Death by Perfume Read online

“Nothing.” James’s expression was grim. “But everyone is trying their best.”

  “You have to help me. You have to!” Her voice was dry and sandy, and the redness covering her cheeks now crept up into her eyes.

  “I will, please try not to worry,” said James.

  I took the opportunity to slip into the kitchen to pour a fresh glass of milk, which I pushed into her hand. “Margaret, you have to drink at least a little of this. Stop torturing yourself.”

  She drank mouthful after mouthful mechanically, her gaze unfocussed. A few of her other friends began arriving, so James and I took our leave and went home.

  The next day, there was still no news of Dale.

  Margaret went to the British embassy first thing, but despite waiting all morning, they were unable to tell her anything new. How could a human being, fully alive, suddenly vanish from the horizon—so suddenly, and so completely?

  In the afternoon, she returned home, her spirits on the verge of collapse. As she pulled open the front door, she shouted at me and her other friends in the flat, “Get out, could you please get out, and let me have a bit of peace!”

  We didn’t feel safe leaving her alone, but she continued to plead while sobbing, “I’m begging you, I won’t do anything foolish, I just need a bit of quiet, that’s all.”

  Jenny and I exchanged a look, and led the way out. The others stood up too, and silently followed us to the door.

  My heart had never felt so heavy. Looking at Margaret’s pale face, frighteningly pallid, all hope drained from it, I felt it transform into a black net, trapping me, binding me tight so that even breathing became difficult.

  • • •

  On the third morning after his disappearance, Dale came back to us.

  When James told me that evening, I don’t know why, but I felt empty. My nerves had been thoroughly on edge for the last two days and nights, and now that they could relax, my heart was at a loss as to what to do next.

  After dinner, we headed over to Margaret’s, where we found the place full of people.

  Dale sat in the middle of the living room, his slim face now hollowed, his chin pointy as a knife. His expression was dark, lacking even a shred of relief at finding himself still alive. Margaret was the opposite—the red in her eyes had climbed back down into her cheeks; those blue eyes were lit by her smile and shone like crystals. She clung tightly to Dale, her hands wrapped around his skinny arm, as if afraid he would vanish again if she so much as blinked.

  Before we could ask, the many voices of the crowd rushed in to tell us the events of Dale’s time as a missing person.

  After work that day, Dale was driving home when, not paying attention, he drove through a red light and was stopped by a policeman. Unable to speak the language, he couldn’t protest when, according to the unwritten laws of this place, they locked him up in prison, ignoring him when he begged to phone his wife. After he’d suffered through two days behind bars, they let him out again as if nothing had happened.

  The reaction amongst the assembled folk was rage, helpless rage. Margaret, though, weakened by her ordeal and beset by sudden joy, seemed incapable now of expressing any resentment. Her voice utterly calm, she said, “I swore an oath that if he came back, all would be well again, and I wouldn’t complain about anything else.”

  • • •

  Two weeks later, Margaret told me she and Dale had made up their minds to ask for an early termination to Dale’s contract, so they could return to England.

  I wasn’t surprised at their decision, only melancholy.

  A month later, we went to the airport to see them off. Margaret kissed my cheeks and said earnestly, “Take care of yourself, my dear.”

  After returning to my beloved homeland of Singapore, I wrote a letter to Margaret: “Even though I experienced a great deal of sorrow and anger during my year there, and many things displeased me, I never once regretted choosing to go—not once. If I hadn’t had the experience of living somewhere else, I wouldn’t now understand so deeply how much I love my own country!”

  Butterfly

  LIVING IN THE desert, it was hard to avoid falling into depression from time to time. Looking out the window, there’d be nothing but sand dunes in any direction. The unchanging sun sprawled oppressively, imperiously, over the loosely piled sand and pebbles, the heat blazing till we despaired, helpless, as days blurred into years.

  In such a lonely, monotonous existence, getting a letter from a faraway friend or relative was a welcome shot in the arm. The mail arrived not via postman, but delivered by Tan Ah Tong, the man responsible for staff welfare at James’s company.

  Addresses in Jeddah were confusing: houses lacked numbers, and apart from the major roads, streets had no names—countless lanes and alleyways were completely anonymous. Messages had to be delivered to the central post office’s mailboxes, from where Tan Ah Tong would retrieve and deliver them to more than two hundred employees.

  That day, I’d waited, agitated, till past seven, and there was still no sign of Mr Tan. This had gone on for several days now, and I was terribly disappointed.

  James got home after eight. Even though I knew he must be exhausted, I couldn’t help complaining to him, “There hasn’t been a single letter for days now. I wonder if there’s a problem at the post office.”

  At this, James smacked his forehead and exclaimed, “I’m so sorry, I’ve got quite a few letters in my office. I keep forgetting to bring them back.”

  “Why don’t you let Tan Ah Tong bring them?”

  “Oh, the company’s fired him,” he explained. “He didn’t get on with most of the Thai workers, which was creating a lot of unhappiness. We wanted to let him go a few months ago, but there wasn’t anyone to replace him, so it kept dragging on.”

  “The company has so many Thai workers, you should get someone from Thailand to be in charge of their welfare.”

  “Yes, we did, the guy who’s coming to take over is Thai. He was recommended by an employment agency.”

  This turned out to be a man named Sonchai. Two days later, he showed up in the evening to deliver the mail.

  A young face—extremely young—round with smooth, tender skin, and a pair of large, innocent eyes. At first glance, he had the appearance of a doll who’d suddenly grown overnight to the size of an adult human.

  “Ma’am.” He bowed courteously. “Your letters.”

  “Would you like to come in and have a drink?”

  His childlike face blossomed into a smile. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  I poured him a glass of orange juice, and he mopped away his sweat as he drank, sighing, “It’s so hot! Even the worst day in Bangkok is not as hot as this.”

  “It’s terrible.” I nodded in agreement. “When I first arrived, I had a headache that wouldn’t go away for several days. You have to take care of yourself.”

  “I’m good at adapting,” he said confidently. “I should be fine in a day or two.”

  Finishing his drink, he placed his glass on the table and politely took his leave. “From now on, I’ll have to come into the city every day, so just let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, ma’am.”

  Sonchai and Tan Ah Tong were made along completely different lines. Mr Tan had been silent, and also completely passive—if you didn’t prod him, he’d never do anything. Even if you got him moving, he’d only take half a step; workers who tried to ask him for something always found themselves facing a slew of excuses, and when finally forced to complete a task, he’d complain the whole time. I’d heard that amongst the Chinese workers, he’d acquired the nickname Grumpy Old Woman. Each time I saw Mr Tan, he seemed to have no energy at all, as if a hundred illnesses had invaded his body at once. Putting such a person in charge of employee welfare naturally caused a great deal of dissatisfaction. And now, here was Sonchai, bursting with energy. Perhaps for the long-suffering labourers, his arrival would be as welcome as springtime in the desert.

  • • •

  After Sonchai came into my life, it was as if I’d built a bridge along which news from the outside world could travel.

  Unlike Tan Ah Tong, who only spoke in response to direct questions, Sonchai loved to chatter away. Coming into the house for a short rest after delivering the mail, he’d tell me many lively anecdotes about the workers, some happy, some sad, and some hilarious. There were also tales that provoked deeper thoughts.

  There was a day when he looked sternly at me as soon as he arrived, and said, “Ma’am, if there’s nothing urgent, it’s best if you don’t leave the house for a few days.”

  “Why not?” I asked, distractedly flipping through the letters he’d brought.

  “Something terrible has happened!”

  Hearing his ponderous tone, I couldn’t help raising my eyes.

  “A Korean man killed his Pakistani friend and dismembered the body, then cooked and ate it piece by piece.”

  Goosebumps rose on my skin, and I let out a shrill cry. What an awful, cruel thing to do!

  “After the news got out this morning, when some Korean workers went into the city, they got shouted at in the street. As soon as any Pakistanis saw them, they’d wave their fists and roar, and Arabs would offer up their faces and say, ‘Hey, do you want to eat my flesh too?!’ Some of the paler-skinned Malaysians got mistaken for Koreans, and met with the same treatment. It might be best if you stayed indoors, to avoid any trouble.”

  After Sonchai left, I felt uneasy, as if the house concealed some dark shape that might reveal itself at any second, like being in the deep jungle and imagining enemy forces all around.

  When James arrived home, he brought more news with him.

  It turned out that the Korean man and his Pakistani victim had been in a homosexual relationship. When
the Korean decided to accept a marriage his family had arranged for him, the Pakistani man agreed to leave, but tried to extort a large sum of money as a “separation fee”. This might have been the end of the matter, except the Pakistani was greedy and began treating the Korean as a bottomless source of wealth. Unable to bear his demands, the Korean felt he had no choice but to murder his former lover. With nowhere to hide the body, he hacked it up and stored it in his icebox, eating a piece a day. When the police caught up with him, they even found an entire human leg among other body parts in the fridge.

  After this sensational event, Sonchai began delivering the mail two hours later than before. His face full of apology, he explained, “I really can’t stand seeing our Korean colleagues getting hurt for no reason, so I’ve told them that if they need to buy anything from town, I’ll get it for them. With all the rushing back and forth, it takes me this much longer to get here with your mail.”

  “The workers’ safety is more important than my personal letters,” I reassured him. “If you can’t find the time, I can always get James to bring them instead.”

  For a few days after that, he might indeed have been too busy, because it was James who handed me the mail when he arrived late at night.

  When I mentioned Sonchai, James gave him a thumbs-up. “He’s so thoughtful, and so efficient, it’s not just the Thais who adore him, our workers from every other country hold him in very high regard!”

  I thought of the servant who delivered our meals every day, a little chap named Nattapong who’d taken over this duty after the previous delivery man, Ah Leong, was dismissed. Nattapong practically worshipped Sonchai.

  After dropping off the food, Nattapong often lingered a few minutes, kicking stones around to amuse Danny. He was nineteen years old but short as a child, dark-skinned and compactly built. I’d never seen him without a wide smile beaming from his face, revealing his rather stained teeth.

  He’d once told me that his family was so poor they could barely feed themselves, and both he and his nine younger siblings were thin as matchsticks from malnourishment.

  In order to pay the employment agent his fee—which seemed to them an astronomical sum—Nattapong’s father had to harden his heart and sell his newborn daughter. Even this didn’t fetch enough, and it took the whole family to scrape together the rest of the money. Nattapong signed a two-year contract with the company, and once he’d managed to serve out his bond, his family’s living conditions would be dramatically improved.

  Nattapong’s greatest burden was his illiteracy. Without the ability to write letters, he had no way of communicating with his family. Sometimes, watching me teach Danny some simple Chinese characters, his eyes would fill with envy, and he’d stare impotently at the table piled high with children’s books.

  One day, as he handed over the food cartons, I noticed his expression full of an excitement he couldn’t conceal. Before I could ask, he blurted out, “I’ve been in Saudi Arabia for half a year now, and today I finally posted my first letter home!”

  “A letter?” I looked approvingly at his lively demeanour. “Since when did you learn how to write?”

  He wrinkled his nose and said playfully, “I only posted it, I didn’t write it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sonchai wrote it for me. I dictated the words, but he held the pen.”

  So even the little delivery boy was being taken care of by Sonchai. What a precious man he was.

  “Sonchai is wonderful.” Nattapong’s face was full of admiration and gratitude. “He never puts on airs. From the very beginning he’s been warm and friendly, like a father and older brother rolled into one. We all love him!”

  Tan Ah Tong had been ice, and now Sonchai was fire. The former’s freezing manner felt like an iceberg, keeping everyone far away, while the latter was a small stove you could huddle nearby for warmth. He brought tenderness, joy and hope to the workers.

  • • •

  Trapped indoors all day and all night during the unbearably hot desert summer, I felt myself growing prickly as a hedgehog, liable to lose my temper at any moment, the spines on my back quivering upright and jabbing into James till he cried out in frustration.

  One day, he arrived home from work with a handful of brochures that he thrust at me. “Want to go on holiday?”

  The glossy pictures were of a wide white beach and azure ocean joining seamlessly with the sky. Another showed a desolate set of ruins, which, despite the shattered tiles and broken walls, still possessed the remnants of the Roman Empire’s majesty.

  “Is this Tunisia in North Africa?” My eyes lit up.

  “Yup. Good guess, for someone who doesn’t know anything about geography,” he said smiling. “We leave next Tuesday. I’ve asked Sonchai to take care of the arrangements.”

  Wow. I smiled from cheek to cheek, and straight away my mood improved.

  The next day, Sonchai came by to pick up my photos for the visa application. I’d been planning to go out for a bit of shopping, and got him to give me a lift into town.

  “Ma’am, I’m so jealous,” he said as he started the engine. “You have so many chances to go travelling overseas.”

  “Doesn’t coming to work from so far away count as overseas travel?”

  “How can you compare work and holiday?” He sighed. “People like me are fated to be labourers. All our lives, we can only work like horses or cows, just to get our three meals a day.”

  This was the first time I’d seen a shadow pass across his normally cheerful face.

  “Are you married?”

  He shook his head and smiled bitterly. “I don’t want to tie my hands and feet too early. Ideally, I’d like to establish myself, and then find a wife.” After a pause, he continued. “I don’t just mean I want a steady job. My dream is to save enough money to start a business and be my own boss.”

  Here was someone who refused to live a mundane life. At such a young age, he should indeed have a strong vision motivating him to continue working hard. Smiling, I encouraged him, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. You’re good at getting things done, and not afraid of working hard. I believe you’ll make your dreams come true.”

  • • •

  Soon, the tickets and visas had been sorted out. Our flight to Tunisia was scheduled to leave at four o’clock the following Tuesday.

  Initially, the arrangement had been for James to come home at twelve to have lunch with me, and then we’d head to the airport together. Yet I sat waiting with my luggage by my side till after one, and there was still no sign of him. At this time, we hadn’t installed a telephone in the house, and there was nothing I could do but stay where I was, quietly fretting.

  At ten minutes to two, Nattapong arrived with lunch, sweat streaming down his face.

  “Ma’am, so sorry I’m late,” he said, mopping his brow and panting. “Today something unbelievable happened at the workplace.”

  “What happened?” Thinking of James, still nowhere to be seen, my heart began racing.

  “More than two hundred workers went on strike!” Nattapong said urgently. “Everyone’s been complaining about the food. Today, they finally went one by one into the canteen and smashed their bowls and spoons. I’ve never seen them so angry before. Scary!”

  As the Chinese say, three feet of ice doesn’t form in a single day. I’d known for some time that the workers were unhappy with the catering arrangements.

  Opening the lunchbox Nattapong had just delivered, I was faced with stewed chicken livers (yuck, chicken livers again!), bitter gourd stir-fried with chicken, and egg-drop soup. Although this was a reasonably balanced meal, having to eat chicken livers two days in a row would take anyone’s appetite away. Coming to work in a desert thousands of miles from home, with no entertainment or way to relax, the labourers naturally placed a great deal of importance on their food. Yet pork was prohibited in Saudi Arabia, thus drastically reducing the number of possible dishes. Added to this, chicken innards were extremely cheap as the locals refused to eat them, so the cooks inevitably returned from the market with great bags of these wretched livers, so numerous that your hair stood on end just to look at them.

  “They poured the livers from their plates onto the floor and stamped on them, until the whole canteen was covered with brown sludge. It looked exactly like shit. Disgusting.”