Cody woke early the following morning still in his clothes, the acrid stink of cigarette smoke and alcohol emanating from his body. The sunlight seeping in between the half-drawn curtains was weak and feeble, the sky just starting to lighten. The other half of the bed was empty, though the sheet was roughened up. His mind felt heavy and sodden, unwilling to snap to full wakefulness. Sounds travelled up from the street to reach his ears: an occasional shout, a dog’s whiny bark, the revving of a bike.
Was he still where I left him last night? Shouldn’t he be back already?
Cody pulled himself out of bed and went over to the balcony, drawing back the curtains and pushing open the glass doors. He blinked and scanned the rusty rooftops of the three- and four-storey houses nearby, most of them bedecked with antennae or satellite dishes. Farther out, the hills rose out of the mist, like a woman casting off her membranous robes for a fresher set of green. The air carried the coolness of the night, and hurt his lungs as he took in a long breath. Leaning against the railing, he glanced down at the street and saw Ai Ling emerge from the hotel, dressed in a white T-shirt and running shorts. For a moment, she stopped and looked around, and Cody wanted to call out to her, but before he could, she was already running down the street, towards the beach. He watched as she turned down a corner and disappeared.
His thoughts went immediately to Chee Seng—they would have to talk about the previous night’s dalliance once he returned, and the thought of a potential fight was enough to cast a shadow of weariness over his mind. He sat down on the rattan chair at the balcony and rubbed his face roughly. Then he closed his eyes and leant back in the chair. Without intending to, he fell into the pit of sleep.
When he woke later, to the sound of something breaking in the near distance, he was thrown momentarily into a state of disorientation. A long series of cries and shouts rang out. As he stumbled to his feet, his vision whitening out for a second or two, he looked out into the streets below.
For a long time, he could not properly register what he was seeing. It felt wrong, as if the images before him had all given up their forms and meanings and purposes, jumbled up into chaos, into spectacular disarray, and nothing could put them back in their rightful places again.
The heavy, mercurial waves, coming in fast and livid, had swept everything up in their wake, and from where he stood he could only feel their full-on urgency. A succession of voices rose and quelled and faded, and then rose again. Hands reached out of the surface of the choppy water, bodies collided with other bodies, smashing into walls and trees and telephone poles. An explosion of birds took to the sky. The tough, unsparing wind carried the wails and cries deeper inland.
Cody did not know how long he stood there watching, but at one point he turned and stumbled back into the room and shut the glass doors. He switched on the television, but it had gone dead, its reflective surface a blank, unresponsive darkness. Then he pulled the curtains shut and lay on the floor and closed his eyes to the world raging outside.
A knock on the door. You’re roused from the dark well of sleep. The dim universe of the room materialises before you, light-stripes seeping through the fabric of the curtains. Is it morning or afternoon? You breathe in the dust of the cold floor and imagine it entering your body, settling over tongue and lungs, accumulating in layers of sediment.
The knocks come again. You hold your breath, wishing for them to go away. Your body aches. The room holds the fragile silence even as the knocks penetrate into every corner and ricochet against the walls. Three knocks, pause, three knocks.
Go away. Go away, please.
There is a respite, as if the person on the other side of the door has finally given up. You coil up and open your mouth; your tongue feels parched and raw. You utter something; the words vanish under your breath: Go away.
The knocks resume. Someone calls out your name: “Cody, it’s Chee Seng. Please open the door.”
You press your hands to your ears. You shift your body, which feels heavy and ancient and mountainous; your arms and legs move like glaciers, inch by inch, breaking apart in their movements. Three more knocks, fired off like gunshots. You edge yourself up against the wall, your heart jackhammering, your thoughts narrowed to the rigid mechanics of your body. You fold your knees into sharp angles and push yourself up. Every joint in your body flares up in blasts of vengeful mutiny. You hold still and try to straighten your body—nausea seizes you but soon passes—and take a small step. The ground shakes unsteadily, as if about to give way under your weight. You take another step.
The voice again, louder: “It’s me, Cody. Open up.”
Then you’re at the door, leaning against it. The knocks stop. You can feel the person behind the door silently acknowledging your presence, waiting for you to make the next move. You place a hand on the door handle and, with some effort, push it down. The door opens slowly towards you, and, after what seems like a lifetime of missteps and stumbles and doubt, you peer out of the room and hold your breath and never let it go.
28
CHEE SENG
I have come back to Phuket alone every year after the tsunami and stayed at the same hotel, until it closed down several years later. In its place, there is now a large gelato shop and an adjoining playground that draws in hordes of sweaty tourists, mostly parents with children in tow. I have chosen a new hotel along Thaweewong Road, just beside the beach, where I swim every day if the weather permits. Some nights, when the breeze is cool and light, I go for long walks along the beachfront, from one end to the other, looking out at the night sky pierced with sharply blinking stars. On these walks, my mind is crowded with thoughts about the past, though the memories that surface no longer have any hold on me.
They never found Ai Ling, and in the end, after a week of searching and waiting, Cody and I returned to Singapore, leaving Wei Xiang behind to keep up the search.
“She’ll turn up,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
He stayed for another week before returning home, heavy with a broken spirit. A small wake was held, where most of the mourners sat quietly in twos and threes, wary of making eye contact with Wei Xiang. Before we departed, I left a note, offering him our condolences. After replying with a thank-you email a few days later, I never heard from Wei Xiang again, though I tried to contact him several times, to meet up for coffee or a meal.
I usually do not have an itinerary when I come to Phuket, preferring to go where I want to go when I feel like it, or stay put in my hotel room reading and sleeping and thinking. My mobile phone is switched off throughout my stay, so there is no way I can be found if I’m lost or missing—a thought I entertain quite frequently. For the first three years after the tsunami, whenever I returned to the island, I would try to find out where the old woman had lived, and whether she was still alive. Though the island is not big—you can complete a car ride along its coast in less than two hours—there are hilly regions in the north and east that are relatively remote, the interiors only known to the well-versed locals who have stayed on the island for decades. On the map, there are a multitude of passable vehicular routes, interspersed with small, nondescript villages that all look alike after a while. I would hire a motorbike driver, and using my well-worn map direct him to the places I had marked down. I was lucky, in my third year, to locate the village where I was able to find help after my long walk out of the forest. Through my driver-translator, I was able to get a clearer picture of what had transpired the day I stumbled into the village, though further questions about where I had come from were met with a muted response. Unwilling to give up, I pressed on with the few leads I had, going down every route indicated on the map, looking for signs along the road that would show me a way into the forest, and lead me to the old woman’s hut, to the unmarked grave where the young, unknown boy was buried. But all the routes I took ultimately, eventually, led me back to the town, no matter the distance. There was never going to be a way to find what was already lost—this was something that took me much longer to realise, and finally come to terms with.