They ran across the little restaurant entirely by accident. It was
the evening of their first night in Singapore and they were walking
near a beach when, on a whim, they ducked into a side street and
happened to pass the place.
The restaurant was a one-storey building
surrounded by a waist-high brick wall, with a garden with low palm
trees and five wooden tables. The stucco main building was painted a
bright pink. Each table had its own faded umbrella opened over it. It
was still early and the place was nearly deserted.
Just two old men
with short hair, Chinese apparently, sat across from each other,
drinking beer and eating a variety of snacks. They didn’t say a word to
each other. On the ground at their feet lay a large black dog,
wearily, its eyes half closed. A ghostly trail of steam streamed out of
the kitchen window, and the tempting smell of something cooking. The
happy voices of the cooks filtered out as well, along with the clatter
of pots and pans. The palm fronds on the trees, trembling in the slight
breeze, stood out in the sinking sun.
The woman came to a halt, taking in the scene.
‘How about having dinner here?’ she asked.
The young man read the name of the restaurant at the entrance and looked around for a menu.
But
there wasn’t a menu posted outside. He gave it some thought. ‘Hmm. I
don’t know. You know, eating at some place we’re not sure of in a
foreign country.’
‘But I’ve got a sixth sense about
restaurants. I can always sniff out the really good ones. And this
one’s definitely great. I guarantee it. Why don’t we try it?’
The
man closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had no idea what kind
of food they made here, but he had to admit it did smell pretty
tempting. And the restaurant itself had a certain charm to it. ‘But do
you think it’s clean?’
She tugged at his arm.
‘You’re too sensitive. Don’t worry. We’ve flown all this way here, so
we should be a little more adventurous. I don’t want to eat in the
restaurant in the hotel every day. That’s boring. Come on, let’s give
it a try.’
*
Once
inside they realized that the place specialised in crab dishes. The
menu was written in English and Chinese. Most of the customers were
locals, and the prices were quite reasonable. According to the menu
Singapore boasts dozens of varieties of crabs, with more than a hundred
types of crab dishes.
The man and the woman ordered Singapore beer, and
after looking over what was available, selected several crab dishes
and shared them. The portions were generous, the ingredients all fresh,
the seasoning just right.
‘This really is good,’ the man said, impressed.
‘See? What’d I tell you? I told you I have the power to find the best. Now do you believe me?’
‘Yup. Have to say I do,’ the young man admitted.
‘This
kind of power really comes in handy,’ the woman said. ‘You know,
eating’s much more important than most people think. There comes a time
in your life when you’ve just got to have something super-delicious.
And when you’re standing at that crossroads your whole life can change,
depending on which one you go into—the good restaurant or the awful
one. It’s like—do you fall on this side of the fence, or the other
side.’
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Life can be pretty alarming, can’t it?’
‘Exactly,’ she said, and held up a mischievous finger. ‘Life is an alarming thing. More than you can ever imagine.’
The young man nodded. ‘And we happened to fall on the inside of the fence, didn’t we?’
‘Exactly.’
‘That’s good,’ the young man said dispassionately. ‘Do you like crab?’
‘Mm, I’ve always loved it. How about you?’
‘I loved it. I wouldn’t mind eating crab every day.’
‘A new point we have in common,’ she beamed.
The man smiled, and the two of them raised their glasses in another toast.
‘We’ve got to come back tomorrow,’ she said, ‘There can’t be many places like this in the world.
I mean, it’s so delicious—and look at the prices.’
*
For
the next three days they ate at the little restaurant. In the morning
they’d go to the beach to swim, and sunbathe, then stroll around the
town and pick up souvenirs at local handicraft shops. Around the same
time each evening they’d go to the little backstreet restaurant, try
different crab dishes, then return to their hotel room for some
leisurely lovemaking, then fall into a dreamless sleep.
Every day felt
like paradise. The woman was twenty-six, and taught English in a private
girl’s school. The man was twenty-eight and worked as an auditor at a
large bank. It was almost a miracle that they were able to take a
holiday at the same time, and they wanted to find a place where no one
would bother them, where they could simply enjoy themselves. They tried
their best to avoid any topic that would spoil the mood and their
precious time together.
On the fourth day—the last
day of their holiday—they ate crab as always in the evening. As they
scooped out meat from the crab legs with metal utensils, they talked
about how being here, swimming every day at the beach, eating their
fill of crab at night, made life back in Tokyo begin to look unreal,
and far, far away. Mostly they talked about the present. Silence fell
on their meal from time to time, each of them lost in their own
thoughts. But it wasn’t an unpleasant silence. Cold beer and hot crab
filled in the gaps nicely.
They left the restaurant
and walked back to their hotel, and, as always, ended their day by
making love. Quiet, but fulfilling lovemaking. They both took showers
and soon fell asleep.
But after a short while the
young man woke up, feeling awful. He had a sensation that was as if
he’d swallowed a hard cloud. He rushed to the bathroom, and draped over
the toilet bowl he spewed out the content of his stomach. His stomach
had been full of white crab meat. He hadn’t had time to switch on the
light, but in the light of the moon, which lay floating over the sea,
he could tell what was in the toilet. He took a deep breath, closed his
eyes and let time pass. His head was a blank, and he couldn’t form a
single thought. All he could do was wait. Another wave of nausea hit
him and again he threw up whatever was left in his stomach.
When
he open his eyes he saw a white lump of what he’d vomited floating in
the water in the toilet. A huge amount. What a hell of a lot of crab I
ate! he thought, half impressed. Eating this much crab day after day—no
wonder I got sick. No matter how you look at it, this was far too much
crab. Two or three years’ worth of crab in four days.
As
he stared, he noticed that the lump floating in the toilet looked as
if it was moving slightly. At first he thought he must be imagining
things. The faint moonlight must be producing the illusion. An
occasional passing cloud would cover the moon, making everything, for a
moment, darker than before. The young man closed his eyes, took a slow
deep breath and opened his eyes again. It was no illusion. The lump of
meat was definitely moving. Like wrinkles twisting around, the surface
of the meat was wriggling.
The young man stood up and flicked on the
bathroom light. He leaned closer to the lump of meat and saw that what
was trembling on the surface were countless worms. Tiny worms the same
colour as the crabmeat, millions of them, clinging to the surface of
the meat.
Once more he vomited everything in his
stomach. But there wasn’t anything left, and his stomach clenched into a
fist-sized lump. Bitter green bile came out, wrung out of his guts.
Not content with this, he gulped down mouthwash and spewed it back up.
He flushed down the contents of the toilet, flushing over and over to
make sure it was all gone.
Then he washed his face at the sink, using
the fresh white towel to scrub hard around his mouth, and he thoroughly
brushed his teeth. He rested his hands against the sink and stared at
his reflection in the mirror. His face looked gaunt, wrinkled, his skin
the coulour of dirt. He couldn’t believe that was really his face. He
looked like some exhausted old man.
He left the
bathroom, leaned back against the door and surveyed the bedroom. His
girlfriend was in bed, fast asleep. Face sunk deep in her pillow, she
was snoring peacefully, oblivious to what had transpired. Like a
delicate fan, her long hair covered her cheeks, her shoulders. Just
before her shoulder blades were two small moles, lined up like a pair
of twins. Her back revealed a clear swimsuit line.
Light from the
whitish moon tranquilly filtered in through the blinds, along with the
monotonous sound of waves against the shore. On the bedside the green
numbers of the alarm clock glowed. Nothing had changed. Except that
now, the crab was inside her—that everything they’d shared the same
dishes. Only she wasn’t aware of it.
The young man
sank down in the rattan chair next to the window, closed his eyes and
breathed, slowly and regularly. Breathing fresh air into his lungs,
exhaling the old, the stale. Trying to breathe as much air as he could
into his body. He wanted all the pores in his body to open wide. Like
an antique alarm clock in an empty room, his heart pounded out a hard,
dry beat.
Gazing at his girlfriend, he pictured the
countless tiny worms in her stomach. Should he wake her up and tell her
about it? Shouldn’t they do something? Unsure what to do, he thought
for a while, and decided against it. It wouldn’t do any good. She
hadn’t noticed anything. And that was the main problem.
The
world felt out of kilter. He could hear as it creaked through this new
orbit. Something had happened, he thought, and the world had changed.
Everything was out of order, and would never get back to the way it
was. Everything had changed, and all it could do was continue in this
new direction.
Tomorrow I’m going back to Tokyo, he thought, back to
the life I left there. On the surface nothing’s changed, but I don’t
think I’ll ever be able to get along with her again. I’ll never feel
the way I felt about her until yesterday, the young man knew. But
that’s not all. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get along with
myself. It’s as though we fell off a high fence, on the outside.
Painlessly, without a sound. And she never ever noticed.
The
young man sat in the rattan chair until dawn, breathing quietly. From
time to time a squall came up in the night, the raindrops pounding
against the window like some kind of punishment. The rain clouds would
pass and the moon showed its face. Again and again. But the woman never
woke up. Or even rolled over in bed. Her shoulder shook a little few
times, but that was all. More than anything, he wanted to sleep, to
sleep soundly and wake up to find that everything had been solved, that
everything was as it had been, operating smoothly as always. The young
man wanted nothing more than to fall into a deep sleep. But no matter
how much he might stretch his hand out for it, sleep lay out of reach.
The
young man remembered that first night, when they passed that little
side-street restaurant. The two old Chinese men silently eating their
food, the black dog, eyes closed, at their feet, the faded umbrellas at
the tables. How she’d tugged at his arm. It all seemed years ago. But
it was barely three days. Three days in which, through some strange
force, he’d changed into one of those ominous, ashen old men. All in
the quiet, beautiful seaside city of Singapore.
He
brought his hands in front of him and gazed intently at them. He looked
at the back of his hands, then the palms. Nothing could hide the fact
that his hands were trembling, ever so slightly.
‘Mm, I’ve always loved crab,’ he could hear her say. ‘How about you?’
I don’t know, he thought.
His
heart felt enclosed by something formless, surrounded by a deep, soft
mystery. He no longer had the faintest clue where his life was headed,
and what might be waiting for him there. But as the eastern sky finally
began to lighten he suddenly had a thought. One thing I am sure of, he
thought. No matter where I go, I’m never going to eat crab again.
