO, as per her aunt’s instructions.

She thought about these things as she walked to the station to fetch her aunt. By that time of the night the stores were shuttered. She passed by a row of houses with rose bushes two-, three-stories high. In the mornings retired Chinese gentlemen would tend them in their vests. Such conscientious gardeners! And still Aunty Sumana complained! Even the garbage bins were lined properly along the pavement’s edge. There was consistency in the trash.

People discarded the same things – old television sets, rusted baking trays, out-of-fashion T-shirts. Meera turned on Union Street and walked past the fire station. An upended milk carton leaning against the wall indicated the spot where Gary would sit. He appeared during rush hours, never on weekends, and extended a petulant, embarrassed hand toward passers-by.

Yesterday Meera had emptied her change into his palm. When she turned around, he was sitting on the steps of the deli eating a hot dog, a napkin tucked in his collar. Even the homeless here used their money wisely. Truly, if Flushing had a rowdy element, it was her chinnamma! Still, despite her aunt’s criticism of Flushing, she had been the one to show Meera around.

The one to show her how to take out the trash, where to catch the bus, how to purchase a MetroCard.

The escalators awoke and a stream of men and women emerged from underground. Aunty Sumana’s voice preceded her body. She was singing a Tamil hymn. She tapped her cane against the pavement as she shuffled her feet. On their walk home Aunty Sumana chatted non-stop about her ongoing fight with the shift manager who sometimes liked her and sometimes hated her so much he warned to get her fired. Today he had given her her second written warning.

‘I think he is unhappy his girlfriend left him.’

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‘Why don’t you butter him up?’

‘What if he gets wrong idea?’

‘There is nothing wrong with “wrong ideas”, Aunty,’ Meera ventured.

‘There is nothing wrong with getting to know someone over a cup of—’ ‘Aiyaiyo! What funny-funny things are you saying, rowdy pilla?!’

Meera slowed to allow her aunt a moment’s rest. The metal in her knees was giving her trouble. Perhaps it was absurd to imagine Aunty Sumana sitting across from a man, eating ice-cream from the same cup, dipping spoons simultaneously, talking about Japanese cinema and Russian literature.

In this new aspect of her New York life, Meera realised, she had only herself as a guide. She couldn’t ask anyone for advice on how to proceed with Bart, least of all her aunt.

Before she went to sleep she allowed herself to think about Bart once, and her fingers automatically reached for her laptop, opened her email, and indeed, at the top of her inbox, there was a message. ‘Thank you for a beautiful evening,’ it said. ‘Thank you for being you.’

The two hours of Modernist Poetry became a world that Meera longed to inhabit. It contained things that had no relevance to her life but were charming all the same. It was as though she were looking at those things – the Cotswolds, a blackbird, a red wagon – from behind a glass, as she did walking past antique stores in Union Square. Crystal ladybugs, ivory brooches, busts of unknown women.

They read Pound, Eliot, Stevens. They learned how Eliot spoke in many voices and favoured the dream realm while Stevens was self-conscious but playful. All these things Bart brought to them, gifts from the world of literature, although, in class, she thought of him as strictly Professor Donoghue.

‘The nudity,’ he said, and she felt his eyes on him. ‘The nudity of the language is evident in Pound. Eliot refuses nudity.’

Tom leaned toward Meera and whispered, ‘Whom would Donoghue like to see naked, you think?’

She jerked up in her chair.

‘Pound or Eliot? I don’t wanna write my paper on the wrong man.’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied, her face turning red.

‘You don’t?’ He looked at her with such incredulity that her pulse quickened.

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Still, Bart’s class was a relief from the postcolonial classes where she already knew the story, and that the story ended badly – in colonialism and then in postcolonialism – which was just a shorthand for nationalism, impending fascism, grave inequality. There was no love, no poetry, only a poetics of doom.

They met often after that, every week on Fridays when Bart wasn’t teaching and again on Sundays to break up the monotony of his working weekend.

They cooked elaborate dinners in Bart’s kitchen, which, to Meera’s surprise was equipped with everything from an egg poacher to a crème bruleé torch.

She brought him spices from Jackson Heights, but only the ones he was able to name, afraid that introducing Bart to the foetidness of asafoetida or the bitterness of fenugreek might land her the position of native informant, a role she did not fancy. Still, she made him chicken curry, spiced mildly, and the dinner was a success because Bart ordered fresh naan from the Indian restaurant down his street. They ate on the big table in the kitchen, which was lovely to Meera from every angle, the roses dying on the marble counter, the copper pots hanging from the ceiling, the faint pink evening light coming from the stained-glass windows.

Her aunt’s kitchen was not large enough to accommodate a table. It had been renovated, but it lacked the studied, slow charm abundant at Bart’s.

Her aunt had just the basics. A rice cooker, a pressure cooker, pans for tea and stew. Once, when Meera bought home a madeleine pan, her aunt chided her for splurging money.

‘You supposed to be saving for your future,’ she said. ‘For your children, your husband. Which I am supposed to find. But where am I supposed to find him? At the store? You better off finding a job than a man. Of course, if you wait too long all you will get are divorcees and widowers.’

Bart was a widower, which would imply he had time to spare, he was ready for a new commitment. But it was hard to believe that his life was ever occupied by anything but work. He’d been married forty years, but the apartment had hardly any public traces of his wife, no photos in frames, shoes or coats lingering in the coat closet, a chair with her name on it like Bart’s, or even a lampshade that hinted at feminine aesthetics. Had she failed to fill his house with her presence, or had they remained within their separate spheres? Sometimes Meera wondered if the woman had been deliberately

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hidden; that right before Meera appeared on his doorstep, Bart had swiped all reminders of his wife away. But in the end, she decided that Mary was a private wound. Bart was still in mourning. Why else did he never bring her up?

Six weeks before Christmas Bart invited Meera to the ballet. She splurged on a black dress from H&M and borrowed her aunt’s pearl necklace. That evening, as she emerged from the Columbus Circle station, she saw Bart on the steps of the Lincoln Center, talking to a woman in a long, pale pink silk dress and a trench coat. Their conversation seemed private, the way Bart held her shoulder, whispered in her ear. Before Meera could turn around he spotted her, called her name.

‘Come and meet my family,’ he said. The woman, much older than Meera, put a gloved hand on his shoulder, as though in gratitude. As Meera drew close she saw that the woman was accompanied by a little girl, a child of six or seven.

‘Gracie,’ said Bart to the little girl, ‘Say hello to my friend, Meera. And this little lady is Gracie, my granddaughter.’

The girl put her hand in Meera’s. She had long straight hair like her mother’s, but lighter, and she wore a black bow on her ponytail. She told Meera it was her second time seeing this ballet, and that this was her favourite out of the six she had seen so far.

‘Very impressive,’ Meera said, still shaking the girl’s hand.

Her mother, Liz, instead of taking Meera’s extended hand, brought her close and hugged her.

‘Shall we go in, Bart?’ she asked, taking his arm, leaving the other free for Meera.

Inside, as Liz and Gracie walked ahead, Meera leaned into Bart and asked, ‘Is that your daughter? But she didn’t call you Dad.’ ‘My children are adopted.’ He took Meera’s hand and kissed it.

For the rest of the evening Meera was distracted. While the dancers sprang and pirouetted and music rose and fell, Meera kept thinking about Bart and his family. The man sitting next to her, taking in the music and the dance, kissing her hand from time to time, had spent a lifetime without anyone calling him Dad. She wondered if it was unjust, to adopt children, to put them through school and college, and still not hear them call you Dad. This new knowledge changed her view of Bart, made him nobler, a more loving husband, a far less selfish human being. Then, suddenly, she felt a bout of

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inexplicable anger. Why didn’t his children call him Dad? Even though it was no business of hers to question his family’s inner workings, she felt indignant for him, allowed herself the right to feel indignant for him.

They knew all along they were adopted, he told her later on the train with Gracie and Liz, on their way to Chinatown for dinner. ‘They were ten and eleven when we brought them home.’

While waiting for a table at Golden Unicorn, Meera watched Bart pick up Gracie and plant a kiss on her forehead. He was laughing at whatever she was saying, his head thrown back, the edges of his teeth visible. He pressed his face against her, as though fighting his way into her life, desperate to be let in. He set her down by the indoor pond with the bright orange fish. Gracie put her finger in and the fish swam up to inspect it with their mouths.

‘Bart, look! The fish are kissing me, Bart!’

But when Meera did the same the fish retreated into the golden depths, toward the lamps below. Meera pouted as she rose. ‘The fish don’t like me.’

Before she could wipe her fingers on her dress Bart took hold of them and kissed them.

At dinner they ate steamed leeks and short ribs and sticky pork and bean curd. They talked about ballet. Meera confessed to not knowing much about it, but shared that as a child in India she had danced in her school’s production of Sleeping Beauty. She recalled spinning so fast she had fallen off the makeshift wooden stage, dragging the carpet and the rest of the dancers with her. Gracie began to laugh, as did Meera, which pleased Bart greatly. In between giggles, Liz grabbed her hand and said, ‘Oh Meera, we hope we get to see a lot more of you.’

On their walk back Bart lit up a cigarette and Meera snatched it out of his mouth.

‘Bad habit.’

‘OK, daughter,’ he said, and kissed her on the mouth.

After that night Meera waited for his emails. She put aside a small allowance for clothes and personal care items and made a habit of pausing at the many makeup stations at Sephora. To her toiletries she added a foundation from Dior, mascara, blush, concealer and, though she didn’t need it, a skin tightening clay mask because the salesgirl talked her into it. She lingered in the poetry section at the university bookstore and purchased a hardbound copy of Eliot’s Four Quartets. Though she had never celebrated it, she looked

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forward to Christmas. She imagined dining at Liz’s, sitting on a long table with poinsettias and candles that had been measured and cut, a turkey and all the delicacies she’d only seen on the covers of Crate & Barrel catalogues.

She would be sitting next to Bart, and he’d lean in from time to time to explain a private joke or an anecdote the family had just been discussing.

They weren’t yet at the phone conversation stage. She never called him, afraid to bother him when he might be writing. She pictured him at his desk in his study, poring over the pages of his manuscript. She’d caught fleeting glimpses of the pages, deciphered stray words, but they’d never discussed it, nor was she invited to inspect it, as if talking about theory or literature would turn them back into the professor-student roles they were trying to avoid.

They’d discussed literature intermittently. Once she’d mentioned Midnight’s Children and Bart had smiled. ‘Great novel,’ he’d said, but Meera knew he didn’t own a copy. She’d spent hours in his library while he wrote.

Once, at a dinner, after they’d had a couple glasses of wine, he’d said, ‘I don’t get postcolonial literature. Or post-anything for that matter.’

Meera felt incapable of defending the discipline, then felt bad at not being able to say even a few words, no matter how inarticulate, about an area in which she was hoping to specialise.

‘They are hiring new faculty but not in the traditional fields. They can’t afford another Chaucer scholar but they want people working on Caribbean literature and Africa.’

‘Africa is in,’ she said, aware that she sounded ridiculous. ‘Africa is hot.’

‘African literature. Isn’t that an oxymoron? Africa and literature?’

She felt her blood rising to her face, but she said nothing.

‘Who knows. They might even decide to get rid of an old fogey like me.

As it is, people don’t read poetry.’

‘But people won’t stop reading Eliot or Pound.’

He mumbled something she didn’t hear. ‘Listen, let’s get out of here?’ He threw a hundred-dollar bill on the table, and held up her coat for her.

On their walk back Meera was aware of feeling ridiculous. Of telling a professor of poetry about the reading habits of the citizens of his country.

Only once had Bart spoken to her about literature with abandon. They were strolling in the botanical garden on a Sunday, and she’d dared to ask him his favourite author. She’d tried her best not to bring up her classmate Tom’s question.

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‘Dostoevsky,’ Bart said, taking her hand in hers.

‘Why aren’t you working on him then?’

‘I realised his genius too late. I was in the fifth year of my PhD at Yale and by then I had written five hundred pages on Eliot. In your fifth year of graduate study you fancy yourself Prince Myshkin. Everyone is out to get you, your advisors who want you to present papers in Amsterdam when all you want to do is disappear and finish your dissertation, the office lady who just wants you to collect your mail on time, your friends who complain that you don’t come out for beer more often.’

She told him it was Proust she loved most. She told him how she had discovered him all on her own, browsing in Barnes & Noble on Union Square one evening after class, she’d picked up a book she thought was a bit too wistfully titled In Search of Lost Time. She expected the writer to be an old woman who liked to indulge in the ornate, someone who knew that the search for lost time was futile, and yet, being a naïve romantic, she still persevered. But what Meera encountered in the first sentence, that she thought ended much too soon, was something delightful. Beyond delightful, and she couldn’t believe that so much could be said about the moment when one is about to fall asleep. She knew then that this was the writer for her and she googled him and found that he was a man with a funny moustache and the most delicate eyes, which only increased her love for him.

Back at his place, Bart was smiling at her and she knew that her confession had brought colour to her cheeks. He’d poured them both an orange liquor to keep out the cold. She’d had a couple glasses.

‘You know,’ he said, grabbing her hand and bringing her close, ‘His name isn’t pronounced praoost. It’s proost.’

She reddened. ‘I shan’t let you into my confidence again,’ she said.

‘No, let me in, it’s Christmas.’ He held up a mistletoe and kissed her.

But then he broke away to tell her was going to teach at Stanford in the summer, and he wanted her to accompany him. She said yes without thinking, and returned his interrupted kiss.

That evening he did not let go of her. He held her on the couch as they watched Casablanca. Every few minutes she lifted her head to look at the clock hanging in the kitchen, visible from the living room, and said, ‘I should go,’ then succumbed to his caresses.

At one point he led her to his bedroom and she, too delirious from the liquor, too curious to see the rest of his life, did not resist. She knew that

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there would be no going back after this, but if she didn’t follow him there also might not be no going forward.

In bed he was gentle with her, scared even, she thought, the way his eyes looked for approval at each step. But then he saw the panic she hadn’t been able to hide, and collapsed beside her, his breath coming hard.

‘You didn’t like what I was doing? Be honest.’

This wasn’t the time to mention that she was still a virgin, that her one serious boyfriend back in India had tried but failed despite all the right lessons in anatomy and romance. The truth was, all kinds of questions of commitment, of morality, of not disappointing her aunt and her parents came to a head, and she locked up. She kissed him on the cheek and he took her hand and held it. He tipped his head and looked up at her, but she avoided his gaze.

‘Look, just the pleasure of your company is enough—’ She shook her head, looking for a way out. ‘Why aren’t you with someone closer to your age?’

‘Do you have someone in mind?’

She didn’t. She couldn’t imagine him with anyone else. Her mind coursed through faces. None of the faculty would do. They did not deserve him. Nor any of her colleagues. And then suddenly from somewhere, her. Perhaps because it was getting late, and Meera had only one other person, other than herself and Bart, in mind at that time. She was the third variable in the equation. Aunty Sumana. Meera said her name out loud. There in the darkness of Bart’s bedroom, the sound of her aunt’s name, too Indian, too sobering, too anesthetising. It did not belong there, and yet she said it out loud. She could not take it back.

‘Who is that?’

‘My aunt. She is forty-eight.’ More information she didn’t mean to volunteer.

‘Is she pretty like you?’ Bart seemed to be playing along. His eyes were shut, and it seemed as though he were settling into sleep or into the story Meera was telling him. She linked her fingers with his to seek assurance. He did not resist.

‘She is, was, much prettier. She is divorced. Her marriage didn’t even last two days. She has no children.’ The next thing she said, she didn’t know where it came from. ‘Just like you.’

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Bart stiffened, but did not let go of her hand. Still, the information Meera had volunteered fell between them as though into a crater far below.

‘How sad for her,’ he said, finally. ‘Does she have pets?’

‘No, no pets.’

‘You should get her one.’ He turned to his side, letting go of her hand.

Something between them had shifted. They lay like that for a while, without touching. Minutes passed. Soon, Bart was snoring. Meera waited for him to wake up, even if just to change into pyjamas or to grab a blanket or a glass of water. It felt as though she waited a long time. But Bart didn’t awake. There were books on his bedside table, his glasses too. Meera noticed stacks of papers under the bed, lectures in preparation, manuscripts in progress, student papers in need of grading. No doubt Meera’s paper was in there too. Bart wasn’t lying, he was content. He had been content all this time with his books and papers, and now with a little bit of Meera, in whatever capacity she was willing to share. It was she who had been dissatisfied, she who was confused.

Meera wondered about calling a cab, wondered if it would be OK to leave like that, wondered about her grade in his class, then wondered if she should be wondering about that at all. Then, finally, knowing her aunt would be devastated to find she hadn’t come home, she forced herself out of bed, put on her clothes, made her way to the subway. She didn’t leave a note behind, explaining her exit.

On the train, she thought about what had just happened. She had failed her aunt, hurt her in a special way, and the fact that her aunt hadn’t been present to acknowledge the hurt only made it worse. It was Meera’s private hell, a dungeon of her own making.

A week later her aunt caught the flu and Meera took three days off to write her final papers, in between making soup, taking her aunt’s temperature, stroking her head to get her to sleep because high fever made her hysterical.

She didn’t see Bart that week, or the week after. Once finals were over, she heard from him. He wrote to tell her he was headed to California with Gracie.

Meera could see what existed between them, that hopelessly grey thing, had been only golden and bright once, like the skyline shimmering from far away. Her grades were posted; she’d received an A- in his class. She knew that in graduate school she could get one of four grades – A, A-, B+, B, the Bs meaning the teacher really didn’t like you, the As meaning he did. Bart had

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chosen the best possible solution, and Meera knew that with the A- he was telling her what he thought of her, both in class and outside of it, especially outside of it. She knew that he was referring to their last evening together, when she’d broached her aunt, suggested he should be with someone closer to his age, and left without leaving a note. The A-, really was the best possible solution, and Meera was grateful to Bart for choosing it.

On the weekend her aunt felt better for the first time and Meera insisted they spend an afternoon in Central Park. They took the 7-train to Jackson Heights and then the E to 53rd Street. Aunty Sumana tired very soon, and they hadn’t even walked fifty feet. They sat on a bench in Central Park watching lovers and families enjoying the Christmas decorations. It began to snow, and Meera suggested they find a café where they could enjoy a hot chocolate. But her aunt wanted to go back to Queens. She couldn’t be tempted with shopping, either. ‘It’s too much walking for me, honey,’ her aunt said. But Meera knew it was something else. Her aunt was the only woman in bright, loose slacks and oversized cardigans hobbling along with her walking stick past Bloomingdales, her unmade-up face the only one among a crowd of models.

‘Why don’t you go with your friends, honey?’

But even if Meera wanted to, she couldn’t. She’d never made friends at school, never exchanged numbers.

She met Bart early the next year in a café in the Village because he had some comments on her final paper, and they’d scheduled a meeting back in the fall. He told her he would be off to teach a spring semester in Berlin. He promised to write. On their way to the station he smoked a cigarette and she didn’t pull it out of his mouth. He invited her back to his place, but she thought about what had happened the last time she was there, and told a lie about her aunt being sick.

Just as the 7-train turned away from Queensboro Plaza and the Manhattan skyline disappeared, Meera felt a sudden revulsion for the borough. In her aunt’s voice she imagined herself complaining: there isn’t any authentic mango ice-cream on the whole island, the waitresses forget to serve me when I order only a ginger ale. And the stores on Fifth Avenue? Forget about them.

I can’t afford to step inside them. She saw what her aunt saw. How else could she describe it, but as an instinct for meanness, this urge to denounce what you have, what you want, not out of dissatisfaction, but a very absurd,

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stubborn, despairing hope. You could never mourn the loss of something you never fully had. She looked up again, desperate for one last glance, hopeful that it wouldn’t forsake her because she wasn’t ready to forsake it.

But it was too late.

She imagined telling her aunt about Bart, practised her speech in the bathroom mirror.

‘What have you done?’ her aunt would say. ‘You have ruined your marriage prospects!’ Her face would contort the way it did when something irreparable happened, as it did when the man she thought would love her forever lifted a vase and hit her across the face.

Maybe her aunt was right. Maybe it was better to focus on finding a job rather than finding a man, that everywhere you went, you met the same type of men. But Meera liked to think it was grief that looked the same everywhere.

That night, she entered her aunt’s room with her speech prepared. A romantic scene was in progress on the TV. Her aunt was snoring softly, one hand under her head, another holding a photo album on her heart. Meera flipped through the photo album, mourning the spectacle of her aunt’s botched wedding, all the wasted silk and gold. Aunty Sumana blinked her eyes open.

‘I never told you what I said to him the night of our wedding,’ she said.

She had been in love with someone else, a Punjabi man, twenty years her senior, a man her parents would never allow her to marry. She hadn’t the guts to run away with her lover. She had no choice but to marry the man her mother had picked. ‘I told my husband he could never take that man’s place, and that I, his wife, would never stop loving this other man. My husband couldn’t bear the insult.’ The way she spoke, she sounded proud of what her husband had done next – taken the brass vase on the bedside table and hit her with it. ‘I provoked him,’ she said. ‘I think, maybe, if I had met my husband sooner, if I had met him first, maybe I could have loved him. What do you think? He wasn’t bad looking, was he?’ She put the album in Meera’s hands.

All her life Meera had hated this tiny little man, this man who had changed the course of her aunt’s life. He was a small man with short arms and a tiny waist. In one photo he stood on a beach drinking coconut water. His bell-bottoms were too big for him, they covered his feet entirely. Meera didn’t know why but today his scrunched shoulders, the vacancy in his eyes seemed to tell a different story. Perhaps he too was afraid of the overwhelming

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uncertainty of cities, of big things like marriage. Perhaps he too had the need for someone to show him a bit of love, for someone to cook him rice, mend his pants.

‘All this time, I am thinking I made a mistake. What do you think, yen ponnu? Did I make a mistake?’

Meera didn’t know what to make of the story. She left her aunt’s room bewildered. Her aunt had known romance, the feel of a caress, the vibrant sound of promises, however mottled and broken and inebriated. Her aunt had known love and had lost it, deliberately forsaken it not once but twice by those same instincts. Meera had too, and she carried this knowledge of their equilibrium into the living room, where she could call it by a different name – fear, foolishness, or even hope.

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Contributors Cont ributors Cont ributors

BERNICE CHAULY is a Malaysian writer, poet and educator. Born in George Town, Penang, to Chinese-Punjabi teachers, she is festival director of the George Town Literary Festival and has won multiple awards for her contribution to the arts in Malaysia. She is the author of going there and coming back (1997), The Book of Sins (2008), Lost in KL (2008), the acclaimed memoir Growing Up With Ghosts (2011) and Onkalo (2013), her third collection of poems. Chauly’s first novel is the award-winning Once We Were There (2017).

JENNY CHEN (translator of Jeff Hu) studied at Harvard and now lives and works in Hartford, Connecticut.

PAUL FRENCH was born and is currently based in London, though he lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. He is a widely published analyst and commentator on China and has written a number of books, including a history of foreign correspondents in China. His Midnight in Peking was a New York Times Bestseller, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Mystery Writers’ of America Edgar award-winner for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) Dagger award for non-fiction.

NICOLAS GATTIG has published short fiction in various magazines and is a contributing writer at The Japan Times, where he does essays and book reviews.

He lived in Tokyo for several years and has visited the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011. He now lives in San Francisco and is working on a novel about artificial intelligence and tech orgies.

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JEFF HU was born in in China in 1990. He worked there as a journalist and supplemented his income with short stories posted on the Internet, the most popular ones attracting up to a million hits. He now works as a builder in Australia but continues to write and hopes to find a wider audience in English.

JUNG YOUNG MOON was born in Hamyang, South Korea, in 1965. He graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in psychology. His literary début was in 1996 with the novel A Man Who Barely Exists. Jung is also an accomplished translator who has translated more than forty books from English into Korean. In 1999 he won the 12th Dongseo Literary Award with his collection of short stories, A Chain of Dark Tales and, in 2003, the Korean National Theatre produced his play The Donkeys.

JEFFREY KARVONEN (translator with Eunji Mah of Jung Young Moon).

Karvonen and Mah are a translating team based in Yong-in, South Korea. They are the recipients of three Literature Translation Institute of Korea Translation Grants and a Daesan Cultural Foundation Grant for Translation of a Literary Work. Their translation of Jung Young Moon’s A Contrived World was published in 2016 by Dalki Archive Press.

ZACH MACDONALD is a native of Canada who taught English in Japan and South Korea before moving to his current home in Bangkok, Thailand. He is working on a collection of East and Southeast Asia–based short fiction, and plugging away at two novels, including one set in his home province of Nova Scotia. His work has previously been published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and in the Asia Literary Review.

EUNJI MAH (translator with Jeffrey Karvonen of Jung Young Moon). Mah and Karvonen are a translating team based in Yong-in, South Korea. They are the recipients of three Literature Translation Institute of Korea Translation Grants and a Daesan Cultural Foundation Grant for Translation of a Literary Work. Their translation of Jung Young Moon’s A Contrived World was published in 2016 by Dalki Archive Press.

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JOHN MATEER has over the past twenty-five years published many books of poems, and has been translated into Japanese, Indonesian, Malay and a number of European languages, and, recently, into Armenian. His collection of poems, Unbelievers, or ‘The Moor’, was published in Australia and the UK and has also appeared in Portuguese and German editions. His latest book João was published this year in Australia by Giramondo Publishing and is in an international edition forthcoming with Shearsman Books.

APURVA NARAIN is Kunwar Narain’s son and translator into English. Apurva’s book of translations, No Other World, was published in India and England.

Another book is in the offing. Educated in India and at the University of Cambridge, he is a development consultant by profession. Literature is his personal interest; he writes occasionally, in English. An avid traveller, he has lived in the UK, USA and France, and now lives in Delhi.

KUNWAR NARAIN, a pre-eminent figure in Indian literature, Narain is considered one of the finest modern poets and Hindi’s foremost poet-intellectual of the last few decades. A widely-read, reclusive, presence, his oeuvre spans seven decades and diverse genres. His work is said to embody a rare purity and humanism. Widely translated, his honours include the Indian Academy of Letters’ highest recognition; the civilian honour Padma Bhûshan; Italy’s Premio Feronia as a distinguished world author; and the Jnanpith, India’s highest literary award.

MURZBAN F. SHROFF’s fiction has been published in more than sixty literary journals. He is the recipient of the John Gilgun Fiction Award. His short story collection, Breathless in Bombay, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in the best debut category for Europe and South Asia and was rated by The Guardian as among the ten best Mumbai books. His novel, Waiting for Jonathan Koshy, was a finalist for the Horatio Nelson Prize.

KAMANA SRIKANTH – a native of Chennai in South India, Kamana is a lawyer and writer currently residing in San Francisco. She earned her MFA at City University of Hong Kong and is now working on a collection of short stories and a novel. Her work has appeared in the Asia Literary Review and in the anthology Afterness: Literature from the New Transnational Asia.

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SHILPI SUNEJA was born in India. She holds an MA in English from New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where she was awarded the Saul Bellow Prize. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, her work appears in Michigan Quarterly Review, Bat City Review, Little Fiction, Stirring, Kartika Review and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel about the long shadow of the Indian Partition.

MIGUEL SYJUCO, a contributing opinion writer for the International New York Times, is a writer from the Philippines. His debut novel, Ilustrado was a New York Times Notable Book of 2010 and was the winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize, the Palanca Award, and other accolades. Currently a professor at New York University Abu Dhabi, he has also written for the Guardian, Time, Newsweek, the Boston Review, the Globe and Mail, the BBC, the CBC, Inside Higher Ed, and many others.

JOHN THIEME is a British author, of part-Canadian parentage, whose journalistic, academic and creative writing has been published in some twenty-five countries.

He has held chairs in British universities and has also taught in the Caribbean and, as a visiting professor, in Hong Kong and Italy. His most recent books are Postcolonial Literary Geographies: Out of Place (2016), Paco’s Atlas and Other Poems (2018) and the novel, The Book of Francis Barber (2018).

JOHN VATER (translator of Kunwar Narain) received an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa. He translates from Hindi and was selected as the ‘Emerging Translator’ from the US for the 2018 BILTC residency. His essays have appeared in 91st Meridian and The Quint, and he has a forthcoming translation in Words Without Borders. He is currently translating a collection of short stories by Kunwar Narain.

KATHERINE WU is a student of English Literature living in Hong Kong. Her love of poetry began at the age of ten: she sees writing and reading poetry as one of the best ways to discern the world around her. An advocate for women in STEM, she also enjoys 35mm photography and learning about the environmentalist landscape in her local and global community. Her favourite poets are Grace Chua, Robert Frost and Ellen Zhang.

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XU XI is author of thirteen books, including Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories (Signal 8 Press, 2018) and Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy For A City (Penguin, 2017).

Forthcoming are This Fish is Fowl: Essays of Being (American Lives Series, Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2019) and The Art & Craft of Asian Stories, (Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2019-20). She is co-director of the International MFA in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Vermont College of Fine Arts, co-founder of Authors at Large and fiction editor at large for Tupelo Press. Follow her @xuxiwriter.

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Under the Sun Yat-sen University Creative Writing Education Program, the Center organizes readings by international writers and a book club to promote the reading and writing of world literature. From October 2015, it will start the Sun Yat-sen University International Writers’ Residency, which moves from the campuses of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and Zhuhai to Jiangmen in Guangdong Province and Yangshuo in Guangxi Autonomous Region, and gives between ten and fifteen writers the time and space to write as well as providing them with the opportunity to get to know Chinese people and culture. Contact: daifan@mail.sysu.edu.cn

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We seem to loop back as much as move forward. Once banished leaders and ideologies find their way back into popularity, with profound and sometimes regressive consequences. As the dizzying pace of change leads to dislocation and alienation, people often seek comfort in their traditions. Not surprisingly, questions are raised whether we collectively will be better off tomorrow than today. Good answers can only arise through understanding the past, and imagination and perseverance as we move ahead.

Asia Literary Review | Essential Reading Featuring: Malaysia’s Bernice Chauly reimagines her country’s violent political past Paul French brings to life 1930s Shanghai in all its seedy glory Murzban Shroff’s Mumbai is a nouveau riche high-rise hen-pen Miguel Syjuco laments the returned spectre of martial law in the Philippines Xu Xi portrays lovers’ chemistry fuelled by deception Jung Young Moon – nihilism in the form of a lap-dog Jeff Hu’s Fourth Great Granny stubbornly refuses to remain dead ‘For decades, Asia’s modern literature, even to us in Asia, was a dark continent. If all this is now changed or changing, ALR has had a lot to do with it.’ – Arvind Krishna Mehrotra asialiteraryreview.com

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