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

Diwali fireworks from Letchumani. Tchee, fireworks from the washer-man! Whoever heard of this thing?’

‘Oh, fireworks! That reminds me,’ Tom interrupts her, leaning down to where his striped carrier bag nestles against the table. ‘I picked up a few for you, Mary-Auntie, just some Diwali gifts. They’re from the covered markets.’

Of course they are. Good-quality best-quality, and a permit too, no doubt. I’d forgotten I’d need one and Letchumani – used to foreigners and tourists – hadn’t bothered to tell me. Tom’s competent parcels make me feel even more out of place than Ammuma’s complaints. It used to be Tom who was foreign, once.

Ammuma beams. He’s good, she says, to remember an old woman like herself – Ammuma is only ever old when it suits her – and would he believe her own granddaughter’s refusing, actually refusing, to play fireworks for Diwali because of the rain. ‘What’s a little bit of rain?’ she says. ‘You children used to run out in it every day.’

Tom gives me a sympathetic look. He’s about to say something but a sudden beeping chimes out, silencing us. It’s a pager clipped to his smart leather belt.

‘It’s the hospital,’ he says. ‘They’ll be busy down there, with Diwali tonight.’

Ammuma gives me a triumphant look. ‘See, Durga? So dangerous, these rockets Letchumani makes. Better instead to use Tom’s fireworks.’

Better to use Tom’s fireworks. Better to work in Tom’s job and wear clothes like Tom’s and be as patient as Tom. Easy enough for him; she’s not his grandmother.

He glances down at the pager, pushing his chair back.

‘Will you come and help me put the fireworks in the kitchen?’ I say quickly. ‘It’ll only take a minute.’

‘Of course.’ Tom starts to rise politely, but Ammuma’s already glaring at me.

‘Wanting to wander off alone in the corridors with a boy? Aiyoh, Durga,’ she says, sucking disapproval through her teeth. ‘This is your home, this is a respectable house. Not so-so like these student accommodations in Canada.’

She leans over to confide in Tom, her voice loud enough for me to hear. ‘Boys and girls all together. Mixed up like slum-puppies.’

I sink back into my chair. I’d forgotten how fragile girls are in Pahang, how easily soiled. A fingerprint is enough to put anyone off.

‘Sorry, Mary-Auntie. I’m sure she didn’t mean it. And – I hate to go so soon – but I can’t stay anyway. I need to drop in on the wards.’

He takes his time putting his shoes on and tying his shoelaces, looking up at me with queer little ducking movements of his head. Any moment now, I think, he’ll slip me a letter, a flower – a peony – that’ll mean nothing except to the two of us. He wouldn’t just walk away, not after coming halfway across the world.

But he does. He tugs his smart suit jacket straight and waves as he crosses the compound yard. There’s a backward glance as he reaches the gate, but that’s all. He mouths something to me – or perhaps he doesn’t – and then the gate closes. He’s gone, and there’s nothing here but the rain and a half-eaten pandan cake.

‘So, Durga.’ Ammuma’s brisk. ‘You light these.’

She pushes his bag over to me. ‘I’ll go upstairs, wash hands, then come back for Diwali puja.’

She tips herself upright, scraping her rattan chair over the concrete. ‘Use Tom’s fireworks,’ she calls back as she hobbles out of the room. ‘Not this Letchumani nonsense.’

I sit there in the fading light and stare at a line of ants nudging across the floor. How dare he? I think. How dare he saunter in here with top-class fireworks and without having changed in the slightest? He should have had some wrinkles, or an apologetic thirty-something paunch. He should have had capped teeth and a worried smile. He should have been ashamed of himself.

I shove his bag away. He doesn’t know better than me, despite all his meaningful glances and his market shopping and his so-important pager. I grab Letchumani’s bright red bag instead, and tuck it under my arm.

The front room’s dark, with no lamps lit and a dusty bare rectangle where the wooden bench used to be. And the hallway’s even darker, with a single yellowing bulb doing nothing but splash shadows around. The kitchen and dining room are at one end; great stone-flagged rooms that Karthika rules as the only servant in the house. The hall floor’s slippery with the paraffin wax she uses to polish wood, and I can smell the burn of Jeyes Fluid from the kitchen sink.

I push the back door open and the wet air hits me with a slap. My bare feet press water up through the grass as I walk slowly down to the far end of the compound. There’s a strip of grass running the full length of it, nearly twenty metres straight from the house to the crumbling rear wall. The Jelai river roars from behind its banks, and the wind flecks my hair with spray as I turn to look at the house.

From here, it’s ramshackle. It’s three storeys high, casting a deep shadow over the side of the compound yard where the wells are. Half of the house was torn down during the war, but it is still a sprawling mass compared with Canadian condos. And it’s far too close to the Jelai. Ammuma’s father Stephen didn’t know or care about floods, and over time the ground’s been submerged so often it’s taken on a slippery, aquatic tinge.

A light goes on in Ammuma’s bedroom. She’s watching, then, her eyes on me like always. I set my teeth and pull the first firework out of the bag. It’s a night for locked doors in Pahang tonight, with all those ghosts and goddesses creeping about – and men like Tom, too, come to that. Let them in and you’ll never get any of them out again.

The firework’s a rocket, and for a moment I think Ammuma was right. The damp cardboard sticks to my fingers and