When I was a child. A strange character lived right above me in our apartment building. My family lived on the second floor and he lived on the third. All of the people in the building called him the Malaysian although he really was a Chinese. Perhaps it was because of his tanned skin and his build. Unlike the other men living in the building, he had broad shoulders and was tall. He had wavy hair and everyone agreed that he was handsome in a slightly unorthodox way. He was strange. In my memory, he was always the person people gossiped about. He was supposed to have been forty five and had for a while worked in Burma doing hard labor, but I think all that were mere stories people made up. He had that mystery about him. For the ten years we lived in the apartment, he had retained that same mystery. He was not young, but because he never had any family, he always had that bachelor charm that made him seem younger than he really was. Even for his age, he was pretty wild. He had so many girlfriends, even the building's gossips could not keep track of them. Every other week he would invite some woman to his apartment and for several days we would see his women coming and going, but then, they always mysteriously disappeared and someone else would take their place. It was a cycle that we got used to in the building.

For all his mystery, there was one thing we all knew about the Malaysian, he was a compulsive liar. Everyone knew that. He lied to get extensions on paying his rent. He told a different story every time anyone ever asked about his past. Even his women, he lied to get them to go home with him. That was what the adults used to whisper about. There was always a certain excited buzz when the adults discussed the Malaysian's lies. The women would talk about his lies admiringly, claiming often that if they had such fancy stoires to sweep them off their feet, they too will follow him home. The men grunted in disgust, such cheap tricks: women as they all knew were a bunch of softies and were, according to their logic, extremely gullible. Still, that did not explain why the land lord granted him rent extensions month after month. I asked him once, why he still gave the Malaysian credit when he knew that he was lying. The landlord merely exclaimed that I shouldn't fault the man for being a good story teller. So in all the children's eyes, the Malyaisan had a mythical quality, a secret knowledge on how to get away with things that we as children tried so hard to get away with.

For a while, the Malaysian dated the daughter of the owner of the grocery store on the street corner. We would watch him drop by every afternoon on pretext of buying cigarettes so he could chat up Lucy. Though it was obvious as day to all of us kids, the whole thing seemed to have eluded the grocery store owner who didn't seem to notice that the Malaysian was trying his tricks on his daughter. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, for the grocery store owner, the Malaysian soon lost interest in Lucy. We caught him trying to steal kisses from her in the neighborhood movie house but we thought that was as much he got out of her. I tried to ask Lucy why she would date a liar, but she just battered her lashes at me and shrugged her shoulders.

It made it all the more infuriating when we were taught in school that lying was wrong and that one should never in any circumstance lie. I asked mother about this and all she said was that I should try to be a good boy and not worry about the Malaysian.

"Sometimes," she said, "people are just the way they are."

"But surely, he can change?"

But my mother just smiled, " Sometimes these traits are in people's characters, and you can't change that."

That got it into my head, that perhaps if I was bad for long enough, my parents would accept that it was just in my character and that I could never change. But of course, that never happened.

The summer I turned eight, I remember trying hard to unrevel the secret of the Malaysian. My neighbor and I would spy on his apartment from the roof of the adjacent apartment building. Once in a while, when we hung around in the lobby area we would run into him and he would say hi to us. But always, I held him in suspect because I thought he had a skill I could learn. Being so good at it, to the extent that he could even fool my mum made me resent him a little.

It was that same summer that a new apartment building on our street got completed and we started to see a lot of new faces walking our street. It made the owner of the grocery store happy to see new customers. But we the kids of the building was unhappy because that meant sharing out territories with new kids we were not familiar with. We also lived in constant fear of older kids who might try to push us around. To our relief, most of the new inhabitants seemed to be old folks. Sometimes we would watch them shuffle slowly down the street and imagine shooting our sling shots at them.

But I distinctly remember that it was that same summer that I witnessed the Malaysian's magic with my own eyes. I was in the grocery store with little Tam who was two years younger than me. We would reading the dollar fifty comics. The Malaysian was lounging around the cashier small talking with the grocery store owner when this old lady came in. She was in dsitressed, wringing her hands in agony. She asked if the grocery store owner could help her make an overseas call. She had heard from her son-in-law that her daughter got into a car accident and was hospitalized. They lived in the States and she did not know how to make overseas calls. The message about her daughter she had gotten from a relative. Not being able to learn about the daughter, she was overcome with worry. She told the grocery store owner that she had tried getting help from her neigbors but none of them could make international calls. She handed a slip of paper with a phone number on it and asked the grocery store owner if he could help her call the number. The store owner was reluctant, naturally because international calls were expensive. A five minutes call could easily have amounted to twenty dollars and that was a lot of money back then. The Malaysian, seeing the grocery store owner's hesitation, told him to do it and to put the bill on his account. The store owner looked at him in a way that I can only describe as a mixture of admiration and gratefulness then started to dial the number on the scrap of paper. He didn't seem to remember that the Malaysian was already buying things on credit from the store. The question of where the money would come from didn't seem to cross the store owner's mind.

The Malaysian watched the old lady wring her gnarled hands, her eyes red with anxious tears. He put his arm around her shoulder and told her
"It's going to be okay. My son was once in a car accident, he broke his leg and fractured his ribs but he survived. Now, he still plays football and outruns me. It's going to be alright, you'll see."

She was silent and watchful, waiting for a sign from the store owner that the call has gotten through. We all waited when the store owner passed her the receiver. After what seemed like a endless conversation. She finally put down the phone. She had spoken to her son-in-law and apparently her daughter was not in danger, she would have to wear a cast for the next few months but she would live. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Once she put down the phone, to our surprised, she hugged the Malaysian and burst in tears. Then as abruptly as she entered the store, she left. We watched her leave. Having witnessed the whole incident I was full of wonder. When the Malaysian walked out of the store, I followed him.

"Why did you lie about a son? We all know you don't have a son. Why did you lie?" I kept asking even as the Malaysian kept walking. He didn't answer me. I stopped walking and watching his backview moving away in the setting sun.

" Why do you lie?"I shouted.

The Malaysian turned around and gave me a smile. I couldn't read his face, it was lit a gentle orange by the sun but half his face was in the shadows. He smiled at me for a moment, then without a word, he turned around and kept walking. I watched his back view get smaller and smaller until eventually, he was out of sight.