By Patrick Sagaram

Years go by and our marriage throws up questions. We ask ourselves, are we happy. We ask ourselves if we still love each other. It's terrain we haven't charted. A place we're too afraid to go. To be honest, it's easier this way. I know the day would come for me to face the truth. When you sit me down, hold my hand and say things have not been working out. And as difficult as it gets, the decision is final. I've rehearsed this moment in my head many times. If this day ever comes what I know is whatever you say may be another hopelessly false story. The why is always elusive. What's left is no more than what used to exist. Now traded for a bitter smell, like something burning.

So, in the dark dripping afterwards of a thundery downpour, we both lay in bed reading. Outside, a small wind shivered and jacaranda leaves scraped across the pavement. Our son was in his room sleeping off the fatigue from soccer camp. We moved into this house – your idea, not mine – after I got tenure. You felt we could use the space, maybe even save some privacy for ourselves. Once in a while you talked about flipping if the price was right. But it was all talk. You had no wish to move.

You were reading another novel. It may have been The Sea & Poison, I can't be sure. I was halfway into this monograph about crocodiles in Singapore. Legend goes that after Farquhar lost his pet dog to a crocodile along Rochor River, he gave orders to build a barricade to trap the animal. Once caught, they speared it to death, its carcass hung from a tree. Considered regionally extinct, these reptiles never left our waters, a study shows. It's true, actually. Every now and then a report would surface in the papers about a sighting in various parts of the island.    

You were sipping green tea and I was drinking some dark fancy beer you bought at the supermarket. Your head rested on my shoulder and both of us about to fade towards sleep. Just then I thought I should mention what I heard earlier at the office. It was on my mind all day and I wasn't sure about to break to you. The best thing was to get it over and be done. And so, I said, Jessica and Chuen Seng are separating.

It caught you off guard, I could tell. We were touching incidentally but you pulled away, withdrawing into the intimate cool distance.

Are you sure about this?

That's what I heard.

Do you know what happened?

Not really, I said.

Something must have happened, you said.

You looked down at the pages of your book but you stopped reading. Clearly, the news upset you. There wasn't any doubt: This was upsetting news. I understood these things happen. It's not unusual these days. One moment people are together, the possibilities are endless and the next moment is a different story. Have you considered the fact that maybe nothing happened between Jessica and Chuen Seng? You know marriages also have their expiry dates and perhaps theirs ran its course. I know you refuse to admit it because you can be old-fashioned that way. Still, I've learnt to keep such things to myself. As it is we have enough things we argue over. I don't see any reason to argue over this.

After a minute, you said. Maybe I should call her tomorrow. Do you think it's a good idea? This is so sudden. How could this happen?

It's the way you said it. It came out as a whisper to someone else, not in the room.

 Get some sleep, I said. There is no reason to think about this now.

The wind outside rose to a growl. I turned off the light and rolled on my side. I had to be up early tomorrow morning. I lay there facing away from you, eyes closed trying to let sleep come and after some time, maybe an hour or so passed before you leaned over my side and put your arm around my shoulder. But you did so in a way as not to wake me up.     

I woke up and took a shower and drank my coffee in the kitchen as rain fell softly in the trees outside. I packed my things in the car the day before, standard fieldwork equipment and was on the expressway, following my lights as the wipers slapped against the windshield. I slept badly and felt a floating sensation, which I tried to suppress by focusing on the task ahead. The rain wasn't coming down heavy and weather updates on the radio predicted it might stay this way.

Good thing as it might keep the crowds away to the Buloh Besar River where I was going to look for crocodiles. Not just any crocodile but a 16-foot beast, Chuen Seng once spotted by chance. He showed me a grainy video of this thing taken with his mobile phone, its huge belly sunk in the muddy banks of the mangrove, jaws wide open to reveal a mouthful of knives. Ever since then no one has spotted it again. I've seen pictures of tail drag in mud and sand, which have been matched to it. But there's no way of knowing. To be certain, I had to find out for myself.    

I was looking forward to going out to the field after being stuck in the office all semester working on grants, reading dissertations and attending back-to-back meetings. I had to get out or I'll go stale and lose my edge. In the open I felt in my element again, back to those days when I spent in open country with only my sleeping bag and few essential items. I've been to Buloh Besar back when I was in the army, years ago when my regiment deployed near the dam during a battalion exercise. When a couple of my platoon mates and I trekked into the woods and the things we saw: a whip snake coiling on the branches of a tree; a dead cat, clouds of flies swarming over the carcass. Evan saw birds with strange colours, one looked as if it was wearing a beret. At sunset one evening, a white owl perched up high in the trees.

As I drove past the long stretch of road toward Mandai, I remembered something in my dreams last night. A face turned away from me, could have been yours? Possibly so, because you do that whenever we had our fights. What were we fighting about this time? God only knows. With you, I have no clue when the fights begin until it was always too late. But I also remembered another thing. How the face in my dreams last night changed to Jessica. I've known her as long as I've known you. We were all living in Sheares Hall back when we met. You and Jessica were roommates, remained friends afterward. We were thick as thieves. Kept in touch even after I left for my postgraduate studies in Perth. Both of you visited me once during summer, the three of us took a road trip to Monkey Myer. Rusty sand dunes, white beaches and wildlife, I still remember.

Up ahead I could see the War Memorial and by the time dawn was breaking and a watery sun melted in the clouds and rain turning everything into mud. Lethargy slung in the air. If the weather turned for the worse and water level rose, I knew my chances would be slim. By nature these creatures are shy and reclusive, and not many people know crocodiles tend to keep away from humans, retreating into the water quickly. And yes, they might appear awkward and lethargic but can be deceptively quick.

It is not common knowledge but there exists a spiritual dimension to the crocodile. In some cultures throughout South-east Asia, the animal appears on the axis mundi – a kind of cosmic axis whereby a vertical plane links the underworld to the heavens, intersecting the horizontal journey of life to death on earth itself. In Singapore, the crocodile is represented on the horizontal plane as a guardian projecting from the vertical plane within the underworld, a place symbolic of origins, waters and fertility.

By the time I pulled into the road linking Lim Chu Kang and Kranji, I could see octagonal decks of the dam's white control towers standing in a fenced compound. You can spot anglers setting up their equipment here but the rain kept them away today. Factories and warehouses lined the far bank of the river, some of which veiled by thick forest and further behind blocks of flats shone in the creamy sunlight. 

It did seem odd you didn't know about the split, or even the problems Jessica was having and had to hear it from me. But then again, you haven't been as close as you once were years ago. It can't be helped, I suppose. A fading away from friends after marriage was expected. It was around this time Chuen Seng and I became colleagues, new hires at the faculty. His career track was completely different from mine from the beginning. Chuen Seng was that rare breed of academic who was a gifted teacher and researcher. He is so prolific and his work appeared in all the top-tier journals. Students clustered into lecture theatres to listen to him speak and his course evaluations always exceeded expectations. Which is part of the reason why he became our youngest Head of Faculty.

We got along fine but on some level there was resentment on my part, something he suspected as well. But I was the one who introduced Jessica to him because you were always complaining about the kind of men Jessica ended up with and getting her heart broken. So I arranged for them to meet up for drinks and maybe two or three years passed before they got married. 

I turned into the car park, reversed into an empty lot and cut the engine. Because the rain eased somewhat, I thought about forgetting the raincoat, then changed my mind and slipped it on in case the weather turned later. I wasn't sure how long I was going to be here for but I was determined to make this trip fruitful. I had my day pack, loaded it with some energy bars, apples and a plastic jug of water and this bag filled with chicken parts to try and lure the animal. It wasn't sealed tight and maybe it had gone bad or something, but just the sight and smell were completely vile and I brought a fist to my mouth to keep myself from gagging.

Even if there wasn't going to be any sighting today, there might be some clues to where this one lay, hiding in plain sight. Another remarkable thing about these amphibious predators is their stealth, keeping low and still. Lurking.

Which is another reason why the hunt for crocodiles takes place at night in search for eyes glowing above the water. I read about a group of hunters once in Mikjin Valley, Australia's Northern Territory. They rode a small aluminum boat shining a beam of light at the water to pick out its eyes, quietly creeping behind the creature once they spotted it. They used a harpoon to the back of its neck and waited as the thing thrashed and hissed, twisting in the water. Once it tired itself out they lassoed its jaws tight, reeled it toward the boat. When they put a bullet into its head, something broke in me reading about how the animal fought like that right up till the end.    

Before I got out of the car I remembered the dream from last night. It was Jessica's face I'd seen, I'm sure of it now. I get like this sometimes, remembering things only much later. Besides, I've seen her naked before when together with you, we all went skinny-dipping that time at Monkey Myer. Her lush, beautiful body shining in the moonlight next to you, both sheepish and grinning as I watched half-submerged in the water.

I walked to the trailhead, shaking in the wind and the Johor shoreline spanning in front of me. The sky the colour of dirty tin, the waters choppy and rough, the undergrowth rustling wildly. Something had changed, I don't know what, something in the light which I felt, descending into the depths.  

Past the trailhead, I followed the elevated walkway and reached the observation post where people used to congregate and take in the view. Real estate agents would call these million dollar views, not even the properties in Sentosa Cove can match this scenery. Maybe we've been trapped in our urban spaces for so long, there is a feeling we get in these woods, a feeling we can almost touch with our fingers.

We didn't mean to but it happened anyway between, Jessica and I during that trip. You had flown off to meet your parents at Brisbane and Jessica had a few days left before she was about to leave for Europe, backpacking alone. We decided to drive to Margaret River for some wine tasting and I was looking forward to visiting Sugarloaf Rock and be hypnotised by the shifting colours of the boulders created by the trick of the light.

It was a pleasant drive, the land beyond the highway with its gently winding roads, streams and cattle grazing by the green rolling hills. What I didn't expect was a wrong turn I took when we got close to where were heading towards and after driving around for some time, I realised we had been going in circles. By then, it was past sundown and with no cars on the road, really no anything – I began to get worried.

We kept driving until we came to this derelict lodge at the end of some dirt road. Place was grey and tumbledown with a couple of hippies who ran the lodge had this look about them like survivors of a tsunami or something. A look on their faces as if waiting for something that was not about to come. 

I wanted to keep going but Jessica, always one for some adventure, convinced me to stay. Later that night, after drinking too carelessly we decided to go to the pool for a swim. It was only for guests and we were the only ones there. And you know how these things go: both of us in the water, feeling it close around our bodies. It was spring, the air cool and the steam rose from the water. Cloaked in mist and completely hidden, we were touching and then the steam would thin out and vanish and we would get a quick glimpse of the night sky, wind-milling stars before the steam rushed in once again. No one was watching anyway so no harm, really.

And there we were, by the steps at the far edge of the pool, half in and out of the water so there was no way to tell our bodies apart, moving slowly between air and water without hurry or hesitation and when the steam parted once more, we saw a few feet away staring back at us, a spread of muscular wallaroos.         

          Eyes glowing in the dark.

Not human eyes, so we didn't stop. Even as we felt those animal eyes on us as we moved in the darkness in the space between water and air and mist, she and I kept going like some hidden impulse shot through our bodies. I remember that feeling clearly. It changed the thing for me. I should have done things differently, I know but if we kept things to ourselves then nobody got hurt right?

A couple of kilometres into the trail with my head full thoughts from my past and the way the light flickered in the air that I didn't see the animal carcass until I almost stepped on it. Looked like it was torn to pieces, only bits of fur remained but the skull was polished white after picked clean by scavengers. I sidestepped and carried on walking until I realised my laces had gone undone. When I dropped to my knee to tighten them, I tried to recall what I forgot.    

I reached a bridge linking the river and I decided to circle around, tracing the river from the mouth to the bridge. It was here when the weather broke and sunshine dripped through the trees overhead. I was alone by now for sure and I felt a strange kind of joy leapt in my heart, a relief getting away from everything at home. You would be awake by now dragging me over to the supermarket and I'd be pushing a trolley behind you like a zombie. And later driving our son for tuition or some enrichment classes, which I know he hates, but you insist on him going because all the other parents force it on their kids as well. And then we're off once more to some mall in town for shopping or eating or whatever families do these days. It's so tiresome, you know.

But you don't get it. Do you?

All I want these days is escape from the weekend madness. I couldn't ask for anything more. The freedom of an eight-thirty quiet except for distant screech of insects is freedom like nothing you'll ever know. It was probably selfish of me to be thinking about our family this way but I really could do without all of you right now. You, and all the madness waiting for me when I reach home. This is all I really need at this point in my life. I can already picture another trajectory for myself if the choices I made were different. Alone, yes, but I'd very much alive.  

At this point I spotted it hiding among the roots and mud. I stopped where I was standing and gently lowered my bag, releasing the catch to reach for my GoPro inside. Just when I clicked it on and placed it into frame, the reptile flexed it jaws. It's mouth fanned open, and then slammed shut. Then it spun around and bolted away, zigzagging toward the water. A few metres away was a sign warning people to stay off the water's edge. By this time I had strayed from the designated paths to track this thing with its scales of tail whipping ahead, trying to reach for the water. Then I saw it through the viewfinder as it sliced through the water, like a torpedo. Its body so graceless on land diving straight and true, making soft splashes and sending ripples on the surface. It picked up speed and soon vanished out of sight, safe in the cool, quiet of mud and fish and soft hidden things that thrive in the murky deep. 

But it wasn't the one I was looking for because as I played back the footage on the GoPro, the crocodile I'd found was brown and yellow, spotted like a leopard. The beast I was trying to find was much, much larger and had a long and sharp snout and strapping tail with black chequered spots. And without warning, the rain came thick and fast with visibility fading rapidly. It occurred to me these wetlands make their own weather and there can be no predicting anything.  

It might be a good idea to turn around and go for another pass when the weather cleared. I didn't though. Instead I wanted to make my way up to the designated path once again. By this time my boots coated with mud and slime it took two or three tries before I pulled myself up using the branches of nearby trees, nearly losing my footing. By now I was almost winded, like someone had punched me right in the gut. I had only myself to blame for sitting around in the office and not getting enough exercise and not being mindful about my diet.

It did occur to me something bad might happen – a heart attack for a man my age is common given my lack of fitness and indulgences. And for a moment I thought about the possibility of it or slipping and smashing my head. Even getting attacked by a pack of wild dogs is possible over here or getting stung by a swarm of hornets. Out here in the open, nobody is around to help and there are many ways to die. I haven't seen anyone along these trails this morning. Not even the park ranger on his rounds. You know those sorts of freak accidents, which you think, only happen to others. Until it happens to you.

And then it did.

I should have been careful about the exposed roots curling and snaking on the soil's surface and the slippery ground because when it happened when I tried to shrug my shoulder strap of my backpack. I lost my balance and pirouetted backwards, sliding down until my leg got stuck between two thick roots. At first I thought of pulling myself up, cursing myself for being such a clumsy idiot but then I realised my leg had snapped. Funny how the realisation sets in before the pain. Because my bag was still open after I had retrieved my GoPro – which by now was possibly smashed when I fell – all my things lay strewn about, energy bars and fruit and raw chicken parts.

Even at this point in time panic did not set in although knowing I wasn't going anywhere. Sooner or later someone would come for me, surely. Another hiker or park ranger was bound to turn up, after this entire place is not so far off the grid unlike other places where something unfortunate as this would bring about thoughts of death for sure. When crying out for help made no difference if there is no one to hear you. When the elements erase every trace of your passing like you've never been there.

But as the hours crept by I began to have this feeling no one would be coming for me. Didn't matter if my phone battery was low because over here shrouded by foliage and vegetation, I couldn't get a good signal. Each time I tried to wiggle my leg out, a stabbing pain cut through my body. It was dizzying to be caught this way upside down and looking up at the rain coming down. I might be up here for God knows how long? What would it take before you realise something isn't right?  

You didn't do anything wrong all these years when we stayed together. You have your faults, for sure but then again – who doesn't? Nobody is fault-free. It's not about sin, no maybe something deeper, more primal. I suppose you married me because you thought I was I was harmless and easily pushed around. And in a way, I do give that sort of impression to others. I don't go looking for trouble. People cut me off in traffic and I don't curse or shake my fist at them. People take advantage of me in the office and I don't get upset. You got your way most of the time when we saw things differently. And don't get me started on our son. I pamper him too much, I know.

It is because of that nobody suspects me. And I know how hard it can be to stop once you've got it going. Even if we wanted to quit it's not easy. We had patches of interruptions, stops and starts – what I jokingly called abstinence – where we'd go for months without seeing each other. But we always pulled back into our own little orbit, Jessica and I. Brought together by some unseen force or intention the both of us secretly relishing this one big secret.

When our son was growing up, all through the years, afternoons and evenings and whatever pocket of space and time we could carve out. Once I told you I was going overseas for a conference but I was actually going to meet Jessica at a hotel. We stayed in a really nice room, pretending to be husband and wife, pretending we were on holiday and eating buttered steaks and ahi tuna and drinking lots of French champagne and doing and telling each other things only married people do – who would have thought Chuen Seng could never give her what she wanted because he tried too hard and was always too anxious, a complete joy to discover on my part.

While I confessed to her how things between you and I changed after our son was born. It wasn't like you didn't show me affection, of course you did but it was not the same as being attracted to me, there was sometimes a look in your face, like discomfort or pain – I can't say for sure. Funny how shameful things, which we kept hidden from our partners' light all come emerging into the surface with someone whom we share an unshakable bond. But it also could be how we flipped the idea of relationships on its head, changing the rules of the game. Something about stepping out of the regular felt like liberation and freedom for both of us because it seemed as if we were taking back what actually belonged to us. We kept on going right through our marriages.

You really don't know the kind of power it gives you when you look right at the people who think they got you figured out and go, oh you've got no idea. At the dinner table during big family dinners when I'm sitting next to your parents, making polite conversation or when I pick our son up from school or when you're lying next to me in bed. When you whisper into my ear. You've got no idea the power a secret like that gives you.

It was Jessica who told me about the split before the news spread in the office. Chuen Seng was the one who wanted out of the marriage and left without even knowing about us. Right under everyone's noses, we couldn't care about any cover up. Our lies were hiding in plain sight and we kept on going right from the start.

I must have dipped out of consciousness because when I awoke something in the light had changed. A buttery glow overhead. The sky looked as if it was pressing down on me. Each time I blinked it seem to loom over and compress. I tried to cry for help once or twice but after a while it just seemed stupid. I was cold and shivering, my clothes drenched and because I had not respected this trail and had gone off the designated path, it was its way of punishment.

Still, I had to try. I wasn't about to give up this way. With little strength I had left, I had to make one last effort to free my leg. By now the sky had gone dark again, low clouds passing overhead and the wind had slowly filled the spaces between the trees. And just then as I was about to make my move to save myself, I heard the snapping of branches under the weight of something heavy.    

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