The rat in the year of the monkey

Dewi Anggraeni

Our next-door neighbors Quentin and Ania, are having a dinner party for six at their home, to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year's Eve, to be precise.

Neither Quentin nor Ania are remotely Chinese; Quentin's ancestors were English and Ania's Irish. The other couple, who live across the road, are of Scottish and Macedonian descent.

Christian and I are the only ones who can be called Chinese in one way or another.

My father is a Chinese-Indonesian who married my mother, a fourth generation Australian of English descent, and Christian's mother is a mixed-race Chinese-Indonesian, who now lives with his French father and his two sisters in Paris.

Since we just moved into the area last month and have only properly met Quentin and Ania last week when they came to introduce themselves, we really don't know what to expect. We both work during the week, and have spent the weekends unpacking.

In fact, we still have three tea-chests-full of furniture and knick-knacks sitting in the half-furnished family room.

The thought of having to go out again after a grueling week at the office makes me want to scream. The house in fact, is pulsating with tension. We walk past each other, Christian trying to outdo my frown, take showers in turn, get dressed on different sides of the bed, all in silence.

Christian thought I was particularly ungracious when he told me he accepted the invitation two nights ago.

I guess I was. Ungracious. I groaned.

How could he expect me to be happy and cheerful?

He was leaving for the Gold Coast on Friday morning for a company raa raa without me. Still, he must have felt slightly guilty because he finally agreed to delay his departure to Friday morning instead of Thursday afternoon. The following evening he told me he'd accepted Quentin and Ania's invitation.

"Why didn't you check first with me?" I asked testily.

"I knew you were taking Friday off," he replied, dismissing me by walking away, after giving me that French shrug, which by then had lost its sexiness on me.

Traveling the 70-meter distance to our neighbor's front door, we independently rearrange our facial expressions.

Christian presses the doorbell and promptly puts his arm round my shoulders. I am just about to shake his arm off me when the door bursts open and Ania's wide smile makes me feel I've just been caught doing something mean.

"Hi," I say bashfully, trying to relax my shoulders.

"Hello! I'm so glad you were able to come tonight, at such short notice, too! Please entrez!"

She pushes the thick wooden door wide open, then moves to the side to let us in, calling to Quentin inside, the base of her straight golden hair sliding this way and that on the shoulders of her red silk cheongsam.

As we follow Ania into the house, the interior decor catches us by surprise. Except for the wooden verandah visible through the wide open french windows where the railing is beautifully rustic and chunky, anywhere else you look makes you think you are in a house in Shanghai, instead of an outer suburb of Melbourne.

"Glad you guys could make it." Suddenly Quentin is standing beside me, his face beaming a warm welcome.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Christian replies before I can even think of a single word.

Quentin stands tall in his loose trousers and Chinese jacket, all in black silk. He doesn't look quite as exotic as Ania. He has dark hair, but his tell-tale Caucasian nose and thick neck remind me of an old Hollywood film where the character of a Chinese patriarch was played by a white actor in drag.

We are milling around on the verandah, drinking an alcoholic punch and munching on some tidbits served on a Chinese lacquered tray, when Sheila and Nick arrive.

Sheila looks slightly uncomfortable in a royal blue cheongsam though the body-hugging outfit makes her decidedly sexy, and Nick's black silk suit is almost identical to Quentin's, except that his has blue trim and Quentin's red.

When I've overcome the feeling of gate-crashing someone's fancy-dress party, I begin to enjoy myself, Christian having started long before that. Christian is unflappable, a quality I admired in him when we were still going out together, which turned into a source of irritations after we got married.

My enjoyment does not last very long. Sitting on a bench seat in the middle of the verandah, I watch my husband with a combination of envy and exasperation at how he commands the group's attention without even trying.

He doesn't even realize that I'm being driven senseless with mosquito bites. How can I drop a hint to the others that the mosquitoes are eating me alive when they, even the women, are all far more covered than I am? Besides, aren't they all enthralled by Christian's stories about his childhood pranks in Montmartre?

I begin to scratch. I scratch and hit with open palms at the mosquitoes who must think it is Christmas.

Finally Ania turns and realizes what is happening when she sees all the red spots on my arms and neck.

"Good gracious, Tika! You poor thing! Come inside, let me get you something for that. Gosh I'm sorry! You must be all itchy."

She pulls me by the arm and leads me to the bathroom, opens the drug cabinet and takes out a small brown bottle labeled calamine lotion.

"Well, I'll leave you to it, Tika," she says, walking out.

I hear the doorbell from the bathroom and footsteps rushing to the front of the house. When I step out of the bathroom, delicious smells of Chinese food has already filled the back part of the house. In the dining room the table is already set for a famous Chinese dish, steamboat. I find the kitchen where a man and a woman in white chef jackets and chef hats are busy preparing to serve. Then I hear Ania's voice calling everyone to come to the table.

Ania suggests that spouses be seated apart, so when Quentin invites me to sit next to him, I accept with a smile and take the preferred chair he pulls out.

The food is delicious, the wine perfect, and I am enjoying the company. Having the two chefs cum waiters serving there is no need for Ania or anyone else to run around making sure everyone is being looked after.

The conversation becomes inevitably focussed on Australia's role in the war on Iraq, and its subsequent responsibility in the rebuilding of the war-torn country. All six of us agree that the Iraqis need help, with each wanting to contribute an original angle to the same argument.

When seemingly intelligent opinions are being expressed, Christian has to say something embarrassingly banal.

"I am just so sad," he says, putting down his glass of cabernet Malbec, 'that I have to tell my children, that by the time I am thirty-two I already have witnessed two Gulf wars...'

"Oh! You're a rat!" Ania suddenly stops him in his tracks.

"Pardon?" Christian's facial expression says he can't have heard it correctly.

"So am I," says Ania. "We were born under the Chinese zodiac sign of the Rat. Get it?"

"Ooooh," Christian's face relaxes, and the whole table roars with laughter.

"Christian, you obviously hadn't realized, Ania has been studying the Chinese horoscope for years. And beware, before you know where you are, she'll be reading your sign like a book!" Nick says, laughing.

The topic of war and national responsibility is promptly dropped, and we all want Ania to tell our fortune.

"Let's introduce our signs first. As you know, I am a Rat," says Ania again, then turns to Nick.

"I am a Booaar!" declares Nick, pushing his chest forward. And turns to me.

"I'm a Wabbit," I say, trying to be cute, and failing dismally.

"I'm a Dog. Woof, woof!" says Quentin.

"I'm also a boar," says Sheila.

"Well, so I am a Rat," Christian says, delivering the words with a shrug and a bemused expression.

Ania then describes the Rat personality: Charming, extremely easy to get along with, hard working, has a disarming manner even when confronting someone.

Suddenly the itch I felt earlier from the mosquito bites returns in full force. The tension makes me drop a chopstick.

Quentin turns to me, and with a sympathetic hand on my forearm, says, "You don't agree?"

I don't answer immediately. Accepting a pair of clean chopsticks from one of the chefs, I say, "Let's say those were the positive aspects..." and decide not to continue.

Ania places her chopsticks on their stand beside her bowl and raises her hand in a placating manner. "Ahaa, I know. There is a negative side. I can say this because I'm also a Rat."

"Come on," prods Nick, "give us the negative side, then!"

"All right, all right! Loves to criticize, compare and carp, and tends to be self-centered."

I clear my throat demonstratively, ignoring Christian's dark looks which he disguises in a mock-hurt dry smile.

"What about the Rabbit personality?" asks Christian suddenly.

Ania smiles. "Gracious, well-mannered, kind and sensitive to beauty."

It's Christian's turn to clear his throat. "And er, the negative side?"

"Sometimes appears a bit slow and overly deliberate, you know, for example, they will read the fine print before signing any document."

Again, Quentin puts his hand on my arm. "That didn't sound like a negative side to me. What's wrong with being prudent? Anyway darling, why don't you tell us all, how we fare under the cheeky monkey?"

Ania looks around. "Who first?"

The party becomes rowdier with laughter and grunts of disbelief as Ania dishes out her predictions for the Rabbit, the Boar, and the Dog, leaving the Rat till last.

She sits up and faces Christian, trying to summon a serious expression.

"Well, fellow Rat, we have a challenging year ahead. Careerwise we will achieve a lot, but we need to be extra- careful, because there are traps along the way, some even set by ourselves for our adversaries..."

A mango sorbet served with a very fruity sauterne closes the dinner, and we retire to the lounge in various degrees of inebriation, drinking beautifully roasted and percolated coffee, while the chefs pack up in the kitchen.

When Ania returns inside from seeing the chefs off, she says to Quentin. "I saw a rat running along the side of the house, and it was huuuuge!"

Quentin is too tipsy and happy to take his wife's report seriously. "Any wonder when the chefs probably fed him our leftovers?"

Ania collapses into the couch beside her husband. "All right, as long as you catch it if it comes into the house!' she says, then to the others, 'Quentin can catch mice or rats with his bare hands."

"Eerrrgh!" Sheila shrieks, shivering visibly with disgust.

"Look, it's nearly midnight!" Nick points to the oriental mantle clock.

"Gong Hee Fat Choy! Here's to the year of the Monkey!"

We all clink our champagne glasses together, drink the contents, then hurl ourselves into indiscriminate hugging and kissing.

As Nick and Sheila, Christian and I say goodbye to our host and hostess, then stagger across to our respective abodes, I think I hear someone saying how fortunate we are, not having to drive home.

It is midday when I finally fling myself out of bed, not even missing Christian, and mid-afternoon before I feel motivated to go for my weekly shopping. Then as if to make up for the wasted morning, I go into a frantic cleaning and tidying-up mode. I empty one more tea-chest, rendering the house significantly more presentable.

Then I carefully drag the empty chest into the cellar where Christian has meticulously stacked all his bottles of wine.

Back in the kitchen I heat a frozen packaged dinner in the microwave, and take it to the living room. When alone I always eat in front of the television.

A horrible, somewhat muted screeching noise wakes me from a dreamless sleep. Then I hear a strange repetitive clacking noise moving away from the kitchen toward the stairs into the cellar. I sit bolt upright, and still with my heart beating wildly, I run to investigate.

What I see nearly turn my knees to jelly. Scrambling back to the living room I look up Quentin and Ania's phone number with trembling hands, and have difficulty pressing the right digits on the phone pad.

"Ania! Kartika here," I can't help panting, "can I borrow Quentin?"

"Sorry?"

"Ania, your rat, your rat, is in my house, caught in our tiny mousetrap, running around with the trap stuck to its snout! Quick Ania, before I faint!"

"Quentiiiin!" is what I last hear.