Shadow Theatre (23 page)

It was only that one time.

"Rose."

'There's nothing, Shak. Really." I shook my head again, and
I thought I heard her sigh, but then, she said quietly, "Okay."

And we left the gate and went into the house, and we
weren't outside again until Auntie Coco came up the road,
which was shortly after eight o'clock.

N LIKE I I i E \V I N I)OWS in Madam's living room and most of
the windows around the house, the ones in Madam's bedroom had never been replaced (as Madam's husband had fallen ill
while the other windows were being replaced and with the workers
hammering and drilling and walking in and out of the house all day,
it had been impossible for anyone in the family to find a moment's
calm, and so Madam had decided to pay the contractor before the
job was finished, saying she would get in touch with him when her
husband was better, which Malika was sure Madam had intended to
do and would have, if things hadn't started going downhill so quickly, it seemed there had barely been time to catch one's breath).

So the windows in Madam's bedroom were the original windows of the house, with frosted panes and rusted levers and
latches that in recent years had come unlocked on their own on
a few blustery afternoons. Malika had never known the latches
to loosen on a still night, so when Madam mentioned while she
was sipping from her cup of coffee on Sunday morning that the
window near the dressing table had been ajar when she woke
up, Malika wondered at first if it was possible that she, Malika,
had forgotten to lock it on the night before. (On the night
before, Malika had heated up some left-over fish curry and
eaten it with freshly cooked rice while she read by herself at the
kitchen table. Madam had been out having dinner with a
recently widowed friend, an American gentleman named
Nigel, who used to be a friend of Madam's husband's. She had
come home around ten o'clock, while Malika was still awake,
but Malika hadn't known she would, and at half-past nine when
Malika was closing the windows, she had gone into Madam's
room to close those windows as well, which she would have left
open if she had known Madam was on her way home, as Madam
often liked to listen to the rhythms of the night (as Madam put
it) before she went to sleep. Malika would find her sitting on
her bed and looking towards the windows after reading or writing a letter (a page or a pen still in Madam's hand) when she
brought her the usual glass of whiskey. There would be such an
expression in Madam's eyes, Malika would say each time she
stumbled upon this moment in her story. Such an expression,
whether of yearning or relief, Malika was hard put to define as
she shook her head and sighed, her fingers reaching for her red
head, for its resplendent smoothness and its absolute fit
between her thumb and finger. Madam had never admitted it to
her, but it wasn't lost on Malika that it was Madam's husband
who hadn't been able to tolerate any length of a time in a
room without an air conditioner, at least not in Singapore. Ever
since his death, she was no longer required to turn on the air conditioner in the master bedroom a half hour before Madam
was expected home.)

I suppose it's high time we replace them-lah," Madam was
saying, and when Malika looked back upon the morning, it
always began this way, with Madam sitting at the kitchen table
in her green-and-yellow floral pajamas (a hint of fuchsia lipstick
from the night before still on Madam's lips), Madam's long, slim
fingers folded around the steaming white cup as if to warm her
hands. Malika would remember the sensation of being as if in a
book, as if in a scene set in a foreign country on one of those
brisk winter mornings imbued with a slant of light (or was it
supposed to be on winter afternoons that the foreign poet had
seen the slant of light?), as if Madam were a character she was
encountering in some such place, a woman alone at breakfast in
a house inundated with absences. (One could almost hear the
timber crackling in a stone hearth to her left, just out of Malika's
angle of vision, and a dry wind rasping behind her head, as if
outside the kitchen window were bare, wiry trees and the sky
ablaze in a chilling temperate light.)

"Would you like more toast, Madam?" she asked, even
though Madam hadn't yet touched the two slices Malika had left
on a plate on the table when she had brought Madam her coffee
and The Sunday Times (which was lying unread beside the plate,
the corners of the newsprint pages still flat and uncrinkled).

"No, Malika, thank you," was Madam's response, and Malika
could hear in Madam's tone that Madam was preoccupied with
a matter other than breakfast.

She herself had spoken only to break the delirium of feeling afloat on a page, as if she, too, were a character, wandering
on the outskirts of the house owned by the woman at the table,
the woman who tended to occupy the heart of any book,
who dined alone now, on most days and nights, but who had
once been married and surrounded by daughters (before they
were teenagers and started spending more and more hours out of the house) and who used to dine every so often with the
numerous friends and colleagues of her husband's, the woman
who sometimes went out with a friend of her own, the wife of a
colleague of her husband's or another schoolteacher (or sometimes one of Madam's cousins would visit from Malacca), and
very, very occasionally, now that the woman's husband was
deceased, went out on what might be called a date.

Unless they were about war and even when they were set in
wartime, stories tended to revolve around dates, every story a
romance of some sort, Malika thought as she stepped into the
passageway outside the kitchen to gather pieces of handwashed laundry from the clothesline (there were two of
Madam's sleeveless silk-knit tops, one in solid apple-green, the
other an effervescent blue, and a dazzling mauve sari Madam
had worn to a farewell luncheon for one of the nuns at school
on Thursday, a young nun who, like Miss Shakilah, had been
one of Madam's pupils and who would be leaving in a few days
to study in the master's program in psychology at the University
of Chicago in America).

It crossed Malika's mind (as it had on other occasions) that she
had never experienced a date but she simply reminded herself (as
she would on other occasions) that dating was a modern invention,
a modern luxury and, in some respects, a frivolous pastime (to be
enjoyed by the very young or by a widow like Madam who wasn't
seeking another marriage). Romance wasn't a necessary human
experience and the lack of it wasn't an issue worth dwelling upon
(Malika's exact words, from what I remember). Having acquiesced
before she was Sali's age or mine to her apparent lack of sex appeal
in the eyes of men, and to the compounding unattractiveness of her
station in life, Malika's indulgence of Sali's daydreams bore no
reflection on her wishes for herself. No boys had ever whistled at
her when she was a schoolgirl at the convent in Malacca, and not
even the roguish-looking, blue-collar characters slouching over the
tables at Newton paid her any mind when she accompanied Madam. It was no wonder then that she believed and acted on the
conviction that romance lay beyond her realm of possibilities, for
Malika knew no gentleman was going to come calling for her at
Madam's gate, or try to steal a kiss from her at the end of the night,
or send her roses in the middle of an ordinary day.)

"Eh, Malika, can you go to Holland Village this morning
and buy some steaks?" asked Madam.

Malika lay her hand on the apple-green top, feeling the
expensive Chinese silk like a caress on the calloused skin of her
palm. She paused to say, "Yes, Madam, how many?"

"Just two will do," said Madam. 'Two thick and juicy Tbones, or three if you feel like having one today, you want one?"

"No, thank you, Madam." (Malika wasn't religious but she
had never acquired a liking for beef, which she had tasted once
as a young girl, at Madam's request.) "Mrs. Allen coming for
lunch today, Madam?" she asked, folding the apple-green top
and laying it on a clean corner of the dryer.

"No-lah, I can't meet with her today, although poor thing, I
think she gets lonely without her husband. Miss Shakilah is
coming over."

"Oh, I see, Madam."

"Let's also have baked potatoes and buttered peas, with sour
cream on the side, just as they do it at the American Club.
Okay, Malika?"

"Yes, Madam."

Reaching for the blue top, Malika noticed out of the corner
of her eye the burst of sunlight in the flamboyant trees, rampant
streams of gold over the branches and leaves, the crimson flowers edged in shadow sparkling and provocative on this morning.
Her armpits felt damp with perspiration. She wondered as she
was folding the blue top if she would dare to ask Miss Shakilah
how Miss Shakilah had known about the girl in the sugar cane,
and why she had asked Malika about it.

"So remember to buy sour cream-ah, when you go to the supermarket? And check to see if we need a new bottle of
Worcestershire sauce before you go. Jangan lupa, okay?"

"No, I won't forget, Madam." Malika decided that if the
opportunity arose, she would ask Miss Shakilah why she had
asked about the girl, but only if the opportunity arose (which it
would not).

A mournful howl rose from one of the neighboring gardens
as she lay the blue top on top of the apple-green (a howl unlike
that of any dog or cat, Malika would muse later when the memory returned swollen with other, wilder sounds, later when
uncertainty flowered gasping and sputtering into a conundrum
of meaning and the seething echo of things buried in monsoon
mud lay imprinted on the wall of her womb, not like an embryo
but like the thought of an embryo, Malika would say).

For the moment it seemed a Sunday like any other. Only
the mynah birds were oddly subdued, their presence a limp fluttering somewhere in the air or a feathery brush through the
grass. But Malika was sure she sensed the sharp note of a warble
beginning in the treetops as she reached for Madam's sari, careful to fold it in layers as she lifted it off the clothesline so that
the ends didn't even skim the ground.

She wouldn't remember hearing Madam getting up from the
table and leaving the room, but when Malika turned towards the
doorway, Madam was no longer in the kitchen. She thought nothing of it, however, when she saw that the plate of toast was empty
and The Sunday Times wasn't on the table. (Madam had probably
taken the paper into the bathroom to read, as was Madam's habit.)

A ball rolled out of the neighbor's house next-door and
Malika heard it bouncing along the stone slabs that covered the
neighbor's drain. No child ran out to pick it up, and when
Malika glanced towards the fence before stepping into the
kitchen, she saw the ball rolling onto the grass and coming to
rest by a banana tree.

This, she would remember.