… indeed. Road city nose block; the blooming guava trees standing guard along Lorong Gurney are silent – don’t be silly, they’re only trees, they don’t talk! – as I proceed towards the main road in a shopping trolley. But I am telling the story backwards – I must try to hold Pontianak’s rapt attention (sitting there twirling her shroud around her fingers) because she has no patience for Joycean stream of consciousness and holds fast to the traditions of linear storytelling – she is my muse and goads me on to write this fevered account. Also, she works for nothing and I would have to close down the belacan factory if she flounced off bored to jump on top of a car to shriek howl scream all the way to Alor Setar.
So, to tell the story properly (not to say that I am proper), on that day, the 14th of September 1972, at 4.32 and 17 seconds in the afternoon (or maybe a bit before, perhaps after, perhaps maybe even 5 years later or before or sideways); wait, it was in the early hours of the morning that the gerbil fell floridly. But to explain this I should tell you first of the bomoh who made tea. We sat in his hut, which had a garden on the roof, as he mouthed incantations and passed his hands over his bubbling cauldron. After some time, he passed us two tin mugs full of a brown liquid, in which we had milk and sugar. All of a sudden, a hole appeared in the roof, and amidst a velvety glitter of bougainvilleas, hibiscuses and orchids a small rodent fell onto the table between us. Raising itself in a stunned fashion, it looked at us as if to say “My fall parallels the the fall from grace of our country, from the pastoral gentleness of our ancestors to the industrial Westernness of other people’s cups of tea”. But perhaps he was just stunned.
To summarise, the bomoh chanted, we had tea, the gerbil fell (with flowers), I travelled hidden in a shopping trolley toward the main road. I write this sitting on the edge of a spring bed with a thin mattress above the work of pounding shrimp and chili and I suffer writing block yet again. No wait, I have another string of verbs to run together, now then, where was I, shopping trolley, food mixer….
(With apologies)
