Fragile Monsters Read online

  ‘He’s been chomped,’ Cecelia would sigh, opening her legs to the lapping waves and the suggestion of teeth, and Mary squealed and splashed and moaned in terror. When Mohamed’s son turned up two months afterwards with the dumpy woman he’d run off to marry, Mary felt flat disappointment. She would have told it better, if only it had been up to her.

  ‘We’ll take him to the bomohs,’ Cecelia insists again. ‘They’ll fix him.’

  ‘What if they hurt him?’ Mary objects.

  Ever since Cecelia sat next to her during that first howling day at school, Mary’s taken her best friend’s advice. Cecelia has a sly twist to her mind, she comes up with the best games and the most exciting adventures, and lately Mary’s felt like she’s never going to catch up. It’s Anil’s fault, in a way. Ever since he was born there’s been a cloud of bad feeling over the house. Everyone’s felt it; Maniam-cook’s handed in his notice, the knife-sharpener bicycles passed without a word and the kitchen cats have given up hunting mice and taken to scowling in corners. Mary’s father, Stephen, his pale English skin sunburnt as he nails yet another verandah onto yet another annexe, can’t understand it. Damn place has a mind of its own, he mutters.

  Mary’s mother, Radhika, too, knows something’s wrong. She’s started to talk to herself in Malayalam, the mother tongue of Kerala, which nobody here understands. She uses it to plead with her son, to whisper apologies into his unheeding ears. Radhika blames herself for Anil, which is handy for all concerned.

  ‘Look, Mary, he isn’t right.’ Cecelia points an accusing finger at Anil. It’s true that he never makes a sound, that he’s slow to smile or open his eyes or grasp what’s going on. But that’s not always a bad thing, thinks Mary.

  ‘The bomohs will fix him,’ Cecelia insists. ‘And everyone will be happy again.’

  Mary sighs and gives in, gathering Anil up from the cot in all his knitted swaddling. Despite her reluctance, she’s known all along that she’d do as Cecelia said. The two girls have never disagreed, at least not openly. When one arrives late to school, she finds the other waiting outside to scurry in and share her punishment. They divide their lunches, copy each other’s spelling tests and have cross-my-heart promised to dress exactly the same. On good days, they’re friends for ever.

  Today, though, has started out badly. By nine o’clock Mary and Cecelia have both bitten their mothers in a fight over bread and milk at breakfast, stamped out of their back doors, and attempted to drop their kitchen cats into the froggy depths of the well.

  Neither girl has quite wanted to do all this. Mary loves her kittens and Cecelia, for her part, likes bread and milk. But Cecelia and Mary share a strange, unwanted bond, one that developed as soon as they met. When Mary claps her hands, Cecelia’s own palms begin to sting, and when Cecelia outgrows her shoes, Mary’s feet develop blisters. So neither girl is surprised that Mary’s breakfast of bread and milk caused Cecelia to retch three doors away, or that Cecelia’s scream of rage as her cat clawed her arm convinced Mary, with helpless sobs, to try and drown her own docile pets.

  So now, having left two quarrelsome houses and a couple of dripping cats, the girls thrust Anil head-first through the nursery window and climb out after him. It’s a hot day, right in the middle of the dry season, and as she carries him down the driveway Mary’s arms begin to itch from the wool in Anil’s blanket. Stephen insists on that blanket – no son of his is going to grow up like a half-naked savage – and without an amah to replace Ah Sim, nobody’s thought to question the rash that’s spread over Anil’s delicate skin.

  According to playground rumours, the bomohs live in a secret hut deep in the jungle that can’t be reached without a map. Neither girl is quite sure she believes this – Mary wonders who drew the first map, Cecelia wonders what the bomohs eat – but at nine years old they’re far too brave to suggest calling the adventure off. Mary navigates a flooded section of the river with Anil tucked under one arm while Cecelia scratches her elbows raw, and then Cecelia follows while grazes blossom on the skin of Mary’s wrists. Anil, blissfully single-minded and with only one body to worry about, sucks on his thumb and watches the rustling leaves. If he were able to talk, he’d point out that the girls are going in circles. They’ve jumped this rocky outcrop twice already, and he’s seen the thicket of hibiscus behind it at least three times. But he rather likes the look of those petal-soft flowers against the waxy green leaves, so he lies back placidly on Mary’s shoulder and waits for them to appear again.

  ‘Stop! You there, stop.’

  Mary, in the lead, stops short and peers up into the leaves. Ten feet above her she sees a dark-skinned Indian boy – who will one day be my grandfather Rajan – astride the lowest branch and half-obscured by flame-tree blossom. Mary doesn’t know this is a momentous occasion, and so her heart doesn’t skip a beat, her stomach doesn’t drop and her hand doesn’t fly to cover a smile. Rajan looks put out. He hasn’t climbed a ten-foot tree to be disregarded.

  ‘Stop. I told you.’ And then, when this doesn’t have any effect, he adds, ‘If you come any closer, I’ll chop the branch off.’

  Mary peers up at him and shrugs. She’s only known him a few minutes, so she’s clear-eyed enough to think he wouldn’t really chop off the branch he’s sitting on just to spite her. After a few years, she’ll have learnt better.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ she tells him.

  She pats forward, Anil under one arm and the other hand on her hip. Her patent-leather shoes tap under ruffled socks, she’s small and sweet and for the last time in her life she’s on her best behaviour. The worst thing that can happen, she knows, is that in a few minutes the boy will make good on his threat. He’ll tumble down onto her amid a mass of burnt-bright flowers and knock her to the ground where they’ll live happily ever after, she thinks. She’s read her fairy tales; she knows how the stories go.

  ‘Stop! Mary, he’ll do it!’

  Cecelia comes panting up the hill, plump with baby-fat and good intentions. Seen from Rajan’s perspective, through a screen of flowers and ten foot below – in other words, at a safe enough distance – she’s even sweeter than Mary. Down on the ground the two girls glare at each other for a second like tomcats in a cage.

  ‘He’ll fall! You’ll kill him!’ Cecelia insists.

  ‘Leave her alone.’ Rajan veers round to Mary’s defence. He’s twelve years old and his family only arrived in the district a week ago, after his father was appointed as a government doctor in Pahang. The entire Balakrishnan family have been whirled up from Singapore on the very first passenger train ever to cross the Straits causeway and young Rajan considers that sets him ten feet above everyone else without any need for tree trunks.

  But Cecelia knows how to get her own way. She ignores Mary and turns her lovely eyes up to the tree, pleading for him to hold on just one more minute.

  ‘I’ll come up,’ she tells him and Mary, taken aback, stares with her mouth open.

  ‘We’re supposed to be taking Anil to the bomohs,’ she says. ‘You promised!’

  Cecelia shrugs, and gives Mary an impish, provocative smile. ‘Move over,’ she calls to Rajan. ‘I’m coming up.’

  He frowns. This is all moving slightly too fast for him. Like he’ll do so many times in future, he gives in to the snarling undercurrents between Mary and Cecelia.

  ‘Both of you? Come on then,’ he demands. ‘I can’t wait for you all day.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cecelia jerks a thumb towards Mary and Anil, all red and rashy in his heavy wool blanket. ‘She can’t come,’ Cecelia says, all bare-faced lies and lower lip caught between her teeth. ‘She’s brought her brother.’

  ‘No, wait. I can …’ Mary looks around. There’s a cleft in the path up ahead, just the right size to put Anil down in. But it’s razor-sharp and rocky, and might hold anything at all. Scorpions, spiders, the odd jungle viper or two; she’s heard you never see them until they strike. ‘I can’t leave Anil here,’ she finishes miserably.

  Nobody’s listening, t
hough. Rajan’s watching Cecelia, who’s already started to climb. Her monkey limbs are flung wide around the wrinkled bark and she doesn’t look down.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mary hears her say. ‘It’s only Mary. She won’t mind waiting for us.’

  Mary scoops Anil a little higher on her hip and kicks at a puddle of wilted blossom. She’s not angry – not yet, not quite – but then she sees Rajan smile. He reaches down so Cecelia can grab his hand and Mary’s stomach swells and drops. She feels a jolt as Cecelia reaches up to his fingers, feels the warmth of his palm on her own skin, and doesn’t like it one bit.

  ‘My name’s Rajan,’ she hears him say, and then a gust of wind tosses the branches aside. Cecelia’s skirt flips up in that breeze to show a glimpse of her knickers. They’re trimmed with lace, they’re dirty and half a size too small, and Mary’s wearing an identical pair herself. She’s dragged them out of the soiled laundry on purpose, just so Cecelia would have to wear her pair. Mary herself has no compunction about wearing the same underthings for three days running, and Cecelia – cross-my-heart-promised to be Mary’s mirror image right down to the skin – will just have to lump it.

  But as that breeze sneaks under the frayed edge of Cecelia’s ruffled skirt, Mary’s stomach squirms. All of a sudden she can’t feel the bark under Cecelia’s knees, or even the squeeze of Rajan’s fingers on Cecelia’s hand. Instead, there’s a stir of interest at the base of her belly, a muscling sort of swell that takes her by surprise.

  ‘Come down right now,’ Mary shouts up at the tree, and adds for good measure that Cecelia’s a bloodless little mouse in dirty knickers.

  But it doesn’t help in the slightest, because this feeling isn’t Cecelia’s. It’s Mary’s own; it’s to do with the way Rajan’s eyes glint with half-hidden interest and his mouth’s stained red with betel nut. Mary spits – she hates the taste, reminding her of Radhika and failure – and feels a ghostly, warning pressure on her lips. One day, she knows, Rajan and Cecelia will be kissing, will be doing a sight more than holding hands up in a tree. Mary, down amongst all those wilted flowers with only Anil for company, bursts into tears for the second time that day.

  ‘I’ll tell on you,’ she whispers, and wonders if she might have learnt to like betel nut, if she’d only been given the chance.

  5. Friday, 5 a.m.

  ‘Oh my God, a fire? Are you OK?’

  It’s a warm morning, still sticky with rain and with a pale glow where the sun’s going to rise. I’ve calculated that it should be six o’clock in the evening in Canada, and Sangeeta will still be in our office. Her office, now. I grip the phone receiver and breathe out. It helps, to have told someone.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘A sore throat from the smoke and a few bruises, but that’s all.’

  ‘Maybe you’re in shock,’ she suggests, rather hopefully.

  ‘Just some smoke,’ I repeat. ‘And a bruise.’

  I’m in one of the phone booths outside the hospital. It’s busy, with muttered conversations or one-sided anguish going on in alternate booths. There’s an etiquette to grief, and we’ve all left as much space between each other as possible. Or perhaps it’s a sense of self-preservation. Bad luck might be catching.

  ‘It’s my grandmother, though. She wasn’t badly burnt, but –’

  I take a deep breath, press my face against the side of the orange cubicle. It smells of metal, and the sweat from people’s fingers.

  ‘She was asking for my mother.’

  ‘Your mother …’ Sangeeta sucks in her breath. ‘So she doesn’t … she thinks … she’s forgotten she died?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. It’s a little, tight word. It oughtn’t to be big enough for a sob.

  ‘Oh, Durga.’ Sangeeta’s voice is warm, hardly more than a whisper. I scrub at my forehead, push my hair back where it’s sticking against my mouth.

  ‘Anyway,’ I pull myself together, take a few sensible breaths. ‘My grandmother kept saying my mother was in the black areas.’

  ‘The where?’

  ‘The black areas. It’s what they called the villages that were evacuated during the Emergency, right after World War Two.’

  ‘Maybe she was evacuated in this emergency thing.’ Sangeeta sounds pleased, like she’s solved the puzzle. ‘Your grandmother might be remembering it.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘She lived with Ammuma. They weren’t evacuated, I know they weren’t.’

  There’s a pause, and I add, ‘It wasn’t really evacuation anyway. The British locked all the villagers up in resettlement camps in case they were giving food to the Malaysian independence fighters.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’ Sangeeta, on her wipe-clean couch in Ontario, passes judgement. ‘I think I’d have preferred the war.’

  ‘Well, the Emergency was a war, really. We … they – Malaysia, I mean … was fighting the British for independence.’ We. They. She doesn’t notice the hesitation.

  ‘So why would she think your mother was in these black areas now?’

  ‘I don’t know! I mean – Amma’s dead. She isn’t anywhere.’

  ‘I know.’ Sangeeta’s voice is gentle. ‘Maybe you can ask your grandmother a bit more, when she wakes up?’

  ‘It isn’t that easy,’ I say slowly. ‘She doesn’t like talking about my mother, not usually. She just sort of … tells stories. All made up and exaggerated, like folk tales or something.’

  I’m finding it hard to explain. In Canada, all that matters is facts: the who-what-why-when of everyday life. In Pahang, in Malaysia, what matters is how you tell it.

  ‘And I’m supposed to be back in KL on Monday,’ I say. Despite everything, I can feel myself calming down. This is familiar ground, at least. ‘I’ve got lectures. They’ll have to find a substitute for me. One of the post-docs or something, and God knows how he’ll teach the proofs.’

  Sangeeta laughs. ‘That’s the important thing, is it, Durga? How he teaches the proofs?’ She sounds twice her age, coarse with the cigarette she’s just lit. Sympathetic, too. ‘If only I were there, I’d have taken your classes.’

  ‘You never did at Ontario.’

  Sangeeta laughs. She’s not one of nature’s substitutes. She’d fill the lectures with love-smitten teenage boys, I tell her, and Malay government officials who’d want to check on her credentials. I can picture her, handing out lumps of plasticine and Moebius strips made with bright yellow sticky tape. Those methods don’t work here, not like they did in Ontario. I remember my first lecture in KL two months ago, tearing off a triumphant lump of clay to prove a cube and a sphere were the same thing under the skin. The students – Malay, Indian, Chinese – looked doubtful and made tiny, cautious notes. The skin, after all, has some significance in Malaysia.

  ‘The post-doc’s just like you,’ I say. ‘He’d end up teaching Yoneda’s lemma using paper planes or something like that.’

  She laughs dutifully, and then there’s a silence.

  ‘Durga?’ she says finally. ‘It’s five o’clock there, isn’t it? You didn’t ring me at crack of dawn to talk about maths. You’re not OK, are you?’

  For a moment I don’t say anything, watching a well-dressed Sikh man walk out of the hospital. His polished shoes clip smartly on the tarmac, his turban’s neatly tied, and he’s dapper right down to the waistcoat under his jacket. Except that jacket’s buttoned on the wrong holes – as though he’s put it on in a hurry – and it doesn’t match the suit. Perhaps he’s been wearing it for a week without noticing, sitting by someone’s bed. Perhaps he thought bad news couldn’t happen in his best clothes.

  ‘Two months ago,’ I say quietly, ‘I’d have called Deepak.’

  Sangeeta snorts. She thinks I should still call him. Get into a blazing, gorgeous quarrel with his family for urging him back to that shoulder-padded wife. Make a plan – apologies (for them), divorce and a trans-Pacific flight (for him), a wedding and babies (for me). She approves of all that, being a girl for drama.

  ‘But don’t do it now
,’ she adds quickly. ‘Not at five a.m. I mean, it’s evening here, he might even still be in his office … but you weren’t really going to, were you, Durga?’

  I shake my head, forgetting that she can’t see. I’ve had a lot of practice at not calling Deepak during the small hours. For the last two months I’ve been lying awake in my tiny apartment in KL instead, eyes closed and imagining my Ontario apartment. That empty can of his pineapple cologne that nestled in the bin, a single sports sock, that jar of chutney he spooned out at every meal. The KL apartments are flimsier than Canadian ones and all night I listen out for thuds from someone upstairs breaking a glass, a vase, a heart. By dawn, I’m usually calculating the exact thickness of these thin walls between neighbours. A single blow would be enough to knock them down, I’ve worked out. To leave us all in our singlets and sarongs, squatting a careful arm’s-length apart and staring into each other’s faces. Imagining all our nose-hair and unpicked spots suddenly exposed to view.

  ‘Haven’t even thought about him,’ I say, and Sangeeta laughs.

  The beds in Ammuma’s ward have filled up overnight, and a trolley full of breakfasts sits outside. I can hear her complaining from down the corridor. If I’d been away ten minutes longer I daresay she’d have discharged herself and stamped her way back home over the rattan patches. A real pioneer, Mother Agnes used to call Ammuma when she walked down the jungle paths to pick me up from school. Pioneer; it was a word I associated with covered wagons, with circling horses. With trouble, which was Ammuma through and through.

  When I push the door open I see each bed has an old woman in it, identical grey cobwebs who barely make a dent in the pillow. Not Ammuma, though, who’s jerking her head from side to side and cross as a traffic policeman.