Fragile Monsters Read online

  ‘I am sorry, Noor,’ she says as the door opens.

  Noor Abi is old and heavy; she’s lost more sons than she can count and she’s still giving birth to an infant every year. She cries over each new death, sobbing until her milk dries up and her breasts shrivel and her latest baby weans itself in disgust. Noor’s sons are daredevils, and they’ve always had a streak of rebellion. Two are off in the jungle fighting with the Tiga Bintang, three are running rice-smuggling operations in Terengganu and one’s up in Kedah launching a suicide attack on the Japanese water supplies. Noor Abi knows immediately what’s in that thin white envelope. She’s no postman, but she knows that bad news takes up less space than good, and nearly always comes typewritten.

  ‘Agnes!’ Noor calls. ‘Find the camphor-water.’

  But Agnes is there already. She’s already lowering the chick blinds and setting out mourning clothes. She keeps camphor-water on hand now, ready to wash the body of the latest son to be carried back dead from the mountains.

  ‘Hello, Agnes,’ Mary says.

  Agnes is working at Noor Abi’s house every day, in an attempt to stretch the tiny convent rations further by looking after Noor’s children. She comes forward, breathing sympathy, and scribbles a line for Mary in her exercise book.

  Any news of your husband yet?

  Mary swallows a flutter and plummet in her throat, and shakes her head.

  ‘Oh, my dear …’ Noor Abi comes out of her own monumental grief to sympathize too. ‘You must be worried sick. Those Japanese … those Kempetai. They’re – they’re bastards.’

  The word pops plump from her dignified lips and is immediately snatched up by Anil. Although he can talk now, he doesn’t tend to except when it makes trouble.

  ‘Bastards, bastards,’ he begins to sing. ‘Kempetai bastards.’

  Mary hurries down the steps to hush him. Noor and Agnes stand on the porch, arm in arm and sadness trickling right to their soles. If I could talk, Agnes might be thinking, I’d use my voice for something better than swearing – and I wouldn’t slap people either – as Mary cuffs Anil round the ear to keep him quiet. No, Agnes disapproves of violence, and despite her liking for Mary she feels a surge of spite. One day, she thinks, Mary will get her comeuppance.

  Mary slings one leg over the bicycle and starts pedalling off with Anil perched behind. Their next delivery’s at the convent, which means a hill to climb first.

  ‘Bastard, Kempetai bastards,’ Anil sings, and lights start to flicker on in the houses that line the steep street.

  ‘Hush! People will be awake soon,’ Mary hisses.

  Everything starts early in Malaya these days, now all the clocks have moved on to Japanese time. Alarms ring two hours before dawn, housewives begin to cook supper while lunch is still on the table and children rush screeching out to the kampong school before even the most conscientious chickens have untucked their heads. By the time Mary and Anil reach the convent walls the whole world is astir.

  ‘Mary?’ Anil taps his sister on the shoulder as they turn in at the gate. The convent sits in the middle of the compound, surrounded by the fishbone trunks of palm trees. ‘Mary, where is Joseph?’

  Mary’s puzzled for a second, and then remembers just in time. ‘She … uh, he’s at home, Anil. He’s safe in bed.’

  Joseph, of course, being the name little Francesca still goes by. Even here in Pahang, where the Japanese soldiers are disciplined and regimented, Mary’s wary of letting anyone know Francesca’s a girl. For the last couple of years, Francesca’s been thoroughly enjoying her life as a boy, spending her whole days running about with a gang of tot-sized neighbourhood toughs. All Mary’s half-hearted attempts to reintroduce dresses and dolls have failed, and now it seems as though she’s stuck with a son. It could be worse, she thinks now, remembering Noor Abi. Plenty of women in Pahang are running out of sons.

  ‘Kempetai bastards.’ Anil bursts into song again and Mary frowns. The Kempetai may be bastards – and she agrees with that, though she wouldn’t say it out loud – but she doesn’t blame them for Rajan’s disappearance. She doesn’t blame the rebel Tiga Bintang fighters either, nor the Koreans who are press-ganging men into the Thai railway work. No, she blames Rajan himself. Mary suspects it’s his own choice to stay away. And on his own head be the consequences, she thinks rather wildly, and shouts over her shoulder in a voice tart as pickled limes that Anil should shut up now.

  As they wheel through the convent gate Mary wipes her forehead and shakes her aching legs. The convent’s shabby these days and there are only a few nuns left. But Sister Gerta’s still here, and she comes hurrying out of the front door as soon as she hears the bicycle wheels. Her skirts whip around her skinny legs and her habit billows in the snatching wind.

  ‘Mary!’ she exclaims with pleasure.

  Every month since the Occupation began, Mary’s heaved a bagful of letters up here for the nuns. Begging letters, all of them, asking for help or charity or prayers. There’ve been so many that Mary’s had to stitch a special postbag for them, embroidering it with a tiny crucifix. That bag reeks of misery from the letters inside it, and if any joyful note – say, a wedding invitation – is accidentally placed there the consequences are calamitous: jilting, adultery, divorce of the groom and all his brothers. As Mary sorts those letters the envelopes stick to her fingers in a peeling, damp way that has nothing to do with the weather. The people who write them are desperate, and that’s an easy thing to catch.

  ‘Some extra ones today, Sister,’ she says cheerily and Anil joins in again.

  ‘Extra, extra, Kempetai extra bastards.’

  Sister Gerta gasps. ‘You should stop him. What if the soldiers hear?’

  Mary, who’s been trying to stop Anil for the last half hour, keeps her temper.

  ‘He won’t stop,’ she says. ‘But it’ll be all right. There weren’t any soldiers around this morning.’

  ‘Really? You didn’t see any at all? No sentries or anything?’ Sister Gerta seems curiously excited by this. She leans forward, her hands clenched into the rough serge skirts that bunch around her hips.

  ‘None at all.’ Mary’s about to ask why Gerta cares, when Anil suddenly falls quiet. ‘See? He’s stopped,’ she announces with satisfaction.

  ‘Let-ter,’ Anil says carefully, and points at Sister Gerta’s bunchy skirts.

  ‘We’re delivering the letters, Anil.’ Mary’s no more patient than she ever was or will be, and the scouring hilltop wind is getting on her nerves. If she doesn’t quite roll her eyes at her brother then she certainly comes close, and perhaps that’s why she misses the quick movement as Sister Gerta brings an envelope from her skirt pocket and imprints a kiss on it.

  ‘Mary, will you deliver this?’

  Mary looks up at the envelope in Gerta’s hand. ‘Will I …?’

  She steps forward to take a closer look at this envelope. The envelope’s a delicate cream colour and it’s addressed to Father Narayan, of the La Salle Boys School in Lipis.

  Mary shakes her head. ‘It isn’t chopped.’

  The envelope, scented with jasmine and rosewater, hasn’t been chopped; it has no censorship stamp. That means the Japanese soldiers haven’t approved the contents and it would be a crime for Mary to deliver it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Gerta,’ she says. ‘We can’t take it.’

  Gerta looks stricken. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘If there aren’t any sentries … please?’

  Mary’s tired. She’s been up since four o’clock wrangling some breakfast into her son-daughter and doing her brother’s post round. She’s cold, she’s hungry, she has an ulcer on her leg which isn’t healing. It’s been a hard few months for Mary, and who can blame her for not paying quite enough attention to Gerta, standing there under the frangipanis with her skin white as dirty china and her eyes pleading.

  ‘Just go down and get it chopped, Gerta,’ she says impatiently. ‘Don’t be embarrassed, the censors read all sorts of things. Love letters and everything; yours ca
n’t be that bad.’ (Oh, Mary. She’s never been one to think things through.)

  Mary hands the empty sack to Anil and turns to walk back to the bicycle. The handlebars stick, just a little, and by the time Mary’s got them free, Anil and Gerta are standing side-by-side with their hands behind their backs and gigantic, cream-fed smiles on both their faces. Anil has the sack slung over one shoulder and Gerta’s letter has disappeared.

  ‘What’s got into both of you?’ Mary asks. ‘Come on, Anil, time to go. I’m sorry we couldn’t take your letter, Sister Gerta.’

  But Gerta doesn’t seem to mind, shrugging and smiling as she waves them both off down the hill. Mary puts her feet up on the bicycle forks and coasts, enjoying the feeling of wind beating into her face.

  ‘Ma-ry.’ Anil taps her on the shoulder as they reach the bottom of the slope. ‘Go to Lipis-town? See the schoolboys?’

  Anil loves everything to do with school. He never got to go, of course, but he used to press his nose to the compound gate to watch as boys in striped ties carried their boxy school satchels along the road. He’s always particularly liked the yellow-and-red stripes of the La Salle school uniform, even going so far as to beg for a blazer of his very own.

  Mary smiles back at him over her shoulder. ‘Very well,’ she calls. ‘We’ll go and see the school.’

  She starts pedalling again and swings them onto the narrow road that leads out to the school. It’s at the end of a rutted lane, with low pavilions spreading themselves out behind cricket pitches. Like many of the schools in Pahang, it isn’t actually open. There aren’t enough Japanese-speaking teachers, and schools aren’t permitted to teach in any other language. The head, Father Narayan, fills his days by setting out unmarked blackboards and counting his chalks.

  ‘Pity Gerta didn’t have her letter chopped,’ Mary calls to Anil as she pedals the bike over dried-up mud. ‘We could have dropped it in to Father Narayan now –’

  She breaks off. There’s a Japanese sentry standing under the angsana tree by the school corner. His hat’s tweaked into a stiff fold and a gun hangs from his polished belt.

  Mary stops the bicycle and pulls Anil off after her. ‘Bow!’ she hisses, but he doesn’t move.

  The soldier puts his thumbs into his belt and begins to walk towards them, each leg swinging like a pendulum.

  ‘Anil!’ Mary gives him a sharp, hard pinch. The sentry’s smiling, with a clear and hard grin that doesn’t bode well. ‘Bow!’

  Anil drops his head and Mary sinks with relief into her own bow. Don’t look at us, keep walking by, she thinks and then just as the soldier reaches them she hears Anil draw in a breath.

  ‘Bastards, bastards,’ he sings. ‘Kempetai bastards.’

  The soldier stops. For a long, heart-stretching second he doesn’t move. Mary’s holding her breath – don’t understand English, she’s praying, please don’t understand – and then Anil chirps again, almost to himself.

  ‘Bastards, bastards, Kempetai –’

  The soldier pulls back his fist, swinging it with a brutal punch into Anil’s face. Anil crumples to the ground and a second punch from the soldier sends Mary lurching away. She lands on the bike, feeling the spokes pierce her leg and her mouth fill with tiny, clattering stones that turn out to be her own teeth. The soldier stamps down hard on Anil’s head and Mary’s sure she can hear something crack. She scrambles to her knees, crawls up to the soldier’s flying boots.

  ‘Please,’ she says. She puts her head on the ground. ‘Please,’ and then there’s a sudden silence.

  Mary lifts her head up, blood brimming from her lips. The soldier’s picked up Anil’s gunny sack and is feeling inside it. He grabs at something – but there’s nothing there – thinks Mary and then, a second later … Oh, Anil. Oh, Anil.

  Because the soldier’s just pulled out a delicate cream-coloured envelope, lying innocently in the post-office bag and uncensored. Unchopped. Unimaginable.

  ‘Aha!’ The soldier kicks Anil again, holds up the envelope in triumph. ‘Illegal,’ he screeches. ‘Illegal!’

  Mary screams as the soldier kicks Anil again. Blood pools on the road and on the soldier’s boots, which seems to upset him. He takes a step back and slips the gun off his shoulder.

  ‘Stupid. Foolish postboy,’ he says, and brings the rifle into position. Anil lies still on the ground with his legs at an impossible angle and the soldier tightens his finger on the trigger and then –

  ‘I did it,’ Mary says. ‘I put the letter in.’

  23. Tuesday, 5 p.m.

  Ammuma’s voice gets slower and slower, till she falls silent.

  ‘Cannot remember next,’ she says, looking me in the eye. A few missing facts. A few missing brothers, and sisters, and daughters. Not worth remembering, those daughters. They’re just footnotes in history.

  She pulls in on herself after that, settling ostentatiously to sleep. And I go back to standing by the door, watching the sun set and the green mosquito coils shiver into fragments under the kitchen table. I shut the door and then open it again just to feel purposeful. There’s a coppery tang to the air, like coins fished from a well. Perhaps the floods are going to miss us after all, sweep out to the eastern plains and leave only the stink of mud and river bones.

  I don’t know how long I stand there. The sun sets and the air turns salt-bright, trembling on the edge of calm. I think about Ammuma, about Peony and Francesca. About equilibrium, and tidy mathematical games which have a winning strategy for every player. In real life, it turns out, the ghosts are always a few points up.

  ‘Ammuma?’ It’s almost dark now on the verandah. Shadows bleed across the concrete floor and Ammuma’s sari gleams in the dusk. ‘Are you awake?’

  Her head lolls to the side. One eye opens in a slow, sightless blink and she lets out a windy belch. There’s a rustle as papers flutter off the low table. I can’t see where they land. The corners of the room are pitch black, as though the light’s been wrung out with two hands.

  I kneel down and pat at the floor, expecting at any moment the sizzle of an earwig or the dryness of a chik-chak or even – and the thought comes without asking – the stamp of Ammuma’s heel.

  My palm skims something soft. It’s cloth, the black roll wrapping my mother’s plait. I find the autograph book on the floor too, with the pages dog-eared. Ammuma must have been picking over it while I was in the kitchen. Rummaging through, sniffing and tasting and peering at every blank page.

  Next to it I find the envelope of photographs. It’s split open and the frayed edge rasps like a friendly tongue. My palms pad over gritty dust and the occasional cool sheen of a photograph that’s fallen out. Perhaps there are more I haven’t found: pictures blown down cracks to puzzle some young girl-cousins in thirty-fifty-a-hundred years’ time. I’d wish them good luck, those futuristic flawless cousins with gleaming hair and space-age skin, but I doubt they’ll need it. Women like that can look after themselves.

  When I’ve gathered everything I can find, I bundle it all up and take it into the hall. Ammuma keeps a torch on the table in here, for days like this when the power goes out. It sends a feeble beam into the front room. The furniture leaps out at me: chairs and tables and bamboo pictures looking affronted in the sudden light.

  By torchlight Francesca seems calm and unflappable in her handcuffs. She’s so hugely swollen that she must have given birth not long after this photo was taken. Me. And then she died, but that can’t have been like I’ve always thought. No clean white sheets or gentle nurses: my mother would have burnt alive in those handcuffs. Peony once showed me the news photographs about the San fire – the famous ones, in the Straits Times. Shadows burnt onto padded walls and faces melted to chicken fat. Ammuma refused to have those pages in the house: Death and foolishness and God-knows-what, child, ten years ago it is now, why don’t you leave it alone? She’s wary of history, Ammuma. She had a daughter, once, before all that history.

  I shove the autograph book in one of my skirt pockets, and t
hen the photograph and Amma’s plait in the other pocket. I’ll need these things; they’re the only proofs I’ve got right now. The torch flickers and I cup my hand over it, blood-veins and bones showing through. I pad back through the front room to peer at Ammuma. Her head’s sunk back and her skin is loose around her exposed collarbone. No blood-veins for Ammuma, no insides showing. She keeps her secrets.

  But there’s someone else who doesn’t. Someone who deals in gossip, which Ammuma likes, and facts, which she’d never stoop to. Someone who was there from the start, keeping order and always giving a straight answer in her coloured exercise books. What’s the height of a triangle, Mother Agnes? What does this word mean? Why did Francesca end up in the San? Now there’s a question, Mother Agnes. They don’t make dictionaries big enough for that one.

  Ammuma doesn’t wake as I tuck the blanket up over her hips. She doesn’t stir – I think – as I buckle my shoes on. Her eyes surely don’t snap open and stare into the darkness behind my back. She isn’t sitting there – she couldn’t be – watching me tiptoe down the steps.

  Once I’m outside I switch the torch back on. A circle of light leaps out and everything else drops dizzyingly away. The kampong track’s overgrown and barely visible; nobody’s taken it for years. I used to know this way so well, and now it’s like seeing a familiar face turned shrunken and twisted. Ferns wrap themselves around my ankles, and spider webs plaster my face. I trip on a rattan spine, slashing my leg and landing in a mess of vines and springy little trees. Something blunders into my hair, then tugs itself free. There’s a rustle behind me: footsteps or hooves or claws. I swing the torch. There’s nothing there, or nothing I can see.

  I gulp and push myself on. The shadows are on my heels. They’re licking out from behind me, swallowing my torch and I start to run. My feet slam through rotten logs and crusts of mud. Knee-high ferns that cling and soak my legs. Something’s following me, something’s padding in the echoes of my heartbeat. My torch swings wildly over trees and rocks, looming out of nowhere.