Part IV – The Miserable Quagmire of Non-Communication
IV.i – Lele
"郑欣乐，接下来我该做什么? (Zheng Xinle, what should I do next?)" Fang Wu called to Lele from the kitchen.
On the one hand, Lele could welcome this as a new era of domesticity. On the other, she wished they had dates with more romance in them. How had their situation devolved into this?
During the long school holidays, Lele was inducting Fang Wu into her home baking business. She fervently hoped that were he to marry her in the (preferably near) future, they could spend their days working side by side, just the way that they were now.
Well, maybe not quite the way they were now. It grated on her that whenever they were alone together, Fang Wu addressed her with her full name, in the manner that one might speak to a school classmate or a colleague.
"你干嘛这样叫我？我是你同学吗？(Why are you addressing me like this? Am I your classmate?)" Lele nearly berated him. She was supposed to be always a sunny personality – her very name demanded it! Since when had she ever sulked the way she did now?
"乐乐公主，臣奉令承教, (Princess Lele, your subject shall obey all your commands,)" replied Fang Wu in falsetto. When he teased her in this way, Lele had no idea whether he was doing it because of their growing familiarity or if he might be mocking her.
Was it so hard for him to simply adore her the way everyone else did?
While they were growing up, their father had called Xixi and Lele "两个小娃娃 (the two little dolls)". He'd doted on them as if they were his favourite dolls too, never denying them the dresses and toys they asked for. Between braiding their hair, sewing sequins on their dance costumes, and doing their makeup when they had recitals or competitions, their mother had made them feel like little princesses. And the trophies that Xixi and Lele had won for dance throughout their childhood adorned their parents' upscale flat in the Tianxin district of Changsha.
Neither Xixi nor Lele had needed to do a lick of housework while living with their parents, before they came out here for university. Like many upper-middle-class urban families in China, the Zheng family hired an "ayi阿姨", which translated literally to "auntie" but really meant a servant.
Even now, their parents still paid their rent in Singapore and gave them the money to call in a part-time helper to clean up their flat twice a week. In fact, the Zhengs could afford to rent their daughters a private condo unit, but Xixi and Lele preferred this flat because it was 300 sq ft bigger than the average 3-bedroom new private apartment. That was why the sisters never cared to do something as mundane as everyday home cooking, though they found it sweet to have boyfriends who were willing to cook and clean for them!
Oh, if cooking really was a love language in Asian culture like people said, Lele could be certain that Fang Wu was in love with her! His cooking was truly divine, even though he seemed impervious to the most basic instructions in baking.
But why was his manner towards her so difficult to read? Couldn't he see that their union was meant to be?
A princess was nothing without her prince. And Lele was vastly overdue to have her first knight on a white steed come – and stay – in her life. She'd taken five years at uni to pursue a double Honours degree in Mathematics and Chemistry. That was plenty of time for her to find a boyfriend to graduate with, but she hadn't.
What had she done wrong? Was this a punishment for her dynamism?
After all, Xixi (who was her senior by two years) had found Xiaoming before the third year of uni. By the time Xixi was 21 and Xiaoming was 23, they'd become as inseparable as if they were joined by glue.
Singaporean men were two years older than the women in their year at uni because of their obligation to serve in the army before they embarked on their tertiary education. By right, Lele believed that should make the National University of Singapore the most fertile matchmaking ground. It would ensure she was surrounded by real men, instead of immature boys.
Lele was used to turning heads. Indeed, many men had asked her out on dates during her years at university. Disappointingly, none had progressed to long-term relationships.
It was her unconventional approach to life that was intimidating to most men, Lele decided. After graduating, she continued to be bold in forging her career. Baking, unlike cooking, was interesting because it served not only to provide food but also to create a form of art. Furthermore, baking was all about chemistry, which came naturally to her thanks to her scientific talent.
On top of her home-based bakery business, Lele worked three days a week at a Chinese medicine shop in Chinatown. To her, it was exciting to be able to straddle multiple identities across the Eastern and Western influences in her life.
She'd been out of university for more than a year now. More men had come, but all of them had gone. Repeatedly, Xixi hinted that perhaps Lele's standards might be a notch too high.
Though Xixi wasn't in a much better position either. Her progress with Xiaoming was still frustratingly slow. Although Xixi and Xiaoming had dated for more than six years, he had yet to propose. Despite Lele's fervent hints on behalf of her sister, he stubbornly shied away from the topic of buying a flat.
Unromantic as it sounded, the offer to buy a new Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat was the way in which most Singaporean men proposed. But Xiaoming didn't see any need to acquire a new flat when he was guaranteed to inherit his parents' one.
Well, in the coming year of 2034, Xiaoming would turn thirty. Lele was certain that if the prospect of a government-subsidized flat hadn't served as sufficient impetus for him to propose to Xixi, this significant birthday would. So, she felt mounting pressure to find a partner. When Xixi and Xiaoming inevitably got married, her parents would surely redouble their nagging on her if she didn't.
Miraculously, Fang Wu walked right into her life.
He was the ultimate man among men – handsome, sociable and polite to a fault. After he approached her, Lele decided there was a reason behind all those years of romantic frustration after all. She had merely been waiting for the right man to appear. Someone who wouldn't be fazed by her two jobs, her two degrees, or her strident personality.
And who else could Fate have intended for her, but a man who would be intimidated by no one because he had been to the World Cup?
Driven and competitive since birth, Lele was determined that if her sister was on the cusp of matrimony, she would not be long to follow suit. Thus, there was no way she would allow her budding relationship with Fang Wu to fail.
Even if she didn't know what was in his mind when he teased her. Well, if it made her live up to her reputation for cheerfulness, she would assume that the teasing was his way of showing love.
– Xixi
Zheng Xixi didn't ask for much in life.
Truth to tell, there wasn't much she needed that she and her sister Lele didn't already have. Their dress had every advantage, their faces were rather pretty, their spirits extremely good, their manner unembarrassed and pleasant; they were of consequence at home, and favourites abroad.
And yet – just for Xiaoming to pop the question, was that too much to ask?
In their school days, Xixi and Lele had been among the prettiest girls in their class. Their parents had enrolled them in ballet and modern dance lessons during their spare time, which made them more adept at makeup than most students their age. But as in many other Chinese families, dating had been as forbidden as housework when they were in high school. Every minute of their attention that wasn't taken by their studies was supposed to be focused on their dancing.
High school in China was extremely competitive, too! During the third year of senior high, the teacher would count down the days to the university entrance exams, known as the gaokao 高考, on the classroom blackboard. On a weekly basis, the academic ranking of every student in the class was updated on a notice board visible to everyone in the school.
Xixi hadn't disappointed her parents. She had scored very respectably on the gaokao and ranked among the top five students in her class. And her parents had sent her and her younger sister to Singapore so that they could attend university classes taught in English. This would be their key to the rest of the world.
Boyfriends were the one thing that had been forbidden in high school but not in university, and Xixi had wasted no time in making her choice. Chen Jianming was in her year, studying engineering while she was pursuing her degree in Business Administration. His parents were both civil servants. Therefore, everything checked off in his pedigree.
Yes, he was socially awkward and nerdy, but Xixi could overlook that when engineering was a prestigious degree, second only to medicine or law. Most importantly, he was a very amiable, pleasing young man who might prefer books to people, but treated everyone with courtesy and respect.
Jianming, or "Xiaoming" ('Little Ming') as Xixi and Lele called him because he was as skinny as a teenager, was so adorably filial, too! An only child and a mother's boy, he invited her home to dinner with his parents on a weekly basis. He was often late for their dates, but Xixi always forgave him because his tardiness invariably stemmed from something he was doing for his mother.
"我的乖儿子, (My good son,)" Xiaoming's mother often praised him, patting him on the head as if he was still a little boy. And she'd started calling Xixi "我的乖媳妇 (My good daughter-in-law)" ever since they graduated, too!
Xiaoming's reaction to his parents' praise was irresistibly cute. Xixi loved seeing his face light up behind his square-rimmed glasses. But he stubbornly refused to heed his parents' hints to make her part of the family.
Of course, when they had been fresh graduates, money had been a problem. But now, a solution was within reach. Their jobs were stable and well paying, with Xiaoming in the Public Service and Xixi at the local office of a large tech company. After working for four years, this year they finally had enough socked away for the downpayment on a flat if they wished for it.
The problem was that Xiaoming didn't wish for it, despite all the well-meaning hints that Lele (embarrassingly) piled on him for Xixi's sake. Xixi could understand that the independent Lele would never marry a man who didn't have a place of his own. But she understood Xiaoming best, and she knew he would never be able to do without his parents.
Xixi didn't know how to tell Xiaoming that she liked him without having to change the way he was. That she liked him enough, in fact, to move into his nearly-60-year-old flat and live with him and his parents, if only he would ask her to marry him. In fact, Xixi was sure that the only reason why he hadn't proposed yet was because he didn't know that she wouldn't require the offer of a new flat of their own to say yes.
Only rarely did Xixi feel any misgivings about Xiaoming's divided priorities between herself and his parents. While Xiaoming was always frugal with his own spending, there was one thing he never spared any expense on: his yearly overseas holiday with his parents. This year, the Chen family had been on a three-week tour of the US when Fang Wu had walked into Xixi and Lele's lives.
She barely admitted it to herself, even though she knew her feelings must have been transparent to her sister. For a fleeting two weeks, Zheng Xixi had dared to compare Xiaoming to Fang Wu and found that the tally wasn't necessarily in Xiaoming's favour.
The concept of 男子汉大丈夫 nan zi han da zhang fu (a masculine man) was a thing. A thing that was surprisingly attractive to her despite her long-attached status. And it was a thing that Xiaoming would never quite be.
For those few weeks that Fang Wu had traipsed all over Singapore with her and her sister to check out the local Chinese food scene, Xixi had allowed herself to fantasise that perhaps Fang Wu might just choose her.
Of course, that had been merely a passing fancy. Xiaoming had come back from his US trip with the discounted Coach handbag that she'd asked him to buy for her from the premium factory outlets. The first weekend after he returned, he'd come by specially to present it to her. But he'd also seemed aware of being slighted. After all, Saturday night usually was when she went to his flat to dine with his parents. This time, she'd told him to come to her flat for dinner with Lele and Fang Wu instead.
Xiaoming had stalked off before dessert. Of all the excuses, he said that his parents had purchased a fresh durian that morning and were waiting for him to open it up for them to eat after dinner!
"Surely you can have one of Lele's choux eclairs before you go?" Xixi had nearly pleaded.
"No," Xiaoming had replied, impressive in his resolution for once, "there is nothing worth my staying for;" and he was gone directly.
Upon self-examination, Xixi had the guilty conscience that all through dinner, she had sometimes the air of being divided between Xiaoming and Fang Wu. She'd waxed too lyrical in her praises of the man who had cooked their dinner. (She hadn't meant to offend Xiaoming, but a man who cooked – especially one who cooked well to boot – was so sexy!) Hence, this was her fault, and she'd patch it up. Xiaoming had brought her the Coach bag as he'd promised, after all.
She'd gone to Xiaoming's flat the next day with enough Bee Cheng Hiang 美珍香brand bak kwa (barbequed pork jerky) to feed Xiaoming and his parents for a month.
"Xiaoming, I'm sorry," she'd said. "I wasn't trying to compare you with Fang Wu. Even if you never learn to cook, you're still mine and I love you."
"Do you like the bag?" Upon seeing that Xixi was carrying it, Xiaoming's face had broken into a smile.
They had made up over a long stroll along the beach that was a stone's throw away from Xiaoming's family home. There had even been two leftover seeds of Mao Shan Wang 猫山王durian from the evening before that he'd saved for her despite his anger and jealousy.
And after that, Xiaoming had ensured that they spent one evening every weekend dining at her flat with Lele and Fang Wu, and the other evening at his flat with his parents.
Xixi was sure that Xiaoming must know how badly she wished to marry him. She had made the first move to reconcile, after all. She'd even agreed to let his mother teach her how to make tang yuan 汤圆 dumplings for the upcoming Winter Solstice. She, who never went into the kitchen!
It didn't mean that Xixi stopped appreciating Fang Wu. To the contrary, the more time she spent with her sister and him, the more she felt that Fang Wu was more masculine, more independent, deeper-thinking, and more adventurous than Xiaoming might ever become.
But Xixi also accepted the reality that Lele, with all her dynamism, would be more matched in personality to Fang Wu than she ever would. And she wasn't going to throw away what she had with Xiaoming. Not when the sweet little things he'd done for her, even while he had been ridden with jealousy, showed that he cared deeply for her in his own way.
Thus, even though Zheng Xixi was certain that Xiaoming's proposal was guaranteed not to be romantic, she decided that all she wanted now was simply the chance to hear it.
– Fang Wu
Fang Wu had believed that finding two women who spoke his native dialect would make him feel at home in a foreign land. Ironically, it was turning out to be quite the opposite.
In his world, dialects were for family. Standardised Mandarin was for friends and colleagues. And English was only for people who didn't understand Mandarin.
There had been one time in his life when love had transcended that hierarchy of language, but surely it couldn't count when it had lacked the power to endure.
Fang Wu had initially gravitated towards Xixi and Lele because they could speak the Hunanese dialect, but he barely used it with them now. In fact, he hardly even spoke Mandarin at the Zheng residence most of the time.
That was primarily for the sake of Xiaoming, who spoke only English with everyone who knew it, even though he understood a fair amount of Mandarin. (This was the modus operandi of almost every ethnic Chinese Singaporean Fang Wu had come across thus far, so he couldn't complain.)
But Fang Wu couldn't deny that his lack of desire to flaunt his linguistic commonality with Lele also came from his deep-seated unwillingness to build more intimacy with her than he was ready for.
He didn't find this sliver of self-awareness helpful. How could he allow himself to be distracted by what was unavailable to him, when it was so much more pragmatic to focus on what was?
Focus, he kept telling himself. Focus and accept.
What was wrong with finding a nice Chinese woman to settle down with, just like so many other Chinese men did? Anyone of decent character should be good enough. Hadn't he accepted long ago that his youthful attempt to transcend the divide of race and religion had been mere folly and ignorance?
He considered it such an embarrassing instance of weakness that he had never confided in anyone – not even his siblings nor Xia Jian – about the events that had transpired in Barcelona. He could not succumb again to that weakness now.
Before he set eyes on Atiqah again, he'd had no problem sticking to his resolution. Now, there was no reason why he should waver.
"不仁不义 Bu ren bu yi." Four pithy words, indelibly seared into his consciousness for the past eight years. Words that he'd uttered in that moment of the deepest betrayal he'd ever experienced.
If Atiqah had rejected him from the beginning instead of a bait-and-switch, he wouldn't have felt so horribly played out. He'd known that he was going out on a limb in asking her to wait for him to advance his career and convert to Islam to marry her. There were so many reasons for her to say 'no' that he hadn't truly expected her to say 'yes'.
She could've said that she was too young for love. Or she might've made it clear that she would only marry another Malay Muslim. Or she could simply have told him that she didn't feel the same way about him; that to her, this was friendship rather than love. He would have believed that when he hadn't detected any deliberate attempts at flirting from her, only straightforwardness.
It was that straightforwardness which he had found so piercingly disarming. He'd believed her to be entirely without artifice, a refreshing breath of fresh air from the jaded young ladies he so often met while living in the city.
For those few short months that they'd spent hanging out in Barcelona, he never had cause to believe she did so to get something out of him. She hadn't been after his money, and certainly she hadn't been in it for sex. They had simply been two human beings of like mind, enjoying each other's conversation and company. Naively, he'd thought that this – being of like mind – meant they ought to be together for the rest of their lives.
Her telling him that she didn't and couldn't love him, less than 24 hours after she had implied the contrary, caused him to doubt the veracity of all that he had seen in her. In that single moment of emotional whiplash, the first phrase that had come reflexively to his mind carried the understanding of betrayal that transcended centuries.
The Confucian concept of ren 仁, which was shorthand for "ren de 仁德", meant to show benevolence and principle in one's dealings with others. And yi 义 stood for "dao yi 道义", which meant loyalty. Both were supremely important to him both on and off the football pitch.
And by bait-and-switching him, she'd violated the very precepts he lived by. Bu 不meant "not", so "bu ren bu yi 不仁不义" meant that she lacked any sense of loyalty, integrity, or principle. Since the Chinese had seen fit to codify this into a four-word chengyu 成语 within the canon of traditional sayings, he was evidently far from being the first human to be played out in this fashion.
It hadn't taken long for Fang Wu's initial contempt for Atiqah to soften slightly at the edges. Even before his flight from Barcelona to Shenzhen had taken off, taking him away from Atiqah for what he believed to be forever, he'd realised that she might not be capable of the malice it took to mislead him deliberately.
But he did think she was childish, that she had mistaken curiosity for love and found out too late, which was why she had changed her mind.
Ultimately, it didn't matter whether Atiqah had been intentionally playing with his feelings or been merely misguided. It still spoke of a frivolity in her attitude towards him that didn't match the seriousness with which he'd considered his future with her.
All those years ago, Fang Wu had merely been trying to do the right thing. In fact, finding a solution had cost him many sleepless nights.
At 23, he'd been on several casual dates. But because he had prioritized his career over dating, he'd never had a long-term relationship.
Still, Atiqah had been much less experienced than him in matters of the heart, and he'd known it. She had just finished school, after all. And her religion wouldn't have allowed her to experiment the way most teenagers in Spain would.
He hadn't wanted to take advantage of Atiqah's youth, truly he hadn't. That was why he had tried to keep their relationship strictly platonic throughout that fateful summer. Even when he knew he wanted more, he'd denied himself. Sometimes, he had felt that he'd needed nearly superhuman levels of self-control.
Still, their unique situation had forced his hand too far, too soon. By the rules of Islam, any openly declared romantic interest would need to lead to marriage. And as far as he'd known then, any marriage would have to be between two Muslims.
If they'd had the luxury of time to stay in touch within a shared community, the way most Muslim couples did, he would have been able to wait for Atiqah to be ready before he broached the subject. The problem was, they hadn't.
Destined to part ways at the end of the summer to play football for two different countries, it had been now or never for him to make his intentions known. As it was, he'd waited until the last possible minute before doing so.
What he had to offer had been a raw deal for them both, and he'd been aware of it. But a long engagement had been the only option that wouldn't compromise their goals to bring football glory to their respective countries. They'd sacrificed years of childhood and adolescence, spending considerable time away from family, to get to where they were.
And in the case of Atiqah, every cent for her training had come from her national football association. At that juncture, making a major international move would have been not only impulsive, but irresponsibly risky for either of them.
Thus, with or without an engagement, the stakes for Fang Wu and Atiqah to remain a part of each other's lives had been insanely high. While technology could have enabled a long-distance relationship, Islam wouldn't allow that to happen without an engagement and his stated intention to convert. Fang Wu might have pursued that path half out of desperation, but it had been the only honourable course of action available to him.
Converting to Islam would involve drastic lifestyle changes: no pork, no alcohol, and one month every year when no food nor drink could be consumed between sunup and sundown. Those who were born into Islam took it all in their stride, but he was keenly aware of the suffering he would endure in choosing it.
Yet he had convinced himself that this was what he would do if he truly loved her. She wasn't at liberty to choose her religion, but he could choose his. He'd grown up offering incense at the altar honouring his ancestors and occasionally at Buddhist temples, but by and large his life had been secular. He wouldn't be betraying any long-held religious beliefs by converting to Islam.
That had been a lot of philosophising for a 23-year-old man. But it had all come to naught anyway.
And when the barriers were this high, Atiqah's rejection had been the ultimate deterrent for him to ever make any attempts to rekindle their relationship. Their shared memories – whether genuine or fake on her end – could remain firmly rooted in the past.
It was baggage that he'd rather not confront. If he wouldn't even discuss this with the three most important people in his life, there was no way in hell he'd ever mention it to Lele.
So, when Lele had asked him why he didn't greet Atiqah as an old friend when he first saw her again, he'd grasped at the nearest cop-out that wouldn't spill all the dirty laundry of their history.
"I'm not used to seeing her in the tudung," he'd said. "For a minute, I wasn't sure whether it really was her. I've never seen her in person since I was in Barcelona."
Fang Wu would have been very content to let this fleeting meeting come and go, to never bring up the subject of Atiqah again. But his conscience gnawed at him after he belatedly realised that she had given him a curry puff that was most likely intended for herself or her family members. If she extended that kindness to him as a neighbour, it was his due to reciprocate it.
The Confucian principle of 道之以德齐之以礼 dao zhi yi de qi zhi yi li, which meant that it was more effective to influence people to do the right things through their sense of morality and courtesy than through laws and punishments, apparently applied all too well to him. He'd wished for nothing more than to walk away and had perfect freedom to do so, yet moral obligation forced him to beard the lion in its den one last time.
Eight years of memory hadn't failed him. He knew exactly how he ought to address Atiqah's father Eusoff. And Lele had given him Atiqah's unit number and the latest updates about how her family situation had evolved.
What he hadn't expected was that the sight of Atiqah's flat invoked neither contempt nor indifference in him, but a deep sense of pity.
Dilapidated though their flat was, Eusoff and Atiqah still lived in more comfort than Fang Wu had in his childhood. Yet it was painful to see that Atiqah's future, brimming with so much promise when he had last known her, had been annihilated through no fault of her own.
When her burdens were laid out in plain sight before him - an overcrowded flat with seven people in it, a father plagued with mobility issues, and the general squalor left behind by family members who didn't bother to pick up after themselves – he couldn't bear to cut Atiqah's family outright.
His conscience, telling him to treat Eusoff with respect and offer him neighbourly assistance, was the only reason why Fang Wu had accepted Atiqah's number. The principle of 仁德 ren de told him that the knowledge of Eusoff and his family's plight meant that he should continue to befriend and help them to the best of his ability.
Yet it was so hard to move on to his future when his past came back to haunt him at every turn!
Had that evening, when his – their – past and present had collided in a single room, affected Atiqah as much as it had affected him? Rather than to face an answer that could only bring him more hurt than he had already suffered, Fang Wu had convinced himself that it didn't matter at all.
Hence, here he was at the residence of Zheng Xinle, obediently rolling out pastry and yawning through episodes of The Great British Bake-Off when he didn't care in the least about the right folding technique to make good Kouign-Amann. (Before this, he hadn't even known that French pastry had multiple variations.)
He was literally allowing her to lead him around by the apron strings.
But no matter how tepid and emasculating he found his relationship with Lele and how reluctant he was to accelerate it, the thing that kept him coming back was that Lele shared his origins. Therefore, she was safe. Unlike with Atiqah, there wouldn't be any cultural pitfalls to trip him up again.
That safety might be the enemy of true felicity was a precept that Fang Wu had once not only owned but rocked. In fact, him embracing it had brought much glory to his country and his career.
Tragically, Fang Wu's consciousness screamed the opposite of that now, while his subconscious blocked it out to protect his dignity and prevent him from falling victim to yet another broken heart.
– Atiqah
If it was exquisite irony to find out that her father had given Fang Wu her handphone number, that paled against the agony Atiqah felt every time Fang Wu addressed her father as "Pakcik".
She was living a grotesque parody of the life she would have had if she had waited for Fang Wu to come to Singapore and convert to Islam for her sake. They would have had each other's numbers and used them to message each other by the day, if not by the hour.
Now, she was fully aware that her father had given Fang Wu her number not because he was encouraging them to date, but because he didn't see the remotest possibility of any romantic interest blossoming between them.
She'd overheard her father asking Fang Wu which school he taught at while she was hiding in the kitchen. The answer put paid to any notions that Eusoff could possibly have about the potential of them building deeper ties than friendly neighbourliness, because it accentuated the language divide between them.
If they had been engaged, Fang Wu would have called Eusoff "Pakcik" before marriage and switched to "Bapa Mertua" or "Ayah Mertua" (both of which meant 'father-in-law' in Malay) after they married.
Azlan calling Fang Wu 'Brother' had no such associations. Had Fang Wu and Atiqah been engaged or married, Azlan would have used the Malay term of Abang instead.
Well, of all the ironies, it seemed like Fang Wu was well on track to marrying Lele. Atiqah still clung to the firm belief that Fang Wu didn't date women to play games. And Fang Wu and Lele living in different flats within the same block as Atiqah and her family meant that she would be entrenched in this neighbourly relationship with them after they married, regardless of which flat they eventually selected for their matrimonial residence.
Atiqah had never imagined a situation where Fang Wu would be calling her father "Pakcik" while married to somebody else. It was horrific.
Castigating herself for her selfishness only made Atiqah feel worse. They had broken off for so long by now. In fact, strictly speaking, they'd never truly had an official relationship.
They couldn't have, in fact. Had they allowed their relationship to turn romantic without the prospect of conversion and marriage, that would have been such an outrageous breach of Islam that Atiqah would have risked being disowned by her family and shunned by the Malay Muslim community, particularly the elder generation.
When revisiting their past was so taboo and so fraught with heartache, Atiqah knew it was as much Fang Wu's prerogative to move on with another woman (of any race or religion) as it was hers to marry a Muslim man. The fact that neither had happened in eight years didn't take away their right to proceed with their separate lives now, with no regard whatsoever to the other.
And Atiqah noticed how Fang Wu defaulted to Mandarin every time he felt the need to express his feelings. That was natural when it was the only language he had required while living in China.
Eight years ago, Atiqah had broken her pact with Fang Wu because she believed that relieving him from the pressure to change his cultural identity would be to his benefit. So why was she now begrudging the fact that Lele could converse with him in Mandarin while she couldn't?
The worst of it was that when he talked, she heard the same voice, and discerned the same mind. He should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her father, giving him the respect due to an elder. That showed a rare sense of virtue when many people saw Eusoff as a senior citizen with insufficient education, no income, and only one foot, and treated him accordingly. And Fang Wu's eight years of GoPro footage displayed the unwavering pride he'd always harboured for his native land, as well as his adventurous spirit.
Even though they had now both retired from their football careers, time had bestowed widely differing levels of kindness to them. Fang Wu still rode on his recent glory of being a national star. Meanwhile, Atiqah considered herself a has-been, or perhaps more accurately, a "has-never-been".
The first time she'd run into Fang Wu by accident at Lele's door, at least she had sported more presentable attire than usual because she had come from an errand at the town centre and stopped by the mosque. Now that he'd seen her toiling around at home wearing tired old T-shirts and shorts, she wouldn't be surprised if he might think she looked more like an Indonesian maid than a daughter of the family.
Worse still, the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. If anything, he'd filled out enough that his relative lack of height no longer made him appear as undersized on the pitch when compared to the Caucasians. His stance exuded enough raw power to make his opponents know that he was a force to be reckoned with.
She knew he noticed their differences, too.
Lele was a blabbermouth, and two days after Atiqah had run into Fang Wu at her flat, she'd dropped by with two mini cakes for the boys and said, "Why didn't you tell me you know Fang Wu? I thought you'd be so proud of being personally acquainted with a football star!"
"Barcelona was a very long time ago, Le Le," Atiqah had demurred. "Back then, I was in a completely different stage of my life."
"You must not have known each other very well, then," Lele had continued. "Do you know, he said he couldn't recognise you in your tudung?"
The Fang Wu whom she knew and loved would be too respectful and considerate of others to mock at anyone's religion. But even if she gave him the benefit of the doubt, that his words should not be taken exactly the way they had been conveyed, she couldn't escape his meaning. He couldn't recognise what he had once seen in her.
"Altered beyond his knowledge." Atiqah had fully submitted, in silent, deep mortification. Doubtless it was so, and she could take no revenge, for he was not altered, or not for the worse. She had already acknowledged it to herself, and she could not think differently, let him think of her as he would.
IV.v – Fang Wu
"你看，好可爱喔！(Look, [that's] so cute!)" came Lele's squeal from the living room. For an instant, Fang Wu wondered when he'd become so subservient to Lele's wishes that he was willing to putter away in the kitchen while she lounged around like a princess in front of the TV.
(He didn't want to be reminded that conflict avoidance was the easiest way to skirt around his emotional turmoil, nor that this was his tactic for maintaining some space between Lele and himself.)
The sight of a buck-naked toddler running at a full clip down the common corridor inspired a very different reaction in him than it had in Lele. For heaven's sake, didn't Lele know that this was dangerous? If the child tumbled down the stairs or ran into the lift, who knew what peril might meet him?
Tearing out of the flat, Fang Wu sprinted off in pursuit of the child. It wasn't until he picked up the little boy that he registered that this was the nephew of Atiqah.
Well, regardless of whose family this boy belonged to, Fang Wu had a duty. The indignity of the squirming, giggling toddler urinating down the front of his shirt made that reality even grimmer.
Marching back up the corridor with the child in his arms – what a relief that he'd caught little Yusuf just before he got to the top of the stairs! – Fang Wu saw that the door was already wide open when he arrived at Eusoff's flat.
In the doorway stood a very frazzled – and soaking wet – Atiqah. And beside her stood Aziz, wrapped up in a bright green dinosaur hooded towel with a row of plush spikes that ran from the top of his head down his spine.
Fang Wu suppressed a laugh at the thought that the spiky towel made it visible to all and sundry just how diabolical that child could be. By this time, he'd seen enough of Aziz and Yusuf's antics to feel indignation at the tyranny they wreaked upon their aunt.
He ought not to think about how every inch of her outline stood in even sharper relief than when they'd gone swimming during their days in Barcelona. (She'd always swum in long sleeved rash guards to protect her modesty.)
Further to that, he ought not to be conscious that even more of their anatomy came into contact when he handed the child to her than when he'd made his de facto marriage proposal.
His mind told him that the civil thing to do was to apologise for smearing her with pee, even though that was more Yusuf's fault than his and it couldn't be avoided.
For all the other reasons stated above, he simply couldn't form the words. His line of thinking was verboten when he had firmly resolved to stick to concrete possibilities and abandon vain flights of fancy.
Principle dictated that Fang Wu stayed long enough to ensure that little Yusuf was grasped firmly and safely in Atiqah's arms before he wordlessly headed to the lift that would take him to his eighth-floor flat. After all, he couldn't possibly go back to Xixi and Lele's place covered in pee.
– Atiqah
Bath time had just started to get easier before Aziz got injured. Now that he was four, Atiqah was finally able to trust that when she handed a soapy washcloth to Aziz, he would use it to the effect that he exited the shower in a cleaner state than when he entered it. Unfortunately, all that progress evaporated after he dislocated his shoulder.
The most efficient way to get the boys clean had always been for them to shower together. On the irregular occasions when Azlan was the one to help them, he used the ensuite attached to his room. Atiqah always used the common bathroom, which was the shared property of Eusoff, Aizah and herself.
Like most public housing flats in Singapore that hadn't been worked over by an interior designer, the common bathroom off the kitchen featured a pedestal toilet, a wash basin and a wall-mounted shower head and water heater. There was no bathtub or shower stall, the water simply flowed into a drain hole in the floor covered by a metal grate.
Atiqah didn't relish this phase when she had to go back to soaping and rinsing both boys off again. It was worse than it had been before, with Yusuf now in his terrible twos. Furthermore, she had to take twice as much time with Aziz so as not to put too much pressure on his injured shoulder and back.
Patience was never the strong suit of toddler boys, and while Atiqah was soaping Aziz, Yusuf often had a field day spraying her all over with water.
Still, getting wet wasn't half as bad as having to handle the flight risk that Yusuf posed now that he'd figured out how to undo the flimsy lock on the plastic accordion-style bathroom door. The day he twisted it open and bolted out while she was still soaping Aziz was the most nightmarish one in her recent existence.
"Yusuf," she yelled, "come back! If you don't come, Makcik (Aunt) will be very angry with you!"
Unfortunately, Yusuf thought this was more funny than scary. He did a cheeky dance and slipped away when she hastily reached out to catch him. When Azlan was out at work (he always deigned to work at the most inopportune times!) and Eusoff couldn't move, there was nobody to halt the child's progress out the door that they kept ajar to combat the stuffy tropical heat.
"Yusuf, listen to your makcik, OK? She told you to come back, come, come to Datuk."
As Atiqah threw Aziz's hooded towel over him and patted him dry as hastily as she could without hurting him, she took some meagre relief from hearing her father back her up.
Not that it mattered – by the time she got Aziz reasonably dry and went to the door, Yusuf was already out of her sight. She wondered if Aziz would also try to run out if she left him with his grandfather while she went in pursuit of Yusuf.
Thankfully, her deliverance from that dilemma came before she could propose that arrangement. Her gratitude at seeing Fang Wu carry Yusuf down the corridor towards her flat was only matched by her embarrassment at the wet stain on his shirt that she saw when he drew near.
When Fang Wu had sort-of proposed to her, he'd only held her hands. Now they practically bumped bodies when he handed Yusuf over to her. It was again a parody of the romance they could have had. The fact that Yusuf had peed all over him felt like an added layer of mockery.
Her sensations on the discovery made her perfectly speechless. She could not even thank him. Certainly, if she did, she would have to apologise, in the same breath, for the outrageousness of letting her nephew urinate on him. That was far too shameful to put into words.
His kindness in stepping forward to her relief, the manner, the silence in which it passed, the little particulars of the circumstance – this was no occasion to reflect upon it. She had Yusuf to clean up all over again, as well as to clean herself.
No doubt Fang Wu had slunk off in silence because he was offended not only at her gross negligence, but her nephew's sheer impudence to soil him.
While she carried Yusuf towards the bathroom, Eusoff limped to the front door and shut it to prevent Aziz from running out too.
"Yusuf," her father said in his strictest voice, "what did I say about obeying Datuk and Makcik?"
Atiqah knew her father deeply appreciated the respect and courtesy that Fang Wu always extended to him. She could comprehend his regretting that Fang Wu should have done what Atiqah ought to have done herself.
But neither Eusoff's feelings, nor anybody's feelings, could interest her, until she had a little better arranged her own. She was ashamed of herself, quite ashamed of being so nervous, so overcome by such a trifle; but so it was, and it required a long period of solitude and reflection to recover her.
Still, what use were such feelings when they could only end in futility? The only thing that could unlock their current impasse was for Fang Wu to consider converting to Islam again. When Atiqah couldn't see that happening – certainly she didn't have a right to ask it of him, not anymore – there was no option but to remain mired in silence.
This chapter is all about motivations and stakes:
- If we translate Wentworth's actions into the 21st century deed-for-deed without translating the context, he looks like a douchebag to the nth degree.
- Similarly, Anne's actions in our times without context make her look like a wet dishrag (or a doormat).
But let's take a look at all the constraints that applied in Regency times which most of us are thankfully liberated from:
- Eight years past, they couldn't write to each other when Wentworth went back to sea without being engaged.
- In the present time, they couldn't talk freely about many things (most of all their failed relationship) without a renewal of the engagement.
- Wentworth didn't have many ladies to choose from when he thought he could move on from Anne. The Musgroves were the most pre-eminent family in the area, and in the country there weren't many other families (if at all) of the appropriate social strata to socialize with. So, he was simply doing what was expected in polite society (call upon the neighbours) and accepting the attentions of the most appropriate women for his standing (Henrietta and Louisa Musgrove), and he'd started doing so before he saw Anne again.