Lily

I sat in my seat for the flight from Cape Town to Singapore; 36A - the A denoting a window seat and a hemmed in, uncomfortable flight. Surprisingly, I found myself quite garrulous, almost giddy. This was rare for me. I'm usually cynical, taciturn and brooding, though prone to occasional fits of friendliness. Now was one of those times. Use it while it lasts, I thought. The girl seated next to me was the recipient of this sudden onset of bonhomie. She was on the way to Singapore to meet her husband. He was flying from Brisbane. Meeting in the middle. This seemed like a good example of marital compromise. Not that I would know. I'm 38, almost 39, and single. I've never had to compromise much.

I pried a little. Her name was Lily. She was Asian looking but said she was from Cape Town. Her accent was indiscernible. She'd met her husband during the football World Cup in South Africa. She was attractive - petite with a doll-like face, sleek, unblemished skin and a great curve to her chest. Her manner was polite and unaffected. “So where in Cape Town are you from?” she asked. I tried, as succinctly as possible, to summarize my background, growing up in Woodlands. “I used to work in a restaurant that moved there.” My mind began a mental sweep of the area, hoping to preempt her telling me the place's name - and impress her at the same time. “But it closed down a while back,” she announced, stopping my thoughts in their track. It was just as well. I'd been in and out of the area for a while and wasn't up to speed on all its eateries. “You probably wouldn't know it anyway. It wasn't very good. That's why it closed.” She had a playful giggle.

She asked me what I did. “I'm in computers,” I lied. The truth was so much more complicated and would merely invite more awkward questions. I made a mental note of this lie. Should a topic be revisited, it is important to have the facts straight. It was a bold-faced lie, but it was a fact that I'd told it. And where was I going? “Just for a short holiday. I need a break.” I declined to elaborate. In truth, I was going away for an indefinite period. As the aircraft ascended, so I grew fatigued and surly. The conversation, shorn of its pleasantries, waned.

During meal time our elbows touched. We looked at each other and smiled. I said sorry when a sudden jolt caused a drop of my juice to land on her tray. Later she reciprocated my apology when her thigh nudged me as she stood up to leave her seat. We both tried to avoid using the shared arm rest between us lest our skins brush. Typical airplane civility. Next to Lily, in the aisle seat, sat a middle-aged man. He had a grey complexion and hair and a permanent sneer on his face, even when he slept. He slept almost the whole flight. The flight attendant tried to wake him once, when the first meal was served, but was met with an annoyed grunt. Nobody disturbed him after that. Only once did he wake up during the flight. He muttered something, stood up and shuffled off to the toilet. He had a pronounced limp, although he may just have been stiff from having remained seated and still for so long. When he came back, he shot both me and Lily a look of disdain, resumed his position and went back to sleep.

I settled on a movie by a director I admire. His movies are of the disgusting but delightful type. In hindsight it was the wrong choice. The dialogue-driven piece - not as visceral as many of his others - required a lot of attention. Seated next to the noisy plane engine, I missed a lot. The shrieking performance of the female lead - looking perpetually on the verge of an epileptic fit or orgasm - also put me off. Lily and I knocked back four glasses of red wine each. I was counting. It seemed like a contest at one point and we both called it quits eventually. A slurred, faintly nauseating tie.

Above the whirring hum of the aircraft, we made only one more attempt at conversation. It was feeble. She hated landings, while I was afraid of take-offs. Was her husband meeting her at the airport? Yes. He was arriving two hours before our flight and waiting for her. So much for the faint hopes I'd been harboring of taking this stranger back to my hotel. Nothing wrong with a spot of fantasizing, I guess. We landed and made our way off the plane. Lily, who’d been swept into the aisle, turned and wished me farewell. I did likewise. Our voices were barely audible above the excited din of bleary-eyed but relieved passengers.

With time on my hands, I thought I'd try a bus into town. The bus routes, however, were indecipherable to my eyes and so I settled for a cab. The driver's English was halting at best. Who was I to judge? I couldn't speak a word of his language. “No wife Sir?” I replied that I had a wife and two kids, but I was traveling alone on business. I couldn't face the inevitable question of why I wasn't married at my age. Better to lie, even if my shabby clothes were a giveaway. Neither a businessman nor a man subject to the approval of a proud wife was likely to be dressed like I was. I asked him the same question. “Ya, of course-lah. And too many girlfriend.” Ok loverboy, just get me to my hotel.

The hotel room was a box. Cheap fittings and linen - but not cheaply priced. The remnants of a previous occupant's time spent on the toilet were found smudged and speckled on its porcelain slopes. What did the housekeeping staff do? Still, it's hard to blame them - day in and out working at such an unedifying job. Cleaning up strangers' piss and shit and come and blood and gob. The curtains were thick enough and I was able to enjoy a decent post-flight slumber. The TV was showing reruns of old football games. I lay down and closed my eyes. Not everyone's idea of good background noise, but a lullaby to my ears. A ruckus amongst the players had the commentator agitated and stirred me momentarily, but only momentarily.

I was eating a waffle I'd been served by Lily at some obscure Woodlands restaurant. Butter, treacle and jam dribbled from my mouth, ran down my chin and dripped onto my chest. I grinned, exposing my yellow fang-like incisors. My crooked nose arched like a tensed bow and my furrowed forehead rose and narrowed. I became a caricature of myself. Lily was taunting me for being so foolish. “I'm a married woman. I told you that. And even if I wasn't, what makes you think I'd go with you? Or with anyone for that matter. Do I look easy? An oriental slut? Is this some kind of perverse, built-in prejudice you have against women? Against Asians? You disgust me! You're a fucking pig!” She then started shrieking, not unlike the girl in the film I'd watched on the plane.

My eyes opened slowly. They were dry and crusty. I reached for the complimentary bottle of water by my side and slugged a good portion of it back. I needed to brush my teeth; to get rid of the stale taste that had enveloped my mouth and extended down my throat. I realized that I'd forgotten to charge my electric toothbrush. It was dead. Someone had asked me before I left - on seeing this toothbrush - whether I traveled with it. There was a vague hint of surprise in the question. I answered that it would be my first time traveling with such a toothbrush, but never followed up on why this might be of surprise to her. Perhaps this was the answer. It needs to be charged. Often, simple things don't occur to me.

After fumbling around the cell-like hotel room for a while, I made my way out onto the streets of Little India. It smelled like India without the shit. I was ready to eat. In fact I was starving. I was craving curry and a beer. I found a seat at the first place offering both. The meal came on a banana leaf. No cutlery was offered and so I dug in fingers first, just like most of the locals around me were doing. Two girls, obviously tourists, walked by staring at my turmeric-stained hands with bits of rice and meat glued to them. They tried, unsuccessfully, to conceal a look of distaste. They sat at the table to my side, ordered and were duly given a knife and fork. As they waited for their food, an elderly Indian man approached them. They obviously didn't appreciate the intrusion but the old man was oblivious to this. Or he just didn't care. The smoke from the cigarette dangling between his fingers drifted past their twitching, disapproving noses. The wizened old man had a raspy voice, doubtless due to many years of smoke inhalation. “Where you girls from?”
“Austria,” the brunette replied.
“Oh. I been there. Sydney. Beautiful. And the girls too.” They looked at each other awkwardly and nodded. “I sit, ok?” He didn't wait for an answer. “Bring me some mutton,” he called out. “This my cousin place. Anything you want I can do for you.” His mutton arrived in a bony heap. He carried on talking while shoveling the gloppy mess into his mouth. Occasionally a piece would lodge itself on his lips or fall to the table. The girls' food had arrived but they were yet to start eating. It seemed likely they never would. They sat, heads slightly bowed, silently cursing their luck.

“Perhaps you would like to join me Sir.” The man's bald head turned slowly to face me. He surveyed me like he was watching a stinking garbage truck drive by. A snarl formed on his lips. “Why you interrupt me. Can't you see I'm talking to these beautiful ladies?”
“I just thought you might like to chat with me until they finish their dinner.” He didn't need much convincing. Leaving his half-eaten mutton meal, he shifted his chair towards my table without lifting it. It made a loud, grating sound. “So what you want with me?” I repeated that I just wanted to chat while the girls finished their meal. “So you think I'm a rude bugger?”
“No,” I lied.
“Where you from?” I told him I was South African. “Oh. I been there. They cut me and robbed me. My first night there. Steal my wallet. Three men. Black. Big fuckers. They held me and cut me. See here.” He pointed to a spot on his wrist. I could see no scar. “They cut me here too.” He lowered his head and pulled down on his shirt, indicating somewhere on the back of his neck. Again, I could see nothing. “They say they gonna slit my throat. Take my money. Sixteen thousand dollars. And my credit card. Another eighteen thousand. I worked hard for that money. They want the pin for the credit card. I told them there is no pin. You want to use pin, you go to Singapore. They took the card. They could kill me that time. I couldn't care a less. But I got a wife and kids you know. Anyway, I cancelled the card. Those fuckers couldn't use it. Next day, the embassy flies me home. I got to pay them back you know.”

The girls to my side clearly hadn't bargained on such an animated meal. Barely a word had passed between them, though they seemed grateful that events were unfolding at a table other than theirs. I had been midmeal when the man pulled up next to me, and the sheer forcefulness of his tone demanded my attention and prevented me from finishing my dinner. He wasn't done yet. “Anyway, I divorced my wife. Now I got a new one. She's twenty-eight, twenty-seven, twenty-six. Filipina. I told her I'm fifty-eight. I'm not strong anymore. She said she love me for my heart not down here.” He pointed at his crotch. “I said if I see her with another man, I'll cut her into pieces. Eighty out of a hundred Filipinas are bad but she is a good one. And if I take viagra then she better be careful.” His last comment made him chuckle and I also smiled. The man's diatribe carried on for a while, getting gradually cruder. He occasionally glanced at the two girls beside us as if to make sure they weren't eavesdropping. They didn't need to. They could hear every word. Eventually, the old Indian man grew tired of the sound of his own voice, mumbled something about being the best tailor in Singapore and staggered off.

By this stage, my curry was cold and cloddy but I finished it anyway. I got up and washed my hands at the basin provided for this purpose. The brunette Austrian tourist thanked me as I made my way back to my table. I told her it was no problem. “What is Sydney like anyway?” They laughed. I sat back at my table and asked them how long they'd been traveling. The blonde girl spoke this time. She gave me a short rundown of their plans. They were students on a term break. They were young and naïve, but also clearly wary of being cornered by another predatory male. I didn't push the conversation. More out of courtesy than interest, I sensed, they asked what I did and why I was in Singapore. “I'm in computers and here for a short holiday. I need a break.” The girls left shortly afterwards, their dinner hardly touched.

The next day, I flew to the Malaysian island of Langkawi en route to my ultimate destination, Ko Lipe, a tiny island off the Thai coast. Again I found myself in an affable mood, and engaged my neighbor, a bespectacled and impeccably well-mannered Korean man. Well, a boy really. He had been posted by his construction company to one of its subsidiaries in Singapore and was taking a weekend break in Langkawi. He spoke English slowly and deliberately - and mostly very well. He prefaced his comments with fusty but endearing phrases like, 'To my sorrow', 'In a manner of speaking', and 'If I am to be honest'. He struck me as wholly honest. He liked Singapore but found it expensive, and was slightly annoyed by a girlfriend who had been supposed to join him on this trip but cancelled at the last moment. They had 'quarreled', he told me. I failed to requite his honesty. When asked about myself, I trotted out the familiar line that I was in the computer industry and away for a short break. It was wearing thin, but only in my mind. Pushed on the matter, I would concoct some vague, half-baked specks of information to give the story a more concrete feel. He didn't inquire about my family. A young man tends to overlook such matters. I was relieved. I may have been tempted to lie again, and lying was tiring.

In Langkawi, I stayed overnight at a guesthouse run by a Japanese woman and her Iranian husband. She wore her hair neatly cropped and was well-traveled, worldly and informative. He'd been in the Iranian airforce, had suffered some injuries in the Iran-Iraq war in the early eighties and been on a pension ever since. An unlikely pair if ever there was one. He was a bitter, cantankerous and opinionated man and treated his patient, kind wife badly. I'd stayed at their place before and seen several guests leave prematurely, their European sensibilities offended by his coarse manner. I was a little more hardened and even found him charming at times. However, there was no mistaking the fact that, at heart, he was a chauvinistic bastard. How he and his wife had met I never asked. I'd never witnessed any physical abuse but his verbal tirades against her were regular, and ugly. I'd heard some outraged travelers express their amazement at how she stayed with this man. Somehow, despite his loathsome character, I sensed a great loyalty and tenderness on her part towards her husband. And love, no doubt.

The following morning I packed to leave. My boat to Ko Lipe was leaving in a few hours and I thought I'd pay up and get some lunch before departing. I asked the Japanese lady where her husband was and she told me he’d been ill all night with a bloated stomach and gas. “He's gone out to buy lots of drinking water. A guest here, an English lady, told him that he needs to drink lots of water - only water - and rest. He went to get extra water immediately. He listened to her. I could have told him the same thing, but then he would say, 'what do you bloody know? You just tell me that so you don't have to cook for me anymore.'” She shook her head with a resigned look as if to say, "What can I do?" I smiled, perhaps inappropriately. At that point, her ragged, silver-haired husband burst through the gate. He was clearly in some discomfort, groaning and clutching his stomach with one hand, the other carrying a shopping bag full of water bottles. I had to suppress an even broader smile. The scene was comical to me. “This woman is trying to kill me,” he blurted out, his hand leaving his stomach momentarily to gesture towards his wife. “This is all because of the cashew nuts she gave me last night. One bag full of cashew nuts. She didn't warn me not to mix the cashew nuts with whiskey and now look at me. What is she good for?” I thanked both of them, paid and left.

I took my lunch at a bustling budget restaurant. This place, oddly called Tomato, was packed with hungry diners day and night. I sat at my table and ordered. The food arrived in no time. While I was eating, a man passed by my table from behind, his back to me. He was limping. It was a bad limp and several other customers were staring at him. He looked strangely familiar. It was only when he turned slightly that I recognized him. It was the bad-tempered man from the aisle seat on my flight from Cape Town. What a coincidence that he was also here in Langkawi. He approached a table with three young women sitting at it. This surprised me even more. The women were chattering away in the local language, Malay, smiling and giggling. They looked like a group of friends who hadn't seen each other for a while and had lots of storytelling and gossiping to do. The airplane man sat down next to one of the women. They were a couple. This was obvious from the way she grasped his hand, touched him and spoke to him. I kept watching, intrigued, and realized a few seconds later that I recognized her too. It was Lily. I carried on staring, my mind trying to make sense of the situation; trying to square what she'd told me on the flight with what I was seeing; trying to understand how the man neither of us had spoken to on the plane could fit into this scenario. Suddenly, Lily's eyes caught mine. She held my stare for a moment, clearly recognizing me too, but showed no emotion. I looked down, embarrassed. Without missing a beat, Lily reverted to the animated conversation at her table. I felt deflated and foolish. I got my bill, paid and left.

The boat from Langkawi to Ko Lipe was fast. Too fast. It leapt over the hefty swell and banged hard onto the water's surface through much of the trip. There were only 5 passengers, including myself, on board. Everyone looked a bit queasy and there was no conversation among any of us to begin with. As we neared our destination, the sea became calmer and the boat slowed down a notch or two. Color returned to all our faces, and the sight of the beautiful island before us perked everyone up. A young couple made their way to an outside section at the front of the boat. I followed. Standing beside the couple at the boat's bow, I asked the obligatory question of where they came from. “From Holland and you?” the boyfriend answered and asked. I told them I was South African. I said I was on a much needed short break from work. “Tell me about it,” he said.
“Stressed out huh? What do you do back in Holland?” He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I'm in computers.” I thought I saw his girlfriend standing next to him wink at me, but I wouldn't swear to it.