Fragile Monsters Read online

  Catherine Menon

  * * *

  FRAGILE MONSTERS

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Thursday, 7 p.m.: 1985

  2. Once Upon a Time: 1922

  3. Thursday, 9 p.m.

  4. A Prince and Two Princesses: 1924

  5. Friday, 5 a.m.

  6. The Princesses Set to War: 1926

  7. Friday, 11 a.m.

  8. The King and Queen Have Their Say: 1927

  9. Saturday, 8 a.m.

  10. The Faithful Nun: 1930

  11. Sunday, 12 p.m.

  12. A Servant’s Tale: 1930

  13. Monday, 4 p.m.

  14. 1970

  15. Monday, 11 p.m.

  16. And One Princess Remains: 1934

  17. Tuesday, 8 a.m.

  18. A Prince and Princess Marry: 1935

  19. Tuesday, 3 p.m.

  20. The Princess Lost: 1941

  21. Tuesday, 4 p.m.

  22. The Princess’s Sacrifice: 1943

  23. Tuesday, 5 p.m.

  24. And Another Princess is Born (A Tale)

  25. Wednesday, 1 a.m.

  26. The Princess Returns: 1947

  27. Wednesday, 10 a.m.

  28. A Princess For Ever: 1985

  29. Wednesday, midday

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Catherine Menon has Malaysian heritage and lives in London. She is a lecturer in computer science at the University of Hertfordshire and also holds an MA in Creative Writing. Fragile Monsters is her first book.

  To my grandmothers, Kitty and Goury Amma

  Prologue

  A slap. A cry. Distress, which seems a poor enough start to things. Or perhaps it’s only temper. Mary, who will one day be my grandmother, is a little too young to distinguish yet.

  In a year or so Mary will begin to talk. She’ll master words quickly, unlike her brother, but she’ll never enjoy his flights of fancy. She’ll want to keep her feet on the ground – unwise here in Malaya, where you never know if a dredging pit will give way or a swamp will open its jaws. Still, for the next seventy years Mary will travel cautiously, keeping a tight hold of what she knows.

  To deal with Mary – to pin her stories down and get at the bones beneath – I’ll need something definite. Some rules that explain her, some axioms that strip away all those half-truths and quarter-lies and never-happened-at-alls. I’ll need something mathematical, incontrovertible as a proof from first principles. And if it goes wrong, I’ve only got myself to blame.

  1. Thursday, 7 p.m.: 1985

  ‘Aiyoh, Durga, you went to Letchumani for fireworks?’

  Ammuma glares at the bright red bag I’m lifting out of my car. The trip’s only taken me an hour, but she’s already moved her rattan chair to the verandah’s edge to watch for me driving back into the compound yard. Her white widow’s sari is immaculate and clean-starched, and her skinny thighs make a shallow, mounded lap. She spends nearly all her time on the verandah now, rocking back and forwards in the sleepy heat. That was the first shock about returning to Malaysia: somewhere in the last decade my grandmother’s become old.

  ‘Kill us all,’ she adds, ‘these crazy ideas of yours, getting fireworks from the washer-man.’

  Or perhaps not that old. She likes proper fireworks, I remember. All noise and glare, with a spice of danger if you stick your nose in too far.

  It’s raining, and my sandals slip on the limestone steps as I carry the bag up to her. Sweat trickles down under my nylon shirt; I’ve been back two months but still can’t remember to dress for the climate here.

  ‘I was going to drive to Kuala Lipis, Ammuma,’ I say, ‘but Letchumani had a sign advertising fireworks and I thought …’

  ‘Thought, hanh! Covered market in Lipis for good fireworks only, you should know that, Durga.

  ‘This mathematics rubbish you study,’ she mutters not quite under her breath, ‘all thinking and never common-sense.’

  She’s fetched a plate of pandan cakes while I’ve been out and she pushes them across the table towards me with a not-to-be-argued frown. I left home a decade ago and Ammuma’s convinced I haven’t eaten since. Granddaughters, she thinks, ought to stay where they’ve been put.

  ‘Too late to change fireworks now also.’ She looks up at the evening sky. ‘Have to manage.’ She’s relishing this, like she does all small crises; running out of onions can last her all day.

  ‘Diwali puja will do now,’ she tells me briskly. ‘Prayer first, then play fireworks, ah?’

  ‘What, light the fireworks now? Ammuma, it’s pelting down.’

  I sit next to her, on a small wooden bench that she ordered Karthika to move from the front room. I drove up from Kuala Lumpur four days ago, and the house still feels familiar and strange at once. My childhood home, but I can’t quite manage to be sentimental about it. It’s the wrong sort of home, or perhaps I was the wrong sort of child.

  Just like on the day I left, the compound yard’s flooding. There are puddles under the stone walls and a few dry patches near the biggest trees. The angsanas have lost most of their blossom in the rain, and the scatter of yellow petals makes me catch my breath. Another memory, one I hadn’t even realized I’d forgotten: crouching behind those trees playing five-stones with Peony after school. Her laugh, her tangled hair, her ballpoint tattoos. In Canada I pushed her out of my head, but back here in Pahang she’s everywhere I look. Friends for ever, Durga, she whispers, and for a second I’m fifteen again and everything is about to go wrong.

  I take a deep breath, clenching my fists. Of all people, I should know Peony’s gone. Dead and gone; drowned in the banyan swamp fifteen years ago and nothing to be done about it. She’s a null object. She’s a zero module. She’s the limit of an empty diagram.

  I unclench my hands and look deliberately over to the angsanas again. They’ve grown since those days, and there’s nothing behind their trunks except a sodden crate of banana leaves for the dining table tonight. I’d forgotten this about Pahang, the way the rain gets under your clothes and under your skin.

  ‘Durga? Are you listening?’ Ammuma prods. ‘Of course light the fireworks now. It’s Diwali, when else is it we’ll light them? Christmas? Birthdays-graduations? Next you’ll be asking for eating non-veg tonight.’

  ‘But there’s only us here to see them.’ I’m on edge, arguing when I know I shouldn’t. ‘Why bother just for us, and when it’s raining, too? I never did in Canada.’

  Ammuma sucks in her breath, then lets it out again in a shower of scolding words. It’s a festival, she tells me, punctuating her sentences by slapping the broken wicker of her chair, how dare I suggest we ignore it? It’s far more important than rain, she says, far more important than grandmothers, even, and ungrateful granddaughters who’ve forgotten how they were raised.

  ‘But you don’t even believe in Lakshmi, Ammuma. You never did.’

  Diwali’s for Lakshmi, a goddess who’s supposed to visit the brightest and cleanest houses every year. Ammuma doesn’t hold with her and never has: some goddess, she says, to go poking her nose into other people’s housekeeping.

  ‘Story is important only,’ she insists. ‘Doesn’t matter if it’s true.’

  ‘But you –’

  ‘And fireworks are important too, for driving away evil spirits. Cannot tell, Durga, when a spirit is walking –’

  She stops. There’s a loud clang from the compound gate, then another. Someone’s knocking. I can just make out a figure through the ironwork, then an arm snakes down to open the catch.

  ‘Who’s visiting today?’ Ammuma mutters to herself, and then the gate opens. A white man walks through, carrying a striped bag. He has a cap of combed brown hair that looks oddly fam
iliar and he’s wearing a neatly tailored suit.

  ‘Mary-Auntie!’

  He ignores the mud and walks jauntily towards us, then sees me sitting next to Ammuma. He stops, squinting against the evening light. His smile falters and loses its way.

  ‘Durga?’

  I start to shake. I know who he is, this man with his John Lennon hair. Peony’s voice is in my head again – friends for ever – and this man is bad news, he’s worst news. He’s fifteen years old news, fresh as yesterday’s eggs.

  ‘Durga,’ Tom says for the third time. ‘I can’t believe you’re back in Pahang.’

  We’ve rearranged the verandah table for him, an extra chair and all of us tight-tucked as chickens. His well-stitched leather shoes are paired neatly on the steps, edging mine off into a puddle. Ammuma’s made him a cup of tea in a mug I’ve never seen before. It has ‘Tom’ written on it in curly green letters and she must have bought it at the tourist market in Lipis. She always refused to let me spend my pocket money at the stalls there when I was small, or to buy me anything either. Too expensive, she said; too dirty. I wonder which of those doesn’t matter when it comes to Tom.

  I can’t take my eyes off him. I haven’t seen him since the inquest fifteen years ago, when both of us were sitting on a polished wooden bench at the Kuala Lipis government house. I remember the smell of his sweat as they pronounced the verdict: an accident. Nobody’s fault. And I remember how Ammuma gave me a single fierce hug and how that evening she threw out everything I’d worn that day, from underwear to shoes. Love was one thing, but forgiveness was a whole new bag of thorns. Accidents have causes, she told me. Cause and effect, I think, theorem and proof; Durga and Peony. We always were inseparable.

  ‘I’m not back in Pahang,’ I say, too loudly. ‘I live in KL now; I’m just visiting for Diwali. When did you come back?’

  Ammuma clicks her tongue. That’s a Canadian question, too straightforward for her tastes. I’ve lost the rhythm of how I’m supposed to speak in Malaysia, how I’m supposed to imply and hint and keep my meaning for the spaces between words.

  ‘Five years ago.’

  Tom’s voice is exactly how I remember: far too good for the rest of him. Like sugar-syrup, I once told Peony, and I didn’t even care that she laughed. I sit there and look at him and my face feels scholarly and short-sighted. It’s a good face, usually, good enough for proofs and theorems, but not the right face for meeting Tom again. Too old, or perhaps too young. Too lived-in, as though I could have helped it. A sudden gust of wind whistles through the bow-legged palms in the compound yard.

  ‘Tom trained in Liverpool and now he’s top doctor in Lipis hospital,’ Ammuma says.

  ‘But very good job Durga also has,’ she adds with a greedy rush. ‘Ten years in Canada, but two months ago she gets this lecturing job in KL. Maths professor, wah, so good.’

  Tom and I look at each other awkwardly over the litter of cups and plates. I wonder what he’d think if he knew about Deepak, Deepak and his fourth-generation Ontario wife with her shoulder-pads and terrifying vulnerability. What would he – and Ammuma – say if I blurted out I only took this job because Deepak went back to her? Perhaps nothing at all; perhaps it’s what they’d have expected from me all along – second best, second helpings, second hand.

  ‘Well done, Durga,’ Tom says, stiff as his own shirt collar. It makes me unreasonably cross, how he’s shrugged Pahang back on like an old coat. He’s strolled into the space I left and he’s managed it all much better – top doctor and still apparently finding time to chat with his dear old Mary-Auntie every week. It would be delightful, if only it weren’t.

  ‘Too Canadian, she is, though, now,’ Ammuma grumbles to nobody in particular. ‘Like some tourist playing at Malaysia only. Ammuma, let’s help the servant-girl wash up, she’s saying. Ammuma, here’s some Diwali fireworks from Letchumani. Tchee, fireworks from the washer-man! Whoever heard of this thing?’

  ‘Oh, fireworks! That reminds me,’ Tom interrupts her, leaning down to where his striped carrier bag nestles against the table. ‘I picked up a few for you, Mary-Auntie, just some Diwali gifts. They’re from the covered markets.’

  Of course they are. Good-quality best-quality, and a permit too, no doubt. I’d forgotten I’d need one and Letchumani – used to foreigners and tourists – hadn’t bothered to tell me. Tom’s competent parcels make me feel even more out of place than Ammuma’s complaints. It used to be Tom who was foreign, once.

  Ammuma beams. He’s good, she says, to remember an old woman like herself – Ammuma is only ever old when it suits her – and would he believe her own granddaughter’s refusing, actually refusing, to play fireworks for Diwali because of the rain. ‘What’s a little bit of rain?’ she says. ‘You children used to run out in it every day.’

  Tom gives me a sympathetic look. He’s about to say something but a sudden beeping chimes out, silencing us. It’s a pager clipped to his smart leather belt.

  ‘It’s the hospital,’ he says. ‘They’ll be busy down there, with Diwali tonight.’

  Ammuma gives me a triumphant look. ‘See, Durga? So dangerous, these rockets Letchumani makes. Better instead to use Tom’s fireworks.’

  Better to use Tom’s fireworks. Better to work in Tom’s job and wear clothes like Tom’s and be as patient as Tom. Easy enough for him; she’s not his grandmother.

  He glances down at the pager, pushing his chair back.

  ‘Will you come and help me put the fireworks in the kitchen?’ I say quickly. ‘It’ll only take a minute.’

  ‘Of course.’ Tom starts to rise politely, but Ammuma’s already glaring at me.

  ‘Wanting to wander off alone in the corridors with a boy? Aiyoh, Durga,’ she says, sucking disapproval through her teeth. ‘This is your home, this is a respectable house. Not so-so like these student accommodations in Canada.’

  She leans over to confide in Tom, her voice loud enough for me to hear. ‘Boys and girls all together. Mixed up like slum-puppies.’

  I sink back into my chair. I’d forgotten how fragile girls are in Pahang, how easily soiled. A fingerprint is enough to put anyone off.

  ‘Sorry, Mary-Auntie. I’m sure she didn’t mean it. And – I hate to go so soon – but I can’t stay anyway. I need to drop in on the wards.’

  He takes his time putting his shoes on and tying his shoelaces, looking up at me with queer little ducking movements of his head. Any moment now, I think, he’ll slip me a letter, a flower – a peony – that’ll mean nothing except to the two of us. He wouldn’t just walk away, not after coming halfway across the world.

  But he does. He tugs his smart suit jacket straight and waves as he crosses the compound yard. There’s a backward glance as he reaches the gate, but that’s all. He mouths something to me – or perhaps he doesn’t – and then the gate closes. He’s gone, and there’s nothing here but the rain and a half-eaten pandan cake.

  ‘So, Durga.’ Ammuma’s brisk. ‘You light these.’

  She pushes his bag over to me. ‘I’ll go upstairs, wash hands, then come back for Diwali puja.’

  She tips herself upright, scraping her rattan chair over the concrete. ‘Use Tom’s fireworks,’ she calls back as she hobbles out of the room. ‘Not this Letchumani nonsense.’

  I sit there in the fading light and stare at a line of ants nudging across the floor. How dare he? I think. How dare he saunter in here with top-class fireworks and without having changed in the slightest? He should have had some wrinkles, or an apologetic thirty-something paunch. He should have had capped teeth and a worried smile. He should have been ashamed of himself.

  I shove his bag away. He doesn’t know better than me, despite all his meaningful glances and his market shopping and his so-important pager. I grab Letchumani’s bright red bag instead, and tuck it under my arm.

  The front room’s dark, with no lamps lit and a dusty bare rectangle where the wooden bench used to be. And the hallway’s even darker, with a single yellowing bulb doing nothin
g but splash shadows around. The kitchen and dining room are at one end; great stone-flagged rooms that Karthika rules as the only servant in the house. The hall floor’s slippery with the paraffin wax she uses to polish wood, and I can smell the burn of Jeyes Fluid from the kitchen sink.

  I push the back door open and the wet air hits me with a slap. My bare feet press water up through the grass as I walk slowly down to the far end of the compound. There’s a strip of grass running the full length of it, nearly twenty metres straight from the house to the crumbling rear wall. The Jelai river roars from behind its banks, and the wind flecks my hair with spray as I turn to look at the house.

  From here, it’s ramshackle. It’s three storeys high, casting a deep shadow over the side of the compound yard where the wells are. Half of the house was torn down during the war, but it is still a sprawling mass compared with Canadian condos. And it’s far too close to the Jelai. Ammuma’s father Stephen didn’t know or care about floods, and over time the ground’s been submerged so often it’s taken on a slippery, aquatic tinge.

  A light goes on in Ammuma’s bedroom. She’s watching, then, her eyes on me like always. I set my teeth and pull the first firework out of the bag. It’s a night for locked doors in Pahang tonight, with all those ghosts and goddesses creeping about – and men like Tom, too, come to that. Let them in and you’ll never get any of them out again.

  The firework’s a rocket, and for a moment I think Ammuma was right. The damp cardboard sticks to my fingers and the whole thing’s lumpy and misshapen, like a tube stuffed with paper towels. There’s a sulphurous whiff as I hold a match to it. I daresay the gunpowder’s home-grown in Letchumani’s spare washing vat: magnesium and cuttlefish bile and God knows what else. And then, just when I’m about to give up, the rocket flares into life.

  It soars up and up in a glowing scatter of green and red. Sparks tumble down and the whole garden jumps into relief. All the shadows are scalpel-sharp, frozen in their places by that brief, beautiful glare. The rocket arcs over the back wall, and even after it lands in the Jelai, the compound’s still lit by the last glowing pinpoints that it left behind. I turn around and see Ammuma silhouetted at her upstairs window. Her face is in shadow, and I wave at her. At this distance, I wonder if she can see me smile.