Off he went a-hunting: A portrait of love
She was the daughter of a wealthy man, sent to Europe to learn about literature, wine, dancing, and meeting people from all over the world. She smoked Gitanes that she stole from her mother’s purse, wore Biba and Mary Quant, and read Jackie magazine and Barbara Cartland romances, while picking up European languages as a duck took to water.
He was a clerk that had worked his way up in the consulate, and arrived at his newly assigned post, bewildered and yet excited. Meeting her at one of the many parties the consulate hosted was like being hit by a tropical meteor. She was not beautiful – she wore thick spectacles and had a bad perm, but she made him laugh and feel like a prince.
He spoke little English and no Malay. She learned his language. He was Spanish. She was Malay. He was Catholic. She was Muslim. They fell in love and got married.
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It was the Seventies.
Social cachet
It is later on that such unions are debated and seen by thinkers as the Malay way of lording over the colonialists, by marrying one of their kind and converting them to their religion and culture. In the 1970s, marrying a white person was a message to the establishment, that you’re open-minded, you’re successful, you’re international, and then you’d see doors opening for you. Yes. It gave you that clout.
But back to their story, which is so much more interesting than discourses on colonialism.
They travelled to Africa, Russia, Greece, everywhere. He loved hunting and went on safaris. He came back and decorated their home with heads of lions, boars, elephants, and elephant stumps. She visited her homeland with bananas in her hat, causing much mirth with her Malay relatives.
They had four children, and their family became tourists in conversations with family, “Ah, he’s now with a consultancy… she’s busy with some dance classes…” They became myths. From time to time they were real and exotic, when relatives that visited them came back and told of how their children ran out screaming from their aunt’s home, Mak… Abah… hantu… When the curious parents looked up, there was Jesus Christ himself, all six feet of him, crucified to the ceiling, wooden tongue sticking out, and blood trailing all over his hands and body.
But children recover quickly. As their parents took in their cousin’s strange life, the children played Safari and Monsters and pretended Jesus Christ was a pontianak* come to chase them into the bad, dark jungle.
The crash
The 80s and 90s arrived, and everything crashed.
Tally-ho, another adventure! Back to the motherland, for dear Grandpa and Grandma miss us, we need a change! And what was there to worry about, there were many good international schools for the children to go to.
He left to explore options. With his old hunting gun for luck, kisses from his wife and children and the many promises of I’ll be back and it’ll be like the old days again, he disappeared into the wilds of Eastern Europe.
Four screaming kids and one harassed mother arrived in Kuala Lumpur. One year later, her father died. Before he died, he made her promise this:
Rediscover your faith, for I will no longer be here to provide.
Of course people talked. Of her ways. Her unorthodox way of disciplining her children. Her covering up for mengaji classes and wearing halter tops and shorts in her home. And of her indulgent mother that couldn’t rein her in.
The madcap that she was, she took to selling water filters. I guarantee you that when you drink water from this filter, all those toxins will come out in a huge lump and you will be cancer-free! Then it was one MLM scheme after the other. Soon she was selling supplements. Real estate. Stock-broking. Catering. Baby-sitting.
“The only thing I haven’t done yet is to prostitute myself. But looking at the way everything is heading south, I’d be a disservice to the industry,” she cackled to her good friend.
He never called.
Delusions of love
Her children were not privy to all this. She refused to let them know her troubles and tears. It was best for them to mix with their kind so that they could go back to Europe and disappear in the crowd. Unlike here, where they stood out like a sore thumb.
She was a Stepford Wife gone beserk.
Her family and even the Syariah Court advised her that her marriage was annulled.
Move on.
How can I divorce him when he’s not around?
You can. God has made provisions for you. This is desertion.
We love each other.
One day, an old boyfriend who was recently widowed came back into her life. He taught her how to dance the go-go, and he shared cigarettes with her behind her old home on top of a hill, when she was 17. He proposed.
She declined.
I am still someone’s wife.
Where the hell is he?
He left dejected. Last everyone heard, he moved to up north, did not remarry, but had an unhealthy obsession with orchids.
Today
It is 2005. It has been over 15 years since she saw the love of her life. Sometimes she receives telephone calls that crackle and echo her greeting. She would stare at the telephone and put it down. Crazy Telekom.
Her children are studying overseas now. They are good children; when they have money they send some home. She – her days are taken up with another venture, and religious classes. She has taken to wearing a scarf loosely these days. In the privacy of her home, she is Josephine Baker, and when she feels like it, she dances as she recalls a song from her youth.
She tells me this:
“For as long as I have God and my prayers, I know that one day, we will be together.”
* Pontianak - female vampire
