Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon (100 books to read in a lifetime txt) 📕

Amir wakes with water halfway down his mouth, and his first thought is for his prize goats. Mrs Varghese slaps at the waves, frantic, desperate to find her girls in that muck. If she’d left their hair alone she could have dived for them – dragged them out by their plaits – but as it is they’re swept away, one by one, their shaven heads dipping underwater and out of reach.

In the annexe Mary scrambles from the woodpile onto an old almirah Stephen’s been using to keep his tools in. Everything’s pitch black – no electricity in those days, and kerosene lamps aren’t much good under five feet of water – with the wind kicking little smacks from the surface. The water’s rising faster than she could have thought possible, and she stands on her toes to press her face against the spiky attap roof. Not much chance of help on a night like this, not when nobody even knows she’s there. Something heavy buffets against her legs, nudging her again and again. A piece of driftwood, a catfish, a drowned woman; it could be any of these and Mary gives a little scream. She’s about to slip under the water, her lips pursed upwards to the tiny gap where the roof still holds a cushion of air, when she hears a voice.

‘Help … help!’

She recognizes it, that voice that’s as loud in a whisper as her own is in a shout. It’s Cecelia, nearly hoarse but still crying out somewhere in the main house. Before she can react the annexe roof shudders, rocks as something grinds over it. Above her head, there’s a slap of oars.

‘Who’s shouting? We’ve come! Hello, is anyone there?’ It’s Dr Balakrishnan, somewhere out in that darkness.

‘It’s me! It’s Mary!’

A hand plunges in through the hole in the roof, grabs Mary by the scruff of her neck and hauls her out. Lucky for Mary that she’s thin, without any of Cecelia’s firm flesh. She comes out with barely a scratch.

‘Ai, girl! You were shouting to wake the dead. So loud!’

Dr Balakrishnan stands by the boat’s mast, where a kerosene lamp dances and glows. The light’s attracting creatures to the surface, fish and phosphorescent squid and something large and snappish that lurks beneath the hull. Amir-from-the-market’s huddled in the prow, his arm around the only goat left. Back in the kampung his daughters still cling to the stilts of their house, along with one of the convent nuns and the youngest Varghese girl, all of them abandoned for goats or gold or a prettier sister. It’s not easy, being a woman in these times and Mary’s lucky to have got out at all.

‘We heard shouting.’ It’s Rajan, folded into a spindly bundle of legs and elbows, slopping water out of the boat using an old tin bucket. ‘You’re lucky we were here.’

‘But I wasn’t shout –’ Mary stops.

She wasn’t shouting, of course, and even if she had been she probably wouldn’t have been heard. She’s not Cecelia, with her vocal reach that can cut through a crowded marketplace. Cecelia, who’s been screaming for an hour and now – right now, right when it matters – suddenly finds her throat’s too sore to make any noise at all.

‘Is there anyone else here, Mary?’ Dr Balakrishnan steers the boat in a tight circle. The wind’s whipping up, and Mary can see a mass of leeches and spiky-shelled insects struggling in the ankle-deep water at her feet. Add in one more person – say, a plump sort of person, a small friend, perhaps, the kind you might easily miss in all the excitement – and the boat will certainly capsize.

Mary thinks about Cecelia, who is her best friend and yet so quarrelsome – as Mary puts it – and hurtful. She really, truly ought to be scolded, but Mary wouldn’t say a word against her and so she doesn’t say a word at all. She shuts her lips tight and squats down next to Rajan, rubbing her eyes with her fists. Above their heads the lantern bounces and glares, casting a lurid glow over the drifting tree trunks and occasional splash of a sea creature out of its element. Dr Balakrishnan sets the boat heading due east, to the flood evacuation centres and away.

In later years this will be known as the Great Flood of 1926. Whole villages will be inundated and – according to local stories – simply carry on their lives underwater, quarrelling and farming and brushing the gills their children soon develop. Corpses will bob in becalmed waters for weeks, rotting away until the graveyards can be bailed out.

On the other hand, Cecelia will survive. Not quite the same, not quite a friend, and through the long, stalking years, Mary will learn to regret this night. Amir’s daughters will survive, too, and the youngest Varghese girl, and most of the rest of the kampong. Not the convent nun, clinging to a house stilt. Her eyes will have been turned to the heavens and so she won’t see the large, snappish thing swimming underneath her in the water. She won’t draw her feet up and so will plummet down, dragged underwater by the rubbery lips of a monstrous catfish, the sort to live out the last hundred years of its life in an unknown ditch under the schoolroom.

But Cecelia will survive. More’s the pity, Mary would say. Survival, to Mary, is something you earn.

7. Friday, 11 a.m.

The prayer room feels claustrophobic and heavy, as though the air’s run out. I’m still holding Peony’s picture, and an echoing clang from outside nearly makes me drop it. Somebody’s thrown open the compound gate, not even stopping to latch it again. Quick footsteps cross the yard, then pause at the verandah steps. After a second they start to climb, and I realize I’m holding my breath. Ammuma’s stories come back to me