Imaginary Archive (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ib_archive) wrote2013-03-09 07:01 am
ib_archive) wrote2013-03-09 07:01 am
Entry tags:
[story] eight ways to view the brown hill
author: sharikqah (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sharikqah)
e-mail: shelter_one17 [ at ] yahoo dot com dot sg
1.
The first one Tiff sees has grey hair fanning out from under a patrol cap. He walks towards her in halting steps, as if avoiding puddles on the ground. Up close, she sees he isn't wearing shoes. Then, she notices he has no eyes.
"Can tell me where Tan Kong Har lives?" he asks her.
Maybe it's just too dark, or she's too tired from serving all day. But the man stares straight at her, pale lips shaking like a smile held for too long, from only a few feet away. There's a sad heft to his shoulders. She sees the beige smudges where the pupils should be. In her pockets, her hands curl into fists.
"Girl ah? Tan Kong Har live where?"
"Sorry, Uncle. I dunno."
He shrugs and continues past her down the quiet road. Tiff barely glances at him and walks on. She doesn't turn or speed up. When she reaches her bus stop, the gassy moan of traffic gives her enough courage to look back. All she sees is a line of dark trees and the cemeteries of Bukit Brown beyond them, all mixed together in the black night.
2.
During the day Tiff works at the only café on the grounds of McRitchie Reservoir. It's her pleasure to fry and serve bronze-crusted curry puffs and other finger food. From the warm bubble of the open kitchen she can see the reservoir and the repeated tree-filled hills carbon-copied like a postcard landscape.
She works partly because there's nothing to do until university starts. But mostly it's because she likes the people she meets on weekday afternoons and weekend mornings during her shifts. There are runners, retirees, photographers, canoeists, and, on weekends, the occasional cyclist who chats and leans in too close and brushes her fingers when receiving change.
When her shift ends she walks by the Bukit Brown road where she met the first one, and busses home. If she's early, she travels to the hawker centre at Adam Road to meet her boyfriend Cheng for supper.
Their suppers are like their text messages over the phone: full of meaning and news, but with little sound. They sit at opposite ends of the table, drinking coffee the colour of disturbed earth, and watch the other late-night diners. Sometimes when she's feeling chatty, she talks until Cheng has to return to camp. He's officially confined to camp until his course ends, but has nights out. So she tells him everything she thinks he wants to hear: who she met on her shifts, her thoughts on going to university, news that the cemeteries at Bukit Brown will get dug up –
"They've fenced off the entire cemetery. Put tractors on its edges. They're asking people to claim the graves."
Cheng nods. He swipes the sleeve of his police uniform over his eyes. He doesn't talk much. But he spends his nights off with her and, for the moment, Tiff thinks that's good enough. She lets him know with her words:
"It's a waste, right? All those graves. Hundreds of years old. So they can put up some condo."
But she doesn't tell him about the first one she's met. Or about that cyclist who tried to chat her up. She doesn't bring them up because Cheng doesn't ask.
3.
The next two Tiff meets are a couple: a man sitting by the kerb, and a short, stooped lady who glances down the car-less road. Tiff's checking the bus arrival times on her iPhone, but the man sees her and beckons with his fingers.
Nearing, she sees he's smoking from a pipe, and smoke tusks from his nostrils as he exhales. A smudge of soil clings to his chin like a goatee. He smiles, exposing rotten teeth gushing with mud. Tiff edges her way around him. Then, without warning, the woman stands up and blocks her path.
"You look like my daughter," she says. A cold hand, almost translucent-white, extends, ploughs through Tiff's fringe. "Will – do you want to meet her?"
The fingers in her hair burn – Tiff feels like someone's dumped hot sand over head. She hears the scream leave her throat. She bats the hand away like it's on fire, runs around the woman, and flees down the road. By the time she turns back, the woman is walking off with her pipe-smoking man into the forest. They seem to stroll into the trees, melting away into shadow. Tiff watches the ember from his pipe, a startled star shaking in the dark, until it disappears.
Her phone, a warm lump in her palm, buzzes. Cheng asks if she's on the way.
4.
Before her next shift, Tiff decides to clear her thoughts, get what's happened out of her head. So she takes out her worn pair of Adidas trainers and goes on a run round her workplace, the reservoir.
Early morning fog is still clinging to the shores like white curtains when she begins. The run takes her up rocky little hills, through shadowy trails filled with fractal-branched trees. As the sunlight seeps through the rainforest canopy, she quickens her pace, guided by the jeweled reflection of the reservoir.
But somewhere along the trail, she makes a wrong turn. She vaults a stream dribbling tea-coloured water and finds herself surrounded by gravestones.
Tiff takes in the body-shaped mounds, grey concrete headstones prickly with grass. Lumps of candle wax like flowers adorn some of the raised platforms. Others have fresh offerings of fruit and sweets arrayed before them. Tiff sticks to the gravel path between the larger graves. She makes a loop around the entire cemetery, absorbing the intense silence, the only sound the beating of birds' wings somewhere in the trees.
She comes to a finishing line of sorts: a barrier of red construction tape and a ‘do not enter' sign. Beyond, notices explain how relatives can identify and claim the remains of their buried family members.
Tiff navigates through all of these until she reaches the road. At this time of the day, cars jam its three lanes. People patiently wait at the bus-stop. She remembers her encounter with the couple; it happened just along this road. The mere thought makes her hair itch.
She's shining with sweat when she finally shows up at the café. No one says anything to her about being late. After a quick freshening up, she ignores the twitching muscles in her legs and tries to concentrate on cooking the curry puffs properly.
5.
"Do you believe in spirits?"
She regrets the question the moment it's out of her mouth. Cheng stops in mid-drink, eyes narrowing. His cup remains suspended, as if waiting for Tiff to explain herself. In the long slip of silence that follows, she meets his reddened eyes.
When they first met, Cheng had said she looked like a bullet, all thin, lean and quick. He also said that, with her tanned skin from all her running, she looked like an expensive drink at Starbucks. This was before his nightly duties in camp consumed him, before they graduated from junior college, before she stopped running competitively.
"I mean," she tries to put all her encounters into words. "There are some things that are damn hard to explain."
"No," he says. He empties his cup. "Tell me."
She downs the last dregs in her cup. She can still smell fried flour, potatoes and curry on her skin. But she stares at Cheng again, and tells him.
6.
"Do you believe in spirits?"
She meets the fourth one when she's with the cyclist on a Saturday evening. Tiff's waiting at the bus stop, and the cyclist guy has parked his racing bike diagonally in front of her. He leans over it, his muscles smooth like an oil slick under his spandex bodysuit. He runs his tongue over his glossed lips and Tiff sees teeth shiny with saliva.
"So, you're here every weekday too?" he asks. "You wanna go lunch someday?"
In the triangle of space framed by the cyclist's triceps and arching body, she sees a man in a light grey blazer and a formal stiff brim hat. He adjusts his glasses, wiping them at his waist with a matching coloured handkerchief. From afar, this gentleman looks like a sculpture, all soft-edges, muted colours and blank face. None of the cars seem to notice him.
It takes the cyclist a full moment to understand she's staring at something other than him. He turns, scans the length of the road and smiles.
"Staring at what?"
Tiff looks on. The man is still there, his blazer covering a white-collar shirt so starched he stands out like a white plank against the splotchy green trees. She imagines he'll disappear in the wake of a passing car. But he doesn't.
"Hey, hey. Stoning already ah?"
The cyclist snaps his fingers in front of her face, his fingers a blur of leathery-brown. Tiff feels he's too close, his breath too warm and his slouching body taking up too much space. So she snaps her fingers back, and asks him.
"What kind of question is that?" he says.
7.
When Cheng finally completes his police training, Tiff leaves work early to attend his final parade.
She's late. She elbows her way to the front of the crowd at the parade. There, five contingents of policemen in red berets march past in formation while the brass band plays. Cheng's face is lost in the rows and rows of not-smiling officers. With each coordinated swing, their boots clap into the ground like dull applause. They turn their heads and raise their arms in a salute in one swift motion, and then march off the grounds to cheers and a final crescendo from the band.
Later, Tiff has to search through the mingling officers and attendees for him. Proud parents and over-delirious friends pose with the officers for photographs. Others do jump shots. The band plays on in the background.
She finds him waiting by the bleachers. In his military-sharp coat and peak cap, he looks impossibly white, even with his arms and face turned caramel from sunburn. The more she takes in his ceremonial attire, the more self-conscious she feels: she's still in her skinnies and slippers from work. She doesn't have plastic-sheathed stalks of flowers or a camera either.
When Cheng sees her, he pulls her in. She feels his wet lips plant themselves on her sweaty forehead. His peak cap nudges her temple. Softly, he says, "It means so much to me that you're here."
8.
They're walking back to the reservoir together when she sees the fifth - and last - one. Cheng makes small talk, as if the end of his confinement to camp has returned his voice. Tiff listens for a change. They take slow steps along the pavement, their shoulders sometimes brushing against each other.
Someone waits in front of her bus stop: a young girl in a loose kebaya and wooden slippers. Her hair's done up in a bun the size of her fist, and she loiters just outside the fluorescent wash of the streetlights. Beyond her, through a gap in the trees, the moon lingers like a flat shiny skull.
Tiff slows down and comes to a complete stop just outside the bus stop. She points Cheng towards the girl. He stares ahead, eyes looking like he's reading something really small on a newspaper. Before he can react, Tiff takes one, two, several more strides towards the girl and addresses her.
"I've been kicked out of home," the girl says.
She hugs herself. Tiff sees the remnants of the girl's fingernails sliding off their fleshy beds and the oil-black veins showing beneath the skin. Her voice sounds low, like there's something in her throat.
"Where will I go?" she asks.
When Cheng finally advances, he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with her. She feels Cheng encircle her hand with his clammy fingers. They watch as the girl walks away from the bus stop, crossing the road and slipping past the tractors parked and ready to exhume the graves.
"Is this what you were trying to tell me that night?" Cheng asks.
Tiff doesn't say anything. She lets Cheng's fingers lace through hers. She looks down the long black whip of the deserted road, thinking how many times she's walked it alone at night. She tries to make out the black smudges of construction machinery in the semi-darkness as they wait together for the bus, and lets Cheng talk away.
the end
sharikqah)e-mail: shelter_one17 [ at ] yahoo dot com dot sg
1.
The first one Tiff sees has grey hair fanning out from under a patrol cap. He walks towards her in halting steps, as if avoiding puddles on the ground. Up close, she sees he isn't wearing shoes. Then, she notices he has no eyes.
"Can tell me where Tan Kong Har lives?" he asks her.
Maybe it's just too dark, or she's too tired from serving all day. But the man stares straight at her, pale lips shaking like a smile held for too long, from only a few feet away. There's a sad heft to his shoulders. She sees the beige smudges where the pupils should be. In her pockets, her hands curl into fists.
"Girl ah? Tan Kong Har live where?"
"Sorry, Uncle. I dunno."
He shrugs and continues past her down the quiet road. Tiff barely glances at him and walks on. She doesn't turn or speed up. When she reaches her bus stop, the gassy moan of traffic gives her enough courage to look back. All she sees is a line of dark trees and the cemeteries of Bukit Brown beyond them, all mixed together in the black night.
2.
During the day Tiff works at the only café on the grounds of McRitchie Reservoir. It's her pleasure to fry and serve bronze-crusted curry puffs and other finger food. From the warm bubble of the open kitchen she can see the reservoir and the repeated tree-filled hills carbon-copied like a postcard landscape.
She works partly because there's nothing to do until university starts. But mostly it's because she likes the people she meets on weekday afternoons and weekend mornings during her shifts. There are runners, retirees, photographers, canoeists, and, on weekends, the occasional cyclist who chats and leans in too close and brushes her fingers when receiving change.
When her shift ends she walks by the Bukit Brown road where she met the first one, and busses home. If she's early, she travels to the hawker centre at Adam Road to meet her boyfriend Cheng for supper.
Their suppers are like their text messages over the phone: full of meaning and news, but with little sound. They sit at opposite ends of the table, drinking coffee the colour of disturbed earth, and watch the other late-night diners. Sometimes when she's feeling chatty, she talks until Cheng has to return to camp. He's officially confined to camp until his course ends, but has nights out. So she tells him everything she thinks he wants to hear: who she met on her shifts, her thoughts on going to university, news that the cemeteries at Bukit Brown will get dug up –
"They've fenced off the entire cemetery. Put tractors on its edges. They're asking people to claim the graves."
Cheng nods. He swipes the sleeve of his police uniform over his eyes. He doesn't talk much. But he spends his nights off with her and, for the moment, Tiff thinks that's good enough. She lets him know with her words:
"It's a waste, right? All those graves. Hundreds of years old. So they can put up some condo."
But she doesn't tell him about the first one she's met. Or about that cyclist who tried to chat her up. She doesn't bring them up because Cheng doesn't ask.
3.
The next two Tiff meets are a couple: a man sitting by the kerb, and a short, stooped lady who glances down the car-less road. Tiff's checking the bus arrival times on her iPhone, but the man sees her and beckons with his fingers.
Nearing, she sees he's smoking from a pipe, and smoke tusks from his nostrils as he exhales. A smudge of soil clings to his chin like a goatee. He smiles, exposing rotten teeth gushing with mud. Tiff edges her way around him. Then, without warning, the woman stands up and blocks her path.
"You look like my daughter," she says. A cold hand, almost translucent-white, extends, ploughs through Tiff's fringe. "Will – do you want to meet her?"
The fingers in her hair burn – Tiff feels like someone's dumped hot sand over head. She hears the scream leave her throat. She bats the hand away like it's on fire, runs around the woman, and flees down the road. By the time she turns back, the woman is walking off with her pipe-smoking man into the forest. They seem to stroll into the trees, melting away into shadow. Tiff watches the ember from his pipe, a startled star shaking in the dark, until it disappears.
Her phone, a warm lump in her palm, buzzes. Cheng asks if she's on the way.
4.
Before her next shift, Tiff decides to clear her thoughts, get what's happened out of her head. So she takes out her worn pair of Adidas trainers and goes on a run round her workplace, the reservoir.
Early morning fog is still clinging to the shores like white curtains when she begins. The run takes her up rocky little hills, through shadowy trails filled with fractal-branched trees. As the sunlight seeps through the rainforest canopy, she quickens her pace, guided by the jeweled reflection of the reservoir.
But somewhere along the trail, she makes a wrong turn. She vaults a stream dribbling tea-coloured water and finds herself surrounded by gravestones.
Tiff takes in the body-shaped mounds, grey concrete headstones prickly with grass. Lumps of candle wax like flowers adorn some of the raised platforms. Others have fresh offerings of fruit and sweets arrayed before them. Tiff sticks to the gravel path between the larger graves. She makes a loop around the entire cemetery, absorbing the intense silence, the only sound the beating of birds' wings somewhere in the trees.
She comes to a finishing line of sorts: a barrier of red construction tape and a ‘do not enter' sign. Beyond, notices explain how relatives can identify and claim the remains of their buried family members.
Tiff navigates through all of these until she reaches the road. At this time of the day, cars jam its three lanes. People patiently wait at the bus-stop. She remembers her encounter with the couple; it happened just along this road. The mere thought makes her hair itch.
She's shining with sweat when she finally shows up at the café. No one says anything to her about being late. After a quick freshening up, she ignores the twitching muscles in her legs and tries to concentrate on cooking the curry puffs properly.
5.
"Do you believe in spirits?"
She regrets the question the moment it's out of her mouth. Cheng stops in mid-drink, eyes narrowing. His cup remains suspended, as if waiting for Tiff to explain herself. In the long slip of silence that follows, she meets his reddened eyes.
When they first met, Cheng had said she looked like a bullet, all thin, lean and quick. He also said that, with her tanned skin from all her running, she looked like an expensive drink at Starbucks. This was before his nightly duties in camp consumed him, before they graduated from junior college, before she stopped running competitively.
"I mean," she tries to put all her encounters into words. "There are some things that are damn hard to explain."
"No," he says. He empties his cup. "Tell me."
She downs the last dregs in her cup. She can still smell fried flour, potatoes and curry on her skin. But she stares at Cheng again, and tells him.
6.
"Do you believe in spirits?"
She meets the fourth one when she's with the cyclist on a Saturday evening. Tiff's waiting at the bus stop, and the cyclist guy has parked his racing bike diagonally in front of her. He leans over it, his muscles smooth like an oil slick under his spandex bodysuit. He runs his tongue over his glossed lips and Tiff sees teeth shiny with saliva.
"So, you're here every weekday too?" he asks. "You wanna go lunch someday?"
In the triangle of space framed by the cyclist's triceps and arching body, she sees a man in a light grey blazer and a formal stiff brim hat. He adjusts his glasses, wiping them at his waist with a matching coloured handkerchief. From afar, this gentleman looks like a sculpture, all soft-edges, muted colours and blank face. None of the cars seem to notice him.
It takes the cyclist a full moment to understand she's staring at something other than him. He turns, scans the length of the road and smiles.
"Staring at what?"
Tiff looks on. The man is still there, his blazer covering a white-collar shirt so starched he stands out like a white plank against the splotchy green trees. She imagines he'll disappear in the wake of a passing car. But he doesn't.
"Hey, hey. Stoning already ah?"
The cyclist snaps his fingers in front of her face, his fingers a blur of leathery-brown. Tiff feels he's too close, his breath too warm and his slouching body taking up too much space. So she snaps her fingers back, and asks him.
"What kind of question is that?" he says.
7.
When Cheng finally completes his police training, Tiff leaves work early to attend his final parade.
She's late. She elbows her way to the front of the crowd at the parade. There, five contingents of policemen in red berets march past in formation while the brass band plays. Cheng's face is lost in the rows and rows of not-smiling officers. With each coordinated swing, their boots clap into the ground like dull applause. They turn their heads and raise their arms in a salute in one swift motion, and then march off the grounds to cheers and a final crescendo from the band.
Later, Tiff has to search through the mingling officers and attendees for him. Proud parents and over-delirious friends pose with the officers for photographs. Others do jump shots. The band plays on in the background.
She finds him waiting by the bleachers. In his military-sharp coat and peak cap, he looks impossibly white, even with his arms and face turned caramel from sunburn. The more she takes in his ceremonial attire, the more self-conscious she feels: she's still in her skinnies and slippers from work. She doesn't have plastic-sheathed stalks of flowers or a camera either.
When Cheng sees her, he pulls her in. She feels his wet lips plant themselves on her sweaty forehead. His peak cap nudges her temple. Softly, he says, "It means so much to me that you're here."
8.
They're walking back to the reservoir together when she sees the fifth - and last - one. Cheng makes small talk, as if the end of his confinement to camp has returned his voice. Tiff listens for a change. They take slow steps along the pavement, their shoulders sometimes brushing against each other.
Someone waits in front of her bus stop: a young girl in a loose kebaya and wooden slippers. Her hair's done up in a bun the size of her fist, and she loiters just outside the fluorescent wash of the streetlights. Beyond her, through a gap in the trees, the moon lingers like a flat shiny skull.
Tiff slows down and comes to a complete stop just outside the bus stop. She points Cheng towards the girl. He stares ahead, eyes looking like he's reading something really small on a newspaper. Before he can react, Tiff takes one, two, several more strides towards the girl and addresses her.
"I've been kicked out of home," the girl says.
She hugs herself. Tiff sees the remnants of the girl's fingernails sliding off their fleshy beds and the oil-black veins showing beneath the skin. Her voice sounds low, like there's something in her throat.
"Where will I go?" she asks.
When Cheng finally advances, he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with her. She feels Cheng encircle her hand with his clammy fingers. They watch as the girl walks away from the bus stop, crossing the road and slipping past the tractors parked and ready to exhume the graves.
"Is this what you were trying to tell me that night?" Cheng asks.
Tiff doesn't say anything. She lets Cheng's fingers lace through hers. She looks down the long black whip of the deserted road, thinking how many times she's walked it alone at night. She tries to make out the black smudges of construction machinery in the semi-darkness as they wait together for the bus, and lets Cheng talk away.
the end
no subject
Thanks for the story!