Ode to Broken Things (23 page)

Colonel S had a brief sensation of unease. Had that Agni been there too? He remembered her swiping her card through the restricted access to the tarmac, and felt his skin crawl in agitation. Would she have been near the stage? She had been so hostile towards him, but also so familiar, as if a mirror had been held up to his memories. Such pretty Malay features, such familiar carriage… It was unimaginable that he could harm anyone with Zainal’s blood flowing in her veins.

But the cause was larger than any one person, and he knew that only too well.

Earlier, when he had been watching the Minister being interviewed on television, the noise had come as a background hum to his ears. He had been waiting, a little nauseous from the excitement, and had craned his neck to see the television screen. It showed a large delegation of politicians inside the vip lounge at the airport, with a golden
kris
gleaming on every doorknob.

All chattering like idiots, he thought, wishing everyone
Selamat Deepavali
, as if the holidays of the Indians and the infidels with their idol-worshipping foolishness should matter.

He had to step away from the television and take in a big gulp of fresh air, and his knees trembled as he sat on the wooden slats that made up the steps to the house. A few more minutes and the Minister would be history. He was so keyed up, he couldn’t be still. He wanted to be sure that it would all go smoothly.

Now that the test was successful, they had proved that
it could be done
. The best security systems in the world were useless – and they still had the element of surprise on their side.

The suicide bomber had meant much to Colonel S, but all causes needed sacrifice. He had been their best. It would take time to pull apart the wheelchair and his body. Investigations took time. Their own team worked faster.

Targeting specific leaders could work very well.
To conquer the enemy without going to war was the most desirable way to win
, Sun Tzu. Multiple attacks; leaders must be targeted in different countries. Then attack again amid the chaos. Divert and aim well.

It was not hard to be a step ahead when they had the best brains in the world. When the Devil spread his poison throughout the world, men of science, like him, would rise up to make the antidote. They were everywhere now, and their forces were growing.

The corruption and divisiveness in Malaysian politics made influence easy to buy. Or sell. Their biggest advantage was that they were the most
kiasu
of all the players, the most afraid to lose. For them, the fear of losing was far greater than the fear of death.

Running through the open halls of the secured airport, Agni had the feeling of driving down a dark highway in the torrential rain. She felt a force carrying her up, circling her in a steep darkness, slickly speeding on the wet road with a sharp curve ahead. She had to force herself to keep running through her dizziness. The television footage pounded in her head; the soft thrum was now a raging headache.

It was the certainty, even before she had received the call, that Abhik had been there, within range. Agni had frantically called Rohani, driving back like a maniac from Port Dickson, and Rohani would be waiting at the scene. She flashed her identification card like a talisman and kept moving, through the medical personnel, the thronging reporters, the airport police.

When Rohani met her at the scene, she hugged Agni tightly, and stopped her from going any further. Agni could hear the murmur about mangled bodies, dental records, and
DNA
analysis; it would take some time.

“I
need
to go,” Agni said savagely.

Rohani was tearful. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s like a battlefield in there.”

She barged her way in, dragging Rohani with her. She walked past the charred bodies in that grim and silent room. She didn’t know what she was looking for until she found it.

There was a body with blue nail polish, just two long blue gashes shimmering with silver, on the toes of a man’s right foot.

Agni woke up to green walls, green curtains, a white metal bed, and a blue robe. And a nurse who leaned over to ask, “Feeling better?”

“Dizzy.”

The nurse drew the thick curtains. “Sleep, okay? You’ve been sedated. I’ll check on you in a couple of hours.”

“I want to go home.”

The nurse was young, but there was a matronly concern in her eyes as she lingered and adjusted the blanket. Agni turned deliberately to the wall and closed her eyes. When Rohani came in to clasp her hands in a hard squeeze, her face remained resolutely turned to the window.

Agni said, “I kept pushing him away. He asked me once, you know,
Don’t you wish I’d just disappear
?”

Rohani held her tight and patted her hand in awkward strokes. “You didn’t know this would happen, Agni.”

“I didn’t love him enough. I kept pushing him away, not telling my grandmother about him, not telling anyone. Maybe I willed him dead, like my grandmother once willed me alive.”

Rohani muffled her voice into her chest and said softly, “That’s nonsense, Agni; you don’t really believe that.”

“No,” whimpered Agni. “The women in my family can do this.”

She could not stop trembling. Rohani opened the cupboard and drew another blanket around her friend, but it was as if Agni had no control.

This is how it ends for my Abhik: two wads of cotton wool stuffed into his nose to keep his lifelessness from spilling out. He lies there still and, through the waving wafts of incense, I think I see him breathing, but then the smoke curls away and his body is rigid. There is so much noise here. The Sanskrit of
The
Gita
drones on, as do the visitors’ voices and the cries of the women who clasp Mriduladida in grief. All are equally unintelligible. The
Vedic slokas
merge into the bizarre collage of faces until they all seem to be reciting
Om Bhur Bhuvah Svaha
.

I am shocked by the stillness on my grandmother’s face. Someone, I don’t know who, brought her here. My grandmother is balanced painfully on a wheelchair, but she refuses to lie down, so I hold her. I see in her eyes such mirrored pain; what can I possibly say? I can only rub her back in gentle circles, the way she has soothed me so many times in childhood.

Someone shouts loudly, asking the tentman to create a shade for the visitors. The tin slats squeak on each other and, with my eyes closed, I think of monkeys in deep jungles signalling danger by such high-pitched squeaks. Yet, where is the danger here? Just eyes everywhere, eyes that look into me, into Abhik’s parents and his grandparents, waiting for the act to begin.

The
alpona
we had drawn so carefully on the ground, before placing the hundred and eight lamps, is totally smudged. I can’t believe I was happy once. I can’t believe I was ever happy.

The casket arrives; it will be placed on the pyre. It is taller than the door, so it leans heavily against the gate. Someone shoves a wreath into my hands, and I fumble with it near Abhik’s head, overturning the bottle of rose-water. The smell of death and jasmine is overpowering, mingling with sandal-wood incense and rosewater. I feel too clumsy for this. I look at the strange covered body and think I see him stirring again in sleep as I have seen him so many times before, on yet another weekend afternoon. Then the fans whir noisily, and the touch of rose-water seeping into my white
sari
tells me where I am.

Someone is shouting for iron keys; must be the colour of nails, make sure; and I stare blankly as they rummage near me. My grandmother’s eyes are fixed on a picture of Abhik to be pasted on white art paper. It’s a picture I recognise from a dinner two months ago. I know all his pictures, where they were taken, and by whom. We lived the same life.

Then Abhik is lifted up, and he is placed in the casket. His mother is keening, but I can’t cry. I see the eyes surrounding us and digging into the depths of her soul. My grandmother’s are closed. She claws into my hand.

Abhik’s father holds one side of the casket, and I see our friends lifting up the other three corners to the shouts of
Hari Bol
and the noise swells, even as I hear a lady giving another her phone number, “Call me, yah.” We are steered towards the hearse; the wails increase.
The Gita
chant is louder through the speakers outside.

Not silence, nor shrieks; I want the whisper of the sleeper’s sigh. But, as the coffin passes through the gates, the noise rises to a crescendo, and the sun beats down with the crackle of flames.

Suddenly, Ranjandadu wheels towards me and all necks swivel towards us, eyes alight with anticipation. My head dips to envelope him in a tight hug, and we remain fused in this shared pain that excludes everyone else, until I start to sob. Then Dida lifts her eyes to me, and I gently lead her away.

I will not go to the crematorium to say the final goodbye. For now, I concentrate on holding up my grandmother, who is grimacing with pain. The crowd parts; susurrations follow us like grass snakes, nipping at our heels.

My Agni, when she was about twelve, kept a tortoise. She had rescued it from the road and kept it in the bathtub. Now she is like that animal, all curled up and hidden within.

She was so closed at the funeral, as if Abhik had been only a friend. It was good Ranjan made her cry, or she would have shattered. If only the world was as simple as a computer problem. My Agni has mastered the blinking screen in front of her, finding problems and solving them, without having to look around.

Sweeter than the tree you plant is the fruit it bears. My granddaughter lives, and for that I am glad. I can only chant this mantra in this insanity.

When Nikhil brought me to this country as a bride, Malaya was a transit point in our journey in life. Agni has never had the detachment of a foreigner; she always felt the pulse of this country with the insight of a native and, unlike Abhik, she never found it faltering.

But we still have too many secrets. Ah, my wild Lute of Fire, I was so weak, I did not know whether to spare you the pain of knowing, or the pain of not knowing.

Jay is back again – I saw him circling like a vulture at the funeral. He is waiting for all us all to weaken. He has managed to kill Abhik, I know it, and now he is waiting for me to die so that he can swoop down on Agni and devour her.

There are rumours flying everywhere, and the town is a gaggle of hisses and gossipy mouths. It is easy to blame the Malays, or anybody who is not us. Troops have been deployed, just as they were in 1969. The government is saying, “We warned you, this is what happens when the political balance is not maintained and groups that should not be in power get some power to terrorise and de-stabilise.”

There are soldiers on the streets again. They are also human, right? In such times you protect your own. How to blame anyone?

I am old now, a prisoner of this body, and rotting in a wheel-chair, dependent on others. I am the crazy old woman people distractedly pat when they make the dutiful visits that are such a nuisance; such a distraction from their busy, productive lives. I can see it in their eyes as they turn away from me, asking piteously, “It is so hard for you, Dida, so lonely you poor thing,” but I know they just want to squeeze out some sentences so that they can go home.

Abhik had never been like that. Our bond was beyond duty, and I knew that he would accept Agni no matter who she was. He didn’t need to know who her father was and I saw no need to tell him; but, even if I had, he would have taken Agni, for they were like two parts of the same soul.

My mind is still unclouded and I understand. As well as I understood that day that Siti, wily Siti, who brought my child back from the dead, lost her own soul to a shadow-play on the kitchen wall.

Abhik is dead. I can only worry about my Agni. The vulture circles, relentlessly.

When Jay saw the footage from the press conference at the airport, he knew at once that Colonel S was behind this.

Jay’s bus was parked at a rest stop. Drawn by the hushed crowds around the three television screens, he too had stopped and stared. It didn’t take him long, from the cnn commentary, to guess that this was the experiment Colonel S had talked about.

He stared, horrified. Immediately, he wondered how far he had been implicated.

He wondered whether to call someone. Calling his ex-wife, Rina, would be the only possibility, but he would have to wake her from sleep to tell her. He knew Rina; in the current climate in America, she would worry about witch-hunts, maybe even a scandal ending his career. She would tell him, no matter how remote the possibility, he couldn’t risk his life’s work.
Come home right now
.

He wasn’t ready to go back home. Not alone. He could only hope that his past with the old man would roll off his reputation like teflon. He would have to sever that connection immediately and move on.

His mind churned chaotically, searching for an exit route that would allow other possibilities. He hadn’t felt such wild stirrings in his blood since he had last been in Malaysia, and then it had been due to an impossible obsession. Now things were possible. Even more so now. Obtainable.

He took a taxi back to Kuala Lumpur, paying double, for the drivers were unwilling to drive into a troubled city with armed guards on the streets. He stood on the narrow pavement outside the huge automatic gates that opened into the long serpentine driveway, and rang the bell three times before anyone responded.

The traffic whistled by too close for comfort, the speed of the cars shaking the bougainvillea plants which cascaded down the wrought-iron fence in white, pink, and a dusky orange before the doors swung reluctantly open. The house felt different. Naturally, he didn’t expect to be greeted again by the raucous laughter from a party in progress, but the lugubrious tangibility of bereavement was also unexpected. He had not experienced this in any American funeral he had attended.