A CONJUNCTION OF ELEMENTS

A CONJUNCTION OF ELEMENTS
by Rohini Mori

Noon was a beast.

Sunlight slithered through the open window, setting the room ablaze. Khor shifted, the hard wooden seat gripping his buttocks like an unfamiliar lover. Outside, the sounds of Singapore carried eighteen stories high as cars grid-locked in Novena’s streets honked their displeasure. Inside, the room smouldered with incense and the unpleasant marriage of peonies laid bare over rotting fruit. Khor tugged at his sweat-stained collar as he struggled not to sneeze.

He cast a glance at Anita, resplendent in a jade-green pantsuit. Her face was schooled in its usual polite mask. Her lips, painted as crimson as the paper lanterns overhead, were pursed in anger.

In the wake of his wife’s displeasure, Khor felt his own irritation rise. Bristling, he trained his gaze on the desk in front of him where cups of pu-erh, now long cooled, reposed in their delicate porcelain cradles. Incense eddied in another draft from the window, and this time, Khor didn’t stifle his sneeze.

“Manners,” Anita hissed. Her mask slipped, and for a heartbeat, her true face showed. She reached for her tea, taking a sip as brittle as the cup in her hand.

Khor grunted. Ignoring his wife, he drummed his fingers on the desk, and with equal parts boredom and defiance, contemplated his surroundings.

Laid out in a perfect square, the room’s walls were painted an elegant, understated cream. Furniture sprouted at orderly intervals across a well-varnished floor, their sombre air juxtaposed with charming offshoots of chinoiserie. Here and there bloomed concessions to the Orient: sanguine paper lanterns; a vibrant triptych of dancing koi; a Buddha smiling wide around the secrets in his belly.

“Impeccable.” Anita’s voice razored through her husband’s reverie like scissors through silk. Behind her lipsticked mask, her mouth twitched as if it would smile. “But then again, Master Zhang is a man of exquisite taste.”

Khor returned his wife’s glare with one of his own. In the glow of the paper tanglung overhead, Anita’s eyes shone with rosy malevolence.

“Exquisite? I think you mean expensive,” Khor corrected, seized with a sudden hatred of the room and all it represented. It reminded him too much of his wife’s extravagant tastes, too much of a lifetime spent catering to her selfish whims. With a bitterness Khor refused to acknowledge, he muttered, “It would appear then that the master’s business is thriving.”

“How dare –!”

Anita’s mask was on the verge of slipping once more, but just then, the door to the room opened and a small, neat-looking man entered. He wore traditional robes of classic black brocade, its buttons shining obsidian against the well-tailored fabric. He smiled at Anita, and his teeth glistened yellow in the room’s pinkish pallor.

“Madam Khor. I apologise for keeping you waiting,” he said, affecting a deep bow in Anita’s direction. Jet-black hair tumbled over his temples, framing eyes that darted fish-like in the sallow pond of his face. “I see you’ve brought your husband.”

“Yes, this is Khor.” Anita waved a dismissive hand. Her mouth puckered as if she had tasted something sour.

Executing another tidy bow, Zhang seated himself behind the desk and folded his hands on top of its gleaming surface. In the drifts of afternoon light flooding his back, his heavily ringed fingers winked like miniature suns.

“Venerable Master, we find ourselves in need of… guidance.” Anita faltered, her flawless control slipping by a degree. Her hand fluttered to the pale of her neck, to the jade pendant that nestled in her collarbone’s hollows. “It has been a… difficult time.”

“Ah so.” Zhang nodded sagely. “It has not been a good year for most.”

“No,” said Anita with a pointed look at her husband. “It hasn’t.”

“Perhaps the next few months will prove better. After all, the Year of the Water Tiger is still… on the prowl.” Zhang’s amusement was a shallow rumble in his throat. “Let’s see what the Paht Chee holds in store, shall we?”

With a flourish, he produced a sheaf of papers from within the folds of his robe. He unfolded all six sheets on the desk with deliberate care, his fingers smoothing each papered crease as if it were the most delicate origami.

Curious in spite of himself, Khor leaned forward for a closer look. Under the light of the crimson tanglung, the Paht Chee blushed with secret knowledge. And there, amidst a mass of columns and pillars and Chinese script etched on arcane pink snow, Khor could almost hear his fortune weeping its sorrow.

“In a year of wood and water, one must dig deep for what is missing,” Zhang said, his tone invoking poetry while his eyes confessed to a less savoury truth. “The Paht Chee is lamentable. For those whom the heavens show no favour, the Year of the Water Tiger portends much strife and gloom.”

“I- I don’t understand.”

Zhang favoured Khor with a forgiving smile. “It’s simple. In fact, it is elemental, really.” His chin quivered in appreciation of his own joke as he tapped the Paht Chee with a well-manicured finger. “A year is built on the Four Pillars of Heaven. Fire, water, wood, metal and earth… a permutation of these elements dictates the events to come. Some years are balanced and need little effort to thrive. Others are harder, requiring much struggle and sacrifice. The latter is the case for 2022. And the latter is most certainly the case for you.”

In the silence that followed, Khor’s mind turned in on itself. He thought of the previous twelve months, of investments turned sour and partnerships curdled to spoiled milk under waves scandal. He thought of his ancestral home and its holdings, each mortgaged to the hilt. He thought of familial coffers that no longer waxed as full as the moon.

In the chair next to his, Anita shifted. Her lips were pinched, her brow creased with agitation. Khor’s thoughts turned darker as he contemplated his wife, her each whim indulged with the sweat of his brow and the blood of his inheritance. He thought of a decade of new cars and jewels, of first-class tickets to world-class destinations, of luxuries befitting a business mogul’s wife.

Khor sighed. At forty-nine years of age, he would live another score at best – fate and his blood pressure notwithstanding. It was far too late to lament his choices in life, for all that he’d sacrificed on the altar of his wife’s desires.

As if on cue, Anita stood. Her voice, the one she dropped like the mask she wore when discontent replaced decorum, knifed through the air. “Forget Khor. What does it mean for me?” she snapped.

“Nothing auspicious, I’m afraid,” replied Zhang, his mouth arranging itself into a thin-lipped crescent. He stared at Anita with unveiled dislike. “The Paht Chee predicts grave misfortune. The Star of Yearly Killings will rob you of all you hold dear. Perhaps,” he added, his tone assuming a silkiness that his smile did not share, “the year would be best spent cultivating kindness and patience. And curbing your tendency towards shameless self-indulgence.”

In the ensuing pause, Khor thought he heard thunder boom. His head was filled with the discordant clanging of bells; a sudden pain bloomed bright in his jaw. He turned to see his wife’s hands flailing like windmills as she fended a second blow at him.

“This is all your fault!” Anita’s jade-bangled hand swept across the desk, knocking the cup of pu-erh on its side. Khor watched as it rolled across the desk and smashed itself on the floor with a cheerful tinkle.

On the desk, the Paht Chee no longer glowed pink; puddled under a tide of cold tea, Khor’s fortune had indeed succumbed to an excess of water on wood.

Helpless, he turned to Zhang. With a gentle flick of his wrist, the older man gestured to a corner of the room where a scroll hung on the wall, half-hidden by an ornamental bonsai weeping fronds of clear quartz.

Khor stared at the tiger, entranced. Vivid and three-dimensional in its likeness, the creature stalked its parchment prison, its eyes glittering like jewels behind lashings of bamboo. Its flanks pulsed with power, each stripe on its muscular frame illustrated by brushwork so exquisite it practically roared with life.

“The tiger,” said Zhang with quiet reverence, “is king of the beasts. In a year where heaven has set it loose to roam the earth, you, too, must become a beast.”

Khor’s eyes fluttered shut. The feng shui master’s words ebbed, flowing over him like the ocean of tea in which his fortune had drowned. In the swimming dark behind his eyelids, Khor could see the paper tiger’s maw, its teeth bared wide in a ferocious, fanged growl.

He met the darkness with ease, sinking with it into his soul’s churning void. Against the measured pounding of his heart, Khor pictured claws sprouting from the toes of his loafers, a river of stripes snaking across his spine, his teeth growing toothsome in the timid set of his mouth.

Peace broke in a wave, and when Khor opened his eyes, Anita was weeping beside him. All poise and dignity gone, she slumped in her chair. Her mascara ran twin ribbons of carbon down her face. Her lipsticked mouth sagged, its corners turned downwards in a defeated red smear.

“But surely, Venerable Master… surely there are remedies to appease this… affliction?” she sobbed.

Zhang’s smile was vulpine in his sallow, flat-boned face. Once more the esteemed spiritual master, he hurried to placate Anita. “But of course, Madam Khor,” he soothed, his tone undulating like oil on water. “The caprices of heaven are not without mercy.”

With the practiced flair of a showman, he produced an assortment of trinkets from the drawers of his desk. He arranged each in a neat row for Anita’s inspection: amulets inscribed with arcane sigils; a compact-sized octagonal mirror; red envelopes filled with coins and ingots; a jade pendant and bangle identical to the ones she wore.

Zhang cleared his throat delicately as he picked up the bangle. He dangled it in front of Anita as if it were a carrot and she a horse. “Now, Madam Khor, if you will allow me to suggest…”

+++

An hour later, drunk on fresh cups of pu-erh and thousands of dollars’ worth of charms, Khor and Anita took their leave of the master.

Ever affable, Zhang escorted them down the elevator to his apartment building’s foyer. He bowed to Anita, placing a hand lightly as he did so on Khor’s arm. Oblivious, Anita strode on ahead. Her heels clacked on the tiled floor, her eyes glued to her wrist and the new bangle that jingled merrily beside its twin.  

“With so much wood and water, Mr Khor, it is imperative that one searches for what is missing.” Zhang’s teeth shone amber in the afternoon’s glaring light. “After all, in the Year of the Water Tiger, one must either eat or be eaten. In the end, it is all elemental.”

Khor stared at Zhang, his mind whirling at full tilt. Fire, water, wood, metal, earth… in a year of wood and water, what was missing?

Zhang’s hand tightened on his sleeve. Trailing the feng shui master’s gaze, Khor turned to watch his wife stalk towards the door. He took in the line of her calves in her designer stilettos, her purse slung with fashionable indifference against her satin-clad thigh. A light, almost as blinding as the September sun, sent a frisson of awareness pelting across his spine. He smiled at Zhang in mutual understanding.

At the door, Anita turned, one manicured hand resting on its filigreed handle. Her mouth was twisted in its usual sour line. “For heaven’s sake,” she snapped, “are you coming?”

Fire. Metal. Earth.

A match to a rag, Khor thought. Knives, sharp and shining; a quick stab in the dark. A forgotten plot of land where a body could be buried.

This time, it was Khor who smoothed his face into a perfect mask as he followed his wife out the door. Hands in his pockets, he strolled into the sun, into the burning beast that was Singapore’s heart at noon. And as a roar began to build in the shuttered cave of his mouth, Khor allowed his hands to fist into claws. He smiled; somewhere deep within the cage of his bones, a sleeping tiger stirred.

Fiction © Copyright Rohini Mori
Image by Andrea Stöckel

Rohini Mori is a writer of dark, whimsical fiction from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her work has appeared in Infernal Ink Magazine, The Crow’s Quill, and the Siren’s Call e-zine. Find her online at www.rohinimori.com or on Twitter @Rohini_Mori.