The last immigrant, p.3
The Last Immigrant, page 3
“How he know, lah?” his grandmother said severely as the car wobbled. “Better you keep your eyes on the road.”
The driver stopped laughing. Ismael slid a glance at his profile. He thought the man looked harsh, despite his round moon face. His skin was pockmarked and when he wasn’t talking, his mouth turned down naturally.
So Ismael settled to look at the oil palms and the occasional corrugated-iron house, roof aslant, amidst verdant vegetation that took little notice of the road sliding subversively like a worm deep into the actual rainforest all the way to his grandmother’s kampong.
He curled his toes inside his shoes and wondered what his parents were doing.
The kampong was a village of attap houses on stilts with some of the inhabitants sitting on the wooden steps leading up to their homes. Chickens pecked in a free-range manner, in the midst of swaying coconut palm fronds, which reminded Ismael of barefoot dancing girls in hula skirts. There was a promise of a river in the distance, a jungle of dark trees kept at bay. Ismael half-hoped to see a hantu.
The taxi stopped. The driver lifted out the bags, collected his fare from Ismael’s grandmother and spat on the ground three times to ward off evil spirits. “Have good time, be good boy, don’t go into jungle,” he said loudly. He shoved his body back into his taxi, did a U-turn, waved and drove off leaving Ismael with that slightly panicky feeling he sometimes had when he knew he couldn’t go back.
He picked up his bags. Since the death of her husband, Ismael’s grandmother lived alone, if living in a kampong could ever be that. Some of the villagers wandering about called out cheerfully. “Ai, your grandson needs fattening up. I bring some of my kuehs,” one woman cried.
He saw some children playing soccer barefoot. They stopped to stare at him.
“Later, later, he needs his rest,” his grandmother said, steering Ismael down a path towards her home. His grandmother’s house seemed to have shrunk. He thought this was entirely possible as wood did shrink and expand depending on the weather. They mounted the ladder of wooden steps to the front door.
“Boy, you sleep in here,” his grandmother said. His room led off from the main living area. It had a window with a wooden shutter that had been left open so cool air could pass through. Coconut palms waved to him when he looked out.
“Come when you ready,” she said, leaving him. He took in his surroundings. There was a single bed, where a thin mattress lay on top of narrow planks, covered by a colourful patchwork blanket to keep him warm. A small cupboard with drawers for his clothes stood in a corner.
Ismael sat down on the bed. He had the feeling his grandmother’s wooden house was alive. On its four legs or stilts, it was ready to run, if only he could figure out the spell or the words to say. Wooden beams that looked ancient girded Ismael’s room, how old they actually were he did not know, but they exuded a comforting sense of serenity as though years of happiness of the inhabitants had soaked into the wood. Ismael was glad to be indoors. The roof of closely woven palm leaves made it cool inside.
He sat for a moment doing nothing, just thinking. Then he lifted his suitcase onto the bed and scrabbled through his clothing. He had taken out and arranged the last item when his grandmother called out, “Come and makan. Time to eat.”
“Here. Mum said to give this to you.” He handed her the charm.
“Can I sit on the top step, Nenek?” He accepted the bowl of food she offered him. She laughed and sighed as she held the charm. “Sit where you like to sit, okay by Granny.”
So Ismael perched on the top step of the entrance with the bowl in his lap to spoon up his granny’s rich chicken stew mouthful by delicious mouthful.
“They are just like chicken legs,” he said, after staring at all the neighbouring houses balancing on thin stilts upon the soil. Most of the kampongs in Singapore were gone. Ismael lived in a terrace house with his parents and had never lived in a kampong until now. He decided he liked it. He chewed a bone contentedly. Underneath the floorboards of his grandmother’s house, chickens pecked and scratched the earth then darted out into the sunlight with a flapping of wings.
Ismael’s grandmother had changed out of the clothes she had worn to meet him at the airport and was now wearing a plain cotton sarong around her waist and a somewhat translucent lime-coloured blouse that drifted over her loose breasts. When she bent over to collect his bowl, he could see them hanging, pendulously, browned by the sun, the enormous dark brown nipples that had given suck to his mother protruding.
Grandmother’s cat twined around her legs affectionately and she almost stumbled.
“Here, cat,” Ismael called but the cat ignored him and began to clean its face.
“Ah, it’s a bad cat,” Grandmother said. She came to sit beside him.
“Kuching,” she hissed at the cat who stared at her.
“Kuching means ‘cat’, right?” said Ismael, who did not score very high in school for Malay, his second language.
“Kuching,” he called, but the cat ran away.
“Granny, what is there for me to do here?”
“You can help your nenek feed chickens and weed vegetable garden and you can play with other children. Best not to go into jungle. Go inside jungle, you watch out for Ma Kopek,” she warned.
“Who’s she?”
“Old woman spirit. Catch children. If she presses your head to her breasts, you become dizzy and confused, and you will not know where you are.”
Ismael protested, “But how can I tell if she is a spirit?”
“If you walk in zigzag way and she cannot follow you, means she is a spirit.” His grandmother spat on the dry earth before continuing, “Also, if you walk near graveyard, you be extra careful and look out for hantu bungkus. That one, evil spirit. You can recognise because in funeral wrappings. Also cannot walk like human, must roll on ground.”
Ismael shivered as he pictured a rolling ghoul. The sun was fading. The shadows crept centimetre by slow centimetre down the walls of houses. He jumped as he heard a woman’s voice calling shrilly. “It’s Aunty Noor,” his grandmother said. She raised her own voice, “Hello, hello!”
The woman rounded the corner, a plate in her hands. “Thought your grandson want to try my kueh. Hello, boy.”
She put the plate down on a step at Ismael’s feet and seated herself on a step below. She and his grandmother began to gossip while Ismael started eating the brightly coloured rice, dried coconut, tapioca and yam kuehs, half-listening to them. Most of the children had gone home but a few stragglers were still playing soccer as the sun smeared the sky blood orange.
Ismael lay in bed that night wondering about his new abode and the days ahead. So many tempting offers drifted to him in his sleep.
When Ismael had a chance to explore the place, he found that what he liked best of all in the kampong was the river. The dark green river ran close to the kampong and wended its way into a thick and messy jungle. The jungle had massive trees trailing with lianas. It was home to many species of jungle animals and insects.
The jungle was a source of fear to many: old granny tales passed down told of the spells and magical arts of shamans and bomohs, the inhabitation of demons and spirits in the trees and undergrowth, even the odd Communist might be found lurking in there.
“Causing bad trouble,” his grandmother said. She explained that whilst the kampong was considered a safe zone, the Communist insurgents in Sarawak were waging a guerrilla war against the government for they damned the formation of Malaysia. “They don’t want to belong.”
Some years prior, to the south of Sarawak near Melawi River in West Kalimantan, someone called Bong Kee Chok had formed the People’s Army and then just this year, the North Kalimantan Communist Party had been formed by someone called Wen Ming Chyuan.
“They keep watch on us, move some kampongs away, call
it ‘re-settlement’.”
Ismael realised the taxi driver’s “they” were the Communists but figured that here it was the government.
His grandmother said that to keep him busy and out of the jungle, he had to go to school.
“I’m on holiday,” he protested. “Nenek, I can help you around the house.”
“Your mother, your father want you go make friends, study hard,” she insisted.
Ismael was not quite so sure about that. He thought his parents had enough on their minds without bothering about his schooling.
Chapter 3
On Fish Lane, Ismael’s neighbour Anna hugged her small cat after rescuing it from a fight with the horrid Siamese from next door, which had now gone indoors.
Anna, whose job as a waitress at a West End café was casual, had a day off, which she was spending at home playing with the cat. One of Anna’s colleagues was moving overseas and wanted to leave her cat. She had offered it to everyone in the office. No one had wanted it so Anna, on an impulse, said she would take it. She had no pets of her own. The birds were Darren’s and she was tired of the noise and droppings. She had been pleased with the comfort of the small creature in her arms until Marina, her mother-in-law, said, “Darren’s not going to like it.”
Marina had been silent up to the hour just before they were expecting him home then her words came out like daggers. Anna’s confidence collapsed. She went to the door to let the cat out of the house. Perhaps Darren would think it was a stray.
She sat down, ignoring Marina’s mumblings, and took up a magazine. She liked looking at the actors and models with their glamorous clothes, perfect hair and beautiful bodies, and imagining she was one of them. She flipped a page then hysterical yowling from outside roused her.
The Siamese cat was mauling the little one! Anna rushed to its aid. Glaring at Imelda, she picked up her little cat. She hurried back indoors. What would Darren say? When she put the cat down, it sprang right away towards the birdcage.
*
During the weekend out in the bush, a sunbird attacked Ismael’s face. He lifted a hand to wipe the sweat the bird had clawed. Like his namesake, he was wandering alone in a wilderness.
He was determined to keep his legs going. After considerable meandering and still unable to find a familiar sign, he stopped. The sun had given up and was quietly crawling down the tall eucalypt trees.
Ismael sucked air into his lungs and steadied his legs. He badly wanted to head home but the bush straggled about him in a bewildering fashion. He could do nothing except move in the direction that looked most promising. He was without a map in his hand or head, and as he crunched his way down his chosen track, he was glad that the weather was still warm.
He paused beside a clump of grass trees. Hadn’t he passed them? He glared at the black stumps and wild green hair of the little trees. They reminded him of quaint garden gnomes with a similar ability to mock him. Once they were known as black boys until it was deemed impolite and impolitic.
Should he go off-track? The stony path slid out of sight. Was he on his way home or did it merely look so? The landscape was lacking in human life.
Toohey Forest was in the midst of civilisation. A wild bit of suburban Brisbane kept intact. From Fish Lane, Ismael only needed to trudge down Merchant Street, turn left into Bapaume, right into Peronne, down Pozieres, then clamber up Messines Ridge towards a side street called Gaza, which had a way in to Toohey Forest. The street names marked the battlefronts that Australian troops had fought in during World War I.
It took him about 20 to 25 minutes to reach the bush, depending on how slowly he was walking so he knew he was foolish to be afraid. Dry still air crackled in the undergrowth. The bush was too sparse for anyone to hide behind, yet a disturbing feeling weighed on him. The longer he drifted, the denser it became.
Stepping out without his mobile phone had been a mistake. With no GPS to show him where he was, he could be going round in circles. He made a decision to turn down a sidetrack. He could see no one, no sign of habitation, only endless husks of trees and the cat’s claw creeper happily smothering what it could.
Then all of Ismael’s hair—or what was left of it for he was going somewhat bald—stood up. The fear curled in his stomach like a tapeworm. Something had seeped out of the landscape, a palpable mass like a blood clot out of a wound: perhaps an animal creeping away.
Nothing in the bush can frighten me, he told himself, but far from the desert, Ismael, named by his parents after a prophet, thought wryly that he should sink to his knees right then and call to God.
Of all things, he had forgotten to bring a water bottle, his lips were parched and he hoped a well would miraculously appear. Thinking of Hagar who had filled the empty bottle with water from the well to rescue her son, he pictured his mother.
During the Ming Dynasty in China, his mother had told him, soldiers flew kites tied with packets of gunpowder above enemy camps. When the fuses were lit, the sky above was painted with brilliant displays of light that devastated the enemy. The Chinese termed this: Magic Fire and Flying Duck. He tried to imagine what it would look like if he sent up a flare.
If the people in the neighbourhood saw sparks of light above the green canopy, they might suspect an enemy attack. A large group of neighbours would enter the forest with an array of weapons in their hands. Ismael almost grinned as he pictured them waving kitchen knives, dinner forks and can openers.
But the forest had its own will that could not be penetrated by waving a can opener, came the unbidden thought.
Then Ismael spotted a sign that read “Grass Tree Track” and recognised the trail. Just before stepping onto it, he looked back. He caught a glimpse of a woman beside a rough-barked eucalypt. Her long black hair entwined with the shadows. His heart gave a little jump. The pontianak. The light shifted. Her nails. He had not noticed her nails. He shook his head. No, she was no longer there. He must be suffering heat stroke. Most likely a neighbour out for a walk. “Hello,” she’d call out on seeing him. “How’re you?” How was he?
He began to clamber over the rocks on the track on his way down, panting from his exertions. Before long, he could see the red or green tops of houses and he began to hurry. As he went farther on, the houses themselves became visible. In a short while, he exited the bushland and was on a road leading homewards. Still, he carried something of the bush inside him, which served as a warning, and each tree he passed along the road was a sinister refrain.
“Where are the ducks?” he muttered as he stepped onto Fish Lane. A sense of being watched intensified so he swung around. The headlights of a pair of unearthly eyes gazed at him unblinkingly. So too had Toothless Grandma once looked at him, crouched low, clutching the body of her grandson in her arms, a low crooning sound coming out of her lips, as a group of the kampong people gathered around in silence.
“Imelda!” he cried, breaking the spell his cat had cast. Nevertheless, his cat merely continued to stare at him. He reached down to pat her soft head. He had no enemies. The feeling had nothing to do with war unless it was war of the most private kind. It might have to do with showy displays of martial aggression or about deceptions of might or none of the above.
“What are you up to?” he said to Imelda.
He entered his house. His wife had gone grocery shopping but was now in the kitchen, her dark head bent over the stove. Her slender and real human form reassured him. Here was stability. He could count on Natalie to decry his fancies.
“Nat, I’m home,” he called and saw with pleasure her flushed face turned towards him and the crooked smile on her lips.
But, like a shadow, something squeezed past him and darted into the room.
*
The next morning Ismael woke with a tremendous headache. He staggered out of bed and after his morning ablutions, tried to eat some breakfast but he had little appetite. He called in sick. Again. For some time, though not all the time, he had been waking with a backache and neck ache and other varieties of aches, including that morning’s headache that froze him to the bed making it an effort to rise. He made an appointment to see his doctor.
“It’s stress,” the doctor said. “I’ll give you a few days. If you don’t get better, you might like to see a psychologist.”
The irony was that if his friend were still alive, he would be able to discuss this with him for Cephas had a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, having trod the path between red sandstone columns at the University of Queensland. Cephas was a certified psychologist, no matter how certifiably insane his practice appeared at times.
The diagnosis that came via the grapevine—that is, Cephas’ sister told Nat who told him—was that Cephas had died of an overdose of painkillers. Ismael knew his friend had taken Panadeine or Nurofen tablets on a regular basis for every little headache or backache. After Cephas had fallen and broken his wrist a month ago, he had been taking more and varied tablets to ease the pain during his recovery but Ismael had not expected him to down seventy-odd tablets in one go. How did he get hold of so many? Why had he not realised Cephas was depressed?
Ismael spent most of that day at home snacking from an open bag of chips in his lap and sitting by the window reading. As it grew dark, he switched on the TV to watch the news headlines. The news was still dominated by the latest asylum seeker story. Another boatload of olive-skinned people.
Ismael started to rise to fix himself a snack—he was tired of all the tom-toms that accompanied each arrival—when the newscaster paused to explain that this time the asylum seekers were somewhat peculiar.
Olives, as everyone presumably knows, lie in different hues in the delicatessen. You have the black olives, you have the reddish brown olives and you have the green. The black and reddish brown olive-skinned people had come in previous boatloads. This time it was the green
olive-skinned people desiring to land in Oz. There was no accounting for it. The government could not hide it. These people were green-skinned. Perhaps it was caused by a long seasick journey by boat, the
newscaster speculated.
