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

start the car again, my toes curled tight in their sandals. I wrench the steering wheel around – horns and shouting, ‘Look where you’re going!’ – and the rear-view mirror shows me a long, strung-out bracelet of traffic wrapped tight around Kuala Lipis.

It’s two hours before the traffic eases. People have peeled off to villages and flood evacuation centres, their tail lights red and affronted. I’ve been looking for a place to pull over for ten minutes, but all the verges are full of motorcycles and broken-down cars. I’m exhausted. I can feel my blouse clinging tight with sweat, and my thighs chafed by the leather car seat. One strip of white line crawls past under my car, then another and another. Someone takes pity, waves me through to the side of the road. Through the windows the drivers look goggle-eyed, staring right through me.

Up ahead there’s a huge banyan tree, nearly as big as the one out near the Kampung Ulu swamp. There’s a streetlight tangled in its roots. Ghosts lurk in those roots, Ammuma used to say, devils and jungle spirits and plain old murderers waiting to knife you with their parangs. I turn off the engine anyway, and rest my head on the steering wheel. The murderers will have to take their chances.

When I open my eyes again, I see Tom’s bag slumped in the footwell. Karthika’s sneery little smile comes back to me. He loves me, Durga-Miss, she said, and I could almost envy her. At least she has something to be wrong about.

Jalan Seroja isn’t far from here, only a few streets over. Practically on the way home. If this were one of Ammuma’s stories, Tom would be waiting for me there. He’d appear from behind a palm tree or abseiling down a wall. He’d carry me into the jungle with a knife between his teeth and my hair arranged to show off my cheekbones. There’d be a map, an escape route. Burn after reading. Swallow in case of emergency. Look before you leap, which good story heroines never do.

An oniony smell rises from my armpits as I tug the bag up onto the seat. None of that’s going to happen – I don’t have the cheekbones and won’t get the happy ending – but perhaps Tom and I can sit down anyway. Talk about his son; talk about my sister. Have a cup of tea and fish out some drowned women from their wells and swamps. I want to be friends, which should be easier than lovers and might just last.

And where do I come into it? Peony whispers inside my head, flicking that tangled hair from her sleepless eyes. I have an answer this time, though: she doesn’t. Because you’re dead, Peony, you’re dead and that’s all there is to it.

Jalan Seroja is a long street, running out past the high bridge. The water’s brown and choppy underneath, and I can see palm-oil plantations in the distance. All those stubby trees whipping their shocks of hair about. I wonder what it’s like to live out there, with the stink of char in your nostrils all the time. It’s solid enough to slice, to cut and cube and chew till shreds of it hang in your teeth.

The address is just off the main road, down a private drive. A large bungalow stands at the end, two storeys and whitewashed clean behind high iron gates. It has an air of drawing itself up off the ground, refusing to get the tips of its feet dirty. I can see banana plants over the wall, and a froth of bougainvillaea.

The wind picks up as I climb out of the car. The telephone wires are vibrating overhead, as though there’s a tumbling current up there. Mother Agnes used to say those high-up winds brought ghosts, the kind to slide in through your ears and turn your thoughts inside out. I shake my head; pull myself together. I’ve had quite enough of ghosts for today.

Inside the compound yard I see a woman bending over a terracotta flowerpot. She’s white, large-hipped, in a pink cotton sundress. Her toenails are polished green and her hair’s blonde, almost white in the sun. Next to her is a bright red convertible, a more-money-than-sense car in the luckiest of colours. My stomach starts to dip.

‘Yes?’ There’s a slight Australian lift to her voice, a gluey blur as though she’s stuffed her mouth with meat.

‘I’m Dr Panikkar,’ I hear myself say. ‘I’m looking for Tom.’

‘Tom?’ She stands up and brushes her hands on the seat of her dress. She straddles the path and nudges a flowerpot behind her with her strong calf.

‘Are you from the hospital?’ she asks. She gives me a close-lipped smile and adds, ‘I’m Alice.’

I shake my head. ‘No, no, I’m from KL. Not the hospital.’

She tips her head back, watching me. Good eyebrows, the kind you inherit with skin like that and the diamond bracelet that’s tight around her wrist.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Tom’s not here.’

‘Oh.’ I swallow. ‘Is he coming back? I wasn’t expecting …’ Her.

She gives me a hard stare. ‘They aren’t, generally,’ she says, so quietly I might miss it.

She watches me watching her hands – bare, no ring – and the ghost of a smirk flits over her face. She stands there in front of Tom’s house just exactly as though she belongs. And she does. She’s a wife. She’s a mate. She’s fifteen years wrapped up in a pink-print dress and she’s been here all along, if I’d only had the sense to see.

‘Did you say Panicker?’ she asks suddenly. She slurs it, mashing the edges of the name. I turn into one who panics, in Alice’s mouth.

‘Yes.’

‘You know Mary Panicker then? Lives out past Kuala Lipis?’

‘She’s my grandmother.’ I can hear my voice grate, but Alice takes no notice.

She comes closer, pushing her gleaming hair back. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying it, but she needs a lot more support, you