Islands in the Net (37 page)

The guy sat back on his dumpy, overstuffed couch. There was a tacky painting of a seascape behind his head. He sipped from a coffee cup and fiddled with a microphone paper-clipped to his collar. She could hear him swallowing, loudly.

“I think I'm on the air now,” he announced.

Laura traded glances with the little old woman. The old gal looked disappointed. Didn't speak English.

“This is my home VCR, la,” said Normal Guy. “It always say: ‘do not hook to home antenna, can cause broadcast pollution.' Stray signal, you see? So, I did it. I'm broadcasting! I think so, anyway.”

He poured himself more coffee, his hand shaking a little. “Today,” he said, “my girl and I, I was going to ask to marry. She maybe not such great girl, and I'm not such great fellow either, but we have standard. I think, when a fellow needs to ask to marry, such a thing should at least be possible. Nothing else is civilized.”

He leaned in toward the lens, his head and shoulders swelling. “But then comes this curfew business. I am not liking this very much, but I am good citizen so I am deciding, okay. Go right ahead Jeyaratnam. Catch the terror rascals, give them what for, definitely. Then, the cops are coming into my building.”

He settled back a little, twitching, a light-trail flickering from his glasses. “I admire a cop. Cop is a fine, necessary fellow. Cop on the beat, I always say to him, ‘Good morning, fellow, good job, keep the peace.' Even ten cops are okay. A hundred cops though, and I am changing mind rapidly. Suddenly my neighborhood very plentiful in cop. Thousands. Have real people outnumbered. Barging into my flat. Search every room, every gracious thing. Take my fingerprints, take my blood sample even.”

He showed a sticking plaster on the ball of his thumb. “Run me through computer, chop-chop, tell me to clean up that parking ticket. Then off they run, leave door open, no please or thank you, four million others needing botheration also. So I turn on telly for news. One channel only, la. Tell me we have seize Johore reservoir again. If we have so much water, then why is south side of city on fire apparently, la? This I am asking myself.”

He slammed down his coffee cup. “Can't call girl friend. Can't call mother even. Can't even complain to local politico as Parliament is now all spoilt. What is use of all that voting and stupid campaigns, if it come to this, finish? Is anybody else feeling this way, I am wondering. I am not political, but I am not trusting Government one millimeter. I am small person, but I am not nothing at all.”

Normal Guy looked close to tears suddenly. “If this is for the good of city then where are citizens? Streets empty! Where is everyone? What kind of city is this become? Where is Vienna police, they the terrorist experts? Why is this happening? Why no one ask me if I think it okay? It not one bit okay to me, definitely! I want to success like everyone, I am working hard and minding business, but this too much. Soon come they arrest me for doing this telly business. Do you feel better off to hear of me? Is better than sit here and rot by myself.…”

There was furious pounding on Normal Guy's door. He looked spooked. He leaned forward jerkily and the screen went back to nothingness.

Laura's cheeks were damp. She was crying again. Her eyes felt like they'd been scratched with steel wool. No control. Oh, hell, that poor brave, scared little guy. Goddamn it all anyway.…

Someone shouted at the shop's doorway. Laura looked up, startled. It was a tall, tough-looking, turbanned Sikh in a khaki shirt and Gurkha shorts. He had a badge and shoulder patches and he carried a leather-wrapped lathi stick. “What are you doing, madams?”

“Uh …” Laura scrambled to her feet. The canvas seat of her chair was soaked through with the rounded wet print of her butt. Her eyes were brimming tears—she felt terrified and deeply, obscurely humiliated.

“Don't …” She couldn't think of anything to say.

The Sikh guard looked at her as if she'd dropped from Mars. “You are a tenant here, madam?”

“The riots,” Laura said. “I thought there was shelter here.”

“Tourist madam? A Yankee!” He stared at her, then pulled black-rimmed glasses from a shirt-pocket case and put them on. “Oh!” He had recognized her.

“All right,” Laura said. She stretched out her chafed wrists, still in their severed plastic handcuffs. “Arrest me, officer. Take me into custody.”

The Sikh blushed. “Madam, I am only private security. Cannot arrest you.” The little old lady got up suddenly and shuffled directly at him. He sidestepped clumsily out of her way at the last moment. She wandered out into the hall. He stared after her meditatively.

“Thought you were looters,” he said. “Very sorry.”

Laura paused. “Can you take me to a police station?”

“Surely, Mrs.… Mrs. Vebbler. Madam, I am not helping to notice that you are all wet.”

Laura tried to smile at him. “Rain. Water cannon too, actually.”

The Sikh stiffened. “Is a very great sorrow to me that you experience this in our city while a guest of the Singapore government, Mrs. Webber.”

“That's okay,” Laura muttered. “What's your name, sir?”

“Singh, madam.”

All Sikhs were named Singh. Of course. Laura felt like an idiot. “I could kind of use the police, Mr. Singh. I mean some nice calm police, well out of the riot area.”

Singh tucked his lathi stick smartly under his arm. “Very well, madam.” He was struggling not to salute. “You are following me, please.”

They walked together down the empty hall. “Settling you very soon,” Singh said encouragingly. “Duty is difficult in these times.”

“You said it, Mr. Singh.”

They stepped into a cargo elevator and went down a floor into a dusty parking area. Lots of bikes, a few cars, mostly old junkers. Singh pointed with his stick. “You are riding pillion on my motor scooter if agreeable?”

“Sure, okay.” Singh unlocked his bike and switched it on. They climbed aboard and drove up an exit ramp with a comical, high-pitched whir. The rain had died down for the moment. Singh eased into the street.

“There are roadblocks,” Laura told him.

“Yes, but—” Singh hesitated. He hit the brakes.

One of the cant-winged fighter jets of the Singapore Air Force flew above them with a silken roar. With snaky suddenness, it flickered into a dive, as if sidestepping its own shadow. Real hotdog flying. They watched it open-mouthed.

Something streaked from beneath its wings. A missile. It left a pencil of smoke in the damp air. From the docklands came a sudden violent burst of white-orange fire. Tinkertoy chunks of ruptured loading crane balleted through the air.

Thunder rolled through the empty streets.

Singh swore and turned the bike around. “Enemies attacking! We go back to safety at once!”

They rode back down the ramp. “That was a Singaporean jet, Mr. Singh.”

Singh pretended not to hear her. “Duty now is clear. You are coming with me, please.”

They took an elevator up to the sixth floor. Singh was silent, his back ramrod-straight. He wouldn't meet her eyes.

He led her down the corridor to a hall apartment and knocked three times.

A plump woman in black slacks and a tunic opened the door. “My wife,” said Singh. He gestured Laura inside.

The woman stared in amazement. “Laura Webster!” she said.

“Yes!” Laura said. She felt like hugging the woman.

It was a little three-room place. Very modest. Three bug-cute children bounded into the front room: a boy of nine, a girl, another boy still a toddler. “You have
three
children, Mr. Singh?”

“Yes,” Singh said, smiling. He picked up the littlest boy and mussed his hair. “Makes many tax problems. Working two jobs.” He and his wife began talking rapidly in Bengali, or Hindi maybe, something incomprehensible, but speckled with English loan words. Like
fighter jet
and
television
.

Mrs. Singh, whose name was Aratavari or something vaguely similar, took Laura into the parental bedroom. “We shall get you into some dry clothes,” she said. She opened the closet and took a folded square cloth from the top shelf. It was breathtaking: emerald-green silk with gold embroidery. “A sari will fit you,” she said, shaking it out briskly. It was obviously her finest garment. It looked like something a rajah's wife would wear for ritual suttee.

Laura toweled her hair and face. “Your English is very good.”

“I'm from Manchester,” said Mrs. Singh. “Better opportunity here however.” She turned her back politely while Laura stripped off her sopping blouse and jeans. She put on a sari blouse too big in the bustline and too tight around the ribs. The sari defeated her. Mrs. Singh helped her pleat and pin it.

Laura combed her hair in the mirror. Her gas-stung eyes looked like cracked marbles. But the beautiful sari gave her a hallucinatory look of exotic Sanskrit majesty. If only David were here.… She felt a sudden total rush of culture shock, intense and queasy, like déjà vu with a knife twist.

She followed Mrs. Singh back into the front room, barefoot and rustling. The children laughed, and Singh grinned at her. “Oh. Very good, madam. You would like drinking something?”

“I could sure do with a shot of whiskey.”

“No alcohol.”

“You got a cigarette?” she blurted. They looked shocked. “Sorry,” she muttered, wondering why she'd said it. “Very kind of y'all to put me up and everything.”

Mrs. Singh shook her head modestly. “I should take your clothes to the laundry. Only, curfew forbids it.” The older boy brought Laura a can of chilled guava juice. It tasted like sugared spit.

They sat on the couch. The Government channel was on, with the sound low. A Chinese anchorman was interviewing the cosmonaut, who was still in orbit. The cosmonaut expressed limitless faith in the authorities. “You like curry?” Mrs. Singh said anxiously.

“I can't stay,” Laura said, surprised.

“But you must!”

“No. My company voted. It's a policy matter. We're all going to jail.”

The Singhs were not surprised, but they looked unhappy and troubled. She felt genuinely sorry for them. “Why, Laura?” said Mrs. Singh.

“We came here to deal with Parliament. We don't care for this martial law at all. We're enemies of the state now. We can't work with you anymore.”

Singh and his wife conversed rapidly while the children sat on the floor, big-eyed and grave. “You stay safely here, madam,” Singh said at last. “It's our duty. You are important guest. The Government will understand.”

“It's not the same Government,” Laura said. “East Lagoon—that whole area's a riot zone now. They're killing each other down there. I saw it happen. The Air Force just fired a missile into our property. Maybe killed some of my people too, I don't know.”

Mrs. Singh went pale. “I heard the explosion—but it's not on the television.…” She turned to her husband, who stared morosely at the throw rug. They began talking again, and Laura broke in.

“I have no right to get y'all in trouble.” She stood up. “Where are my sandals?”

Singh stood up too. “I am escorting you, madam.”

“No,” Laura said, “you'd better stay here and guard your own home. Look, the doors are broken in downstairs, if you haven't noticed. Those Anti-Labourites took over our godown—they might wander into this place too, any time they like, and take everybody hostage. They mean business, or antibusiness, or whatever the hell they believe in. And they're not afraid to die, either.”

“I'm not afraid to die,” Singh insisted stoutly. His wife began shouting at him. Laura found her sandals—the toddler was playing with them behind the couch. She slipped them on.

Singh, red-faced, stormed out of the flat. Laura heard him in the hall, shouting and whacking doors with his lathi stick. “What's going on?” she said.

The two older children rushed Mrs. Singh and grabbed her, burying their faces in her tunic. “My husband says, that it was he who rescued you, a famous woman from television, who looked like a lost wet cat. And that you have broken bread in his house. And he will not send a helpless foreign woman to be killed in the streets like some kind of pariah dog.”

“He's got quite a way with words, in his own language.”

“Maybe that explains it,” said Mrs. Singh and smiled.

“I don't think a can of guava juice really qualifies as ‘breaking bread.'”

“Not guava. Soursop.” She patted her little girl's head. “He's a good man. He's honest, and works very hard, and is not stupid, or mean. And never hits me or the children.”

“That's very nice,” Laura said.

Mrs. Singh locked eyes with her. “I tell you this, Laura Webster, because I don't want you to throw my man's life away. Just because you're a political, and he doesn't count for much.”

“I'm not a political,” Laura protested. “I'm just a person, like you.”

“If you were like me, you'd be home with your family.”

Singh burst in suddenly, grabbed Laura by the arm, and hauled her out into the hall. Doors were open up and down the corridor, and it was crowded with confused and angry Indian men in their undershirts. When they saw her they roared in amazement.

In seconds they were all around her. “
Namaste, namaste
,” the Indian greeting, nodding over hands pressed together, palm to palm. Some touched the trailing edge of the sari, respectfully. Uproar of voices. “My son, my son,” a fat man kept shouting in English. “He's A-L.P., my son!”

The elevator opened and they hustled her inside. They crowded it to the limit, and other men ran for the stairs. The elevator sank slowly, its cables groaning, jammed like an overloaded bus.

Minutes later they had hustled her out into the street. Laura wasn't sure how the decision had been made or even if anyone had consciously made one. Windows had been flung open on every floor and people were shouting up and down in the soggy midafternoon heat. More and more were pouring out—a human tide. Not angry, but manic, like soldiers on furlough, or kids out of school—milling, shouting, slapping each other on the shoulders.