Shadow Play (15 page)

“So what?”

“So I want to see justice done.”

“You don't think Ghani might have deserved it?”

Osman raised his eyebrows and shot Maryam a quick look. She
was more than happy to engage in a philosophical discussion: it made a nice change.

“He deserved something, for sure: believe me, Ali, I'm no fan of taking another wife. I don't think any woman is. But death: don't you think it's a touch harsh?”

“Look at my poor sister.”

Maryam shook her head sadly. “Oh, I know. I'm heartbroken to see it. Has anything worked?”

“No,” he answered morosely. “She's confused.” He paused and rubbed his forehead. “We're all sick. It's as though we've all lost our wits, just like Aisha.”

“Really?” Maryam was curious. “Since when?”

Ali shrugged again: now that Maryam looked closely at him, and at his mother, she thought they did look pale, although it could be grief alone. She looked over at Osman, whose face mirrored her own concern.

“A few days. I think my parents are sick because of watching Aisha. They can't bear seeing their daughter suffer like this. Who could?” Hasnah looked at the porch, lost in her own reverie. “Aisha's not here now. She's at Ghani's parents,” Ali added.

Maryam shook her head in sympathy. “I can't imagine. You know, time may help. It may be the only thing. And she's still very young. She could remarry.”

“Or she could spend the rest of her life wandering around the house with only half a mind.”

Hasnah rose abruptly and walked into the house, clearly unable to listen to the conversation. Osman watched her go with a concerned frown.

“I hope not,” Maryam shuddered. “It's too sad to think about.”

“Well, she's my sister, so I've got to think about it, don't you see? That's why I argued with Ghani.”

“I understand. but by then, he'd already divorced this girl and was back with your sister. And sorry, too, I heard.”

Ali nearly spat. “Sorry! That's really nice. He broke Aisha's heart, and I wanted him to know it.”

Maryam nodded encouragement. “And what did he say?”

Ali's shoulders slumped, and he suddenly looked tired.

“   “Some coffee, Ali?” she asked. He nodded. She poured him a cup from the tray in front of them, and he sipped it thoughtfully.

“Where were we?” She affected forgetfulness and Ali eyed her suspiciously. “Ah yes, what Ghani said to you.” She settled back for the story.

He squirmed for a moment and then began talking. Amazing the power of mothers, Maryam thought. An older woman could command most younger men with just a stern look. It was perhaps the only benefit for a woman getting older. Of course, it could also have been Osman's quiet but official presence next to her; she was surprised at herself for thinking this.

“First, he started apologizing,” Ali began, still sulky but coming out of it. “He kept telling me he agreed with me, it was his fault, he didn't know why he'd done it. He said he loved Aisha and the kids, would never leave her, blah blah blah. He told me he thought he'd been bewitched: Faouda must have put a spell on him and that's why he married her. Then when he came back to Kota Bharu, he was too far for the spell to work and he woke up.

“That's what he said, ‘I woke up when I came home, and I
couldn't believe it was me who married Faouda. Ali, maybe it wasn't me, because I love my family, and now that I'm cured, it will be fine.'

“Right, I told him, it'll be fine until the next time, and then the whole thing will start all over again. What are you going to do about it?' I asked him. ‘You can't have this happen every time you go away, you know. Why don't you go to a
bomoh
yourself and get an
azimat?
Or better yet, Aisha can get one to make sure you stay faithful, what about that?'

“That's when he got mad. ‘You're trying to have me bewitched all the time?' he asked me. ‘I won't have a life of my own? You just shut up about
bomoh
,' he told me, ‘I don't want to hear it.' He was shouting by now: scared, I think, that we'd have all these spells on him and he'd be totally in our power. Which is crazy, of course; that's not what I was talking about at all. ‘Stay away from me!' he said. ‘You're trying to kill me!'

Maryam sat up at this. “He said that?”

“Of course,
Mak Cik
, he meant you're trying to kill me with spells and sorcery, not with a
golok.
Because I wasn't: I didn't have one or anything.”

“That's quite an argument,” Maryam commented. “Was Aisha there with you?”

Ali was silent. Maryam surmised she was, and Ali didn't want to give her away. The silence grew, and Ali realized he'd not spoken for too long to have ‘No' be a credible answer.

“You know,” he began slowly, trying to see his way out of the thicket, “she didn't have anything to do with this argument.”

“She wasn't there when you were talking to Ghani?”

“No.” Now he answered promptly, not making the same mistake
twice.

“Where was she?”

“Around,” he said vaguely. Maryam stared hard at him until he decided to amend his answer. “Look, she wasn't part of the argument.”

“Where was she?”

Ali answered with a hint of desperation in his voice. “She was standing a little way away.”

“So she heard the whole thing.”

Ali nodded miserably. “She did. I didn't want her to.”

“What about Ghani?”

He shrugged and stared at the floor.

“Ali,” she said sternly. “Do you want to tell us, or shall I leave and you can speak to
Che
Osman here yourself?”

Tears came to his eyes. “
Mak Cik
, I made everything worse. It wasn't my intention, my
niat
was only good, but I made it worse and it's all my fault.” He began crying in earnest.

“What?” Maryam asked, both alarmed and elated at the thought of an explanation at last.

“Aisha heard it all, like I told you, and she tried to stop the argument. And Ghani yelled at her and said, ‘I won't spend the rest of my life bewitched by you and your family. I said I loved you, I said I was sorry, and now your brother wants me to just
alangkah leher minta disembeleh:
stretch out my neck and ask to have it cut? Are you going to put spells on me whether I know it or not?'

“ ‘I won't have it,' he said to her. ‘Maybe it would be better if I just left. I can't live like this.' And he pulled his arm away and run up into the
panggung.
She stood there crying into her hands, and I knew it was all my fault.”

“
Alamak
!” Maryam was at a loss. No wonder Aisha was so beside herself.

“She was so angry at me,” Ali sobbed. “She said I'd ruined her life. I'd made her children fatherless. Why did I even get involved, she asked me? She sat on the ground in the back of the
panggung
and just cried. I was ready to do anything to make it better,
Mak Cik
, you must believe me.”

She nodded. “I do. What happened next?”

“She wouldn't leave,” he wiped his nose with his sleeve, and tried to dry his eyes. “She told me to get away from her. By this time, the break was over and the performance had started again, so she couldn't go in and talk to him. Besides, I don't think he was ready to talk to anyone right then. I told her she should just go home and talk to him tomorrow, but she started hitting me. So I walked to the front and tried to watch. I couldn't go home without her,
Mak Cik.
I couldn't leave her there.”

“Of course not,” Maryam agreed, passing him some paper napkins from the tray. “Here, blow your nose.” She waited until he was finished. He looked like a woebegone five-year-old. “So when did you leave?”

“Not for a while”

“For a while?”

He wiggled again. Finally, the truth, she thought. “Not till after the performance ended. Aisha tried to talk to him.”

“What did he say?”

“She said he told her to leave him alone. That he'd divorce her if she went to the
bomoh
and put a spell on him. He said they could talk when this run was finished. She was crying and crying. I took her home on my motorcycle.” He looked miserably at Maryam and Osman, his
eyes moving from one to the other. Osman now seemed a strangely sympathetic presence, and Maryam could see how people might open up to him, once he could understand them. “I walked it out to the main road so it wouldn't wake you.”

Osman smiled kindly, as though he had just heard what he'd been waiting all his life to hear. “Thank you,
Che
Ali,” he said calmly, rising slowly from the porch. “You've been a great help.” He touched him briefly on the shoulder, a small but strangely comforting gesture, and with that, he was down the stairs, waiting for Maryam at the bottom.

Chapter XVI

Maryam left her house early the next morning, even before the children had gone to school. She was completely exasperated: as her investigation progressed, she seemed to add suspects rather than eliminate them. With every step, she seemed to be farther from a conclusion.

Something wide and flat seemed half buried under the stairs, and she bent over to throw it away. It wasn't that big, true, but some poisonous snakes weren't that big either, and she wasn't going to provide camouflage for them. “
Aduh
!” she cried. Her middle finger was bleeding, punctured by a spiny thorn, deep and clean. She pulled out the whole package, and picked it apart gingerly.

She found a spine which she thought might be from an
ikan keli
, a poisonous catfish, stabbed through the head of a crude wax figure of a woman. A rolled paper with drawings on it, a spell no doubt, ran through the figure's torso. Nails were driven into the doll, through the head, chest, arms and legs and, of course, the poisonous spine through the forehead. It was wrapped in a white shroud, covered with a broad banana leaf.

She examined it blankly at first, then with mounting horror. It was an evil spell, perhaps even a death spell. The wax figure was clearly meant to represent her, to add
jampi
as supernatural assistance to the
more practical poisonous spine. She felt a sudden prick of fear: was the poison active and even now coursing through her blood?

She looked up at the stairs, thankful that it was she who found it, rather than her children. She tried to stay calm. “Mamat!” she cried.

He came calmly to the door, holding a cup of coffee. “What?”

“I … I think I've found a
jampi
under the stairs,” she began. “A spine from an
ikan keli,”
she ended vaguely. Her head was beginning to pound, whether from fear or a poison, she didn't know. Maryam bent over and closed her eyes, tamping down the panic rising within her. “It's all in my head,” she told Mamat, who was now next to her holding her arm. “I'm imagining it. There's nothing wrong with me.”

She opened her eyes to find herself stretched out on the ground with Mamat leaning over her. “Don't worry,
sayang,”
he told her, “Aliza's getting a taxi right away.” He ran his hand over Maryam's forehead; it felt cold to Maryam, like cool water over hot sand.

“What is it?” she murmured to Mamat, “Poison? Black magic?”

“Never mind,” Mamat told her. “Here's the taxi. Rubiah's here, too.” He tried to maneuver her upright, but Maryam seemed slippery, without strength. “Come on, Yam,” he urged, “try to get up.”

She was dizzy, unable to focus: her legs felt weak and rubbery. They half-dragged Maryam to the car, while Aliza stood at the taxi door sobbing. “Don't worry,” Mamat told her as they got in. “Get Yi to school and you, too. It will be fine.” They were gone it a moment.

It seemed hours before they pulled up in front of the English Doctor's dispensary; Maryam now slurred her words and her eyes drooped. Rubiah restrained her own dread, and Mamat concentrated only on getting Maryam in front of a doctor. Rubiah ran forward to the receptionist, “Please! We need help immediately! Hurry!”

The girl had never seen a
Mak Cik
in such a state. She whisked Maryam into an examination room, where a middle-aged English doctor and a Chinese nurse bent over her solicitously.

“What happened?” asked the doctor, shining a light into Maryam's eyes.

“This.” Rubiah offered him the bundle. “She pierced her finger on this spine.
Ikan Keli
, do you suppose? Is it poisonous?”

The doctor examined the spine very carefully. “It looks like it. We see some fishermen in here occasionally with these. Painful. Very rough.”

He listened to Maryam's quick breathing. “
Mak Cik!”
he called out. “
Mak Cik
, can you hear me?”

Maryam opened her eyes lazily, looking at him without focus. “Yes, I hear you,” she said softly.

“Excellent,” he pronounced. He turned to Mamat. “She's very lucky the spine's dried out a bit. Less harmful. Still, painful. Who did this?”

The doctor's rapid-fire delivery distracted Mamat. “I don't know. She found it under the steps to our house.” He thought for a moment. “Thank God neither of the kids picked it up,” he breathed fervently.

The doctor nodded and prepared an injection. “This will keep her going. Energy. Very important in cases like this. I think she'll be all right, but we'll keep her here for a while. Let her sleep. Keep an eye on her. Has enemies, does she?”

Mamat looked doubtful at first, and then increasingly uncomfortable. “I don't know. Maybe. I mean, enemies who would do this?” It seemed clear she did; he frowned and considered the question.

Rubiah commandeered a pair of scissors and cut off a long lock
of her hair, twisting it into a bracelet of sorts. She tied it tightly around Maryam's injured finger. The doctor raised his eyebrows.