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"Jangan lah buka payung dalam bilik, satgi ular masuk!"
"Apa kena mengena ular dengan payung? Ni karut-karut kau lagi ke?"
Abbas sighs, and the shaking motion in his wrist dies away, leaving the black umbrella hanging open above his head with its ribs trembling and a spray of cold droplets drifting down from the canvas onto his hair and shoulders. He has only been trying to rid it of the afternoon's rain, since it is dripping onto the floor and he has no wish to see Mazli's bedding soaked, and it seems to him a very modest ambition to have drawn such a shriek. He stares blankly at Mazli, who stands before him frowning with both hands planted on his hips, saying, "Bukan karut, ni pantang!", guarding the doorway against a danger that exists only inside his own head.
It is a curious thing to be chided by the same boy who has kept him from getting drenched, and the thought carries him back through the hours, to the gate of the school that morning, where the sun hung over the compound so fiercely that the zinc roofs shimmered like sheets of beaten silver and every boy in sight squinted against the glare. Mazli had walked in beside him with this same black umbrella tucked under his arm like a rolled mat, and the sniggering had begun at once, a spreading ripple that followed the pair of them across the field, one voice asking whether the sky had been reported sick and another wondering aloud who was expecting a funeral. Abbas had walked half a pace behind with his eyes fixed on the red dust and his face arranged into its old blank stare, because there is no honest way to be seen beside a boy who carries an umbrella under such a sun. Mazli hadn't seemed to mind in the least, humming under his breath as though the whole of the wretched schoolyard was a whimsical field of flowers.
By afternoon, the sky had turned its colour, and the rain, when it came, fell with such violence that the morning seemed a story invented by somebody else.
The first drops struck the zinc like flung gravel, and within moments the world had dissolved into a roaring grey curtain, the field churning to mud and the drains overflowing, while boys burst out of the classrooms hollering and holding their exercise books above their heads, or tearing banana leaves from the clump behind the latrines, or simply giving up and running bareheaded with their white shirts plastered transparent against their ribs. Abbas had lingered beneath the eaves, watching them go, with the cold spray misting his face and no plan beyond waiting for the worst of it to pass, until a hand took hold of his sleeve and tugged.
"Abbas, jom balik!"
He remembers stepping out into the roar of it, and how instant the shelter had been, the edges of the world gone at once, the shouting and splashing and drumming all pushed back into a muffled elsewhere, leaving only the hollow patter of rain on stretched cloth and the warm, soapy smell of the boy pressed against his side. Mazli had held the handle in both fists and stretched his arm as high as it would go, which was nowhere near high enough, so that the rim kept tilting into Abbas's forehead, until Abbas silently took the handle and raised it to a proper height. They had walked to the dormitory like that, mostly dry and shoulder to shoulder, past the very boys who had jeered at the gate, now splashing by in a wet tangle with their hair slicked flat and their pants clinging to their legs, one of them throwing a look of baffled resentment at the two figures gliding beneath their black canopy like a pair of kings.
Mazli's eyes narrow, and flick towards the corners of the room as though a serpent might already be uncoiling, and the corner of Abbas's mouth begins, against his will, to tug upwards.
"Ye, ye. Aku letak payung kau kat luar."
Abbas sets the umbrella just beside the dormitory door, where it squats like a gigantic black toadstool in a spreading pool of its own making, and only then does Mazli step aside from the doorway and let him in, with the solemn air of a guard who has satisfied himself that no danger follows. The room is cool after the roar of the afternoon, smelling of damp cotton and old timber, and while Mazli rummages through their shared locker, Abbas goes to fetch their towels from the hanger by the window shutters, the cloth faintly clammy against his fingers. When he turns back, Mazli has already laid a set of Abbas's fresh clothes upon the mattress, folded into neat squares with the collar uppermost, and is busy searching for his own, and the small, unasked-for orderliness of it gives Abbas a pang that he can't quite place. He takes the arranged clothes and sets Mazli's towel down in their place, and is about to take his leave for the bathroom when Mazli turns round and stretches one hand up towards him.
Abbas ducks his head down a little, and Mazli pats about Abbas's hair.
"Tadi kau ada basah kena hujan, eh?" Mazli twirls a damp strand around his finger. "Nanti mandi basuh kaki dulu tau, kemudian badan, kepala akhir sekali—supaya tak demam."
"Ni pun pantang ke?"
"Tak, ni petua!"
Mazli removes his hand, and Abbas straightens to his full height with a sigh, though it is a sigh with very little grievance in it. He thinks it ridiculous, frankly, the whole business of feet and bodies and heads in their order, as though a fever were a bureaucrat who would only accept applications through the correct procedure, and yet when he stands beneath the dripping tap in the bathroom later, with the cold water running down the straight ladder of his spine, he finds that he wets his legs first, and then the rest of him, and his head last of all. It is awkward and faintly disorienting, the water having to be coaxed down in a sequence that his body doesn't recognise, and he follows it regardless, though he couldn't say for what reason. Perhaps it is only that to disobey would take more effort than to comply, or perhaps it is that somewhere beneath his scorn there lies a small and unadmitted wish to be the sort of person who is told how to keep himself well, and who does as he is told. When he returns, he is too lazy to dry his hair, and so he lowers himself onto the floor beside Mazli's bed and lets it drip onto the small towel flung over his shoulders, the water running in slow cold threads down his nape.
It takes only a second for Mazli, returning from his own shower, to shake his head at the sight, and after hanging up his towel he settles himself upon the mattress behind Abbas and begins to dry that dark hair with brisk and capable hands, because apparently, as he announces with great gravity, "Mana boleh biarkan kepala basah macam ni, nanti demam."
Abbas simply lets him, and closes his eyes.
The towel moves over his scalp in slow and clumsy circles, and in the dark behind his eyelids he can almost hear a hum, low and tuneless and off key, the sound his mother used to make when she dried the hair of both her sons after an afternoon of running wild in the rain, bathing in the downpour and leaping through the puddles in the kampung field until their clothes were black with mud. They had certainly made her life harder, for afterwards she would have to scrub the grime out of every collar and shorts by hand, kneeling over the basin with her sleeves pushed up to the elbow, and yet she had never once scolded them, only wrapped them each in a towel and rubbed their heads dry with that same humming, because her sons were smiling and laughing and she could think of nothing in the world that mattered more. He sees Fuad's young wet face squinting up at the sky, and his mother's hands moving over his own scalp, and the warm lamplight pooling on the floorboards of a house that no longer stands in his keeping.
Abbas opens his eyes and tucks the memory away.
"Li."
"Hmm?"
"Mana kau tahu harini akan hujan?"
"Aku tak tahu. Aku cuma tengok petanda."
The towel stops moving, and Mazli hangs it upon Abbas's head with a soft pat. Abbas pulls it down and lets his head fall back until it comes to rest against Mazli's knee.
"Tadi 'pantang', lepas tu 'petua', ni 'petanda' pula dah. Apa petandanya?"
"Semalam panaih ngat." Mazli's hands drift down to Abbas's neck, and he brushes there, plucking away the few hairs that fell during the drying, and then his fingertips traces the line of Abbas's throat and comes to rest upon the hard curve of his Adam's apple as he contemplates. "Selalunya kalau malam panas, siang esoknya akan hujan lebat."
Again, Abbas thinks it stupid, and tries to follow the logic of it and finds that there is none to follow, no chain of reason that leads from a sweltering night to a thundering afternoon. It is the sort of knowledge that no schoolmaster would ever put on a blackboard, and yet it has kept the two of them dry while the whole school ran howling through the downpour, and the argument against it, he notices, has grown steadily harder to make. He swallows, and his Adam's apple bobs beneath that wandering fingertip, and he feels Mazli's touch trails the movement, gentle.
"Pelik-pelik lah kau ni, Li. Sumpah aku tak faham."
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Saturday afternoons in the dormitory carry a hollowed-out hush that Abbas has come to know well, a hush made of everything that is missing from it.
Most of the beds lie empty, their owners having been collected since the morning by their respective parents, and the whole long room holds that quality of a place that has been half vacated, where the silence leans into the gaps. It is a gentler weather today than most, since he isn't alone in it. Mazli sits cross-legged at the centre of the bed with a biscuit tin in his lap, holding forth on the subject of how his penghulu's goat once went missing for three days because "Dia termasuk dunia bunian!", and Rafizi lounges at the foot, listening and asking questions, while Abbas is content to let the fairy-tale-adjacent conversation wash over him.
When the pressure in his bladder grows too insistent to ignore, Abbas rises with a grunt, ignoring Mazli's cry of "Pi mana? Cerita belum habis!", and makes his way down the length of the dormitory and out to the communal washroom. He takes his time about it, letting the water run cold over his hands and his thoughts wander where they will, which is, rather to his annoyance, back towards the bed and the two voices he has left sitting on it. He wonders what Rafizi's mother said to him the last time she was permitted to visit her own son, and whether it is a mercy or a wound to have a mother you can love but can never see without the permission of the people holding the keys, and Abbas has no answer for that. He starts back, rubbing his washed hands dry on the hem of his shirt, and the first thing that reaches him as he nears the door is a sound he can't make sense of, a muffled thumping and scuffling, a thin and breathless whine of "Alah, Piji, sekejap je, sekejap je!", and beneath it a low answer that is clearly the word "Taknak." He quickens his pace, and he steps over the threshold with a small frown.
The frown has nowhere to go.
On the bed, in the very centre, Mazli is kneeling almost astride Rafizi's lap, his knees planted on either side of those long legs and his whole body stretched forward in an attitude of the most desperate and undignified determination, both fists knotted in the hem of Rafizi's old, grey t-shirt, which he is hauling upwards towards Rafizi's chin. Mazli is gasping out a continuous stream of pleas, "Bukak lah baju, Piji, tolong lah, kalau kau tak buka baju, kita tak boleh buat tu!", in a voice pitched so close to a wail that it wouldn't shame a toddler denied his sweets.
Rafizi, for his part, is shaking his head with a slow and implacable dignity, his jaw set and his lips pressed into a line that trembles faintly at the corners into a smile, and he has thrown himself back onto the flat of one palm against the blanket, his spine curved away from the assault. The other hand, Abbas notices, is not pushing Mazli away. It rests broad and steady in that arched back, spread flat near the small of Mazli's waist, holding the boy in place and it is there for no other purpose than to prevent Mazli from tumbling backwards off the bed in the heat of his own campaign. It is a ludicrous tableau—Rafizi's ears turning a scalding scarlet and Mazli's heels drumming frantically against the mattress—and Abbas feels the edifice of his composure wobbles. He should be amused, he supposes, and some part of him undoubtedly is, yet beneath the amusement there stirs another feeling, a prickling awareness of how easily the two of them have fallen into this closeness, excluding him. He pushes it down, and his voice, when it comes, emerges flat and low and devoid of his bunch of mixed feelings, except bewilderment.
"... Apabenda korang buat ni?"
The two of them freeze in place, and the tableau holds for a beat, Mazli still straddling Rafizi's lap and Rafizi beneath him with his neck craned back. Abbas looks between the two of them, at Rafizi sitting up with his shirt pulled into place, at Mazli's ears going pink to match Rafizi's.
Neither of them says a word.
"Mazli."
"Hng—" Mazli whimpers, and un-straddles Rafizi with the sulky care of a kitten climbing down from a shelf. "Aku bukan buat benda pelik pun…" His hands flutter in the air as he searches for a defence, and then one of them swings round to point accusingly at Rafizi. "Piji ni ha, dia nak jahit baju yang dia tengah pakai. Mana boleh! Kalau buat macam tu, nanti dapat malang!”
Abbas groans, "Ni salah satu pantang kau lagi?"
Mazli nods, slumped and dejected.
Abbas turns his gaze on Rafizi, "Yang kau tak buat, kenapa?"
Rafizi seems thrown by the blame. "Dia takde cakap pun pantang? Dia terus suruh aku buka baju." He pulls a slight face, aggrieved and sheepish. "Memang tak lah aku nak buat."
Abbas throws him a look, a long and level one, and jerks his chin towards Mazli, and Rafizi follows the movement and takes in the sight of that drooping head and those sagging shoulders, and Abbas watches the resistance go out of him. Rafizi sighs through his nose, and then, he crosses his arms, grips the hem of his t-shirt and drags it over his head, and holds it out to nudge it against Mazli's arm. Mazli notices, and perks up with an alacrity that is rather insulting, snatching the shirt with both hands, and from some corner of the mattress, by a conjuring trick, he produces a needle with a length of thread already trailing from its eye. The sight of it startles a breath of laughter out of Abbas, small and rusty and quickly swallowed, and he crosses the few paces to the bed and lowers himself onto the mattress beside the other two. It occurs to him, as he settles, that the prickling feeling of a moment ago has gone quiet, soothed away by nothing more than the act of being allowed to look. He peers at the shirt in Mazli's lap and spots a hole near the seam, no larger than a twenty sen coin, its edges frayed into a pale fringe.
"Kenapa baju kau berlubang?"
"Entah lah," Rafizi answers.
He folds his arms across his bare chest and looks at the ceiling. "Baju lama, aku tak perasan pun lubang tu. Mazli yang perasan, lepas tu dia terus ambil benang dengan jarum, kata 'kita kena jahit cepat, nanti makin besar lubang'." His mouth twitches in a manner that betrays far more affection than he intends. "Aku ambil lah jarum dengan benang dari dia, aku nak jahit, tiba-tiba dia suruh aku buka baju. Aku cucuk jarum kat tepi tilam tu dulu tadi, taknak dia terkena."
Abbas listens, and his gaze drifts, as it so often does these days, to the boy sitting between them, who has bent his head over the stricken shirt, drawing the thread through the cloth.
It doesn't take long. Mazli's stitches are quick and even, and within a few minutes the needle has run its last loop through the frayed fringe and the thread has been bitten off between his teeth, leaving the hole closed over with a neat pale seam that is scarcely visible.
"Siap!" Mazli announces, shaking the shirt out with a flourish. "Tengok, Bas, tak nampak pun lubang dia. Mak aku ajar, jahit kena kecik-kecik, baru kemas."
"Mak hang ajar banyak benda," Abbas remarks.
"Memang. Sebab tu aku pandai." Mazli passes the shirt to Rafizi. "Nah, Piji!"
Rafizi takes it and turns it over once, peering at the mended seam with an expression of such surprise that Abbas has to look down at his own knees to keep his face in order.
"Terima kasih, Li." Rafizi murmurs, a little gruffly. He pulls the shirt over his head, and his hair springs up in a rumpled crest as it emerges, which Mazli smooths down with a laugh.
"Sama-sama!" Mazli claps his hands together, delighted. "Dah selamat, hehe, tak jadi malang."
Abbas holds out his palm without a word, and Mazli, after a brief second of puzzlement, understands and drops the needle into it. He rises from the mattress and opens the shared locker, and there on the second shelf, wedged between Mazli's folded sarong he finds the little sewing kit, a battered biscuit box with a faded picture of a rose upon its lid. He winds the thread neatly around the needle's shank, and tucks it into the cushion of red felt, and closes the lid.
"Bas, cepat lah!" Mazli calls from the bed, "Cerita kambing aku belum habis."
"Kambing tu dah hilang tiga hari. Dah kena makan harimau kot."
"Ish, mana ada!" Mazli denies, shuffling aside to make room, only to pull both Abbas and Rafizi closer to each side of himself once Abbas gets back in bed. "Ha, rupa-rupanya, kambing tu—"
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Evening settles over the dormitory, and Abbas sits on the edge of Mazli's bed with an exercise book open across his knees, his back bowed over a page of sums that have long since stopped making sense. The wooden frame is hard and unforgiving beneath him, its slats pressing a row of aching ridges into his thighs, and so, with the idle reasoning of a boy too tired to be sensible, he drags the lumpy pillow of Mazli possession out from against the wall and tucks it beneath himself as a cushion. He lets his shoulders drop, and a lone gecko clicks in the rafters.
"... Bas." Mazli's voice arrives strained, "Bantal tu."
"Apa dengan bantal?"
"Hang duduk atas dia!" Mazli lunges across the bedand tugs at the corner of the pillow with both hands, hauling it out from beneath Abbas so abruptly that Abbas nearly topples off the frame, "Nanti bisul! Bisul besar, lepas tu hang jadi tak boleh duduk terus lepas tu!"
Abbas stares at him, and then at the pillow, now between them, and then at the shallow dent that his own weight has left in the pillor, and he feels the corner of his mouth begin its familiar and treacherous quirk. He has sat upon a hundred hard things in his life, stone steps and kerbsides and the cold concrete of a parapet at midnight, and it has never once occurred to him that a pillow might hold opinions on the matter. Yet Mazli is already plumping it with tender urgency, patting out the dent, that Abbas can only watch in silence, amused despite himself.
"Siapa cakap?" Abbas asks.
"Orang tua-tua." Mazli tucks the pillow back against the wall, well out of harm's way, "Mak aku kata, bantal tu tempat kepala. Kepala tu tinggi. Punggung tu rendah. Tak boleh campur."
It is a rule of such simple and homely logic that Abbas finds he has nothing to say against it, and he returns to his sums with his face arranged into composure, though the sentence goes on turning in his mind, quietly He thinks of the pillow in the house of his childhood, the one embroidered with a pair of faded birds, and of the afternoon his mother swatted him across the thigh with a wooden spoon for flinging it across a room, and how he had wept from the offence of being scolded over what he considered a toy and had felt no pain at all. He had never known, until this moment, that she might have been guarding a law far older than the pillow, handed down to her across a long line of mothers, and the realisation opens in him a small window onto a lost room. He wonders how many of her scoldings were rules of this kind, and how many he has dismissed as temper when they were really the tenderness wearing its working clothes.
When the last of the sums has defeated him, he closes the book and rises to fetch his bag from beside the locker, and it is only then, that he notices Mazli has relocated himself onto Abbas's mattress on the floor, where he lies hugging Abbas’s pillow and rolling idly from side to side. Abbas snorts, and without any thought, he steps across the thin knees in a single easy stride.
A pair of hands close around his shin.
"Bas!" Mazli sits up upright, his face appearing at the level of Abbas's kneecap, wide-eyed with horror and sincerely serious. "Hang langkah aku! Langkah balik, cepat, langkah balik!"
"Langkah balik?"
"Langkah macam tadi, tapi arah terbalik! Nanti aku tak membesar!"
"Kau dah enam belas, Li. Aku rasa dah habis dah fasa membesar kau."
"Jangan lah cakap macamtu… Sampai hati…"
Abbas looks down at the boy now hugging his shin, at the sulky face and the dark hair standing up in tufts, and he feels an absurd laughter gather behind his ribs, which he suppresses with an effort so great that his shoulders shake. Mazli is the smallest boy in the dormitory, smaller by a hand's breadth than lads a full year his junior, and Abbas has often wondered, in the secret way that a person wonders about the private griefs of others, whether it is a sore subject. He sees now that it is sore indeed, sore enough that a single careless stride can summon this fear into the open and set those lips pouting and those small fingers trembling about his shin, and the laughter in his chest dies away, replaced by a quieter and warmer feeling with a tinge of guilt.
He steps back over Mazli's knees, lifting each foot high and setting it down.
"Dah," he says. "Okay?"
"Mm hmm." Mazli falls back upon Abbas's mattress with a gusty sigh of relief, and then, after a pause, adds in a smaller voice, "Terima kasih, Bas. Aku tahu kau rasa benda ni merepek, tapi aku..."
"Ye, aku tahu."
Abbas does know, and the knowing accompanies him the short distance to the locker, where he stows his items inside his bag. When he turns back, Mazli is still rolling about on the floor mattress, though the bed that belongs to him stands empty, and the oddness of it pulls a faint crease between Abbas's brows. He crosses the boards and lowers himself onto the mattress beside Mazli, propping himself on one elbow with his cheek resting in his palm.
"Aku nak tidur."
"Tapi aku taknak tidur lagi."
"Jadi? Aku nak tidur. Kau naiklah katil kau."
Mazli shakes his head and burrows his face deeper into the pillow that he clutches against his chest, so that only the crown of his head remains in view, and his hair sticks up in such a ruinous tangle that it resembles a bird's nest after a storm. Abbas can't bear it. His free hand rises and slides into the mess, carding his fingers through the dark strands, coaxing the knots loose one at a time, and then he pushes the fringe back from Mazli's forehead, uncovering the whole of his face from its hiding place. It is a better face without the fringe, he thinks, open and young and a little flushed from the pillow, the brows straight and the lashes dark against the cheek, and he can see it all more clearly now that it startles him that he has been content with only half of it.
"Kau taknak tidur. Kau nak buat apa?"
Mazli grins, "Mazli nak sembang dengan Abbas!"
"Ye? Tapi Abbas taknak sembang dengan Mazli."
“Kenapa Abbas taknak sembang dengan Mazli?”
"Sebab Abbas nak tidur."
"Hmm..." The smile falters, and the lower lip slides out, and the eyes that look up at Abbas have gone too large for the face that holds them. "Abbas taknak kawan dengan Mazli dah?"
Just then, the light in the dormitory clicks off, plunging the long room into a soft and sudden dark, and Abbas feels Mazli jolt beneath the hand that still rests against his temple, and he snickers, patting the side of that tousled head in reassurance. The shutters admit a thin wash of moonlight, and the gecko in the rafters clicks again, and the dark does what it so often does to a boy who has spent years guarding his face, which is to loosen the guard without asking. He is aware that nobody can see him now, and that he could, if he wished, go on caressing the soft disorder of that hair for as long as the night allows, and he tells himself firmly that this is merely a hypothetical, a thing he could do and has no intention of doing, and yet his fingers go on doing exactly that. They move through the dark strands in gentle strokes, smoothing the stray locks.
"Sepuluh minit," Abbas concedes, yet again, "Sepuluh minit je. Lepas tu aku tidur."
"Lima belas!"
"Sepuluh."
"Tiga belas?"
"... Tiga belas." Abbas lets his head sink down onto the crook of his arm with a groan of surrender that is almost entirely for show. "Cepat. Cakap apa kau nak cakap."
Mazli's whole face lights, and he wriggles closer across the mattress until the pillow is wedged between their chests and the end of his nose is only a tiny breadth from Abbas’s own, and he draws in a breath so full of eager purpose that Abbas knows, before a single word has been spoken, that the thirteen minutes are going to cost him a way more than that.
"Okay. Hang tau tak, dekat kampung aku ada kampung bunian..."
"Aku dah dengar cerita tu. Yang kambing penghulu kau hilang, kan?"
"Bukan, ni cerita lain!" The voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. "Kampung aku, kalau ada kenduri kahwin, akan ada orang masuk hutan, untuk pinjam pinggan mangkuk bunian."
"Bunian pun pakai pinggan mangkuk?"
"Mesti lah! Kalau tak, macam mana bunian nak makan?"
Abbas closes his eyes, and the corner of his mouth, abandoned to its own devices, curls upward and stays there, and he listens to the low, rapid murmur of the tale unfolding beside him in the dark, thinking with a drowsy and unguarded wonder that he has never in his life been so reluctant to fall asleep, nor so certain that he will sleep well.
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As usual, Abbas's meeting with Ayah Lan lasts less time than it takes a kettle to boil, and it unfolds in the familiar order of three questions: is he eating, and have his marks improved, and does the zinc roof of the dormitory leak above the third bed. Abbas answers each of them with a single nod, since a longer reply only makes the silence afterwards harder to bear. Then the man turns and goes back down the path with his back straight and his steps brisk, and Abbas stands where he is until the figure has shrunk and the sound of his shoes has faded out.
It has never been easy to say what the man is to Abbas.
A guardian, the papers say, a word that sits upon the page like a stamp and carries about as much warmth as one, flat and official. Abbas has turned it over many times without ever getting a grip on it, since a guardian is meant to be a person and this man has always behaved more like a monthly arrangement, a supply of rice and bare necessities delivered once in a while to their cheap house, a sack of provisions that Mak would look at with gratitude and guilt sitting apparent on her face, a folded banknote slipped between the pages of books addressed to both Abbas and Fuad, three pairs of shoes left outside the door in sizes that fit Mak, Fuad, and Abbas himself with such exactness that it has always nagged at him. He has never known whether it was done with care or out of obligation, whether the man was thinking of them when he bought the shoes or simply working down a list, and now that Abbas is in Kudrat the question has grown quieter rather than smaller, since sometimes, very rarely, they meet like this, at the gate with the field behind them, and even rarer, Ayah Lan will hand him food.
The mangkuk tingkat is heavy with it. He lifts the lid of the topmost tier and the smell of coconut milk and lemongrass rises to meet him, fragrant and unlike anything the dewan makan has ever offered him on its best day, and he counts four tiers in all, rice and chicken rendang and a dish of pucuk paku fried with belacan, and a twist of banana leaf holding pieces of kuih lapis.
"Aku ada makanan. Nak makan sekali?"
Mazli, who has been sprawled across the end of Rafizi's bed in the middle of some animated tale, snaps his head around. "Makanan?!"
Meanwhile Rafizi, propped against the wall with his legs stretched out, tilts his head, a line forming between his brows. "Mana kau dapat makanan?"
"Ayah Lan."
He says the name quietly, and Rafizi nods.
Mazli, for his part, is already gone. The shorter boy has slid off the bed and across the floor to his own with the speed of a person who has smelled rendang on the air and has decided that all other business can wait, and when Abbas follows, he finds the small tikar mengkuang already unrolled beside the mattress, its curling edges flattened with the heel of a hand. Mazli kneels upon it and reaches into the locker, and from somewhere he produces a plate, one with a faded border of morning glories, and then, after a moment's rummaging, a second and a third, stacking them against his palm one after the other as if producing them from a hat. Abbas stares at them.
"Dari rumah," Mazli says, catching the look and wiping each plate on the hem of his shirt as he goes. "Mak aku suruh bawak. Dia kata, mana tau ada orang nak bagi makan."
The three of them huddle together, their knees touching and their shoulders knocking. The mangkuk tingkat is set down in the middle, and Abbas unclips the first tier. He sees Rafizi's eyes close, briefly, in something close to reverence, and sees Mazli press his lips together to keep from drooling. He lifts the spoon, and he serves the rice, a plentiful mound for each plate, and then pauses over the rendang with the spoon hovering above the dish. He sets the largest on Mazli's plate and the second largest on Rafizi's and keeps the smallest for himself. They begin to eat, rolling the rice into small clumps and dragging them through the gravy, and Abbas has forgotten how loud a person can be when he eats happily. Mazli makes small noises of delight at every mouthful, a hum when the sambal meets the rice, a long sigh over the chicken.
"Sedap?"
"Sedap!" Mazli says, and Rafizi reaches for a second helping of the pucuk paku.
Abbas watches the two of them eat, and the watching fills him up more thoroughly than the rice ever could. Rafizi, who has spent so many years sitting upright with his elbows tucked in and his mouth kept small, now licks gravy from his thumb without a flicker of shame, and Mazli, cheeks bulging and eyes squeezed shut, rocks gently from side to side as if the rendang were a lullaby sung especially for him. Chuckling inwardly, Abbas gathers the last grains on his own plate with his fingertips, and the tips of his fingers tap, lightly, against the plate.
"Abbas." Mazli has stopped chewing. "Jangan ketuk pinggan," he says, once he has swallowed. "Nanti dapat bini tua."
Abbas blinks, and looks up at the earnest, round face beside him, and hears Rafizi's water go down the wrong way in a strangled cough, and he feels his own face give way.
"Bini tua," Abbas repeats.
"Hmm! Bini tua. Yang garang. Yang suka bising pagi-pagi."
"Dah kenapa pula cakap pasal bini tua ni, Li?"
"Sebab kau ketuk pinggan lah!" Mazli resumes his chewing, satisfied that the warning has been delivered and the danger averted. "Pakcik aku suka ketuk pinggan. Dapat bini tua. Tiga kali."
"Tiga kali?" Rafizi manages, his shoulders shaking, and when he has recovered enough breath to continue, he reaches out to wipe a smear of gravy from Mazli's chin. "Bukan satu bini je tua?"
"Tiga bini, tiga-tiga tua." Mazli leans in to make it easier, tilting his face up like a cat being scratched. "Hang jangan gelak, Piji. Ingat, jangan ketuk pinggan, nanti hang pun kena." He turns back to regard Abbas, "Tapi kan, Bas," Mazli says, scooping more gravy and chicken into Abbas’s plate, "Kalau hang dapat bini tua pun, jangan risau, sebab aku boleh tolong pilih."
"Pilih apa?"
"Yang tak garang sangat."
Rafizi gives up and drops his forehead onto Mazli's shoulder, and both of their frames shake with their combined laughter. Abbas watches the pair of them, and the warmth in his chest rises so quickly that it nearly outruns his composure, and he leans to pinch Mazli's cheek.
"Siapa cakap aku nak ada bini pun?"
"Aduh!!" Mazli squawks, though he makes no attempt to pull away, and his eyes crinkle shut. Then his eyes fly wide again, as the remark catches up with him, and he stares at Abbas with horror. "Hang tak nak kahwin? Habis, siapa nak jaga hang bila hang tua?"
"Tua pun aku boleh jaga diri sendiri."
"Tak sama!"
Abbas lets go of the cheek, and Rafizi lifts his head from Mazli's shoulder as Mazli begins to tick off the differences on his rice-crusted fingers. "Orang bujang tua, takde siapa nak urut dia bila dia lenguh. Takde siapa nak suap bubur masa dia demam. Takde siapa nak garukan belakang dia yang tak sampai tangan. Takde siapa nak sapukan minyak. Takde siapa nak jahit baju dia yang koyak. " He runs out of fingers on one hand and starts on the other. "Takde siapa nak kejutkan dia pagi-pagi. Takde siapa nak ingatkan dia hari nak hujan. Takde siapa nak bising kalau dia lupa tutup pintu reban." The list wanders off into smaller and ever more improbable domestic disasters, until at last he huffs, "Mak aku kata, semua orang perlukan peneman!"
Abbas stares at him. "Li, aku takde reban."
"Itu contoh je!" Mazli flaps a hand. "Tapi hang faham maksud aku."
Abbas does understand, and that is exactly the difficulty, because as he turns the list over, he can already put a name to the hands for most of it. The one who rubs ointment when the mosquitoes have been at him is crouched on this very mat, and the one who wakes him on mornings when he would rather sink into the floor has been doing so with a pillow and a loud voice for weeks, and the back that cannot be reached has been scratched more than once, absently and without comment, in the middle of some rambling tale. Mazli stops, looks down at his own hands, and Abbas watches the same realisation dawn across that open face.
"Tak payah kahwin lah, Bas. Hang duduk je dengan aku. Aku masak."
Mazli returns to his chicken, and Abbas goes on staring at the bent dark head.
The truth is, he has pictured marriage before, though never willingly, and what comes is always his mother, a woman who once sat at the far end of a long table with her eyes lowered, unhappy, and then the same woman kneeling over a basin in a cramped with her sleeves pushed to the elbow, her hands raw from scrubbing other people's linen, still unhappy. He has watched what a marriage did to her, and how a person who had once laughed freely was taught, over the years, to make herself small, and the scars of it have settled so deeply into the house of his memory that the very word has come to mean a place where people are diminished. A wife, in his mind, has always been a door that closes on the one who walks through it, and he is startled to discover how long he has been standing with his back against it. But, if Abbas doesn't have to take a wife, and only need to take Mazli instead, then, perhaps—
"Kau tak reti masak."
"Aku reti goreng telur."
"Kau nak bagi aku makan telur hari-hari ke?"
"Apa salahnya? Kan makanan tu?"
Across the mat, Rafizi, who has gone quiet, speaks. "Kau tak nak bagi aku makan sekali?"
"Boleh!" Mazli announces, and belatedly, with a small hitch of conscience, he swivels round on the mat. "Bas, boleh kan, Bas?"
"Kau dah kata boleh, baru nak minta izin aku?" Abbas says, and the words emerge so dry that anyone but these two might have mistaken them for refusal. "Ikut suka kau lah, Li."
He reaches for the kuih lapis, and sets one piece upon Mazli's plate and one upon Rafizi's and keeps the last for himself, because it was given, and because he has glimpsed, for the space of a single meal, a future in which nobody is ever required to eat alone. Beside him Mazli has already begun to chatter, declaring that Abbas and Rafizi will have to give him a very big kitchen indeed if they expect him to cook for three, with a window, and a proper stove, and a shelf for the plates, and Abbas listens, and lets his knee rest more heavily against Mazli's on the mat.
⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⊱⊰⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯
The downpour that has drummed on the zinc all day ends as suddenly as it arrives, leaving the compound of Kudrat steaming and golden beneath a sky rinsed clean, and the three of them drift out onto the field for a stroll, drawn by the scent of petrichor. There are no rowdy boys playing football or rugby today, for the field lies too waterlogged for any game, its turf squelching with standing water, the low patches near the goalposts swollen into shallow brown ponds. The usual shouting has been subdued by the water, and in its stead there is only the drip of the tree leaves, and the rinsed song of birds that have decided the worst is over.
The sun has made its reappearance low in the west, the colour of ripe oranges.
Mazli skips ahead with his sandals slapping merrily through the shallows, flinging up bright fans of water behind him. "Siapa sampai dulu dia menang!" he cries over his shoulder, and breaks into a full gallop towards the stone bench, where it squats beneath a huge ciku tree.
Abbas doesn't run, and neither does Rafizi, and the two of them walk side by side at an easy and leisurely pace, their hands loose at their sides and their eyes fixed on the small figure bounding away from them across the sodden grass. He feels no pressure to compete in a race that nobody has agreed to, and yet he is faintly aware that his stride has slowed to match Rafizi's, or perhaps Rafizi's has slowed to match his, and that the two of them have fallen into step, as though the years between had never opened up. When Mazli reaches the bench, he flings both arms into the air with a whoop that carries clear across the field, and spins in a triumphant circle, a champion crowned. He turns to find them still some distance off, and Abbas catches Rafizi's glance sliding sideways towards him, brimming with a laughter held in check, and he returns it with a lifted brow, and a silent conversation passes between them in a heartbeat, a wordless agreement that Mazli's victory is both the most glorious and the most solitary in the history of the school. It is a small thing, that shared look, and he stores it away.
By the time they arrive, Mazli has pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and is wiping down the stone, working it in circles to chase away the rainwater. Then he seats himself in the middle of the bench with his legs swinging slightly above the ground, rather pleased with himself.
Abbas, having watched this ritual of consideration, lowers himself onto the cleaned stone beside Mazli, and the cold of it seeps faintly through the seat of his trousers, though it is a good cold, a clean one, and he finds he doesn't mind. He notices, with a quiet and private intrigue, that the handkerchief has wiped the bench for all three of them, and that the space on Mazli's other side is dry and waiting, and that nobody has said a word about it.
Rafizi doesn't take it. He stops a few steps short, beneath the broad dark canopy of the ciku tree, where the leaves continue to shed fat, slow drops onto the grass, and he leans his back against the rough bark with his arms folded, content, it seems, to be a pillar at the edge of the picture. Abbas understands the choice without needing to be told, because it is exactly the sort of choice that he himself would make, to stand a little apart and keep the scene within view. Yet he sees too that Rafizi's gaze, when it drifts from the horizon, drifts towards the bench, and that there is a softness in the set of his shoulders against the bark that wasn't there when they first came out, and Abbas thinks that perhaps the distance is a peculiar kind of courtesy.
They stay there in silence, the three of them, observing the sinking sun.
It's Abbas who spots it first. A rainbow rears against the fading fragments of the storm, immense and symmetrically curved, its pigments painted so delicately that he initially mistakes it for an illusion of the dying daylight, and he struggles to recall when he last beheld such a spectacle. Within his father's house, tall windows remained permanently veiled behind drawn drapes, while the claustrophobic quarters that followed offered only a narrow view of grey sky; a realisation hits him that he has spent much of his life cowering beneath roofs that he has forgotten the sky possess such capability, able to stretch a colossal band of brilliance. The view plucks at a dormant corner of his ribs, and his arm lifts, index finger pointing toward the arc.
A palm lands upon his wrist and presses it down.
"Jangan tunjuk!" Mazli exclaims. "Nanti jari bengkok!"
Abbas lowers the arm and flexes his fingers, which feel as straight as ever, and he glances over his shoulder at Rafizi, who has pressed his lips together and turned his face towards the field. The tips of Rafizi's ears are already darkening, and Abbas knows that the effort won't last.
"Habis tu, macam mana nak tengok?"
"Tengok je lah. Tak payah tunjuk."
Mazli tilts his chin toward the sky and gazes at the rainbow, grinning and Abbas finds his gaze slipping away from the heavens to trace the lines of the face beside him instead, at the kaleidoscope of colours reflected across the warm brown of Mazli's skin. The pale, ethereal band of the outermost violet rests across Mazli's forehead like a strip of watered lavender silk, casting a faint amethyst shadow. Just below it, the rich ochre and saffron of the mid-arch settle softly into the high curve of his cheekbone, melting into vermilion. Further down, a vibrant emerald spills along the line of his jaw, pooling deeply in the columns of his throat where the pulse beats. Mazli's irises drink in the fractured sky, the foundational amber of his gaze bleeding into burnt umber and raw sienna where the refraction catches the last golden slant of light, before deepening toward the pupil into a crowded chestnut where all the stray hues collide.
"Kalau nak tunjuk juga, kau orang kena gigit jari dulu."
"Gigit jari?"
"Ha, gigit. Lepas tu baru tunjuk. Tak bengkok."
"Ada orang pernah buktikan ke?" Rafizi joins in, and his voice wobbles with the effort of stifling a laugh as he pushes himself away from the trunk, crosses the few steps of wet grass, and lowers himself onto the other side of Mazli, so that the bench holds all three of them.
"Hmm…" Mazli ponders. "Pakcik aku? Jari dia lurus sampai sekarang. Dia gigit hari-hari."
Abbas turns the whole idea over in his mind and finds it so splendidly and irrefutably strange that he decides, out of nothing more than a spirit of experiment, to try it. He raises his forefinger to his mouth, bites down upon the tip of it, and then lifts his arm once more towards the glowing arch, and beside him he hears Rafizi snicker before collapsing into wheezing mirth, the sound of a boy who has held a laugh in for years and has finally mislaid the lock. Mazli, however, only says approvingly, "Ha, macam tu lah! Pandai!" and beams at Abbas.
It occurs to Abbas, with his finger still raised and the faint taste of salt and rain upon his lip, that he has just made a fool of himself in front of the two people whose opinion he would least like to forfeit, and that neither of them has so much as flinched. Rafizi is wiping his eyes with his hand, and Mazli is already instructing Abbas to hold the finger higher, higher, so that the rainbow will know it is being respected, and there is nothing in either of those two faces that resembles mockery. He thinks of how many years he has spent pointing at things with a certainty that nobody thought to check, his finger levelled at the world's faults and his own, and how this is the first occasion on which he has been taught to do it gently, and in company.
Eventually Abbas puts down his finger, and they resettle into a comfortable silence.
At some point, and Abbas can't say when, Mazli has let his head tip sideways to rest against Rafizi's shoulder, and then Mazli has slid his hand around Abbas's arm and curls there, fingers closing over the crook of Abbas's elbow. Abbas glances across the tousled head and meets Rafizi's eyes, and neither of them says a word, returning their gazes towards the sky.
"Bas, Piji, aku harap kita dapat jumpa banyak lagi pelangi."
⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⊱⊰⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯
The photograph begins as the whim of a lanky boy from the upper form, whose name Abbas has never troubled to learn, and who has borrowed a box camera from his uncle and is determined to use up the whole roll before Monday. He has been working his way through the school all afternoon, collecting subjects like a boy gathering windfall mangoes, a ring of juniors bent over a carrom board, the warden's cat asleep on a windowsill, the water tank, and Mad and Wan locked in a playful headlock, and by the time he reaches the three of them, lounging in a loose heap on Mazli's bed, the little leather case swinging at his hip must be nearly empty.
"Ha, kome bertiga nak tangkap gambo?" he asks, squinting through the small glass window on top of the box. "Kalau nak, berdiri sekali dekat tepi tingkap, rapat-rapat."
Abbas, who would ordinarily have refused the invitation before it was fully spoken, finds his refusal undermined from two sides at once. Mazli has sat bolt upright, crying "Gambar?! Bang, saya tak pernah ada gambar!" in a voice full of wonder that it seems to give off a warmth of its own, and Rafizi, who has said nothing, wears a small and careful smile as he reaches over and pats Mazli's hair flat, twice, to make him presentable for posterity. It would take a harder boy than Abbas to say no in the face of that, and so he rises with the others, his feet carrying him to the window before his mind has agreed to the errand, where the afternoon light slants through.
The camera boy is waving them into a line and chattering all the while about the light, about the shadows, about the proper distance for a good likeness, and it is only when he seizes Mazli by the shoulders and steers him towards the centre, remarking that the shortest ought to stand in the middle to make a neat pyramid, that a cold notion opens in Abbas's stomach.
Without thinking it through, Abbas moves, a quick and sideways slide that carries him in front of Mazli before the older boy has finished his sentence, and he stands at the centre of the line with Rafizi at his right shoulder and an empty space at his left, saying nothing at all, his face arranged into its old dry stillness as though he had meant to be there from the start. Mazli, bewildered, is nudged into the gap by the camera boy, who blinks and acquiesces by saying they can stand anywhere, so long as they hold still, and the three of them settle into a row. The boy bends over his little glass window, mutters a count, and presses the shutter, and the light goes on pouring through the shutters is almost blinding. "Minggu depan aku cuci filem ni," he tells them, already winding the knob and backing towards the door, "Kalau kome nak simpan satu, datang cari aku." Then he is gone, whistling down the corridor in search of his next subjects, and Abbas remains where he is in the middle of the bars of gold, his hands hanging at his sides.
One of those hands is seized and tugged, and he allows himself to be towed back towards Mazli's bed, the old frame creaking its complaint beneath them as they plop down in a heap.
"Bas, apesal hang tak bagi aku diri tengah tadi?"
"Aku cuma nak diri tengah." Abbas shrugs. "Aku kan watak utama."
That draws a titter of chuckles from both Mazli and Rafizi, and Abbas almost believes that the matter has been laughed away, until he notices that Mazli's laughter has thinned out sooner than Rafizi's, and that the dark eyes beside him have lingered upon his face, perceptive.
"Ye?" Mazli says, tilting his head. "Bukan sebab pantang duduk tengah kalau ambil gambar tiga orang?"
Abbas looks back at Mazli.
He has known the pantang all his life, though nobody ever sat him down and taught it to him, since it is the sort of knowledge that settles into a child through the walls of a house, murmured over cooking fires and in the voices of aunts. Three people before a camera, and the one in the middle will be the first to go. He had always taken it for a tale invented to frighten children into good behaviour, and he has never once consulted it, and yet he feels it rising in him now, and he can see, as plainly as if it lay open before him, the black and white photograph folded in his book, its creases worn soft by the years. His mother stands in the centre of it, smiling, with one hand resting on the shoulder of his younger self and his brother close at her side, and he has never in his life permitted himself to count the days between that shutter and the end of her.
He gets up without a word, and takes a book from the locker. The photograph slides out from between the pages. He carries it back and lays it upon the sheet in the small space between the three of them, and smooths its worn corners flat with his thumb, and neither of the other two reaches for it or speaks. They have both seen it before, and they both know what became of the woman in the middle of it, and the knowledge sits in the quiet. Rafizi lowers his eyes to the picture with the stillness of a boy standing at a grave, and Mazli's breath leaves him in a long exhalation, and Abbas understands that nothing needs to be explained, that the whole of his foolish, sideways, wordless gesture has been read and understood and forgiven.
Mazli takes Abbas's hand again, and holds it there in the warm cup of his own.
The silence lasts a good while, and Abbas lets it, listening to the dust settle in the light, until Mazli speaks, his voice quieter than usual and stripped of its customary bounce.
"Abbas, 'pantang', 'petua', 'petanda', tu semua cuma panduan. Ada sesetengah benda dalam dunia ni yang kita memang takkan tahu dan takkan boleh elak."
Abbas smiles a rueful smile.
"Bukan kau yang paling percaya benda-benda ni?"
Mazli squeezes his hand, and reaches his free hand for Rafizi's, and then lets his gaze fall to the creased photograph of the smiling woman, so that he sits at the centre of a small and crooked chain with a hand held in each of his own. "Aku percayakan manusia," he says. "Aku percaya ada sebab kenapa orang tua-tua adakan pantang, petua, petanda. Aku percaya manusia adakan semua tu sebagai panduan, sebagai pedoman. Karut-karut ni semuanya datang dari kasih dan ihsan kepada sesama manusia." He laughs, a small sound, and shakes his head.
Rafizi hums, low and amused, though Abbas can see that his fingers have closed firmly around Mazli's. "Jadi selama ni kau bising-bising, sebenarnya kau tak percaya pun lah?"
Mazli pouts.
"Kan aku cakap—aku percayakan manusia." He bumps Rafizi gently with his side, and frowns at him in playful reproach. "Hang ingat aku betul-betul percaya kalau jahit baju masa tengah pakai akan bawa malang ke? Aku cuma taknak hang terluka, atau tercucuk jarum. Sama macam orang tua-tua yang buat pantang tu." Then he turns back to Abbas, and swings their joined hands once, gently, like a child on a path, and the playfulness drains out of his face until what remains is steady and sincere. "Jadi Bas, hang tak payah fikir lebih-lebih. Kau cuma kena tahu yang—"
He pauses, and Abbas braces himself for what's next.
"Mak kau bukan mati sebab kau."
It is the one thing that no person has ever said aloud in his hearing, and he realises now, with a slow and dizzying horror, that it is the very thing he has been guarding behind his distance.
"Dan aku, dengan Piji, takkan mati sebab kau juga."
Mazli says it more softly still, and Abbas finds that he can't lift his eyes from the sheet, where the three shadows lie joined. It is such a simple sentence, and yet, it is perfectly shaped to the fear beneath his fear, that it seems to him a sort of marvel that any person could have found it, and he wonders how long Mazli has carried it, turning it over in his rowdy mind, waiting for the moment when it might be set down without breaking anything, without breaking Abbas.
"Kan, Piji?" Mazli turns to Rafizi and grins, wet-eyed, and Rafizi smiles.
With his hand held in Mazli’s warm grip and the pale smiling face looking up at him from the photo, Abbas feels the tightness in his chest, which has been there so long that he had mistaken it for the shape of his own body, begins to loosen. He thinks that he ought to say something, that the moment has been held open for him with such patience that it would be a kind of cruelty to let it close on silence, and yet the first words that rise in him are:
"Aku tak percayakan manusia."
The other two turn to look at him, and he forces himself to go on, though the sentence scrapes its way out of his throat. "Aku tak percayakan manusia, sebab aku bukan kau, Mazli. Aku tak percaya yang manusia ada ihsan dan kasih untuk sesama manusia."
How could he? His whole life has been an education in the opposite lesson, a long procession of closed doors and lowered voices, of people who smiled at his name and counted what it might buy them, of a father who had flung a single sentence across a room and never once reached to take it back. He has learnt the cruelty of people by heart, the way other boys learn their multiplication tables, and he has never found a single page in the book where it says otherwise. He feels Mazli's thumb brush across his knuckles, in consolation or perhaps in apology, and his heart gives a hard, painful clench, and Abbas shifts his hand and slides his fingers between Mazli's, slotting them in and closing them in a tight grip, as one grips a rope in a rising flood.
"Tapi, Mazli. Li. Aku.."
He looks at Mazli, and finds that the dark eyes are already waiting for him, with nothing in them that asks him to hurry. This is the largest thing he has ever tried to say, larger than the story of his mother's flight and larger than the confession of his name, because those were only accounts of what had been done to him, and this is a thing that he must do himself.
"Aku percayakan kau."
The words leave him quiet and entire, and the room does not fall in. The light goes on slanting through the shutters, and the small hand in his holds on a little tighter, and he understands that a sentence like that can be spoken once and be true for the rest of his life.
Then he lifts his eyes to Rafizi, and he finds that he can't say the same. The honesty of it makes him ashamed, and he waits for the flicker of hurt, the withdrawal, the closing of a face that he has seen on so many others. It doesn't come. Rafizi only looks back at him, steady and unoffended, and he realises that Rafizi has understood the whole of it, the refusal and the reason and the road that lies behind both, and has decided, without a word, that he is content to wait at the far end. It is, Abbas thinks, a faith that he has done nothing to earn.
Mazli nods happily.
"Cukup lah tu, kan? Kalau hang boleh percaya satu manusia, maksudnya ada kemungkinan untuk hang percaya manusia yang lain. Lagipun, aku dengan Piji akan hidup lama, lama, lamaaaa, untuk teman kau!"
The logic is so shameless, and impervious to argument, that a snicker escapes Abbas and Rafizi's shoulders begin to shake, and Mazli collapses sideways with a crow of giggles. The three of them dissolve into laughter and Abbas finds that he hasn't let go, that his fingers are still laced through Mazli's, and that Mazli's other hand is still held in Rafizi's, and they rock together with each fresh wave of mirth, joined at the centre by the smallest and loudest of them all.
The photograph lies upon the sheet between their knees, with sunlight moving slowly across the smiling woman's face, and Abbas looks down at it, between one gasp of laughter and the next, and for the first time in all the years that it has lived in his book, he doesn't turn it over.