<H1>Chapter 8</H1> <br/><p>After dusk, as each swallow of palm wine slowly eased Awang's anger, he tried to think about anything but Kuntum and Gumarang. They were plotting something behind his back, and he couldn't stay focused enough to figure out what it was.</p> <p>Back in his college days, drinking three pitchers of palm wine hadn't been a problem, but he found that his tolerance had now fallen far below that. Nausea churned in his stomach, accompanied by the urge to vomit, even though he was only halfway through his second pitcher. The tavern attendant didn't look down on him because of the tip he'd slipped him, even though he certainly knew that his customer was the town's doctor.</p> <p>Taluk Kuantan was going through a difficult period, even though the city was far better off than most of the Grand Malay Sultanate. A few extra dirhams here and there were clearly a sensible policy. Unfortunately, sleepless residency nights had turned him into a genuine coward, someone who wanted sleep more than a good time. What kind of world was this if he couldn't even drink as much of his favorite beverage as he wanted?</p> <p>Well... so long as he could drown his sorrows and calm the anxiety that had almost always been present, worming its way into his life ever since the crash. Besides, the taste of palm wine—whether made from sugar palm, coconut, or nipa—was still better than benzodiazepines.</p> <p>By the time he finally managed to finish his second pitcher, Awang had reached the point where he could easily fall asleep in the tavern, wake up twelve hours later, and still be drunk and spinning like gas. He stumbled through the door, and his stomach sent up an urge to vomit that made everything better. As the palm wine churned back up his throat from the tip of his tongue, a stronger urge forced him to puke warm palm wine onto the toes of his shoes.</p> <p>Sadly, he began searching for his car with great difficulty. He knew it had to be somewhere. How else could he have gotten to that damned palm-wine tavern? What kind of car did he own? He couldn't even remember now....</p> <p>Slowly, an image of a black-and-white Toyota Badak surfaced in his mind. Where had he left that old tapir? Maybe it was wallowing in the mud.</p> <p>"Hey, tapir!" he shouted.</p> <p>He smiled to himself.</p> <p><i>I should've become a comedian.</i></p> <p>Then he walked from car to car, occasionally tripping over invisible obstacles planted by demons to thwart his search, until Awang finally concluded that his Badak had been stolen.</p> <p>"Why... why do they always pick me...." was the only sentence he could vomit out as he desperately struggled to figure out which way led home. His house was actually only a kilometer from the tavern, but the moon looked closer and larger.</p> <p>Staggering slowly in what he thought was the right direction, Awang quickly forgot his tapir. "Signs of alcohol addiction" was the diagnosis he would have given if it had happened to someone else. Even if someone told him he had become a heavy palm-wine drinker, he was still highly functional, having achieved more success in life than an ordinary person could manage in several lifetimes.</p> <p>By some rare stroke of luck, he was heading in the right direction to get home.</p> <p>He could do it if he had to; he didn't need his tapir. He used to walk along this little road without a problem when he was a child. Getting away from his house and the funeral home had always been the best reason he knew to head for Jalan Raya Utama. But now, as he trudged drunkenly toward the outskirts of town, the pedestrian sidewalk kept striking his feet faster than his tainted brain would have liked.</p> <p>Suddenly, his body slammed into the ground with enough force to crush the ancient hips of a resident of Rumah Pucuk. Fortunately, he hadn't yet reached old age, and even drunk, he didn't bother trying to break his fall. The blood flowing from his split lip tasted awful. When he got up and staggered onward, he wanted palm wine to wash away the rusty saltiness of blood.</p> <p>As he approached his house, the thought of having to pass the funeral home sobered him somewhat, making him realize he wasn't in any condition to ignore his fear.</p> <p>Indeed, in his youth, back in his father's and grandfather's time, he had practically lived in that place. The fear still clung to him, just as it had gripped him since childhood. There seemed to be no way out of that place. How could he escape the presence of those never-ending shadows of death?</p>