“But still, we tried, we really did,” his father slurred as he peered into Wei Xiang’s face, seeking some sort of penance, perhaps even forgiveness. Wei Xiang turned away, not knowing what to say.
In the end, Wei Xiang’s mother was the one who decided on the divorce, which was finalised when Wei Xiang was seventeen, in his first year in junior college. His parents sat him and his younger brother down to break the news to them, and he asked all the questions that could be asked about the causes and outcomes, but his parents provided only what he needed to know, and nothing more. Wei Xiang was furious at this obfuscation, but was even angrier with himself for not being able to forestall the divorce, for his faltering faith in his own beliefs and actions.
After signing the papers, his mother migrated to Hong Kong, where one of her sisters was living, and within two years she was romantically involved with a man who owned a chain of watch shops. Always the dutiful son, Wei Xiang kept in contact with his mother, and took two trips every year that his mother paid for, visits in which Wei Xiang took pains to be as obliging and accommodating as he could, to present his best self to his mother. But when she invited him to attend her wedding, a simple church affair followed by a reception, Wei Xiang politely declined, citing his year-end examinations.
After a brief period of uncertainty and adjustment, Wei Xiang and his brother continued on with their lives in Singapore. Wei Xiang fought hard to get back the life he had before, to achieve the sense of balance and control that had been hugely unsettled by his parents’ break-up, and to this end he devoted himself, sticking to his routine and habits with a doggedness that left little to chance.
His father, on the other hand, became a pale shade of the man he was before the divorce, cautious in his ways, defensive and prone to anxiety attacks. So different from the man that Wei Xiang grew up with: wiry, greasy-haired, bent over the nightly Chinese newspaper, his plastic-framed thick-lens spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose; dozing on the sofa after a meal, snoring like a drill; leaving for work, his shoulder blades sharp and visible under his short-sleeved shirt. His father had worked as a clerk in a heavy machinery firm that loaned out tractors, digging rigs and lifting cranes on long-term lease to construction and building companies, until he was retrenched when the company had to downsize. He never found a permanent job after that, making do with odd jobs here and there to support the family. Apart from his drinking—he now limits himself to two bottles of Tiger Beer daily—Wei Xiang’s father has little comfort or enjoyment in life, defeated, buckled by the forces of life.
These impressions of his own father have affected his thoughts on becoming one himself. He told Ai Ling more than once of his decision to delay their parenthood after they were married, and he knew Ai Ling silently took heed of it, though he could see it hurt her and conflicted with her growing desire to be a mother. He has softened his stance in the last two years, after seeing how affected Ai Ling was when one of the kids from the childcare centre went missing; it was clear how much she denied herself the pain of this loss, the disappearance of a boy she had grown very fond of.
Wrapped in the silence of the hotel room, Wei Xiang feels something constrict in his chest, an imperceptible ache that spreads across his body. He turns to face Ai Ling’s side of the bed again and runs his hand over the pillow. He plucks a strand of her hair and tosses it aside, then notes that half an hour has passed while he was daydreaming. What is taking her so long? A random image from the dream comes to him then—the sorrowful expression on Ai Ling’s face, her eyes drilling into him, before she plunged into the water after the boy, and disappeared.
Wei Xiang leaps up from the bed, suddenly uneasy. A wave of fear and nausea passes through him. Muted sunlight filters through the curtains. He opens the glass-paned door, steps out onto the balcony, and finally sees the new world outside the hotel room.
5
CHEE SENG
When I open my eyes, the world around me is shadows, and it takes a long time before they start to rearrange themselves into shapes and dimensions, shades and colours. The sounds, and then the smells, begin to make themselves known, little by little, as my mind struggles to make sense of these new, strange sensations. Slight movements out of the corner of my eye: a figure bent over a soot-blackened stove, swathed in layers of rags, stirring a pot, somewhat familiar. Steam rising up from the pot shrouds the face.
I shove away the dusty blanket, and pain shoots through my arms. I attempt to push my body upright and fail; I fall back on the bed, drained. The figure at the stove does not turn around or show any sign of noticing me; it keeps stirring the pot. The smell of garlic and eucalyptus hangs in the air, prickling my senses. My stomach rumbles with hunger, and then I remember the ceramic bowl, the bitter concoction.
Nearby are a small wooden table and two benches; on the table is a bundle of tiny yellow flowers with red berries—herbs?—and a water jug. At the ankle-high threshold of the doorway, two brownish-grey hens are clucking and pecking, sneaking glances into the hut. Morning light reaches in to expose the grainy texture of the cement floor. Near the far wall, three wooden chests are stacked on top of one another according to size. The dark figure trudges towards a latticed larder, and from one of the compartments takes out a glass jar. Removing its cover, it sprinkles the contents into the pot with two light shakes and continues to stir it with the ladle. Then turning around, it finally acknowledges my presence with a steady gaze.
I have a hard time deciphering the face looking at me. With a scarf covering the hair and deeply creased lines around the eyes and lips, the face looks ancient, otherworldly, like a stone carving that has weathered seasons of rain and sun. The eyes, however, set deep within the folds of wrinkled skin, beam with a sagacious, ageless intensity, the eyes of a cat in the dark. As the figure steps towards me, I notice that one of the eyes is actually a glass eye, slightly larger, unmoving in the socket; the other is assessing me closely.
It is an old woman.
Putting the ladle down on the wooden table, she pours some water into a cup and brings it to me. I drink it very slowly, but want more. The old woman brings the jug over and fills the cup again. I drain it. After I finish, she points to the boiling pot on the stove. She places the jug on a stool beside the bed, then goes over and ladles the contents of the pot into an earthenware bowl, the steam rising visibly. It is a thick broth, almost gruel-like, rich with herbal spiciness; I scald the tip of my tongue in my haste, and it leaves an acrid aftertaste in my mouth and a sizzle on my chapped lips. Holding the bowl, the old woman encourages me to eat more. It takes a long time to finish it all; by the time I’m forcing the last granular dregs into my mouth, the soup has turned cold. I lie back down; a warm, effervescent sensation infuses my insides, spreading out to the rest of my body. Once again, I feel drowsy, the irresistible pull of sleep dragging me under. The soft, nearly incorporeal touches of the old woman as she arranges the blanket around me and smoothens out my hair come to me as if from a distant place.
The next time I wake, the old woman is nowhere in sight. How long have I slept? A few hours, a day? There is no clock to tell the time. How long since I was carried off by the waves? I try to recall something else—anything—but my memories are all fuzzy and loose, untethered to any semblance of reality. I slowly sit up on the bed, some of my strength returned, and listen to the surroundings. Apart from the clucking of the chickens outside, there is hardly any other sound. At the foot of the bed are my shirt and jeans, dried out and stiff like pieces of a discarded husk. The old woman has dressed me in layers of dun-coloured robes, held together with frog buttons. Though it is warm, I can’t bring myself to shed the layers.