Written in Black, page 13
I knew, and it did matter. Exuding all the warmth and compassion in the world wasn’t quite enough to cancel out the weird vibe that he was giving off at the same time.
Wasn’t he on good terms with his cousin? Maybe he wasn’t counting relatives as friends. I’d have to speak about this with Radzi later, and maybe even discuss with him about how we could get Mohidin to act less … freaky. But in the meantime, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to be nicer to him.
“Hey, er, I’ll be your friend,” I offered. “It was really sweet of you to help me, and I’d do anything to pay you back, but my friendship is all I have at the moment.”
“Thank you,” he replied, still smiling. “I accept you as my friend. Tok Dodol always accepts people with good hearts.”
At any rate, if Mohidin did intend to kill me, it would’ve been much easier to bump me off back at the store, where he wouldn’t need to concentrate on driving at the same time, or worry about witnesses. But he hadn’t done anything bad at the most opportune time for him, and this probably meant that he could be trusted after all.
Also, I was probably blowing the whole Tok Dodol issue out of proportion. Bomohs like the Malacca Lady, whom Ah Em liked to consult, did this sort of thing all the time, and people paid them money for it. I was much better off than those regular patrons of invoked spirits then, seeing as I was getting actual help from one rather than just wishy-washy blessings. Mohidin hadn’t solicited a fee for his aid either, not that I was sure if he was a bomoh himself.
Of course, it was still quite unnerving sitting in front of that bloody thing with all those pins sticking out of it.
“Let me tell you a story,” Mohidin began in a low voice when he caught me sneaking a look at the glove box. “A story about a young boy like you. A boy with parents and a brother who went to school like all children do.” Mohidin had stopped smiling now.
“But the children at school didn’t think he was normal. They didn’t want to be friends with him, and they bullied him and called him names, until the day he couldn’t stand it anymore and changed schools. But it was always the same wherever he went.
“You see, this boy was born with a lump on his neck. This lump was big enough that he couldn’t hide it from his classmates, and because his parents were poor and had little schooling, he’d never seen a doctor about it. So it kept growing and growing, and the other children kept pointing and laughing, and the teachers just kept quiet. It was as if the boy didn’t exist to them.
“Because he didn’t have any real friends, the boy had to make them up in his head. And he made up as many friends as he could ever want, and these friends never made fun of him nor called him nasty things. They were under his control, and they couldn’t do anything unless he wanted them to. These friends were good to the boy, all of them, and took good care of him.
“But one of them was especially good to the boy.
“This one friend told him one day, ‘tomorrow, a wonderful thing will happen, and your life will change forever’. And you know what happened? The next day, while crossing a road, a car knocked him down. He wasn’t hurt badly, but the lump bled and bled, and it fell off him by itself.
“And everything did change from that day onwards. At school, his classmates were suddenly nice to him. Teachers began to see him like any other child now. Everything turned out truly wonderful, and all the friends in his head celebrated. That one special friend, whose prediction had come true, was very happy too for the boy.
“The boy was very grateful to this special friend. So grateful that he felt he needed to pay him back. He knew that it had to be something valuable, but not expensive because he had no money to spend.
“After some thinking, he finally knew what he could give his friend …”
Mohidin stopped his tale abruptly to swerve the car to avoid a speeding overtaker. While he complained about how careless driving was becoming the norm on Bruneian roads these days, I closed shut the glove compartment. Not particularly keen on hearing the end of his story, I diverted his attention further by enquiring about his past vehicular mishaps and near-misses. Hopefully, the yarn he had just shared with me was the absolute pinnacle of his weirdness …
By now we’d long since left the highway, and directly ahead of us was the last obstacle to our destination: a traffic jam that was clogging up a huge, three-lane roundabout with five exits and no traffic lights. According to Pa and Ah Peh, such congestion was a daily nationwide problem largely caused by the lunch-hour rush of civil servants scrambling from their offices to various schools around the capital, dashing to get themselves and their children home as quickly as possible. This current jam was as bad a jam as any other I’d ever experienced, and I had plenty of experience getting caught up in them because my school was not too far away from here.
Getting onto the roundabout was the worst part; it felt as if we were playing a game of dare with the oncoming cars, which kept trying to cut into our path, a game where the results were either victory or a car crash. Fortunately, Mohidin played this game well and pulled us away smoothly into the circular flow of vehicles and then into the second exit, straight for Badir.
But then, it was time for another setback. After we had cleared the roundabout, we were faced with a horde of cars and vans and trucks of all shapes and sizes vying to fill every single parking slot in sight, like endless streams of ants swarming over each other in a mad scramble for a dropped sweet. We were stuck properly this time, and there were no tricks that were going to get us out of this one quickly.
With our car forced to a standstill, I had nothing much else to do but look outside to pass the time. The lane that our car was trapped in ran alongside a row of shops, and the most popular one amongst them, and situated just outside my window, was a fast-food outlet that specialised in fried chicken. I stared at the pictures on the shop’s glass walls, of golden-brown, deep-fried and battered chicken parts nestled on beds of fluffy turmeric rice. Customers were lined up outside the shop, the queue extending from the entrance and along the common walkway, and including everyone from executives in business suits to builders in dusty overalls. Saliva started to pool in the floor of my mouth, and I forced myself to look away to something else before my stomach got a chance to have its say.
No, there was no time to get sidetracked, even for lunch. Also, it still felt wrong to trouble Mohidin for food. I thought of the disapproving scowl Pa would give me for the dishonour I’d bring myself and the family by begging a stranger for a meal; that was enough to placate my pangs for the time being.
I turned my attention instead to an empty DVD and video game store next door to the chicken outlet, and then to an almost empty mobile phone dealership, and then to a pretty empty sports shop and finally a very full $5 discount outlet. My eyes ran over the adverts that seemed to pepper the entire block, coating the walls and the pillars with promises of every kind of deal imaginable: “Thai massage with cut/wash”; “Japanese/Korean/Mandarin tutor for hire”; “free mobile phone/DVD crack”. It was surprising that I couldn’t find anyone selling parking spaces to the highest bidder here; now that kind of a deal would’ve definitely brought in loads of customers, including us.
It took a full twenty minutes before Mohidin was finally forced to settle for a tight squeeze between two SUVs, under the full glare of the midday sun and next to a rubbish collection point. The dumpsite was a white concrete hut without a proper door, into which a considerable quantity of garbage had already been deposited, most of it spilling out of their black bags and onto the heavily-stained tiled floor. In spite of sitting behind closed doors and windows, I could smell the rancid stench from the dump that was somehow seeping into the car.
“So, boy, do you know where we’re going?” Mohidin asked.
“Friendly Garden Pool Centre. Uh, the address is …” Oh no, I couldn’t remember it. My brain had picked the worst time to forget something. Moreover, my eyes were unhelpfully getting distracted by a stray dog with a very prominent set of udders, which was snoozing underneath one of the SUVs parked nearby, seemingly unperturbed by the unwholesome air it was breathing. Was it really fast asleep? Or was it simply pretending to, while waiting for a chance to attack when I least expected it? These things were everywhere nowadays; was there some kind of national canine conspiracy to turn me into doggie chow?
“Wait, let me … hmm …” I said as calmly as I could, shaking off my thoughts about the dog.
“Okay, let’s try asking in there,” Mohidin pointed to a big department store that stood opposite to the rubbish dump, only about ten metres away. We had parked near the rear part of the store, so we’d have to walk over to the front to get in.
“I didn’t forget it. Just let me think …”
“Come on, you don’t have much time. You’re late as it is.” We left the car, holding our breaths as we walked past the dumpsite and towards the store’s entrance.
In Brunei, they sometimes forgot to tarmac the smaller roads that went around the shops, and this was one such road. Through my new sandals, I felt the jagged, pebbly surface of the path with each step. Also, the road was baking hot. How that bitch could lie there so comfortably under that car was anyone’s guess; I couldn’t imagine it being that much cooler down there. Perhaps all these strays had superhuman, or rather super-doggie, powers, honed through a life on the rough side of town; for instance, One-eye’s superpower was his super intelligence and this one’s was heat resistance. It wouldn’t be long before they indeed took over the world.
With no pavements or walkways leading into the store from its rear, and to avoid getting in the way of oncoming cars, Mohidin and I scurried quickly over the grilled coverings of the drains that ran alongside the building, squeezing ourselves between the parked vehicles and the side wall of the store. Not making our ordeal any easier were a) the stink rising up from the drains and b) the patches of bluish-green sludge that coated the grilles so extensively that landing on one at least every other step was unavoidable.
Even so, we soon reached the department store’s entrance, which, with its shutters well hidden, looked simply like a large hole in the building’s wall. As far as I could see, no-one was entering or leaving the store. A man who looked like the world’s oldest security guard sat by its entrance, snoozing away on a plastic chair, dressed in a red beret and crumpled khaki fatigues, a foot-long wizard-like white beard lying against his chest. An unmanned soft-ice cream dispenser sat forlornly next to him like a mechanical grandchild desperate for attention, its orange, green and pink buttons so bright with deluded optimism and so close to being able to distract one away from the rust marks and cobwebs that had gathered around the rest of its neglected body. The security guard didn’t stir awake as we walked in.
The store’s inside was similarly subdued, but not unexpectedly so, given the time of day. Upon entering, we saw to our left a pharmacy and traditional medicine counter, while straight ahead was a mobile-phone-and-accessories stand as well as the escalator leading to the first floor. To our right were rows of checkout lanes, and beyond these lanes was the groceries section, where I saw a couple of old ladies pushing along their shopping carts, wandering from the vegetables to the dairy aisle in time to the slow sax music being played through the loudspeakers.
We decided to try the pharmacy counter, which was a single glass-casing staffed by a bespectacled middle-aged woman, sitting cross-legged and reading a newspaper. The wares on display were a mix of Western medicines and traditional remedies; I could see many bottles of ginseng as well as other dried-up herbal stuff I didn’t know the names of.
“Uh, excuse me?” I walked over to the woman while Mohidin stayed back, watching.
“Hmm? What?” She barely managed to tear herself away from her paper, and peered over her glasses to flash me an annoyed look.
“Uh, do you know where the Friendly Garden …”
“The what? I can’t hear you!”
“The Friendly Garden Pool Centre!” I shouted.
“No. I don’t know. Don’t shout at me, boy! And why are you dressed like that? You look like you’re going to a funeral!” She then returned to her paper.
I slunk away from her and looked to Mohidin, who only shrugged in response. I pleaded with my eyes and tried to convey how much I wanted him to step in and try asking her. Or at least scold her for acting so nasty to me. It came as a pleasant surprise when he did respond to my silent cry for help. Any other adult I knew, and especially my father, would’ve walked away from there, and would’ve scolded me instead.
“Can I have one box of Vitamin C tablets? And some cough syrup? Also, my nose is a bit itchy. Could I have some of that, uh, hay fever medicine?”
This wasn’t really going the way I had expected it to.
“Medicine?” the woman snapped. “Do you have a prescription for that?” The woman gave Mohidin the same menacing once-over she’d given me from behind her glasses.
“Huh? But I usually get all this at …”
“There’s no registered pharmacist here now. She is the only one who can make the sale for these medicines.”
“When is she coming back?”
“How should I know?” The woman looked repulsed for some reason.
“But …”
“Here, take your vitamins. That’s all I can give you right now. That comes up to twenty-five dollars and eighty cents.”
“It costs that much? But …”
“Check the price before you come up to the counter next time,” she cawed. Mohidin opened his wallet and slowly, and very reluctantly, began pulling out a couple of notes. Looking defeated, my companion handed over the money and took his bag of vitamins without so much as a snarky word back at her. He then beat a hasty retreat, and I was compelled to follow him out of the building.
“Why’d you let her talk to you like that? I mean, aren’t you an adult too? You can’t let yourself get treated like that by her.”
“Ah, never mind,” he muttered, stopping in front of the dozing guard and looking down glumly at the contents of his plastic bag. “It’s not worth it.”
“That woman’s so mean. She must be related to my teacher, Mrs. Yap. One day, I’ll get her arrested for crimes against humanity!”
“Boy, when you grow up …” He left the sentence hanging.
“When I grow up, what?”
He sighed. “Nothing. Do you know the address of the pool centre? The simpang? You’re already twenty minutes late.”
“Ah, crap. Wait, I …” How I wished I’d written it down somewhere. “Let’s see … Simpang 46? 36?”
“Well, this is Simpang 68 right here,” Mohidin pointed to a sign nearby. “Are you sure about the number?”
“Hey, wait, it’s 64! Simpang 64! We can’t be far away! Let’s go back in and ask where Simpang 64 is!”
“We’ll go somewhere else,” Mohidin said with a small voice and darted a helpless look at the woman at the pharmacy. I accompanied him as he walked across the street to another block, hopefully one populated by a less hostile set of shop workers.
We were in luck at the next place we tried. It was a stationery shop manned by a beaming Filipino, who immediately pointed out the way for us without any hesitation. I felt like reciprocating his kindness by purchasing something for his troubles, but unfortunately, I didn’t have any money, and it felt so wrong getting Mohidin to do it on my behalf. In any case, nothing on the newsstand grabbed my interest, and the comics I usually browsed through at shops like this weren’t stocked here. Nothing piqued Mohidin’s fancy either, so the most we could do was thank the man, which we did profusely and gratefully before following his directions to Simpang 64.
Our destination turned out to be a rather isolated part of Badir town. There was a single block of shops here, formed of six individual units lined side by side, and the only one with a sign or banner of any sort happened to be the Friendly Garden Pool Centre, the second unit from the far end of the building.
Three of the other units were locked up, and were probably out of business. The one at this end was occupied by a tyre dealership, and the unit next to it was a coffee-shop with an interior so badly-lit and grimy that it looked like it was last refurbished about fifty years ago. The place however couldn’t have been more than ten years old, because that was about the age of Badir itself – before that, this whole area was nothing but swampland. Neither the tyre dealer nor the café looked like they had any customers at the moment; the café seemed completely deserted, while the tyre dealership was filled with stacks of heaped-up tyres and various car parts that prevented me from making out if there was any activity inside. It felt refreshing to be out of the way of all the cars and the bustle though; the noises coming off the busier roads nearby were reduced here to a mild background hum and a few muted horn-honks.
As we walked up to the pool centre, I tried to look through its glass façade that was plastered over with advertisements for new mobile-phone subscription services and fast food joints, and managed to get a heavily-obscured glimpse of a row of computer terminals, but saw no pool tables. A handwritten sign pasted awkwardly between a few ads proclaimed that no-one in a school uniform would be allowed entry into the pool centre, and that smoking wasn’t allowed within the business premises.
As I pushed open the door, Mohidin made a move to walk in first. “Uh, Mohidin? Can I go in by myself?” I asked, holding open the door.
“What? No, I can’t let you do that.”
“Well, it’s my brother … He might get a bit jittery if he sees me with you. He’s so stupid that he might think you’re an undercover police officer or something. It’s probably better if it’s just me.”
Again, I didn’t know why I felt so strongly about hiding the fact that this whole thing was really about my desire to speak to my mother, and learning what Michael knew that I didn’t about her. It was not like Mohidin would’ve laughed or called me a weakling; he of all people would’ve understood. Yet, I didn’t feel too sure about confiding in him.
