the talent night

There was going to be a talent night.

A talent night is one night in the dewan. There is a microphone. There is a stage made of borrowed tables. One person goes up and does one thing, and everybody watches.

Last year a boy played the same three seconds of a song on a keyboard. He played it eleven times. He got a clap each time.

The year before, Pakcik's nephew whistled. That was the whole act. He whistled, and he won. He is still a little bit famous on our street.

A microphone. A stage. The whole kampung sitting down, in chairs, facing the same way, with nothing to do but look at you.

I wanted it. I wanted it the way the baby wants whatever is highest on the shelf.

But you do not win a talent night with one thing. One thing is for whistlers. I was going to win it with everything. I was going to win it so hard that next year they would have to cancel it, out of respect.

I just needed an act.

And an act needs a gang.

So I got the gang.

I called us the Grand Kampung Spectacular. Nobody else ever calls us that. I say the name, everybody hears it, and everybody keeps using their own names anyway. That is fine. A director is used to being alone with her big ideas.

First I went to Aiman. Aiman charges money for everything.

"I am putting you in the greatest act this kampung has ever seen," I said.

"To be in it is twenty sen," said Aiman.

"You pay ME," I said. "It is an honour."

"To be in it is twenty sen," said Aiman, "and to be the star is fifty." Aiman had found a way to make me pay him for the honour of being in my own show. I paid the fifty. I did not have the fifty. Now I owe Aiman fifty sen, and Aiman never forgets a fifty sen.

Then Kavi. Kavi only knows loud. He has never once been quiet, not even by accident. So I gave Kavi the most important job in the show. I made Kavi the part that makes no sound at all.

"You stand here," I said, "and you do not move, and you do not speak, until I point. Can you do that."

"YES," said Kavi.

That one was going to be a problem and I knew it and I cast him anyway, because that is the kind of director I am.

Divya I did not have to ask. Divya came on her own and stood next to me, being right.

"A talent night is just one person doing one small thing," Divya said. "You do not have to build a whole big machine. Or whatever this is."

"It is going to be everything," I said.

"That is what I am worried about," said Divya. Divya does not argue. She says the true thing once, quietly, and then helps you do the wrong thing anyway. That is the kind of best friend Divya is.

Ah Wei joined for the food. There was no food. Ah Wei joined anyway and then ate one of the props, which I will get to.

And the finale. The finale had to be bigger than all of us. Bigger than a keyboard. Bigger than a whistle. The finale had to be a thing that had never been seen in the dewan or anywhere near it.

For that you need Pei Pei.

Pei Pei does not talk. Pei Pei builds. I told Pei Pei the idea. I wanted the end of the show to open up like a flower. I wanted something to go up into the air, high over everyone. I wanted the last thing the kampung saw to be the sky, inside the dewan.

Pei Pei looked at me for a while. Then Pei Pei went away.

She came back the next day pulling a thing on a trolley. It was made of bicycle wheels, a broken umbrella, and a lot of string. There was tin too. There is always tin. It was taller than her. It was taller than me. If I stood on Aiman we still might not have reached the top.

She set it down. She held up one end of a string and looked at me. She was trying to tell me something about the string.

"Perfect," I said. "Backstage. You are the machine."

Pei Pei held the string a moment longer. She opened her mouth, which Pei Pei almost never does. I was already turning round to deal with Kavi. Kavi was testing how quiet he could be. He was testing it by shouting about how quiet he was being.

"Pei Pei has it," I told everyone. "Pei Pei is the machine. I am the voice."

I did not look back at the string. I want you to remember that I did not look back at the string.

We rehearsed once. At the end, Pei Pei did a small thing to the trolley, and the machine opened.

I cannot really tell you what it was like, because I have not got the words and I had all the words, that was my whole job. The umbrella went out and up and turned into something that was not an umbrella. The wheels caught the light. The string pulled the tin into a shape. The shape lifted, slow, and for a moment there was a thing turning in the air above us that the dewan had definitely never seen.

It worked. It worked perfectly, exactly once.

I took the perfect rehearsal as proof that I had already won. So I made the act bigger. I added a march in. I added me announcing each member of the gang by a name they did not have. I added a part where I climbed onto the machine at the end and went up with it. Up into the air. Up into the sky inside the dewan. The director, rising over her Grand Kampung Spectacular, while the whole kampung went ohhh.

Divya looked at me when I added that part.

"You are going to ride it," Divya said.

"I am going to ride it," I said.

"Up into the air."

"Up into the air."

"On a machine of Pei Pei's," said Divya, "that has worked once."

I did not answer that, because the answer was yes and yes sounded worse out loud.

The night came. The dewan filled up. The whole kampung sat in chairs and faced the same way. They only do that for a wedding, or a funeral, or a talent night. Only one of the three is allowed to be fun.

Mak was there with a tray. Mak does not go anywhere without a tray, in case a room turns out to need feeding. Atok came as far as a chair near the door. He sat with the radio low against his ear, listening to the football and the talent night at the same time, getting both. The makcik network came and sat in the middle, all three of them. They knew who would win before it started. They always know. Pakcik leaned in the doorway. Pakcik had already seen the whole show yesterday, in his head, and come anyway, to watch me find it out the long way.

We marched in. I took the microphone.

A microphone is a dangerous thing to give a person who already likes talking. I want to be honest about what it did to me. I introduced Aiman as The Treasurer Of Wonder. I introduced Kavi as Silence Itself. Kavi had been still and quiet for a whole forty seconds, the longest of his life. He could not hold the honour of it. He shouted "I AM SILENCE." The dewan laughed. I narrated over the laugh, because I had the microphone, and the microphone does not let you stop.

Ah Wei was supposed to hand me a flower at one point. There was no flower by then. Ah Wei had eaten the part of the act that was a flower. He looked at me, very sorry, with a leaf still going. I narrated that too.

It was going well. Or it was going how I wanted it to go. From inside a microphone, those two things feel exactly the same, and that is the danger.

Then the finale.

I gave the big signal. I climbed onto the machine. I lifted the microphone and told the whole kampung to watch the sky come down into the room.

Pei Pei, backstage, started the machine.

And the machine did nothing.

It did not open. The umbrella stayed an umbrella. The wheels did not turn. One small bit of tin went tick, once, somewhere inside it, and then nothing. The thing I was sitting on top of, in front of the entire kampung, with the microphone in my hand, just sat there being a pile.

There is a kind of quiet that only happens after you have promised people the sky. I was on top of it.

So I did the only thing I know. I talked.

I told them it was coming. I told them to wait for it. I told them the best part of any wonder is the moment just before the wonder, and I told them we were in that moment now, we were deep in that moment, we were further into that moment than anyone had ever been.

I pressed the bit of the machine I had seen Pei Pei press. Nothing. I pressed it again, harder, which is what you do to a thing that is not working when you do not know why. You do the not-working thing again, but meaner.

I had no idea how the machine worked.

I had named all of it. I had built none of it. The one person who knew was standing in the dark at the side of the stage. That was where I had put her. Her mouth was shut, because I had told her to be the machine, and Pei Pei does the job she is given.

And then I ran out.

I ran out of words. Me. In front of the whole kampung, on top of a dead machine, with a live microphone, I came to the end of what I had, and there was nothing after it. Just me and the quiet and the umbrella that was only an umbrella.

I had been holding the microphone all night. The whole night. I had not once given it to anyone.

I looked at Pei Pei.

Pei Pei was already looking at me. She had been looking at me the whole time, I think. She had been waiting for me to turn around since yesterday, since the day I would not look at the string.

I held out the microphone.

Pei Pei came out of the dark. She took it. She is not used to holding it and she held it slightly wrong, too close, so the first thing the kampung got was the enormous sound of Pei Pei breathing in.

"It has not clicked yet," said Pei Pei.

That was all. That was the sentence. That was the whole thing she had been holding at the end of that string the day I turned away. She crouched by the machine. She did one small thing to the bottom of it. I had never once looked at the bottom of it.

It clicked.

Then the umbrella remembered it was not an umbrella. The wheels caught the lights. The string pulled the tin up into its shape, slow. The shape lifted, and turned. And the whole dewan made the ohhh. The big one. The one I had wanted so badly that I forgot to leave any room in it for anyone else.

Pei Pei watched it go up. Then she leaned to the microphone one more time, which for Pei Pei is a second whole speech in one night.

"It is called the Flower That Waits," she said.

I did not know it had a name. She had named it and never told me, because I had never once stopped to let her.

We did not win. A small girl from the other end of the kampung won. She read a poem she wrote about her grandmother, and she was very good. The makcik network had known it would be her since Tuesday.

But the last thing the kampung saw was the thing turning in the air. The sky, inside the dewan. Exactly what I had asked for. They just heard a different name on it than mine.

After, Pei Pei folded the Flower That Waits back down onto its trolley, quiet again, the same as she came. I went over. I did not have anything clever. For once I did not reach for it.

She handed me the microphone, switched off now, just a cold thing in the hand.

"Next year," she said.

Two words. From Pei Pei that is practically a song.

I took the microphone and I did not say anything back. I just held it. The two of us stood and looked at the folded-up flower, and neither of us said a word, and that was the right amount of words.