Kafka

As Gavin Sim sat in the new cafe one morning after a night of bad dreams, he found his book mistaken for a giant insect. He was sitting at his table and after reading the first page of Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’, he set his book down, front cover facing up, on the tabletop. Psst! Gavin heard the aerosol nozzle disperse its spray. Sound travels faster than airborne insecticide molecules but he had no time to react.

“Eeee-yer! Cockroach!” exclaimed a shriveled Chinese woman in Hokkien. She doused the cover of Gavin’s paperback copy of Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ on the table with Ridsect. She shook the bright red can from side to side, a chemical warfare veteran clad in a loose-fitting blue samfoo.Choking, Gavin’s espresso shot out of his nostrils onto his shirt. He gagged and pushed his chair back.. The book’s cover absorbed the brunt of the aerosol assault but an oily slick marred the embossed photograph of a cockroach. The old woman peered closely at the book and slapped her liver-spotted palm down on the photograph three times.

“Aiyoh auntie!” screeched a male voice in mortified Hokkien, “What are you doing?”. It would have been Gavin’s voice except that he did not speak Hokkien, although he understood it. The owner of the voice was a wiry Chinese man in his early thirties. He emerged from the pantry at the back of the café, an oddly urbane figure wearing a pinstriped shirt, burgundy tie and black trousers. He dashed over to the old woman and confiscated the can of Ridsect.

“Big cockroach on the table!”, the old woman pointed at the book in triumph.

“No lah! It’s a photograph of a cockroach, on a book-”, the man suddenly held back as if it was futile to explain to the old woman, the concepts of ‘photograph’ and ‘book’.

“Tolong-lah, go and sit down,!”, he ordered, tossing the Ridsect can into a wastepaper basket under the cash-counter.

“So ungrateful!” she muttered to herself and shoved past the man. She hobbled into the pantry and slammed the door shut. Gavin heard a wooden stool squeak in distress as the old lady planted her bottom on it,

Gavin blinked to check that his eyesight -it was intact although his sense of smell was undergoing post-traumatic stress disorder. He took three hesitant deep breaths and reassured himself that he was still fine, albeit stunned.

“So sorry…are you OK sir?”, the man asked Gavin in English and adjusted his burgundy tie. Gavin nodded. At the man’s behest, Gavin shifted to a neighbouring table, and a petite Pilipino woman brought him a fresh coffee.

Gavin looked around and asked himself “Am I still dreaming?”. But he was not because he was still in the café. It had just opened at one end of a row of once swanky shop-houses near Gavin’s Sri Hartamas neighbourhood. Since the late 1990s, a mushrooming of shopping-malls in Kuala Lumpur caused the shop house row to become neglected. It witnessed a succession of assorted tenants such as beauty parlours, vetenarian clinics and Thai restaurants. The shop lot at the end of the row stood vacant for several years, boarded up until Gavin heard hacking and drilling noises coming from behind the boards. The noises continued for four weeks until Gavin walked past and saw the finished result. The décor of the café was sparse until it bordered on incompletion-gun-metal grey tiled floor, orange plastic chairs, plastered white walls, and round plywood tables. This arrangement made Gavin unsure as to whether the cafe was a proper eatery or the set-up of some renovators having an elaborate tea-break, so he passed by it for another two weeks. He recalled the apologetic Chinese man standing at the entrance.

Today, he had ushered Gavin inside while an electronic bell chimed out the first four opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in ominous greeting. Seated on the terracotta tiling of the walkway outside the café, two little boys were zapping away foes composed of myriad pixels on their portable Sony Playstations

The pantry door creaked open and the old woman came out for fresh air. She tilted her head up towards the ceiling-fans to cool her face. Gavin saw that her left eye was milky and glazed over: useless in its socket. The right eye, awaiting the same transformation as its companion, gazed at the rotating fans. No wonder she thought the cockroach on the book cover was real because she possessed only one working peeper. Her unfortunate condition made her action was more misguided than malicious. Anyway, Gavin mused, Auntie Aerosol had inadvertently jazzed up the cover. Now the book cover looked like a primary-school art project, with oily palm prints smudged around the cockroach photo.

The waist-height narrow bookshelf near the cash-counter intrigued Gavin enough to make him walk over and peruse it. The numerous books on the shelf were haphazardly arranged; they jutted out at odd angles. Most of the books’ spines were faded and cracked: several Tom Clancy thrillers, science-fiction anthologies and self-help titles such as ‘How To Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie. Sandwiched between two Tom Clancy books was, ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding. The plain white uppercase lettering on the grimy orange spine made him infer that it was a used literature text. His archaeological instincts stirred, Gavin reached for the book and grasped the top corner that stuck out. The book did not budge so he tugged with more strength. The shelf tottered and fell over with a solid thud like a disturbed tombstone.

Gavin felt like Indiana Jones, after setting off a deadly trap in an ancient crypt Alerted by the noise, the Filipino woman wearily sauntered out of the pantry at the back of the café. She ignored Gavin’s apology, and bent over the fallen bookcase. With astounding strength she hauled the bookcase off the floor. To Gavin’s disbelief, none of the books spilled off the shelf.

“Cannot take,” she informed him, indicating the books with a linen dishcloth wrapped around her hand, “already put gum.”. She returned into the dark of the pantry.

Gavin reached out again for ‘Lord of the Flies’ and traced a finger down the book’s spine. He discovered globs of hardened translucent gum at the base of the spine, and more of the same substance was congealed at the bottom of the adjacent books, as if secreted by mutant bookworms. He went back to his table and collected his traumatised copy of ‘Metamorphosis’, wedging it under his arm in a protective gesture. Gavin went to pay at the counter but the man waved aside Gavin’s money, “Sorry about just now- my auntie, you see..”, he pointed to his left eye and winced. Gavin felt drained, “It’s OK, never mind, I-”

“On the house! Don’t say “Never mind”! he smiled and handed a stamped voucher to Gavin. “10 percent discount for you, next time you come.”

“Thanks,” Gavin replied and exited, pushing the glass door open. The bell chimed Beethoven’s Fifth in farewell. Gavin inspected the voucher. Printed in heavy German Bold Italic was the name of the café, ‘Kaf-fa-ka Kafe’. On the terracotta walkway, one of the boys had usurped the other’s Playstation and the other was bawling at the injustice of the deed.