Ode to Broken Things (11 page)

“So how did you track him down?” Shanti asked Zainal one evening.

A wind blew through the light, making shadows waver. Jay covered his mouth to stifle a tired yawn and closed his eyes, while his ears sharpened for the murmuring voices. Zainal cracked his knuckles slowly, one by one, and then, after the suspense had stretched the room taut with its silence, he began his story.

“First, we try and follow the tracks to the edge of the swamp, but we lose them to the leeches and the snakes and centipedes.”

Zainal ruffled the hair of his youngest child and said, “
Aiyoh, even the centipede’s not as troublesome as the little nyamuk
,” with a meaningful smile at his little son. The little mosquitoes, he explained, caused the most trouble in the jungle. They had to keep their faces and hands covered with a sarong, with only the eyes and the nose sticking out.

Drawn into the wilderness by Zainal’s voice, the young Jay could see the pale faces of the bandits moving through the dense undergrowth carefully, using hand signals to communicate. The jungle was deathly quiet during the day, and sounds and smells could be detected quite easily by a wary patrol. The rainforest was beautiful, with thousands of tall trees, white, grey, and shaded with almost every colour imaginable, all reaching towards the sunlight, hundreds of feet up. There, they spread out in a carpet of tangled green as the creepers, rattans, and vines hung down from the trees. No birds could be seen, for they were above the canopy in the bright sunlight. The light in the deep jungle was very faint, distilled through the ancient trees, and the air was moist with the breath of their long existence.

The day Zainal’s platoon captured the Kajang Terror, the call had come from Bukit Hitam Estate, about three bandits trying to collect protection money from rubber tappers. The men got into two trucks, and circled round and round the hill dense with rubber trees.

“Then the
krackkrackkrack
Bren gun fire
zoooom
past my left ear. I duck, but the ground near the bush is bloody, and blood trickling down the fallen leaves of the rubber trees.
Alhamdulillah
, I was safe! Although a bandit with a grenade is right next to me, planning to throw grenade, someone empty a gun from close range into him!”

Siti never asked Zainal any questions. But Jay could see her lips moving in the lamplight, and she stared at Zainal’s fingers as he squeezed together a thumb and forefinger to illustrate his narrow escape.

Zainal’s troop had followed the small jungle track and, after walking about fifty yards, suddenly heard music. In a small clearing there was a rustic hut, and inside was a radio.

“Playing dum-da-da-dah, so we know that the time was exactly nine in the morning. We start to close in, quietly, very, very quietly. Three bandits come out; one with long beard, like this, and one a girl, all with guns and uniforms some more. So we open fire,
lah
, and the bandits ran, all of them from the hut and jump into the swamp. The Kajang Terror by this time was fat, really fat, and suddenly there he was, stuck in the swamp like a hippo. Somebody fire and
pshew
, straight through the eye, and The Terror was dead. It all happen so fast no time to think also.”

They brought the body into Klang and tied him to a wooden door; then trailed the corpse behind a police van, for all the Min Yuen and other Chinese fellows to see and learn. They went to all the towns and
kampung
areas the bandits had previously terrorised, so that the people would know that the legend had ended… that he was really dead.

“But these people, so stupid one. Really afraid of him, think his
hantu
is even more powerful now that he is dead. Even the Malays, they sit in mosques and talk about this ghost that never die,” Zainal shook his head.

Jay remembered Shanti sitting still after this story, absorbed in her own thoughts. His heart had cramped as Shapna looked at her watch irritably and signalled that it was time to go home. Siti, Zainal’s wife, had kissed Shanti on the forehead in goodbye.

Siti had loved Shanti like a daughter. She and Shapna conjured Shanti out of a bottle (they claimed) and both loved her equally. He still had a picture, in Boston, which showed Siti looking lovingly at Shanti as she lay curled against the cushions, scribbling into a notebook balanced on her knees.
If the seed is good, when it falls into the ocean an island will spring up
; that was what Siti said when Jay took that picture.

But Shanti died for them the day she found her soulmate.

Zainal was thirty-three years older than her. Yet, she had found sanity in his arms, and contentment in the knowledge that his religion allowed him more than one wife.

For Siti, her husband’s infidelity came as a shadow-play on the kitchen wall.

The night was cool, and Shanti and Jay were spending the evening at Siti’s house again. The TV droned on, as usual.

Shanti got up to get some water. Zainal followed. Siti, looking up from the TV, wondered at the long silence, listened for the drip of the tap, the clink of a glass, but heard nothing. Instead, two shadows on the kitchen wall merged soundlessly. The shadows heightened as he pulled away. She leaned forward. Then he raised his arms, dissolving into her upturned face.

It is in such silences that we lose our sanity
, Jay knew too well. He had looked up and seen only the stricken look on Siti’s face. Confused, he had turned to the shadows, then back to the TV, oblivious.

Siti had drawn on her
semangat
and willed Shanti to die. The curse of a mother is powerful, and Shanti had been cursed by two. How could she have survived that?

Shapna, too, went berserk when she heard about the pregnancy.

“His bastard child!” she shrieked, putting Shanti’s hand on her own head. “Swear on me you will have nothing to do with him again.”

Shanti steeled herself. “I cannot swear on your life,” she said, while Shapna screamed, “Slut! You will never become a Fatimah or Aishah or whatever the hell it is you want, with your bastard child. You might as well kill yourself now; it will be the same thing!”

Jay remained silent through it all.

Agni’s voice broke the silence. “And then? What about Zainal and my mother? They wanted to marry each other, right?
Tarpor
?”

Was this the time to tell her the truth?
Agni’s voice brought Jay back to the open air hawker stalls functioning as a huge food court under balmy skies, fragrant with mingling cuisines. He heard the shouts of the clients with the languages all mixed up; names of foods learnt from the languages of the hawkers, never translated, and even he had once known how to order exactly what he wanted in Cantonese, Hokkien, or Hakka. The words hadn’t fazed him at all, all these cultures comingling in a history that was older than anyone alive. He looked at Agni and thought, not just yet.

“My father,” he cleared his throat and kept his voice even, “well, he tried to talk to Zainal. But Zainal frowned when he emerged from the shadows of the jacaranda tree, and sneered about my father lecturing about
illicit liaisons
. He, Zainal, had not pursued a married woman and, since his religion allowed more than one wife, he was willing to marry Shanti. Something like that.”

“And then?”

“Zainal, I remember, called him a
Pendatang
.
Pendatang
as in the newly arrived. The immigrant. The one who had no –”

“I know what it means,” said Agni, irritated. “
Tarpor
?”

“Your grandmother said Siti put up a hate charm, murmuring, ‘
Umamman Chan Ta-man Chan
’ seven times in a single breath and blowing on slaked lime, then marking their fence so that the hatred would take firm hold.”

Agni moved her plate to the side brusquely. “And that was that? A magic charm, your father insulted, and everyone gave up?”

“They had to. Siti and Zainal disappeared that night, never to return again. Just as everyone knew they would.” They both remained silent for some time. “Maybe Shanti thought the child would force their hand, but this one tore everyone apart.”

“It’s me, Professor,” Agni snapped. “That child is
me
.”

“Yes. Well, she did want you. She wouldn’t consider any other solution, and they tried… well, you can imagine. She really wanted a daughter – only a daughter – Agnibina. Do you know what it means?” From the recesses of his memory, Jay dredged up a long-forgotten tune and softly sang the lines of a Bengali song:

What melodies play in your lute of Fire?
The heavens tremble with the stars aflame,
Inebriated by your song.

Agni smiled ruefully, “Music that ignites the soul, that’s me.” “She wanted you to change the world.” “Not just change, but fire it up, Professor,” Agni said archly, “although fires can be quite traumatic, eh?”

He looked away. “Why do you say that?”

Agni picked up a napkin, delicately dabbing at her lips. “Well… anyway, let it go. I am grateful to you for being in the fire, and for Zainal rescuing you so that he would eventually meet my mother and I would be born. Despite everything that happened, I think you did
me
a favour by getting lost in that fire.”

“Hang on!” Jay was laughing, pleasantly surprised to realise that his hands weren’t betraying his nervous memories right now, “I’m not sure I want to take any credit. I ended up as a pawn in that story when all I really wanted was the Queen!”

Agni cocked her head at him, and Jay realised what he had just said. He picked up his
teh tarik
to sip the last of the milky tea.

That was when the Malay stall keeper appeared. Without a word, he picked up the fork and spoon on Jay’s plate and flung them into a nearby drain.

“What the hell is going on?” Jay got up so quickly that the red plastic chair he had been sitting on crashed to the ground.

The Malay man started to shout.

“What is he saying?” Jay turned to Agni.

“Something about the forks and spoons from the Malay and Chinese stalls getting mixed up and contaminated.” Agni whispered hurriedly.

“Contaminated? By what?”

By this time, a crowd had collected, and other hawkers started discussing the problem in loud Malay. Jay could hear the word
haram
being repeated. He looked at the Chinese hawkers for help, but two of them just stood by the sidelines, one softly scratching an arm and the other watching intently.

“But we didn’t order any pork, Uncle!” Agni tried reasoning in English and switched to Malay even as the stall keeper grew livid beyond reason. Jay opened his wallet and took out a couple of notes, waving them uncertainly in the air.

The Malay hawker didn’t want money, he shouted; who did they think they were? Jay began to feel the eyes of the mob grow hostile, and the heat pouring down through the serrated tin roof felt like molten metal on his skin. Just the fact that Jay’s cutlery may have been near pork, the most
haram
of all, was enough. There was nothing left to argue about.

Jay remembered the
cnn
footage on the street riots in Kuala Lumpur just a couple of days ago, and felt slightly dizzy. What could he do if this group got really ugly?

“Let’s go,” said Agni angrily. She gathered her jacket and pulled on Jay’s arm, hurriedly throwing some notes on the table. She didn’t look back. Jay, both confused and furious in that hostile crowd of people whom he barely understood, hurried to follow her lead, stumbling on the fallen chair.

They didn’t stop until they had reached Old Coliseum Café. Then Agni squeezed Jay’s arm in sympathy. “Look, I’m sorry.

This is not normal. I think the unrest in the streets is making everyone edgy a bit –”

He pulled away. “Edgy? Why? Is it because I’m American? Did that fellow just pick a fight because of my accent?”

“Why would you think that?” asked Agni. “Sometimes Indian men pick fights if they see an Indian woman with a foreigner, but I don’t think that the ‘uncle’ back there had any such motive.”

Jay realised that she was trying to lighten the atmosphere, but he was still fuming inside. “Well, something set him off, and I don’t think it was the fork or the effing spoon!”

He had stopped abruptly in the middle of the road. Agni grasped his gesticulating hand firmly and said, “They are not all jihadis, Prof.”

Jay took a deep breath. She was right. “Okay. But that bastard was really frothing at the mouth… Geez!”

“Yes. I’m sorry,” Agni’s voice sounded timid.

Jay raised an awkward arm towards her shoulder and withdrew quickly as Agni stepped back, startled. “Oops, I wouldn’t want one of your Malaysian-Indian brothers to come raging down the warpath now!”

At Leboh Ampang, where the air was heavy with the smell of
sambar
and sandalwood incense, they ducked into a narrow alleyway that led to the parking garage. In between the tailors and the newspaper vendors, a Chinese fortune-teller called out loudly, “Sir! Try your fortune – five ringgit only! Guaranteed hundred per cent accurate.”

“One minute, Agni.” Jay drew her into the stall by splaying his fingers on the small of her back, and lightly pushing her in. “I remember this!” He tossed the coins up like a child, flicking the large golden balls that twirled in the air, then sank to reveal lines drawn in heads and tails. Agni laughed at his excitement as the sixth line formed and the entire image was revealed.

“Very auspicious,” said the fortune-teller. “The upper trigram, here, it is Chên – takes the situation out of danger. The danger is in the lower trigram, which is the Abysmal, Water. This is the beginning of the end of trouble.”

Jay looked at Agni, and they burst into laughter. Jay handed over the fee, with a generous tip.

“Thank you!” the fortune-teller beamed, “and here is a souvenir for you.” He handed Jay a small scroll, rolled up like parchment.

Inside was a poem.

The thunder rolls Deliverance

If there is no call for action

Return brings good fortune

If action is called for

Hastening brings good fortune

Jay looked delighted. “I like it!” he said.