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

deliberately over to the angsanas again. They’ve grown since those days, and there’s nothing behind their trunks except a sodden crate of banana leaves for the dining table tonight. I’d forgotten this about Pahang, the way the rain gets under your clothes and under your skin.

‘Durga? Are you listening?’ Ammuma prods. ‘Of course light the fireworks now. It’s Diwali, when else is it we’ll light them? Christmas? Birthdays-graduations? Next you’ll be asking for eating non-veg tonight.’

‘But there’s only us here to see them.’ I’m on edge, arguing when I know I shouldn’t. ‘Why bother just for us, and when it’s raining, too? I never did in Canada.’

Ammuma sucks in her breath, then lets it out again in a shower of scolding words. It’s a festival, she tells me, punctuating her sentences by slapping the broken wicker of her chair, how dare I suggest we ignore it? It’s far more important than rain, she says, far more important than grandmothers, even, and ungrateful granddaughters who’ve forgotten how they were raised.

‘But you don’t even believe in Lakshmi, Ammuma. You never did.’

Diwali’s for Lakshmi, a goddess who’s supposed to visit the brightest and cleanest houses every year. Ammuma doesn’t hold with her and never has: some goddess, she says, to go poking her nose into other people’s housekeeping.

‘Story is important only,’ she insists. ‘Doesn’t matter if it’s true.’

‘But you –’

‘And fireworks are important too, for driving away evil spirits. Cannot tell, Durga, when a spirit is walking –’

She stops. There’s a loud clang from the compound gate, then another. Someone’s knocking. I can just make out a figure through the ironwork, then an arm snakes down to open the catch.

‘Who’s visiting today?’ Ammuma mutters to herself, and then the gate opens. A white man walks through, carrying a striped bag. He has a cap of combed brown hair that looks oddly familiar and he’s wearing a neatly tailored suit.

‘Mary-Auntie!’

He ignores the mud and walks jauntily towards us, then sees me sitting next to Ammuma. He stops, squinting against the evening light. His smile falters and loses its way.

‘Durga?’

I start to shake. I know who he is, this man with his John Lennon hair. Peony’s voice is in my head again – friends for ever – and this man is bad news, he’s worst news. He’s fifteen years old news, fresh as yesterday’s eggs.

‘Durga,’ Tom says for the third time. ‘I can’t believe you’re back in Pahang.’

We’ve rearranged the verandah table for him, an extra chair and all of us tight-tucked as chickens. His well-stitched leather shoes are paired neatly on the steps, edging mine off into a puddle. Ammuma’s made him a cup of tea in a mug I’ve never seen before. It has ‘Tom’ written on it in curly green letters and she must have bought it at the tourist market in Lipis. She always refused to let me spend my pocket money at the stalls there when I was small, or to buy me anything either. Too expensive, she said; too dirty. I wonder which of those doesn’t matter when it comes to Tom.

I can’t take my eyes off him. I haven’t seen him since the inquest fifteen years ago, when both of us were sitting on a polished wooden bench at the Kuala Lipis government house. I remember the smell of his sweat as they pronounced the verdict: an accident. Nobody’s fault. And I remember how Ammuma gave me a single fierce hug and how that evening she threw out everything I’d worn that day, from underwear to shoes. Love was one thing, but forgiveness was a whole new bag of thorns. Accidents have causes, she told me. Cause and effect, I think, theorem and proof; Durga and Peony. We always were inseparable.

‘I’m not back in Pahang,’ I say, too loudly. ‘I live in KL now; I’m just visiting for Diwali. When did you come back?’

Ammuma clicks her tongue. That’s a Canadian question, too straightforward for her tastes. I’ve lost the rhythm of how I’m supposed to speak in Malaysia, how I’m supposed to imply and hint and keep my meaning for the spaces between words.

‘Five years ago.’

Tom’s voice is exactly how I remember: far too good for the rest of him. Like sugar-syrup, I once told Peony, and I didn’t even care that she laughed. I sit there and look at him and my face feels scholarly and short-sighted. It’s a good face, usually, good enough for proofs and theorems, but not the right face for meeting Tom again. Too old, or perhaps too young. Too lived-in, as though I could have helped it. A sudden gust of wind whistles through the bow-legged palms in the compound yard.

‘Tom trained in Liverpool and now he’s top doctor in Lipis hospital,’ Ammuma says.

‘But very good job Durga also has,’ she adds with a greedy rush. ‘Ten years in Canada, but two months ago she gets this lecturing job in KL. Maths professor, wah, so good.’

Tom and I look at each other awkwardly over the litter of cups and plates. I wonder what he’d think if he knew about Deepak, Deepak and his fourth-generation Ontario wife with her shoulder-pads and terrifying vulnerability. What would he – and Ammuma – say if I blurted out I only took this job because Deepak went back to her? Perhaps nothing at all; perhaps it’s what they’d have expected from me all along – second best, second helpings, second hand.

‘Well done, Durga,’ Tom says, stiff as his own shirt collar. It makes me unreasonably cross, how he’s shrugged Pahang back on like an old coat. He’s strolled into the space I left and he’s managed it all much better – top doctor and still apparently finding time to chat with his dear old Mary-Auntie every week. It would be delightful, if only it weren’t.

‘Too Canadian, she is, though, now,’ Ammuma grumbles to nobody in particular. ‘Like some tourist playing at Malaysia only. Ammuma, let’s help the servant-girl wash up, she’s saying. Ammuma, here’s some