Back in school on Monday, Cody and Wee Boon pretended nothing had happened, even as they went through the usual routines. But nothing was the same again after that. They plunged headlong into their studies, revisions and remedial classes—the PSLE was less than three months away—and left things as they were, unasked and unquestioned. Cody studied with some of the boys from the class, and spent more time playing with them, which meant seeing Wee Boon less.
They took the PSLE, and after the results were announced—Cody and Wee Boon got accepted to different secondary schools—they never contacted each other again. They sheared themselves clean of their past, their childhoods, and moved on. The friendship they had was cast aside quickly, heedlessly, as they began their new lives in their new schools.
15
WEI XIANG
For the past twenty minutes, Wei Xiang has followed a local man carrying a young girl in his arms—small in her pink Hello Kitty pyjamas, her limbs loose by her sides, blood flowing from an unseen wound on her head—as it is clear, even through the man’s visible grief, that he knows where he is going. The man’s face is tormented, his gaze far away, and the last two fingers on his left hand are missing and bleeding freely. His open anguish singles him out in the crowd, and Wei Xiang was drawn to him at first sight. They now approach the compound of a school cum emergency medical centre, circumscribed by a chain link fence crowded by adults and street kids, and a gate attended to by a guard, who lets the man through. Wei Xiang stands by a muddy puddle near the gate. In the courtyard are a number of dead bodies, and several volunteers are constructing a shelter with metal poles and tarps. A group of street kids lingers at the fence, whispering to one another; one of them stares at him with an undisguised curiosity, before his companion distracts him, pointing to something in the weedy shrubs at the edge of the school field. The growing crowd gawks at the commotion, sometimes letting out a collective cry or yell when another body is carried into the school, clearing a path for the procession.
Wei Xiang steps up to the school gate, and the guard stops him, jabbering at him in Thai. Wei Xiang points to the school assembly hall and, with a loud voice and a series of wild gestures, tries his best to convey his intentions. The guard stares at him, and Wei Xiang, exasperated, raises his voice. “My wife!” he screams into the guard’s face, finally losing his calm. He is aware of the attention he’s getting, the numerous pairs of eyes watching his outburst, but he ignores them. The guard finally backs down, moves aside and allows Wei Xiang to enter the school compound. When he looks back, the street kids are still staring at him from behind the fence.
Wei Xiang quickly makes his way through the entrance of the low-ceilinged hall, careful not to trip over any of the dead bodies lying on the sediment-encrusted floor, moving aside for the helpers making their rounds, scribbling on pieces of paper or separating the bodies according to gender and size. He passes through the men’s section, a marked-out area near the entrance, with most of the bodies left uncovered; only the worst cases are occluded by torn sections of cardboard, pieces of clothing or newspapers over their faces or severed limbs. Wei Xiang catches a glimpse of a man with a deep gash that has split open his chest, his face covered by a flimsy rag soaked through with blood, with a stone on top to weigh it down. He moves to the women’s section, near the raised platform at one end of the hall; a wood-and-copper plaque featuring the school insignia—branches of laurel and a yellow lamp—hangs on the peeling wall above the platform. Dead children have been placed on the platform, lined up in neat rows, with white plastic sheets and blankets covering their bodies.
Wei Xiang preps himself mentally as he starts to examine the first row of dead women’s bodies. The faces of the women—ashen, grim, distorted—imprint themselves like a hot branding iron into his frayed, exhausted mind. Every face is a torture, and every anticipation of possible recognition raised and thwarted leaves him stricken with a deepening sense of futility. After the fifth body, Wei Xiang blanks out unwittingly. For a fleeting moment, he can’t remember anything about Ai Ling—her face or any of her features; she has become a phantasm, a figure made up of a multitude of disembodied, indistinguishable parts. What kind of ears or eyebrows or lips does she have? Does she have a scar or a mole? Nothing comes to mind. All the faces he sees are the same to him, each possessing a similar death mask. He closes his eyes to pull himself together, to let the images of the faces fall away. Then, hardening his resolve, Wei Xiang continues down the line to the next row of bodies, lifting the coverings and taking quick glances. He holds his breath; the air in the hall has thickened, and the helpers who wear improvised face masks made of dirty rags and handkerchiefs are fanning themselves with cut-outs made of cardboard.
Wei Xiang pauses beside a body, the face concealed by strands of long hair but clearly missing both eyes and nose; his gaze glides down the body, to check its shape and proportions for any recognisable traits or features—does Ai Ling have a mole near her right breast? Or a pale crescent scar on her hip? He covers the body and catches his breath, emptying his mind of the image of the woman’s face. From somewhere, he hears a shout and sees men bringing in another dead body, dropping it on the floor with a dull thud. Two women rush to identify it, pointing to the platform; one of them speaks in a firm voice to a helper who is propping himself up with both hands on his thighs, panting visibly.
Wei Xiang presses on. Nobody has stopped him so far from looking at the bodies, though he notices one or two helpers giving him strange, puzzled glances. After examining the last body in the section—a heavyset woman in her late forties with half-shut eyes, white-purplish lips and a stunned scowl on her face—Wei Xiang stretches, feeling the tension in his neck and waist, the nagging ache in his lower back.
He looks back towards the entrance of the assembly hall and sees the silhouette of a young boy standing there alone, his small form dark against the harsh sunlight from outside. By the time Wei Xiang blinks and clears his vision, the boy is gone. He wonders how a kid could have sneaked into the school compound, with the guard at the gate.
Wei Xiang notes the time on his watch: already half past four in the afternoon. He has spent more than two hours searching the assembly hall for Ai Ling. The stale air barely stirs, permeated with a strong, unbearable stench; Wei Xiang feels his nausea getting worse, so he steps outside. The helpers have finished constructing the makeshift tent in the courtyard and have placed Red Cross signs on the dark green canvas. Several people carry bundles of blankets and large boxes of medical supplies into the tent, the flaps tied as wide as possible to allow unobstructed entry. A few wooden tables sit at the entrance, with a radio crackling with alternating bursts of static and voices. From where he stands, Wei Xiang can hear muffled voices. A blue pickup truck pulls into the school’s driveway and disgorges a few young men in uniforms, who move in swift strides to the tent, led by a stout man with a severe buzzcut. A young woman with dishevelled hair and tired features stands up nervously to speak to the soldier, and passes him a handful of documents.