Bachianas Brasileiras

1. Bachianas Brasileiras No.1 ‘for orchestra of cellos’

If you order a frappuccino from Starbucks, the next thing you most probably will do is to find a secluded spot, sit down, perhaps grab a newest novel, put your Ipod on and of course, slowly sip the coffee you just order. That is the magical thing about Starbucks. Although their main selling point is their coffee, most of the customers actually pay very little homage to the coffee. On the contrary, books, free internet, music or even chitchatting are those trivial additions that help to define Starbucks.

To prove my point, now I will like to invite everyone to look around the Starbucks I’m in now. I’m standing in front of the counter, admiring the varieties and at the same time, reluctant to make my decision. In the sweltering afternoon like this, it seems perfectly sensible to order an ice-cold frapuccino. However, macchiato sounds like a better choice for me. Nonetheless, I place my order for a frapuccino because I decide that frapuccino suits the ambience better. I look around me for seat. This is perhaps a less busy afternoon for Starbucks despite the scorching heat outside the glass walls. Then, I see two teenagers occupying the different tables. My deduction skill tells me, they are strangers. Two different men with two very different lives to live in. From first glance, it appears that the only similarity they share is their age.

I choose a table farther from both of them. To be frank, I’m afraid that my presence might displace the fine balance exist between them. They are indeed not much different from me and I’m not much older than them. Funny thing is, initially I wanted to join them, perhaps said hi and shook hands. Now, I’m slumping into the couch and very much relieved that I didn’t join them out of impulsion. They seem inexplicably special. Perhaps they can fly or they have X-ray vision? Ok, enough of crazy thoughts, my coffee is ready and I go over to the counter and collect it.

From now on, I will address two of them as ‘A’ and ‘B’. Pardon me for this seemingly rude code name I have given to both of them. Code names thrill me and if I’m right, special people do need special name like super heroes, don’t they? To my right, A’s mug is half full and he is surfing internet using his Dell laptop. To my left, B, on the other hand, has his cup full of ice-blended coffee. He is reading Times. Nothing I witness can suggest that they are somehow extraordinary in their own way.

I take my macchiato back to my seat. As I walk past them, none of them even lift their head or even move a bit in recognition of the presence of me. That infuriates me. Am I the only one here who is very much agitated? They seem phlegmatic. Bachinas Brasileiras that comes through from the speakers soothes them, but not me. Villa-Loboos’s famous suites that stylistically fuse baroque Bach’s and Brazilian folk songs are very strange choice of pieces they choose to play in this unusually oppressing afternoon.

When I’m back to my table, I continue observing them. A is still immersing himself in the make-believe world of internet and B is still reading his Times. I’m bored by their indifference and so, I take out my laptop too. Once I begin typing something in Microsoft Word, I can’t stop thinking about them. Perhaps I should write about them, shouldn’t I?

 

2. Bachianas Brasileiras No.2 for chamber orchestra

A is the boy who can have whatever he wants. He discovered that since his parents first played Bachianas Brasileiras from the compact discs. A doesn’t particularly like the suites. He finds himself hard to digest the clash of modern and baroque music. If he were to choose, he would prefer someone like Mozart, quintessential classical; Schumann, real romantic master; or J.S. Bach, the central figure of baroque music. A dislikes innovation although he knows innovation is inevitable. Come and think about it, A realizes that what he dislikes is the transition before the innovation. Innovation can’t just jump right through the window of intellectual restriction. Too much of innovation will be dismissed as utter fantasy. That is why A always pities Nikola Tesla.

No matter how much he distastes fusion music, he can’t bring himself to denounce Bachianas Brasileiras. Because this piece helped him to bring the first ever snowflake to this tropical country. When he was 9 years old, he had seen enough of snows to know what real snows look like. One day, when Bachianas Brasileiras was played, he suddenly wished he could bring snows to this country. The moment the idea formed, the temperature dropped, then the snows fell through the sky. The next day, the country’s prime minister declared the state of emergency to fight imminent nuclear terrorism. Too much new stuffs, people couldn’t take it, they reject them altogether.

Young A was very mesmerized by the beauty of the snows that stopped once the music stopped. Later when he was older, more classical music was played to him. There was one that really held his heart, ‘Winter’ by Vivaldi. In his mind, snowflakes with Winter playing in the background would be just magical. He couldn’t find any other substitution for ‘magical’. But, no matter how hard he tried, how concentrated was he to try to picture the snow, he failed to summon the snows he saw when he was five years old. He never told anyone about this and neither could he muster enough courage to put the compact disc of Bachianas Brasileiras in the player once again.

After the snowing incident, he came across with Bachianas Brasileiras in several occasions. Once in his college graduation ball, he was with his date when the hall sprung to life with Bachianas Brasileiras reverberating in the hall. His date immediately sensed that he was petrified. He couldn’t move. It had been a while since he last heard that in shop that sells guitars. Coincidentally, Bachianas Braileiras No.2 was the choice of the ball DJ. The idea of snow promptly came out of no where. Before his conscious thinking even started to kick in, snows had fallen everywhere in the ballroom. Everyone was in ecstasy, thinking the snowfall must be another meticulously designed surprise. The organizer never denied their involvement although they were no less bewildered by the snowfall.

A glared at his date, having hard time to concentrate. This would be the time to show off some miracles. He concentrated laboriously to change the snowfall into a vast field of lavender, knowing his date would like it. And he did it. Everyone suddenly disappeared. Only he and his date was now in the field of lavender. His date was more confused than surprised. It saddened him. Before he could make any amendments to the scene he created, the music stopped- and they were back to the ball room. ‘I must stop drinking,’ she groggily whispered to him.

So much for miracle. His ability only added more misery to him. He was born with silver spoon and he was well-endowed with brainy mind. Every relative adored his brilliant mind. He excelled in everything and his parents gave him everything. ‘He can be a lawyer’, ‘He can be a doctor’, ‘No, he can even be our prime minister,’ all sorts of prediction fell into place since he was very young. And they were quite right about it- he was indeed good in everything; except that very one thing they miss, his ability. His childhood was filled with endless bouts between his ability and his normal life.

How could he tell everyone about that? His life would be ruined the moment he told everyone about that. Assumptions would soon dictate their reprimands. ‘So you are not that smart after all? You use that piece of classical crap to cheat in the exam? How often you use that? What else did you do with it? He could foretell every merciless lambast. Sometimes he was very amused by the fact that burden of expectations can change so much of people’s perspective. If he is just a Tom, Dick and Henry with average grade in schools, he will just be dismissed as a fraud if he ever tells everyone about his ability. People expect something spectacular from him, but if he has something more to showcase, he will be once again denounced as a fraud, along with his past achievements. People more easily fall into the trap of taking refuge in the worst side of humankind. They can’t see past anything.

They certainly are good guessers no matter how flawed they are. He did ace his exam and now he has to face an impossible decision, to fulfill the expectation or to go against it. He was just informed that he was awarded a prestigious scholarship to study medicine in the UK. Once again, he feels the burden is crushing him. He could raise few eyebrows if he ever tells everyone that he doesn’t want to be that special. That means, he has to accept the fact that a predestined path will be his destiny. He will be ultimately ordinary. On the other hand, he has to be special, at least in the eyes of his parents and his relatives. To them, he is so special, so precious. Indeed, he is unique, not because of his brilliant mind. He is stuck in an irony he creates for himself.

Now, he is in a Starbucks. A painfully recalls what happened the day he went to that guitar shop. He was just 16 years old that day, a very frustrated one. Hadn’t he stopped himself from heading to the road of perdition, or hadn’t the music stopped suddenly, what would happen to him? There is no way to find out. Or does he have a way, with the same familiar music playing in the Starbucks?

 

3. Bachianas Brasileiras No.3 for piano and orchestra

B, on the other hand, is too extraordinary because of his uncanny ordinariness. He once suspected that his life helps to define what ‘mean’ is. He is most probably right. Throughout his life, he sails at the perfect straight line of mean. His result is the average or mean of the whole class. Among 5 siblings, he is the third, two before him, two after him. You would also like to call that a perfect symmetry. The clothes he wears are of moderately old because he gets it from his eldest brother. His eldest brother reads a lot, his youngest brother never reads, he reads moderately, not too zealot, not too repellant of books- just nice. If you ask him about his life, he can endlessly and tirelessly tell you everything until you get really bored. In the end, you can just easily conclude it as ‘symmetrical life that is more average than any other average people’ and you can’t help wondering isn’t he too extraordinary to be so ordinary?

However, even a perfectly average life has some kinks in it. B will passionately tell you with clarity that will perplex you. Some of the ‘out-of-ordinary kinks’ in his life are some distant memories that you won’t be able to remember. Only he would be able to remember this kind of trivial matters. You can’t really blame him, can you? He has been leading a perfect average life, something special is always worth commemorating, isn’t it? If you see B one day, you can open up the conversation by asking when did the first kink of your average(tragic) life happen?

 It happened when he was nine years old. He wore his usual moderately wrinkled and old T-shirt and he was not alone. He was with all his siblings and his parents. On that fateful day, his father had been in his particularly good mood. ‘Let’s go to the beach,’ he announced to 5 utterly flummoxed children. None of them had ever seen their father in such a jolly mood. But they didn’t say much, fearful of the sudden cancel of the trip by his father whose mood swing was famously unpredictable.

Hence, they all cramped into his father’s car. The car was a bit to small to house 5 siblings and their mother. None of them ever complained. The trip proved to be rewarding and they all had fun. Even their mother who was normally emotionless enjoyed herself as much as her kids. At the same time, B couldn’t help wondering something was very wrong with his father.  B could tell you in spite of his ordinariness, he has some privileges those less ordinary people will never have- attention. Nobody pays attention to him since he was young. B could just do anything without scrutiny under everyone’s watchful eyes.

That day, he was a bit, just a bit less ordinary. He chose to be alone while his siblings immensely enjoyed themselves on the beach. As usual, nobody noticed that. He picked a spot, sat down, wondering how his life would be if he were at the another extreme? He pictured himself to be under the limelight. He fantasized that he could perform special superhuman ability. And all of a sudden, snows fell through the thick curtain of sky. He felt a chilling sensation on his shoulder at first; then his head; then his right thigh.

He fixed his gaze on the clear blue sky above him. The sky was cloudless and he hated a cloudless sky. The temperature around him dropped but he didn’t feel the chill as if a layer of insulator wrapped around him like a guardian angel. Guardian angel? His mum once told him snow was the guardian angel of sinners’ soul. Although he didn’t quite know what sinners meant, he liked the idea of guardian angel.

Meanwhile, his siblings and his parents were all bewildered by the snows. His father quickly hustled everyone back to the car, ‘play time is over!’ B remembered very clearly that he was literally dragged to the car while he was awestruck by the snows. He kept looking out of the window, hoping the snows would never stop. ‘Why the sea water never freeze?’ B found his question fall into deaf ears. Everyone was preoccupied by the phenomenon.

Now, he is reading a Time in a Starbucks. His first encounter of something extraordinary in his ordinary life still humbles him. People have no idea what kind of life I have been leading, they have no idea, he ponders it whenever he tries to recall what happened next that day- how their car skidded out of control, how their car fell over the cliff and how all his siblings and his parents were killed.   

 

4. Bachianas Brasileiras No.4 for orchestra

A’s life was a perfect life that everyone slaves for it. His result was splendid and he was even offered a scholarship, big time. A fought hard for the result and he was proud of the fact that never once in his life that he ever attempted to cheat using his ability. Why? He has everything he wants. Why bother to fight so hard for something he already has? A has different desires. He doesn’t want to become some world-renowned surgeon neither does he want to become a lawyer-turned-politician.

He wants his life, not something everyone wants.

That is the reason why he is sitting in the Starbucks now. He needs the internet there to search for something, a scholarship. He still remembers the day he forwarded his idea to his parents. ‘I want to study music,’ his parents’ reaction was almost reflexive. ‘No.’ ‘I think you don’t understand, I don’t want to study medicine, music is my passion,’ he thought he made a very poor case. As clichéd as his argument went, his parents rebutted almost spontaneously, ‘you think the life out there,’ they pointed at the front windows, ‘is a bed of roses?’ ‘Do you know how materialistic the world out there? You can’t possibly hope to make a living out of some crappy reggae bars you are going to play in.’

The rest of the arguments were as banal as soap operas. But, it did happen. A’s parents were as astute as ever. ‘You all will regret,’ he ended their heated argument with a really hard bang of his room door. Is always an uphill task to argue levelheadedly with his parents when they do have their point. A let himself fall on his bed in frustration. How he wished he could change their mind… the music, the brazillian, Bachinas Brasileiras… the ideas came in fragments. No, B promised to himself that he wouldn’t succumb to the temptation of his ability.

‘You think you can change your parents’ mind?’ That is the burning question that has been languishing him. He feels weak. The sense of hopelessness descends unexpectedly when he is browsing the net. The search result isn’t promising. The frustration of powerless against his own life rolls like a snowball, it’s getting bigger and the urge of using his ability grows incessantly pressing. Throughout his life, he has no control of his life, he thinks to himself. He doesn’t get to choose. Who gets to choose? No, he has to have choices.

Without any prior warning, low rumbling of cellos and solitude violin is omnipresent in the Starbucks. It is simple and he asks inaudibly, ‘what’s this song?’ Circumstantially, a very muffled answer occurs to him- Bachianas Brasileiras No.4. He isn’t terribly thrilled by the answer. But something terrific is brewing, he just knows. The answer he just obtained was an abstract answer. Did he finally manage to summon an idea?   

A reminisces his bitter incident in the musical instrument shop. He never told anyone about what he hoped to become one day to come. How could he tell his parents he always wants to become a guitarist instead of some bigshot doctor or lawyer? The moment he stepped into the shop, he heard Bachianas Brasileiras No.2. He couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he started thinking about something. How about bringing Jimi Hendrix to the guitar shop? And pop, the legendary guitarist was there. That was his first ever conscious attempt. How about Villa-Loboos, the composer of Bachianas Brasileiras? No, it would be too creepy to summon someone that was dead. Then he thought of something else. A concept, to be more precise. He has been summoning concrete and real objects in his whole life. He toiled with the idea of summoning something more abstract, let’s say his future. It turned out not an effortless task.

It was harder than he could imagine. Partly because he was reluctant to see his future, partly because he had doubts. Why sudden urge to look into the future which would be possibly perilous? He fled from the shop, never looked back.  

Now, he is still in that Starbucks, with Bachianas Brasileiras playing in the background. Again, future is within his grasp but does he have the courage to move forward?

 

5. Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 for voice and 8 cellos

B was orphaned 7 years ago. Just when he was expecting a sharp abrupt turn to his ordinary life, he was coerced back to his average-ness. He again found himself to be the perfect balance in his new home. His foster parent was now his unmarried aunty. His aunty put him in the another school in which he once again became an average student. His ranking was still 25^th in the class of 49 students, 24 before him, 24 after him, no more no less.  

He continued to live in the way he was. It never occurred to him that he was perhaps able to change. He just wanted to live ordinarily. It didn’t matter to him whether he could ever achieve anything magnificent. Nothing half as dramatic as the snows that orphaned him ever dawned on him after that incident. It was true that he didn’t want to be a standout. He detested it, as a matter of fact. The only time something out of ordinary happened to him, he lost everything he had.

So, he continued to live like any normal individual for another 7 years until the day he officially graduated from his high school, with average grade that would bring him no where. University would be a tall order for him. But he was not ready for the baptism of the society. What his aunty said now made a lot of sense, ‘you are too good to hit the street.’ After so many years, for once, he hoped his life could be little less ordinary. A higher grade would do. Sadly, reality worked in its mysterious way.

It was on the graduation ball that he realized he ought to be someone special, not someone that forgettable or someone that negligible. He went to the ball, alone. He didn’t have a date and he never wanted to have one. His high school years had been years of solitude. He hardly had friends and he was always seen alone during recess. When the class finished, he would be among the first to go back. Club activities were not cup of his tea. He did join some, as a normal member. Careful he was, not to show any enthusiasm when he joined any activities. Sometimes, he found himself running of excuses to defend himself. He brought all the ordinariness to himself.

Nonetheless, he did show up for the ball, to his classmates utter amazement. ‘Look at you, you are here,’ one of his few friends, Dan nearly dropped his jaw when he first saw him showing up with a suave tux. ‘Nice tux,’ he heard that compliments far too often that night. He began to suspect something was again, quite wrong. Uneasiness crept on his skin and the Goosebumps shunted him straight to the washroom. He could no longer stand the ball. He shut himself inside the washroom and let the turbulent emotion to overwhelm himself.

Then something magical thing happened.  Somebody outside the washroom shouted, ‘Look at the snows! My god…’ Reluctantly, he dragged himself out from the washroom and he was instantly awestricken. The same snow he saw 7 years ago, the same texture, the same coldness… Everyone had gone insane with the snowfall except him. He found himself slowly walking to the middle of the dance floor. From there, he scanned the whole hall from that vantage point. His classmates and other students all stopped moving. They were dumbfounded.  

Soon after he regained his full consciousness, a fear that was so surreal engulfed him. ‘What am I going to lose this time?’ He didn’t have much thing to lose after all but he was not sure whether he could take another big blow. Panic, like a fleeting white flash, seared through his whole body, shivering him. People might not notice but he knew he was shivering like someone with extremely high fever.

He wanted to flee from the ball and he saw a couple who danced rigidly. The girl looked confused and the guy was totally lost in his own world. Most awkward dance B had ever seen in his whole life. It was unbelievable to see those two still could dance in spite of all the ridicules. B reasoned, ‘they have no of the significance of this snow. Of course they feel nothing.’ He pushed back the crowd ahead of him to reach the exit. Once he was outside the hotel, he inhaled deeply.

What will happen to me this time?

Now, he is still in that Starbucks. Suddenly, the guy in front of him looked so familiar. The guy in the ball, the epiphany shivered him, not because of the fear. He was thrilled. Finally…

 

6. Bachianas Brasileiras No.6 for flute and bassoon

Surprisingly, both of them are very pale now. A covers his face with his palms. B is shivering with fear or excitement that makes his face paler than ever. I have been here, observing them for a very long time. My macchiato has turned cold and it is just too awful to drink now. I have been half-heartedly typing something on Microsoft Word but the truth is, I have been watching them closely.

B has stopped flipping his magazine since 10 minutes before. A has been hiding behind his palms for exactly 7 minutes 23 seconds and still counting. Something big will be happening here, right here. I wish I’m half as special as them so that I know what they think right now.

How is it to feel? No, it will be imprudent and impolite. Asking them risks exposing myself and inquiring too much will be a rude intrusion to other people’s privacy. I refuse to be known, like flute and bassoon. Flute and bassoon are always hidden, especially in a symphony. You can hardly hear any flute or bassoon when all the other instruments are played at full volume. The only time flute and bassoon can be heard is when they are doing solo. This is their show. I don’t want to be then who steals the show from them. As a matter of fact, I’m not capable of stealing show from them.

So, I continue to observe surreptitiously.

 

7. Bachianas Brasileiras No.7 for orchestra

A recovers from his struggles. He has been musing and weighing his odds. What if his future is not real? What if he won’t see anything? What if he sees something destructive? What if he can never change what he sees in the future? And he knows he has to reach the final conclusion. God knows when will they change the song again. Missed chance is no better than no chance.

Painstakingly, he tries to picture a concept in his mind. It proves a more daunting task. What is the concept of future? Instinctively, his brain will tell himself what it imagines. In his imagination, there’ll be kids, his wife and friends who are all faceless. He shakes his head in annoyance. Imagination is not what he wants because all the reality will be translated from his imagination. He wants the future projected to him, in its purest form, without the influence of his wishful imagination. He needs to know.

His vision suddenly becomes very cloudy. The interior of the Starbucks has turned dim and it is swirling in an irregular motion. It nauseates him. It is too dangerous to mess with the future. Before he manages to hurl himself out from the vortex of the swirling world, ever thing turns dark.

‘Dr James, Dr James!’ Who is Dr. James? He woke up and very surprised to find out there is no hangover. His vision is back to its normal clarity. He looks around, the same Starbucks. No, not exactly the same. Something is different. The design is quite different and who is that Dr.James? Somebody has been calling him over and over again.

He stands up to see where the sound comes from and he bangs against his table. The knife and the plate vibrate with the impact. Bewildered, he picks up the knife curiously. He sees something on the knife, perhaps the reflection. It is not easy to see one’s reflection on a knife with such an irregular surface. He stares straight into the reflection and he is alarmed. Something bizarre has been seen.

He turns around. There are two beds in a room. A curtain separates these two beds. Those two beds are not ordinary beds. One can only see them in a hospital and it only takes him a while to realize that he is now in a hospital. A stern-looking nurse is shouting straight to his face, ‘Dr. James’. ‘Dr. James, is this your stethoscope?’ He stares at the nurse intensely. The nurse was taken aback by the confused gaze and she apologizes, ‘Sorry Dr. James, I thought this is yours.’ And she walks past him, disappearing into the labyrinth of corridors.

‘What are you looking at?’ A voice startled him from behind.

Mystified, he turns to his back, finding himself in front of a lady he has never met before in his whole life. He touches her face and it feels soft. Without warning, he finds himself now in a comfy-looking living hall. In front of him, behind the lady, there is one television. On the immaculate wall, the clock shows 3.03pm. ‘I’m just looking at the clock,’ that is the first time he speaks since he finds himself in this peculiar realm of eccentricities.

She smiles. What a ravishing lady! He wishes to hold on to her for a longer time but something has changed. His vision becomes dark and cloudy again. Speckles of impurities mark over her face and the wall behind her. They are shattered and he wakes up, panting. That’s when the music stops abruptly.

He howls, ‘No!’ after realizing that he could never touch her face again. He pounds on the table like a madman with his eyes bulging. It takes 3 guys to hold him down. They, of course, don’t know what has happened to him. They only hear him muttering ‘I need to go back, I have lost her’ all the way back. Nobody knows what he means.

 

8. Bachianas Brasileiras No.8 for orchestra

B never stopped looking for miracles after that day onwards. Someone in the hall must have created the miracle. He or she was the one who was responsible for bringing B the most beautiful thing to his life and taking away the most precious thing from him. He obtained a list of people who attended the ball. 121 people were there. The figure didn’t discourage him somehow.

B started stalking everyone in the list. His ordinariness granted him some protection. None of the target he stalked was suspicious of being followed. Firstly, he would identify a target from the list. He would follow them and break into their house. Installing a spy cam in an unexpected corner of the house wasn’t an impossible task. Everyone had an untouched corner in their house. From the tv screen that was linked to the camera, he fastforwarded and rewinded the frames to check out every minor detail, every single frame might convey something and he must not miss that.

Day after day, he was hoping as he was going down the list, he would unearth that someone, who was responsible for everything. But as the list was getting shorter, the chance of finding that person was growing slimmer. He started questioning his rationale behind this. Was he wrong about the ball? No, someone, that someone must be there. How sure was he about that? When he was at the beach, no one was there except his whole family. His whole argument failed to connect with each other if someone were to probe deeper into it.

He had reached his bottleneck. None of the source yielded anything. He even hired a private investigator to follow some highly suspicious individuals. Negative, the result came back. ‘You have changed,’ his aunty commented. ‘Yes I am,’ offering no further explanation. It was true that he no longer cared to be constantly aware of being exposed.

He even called very few friends to talk to them, much to their surprise. They didn’t have to know the ulterior motive behind each call to sense that he had changed. He now went out more often. He started to buy trendy clothes. None of these changes was something he himself could explain. The only one idea was he was not supposed to be ordinary. He would find that person with ability and he would be the famous one. Although the idea of being famous still unnerved him, he was trying to get used to it.

Deliberately, he avoided being average. He sped, he swore loudly, he even modified his accent- just to be the extraordinary one. These changes were all gradual and subtle. Maybe he himself didn’t want those changes. It was the basis of his task that had thrown his perfectly symmetrical life out of the fine balance.

Despite of his numerous attempts, that person was still at large.

Now, B is sitting in a Starbucks, a café he previously wouldn’t even consider going. All the drama was unfolding in front of him as he gingerly put down his magazine. Watching that person who now appeared to him as the one who danced like a mindless robot in the ball, he laughs at his own stupidity. Everything has been so apparent, so lucid. He is the one. He causes all the problems. No wonder he still could dance!

As B walks over to help that person who was now seizing on the ground, he is all ready for this moment.

 

9. Bachianas Brasileiras No.9 for string orchestra   

‘I’m his friend, I can handle this,’ B told the astonished shopkeeper. B moves A to the outside. I’m there to help A who is delirious. ‘You’ve got to move him somewhere else,’ and B nods in agreement. We move A to the backyard to avoid the watchful eyes of the passersby. I volunteer to go back to the Starbucks and get some cold water. ‘I need her,’ A is still in his semi-conscious state.

When I’m back with a glass of cold water, A uses his hands to support his body. A regains some of his consciousness back. B is watching intently on him, crossing his arms in front of his chest. A shakes his head and clears his throat, ‘can I have some water?’ I promptly give him the water. A takes it gratefully, ‘thank you very much.’ He gulps down the whole glass of water and he stares at both of us apologetically, ‘I’m so sorry for what has just happened.’

 ‘Why do you do this,’ B confronts A coldly.

‘What?’

‘You know what am I asking, how do you do whatever you do,’ he knows what he is talking about.

A’s face turns even paler. Any sign of redness has receded in favour of a sickly chalky white. ‘I don’t know. It’s just in my mind,’ A says without remorse. ‘I can’t believe you are the one, after so many years of searching, do you know how much have I changed?’ B is getting more and more agitated. Apparently, A understands what he is blabbering about.

‘Why are you doing this? You show me something miraculous and at the same time take whatever I have. Why?’ B kneels in front of A, tears are rolling down from the wells of both eyes. A looks straight into B’s eyes. ‘Do you know what it takes to have this ability? You will never know the misery. You have to constantly choose between being ordinary and extraordinary. Everyone expects you to be someone but you yourself are not even sure what you have to expect,’ B shakes his head defiantly and A continues, tears are visible, ‘I don’t get to become who I am. You know what did I see just now? My future, a future that is not supposed to be mine. I’m ordinary. If I’m extraordinary enough, maybe I can change it. But can I? I’m helpless in front of the impossible choices lie in front of me.’ A hollered.

‘You know what? At least you have choices. Do I have one? Everytime you perform your goddamn miracle, I lose something. I’m sick of everything you do. I’m sick of you,’ B whispers this softly, avoiding the eye contact with A.

‘What did you lose,’ A softens.

‘The ordinariness, the symmetry, the order, you take away everything. Because of you, I lost my family. I direly wanted to go back to my symmetrical life but I failed. Because of you, I had to search for you, abandoning everything that defines me and my life!’ B is shaking involuntarily. 

‘I’m sorry,’ A concedes. Never once in his whole life he feels remorseful for whatever he has. With this exasperating guy sobbing like a completely battered soul, for once, he thinks he should stop blaming everyone for his downfall. ‘At least you have choices,’ B’s voice dampens his arrogance.

x

I witness their brawl from a corner. In my mind, there is a mind map of how two parallel lines start crisscrossing each other. No one can tell for sure how many times those two lines will cross each other again. Maybe they will never cross each other again. Maybe they will fuse to become a line. Many readers will be asking this question. Why not a proper conclusion? The answer is that simple. I never know what happens to them afterwards. I’m just a random point placed at the point of first intersection of those two lines. They move forward, but I don’t. to them, I’m just another customer they see in a Starbucks; I’m just another pedestrian that happens to be there to help them and witness everything. Thus, I’m not going to fool my reader by creating an alternative ending. A happily ever after ending will appeal to many wishful readers. A morbid ending is more of my liking. After reviewing everything I saw, I convince myself, ‘No, let the story end here.’

If there’s a Bachianas Brasileiras No.10, I might as well write about them thoroughly. However, that is life. Sometimes, just like A, we don’t have control on what we do, because it is life, c’est la vie. Perhaps everyone of us resembles B in a queerer way. We are just victims of being left option-less. And funny thing about their distinctly different lives, the one who has choices failed to change anything. In contrast, the one who is left with no choice, alters his course of life more than he can ever envisage.

But one thing they do share in common, they are both left hopeless in the course of their respective life. Maybe that’s how life is supposed to work, isn’t it?

Yesterday Once More - A Fairy Tale

1.

I had a dream and it was a strange dream. I could ‘see’ ships hovering on the cloudless sky. They were of different sizes; some of them were mammoth, some of the were just microscopically petite (how I saw the ship that small?). Then, they suddenly developed a glowing orange tide on them. Slowly, almost randomly, the orange tide receded, giving way to dark clouds. Now the sky seemed somber. Thunder was brewing and precipitating the eerie déjà vu- I could no longer wake up or I would wake up an entirely different creature, just like Kafka’s bug and Roth’s breast.

And I was wide awake, feeling my heart throbbing in my head. What a bizarre dream! Luckily I was never a staunch believer in dream that could mildly resemble a fairy tale or a senseless images that deprived me of hours of sleep. I turned and looked at the white Mickey Mouse clock on the table; Mickey’s arms were pointing to 5.30am. What a ghostly hour to have such a dream! Somehow, I was not so sure of my trusty Mickey Mouse this time. The playground I could see from my window was buzzing with activities. Frisbees, dogs, pregnant mums, I stared at them disbelievingly. It must be a mistake. I had never slept until 5.30pm.

My stomach was sick with the prospects of I actually slept for more than 17 hours. Pushing open the door, I was sweating profusely. I tiptoed gingerly to the living room, suspecting foulplay. Somebody must have drugged me to sleep. Recall, recall, I told myself. Was my drink laced? No, it would only happen if I were to go to a pub yesterday night. My mind was like wires crisscrossing and shooting current sporadically without any coordination. There was once my friend recounted a real story of being shell-shocked.  A person who was facing an unexpected event would have their self-defend mechanism turned off for a moment.

What benefits could we possibly get from shell-shock? My friend shrugged.

As if waking up only to discover I just slept through half a day was not shocking enough, the moment I stepped into the living room, I saw me sitting on the couch. I was shell-shocked. He or I was tossing his (shoes I just bought during the sales!) shoes and slumped on the couch. No emotion was shown but I was him, I knew exactly what it meant. Tossing shoes, slumping, poker face, he was in bad mood. My depression had no cinematic impulse nor expressive grief. He was in every aspect, a me, my doppelganger; Or was I his doppelganger?

Suddenly, he stared straight at me. I had no idea whether he could see me. Once again, I found myself in an impossible position. Facing myself, as if it was not peculiar enough, I had to reason whether I was the unwanted one in his world or vice versa. One way or another, by all means, I couldn’t help but shivering in a morbid sense of excitement.

‘I had a bad day’ The slight pause in between ‘I’ and ‘had’ was deliberately created to invoke my curiosity. Suspense was his game. He loved the way he pronounced ‘real’ and he enjoyed every moment of teasing my ignorance.   ‘why?’ He sighed.

How could he be so indifferent as if I meant nothing to him? How could he keep his cool when his mirror image was not acting in his own way? I was puzzled by him. Was I that normal to him?

‘I told her, I told her everything, the fairy tale, everything!’ his sudden outburst was inexplicable. I should have refrained myself. Instead, I asked like a caring old friend, ‘What happened? Didn’t she like the story?’

‘You had no idea what that story is, didn’t you?’

‘In fact, I don’t,’ How did I manage to hold my nerve? Talking to myself…

‘It is a fairy tale, I don’t tell fairy tales. To me, they are too morbid. Humankind is mocked by their simplicity and only in fairy tales, morality was nothing. People get killed all the time in fairy tales but… this story just sprung to my mind on night. The urge was so strong. I need to tell her, I need to confess my love.’

She… that was not her name. However, ‘she’ sounded like a déjà vu. Again, déjà vu, the thunder, the lightning… they all happened again! Who was she? She was in my mind but where was she in my mind? Every obscure corner, every piece, I needed to remember who she was. Who?

 

2.

All of a sudden, the strange orange ships and the stentorian thunder were back. I was rudely awaken by the dream and to my dismay, same thing happened all over again. I rushed to the window, all of them were still there, doing exactly the same thing. ‘Was what I went through another dream?’ No, it was too surreal. My doppelganger would be sitting on the same couch if I were to muster enough courage to go out from my room. My heart was not strong enough for another encounter with my doppelganger, not after the surreal dream I had. Was it a dream? The question was back. However, I was more inclined to think so because if I was wrong, then, somebody might have pressed a ‘backspace’ in my life and refreshed my last few minutes.

That was even more disturbing.

Then, I saw him, my impostor. He came out from the washroom. He still looked the same, except he was humming ‘Yesterday Once More’. I should know better than anyone else. My favourite, the only song I would hum when I was in a particularly jolly mood. I couldn’t really remember when was the last time I hummed this song. It must be ages ago because I could hardly remember the lyrics. ‘You should be happier, you should do something to cheer yourself up, your all make-believe stories have gotten into your head, do they not?’ my friend who was concerned once asked me.

What could I say? I was not nihilistic, I was not even an idealist or perfectionist. But, happiness? Not my thing, I inadvertently distanced myself from them. Perhaps my friend was right, the stories I wrote influenced me more than I managed influence them.

Back to my doppelganger, he grinned at me. ‘Tell you what? I’m going to see her tomorrow.’ I threw an anxious look on the Mickey Mouse clock which was still there, 5.30pm. The calendar, one cross was missing. I had a habit to mark everyday I lived through by putting a big cross on the date. Today was supposed to be 11^th May but there was no cross on 10^th May. First thing that came to my mind was, I time travelled. Nonsense, how did I explain why all the scenes were still the same? Why the same dream?

‘She agrees to go out with me, finally. I asked her for a few times already but I was being unlucky for quite a few times. First time I asked her, she had an exam. Second time I asked her, she had to attend a wedding dinner. Finally, she said yes. Aren’t you happy for me?’

He painstakingly narrated all the tedium. I could hear and see the exuberance. But, how could I bring myself to tell him he was going to be heartbroken on tomorrow? All these things had been strange to me, I could hardly convince myself. He wouldn’t believe In me, neither would I if I were to experience this all over again.

 

3.

I refused to open my eyes. It was all happening, all over again. The dream, the thunder, I was on the brink of losing my mind. Another refreshing of my life would ultimately force me to go berserk. I howled aimlessly. The Micky Mouse clock was still on the clock and it annoyed me. I hurled the clock out of the window in frustration.

Desperation, was a more appropriate term.

Without any surprise, I saw him sitting by his desk. He was writing something ferociously. The fairy tale! I suddenly recalled.  Occasionally, he lifted his head and looked at the playground outside his room. The sky was dyed in the brilliant orange clouds. His exultance was reflective in the eccentric colour of clouds. What exultance? The fairy tale?

I wished I could surreptitiously steal a view on the story he was working on. Just before I was about to do that, he turned to me with a worried look on his face. The same face I grimaced at when it appeared behind the mirror. Behind the mirror, the face with its mouth opened, eyes wide, sweat crystallized on the forehead- they were all perfect testimonial of an infatuated heart.

He had tons of worries, the absurd ones, the groundless ones.

Without totally denouncing his paranoia, I advised him to take the middle way. Be nice to her, be the one she needed, be there for her… I was good in assuring him everything would be alright but ultimately, I was him. The worries were gnawing in me too. She, was a shapeless and formless apparition to me. But he didn’t know that, he assumed I knew her well; maybe I did, just that my memory failed me, at this crucial moment.

‘Why are you writing this?’

‘12^th May is her birthday, I want to tell her this, I think it’ll be a perfect story for her. I think she will be touched,’ he beamed.

His optimism touched me. For a moment, I thought he was going to succeed and 12^th of May would be altogether a different ending. The shoes wouldn’t be tossed and he wouldn’t be talking to a stranger who turned out to be himself. The story was on the desk. Somehow, without looking at it, I was convinced. She would be touched.

And I realized I had too much ‘would’, ‘could’ and ‘should’ in my own wishful thinking. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, three blind mice.

I no longer argued with the rational. The irrationality surrounding me no longer troubled me. Perhaps, I had grown used to it or perhaps, I was just very obsessed with his soon-to-be failure. As he continued scribbled down his final thought, I watched from far.

‘Why you want to tell her this story?’

He was startled. ‘I don’t know, she is different. I want to tell her that. She never gives me any hint but we can talk for whole day long. Tell me, can I be mistaken?’

No exactly an answer to my question. At least, one thing was confirmed. He was indeed a replica of me. Or he was just an ordinary infatuated teenager? No reason to fall in love, yet, believing in a reason that never existed with a conviction so strong that would tear him apart if he were to be rejected- he picked up the sign of falling in love.

Naïve, childish, impulsive, three blind bats.

 

4.

‘I thought bats are blind naturally?’

‘Does that mean men are blind naturally?’

‘Love is blind naturally.’

‘Love is naïve, childish and impulsive?’

‘Don’t you know that?’

Then the orange ships marched in, I was awake, with hair plastered to my sweaty forehead. He was not In the room. He was not in the living room when I went out to see what was awaiting me out there. No surprise and should I consider this as a different type of surprise?

The dreams had left me pretty much dehydrated. And dehydration made me drowsy. I sat down on the couch, thinking of all the possibilities. The absence of him made me nervous. I was partly afraid of he would suddenly appear out of no where and was not entirely relieved either if this was not a part of my ‘refreshed’ dream. ‘Yesterday Once More’,  what was the significance of the song?

The calendar hung on the wall seemingly foretold everything, including the significance. It was 18^th of March- my birthday. Was I going through another birthday? Which birthday was it? The 2008 one or the 2009 one or the even earlier ones?  

Somebody was knocking the door of the apartment.

I was cross because my thought was disrupted. Who was the one who knocked the door? I decided whoever that person was, he/she was definitely not him. Wouldn’t he have the key to his apartment (technically my apartment also)?

Realizing the whole new probability, I weighted two possibilities. 1. It was a prank. 2. She was the one.

I opened the door slowly, half-expecting she would be standing in front of me. How would I know she was the one? No way to prove it nor to disprove it. Juggling such a variety of mixed thoughts was quite a headache. And it number my response. How did I know?

Because she was standing there, right in front of me the moment I opened the door.

I was shell-shocked for the second time, though the magnitude must be lower. I still could instinctively welcome her to my place. I still could mutter some mumbo-jumbos- which clearly made sense to her. She said something and I replied something else. We both smiled, though all of them didn’t really register in my mind. It was all reflex.

Hence, I couldn’t really describe her. Was she petite? Did she have an alluring figure? Was her hair black or brown? If my friends were to be here to witness everything, they must be laughing at my apparent state of autonomicity. ‘How can you fail to notice her hair?’ they would say.

I poured her something. I told her something. And now I discovered I was facing the mirror in my bathroom. The person behind the mirror was in every aspect, a quintessential me. ‘Clear your mind, ask the important ones, skip the miscellaneous,’ who was talking to whom?

I must ask her.

She was flipping through The Economist scattered haphazardly on the round table when I came back to the living room. There’s clarity in her eyes, eager to learn about me, eager to strike a conversation, eager to gain control. ‘Do you like yachts?’, ‘The orange one,’ she was taken aback by my question. Clearly, she didn’t expect me to ask a question first.

‘How do you know I like yachts? Orange is a strange choice, but it’ll be quite a stand-out if an orange yacht is anchored with other yachts.’

‘ Have you been to one before?’

‘No’

‘ Why you like them?’

‘ You are acting weird today.’

‘Answer me’

‘Hmm… they were once in my dream.’

‘What kind of dream?’

‘It was kind of silly but I dreamed of I was on a yacht with thousands maybe million of perfumes around me.’

‘Thousands? How did they smell like? It must be one hell of cocktail.’

‘No, they smell just like here.’

‘Here? I don’t understand, there’s no perfume here.’

‘ Don’t you realize we are surrounded by millions of scents all the time?’

‘You like perfumes?’

‘You are asking a lot.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yeah, talk about yourself. Why didn’t you say hi to me this morning in the campus?’

‘I didn’t? I thought I said hi to you and even told you about my birthday?’

‘No you didn’t, I’m sure about that.’

‘How did you find out about my birthday?’

‘Why are you at home during your birthday? Expecting someone?’

‘Are you here to celebrate for me?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why are you here if you are not here to celebrate?’

‘Just come by to meet my new friend.’

‘We are friends?’

‘More than that?’

‘What do you mean by more than that?’

‘More than you wishful thinking.’

‘What wishful thinking?’

‘About me.’

‘About you what?’

‘About how I like yachts and perfumes.’

‘I’m confused.’

‘Me too.’

‘Would you like to, you know, swing by and be my guest?’

‘That’s very generous of you. I guess I will see you more often?’

‘I think we are throwing each other too many questions.’

‘Are we?’

‘I think so, another question from you.

‘No question next time.’

‘Seriously?’

‘See, another question.’

 

5.

Now I realized those ships in my dream were yachts. Old habits died hard. I had been calling them yachts since I was young and no matter how my mother tried to correct me, it’s hard to change. Orange yachts, lots of them were in my dream. They were on the sky and the sky was instantly dyed orange. I tried to close my eyes; the ray was too glaring. My eyes were closed in my dream. So, what could be so glaring until I felt like losing my eyesight?

The thunder roared and soon the yachts dispersed. The wind was too strong for them.

Ceiling fan was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. Mickey mouse clock was the second thing I saw. 5.30pm. The calendar was the third thing I would like to see. It showed 12^th of May when I stepped into my living hall. A huge tide of relief  overwhelmed me. It’s now all over. No more doppelganger, no more endless fear of facing myself, no more ‘she’.

She?

She was completely out of my mind until the haunting images of the dream dragged her back. 12^th of May, 5.30pm, I ought to do something, something that sounded to eerily familiar to me. Reminder, yes, I kept a reminder. I ransacked my room and my study table for that piece of reminder. And I found it, right underneath ‘The Art Of Yachting’.

5.40pm- pick up her gift from the shop

6.30pm- meet her.

Her gift?

Yacht was way beyond me. I couldn’t have bought her a yacht. It must be something else. I found myself pacing in obvious irritability, trying very hard to remember. What gift? Another question from me. My head was overdriven by information and the couch suddenly looked so tempting to me. I slumped on the couch, musing about how I came to lose my memory. No, I didn’t. I once told a friend, ‘it’s all in your mind, it’s just a matter of whether you can remember.’

I was sure I didn’t forget.

Suddenly, my saturated mind was intruded by an untimely thought. Didn’t I look exactly like the ‘him’ I witnessed in the dream? Depressed, worried, jumpy… ‘Think like him,’ I tried to condition myself to think like him as if I was not him in the first place.

The story!

How could I forget the single most crucial link? I rushed into my room and flipped open ‘The Art Of Yachting’. A piece of paper dropped out. The story, my story, my story for her... my promise.

 

Once upon a time, there was a young man living alone in a humble hut. One day, a young girl passed by his hut and the moment he saw her, he was completely in love with her. He swore to everyone he met that the girl was the most beautiful lady he had ever met in his whole life. But, he never saw that girl again. All she left him, was a petal of flower. The scent of the flower, strangely enough, ever faded. It was the magic flower, he thought.

One night when he was asleep, suddenly an old man came to his dream. ‘I’m the father of that girl. In order to marry her, you have to complete three tasks. Firstly, you must buy the most expensive gem in the World for her. Secondly, you must build a house for her on the most dangerous cliff in the World. Thirdly, you must live in there and wait for her.

The first task, to him, was the easiest. He worked hard for 20 years in a nearby mill and when he amassed enough fortune, he bought the biggest ruby in the World. The second task was tricky. He thought all by himself, there  was no way for him to build a house on the steepest and the most dangerous cliff in the World. But, with enough courage and perseverance, he finished building that house in another 20 years.

The third task, which was supposed to be the easiest, turned out to be the hardest of all tasks. Everyday, he was eagerly waiting for her to come back to him. Another day went by, another disappointment added. Nonetheless, he waited for another 20 years. His love for her never changed and wavered. He swore to himself that he would wait for the one who brought that heavenly scent to his life.

One day, the old man in his dream 60 years ago suddenly appeared at his doorway. The old man didn’t seem to change a bit but the young guy was now a frail and old man already. The old man said to him, ‘congratulations on completing your tasks, you shall now have my daughter’s hands.’ Then the young girl appeared in front of him. She also didn’t change a bit.

He was very sad. He was no longer young but the girl was still young. ‘I can’t marry her,’ he said, ‘I’m too old for her.’ The old man laughed, ‘do you know why I set all the tasks for you?’ He shook his head.

‘A guy doesn’t have to be rich as long as he is willing to spend for the one he loves dearly. A guy doesn’t have to be strong as long as he is willing to carry the one he loves dearly and be the one for her all the way. A guy doesn’t have to be immortal as long as he is willing to wait for the one he loves dearly.’

‘You are the right one for my daughter,’ as the father of the girl said that, the old man was turned into a young guy once again. He was overjoyed. He lives happily with the girl happily ever after.

 

The perfume. Mystery solved, the gift is a perfume! A perfect testimonial of love.

Such a simple fairy tale! There was only one thing in my mind now, I must tell her that. No more questions, no more careful calculations, no more searching for signs and hints. I must and would tell her everything.

As I held the paper close to my chest, I could see the yachts once again. Orange ones. The thunder was not in my sight. For once in my whole life, I felt the optimism caressing my skin, warming my heart, soothing my injured soul, once again. For once, I believed.

Another me must be watching me from far and I was sure, he could feel the happiness too. There would be a smile on his face.

A Fairy Tale: She

She is coming, too soon, too abrupt.

Her apparition is an anticipated surprise.

I bow before her, I lean on her,

And I tell her a fairy tale.

That's the end of our fairy tale.

Fairy tale that's devoid of all its vital innocence.

We are becoming aware.

We stop moving, in awe of the fairy tale.

She knows.

Though her knowledge is not my wisdom.

Her riddles defeat me.

And she knows.

We are drifting apart and the fairy tale,

Repeats itself all over again,

Perhaps it's time for me,

To outgrow fairy tales.

And They Speak

Like a lotus without roots that floats with the flow. – A Chinese Idiom

 

1. The Magical House Speaks

 

I just bought a magical house and moved in one month ago. Magical? My friends were suspicious. The last time they heard of this word, ‘magical’, was in a cinema while they were watching a movie, a cartoon to be precise. They house spoke to me the moment I stepped on its lawn. His voice was husky, restrained. I figured the house hadn’t spoken for quite some time.

 

                Magical magical magical,

                Ding dong ding dong,

                I speak, I sing, I chant,

                Oh, torment me with your presence,

                Your presence is a venom,

                Quick it is, silence departed.

                Magical magical magical.

 

I concluded that the house did welcome my presence. He liked rhetoric, he liked the ironies. How did I know? Later on, someone would tell me this, or something? ‘When was the last time he spoke?’ I inquired cautiously, careful not to raise any suspicious eyebrows of the inhabitants in the house. The someone, the something.  Let’s denote the unknown something/someone with an X first. X sunk into deep muse. I slowly sipped the coffee I brewed for no one but myself.

 

‘The day he was cursed. Curse, how terrible, how terrifying! How did he even survive!’ x’s replied was pregnant with uncertainties. My dear reader, I shall depart from the main conversation I had with x for while. I felt the necessity to describe X to you. Without any description, any move to convince you with X’s story would be ultimately futile.

 

I learnt my lessons from my friends who discounted my story with ‘Neh, you are blabbering’. I couldn’t really blame them, could I? X was a soloist. X was alone. X fed on solitude. X slept on single bed. X only played The Pictures of the Exhibition by Mussorgsky. X only read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. X had no friends and X was not the one who cursed the magical house. ‘Curse is a strong word, way too strong,’ he regretted uttering those harsh words in front of me. The house was magical, X knew that. No wonder certain degree of respect was displayed, although I had no idea whether X was being sincere or polite.

 

‘What so magical about this house?’ I asked that despite of the fact that the house did just speak to me. X broke into a radiant grin, ‘You are sly, aren’t you?’ Another lesson learned, X was not someone I should fool around with. X was way too smart for me. The house I lived in was a magical house. Regardless of anything, I must explore it on my own. X implied it quite clearly on our first encounter. I turned the door knob and X was right behind me, gave me a big fright. X introduced me to the magical house and what did he say to me?

 

Lotus and Mussorgsky.

 

Exactly, it’s the hint to decipher every mystery about this magical house who refused to reveal anything except the poem I heard. Lotus and Mussorgsky, Gosh, I was so inspired to unearth the truths. But I had to cautious enough not to show my excitement on my face. X was observant and X would know my secret. From now on, I knew I should keep a secret.

 

 

2. And the cuckoo clock speaks

 

Slowly, swiftly, I murder everyone

With my patience, with my determination

When the darkness descends, when the air mystifies,

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

I’m the one, the only one.

 

‘He is old, very old indeed,’ X whispered to me. X went on with the history of the cuckoo clock. How could I tell X that I was not interested with this maroon cuckoo clock which was not even accurate? My mind was saturated with lotus and Mussorgsky and what were the hints behind them. I hardly listened to anything said by X but out of courtesy, I nodded every time he seemed to seek an assurance from me.

 

‘The man who cursed this house bought this clock to replace his old clock which was always slower than the actual time,’ X roused my curiosity with the mention of the ‘curse’. The word now seemed peculiar to me because we were not living in a magical world. Realism dictated our world. But wait, I just heard the cuckoo clock chanting effortlessly in my presence. I was confused.

 

The cuckoo clock was hung on the wall, near the dining hall by the previous tenant who cursed the magical house. He liked the cuckoo clock so much and it’s definitely the love at first sight. He saw it in a shopping mall and it would cost him a bomb. Without realizing how exorbitant it was, partly because the madness of love had taken over him, he bought it using his credit card. ‘I was later told that that guy’s father own thousands hectares of palm oil plantation,’ X continued with a strange admiration and the tenderness of X’s gaze innervated me.

 

He cleaned the clock regularly. Unlike what I saw right now, the clock was sparkling immaculate last time. The wood body was constantly polished. The glass wall was meticulously wiped by the tenant. Partly because of his love to everything his father disapproved of, partly because of his lover, partly because of his love at the first sight, he was found too obsessed with the cuckoo clock. ‘He stayed up late to accompany it and he told me because the clock hates solitude,’ X’s indifference, again, was spine-chilling.  

 

His father, on the other hand, hated this clock. The house which was magical, in his father’s eye, didn’t really go well with the clock. The cuckoo clock had its larger-than-life aura that the house, his father surmised, couldn’t contain. ‘The clock is too expensive, besides, it’s too big for the house, my son,’ his advice fell into a deaf ear, as usual.

 

The tenant was rebellious. He learned to ride a bike in front of a mamak shop although his father clearly forbid him of doing that. He refused to speak to his father for one month because his father openly criticized his decision for not taking Mandarin in his SPM.  ‘Mandarin is a waste of time! In Malaysia, English is the kind, master it and you are notch ahead. It’s hard to get A1 for SPM, you do realize that, don’t you? This might seriously compromise my chance in getting scholarship,’ he once thought he was born to oppose whatever his father suggested.

 

His father was adamant in his disapproval of the tenant’s girlfriend who spoke no other language but English. She couldn’t speak Chinese or any mandarin dialect. His father was furious, much more furious than when he found out the cuckoo clock. That was unacceptable. How could he bring a girl who can’t speak mandarin home! He refused to meet her. The tenant stormed out of the house and that’s how he ended up in this magical house.

 

X was delirious with joy. I could tell from the story he told. He had no control what he wanted to convey. What did mandarin get to do with the cuckoo clock? On the other hand, I was not really into X’s narration. I was starting to relate his story to the ‘lotus and Mussorgsky’.  I once saw a pool that was totally covered by the lotuses in China. China had something to do with lotus, it seemed ludicrous but, mandarin, China and Malaysian Chinese.

 

I decided to listen to X more since I was on my bottleneck of puzzle-solving. His stories might shed some light on my riddles.

 

 

3. And the piano speaks

 

Raindrop, raindrop, on the keyboard,

Chopin, Rubenstein, Rachmaninoff,

Virtuosos, pupils,

The piano concertos, the piano solos,

Reverberates in resonance,

When the piano player is alone,

In a dark room, with his piano.

 

‘This is the piano, you are right, the tenant bought it,’ X continued, ‘ for countless of his sleepless nights, the piano was his remedy.’ The tenant was found asleep on the piano once. He played good piano. He listened to Chopin’s and Rachmaninoff’s played by Rubenstein. However, he preferred playing Schumann’s Traumerei and Papillons. Chopin, to him was too subtle. Rachmaninoff, to him, was god-like and should not be defiled by his inferior skills. Traumerei was his lullaby, Papillons was his passion.

 

He played Papillons in front of his girlfriend who was a ballet dancer. ‘Madame Butterfly,’ he uttered this to himself dreamily whenever he saw her dancing in front of him. With her robe brushed against the floor, he would be reminiscing how they met each other.

 

‘Danso, danso, danso,’ he murmured that to his girlfriend the first time they kissed.

 

‘He met his girlfriend in a medical college in Kuala Lumpur,’ X stroked the keyboard nonchalantly. The tenant was under scholarship offered by Malaysian government but his girlfriend was not. Whenever he was asked about his scholarship, his story would always be recounted in this sentence ‘luckily I didn’t take mandarin in my SPM.’ Looking his friends, one by one, failed to secure the scholarship because of a single A2 in their SPM certificates. He would sometime, lament for them. Most of the time, he would just sneer at them.

 

To him, there’s nothing greater than the scholarship, the prestige. Mother-tongue could be put aside and again, he was proven right by everyone he met. In Kuala Lumpur, most of the Chinese spoke splendid English, because they didn’t speak Mandarin. Mandarin was like a distant relative, existence was none of their concern.

 

‘They are still Chinese, still celebrate Chinese New Year!’ His father exclaimed in exasperation. No, to the tenant, culture must come second to whatever that mattered to him. He didn’t care about the tradition. He ate mooncakes without bothering to know when was the Mooncake Festival. He didn’t even know what Dong Zhi was even though he ate tang yuen every year.  

 

And his encounter with his girlfriend deepened his conviction. The first lie he told her, the first promise, the first step to his own perdition, all happened at one time. ‘I don’t speak Mandarin too,’ he told her the first time they met. Like a dying patient who was bound to the ventilator for life, he chose to relieve himself from the bondage. He thought he was free, he convinced himself he did the right thing, but, ‘he played Moonlight Sonata’s for the first time in his life the night he told the lie,’ X pressed on C-sharp heavily and filled the hall with ripples of rummy echo.

 

‘Why didn’t he tell the truth?’ I wasn’t expecting the story to be this intriguing and X’s answers baffled me.  ‘Young man, ego, ego, is a terrible thing, a terrifying thing. Do you want to be different? Do you want to be special?’ X was playing Traumerei gracefully and yet, the effect on me was stentorian. Overcome by the curiosity, temporarily, I totally forgot about my riddle. I asked ‘What happened next?’

 

‘Let’s meet our pal!’ he was exuberant.

 

 

4. And the pond speaks

 

                Splash, splash, the frog on a lotus leaf

                No flow, no ripple, all silence on its surface

                Lotuses grow, brilliant reflection

                Like a lotus without roots that floats with the flow

                There’s no flow, all silence, all dead.

 

I threw a pebble into the pond earlier that day. The ripple created by it was somehow no less ordinary than any pattern of ripple you would see in the world. No, in this house, ordinary was a curse. It’s unacceptable to be ordinary while everything was magical. Just when I was thinking about how ordinary this pool can be. It spoke.

 

The clarity of its voice is unmistakable. It’s so distinct that you could immediately tell that the pond was speaking although you had never witnessed a speaking pond. Just imagine there was a lift. You were inside with 10 sweaty office workers. The cocktail of perfume, lunch and boss’s saliva invaded and numbed your senses. However, you could still tell who wore the perfume this morning and had an orgasm yesterday’s night.

 

That was why I was unperturbed when X told me this pond was the central of the house while geographically, it was no where close to the ‘central’. ‘Everything happened here,’ X exclaimed gleefully. “Tell me, what do you think about a lotus?” X suddenly asked. I answered earnestly, ‘I think lotus is the saddest flower in the world, it floats and flows. No roots can hole her from flowing with the flow.’

 

‘Well, I don’t think the ex-tenant had a totally different stand,’ X slumped into another daydream.

 

A night, the night. Alcohol, jokes, junk food, the recipe for disasters. They gathered around the pond, some of them brought junk food, some of them brought themselves and he, as the host, provided all the alcohol needed. ‘Ah, alcohol, what a deadly attraction to every teenager,’ X exclaimed loudly and for a spur of moment, I found myself more confused than ever. Did X even go through that age of endless temptations and rebellions?

 

Cordon bleu, whisky, he didn’t even bother how risky it’s to mix alcohol, not to mention all his friends were drinking amateurs. Nobody really drank that much and yet, everyone boasted how much they could take and how many pubs they went before. To him, it’s all so fresh and scintillating. He never got that much of opportunities to drink. Coming from a traditional Chinese family, the only time he was even allowed to touch some alcohol was during Chinese New Year. The most he could take was beer. Liquor like cordon bleu, he didn’t even consider the repercussions, it just didn’t occur to him what alcohol could do.

 

‘Come and think about it, alcohol didn’t do anything at all. Later in his life, he tried to blame all his failure to that night, to the alcohol while he knew perfectly, the wind of change was already brewing, the seed of revolution was creeping somewhere under the skin,’ X threw another pebbles into the pond.

 

There was laughter, there was boisterous conversation, there were friends who behaved just like him, inexperienced yet eager to break out from his teenage cocoon. He was not quite ready for everything, neither did his girlfriend who was also there. Though cautious he was with alcohol, neither he nor his girlfriend could foresee the vortex of irreversibility. Life was all together foreign to them after that. However, while they were pokering with bunch of good friends, it hardly occurred to them that they were heading to their perdition. Perhaps, perdition might not be the most suitable vocabulary, but, he was sure a part of him died as the punishment of being sober.

 

People said, it was good to be sober. He must beg to differ. Sometime, he secretly wished he was the one who was drunk. At least, when people were drunk, they told the truth. Part of him wanted to know the inconvenient truth, part of him prevented him from knowing what he wanted. He was conditioned by all his lies he ever told, to other people and most importantly to himself. When he saw one of his best friend was not behaving herself under the influence of the alcohol, he conditioned himself, it’s good to be sober. When that friend of his leaned to another equally drunk friend and tried to kiss each other, he sensed something was wrong. His girlfriend who was always the more sensible and sensitive one advised him to separate them.

 

And he did what he was told to do. He asked them to wait for him in his car, he would drive them home.

 

But it’s no good, while his another friend who just couldn’t stop revealing his own secret, while he was trying desperately to separate them in vain, now, he could see them kissing in the car, hands on the hips, threatening to do something unspeakable.

 

He could no longer take it. A can of beer during Chinese New Year wouldn’t turn a girl and a guy unconscious, a kiss meant nothing to other people, but not for him who was brought up in a traditional Chinese family.

 

‘He realized that he was no longer a boy. The world outside the cocoon was not as good as what he might anticipate. A blame on his conservative father will do, problem solved. But, he knew he was running out of excuses. He couldn’t dislocate himself from the upbringing of the culture. He couldn’t detach from life he direly avoided. He couldn’t even bring his eyes to meet his girlfriend’s. As if the relationship was built on a false premise, he felt the chill. He swore that the moment he witnessed all the made-believe world he created for himself falling apart, he also saw the end of the relationship that was full of deceptions and betrayals,’ X narrated in a gusto that drew me closer and closer.

 

Unprepared, he promptly sent them home. His girlfriend was sitting beside him all the way and with those two drunken friends sitting behind them. Suddenly, the girl wept. The guy was partially brought back to the reality and he tried to calm her. Again, the girl was very drunk. She refused to sit still, she moaned, she again wrapped her arms around the guy’s neck.  ‘What could he do besides driving the car silently? Realizing there’s nothing he could do, he attempted to condition himself,’ X paused.

 

‘Again, it’s no good,’ X concluded.  

 

5. And the dining table speaks

 

Testimonial to everything,

I live for a very long time,

People sit across me,

Smiling taciturnly,

Conversing like victims of love,

Love of?

Culture? Life? Innocence?

 

He stared at her, across the table. 1 year ago, they used to do the same thing. Same cuisines, Close To You by The Carpenter, same awkwardness, the only thing that changed was now, there was no deception. Everything was clear to them now. The loss of innocence was the least of their concern, but he couldn’t just brush it away like it never happened because everything stemmed from that night.

 

The night by the pond.

 

However, the loss of teenage didn’t cause them to be less intimate. The alcohol hardly altered their relationship. Yet, like a chain that linked them together had been corroded, they were suddenly yanked free from the constraint. The life ahead of them suddenly looked mammoth and intimidating for them. They claimed that they were no longer childish, they were no longer disillusioned. ‘I will say they are still disillusioned, they just don’t want to admit. Both of them were guilty of what they did, they didn’t want to concede to the fact that there’s a life in front of them. They refused to acknowledge there’ll be more booze, there’ll be more kissing, there’ll be more sex waiting for them,’ X said.

 

I was convinced because I somehow could relate to their dilemma. I wished I could talk more about myself but I found their story to be more engrossing. Hence, I let X continue.

 

They broke up. He accepted it gracefully, almost unbelievably calm. ‘Let it come and go,’ she said to him, blankly, devoid of any expression. He wondered was it part of her so-called ‘I’ve grown up ranting’? He decided not to bring up the issue anymore. What he didn’t tell her (he no longer considered this as a lie) was, those two drunken friends were in a relationship now. The day after the fateful night, the guy swore adamantly that he was not interested in the girl. Weeks later, they were together. Perhaps the girl had forgotten how his hands were on her hips, perhaps the alcohol did all the talking for them, perhaps he was just wrong which he hoped he was, he still couldn’t accept that the World was larger than his teenage.

 

After he ran away from the tyranny of his father, he thought college life was his World. But little did he know was, his own World was modeled after his father’s. The all illusions he had was modeled after things he dreaded. His vision was his father’s, his grandfather’s, his friend’s father’s.  That’s why when his girlfriend proposed a break-up, part of him was urging him to accept it immediately.

 

He was no longer innocent. His love which was built upon a blatant denial of everything he dreaded was deemed unsuitable now. He hoped his girlfriend could understand that. ‘ I pity both of them, so young, so childish, so simplistic view of World that’s much more complicated,’ X showed his sympathy for the very first time.

 

My throat was burning due to over-straining. I was excited. I temporarily forgot about all my quest for truth, the story mattered more right now. I even willingly gave up finding the identity of X. Second-guessing was just not my trait.

 

‘It’s hard to end a story like that huh? You must be wondering who am I, how do I know so much. Tell me do they matter to you than the story itself?’ X asked. I shook my head, the story indeed had more to offer. X broke into convulsive laughter upon seeing my response. ‘I must be one hell of story-teller!’

 

6. And they speak

 

 I could hear nothing. I lay on the floor, looking at the ceiling. The quest ought to be ended. I mused about culture and what it had got to do with me. Then I realized, nobody could really run from the culture. Even lotus had to stop flowing with the flow one day, there’s no reason for me to be rootless. I must be anchored to something, a belief perhaps. Perhaps Lotus and Mussorgsky never existed in the first place. Picture of The Exhibition, what exhibition? Life itself was an exhibition, the exhibition of rude wake-up-calls and blatant honesty.

 

Thinking about all these things really hurt my head. To make things worse, X was no longer here. X vanished into a thin air, just like how he appeared our of no where. ‘Life is always beyond my grasp,’ I concluded. The moment I reached my conclusion, I heard a symphony, at first, it was all muffle. Then, it evolved and gained its momentum.

 

Now I could swear I heard X. However, it didn’t sound like X at all. It’s a cacophony of everything that ever spoke to me.

 

Where are you running to?

Whom are you lying to?

What are you going to do?

When are you going to wake up?

Which life are you choosing?

 

I was sleepy and thus I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was a new man. 

May

Dedicated to Tham May Wan who due to some special reasons, refuse to tell me something important. So, i use this to piss her off, hehe... Call me irresponsible, call me childish XD

Descends from nowhere,

With the voice so thin,

With the motion barely noticeable.

She walks right through me,

Like ghost, like enigma, like reality

When our paths cross, 

Dreamlike intermediate are spontaneously generated,

Reality becomes unbelievable, magical time.

We sing the song of magics,

Of friendship, of life

Converging our path is,

the common path, i see no end to it,

Illusions? Hallucinations?

She whispers, May is yet to come,

Let's toast for the life,

Let's toast for the bets,

And finally, let's toast for her apparition.

Demise

p/s: this is my entry for TheStar short story competition. So do expect a very long story. Hope you like my bold way of writing! At least, it's bold for me

Demise

 

1.

“Why are you here?” he asked, rather nonchalantly.

 

I’m always taught to read between the lines. ‘Taught’ might sound a bit too methodical, ‘trained’ will suit my case better. Curious I am, I find myself often in troubles. Waist deep in a torrent of quicksand, I will always look back at what have I done and how my curiosity costs me. I learn from mistakes while I’m in a mistake but I will forget about it soon after I get myself out of the cobweb of problems.

 

The first time I saw him, I refused to read between his mysterious veils of disguise. However, my habit was like a tireless old friend. He nagged at me and I, eventually had to succumb to his charm, not without struggles in vain.

 

He didn’t look at me while he was asking me that question and I knew why. Because he loved this small town which is on a road of demise. The love his sowed in this decaying town proved that he didn’t want to be a part of the history of this town, long forgotten and banal.

 

The way he prepared the special Sungai Lembing’s fried noodle with tomato ketchup which you can’t find in anywhere else in Malaysia apart from the Kuching’s one which is quite different in taste was articulate. Every step, like a sacred cannon, was followed to the point of meticulous precision. To my greatest surprise, the renowned Sungai Lembing noodle was the material he took least care of. Tomato ketchup, unknown spice or even ordinary egg… Those were the things he attended with care.

 

“Why?” I wondered.

 

I got my answer much later, not because he didn’t answer me directly. He gave me some reasons which struck me as ineffable and inexplicable. I didn’t realize how deceivingly easy truth can be until much later when I was older and wiser.

 

“Same reason why you are here. By the way, you haven’t answered my first question but I don’t need. Everyone who comes to Sungai Lembing has the same reasons, same ulterior motives, same prospects and even same history. Don’t ask me why, look into yourself, why are you here, why you are curious, why your superficiality clouds your judgment, why you long for this dying town, why you want to eat the famous Sungai Lembing’s noodle?” he talked to himself, incessantly and the nonchalance evaporated.

His hands never stopped while he continued his narration, “The noodle, the roasted pork, the mountain, those are not the things you come for, do you? You come here to escape, to escape being oneself, to escape being part of stagnant flow of time. There’s no history and future in the big town you came from. Time stops there. Only in Sungai Lembing, time proceeds in one-way traffic. No turning back, no slowing down. It’s dying. She’s losing her radiance. You are here to for her funeral.”

 

Is there something to do with Sungai Lembing’s noodle? Why everything in Sungai Lembing must be so convoluted? Perhaps he was right, we oversimplify everything in the metropolitan I came from. The history, who cares about it? The future, who cares about it? The reasons, people outside this dying town are not even aware of their existence.

 

“Sorry do I bore you with my theory? I understand the noodle is what you crave for right now, but are you absolutely sure that there’s nothing that interests you about this town. We exist for reasons and from first glance, you might surmise I’m running out of my mind by using Sungai Lembing as the proofs for my little existentialism conspiracy theory. However yes, Sungai Lembing existed for reasons. Pardon me, she still exists for reasons, even though young men no longer find reasons in this town because she is dying. Look at the streets, empty. Look at the shop houses, vacant,” he hardly gave me anytime to respond while he served me another specialty of Sungai Lembing, la kian mee  which literally means ‘spicy noodle’.

 

“I’m sure you won’t believe in me. The streets are buzzed with tourists during weekends and the streets are always jammed. Hard to imagine huh? Those tourists have no reasons, they are not reasonable and sensible enough to grasp the meaning of Sungai Lembing. For them, this town is small and the food is sumptuous. That’s all, superficial and banal. We exist for the sake of the history, not for the sake of tourists who couldn’t care less of the history itself as if it was an oblivion…” his narration went on and on. There were crescendos and decrescendos in his story. Laced with emotions and unmistakable sense of messiah emancipated from his eyes, but I couldn’t take it anymore.

 

It’s too overwhelming. The noodles were indeed highly recommended, the town was indeed small and quiet, the streets were indeed without trace of their weekends’ glories, everything he said was right on the point, without exaggeration and fabrication. 

 

“We are part of the history. We will go down together and yes, not even reasons need reasons to justify itself. Have you found your Holy Grail? The reasons?”

His story ended with that very sentence. That’s 10 years ago, while I was still 19 years old.

 

2.

10 years have passed since I last visited Sungai Lembing. During that period, I went through changes, some irreversible and some reversible, some went awry and some went better. Fundamentally, I’m a changed man. 5 years of med school prepared me for changes and another 5 years in the hospitals morphed and remolded me into a person I can hardly recognize.

 

The sheer attempt to seek for the meaning of compassionate, love and most importantly reasons are laughable. ‘Reasons need no reasons to justify themselves,’ what he told me, ultimately was true. Every day, I see patients in and out from the hospital, some are young, some are old, some are morbid. It doesn’t matter because the moment you lose interest in ‘reasons’, everything becomes a dirt. What I try to say is, it doesn’t matter to me or you or someone else whose conviction in reasons is shattered in the process of growing old.  

 

Everyday, I see life falling apart before me. Denial, anger, resignation, acceptance, all lead you to nowhere but perdition. Dreams fall apart, illusions disillusioned, from a freshman from the medical school, slowly and painfully, metamorphosis takes place inside my body and changes me to a bringer of reality. I wish I can shout out my sickening dread of breaking bad news to a utopian dreamer. No, I’m the bringer of reality and I myself have to face the music. Reality, contrary to conventional wisdom requires no reasons.

 

Why people have to suffer? To make one’s life more memorable or more excruciating? Perhaps it’s just like what my colleague has suggested, people’s life is a dice of fate. Fate rolls dice and when tragedy strikes, bingo! Even his pessimism fails to convince me. What is fate and why fate rolls dice as it it was no one’s business? We don’t need reasons to neither live nor die. Everything is dictated by impulsion and boredom. It’s either you do something really extraordinary to free you from the slavery or continue to be chained to routine.

 

Maybe those are just my excuses to make another visit to Sungai Lembing after 10 years. 10 painfully monotonous reasonless years. I long for the boring man who indoctrinated me with his agnostic teaching. And I don’t need any reason to start finding more about Sungai Lembing on the internet. It’s once the second largest underground tin mining site in the World. Englishmen had set up a factory and numerous mining sites there. Local aborigines and immigrant Chinese from mainland China were brought to the mining sites. It’s once buzzed with a lively clubhouse, lazy stroll of Caucasians, puffs of smokes that spiraled into the thin air, noise, various kinds of dialects. Glories, wealth, sweats are all so foreign for the present Sungai Lembing. Since the mining company went out of business in 1987, even before the local sensed something had gone awry, they find themselves in a irreversible part of history.

 

“He is right, everything is like Oscar Wilde’s plays. They defy conventionality and they are cynical. Sungai Lembing will be created and destroyed in the ludicrous cycle of absolute reasonless,” I exclaimed loudly, in front of my laptop and later in front of a guy I meet in Sungai Lembing one week later.

 

3.

To my utter dismay and disappointment, I can’t find the guy who whispered to me like a formless silhouette 10 years ago. I go to his stall which he used to make his unique tomato paste and he was no longer there. Somebody else has taken over his stall and although same variety of food is served, I can’t believe he who doesn’t believe in reasons and has no reasons to live or die has deserted this place.

 

I take my seat and try to scan around the hawker centre. It has been renovated and refurbished. I can hardly recognize the same seat I used to sit on and had my life-changing conversation. The new owner smiles amiably at me and dutifully recommends me some of his specialties which I tried 10 years ago. I decide that I need not to hurt his feeling by telling him the truth. Timidly, I feign a voice of innocence and order the specialty he recommends.

 

After the food has come, I try a few spoonfuls of fried noodle with tomato sauce. It tastes fantastic and I must confess with guilt well into my congested mind that it’s even better than what I ate 10 years ago. Sincerely I compliment his food and gleefully he has another plate served to me moments later.

 

Across the table, he stares at me and makes me uncomfortable. I feel my private bubble has been threatened by intrusion and occasionally, I steal a glimpse on him. He still looks at me with fascination. His lips curl up in curiosity and in a second or two, a sense of eerie déjà vu strikes me. That’s it! The beginning of the end, ‘Why are you here?’, the philosophical lecture, the painstaking narration and the taunting.

 

As I think I see it coming, and so I embrace and galvanize myself for the impact. However, his tone is mystically different, he inquires innocently, “ You were here before, weren’t you?” I become panic. My body is bare to constant onslaught because I have been disarmed by his innocent smile. “Yes, what happens to the guy who was running this stall before?” I’m running some simple math inside my mind, “Ten years ago, the guy who was here ten years ago,” I conclude with clarity that amazes myself.

 

“He just passed away,” he answers me with vagueness that is rare among long-gone memories and he’s observant enough to acknowledge my query. “Last month, he was found dead on his way home,” he refuses to meet my scorching curiosity. But he is wrong. I’m not curious, I’m shell-shocked. I have been running through all the possibilities, he might be bored by his own rhetoric, he might just give up on clinching on hopes. Death, is something that I never could conceive. It’s too abstract, it’s too unbelievable and it’s simply too distant, to put it this way, I came here to escape death in the city. Never once in my plethora of sleepless nights, with my hair plastered to my sweaty forehead, I related this dying town with premature death.

 

It’s not that hard to sense my bewilderment. He is so observant and thoughtful to let me suffering from perplexing death. “He was found dead after the dawn was breaking by a local fisherman.  Someone struck him from behind while he was riding on his motorbike and caused him to lose control. Nobody witnessed and heard the incident,” he spares me from guessing game by giving me a brief summary which does very little to extinguish my curiosity.

 

  “Tell me more about him,” I can tell my life has started branching out from his destined path. Branches after branches that lead me neither to my own perdition nor my final destination. I can see the beginning of the end in this story. But I never doubt the magnitude of this story, it might turn out to be a defining moment in my life, it might turn out to be another great-expectation-turns –awry moment. I can’t tell and I’m not sure.

 

4.

He was Teo. Nobody knew his full name because he never told anyone. To begin with this story, my narrator changes his sitting position like a fortune teller. He told me that Teo was not born and raised in Sungai Lembing. That means he was not even a local. “He is not a local?” I couldn’t help but to interrupt my narrator with present tense that seems rude and inappropriate. My conviction in this story is further shaken after I’m being told that he was once a medical doctor in a hospital in Kuala Kubu Bahru, Selangor.

 

How on earth does he know so much while Teo was secretive enough to the extent of not telling people his real name. But I keep my suspicion in check because deep down inside, I’m somehow convinced to listen to the full story.

 

Nobody knows why he came to Sungai Lembing. Some of the locals who have been to Kuala Kubu Bahru surmised that the similarities between these two places might be the reason that brought him to this small mining town at the East coast of Malaysia. He was 25 when he first came to Sungai Lembing for mountain climbing. Again, I should be more sceptical on the precise age given by my narrator but again, I disguise myself.

 

He came here again 6 months after. This time, I can no longer masquerade my suspicion. It’s getting inexplicable but his sly smile that seems to extend from his lips all the way to the edge of his eyes suggests the best thing I should do is, wait and listen.

 

Turned out that Teo was forced to stay with the middle-aged story-teller who knows how to puppet his audience for nearly a month during Teo’s second visit. I’m totally oblivious to the fact that Sungai Lembing is flooded every year from November to December. And the sole connection to the World outside this mining town, will be cut crudely. The existence of this town is displaced from the map for at least 1 month every year.

 

He reminisces his encounter with Teo, “It was all started by an unforgiving torrent of rain tumbling down from the sky.” The monsoon came earlier that year and Teo who was planning for another mountain climbing trip, didn’t anticipate the early coming of monsoon. The rain was unstoppable and most of the locals were stranded by the flood. River overflowed overnight. I tried to picture the scene in my mind and it inevitably brought me to an experience I once had on a rescue chopper. The view from thousand feet off the ground was, I shamelessly admit, breathtaking. The river branched into numerous small streams. The roads beside the river were all small streams that branched further more into more tiny dead-ends.

 

Some locals who received the early notice moved out of the town in early November. “The place I stay is high off the river, I’m quite safe there but my neighbors all moved out  It’s not easy to stay there during monsoon season. I don’t need to worry about flood water but everything is disrupted, water supply, electricity, routine,” he could go on and on, recounting his own collection of stories if not because of my anxious glare.

 

Reason is the replacement of an awful word, randomness in the dictionary of civilizations. People dread randomness. There must be reasons to keep everything in order and randomness stems from lack of reasons. That’s wrong. Fundamentally, randomness or chaos is created first and the World will only become more chaotic and random. Scientists of thermodynamic physics proved that long time ago.

 

Same thing dictates the encounter of the man orating intensely in front of me and Teo. No reason is needed. Chaos, in their term, can be translated to the zeal for mountain climbing. His story is like a big mothball, with threads radiating from its main body and now, I can grasp the shape by holding to one of the numerous threads. “I was a hiker myself,” before he can continue, I interrupt, “What happened?” He points to his knees and I nod. “I was supposed to be his guide. I warned him not to come in November but he insisted. I let him stay in my place and that’s how I met him,” he recounts it business-like.

 

Teo was offered to be shipped out of the town but again, his stubbornness insisted on staying here, being stranded, being deprived of basic amenities. He claimed that a hiker should not falter in front of darkness. Now, as I’m listening, I believe he came here, not to hike, but to confirm his philosophies. They were stranded in their small house. Randomness, again, converged the diverging paths of these two lonely souls. One month of solitude, one month of chattering, one month of gambles with reason, they shared more than each other’s stories. They shared each other life.

 

“That’s what will happen when randomness clashes with randomness,” he pauses for a while and continues, “it’s me who taught him how to cook good La-kian-mee.” For once, the story seems to be heading towards a different ending with endless happiness promised, not heart-wrenching tragedies that ought to be retold in business-like manner.

 

5.

“He dreamed of reviving this dying town,” he resumes his story suddenly. Looking through my superficial disbelief displayed on my face, he knows I believe in his story and he understands the reasons behind my disbelief. “With all his pessimism, it’s hard to imagine that he once dreamed of shaping this unforgiving place that’s flooded every year into a tourists’ hotspot,” he apparently understands me thoroughly.

 

But he does miss a point. I’m speechless, partly because of my impression on Teo’s pessimism. The main reason is, why must he be a medical doctor? Somehow, without me realizing, the Earth or the path or whatever you will call it, is diverging, branching, converging, de-branching into Teo’s road to premonition. I can prophesize everything from now on. Thousands of stories of mine, only if I were to modify some parts of them, I will be Teo, I will get killed, I will get whatever bestowed on Teo.

 

Sensing my confusion, my story-teller pauses and tells me that he will get me some drinks. I or Teo or somebody else I don’t know are dying with hopelessness. Reasonless, some people might call it. He (unknown to me or Teo) escapes the routine, trying to seek for reasons that might be found somewhere in this World. Only to find out it’s a dead-end, before he has time to turn back, tragedy descends majestically or stealthily. He dies in vain. I want to ask Teo of his reasons he was seeking feverishly in Sungai Lembing. Has he found it? I believe not. There’s no reason. Randomness cheats us into the whole business of self-deception. Reasons don’t exist or no longer exists, like Teo, like John Doe.

 

Bedlam, I conclude in one word to describe my life. Born to believe in purposes, coaxed to believe in dreams, force to deceive myself into a self-loathing life. I still remembered I was once asked by an interviewer, “Why you want to study medicine?” I replied with my social responsibilities theory. Even though I hardly had faith in what I said, I was reserved in thinking that medical career is everything but nothing. I refrained from thinking about that there’s no reason behind a pivotal choice, perhaps the most important one I ever made in my whole life. “My father forces me into my medical career,” I confessed to a close friend of mine.  Nonetheless, I never blamed him for making decision for me. In his whole life, my father believes in security. Everything comes next to security. “Only by securing your life with a career so distinctive, you have chance,” he shook his head while he was telling me this after I told him I had no interest in medicine.

 

Just when I am running through all the slides of my stories, my story-teller comes  back and promptly confirms my worst fear. Teo, indeed had a very similar altered life with me. We were on diverging paths, only to be united by invisible forces, my father, his scholarship, Sungai Lembing…

 

Teo didn’t have a father. He never met his father. His abusive mother raised him up, with canes, reprimands, punishments, boozes, smokes, mahjoong’s clattering sounds. In spite of her mother unusual way of supporting the family, he excelled in everything ranging from sports to academic stuffs. He grew up literally in solitude. At night, he would be grounded in a dark room because he refused to help her mother on mahjoong table. He had no siblings. His relative deserted his family.

 

“I like solitude. I’m not comfortable with people,” Teo told that when he was asked whether he needed any candle to light up the dark house which stood proudly on a small hill that overviews the flooded river. I nodded instinctively because the moment he grew used to his own solitude, medical career will be his guillotine. Patients come in and out. Some are annoying, some are boring, some refuse to speak, some are uncooperative, all sorts of patients you need to face everyday. It’s the myriad of intruders that came into his private circle that made him miserable.

 

“Teo didn’t tell me that much about his family. He preferred talking about Sungai Lembing, her history, the mines, everything,” my story-teller is pouring me some Chinese tea. “His vested interest in this place actually drew lots of disbelieving look from the locals. Teo later unveiled his plans to revive Sungai Lembing and his plans to attract more tourists from nearby Kuantan.

 

My story-teller suddenly pointed his finger to some green-coloured buildings that stood in solitary on the small hill that overlooks the river. I immediately understand what I am looking at. Those are his inns or motels Teo built. The oppressive lonesome, the dull colour, the design, the same inns opposite of my story-teller’s house, those are the legacy of Teo.  Once upon a time, a medical doctor who is devoid of reasons to stay alive, a doctor who dislikes strangers, a medical doctor had a dream. Random dream that requires no reasons.

 

6.

“Who killed him?” I ask abruptly without really thinking of the logics behind the question.  The murderer is never found until today. He was at large. He killed a man and he’s free. Another strong proof for the reasonless-ness. I was told that he was targeted by the culprit because of the money he collected from the small inns he owned.  He was hit from behind, never really realizing what was happening to him. I wonder silently if there’s heaven, how anxious he must be in looking for reasons behind his murder. No, I might be wrong. It seems to me a bit naïve that after so many debacles, he can still believe in reasons.

 

“He totally loves this place and he’s orderly,” my story-teller inspires in great depth and I think the following story is going to be lengthy. I’m spot-on. “ He came back once again after the flood. I think 3 years later. It’s a very long time since I last saw him. This time, he had all his stuffs with him. ‘How about your medical career?’ I asked. He told me he had resigned from the government. ‘I’m free,’ he said with exuberance I never saw before and will never see again. He certainly had planned very carefully about everything. Actually, months before he came, he phoned me and asked whether he could stay over my place for few months. I said no problem, the door is always opened for him. He was really serious about his plans. Turned out, he had purchased a piece of land opposite of my house from several owners. The lands were owned by few people. Each one of them owned a little piece of land. In order to persuade them to sell the land, he had gone to Penang and even Sabah to convince them to sell him the land. That’s why he took so long time to come back here. After he reached here, the construction started immediately. He was no-nonsense in every detail. He would go and inspect the construction on his own. ‘Where does your money come from?’ I once asked out of curiosity. He claimed that he sold all his shares  before he resigned. How he amassed such a fortune? No one knows for sure until today.”

 

“People here were suspicious at first and grew indifferent about his ambitious endeavour later. The locals were well aware of the fact that even if there’s any result, they might not have the chance to see the total revival of this dying town. At the same time, he wasted no time. He learned from me how to make quintessential local dishes. He even tried to learn how to roast pork from Ah Hee but he was rejected. Ultimately, he managed to convince Ah Hee to roast more pork during weekends, especially on Sunday. Have you ever wondered why the shops here are closed during the weekdays? Because they are only open on Fridays and Saturdays when most of the people who work outside of the town come back. Locals are largely oblivious of his plans. He confided in me about some of his plans. He admitted he was being ambitious and he couldn’t see the future. It’s risky. And he stared straight into my eyes, ‘Tell me what to do? Tell me do you believe in what I’m doing?” He suddenly stopped. A trademark storytelling virtuoso will always do that, stop and there comes the crescendo, everything raised to the climax and the momentum maintained to its cadenza-like ending.

 

“I swear that’s the most despair look ever you will see on a face of young man. You will only see that in a terminally ill patient or an old man who comes to his final revelation. I’m sure you see that before,” he seeks assurance in my eyes. I can’t do anything but nod. When I was still in the medical school, I was taught how to recognize such faces. Because it’s time to offer consolation, offer refuge that might only be found supernaturally, it doesn’t matter whether it’s sincere or phony. “So I deliver my final coup-de-grace, he is lost, I as a friend must act as a friend,” he justifies himself once again, as if it’s going to alter anything.

 

Unexpectedly, my story-teller sighs. Something bizarre is happening. Miracle, some people call it, but I interpret differently. He seems lethargic, he seems guilty, he seems relieved, he seems indifferent, he seems adamant. That look is composite of everything. Experience might sum up everything, but if I were to put it into words. It’ll be the sadistically victorious look. There’s no euphoria, there’s no satisfaction. Only end results matter.

 

“I asked, ‘Why are you here?’ ‘I’m not running away,’ he rebuked me promptly. ‘Are you running from your responsibility? Or, are you running towards your responsibility?’ I never gave him any chance to answer because I’m infuriated by him. I’m enraged by his indifference before all these. I’m angry because he became weak. I continued, ‘ I know you know what I mean. Do you always think you are responsible everything? Who are you? You have the messianic sense of perfection. You seek perfection, don’t you? ‘ Teo remained silent, dead silent. Emboldened by his silence, I went on ‘Do you always feel obliged to save everyone? Do you always want to seek for reasons to justify your failure? Is that the reason you came here because you couldn’t find any reason to justify your failures in your life?’ ‘Tell me, Teo, was your sleeping with strangers? Have you ever seen her doing that? Or, those were the reasons you were locked up inside the dark room? I have questions, please, satisfy my curiosity. One thing for sure, I know there’s no reasons in this world. Don’t smile that! I know you are clinching on your Wilde’s  tongue-in-cheek,’ I remembered I almost went berserk when I saw a impolite smile that curled out of the edge of his mouth.”

 

“I never got any answer from him. Because the next day, he moved out from my house and I was disposed from his memories, for good. Do I feel sorry for him? I don’t know but my faith in my allegations was never wavered. I believe in everything I said to him, though it’s crude and unpolished. He was mad. He felt responsible for everything. Everything was his fault. Unable to get close to strangers, his fault. So he detached himself from his life. Unable to make his broken family right, his fault. His mother lamented on him and he couldn’t bring himself to witness how her mother will eventually die in his arms one day, ironically, mockingly. Unable to make a good doctor, his fault. So, he came here, escaping his nemesis. Unable to make reasons out of this senseless cuckoos’ nest, his fault. So, he was here to search for reasons for everything that ultimately traces all the way back to his inability to reason.  He thought he was a messiah.”

 

My story-teller sighs again. There’s something enchanting about his body language. He is everything but languid right now. Highly spirited, highly inspired, he could go on and on. But he know the precise moment to deliver the final punch, the final push to the carnival-like or tranquil ending. What sets him apart from other story-tellers who I encounter later in my life is his facial expression. Contradiction is his forte.

 

“He went on with his plans. He managed to attract tour buses that came all the way from Singapore. He even went so far to promote the food in Sungai Lembing to the international stage. Once there was a Taiwanese reality-tv star who came here and tried all the famous food here. He even went to climb the mountain and visited the cave. He was quite extraordinary because he stayed with the locals for quite sometime. He went to the wet market. Until today, people here are still talking about this. Many of the locals were so thrilled to be on national tv. But he was totally out of the picture of my life. I never reconciled with him. Partly because he was busy all the time despite the fact that those tourists only come during weekends.”

 

“I miss him and I still feel sorry for him,” his bitter smile will haunt me for quite sometime. And as I tell this story again later in my life, I always tell my listeners that smile was the bona fide defining moment of my life.

 

7.

Later on that fateful day, I went to experience solitude. I went to Sungai Lembing museum and look for legacy left by people who were here before Teo. They were all parts of the history, so was Teo. I also went to the abandoned tin mining site. There’s no one there and that’s exactly what I wanted. Solitude and serenity. I sat in the car, turning my air-con to full blast. I needed to clear my mind because everything that happened before this was simply too suffocating.  

 

I didn’t have any reason to believe that my life was somehow clashing with Teo’s life. Two parallel lines started crisscrossing at each other. I couldn’t remember the precise moment that I lost control of my life. I couldn’t tell for sure the precise moment that I blamed myself for all the adversities. Self-pity came and went away in my life, like tourists who visited and left Sungai Lembing.

 

If I were a modernist, I would continue seeking for the truth like Teo. Reasons existed or not. The end-result was discreet. It’s either this or that. If I were a post-modernist like my story-teller, I would continue seeking for contradictions and the very meaning of reasons or chaos. It’s neither this nor that. But I was neither of them. I was not interested in truths and ironies. My life was not meant to be a metaphor. Metaphor was not my scapegoat. I was running out of excuses.

 

The truth was, Teo was killed by some petty robbers who eyed for cash. The contradiction was, Teo can be considered as the breadwinner of Sungai Lembing. The last saviour killed by greed. Last time, it happened in the Bible. Ces’t la vie.

 

I walked past the old mining sites. The opening had collapsed and what was behind that, I was totally clueless. Just like Teo, I knew nothing about him. How he was killed? Why he was killed? Who’s her mother? What was he running away? Blind rage had surged inside my heart, I felt justice was not served. I felt the reasons were not sufficient. I felt there’s no reason in the world. Yet, I decided to drop the case later on in my life. In this World, I must concede that there were many things I had no control over it. Internal locus of control, external locus of control, I was oscillating in between these two. Should I gain control or should I not?

 

It no longer mattered. As I drove past the town, it’s all quiet. Shops were closed, a corpulent lady was making kuih kapit in front of her house, my story-teller was cleaning his stall. I tried to picture everything that happened here in the past. All was too fast and furious. People immigrated here, people died here, people prospered here, people marked a page in the history of this dying town. I should have a reason to believe there’s no reason for all this to happen.

 

Truth was, I must reconcile with my father and my career. Irony was, no one told me what to do, except Teo whose intention was still like an enigma, shapeless and tragic. I took up my phone and replied a few text messages. Then, I dialed my father’s phone. I made up my mind to tell him everything, not to seek for forgiveness.

 

I had no reasons to tell everything.     

And They Speak

A magical house,

Houses magical moments of rowdiness. Rowdy quietness.

And it speaks,

Word of no one can hear. Everyone understands though.

An antique clock,

Clocks in and out, standing against the tides. Feels lonely.

And it speaks,

Time of no one will miss. Everyone feels it at night, though.

A majestic grand piano,

Piano concertos and string quartets. Soloist still, melody subdued.

And it speaks,

Sound of no importance. Everyone hears its stentorian silence.

And I speak,

Solitude is a magical house,

that offers long-lost comfort to wanderers of this chaotic world.

Heart

My little foolish heart,

No longer beats, because he has a new job.

He listens carelessly, nonchalantly.

He morphs into a victim of killing smiles,

Because listening is disheartening, deceiving, deviating.

Oh yeah, I shouldn’t have listened to James Morrison.

Or, I should have control over my mischievous heart.

Once, he was a tardy heart.

Long before he falls for smiles that frost his boiling veins.

Beat gleefully, almost exuberantly, with rhythm I took pride of.

Now, scattered in disarray, literally and metaphorically.

He is a curious pilgrim of his own eccentricity.

Ignorable pedestrians, worthless friends, they seek refuge in his conviction!

They swear for celibacy.

He leaps in joviality, nothing excites him more than equal peculiarity.

Bang!

The great expectation shattered.

They laugh like crazy men, insane and senile,

Though none of their action is mockingly ludicrous.

Felicity emancipated. My heart then concedes.

For once, he feels like a piece of jigsaw puzzle,

Created but not allowed to join the bigger picture.

He weeps shamelessly. How cliché and banal it sounds.

Why should I be an odd-one-out?

In one of his boisterous monologue, he asked.

That was long before he finds his long lost sangfroid.

Time the elixir cries for him.

People continue to poke fun of his conventional wisdom.

Too bad.

I somehow symphatize my failing heart.

Fragile he is.

Sways with the direction of wind, turbulent in infinity.

Yet, taunts rain on him, incessantly.

How much more could he take?

 

The Second Last Chapter

I

 The Beginning Of The End

I was daydreaming. In my dream, there were herds of wolves chasing a farmer and soon a little girl cam into my picture and hummed a song. The song she hummed was barely recognizable but how could I miss my favourite song? Even though her tune was completely out and the tempo was in disarray, I could still tell it’s “I need to be in love” by The Carpenters. I knew this song since I was young . My mother used to sing it when she was doing household chores. Although I barely remembered her voice, I missed her and her singing. I missed this song, very much indeed.

 

From far, I could see clouds hovering on the sky, mingling with each other and fusing. I could also see a guy who was about my age kicking the stone on the ground. He was listening to an iPod and without any reason, I thought he was listening to ‘I need to be in love’. As if sensing my intrusion, he turned his head and looked at me. I blushed temporarily before I realized he was just staring admirably at the big tree at my back. Disappointed, I stood up, trying to inhale the fresh air but what I breathed in, was the air of still and faint trace of melancholy.

 

And then, I saw the girl. She was coming from no where as if she just came into the big picture of mine accidentally. Gingerly, she approached the guy. For a spur of moment, I felt jealousy welled up inside my turbulent mind. Then, she stopped in front of him, purposely kept a distance between them. Were they trying to fake their intimacy? I didn’t think so because there’s no one there but me, a reluctant witness of the untold stories.

 

They stared into each other’s eyes for a while. They didn’t utter a single word and neither did they move. All I could see were the tearful eyes of them. If one was not observant enough, he or she might not tell the difference between them because they stood so still and every breath and movement of theirs were so coordinated and unison. But, I could tell, the girl was in more pain than the guy.

 

And I also realized, they were not a couple and would never be one.

 

X

 

Shelton

A New Chapter

He told me a story in the cafeteria. We always went to the same cafeteria, not for the food sold there, but for the privacy. It might sound bizarre. Privacy in the cafeteria? Impossible, some people might say. However, once we really settled down, people wouldn’t pay more attention to us more than any Tom, Dick and Henry.

 

Occasionally, there were intruders passing by us and trying to pilfer some details from us. What did they get? They pretended to be contented with what they had just eavesdropped but I could tell the guilt running right underneath their insolent expression. They knew nothing. If they knew something, they wouldn’t have appeared again and again. Apparently, they were still in search of their Holy Grail, our secret.

 

He and I were seniors and juniors in our university. I knew him in a club and somehow we grew closer to each other. Eventually, we went out together which many of my friends considered as ‘dates’. But, I was the only one who held the truth, a saddening truth.

 

He was a good story-teller. What set him different with other guys I ever went out with was, he appeared ordinary when he was silent. Once he started telling one of his vast collection of stories, his confidence flared, his temple twitched and his charm radiated. His stories were always enchanting and if I were to nip-pick any flaw in his character when he was telling stories, it’s the trace of melancholy in his voice.

 

His stories largely were heart-warming. Positive message, he once commented on his stories. Nonetheless, he contradicted himself later by quoting Oscar Wilde ‘there’s no such thing as moral or immoral story, there’s only well or bad-written story.’ I once asked him, out of curiosity, ‘why you have so many stories to tell?’ For once, he pulled out a matter-of-fact expression and told me solemnly, ‘I heard them.’ Why so serious? I had never seen that expression again until this morning.

 

‘Hi, wanna have lunch later? Same place same time,’ I texted.

‘Ok, but I’ve got to rush later,’ he replied.

 

When I met him in the cafeteria later, he had that solemn expression hung peculiarly on his face. Deep down inside me, I could tell something was wrong but what could I say? Told him I felt uncomfortable with his peculiarity? No, I chose to keep quiet instead.

 

He took his own sweet time to finish his food, as usual. Uncharacteristically, he played with his fork and spoon, which was something he never did before. Later on, he shifted his attention to the chilly bottle on the table. Again, he never seemed to pay so much attention on the bottle that was always there.

 

Something was happening, right here, right now.

 

‘Is something bothering you?’ I couldn’t resist to ask.

Taken aback, he swiftly turned to me and his stare made me uneasy. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ on a spur of moment, I thought his normal self was back. His spontaneous urge to tell stories was back. No, he was not himself. He never told me a story with his shoulder slumped like a flaccid gunny bag.

x

Ronald

 The jigsaw puzzle.

She was different from other girls I had ever met. So different until I was so afraid to admit that she really existed. Once she told me, ‘different or same, they are both relative. Perspective determines everything.’ I must confess that the first time I heard this, I was totally lost.

 

But now, I completely understood the explicit truth of her words.

 

She was my friend’s closest friend. They went to the same school, they stayed in each other’s house sometime, they once had a crush on the same boy, they checked each other email and Facebook account, and they were totally different. My friend was a total extrovert and was omnipresent in any function and party. She, on the other hand, loved jigsaw puzzle, writing poems, reading Steinbeck’s and listening to Bach’s.

 

Difference, was the thing that glued them together, strangely. They ate together, they studied together, they cried together when time was hard and they both loved to hear my stories. I was a good story-teller and I needed not to boast it. My friends could prove it anytime.

 

That’s how I began to know her more. In one of my stories, I mentioned about a jigsaw which couldn’t find its way home. It’s not my best story. However, she later told me she actually loved it and refused to tell me the reasons. Eventually I found out that she was fond of jigsaw puzzle and she could do that all day long.

 

The more stories I told, the more I got to know her. Only by coming out with stories incessantly, by luck, I might stumble onto her another untold secret. Then before I was aware of my obsession in telling her stories, I fell in love with her. She proved to be less ordinary than I first thought. The more she revealed herself, the more I deeper I was in love with her.

 

Sometime I told myself that I didn’t really love her, it’s my obsession in secrets that hooked me. The explanation was not good enough. Her smile never failed to lift my spirit, her melancholy never failed to affect me and to put it in an overused term, I found myself connected to her.

 

I was not sure whether she felt the same way but she didn’t seem to avoid me, which was a good news. My friend knew it well, though. After knowing what I was up to, she earnestly advised me and asked me to think of this question, ‘Is she your dream?’

 

Without even ruminating the trick she hid behind the question, firmly and confidently, I gave my answer, ‘Yes.’  

 

‘Make her your reality, not your dream,’

 

Until today, the impact she made in me was still there although many things had been changed by the unforeseen circumstances. Her statement, like a meteor crushing onto the Earth, forced its way into my heart and refused to come out ever since.

 

I took up her advice and whatever happened after that, though memorable, was no longer overwhelming. The impact was not greater than that statement. The reality was not realer than the dream.

x

Samantha

 Piecing a dream

Everyone loved him. No, love would be an understatement which I personally found demeaning. Worshipped would be more appropriate word. No matter how hard he tried to play down the commotion revolved around him, the facts would never be fictions. Ironically, he loved telling fictions and somehow I believed in the made-believe world he created everyday tirelessly.

 

He was not full of surprises. He was boring sometime with his stories. I was never sure of what he was up to. My friend told me his stories were just a tool of his, to fish my secrets. I scorned at her so-called epiphany because it made me sound mysterious. I was not.

 

But I didn’t know how other people perceived me. Quietness was equated to mysteriousness, thanks to all the soap operas, I ought to be mysterious just because I didn’t speak much. To be frank, sometime I could be sarcastic but I didn’t hide secrets. I didn’t have tricks up my sleeve.

 

Playing psychology games was simply not my forte. Nor was he good in playing his little mind game. I could feel a slight tremor in his voice every time he was about to tell his new stories. The tremor was faint, nearly invisible and inaudible. It was there, nonetheless. Was it a sign or I was just thinking too much? At that time, I was never sure about that and you had probably heard of the girls’ six sense but as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t have that inborn ability.

 

Hence, there’s no progress. He continued telling his stories and I continued feeding him as much ‘secrets’ as I could. Like a tug-of-war,  we each tried to pull each other to our side and our relationship was a ribbon tied on the middle of the rope. It neither moved forward nor backward.

 

It’s frustrating and toilsome. Because as he told more stories, the more he made his intention clear. But our relationship was already stale, unless there’s a trigger, we would stay still no matter how hard we tried. I could be the one who poured out my heart to him and I could be the one who broke the silence. But that was a tug-of war, once you gave in, you lost and you fell. I refused to be the one who fell although the temptation was great. I simply couldn’t risk it.

 

He was not better than me. His stories became more and more melodramatic. The mood swing of the characters was no longer like a thermometer reading, it was like a tidal wave. It changed within seconds and was gone within split second. Waiting agonized a lonely soul and agony changed a hapless soul. Before I realized anything, he had changed. He was no longer as cheerful as he used to be. There’s lots of laughter before this and now it had gone with the wind. I could tell from the development of his stories.

 

He was in pain. Tug-of-war was slowly killing both of us.

 

Until one day, something was changed. He asked me out as he always did. I didn’t see it coming and without any warning, he confessed his love to me, in a very calm and pristine manner. For a moment, he looked immaculate once again as if the agony had deserted him for good. His eyes beamed and his body glow with a strange rhythm as if it was just emancipated.

 

That’s a moment of truth and the tug-of-war had ended. To thaw the ice, to sooth the pain, to massage the numbness, whatever you might call it, he told me…

 

‘You are not my dream because you are real, as real as I can hold you right now.’

 

And then I said something I couldn’t really recall. At that moment, strangely enough, all I could run through my mind was, I would be leaving this country in 2 months time. We had so little time together.

x

Ronald

 Unfinished Puzzle

She bought us a jigsaw puzzle for our first month anniversary. 1000 pieces. It’s a portrait of a couple holding hands in a park with a girl sitting under a tree. The shadow casted by the tree partly concealed the face of the girl sitting under the tree. We didn’t notice at first but as we started piecing the every piece of the puzzle, it’s revealed the girl was actually listening to a walkman.

 

‘What song she is listening to?’ She asked me dreamily, in a casual but luring way. ‘Well, you are a story teller, aren’t you,’ she pressed on when she heard no reply from me.

 

I needed sometime to think of a story but instinct told me, she was indeed listening to ‘I need to be in love.’ The idea just occurred to me suddenly and without much processing and reasoning, somehow I was convinced that she was savouring this The Carpenters’ less well-known song. Just like a pendulum, the title of the song gave me a push to upset the balance of the invisible pendulum in my mind. Now the balance was absent and my mind was churning out a story again and I told her.

 

As she listened to my story, she suddenly broke into tears. For a moment, I felt a sense of triumph welled up inside me like a pot of boiling water. That feeling didn’t last long before I realized something was not right. She never cried because of a story. In fact, I never saw her crying before.

 

For once, I was panicked.  

 

She was telling me something that day in a shopping mall we went together. We were in front of a shop that sold antique clocks. Out of curiosity, we went in and were awed by the sheer beauty of vintage. They were so meticulously crafted. I was so absorbed to the clocks and I didn’t notice she was no longer by my side.

 

She had gone outside of the shop and sat on a bench. I thought she must be exhausted by the long hours of shopping but she shook her head when I suggested we went home. She wanted to stay with me for a longer time. I didn’t think much at that point of time.

 

Now, baffled by her sudden overflow of tears, I understood. Her voice suddenly rang in my ears again, ‘I want to stay with you.’ What else could she mean? I was not unaware of her departure for the United States in a month. I was just not very prepared to accept the truth.

 

That always happened to me. Sense of urgency didn’t strike until the imminence enervated me. ‘She is leaving,’ I repeated that in my mind. I needed to clear my mind because wishful thinking began invading my veins. I dreamed of stopping time.

 

She wiped away her tears and said, ‘how much you love me?

X

 

One month later, as I sent her away to the States. I gave her a book. It’s written by me and all the stories I had told her were inside that book. I had them published and I wanted her to be my first reader. She quickly glanced through the title and flipped through few pages.

 

‘Why The Second Last Chapter?’

‘Cause I don’t want our story to be the last chapter. The last chapter, we must write together and the beautiful story we write shall be named ‘The Last Chapter.’ Will you write that story with me?’

 

She smiled and that smile, I swore, was the most resplendent and beautiful I had ever seen. Her smile, eradicated the sense of regret for not able to finish our puzzle. Her smile, gave me the answer I always wanted.

x

Samantha

Fonder heart

Long-distant relationship was not easy to maintain. The first real test of our relationship happened during my first month stay in the States. I was busy with all sorts of club activities. Life here had been so busy. There’s gathering nearly every night. There’s outing every now and then.

 

He tried very hard to understand. He hardly showed any discontent when I told him I had to go to such and such gathering. In fact, he never objected anything I said. No matter how encouraging he might appear to be, I knew he wanted to spend more time with me. I ought to share more of my time with him.

 

Even though I had done my best to call him everyday, set aside the time difference issue, I couldn’t just forsake my first university life. If I didn’t seize my chance to mingle with them, I would end up as another reclusive oversea student. I had seen lots of them who just locked themselves in their room and I refused to be one.

 

I hoped he understood and he did say it more than one time that he understood what I had gone through. But truth was always more convoluted than myth. The problems of our relationship, the miscommunication, wouldn’t be brushed easily aside by ‘I understand…, I see…, I know…’. Turned out I was right, we became complacent and we patronized each other. As if greeting was just some sorts of formality, our relationship grew sour. 

 

Both of us tried to reverse and relive the old days we spent together but it just didn’t happen. Problems kept rising one after another and we had our first big fight 4 weeks after I reached the States. Both of us blamed ourselves for not communicating well but at the same time, demanded more from each other. He said that he expected more. ‘Since when you stopped telling me stories?’ I rebuked and both of us fell into eerie silence than spanned few thousands miles.

 

Then we both apologized to each other and vowed to make our relationship meaningful once again.

 

Just when I thought that we had gone through the worst, I heard some gossips about him. All sorts of rumours started coming into my inbox. Some of them were malicious and some of the seemed genuinely sincere. I told myself I was not going to let them wavered my faith in him.

 

However, it’s impossible to do so. I was staunch believer of his commitment but the rumours, were like parasites. They might be removed from your body but the effects were still intact. Whenever we had disputes, the images would pop out instantly. ‘No, I won’t let those images dictate my life,’ I told myself.

 

Things didn’t get better. I was pretty sure that he had heard all those rumours himself. His life wouldn’t be easier than me, if not harder. His friend told me he had quit some of his club activities to avoid more conflicts with me and I was deeply touched.

 

What else I could do? I didn’t know. That’s why during my birthday, when he phoned me, I said something like ‘we have been together for 5 months, I wish it will be longer.’ I never did understand why I said that.  He immediately sunk into his dejected tone. I could tell when he was uplifted or dejected. He didn’t say anything about that after the incidence but I guessed he was pretty sore about my reply.

 

How I wished I didn’t say that! His email further distressed me. ‘Are we going to finish our last chapter?’ He sent me this after we had that conversation. Soon after I read those, I confessed to my best friend and as usual she showed her understanding. She never stood by anyone of us.

 

I cried because I knew I was going to lose him. We were not going to write the last chapter together.

x

Shelton

A story-teller’s story

The story he told me was depressing. Because it’s a true story. Nothing would be more depressing than the truth and truth always hurt. He told me about his ex-girlfriend. Everything they did together, the jigsaw puzzle, The Second Last Chapter, the life in the States, and the most depressing among all, how they broke up.

 

She never picked up his phone call after her birthday. She never replied his email anymore. She changed her Facebook status to ‘single’. No clean break-up, no explanation, as if she had gone missing.

 

He demanded for explanation. But what could he do? He was in Malaysia, she was in LA. He tried calling her everyday, sending her offline message and email. When all these attempts failed, he even called her parents. They didn’t want to talk much about that and were evasive.

 

He didn’t know what happened and he was furious. How could his girlfriend just broke up with him as if their relationship mattered nothing? Where had all those deceiving promises like the last chapter and jigsaw puzzle gone?

 

What made thing worse was 1 month after he lost track of her, her Facebook status was suddenly changed to ‘In a relationship’. Moment of truth! He once thought. She ditched him and now she went for the other guy in the US. Strangely, after he found out about that, he was somehow calmed. The ripple stirred by her sudden departure finally showed sign of recession. But, he wanted more than that. If she had fallen in love with other guy, why couldn’t she tell her? Why?

 

So he sent her messages again. To no avail, his effort was never replied. Saddened and baffled, he decided that life must go on despite of all the peculiarity and surprises that were even more melodramatic than his stories.

 

Letting go was easier said than done. Getting over was even worse. There’s no easy way out because her image just sprung back and upset the balance of his life anytime. He still couldn’t help but routinely check out her Facebook status and tried to contact her. Although he refrained himself from calling her friends, he still made some calls to them occasionally. Excuses like he just wanted to make sure everything was alright were dropped.

 

And he still hadn’t decided what to do with the unfinished jigsaw puzzle. ‘Should I leave it there or should I just chuck it away and never look at it again?’ He once questioned himself. But he didn’t do anything about that. The jigsaw puzzle was still there and he was still melancholic. Stories were still narrated but the narrator was becoming more and more detached from his own stories.

 

Then, something which he always considered as ‘miracle’ happened. She told him she would be coming back at the end of the year to celebrate Christmas. She would confess everything and give him the explanation he had been waiting in vain for one whole year.

 

‘Now, it’s time to close the last chapter. Like a Pandora box, I finally get to close it. No matter what will follow, I think I’ll recover,’ he said that to me in the cafeteria.

‘I must close the chapter,’ he repeated it once again but his voice had been reduced to a nearly inaudible murmur.

 

That’s when I chose to make the toughest decision in my life. I must follow him without him knowing. I cared too much about him. A part of me insisted to go after him and witnessed what would be unfolded, would there be any drama, tears?; a part of me attempted to tie me to my conscience, no you were not supposed to be there, his story should be ended by himself…

 

I made my choice. And I must go because his eyes told me so, his body language whispered to me and his story forced me to act. I was no longer myself. Before I realized that, I was already part of his absorbing story and I would always be there, for him.

 

I

 

The Second Last Chapter

 

Perhaps you already knew my identity, perhaps you hadn’t. But did it matter, for this story, for ‘The Second Last Chapter?’ I guessed if It didn’t matter initially, it mattered now. Because it’s all about me and without me, the story wouldn’t exist in the first place. Without me, the story would have ended abruptly the day she said ‘we have been together for 5 months, I wish it will be longer.’

 

Samantha died tragically the day after her birthday. I was with her at a park when a drunkard suddenly hit her skull from behind with a beer bottle. The moment the bottle shattered into millions of splendid ruby gems, I knew what I needed to do next. Her story should be sealed. He should not know the truth because he still had the illusions that they were destined to be together and the last chapter would be written together.

 

Truth didn’t work that way. Samantha was my best friend and we always shared each other’s story. From the beginning to the end, I was the one who knew the most. How they got together and how moving their love story was. She confided everything about him in me.

 

Not surprisingly, I also knew about their promises to each other, their struggles to keep their dream alive, and their conflicts. She cried the night she was supposed to celebrate her birthday. ‘I don’t know why I said that to him,’ she shook her head in despair and for once, I felt the helplessness arisen in her. For once, I sensed the deepest fear and doubt she had for this relationship.

 

As usual I kept quiet, not because I couldn’t help her, but I wanted to let her be herself. I still remembered his promise to me, ‘I want to make her my reality, not my dream.’ No reason I should lose my confidence in him back then. And when she was on the verge of collapse, I asked her, ‘why are you two together?’

 

I could never forget her answer right until today. I sat under the tree, listening to my favourite song, ‘I need to be in love’, looking at the hovering clouds, trying to reminisce as much as possible what happened after she told me her answer and I was moved. There was no tear but my heart was wrenched. It had been a long time since I last had this feeling.

 

Memory was a painful ability. And her reply, ‘We are living up the dream we have together,’ after so many months still had the same effect it had on me on that day. They were supposed to be together, chasing the dream of reality and live up the reality of dream.

 

She might have survived if she summoned a one last deep breath before she died. But instead of doing that, she gave up. Perhaps she was tired by all those dream chasing, perhaps she thought the story should be left unconcluded… I never got to know why but one thing for sure, she didn’t want him to know.

 

That’s why I logged into her Facebook account and changed her status to ‘single’. He tired to reach her frantically. He called, he sent email, he texted, but he didn’t know all his efforts ended up at the wrong end. I read all his mails to her and I didn’t reply. I had a story in my mind. Both of them, he and she, should be in the story.

 

He must have resented her. She, who no longer lived, was given a new life, new relationship and new memory. People might be abhorred by my selfish act and I would be reprimanded by all my readers. However, this was a story. Fiction, from the beginning to the end. Lies were built on truths and truths were built on lies.

 

In my story, he must move forward. He shouldn’t look back and he shouldn’t know the last chapter of the story. Because ‘The Second Last Chapter’ was always more beautiful and more often than not, it’s more like an ending than the actual last chapter.

 

He should still live in the harsh facts that she left him for other guy. He was not good enough for her. And his stories ought to be continued with someone else. What was gone was gone and he had to accept that. Perhaps that’s why I always surmised that the second last chapter was more readable than the last chapter.

 

The twists, the ‘truth’ revealed in the last chapter made a real story phony. A good story should never have a last chapter.

 

From the place I rested myself, I could see him and a girl confronting each other. He was surprised to see her there. ‘Why you?’ He was genuinely surprised. She was not the one he was expecting to see. The girl, her name was Shelton, wasn’t it? She was yelling at him, telling him that he should never see Samantha once again. ‘It’s for your own good, forget her!’ She exasperated.

 

Watching her and all her deeds, it deepened my conviction that Ronald should never know the truth. I came back not to tell him the truth, the last chapter. I was going to tell the lie, the second last chapter, that hurt less than the truth. Then a strong and ferocious feeling was brewing inside me. The feeling was so intense and so real and that’s the time I realize my mistake.

 

I shouldn’t even have considered telling him the lie! I shouldn’t have disguised as Samantha and sent him the mail in order to ask him out. My efforts were all in vain because my mind which was always rationale clearly understood something.  

 

 He didn’t deserve the lie if he was still after the dream. Long time ago, I had already warned him about the dangers of dreams. He was still insisting on chasing a shapeless dream and choosing to neglect the reality in front of him. I couldn’t tell a lie to a man who couldn’t even differentiate dream from reality.

 

Hence, I stood up and turned away from them. I muttered something I could barely hear, ‘I couldn’t tell him, I couldn’t tell him, I couldn’t tell him…’ Suddenly, tears were tumbling down my cheeks and once again, I asked myself, why couldn’t I tell him the truth, perhaps the lie?

 

I had no answer because I myself  lived in my own second last chapter and refused to know the last chapter, which might free me from my excruciating pain.

Schubert's Symphony No.8 - Unfinished Symphony

Many people didn’t get you. They confided in me, they complained to me about you, they asked me about you but no matter what they did, I knew they were just trying to pilfer your agelessly stunning beauty.

To them, you were not a mystery at all. You were always under the limelight, subject to all sorts of intrusive personal dissection. However, you didn’t even blush when their hands were all over your body, when the last trace of privacy evaporated. To no avail, I advised you, be careful with the deadly sins of humans. You were not one of them and so that you wouldn’t understand how treacherous a man can be.

No, you told me, ‘life is short, like Shubert’s Unfinished symphony.’ Symphony No.8? Why Shubert never got to finish it? Was it because the symphony was simply too heavenly to be true, even he himself never surmised that he could come out with this chief c-oeuvre? Or there’s a simpler explanation, the life was just too short, like a short-lived insect?

Either way, it’s bad, you argued that. How so? I asked. People never saw through your beauty, as if their surreptitious glance was not piercing enough; they never fully understood it, just like listening to a Schubert and concluded that Schubert was just a lucky composer who managed to decipher the secret of harmony and melody.

Life is short, you said, it’s beyond any dispute. At any given moment, your beauty might become the history of today’s glory. News gave way to mundane bedside stories. ‘that’s why I dance, like a desperate baroness amid the crowd, trying to garner a pitiful hug,’ you lowered your head and muttered inaudibly.

Suddenly, there’s all sadness, like a vagabond tied to an addiction. She sighed. ‘I don’t belong to here,’ she continued, ‘ I might as well go back to where I was from and forget myself.’ I pretended I was listening to what she said afterwards but my mind was wandering somewhere else in the scenic depiction of Schubert’s pieces.

And then I saw what I was seeking for. The beauty of flaws. Her beauty didn’t make her invisible. She was flawed just like everyone else, just like Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. But did she even care to correct whatever that was deemed wrong? No she didn’t even care and she suddenly seemed more resplendent than ever. Light of flaws was emanating from her divine feature and she flashed a smile. A smile which carried the impact that was tantamount to the renowned Unfinished Symphony, simple yet grandeur.

Beauty, behind the curtain of perfection,

Is the imperfection.

Beyond the imperfection,

There’s unfinished symphony played,

Through a single brass,

That sounds like a full orchestra.

That’s beauty, so real…