Arjun didn't twitch this time. He was already home, in place built on leaving that people had stayed long enough to make home, with girl who vaulted counter and boss who counted everything but knew when to cross things out and photo of three people who started it all with lie and tamarind whiskey that killed bite and made you remember.
He drank. Bitter, then sweet at end, if you waited.
He waited.
Night in Love Lane in 1978 was not night as you know it now. There were no backpackers with guitars. No cafes that called themselves speakeasy. There was dark that was really dark, because Mr. Chew turned off the street bulb at 10 PM to save electricity, and there was sound that was really sound, because no air-con hummed to cover it.
You could hear water dripping from the attap roofs next door, one drop at a time, from the rain that had stopped at 4 AM but still lived in gutters. You could hear Ah Lan's wok, even though she had gone home, because the wok kept its heat for an hour. You could hear the mosque on Acheh Street, not the call yet, but the old man who swept its steps, his broom making circles.
Arjun liked night because night was when the bar stopped being Hotel Malaya Bar and became just bar, the way Lina stopped being waitress who never asked for help and became just Lina, who rubbed her wrist when tired.
After Muthu's son left, after photo was placed behind bar next to I LEAVE THIS JOINT TO CHEW paper, now two relics, Mr. Chew went upstairs to watch his small black-and-white TV that showed only one channel and snow. The mynah bird was covered with cloth. It muttered "Stay" once, softly, then corrected itself with "No rooms!" louder, as if afraid to be sentimental.
Lina and Arjun stayed downstairs to close, same ritual without anyone deciding it, same as March, April, May.
Chairs up. Till counted. Floor swept. Red emergency light on. That red light was from British time. It was supposed to come on when blackout, but it came on every night at 11 PM because wiring was bad. In its glow, everyone looked like they were inside a heart, which is why people told truth under it without meaning to.
Lina counted tips. Not money, but who left what. Mrs. Tan from table 3 left two twenty-cent coins and a hairpin. Sailors from port left $1 and a foreign coin that wasn't money here. Muthu's son left photo and no tip, which was correct, because some things you don't tip.
Arjun cleaned bottles. He had four kicap bottles now. Tamarind paste, burnt palm sugar, clove water, and Batch 3 that was now half gone and would be gone tomorrow, short again.
"Tell me how you remember," Lina said, not looking up from coins.
"How I remember what?" he asked.
"Everything. You remember Mrs. Tan less ice. You remember my scar is from zinc table, not wok. You remember my father says fertilizer boy owns two pigs and Honda. You remember everything but you pretend you don't."
He set bottle down. He looked at her in red light. Her cheek had line from cot sheet again, because they had napped upstairs at 5 PM after Chew told them to, and she had fallen asleep on his chest while he counted fan clicks.
"I remember because I am scared to forget," he said. It was real thing, so he didn't make it poetry. "In Bagan Jermal, my mother remembers everything. She remembers what time my father came home 1968, what he ate. I thought if I forget, I become different person. If I become different person, she will not know me when I go back."
"And now?"
"Now I remember because I want to stay. Different."
She nodded, like she knew difference. She took the hairpin Mrs. Tan left, small, pearl, and put it in her hair, hastily tied, crooked. It made her look less like waitress, more like girl who got off bus with canvas bag.
"You know how bar remembers?" she said. "Not in head. In hands. My grandmother taught me to make kueh. I forgot recipe when she died. But my hands remember. When I fry, my hands know when oil hot, when to flip. Hands remember fire."
She held out her hands, palms up, in red light. Small hands, strong, scar on left wrist crescent moon catching red, making it look like fresh.
"Touch," she said.
He touched. His hands, steady, that Chew hired in 1977 because steady, covered hers.
"Bar remembers like hands," she said. "Not like head."
Upstairs, TV flickered. Mr. Chew laughed at something. Mynah bird, under cloth, said "Stay" again, very soft, and this time didn't correct.
At 11:30 PM, they did inventory without clipboard, because clipboard was upstairs with Chew, and because some inventory you do with eyes, not pen.
Lina: "One photo. One paper with wrong spelling. One mynah bird who learned new word."
Arjun: "Thirty limes -> ten. Tamarind 1kg -> 100g. Gula Melaka gone. Whiskey gone."
Lina: "One cot. Three creaks. One letter posted to Mak Mandin, one to Kuala Ketil temple."
Arjun: "One boy who left twice."
Lina: "One girl who ran once."
Together, quiet, because red light makes you whisper: "One bar built on leaving that stayed."
They turned off red light. Bar looked innocent again. Old wood, peeling paint, Chengal that was supposed to be teak.
They went upstairs, barefoot, matching shoes left downstairs on purpose this time, because yesterday mismatched shoes was accident, today matching shoes left behind is choice, is saying we are here, we will need shoes tomorrow, we are not disappearing.
Cot creaked. First near head, then middle, then near window, all three, because they were no longer trying to be quiet.
Downstairs, Chengal bar cooled. At 6 AM it would be cool again. At 2 PM warm. At 11 PM hot. It would remember them, even if they forgot how to fit, even if they left again, even if ferry took them.
That is how bar remembers. Not in ledger. In wood. In smell. In hands. In three creaks that only happen when two people move at once.
Penang was a place that taught people how to leave. Until someone decides to stay and gives it a pulse. And some homes, even after people leave, keep the shape of them, like cot sheet keeps line on cheek for an hour after you wake, until heat erases it, until you make it again tomorrow.
Enough to be short again tomorrow.
The next morning, May 7th, 1978, Sunday, it rained again, but different rain. Not hammering rain that turned Love Lane into river. Drizzle, soft, like someone breathing on window.
Mr. Chew did inventory at 7 AM, three sharp raps, but this time he knocked on bar, not door, because doors were already open.
Lina was already there, hair tied with pearl hairpin Mrs. Tan left, which she had kept. Arjun was there, shoes matching, Seiko watch shaken to start at 3:15, which was correct time twice a day.
Chew looked at them and didn't write limes first. He wrote, in Red Anchor ledger under loose floorboard, not clipboard: May 7, Bar remembers. Boy and girl still here. Photo still there. Mynah bird still says Stay sometimes. I still count.
Then he went to clipboard and wrote, for health inspector: Limes 30->30 (bought extra, because rain, no customers, but good to have). And for himself, small at bottom: Love -> enough.
He left clipboard on bar and went to make kopi O black as tar.
Lina touched photo of Muthu, Whitby, Chew 1938. "We should add one," she said.
Arjun took Polaroid camera that tourist left last month and never claimed, because tourist was drunk and left camera and took someone else's hat. He held it up.
"Bar doesn't like photos," Chew said, coming back. "Photos make it forget. But one more won't hurt."
He stood behind bar, where he had stood since 1941, hands steady though shaking a little now at fifty-six. Lina stood on customer side, sleeves up, scar showing. Arjun stood between, where bar is not bar but place where people cross.
Flash. Click. Photo came out white, then slowly brown, then faces.
Three people, 1978, in bar that started as lie in 1936. One boy who left twice, one girl who ran once, one man who stayed forty-two years counting limes so he wouldn't have to count dead friends.
They pinned it next to 1938 photo. Two photos, forty years apart, same Chengal bar that was supposed to be teak.
Bar remembered both.
End of Part 4
Next Part 5
DISCLAIMER
This work is a work of pure fiction. All characters, names, incidents, dialogues, and locations including Hotel Malaya Bar, Mr. Chew, Lina, Arun, Shankar and all its regulars, staff and patrons are entirely fictitious and products of the author's imagination.
Any resemblance or connection to any actual place, whether still standing today, renovated, demolished, or bombed and destroyed during the Second World War, is purely coincidental.
Any resemblance to any person, whether alive, dead, buried, cremated, or committed to the sea, is also purely coincidental and unintentional.
No identification with actual persons, living or deceased, or with any existing establishment, is intended or should be inferred.
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