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.
