Tash Aw - Five Star Billionaire

But this is not a tale of misery; it is a tale of comedy. Because there is something amusing in the gradual unearthing of Gary’s life, for sure there is. Everyone who reads these news articles says, Oh, how terrible, how sad, what a horrible boy he is, what a tragic story, but they laugh too. They snigger at the calendar of scantily clad girls that hangs on the porch of Gary’s foster father’s house, the kind of cheap freebie that you get when buying gas or beer, clearly several years out of date but still hanging there because its owner is a dirty old man — can you imagine, a grandpa his age looking at pictures of young girls like that. When there is an interview with one of Gary’s childhood acquaintances on TV, viewers make fun of his accent, for it is very unsophisticated. When rural Chinese people speak English, it sounds as if they are speaking Hokkien. An den I got say him, ey, why you want lie me, I no money oso you like dat one, ah? Many people, ah, they don like him is because he no money ma, so he got steal people handphone, people money. One time I got say him, ey, why I don do anything oso you lai kacau wo? Just say like dat oso kena wallop one . The viewers don’t mean to be rude, but even when this guy speaks Mandarin, it is so thick with Hokkien overtones and also mixed in with Malay words that it is really funny to listen to — you don’t even know what language he is speaking!

Once you have seen and heard these comic snippets from his past, Gary’s recent antics seem pretty hilarious too. Watch again the video of him beating up the man in the luxury bar in Shanghai: He is swaying and unsteady, raising his fists as drunk people do in films. When he lifts the wooden signboard overhead and brings it crashing down on the man’s body, over and over again, he looks as if he is the villain in an old slapstick movie or even a cartoon, where people fall from great heights or get crushed by falling weights and all you do is laugh at them. His body is tiny compared to that of the inert fallen victim’s — a seagull pecking at the corpse of a walrus. The single word on the sign flashes before you. WOW! … WOW! … WOW!

Gary himself feels like laughing when he sees these images. Surrounded by newspapers strewn across the floor of his hotel room — his agent has every single newspaper and magazine delivered daily to his room as punishment for the mess he has gotten the whole company into — he sees just how ridiculous this situation is. If he were not the subject of these stories, he would be eager to read all of them, because there is a sense of unreality about this whole affair — no one could possibly be so idiotic. Every day he would want to get the cheap newspapers and magazines with colorful covers and ask himself, chuckling: How can someone so famous be so goddamn stupid? He would be fascinated but, frankly, he wouldn’t take any of it seriously.

And when he zaps through the channels on TV and sees people he knew in past times, he begins to giggle. Here is one, a boy who extorted money from Gary for two years, between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. The money Gary had was not even worth the effort, but the boy did it anyway, he and his band of friends, until the day Gary pushed him into a monsoon drain. And now here he is, showing off his fat fleshy nose, which he claims Gary broke in a fight. He is wearing the uniform of a fast-food restaurant — the first KFC to open in that small provincial town. When he speaks to the journalist, he tries to summon up long-suppressed pain, his eyes narrowed, his voice anguished, as if the event traumatized him, but the camera picks up a hint of a smile even as he talks about how Gary always had a “dark soul” and how everyone feared him. This guy who spends his days serving fried chicken and coleslaw and his nights racing scooters with his Ah Beng friends around a small town in the north of Malaysia — he is so proud that someone has come all the way from Taipei to ask him questions and put him on TV. He is ridiculous; he makes Gary want to laugh out loud. LOL LOL LOL.

Gary’s foster father appears on TV again. Now, that really was a comic arrangement if ever there was one. Gary never addressed that man properly, barely had a conversation with him, yet he is being described as Gary’s “closest relative.” The two of them spent their entire lives avoiding each other, timing their respective arrivals at the house in order to minimize the chances of seeing each other. Gary remembers the huge relief he felt whenever he came home and found the place empty and the dread when he heard the front grille creak open in the night. Often he would come home and find his foster father slumped in the lounger made of plastic strings, his mouth open, trails of dried spittle tracing the line of his jaw down to his bony collarbone, like sea salt on rocks. His head was rounded at the back, the feather-thin white hair rising up in a wispy tuft, his nose pointed like the beak of a turtle. He truly did look like a comic-book animal — an Old-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle. The first time Gary got thrown out of school (the exact misdemeanor is forgotten now — probably for smoking on school grounds during morning break), he did not think about what would happen if he came home early. His foster father hit him, said it was a waste of money sending him to school, he should just get a job serving tables at the coffee shop or carrying sacks of rice. As he raised the shoe to beat Gary, his jerky movements and bony arms made him look just like a make-believe animal. Old-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle, Old-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle. Alone in his hotel room, sitting amid a sea of comic-book memories from his childhood, Gary feels like laughing, laughing, laughing.

Laughing until he cries.

This endless pantomime tires him, but now, thank God, there is a break. The celebrity news on TV moves on to someone else — an older pop singer who fell to the floor at a meet-and-greet session last night, and now people think she is pregnant. Gary knows her. To the public, she seems like a stuck-up woman, but he feels a certain closeness to her because she gave him generous advice when he first moved to Taipei. When he was struggling with voice coaching and trying to break into acting at the same time, she said, Don’t worry, one way or another you will be a big star — you have no other option in life but to be a big star.

Ha-ha, he said. Maybe I don’t want to be a star.

She said, There is no other possibility for you.

They share a love of spicy beef noodles, and when she played her concert in Malaysia, she spent much time eating at neighborhood street stalls in order to experience the delicacies Gary had recommended to her. In an interview with the local press, she referred to him as her “surrogate son,” and even though they are not that close, Gary knew what she meant, because he, too, felt in a small way that she was like his mother. He knows that she is indeed pregnant and that the father is a rich married man who will not leave his wife, and she is very unhappy. At the age of forty-six, she believes she has lost her charm and has resorted to plastic surgery, which lends her beauty a harsh, tense quality. The cameras wait outside the hospital day and night, making her even more miserable. But here’s the problem: Her sadness brings relief to Gary. Every moment the news concentrates on her, he is able to take time out from the ridiculous spectacle of his own life. He wishes the news to remain focused on her misery, but he knows that, sooner or later, the loop will come back around to him. For the fact is that her fame has all but diminished, whereas he is still a huge star. Or at least he was until a few days ago.

He turns the TV off and stares at the blank screen. His hand twitches, resisting the urge to turn the TV on again. He cannot bear the sad ridicule of his life, but at the same time he is used to it now. He wants to see those people from his past, see what has become of them — laugh at them the way others are laughing at him. But he manages to resist the temptation and instead logs on to the Facebook page that his record company maintains for him. He is not allowed to respond personally to any messages. Whenever he makes a statement to his fans on this page, it is in fact the PR department that writes the words: I’m deeply sorry for all the embarrassment my behavior has caused. Knowing you are all there to support me has touched me deeply and keeps me strong. My problems have brought me closer to you all. Thank you, thank you .