Life (34 page)

She woke wrapped in the wine-colored bedspread, feeling chilled and a little burned. Spence was beside her, fast asleep; the hut was full of morning light. She sat up and saw her shells arranged in strange patterns, all over the sandy wooden floor. It was like waking and finding you had managed to bring a flower home from Narnia. It wasn’t a dream. They had visited another world.

iv

Ramone was not, in fact, traveling with Daz. When they came to Nasser apartments, the week after New Year, they hardly seemed to be friends. Ramone, who’d contacted Anna and Spence by phone from her hotel, arrived two hours later than arranged and very dressed down (sensible short hair, faded combats, chain store tee-shirt). She now claimed—with an irritating air of important secrets in reserve— that she was here to research a new book. So what was she really doing in Sungai? Daz made no comment. If she thought Ramone’s trouble-spot rubber-necking in poor taste, she didn’t say so.

Aside from her clothes, the rabid one was the same as ever: same malign, opaque blue eyes, same chimpanzee lip, same mean, arbitrary aggression. Daz had become a new person. She seemed to have shed her great beauty when she stopped being a megababe; she was now a soberly good-looking, well-groomed, grown-up woman. Anna marveled at the changes she’d seen in that ingenuous Malaysian Valley Girl she’d met at the Freshers’ Fair and yet felt an instant sympathy. You could see in her eyes that Daz, in spite of her successes, had been living in the wild world, making compromises and accepting defeats. Ramone was more difficult. She was in a discontented phase. She did that trick, the same as she’d done on Beevey Island years ago, of
not looking
at Anna. She baited Spence and tried to pick a fight with Daz about the wimpish EU Mission—and the forthcoming “Equality and Democracy Rally,” a government-sanctioned “expression of free speech” in which Daz would be involved.

Nevertheless they all agreed to go out on the town together. Anna invited Wolfgang, hoping that he would be the life and soul of the party. She couldn’t think of anyone else.

They met at Ramone’s hotel, the Rajah Brooke, a hangout favored by middle-aged US tourists before the annexation, and went to eat in The Plaza, at an eclectic, Chinese-run restaurant called The Jungle Pigeon. It was early, because they wanted to go on somewhere. The Plaza was full of shoppers, heavy aircon, and the smell of too much deodorizer. Ramone jeered at it. “Is this the way you two live? I suppose you never venture into the real Sungai? We might as well be eating prawn sesame toast in some crap Chinese off Piccadilly Gardens.”

“Where are Piccadilly Gardens?” wondered Daz. “I’ve never heard of them.”

“She means Piccadilly, Manchester,” supplied Anna.

“If you want the Sungai experience,” said Spence (trying to keep his temper), “this is it, much as there is one. Up-country is roads and trees, plenty of trees, a few muddy rivers, some ugly mountains. There’s no scenery. Not much culture. It could be the Midwest.”

“Huh. Far as I can see, you might as well have stayed at home.”

“I think that’s the point. We
did
stay at home. That’s what we’ve found out.”

Ramone muttered something about Hallmark card sentiment.

Anna was borne up, after Pasir Pancang, on that dark glimmering tide of perfect, active calm. Things couldn’t be better between her and Spence. She was serene about working for Parentis. Transferred Y was in wonderful shape. She wanted the evening to go with a swing and wondered why Wolfgang (in the shirt with the silver and purple butterflies) was being so stiff and stilted. Ramone, bless her, still did not know how to use a pair of chopsticks. The rabid one was going to stay hungry, now the fingerfood was gone, unless she stopped being on her dignity and asked for a fork. Spence and Anna and Wolfgang were fast-working gannets, and Daz soon proved their equal. Wham, wham, wham…a heap of sticky, delicious little squid
in suo tinto,
a mass of slivered chili-fried liver, crispy tempeh, delicious nyonya fish curry, all of it disappeared at speed. Spence had ordered the signature dish, as one must: two of them. The jungle pigeons arrived late, glistening reddish black in pools of anise sauce, arranged with their intact heads tucked under their wings. At this spectacle Ramone broke down and exclaimed in innocent delight, endearing herself to the Pigeon staff.

“Oh, cool. Aren’t they
gross!
They look like burn victims.”

“You have to eat the head,” the waiter told her, grinning mischievously, as he completed a neat, scissoring dismemberment of the first bird. “It’s good luck.”

“You can easily get this dish in Manchester, you know,” Anna couldn’t resist pointing out. “With a smaller pigeon… If you like Chinese food, that is.”

“I like Chinese
takeaway
food.” Ramone gave Anna a look, a flash of fierce contact, quickly withdrawn. “So, how’s the baby-making going? Cloned anyone famous lately?”

“What, me personally? I’m not involved in the clinical work. Purely admin this trip.”

Out of the corner of her ear, as it were, she heard Wolfgang sounding unlike himself.

“You are Sungainese by birth, Ms Avriti? So I’ve been told?”

“Yes I am,” agreed Daz, quietly.

“And a Human Rights lawyer, whatever that exactly means. You have family living here?”

“Oh yes.”

Ramone’s muddy blue eyes gleamed. “Infertility’s not a disease. Face it Anna, your ‘clinical work’ is pure money grubbing.”

“If you like. That’s definitely what the boss thinks, isn’t it Wolfgang?”

“Poor Aslan. He knows no other worthwhile activity. He should be called Ben Franklin.”

“Aslan?” Ramone was charmed. “Your boss is called
Aslan?
”

“Straight up.”

“What’s that? Persian ethnic or Christian Hippy?”

“Hippy, we’ve decided, because his family name’s ‘Gaegler’ and there are little signs—”

“Little signs!” At last Wolfgang’s crazy infectious laugh, like a hyena with hiccups. “This sad teetotal capitalist has his daddy’s photo on the desk. Old Papa is wearing a Grateful Dead tee-shirt, and he is wearing cannabis sativa leaf earrings. Isn’t that nice?”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” growled Ramone. “There’s no fucking distance between the counterculture and the free market, never was… Hey, does any one want some cool drugs?”

She extracted a lipstick from one of her pockets, untwisted the base, and shook out a half dozen turquoise capsules. “Have you heard of this? It’s the Alzheimer’s drug, regressive recall modulator. Lavvy gets it on prescription, for memory lapses, although she doesn’t really need it. It’s neurological time traveling. You go back to something that happened in your past, and you get a brilliant high from doing this. No one knows why; people who found out just started taking it. It’s already illegal here. Want some?”

“I don’t want to go into a coma, right now,” said Daz. “I want to dance.”

“Oh, that’s okay. You can dance in the regression, it only happens in your head—”

“What if you remember something horrible?” asked Anna, not remotely tempted.

“To me, this sounds repellent,” said Wolfgang.

Ramone grinned. “Yeah, there’s the chance of a bad trip, like with any psychotropic. It’s a risk you have to take. Spence, what about it?”

Spence glanced at Anna. “Nah. It doesn’t appeal. Guess I’m a now sort of person.”

“We ought to be going,” said Daz, “I’ll see if I can get us straight into the club. Put those things away, for heaven’s sake.” She went to the pay phones to call the Riverrun, the club they planned to visit, but returned shaking her head. Couldn’t get a line.

“They took my mobile off me at the airport,” complained Ramone. “And my video camera. Why do they do that? Tin-pot dictatorship—”

“Mobile phones are supposed to be anti-Islamic,” explained Anna. “I didn’t know about camcorders. That’s the story, but it doesn’t make much sense.”

Daz snorted, if an elegant grown-up lady can snort—betrayed by the wine into impatience with these simpletons. “It’s nothing to do with Islam. It’s about controlling communication, you dorks. Let’s queue at the door. There won’t be much of a line.”

As they left the restaurant Spence donned an old Microsoft baseball cap, Wolfgang his Ozzie bush hat. Daz and Anna tied their scarves. Ramone prepared to exit bravely bareheaded. Daz grabbed her, holding out the extra hejab she had wisely brought along. “I knew you’d try it. Don’t be stupid, Ro.”

“I won’t put that on. I fucking won’t.”

“In daylight you can get away with being a tourist. After dark,
you wear this.
”

The river of Sungai, which means “river” in Malay, was labeled the Tyan on maps, which probably meant river in some vanished Dyak language. It ran through the city like the Thames, puzzlingly small for its historic role: from the west-end docks, from whence the big old refineries sprawled along the estuary towards the sea, to the new football stadium that marked, roughly, the eastern city limits. The Riverrun Club occupied one of the East Quay go-downs, picturesque ancient warehouses that somehow still escaped the developers. On this tepid, steaming January night the floor was packed at nine pm, because the lights were going out at midnight, the police were coming in to check for stragglers: and
you’d better believe it.

Anna and Spence did not frequent the Riverrun, they couldn’t afford to. It was, enduringly, the place to be. Alcohol was freely available, the air-conditioning was chill and dry, the sound and light phenomenally good, the walls of the cavernous hall dusky and naked as the day they were born. Over the dancers’ heads clouds of bright gas formed into stars, streaming envelopes of aurora meshed; the river ran around and around its swollen center in silver spangles: the dark and shining elliptical river of our birth. The party swiftly downed their first, included-in-the-door-money drink in strong liquor, and lost each other for a while.

Anna and Spence met Wolfgang on the way to the loft. He dismissed the three gorgeous Sungainese he was talking to and joined them.

Inside the Riverrun, until curfew, everything was allowed. It was the modern way of oppression. Do what you like, as long as you accept our rules in daytime, in the real world. “Gee, were they boy-loving boys dressed up as girls, Wolfie?” asked Spence, affecting hickdom. “Or were they girl-loving girls, dressed up as boys dressed as girls?”

“You are such a clown, Spencer. You would make a fine boy-girl yourself. Did anyone ever tell you? I would hardly be able to keep my hands to myself.”

“Oh, I know it.” Spence tossed his head and pouted.

Spence and Wolfgang always “flirted outrageously,” it was their little routine. But it was true, thought Anna, that Spence was looking very sexy. Something about the lineaments of gratified desire? No, not gratified desire: gratified
by
desire. He was giving off a positive fog of pheromones, and this was Anna’s doing. She knew that in his mind he was wearing those pajamas. She seized his hand, fleetingly alarmed,
but we can still be brother and sister?
Ramone and Daz were already in the loft. The five of them took over one of the knee-high bamboo tables. Wolfgang ordered drinks.

“Are you going to be at this so-called Pro-Democracy rally, Anna?” demanded Ramone.