Anguli Ma (5 page)

Tiny lights from large ships twinkled on the invisible horizon. Behind her, across the Maribyrnong River, orange warning lights flashed at the docks, revealing then obscuring the rearranging formations of the shipping containers.

When Đào returned home, she could see her young tenant's thin outline in the dusty window of the studio. She tapped on the glass.

“You eaten yet? Come and have a bite to eat with me.”

“Not yet
Cô
,
cháu ra liền
,” Sinh put on her coat and came out.

Đào noticed that Sinh had already cooked some rice in the electric cooker. She smiled and spooned some into bowls, and reheated the chicken curry in the big aluminium pot.

“You did overtime today?” Sinh asked.

“Yes,” Đào said, her fingernails were still stained with magenta-coloured lint from the sweatshop. She ladled chicken and potato into the girl's bowl; they ate, as heartily and quickly as they liked. The warm glow of the kitchen made Đào feel talkative.

“When will this girl get married?” she playfully teased Sinh.

“When this girl meets a decent man,” Sinh answered somewhat seriously.

Her young tenant's long hair was tied back with an elastic band.

“Then you can get your own house,” Đào teased some more.

“How can I marry without my parents here? Maybe if I win TattsLotto, first prize, one million dollars, then I'd buy a house for myself, and you can stay with me if you want to aunty.”

They laughed at the thought of them being in a one-million dollar house.

“The house will be so big, I'm sure my parents wouldn't mind,” Sinh blurted and then grew very quiet. After a while, she asked, “
Cô
, do you think we'll be reunited?”

“It's a very big question,” Đào said, buying some time. “Your parents don't know where you are either…I'm sure that they miss you.”

“Thank you. I'm so overcome all of a sudden,” Sinh said apologetically, and smiled.

Đào tried to lighten things up, “I would love to live in your million-dollar house, and we would swap places, because I would be your tenant.”

Sinh replied, in between large mouthfuls of cooked potato, “I'll be so rich, you can stay with me for free.”

Đào was touched by this simple girl who lived out the back of her house.

“Ahh, when will we be happy?” Đào muttered to herself.

“Maybe we are happy now, and we just can't see it,” Sinh said, then to stop herself from further sadness, she added, “Aunty, I'm giving you the money.” Sinh slipped the next month's board and lodgings to her landlady.

“You're giving me the money ahead of time, without being asked.”

“So I won't forget,” Sinh said simply as she emptied her bowl.

Đào wanted to feed the girl more chicken and rice.

The Brown Man

It is unusually still and clear in the park. He has not seen the monk for several days, so he wanders down the hill towards the river. Something
grey and white dashes by, and then disappears behind some rocks again. The brown man shuffles more quickly towards the site.

He calls out, “Ey!”

The dog stops, and looks up at him momentarily, its muzzle frosted with sandy-coloured earth and just a smear of something dried up, which it licks with its long, lolling pink tongue. Then, greedily, it continues digging up what's beneath.

The man sees a piece of fabric, half buried in the clay soil where the stray is digging. The brown man approaches, his shoulder clips something and he hears the softest “snap” of a large spider web springing away from him. The spider's round belly dangles in the middle of its crumpled web. The sun is out, heating the grasses, boulders and paths within the park and the bitumen roads that surround it. The swollen midday air stirs something dreadful in the man's blood. He glances up the cliff to the rear of the factory high above them, and sees that no one is about; no one is there to cast an eye over this scene.

He walks softly. Glossy black ants scurry over something slender and whitish, almost translucent by now. He wades into the scrub as high as his waist. The stray looks up at him, its tail wagging. The man takes in the naked, silver trees; their rough bark lying stripped and scattered on the ground.

The dog backs away from the mound, and starts to growl. The man makes friendly noises at the stray, and herds it up the hill through the
overgrown thistles toward the hurricane fence. His hand searches, then clutches a large rock on the ground. Some of the thistles are now as high as his head; their thorns catch on his clothes and spear his forearms. The dog's long coat is covered in burrs; it is struggling to move in the thick scrub and weeds. The stray bares its teeth, its red, jagged gums. The man stands erect with the heavy rock lifted over his head.

He notices the dog's breathing, how it is shallow and fast, how it becomes stilted as the dog presses itself against the thistles and the hurricane fence, unable to get through. He notices his own breathing, which is strangely high-pitched. The dog begins to shake uncontrollably, its hair stands up along the ridge of its back. The brown man looks into the eyes of the dog; the dog sees the man and knows itself to be animal, stuck in its animal form. It regrets its imminent pain and death. It is able to regret because it has known joy, the joy of running freely in the wind.

The man's hands drop the rock down on the animal's head. The dog lets out a loud, high yelp, but the blow does not kill it or even knock it out. The brown man lets the rock fall to the ground, all strength leaving him.

‘I am useless now,' he realises as the stray runs a crooked line down the hill, escaping across the river at the fish trap.

Đào

Đào picked up the
Nhân Quyền
and turned to the horoscope page. Perhaps it will tell her which lucky numbers to pick this week.

Those born in the year of the Dog are naturally optimistic, sociable and loyal to a fault. It is vital this year to recognise which loss is grave, and which is merely painful.

Đào started to wonder: what could this prediction relate to? The newspaper was filled with horror stories from her home country, what with all the escapes and Thai pirates, now the morbidity was spreading to the horoscopes!

The phone rang. She picked it up. It was Thảo, her friend from the migrant hostel days.

“
Người đẹp, em
want
cái gì
?” Đào cheered up. “Yes. The Meeting will be on this week.” She listened to the earpiece. “You won't be there?… You'll be back on the Monday…What's your bid this time?…I've written if down…If you're successful, could I hold it for you?…Okay,
em đừng có lo, tôi hiểu rồi
, I'll hold the money for you.” Đào hung up the phone, her mind gainfully occupied with calculating the interest to be paid on Thảo's bid.

In the warmth of her bed, Đào remembered those early days when she first arrived. She didn't know what to do with herself, and was constantly busy rearranging her life to this new country. She thought
that one had to take some chances, or else get crushed by change.

The side gate squeaked.

She got up and looked out the kitchen window. Peering into the darkness, she could see Anguli Ma and two men entering her backyard. They went into the garage. A dim light was turned on. After a while, the warped door opened again momentarily, throwing out a small cloud of cigarette smoke, before closing again.

Đào wondered, “What must Bác and Sinh think about this new tenant, and of me…” but admonished herself immediately. Anguli Ma was just having fun like other men his age. And yet her intestines burned with tension.

The moon was silent-calm. Suddenly Đào longed for the advice from her parents and elders, from the whole society which she had once been part of, was taken care of by, whether wisely or not. She had never been alone like this before. Like an arm without a torso, or a leg without a thigh, or a pair of ears without eyes.

Đào patted down her uneasiness, and tried to go back to sleep. As the night dragged on, the men's revelry was intermittently heard as snatches of drunken singing, and the clinking of bowls and glasses. These sounds intermingled with the ocean of traffic flowing along the highway.

At one point, Đào startled herself from her sleep. She woke thinking she'd heard a man's drunken scream or perhaps it was the wailing of a human child. Now she was no longer sure whether she had heard it
or not. She listened hard to the night and its endless flow of cars along the highway. She looked around her room. Nothing had changed. So she lay back down.

Very early in the morning before her tenants had woken, Đào came down the concrete path. She was careful not to disturb the blue drops of dew on the long grass, which would make her slippers and socks wet. Then Đào stiffened; there was a trail of blood, of something dragged along the side of the house. The trail continued past the studio to the bathroom-outside.

Although she tried to push it away, a jewel of terror gleamed inside Đào.

Young Triều

While the car was moving, its door opened with Young Triều leaning out. He vomited a gush of white fluid onto the road. The door closed again and the car resettled into a straight path and sped off. That was after the whisky, after driving home, after the puddle of blood in the boot of the car, after the impact with the front when they ran over the dog, after meeting Anguli Ma again that day at
hụi
. In the drunken blur Young Triều saw, back at the house, Anguli Ma carrying the dog in his arms.

It was breathing unevenly with its perforated lung. But there was something else that was strange with the collapsed dog. It had Anguli Ma's face attached to its furry neck.

Young Triều yelled in a drunken lilt, “Wow, I liked you better before,” pointing his index finger at the dog's face. “Fucken fur all over and then naked on the head.” He was delirious with his own swearing, and laughed, “You look hideous with Anguli Ma's face…”

“Shut up you arsehole,” Anguli Ma told him.

Young Triều looked at the melting plasticky dog. “Wow! I bet De Niro can't do that – ‘You talkin' to me?'”

The dog didn't answer, but instead began to grow pointy ears; its face was rubbery-pink, like recently burnt flesh. And when Young Triều looked up, he saw that Anguli Ma now looked like the dog. Young Triều turned between the dog with the man's head and the man with the dog's head, and his own seemed to swirl around violently.

“Stop changing!” he screamed in the woman's backyard and blacked out.

“Stupid poofter,” Anguli Ma spat at the unconscious boy.

When he came to, there was the smell of cooking, beautiful cooking.

They were in a room with bare walls covered in mildew, and a wooden door on the side. Then, Young Triều was able to recognise the garage door entrance. He sat up and was given a bowl, and ate. The rice was cooked to perfection, each grain was plump yet separate. The first two
dishes were delicious, very tender
médaillons
of meat and handmade grilled sausages; but when the third dish came along, it had a small tail in it. He began to feel queasy, but tried not to let on. Anguli Ma pressed another beer onto him.

The workmate intervened; he complained that Anguli always pressed drinks onto everyone. “He's just trying to lose himself, and take everyone else with him. Eat some more rice, it'll make you feel better.”

Young Triều blinked and obeyed. The rice did soak up the nausea in his stomach.

“What do you do?” the workmate asked him.

“I just finished my studies. When I find work, I will save money to buy a house.” The young man was starting to feel his body again.

“No point doing all that study. You're homeless, man. Just like us,” said Anguli Ma.

Anguli Ma

They felt they had done nothing wrong. They had been driving at night: him, the workmate and Young Triều. The men drove across the silent, empty land, intermittently marked out by a solitary street sign, an isolated tree, an abandoned warehouse. They got onto the highway, and then more tidy, mean, suburban enclosures.

And there was a dog on the road. Anguli slammed the car into it. The thud of the collision, and then the front and rear wheels rolled over its black body.

“
Đụ má!
” he said.

“Shit, what was that?” the workmate said.

“It was solid,” Young Triều said. “Was it a…child?”

Anguli turned off the engine. “Don't be a
pê đê
. It was a dog! Black as night. Ran onto the road.” He got out of the car to look. He went to the back and unlocked the boot.

“What are you doing?” Young Triều said, following him out.

“Look at him. He's not going to make it,” Anguli said.

“What are you doing?” the workmate protested from inside the car, “What? We're going to take him?”