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Tash Aw The Harmony Silk Factory

On this swim, as on every other, there was no purpose, no silly race, no “first to the other side wins.” We just swam. A few feet from the edge, where the shelf fell away, I prepared myself for the cold. It gripped my whole body, squeezing the air from my chest. I breathed sharply, chokingly, but I had known that feeling before and so I continued to strike out. Pull. Kick. Pull. Kick. I heard Ruby’s choking breaths echoing my own, but I kept on swimming into the blackness, my eyes closed.

“Jas,” came the first call. Ruby’s voice breathed the word, it did not speak it. “Jas.”

I opened my eyes and searched for him in the infinite darkness. “Ruby?” I said, still swimming forward.

By the time I realized, several seconds later, that he was no longer there, it was too late. I swam furiously in different directions, not knowing where to look, where to turn next. In the moonless night I thought of the chickens we kept in the yard behind the factory. I don’t know why they came into my thoughts. When you entered the coop to select one of them for slaughter, they would run away in zigzags, never knowing where they were going or who they were escaping from. The victim always had a vacant expression on its face, not terrified or even sad, just lost.

Of course it was fate that the first car I met, after walking an hour on the deserted road, was Father’s. It had to be Father who found me, naked and wild-eyed. I shouted out what had happened to Ruby. Whether I made sense or not I don’t know.

“He’s not playing tricks on you,” Father said. That was just how he spoke. Never asked questions, always statements.

“No, I’m sure!” I screamed.

“You’re not telling stories?”

There was no need for me to answer.

“Then he’s dead already,” he said, opening the door for me to get in. “We’ll go back for your clothes tomorrow.”

I was afraid he was angry with me for making him go all the way home before doubling back to Kampar for his evening playing cards. I was afraid, so I said no more.

And that is how my friend Ruby Wong died, more or less.



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