Written in Black, page 12
“I’m counting on you, Radzi! Don’t you have anything to give me?”
“Yeah, well, there are a lot of schools in Brunei. Saying you’re at one isn’t much help. Why don’t you look for a sign with the school name? Can’t you see one?”
Why hadn’t I thought of that before calling him?
I had just cleared the main gate, so I turned back to see if I could find any indication of the school’s name. There was a concrete wall stretching across the front of the school compound, at the centre of which, and immediately next to the main gate, was the school’s official mural, a gigantic open book lying open in front of a burning torch. At the top of this painting were the words “WELCOME TO”, and at the bottom was the word “SEKOLAH” – and that was all I could see of the school’s name. The rest of it lay buried under a splodge of paint over which were drawn a series of random figures.
“I can’t see the name. Someone’s painted some crap over it.”
“Well, try looking closer.”
I approached the wall with some apprehension, desperate to not draw too much attention to myself. “Let’s see …”
On closer inspection, I found that the crap drawn there were six cartoons, standing side-by-side with arms draped around each others’ shoulders, their faces stunningly rendered in such lifelike detail that I found it hard to imagine that this had been done with just spray paint. Why, five of them were the spitting image of the poklans who had abducted me, to the extent that actual “wanted” photos might not have looked as real. Inexplicably, a figure best described as a human-sized banana wearing a leather jacket and a pair of sunglasses stood next to them, while the poklans themselves were depicted with regular-sized bananas sticking out of their trouser pockets. To top it off, an inscription painted below the image said “Pisang Panas Gang”.
The “Hot Banana” gang, eh? I was sure nobody with an ounce of sanity would want any of their bananas. They could keep them to themselves, and share them with each other for all I cared.
“Have you ever heard of the Pisang Panas Gang?” I said into the phone.
“What the hell is that?”
“Never mind … I don’t see any name anywhere.”
“What about by the road? No signs there?”
Radzi waited while I trudged to the nearest pedestrian crossing. All it had was the customary “slow down” notice; the school’s name was nowhere to be found on it.
“Nope.”
“Why don’t you ask one of the parents? Just pretend you’re visiting a friend or a cousin.”
“No way, I’m not taking that risk. Besides, I’m way out of there already. I can’t go back in again!”
“Well, has the phone got internet? You could check, but I don’t think …”
“What could I search for without the name of the school? There’s nothing else around here but a small shop.”
“What kind of shop?”
“You know, one of those kedai runcit. Nothing major. Owned by some guy called Mohidin.”
“Mohidin? Wait, are you sure?”
“Why?”
“I’ve got a cousin called Mohidin. He’s got a small shop near Kampung Daun and it’s supposed to be next to a school.”
“Really? Could this be his shop then?”
“Maybe.”
“What does your cousin look like?”
“He’s in his twenties … He’s thin, has some acne scars …”
“It does sound like him,” I said excitedly. “Great, I can hand the phone over to him then, and you can tell him to help me out.”
Radzi was silent. “Hello? You there? Hello?”
Still no response. I took the phone off my ear and glanced at its screen: blank as an exercise book on the first day of school. My repeated attempts to restart the device didn’t work, and I had to stop myself from throwing the useless thing onto the pavement and smashing it into pieces. All that hope built up only for this to happen? Could nothing go right today? I didn’t even get to ask Radzi where exactly Kampung Daun was, or how far it was from Badir.
I wondered if this man Mohidin would agree to help me after a mere mentioning of his cousin’s name. There was little else I could do but try my luck. After all, so far, I’d survived a ride in a coffin, a cursed house, a horde of bats, a pack of wild dogs, and a gang of lunatics. How much worse could a simple storekeeper be?
Chapter Eleven
It turned out that Mohidin wasn’t so terrible after all. He listened to me attentively, although with a blank face that didn’t give away any emotion, as I basted my story with layer upon layer of acts of filial piety and noble self-sacrifice. I told him of my intention to find Michael and left out the parts about using my brother to try and get a hold of my mother, focusing instead on how he had been Ah Kong’s favourite grandson and that it was my sworn duty to bring him back for the funeral. I didn’t really know why I hadn’t wanted to tell Mohidin the real reason behind my wanting to find Michael, especially since my quest to find out the truth about my mother was just as worthy.
“What a story …” he finally said.
“Yes … Yes, it is,” I nodded solemnly.
“Your mother and then your brother and then your grandfather … All gone.”
“Of cour … Oh, right, yeah …” For a moment, I thought he was referring to my heroic encounters with the dogs and the poklans. “Yeah, all that too …”
“And you are here by yourself …”
“Yup! Well, thanks partly to Radzi.”
“Radzi …”
The shopkeeper’s vacant look betrayed nothing. His face remained blank, and I could not glean anything from the flattened tone of his voice either; it was a different sort of “flat” from my father’s voice, who tended to sound flat from being fed up all the time. Mohidin just sounded and looked emotionless. Radzi certainly hadn’t got to that part of his description (even if whatever little he’d managed to tell me about his cousin did fit, especially the acne).
Mohidin’s English was practically perfect though, much like Radzi’s, and once one got past the monotony of his voice, one would realise that the grammar and diction were spot-on, and that he enunciated his words with minimal hesitation or stutter. Other pieces of soft evidence that tied him to my good friend? His accent also had a mild American twang to it, again, similar to Radzi’s (though this in itself wasn’t too uncommon amongst Bruneian youths in general).
“Um, he said you’d be able to help me …”
“Did he?”
“Er, yeah … He said you were a great guy. His favourite relative. The best shopkeeper in Kampung Daun!”
Mohidin gave a disbelieving look in response to my flattery.
“Boy, what I should do is take you home …”
I began to panic. This was the last thing I needed: one man’s good intentions ruining my last hope of success.
“Oh no, you can’t! You’ve got to help me find my brother! If you take me back, then everything will stay the way it is and nothing will ever get better!” I knew I was babbling, but I had to throw whatever I could at him, no matter how desperate it made me look.
“I should take you back. It’s not safe for you to run around like this.”
“Well, if you’re worried about me being by myself, you could come along. To Badir. It won’t be a problem, and I promise it wouldn’t take too long.”
He paused to contemplate my offer. “You really need to do this? It’s that important?”
“It’s very, very important. Oh, please … I know deep down that it would make my whole family so very, very happy when we’re all together again.”
“And if I said no?”
“Well … I’d find some other way of getting there then,” I said. “I need to find my brother, and I need to get him to the funeral, so he can see our grandfather one last time. And I need to help him reunite with our family. No matter what, I can’t give up now.” My best efforts at displaying strong and unshakable love for my brother probably didn’t come across half as well as I wanted it to, but it was the best I could manage. “I’d do anything to find my brother. I’d sneak into a car, I’d run, I’d even … I’d even go to a bomoh, if I knew where to look. It was my grandfather’s dying wish, after all …”
That last bit was the cherry on the cake. Mohidin raised an eyebrow and then leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped in front of his chest. His short and flat hair exposed a vast, protuberant forehead, and beneath it, a pair of dark brown eyes, which were wide open now.
“Okay, boy …” he relented finally. “Wait here.” He left his seat, going past me and heading through a door next to his counter, shutting it behind him. Intrigued, I approached it, regardless of his instruction to stay put, and placed an ear near its handle to eavesdrop. I could make out the faint sounds of him speaking to someone. Was he discussing my problem with someone over the phone? Could it be Radzi?
He suddenly stopped talking, and then I detected the sound of footsteps walking towards the door. I didn’t want to get caught snooping red-handed, so I scuttled out of the way, managing to re-assume my original position in the chair just as Mohidin opened the door and stepped out of the side room.
“Okay, boy,” he said assuredly. “I’ll help you.”
“Really? That’s great.”
That was rather quick. Almost too quick. But nothing seemed amiss otherwise, so I was only too happy I’d stumbled upon this opportunity, and I put aside all those things I’d been taught about stranger-danger (technically, he wasn’t even a stranger, since he was Radzi’s relative). Besides, the fact that he had initially refused my request and threatened to take me home first was enough proof that he was a normal, sensible and perfectly dependable adult.
“We should go now, if you want to catch your brother on time. Can you help me close the shop?”
That I did by helping him pull the metal shutter at the shop’s entrance across its track until it was fully extended. I then watched as he secured the padlock and put up a “closed” sign before leading me to his ride, a white saloon car. With everything taken care of, we set off for Badir, me sitting in the front passenger seat of a car for the first time in more than a year.
I allowed myself to sit back and relax a little. The radio was on, and a dance anthem with a repetitive jackhammer-like beat and with lyrics that consisted solely of the words “ass” and “tap” blared out from the car’s speakers as we drove down the long coastal highway. The road was not as close to the sea as to give me a view of the shoreline though; rather, there was nothing but forest on both sides of the car. Stretches of trees filled up the view outside our windows, keeping up with us almost as closely as the ever-present sun in the sky. It may have been everywhere, and it all looked the same, but it was still my favourite sight to see whenever I was in a car. My sole quibble, minor as it was, was with our driving speed. The clock showed 1.10. It was already fifteen minutes since we’d left the shop, so I asked Mohidin to step it up a bit.
“Sorry, I can’t go faster. This road is quite dangerous. Too much overtaking. Some students died here last week.”
“The story that was in the newspapers? The one that said that one of them was cut in half?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Sad, isn’t it?” Mohidin said, yawning. “Have you eaten yet? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
“Oh, that’s alright. I had breakfast this morning, and I’m not that hungry now.” Honestly, I was growing rather hungry, but I felt too shy to trouble Mohidin with a request for refreshments. He was already doing me a massive favour by driving me to Badir, not to mention kindly lending me a fresh pair of sandals to replace the ones I’d lost back at the dumpster, so asking for something else from him felt like going too far.
“You must have some lunch. A growing boy like you … No wonder you’re so thin.” Mohidin pointed to the back seat.
“I don’t have any food right now, but there’s a bottle of water there, if you’d like,” he offered.
I turned around to look at the half-full bottle of mineral water on the seat bobbing along to the car’s motion. Any feelings of thirst I might have had rapidly evaporated away though when I spotted a strange-looking black plastic bag sitting beside it. A small, familiar-looking piece of red cloth stuck out of it, and whatever else was inside filled it out well enough to make the bag bulge into the shape of a pumpkin.
“Do you really run the store by yourself? It must be hard …” I asked, turning away. I really wanted to ask him about the bag and what was in it, but decided not to.
“It’s okay.”
“I mean, the type of people you must get … Like those dreadful poklans who forced me to buy glue from you.”
“The ones who take things without paying are worse. But you can’t stop it.”
“That’s awful! Do you get a lot of that?”
“More than enough. Too many kids playing pool upstairs; when they get bored, they come down and hang around my shop, then run off with things without paying.”
“I see … But, hey, it must still be pretty cool owning your own business. And to own one when you’re so young.”
“I’m not so young.” Most would have said this with a smirk or a grin, but Mohidin did it as blandly as one possibly could. “The shop went to me after my parents died.”
“Oh … When did your parents pass away?”
“Soon after my brother. It was my family’s time then … Like how it’s your family’s time now.”
I couldn’t really argue with that. “It must’ve been hard …”
“Yes, but Tok Dodol says not to dwell on the past. People must always to look to the future.”
“How did they?”
“They had … accidents.”
“Oh … Hey, Mohidin, who’s Tok Dodol?”
“He’s the one I asked for advice about helping you.”
“He was in that room?”
“No, but I can reach him anywhere. I can even talk to him in my head.”
I felt my throat growing dry. He couldn’t really be serious about this whole friend-in-my-head thing … Could he?
“Tok Dodol told me he saw you coming. A boy with a good heart who wants to help his family.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“A person like you deserves help. So I had to help. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Thanks, that’s nice but, who is he?”
“He is Tok Dodol.”
“Yeah, but …”
“He keeps me safe. Do you want to see him, boy?”
“Um …” No, thanks, I’d rather not. “He is here.”
“Here? Like, in this car?”
“Yes.”
I gave the car’s interior a thorough scan. “I don’t see anything …”
“He’s in there.” Mohidin pointed at the glove compartment in front of me. My eyes darted to the closed door.
“Open it and see.”
“Ah.” I’d really rather not.
“Don’t be scared. Go ahead.”
I kept my hands firmly by my side. Mohidin drove on, saying nothing further in return, yet silently pressing upon me the burden of opening the glove box and finding out for myself about Tok Dodol.
“Isn’t it a bit too small for a person?”
“Just open it and see,” he droned again.
Well, what was the worst that could happen? Haltingly, I reached out and wrapped my fingers around the handle of the compartment’s door. I held my breath as I pulled: the latch clicked, and the door creaked open. Initially it was all dark inside, but as I kept pulling, an automatic light was triggered on, and then I could see what Mohidin was so eager to show me.
I jumped back a bit, recoiling with genuine dread. There was a small object lying there, covered by a brown sackcloth and surrounded by a loose scattering of fine soil that was spread across the floor of the compartment. Some tendril-like things that looked to be coming from the back of the object ran curled and twisted over the soil, resembling dried-up roots coming off the bottom of a plant. And then there was the blood. Bright red and fresh-looking blood, drawn in a weird circular pattern over the surface of the sackcloth, with three pins sticking out of it that made it look as if the bag was bleeding from three separate stab wounds.
“Do you see?” Blasé as ever, Mohidin kept his eyes on the road as he asked for my opinion on his secret adviser.
“Yeah. I see.” Given the many terrifying events I had experienced that day, I was near exhaustion, and too weary to generate the horror that this situation would (and should) have normally commanded.
“Is that real blood?” Perhaps if I kept him talking, we could carry on doing so till the completion of my quest, and he’d never get a chance to use me for a ritual human sacrifice.
“Yes.”
“Where did you get it?”
“It’s mine.”
I sat there, speechless and immobile, awaiting the next move by Mohidin. He could have come at me with a hatchet and a clown mask on, and I wouldn’t have had the senses to do anything about it.
“He’s my only friend. The only one who cares about me.”
That snapped me out of it. “Really? You don’t have any other friends?” Anything to keep his mind on the conversation and off any potential thoughts to do something unsavoury to the boy travelling in the car with him.
“No, I don’t. Nobody’s ever interested in talking to me. I’m just the guy in the background, wherever I am. But that’s alright.” He followed this up with a smile, the first one I’d seen since I had met him. But it was not a real smile, and not one made from genuine happiness. Adults rarely ever smiled at me while truly meaning it, so I could usually tell when a smile was fake or not, and this was about as fake as it got.
But while those false smiles usually annoyed me, Mohidin’s only made me feel sorry for him. His upturned lips made a very poor cover for all the loneliness I could see written over the rest of his face.
“Why don’t they want to talk to you? You seem like a nice guy.”
His smile grew bigger, and it looked as if he was genuinely touched by my remark. Maybe I’d misjudged him; how could someone this pitiful ever do anything harmful, at least intentionally. “I don’t know …” he mumbled. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
