Anguli Ma (7 page)

The man continues his rash search for the monk. Then, in the distance, he notices the flattened rushes by the water. The man approaches and is met with invigorating air from the river. Then, the bank of the river comes into view and he sees the monk resting on his side, with eyes half-closed. The reclining figure does not make eye contact, confront or challenge his observer; his self-possession invites the man to his interiority and stillness. The brown man unconsciously mirrors the monk's composure. A gentle breeze blows through the gnarled wattle tree.

The monk releases himself from his reclining pose and sits upright. The spell of calmness breaks, and the brown man finds himself feeling very angry.

“What have you done? I can't kill even a wild animal anymore.”

The monk observes the dejected man before him, a man shaken by something arising from beneath the surface. He lowers his voice and urges the man to go further into his wretchedness, to
lean
into his fear.

“You are now repulsed by killing, but I ask you to do one more.”

The brown man is enraged. What is this impostor with the shaven head doing in this barren park? Why does he trick maggots like me? What has he done to my power?

He grabs hold of the collar of the monk's robe, pulling him clean off the flattened vegetation.

“This time you should choose,” the monk hoarsely whispers in mid-air, “your most worthy victim.” He plants his feet on the ground. “It is not me. I know you've thought of that already.” The monk tilts his head down, and smiles, “It is someone much dearer to you, and much more dangerous to you.”

The grin is so incomprehensible to the brown man that he suddenly perceives the coarse, black hairs growing on his clenched hands; the burnished cigarette stain between his fingers; the breeze teasing his hair against his cheek; his throat drying and constricting; the rotten smell of his animal innards. All this he apprehends, as the magnitude of the monk's provocation sinks in.

Đào

Đào tried to fight off her tiredness. Throughout the meeting, she found that she was still shaken from the events of the night before. She was relieved that there was only a small number gathered at her house that
afternoon. She went through the procedure of drawing out the bids from the plastic container for those present at the meeting, as well as for those who had telephoned through their bid amounts beforehand.

Con heo
that day went to her friend Thảo. Thảo was out of town. Đào went into automatic mode when the meeting was over and stuffed the pooled funds into one of the cardboard boxes in her spare room, locked it, put the sateen cushions and biros back in their places, made sure that Tuyết started her practice at the old piano, expressed enthusiasm when the child played something slightly recognisable, cut some apples and placed a plate of sliced apples in front of her when she watched the
tivi
.

Đào alternated between attentiveness and torpor, and she fell asleep. She began dreaming vividly. Time was flowing out of her. Her arms had less and less energy and eventually she was frozen, permanently, in a beastly form. And then the light around her withdrew into the distance and disappeared altogether without her being able to move towards it any longer. Đào found herself on the second-hand couch suddenly jerking awake.

Her grandchild was cross-legged before the
tivi
with the apples barely eaten. The weight of Đào's tiredness overcame her and she fell asleep again.

In her second dream, Đào's world was made up of shifting words and cardboard boxes, which seemed to rearrange themselves. What was
distant suddenly became near, and what was near was a trick of the eye and was, in fact, distant. The shifting blocks moved in free space, and these became fingers that reached out and touched her face. The shock of this made her body jerk as she slept. Then, black animal fur, dripping with diluted blood, clogged Đào's dream, and a sense of being out of breath. She tried to draw deeply from her lungs and, still coming up for air, somehow, her lungs were not drinking in the air…her head felt like someone was wringing it out like a wet piece of discarded fabric.
So you are standing somewhere else much different from where you thought you were.
She was panicking, from having to chase after something, a word, perhaps, a word half-remembered. It ran along on two legs, or perhaps four. It cast a shadow over the cracked surfaces as it ran along the empty yard, opened the gate and then bolted. Out the front of her garden.
Chết mồ
!

When Đào woke up, the kitchen was bathed in blue light from the street, streaming through the windows. She was unsure of how long she'd slept.

Đào switched on the fluorescent light; she looked around the kitchen, the living room, the backyard, then ran out to the front of the house where the cars and trucks on the highway churned the dust ceaselessly. She called out her granddaughter's name – Tuyết, Tuyết
Æ¡i
– but only the sound of traffic came back. Đào crossed the big intersection, went past the used-car yard, and still she could not see her granddaughter. Maybe
the shops, she thought, maybe Tuyết walked herself there while Đào was asleep, even though she knows not to.

Tuyết

The adults met and talked loudly, while Tuyết waited in the kitchen. And then everyone left, and she went to practise on the piano, at least half an hour of finger exercises to strengthen the fourth and fifth fingers. Her grandmother cleared away the pens and cushions and snacks, locking and unlocking the different rooms in the house, and then came back to the couch. As Tuyết played the piano, she looked past her grandmother's shoulder and saw the new man living out the back of the house. He had been through the side gate and was making his way to the front of the house.

“What wonderful playing! Genius!” Her grandmother clapped, oblivious to the new man's presence outside.

Tuyết was confused by her grandmother's praise; she hadn't played anything too special or difficult – she merely repeated the melodic phrase like a trained monkey. “So that was what was meant by being good,” Tuyết thought.

At the front of the house, the new man stopped and turned around as though he had forgotten something, and walked slowly back past the
window again, looking all around where she was. At the side gate, he then turned around
again
, going past the window by the piano. He pressed his cheek against the glass and smiled a funny lopsided smile at her, through all the screens. He stood still to watch her tiny fingers dance.

She quickly averted her eyes and continued playing, or else her grandmother might see the man in the window. The next piece was longer and more difficult. Tuyết played it with more feeling, and placed into it both her fear and her courage. When she finished playing, the new man was gone, and her grandmother was asleep.

Tuyết turned on the television. There was an ad for Vita-Weats, and it had Vegemite maggots squirming out of the holes as the boy squashed the crackers together. “Disgusting!” thought Tuyết, as the jingle sang out, “Good trim Vita-Weat, the crispbread all the family eats.”

Her grandma snored behind her, on the couch. Tuyết realised that her grandmother couldn't know that she was sitting too close to the television. She sat on the floor, and in spite of herself, moved away as she had often been told to. Then, the little girl heard footsteps in the kitchen.

The new man who lived out the back reappeared, this time inside the house. He had a large black bag over his lopsided shoulder, and waved at her to come over to him. His large hands waved and waved and waved to her, and his grin was as wide as a happy bear. Tuyết looked at her grandmother, who was snoring; she looked down, not knowing what to do. Then she stood up off the floor, and came out to the kitchen.

“Do you want some lollies? Let's go to the milk bar, and you can choose which lollies. We can play a game.”

They crossed the road, and were near the small cluster of shops on the highway.

Tuyết suddenly remembered, “Oh, I'm not allowed to accept lollies from strangers.”

“Your father gives your grandmother money, yes?”

“
Dạ
,” she said obediently.

“
Giỏi
, and your grandmother keeps your father's money along with all her friends' money: my money, Bác's money, the girl's money. And now it's all with me, in this bag here, see? So you aren't taking money from a stranger, you are simply taking your father's money, for some lollies. Your own father's money.” The new man laid out his logic to the child.

They bought one-cent and two-cent lollies, and came out of the shop with several bags. She ate the chocolate buttons, the milk bottles and chewed on the confectionary false teeth. The new man watched her in the dim twilight and didn't say a word the whole time as she ate. Perhaps this will be as boring as staying in the living room with her grandmother, she thought.

The man asked Tuyết if she knew how to play “paper rock scissors”. He seemed surprised when she said no, and explained the rules to her – this is “scissors”, this is “rock”, and this is “paper”. He made the hand
gesture for each, and on “paper” and “rock” his large hand opened to swallow up her little fist. When Tuyết's hand was “paper” and the man's was “scissors”, he happily leapt in and almost snapped off the palm of her hand with his strong fingers.

“Yummy child's fingers,” she thought she heard him say, but then wasn't sure.

How icy this man's hands were, the child noticed. His fingers were harsh, and after a few more times of being hurt, Tuyết said she wanted to stop playing.

The man stood very close over her and said, “But we are playing this wonderful game. You wanted someone to play with. Or did you lie to me, and you wanted to sit at home, alone all day? You stupid rag.” The man seemed to grow as tall and dark as a mountain as the high beam of a truck shone from the highway behind him. His shadow grew across the rough concrete and his large hands reached out towards her.

Tuyết heard a shrieking voice from across the road, her grandmother's voice calling out to her, “Tuyết, Tuyết
Æ¡i
! Come over here at once!”

The little girl turned and saw her grandmother running towards them.

Đào

“Come here at once! Don't bother this man with your silly games.” Đào tried to catch her breath, as Tuyết ran towards her. Anguli Ma followed the child but stopped a few metres from Đào's red-hot face.

“She wasn't bothering me. She's a real joy. She's a sweet little girl. Sweet little girl, aren't you?”

Tuyết brightened, for she rarely had anyone call her sweet, but immediately dropped her brightness when she looked at Đào.

“You look white as a ghost Đào, have you lost anything?” Anguli asked.

She saw Anguli Ma's bag, the one he had arrived at her house with.

“Where were you going with my granddaughter?”

“We went to the shops to get her some lollies.”

“I don't want you around here. Get out, you demon, and don't come back!” Đào yelled.

“You better make sure you have enough money,” his voice was as sweet as coconut milk. “You won't find a tenant as good as me…” Anguli Ma's mouth laughed, but his eyes remained cold as black stones.

Tuyết

She didn't know that people could be wolves as well. There was so much to learn about adults.

Đào

When they were alone back in the house, Tuyết told her grandmother, “But I thought that man was your friend. You let him live here, and you talk to him.”

“Just because I talk to someone doesn't mean he's my friend. Don't you spend any time with him. He could be a wolf that comes to snatch you away, and cook you, then eat you up, so don't be stupid and talk to him if you see him again. I hope he never returns here.”

“But how will he give you back your money?” Tuyết continued.

“My money? What are you saying?” she could feel her entrails begin to steam.

Tuyết stammered and she could not speak as Đào stared at her. Tuyết tried to talk. She started trembling.

“Tell me what you're saying now. Don't stand there shivering!” Đào wanted to shake it out of the girl.

“He told me that he's got the money which you were keeping for everyone.” Tuyết had turned green with fear.

Đào reached back through her tiredness, to understand the words the little girl had just uttered. Then, after a moment, the meaning of the words fell into place.

Đào's heart beat like a motor. She unlocked the spare room, trembling, stumbling, flicked on the light. She moved the bags from the top of the stack of boxes, then shifted the bags filled with fabric. White, red, indigo, turquoise, white, precision-cut knitted-cotton, spilled onto the floor in the turbulence of her thrashing. She kept digging down in the bags, to the deep, to what was sunken. Fleecy, fluffy, looped. Đào upended the bags onto the floor; she tore the bags apart; she was dismantling her fortress of clutter. The disturbed lint floated in the air. She dissected the upended debris on the floor outside the room. What was she to hand-deliver to Thảo tomorrow?

She went and got the broom, and chased her son's child. Tuyết ran into the toilet and locked the door. Đào smashed the broomstick through the wood panel of the toilet door.

Đào shot out her poison, “
Đồ ngu! Đứng đó cho người ta bắt cóc ăn thịt, rồi thằng quỷ đó lấy hết tiền tao, rồi mày còn chơi
paper rock scissors
với nó
!” She cursed the child for allowing the demon to kidnap and eat her up, steal all of their money, while she played paper rock scissors with him.

The door was smashed. Through the layers of the splintered wood panel, Đào could see the terrified face of the little girl, the pale-green walls of the toilet casting a sick-coloured tinge on her skin. She pulled the broomstick out and then stabbed it in again down through the hole, the end of the handle striking the child on her head and chest, and then there was screaming from its mouth-hole, and screaming fury from Đào herself, so loud it could tear her own ribs apart.