A Wolf’s Heart
by O Thiam Chin
The boy was told not to touch anything. And so far, he hadn’t touched anything he wasn’t curious about in the two rooms he had walked into. The flat was messy and stuffed with many things that he hadn’t seen before, objects and curios that were old and yellowed and sticky and dusty. Things on top of other things, towers built to reach the ceiling, to hold up the walls. The light in the rooms was dim and filtered, and shadows lurked in the corners and tight spaces between the carton boxes and old furniture.
He was hoping to see a lizard or a cockroach spring out from somewhere, so he could chase after it, to kill it. He was terrified of them for a long time, but he had trained himself to face up to his fear at the beginning of the year. He was already ten years old, and he reminded himself he needed to be braver, or to be less afraid. He was bigger than these creatures, and they could easily be squashed under his feet, or with a rolled-up newspaper.
The boy looked around the room and wondered which item he could use as a weapon to fend for himself; one of the magazines stacked beside a large wooden table, which had photos of men with multi-colored caps and dark glasses straddling horses on their covers, a thick paintbrush with a stiffened tip, the long metal ruler that sat rusty and forbidding on the tabletop, nearly thrice the length of his forearm. He picked up one end of the ruler and tried to lift it. The rust felt rough on his palm, like tiny flecks of salt. It was heavier than he thought. He held it above his head briefly, like a sword, and decided that it was too bulky to be of use to him. Still he swung it around a few times, pretending to slaughter invisible enemies, before putting it down, arranging it carefully to fit the brown outline left on the tabletop.
He listened out for familiar words, tried to understand what she was saying to whoever was on the phone; he could only make sense of some of the Hokkien words she was using.
The boy could hear his mother moving in the living room, talking on the phone. Her voice carried loudly through the flat, like a newscaster on the radio, reporting traffic updates, flat and sonorous. He listened out for familiar words, tried to understand what she was saying to whoever was on the phone; he could only make sense of some of the Hokkien words she was using. It must be one of the older relatives, the boy thought, that would explain why his mother was speaking Hokkien. He could only speak a few words of it, but felt he understood more. His mother was often surprised when he asked her certain things after her phone call to one of the aunties. Were you eavesdropping, his mother teased, pinching his ear, when you’re not supposed to? The boy learnt to store up Hokkien words, to hoard them in his mind, to practice using them with his mother. He was too shy to speak it aloud with the older relatives, who could conduct lengthy conversations with it without slipping into Mandarin or fragments of English, which often left him feeling enthralled and alienated.
His mother was speaking too fast now, the words bursting forth in long uninterrupted streams, of which the boy barely comprehended a few words or phrases. He’s better now, he’s resting, in a few days, come home. And then there was a long pause in the conversation, a disquiet that exerted a somber weight on the silence in the flat, followed by a series of sighs. The boy crept up to the entrance of the study room, listening, trying not to make his presence known. He could stay very quiet, if he had to, and keep himself very still. Whenever he did this, he would imagine himself as a mouse hiding behind a hole in a wall, something he recalled from a cartoon he had seen when he was younger, silent and cautious, its senses attuned to everything around it. He could be small and unnoticeable, he could disappear into the background if he willed it.
When his mother moved into the kitchen and her voice started to fade, the boy turned back to the room. The air was stale and dusty with the smell of old books and newspapers. There were rows of bookshelves that lined two walls, over-spilling with books of all sizes, mostly Chinese, which the boy wasn’t much interested in. Earlier, he had picked up a book from one of the lower shelves and given it a flip; there wasn’t any picture in it that could hold his attention. He much preferred the magazines, which were at least filled with photos of smiling people and comic illustrations—with jokes that he didn’t get—though the pages left his fingers sticky.
Your Ah Gong was a hoarder, his mother once told him, always keeping and keeping and never throwing away anything. The boy didn’t mind the mess; there was plenty to be discovered in so many things, like a treasure hunt, though whatever treasures lay buried or hidden here remained a mystery to him.
On nearly every surface of the shelves, the boy found a great variety of knick-knacks: coins and pens and stamps and paper stubs and objet d'art. He picked up some to examine more thoroughly, guessing at their uses, while his eyes scanned and skipped over others. Your Ah Gong was a hoarder, his mother once told him, always keeping and keeping and never throwing away anything. The boy didn’t mind the mess; there was plenty to be discovered in so many things, like a treasure hunt, though whatever treasures lay buried or hidden here remained a mystery to him. The fun was in the search, the boy told himself, the fun was finding what you didn’t expect to find, the possibility of surprises. He had the whole afternoon, which was the amount of time his mother said she needed to “sort out the damn mess.”
Among the displays were several photo frames, most of which had his grandfather in them, along with other people the boy didn’t know or recognize. The boy prided himself for being able to identify his grandfather in these photos, though the man in them was nothing like the person the boy knew now. The face, the hawk-like eyes, the hairline, the rigidness of his shoulders, the perpetual hunch; these were the features he could easily pick out, no trouble at all. He had always excelled at the compare-the-pictures game that was included at the back of the bi-monthly school magazine, quick to spot and circle the differences. The photo frames weren’t arranged in any order or chronology, and the boy was amused to see his grandfather move from one age to another, seamlessly, without any lapse: a young serious man with wavy parted hair, an old man with big glasses hanging off his nose, a teenager with a broad sullen face, a man in a dark-brown suit with large lapels standing beside a comely woman in a wedding gown, a child in knee-length khaki shorts. He knew the woman in the gown was his grandmother, though he hadn’t seen her before; she had died long before he was born. He studied the face of his late grandmother: plump and glossy and rosy, a blunt glint in her eyes. He compared these physical traits against his mother’s, and found nothing that matched, though they might, just might, share a similar smile if his mother smiled more often and widely with bared teeth. There was even a photo of his mother, albeit many years younger, on display, though it took a while for the boy to recognize her amongst the many strangers’ faces, with her grinning youthful face, bright and guileless. He rarely saw his mother in such happiness, let alone demonstrating it so openly in a photo.
Out of sheer compulsion, the boy gathered all the photo frames from the shelves and arranged them on the floor in chronological order. He liked order and proper sequence and things to be in exactly the way he liked them to be. He tried his best to be as accurate as possible, though some shots of his grandfather were harder to determine as they seemed to be taken around the same age. The boy made guesses based on the clothes he wore—his grandfather opting for single-colored short-sleeved shirts as he aged—and the length of his hair, which was nearly gone now.
The boy studied the photos again, working from the most recent… to the oldest, and took a fleeting delight in how his grandfather slowly grew younger as he went from one photo to another.
Done with the task, he placed the photo frames in a neat row on the topmost shelf first, the one he could reach easily without tiptoeing, and then subsequently the lower shelves. The boy studied the photos again, working from the most recent—he wondered briefly at what age his grandfather had stopped taking photos or allowing others to take photos of him—to the oldest, and took a fleeting delight in how his grandfather slowly grew younger as he went from one photo to another. He wanted to run out to tell his mother what he had done, but checked himself at the last moment. Don’t touch or break anything, his mother had told him earlier, coming into the flat where his grandfather had lived alone, eyeing him purposefully. We’re only just picking up a few things.
The last time the boy was here, he had sat in the living room with his mother the whole time, listening in to the conversation and fidgeting on the hard rosewood chair, which was causing his buttocks to ache. He had wanted to get up and roam around the flat but knew it was forbidden. His grandfather was a stern, serious man, and in his presence, the boy had felt cowed, intimidated. When he spoke in rapid-fire Hokkien, the boy had a hard time deciphering the words that came out in a swift lumpen torrent, a furious casting of small hard stones. He knew at some point they were talking about him when his grandfather’s gaze passed over him, and his mother instinctually laid her hand on his thigh. He glared at his mother’s hand then, wanting to shake it off—he didn’t like to be touched so suddenly, unknowingly—but was silenced by his grandfather’s censorious stare. Then, a few moments later, they got up so unexpectedly—the boy was studying a large oil painting on the wall, which depicted a row of dark-skinned women, with bare round breasts, working a harvest field with sickles, before his mother pulled him to his feet, gripping his right hand—and stormed out of the flat, his mother’s face livid with rage and exasperation, that the boy hadn’t had a chance to catch his breath, let alone bid his grandfather goodbye.
That had happened last year when he was in Primary Four, and he hadn’t been back until now. The whole flat continued to hold traces of his grandfather—the musty cloying smell that was a combination of medicinal ointment, greasy clothes, and the stench of unwashed body—and the boy was wary, constantly on alert, that his grandfather would pop his head through the door to catch him in the act. But his grandfather was somewhere else, the boy assured himself, and so he was free to explore, to have free rein of the whole place.
Getting bolder, the boy ventured to open the drawers and cabinet doors, taking out the rubber-banded folders and small boxes, lifting the flaps to check the contents. He ran his fingers down the stacks of paper on the table, all filled with lines and scrawls of Chinese words, hardly any space for him to scribble or draw on. Pulling out the swivel chair from the table, the boy plopped himself down on it. The cracked coarse surface of the chair tickled the back of his thighs, as he swung his legs, trying to touch the floor with his toes. He started arranging things on the table, putting the discarded pens back into the bamboo stationery holder, and the paper clips and erasers into a hold-all saucer by a landscape-painting calendar. There were markings on the calendar, the month May, tiny asterisks and crosses, strings of numbers. The boy flipped through the months and settled on August, his favorite month—his birthday falls on that month, the third. The painting on the page featured a herd of animals—oxen? buffaloes?—grazing on a grassland, against a ridge of dark mountainous peaks.
With a red pen, the boy drew a small star besides his birth date. He sat back to look at the star, smiling to himself, and then, in a flash of panicking doubt, he seized the calendar and tried to rub out the star, first with his fingers and later with an eraser. His frantic efforts only further exacerbated his mistake, smudging the space of the entire box, darkening the other dates around it. The boy quickly turned the page back to the current month and placed the calendar out of sight, at the far corner of the table.
The words revealed themselves in a dense, narrow scrawl, some of the characters holding so many strokes they resembled tiny mazes, tightly contained, continuous.
He pulled a piece of paper out of a sheaf, glanced at both sides to make sure they were blank, and placed it before him. The paper was off-white, a dull shade of yellow seeping inwards from the edges, and, when the boy looked closely, he noticed very light markings on the surface, faint indents where the words were rubbed off. He ran his fingers across these tight empty furrows, which took up the top half of the page and looked like rows of Chinese words. Picking up a short stub of a pencil, the boy slowly began to shade these invisible words out, going at it slowly and evenly. The words gradually rose and surfaced from the page, blossoming pale white against the dark shading. He worked methodically down the page, line by line, brushing away the carbon residue with his fingertips. The words revealed themselves in a dense, narrow scrawl, some of the characters holding so many strokes they resembled tiny mazes, tightly contained, continuous.
The boy could pick out a few familiar words here and there, but everything else eluded him. He had been struggling with Chinese in school this year, scoring poorly in tests and assessments. His mother had signed him up for a Chinese tuition class, but so far, the improvement had not been significant. He was good at memorizing words, but when it came to putting them into sentences or answering comprehension essay questions, he often found himself stumped, flummoxed. His grandfather, having seen his writing once, had commented on the sloppiness of his handwriting: you’re holding the pencil wrongly, that’s why your words are so loose, so spread out, very ugly. Then, grabbing the boy’s hand in his, he had demonstrated how to write the words for garden in a few economical but flourished strokes. Practice, his grandfather had admonished, you need to practice more, if you want to improve your handwriting. And though the boy had tried, and his Chinese teacher had praised him in class for his “lovely handwriting,” his understanding of the semantics of the language was still languishing. Why do I need to learn this, I don’t want to use it anyway, he had moaned to his mother in vexed exasperation once, to which she had replied: I don’t care whether you use it or not, you need to pass your tests, your examinations, and that’s all that matters.
In the absence of meaning, the boy attempted to put his own spin on what the words meant, to derive a sense of a story behind them. Here, the word, which remotely resembled the character for “cat,” meant perhaps that his grandfather was writing about a dead pet—though, as far as the boy knew, his grandfather was never fond of animals, and had never kept a pet—and there, another word, for “door,” suggested something about making an entrance or leaving through an exit, perhaps an escape of sorts. Maybe a cat, someone else’s, had made its escape through an open door. The boy chuckled at his feeble effort in making up this story.
How well did he know his grandfather anyway? The boy could easily recall his appearance, the way he talked and moved, the spectrum of his facial expressions. Was all that enough to make up who his grandfather was? The boy had been surprised earlier by the photos of his grandfather as a young boy—how was it possible for him to be one, or to be as young, no, to be even younger than the boy was now—unable to grasp the past that he was unable to fathom. He could not comprehend the idea of a past in someone’s life—how long ago was it, how far back in time, how many years were there—in any definite, measurable way.
Was the past just a series of things he could remember, or was it what was left after everything had happened, the remainders, the crumbs?
To the boy, the past was only last week when he was jolted on the back by Caleb, a boy from his class who was always picking on him, and he had shoved him back, which had resulted in a fist fight and later a call to his mother from his form teacher. Maybe the past was a memory he had kept from last year when his mother had slipped into one of her sad moods, and couldn’t—wouldn’t—get out of bed for days on end, and he had to learn to do everything himself—made his own meals, walked to school by himself, ironed his school uniform. Was the past just a series of things he could remember, or was it what was left after everything had happened, the remainders, the crumbs? Which was more substantial—the memories he had, in the shape and form that he had moulded them, or the reality of things that had occurred that had slipped his mind somehow, like those words that had been erased but still lingered on the paper, invisible, hidden?
The boy picked up the pencil again, and started to trace over the Chinese characters, filling in the empty groove of each word, careful to avoid going beyond each stroke. He went at it with a deliberate slowness, and his fingers clasping the pencil ached after a while. The words became visible, more solid, rising up darker against the grey background of pencil shading. Coming to the second line, the tip of the pencil became blunt and the boy swapped it for a sharper one, which, as he pressed it to the first stroke of a new word, broke the surface of the paper with a tiny hole. The boy gasped, as if he had been slapped on the wrist. He turned the paper around to even out the hole, but the damage was already done.
The boy fell into a moody reverie. He scrunched up the paper, crushing it violently in his fist, and just as swiftly, in the next second, he was unfurling the ball of creases, straightening out the edges, a current of guilt and remorse tingling his senses. There was no way to undo what he had done; the hole was there, the tracing only half done, and the paper was a mess of untameable wrinkles. He looked up at the study room door, suddenly worried that his mother would appear at that moment and confront him with his misdeed. Why do you always do things without thinking, his mother’s voice in his head, yelling.
He quickly tore up the paper and slipped the torn strips into his shorts pocket. Both his palms were blackened by the pencil lead-powder, and he rubbed them against the sides of his shorts, trying to remove the stain. He got out of the chair, surveyed the arrangement of the table and put things back in their places. The weight of his blunder sat heavily, awkwardly, in his pocket, and the boy wanted more than anything to get rid of it as he sneaked to peek out of the room. His mother was nowhere in sight; he could hear her voice coming from the kitchen, still on the phone. He fled into the opposite room, his grandfather’s bedroom, after a few moments of hesitation.
The boy felt a temporary relief, upon entering the bedroom, which was quickly succeeded by a sense of disorientation, as if he had entered a different time zone. The bedroom was dimmer, the light grey and diffused, with the thick curtains drawn. The boy thought he heard a noise coming from a dark corner but immediately dismissed the idea. His guilt was playing a trick on him, he knew. Apart from an old ramshackle wardrobe that took up an entire wall, a queen-size bed and a standing rotary fan, there was also a thin mattress with a pillow and blanket beside the bed. His grandfather had preferred to sleep on the mattress on the floor, after his grandmother died, which he claimed was much cooler and more comfortable. The boy’s mother had offered to get rid of the bulky bed, but his grandfather had refused point-blank every time, offering no reason.
He padded to the adjoining bathroom and dumped the paper shreds into the toilet bowl, flushing them away. The whole thing unravelled in the swirl of gushing water, and some pieces got stuck to the sides of the bowl, and the boy had to wait—it took an eternity for the tank to fill up again—to flush it again. Then he went over to the wash basin, took up the bar of soap—a tiny shrivelled fragment, really, strangely odourless—and wet it with some water, rubbing it vigorously. He scoured his blackened palms and dried them on his shirt. Then, after taking a quick glance into the mirror to check his face, he turned to leave the bathroom.
The boy knew his mind was never entirely blank; it was filled with so many unvoiced thoughts and ideas and images that he could barely hold together, let alone understood them all, a fast-moving stream that went uninterrupted through his head.
Back in the room, the boy sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling a surge of sluggishness overcome him. It suddenly didn’t seem all that fun, the secret hunt in his grandfather’s study room; there was just too much of everything and yet nothing that he truly wanted. He had enough and he wanted to go, but his mother hadn’t called out to him yet, which meant that she was still looking for the thing that she said his grandfather had wanted, in the flat—what was it again, the boy thought. His mother had told him earlier on, but now his mind was a blank. His form teacher had once told his mother, during a parent-teacher session, that he was often distracted in class, “always daydreaming, his mind elsewhere, not paying any attention to anything,” which had earned him a good beating once they got home. The boy knew his mind was never entirely blank; it was filled with so many unvoiced thoughts and ideas and images that he could barely hold together, let alone understood them all, a fast-moving stream that went uninterrupted through his head. He didn’t know how to stop thinking certain thoughts, or how to stop feeling certain fears. They were always there, always bothering him, making him uneasy, fretful, restless.
Yet, as he sat there, the boy became more still and more at rest, his body seemingly anchoring itself to the large solid bed. Grounded firmly, like roots extending from a tiny bud of a seedling, reaching downwards. He remembered the task that his science teacher had assigned: to grow green beans in a small jar with wet cotton wool. The roots had appeared, tiny and pale, a few days later, and the boy had marvelled at the sight of them, fascinated with the idea that something, alive and living, could come out of something as insubstantial or innocuous as a green bean seed. The roots grew and extended themselves throughout the cotton wool, which the boy took to wetting twice a day. He knew about the water and light that are needed to sustain the seeds, later seedlings, to help them grow, but what about the thing that is forcing their growth—is it a force, or something else? Something unseen, but real, as real as the breaths he has to take, to keep himself alive—that is pushing them through the different stages of it, that is enabling them to keep surviving, and not die, to grow out their leaves and have thicker stem, stronger roots. He knew about life—as well and as much as he could, from plants and animals—but yet the more he thought about it, the less he knew what it was. He was becoming more and more unsure of what it is that gives life. Is it different from one thing to another, from one person to another, from a green bean plant to, say, a pigeon or a hamster, and if it’s different, by what measure or degree? Is every life the same, or do the differences matter? The boy drew in a long breath—there, he’s alive, isn’t he, but why, and how?—and exhaled as long as he could. And then he tried to suck in the air in short quick intakes, puffing them out noisily through his mouth, as if he were running out of breath.
He knew about life—as well and as much as he could, from plants and animals—but yet the more he thought about it, the less he knew what it was. He was becoming more and more unsure of what it is that gives life.
The boy lay down on the bed, bumping his heels against the side of it, still deciding what he should do next. The bedroom was dark and warm and quiet, like a cave, and the boy was alone and secure inside it, his mind free to wander. He rolled over on the bed to the other side and gazed down at the mattress on the floor. A shard of memory surfaced suddenly: his grandfather lying on his back on the mattress, his hands crossed over his chest. His mother had left him alone with his grandfather that day—where did she go? how long had he stayed that time?—and he had woken from a deep slumber in the living room in what he had thought was an empty flat. He had felt a violent, seizing panic then, but held himself in check, not wanting to cry out. The whole flat was ticking conspiratorially around him, pressing on him a secret code. The boy wandered from kitchen to study room, as if through a strange wilderness, the flat seemingly larger and more menacing with no one around. Everyone was gone, the boy thought, and this was where he was finally left behind, on his own. No one would come for him, no one would know he was here, still alive.
And then, standing at the entrance of the bedroom, he saw his grandfather on the mattress on the floor. He would have yelled out in pure unabashed relief, had he not seen his grandfather’s closed eyes. How swiftly he had given in to his fear, how easy it was to disrupt his sense of order and security. And barely had the boy processed these thoughts than a new assault of fear hit him as he stared at his grandfather’s still, unmoving body. Was he—no, he couldn’t be—the boy couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the thought that was already forming in his head. What did he know about death—he had once seen a pigeon crushed out of shape on a road, one of its wings stuck out like a half-open fan, the underside of its feathers grey and pristine and soft, its head and body pulped into a sticky goo, and had felt a sense of awe and exhilaration and revulsion—that he could possibly make any sense of? His mother had told him many times that his grandfather was old, getting older, but the boy had not understood what her words had really meant—old, and so?
He stared into his face, observing it for any movement in his features, then lowered his ear as close as he could to the latter’s nose, listening.
But now the knowledge stood rigid and undeniable before him, like a wall he had slammed himself into. This is death, this is how it is like, he thought, stillness, and silence. He crept slowly towards his grandfather, making every effort to make his presence imperceptible, his footsteps light. The boy held his breath as he approached, until he was kneeling before his grandfather. He stared into his face, observing it for any movement in his features, then lowered his ear as close as he could to the latter’s nose, listening.
When he turned again to look at his grandfather, the boy nearly jostled out of his skin, letting out a cry. His grandfather’s eyes, wide open, were staring back at him. You’re awake, he said and, noticing the startled look on the boy’s face, added, what are you doing? Before the boy could blurt out anything in reply, his grandfather said: you think I was dead, didn’t you? Then he smiled at the boy. I’m too old to die. Come here, listen to this. The old man gestured to the boy with a swing of his arm, pointing a finger to the middle of his chest. Listen. The boy hesitated for a moment, and then leaned in, touching his ear to the warm skin of his grandfather’s. He listened.
But now, lying on the bed, sounding the depth of his memory for something clearer, the boy couldn’t remember what he had heard. He tried to bring up the sensation of a heart beating in his ear, but it felt unreal, a fake cartoonish sound, something he had heard on a TV show. He imagined a red giant heart leaping out of a cartoon character’s—a wolf’s—body, pulsating in bright, alarming flashes, mechanically, singularly. He knew this image was nothing like what he had experienced that time, but it was all he had to stand in for it. He turned to lie on his back, staring up at the ceiling, which seemed so high above him, floating into white space. He tried to listen again, to let his ears pick up on anything he might have missed. Then, from somewhere in the flat, as if seeping from a dark corner of his mind, he finally heard something.
Someone was calling out to him, and the boy knew that voice, and he knew his time was up, and so he closed his eyes, and he smiled.
O Thiam Chin is the author of four novels, including We Are Not Alone Here (PRH SEA, 2022) and six short-fiction collections. His debut novel, Now That It’s Over, won the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2015. His work has appeared in Granta, The Cincinnati Review, Mānoa, The Brooklyn Rail, World Literature Today, and elsewhere.
