Singapore Noir

Reel by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

Changi

Ah Meng knew how it would end even before they appeared.

The nibong poles would have long been in place, a wooden labyrinth designed to attract and confuse. He imagined their hearts racing, surges of blood pumping through, adrenaline pulling them further into the buttery blackness, panic steering them along the rows of columns. They would sense then that it was too late. Even so, there was nothing left to do but swim, just keep swimming. It carried reassurance, even if false. By the time the nets closed in, snuggling them together in a tight slippery ball, there was no more point in trying.

This was stupid daydreaming, Ah Meng’s mum would say. Fish so stupid — where got brains to think? The woman had a point. And the truth of that was what kept the family in business. Not good business, mind you — fish farming was becoming far more practical and lucrative than kelong fishing these days. But to start a new fish farm — expensive, lah. Maybe when Ah Long came back from Queensland with his atas business degree then they could discuss. For now, with the kelong that Kong Kong set up years ago, the family managed to catch enough each month to pass the time. Not good, not bad. Just can, lah.

Just can. That was what Ah Meng’s days were, one flowing into the next. His only relief came one Sunday. Ah Meng was squatting on the jetty after a late breakfast smoking a cigarette, trying to see how long he could pull on it, how long he could get the ash to last before it fell off in one long tube. He was getting better at it — almost reaching one and a half centimeters now! — which made him feel a bit proud, lah, even if no one noticed or cared. Life on the kelong is just like that, he had learned in a year. If you don’t notice the small things, there’s nothing to notice at all.

Monsoon season had just started, which was both okay and not so okay for fishing. Sometimes the stormy waters pushed flotillas of tiger groupers and cobia into the kelong traps. But some days all he and Siva hauled in were nets of shrimp and tiny crabs. No matter how many of those you caught — no point, lah. The Chinese restaurants only paid big bucks for large fish — nice nice one they can display in fish tanks.

Ma had just scolded him for squatting and smoking like a samseng the week before, when she suddenly showed up again in her new secondhand Corolla to spy on him. It was true that Ah Meng never used to do it until he started copying his army mates. But once she scolded him, aiyoh, he found himself doing it all the time. He couldn’t understand his mother sometimes — she always said she came by without calling first because she happened to be in the neighborhood. But hello, Ah Meng was her son — wouldn’t he know that she lived in Faber Crescent, all the way on the other side of the island? Sometimes Ah Meng couldn’t believe how toot she thought he was. He wasn’t smart like Ah Long, lah — can go university in Australia all. But she should at least know that he wasn’t stupid. After last week, Ah Meng started really enjoying squatting on the jetty smoking. He liked imagining the look on his mum’s face if she pulled up in her Corolla at that exact moment. The thought of that made each puff all the more shiok.

Spotting the girls made him get up though. There were two — one big, one smaller. Skinny beanpoles with long pale legs. The big one had a long tidy ponytail; the little one, one of those Japanese doll haircuts. Even before they got close, Ah Meng could see how pretty they were. He could tell they were sisters — same button nose, same slightly crooked smile, same cheeks the color of young dragonfruit. They even walked the same, each turning out her feet just slightly. Watching them stroll down the pier toward the jetty, slender legs purposely pushing out from their matching black Adidas shorts, Ah Meng imagined them as birds. Were birds as stupid as fish?

They must have come from the village hawker center — each clutched a clear plastic bag of sugarcane juice jabbed with a neon pink straw. From their slippers, Ah Meng guessed that they lived close enough to walk. He tried to recall if he’d seen them before — he didn’t think so. Girls weren’t that common on this jetty so he was sure he would have noticed. A little farther away, yes, near the government holiday chalets on Strawberry Hill or closer to the canoeing and windsurfing joints in Changi Village. Sometimes at night, you might see the Malay ladyboys pop up and loiter a little, some of them looking for a break from walking, some just looking for a good spot for their clients, lah. But mostly all you saw on this jetty were the morning fishermen and the few kelong oldies left. And Ah Meng.

If he wanted to see any chio girls he usually had to take the bus to the Bedok town center. If he felt in the mood for atas girls then go Clarke Quay where the high-class clubs were, lah. But the girls there were a bit scary for him. None of them usually wanted to talk to him. Actually, the ones in Bedok also usually ignored him. They could probably tell immediately that he didn’t have anything. No car, no Tag Heuer, not even a credit card. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since before the army days. Once he got posted to Pulau Tekong for three months of artillery training, his girlfriend dumped him for a neighbor who’d already finished his army duty — he would actually be around to bring her out and didn’t have a toot-looking shaved head anymore. It had been so long since Ah Meng had seen one pretty girl, much less two. He sucked hard on his cigarette.

How to play this?

He flicked his cigarette out into the water and lit another, steadying himself against the railing as he leaned back on one foot, hoping he looked a little like Tony Leung in one of those moody Shanghai movies. He got no hat or gangster suit, lah, but can still act a bit. When the girls got close enough, he turned his face away, narrowing his eyes as he peered out at the water. It hadn’t rained yet so it was still that time of day when the air in the village tasted like moist salt. The girls’ footsteps were so light, the way they walked so high class that he heard no sounds of slippers flapping against their heels. He could feel his heart walloping his chest. He blinked and looked farther out, focusing on his kelong in the distance. The small platformed house in the slender strait that sliced a passage between Malaysia and Singapore was barely visible, encircled with an uneven skyline of tall nibong stilts. All was quiet — good. Siva and his two boys were off on Sundays, so if anyone was actually puttering around on his kelong, that means sure got trouble.

“Is that your boat?”

Slowly he turned around. It was the smaller one.

“Yah,” he said as casually as he could. The small one was smiling slightly; the big one stared at him blankly. He wasn’t sure what to do.

“Is it expensive?” The small one again.

A very Singaporean question, he thought, noting that she must not be very smart to imagine that his beat-up wooden boat might be expensive. It was fairly large, yes — big enough to transport nets and basins of fish — with a small sheltered section lined with painted benches. Ma had come up with the brilliant idea of kelong tourism a few months back, until she discovered how much cash she’d have to sink into fixing up the place before people would actually pay to come for a chance to check out “one of Singapore’s last real-life working kelongs!” Not to mention the boat they had was so old and lau pok that Ah Meng couldn’t see anyone wanting to risk even minutes on it.

“Er, no. This one very old one,” he replied, desperately trying to think of something better to say. He took another long drag.

“Do you give people rides?” The bigger girl this time, smiling at him along with the little one.

Ah Meng wasn’t supposed to — lawsuits, Ma had explained. Better don’t risk anything funny. So even when his army kaki gajiau-ed him for evening joyrides, promising to bring a nice bottle of Black Label if he agreed, he always said no.

“Sometimes,” he said, quickly adding, “but only if the weather’s nice.”

“It’s nice today,” the big one said.

That was true. Though the rains hadn’t come yet it was bluish out. Even the sun was up in full force. There was nothing left to say, so Ah Meng tossed his cigarette into the still water and gestured for them to follow, leading the girls down the neat walkway to the boat.

Since it had been their idea, he thought they would be more excited about seeing the boat up close. From the looks of it, though, the excitement was all his. He hoped they couldn’t tell. The small one peeked closely at the vessel before letting him take her hand to help her onto the boat. But the older girl simply stepped on, settling in next to her sister on one of the two slender benches. Ah Meng was thankful that he had spent the morning hosing down the boat and Cloroxing everything so the deck smelled more like the sashimi section at Cold Storage than the aunties’ fish stalls at the wet market.

“Why doesn’t it have a name?” the small one asked as he leaned over to cast off. “Usually boats got name — right? Always painted on the side?”

Ah Meng had never considered this and had no answer. “I can maybe name it after you,” he said. “What’s your name?”

The small one looked at the big girl, who shrugged.

“Yan — Xiao Yan,” the little one said, smiling. “And she’s Ling Ling. You can combine them and call it Yan Ling?”

She sounded so earnest Ah Meng suddenly realized how young she probably was. And her sister probably not much older. He felt a twinge. But it had been so long. And it’s not like he really had anything so bad in mind. He just wanted to be friends. And it occurred to him that since he was only twenty-two, the age difference wasn’t terrible. Hell, girls his age were meeting and fucking guys twice their age! In just a few years these two girls would probably be doing exactly the same. Those guys they would be fucking were much older than Ah Meng was now!

Ah Meng was sick of it. If a guy is just trying to make do, who can blame him? Isn’t that what the government wants? His mum wants? For him to show some initiative? Fuck care, lah.

“Tell you what — if I can find some paint on the kelong I’ll even let you paint it on the side,” he said.

Both girls got excited. “Kelong?” Ling said. “We’ve never been on a kelong!”

This was easier than he’d thought.

“Okay, lah, since you two so nice, maybe I can take you there,” he tossed out, ducking into the cabin to start up the boat.

The girls got up and followed him, watching and saying nothing as he put the throttle in idle, jiggered the gearshift into neutral, then turned the starter switch, cranking the engine for a few seconds before feeling it catch, throwing the floor beneath them into a thick trundle. Yan stumbled backward but Ling reached out so quickly to grab her that Ah Meng had no time to react.

As they left the jetty, Ah Meng wondered how he might impress them. Using one hand to steer — a move he was now glad he had practiced every day — he guided the chugging vessel toward the kelong. The ride wouldn’t take long, five minutes at the most. The shortness of it stressed him out. Ah Meng felt as if this was his moment to make an impression. He wasn’t sure what they had in mind but it probably wasn’t a rickety platformed house surrounded by smelly nets of fish.

“You see that island over there?” he said, pointing toward the larger of the two that he glimpsed through the door of his dank room every day. The girls nodded. “That’s Pulau Ubin.”

The girls remained silent. Ah Meng tried to remember anything he might know about Ubin.

“It’s haunted,” he said. Yan and Ling looked bored.

Ah Meng decided to circle the kelong to buy a little time. He tried to remember an old story he’d heard from some of the fishing uncles in Changi the one time they invited him to join them for beers at the hawker center.

“I know it looks like nothing but trees and jungle, lah,” he said. “But Ubin actually quite interesting one. Years and years ago there was nothing there. But then three animals from Singapore — a frog, a pig, and an elephant — decided to challenge each other to see who could swim across and reach Malaysia first. Whoever didn’t make it would turn into stone. In the end they all also cannot make it, lah — the elephant and the pig turned into stone in the same spot, becoming Pulau Ubin. The frog was a little bit further from them and became Pulau Sekudu — Frog Island. You see that small one over there? The big rock in the middle looks like a frog, right?”

Ah Meng exhaled as softly as he could. He felt his heart chugging harder than the boat. This was the most he’d said to any girl he didn’t know in a long time.

Something must have worked though — the girls went to the window and stared out. Ling was pointing, whispering and nudging Yan to look at Sekudu. The little girl said, “Wah!” and giggled softly. Ah Meng felt a burst of pride. He’d made her laugh!

The boat passed the nearest kelong to Ah Meng’s, giving him a new thought. What if the boys over there were out and about? If they saw the girls on his boat, susah lah. People around here were damn fucking gossipy. With nothing happening every day, any small new thing — wah, people talked and talked about it for weeks.

He sped up as he passed. Let them think he was rude for not waving today.

The girls had returned to his side and were watching him steer. In silence, he circled his kelong and pulled to a stop at the landing. He gestured to them to stay in the cabin while he tied the boat to the kelong dock, jumped off, and tightened the connection, then waved to them to come out. Ling helped Yan off the boat before getting off herself.

Ah Meng looked around, squinting hard to gauge how clearly he could see into old Tan’s kelong across the way. All seemed quiet over there — the boys must be on the mainland. Oh yah — day off.

Feeling much better, he led the way, wending down the slatted path that zigzagged around the series of sunken pools outlined with tall poles. A breeze was coming through now. He peered behind him; the girls were walking hand in hand, carefully treading in his footsteps. Yan seemed a little scared and was moving slower than Ling.

“Don’t worry,” he said, stopping and turning to face them. “People never fall in one.”

“But if fall in, then how?” Yan asked.

“Not good, lah,” he said, squatting down by one of the pools. He felt around for something to show them what he meant, patting his pockets and pulling out his pack of Salems. Ah Meng held a cigarette up for the girls to see.

“Inside here, ah,” he said, pointing to a square of water, “got many many fish. Especially today — we holiday today, mah, so don’t bring them to town until tomorrow. These fish, ah, anything also eat one. Small fish, each other, anything you throw in also they take.”

Ah Meng threw his cigarette into the water and a violent vortex bubbled up. He imagined the swirl of fish below shoving and nipping at each other, trying to reach for what might be new food. The girls were giggling now.

“Do it again!” Ling said.

And so he did. Even if ciggies had become fucking expensive, he was sure this would be worth it. He flung the second one a little farther out. Even he was laughing along with the girls now.

Ah Meng glanced over at them — Yan didn’t look scared anymore. He realized this was the happiest he’d felt in a very long time. He had been thinking recently about how ironic it was that the infamous Changi prison, where British prisoners of war were kept during the Japanese Occupation and now home to dangerous criminals, was so close to his kelong. Yah, sure — those guys in there now were prisoners. But hallo, so was Ah Meng! What kind of life was this at the kelong? He was supposed to do it just for two years, until Ah Long came back from uni. But from the way Ma had been talking, it seemed as if she was happy to have him take care of business on the kelong for good. Save money what — no need to hire a new kelong manager all. Kani nah. Just thinking about Ah Long coming back and getting to sit in some air-con office, planning the family business’s future while Ah Meng sweated his balls off at the kelong, made him want to vomit blood.

Ah Long had recently sent Ma some picture of a girlfriend — some small-small, cute-cute Singaporean girl who was studying business in Queensland also. Ma was so excited, asked Ah Long to make sure to bring her home for Chinese New Year. Of course Ah Long could meet girls like that, lah — Ma send him away to study all. But Ah Meng? Put him on the kelong, how to meet girls? All the action he got most nights was hearing Siva in the room next door whacking off. When Ah Meng first started on the kelong Siva at least tried to be a bit quiet about it. But now, after a year, the guy damn not shy one. Ah Meng heard each long grunt through the thin wall between them.

Now, though — who was the winner? Ah Meng looked over at Yan and Ling, both of their faces bright, upturned, almost glinting in the sun. He shook his head and smiled at his fortune. Just wait till Ma saw these two. When they were a little older, perhaps.

“Come,” he said, getting up and starting back toward the house. “You girls hungry?”

Choosing not to show them his bedroom just yet, Ah Meng led them to the small kitchen where he, Siva, and the boys cooked instant noodles most days. Once a week they split a fish — nothing special, just the first thing they netted that was large enough for the four of them. Ah Meng had caught one just that morning, thinking that he might have it all to himself tonight as a treat. He took it out of the fridge and showed it to the girls.

“You cook?” he asked.

Ling nodded. “Just helping Mum in the kitchen sometimes,” she said, opening drawers to search for a knife. She had never gutted a fish, so Ah Meng showed her how. Once that was done, he handed her the knife and let her chop up the rest. He didn’t know how to cook so he usually just fried up pieces of fish with some green onions and soy sauce. When he explained this to Ling, she took over.

Ah Meng went to the fridge and grabbed two cold Anchor beers. He offered one to Ling but she shook her head. “Uncle — I’m only fifteen, lah,” she said, laughing.

Fifteen. Ah Meng felt the twinge again. He’d come this far. See how, lor. If got chance then got chance. No chance then no chance. The gods would decide.

He lightly pinched Ling’s cheek, a move that made her smile a little wider, surprising him. He felt himself start to blush and turned away. Opening a can of Anchor, Ah Meng sat down by the chipped square table outside the kitchen where he, Siva, and the boys had their meals. This day was turning out not bad, lah. But what next? He wasn’t sure. When Ah Meng first saw the girls, he had thought he might say hello and maybe offer them a ride on his boat in the near future. Now that they were on the kelong, he had no idea what to do.

Chuan dao qiao tou zhi ran zhi — Ah Meng hadn’t paid much attention to Chinese classes in secondary school but this old saying popped into his head. When the boat reaches the head of the bridge, it will naturally straighten itself out. He leaned back against the rusted metal folding chair and stretched his legs, getting settled before lighting up a Salem.

As his cigarette disappeared, he noticed the smell of fish frying in onions. Good girl, he thought. In minutes, Ling and Yan appeared bearing a plate of fish and three sets of chopsticks. Ling had tucked another can of Anchor under her arm, setting it down shyly in front of him. Ah Meng looked at the girl, blushing again.

They ate in silence. Feeling like he needed to thank Ling, Ah Meng said, “Wah, your cooking very good!” Ling just smiled and continued digging out plump little pieces of fish, using her fingers to remove hairlike bones, before offering them to Yan. This pleased Ah Meng. She’ll make a very good mother, he thought, wondering how their first kiss might be, how her lips would feel on his, on his neck, more. He didn’t feel guilty.

“You live here alone?” Ling suddenly asked, heading into the kitchen to get more beer when she noticed Ah Meng crumpling up his second can.

“I wish!” he said, laughing. “But no, lah. My workers here also. But today off day.”

Ling, back with two cans, opened one for Ah Meng. “Isn’t it lonely?” she asked. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

Ah Meng wasn’t sure what to say. Explain too much and she would think he was a loser. Tell her too little and she might think he wasn’t interested in girls.

“Last time,” he said, wiping his mouth with his palm and lighting another cigarette. “Now no more. No time, lah! Why? Want to be my girlfriend, is it?”

Ling said nothing but Ah Meng could see her smiling. Yan was absently picking at fish remnants, putting nothing more in her mouth. His mind was feeling a bit like cotton balls. He normally didn’t drink this much so early — and usually not when it was so hot. Beer is nice in the afternoon, lah, but maybe when you’re sitting in a shady hawker center or in your friend’s air-con house. Out on the kelong, drinking in the afternoon sure got headache one. And he could feel one happening right now. Die, lah — like that how to perform? Ah Meng quickly finished the last swigs of his Anchor, crumpling the can. Too late, he heard Ling opening the other can on the table, pushing it toward him. He wanted to say no but she looked so deferential, her sweet face so much wanting to please, that he just nodded toward her, took the fresh beer with both hands, and had a few long sips.

Yan, bored, got up and wandered toward the slatted footpath near the fish.

“Oi! Be careful!” Ling shouted, jumping up and hurrying after her. Ah Meng did the same, falling in step with the girls after Ling had caught up to Yan, taking her hand, firmly guiding her to walk only in the very middle of the footpath, so narrow in parts it was almost like a gangplank.

When the path took them to the heart of the wooden maze, Ling and Yan picked a darker spot and sat down, cross-legged, staring out at the cloudy green water so calm that Ah Meng wondered if the fish were sleeping. He sat down next to Ling, getting as close as he could.

He felt the girl place her head on his shoulder. His heart started going like a motor. He knew there was no way she couldn’t feel that and the thought made him blush again. He draped his right hand around her shoulder, pulling her closer, shutting his eyes to photograph the feeling.

A minute passed. Ah Meng was counting the time with his heartbeats. One one thousand, two one thousand, three... When he opened his eyes, Ling was peering up at him, her large brown eyes open and sweet and cool. He felt his left hand reach over to brush a long piece of hair away from her forehead so he could look closer.

Ling didn’t move. The gods had spoken. So Ah Meng got even closer. He felt so full his chest hurt. He pinched his eyes shut, leaning toward her, lips extended.

He didn’t realize his lips had never made contact until he opened his eyes, finding that he was falling over backward. The pain in his chest was still there — so was Siva’s favorite fish knife. Ling was squatting by him now, casually watching him grope at the knife. He could see Yan standing behind her, covering her face with her little hands.

His T-shirt was so wet, his hands were so red. When Ling reached over and pulled out the knife, Ah Meng feeling each of the eight inches as it slid out, his first thought was to thank her for helping him. But too quickly, she plunged it back in, hitting a higher spot this time. Ah Meng gasped, feeling a tinny wetness coming up from his throat.

“Hurry up,” he heard her say. “Help!”

His mind was a swirl of cotton. Dimly, he felt Ling pull out the knife and toss it into the water. Then the feeling of four hands pushing, rolling him. Once, twice.

Yan was crying, but very softly. Ling couldn’t hear her over the boat’s engine but sensed it anyway. Holding onto the steering wheel with her right hand and steadying it the way she remembered seeing the guy do it, she reached her left out toward Yan, gesturing for her to take it. The rains still hadn’t come; the ride had been smooth. They would be back at the jetty in a few minutes.

Feeling Yan take her hand, Ling squeezed it. Glancing over, she saw that her little sister had stopped sobbing.

“Don’t worry,” Ling said. “Next time will be easier.”

Mother by Monica Bhide

Kallang

The Merdeka Bridge became Edward’s home after the killing. He spent hours on it watching people go by. Nothing in this lonely city was his anymore; even the sky was different. But the water flowing gently under the bridge provided solace. The sound of the small waves, heard only when traffic disappeared, the gentleness of the ripples, those were the only things that reminded him of home. The home he left after the killing — or suicide, as some called it.

He knew better, the kill was neither a simple murder nor a suicide. But no one would understand that; they couldn’t. They did not love her like he did; you had to love someone to the degree he did to understand why it had happened.

At the moment, though, he felt bad at having said something to the young woman — Ms. Ana, as he liked to call her — who had been running by him on the bridge. He saw her almost every night. She ran around the same time. Normally, she would stop and speak to him but today she seemed distracted; she even tripped and fell. He could see she was bleeding. He offered her a hand and was hurt when she recoiled. He was tall for his fifteen years, really tall for a Chinese kid. His time on the streets showed in the dirt caked in his ears. He had pulled several tufts of hair out of his head after finding lice crawling down his forehead and into the small, festering sores on the sides of his cheeks.

He knew what she was thinking; his friends told him: Homeless man wants my money.

He did not want her money; he liked her.

“Ms. Ana, it’s me, Eddie,” he offered, “Don’t you remember? You gave me ten dollars last week.”

“Yes, of course I do. How are you? Did you eat something?” Ms. Ana asked, wiping her chin with the edge of her T-shirt.

He smiled. “Yah, three times! Thank you.”

“How do you feel today?”

“My friends, Ms. Ana, they are back. They went away and now they are back. I don’t know why. I say to them to go away. Tell them to leave me alone, Ms. Ana, tell them to go away,” he said, beginning to weep.

Gently, she sat down next to him and gave him a hug and then reached into her sock and pulled out a twenty.

“Keep this, Eddie, eat something.” He smiled at her.

“The jacket you gave me keeps me so warm, Ms. Ana. It is so cold out here at night sometimes. The jacket is so warm.”

“Come tomorrow, I will bring you some more clothes, but now I have to go.”

Eddie tried showing Ms. Ana his friends. No one could see them. It made him so mad. They constantly talked to him. Never let him sleep. His brain tried to stop them from talking. But no, they knew better. They knew how to sneak up on him when no one was looking. Yah, they were sneaky, those friends.

He held onto Ms. Ana’s hand as she stood up. She was so kind and warm. “Can you stay with me for a few more minutes?”

“I have to go, Eddie, I have to go,” she said, tugging at her hand.

Let her go, Eddie, she won’t stay. Your hands are ugly, filthy. You smell. Let her go. She belongs in a different world.

Truth was, he was hungry; he could not stand too well, his head was spinning. He let her hand go and she turned to run and then stopped and came back to him.

He looked up at her surprised that she had returned so quickly. She bent down and gave him a gentle hug, then quickly turned around and ran off.

Most of the people he met could not get away from him fast enough and she had given him a hug.

Be careful, Eddie, she may want something. You should watch her.

Eddie pulled some more hair out; his friends were definitely back. The mean one had not started speaking yet. It was just a matter of time.

Look around you, Eddie, you don’t belong here. These people have perfect lives, big houses, shiny cars, lots of money. And they have good families. Not like yours. Their families care. They don’t run around and let the kids fend for themselves.

Don’t listen to him, Eddie. He is a goondu! She was a good woman, your ma. No, you tell him to stop, now. You wouldn’t be in this shit if you listened to me and not him.

Two older aunties were walking by now — Eddie watched as they moved carefully to avoid him. He felt lousy. He hated being on the streets. It was pathetic. He was homeless even though he had a home. He did not want to go home — the warmth of it reminded him of his mother. He did not want to be reminded of her. He missed her. No, he was better off outside.

You know it is easier to be outside, Eddie. The house will be full of her things and there, they... they will be looking for you... they know what you did, they will try to get you. You need to stay out of the house.

Eddie got up from the bridge and began to walk toward the lights of Kallang, away from the river, peering at the reflection of the setting sun as it glinted on the water.

A light breeze was rolling in. Luckily, Ms. Ana had given him the jacket a week earlier. It was gray and blue with the word Singapore on the back.

You know, Eddie, Ma would have loved your jacket.

No way, Eddie, she would be ashamed, you were her dream and now here you are wearing people’s garbage.

Eddie paused when he got to the bus stop. His hunger pangs had become an accurate indicator of time and they told him that Uncle Teo would be driving up soon in bus number 26 and Eddie would spend the next hour in its comfortable air-con before returning to the streets for the rest of the night. He thought for a minute about going home. But the house stifled him. Each time the phone rang, his heart jumped — maybe it was the police looking for him, or perhaps, just perhaps there was a miracle and his mother had come back. Neither ever happened.

The streets were better. No one knew him.

Uncle Teo opened the bus door and pretended not to notice that Eddie offered no fare — again. This was an older bus, one that wended a well-traveled route, and Eddie could always detect the familiar smell of dirt, sweat, and sometimes vomit lingering just beneath the scent of chemical sprays.

This is what being unwanted smells like, Eddie, get used to it. This is the rest of your life.

“Go to the last seat,” Uncle Teo casually said, “someone left a McDonald’s bag. Maybe inside got some makan.”

It was the same routine each night.

Maybe he poisoned the burger, Eddie. Who would want to feed you? You are such a waste of flesh.

No, no, Eddie. He loves you. You can repay him someday. Don’t listen to that man. You are a good boy, Edward. Eat the Big Mac.

Eddie clutched at his head. It was pounding, and the voices were getting stronger and louder.

He found the bag on a crackled cushion in the back of the bus and inhaled the two burgers; his first and last meal of the day.

If only Ma had told him the truth.

He stared out the window at the spectacle of purpose on the street. People were busy, had places to go, things to do, goals to accomplish. He’d had it all too until Ma’s rape. The rape changed everything. The voices, his friends, had shown up that day.

The day that changed everything was an ordinary day, a sunny one. After school, he had headed to the East Coast lagoon as usual, spending the afternoon helping tourists and schoolkids carry kayaks and canoes in and out of the water. The tips were good.

Eddie headed home only after the last of the canoes was put away.

“Ma! Ma! I home already,” he’d called, as he entered their tiny ground-floor flat that sparkled on the outside thanks to his mother’s hot-pink bougainvilleas. Inside it was cool. His mother had found a discarded air conditioner at the school where she worked and spent a lot of money getting it repaired. Then she’d had it installed in Eddie’s room.

“Ma,” he called again, but there was no response. On the dining table was a sardine sandwich with onions, his favorite. He hated eating alone but the swim had tired him out. Once the sandwich disappeared, he waited at the door for her to come home. Generally she arrived by nine. But that day she was late, very late.

He had fallen asleep near the door when he heard it open hours later. Then he saw her, in the stark fluorescent light from the deck outside — she walked through the front door covered in dirt. Her white blouse was ripped and she was clutching at it in the middle, desperately trying to keep it closed. She seemed oblivious to him as she entered. He averted his eyes so she would not feel the shame of having her son look at her in this state of undress. His mind was racing. He quickly glanced over to see if she was bleeding; he could see no red.

He followed her to her room. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing, lah... nothing. Go to bed, Eddie,” she said very softly, “I’m okay.”

He wanted to protest. But he just stood there, unsure of what to do. She sat on the edge of the bed, the white sheets now stained with dirt from her blue cotton skirt and open blouse. She covered her face with her hands and he noticed her nails were chipped.

“Go to bed, Edward. I am fine. I mean it, go to bed. I am fine.” Then she stood up and ran into the shower. He understood. She was trying to wash away the sins of another.

Eddie went to the refrigerator. It was a wonder the twenty-five-year-old contraption still worked. Grabbing a packet of soursop juice, he sat down at their rickety dining table.

Had she been assaulted? Raped? What if it were rape? How would they ever get over it? This was not happening; it was like a scene from a bad movie.

He felt his hands crush the packet as anger flowed into his arms. He wanted to kill the bastard who’d hurt his mother. After all, he was the man of the house. He never knew his father, except through the pictures his mother kept around the house. He loved the one where his father beamed, holding his newborn boy. It was taken at the house when Eddie was just two days old. That was the last time his father held him.

His father’s death was a testament to the times they lived in, his mother often said. He worked as a bank teller — a disgruntled employee and a knife told the rest of the story. Just like that, for no reason at all, his twenty-five-year-old father had been stabbed. Their only solace was he died almost instantly.

After his father’s death, Ma seemed to forget everything except how to make sure that she and Eddie had enough to eat. She had no friends, preferring to spend all her free time with him. He was grateful that she was not interested in dating men. Unlike other kids in his school whose divorced parents were seeing other people, Ma seemed happy to be alone. She never seemed to need anyone besides Eddie.

Yes, he was thankful.

“You are like my tail, Eddie, always behind me,” she would joke.

He rarely left her side, even when other kids and even some adults made fun of him. “Let her go, Eddie, she has to work. You can’t be her shadow your whole life, you know — you have to be your own man,” they would say.

Ma worked shifts at the primary school nearby, doing anything and everything disgusting — the clean-up lady no one noticed. She cleaned the toilets, collected rubbish, and even mopped vomit, feces, and urine off the bathroom floors. He felt sorry for her when he watched her cry herself to sleep each night. Someday, he hoped, he could give her peace.

Even so, everything was perfect when it was just the two of them, Ma and Eddie. Until that day when Ma came home with ripped clothes.

Eddie could still hear her in the shower as he left the dining table and walked into her room. She had such simple tastes, a tiny bed with a tattered mosquito net draped over it, a small side table where she always set down the romance novel she was reading, her prayer books neatly stacked on a narrow bookshelf on the other side of the room. He wandered over and ran his hand across the prayer books. His poor God-fearing mother. What would this rape do to her? Would she be able to handle life now that she had been desecrated?

He saw the bathroom door open and fled. He did not want her to see his tears. He could not help but cry. After all, what could he do to help her?

His head began to pound. Voices that he had ignored for so long began to get louder, stronger; first begging and then demanding that he listen to them. They owned him and he could no longer ignore them.

You are the man of the house, Eddie. You have to help her. Find out what happened.

How can you leave her in there alone?

You are a coward, you cannot do anything. You should have died in the womb.

Yes, Eddie you are a loser.

He left the house and ran across two wide streets, down the passage beneath the highway, and emerged on the beach clutching at his head and screaming, “Stop it, stop it, go away, go away, I don’t hear you, go away, go away!”

As he sat on the dark beach throwing rocks into the water, gentle cold waves washed his feet, calming him down. The emptiness of the beach reminded him of his mother’s life. She had nothing except him and her honor. Tonight she had lost the more important of the two. He could never restore that.

As the sun came up, he decided to go home. Ma was sound asleep.

Sleeping?! How can your ma sleep, Eddie? Has she no shame? She should be praying to God and asking for help. She should be cleaning herself. How can she sleep at a time like this?

What woman sleeps after being raped? Why hasn’t she called the cops?

Maybe she liked it, eh, Eddie? Maybe your ma misses having a man around.

“No, no, no!” He covered his mouth and then his ears as the voices began to take over.

The next morning, he tried to talk to her: “Who was he? What happened? Were you attacked? Is it someone we know?”

She would not answer.

Her purity had been lost and she seemed not to care.

She has become a slut. She liked it with the strange man. Or men. Why else won’t she tell you what happened? You don’t know her anymore, Eddie. She was with a man — a man, Eddie, who was not your father. She was with a stranger.

No, no, Eddie, she was possibly raped. You need to take care of her.

Yes, Eddie, you need to take care of her. She needs to be cleansed of all the filth, the sins.

He had too much on his mind to go to his ridiculous special school so he wandered off to the arcade in Parkway Parade. He needed to think and school was not the place to be. Fortunately, the voices left him alone at the arcade.

Around noon, he decided to head home. His mother was usually at work at this time, but this day was different, he knew she would be home.

He saw her back first; she appeared to be on the phone. She turned toward the door, but did not seem to notice him. She was staring at the ceiling and talking very quickly.

“I can’t believe this happened...” she was saying.

He stopped. Perhaps now he would hear what had occurred. She would reveal the name of the bastard to her friend, he thought. This would be good, he needed to know and he would find out right now. She began to cry and her words got muffled. He could barely make out what she was saying, and he stared hard at her lips.

“We were walking through the park...” She was clearly getting more and more agitated. “It was so quiet and no one was around. He turned and kissed me and then... and then he pulled at my blouse... in the dirt right here in the park. I can’t believe it happened. I think I’m—” She stopped mid-sentence when she saw him and quickly hung up the phone. “Would you like something to eat?”

He said no. Her question surprised him; usually it would have been a torrent of, Why are you not in school? Where have you been? Today she seemed uninterested.

Told you, man. Told you, she is hiding something.

She is seeing a man.

Eddie, don’t listen to him. You don’t know what she said. You did not read her lips all the way through. You don’t know the whole story.

There he goes, Eddie, calling you stupid because you can’t hear properly. Yes, he is calling you stupid — are you going to let him do that?

No, I am not stupid.

I never said you were.

Thoughts clawed at his brain like tiny crabs taking over the shoreline.

He remembered that day even more clearly than the day of the rape. Because after that phone call, her behavior began to really change.

Ma began to stay out later after work each day. When he asked why, she made excuses that made no sense. She seemed constantly lost in thought, and he hated the fact that she ignored his questions. She began to scout local resale stores for silk blouses and bright skirts. She even started wearing makeup. Perhaps, he thought, she feels like she has been prostituted so she needs to dress and behave like one. He wondered how he could help her. He asked her constantly about that day; she never responded.

Although she did still go to the Holy Family Church, he noticed that she had stopped praying in the mornings. She was more concerned with the way her hair looked than with reading the Bible.

I told you, she is turning into a prostitute.

No, she isn’t. She is a kind, gentle woman, don’t forget that, Eddie.

She is a prostitute, Eddie. Ever wonder where she goes out at night? Why is she so late? Who is she with? Why won’t she tell you?

The final straw was when she began to have people over several times a month. Men and women came to his house for what she called a reading club, to discuss some book. He hated them on sight, and hated the fake attention they showered on him. She thrived on it. A cleaning lady in a book club — it was a joke. The people came and talked to her, they ate and drank together and laughed. They were stealing his mother from him, and she was letting it happen.

“Why are you trying to be so atas?” he asked one day, and she slapped him. It was the first time.

She doesn’t need you anymore, Eddie. She has them.

A cleaning woman — what does she need to read for, Eddie?

She is becoming atas, Eddie. Soon she will think you aren’t good enough for her.

He began to withdraw.

He knew it was all because of the rape. It had changed her; she was no longer the beautiful, pious woman he had loved. She was now a cheap slut, flaunting herself in front of these people in her new clothes and makeup, laughing out loud, pretending to be someone she was not. He was sure she was in a lot of pain.

You are right, Eddie, she needs help.

Her soul has been desecrated, you need to cleanse her. She is in pain. Evil is making her hide the pain. You need to help her, Eddie, she is your ma. She would do the same for you.

Help her, man, help her.

The decision was made. The voices were unanimous. He decided he would help her. He would put her out of her pain.

He picked a day about two weeks later, telling her he had saved enough to treat his mother to a nice meal.

Then he began to plan, meticulously writing down each step.

When the day finally arrived, his mind was calm. He was prepared.

Even though God had not given him the best ears or brain, he had given him several advisors who dwelled in his head.

His mother dressed down for the dinner, which pleased him.

At five p.m., he told her he was ready to go.

Together they walked to a little beachside restaurant nearby, one he knew she liked. Because it was right by the water, you could feel the sand under your feet at the table. Ma loved it, and he wanted her to enjoy this evening.

She ordered her favorite, fermented shrimp-coated fried chicken wings, for the two of them, the extra large basket that they had shared many times before.

As they ate, he began to tell her about the new place he had discovered — it would be his present for her birthday.

“It’s beautiful, Ma! You have to see it, will you come with me?”

She smiled at him. “Yes, of course.”

She reached into her purse to pay. He protested. It was his treat, he said. After he paid, he took her hand and started walking.

They had been strolling along the water for about fifteen minutes when Ma started worrying. “Where is it, Eddie? I’m getting tired and it’s getting dark.”

“Just a bit longer, Ma,” he said.

They reached a tiny jetty, a long slender walkway that cut a swath far out into the blue.

Eddie squeezed his mother’s hand, gently tugging her along as he stepped onto the jetty and headed toward the edge. “Happy Birthday, Ma!” He beamed as he pointed toward the panorama at the end of the pier.

She had lived on Singapore’s East Coast all her life, but even in the dimming light of the evening, she was stunned by the view. He had managed to find a view of the sea that she had never seen before. Shades of blue looked like flowing silk, the shadowy tankers twinkled in the distance. All the colors and sights melded together to form a perfect seascape.

She stepped further toward the edge to take in the beauty. She never saw the push coming.

This is for you, Ma, this will save your soul.

Yes, Eddie, you did it, you have cleansed her of her sins. Now she will be with Him, she is safe.

When she screamed, he began shouting along too: “Ma. I love you! I’m coming, Ma! I love you!” In a new pure world, they would be together. No unhappiness.

He closed his eyes and took a step forward. But then a bony hand grabbed him and pulled him back.

“Ah, boy!” he heard a stranger shout. “What happened? Did your mother fall in?”

Eddie began to cry.

Her funeral was held a few days later. It was a quiet ceremony. There was no body; it was never found.

When her new friends, the ones he hated, showed up, he sidled up next to them to hear what they were saying.

“Pity,” said one.

“Yes,” agreed another, “she was so in love and ready for her new life. What a waste.”

Love? In love? What were they saying? His mother in love?

“Yes,” whispered the first. “She told me about him a few months ago. Their first encounter made me blush! They made love in Fort Canning Park! She said she was a mess when she got home.”

The jolt of the bus stopping brought him back to the present. “Time to get off, Eddie,” Uncle Teo said. “I’m sorry.”

Eddie thanked him and walked out into the night breeze. The bus had dropped him off where he had started, by the Merdeka Bridge.

He pulled the thin jacket closer to his body, heading to his usual spot in a corner. When he closed his eyes, he knew he would see his mother, the jetty, her back, his hands. Slowly but surely the dreams would come; dreams filled with snakes. Some nights they would slither up his legs first — on others, they would simply coil around his stomach. Just before the bites, he would wake up screaming.

Kena Sai by S.J. Rozan

Bukit Timah

On Monday afternoon the old man with the erhu was at the corner again.

In the soft shade of a tembusu he sat on a folding stool, the ancient battered instrument held upright. The knobby fingers of his left hand slid along the strings while his right arm worked the bow. A tight-stretched cobra skin fattened each long slow note before releasing it into the air.

Watching through sinuous heat shimmering up from the concrete, Ed was caught. Davey stopped also. He stared, let go of Ed’s hand, balanced for a moment on not-quite-steady toddler legs, then plopped down on the grass of the verge, never taking his eyes off the old man. Ed smiled and slid down against a mahogany tree. It would make no difference when they arrived at Ellen’s. They could stay here for now and drift on these melodies, alien and alluring.

The old man’s hands gained speed, racing, nimble as the macaques in the park; then they slowed, slipped supple and flowing, like the water in the Strait. The macaques had ruled the island once, dancing through the trees, screaming by the water holes. The Strait had washed the shores of island and mainland, tying them together as it held them apart. Now the few macaques left were confined to the reserve and the Strait was causewayed and ferried, narrowed by landfill and curbed by barriers. But the monkeys were still monkeys and the water was still water.

The music sounded sad to Ed. That was the minor scale, he knew. Probably these were not sad songs, just his Western ears that made them so. The old man did look sad, though. Because he was far from home? Or because he was old? Or because no one but Ed and Davey stopped to listen, and he knew Ed didn’t understand?

No one in Singapore stopped to listen, or stopped for anything. No one played music on streetcorners, either, and on a less out-of-the-way sidewalk the old man would’ve been arrested for interfering with the public progress, for distracting citizens from their daily rounds, for being unnecessary. But on this hot afternoon in Bukit Timah, no one other than Ed and Davey were on the street to be distracted.

Ed wondered if the old man lived here, in this sweet, treed expat enclave where Westerners dwelled to be reminded of home. He doubted he did, thought it more likely he traveled to this corner by bus, to other corners of the island also, other quiet empty suburbs where he could sit and play his quavering melodies in the damp heat. Maybe he lived with his family; maybe his daughter was a banker, his son-in-law a doctor, his grandchildren energetic high-achievers who ran off in their school uniforms in the morning, none of them with time for the old man’s music or his memories. Maybe, long ago, young and energetic himself, he’d come to Singapore from South China, from heat like this, and now he was old and an expat and he, too, wanted to be reminded of home.

Ed didn’t. Home was worlds, years, lives away. He didn’t miss it and he didn’t want to go back there, back to New York, back to winter slush and politics he had to pay attention to and buses that didn’t come. It was ten years since they’d left, since Ellen had called, so excited, the promotion had come through and they were headed to London. No more taxi drivers who didn’t know the way, no more slithery roaches, pretentious hipsters, brown smothering clouds drifting over from New Jersey.

“I think they have roaches,” Ed smiled, kissing her at the door that night. Her eyes had been glowing. “And I’m sure they have hipsters.”

“My God, what smells so great in here?”

“Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I thought I should learn the exotic cuisine.”

All through dinner she talked, making lists, assigning tasks. She would tackle this and Ed should follow through on that. He sipped his wine, enjoying her incandescence, her mad caroming. A month later they’d settled into a West London flat. “You’ve got to call it a flat now, darling,” she told him as she breezed out the door her first day.

Ed’s own clients were people he’d never met and they didn’t care where he was as long as their websites got designed, updated, and populated, a word that delighted him: as though each page were a tiny village, JoeJones.com, pop. 313. He methodically took care of them and then took long midday walks, as he had in New York, as he always had.

In their new suburban London home Ed saw himself as one of the islands revealed when the tide of commuters swept out each morning. His walks took him to the greengrocer, the locksmith, the fishmonger, islands also, each one craggy or forbidding or gentle, each one worth exploring. The cars driving on the left-hand side of the road he found interesting to watch, like choreographed dancers in a number new to him. He wondered whether England had no tornados because her traffic went counter-clockwise. He learned to differentiate the subtle variations of fog and rain and he liked the clinks when he jingled the coins that made his pockets heavy.

Ellen didn’t. The money exasperated her and she couldn’t get used to traffic coming from the wrong direction. The gray weather was draining. The cabbies never got lost but there weren’t many places, she found, that she wanted to go.

“New York made such sense,” she sighed over lamb chops and green beans one night. The chops were particularly good; Ed had made friends with the butcher, a fat man from Sussex. I’ve given ye the best ones, tender and tasty if ye cook ’em right.

“London,” Ellen went on, shaking her head. “It’s so... medieval.” Her response was to buckle down and work harder. Eighteen months later she called home one morning, an hour after she got to work, thrilled once again: they were going to Prague.

In Prague Ed liked the tensions between the past and the present, the red roofs, the smell of yeast and cinnamon from the bakery. He couldn’t master Czech but the baker spoke English. From Madagascar, the vanilla, she’s cost too much but nothing else worth having. Ed cooked chicken with onions and paprika. Ellen railed against the narrow streets and the traffic. In London, she said, it rained all the time but at least you could get around.

After Prague, Buenos Aires, where Ed paused in his walks to sit in cafés on wide boulevards. Try first without milk, señor, you drink Argentine coffee now. He grilled butter-tender steaks and Ellen felt nostalgic for buttoned-up Prague where ragtop cars didn’t pound out music twenty-four hours a day. Then Nairobi, to Ed a never-still metropolis of old jeeps, bright cloth, musical speech (Fresh pineapple! Come buy it! You can do much wid it!), and dark, glistening faces. He learned to make ugali from cornmeal and served it with roast goat. To Ellen, Nairobi was dust that made her cough, bottled water, failed Internet connections (in Buenos Aires the technology worked), and armed guards.

In Nairobi, she got pregnant. It was time, she said; they didn’t want to wait until they were too old, until conceiving was a chore and delivery a risk, did they? Ed thought perhaps she’d want to go home, at least to have the baby, but she was working on some major deals and so Davey was born in Aga Khan Hospital three months before they moved to Singapore.

Singapore astonished Ed.

Ellen’s colleagues envied the assignment because, they said, Singapore was Asia Lite. Not like being sent to Shanghai or Tokyo, with their illegible street signs, illegible menus, illegible manners. Everything worked in Singapore. Crime barely existed, the water was safe. Everything worked, and worked in ways you understood. Not that life was perfect. The trees were groomed and the sidewalks practically polished, traffic flowed — but be careful, they were warned: Singapore, it’s Disneyland with the death penalty. Jaywalking, gum-chewing, free-thinking: just watch yourselves.

Ellen didn’t care about jaywalking, or free-thinking either. She was happy to be an expat among expats, to mix only with other Westerners, to live as though she weren’t in Asia at all. The safe, clean, functioning Singapore was the one she came looking for, the one she found, the one that — for a time — pleased her.

Ed saw all that — how could you miss it? — but it wasn’t his Singapore. More than anywhere they’d lived, more than where they’d come from, Singapore instantly felt like home.

He loved the damp heat, the daily rain, the bright and gray skies alternating, striping the day. The storms that blew through and scoured the air. The breathless young Singaporeans in the business of business; the expat community constantly churning, impermanent, strangers arriving and friends departing every day. Cultures mashing into one another in heady confusion: the swirling scents of curry, coconut milk, and coriander, the roast Cornish hen with fingerling potatoes in one café, the nasi lemak in the next, the chicken tajine a few doors down. Singapore had four official languages, but the one Ed loved was the unofficial one, the one everyone spoke: Singlish — in vocabulary, in grammar, and in syntax, a knotted combination of them all. In Singapore you could live your life in English, but Singlish was what the locals spoke, and the transplanted, the settled-in. Ed set out to learn it.

He also set out, as always, to learn the local cuisine. In Singapore that very idea was funny, because all recipes except the oldest Malay ones were immigrants and none were pure. He wrapped Davey in a quilted cotton infant sling and took him along to the markets, collecting the dozens of umber, ochre, black, and gold spices that went into curry, depending on whose curry you were cooking. He made pineapple tarts and oyster omelets, yellow egg noodles, coconut-stewed beef, and fish head curry.

Ellen started to drink.

“Singapore,” she sighed as they sat over the remains of vegetable dumplings and pork rib soup. She poured herself more wine. “At least in Nairobi when it was this freakin’ hot, it was dry.”

“I took Davey to the reserve this morning. We spotted a baby macaque in a tree. I don’t know which thought the other was funnier.” He told her this because she never asked anymore. Somewhere between Buenos Aires and Nairobi she’d stopped wondering how Ed spent his days. In Singapore she’d briefly become curious again, because of Davey, but it turned out baby news bored her. She cooed over Davey in the morning, once Ed had him dressed and in his high chair. She sang to him at night if she was home before his bedtime, though those early evenings slowly grew rare. She read parenting books, but not, as Ed did, to learn what to do, how to be a new person with the new person that was Davey. Ellen read to find out what Davey should be doing, what his accomplishments ought to be in this month, and this and this. She compared Davey with the child in the books — an average child, and shouldn’t Davey be more advanced than that? — and with the children she met, children of expats, of transplants, of locals. On weekends, before the midday heat chased her indoors, she’d walk with Ed and Davey in the Children’s Garden or to a breakfast of noodles at a hawker center. Davey’s chubby friendliness made the cooking aunties cluck and chuckle: what a buaya he was, a little flirt! Ellen basked in their adoration, but Ed understood: admiring Davey, they were admiring her. She was kiasu, Ed thought, cutthroat competitive, as she always had been. He used to admire her fire and drive, having little ambition of his own; but now that Davey had become her proxy, it began to trouble him. The aunties asked to hold Davey, which Ellen affected to think about and then graciously permitted — Ed always allowed it — and at first they tried to give him sweets but they soon learned that was only for weekdays, when Davey was alone with Ed.

Ed, enchanted with Davey’s first smile, his first tooth and first word, suggested on his first birthday that they think about another child. Ellen barked, “Are you crazy?” and went off to bed alone. Ed took a folding chair out onto the walk in front of the ground-floor flat and sat in the evening breeze. Ellen kept the air-conditioning cranked up high; Ed didn’t like it, living in a temperature Singapore never felt. Crazy? He considered. Well, maybe. Huat sio oreddy. The man’s mad.

Across another year Ed took Davey to the garden and the reserve, to the market and to other kids’ homes to crawl and then walk and then run around in a chattering tribe like monkeys. He cooked fried dough, sweet potato leaf stew, biryani, chili crab for holidays. He told Ellen about Davey’s day while Davey laughed and mashed his hands in his rice and Ellen nodded and floated farther away. At the end of the year she told him she’d found someone else and she’d like him to move out.

He wasn’t surprised. Though he wasn’t happy, he knew his unhappiness stemmed largely not from the loss of Ellen, long since lost, but from her insistence that they share custody of Davey.

“What mother would just totally give up her son?” she said, blinking.

What mother doesn’t know the names of his friends? Ed thought, but he understood. Ellen resisted Asia in Singapore, as she had Africa in Nairobi and old Europe in Prague, but still, this was about that most Asian of notions: saving face. Not with the cooking aunties, who would have mattered to Ed but meant nothing to Ellen; but among her colleagues. This ornament, this piece in the game that Davey was to her, it would make her look bad, cold-hearted, to give him up.

Ed didn’t protest, though, because he saw immediately how it would be and he was right. Ellen hired a nanny. A smiling Filipina named Maricor, who lived in the ground-floor flat three nights a week in the room that had been Ed’s office. Ellen made no adjustment in her life for Davey, still left for work early in the morning when the light was clear, and Maricor didn’t mind at all that Ed usually appeared an hour or so later, to go with them to the reserve, the garden, shopping at the market for spices and fruits. Ellen knew, and Ellen didn’t care, as long as Ed waited until she was gone so she didn’t have to see him, wasn’t required to make small talk and act as though they were still connected. They were, of course, because of Davey, who would connect them forever. But Ellen, as always, was eager to leave one life behind and begin the next.

Twice, on weekend days — weekends were always Ed’s, because, as Ellen explained, if she wasn’t working through a weekend she needed Me time — Ed and Davey ran into Ellen and her someone else in the Smith Street wet market. The someone, a boisterous Russian with a big smile, was a client of Ellen’s firm. He tickled Davey’s chin and seemed happily baffled by the noise, the bright colors of signs and stalls, the profusion of spices and fruits he called “foreign” and “exotic.” Ellen kissed Davey, smiled thinly, and steered her Russian away as soon as they’d exchanged enough substance-free sentences so that everyone could see she was perfectly comfortable in Ed’s presence. Watching her examine fine powders, peeled bark, and round berries in spice stalls, seeing her make purchases he was sure she had no idea how to use, Ed wondered if she was hoping to learn to cook. Ellen, he thought, cooking: none of their friends back in New York — or anywhere else — would believe it. But Singapore did strange things to you.

Ed settled into the new arrangement and found it not uncomfortable. The nights Davey spent at Ellen’s, Ed missed him, missed cooking his rice porridge in the morning and teaching him his new word of the day. Ed worked late into those nights, so his days were free for Davey and for Maricor, whose calm company he was coming to enjoy. Maricor had good English — one of Ellen’s criteria for a nanny — but Ed also spoke with her in Singlish, Maricor laughing with delight when he surprised her with a new phrase. Ellen had rolled her eyes when he’d used Singlish words: “It’s not a real language, you know.”

Six seasonless months drifted by. Ed and Ellen were quietly divorced, Davey adjusted easily to his double life and started to speak in full sentences, both Singlish and English — with the occasional Spanish word thrown in, and sometimes Russian — and the languid heat of Singapore seeped deeper into Ed’s pores, melted the suits out of his wardrobe and the hurry out of his steps. Expats and young people raced around him, career-building, but the old, true life of the island was indolent and slow and kind, and that was the life Ed lived until Ellen called one morning to say she’d been promoted again. She was going to Moscow.

Ed congratulated her: he knew she was happy. Moscow was the plum placement in Ellen’s firm and she’d worked hard for it.

“Sergei says he can get you a work visa, no problem.” Ed heard the pride in her voice about her well-connected Russian before he understood what she was really saying.

“I don’t want to go to Moscow.”

“We can’t very well share custody long-distance. I know people do, but study after study shows that’s not the best thing at all for the child.”

Study after study? Best thing for the child? “You’re taking Davey?”

“Of course. I’m his mother.”

Phone to his ear, Ed stared dumbly out the window. He lived now in another ground-floor flat a few blocks from Ellen’s, a place with a small patio where Davey and Maricor sat on the paving stones building a tower from wooden blocks. Davey wore khaki shorts (“Like Daddy’s!” he’d shrieked with glee when they’d been presented to him) and Maricor’s red sundress pooled around her knees. “Davey doesn’t want to go to Moscow.”

“What are you talking about? He’s a child. He has no idea where he wants to go.”

The patent error took Ed’s breath away. He tried to picture Davey, who’d never worn a sweater, all bundled up in parka, scarf, and boots, with a no-nonsense Russian nanny pulling his mittens on. He wondered where a child would play if nine months of the year it was too cold to be outdoors. Like New York, he realized, but worse, and what did New York parents do? Sent their kids to preschool boot camp so they’d be fast-tracked to MIT or Yale.

“There’s an American School in Moscow,” Ellen was saying, “and a couple of international schools as well that would be good for him. Sergei looked into it already. I start the fifteenth of next month — that’s more than four weeks, that gives you plenty of time. You can stay in a hotel until you find an apartment. My firm might help.”

Ed hung up thinking, Kena sai, lah. Kena sai. Hit by shit.

Early Sunday, when Maricor went to Mass at Good Shepherd Cathedral, Ed and Davey went to Malaysia. They made the trip every few months, always by ferry because they were in no hurry and Davey liked the boat ride. Sometimes they went right on through Johor Bahru all the way to Kuala Lumpur and spent the night. From time to time they went to the beach at Desaru. Almost always, whatever else they did, they shopped at the Larkin wet market for spices and vegetables. The market aunties in Singapore laughed at Ed about this, for they scorned Johor Bahru because of its dirt and crime and general not-Singapore-ness, and claimed everything found there was available in Singapore. Ed would shrug and smile and say, “Most can, some cannot, lah,” and join them in laughing at his Singlish.

On this trip he bought some things he had seen previously but hadn’t had a reason to pick up. He took Davey to the beach and they got home quite late, Davey sleeping in Ed’s arms, the heft of him at once heavy — he was getting big — and weightless. Davey didn’t wake up when Ed put him to bed and slept soundly while Ed organized his purchases.

The next afternoon, Monday, was the day of the week when Ed delivered Davey to Ellen. In practice it was almost always Maricor who received him, Ellen staying late at the office. This night, while Maricor gave Davey his bath, Ed inspected Ellen’s kitchen, noting the increased number of bottles and shakers and jars of spices and herbs, the powders and chunks and leaves and liquids Ellen had never paid attention to when he was cooking. He was careful how he handled them. If there was an organizing principle he couldn’t see it, but Ellen had systems for everything and had never liked Ed to disturb her things. When Davey was all scrubbed and sleepy, Ed read him a bedtime book from the pile he’d brought over, Ellen having no idea what children, or her own child, liked to read. After Ed kissed him good night, Ed and Maricor sat down as usual for a cup of kopi-gau, Singapore’s signature condensed-milk extra-strong coffee that had driven Ellen, from the day they arrived, to thank God that Singapore also had Starbucks.

“Has she been cooking?” Ed asked Maricor, waving his cup toward the shelves.

Maricor’s smile was sweet, but also amused. “On Sunday, she tell me. Ella necesita el fin de semana, the whole weekend, to prepare. She mix curry spices herself, lah.”

“Is it good, the food she makes?”

“I come Monday. She and Señor Sergei, they eat it all up before I get here.” She added, “He is very polite, Señor Sergei. He always eat what she make.”

Ed smiled too, understanding: if the curries Ellen made were good, Sergei wouldn’t need to be polite.

Not much changed over the next two weeks. Ellen’s conversations with Ed, ever short and to the point, were about nothing now but the impending move. It was a good thing the furniture in the flat was all rented, and whatever wasn’t (a few mirrors: Ellen had thought the flat needed more of those) the landlord could inherit. Ellen never brought anything from one life to the next. In his flat Ed had carved masks from Nairobi, matryoshkas from Prague. Ellen had her Russian work visa, her plane ticket; she was taking the last few days off work before she left, to accomplish her final errands, and she suggested Ed do the same.

Ed spent half a day getting Davey a passport and bought two tickets, for himself and Davey, for a few days after Ellen’s. “I need time to get settled before you two come,” she said. Ed’s answers didn’t matter so he hardly offered any. He met Maricor at Ellen’s on midweek mornings, took Davey home with him Thurdays, brought him back Mondays. He shopped at the market and cooked beef rendang and jicama-filled popiah. They didn’t go back to Malaysia; there was no need.

Now, on this Monday afternoon, the last before Ellen’s moving date, Ed and Davey sat entranced before the old man with the erhu. Because of the impromptu concert, they’d get to Ellen’s later than usual, but now that Ed thought about it, it was probably better this way. The old man would see how relaxed Ed was, how sweet he was with Davey; that would be useful if the police found him and asked. It would be hard on Maricor, the shock of finding the bodies when she arrived; Ed had been hoping to save her that but it occurred to him now that after she called the ambulance she’d probably ring Ed and tell him not to bring Davey into the flat. That would be easier on the boy. Ed would rush there in any case, and leave Davey outside with her, and go inside and try to take charge, though by then the police would be there and he’d be interfering. He’d be unnecessary, except to tell them, in low, shocked tones, that Ellen absolutely didn’t know her way around the kitchen or the market; that he’d warned her once or twice that not everything sold in the wet markets was edible, and that some herbs were easily mistaken for others.

Later, once the poison was identified as cerebera odollam, suicide tree, he’d shake his head blankly and say no, he had no idea where she’d gotten it, nor any idea what she’d thought its use was, though when it was ground it probably looked like any number of the darker spices used in curries and maybe that was her mistake. He’d tell the police he’d heard suicide tree could be bought in Malaysia but he hadn’t seen it here, which didn’t mean it wasn’t for sale, but that no, no, there was no possible way this was a suicide, double or otherwise, because Ellen had been promoted to Moscow and was very excited and planning to go.

Ed ruffled Davey’s hair. Yes, things were buay pai. No, better than not bad — everything was shiok, lah. Great. He settled more comfortably against the mahogany tree, wiped sweat from his face in the hot, rich air, watched the old man’s macaque hands, and waited for his phone to ring.

Tattoo by Lawrence Osborne

Geylang

When he was hired by Hiroshi Systems, Ryu was offered a family apartment in Bayshore Park for himself, his wife, and his son. Relocated from Japan, they had little idea where they were, but the condo faced the sea over the East Coast and a cooler wind swept through the private roof garden where he and his son Tomiko grew pepper plants in pots and arranged a little Zen enclosure of white pebbles within a square of white tea shrubs.

At thirty-two, Ryu was viewed favorably by his cynical superiors, though he was never quite fully aware of the degree to which he was being groomed for more exalted responsibilities at the commading heights of Hiroshi Systems. He was given a company car and a Malay driver to take him every morning down to Orchard, where he stayed until late at night working at a seven-floor HQ decorated with silk scrolls and antique samurai swords.

More conscientious and puritanical than his peers, he rarely joined the raucous drinking parties that were held at Orihara Shoten or Kinki. He was never seen paralytic under a table chewing on a napkin or ramming yen notes into tassled hostess bras. He punctually called Natsuo an hour before he left the office to make sure that when he got home Tomiko was not yet in bed. He prized the hour that he could spend with his son, reading in bed or watering the shrubs on the roof, the seven-year-old following him around with a watering can. After he had put him to bed, he and Natsuo ate together in their ocean-view dining room and afterward, according to their mood, enjoyed an hour together in bed or watched old Zatoichi movies animated by the incomparable Shintaro Katsu. They were the same movies his mother used to watch.

Their life went on like this for six months. Natsuo’s mother visited from Osaka, and Ryu’s father visited from Hiroshima. They went to the movies in Orchard once a week while the Filipina nanny looked after Tomiko, and on Wednesday nights he took Natsuo to Gordon Grill for an English meal followed by a Baked Alaska, a dish so lavishly outmoded that it felt startling and arousing to them. Once a month they sat behind candles at Tong Le and peered out over the lights of a city they did not understand and never would. It seemed like a place they should be enjoying, but which they did not know how to enjoy. The most enjoyable, the most sensual thing about it for them, was the heat.

Natsuo worked part-time at a Japanese food consortium, and she had more hours to feel out her adopted city than her husband did. But that same enjoyable heat dogged her when she spent time in it and she too often felt her will sapped as soon as she hit the streets. During the rains, she went to the movies by herself and grew a little plumper on daily servings of kaya toast; she went to spas in five-star hotels and had her nails done after her massages and wondered if this was decadent or virtuous. There was no way of knowing. Whether or not she was a typical expat Japanese wife never occurred to her. It was the passing of time that was the great problem, the riddle with which she had to grapple. And then there was the buying of lavender-flavored Hokkaido milk and sake from Meidi-ya supermarket.

Ryu had little time to himself. One night, however, when he had finished work earlier than expected, he got into a cab on Grange Road and asked, as usual, to be taken home. While they headed eastward, the driver caught his eye in the rearview mirror and offered him a smile.

“Tired go home, lor?”

“Why — do I look tired?”

He touched his face and caught a glimpse of the wan specter in the same mirror. It was true, he looked appallingly sapped.

“No fun after work, bad time, lah.”

Fun after work? The concept, so ubiquitous around him, had never really occurred to him. Yet the driver’s surprise made perfect sense. He was hurrying home to the same routine he enjoyed every day, but as it happened the word enjoyed was a slight exaggeration.

Feeling suddenly resentful, he fired back: “So, what do you suggest?”

“If you like it, I’ll take you for some relax.”

“I think I’d like that,” Ryu blurted out, and before he could change his mind the driver had shifted lanes and then turned away from the usual road.

“Where, then?” Ryu asked, leaning forward weakly.

“Don’t worry, san, a place where Japanese gentlemen like.”

They drove west. It was a Thursday night in the rainy season, unremarkable in every way, the streets swept with wind and rain, and Ryu didn’t ask again where the driver intended to take him. It seemed so innocuous and unexceptional that he felt embarrassed to ask something that would make him appear a rube. He sat back and enjoyed a ride into Geylang, and soon they were passing along streets of what looked like suburban villas and shop houses.

Some of these were clearly brothels, with dark red lights and a couple of girls sitting outside on metal stools, watching the cars floating by. So that was what the driver had in mind. And yet he was neither surprised nor put off. His curiosity was lightly aroused. The area away from the white neon of the main streets seemed calm and matter-of-fact, and the red-light houses with their girls gave off no energy that could be interpreted as menacing. When they came to a quiet halt in front of one, halfway down a leafy street, he got out with a falsely cheery wave and wondered what commission the driver was given for bringing naïve expats there. The man, holding open the door for him, told him that he would wait for him and take him home afterward for a set price, to which Ryu agreed at once. There didn’t seem any point complicating things unnecessarily.

He went up to an entrance where an older woman sat reading a paper by a garage light, and when he had gone through the bead curtain into the foyer there was a quiet commotion, a pleasurable rustle, and a mama-san appeared with a kettle in one hand and a pair of glasses wrapped around her neck with a glittering string. He had to use his awkward, slightly broken English to make it understood that he did not have much time. That it was his first time, however, was easy enough to disguise.

The room was half-dark, with a Guan Yin shrine in a corner and a walnut coffee table piled with travel magazines. He was served tea while five girls were brought out from the room beyond, all of them dressed in below-the-knee black silk skirts, and from these he had to choose his one-hour paramour. It would have been easier, he reflected, to do so with his eyes closed, not seeing the way they subjected him to their own smiling scrutiny. But as it was, he had to look each one in the eye and cast a quick glance over her shoulder, the obscured curve of the breast and stomach, the hips in their locked poise, the angle of the mouth. Though the air-conditioning had been turned up as soon as he entered, he began to perspire and mopped his forehead with one of the napkins which had come with the tea.

Then he turned his eye back to the girl at the dead center of the row, whose shoulders were bared by her strapless dress. She was the shortest of the line-up and her hair was dyed a curious dark blond at the tips. Her eyes looked green from a distance, as though she were wearing colored contact lenses. She did not smile, but in any case his eye had not returned to her face but to a small tattoo on her left shoulder.

It was a dark blue Chinese character which did not correspond to a kanji which he could decipher. Suddenly prompted by something in this spidery character, with its radiating lines and disciplined geometry, he nodded to her without a moment’s further indecision and rose unsteadily, unsure as to whether his equipment would rise to the occasion of so pretty and relaxed a girl. Such an unflappable professional.

And on top of that, he thought, you’re a swine and a low-life, and now you have a secret, the first secret you have ever had from Natsuo—

The world of secrets. As he followed the girl — he just about caught her name as Cheryl — he wondered if every man had this moment of grim initiation into the world that lay beyond and around marriage.

Certainly, nobody ever talked about it until they were older and it no longer mattered as much. But as soon as one had entered it, there was no going back. It was an irreversible decay, a one-way slide. Everything one had known up to that point as sexual happiness and wonder became instantly foreshortened and relativized. It was this that was arousing. One of his more lewd colleagues at work, now that he thought about it, had expressed it crudely when explaining why he had gotten divorced from his wife in Tokyo: “Like the wondrous and fastidious panda,” he’d said, “I found it impossible to mate in captivity.”

They went into a small back room garishly adorned with a small droplet chandelier and silver-framed mirrors.

“You like short time one hour?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Take shower together.”

He paid her, and they disrobed under the absurd chandelier.

Naked, she was far more beautiful. In the claustrophobic shower she soaped him from head to foot and nestled against him as she used the shower head to disperse the suds from his chest and back. As she did so, he looked down at the tattoo. It seemed to have been carved into her marvelous skin with a laser, the lines crisp and elegant. They washed each other’s hair and began to laugh. She held his erection with one hand and caressed the back of his neck with the other soaped hand, running her nails into his hair.

He had the impression at once that this one would not keep a faithful eye on the clock by the bed. When they were half dry they rolled onto the bed in their white towels and his guilt subsided and he plunged his face into her hair, holding a shoulder in each hand, and kissed her throat.

During the hour his ear picked up what seemed like distant sounds. Cars passed in the rain, men walked along the street looking into the brothels while a soft thunder rolled across the city. His initial hysteria also calmed and he realized that to take this sort of pleasure one needed a measured coolness, a sense of righteousness. That was the trick. The jittery fear and guiltiness of the newbie were faintly ridiculous to these girls who saw so easily beneath the male surface and who, unlike other women, did not heap facile scorn upon it. But now he also realized that this diversion away from Natsuo was in fact a boomerang motion back toward her. It didn’t matter at all, and nor did it matter that if she discovered his pecadillo she would not understand it in the least. It was one of those things that only explanations and expiation make sordid.

The people we think we know the most are always the people we know the least. They carry their secrets within them with a greater discipline, that is all, but those secrets can be larger than oceans, deeper and more critical by virtue of being skillfully kept out of view by a surgical paranoia.

Afterward, he lay on the bed exhausted while she brought him tea. The girls chattered in Mandarin in the next room.

“I was wondering,” he said at last, while she carefully combed her hair in a dresser mirror, still naked but for a towel wrapped around her hips. “That tattoo on your shoulder. Is it a Chinese character?”

Without turning, she caught his eye in the mirror. “Of course it is. But it’s an old character.”

“I thought so. What does it mean? Do you mind me asking?”

“I don’t mind you asking, but I won’t tell you unless you come back to see me again.”

They smiled.

“That seems fair,” he laughed. “You’ll tell me next time.”

“Maybe, if you make me happy.”

Ah, the tip. He would make it a handsome one.

“Maybe you’ll tell me where you are from?”

“So curious, lah! I am from Penang.”

He guessed it was not quite true. He had heard her speak a quick, native Mandarin to her sisters in the other room. Whatever, he thought in amusement. She is allowed to lie, given what she has to do for a living. She can lie to me, or any man she likes. It’s not the same as a real lie.

He accepted it and admired instead the almost military tension of her spine, the vertebrae visible through that delicate skin. She had a smell like bergamot tea. When she half turned toward him, her eye moved like that of a gecko, ironic and quick.

On the way out, he kissed her more warmly than he should have and was sure that she responded in kind. It produced in him a grateful moment of crackpot pride. There was, then, the hitherto distant possibility that this hour in bed had not been merely a financial transaction, and even if this was an illusion, he clung to that moment of pride all the way back to Bayshore Park.

He ate dinner with Natsuo as usual, Tomiko quietly asleep.

“You were late,” she observed as they were halfway through the curry their maid had prepared. “Are management leaning on you?”

“A bit.”

“That means they want to promote you.”

“Perhaps,” he said absently.

He was still thinking about the shoulder scented like bergamot tea and its ancient tattooed character.

“It’s just a thought,” she said tactfully. “It would be wonderful if they promoted you. We could get a jeep.”

“What would we do with a jeep?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Couldn’t we drive to a jungle somewhere and swim in a waterfall?”

What a foolish idea, he thought. Why would anyone want to buy a Jeep and swim in a waterfall?

“Whether they promote me or not,” he said instead, “I am quite content. The salary is more than enough but I might have to work a little later on some nights. It’s normal, I guess.”

“Then I’ll contact Koyabashi and ask her if she’d like to play cards at the Raffles. They have a group that plays there every week. Just the girls.”

It was a ridiculous idea but maybe it could have its uses. He kept his mouth shut. Then looked into her cool, restrained eyes and wondered if she had instinctively understood the manner in which his mind and heart had wandered off for a while, without saying a word. It would be a small miracle if she had not, but he let her talk on about her atrocious cards party until she ran out of steam, and her eyes rose suddenly, enormous with a distant grief.

They lay mutually antagonized and distant in the bedroom that night. Storm clouds amassed on the horizon, momentarily visible when lightning flickered below them. When she had fallen asleep, Ryu continued to think about his unexpected evening and the mystifying antiquity and elegance of the tattoo. He wondered about the other girls in the establishment, the leafy streets of Geylang and the calm that seemed to possess them at a certain hour. The calm, perhaps, of a thousand individual lusts rushing toward their premeditated satiations. The city had suddenly acquired a new dimension for him, and he had time to enter it again and again.

The following day, he worked alone in his seventh-floor office. He was filled with a hurried concentration. Come noon he took a punctual bento lunch with his immediate superior at a small Japanese place on the street and talked about the accounting software they had just installed at a well-known supermarket chain.

“Everything all right at home?” Mr. Inoue asked halfway through the dreary meal. “How is Natsuo adapting to her new city?”

Ryu shrugged. “She seems fine. The heat bothers her a little.”

“The heat, eh? Well, the heat bothers everyone.”

This wasn’t exactly helpful, and Inoue pressed on with a few more questions. Did the alienness of the new culture oppress them?

“Oppress?” Ryu shot back irritably. “It’s as good a place as we’ve ever lived. We even have lavender milk from Hokkaido.”

Ryu’s days began feeling longer. Between bouts of intense work he gazed through double-glazed windows at the sadly luminous monsoon skies alternately drenched with sunlight and flurries of rain. Out of their depths, huge atomic clouds materialized in slow motion, filled with a supernatural light.

Four days later he went back to the same house in Geylang; he had taken their business card on the previous visit. Golden Lotus Happy Massage. Now it was late afternoon and he had taken off an hour early so as not to arrive home late. The street sank into a watery dusk as he walked up to the outer door and rang the musical bell.

The same mama-san opened. Cheryl, however, was not there. He decided to wait with his tea and read the magazines on the tables. No other customers came or went. The mama-san explained that it was the unstable weather. His time was slipping away but after a half hour Cheryl appeared, dropped off by the parlor delivery car. She was dressed like a secretary, buttoned up and crisply prim, in a tartan skirt and glossy heels, a strawberry umbrella folding itself as she burst through the colored beads and showering the linoleum floor with water. She saw him at once; he rose and, with absurdly correct Japanese etiquette, bowed at the waist.

“I didn’t think I see you again, lor,” she said as they undressed with the windows open onto a small lawn. “Shall I close them?”

“No, leave them. I don’t mind the heat tonight.”

A quiet purr of cicadas came from the trees, the wet shrubs.

They felt more familiar to each other, the humor came more spontaneously. This time he forgot the hour and relaxed into their play, and when it was done he saw that three hours had passed. She said it didn’t matter, it was not a busy day of the week, and they showered together at the end with a slow-tempoed affection and deliberation. He asked her again about the tattoo.

“What if I said I didn’t know?” she said, smiling. “I just saw it in a tattoo shop in town.”

“What a strange thing to do.”

“Tattoos are always a whim. Maybe I was drunk. At least it’s only on my shoulder.”

“Your beautiful shoulder. It looks very at home there.”

“It’s a spell, you know — I know that it’s a spell. The man who did it said it was.”

“Why would you want a spell?”

They walked out lazily into the reception area, where the mama-san was asleep in a corner.

“It’s protection,” she said with a mischievous smile. “One never knows who one needs protection from, lor.”

“Not from me, anyway.”

He kissed her cheek and promised he would come back at the same time the following week. His courtly manner seemed to charm her. At least he told himself that it charmed her, that between them there was a quick, subtle bond which had matured with a beautiful suddenness. This unpredictable swiftness had created its own delicacy.

It was remarkable, he thought as he drove back to his office in a taxi, how the bonds leap from one skin to another without any prompting. Like the tropism of plants. He went up to the empty office and called his driver, pretending that he had worked late. He must always arrive in Bayshore in the company car.

Tomiko was still up when he stumbled into the apartment, oddly disheveled and incoherent, complaining as he now always did of the overwork. Natsuo was in an evening dress, pointless in the circumstances (had she gone out by herself?), and slightly tipsy from gin-and-tonics which she had been making for herself. The boy ran up to him and asked him at once to go up to the garden and water the bonsais.

“All right,” Ryu said, quite relieved. “Let’s go make our garden grow. If Mummy will let us.”

He went over to kiss his wife on her cheek. “Did you go out?”

“The card game at the Raffles, remember?”

“Ah, yes. Did the Japanese girls have a good gossip?”

“We played bridge and missed autumn in Kyoto.”

“You know,” he added softly, “you shouldn’t drink when you’re alone with Tomiko. It isn’t necessary. He can sense everything—”

“There wasn’t anything else to do,” she retorted, flaring up. “You were two hours late. Are they really working you that hard?”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“Or not at all — I don’t want to talk about it.”

He went up to the roof with Tomiko. The act of watering outdoor plants during the rainy season was purely symbolic, but for that very reason the boy loved to do it. He was prospering at the American School and his English was now almost fluent. Into his flowing Japanese he would drop entire English sentences as if they were universally understood. They puttered around the bonsais they had set up and then stood on the parapet and watched the jittery lightning ever present on the horizon. He was a neat and punctual boy, somewhat like his father in that respect, and there was something neat and punctual about the way he approached the small events of his life. He took his father’s hand now and asked him why Mummy was drinking so many sodas by herself — could Ryu not come back a little earlier from work?

“Maybe you’re right,” Ryu admitted. “I’ve been held up at the office rather late, I couldn’t help it. I’m sure you and Mummy can understand that.”

“But why is she drinking so many sodas?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll ask her.”

He took Tomiko in his arms playfully and kissed his overgrown mop of hair. He told him not to worry about Mummy and her sodas, or about his coming home late. Daddy always came home as soon as he could.

Week after week, the routine repeated itself. He saw Cheryl every Wednesday night now, assuming that this regularity would conceal his movements more effectively, and on the weekends he took Tomiko to the resorts on Sentosa and to Luna Park. It was, on balance, more or less the life he had always expected to have, if one excepted the gradual falling in love with a massage parlor girl. He had even foreseen moving to a foreign tropical city as a rising young executive living in a luxurious highrise by the sea.

What he had not expected was the gradually encroaching sense of dissatisfaction that now began to gnaw at him at the very moment when he should have been happiest.

Or at least most content. But something in his meetings with Cheryl had accelerated a crisis more typical of middle age. Now he saw how grimly predictable it was. The gaudy, fantasizing romance which had sprung up, but which existed only in his own head, the little lies and evasions with which he made his marriage continue to tick.

It was a machinery which he himself had assembled unconsciously but which had now begun to work as he’d intended. The machine lurched forward — the lies were its gears. Increasingly, he could not stand having sex with Natsuo, for all the increased desire which his initial adventure had inspired. He would think, I can’t imagine her permitting herself to be tattooed. She would never do that. It would go against all her rigid principles of cleanliness and self-regard. That tattoo is everything that she is not. It would fill her with contempt and horror, just as the idea of a massage parlor whore would.

He began to show up later for dinner and when he played with Tomiko he was slightly brusque and more impatient. He yearned for his Wednesday evenings when he was alone with Cheryl on the far side of the city, with the smell of the mango tree coming through the open window. His work, too, began to slip. Mr. Inoue sometimes called him in to see if an explanation was forthcoming. But Ryu dismissed his superior’s concerns; he said the wet season did not agree with him and that he had trouble getting to sleep at night.

“Take some Ambien,” Mr. Inoue replied tersely. “Your figures are dropping a little. Are you worried about financial matters?”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Then see if you can’t get yourself back on track, Ryu. We all know relocation can be a tough time.”

In reality, Ryu had never felt more alive. He bought extravagant presents for Cheryl, watching her face carefully as she opened them. He masturbated himself to sleep thinking about her while Natsuo snored next to him. The lovemaking on the side street of Geylang had become more fluid and indifferent to time, more childishly wild. He had fallen in love.

Sometimes, because he was stubbornly awake, he heard Tomiko stirring in the room at the end of the long corridor, crying out in his sleep, and he would creep into the corridor for a moment and listen before returning nonplussed to his bed. It all seemed increasingly unreal. When his insomnia grew more severe, he sat in the front room looking down at the operatic tropic sea and the empty beach wondering what his mother would think of him now. The dutiful good son had turned on an enigmatic axis; the city had played a delicious trick on him and his jolly old character had begun to erode.

Natsuo was now aware that something had changed. His behavior was becoming erratic and he no longer spent as much time with Tomiko. Ryu smelled strange as well. It was as if his aftershave had suddenly turned sour. One night, during a storm, it was she who woke up and heard the boy slamming his door, and she went quietly down the corridor to see what was wrong. Tomiko was wide awake but lying in his bed. He had been drawing in the dark, and the sheets of paper lay all over the floor. She went in and calmed him down and asked him why he was awake.

“Bad dream,” he said.

“What kind of bad dream?”

He turned on his side to look into her face, and his lips were pressed in a half-smile, his eyes suddenly malicious.

“Can’t remember, Mummy. Something nasty.”

“All right, but now you can go back to sleep and not worry about it. It won’t come back.”

“How do you know it won’t come back?”

“Because I know. Do you want your rabbit?”

Slowly, he shook his head. “You don’t know,” he said.

She scooped up one of the sheets and took it with her into the corridor, then closed the door behind her. To her surprise, her hands were shaking. It was impossible to imagine from where the merry malice in his eyes had come. Glancing down at the sheet, meanwhile, she saw that it was covered with scribbled kanji, but the more she looked at them the less she could read them. They were Chinese, and not familiar at all. As she returned to her bedroom she felt a subtle unease. It was not a variety of different characters but the same one repeated over and over. She folded the sheet of paper and put it away in a drawer in her closet. If it happened again, she would have to see if a therapist might have an answer.

But as it happened, Tomiko’s performance at school was exemplary. When he was at home he sat quietly in his room learning English words on a laptop. His behavior was so unremarkable that before long she forgot about the sheet of paper folded inside her closet. She became more and more immersed in her weekly bridge games at the Raffles — where the ladies played in a parlor as white as an iceberg — and she even began to think a little less about her husband. How boring his stress and their now nonexistent sexual intimacy were. The other Japanese wives assured her that this lugubrious situation was normal. Their men were overworked by their companies and it was the wives who paid the price. Such was life.

“Yes,” Natsuo burst out one night, on the brink of tears, “but is that what I was born to put up with? Is that all there is?”

Reassured in the end, however, she busied herself as these other women did, with part-time work, shopping, and Bridge, with daydreaming and fantasies and books of Buddhist aphorisms. This self-distraction would not last forever, she calculated, but for the time being it was a kind of pain reliever. She organized their household as briskly as she could. When Tomiko started waking up again in the middle of the night, she made sure she had enough chocolate milk in the fridge to calm him down and told him he would stop dreaming of the Chinese character soon. Ryu, she thought, hardly noticed anyway. More than ever he was “detained” at the office, and she knew he was lying.

To compensate for this dreary absence of her husband, she decided one night to take him out to one of the city’s better restaurants and pay the nanny extra to babysit. She insisted that he come home early from work (it was a Wednesday and he had to cancel his tryst at the Golden Happy Massage) and made him cocktails as they dressed for their now unusual night out.

Ryu was in an irritable mood because of the cancellation. But he had enough sense to realize that if his wife was putting on a show it was important for her, and, indeed, for them. Miserable and hokey as it was, he had to go along with it.

They got tipsy from the first drink — a particularly strong version of a Mai Tai which she mixed poorly — and got dressed in the vast master bedroom in a state of antagonistic confusion. She lay down for a while and asked him to go into her closet and pick out a pair of stockings for her, ones that would match her red Pucci dress.

“And don’t fuck it up and bring back something green.”

He went to the walk-in closet and fumbled around with the drawers in a slightly drunken annoyance. Why could she not organize her drawers at least? He had to open several of them, and as he did so he came across the folded sheet of paper which she had placed there weeks before and which she had since forgotten about. He opened it and saw the character, which he recognized at once. And yet, it seemed impossible.

A cold panic swept through him as he stood staring down at the crudely drawn characters, which looked as if they had been made by a child. Immediately he understood that Natsuo must have had him followed and the massage girls investigated. So she had been lying and fooling him all along. She was not as oblivious or rigidly naïve as he had believed. After his momentary astonishment, he felt a new and quite fierce respect for her. Admirably done, he thought grimly, and peered back into the room to make sure she was still lying on the bed. She was probably only pretending to be drunk, watching and observing him when he was off his guard.

That clever bitch, he thought, smiling in spite of himself and refolding the paper and putting it back exactly where he had found it. She’s been one step ahead of me the whole time!

He came back into the room with the wrong stockings; she smiled indulgently and he stroked her face.

“I’m glad we’re going to dinner,” he said. “It’s been awhile — what an inspiration on your part to book us at Tong Le. I’ve missed the old place.”

They went to Tong Le and drank a bottle of Argentinian wine. Natsuo had revived, and he found that she looked savagely appealing in her mismatched stockings and heirloom earrings that had once belonged to her grandmother, a glamorous consul’s wife in Pusan. It was something unheralded. He reached over and took her hand, which was now soft, sly, cunning, sexualized once again. He was secretly bemused and amused. His wife had never scared him before, but now that she had done so, he was intrigued. He wondered how she had done it.

She must have “read” his body language, with a feral intuition, and it seemed not unlikely that she had prepared a vengeance that would be equally surprising.

On the spur of the moment, then, he made a resolution to call off his secret rendezvous in Geylang. He would tell Cheryl by means of a written message that he would send by courier and he would say it in a gentlemanly way. She would understand without hesitation, as such girls were bound to do, since it was, presumably, a cruel aspect of their metier.

He wondered whether Natsuo knew he had seen the sheet of paper. If she did, it was a marvelously elegant and disciplined way of restoring her marriage and chastizing her ridiculous husband.

Yes, he thought, a man in captivity is always a fool ten times over. He doesn’t see anything.

Across the bay, dark with clouds and rain, they saw the flickers of lightning faintly green against the horizon. They divided a salted century egg and laughed about their parents. In his mind, he formulated the letter he would write to Cheryl, and as he did so he became forlorn. This was alleviated only by the thought of the sex he would enjoy with his wife later that night, and for the first time in four months. He thought about the tattoo itself, and the meaning which had never been divulged to him. It must indeed have been a spell, he reflected, and this explained the girl’s reluctance to tell him what it was. Inoue was right after all — it was a culture he didn’t understand, and which he secretly despised.

He saw the ghostly reflection of his own face in the wet glass, and sensed the restaurant rotating slowly, one complete revolution every two hours, as they advertised. They drank quite heavily and a violet violence slowly came into her eyes; his hand began to shake and he felt himself beginning to suffocate behind his collar and tie. So it is, he thought, secrets always lead to other secrets.

Far away in Geylang, the girl was leading another man into the back room, opening the window so that the scent of rain and grass could enter the boudoir and give it some natural life and charm.

Like Ryu, he would notice the tattoo and wonder what it was. Afterward, he would ask her what it meant, and she would shake her head. She would smile in genuine denial and then tell him that she didn’t know, only that it was a spell of some kind, a spell which someone had given her long ago and which she had accepted as some kind of supernatural truth but which ever since had served her well.