The One-armed Cyclist
3,700 words (background)
... How had he managed to forget the day? He'd never forgotten before. He wondered at that, pondering the possibility of one year actually forgetting to remember the anniversary.
"How could I forget?" he murmured, and then coughed awkwardly. He hadn't heard his own voice in contemplation for some time and it felt as though a stranger had walked in. Suddenly he was restless and wanted to be gone.
Though just past midday, and nearly the hottest time, he pulled out the bicycle once more. December after all, he thought, coolest time of the year and the wind will be a fan. A voice in his head said the actual date, but he chose to ignore it and pedalled steadily towards the backstreets, brooding on the possibility of calling into Ma Poh's.
He was urged to eat rice and after the customary and insistent refusals he sat down to eat, using a spoon and not chopsticks. Not to raise a rice bowl to his mouth was one sort of pain he could never explain. Ma Poh talked incessantly. All the gossip, new-born babies, deaths, illnesses and scandals all aired and brought up to date. No need even to talk in her house, not much chance of getting a word in anyway with so many women. It was later, when the other casual drop-ins had taken their leave, that he really began the visit he had hoped for.
They were all there in the upstairs room, all his old friends, all lovingly cared for behind glass. He touched the spine of each and read the characters, smiling at the memories of the people who lived in the words on the pages inside.
"Borrow some," Ma Poh said casually, as she eyed him sideways on.
He shook his head and slid closed the front of their cabinet prison. Ma Poh stopped him as he was about to leave and gently brushed a hand on his.
"They're still your books, you know. Ah Swee never felt they were his and what use have I for them, I can't even read."
"Not mine any more," he said mildly and bade her farewell.
It was inevitable he would end up where he did. Walking along beside the bicycle, he looked up at the old facade and the huge letters at the top: East Peninsular Hotel. From the opposite end of the street he stood surveying the colonial elegance of the old building, at one time a skyscraper of four storeys, now dwarfed by Holiday Inn's latest monstrosity.
For once he went into the coffee shop across the street. It had changed hands so many times; people from Kuala Lipis were running it now. He felt the relief of being a virtual stranger. He took a seat wedged between a pillar and the ice-cream freezer so he was mostly obscured, both from within the shop and outside. He sipped a cold drink and studied each window of the building opposite. It had not changed, not at all, not in the slightest. Even the paint seemed to be in the same state of flaky disrepair, no doubt due for its ten-yearly lick.
He waited expectantly and they came back to him -- the voices from the past. He remembered every word but only one sentence and one voice lifted itself above the others, so it seemed to be a voice of the moment, there beside him, clear and solid:
"Write for me a little something. I see such beautiful artistry in your strokes. Write for me a little something, auspicious but simple too."
The calmness evaporated and he fled from the place, pushing frantically on the bicycle. He realized he was shaking too much to ride it. He felt the river beckoning to him. The heat has scorched my brain, he thought. Even the sight of the cool, muddy waters would be enough to quell the fire, to quell the anger.
On a rock, where the trees dipped to touch the water, he sat for some time, cooled at last. The voice was gone, but the words he knew too well and in his head he repeated them and remembered in tranquillity . . .
Copyright ) 1999 Rosemary Lim and Singapore National Printers. All rights reserved.