BLACKMAIL
A story by Peter G.
Brown 1887 words
Mohamed Rasif received the
phone call about Sunday lunchtime. He was standing with a towel
around him looking at himself in the mirror. Absently he lifted
the house receiver. A man's voice in a strong Indonesian accent
said, “you've been meeting a woman”. The words were jumpa perempuan. A horrid fissure broke
across his chest like black lightning. He said, “Can you ring my
handphone” and gave the man the number. Then he replaced the
receiver.
His wife Sabariah, always
called Seh, asked, “who was that?” Rasif made no reply. He
reached back to the bed and grabbed the mobile phone and went
downstairs. He sat in his towel on the setee. Seh came down
and stared at him. She said “you're looking very grim”. The
mobile rang. A sort of slow rage consumed Rasif because on the
display were the words “private number”.
Rasif didn't really have time
to think, his mind was more like a hot fog, with several parallel
thoughts passing viscerally through his body. ”I've got to go
out” he said to Seh, some efficient instinctive part of him taking
over. He had a quick bath, while the skin of his back and
shoulder felt icy. In a kind of trance he dressed and went out to
the car.
Cruising round the new roads of
Kuala Lumpur Rasif tried to take stock of his life. His immediate
coherent thought was that this was the will of Allah. Something
had happened which he had to take full responsibility for. This
cleared his mind and helped to calm him. He was guilty, he had broken
the law, so now Allah was punishing him. But the most important
consideration was that innocents should not also suffer. That was
where this bastard had got him. It literally felt like he was
being held round the neck by this man's muscular, brutal arm - he could
not escape no matter how he struggled.
A sort of physical rage
possessed him, it felt like he was impotent, unmanned,
humiliated. He could ask again, this monster, and again. He
left the North-South highway via a slip road and then parked the car at
the side of the wide area that was the opening out to the toll.
It was spatting rain on the windscreen. He turned off the engine,
felt spiritually, mentally sickened. Unwiped, the
windscreen gathered a massed crowd of drops. Like people crowding
to accuse him...and Seh?
Suddenly it struck him - did
she know all the time? She was looking at him in that
self-satisfied, almost triumphant way as he left the house. She
didn't try to stop him. She had said only “you're looking very
grim” as though she had added silently “serves you right, you...”
But had that been her expression?
Come on
Rasif, don't imagine things, let's try to look at this thing
rationally. He had
always prided himself on his English education, his English way of
looking at things. He had insisted Seh speak English to the kids
when they were small so they would grow up truly bi-lingual - not
speaking this artificial “Malaysian” English. After all he taught
English, he had to set an example, the right pronunciation and
grammar. None of this “is it” or “please off the light”.
This is the question: who
would have actually known? Someone was watching as he went to her
apartment in Chow Kit. That filthy corridor with the mosaic floor
and the filthy stairs, right up to the fourth floor, anyone could have
seen. Rasif gave a big sigh - how could I have been so stupid, so
complacent? Once a week - the same evening for - how long was it
- must be four, five months. But then before that, when he met
her at the Karaoke joint and they repaired upstairs to this shabby flat
full of girls. Anyone could have known, someone who knew someone
from the school - although he had already been retired a year. It
was that police guy Ghazali who had introduced him to the place.
The one who he got to know during the child abuse case, who had helped
him when the parents had rung him and warned, “if you give evidence in
this case something really bad will happen to you”. But then he
was in the right! Now is different.
Ghazali was bluff and hearty, always talking, set him at ease,
convinced him it was okay- “wives once they reach fifty they're no good
any more for that - don't worry about it, it's a
natural need. You can find a new wife, but if you don't want to
upset her, she won't know...” etcetera, etcetera.
The girls were mostly Chinese,
sidling around in skimpy clothes making his heart thump. But this
GRO Lena was a Malay - at least Indonesian, a Javanese. She was
always talking to her mother on the phone in this language he didn't
understand. Bet the mother didn't ask questions, just was happy
to receive the money. Then one night he went there and the girl
at the reception told him that Lena had left. She asked around
about a contact. This extremely thin strange girl who seemed half
white told him where to go. When he arrived he rang and she let
him in, always so nonchalant, so enclosed. He had started to love
her a little, to melt when she was close, it had become that
automatic. But she never reacted. She had no sense of
humour. When he said, “so you've left the employment and now set
up your own business” she said nothing. He wondered if she really
understood much Bahasa at all. They spoke very
little. She made him some coffee and sometimes offered him some
home-cooked food. Then she put a clean sheet on the bed and
turned the light off and sat down and began to take off her
jeans. Her face in the semi darkness was always placid, as though
she was somewhere else, a world away. Yet she held him tight and
let him do whatever he wanted. She never even asked him for
protection. Yet he always used them, just for his own safety.
As the months went by these
weekly visits started to tear at him. It became a bodily need
that he wanted to resist. He was embarrassed, sickened by this
habit, yet the moment he saw her the other side of the concertina gate,
her face was like a magic spell, it was happiness, he felt the worry
and bad thoughts of the bleak day drain out of him like dirty water and
a clean, clear joy replace it, like the innocent joy of
childhood. Sometimes he made love to her three or four times in
the space of three hours, yet he was not tired but exhilarated, he
could work much harder the next day.
It was fasting month coming up
that did it. He thought: this girl is Muslim and she's living
this dirty life and I should be saving her. I am fifty six and
she is only a teenager, I am behaving like a shaitan. Then he woke up one night in
a sweat, with Seh lying there next to him like a piece of wood dressed
in clothes and realised fully - I am defiled by sin.
He resolved to ask Lena to
marry him. He would secretly take her as his second wife.
He had been told about this place in Southern Thailand where you could
get married no questions asked. At least I shall be all right in
the eyes of God, he thought. His lungs felt like glass as he
waited for her to come down. This time, as she approached the
grill she even smiled. My, he exclaimed in his heart, I really
love this girl I don't want her to be anyone else's ever again. I
must save her.
“Will you marry me?” he asked
after his joy had expended. For the first time he had kissed her
hungrily, though normally his upbringing made him recoil from mouth
kissing. For the first time he wanted her to be his, to possess
her soul as well as her body. She lay back and said
nothing. He mouth was small and mean, pouting yet turned
down. She looked even angry. “I want to save you from all
this” Rasif whispered dramatically. Again she said nothing.
Something felt like it exonerated him, as he lay there looking at her
whitish profile against the dark cupboard. He had sincerity, ikhlas. This was the most important
thing for a Muslim, to have Ikhlas. Even if I suffer for this,
even if she doesn't want me, I'm only a source of money, I still know
that my heart cares for her, that in some essential sense he was doing,
had been doing right.
He showered in her tiny
bathroom, making extra scruples with his ablution and reciting
verses. Then before he left, bidding her good bye, he said, “I
want you to be a good girl...think about what I offered you, it's
sincere” he coaxed, but the face at the grill remained impassive,
sullen. Finally she said, “I don't want to be married”. Rasif
swallowed down a great impact of sticky, coldness. He could
hardly speak further from shame and attenuated despair. He said,
“It's fasting month next week, so I shall call you after it's
over.” He forced a smile, “Selamat
Berpuasa. Selamat Hari Raya. Maaf Zahir Batin”.
*
* * *
* * *
* * *
He sat in the hotel lounge, in
one of those chairs with high gilded backs and laid the newspaper on
the glass coffee table. When the waiter came over he ordered a
coffee. In obedience to the warning of the man, he did not look
around or observe other people in the foyer. He knew he was being
watched. He felt as powerless as a fish in a net. This
money was part of his flesh - like a debt to Shylock. It was a
slice of his family, of Seh, of his three now grown up children one of
whom was still studying overseas, in Kansas. It felt like his
heart was there, between the pages of news print, in that buff
envelope. It was about to be torn from his breast.
The coffee came. He sat
and drank it, then paid the bill to the waiter. His arms were
somehow moving independently of his will which was in effect impounded,
paralysed. He muttered over and over astaghfirullah,as he rose and walked slowly,
somnabulantly across the foyer and through the glass doors, out into
the hot night which greeted him like the warm, moist breath of a
lover. He did not look back or behind him. Walking round to
the side street where he had parked his car he uttered a prayer,
asking, imploring Allah for mercy, and spare him any further demands of
his limited wealth and savings, spare him the torture of Seh finding
out or noticing that ten thousand ringgit had disappeared from one of
the accounts, promising never to commit such a dosa besar again.