{"id":88,"date":"2015-11-16T07:15:47","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T13:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thespectacle.wpengine.com\/?p=88"},"modified":"2016-05-17T14:10:38","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T19:10:38","slug":"durian-durian-by-liam-callanan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=88","title":{"rendered":"“Taste” by Liam Callanan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex was her problem, two ways. One, her problem to supervise in Singapore, and two, her problem in that she\u2019d asked for him, or rather, someone like him, to address the stumblings of previous visits. The authors the State Department had sent before had been old. They were hard to hear and hard to please and did not like visiting schoolchildren. Grace had asked her boss to ask Washington for people more youthful, and State had sent a series of four very young authors. But they almost all had Asian names. Two were Korean American and one was Japanese American. Only the fourth was white, and he was tattooed. The expatriates who attended the first three readings hadn\u2019t seemed to mind, but the Singaporeans felt insulted, she knew. She could see their indignation without even having to read the DID YOU ENJOY THIS \u2018TRIP\u2019 TO THE UNITED STATES? comment cards that she collected after each event. <\/span>Who are Americans to think that Singapore needs to discover <\/span><\/i>Asian<\/span> authors<\/span><\/i>, is what the Singaporeans thought. They had perfectly fine Asian authors here, rather than these pretenders who couldn\u2019t even speak anything but broad, flat American English. <\/span><\/p>\n

And now, this <\/span><\/i>mat salleh<\/span> with the tattoos<\/span><\/i>, one local man said to Grace afterwards, and then shook his head and walked away.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was an issue, yes. The tattoos. But the bigger issue, Grace thought, was that the man had even used the pejorative with her, with Grace\u2014a Singaporean with roots in China, but in that room, that night, a representative of the United States. <\/span>Mat salleh<\/span><\/i>: a kind of pidgin Malay for <\/span>mad sailor<\/span><\/i>, mad as in red-faced and sunburned, mad as in crazy to be out in the sun. Mad as in that\u2019s exactly what this young tattooed author was, angry at things Grace could understand but not control, like the heat, and angry at things she did not understand and she could not control, like Orchard Street. <\/span>Three Cartier stores in two blocks is obscene, <\/span><\/i>he said. He was <\/span>not an author but a writer<\/span><\/i>. He wanted to see <\/span>not this simulacrum of a city but the real Singapore<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

He might not ever get to <\/span>see<\/span><\/i> the real Singapore, her boss said, \u201cBut he sure as hell is going to taste it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Grace\u2019s boss had a strange name, Jack Fountain, and an easy job, cultural attach\u00e9. The attach\u00e9\u2019s duties were few; Jack\u2019s favorite was escorting visiting artists. Of late, these artists had all been authors. With the budget cuts, they were the cheapest. They required no costumes or lighting or fancy auditoriums. They hardly required payment. You stood them up in front of an audience and they read, and then they posed for pictures and then they flew home. <\/span><\/p>\n

On the way to the airport, however, Jack always insisted they stop for durian. Not because he liked what Singaporeans called \u201cthe king of fruits,\u201d but because he liked taking pictures of visitors taking their first bite. The spiny, head-sized fruits were very much to Americans\u2019 dislike. The smell was like \u201crotting clothes\u201d or \u201crotting flesh,\u201d or so visitors described it, which always seemed odd to Grace: America was the country that enjoyed \u201chot dogs,\u201d which the embassy dutifully served each year at a July party. Hot dogs smelled like their name. And durian, unlike hot dogs, looked like a food that would be appropriate to eat, not to mention display\u2014at least before it was cut open. Jack loved that moment, loved it so much he refused to believe durian was seasonal, that it couldn\u2019t be had throughout the year. \u201cThere\u2019s only one season here, summer,\u201d he would say. <\/span><\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t, but it was summer now, durian was available, and\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cListen,\u201d Jack said. \u201cI can\u2019t swing it tonight. I\u2019ll need you to do the drive, the durian, the photo, the airport.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is okay,\u201d Grace said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re so funny,\u201d Jack said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack was funny, in that other sense of the word Grace was learning (from Jack, who used it for people like Alex). It meant <\/span>odd<\/span><\/i>, could mean <\/span>inscrutable<\/span><\/i>, or even <\/span>ill<\/span><\/i>. It was hard to say. Just as it was often hard to say if Jack was joking. She had not had this problem with Americans before. It was very easy to tell when they were joking; they laughed first, they laughed for you. They laughed all the time. <\/span><\/p>\n

But Mr. Fountain\u2014who said to call him Jack, which Grace had been experimenting with, unpleasantly\u2014smiled. He didn\u2019t laugh. \u201cAnd,\u201d he said, \u201cfeel free\u201d\u2014a phrase Americans used widely, but only with regard to the most minor things\u2014\u201cto come in late tomorrow.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

That this sentence was intended to be a kindness, a small gift, Grace understood, but disliked. It felt dishonest, dishonorable, almost a punishment. \u00a0She did not explain this to him, she did not want him to think she misunderstood. She did not want him to say, again, that Grace spoke English <\/span>perfectly<\/span><\/i>, which may also have been a kind of joke: she had been born and raised in Singapore; English was (along with Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) the official language. But it was also true that her family was Chinese, and that she had just returned from four years of college in China, where she spoke Mandarin exclusively and, up until the very end, well.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘Speaking of,’ Jack said. ‘Take a hearse tonight.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then it was back to Singapore, back to English\u2014and Singlish, too, of course. But Singlish was for friends, the streets, texting, and capital-E English was for business, for government, for getting ahead. And so, despite Jack\u2019s assurances, she took time with English now, not so much relearning the language as reacquainting herself with it, the shape of its words, the slope of its sentences. She had even signed up for a writing class at night. It wasn\u2019t great, but the bigger mistake was that she had told Jack about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd your class!\u201d Jack said. \u201cThe library cancelled, right? Take this Alex person there, pre-durian!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

She thought. It could be a joke. The class was nowhere near the embassy or the sparkling stores of Orchard Street. The building, a community center, was un-air-conditioned, and grease from the food stalls in the hawker center nearby hung in the air like mist. Some nights, no students came. Some nights, the teacher did not come. \u00a0But there were actual desks, a chalkboard, a teacher who refused bribes, and on the wall, posters of authors. Shakespeare. Toni Morrison. John F. Kennedy, whom Jack once told her went by \u2018Jack,\u2019 which was almost certainly a joke.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know this one has kept you busy,\u201d Jack said; he had not stopped talking. She wondered what she had missed. \u201cNext time,\u201d he said, \u201cwe\u2019ll specify girls. Women! No boys. Boys are trouble.\u201d He smiled. He stood. She stood. He bowed slightly. She did not. Anything unspoken she understood perfectly well.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSpeaking of,\u201d Jack said. \u201cTake a hearse tonight.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

A hearse. That had been a very confusing, and troubling, Google research session for what turned out to be the nickname (just Jack\u2019s?) for the embassy\u2019s bulletproof sedans. They had windshields an inch thick and the doors took two people to close. Alex, exasperated\u2014why had the library cancelled? Where was her boss? Why did they have to get durian? Where were they going, <\/span>really<\/span><\/i>?\u2014asked why. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause it is so heavy,\u201d Grace said. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Alex said, \u201cwhy are we in this tank? Is there a problem?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Grace said. A message had come from Washington ordering all embassies, consulates, and Presence Posts in Zone 14 to restrict urban travel for the next 48 hours, and to take precautions if such travel was necessary. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Problem, what problem? Everything\u2019s fine. We\u2019re just rolling in the armored car because we like the look,\u2019\u201d Alex said. \u201cFine. <\/span>Here\u2019s<\/span><\/i> the problem. You know what the entry card at the airport says, the little slip you fill out? Or maybe it\u2019s just Americans who get it. \u2018DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS,\u2019 it says, all caps, like a text from your mom.\u201d He leaned forward to peer through the windshield. \u201cThis is a joke.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Everything, everywhere, smelled of smoke, of fire, but distantly, as if the far reaches of the paperwhite sky were curling into flame.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

She had introduced Alex to her teacher, the teacher had introduced Alex to the class. Then the teacher left to smoke. But that wasn\u2019t what distracted Grace. Alex had. What he read had: <\/span>everything, everywhere\u2026<\/span><\/i>. Blame him. For \u201cpaperwhite,\u201d for \u201ccurling,\u201d for all those commas, for writing so boring her mind drifted. But blame forest fires, not the absent teacher, for the smoke. In Singapore, where it might rain daily, it had not rained for a week, and across in Sumatra, forests were burning. Without rain, the fires raged on; without rain, the smoke seeped into every corner of life on the island. Many in class tonight were wearing the paper hospital masks Americans found so frightening\u2014even Alex had asked if there was \u201csome kind of epidemic going on\u201d\u2014and the class was less than half full. She\u2019d kept a careful count in her notebook. \u201cState likes reports and reports love numbers,\u201d Jack always said.<\/span><\/p>\n

So: <\/span>6 Chinese, 2 Malay, 1 Tamil. <\/span><\/i>But that was just for her own accounting; she\u2019d clean it up later for Jack, who was often confused when she described things in terms of race. \u201cRace doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d he\u2019d said to her more than once, which was odd for an American to say. <\/span><\/p>\n

Everything, everywhere, smelled of smoke, of fire, but distantly, as if the far reaches of<\/span><\/i><\/del> the paperwhite sky <\/span><\/i>were<\/span><\/i> curling<\/span><\/i><\/del> curled into flame. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Better. She\u2019d written down Alex\u2019s first line\u2014she\u2019d meant to transcribe all that he read\u2014but then found she couldn\u2019t go on to the second sentence without editing the first. <\/span>Paperwhite paperwhite<\/span><\/i>. She said it to herself, silently, but moved her lips because she realized that\u2019s what she liked about this compound word (she liked <\/span>compound<\/span><\/i>, too), the way it made your lips beat out all those syllables, made you feel you\u2019d accomplished a whole conversation with just the one word. Paperwhite. They wrote and read \u201cwhite papers\u201d at the embassy all the time. But this was different. An adjective. And he\u2019d used it to describe\u2014she started listening again to see if she could tell. Alex was talking about eggs now; someone\u2014two people\u2014making eggs. She wrote down <\/span>egg <\/span><\/i>and looked at it. It was odd how English could oversimplify things. Just three squiggles for something so complex. Here, as was often the case, Mandarin seemed more appropriate to the task: <\/span>\u9e21<\/span>\u86cb<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then, all around her, light clapping. Far too soon for Alex to be done, or she had completely lost track of time. Grace quickly stood, embarrassed, and then quickly sat, even more embarrassed. The teacher, whom she had not noticed returning, looked at her anxiously. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI ask the group for questions?\u201d the teacher asked Grace. \u201cCan or not?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever the boss says,\u201d Alex said, though no one was looking at him. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe boss says okay,\u201d Grace said, to be funny. The teacher, and students, looked panicked. \u201cPlease,\u201d Grace said. \u201cI did not mean to interrupt. The group should please ask questions.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

And no one did. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

In the car after, Alex said he\u2019d been invited to a \u201cpoetry slam\u201d at a coffeehouse. His flight wasn\u2019t until 1 a.m. He didn\u2019t care about dinner. He wasn\u2019t demanding, hadn\u2019t demanded anything the whole damn trip, but he was going to make this one demand, okay? He wanted to go. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is the coffeehouse?\u201d she asked, not so she could take him there, but so she could explain why it was not possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI can go on my own,\u201d he said. \u201cYour advanced nation is light years ahead with public transit and all that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That Alex used <\/span>light years<\/span><\/i>, a beautiful English term she\u2019d almost only ever encountered in print, had a strange effect on her, not unlike the physics, so far as she understood them, of light years themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI will give you a ride,\u201d Grace said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alex didn\u2019t believe Grace \u201ccould, would, or should\u201d drive him to the coffeehouse, as it was located in Geylang, which Google had told him was a \u201cred-light district.\u201d He then told Grace what this meant. \u201cIt\u2019s not like there\u2019s a lot of red lights there,\u201d Alex began. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know,\u201d Grace said, since she did. She didn\u2019t tell Alex what else she knew, which was that red lights were optional when in the bulletproof sedan. Dark and boxy, the car attracted attention, including from the police.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAll right,\u201d Alex said, \u201cI\u2019m sure you have your <\/span>orders<\/span><\/i>. But when we get there, you don\u2019t have to come in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to,\u201d Grace said\u2014automatically, but then rewound, listened. Three little words. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy? Are you going censor me?\u201d Alex asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Grace said. She wished she could turn to look at him, but driving the sedan took her entire focus. Everyone was looking at them, she was sure. And saw what? She had on a black suit (the American flag lapel pin safely, for now, in a pocket), black prescriptionless glasses, red lipstick. Alex had on the same outfit he\u2019d worn the whole trip, the same thin red beard. Those arms (she\u2019d sought a word with her dictionary-thesaurus app, found \u201cropy\u201d). That hat (which the heat had finally forced him to remove). <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause that\u2019s a problem here,\u201d Alex said. \u201cWe got that whole rundown at the State Department.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSingapore is not like the U.S.,\u201d Grace said. This was a line of Jack\u2019s, the first line of yet another standard speech, one he would give newly arrived visitors in the privacy of his office. Grace found it handy to repeat the line, but not the whole speech. Because what more needed to be said? And because when Jack said it, he meant that the U.S. was better. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m getting a lot of heat on social media, you know, for coming,\u201d Alex said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Her mother and father did not like when she worked events at night. Not because the longer hours did not result in more pay (although they would have been upset about that, if they knew), but because it was inappropriate. A young woman, 23, driving strangers around Singapore after dark? Couldn\u2019t they find a man to do this job? Why wasn\u2019t Grace doing visas, which mattered? Why wasn\u2019t she married? Why wasn\u2019t she dating? Why had she broken up with the boy in China, so promising? Why did Grace want her parents to call her \u201cGrace\u201d now? What was wrong with her Chinese name?<\/span><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until Alex spoke again\u2014\u201cDo I make you nervous?\u201d\u2014that Grace realized she hadn\u2019t replied to his previous comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

She thought of Jack, decided to smile. \u201cNo,\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I\u2019m about to make you very nervous,\u201d Alex said, and jumped out of the car. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Her writing teacher had told her to notice details, to take mental snapshots, because you never knew what was going to be important, what was going to spark a story. <\/span><\/p>\n

And so she noticed that, after all their talk of a red light district, they were stopped at a red light. And that as Alex turned away from her, bent and strained against the door, his shirt\u2014that tight t-shirt, which he\u2019d been advised against\u2014rose, and his pants\u2014skinny jeans\u2014puckered, she was able to glimpse his underwear, which was a deep, blood red. And that the corner establishment he ran into was fronted by a red neon fa\u00e7ade, and that its name, or sales pitch, or both, was four English words\u2014TWO SPACESHIPS COLLIDING CUCUMBER\u2014which may have seemed exuberantly arbitrary to Alex but had clearly been chosen with great care. Either way, it was known\u2014to Grace, anyway\u2014as a place that drew Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

She watched Alex run, watched him leave the heavy door wide open, watched a scooter slaloming through traffic slam right into it and crumple, bleeding, to the street. Red.<\/span><\/p>\n

More red lights, and blue, as the police arrived. One minute, four cruisers. Three more policemen, plainclothed, emerged from the crowd. It was one of these officers who spoke to her while the bleeding man was handcuffed and his scooter rolled away. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIdiot,\u201d the policeman, ethnic Chinese, said, but he looked toward the coffeehouse. Another man got into the embassy\u2019s sedan, honked the horn, and with the help of a police vehicle a third the sedan\u2019s size, nosed the bulletproof car through the crowd and out of sight. <\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cIncident Procedures\u201d\u2014which were detailed in a (red) sticker right on the dash\u2014e-SCAPE: <\/span>Survey, Contact, Assess, Prepare, Extraction\u2014<\/span><\/i>only said to contact local officials <\/span>after<\/span><\/i> the embassy had been contacted and instructions received. <\/span><\/p>\n

But Grace was busy surveying something else. Alex had entered a brothel. It was labeled a coffeehouse, and Alex had said he\u2019d been invited to read at a coffeehouse, but couldn\u2019t he see that this building\u2014with all its neon, with that name, with the two men idly standing by the door, was not a coffeehouse? <\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe not. Maybe he thought, like Jack seemed to think, that the Geylang district was simply another of Singapore\u2019s tourist attractions, that going there to sample durian and \u201csee the sights\u201d as Jack put it, was no different than gliding through Westernland at Tokyo Disney. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYour boyfriend is all busy, miss,\u201d said the man to her right as she approached the door. She ignored him, and stepped in. Blink. It took her a moment to adjust to the darkness of the coffeehouse. And once she had adjusted, it took her a moment to adjust to the fact that it looked like just that\u2014a coffeehouse. With a little stage down at the end. Upon which Alex was sitting, examining papers unfolded from a pocket. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to say a few things first,\u201d Alex said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Grace spoke very good English; she was poised, professional; when Jack, her boss, had found himself in Geylang, in the wrong place in Geylang, one week after his arrival in-country, he had called <\/span>her<\/span><\/i>, not the embassy, but Grace, not contract security, not the Marines, not the local police, and she had come and solved it. It had only taken one freshly washed, starched and ironed US$100 bill and a fake business card, but Jack had been extraordinarily grateful. Grace had made the girl\u2014and she was very definitely a girl\u2014go away, and the girl\u2019s <\/span>minder<\/span><\/i> (Grace had searched through alternatives later before settling on this English word to tag and store the memory) go away, and she\u2019d made the pictures go away. <\/span><\/p>\n

They never spoke of it after. They didn\u2019t have to. Did her boss still go out in Geylang? Grace didn\u2019t think so, but part of her wondered now, in the coffeehouse, if Jack might suddenly stride in. That made her nervous: then Grace would be the one who had to do the explaining. <\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone was looking at Alex, but not expectantly. The coffeehouse was the brothel\u2019s waiting room, where services were negotiated. If a mat salleh wanted to sit on a stage where the girl usually sat, so be it. Mat sallehs were, by definition, crazy. And also by definition, they never lasted long: it was too hot for them. <\/span><\/p>\n

Grace went up to Alex. A man at a table clicked his tongue\u2014once, twice. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is time to go home,\u201d said Grace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t even started yet,\u201d said Alex.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you told me,\u201d Grace said, \u201cthis was not true.\u201d Americans liked this, blunt talk. Or: they didn\u2019t like being<\/span> spoken <\/span>to<\/span><\/i> bluntly. But they did like blunt talk. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Alex said. In American English, this often did not mean that the speaker was sorry. It meant that the speaker was sorry <\/span>for<\/span><\/i> you. \u201cI thought I said I was doing a reading\u2014\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou said you were invited by a student to do a reading in a coffeehouse,\u201d Grace said. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a coffeehouse,\u201d Alex said, and laughed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a place where girls work,\u201d Grace said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alex said nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd no student invited you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Alex said nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow much have you paid them so far?\u201d Grace said. The present, or perhaps past, perfect continuous? In Mandarin, no confusion. In Mandarin, no past tense. In Mandarin, context was all. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t pay them anything,\u201d Alex said. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow much was the coffee?\u201d Grace said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c$40,\u201d Alex mumbled. \u201cU.S.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Grace nodded and looked around the room. <\/span><\/p>\n

Let the mat salleh sit on the whore\u2019s stool in the salon while he drinks his beer:<\/span><\/i> that was what they thought<\/span>. If he speaks\u2014if he reads something aloud\u2014so much the better. Americans are funny. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cCan I at least read what I was going to read?\u201d Alex said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Grace said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlease,\u201d said a voice behind her, rich, low, round. His face was Chinese, but he had a deep American accent, which may have been where he\u2019d gotten his height as well. \u201cI want to hear the story.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Alex smiled at Grace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne minute,\u201d said Grace. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to eat durian,\u201d said Alex. \u201cSo we can stay longer, because we don\u2019t need to stop there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOf course you want to eat durian!\u201d the man said. \u201cBut first, we must hear you read. Is this a letter to your girlfriend?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am not his girlfriend,\u201d Grace said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Alex, and straightened up. \u201cIt\u2019s called, \u2018Saying Grace.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Once upon a time there was an island surrounded by <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Alex started again. <\/span><\/p>\n

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there was a land of fantastical beasts<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Alex stopped again. Grace, who had moved to the side but was still standing, looked at the papers he was holding. They\u2019d been crumpled and uncrumpled, she saw. And the title was not \u201cSaying Grace,\u201d but rather, the title of the story he\u2019d read earlier in her class. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think he is nervous in front of you,\u201d the man said. He motioned for Grace to sit beside him, and then raised a hand. A waitress materialized; Grace shook her head. The man nodded. Grace sat. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t say I\u2019ve liked Singapore,\u201d Alex said, holding the pages, but staring at the audience. \u201cIt\u2019s very hot, for one, all of the time, and it\u2019s very expensive. There are a lot of rules\u2014\u201d A shout from the back of the room, possibly not directed at Alex, startled him. He started again. \u201cBut, you know what, there are a lot of rules everywhere. My girlfriend had a lot of rules.\u201d He looked at Grace. \u201cThis is not my girlfriend. I wish she was, but\u2014\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Grace very much wanted to hear what he was going to say next, but that was interrupted by someone new entering the room. Not from the street, but the rooms upstairs. Jack. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The open-air stall was hospital-bright, with multiple banks of fluorescent white lights illuminating piles of durian. Jack did not know there were various types of durian, that not all the fruit on display was ripe, that you could tell if it was ripe by looking at the stem. Jack only knew that it smelled terribly and tasted worse. He would pay the durian hawker for his fruit and then get his camera ready while the hawker went at the massive fruit with a small machete, parting its spiny, centimeters-thick husk in a way that was both forceful and delicate, all to expose the soft, pale pulpy mass at its center. This was what you ate. Grace had heard visitors describe it as looking like a vital organ and some were so specific to say it looked like a section of colon. Diseased. Foul descriptions abounded. The mass looked like a hairless rat. A rat fetus. Feces. And that it smelled like all these things. <\/span><\/p>\n

Grace thought Alex knew he was being photographed, knew this was part of the gig, that everyone had a job here and his was to mug for the camera, look comically alarmed or squeamish as he prepared to take a bite and then took a bite. He was to do all these things <\/span>gamely<\/span><\/i>\u2014a word Grace had been studying, monitoring to see if it could work at times like now, or not\u2014and then he was to head off to the airport, pass through customs and immigration without fuss, and not mention there or thereafter that he\u2019d attempted to do a reading in a brothel, or that that reading had been interrupted by, first, the arrival of the US Embassy\u2019s deputy cultural attach\u00e9\u2019s assistant, and second, by the deputy cultural attach\u00e9 himself. <\/span><\/p>\n

But at the brothel Jack had laughed\u2014an actual laugh\u2014and applauded Alex for \u201ctaking his art to the streets,\u201d and then took them all out into the street, then down the street, then left down another, then left again, right, right\u2014Jack certainly knew his way around Geylang\u2014and parked them at the durian stand, where he bargained with the hawker and wound up paying double the rate for an inferior fruit. <\/span><\/p>\n

Bite.<\/span><\/p>\n

No matter how much they\u2019d prepared themselves\u2014how terrible or beautiful their imaginings\u2014the first bite always shocked. You could see it on their faces, behind their smiles, or in their smiles. (What was so readily forgotten: they always did smile.) Grace often wondered what shocked them most. Probably that their fears prior to that bite had focused on taste, the surely terrible taste, only to discover that what was most disconcerting was texture. It looked smooth and pudding-like\u2014it was smooth and pudding-like\u2014but it fell apart, liquefied in your mouth almost immediately, as though no longer able to sustain the ruse that it was solid, a fruit, matter, substantive, something edible. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alex\u2019s smile turned to a grimace, and Grace thought he would spit it up, but Jack, still snapping away, taunted him not to, and that worked, as taunting often did with Americans, particularly males, even the older ones. Alex spit nothing out, but keeping himself from doing so seemed to take his all, in that moment and in every moment after, from then until they said goodbye to him at the airport. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

On the way home, Jack told Grace that she was fired. She should never have let the Singaporean authorities take the car. No sensitive documents had been confiscated, but a small metal pipe had been. Grace could either undergo a drug test\u2014which they both knew she would pass, and which result they both knew wouldn\u2019t matter\u2014or she could resign. Now was the moment for blackmail, but Jack took that away, too\u2014he was resigning as well. He didn\u2019t have to say that the pipe had been his anymore than he had to say why he\u2019d been in the brothel. What he didn\u2019t know was how Grace had \u201ctracked\u201d him to the brothel, but then \u201cnothing surprises me in this surveillance state anymore.\u201d Grace didn\u2019t know how to tell him it had been Alex\u2019s doing, that his choosing that coffeehouse mere coincidence, that coincidences were not infrequent in a small island city-state\u2014so small that it was less than half the size, in square kilometers, of Oklahoma City, which Jack, who had grown up there, always pointed out. <\/span><\/p>\n

Paperwhite paperwhite paperwhite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And she didn\u2019t know how to write it up for class, either. She spent all day every day at the library the week following, leaving her family\u2019s apartment each morning at the usual time\u2014she had not told them about the firing yet\u2014and going straight to the community center, working out what words she would share this week. <\/span><\/p>\n

The man came into the brothel with a smile on his face<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

On the way to the airport, there was one final stop to make<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Freedom is not <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Freedom is being able to wave your national identity card at a crosswalk button and receive a longer walk signal if you are very old<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Freedom is three official languages<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Freedom is not something we put into words<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Freedom is a durian<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Freedom is half fish, half lion, the symbol of Singapore<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Freedom is red<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The lights above the fruit glowed brighter than the sun, but nothing like the sun\u2014they were white, paperwhite, and when she went back to the stand by herself, later, the men did not mind nor even seem to notice as she stood there, looking at the lights. Paperwhite paperwhite paperwhite. She could say the word aloud or write it down. She could stand here forever, thinking it or not thinking it, and no one could take her anywhere, make her say anything, make her do anything, because she was in Singapore and she had done absolutely nothing wrong. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The cursor blinked and waited, and she with it, to see what word would come next.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Liam Callanan is the author of The Cloud Atlas<\/i> and All Saints<\/i>. His most recent book is Listen & Other Stories<\/i>. Visit liamcallanan.com<\/a> for more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex was her problem, two ways. One, her problem to supervise in Singapore, and two, her problem in that she\u2019d asked for him, or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}