weekend

It was raining the whole weekend, with little splashes of sunshine wedged in between the showers. The five of us had breakfast at the coffee table – I had helped with peeling off the skins of the sweet potatoes to make cek mek molek. Mother used to make a lot of them when we were little. Then the guest came, her belly enormous, and we talked, talking about pregnancy, stuff and teasing the little ones about marriage. The wives tell each other tales of their shopping sprees to buy perfume, grabbing everything under 5 minutes of closing. Their husbands, on the other hand, all work, either as chef or a cleaner somewhere in the city, but everything is affordable when you have pay of thirty dollars an hour.

They proceeded then with unearthing the bags of perfume under the bed, all five or ten of them. “Murah sangat! Rugi tak beli” I look at the brands and names, take a sniff or two, marvel at whether I care about all these worn out celebrities who do a side business of making perfume; Mariah Carey, Halle Barry, J.Lo, Justin Bieber, Britney, and sell them at convoluted prices. It’s for their siblings and makciks and friends, the wives say to me, and would be a great gift. The gift of perfume, bought cheaply, given randomly without any selective measure, there’s nothing great in that. But to each their own.

A and I went to the saturday market, because I wanted to just scout for interesting things. It was raining after all, and there were not many stalls around. I managed to find a man selling off his collection of books. His is a interesting bunch – Kafka wedged between a biography of Salinger, T.S Eliot, Nabokov, vintage copies of Hemingway’s, four of Murakami, Karl Pilkington, Keroac, Salinger’s For Esme, with Love and Squalor (which is just another version of Nine Stories) and even the contemporary ones which I bought but never had read. His books are nicely taken care of without any markings – a perfectionist of some kind – seen by the way he arranges back the books I picked the other way around (I said sorry). I found a copy of Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, which I intended to buy but seeing I have about a bunch of other books to be read at home and little money to be spent, I decided otherwise. We went into De Capo’s after that, and found nothing worth buying. In the end all I want are bargains and rare finds.

Back home, I wedged between the wives who are talking to each other about post-natal depression. I had forgotten she was pregnant, my head was just an inch away from her belly. The baby is due next week. Infinitely curious, I rubbed and nudged it, imagining the life inside. But here are the wives talking about a woman jumping off from a ten story building, her head smashed next to the swimming pool.  Thus death and birth is spoken casually.

“But she had been posting photos and statuses happily on Facebook. No one suspected a thing”

It is annoying to have your whole life scrutinized when you die. Clues, ques, words, all these last things are overemphasized to give them a sort of symbolic importance to justify their own death. As if trying to find a glimpse of life in the already dead. The need to immortalize, to cling, to exhaust the person even of his traces. Even the lamest things, like what he last ate before crashing head on in some accident is mentioned. Thus they arrive to their own conclusions, be a judge of character of whether a person has lived a good life or not.

(When my brother was thrown in a three week long coma, all flocked to his blog, already making odes and dedications, tracing any signs of life in him.)

We went to Bondi Junction afterwards, to an officer’s house. She lived at level nine, and her balcony overlooked the entire city. She made nasi ayam and cupcakes, and we ate watching TV3 on stream while Sydney rained before us. The other guests soon arrive and I have seen all but recognized none. A guy told me he was in my team while at the same camp – I had forgotten his name and face. I am terrible at remembering people. We went home, talking about A’s developing love episodes. Apparently this time, it is going good.

(The night disappeared in a flash. I studied Camus’ The Outsider until I fell asleep.)