The Oddfits (4 page)

CHAPTER 4

“Mr. and Mrs. Froy, it has come to my attention,” said the principal of Da Qiao Primary School, “that your son does not fit in so well here.” The principal had a reputation for being extremely straightforward. And for having perfectly manicured fingernails. Resting her elbows on her desk and folding her hands in front of her, she appraised her nails with a barely noticeable downward glance and smiled to herself before turning her attention once again to what she privately called “the
ang moh
problem.”

“Really?” said Mr. Floyd with an astonished look on his face. “I had no idea. He’s never told us!”

It was the principal’s turn to be astonished. “Hah? He never said anything?”

“No,” Mrs. Floyd confirmed. “When we ask him how school is, he tells us that he absolutely
adores
it. He seems as happy as the proverbial clam. When he came home after that first day of school, I’d never seen such a wide grin.”

The principal sighed. “I am terribly sorry to be saying this, but I think he has been lying to you.”

The Floyds looked aghast. Mr. Floyd even gasped.

“Murgatroyd? Lie to us?”

“Why would he lie about such a thing?”

“Oh, dear me. If only we had known.”

“What is wrong, exactly?”

The principal elaborated. Murgatroyd had been attending Da Qiao Primary for one month now, and while he was doing passably in his classes, he had no friends and kept getting picked on by the other children, even when he finally started showing up in a white and green school uniform instead of girls’ clothes, and even when his hair started growing back. During recess, he would hide in the toilet stalls or hang around the teachers who had to pry him off their persons before they could retreat to the safety of the teachers’ lounge.

The principal spared no grim detail, pulled no punches. And after she had given her frank account of the situation, the principal leaned back in her chair, quickly admired her fingernails again, and waited for the Floyds’ response, which she hoped would involve taking the poor little
ang moh
boy out of Da Qiao Primary and putting him in a school where he might stand a better chance of being happy—perhaps one of the well-funded, well-maintained private schools where foreigners usually enrolled their children.

The news of their son’s extreme unhappiness had evidently come as a shock to them. The father appeared to even be clutching his chest as if he were experiencing a heart attack.

“Are you
. . .
feeling all right, Mr. Froy?” the principal asked, leaning forward in her chair.

He didn’t appear to have heard her. “That’s terrible. Absolutely terrible,” he muttered. The principal nodded gravely in assent. James Floyd took a deep breath. He took three more deep breaths, placing his hands on his knees as if to steady himself. He looked at his wife, who had been sobbing silently all the while into several tissues, which now lay crumpled in a soggy heap on her lap. He looked at the principal. He opened his mouth to speak.

“So, what can we do to help him fit in at Da Qiao Primary?”

Flabbergasted, the principal peered at him through her wire-rimmed spectacles. She had heard wrongly. She inclined her head towards him and cupped one hand over her ear. “Excuse me?”

Mr. Floyd repeated himself. “How can we help him fit in?”

“Say again?”

Mr. Floyd said again, “How can we help him fit in?”

She stared in disbelief at the British couple sitting in front of her, looking so pathetically earnest.

“Maybe I’m not making myself clear.” The principal of Da Qiao Primary cleared her throat and addressed the Floyds in a very slow, very loud voice. “Mr. and Mrs. Froy, your son does not belong here.”

The words seemed to have no effect on the Floyds’ blinking, expectant gaze. She decided to try pleading with them. “Please, for his sake, find another school for him. There are many other places where you can send him. How about the British school or American school where he can be with other children like him?”

At the suggestion of a British or American school, Mr. Floyd’s naturally good-natured brow furrowed. “Other children
like him
?” he repeated coldly. “You mean other
ang moh
like him?”

The principal grew quiet.

“That is precisely what I would
detest
the most!” he thundered. “Madam, we are not aliens, nor are we foreigners. As you well know from all those forms we had to fill out, I am a naturalized Singaporean citizen, and my son is a citizen by birth. The farthest out of the country he has ever been is Malaysia. He has never been to England, and I dare-say he would not recognize a picture of the Queen if it came to life, bit him in the buttocks, and introduced itself. His skin may be white and pasty and prone to redness if overexposed to the sun, and it is entirely possible that one of his distant relatives might have helped undertake the colonization of this island. Nevertheless, he has just as much of a right to attend a local school as your own son or daughter. I will not take my son out of this school just because he
does not fit in
.”

The principal accepted the reprimand and sighed. “You’re right, Mr. Froy, I misspoke. But please, for the sake of your son, be practical. Murgatoy is very unhappy here. This is the fact of the matter.”

“Give him time,” Mrs. Floyd said. “They’ll learn to accept him eventually. He’ll learn to fit in.”

The principal gave one last desperate try, “Half of them cannot even pronounce his name correctly.” She paused. “
I
cannot even pronounce his name correctly.”

“Then we’ll give him another name,” Mr. Floyd promptly replied. “We’ll give him a Chinese name to help him fit in, see?”

“Oh, I see,” the principal said sarcastically. “What will his name be?” she asked with a challenging smirk.

There was silence. Then, all of a sudden, Mrs. Floyd decided to stop sobbing long enough to offer a suggestion. “His name will be Shwet Foo.”

James Floyd turned to his wife, his face radiant with adoration. “Olivia, darling, you’re a genius.”

“Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo.” Olivia Floyd uttered the entirety of their son’s new name for full effect.

The principal of Da Qiao Primary reacted somewhat curiously to Mrs. Floyd’s solemn pronouncement. Torn between profound pity for the little
ang moh
boy and the uncontrollable urge to giggle at his nonsensical new “Chinese” name, she did both. As snorts of laughter shook her small frame, the edges of her mouth also curved downwards in a sympathetic grimace for the fate of Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo.

Poor little Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo.

Having made “the
ang moh
problem” a little bit worse instead of solving it, the principal concluded the meeting, and resigned herself and little Shwet Foo to the unhappy circumstances at hand. After Mr. and Mrs. Floyd had left, she pulled out a nail file from her desk and began doing what she did whenever she needed to decompress.
Why would they do such a terrible thing?
she asked herself, working furiously at an irregularity in the curve of her left thumbnail.

Why indeed would Mr. and Mrs. Floyd do such a terrible thing? Of course, the Floyds’ behaviour towards their son had always been slightly peculiar. Those who could call themselves friends of the Floyd family had always noticed as much, but could never quite place their finger on it.

Despite James and Olivia’s supposed best intentions in Chinese-ifying their son, the children’s behaviour towards their
ang moh
classmate remained much the same: abusive, with a slight swelling of even more abuse when they found out about Murgatroyd’s ridiculous-sounding “Chinese” name. The newly christened Shwet Foo never did assimilate into life at Da Qiao Primary. In fact, he never really assimilated into life in general. Part of it had to do with his initial ostracism at Da Qiao Primary, which set the pattern for the rest of his student life: fearful of his schoolmates, he avoided their company, and they in turn continued to ignore him, or occasionally, to torment and tease him. Part of it had to do with his personality, which was naturally quiet and withdrawn. Part of it, sadly, did have to do with his blonde hair and blue eyes, which were a superficial difference, yes, but inalterable nonetheless. And despite Murgatroyd’s increasingly Singaporean accent and his growing familiarity with local life, his unhappy days continued. A large part of it had to do with something else entirely—something that was not only imperceptible to the overwhelming majority of the population, but to their knowledge, simply didn’t exist. Murgatroyd would discover what that something was much later in his life, and to his surprise, it would be intimately connected with the hope for the extraordinarily stupendous Something that would, every now and then for the next sixteen years, drift momentarily to the surface of his consciousness before submerging itself once more.

Murgatroyd’s life did not turn out to be an entirely solitary one, though. In fact, he emerged from his otherwise painful six years at Da Qiao Primary with a friend by the name of Seng Kay Huat—a boy older than him by two years who was to remain Murgatroyd’s closest companion for many years to come, even after their lives had diverged to follow very separate paths. Even at a very young age, it was clear that Kay Huat was destined for great things. Endowed with great intelligence, clean-cut good looks, and an affable personality, Kay Huat’s natural abilities paved over the rockiness of life’s path, turning it into a veritable freeway of easy success down which he could cruise in a silver Porsche. His high examination marks upon leaving Da Qiao Primary earned him a scholarship to attend the elite Raffles Institution, where he completed his secondary and pre-university education. After serving his mandatory two years’ national service in the Singaporean army, Kay Huat won a full scholarship from Stanford University in the United States. He graduated
summa cum laude
with a BA in economics and philosophy, and a minor in art history. He had then returned home to take his place in Singaporean society as a highly paid, highly ambitious, and highly successful private banker.

In contrast, it was clear from a very early age that Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo was not destined for anything involving high pay, ambition, or success. Murgatroyd had never been very good at studying, and chose to end his education after graduating from a low-ranking secondary school. After scraping through his two years of national service, he went through a number of odd jobs, all of which he was fired from, until he found employment as the top waiter of a wildly successful restaurant. Surprisingly enough, Murgatroyd was very good at this job.

SINGAPORE

2004

CHAPTER 5

A mysterious figure crept cautiously from his corner into the open space, enshrouded by a turbid murkiness thick and dense as pea soup. Tilting his head to one side, he appeared to be listening for something in particular: a signal or a warning perhaps. Tonight, he felt instinctively that something was wrong, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. The area in which he stood was usually terribly packed, with hardly any room to move or space to breathe. But over time, the crowds had thinned, and now he found himself solitary, and actually, a little lonely as well. He would have never called himself a social butterfly, but the sight of the desolate square (well, what he could see of it through the gloom) filled him with sadness. Sadness? Was it sadness? Never having been much of an orator or writer either, he racked his brains for the proper words to describe his feelings. After a while, they came to him. It was not sadness or loneliness that so gripped his heart. It was a feeling of mild terror—not enough to send him screaming into the night, but enough to make the very hairs on his legs quiver ever so slightly in alertness. He must be on his guard.

He stood now before the Great Screen, claiming an enviable spot directly in front of it—a spot which, in the past, he would have never been able to obtain without a great deal of pushing and shoving, and even then he would have been able to hold his position for a few minutes at the most. Long gone were those days, and long gone were the multitudes jostling with each other for the privilege of a glimpse into that other world; although on a night like this, one could only make out their immense figures if one really squinted. That other world would never change. He felt sure of it. Its cycles of alternating illumination and darkness, activity and quietude, would never cease. They would continue long after his own demise, into the far reaches of eternity.

It was the figures’ aura of immortality that had the power to draw the crowds, to hold them mesmerized until they forgot the existence of anything apart from the magnificent creatures before their eyes: strange-looking gods and goddesses who congregated regularly to feast and celebrate, and their servants clad in white and black who spent their lives perpetually setting up and dismantling banquet after banquet after banquet. The lives of these immortals were so vastly different from their own; it helped them to escape their cramped existence spent in the confines of this prison. Even now, he felt a wave of calm washing over him—a wave so strong that he felt as if he were being lifted slowly off his feet and out of the water. He waved his eight legs as frantically as he could, but he was weak from hunger. Summoning the last dregs of his energy, he strained convulsively against the restraints that bound his pincers shut, but to no avail. So this is what happened to the others, he thought sluggishly to himself as he was removed from the tank. Still, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the Great Screen.

“My apologies, madam, but this is the last lobster we have left. If you find him unsuitable, perhaps you would like to choose something else for your main course this evening?”

Murgatroyd held the lobster aloft before the guest so that she could inspect it. He held it firmly so the lobster wouldn’t flick water onto her clothes, but elegantly too, to maintain the ambience of fine dining so assiduously maintained at L’Abattoir. He held it not so close that the guest would be subjected to the fishy stench, but not so far away that the guest couldn’t easily spot any defects that might prompt her to reject the lobster in favour of something else.

Mrs. Tan was a regular patron of L’Abattoir. She took lemon and lime in her water and wore a rouge too pink for her age. She examined the lobster in front of her.

“He looks a bit listless, don’t you think?”

Murgatroyd sensed that this was an opportune time for a light joke.

“He’s resigned to his fate, madam.”

Mrs. Tan laughed and turned to her husband. “Aloysius, what do you think?”

Her husband—a short, plump man who was disconcertingly similar to his wife in appearance and who couldn’t resist a good crème brûlée—peered at the proffered lobster through his spectacles and nodded. “He’ll do, lah
.
”

“As you may have read in tonight’s menu, madam and sir, the chef will be searing the lobster lightly and serving it over a bed of risotto made from sushi rice and enoki mushrooms, with a dollop of our signature sesame sauce on the side.”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

Murgatroyd bowed slightly and lingered, sensing that Mrs. Tan had something else to say.

“You’ve been working here for quite some time already, is it?” she asked in a friendly tone of voice.

She had acknowledged that she recognized him. Now he could address her with more familiarity to demonstrate his skill and experience on the waitstaff of L’Abattoir.

“Three years now, Mrs. Tan.”

“You’re quite young. How old are you?”

“Twenty-five, madam.”

“Your accent is like a local,” she observed. “But you’re obviously not from here.”

Such observations were not new to Murgatroyd. “I’m a citizen, Mrs. Tan. My parents are originally from England.”

“Ah, I see. Both of them are Caucasian? You don’t look mixed.”

“No, no. Not mixed.”

Mr. Tan ceased peering at the lobster to peer at Murgatroyd. “Wah. Very interesting, I must say.”

“Thank you, Mr. Tan.”

“Which part of England are they from?”

“I think they both grew up in London.”

“Have you ever been there?” Mr. Tan asked.

Murgatroyd shook his head.

“London’s a lovely city,” Mrs. Tan said, taking a sip of water. “We stayed there for a few days when looking at schools for our son.”

“Oh?”

“He’s at Oxford now. Studying mathematics at St. Peter’s College.”

“You must be very proud of him.”

“We are,” Mr. Tan confirmed. The mobile phone lying next to his dinner plate began to vibrate. As Mr. Tan picked it up, and as Mrs. Tan let her gaze fall abstractedly on the family dining at the next table, Murgatroyd knew that he had become a nonentity once again, and it was time for him to bow and bear the lobster off to the kitchen for its execution. Keeping the lobster a crooked-arm’s length away from his body, he glided away, past the glass-panelled arena at the centre of the restaurant, through the silver swinging doors of the kitchen, and handed the victim over to his fate: to be laid belly-up on a wooden chopping block, to have the point of a knife inserted into its middle to sever its ventral nerve cord, and to have its head and brain split in two. A fast death, and arguably the kindest one possible, but not nearly spectacular enough to merit public viewing in the infamous L’Abattoir arena.

Of course, the Tans never took the arena into consideration when they came to L’Abattoir to dine. They were regular patrons only because they thought the chef a wizard and his food exquisite. In fact, one could say that they came
despite
what L’Abattoir had become famous for. They always requested the worst table in the house—“the worst” insofar as it was the sole table that offered almost no view of the arena. All the other tables had been positioned so that its occupants could enjoy the spectacle to its fullest, with a few choice seats positioned only metres away from the glass-panelled enclosure. The Tans’ aversion to the spectacle that drew almost all the other clientele made them truly exceptional. Everyone else was out for blood and was willing to pay to see it.

The various bribes that the staff members of L’Abattoir had been offered in exchange for a seating at one of the closer tables bordered on the absurd: sums of money up to thousands of dollars, designer bags and watches, stocks and bonds, fine wines, antiques and artwork. The headwaiter could even boast of having been offered a herd of llamas by the erstwhile dictator of some small Latin American country who had been passing through Singapore on the way to his summer mansion in the Philippines. Almost none of these bribes had been taken, and when they had been, the accepting party had always been fired. Shakti Vithani stood for no such shenanigans among the staff of any of her restaurants. Apart from the fact that bribery was unprofessional, allowing them to supplement their incomes in this way would have undermined her control over them. Discipline had to be maintained. Besides, such bribes rightfully belonged to the restaurant owner, not to mere employees. After all, how could
they
properly appreciate the exquisite Sung Dynasty vase that had added such class to her guest bathroom? And where would they find the means to build the kind of stable she had just commissioned to comfortably house her newly acquired trio of beautiful show-quality llamas?

From her position at the far end of the bar, her customary glass of Coca-Cola Light in her hand, Shakti Vithani lovingly surveyed her establishment—the jewel in the crown of her small but successful restaurant empire—and sighed with contentment. At long last, she had finally arrived. Of course, business at L’Abattoir
hadn’t always been this good. In fact, there had been a time—an exceptionally dark time—when it had been in very real danger of closing, dragging down with it Shakti’s hopes of becoming a world-famous restaurateur.

She smiled and shook her head at the memory. She could smile now. What a long way she had come since then! How young and inexperienced she had been! The surprisingly easy success of her very first restaurant—an upscale Northern Indian bistro called the Spice Larder—had deceived her into thinking that all a restaurant needed was good ambience and good food. The struggle she’d had with getting her subsequent two restaurants to follow suit had taught her the hard way that eating may have been the national pastime, but winning over the hearts, stomachs, and wallets of the Singaporean people was extraordinarily difficult and took exhaustive amounts of energy, skill, and cunning.

Singaporeans loved food, and Singapore was the right place to love it. Food of every variety and suited to any budget was to be found everywhere. Local cuisine was the cheapest, its quality practically guaranteed, and in itself was endlessly diverse. There were noodles any way you wanted them, flat and thick, thin and translucent, yellow and chewy, hand-pulled or knife-cut, in any liquid medium your heart desired—fragrant prawn-pork broth; rich brown sauce; curried coconut gravy; soup bright with tamarind and lime; fish stock, singing sweet and pure, made creamy with a touch of milk. How about rice? Rice flavoured with broth and garlic and ginger served with delicately poached chicken and three sauces—beige ginger, black soy, and red-orange chilli; rich rice boiled in coconut milk and scented with the clean green of pandan leaves; biryani rice flecked yellow and orange with saffron and turmeric, glinting with ghee, disappearing down your gullet and leaving a faint spice trail behind it of cardamom and coriander, cinnamon and ginger. Carnivorous cravings? Duck with skin roasted red-brown and crisp, or stewed pork belly, black and velvety; beef or lamb or chicken slow-cooked in curry, tender meat melting off the bones. Seafood? Brilliant, blushing steamed prawns the size of a grown man’s fist; crab chunks in black pepper gravy or a sweetish chilli sauce that left you licking the bowls and plates clean; whole grouper fish, fried to crunchy perfection on the outside, white flesh delicate and flaky on the inside. Vegetarian? Tofu and boiled eggs deep-fried in shrimp-chilli paste; sweet potato leaves stewed in spicy coconut cream; a salad of pineapple, turnip, water-apple, green mango, and cucumber doused in a spicy-sweet black sauce and christened with crushed peanuts. Snack? Bright yellow egg-custard tarts; flaky pastry puffs stuffed with your choice of curried chicken, curried sardine, apple, yam, pineapple, or durian paste; toast slices spread with butter and glistening green coconut jam. Dessert? Mounds of shaved ice flavoured with rose syrup and condensed milk, concealing a treasure pile of jelly, red beans, and corn kernels; plump glutinous rice balls floating in clear, sweet liquid, waiting for you to sink your teeth into them and release a gushing ooze of buttery peanut or black sesame paste; chewy, porous pancakes rolled around sweet bean filling, gooey chocolate, or strands of orange-dyed grated coconut. Thirsty? Tea or coffee with condensed milk, or the fresh juice of a gingerroot; white milk of the soya bean, green juice of the sugar cane; liquid blends of carrot, pineapple, apple, dragon fruit, mango, cucumber, rose apple, and guava made to your exact specifications.

Those were just a few of the local options. And what about the foreign ones? British and American and Italian and French; Indonesian and Thai and Vietnamese; Northern Indian and Pakistani; Japanese and Korean and Taiwanese: their cuisines flooded the Singaporean marketplace too. From the west: English-style pubs selling fish and chips, bangers and mash; fifties-style diners serving cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and pancakes and waffles; patisseries filled with croissants and pains au chocolat, madeleines and éclairs, and gorgeous macarons in all the colours of the rainbow; trattorias turning out thin-crust pizzas and mounds of delicate house-made orecchiette. From East Asia: ramen noodles and tonkatsu and sushi; kimchi fried rice and bibimbap and soondubu; dim sum and Shanghainese soup dumplings; Taiwanese beef noodle soup and pearl milk tea. From South and Southeast Asian neighbours: steaming hot bowls of pho, shrimp on skewers of sugarcane, fluffy naan bread and chicken vindaloo, green papaya salad and pad thai, gado-gado and otak-otak. Add the food chains that had sprung up all over. Fast food: McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and Subway. Coffee: Starbucks, Spinelli’s, Ya Kun Kaya Toast, the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Bread and pastries: Breadtalk, Four Leaves, Prima Deli, D
é
lifrance.