Initiates by Philip Spires (best new books to read txt) 📖

green was picking his nose and assessing the booty at a squinting arm’s length. In orange with a white sash, the next poked his ear, fidgeted with his hair, adjusted his balls. The next, rather drab in brown, was quite obviously snoozing, but actively so, readjusting to new discomfort every few seconds. Opposite was a man in salmon pink with a blue and gold samping tekat. He was also asleep, his head nodding to the side only to be corrected to straight every few seconds. There was a child, perched on his plastic chair, his legs too short to reach the ground, his dangling designer label patent shoes shining almost as fiercely as the crimson satin of his suit. No-one was talking. It was as if conversation was publicly banned, rendered inappropriate, suppressed by the weight of the occasion.

And then a penny dropped. Ted realised the obvious. There were two groups of men, two squares of plastic chairs, two classes of invitation. The headgear nearby was all black. In the second group, the one where Haji was currently doing his rounds, white predominated above the neck. He, the expatriate, the non-believer, he was in with the second class citizens, the non-hajis.

Sylvie had noticed other women giving money. She asked her new friend and neighbour how much would be expected, and received a non-committal answer. She opened her handbag and extracted ten dollars from her wallet. Zubaidah’s mother saw this and reached across her daughter, wordlessly indicating that Sylvie should put away her money, which she did, more quickly than she had taken it out. She seemed to be trying to say that nothing would be expected from the whites, the orang puteh. When the collecting groups reached her, however, she quickly retrieved the note and placed it in the opened palms of the bride’s mother, surfaces intricately marbled with henna applied for the occasion. The ample lady passed Sylvie’s donation back to a member of her entourage, obviously an employed civil servant, used to bureaucracy and specially chosen to keep the accounts. The figure was duly noted in a personal organiser as the note itself was passed to a third woman who stuffed it into a bag.

The greeting that had accompanied Sylvie’s ten dollars had been a perfunctory smile and a handshake. Zubaidah’s fifty dollars evoked a good two minutes of apparently intimate chat, the friendly handshake held throughout. Sylvie was tempted to make an increased offer, but let the matter pass. It was Zubaidah who spoke next, however. She spoke directly to Sylvia, in a tone that seemed to assume friendship, but her manner and content were both surprising, even vaguely abrasive.

“I hope these people get on with it. We have to go to another wedding today – much grander than this.” Zubaidah’s lower lip protruded just a little as she quickly mimicked a scan of the scene before them. “The people here are nothing special,” she whispered, as she craned her neck to get a better view of the food on offer. “The people this evening are much better connected. It will be a better class of event.”

Sylvie considered a response, wondering if the comment referred to social status or wealth. She had just decided that they were the same thing, when she became suddenly conscious of the fact that her skirt did not cover her lower legs.

They had been sitting under the shade for an hour and a half when the call to prayer finally rang out. There were loudspeakers at each corner of the awning’s frame and, with all monies counted, the moment had arrived when proceedings could process. A young boy inserted a double checked disc into the player and fiddled to comic effect with the volume at the start of the familiar calls. Ted knew not to smile. Sylvie was surprised at how many of the nearby women giggled. But when a collective wipe of the face signalled that all was done, there was a distinct lightening of feel. Glasses of Coca Cola and mineral water were poured and distributed while fast-moving, officious youngsters lifted cling-film covers from the trays of food. Plastic plates, plastic spoons and paper serviettes appeared and were distributed with fawning decorum and precision to the guests who, after a pause just long enough to be noticed, rose to take their helpings of food. Everyone knew the beef rendang would be finished before even half of the guests had reached the table. There was some light conversation, but by and large this time was devoted to eating. Leftovers, chicken bones and licked spoons were discarded directly into black plastic sacks that the organising youngsters placed beneath the central tables, some of the guests merely placing their debris in the vicinity of the receptacle in an effort to keep their fingers clean. And immediately people started to leave. “So that is that,” Ted thought as he sifted through the mixed vegetables in search of a few more prawns.

Over half of the guests had already left when Haji and his wife approached Zubaidah and her mother. Despite her earlier dismissal of the quality of the food on offer, Zubaidah had taken a helping proportionate to her bulk. She had struggled to control the deformation of the thin plastic plate with one hand whilst the other dug in with the spoon, and was still eating, rather than already on her way when the clearly unexpected invitation came. She was in fact in the middle of explaining to Sylvie exactly where in Greater Manchester she had lived as a student when the bride’s mother laid her hand on the fleshiness of the upper arm in an unspoken invitation to stand. Thus Sylvie was adjudged to be part of the group and, without a word being spoken, the three women, Zubaidah, her mother and a tag-along Sylvie were led towards the house. As they passed the edge of the men’s area, Haji gave Ted a tap on the shoulder and invited him to join them.

“How did you get on?” he asked, finding new relief in his wife’s proximity.

“I seem to have made a friend,” she answered, nodding towards Zubaidah’s bulk.

“You know, that is what’s so wonderful about Nora,” he said incongruously, after a short pause. “So many of the women here become enormous. Nora is so slim and sylph-like. And you know she’s an athlete as well?”

“Ted, I’ve only met her a couple of times in the office,” Sylvie replied. “You work with her every day. I don’t know her.” After a short pause at the lower step of the house’s grand, arcaded, classical portico she added, “Given what seems to happen in marriages around here, it’s possible that the women get fat deliberately. The layers might provide a bit of much needed distance from their husbands.”

“Or it sends them elsewhere…”

“Same thing. That’s exactly what I meant.”

Haji spoke a few words, all in Malay, before turning and leading his wife by the hand into the house. “He said he is taking us to see the bride. The groom is due to arrive in a few minutes. I think we are getting privileged treatment.” Zubaidah’s words were meant only for Sylvie’s ears, but they were loud enough for everyone to hear.

After the sunlit outside, the interior seemed momentarily dark, but Sylvie’s eyes still took in all they saw. The room was already quite full, with everyone ignoring the seats, preferring to stand in deference.

It wasn’t the opulence alone that struck her; it was how opulence was layered on opulence in, at least to her eyes, apparently random overstatement. It wasn’t enough for the curtains to be of heavy brocade with long gilt tassels. Their brilliant pink also needed a thick, heavy, yellow satin border. And the room was carpeted – brilliant purple with red and white floral Chinese serpents strewn on top. The mock Louis Quinze Indonesian copy of indeterminate Italian Baroque inspiration furniture had so many gilded scrolls that it looked like a library in a flower shop, the vast blooms of its upholstery figured almost to three full dimensions.

But it was the dais and its occupant that rendered Sylvie breathless. Through the sliding doors into the living room they went, and there beneath a vast, gathered, canopied, yellow curtain were set two even more ornate chairs. And everything was edged with attached bouquets of expensive blooms, so perfect that initially Sylvie took them to be artificial. But they were real. Flowers that cost more than a dollar a stalk were apparently cultivated here. There were vast bouquets set in pedestalled vases, one central, two others to the sides. And there, in the right hand chair sat Nora, whom Ted did not recognise. She was probably smiling, but quite motionless, her eyes perhaps a little open, perhaps closed. Her small hands gripped a bouquet of their own, the hands themselves presenting a solid henna-brown ribbon around the stems. Nora’s dress was of indeterminate design, there being so much of it that it was impossible to assess its construction. The veil was white, trimmed with gold and worn like a grand tudong, not covering the face. A gentle, perhaps fixed smile played at the corners of her mouth.

Cameras were produced. “That is one heap of work,” said Ted. Sylvie did not know whether he meant the dress, the dais, the drapes, the flowers or even the bride, but she sought no clarification, since her husband’s comment applied to them all. A teenager dressed in a bright orange suit appeared and spoke with Nora’s father, who immediately but politely ushered his invited guests into a space he negotiated with those to the left of the platform.

Sylvie and Ted turned to watch as Haji left the room. Almost immediately he reappeared, framed in the aperture of the sliding doors, now accompanied by a turbaned young man in cream satin who looked like he might recently have been spirited from an Aladdin’s lamp. He wore no samping, only a gold cummerbund to secure the voluminous long jacket. Prominent, but held almost apologetically before him, was his dagger, which he slowly drew. A Malay kris, a slender wave-like blade beneath an angled guard, reflected the camera flashes, all of which seemed to hit at the same time. And then the dagger was sheathed, with a gentle but assertive push. There was a gentle ripple of ostentatiously polite applause.

“It is symbolic”, whispered Zubaidah in Sylvie’s ear. “It is penis and vagina,” she continued, choosing not to notice Sylvie’s reaction.

As the groom advanced across the room to claim his bride, Sylvie noticed only the black incongruity of his lace-up shoes. She had expected to find pointed sandals, perhaps embroidered, with a rhinestone trim. Not once did Nora’s eyes lift from their indeterminate focus, even as he took his appointed seat on the dais next to her, his new conquest. Cameras again flashed as he held his sheathed dagger upright on his thigh.

When they stood, stood together for more pictures. It took a minute or so for the problem to register. Ted did not notice at first, but then, when the couple began to move, merely to shuffle from side to side to acknowledge the angle of the cameras, he was aware of something unfamiliar about the girl with whom he wad worked so closely for six months. It was Sylvia who put words to his thoughts, however, when she turned to whisper, “I thought you said she was an athlete? She looks crippled. She can barely walk.”

Ted looked at her, confused. “She had a couple of days off work, but we thought