Without meaning to, Wei Xiang finds himself back at the edge of the sea. Why is it that everywhere he goes on the island, he returns again and again to the sea, as if it were never out of sight, always present, always here to remind him of what he has lost? Now, looking out across the expanse of water, Wei Xiang can no longer drum up the strength he needs to deal with the doubts that have finally overwhelmed him. He feels utterly sapped, his mind in tatters.
He takes off his shoes and steps into the sea; the waves crawl to meet his feet, cooling his skin. He moves slowly through the water, which embraces him like a tight second skin. It is only when the water comes up to his chest and the ground under him pulls away that he hears someone calling out to him. Wei Xiang cranes around, and on the shoreline he sees someone in the subdued afternoon light, a dark figure, waving at him. And Wei Xiang knows that he will not be able to take another step further, that this is as far as he can go.
Even as the voice is calling out to him—louder, more urgent—Wei Xiang remains still, his body swaying in the gentle tug of the waves. For a long time, he stays like this, hoping and waiting for something that is lost to him forever.
27
CODY
The room holds the silence well, the walls letting nothing in. As you lie on the floor, time no longer makes any sense. Your thoughts have grown vague, more oblique, worn smooth by repetition. Chee Seng, Ai Ling, Wei Xiang—mere figures that appear like nebulous shadows on the horizon of your perception, disappearing in a flicker of thought. When you do not stir, they stay where they are—dark, ominous creatures strutting across the plains of your mind, wary of one another, yet hungry for contact. Thoughts of them hurt your head, like knife slashes.
Your body’s noises: persistent stomach growls, tight pops of the joints in your legs and arms as you turn, breaths inhaled and expelled in long bursts. Your body resists all effort to shut it down, continuing relentlessly, not stopping until every part of you has eventually turned to dust.
A gecko chirps from somewhere in the room—a peal of shots from a toy ray gun. Your heartbeat thumps in your wrist.
The night after the dinner and their big fight, Chee Seng had stormed out of the hotel room. Shortly after, Cody, too, left the room, unable to bear its oppressive silence. He ran after Chee Seng, thinking he could catch up, but by the time he got to the street outside the hotel, Chee Seng was already gone. Droves of people filled the street, stopping to eat at the food carts or play shooting games at the makeshift stalls or surround a street performer guiding his monkey through a series of tricks. Recalling the name of the club that Chee Seng had mentioned earlier, Cody went back into the hotel and asked the receptionist for clear directions. The club was only five streets away, and given that he was still wired from the fight, he decided to walk there.
The evening breeze cooled his skin and brought some relief. He followed a group of locals, dressed in tight T-shirts and jeans, down a side street and found the club, located at the end of a narrow lane; the sign above the entrance was bright and kitschy. He paid a nominal entry fee and entered the club, the tight space of the hall akin to a dark, clammy hole in which strobe lights beamed and sliced and glided over the dancing figures and shaking silhouettes.
It took little effort to find Chee Seng across the huddle of tightly-packed bodies, partially hidden from view. He was talking to a young man, his face pressed close. The man looked at Chee Seng with an overt interest, putting his hand on Chee Seng’s chest and shoulder, pulling him into a hug. The moving tableaux of electric lights and shadows across Chee Seng’s face gave his expressions a heightened quality, as if he were trying to shape his features according to the moment. On his lover’s face, Cody recognised something he had not seen for a long time: a look of unequivocal desire.
To avoid detection, Cody dissolved into a corner of the club, hiding in the dark, his eyes never straying from Chee Seng or the man. They danced for some time before turning to the bar for drinks, with Chee Seng paying for them both. Cody watched, riveted, as if watching a play, two men on a stage with their lines and movements and gestures executed in perfect harmony. He was not sure what he could do at that moment; just the idea of crossing the room and confronting Chee Seng was almost unbearable, a feat that required unimaginable strength that he did not possess. He continued to watch as they danced, and then later left the club, laughing like schoolboys sharing a private joke. Cody followed them, keeping a fair distance. They flitted down several dark lanes, sometimes stopping to kiss, before emerging out onto the beach.
In the darkness, they sneaked under a huge open umbrella and made out on the deck chairs. Cody crept closer—he felt exposed, conspicuous under the milky glow of the moonlight—and he saw everything. They were taking off their clothes, frantic in their urgency, and then one of them stopped suddenly; Cody could not tell which one. Neither moved. After a while, the other man moved away, trudging through the loose sand back towards the road. Cody did not move until he was sure the man was finally gone. From where he was hiding, he could hear the waves hitting the shore, their gentle pulses.
Cody crept over to where Chee Seng was lying on the deck chair with his eyes closed. He did not move when Cody came closer, perhaps too drunk to notice. Cody blocked the moonlight that shone across Chee Seng’s body and waited for him to sense Cody’s presence. But there was no sign of movement; he had passed out, dead to the world. Cody stood and waited for his thoughts to straighten themselves out. He shook with fury and sorrow at the state they were in, at how they had allowed things to fall into this mess.
Before he knew it, Cody was weeping, soundlessly and wretchedly, for all that he had lost—there was no way they could stop what was coming. And when he was done crying, he stared at Chee Seng’s sleeping form, then turned his back and walked away.
The dreams, when they come, pull you deep into their folds, ensnaring you.
In one of them you’re in a room, not unlike your hotel room, and people are passing through it in multitudes, coming and going in such numbers that you have to squeeze your body into a foetal position for fear that you’ll be trampled. Yet there is no danger of that, as they never come close enough to even brush against the sides of your body. They walk past and, without looking, throw things at you: a flower, a handful of soil, a tattered book, a plate, a dead snake, a dirty rag, a wad of saliva, a handkerchief embroidered with flying swallows, rice, hair. These things slowly pile up. Yet, even under the cumulative weight of these familiar objects, you do not feel as if you’ve been weighed down; instead, what you feel in the dream—soft and impenetrable—is a strange sense of security, as if a place of refuge has suddenly been revealed, and it’s a place that can take you, broken, into its depths. Each object that covers you carries its own weight of history and significance, one that you somehow know instinctively and exactly; soon, you are completely covered, buried out of sight. The darkness is full and complete and assuring.
In another dream, you find yourself being eaten by a beast twice your size, a cross between a hunchbacked wolf and a steely gargoyle, heavily muscled with matted fur, and wet, yellow pits for eyes. It glances at you, then turns its attention back to the gaping hole in your torso, devouring your insides. There is hardly any blood, and the beast is taking its time, chewing leisurely before swallowing. You can only feel the faintest trace of pain. Somehow, it is the right thing to do, offering yourself up to the beast. You’re not afraid. Only when it has eaten its fill do you feel a jolt of desolation, of forlornness, and the sensation is not the pain of self-annihilation or death, but of desertion, of severance. The beast turns its head and glares at you; in its bright enraged eyes, you see how the beast sees you, as a man with nothing to lose. In his stare: pity, contempt, recognition. Then, after shaking its body roughly and flicking away the blood, the beast rises to its full stature and roars. And without even a final look, it turns and saunters off.