Little People

The baker gently lifted up the boy and placed him on the milky white frosting draped on a rich dark chocolate cake. The boy looked around in wonder. He leaned casually against a sugary log. Just up ahead was an evergreen fir tree, flakes of snow dusted on its branches. Chubby round toadstools, dyed a brilliant red and dotted with huge white spots, broke the monotony of the virginal landscape. Intricate fractal crystalline snowflakes adorned the ground. He stood there a little foolishly, coat buttoned up a little too tightly, with a Christmas hat draped rakishly on his sandy hair. A woollen green scarf was wrapped around his throat.

The baker then hurried off to answer the doorbell. He could hear the baker talking to someone in urgent tones over the phone, “Yes, Mr. Thomas. I assure you the cake will be done by this evening. You can come by and pick it up later.”

The baker came back into the kitchen, wiping her hands on her gingham apron.

“OK, let’s see, where were we?”

The boy watched as a cherubic girl with apple-stained cheeks and fluffy blonde curls hidden under a gray knitted beanie hat was lowered into position onto the cake. She wore a lacey pink dress beneath a thick brown fur coat. She had big blue eyes and pouting lips. The baker scattered some silver balls around the two little marzipan people and surrounded the chocolate base with colourful flowers. Then, the baker brought the cake out and placed it on a refrigerated shelf at the counter.

The crowds jostled past the bakery, heavy laden with bulging shopping bags in their arms. It had started to drizzle when a tall, dark-skinned man with a bushy moustache entered the bakery. He greeted the baker cordially and handed over two fifty-ringgit notes to her. She slowly removed the cake from its position and packaged it deftly into a cardboard box tied with pink ribbons.

The boy and the girl gaped in horror as all turned dark around them. Then they felt themselves being lifted up into the air as Mr. Thomas carried the cake off the counter. It was as though they were in a ship, swaying with the tossing waves. They heard the roar of a car engine droning in the background.

“Where do you think we are going to?” the boy asked. The girl shrugged her shoulders.

“Daddy! Daddy! I want to see the cake, please,” they heard a high-pitched squeal.

Mr. Thomas opened the box. Harsh fluorescent light flooded the winter wonderland and the two marzipan people winced involuntarily. Golden lights twinkled on a giant glittering Christmas tree towering overhead and the smell of spicy chicken curry wafted in the air.

“Ooh,” they heard little Bertha Thomas exclaim.

“It’s time for the party to begin! Come here, Bertha,” Mrs. Thomas said as she entered the living room with a freshly-baked Shepherd’s pie. The guests cheered happily.

The next two hours were a blur of chaotic activity and chatter. The boy and girl were removed from the snowy frosted cake and placed onto a plate. The cake was then cut and distributed to the hungry guests.

“Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,” Mr. Thomas said, raising his glass of Coke. “Merry Christmas,” the guests echoed. There was much laughter and eating and drinking.

Finally the party was over. Silence settled over the Thomas house. The maid came to clear up the mess and wash the dishes. She took the boy and the girl and tossed the two figurines onto the heap of rubbish piled into a metal trash can in the kitchen. Then, she turned out the lights. It was pitch black except for the distant stars twinkling in the sky beyond the half-shuttered window.

The girl suddenly burst into tears.

“Oh, what’s going to happen to us now?” she sobbed.

The boy looked at her helplessly.

“I don’t know,” he said.

She was still crying piteously. “Don’t worry,” he tried to comfort her. He wanted to reach out to her, but found that his right leg was broken. He grunted as he hobbled across a chewed-up turkey drumstick, dragging his leg with him.

“Do you think that we are going to die? The garbage collectors will probably be here tomorrow. That will be the end,” she whispered.

The boy wrapped his little arms round her. Her whimpers gradually died down. He heard her sniffle as she buried her golden locks into his shoulder.

“We will figure something out tonight,” he said resolutely.

The two little people stayed like that for some time, watching the soft silver moonlight rise and flood the empty kitchen. A dog howled in the distance and a tiny gecko skittered across the ceiling. The fragrance of the ‘pandan’ bush outside softly perfumed the fresh air of the night.

He looked down at the girl tenderly as she snuggled against him. He gently brushed aside her tears. She clung on to him desperately. Both gripped by the unspoken fear that these would be the last few hours of their lives.

He dug deep into his coat pocket and found what he was looking for. He hesitated for a few moments and then pressed it into her hand. Her big blue eyes fluttered and looked up at him as she opened her palm and saw his gift.

“But,” she started to say.

“Shh, take it. It’s yours now,” he murmured in her ear.

“Wait,” she said.

She removed something from her own pocket and held it up to the tenuous moonlight. He caught a glimpse of it before she slipped it into his coat pocket, replacing the one he had presented to her.

It was a small brilliant ruby-coloured, almond-scented marzipan heart. Just like the one he had given away a few moments before. He started to choke up and a stray tear glistened on his cheek.

He forced himself to stand and glanced around the kitchen. The back door had been left slightly ajar, held in place by a chain lock far above them.

“We can escape,” he told her and pointed at the narrow gap that led to the world outside.

She looked at his broken leg, dangling precariously at an angle. “We need to fix this first,” she said. She hunted around in the rubbish surrounding them and found a toothpick. Nudging him to sit down, she put the small wooden stick against his broken leg like a splint and wrapped it around him with a bit of string.

“Thank you,” he said. He took more of the string and tied one end around the turkey bone.

They both looked at the door, hearts pounding in anticipation.

“To freedom,” he cried as he rappelled down the slippery wall of the trash can with the girl by his side.

“And a new life beyond,” she added.

The Celadon Duck

It was her own fault, she knew as she sat on that dusty shelf at the back of the dingy old shop and reminisced about her past life. It was hot, damp and humid. Nothing like the cold winds of Korea where she had been born, straight out of a fiery furnace in an ancient artisan’s kiln.

She once occupied the place of pride on some magnificent mantelpieces draped in colourful brocade, a glint in her glassy eye and an elegant sheen on her glazed jade-green feathers. She had watched as nobles welcomed foreign emissaries to grand pillared halls and merchants discussed international trade under her tapered beak. She had survived a stormy sea journey on a rickety junk, shivering in fear as she lay wrapped beneath layers of cloth while hoping that they reach the shores of China soon. And another journey, wrapped in layers of crinkled brown paper, as the Chinese diplomat’s grandson (who had inherited her from his grandfather; a tall bespectacled man with the family name of Loke who had been given the duck-shaped incense burner as a gift from his Korean counterpart) fled the war-torn city of his birth and headed for the balmy tropics to escape from the advancing enemy forces.

It was initially a rough start in a new land. The diplomat’s grandson, who never had to do menial work in his life, started off as a labourer in the tin mines. She would watch him hungrily wolf down scraps of salted fish with his plain white rice, then fall asleep on a straw mat in exhaustion. A far cry from the luxurious feasts and comfortable beds he used to enjoy back home. Nonetheless he kept her by his threadbare cotton pillow. A reminder of bygone days. He got his first break after scrimping and saving for two years, starting his own textile business selling cheap shirts on the five foot walkway. Then he married the neighbour’s daughter, a sweet but plain-faced girl, and moved into a small kampong house in Brickfields. She was then placed on the side of the family altar, next to a gold-plated statue of a reclining Buddha and the ancestral tablets. She watched as the family grew and the business expanded, following them as they moved from each home to every successively bigger home.

And one day, she saw them. Her ‘real’ counterparts. By then, the Lokes were living in a low white-washed brick bungalow adjacent to the Lake Gardens. A family of Lesser Whistling ducks, who often paraded past the living room on their way to the muddy pond at the foot of the hill on which the house was perched. They would strut past, preening their slick brown feathers with slim black bills and pecking at the sandy ground. She thought of her centuries of being parked on countertops and mantelpieces, and for the first time in her life, she wished for the sunny liberty that the duck family enjoyed. When the lights had been put out for the day, she would stare at the stars twinkling beyond the window frames and dream of frolicking in the cool waters of the pond. And so she tried to escape into the freedom she so sought. Tried, and tried. One fine day, she finally succeeded.

“Aiyah, Brian, why you so careless one? I told you to be careful when you play in the living room. Now you have broken Gong Gong’s favourite porcelain duck that he brought from China! He will be so mad when he finds out, Brian,” the diplomat’s grandson’s wife, now an elderly lady with grey hair and a bent back, scolded her five year old grandson when she saw the shattered light green pieces on the marble floor.

“But, Po Po, it wasn’t me!” the mop-headed lad protested.

“Now, Brian Loke, this is even worse! We have taught you not to lie, haven’t we? You know what is the ‘rotan’? You were the only one in the room till five minutes ago. Seline! Seline, come and clear up this mess,” she called for the Filipino maid and dragged her grandson out by his T-shirt collar.

And so the duck found bits of herself swept up into a dustpan unceremoniously and chucked onto the heap of rubbish just outside the front gate. The reality was nothing like how she had imagined it to be. The sun and rain made her porcelain glaze crack further and left dirt stains on her feathers. A stray dog came in the evenings and pawed through the trash, causing her to tremble in fear that he would fracture her further. Lines of fire ants crawled over her at night, carrying bits of cake and sugary treats. The smell of the decaying rubbish and the stagnant drain water in the ‘longkang’ nauseated her. The duck family, far from embracing her as one of their own, snootily ignored the broken celadon duck which lay helplessly on the wayside.

She met Uncle Chan one day when he was on his evening walk through the neighbourhood.

“Hullo, what’s this?” he stopped and peered at the broken duck. He picked up a piece of her back and dusted off the soil, examining it with a critical eye.

“Interesting,” he murmured to himself. He plucked a huge leaf from a palm that was growing opposite and picked up the broken pieces carefully.

She found herself on a wooden table top in a cluttered workshop. Uncle Chan put on his black-rimmed spectacles and uncapped a bottle of glue. He wiped each piece carefully and arranged the shattered pieces on a sheet of newspaper. Switching on his work lamp, he used a small paintbrush to apply glue onto the jagged edges and slowly assembled her together again.

After a few hours, Uncle Chan wiped his brow and smiled.

“Yes, we are finally done,” he said with a satisfied look on his wrinkled sunburnt face.

But the celadon duck knew that life would never be the same again. No one would want her, with cracks running down her back and on her base. She looked like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Not like a treasured antique any longer. She knew that her fate would be to languish, forgotten, on the dusty shelves of Uncle Chan’s vintage shop forever.

A typical rainy day in Kuala Lumpur. When the late monsoon rains would drench the city in never-ending sheets of fury, drowning the streets in tea-coloured flash floods and causing the traffic to halt to a stand-still. A middle-aged Chinese man darted into the shop, shaking off the raindrops from his wet hair and black umbrella. Uncle Chan looked up from a watch he was repairing.

“How can I help you?” he said.

“Nothing, I mean, this rain… is just so heavy. Phew. Thank you boss, I’ll just browse around and take a look for now,” the stranger huffed as he closed his umbrella. Uncle Chan nodded and returned to his work.

The stranger slowly walked around the shop, looking at the eclectic collection of wares with a keen eye. His umbrella was hooked on his left elbow and he mopped his dripping brow with a square handkerchief. He lingered for a few moments as he bent down and looked at the duck. She looked back at him wordlessly. There was something vaguely familiar about his eyes and nose.

The stranger straightened up and went to Uncle Chan at the counter.

“Yes, what can I do for you? Found anything interesting?” Uncle Chan said.

“Yes. That…that duck. How much for it?”

“Oh, you sure you want it? Never really thought of selling her. Found her while I was having an evening walk one day and fixed her up nicely,” Uncle Chan looked at the stranger and rubbed his chin.

“The duck reminds me of my grandfather’s favourite antique which he brought from China. According to Gong Gong, it was a gift to his grandfather from a Korean friend. But one day, it suddenly broke and my grandma threw it away. Never saw it again,” the stranger mused. He retrieved his leather wallet from his pocket and took out a platinum credit card marked ‘Brian Loke’ in embossed gold lettering.

“I’ll pay you seven thousand for it. My grandfather’s been dead for almost twenty years now but I still want to get the duck back. It was our family heirloom,” Brian said.

Uncle Chan nodded and walked over to the shelf, picking up the celadon duck and packing it into a cardboard box.

“Go ahead, she’s all yours now.”

Dry Bones

He shuffled along the broken pavement, the sunlight glaring into his eyes from the bright blue sky arching overhead. Beads of sweat accumulated on the crew-cut stubble on his scalp and dripped onto his dirt-stained Pagoda singlet. An endless stream of people pushed and rushed past him on their way to work, shopping and various appointments. He stopped momentarily and stared at the crumbling derelict walls of the Pudu Jail which were being demolished.

**************

He screamed in pain and gritted his teeth as the bloody rotan made contact with his shredded flesh, sending a searing pain rippling through his back. The afternoon heat arose from the baked concrete and a blue-bottle fly buzzed around his ears.

"Satu lagi," he heard the cry ring out.

Krakk! He screamed again, his cries of anguish echoing along the rusty chain-link fence.

***************

A young secondary schoolboy in olive green trousers swung past him, the boy's messenger bag crashing into his side. He jumped, startled. He turned angrily but the boy had already disappeared into the crowd, oblivious to the surroundings thanks to the loud pop music blasting through a set of new headphones.

He rubbed his eyes. He could still feel the pain coursing though his nerves, memories of his long imprisonment in Pudu Jail. That era of his life had long passed and the jail was merely a run-down concrete shell full of ghosts of yesteryears. But these ghosts were still haunting him. His hands started to tremble violently and he knew that it was time for another drink. He dug his hands deep into the pockets of his tattered khaki shorts. He swore. There was no money there. He noticed his stomach starting to rumble too. He kicked a pebble into the ditch in frustration and turned to join the sea of passer-bys.

The sky was starting to darken. Flocks of sparrows and swifts wheeled overhead, returning to their homes. He glanced at the gathering traffic congestion. He paused outside a cafe along Jalan Bukit Bintang, the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee and baked breads wafting onto the streets and tempting him. The waiter standing at the door tried to shoo him away, "Eh, berambuslah. Don't dirty our place. We need to run a business here."

"Please, let me have a bit of your leftover food. I'm hungry," he pleaded with bloodshot eyes.

The waiter peeked outside quickly and sighed. "Fine, fine. Go by the back door and perhaps the cook may give you something to eat."

He went to the back door, accompanied by a mangy orange-coloured stray cat that had adopted him along the way. A middle-aged Malay washerwoman opened the door and scrutinised him. "Masuk cepat. I will find something for you to eat."

He crept into the damp kitchen and squatted in a corner. The washerwoman handed him a stale burnt croissant and he started to wolf it down hungrily. The cat meowed and melted into the murky darkness outside. The Malay lady said, "Finish it off quickly and off you go." She turned back to her heaps of dirty dishes soaking in soapy basins.

He licked the last crumbs of bread off his fingers. Beyond the open doorway, he could see the dimly-lit dining hall. Not many customers there. From his vantage point, he spotted a gilt-framed painting of bucolic rolling hills and tendrils of white mist. He turned to look at the washerwoman, who was still preoccupied with her work. "Hmm, I can probably sell that painting and get enough money for my next fix," he thought.

He crept past the waiter who was preparing a cocktail behind the bar and quickly removed the painting from the wall. He hid behind the stainless steel racks of pots and pans, surveying his escape route. Good, there was no one in the kitchen. He was just about to make a dash for the back door when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Stealing something? Unfortunately for you, someone alerted us just in time." He turned to find a burly Sikh security guard with a thick beard and an indigo blue turban swathed round his head. "Come with me. We will sort this out at the police station."

"Hold on, this man is my guest! Why are you arresting him?" a shrill voice demanded.

"Mr. Andy, we caught him stealing from your restaurant," the guard explained.

"This man is my cousin from Kota Bharu and the painting is a gift for his family. A souvenir from his trip down to KL," said the thin bronze-skinned man dressed in a dark gray Armani suit.

The security guard kept silent and released his grip slightly.

"In fact, Ah Seng, you forgot to bring along the RM500 I left out here for you," the man opened the cash register and held out RM500.

He didn't know quite what to say.

"Sorry sir, I see there's been a misunderstanding. I assure you this will not happen again," the guard apologised.

After the guard had left, he could not contain his curiosity any longer.

"Sir, you know that I am not your cousin and that I intended to steal from you. Why, then, did you do that?"

Mr. Andy merely smiled. "Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money to start a new life. You no longer belong to evil but to good."

He was silent for a few minutes, then he nodded and quietly slipped away. And for the first time in years, there were tears in his eyes. He looked up into the incandescent orange glow of the city lights and saw, silhouetted amidst the towering skyscrapers, a cross.

"A new life," he whispered to himself.

Note: This article originally appeared in Zes-T, a publication of Damansara Utama Methodist Church (DUMC)

Eggs and Ketchup: A Christmas Story

He sat in a corner of the coffee shop, his right hand cradling a porcelain cup of warm buttery kopi-o. As he sipped the thick beverage sweetened with condensed milk, he could feel it sloshing down his throat and warming his cold innards. He flipped through the thick stack of papers before him – pages and pages of scribbled mathematical equations and pencil-drawn diagrams. A torrential downpour had just passed, and though the late morning sun was already shining outside, there was a residual drizzle pattering against the greenish glass window-panes. It was rather quiet and as the owner of the coffee shop walked by, he asked why business was slower than usual that day.

“It’s Christmas Eve, y’know. Most people have left town by now. In fact, I’m going to close my shop early today and have Christmas dinner with my family.”

He smiled and said nothing. He stirred his drink thoughtfully.

“Here, sir. Your usual order of two half-boiled eggs.”

He nodded amiably and reached for the cracked yellowed porcelain saucer decorated with arborising green fronds painted on the rim. The two brown-shelled eggs jiggled and nudged against each other as he dragged the plate towards him.

Family. He had not heard that word for some time. It was a word that he would have preferred to forget.

“Hey, Jason! Pinnochio!”

He turned around to see the class bully, Giant, walking down the school corridor. Giant was his nickname, given thanks to his large chubby frame and his physical resemblance to the character in the Doraemon cartoons.

“How’re your fake mommy and daddy? Have you become a real boy yet?” Giant sniggered.

“They are my real parents! How can you say that they are fake?” Jason retorted angrily. He leaned against the row of lockers, arms akimbo.

“Haha, can’t you tell? Do you look anything like them at all?”

Jason looked at his hands. That was true. His parents were fair with dark brown eyes and tousled wavy black hair. The hands that greeted his gaze were black and shiny.

“Betcha joints creak when you move, Pinnochio. My mom says you were picked up from a rubbish dump.” Juno, another boy, joined in the taunting.

He felt his jaw stiffen. He clenched his fists.

“Be careful not to lie, Metal Boy, or your nose will grow long like a carrot!” Giant laughed and snorted. Juno joined in the laughter.

“Bye kiddo!” the two boys ran off as the school bell rang, signifying the end of the recess period. Jason did not return to his class. He slumped against the steel wall of the nearest locker. Could it be true? Fake parents? Did they truly love him or was he just a toy or a pet to them?

He stepped off the school bus that evening, opened the door of his home and headed straight for the kitchen. Mum was there, stirring a pot of chicken soup.

“Mum, I need to ask you something,” he said, placing his school bag on the tiled floor.

“Yes, sweetie. What is it?”

“Do I really belong to you? Why do I look different from other people? Juno said that I was picked up from the rubbish dump,” he asked plaintively.

“Son, you know that we love you very much,” his mother said. Just then, his father came into the kitchen and looked at Mum.

Dad sighed and looked away, “Martha, perhaps it’s time we tell the boy the truth.”

Mum said nothing.

“Come here, Jason,” Dad said as he pulled up a chair.

It was then that he learnt the story of his birth. Or so-called birth.

On a swelteringly humid Saturday afternoon, Dad was walking home from the bus stop after work when he heard a strange whirring sound coming from the local rubbish heap. His curiosity piqued, he stepped off the path to take a look. It was then that he saw the robot. It was buried under a heap of dead leaves, apple peelings, rotting vegetables and empty mineral water bottles. It did not seem to be functional, its eyes a dull red with no glow left and its left hand rotating aimlessly in an obvious malfunction. Being a robotics professor in the university, Dad decided to try and fix the robot and brought it home.

He had forgotten all about the salvaged robot till Mum came across the black metal humanoid contraption in the cluttered garage one day, coated with dust.

“What’s this, honey?” she asked as she dusted it off and brought it into the living room. Dad turned and looked at her, cradling the broken robot in her arms. She came and set it upon the marble-topped table. They looked at the metallic figure together.

“He looks so adorable, Raj. Where did you get him from? Do you think you can fix him?” she asked hopefully, her hand in Dad’s.

Dad turned Jason over.

“Yes, I believe so, dear. Picked him up at the dump on Jalan Kasturi. Why?”

“It’s just that, somehow, he appeals to me. He looks like he needs a home and a family. Poor little guy. Dear, you know how much I want a kid but we haven’t been able to have one so far?”

“Martha, you know that’s not important to me,” Dad murmured, caressing Mum’s hand.

“But we’ve tried so hard for so long with no results. Perhaps, he’s God’s gift to us? A son,” she said.

“A son. At last,” Dad echoed, touching the welded burnished plates lovingly.

Knowing the truth did not make it any easier. The school environment is not an easy one to thrive in for children who look different from their peers. Jason spent most of his time in school reading books in the library and solving mathematical equations. He had no friends. He could not participate in any sporting activities or playground games as his physique and stiff joints did not allow him to be physically active. However, his teachers found that he had an affinity for mathematics and he found himself in the accelerated class, and from there on, he was a freshman at Harvard at the ‘age’ of ten. University was the same. Unable to communicate with his human peers, he never joined in the rowdy parties and pub crawls, preferring to while away his free time writing scientific papers in the safety of his cramped apartment. He soon acquired a reputation as a lone genius. An eccentric brilliant scholar who was a social outcast. 

Jason took the eggs and cracked them against the edge of the saucer. The semi-translucent egg whites slid out followed by the wobbly liquid golden yolks. Without thinking, his left hand reached for the yellow plastic bottle of ketchup and squirted the bright red sauce onto his eggs. He was just about to stir the ketchup into the mess of egg when he paused. It suddenly dawned on him that he had learned to eat his eggs that way from his Dad.

“Pass me the ketchup, Martha,” Dad would peek at Mum from over the edge of his morning newspaper.

“It’s on the table. Get it yourself,” she would say.

Jason would watch as Dad drowned his breakfast egg in ketchup and slurped it down.

“Oh come on, Raj. All those colourings and preservatives can’t be good for you,” Mum would often complain as she watched him eat. And all Dad would do in reply was to grin mischievously.

It had been five years since he had any contact with Mum and Dad. Despite the academic success and various accolades he had received, he often questioned why they had revived him and thrust him, an outsider and alien, into the human world. Perhaps he would have been happier, rusting away among the garbage and broken glass bottles. Among inanimate objects. His own kind. If only Dad had not cleaned him up, installed his memory chips, redesigned his organic energy processor in order to allow him to enjoy human food and invented the emotion chip for him...

He sipped the mixture of tangy tomato-flavoured sauce and egg slowly from the saucer. Then he retrieved his mobile phone from his side compartment (which he used as a pocket) and scrolled through the list of contacts. He found the entry marked ‘Appa’. His finger hovered over the lime green ‘dial’ button for a split second; then he pressed down upon the button and held up the phone to his ear.