The cries of children rise above the clamour of the other noises; they have taken to wandering the street, looking lost and confused, their faces mottled with dried-up mud, tears and mucus. A few kids are crying at the top of their voices, perched on piles of rubble, their clothes wet. In the street, the water comes up to Wei Xiang’s hips. Small groups of locals navigate the water with caution; some are staggering in the direction of the beach—Wei Xiang has a hard time telling which direction the sea is—while others head inland towards higher ground.
Wei Xiang sees a young woman moving frantically through the water, peering into narrow alleys, shouting something with every step: “Yari!” A name perhaps. A lean, bare-chested man is pushing a rickety bicycle missing a seat through the water, a large basket of chickens tied with ropes around its frame. The metal-grille gates of the row of shops opposite the hotel are shut tight, their faded signboards askew. Two cats patrol the zinc rooftops of the shops, surveying the sight before them with lazy contempt.
Two old women wearing wide-brimmed, straw-woven hats brush past Wei Xiang, talking loudly; one of them gives Wei Xiang a long rueful stare. Standing in the middle of the street, Wei Xiang assesses the two possible routes he can take: towards the sea, or away from it. He can also head down any of the alleyways that branch off into other parts of the town and find his way around. A hard object bumps against his calf and jolts him; he looks down and sees a small dead dog gliding away, the fringes of its matted fur trailing in the water. A group of locals carrying a torn-off aluminium panel knocks into Wei Xiang, almost throwing him off his feet; a hand, white knuckles taut, peeks out of the plastic sheet covering the makeshift stretcher, and he quickly moves aside. The path clears as the crowd makes way for the men to pass. Wei Xiang watches the procession till it disappears around a bend, near the main road. Then he glances down the waterlogged street leading to the beach and sees hordes of people making their way into the interior of the town, away from the wreckage.
Someone grabs his arm and Wei Xiang jumps, staring into the anguished face of the frantic young woman he saw earlier, the one searching for someone. He does not pull away from her touch, certain that he’s also wearing the same raw, pleading, desperate look. The woman’s voice is hoarse, but she utters the word again, like a chant: “Yari! Yari! Yari!” Wei Xiang shakes his head, and the woman loosens her grip, stumbling away to another passer-by, calling out the name.
Where the landscape has flattened out in the direction of the sea, Wei Xiang can see the ruins of toppled huts, reduced to perilous fragments of walls, carcasses of their former selves. The coconut trees have been stripped clean of foliage, their bare trunks jutting into the sky like accusing fingers.
A dizzying chill runs through him as he registers these images, his clouded mind lacking the ability to process them or put any definite meaning to what he is seeing. Everything is scrambled up, a reel of disconnected images. Yet, amidst all this, an overriding thought shrieks for his attention: Where is Ai Ling?
Stirring from his indecision, Wei Xiang takes a step, and allows himself to be pushed along with the flow of the crowd heading towards the sea.
PART TWO
12
AI LING
Two days after the tsunami, the weather is sultry, the sky a clear expanse with hardly any clouds. In mid-morning, as the sun parks itself above the horizon, the dewy lightness of dawn gives way to the intensifying warmth of a humid day. The seashell-littered sand glisters with a shine, reflecting winks of light, as the coconut trees sway in the breeze that sweeps across the small island.
The body of the woman on the beach has darkened into shades of blue-purple blotches, decorated in livid patterns; the tributaries of veins and arteries are mapped out clearly in red, green and black under the skin. Visceral fluids leak from the body, pooling around the woman’s ears and mouth, staining the front and back of her shorts. Under the heat of the sun, the body continues to execute its functions like clockwork, breaking down and tearing apart from within. Life, still persisting, still working, through death.
The sea breeze carries the smell of death across the island and ruffles the long, frizzled hair of the woman. The loose strands leap and dance in the breeze, as if charged with energy. The world around the woman’s body teems with little acts of movement, small signs of life.
The first thing Ai Ling noticed about the new boy was his hair—soft coils that hung like cursive loops on his forehead. She patted his head twice when he was brought into the class by the principal. The boy looked up at her, his eyes full of questions. For the rest of his first day at the childcare centre, Ai Ling watched him attentively. The boy was slow to come out of himself, and while the other children largely ignored him, the boy’s eyes never left them, watchful and observant as if making mental notes of what they were doing or saying. During mealtimes, he sat quietly by himself eating his porridge, never once staining his shirt or dirtying the table. During the afternoon games of tag and skipping, the boy fell but swiftly got up, brushed his knee once, and ran to the back of the queue, waiting for his turn again. When Ai Ling asked him whether he was okay, he nodded his head, barely lifting his eyes to look at her. The boy perspired freely, and his wet hair was plastered to his forehead like a row of inverted Cs. That day, Ai Ling stayed back late and waited with the boy for his parents. His mother came, a stout, wide-hipped woman with dull, darting eyes, and Ai Ling talked to her for a few minutes and told her about the boy’s first day. The mother nodded her head, saying little, before she picked up the boy’s haversack and hurried him out the door.
That night, while they were having dinner, Ai Ling told Wei Xiang about the new boy.
“He is really small for his age, the shortest in my class.”
“Boys are usually like that, shorter and smaller than the girls, until they hit puberty.”
“And he is too scrawny. His arms are so thin, that I’m afraid of pulling them off.”
“Maybe he has a higher metabolism than the others. I was a skinny monkey when I was young. A tiny body with a huge head. Try imagining how I looked.”
“But he’s really adorable and quite obedient. The rest of the children have not taken a liking to him yet, but I guess they will, sooner or later.”
“Children are like that, they take a long while to adapt to changes, to new people. I’m sure the boy will be fine, and will get along with the rest when he’s comfortable with them.”
“I hope so.”
In the days and weeks that followed, Ai Ling could not help but pay the boy more attention, keeping him within her sight, noting his movements and behaviours. Her interest was purely professional, she told herself; she was a teacher, and she had to look out for the children under her care. But deep inside, she was aware of something that went beyond her duties, something more instinctual, as if the boy had triggered a latent maternal impulse in her, a seed that had been sown and was now growing of its own will.