Fiction

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The symbol

I was standing outside the shop in the hot afternoon air that was so thick you could almost grab a hold of it with your hands. Across the street from me there was a homeless woman shouting gibberish at passersby. She had false teeth that she kept moving in and out of her mouth. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to her, but she kept on screaming as she had done every day for the past three weeks.

         An Indian man, or at least he looked Indian, with a serious face walked past me without looking at me and opened the door to the tattoo shop and stepped in.        

         I saw him through the window talking to Sy. He pulled out a folded piece of paper from his front pant’s pocket. He showed the paper to Sy but didn’t hand it to him. Sy was nodding and said something to him, he then got up and walked to the door. He opened the door only a little like he was scared that the outside air would contaminate the air conditioned air inside.

         “Jay, fifty ringgit tattoo. You wanna do?” Sy said with a grin on his face. He knew I wouldn’t be very happy doing it, but that I would do it anyway.

“Yeah, sure. What’s the picture? Is it big?” I replied without even trying to hide my disinterest.

“Come and see.” Sy concluded and went back to the man.

         I followed him inside. The non-smiling dark skinned man was sitting on an unstable chair with one of it’s original five wheels missing. I took the piece of paper from him. The symbol was simple and quite small. I was relieved. It would be fast and easy to tattoo.

         “You drew this yourself?” I asked the man.

He shook his head and stared at the floor in front of me.

“What does it mean?” I tried, not expecting much of an answer.

“Protection.” The man answered almost inaudibly. That was the only thing I heard him say the entire time he was in the shop. A few times while I was tattooing the symbol on his chest I asked if he was comfortable or if he needed a break. He didn’t answer or even seem to notice my enquiries.

         When I finished the tattoo, he got straight up, paid and left without saying a word.        

         Weeks passed and I forgot about the strange encounter. One morning I was having a coffee in a restaurant downstairs from where I lived. Someone had left a newspaper on the table. It was coffee stained and there were some grains of rice stuck on it. I skimmed through it avoiding getting my hands messy.

         And there it was, a picture of the man. He didn’t have a shirt on in the photo so I could see that the tattoo had healed really nicely. But unfortunately the protection that the symbol was supposed to give didn’t work well. The headline above the photo announced; “An unidentified man’s decapitated body found in Klang river.” 

 

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The night train

I finished my nasi lemak sitting on my berth with the curtain pulled half way. People were still walking past my bed, going to the toilet or perhaps to smoke a cigarette between the carriages, but it had started to get quieter and most of the passengers were sleeping or at least trying to.

The food had left a mild burning sensation in my mouth because of the chili sauce in it. I liked the feeling so I waited a bit before washing it all down with the little water I had left in the bottle.

I had filled the bottle at the train station toilet before getting on the train. The water had a strange taste but I knew it was ok to drink it and that I wouldn’t get sick from it. I had a small bag of almonds and I had some of them for dessert.

         I looked to the other side of the aisle at her. She had pulled her curtain almost all the way to the edge but I could still see a part of her head. She was lying down. It seemed that she was sleeping. 

         I closed my curtain and looked out of the window at the silhouettes of trees passing by. I took out a book from my bag, a collection of Hemingway’s short stories. I tried to read it but my bed lamp was broken and without it, it was too dark to read so I put the book down. As I did that she pushed away a part of my curtain and we looked at each other. She smiled. I moved over to the other side of the bed to give her space.

We made love. The noise of the train was so loud that we weren’t worried about the Chinese woman sleeping in the bed below me hearing us. As we embraced each other’s naked bodies we both stared out of the window.  There was lightning. It momentarily illuminated fields, trees and houses.

After, we laid there together for a while. She was breathing heavily and her skin was damp from sweating. Then she left and went back to her own narrow bed.

That night I dreamt for the first time in years.  I woke up to a man with a blue uniform and greying mustache asking to see my passport. By the time I had gotten my passport out, presented it to him and gotten it back I had forgotten what I dreamt about.