Like most people in our position, we lived an industrious but precarious existence. My great-aunt had worked part-time in a factory on the outskirts of Johor Baru that produced VHS players for export, but, being in her fifties, she was soon laid off and had no work other than to tend to our smallholding, and we were therefore forced to be inventive in the way we made our living. Nowadays I hear liberal, educated people refer sympathetically to such a way of life as ‘hard’, or even ‘desperate’, but I prefer to think of it as creative. I had just turned thirteen, and thought that if we had more money I would be able to return home.
I began selling pineapples on a disused wooden stand by the side of the road that led to the coast, hoping to ensnare day-trippers from Singapore on their way to Desaru. Knowing that our pineapples were sour, I sold them cheaply, and in the first few weeks I managed to make a little money. But even this began to dry up as people realised the low quality of my wares. So one day I bought a supersweet pineapple in the market and cut it up in pieces, offering it as proof of my own fruit’s tenderness. A number of people fell for it, and only one couple complained on their way back from the coast. I feigned innocence – I couldn’t guarantee that every pineapple would be sweet. They showed me a pineapple cut in half, and I recognised its dry, pale flesh as one of mine. They insisted I give them five pineapples for free, and when I refused, the woman called me names and her companion ended up hurling the pineapple at my head. I ducked but it caught me on my ear, making it swell like a mushroom. Soon afterwards I abandoned the stall and got a job waiting tables at a local coffee shop.
I did not see my father for nearly four years. I received news from him occasionally, when a letter would arrive via my great-aunt. He would write about the Kelantan river bursting its banks in the monsoon season, the kite-flying contests that year, the second-hand scooter he had bought, things he had eaten in the market – uninteresting news of daily life. Once he told me he had bought me a large spinning top which awaited my return, but when I finally went home there was no further mention of it.
There was never any news of jobs or money – the very reason we had to move away from home. There was no indication of how he was planning our future, no sense that he was aware of the passage of time. I had never been aware of this myself, but now, hundreds of miles from home, I could almost hear the seconds of an invisible clock ticking away in my head. I had gone to live with my great-aunt thinking that it was temporary, and that I would be back home as soon as my father ‘got settled’. That was what he told me. After a year I realised that my residence in the dull flatlands of the south was not going to be as fleeting as I had hoped. One learns quickly at that age. Like all children, I had never before appreciated what time meant – the years stretched infinitely beyond me, waiting, impossibly, to be filled. But all of a sudden I began to feel the urgency of each day. I counted them down, saddened by how much I could have been doing with every sunrise and sunset, if only I had been at home.
I waited for my father to think of a plan that would reunite us in our village, but, incapable of understanding that time was not on his side, he left me waiting.
You must appreciate that time is always against you. It is never kind or encouraging. It gnaws away invisibly at all good things. Therefore, if you have any desire to accomplish anything, even the simplest task, do it swiftly and with great purpose, or time will drag it away from you.
Four years. They passed so quickly.
5
Reinvent Yourself
The first rule of success is, you must look beautiful. No one taught Phoebe this secret, but she could tell by simple observation that successful people always looked good. Just by looking at the women hurrying along Henan Lu, running for buses, or reading their magazines in the metro at rush hour, she could spot the few who were on life’s upward curve. At first she did not really think about the connection between appearance and achievement; she could not even imagine such a link. But then she kept noticing more and more women who looked immaculate in their dress, and what’s more, that they often carried bags that looked as though they contained serious life items instead of mere beauty accessories. Often, these impressive-looking women would take out papers or a book from their sleek bags and read them on the bus with an air of purpose, and even if they were reading mere novels, Phoebe could see that they were absorbing the words the way high-achieving people do. All the time working, working, in a way that was steely yet elegant. It reminded her of a girl at school who always came first in class, the way that girl read books with a determination no one else had. All the teachers said she would go on to great things, and sure enough, she got a job as a quantity surveyor in Kuantan. Gradually, Phoebe realised that the reason these women looked so beautiful was that they had good positions in life; she could not deny that the two things were inseparable. Which one came first, beauty or success, she did not know.
She started taking notes on the type of clothes they wore, how they styled their hair, even the way they walked. When she compared these to her own way of dressing and behaving, it became clear why she had not yet been able to find a decent job in Shanghai. No one would look at her and think, that woman is going to astound the world with her abilities, we should give her a job. No, she was not someone you would even look at twice on the bus, never mind give a job to.
She knew she was not a mediocre person, but she looked like one to the outside world. This was not her fault, she thought; it was also because of where she lived. Every day she was surrounded by mediocre people who dragged her down into their sea of mediocrity. She had found a room in an apartment block not far from the river, which she had thought would be beautiful and prestigious. A girl she had worked with in a mobile-phone keypad factory in Guangzhou had a childhood friend who had gone to work in Shanghai, and she had a good job working in an office. The girl’s apartment was just one room, but it had a small washroom and a space to prepare simple meals. Her name was Yanyan, and in her text message she said that Phoebe could stay there for free until she got a job – surely it wouldn’t be long before Phoebe found a good position. When Phoebe looked at the address she saw that it was close to the centre of town, a nice area near some famous attractions that foreign visitors loved, and by the bank of the river, about which people wrote love songs. The apartment was on the tenth floor, so she imagined magnificent views of this great metropolis that would inspire her with the spirit of high achievement. Every day she would wake up and breathe the intoxicating air of excellence.
But when she came out of the subway station she found herself in a low-class shopping centre full of small shops that sold everything in bulk – clothes, mushrooms, teapots, pink plastic hairclips, fake trainers. She stood for a minute trying to work out the right direction. In front of her was a row of shops with makeshift beds outside them – there were people stretched out on each one, getting tattoos. She walked past them, looking at the huge rose being tattooed on a man’s arm, its petals reaching around his biceps; an eagle on the nape of someone else’s neck; a manga kitten on a young woman’s ankle. Outside, the pavement was black with grease from the dozens of stalls selling skewers of grilled meat and squid. It was hard to walk properly because of all the discarded skewer-sticks, which made her feel unstable in her heels.
In the entrance hall to the apartment block there was a cramped wooden booth where two watchmen sat, drinking tea from plastic flasks. They did not even look up when Phoebe walked in; they did not care who came into the building. The floor was pale, with a covering of dust and streaked with black marks that Phoebe could not identify, and on the walls were patches of cement where the crumbling brickwork had fallen away and been hastily filled in. The wooden noticeboards and the metal pigeon-hole letterboxes were old and had not been changed for at least fifty years – their green paint looked almost black. The place was dirtier than some of the factory hostels she had lived in. As she waited