We, The Survivors. Tash Aw
too big for him, tightened with a belt and hanging past his knees. He and Halim were hauling some bags of cement towards the mixer, walking swiftly with small steps, their bare feet making tracks in the earth. Their knees buckled slightly now and then, and I remembered that same sensation in my own legs just a couple of hours before – that feeling of forcing your body to do what it didn’t want to do, until it became so familiar that you no longer knew how not to force your body, and simple acts like lifting a cup of tea or a bowl of rice to your lips felt strange and lifeless. Overhead the sky was turning dark. Soon, when the afternoon rain showers arrived and turned the yard to mud, it would be more difficult to walk, and the men knew this, which is why they were pushing themselves now. Run, lift, throw. Anticipating the rain, Bayu had taken off his shirt, and I could see the dark scar on his back from his last job on a construction site in Seremban – a long curved line, the width of a finger, that looked barely healed. As he emptied a wheelbarrow full of rocks, he slipped and fell to the ground. His head hit the handle of the barrow with a dull thud, and he fell awkwardly on an outstretched hand – the kind of fall that shocks the wrist and collarbone. Aiiiiie. His cry was like a small child’s, high-pitched and weak – it didn’t match the width of his shoulders, the stockiness of his legs. The others laughed. If I’d been out there I’d have done the same – laughed and teased him for being clumsy. He rubbed his head, dusted his arm and started running with the empty wheelbarrow, ready to collect a new load. Of course he would cry out like a child. He was not even twenty years old.
I sat in my chair and looked at my hands, turning them over a few times. The backs were much lighter in colour than the palms. I closed my eyes. All of a sudden, I was tired. I lay down and went to sleep, cooled by the table fan.
With each year I distanced myself a little more from the physical work on the farm. On a few occasions early on, when I was supervising a group of workers in the construction of a brick storehouse or a new net-cage, I’d get frustrated if I thought they were too slow, or weren’t carrying out the task correctly – I felt the urge to jump into the boat and drag the nets up from the water to untangle them, as I’d done throughout my childhood, or to spread the mortar evenly and align the bricks myself. As I stood watching the men at work, my body felt as though it was trying to escape my control. Now, as before, I had to force it, but in a different way – this time to remain still, because it was not used to being so. The more my inaction frustrated me, the louder I shouted at the workers.
Still, the body can unlearn the lessons of a lifetime, and soon the idea of taking off my shirt and working in the sun felt so foreign to me that it became distasteful. Why would I do it? I spent my time doing the rounds, making sure the fish were healthy, that the pumps and filters and generators were functioning. I also supervised all the building and repair work. The farm expanded, and after a few years we had a sales manager and a secretary.
I started saving money and having a life outside of work – the kind of evenings and weekends that I’d always imagined normal people had. I got married and bought a house. We started going out of town – an overnight drive to Penang, a five-day tour of Bangkok. Even when I took time off, I drew my salary – I got used to the idea of receiving money even though I wasn’t working. In August that year, I remember going to the bank and checking my account, and not even feeling any great pleasure in seeing that my pay had been safely deposited – 1,900 ringgit. I had no way of knowing that it would be the last time.
When I think back to that day when Hendro came running to tell me there was a phone call for me, I sometimes wonder how things might have been if the line had gone dead, which sometimes happened, because our connection wasn’t very reliable. I know it’s God’s will, and that things turned out the way they did because He intended it. But still. I sometimes imagine Hendro saying, ‘Someone called but said, “Forget it, don’t worry if Ah Hock is busy right now.”’ Instead, I remember his breathlessness as he walked briskly beside me, peeling off to rejoin the other men in our soon-to-be car park. In the office, the phone’s receiver was lying face-down on the table, away from its cradle – I didn’t know if the caller had hung up since Hendro answered it.
‘Hello?’
‘Wai, little brother! It’s me.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Heyyy … it’s Keong.’
She sits and stares at me without blinking.
I noticed right at the start, from the very first interview. She never blinks. Not even when I run out of things to say. In moments of silence she holds my gaze and smiles. It’s always me who looks away first.
I didn’t like her at the beginning, and part of me still doesn’t trust her. You can never really believe anything they say, these educated types from the big city – they’re too ready with their smile, too interested in you. She looks me in the eye when I talk, as if what I’m saying is the most important thing in the world. Every so often she nods, like she truly understands what I’m saying. Sometimes she makes a noise, like Um … umm, as if to say, Yes, I’m with you. She frowns and looks at me as if she’s absorbing every single word I say, even when I’m just talking about unimportant things – the kind of underwear I once bought in Sungai Wang Plaza, what kind of noodles I ate one evening in 2003, that kind of thing. Sometimes I do it on purpose. I want to see if she gets bored and hurries me along to talk about other stuff.
But she never loses her composure, always pretends to be fascinated. Never yawns, never checks her watch. Her Samsung Galaxy is on the table in front of me, recording everything I say, but she rarely looks at it. She just scribbles notes in her notepad from time to time. I feel like I’m a politician giving a press conference on live TV.
I’m the one who keeps glancing at the phone, just to make sure it’s still recording.
When I got her first email about two months ago, I thought it was junk, like the rest of the stuff in my inbox. Beautiful China Bride, USA Diploma Online, Viagra Direct. That day I noticed a message headed Request for interview. I ignored it – it was as meaningless to me as all the others. About a week later, I noticed another email from the same person, headed: Fw: Please indicate your response. Who actually clicks on this kind of email? Every day I read about people being scammed. You click on a link and your whole computer is infected, a hacker in Russia gets all your bank info. Someone takes your hard-earned cash. They even take your identity.
However, I am the kind of person who clicks on these links. I have no online banking, no credit card, no spouse to discover the stuff I look at on the computer – I have nothing to lose. I waited for a week, then two, reading the email a couple of times each day. Finally I thought, She’s confused me with someone else.
But there was no mistake. She had been doing research for her studies in America, and had heard about my case. Now she was returning to Malaysia to spend some time conducting field work. She wanted to interview me, to try to understand the circumstances and events surrounding the case. A fraudster, I thought immediately. Someone pretending to be someone else. I’d say yes, and ‘she’ would come into my house with ten armed men and rob me of what little cash I had left.
I would like to talk to you on an informal basis, to build a portrait of you as a human being. I am interested in your personal history. We could have an initial chat and see how things progress.
I wrote back because I was bored. She replied, with a reference letter from her university as proof. I Googled her and saw her college photo. Tan Su-Min. I asked the pastor at church to ring the number on the letter, just to be sure. New York, ah? he said. He read the letter slowly and said, doctorate in sociology – wah, no joke. It’s OK, it’s genuine, no need to call.
The first day, she rang the bell once and opened the metal gates without waiting for me to come to the door. She had crossed the small concrete porch before I could even make it out of the kitchen. I thought, She isn’t scared at all. The dog next door started barking – lots of people round here have dogs because of the break-ins. You wouldn’t think there’s anything to steal in a neighbourhood like this, but these days robbers do anything for a TV or a stereo set. The