The Orientalist and the Ghost (16 page)

‘Look at you, Sal! You’re green! Where did you think roast chickens came from? Did you think they fell out of the sky in a baking tray with roast potatoes?’

Frances then stuck out her hands, waggling the scabby chicken feet she’d stolen. She poked the claws at Sally’s throat and cackled at her screams.

On Friday nights Sally stayed over at Frances’s. They’d spend the evening sitting on the bedroom window-ledge, drinking from a hip flask of whisky and pretending to smoke cigars stolen from her father’s study (Mr Milnar was away on a month-long business
trip
to Brunei and Sally had yet to meet him). They wore tatty Panama hats as they dangled their legs over the street below, and Sally’s first acquaintance with Frances’s mysterious father was the scent of his sweat and aftershave in the hat band. As they spied on the night-time to-ings and fro-ings of Sultan Road, Frances told macabre tales about the people coming out of the Petaling Street market.

‘See that girl there? She’s got webbed fingers and a stumpy tail ’cos of inbreeding. Her half-sister is also her mother and her grandfather also her father. Ayah says the family are possessed by demons and I’m not to buy anything from their bakery … And that man there, the one with the limp, he’s the chef of this swanky restaurant. He buys orphaned babies from Thailand and cooks them for gangsters who believe eating babies makes you live longer. D’you know eating nothing but babies can make you immortal?’

‘What a disgusting pack of lies!’ Sally laughed. ‘You ought to be ashamed!’

Widening her eyes, Frances breathed, ‘But it’s true!’ and continued to spin her urban myths, gaily depicting her neighbours as cannibals, freaks and vampires.

They silenced the radio after midnight, clicked out the light and stumbled through clouds of cigar smoke to bed, where they’d lie together under the canopy of mosquito nets, the room swaying in their drunkenness. As Sally’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she was able to distinguish the shape of her friend: the hillocks of her knees; the ridge of collar-bone and the rise and fall of her chest under her
camisole
. The girls always lay awake until they’d sobered up. They wouldn’t let each other sleep – one murmuring as the other began to drowse, nudging her bedmate back to consciousness.

Sally remembers little of those nocturnal conversations and the dreamy silences in between. But she recalls the darkness was permissive of anything, tolerant of any aberrant words or thoughts that popped into their heads.

‘When’s your dad coming back from Brunei?’ Sally once asked, after weeks of Mr Milnar’s absence.

‘Tuesday,’ said Frances. ‘But I wish he would stay there for ever.’

Sally lay on her side, elbow on the mattress, head in her hand. Frances stared at the ceiling. It wasn’t the first time she’d expressed sentiments like this about Mr Milnar. Sally couldn’t imagine wishing her father exiled to another country. What a sad thing to wish for.

‘Why do you hate him so much?’

‘Because.’

‘Because what?’

‘Because he’s a murderer.’

‘Oh?’ Sally said casually, expecting this was another one of Frances’s absurd tales. ‘Who did he murder?’

‘My mother. When I was a baby.’

Sally narrowed her eyes. ‘Y’know … it’s not funny to joke about stuff like that. My father would be really hurt if he overheard me saying that about him. And it’s disrespectful to make things up about the dead. Especially your mother.’

‘I’m not making it up.’

‘Right. And I suppose he killed her to sell her kidneys on the black market.’

‘If you don’t believe me, fair enough. But if it wasn’t for him she’d still be alive today.’

‘If your father’s a murderer, then why isn’t he in prison?’ Sally asked.

‘Because he didn’t do it in cold blood – he’s not a murderer in the eyes of the law.’

‘C’mon, Frances,’ Sally said impatiently, ‘you can’t have it both ways. Either he killed her or he didn’t. How did she die?’

There was a long silence, then Frances said: ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Please don’t mention it again.’

This was fine with Sally, who thought Frances’s storytelling had crossed the line from funny to disturbing. The lie was ludicrous, yet at the same time part of Sally believed her – felt a thrill of fear to be in the home of a murderer. The room was quiet and tense with mutual irritation. When Frances spoke again, her words chimed in the dark.

‘Promise you won’t tell anyone at school.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Sally replied, ‘I won’t.’

They were outside a herbalist when their careers as petty criminals began. Piled up along the shop front were sacks of dried sundries – beans and lotus root and woven baskets of candied mango and papaya. As they lingered, dithering over whether or not to go in, Frances whispered: ‘I dare you to steal some sweets.’

Sally glanced at her, wondering if she’d misheard. She had coins in her purse and had no desire to steal anything. She glanced in the shop. The assistant was busy at the counter with his pestle and mortar, and no one else was paying them any attention. Not wanting to pass up an opportunity to impress Frances, Sally dipped her fingers into the basket of dried fruit and scooped up a fistful before moving into the street. She broke into a trot, pandemonium in her heart, convinced she’d hear the shout of
Stop, thief!
at any moment. They turned into an alleyway and Sally’s knees shook with relief when she realized they hadn’t been followed. She unfurled her fist to show Frances the sweets she’d stolen, which glistened like sugared jewels in her palm. And, grinning her baby vampire’s grin, Frances unclenched her own fist, to show off her copy-cat theft.

They stole more and more recklessly; light-fingered thrill-seekers, filching and pilfering wherever they went. They flitted past diners in the hawker centres and pinched chopsticks from plates (while the diner had turned his back to greet a friend or to check his lottery ticket against the winning numbers on TV). They thieved from the fruit carts, stuffing pineapples into their satchels, cheering ‘Happy National Pineapple Day!’ as they handed them out to passers-by in the street. They became the opposite of pickpockets, smuggling stolen lollipops and paper fans into handbags, giggling to imagine the victim’s surprise when they reached for their wallet, only to find a bright
yellow
starfruit, or some lychees nestling like eggs against the pocket lining. Once Sally was caught in the over-ambitious act of sneaking up behind an old lady to balance a mango on her sun bonnet. The mango wobbled on the bonnet for a second, before toppling forwards into the basket of the woman’s push-bike. Baffled, she picked up the reddish-yellow fruit and held it up towards the Foreign Devil culprit, who was now legging it from the scene of the crime.

One day after school they made the pilgrimage to the Guandi temple, the shrine of Kuan Ti, the Taoist god of war. At the temple gates a group of beggars sat, bony arms outstretched, rattling tins for alms. Frances glided through the gates as if she had neither seen nor heard them, but Sally hesitated, her eyes meeting those of an ageless man in rags, with matted hair and a misshapen proboscis for a nose. The man shouted at Sally in Malay and grabbed the hem of her skirt. Sally couldn’t have panicked more if her skirt had caught fire. She tore the hem free and ran into the temple, shuddering in disgust.

Sally had always found Chinese temples ostentatious and the Guandi temple was no exception. Banners of red and gold were draped everywhere, and dragons perched on the jade-tiled roof, tails coiled round the temple pillars. Joss-sticks burned in great brass urns and spirals of incense gently snowed ash from the ceiling. A furnace incinerated origami cars as offerings for the afterlife, and vases and golden statues dazzled the eye. It was as if the Chinese feared the slightest hint
of
austerity would offend the gods. On a marble bench at the side of the temple, Sally and Frances sat and watched as the caretaker swept ash from the tiled floor and a row of men bowed their tonsured heads and waggled incense sticks at the altar.

‘It’s mostly businessmen that come here,’ Frances said. ‘They’re praying for money and success in the business world.’

‘I thought this temple was for the god of war,’ said Sally.

‘It is. The businessmen think they’re warriors.’ Frances snorted her contempt, then gave Sally a sly, sidelong smile. Sally knew what was coming.

‘I dare you to nick one of the cakes from the altar.’

Sally glanced at the offerings of fruit and little pink cakes. She’d no steadfast opinions on God and the status of His existence, but thought it wise to avoid sacrilegious behaviour until she was firmly committed to atheism. Frances clucked a few times and fanned her elbows in a disheartening chicken imitation.

‘Scared old Kuan Ti will come after you with his sword?’ she scoffed. ‘Since when were you Buddhist?’

Sally
was
scared – even though in the hierarchy of religions she thought Buddhism inferior to Christianity or Islam. If they had to steal from a Buddhist god, why not the goddess of mercy? Surely she would be a far safer bet.

‘I think it’s lame to steal from temples,’ Sally said.

‘OK,’ Frances said. ‘If you won’t do it, I will. I’ll take a cake and give it to the beggars outside. Watch!’

Frances strode to the altar. She stood for a moment, head lowered before the golden statue of the god of war as though in silent prayer. Then, hands flying out, Frances swiped a couple of cakes and whirled round so fast her grey pleated skirt flared behind her. Stolen offerings in her hands, Frances hurried to the temple gates, the cocksure confidence that had taken her to the altar no longer in evidence. She’d almost succeeded in her getaway, but, reaching the threshold of the shrine, she rushed smack bang into a tall, blond man in a linen suit. The man caught Frances by the shoulders and steadied her, before both parties stepped back from the collision.

‘Frances,’ he said, ‘what do you have there in your hands? What are you playing at?’ The man towered over her.

Frances flushed and said nothing.

‘Frances, answer me this minute. Did you take those from the altar?’

‘They’re for the beggars,’ said Frances stubbornly.

‘You’ve more than enough pocket money if you want to buy cakes for the beggars. There’s absolutely no need to go about stealing. This has to stop, Frances. I’ve only been back five minutes and already I’ve had nothing but complaints about you. Now, put those back where you found them.’

That must be Mr Milnar!
thought Sally,
Frances’s father!
The Aryan-looking man was completely unlike how she’d imagined Frances’s father to be. Mr Milnar was very handsome; firm-jawed like the heroes on the
covers
of her Harlequin romances, he had a distinguished hump-back nose and elegantly receding fair hair. Though he was forty-ish, he had the clean-cut air of a public-school boy about him. He looked nothing like the murderer Frances claimed he was. Mr Milnar watched sternly as his sulky daughter replaced the cakes on the altar. And as he nodded to himself, satisfied the crime was undone, Sally felt herself fall slightly in love with him.

Mr Milnar frowned as Sally approached him and she guessed her feelings weren’t reciprocated.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘Sally Hargreaves, sir. I’m in the same class as Frances at school. We’re friends.’

‘Ah yes, I’ve heard about you. You and Frances are fast acquiring reputations as trouble-makers here in Chinatown. You’re nowhere near as discreet as you think you are!’ He looked Sally up and down. ‘And it’s not as if you’re inconspicuous, is it?’

Sally hung her head, blushing red as a brick.

‘No, sir.’

‘A fine friend you are, encouraging Frances to steal!’

They left the temple in disgrace. Mr Milnar flung some coins to the beggars, then ordered the girls into the back seat of a stuffy overheated Morris Minor parked outside, ignoring Sally’s protests that she could make her own way home.

They drove to Petaling Jaya in silence, the scorching leather upholstery searing the back of Sally’s legs. She was deeply ashamed, but beside her Frances fumed as if
she’d
suffered a great injustice. Frances didn’t speak for the entire journey – not even to say goodbye when Sally was dropped off at her home. And Sally realized it was the maddest that she’d seen her.

11

OVER THE YEARS
the biochemistry labs have become Adam’s second home. He belongs there, like the odour of halogens, the hum of the fume cupboards, and the iodine splashes on the benches. Every morning before the first session of practicals, he wheels a trolley around his appointed lab, pausing at intervals to set out volumetric flasks, pipettes, stoppered bottles of 0.1 molar sodium hydroxide. Adam is efficient and methodical, completing his tasks like an automaton, thoughts free to roam elsewhere.

When the biology undergraduates straggle in, tugging white lab coats on and whinging about deadlines and hangovers, Adam withdraws into the clutter of the preparation room, to the perpetual de-ionizing trickle of the distiller. Throughout the morning gum-snapping students in oversized safety glasses knock on Adam’s door;
Where are the 50ml cylinders? Where are the
latex
gloves?
More often than not Adam will stop whatever he’s doing and direct them back to the cupboard under their bench.