The predatory rodents quickly spread throughout the village into the wells, the jars, the stores of rice. The inhabitants of Cibeurit had no opportunity to grieve for their village head as, in no time at all, the close-knit, peaceful community was attacked by plague. Corpses lay stretched out at every corner. No one was buried because Jaja had suddenly vanished as if sucked up in putrid air and a puddle of vomit. The village of Cibeurit was hemmed in by the stench of rats. The stench of disease, of death.

The long-legged woman and her dwarf lover were never found. The villagers believe Maimunah had gone off with King Rat and cursed the village. Those who escaped death formed a pact to forget and wandered like a gang of rogues. The kinship ties of Cibeurit dissolved. Aunt Icih, one of the survivors, told this tale to pregnant mothers who came to her. Destiny’s decree allowed her to live and to become the holder of a secret, though she was never able to answer the question of the mothers who asked:

‘Who sent those man-eating rats?’

—

May, the cold-blooded killer, has satisfied her appetite for destruction. She closes her small notebook. Yes. Satisfied. Her story is complete.

She parts her long curly hair, which dances to the swaying of her hips. Her eyes fix on the large crystal globe hanging from the ceiling, glowing like a planet in the evening sky. A writer who favours nostalgia over murder would certainly interpret this sparkling as a kind of firefly.

The woman doesn’t think she will put the finishing touches on her story in this Chinatown nightclub. She sips her drink again. Like many women of Manhattan, she is devoted to Cosmopolitans. Vodka, Cointreau, lemon, cranberry. She has always seen herself as a cocktail hotchpotch. Gado-gado is a hotchpotch too, but gado-gado signifies home, a native village, a longed-for place. It doesn’t mean journey.

On its journey, a pack of criminals murders and leaves a trail. When a foot gets entangled, it’s not easy to search for a shoe that has been tossed who knows where. May knows that one shoe was left in the village Cibeurit, so she finishes off that close-knit, peaceful village before it destroys her. She kills off the place and the memories lovingly, as if killing the father. In New York City, with a single shoe, she survives, like the thieves. Summon up the places of your past, then destroy them! Distant places, indistinct, remembered in fragments.

May’s intention to leave the nightclub is stayed by a sparkling figure. A firefly? Near her table sits a thickly moustachioed man in a gold robe. A sparkling cap covers his head. May squints, trying to convince herself she isn’t drunk. The man is no stranger. How short his legs are: dangling, not reaching the floor. May shudders, struck by a flash of realisation.