Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

A lone fire truck roared by and stopped just yards behind Arthur. Firemen, dressed in their khakis and black helmets, leapt from the vehicle with hoses and pickaxes. Men ran up to render assistance, unknowingly obstructing them. Tearful youths and women paraded the length of the road, clutching their salvaged possessions and grieving for those lost to the flames.

For two hours Arthur peddled the toddler like merchandise amongst the families until he was convinced that it would yield nothing. By then his throat was dry and his arm throbbed with a sour ache. A policeman he approached wouldn’t take the toddler and instead instructed him to wait at a holding area.

Frustration got the better of him. For an instant he contemplated abandoning the toddler on the sidewalk but a faint wheezing cry startled him back to his senses. When the fire reached Havelock Road he gave up his search and boarded an army truck that took them to a school at Kim Seng Road. Standpipes had been erected behind a classroom block, where children washed and frolicked like wartime refugees.

A series of registration stands offered re-registration for anyone who had lost their papers in the fire. A quick idea seized Arthur: He could get the child registered as the next surrogate before surrendering him to the authorities. With the renewal documents an identity from the toddler would buy him another thirty years before he had to switch.

But the man at the desk nixed that plan when he told Arthur that the child was too young to be registered, and that he would have to be taken to a crèche from which his parents would be notified to collect him.

Grudgingly Arthur went to the crèche, only to find that it was full.

“Especially at these times,” said the crèche man. He was sitting behind an old counter of lacquered wood that smelled bitter and fusty. “Just two years back we got a whole lot of them when kampong Tiong Bahru burned down.”

“But he’s a fire victim.” Arthur held the toddler up. “He’s got to live somewhere.”

“With his parents.” The man pushed his heavy black-framed glasses up his nose. “Until he is proven to be orphaned the others get priority. You could choose to be registered as an interim guardian until he’s claimed by her parents. Or you can come back in a day or two. There might be a vacancy then. Who knows?”

The crèche man directed Arthur to a bench where he could wait in case the parents should turn up. Arthur, crestfallen, flinched at a warm and moist sensation around his thigh on which the child rested. He hoisted the child up by the armpits and his head lolled and dropped over a shoulder. In that posture the child strained to look at Arthur and broke into an adorable beaver-smile that revealed only his upper and lower incisors. Not only did he seem unusually floppy, his right leg was also perceptibly shorter than the left.

Two hours into the wait it occurred to Arthur that no one would probably want to claim the child.

It was almost midnight by the time Arthur got to Hannah’s rented room in a shophouse along Petain Road. Arthur crouched low and duck-walked along the sidewalk with the child in his arms until he got behind a tree. In the tenebrous light of a streetlamp he watched Khun light a cigarette and the hungry glow of its tip and the stream of grey-blue smoke. He felt dastardly; there was no reason why he should be hiding from the pimp. He just didn’t want to deal with him any more than he needed to.

Fortunately Khun did not linger. After his Beetle passed beyond sight Arthur ran across the road and pattered up the narrow stairway that led to a single door at the top of it. His steps resounded so loudly that the door flew open before he even got to it. Hannah, dressed in a modest set of nightclothes, stood at the doorway and regarded him with displeasure.

“What on earth are you doing here?” She folded her arms. Her hair, straight and parted at the centre, was bound low behind her nape.

“You leaving me out here with a baby?” Arthur panted, as he pushed past her.

He came to a small room sparsely furnished with a bed, a couch, a hardy little shelf with a few books and a small closet. He sank into the green and white cushions of the couch and allowed the toddler to doze in the crook of his arm. From a record drifted the words of a song softly playing:

Arthur wagged his finger beside his ear. “Something very familiar about that song.”

Hannah closed the door behind her. “I told you not to come here.”

“You said to see you right after I got the papers.”

“Not here. You could’ve called.”

“I met your guest on the way in,” Arthur said. “Was it because of him?”

Hannah rolled her eyes but made no reply.

“Did you sleep with him?”

“That’s audacious of you.”

“Did you?”

“It was business.” Hannah’s gaze was icy and unflinching. “You read too much into our friendship.”

“Then why are you helping me?”

“Sympathy,” said Hannah. “I was also a vagrant once.”

“Vagrant?” said Arthur, his tone dripping with disdain. “You don’t know me, Hannah.”

“And you don’t know how to stay out of things.”

“Can I date you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Hannah’s eyes flitted down to the bundle in his arms. “What’s with the baby?”

“From an earlier marriage.”

“Not in the mood for jokes, Arthur.”

Arthur told Hannah about how he had found the child at the fire and that he had decided to keep him because the crèche didn’t want him.

“That’s stupid of you,” said Hannah.

“You don’t know children, Hannah.”

“I don’t like children.”

“Poor thing.” Arthur gently rocked the bundle. “When death becomes imminent we prepare ourselves for it. Children cry their eyes out till death takes them. It’s very heart-breaking.”

“Where’re the papers?” Hannah broke in as soon as he had finished, apparently with the intention of changing the subject.

He handed them to her and watched her swallow, as if with emotion. She checked the edges, bent it a little and felt its printed text. “Looks like Khun didn’t cut corners this time round,” she said, sniffing it. “I wanted to make sure the base was transferred off a real one. It’s a nightmare to replicate the watermark and most copiers make a good mess of it. Once the colonials pull out you’re going to need them to exchange for a legitimate one. It’s going to be anytime now, with the talks about merger and all.”

“Glad to know.”

“Bottom line,” Hannah held him in her sight. “Never put yourself in a position where your past might be dug up and scrutinised.”

Arthur took time to admire her sombre visage. “You’re one beautiful, naggy old hag. But I’ll bear that in mind.”

Just then the child, distressed by the heat from Arthur’s body, started whimpering.

“You got something I could use as a nappy? He wet his pants an hour ago.”

Hannah went to the closet and returned with a few safety pins and a small towel. Arthur’s feeble attempt at rocking failed to work and the child was becoming increasingly upset. His mouth popped open and out came a muted cry that sounded like asthmatic wheezing. With an air of authority Hannah took the child over, pulled off the shorts and began dusting the child’s bottom with talcum powder and wrapping the towel over it.