Moonrise, Sunset

Gopal Baratham

Description

Hours after agreeing to marry How Kum Menon, Vanita Sundram is murdered, stabbed while asleep in her fiance's arms. More killings follow, and the reluctant and grieving How Kum is swept up in the police investigation. As time passes and the murders remain unsolved, several self-proclaimed 'experts' muscle in: How Kum's drunken 'Uncle' Oscar with his underworld links: the unlikely double-act of an American psycho-sexual healer and his matronly psychic sidekick: and a Hindu holy-man...A political thriller in the tradition of Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, Moonrise, Sunset enhances Gopal Baratham's reputation as Singapore's most brilliant and controversial writer.

Sujets

• Political
• Politics

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814634847
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for Gopal Baratham s writing:
The writer possesses a technically excellent prose style, so smooth that it slips down the reader s throat like a well-made Singapore Sling.
- T HE H INDU
Baratham s talent as a writer has been undisputed. So has his moral courage.
- T HE I NDIAN E XPRESS
a genuine ability to tell a story.
- C OMMENTARY
Singapore s literary enfant terrible
- T HE W ESTERN A USTRALIA
Baratham s controversial - has always been
- A SIA T IMES
The absence of jargon and pretentiousness lends a special charm to the low-key stories that explore the emotions of the locals
- A SIAWEEK

1996 Gopal Baratham
Cover designed by Sarah and Schooling
First published by Serpent s Tail, 4 Blackstock Mews, London N4
This revised edition published in 2014 by
Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196
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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Baratham, Gopal, 1935-2002.
Moonrise, sunset / Gopal Baratham. - Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2014. pages cm
ISBN : 978-981-4351-36-2 (paperback) eISBN: 978 981 4634 84 7
1. Murder - Investigation - Fiction. I. Title.
PR9570.S53 S823 - dc23 OCN891602477
Printed in Singapore by NPE Printers Pte Ltd
To Ban Kah Choon with affection and respect
I SEE THINGS different from other people. The sky talks to me, sends messages in rainstorms and lightning. The Singapore night, warm and damp like a dog s tongue, licks my face and tickles the side of my ear. People gushing out of MRT stations dance to secret harmonies and fingers working a keyboard have a choreography only I am aware of. Unconnected images string themselves into pictures and events, willy-nilly, lie one against the other till sequence is unavoidable. This is how the world has always been to me; this is how, I hope, it will always be. I keep my thoughts to myself, however. If I didn t, people would think me mad.
Not Vanita though. She listens, tries not to smile, though I sometimes sound outrageous even to myself. This is one of the many things I love about Vanita. One of the many lovely, unbelievable, heart-stopping things.
I look to the east over the tops of the ships and beyond the shadows of the islands. Look right to the edge of the world, where a gigantic red ball is emerging from the sea. A thought strikes me. An odd thought, something which normally I would have kept to myself. But I loved the woman beside me and trusted her not to laugh, or at least not to laugh too much, at the goings-on in my head. So I spoke up. I think that moonrise looks so much like sunset that it is impossible to tell one from the other.
Vanita stopped what she was doing. Don t be silly, she said. Moons rise in the east, which is there. She pointed to the open sea. Suns set in the west. She held my face and turned my head sharply round till it faced the city which is there. Vanita has a lovely voice, lilting with highs and lows jumbled, like a boy s at puberty. She makes music without meaning to. I waited for its spell to subside before turning to stare at the full moon again.
For some reason it made me uneasy. Not full moons generally. This full moon. It stained the clouds which had hung about all evening a deep purplish-blue. A lovely colour, in most circumstances. Round their edges, however, were mean yellow tinges which made them look like bruises growing old. I was disturbed by this moonrise, wondered what it was trying to say to me.
I turned away from it, back to Vanita. I have been looking at it for a long time and I can t see how I can tell without turning my head whether it is moonrise or sunset.
My sweet, sweet boy, you are lovely to love but that doesn t stop you being a dumbo. You can t tell anything from anything unless you look around you.
What if you don t want to? What if you can t ?
Never mind, she said, fishing out a piece of fried chicken and popping it into my mouth. She put another into my hand for good measure and went on with what she was doing.
Vanita treats me like a child. Perhaps, she has a right to, for she is my first girl.
When I met her a year ago, I was twenty-seven and a virgin. Vanita was surprised, though she need not have been. I am not hungry for experience, have never gone out to grab life in the way that is recommended these days. I tend to let things happen to me, allow myself to be buffeted this way and that by events. I must confess that I really don t pay too much attention to what goes on around me because I am confident that, when things are right and without my searching for it, a pattern will emerge and I will recognise it; and in it the time, the place, the person. And, when this happens, I would know what to do.
As soon as I set eyes on Vanita, I knew that the person I had been waiting for had arrived. I slipped into the sequence of events that followed our meeting easily; as easily as I, though totally inexperienced, slipped into her body.
I was, nevertheless, glad that she had some expertise in these matters and, to put things in her own words, knew what went where and how things worked . I was grateful that she was knowledgeable but was never moved to find out how she had come by her knowledge or how many lovers she had had before me though she had said often enough that she would be only too happy to tell me. Vanita is not coy about such things. I discovered this very early on.
I am tall, unmuscular, and pale skinned. I have always been worried about looking effeminate. After our first night together, Vanita told me that I had nothing to be ashamed of. She assured me that I was, in the area that really mattered, better endowed than any of the men she had been with. This may have been why she handled my body with the kind of care that collectors reserve for their prize pieces; how she got it to do things I didn t think it capable of. I was flattered; pleasured beyond my wildest dreams. Now, as I watched her unpack the food she had cooked, I felt the rush of desire and was impatient to begin making love.
I tore my eyes away from her and looked around the park.
Singapore is so small that it is easy to visualise it as a diamond-shaped island lying sideways at the tip of the Malay peninsula. East Coast Park runs along its south-eastern edge where the waters of the Indian Ocean merge with those of the China Sea.
We had been coming to the same spot in the park for nearly a year. Vanita had chosen it. It was some distance from the beach and away from the teenagers and their noisy Sony compos, almost far enough for the smell of barbecue sauce not to reach us. From where we were, I could see the ships riding at anchor, smell the turning of the tides and, when I listened really carefully, hear voices speaking in strange tongues.
Our tiny island is the busiest port in the world and the destination, at some time, of every craft that sails the seas. And ships bring with them the sounds of faraway places, hints of exquisite pleasures, suggestions that impossible dreams can somewhere be realised. From where we sat, I felt that I could reach out and touch the world, feel it breathe, take its pulse. It was the perfect spot for making love to the woman for whom I had waited so long.
I stretched out on the grass and looked at the rising moon. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Vanita spreading the heavy waterproof sheet on which we would spend the night. At one end of this she placed the sleeping-bag which we would pull over our naked bodies when it got cold, as it sometimes did just before dawn. Then she began unpacking the food she had cooked.
I knew what this would be and knowing made my appetite as sharp as my desire. Besides the spicy fried chicken there would be chapatis wrapped round mince and peas, fish grilled in banana leaves, dry curried vegetables and an assortment of pickles. For dessert we always had semolina cooked in milk that had been sweetened with rock-sugar and spiced with cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. To this Vanita always added a generous helping of Benedictine, a liqueur which Singaporeans believe increases desire and improves sexual performance. I do not know what it did for my lovemaking but it certainly made me sleep soundly once this was done. And the depth of my slumber contributed to the horror I was soon to know.
Innocent of what was to come, we ate, fed each other and felt one with the sea and the dancing lights of the ships.
The food tasted better than ever. Vanita is a marvellous cook and I was especially happy that evening. I knew,