Lion City by Ng Yi-Sheng

Author:Ng Yi-Sheng
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Epigram Books
Published: 2019-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Shortly after this, Mrs Tan stopped going to the hospital. Another woman in her office had taken maternity leave, so she had accepted some extra administrative work which kept her in the office until well after 7pm. She often ate dinner alone at kopitiams and fast-food joints, listening to her Taiwanese music on her devices.

But she could not shut the pox out of her life. There was her husband at home, of course, lying in bed next to her every night. He had grown lazier about applying the jelly to his skin, and had reverted to his old habit of sleeping topless, so that his body gleamed with the lamplights of the opposite block. In the morning, when he left for work, the holes littered his face like stubble.

Nelly would sometimes come over too. Plexing was safer at the Tans’ flat than at her own. She brought friends with her: both the familiar faces from therapy as well as other folks her own age, with long hair and baggy black clothing. The young people wore their scars with pride, sometimes colouring their rims with nail polish and lip liner to render them more visible to the outside world. Many of the older people had lost their misgivings as well. Dr Bala often turned up in short sleeves, and the fat woman with spectacles occasionally removed her tudung, exposing the ring of holes on her forehead like a coronet.

Mr Tan assumed a position of authority at these parties. He not only offered cables to newcomers, but gave detailed advice about which ports in the body would provide the best connectivity, as well as the ambient factors that might interfere with Wi-Fi or LAN. He had become a guru of sorts, with a uniform of an unbuttoned silk pyjama top and shorts. Nelly’s friends sat cross-legged at his feet while he expounded on the metaphysical aspects and ethics of plexing, speaking longer and more eloquently than in any of his dialogues with Mrs Tan over twenty years of marriage.

Mrs Tan learnt to avoid these noisy Saturdays by devoting them to shopping, diligently ploughing through the weekend queues at the wet market, the supermarket, the shopping mall, until her arms could carry no more. Much of what she purchased was for her guests: cans of Danish cream crackers and Heaven and Earth iced tea. She did not want her husband to be seen as a poor host.

She was weathering one night in the aisles of Mustafa Centre when someone tapped her on her shoulder.

“Mrs Tan?”

It was a stranger with slicked-down hair and a chequered shirt. She had never met him before; she was sure of it. He was the darkest-skinned man she’d ever seen, and under the strip lighting the holes in him shone like crystals in granite. He was pushing a shopping trolley full of copper wire and metal fittings.

“I’m such a big fan of your husband’s. He’s a very great man.”

“Thank you.”

He must have seen the confusion in her eyes, because he added, “I’ve never been to your house.

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