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.