I had a great time this evening. Hope you have enjoyed it too. Can’t wait for the next time we meet. When can I see you again? Haha. Good night, dear.
You continue to scroll through the messages. In the earliest ones you glimpse forgotten past events, words of love, the first flushes of emotions. You can’t remember most of the messages that you sent to him, yet they clearly mean something to Chee Seng, important enough to keep.
And the more you read, the weaker the grip of your understanding of this person who has sent these messages; it’s nearly impossible to comprehend this strange construct of a person that is the younger you, so far removed from who you are now. You hit the Sent box and read the messages that Chee Seng has sent in response. When you’re done, you close your weary eyes, your mind strangely empty of thoughts, suspended in a limbo.
And you stay there, in this state, for a long time, willing yourself to feel nothing, to be nothing.
11
WEI XIANG
By the time he has run down five flights of stairs to the second floor of the hotel—the lift has stopped working—Wei Xiang is completely out of breath, his heart slamming in his chest. There is already a commotion at the makeshift front desk that has been relocated from the lobby to the second floor foyer: a stocky, dark-skinned woman in a sundress is gesturing wildly and yelling at the hotel manager, while the latter is trying and failing to mollify her. Wei Xiang can hear the woman from where he’s standing, an intense volley of angry words, and though he does not understand a single word—Spanish? Portuguese?—he can guess at the gist of what she wants, or what anyone in the current situation wants. He, too, is about to do the same thing, if not for the motley group of hotel guests queuing at the desk, staring openly at the one-sided altercation, waiting their turns. Behind the manager, two female receptionists are cradling phones to their ears, talking rapidly and glancing furtively at the guests.
Wei Xiang walks down the final flight of stairs and stops two steps above the standing water that has flooded the hotel reception and lobby. The velvety sofas have toppled, their wooden legs sticking above the water like limbs of dead, stiffened animals; the large glass-paned table in the waiting area has shattered into webbed pieces, and the side tables have floated to the other end of the lobby, jumbled in a tight configuration. Torn magazines, books, newspapers, Lonely Planet guidebooks and travel pamphlets, warped and water-bloated, drift on the surface of the mud-grey water, banging listlessly against one another. A few landscape paintings have fallen off their hooks and bob in the water, the paint dissolving into smudgy blots and splotches of colour, their wooden frames broken. Two Caucasian children, oblivious to the danger around them, are playing in the stagnant water that comes up to mid-thigh, throwing handfuls of dirty water at each other. The wall lighting fixtures and decorative standing lamps have either been short-circuited or switched off; the lobby is shrouded in a palpable gloom.
Five men, hotel staff, are rummaging through the mess, salvaging what they can: shoes and sandals, small pots of fake geraniums and daisies, brochure holders, clothes hangers, rugs, umbrellas. Two of them are carrying black trash bags, into which they throw everything that is broken, tattered, or in an irreparable state. The men go about their task in an orderly manner, as if this were a regular part of their daily work routine. A few female staff, dressed in their black-and-white hotel uniforms, appear with large plastic buckets and metal pails, forming a line that snakes from the lobby into a room at the back of the hotel. They begin to fill these containers with the dirty water, and pass them up the line. Looking at them, Wei Xiang can’t help but wonder how long it will take them to clear away all the water. To Wei Xiang, their feeble attempt to relieve the situation seems futile, pointless even, akin to emptying the sea with spoons and ladles. From outside the hotel, overlapping yells and cries can be heard.
Wei Xiang hesitates where he stands, holding the handrail, his feet just above the surface of the lightly rippling water. He watches the commotion around him with detachment, as if what is happening before him is removed entirely from reality, a scene from a dream perhaps, and that if he closes his eyes and opens them again, all this will disappear and everything will return to normal. But the urgency of the harried voices around him is too loud to ignore, coming through the fog that has veiled his mind. There’s no time to wait. Wei Xiang cautiously slips into the cold water, which comes up to his calves, darkening the hem of his Bermuda shorts. A porter, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and rolled-up pants, turns to look at Wei Xiang as he wades towards the flooded reception area. Holding the black trash bag, the man throws in a soggy travel magazine that has come apart in his hands, and regards Wei Xiang with a solicitous look.
“Good morning, sir. How can I help you?” the porter says, straightening his body, giving Wei Xiang a wan smile.
“What happened?” Wei Xiang can’t help asking this question, though he has already seen the aftermath of the waves, the destruction that has wrecked the town, from the balcony of his hotel room.
“We hit by big waves, sir. Very big waves. Happened in morning, very early.”
“Did you see the waves?”
“No, sir. Happened too fast, very sudden, they said. I sleeping.” He points to somewhere behind Wei Xiang, beyond the restaurant, towards the back of the hotel; the staff dormitory. Wei Xiang caught a glimpse of it the day before, a nondescript, three-storey concrete building situated beside a small mango and rambutan garden and a stone-paved footpath, with flapping uniforms, shorts, towels, and undergarments pegged on clotheslines hanging across the balcony. Most of the hotel staff, who come from villages from the northern part of the country, or from the other islands near Phuket, stay there.
Wei Xiang sees a family coming down the stairs, the father putting up his hand to stop his wife and children from stepping into the water, his three young children gasping with delight at the sight of the water-logged lobby. The man speaks to his wife in Thai, who immediately shepherds the excited children up the stairs, while he rolls up his pants and makes his way across the lobby, his arms moving in wide, exaggerated arcs around his chest, as if he were trotting through the water with great effort.
“Have you seen a Chinese woman with long hair, about this height, this morning?” Wei Xiang says, lifting his hand to a height just below his chin. “I think she might be wearing running attire.” The porter stares at him, his forehead furrowed. “Have you seen a woman like that?” he asks again.
The porter lowers his eyes, shakes his head. “No sir, I no see this woman,” he says.
Wei Xiang feels a passing moment of relief until it strikes him that Ai Ling might have left the hotel before the man came on duty, and his mind begins to crowd with other thoughts. Yes, Ai Ling is still out there, somewhere; perhaps she has found some sort of refuge before the waves came in, and is waiting for someone to find her. Maybe she’s waiting for him to get her now. Wei Xiang turns to leave.
“Sir, can’t go out, very dangerous,” the porter says, a look of concern flashing across his face. “Later waves come back. Stay in hotel, better, safe. Don’t go out.”
“I need to find my wife. She went out this morning, and I think she is missing. Do you understand? I need to find her,” Wei Xiang says, his voice cracking. He looks away, out of the dirt-smeared hotel windows, at the street and the soot-hued sky.
“Sir, messy outside. Water everywhere, hard to walk. No safe.”
“It’s okay. I can manage,” Wei Xiang says, tearing himself away from the porter, and trudges towards the open doors of the hotel. He can hear mutters of “Sir, sir” behind him, but ignores it. Moving through the sluggish water is much harder than he thought. He steps on something soft and squishy, and quickly brushes it aside with his feet. The muddy water is thicker and more viscous at the entrance of the hotel; the glass doors have shattered, leaving behind a skeletal metal frame with a barbed perimeter of glass shards. Crossing the threshold, Wei Xiang looks out into the street. The commotion behind him in the hotel fades into the background as the bustling din of the street assaults him.