We, The Survivors. Tash Aw

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СКАЧАТЬ to speak, but failed. What revelations would I make, and regret later? I liked her for letting me talk. I hated her for making me talk.

      She spoke Mandarin in a way that made it obvious that it was a second language to her – sometimes clear as a textbook, other times halting, mixed in with a bunch of English words. Everything about her seemed alien to me that first time, even though she came from only thirty miles away. Her foreignness made it easier for me to speak as freely as I did. I could tell her anything I wanted, and she would have to believe me. That first day, even though I tried to be formal in the way I spoke, I felt myself lapsing into dialects, my country Hokkien surging out of me from time to time, or else the odd Cantonese swear word popping up before I even realised I’d said it.

      Suddenly I would be aware of my speech, the difference between the crudeness of my voice and the polish of hers, always under control, never too loud or too soft. Sometimes I would say something inappropriate and I’d think, Now she is going to realise she has made a huge mistake. Now she will start making excuses to leave. But her expression never changed – always balanced between interest and amusement. She stayed for four hours.

      We’ve seen each other once or twice a week, sometimes three times, for the last two months. Every time, without fail, she comes to my house and sits patiently while I talk. We drink Chinese tea or chrysanthemum tea from a carton, and I might snack on some biscuits. She never eats anything, not even a dried melon seed. If a stranger walked into the room they would see a couple of acquaintances, or perhaps relatives – a young woman dutifully listening to her older cousin. But they are not as intimate as it appears. They are separated not just by ten or fifteen years, but by something else that neither can properly identify.

      For example, how do you explain this incident? One day, not long after we first meet, maybe four or five sessions in, I’m talking about random, unconnected incidents from my childhood – from the time we were living with my uncle, after my father had left us and we had nowhere to call our own. I was only ten, but I hated that house. I spent all day outdoors, walking along the streams and inlets that ran into the river and eventually fed into the sea. I knew all the ricefields and the forests, I knew how to set traps for fish and shoot birds with my catapult. Sometimes the birds I shot wouldn’t be killed, they would just fall to the ground and flap around weakly with broken wings. Sometimes I felt pity for them, and regretted hurting them, but even as I felt that sorrow I knew I would do it again. The only way I could stop their suffering was to kill them, usually by dropping a big rock on them, or by twisting their necks – just like this, I show her with my hands.

      She nods and continues to take notes, but I notice something – a tiny change in her expression, something like a grimace that breaks through her half-smile, just for a moment, before she composes herself. So I continue. I describe how I would hear a soft crunch under the rock as I dropped it on the bird. How their bones were weaker than twigs in my hands. She nods, as if she understands, but I know she has no idea what it means to put an end to a life.

      She has no idea what I felt, at that moment or any other.

      I begin to tell her about the cat, the small black-and-white kitten, that I found by the side of the road one day. It had been injured, its hind legs broken and bloody. It was squealing loudly, and for a second I thought maybe I should take it home as a pet. I would heal it, give it some medicine and fix its legs. But I knew that it was hopeless, it was too weak to survive. It would not even last the journey home. As I picked up the rock I thought, I’m sorry, but this is the way life is. In this world, some of us are strong, others are weak. Some will live, others will flourish, all will die. I wanted to feel pity, but I didn’t. I brought the rock down hard on its head. Then I lifted it again, trying not to look at the black-red mess staining the hard earth. I hit it with the rock another time, harder, to make sure the cat was no longer suffering.

      She continues to look down at her notebook, but she has stopped scribbling – her pen is poised over the page, waiting. Her jaw hardens, twitching slightly on the right side. For once, she does not look at me, but focuses on her notes. At last she smiles again, but her brow is still tight – the corners of her eyes a little creased. She says, Umm, but then she has to clear her throat. As if she’s going to cough, only she doesn’t.

      Today is a normal day, meaning we’re relaxed, and conversation is easy. I don’t have much to say of interest, but that’s OK. She doesn’t mind if I ramble. We have a couple of moments’ silence, but nothing that lasts too long. We don’t have any of those awkward pauses we used to have in the early sessions, when I sometimes felt like fleeing the room. I’m talking about all the things I intend to do if I strike it big on the lottery one day. Maybe go travelling. Maybe get some training on computers. She’s smiling while she writes in her notebook. She raises her eyebrows as if to say, That’s a great idea.

      But as I’m talking, something comes to mind, as it sometimes does when I’m with her. I remember the look on her face after I told her about the cat – her lips pulled into a smile, but her eyes narrowed, accusing me of something. But what? I don’t know what to call the look on her face. I don’t know if I can call it anger, or contempt, or sadness.

      And I can’t stop the thought from forming in my head: she cares more about the cat than she does about me.

       October 13th

      The first time I ever saw Keong, he was beating up another kid. The boy’s lip was puffy and split, and there was a trail of rich red blood down his T-shirt, matched in colour by two angry marks on his leg, parallel straight lines that ran from knee to ankle. He was half-sitting, half-crouching on the floor – Keong was gripping him by his wrist with one hand, and in the other he was holding a stick, about three feet long. They both looked up when they saw me in the doorway. A pause. Then Keong delivered another blow, and another, as if I hadn’t appeared at all – as if the sight of me had been an illusion, a trick of the light. I didn’t know what offence the other kid had committed to deserve the beating – what form the insult had taken. Later, I learned that it didn’t take much for Keong to feel insulted.

      The fight, which I guess you would probably say was an assault, was taking place in a disused shack on the edge of an inlet where the smaller boats were moored, sheltered from the storms that blew in from the open waters. The tide had gone out, and I was picking my way through the mangroves, hoping to dig out a crab from the mud – just killing time, as usual. I was twelve, I spent all day outdoors. I heard a quick suffocated groan, someone who wanted to cry out but didn’t – the scream squeezed in the throat so that when it emerged it was only a weak impression of the noise it should have been. I recognised pain in that fleeting sound, which most people wouldn’t even have noticed – I’d heard it many times in my own family – and instantly I knew where it had come from. The shack had once been used for storing nets and jerry cans, but it had been cleared out when our smaller boats started to become superfluous with the arrival of the large vessels capable of fishing over a much further range. Parts of it had rotted and fallen into the mud below, joining the skeletons of wooden boats that we’d simply abandoned over the years.

      I stood in the doorway for a few minutes, watching until Keong had finished with the boy. I didn’t try to help the victim or intervene. That was how things worked in the world, in our world at least – we didn’t get mixed up in other people’s troubles. Keong brushed past me as he walked out into the bright sunlight. I still had the feeling that he hadn’t noticed me, but a few moments later he turned back and said, ‘Come with me.’ Now I realise that it wasn’t a command but a question, but at that time it didn’t seem as if I had a choice. As I walked with him back towards the village, I thought about the boy lying on the broken floor of the broken hut – his body broken too, defeated. I wondered if I should go back, try and help him. I didn’t want him to be alone. I could have gathered the other boys in the village and reported what I’d witnessed. But instead I continued walking with Keong.

      Nowadays СКАЧАТЬ