Five Star Billionaire. Tash Aw

or big or deep enough to accept their love. The record company arranged for it all to be donated to charity or simply destroyed, but still he could feel their desire for him lingering over him like a raincloud on a muggy day, refusing to budge.

      Early last year, on the eve of a major concert at the Taipei Arena, Gary collapsed and was admitted to hospital. The diagnosis was not serious – he was anaemic, which explained not only his famously pale complexion but his frequent dizzy spells. He was also found to have low blood pressure and an elevated cholesterol level for someone so young. It was all the takeaway curries, the pizzas and other junk food he ate during late-night sessions in the recording studio. His punishing work schedule exacerbated these underlying conditions, and it was no surprise that he eventually succumbed to the pressure, the doctors said. They prescribed a fortnight’s complete rest, some supplements, and a balanced diet. Before he left, one doctor asked him if he was stressed. When Gary appeared somewhat confused by the question, the doctor posed it again, this time asking whether he found it difficult to deal with the pressures he had placed upon himself and whether, for example, he worried about things beyond his control. Gary thought for a few seconds before truthfully answering no. Because when he stopped for that moment to consider his life, he realised that there was nothing in it that was within his control. Every minute of his day was organised by his management company, even the number of hours he should sleep. It had been like this for so long that he wondered if he had ever known a different way of living.

      The press was full of hysterical reports. Some said he had fallen ill from toxins ingested while eating moray eel down on the coast, some said he had suffered an overdose, others said he had AIDS. He had not been seen in public or been photographed by the paparazzi for only five days when one tabloid newspaper began to surmise that he was dead. From his apartment he peered cautiously out between the metallic slats of the blinds and saw a group of teenage fans holding a vigil for him. At night they lit candles and huddled together to console each other. In daylight, he could see that some of them had been crying. He wished they would go away, and after two days he began to resent them. Their presence weighed down on him, and he couldn’t sleep. He longed to be free of his apartment, which he hated even at the best of times. He had become used to having the blinds down all the time – from the moment he moved in, he had never seen the apartment in daylight, not even for one minute. It was always night in his home.

      What most bothered him was the lack of activity. He wasn’t used to having time on his hands. Now that he was rested and feeling better he could not stand the hours spent watching DVDs or Korean TV dramas. He tried strumming tunes on his guitar or tinkling on the piano, but the apartment was too dark and oppressive, and he could feel no enthusiasm for music. He began spending too much time on the internet, on websites he shouldn’t have been looking at. In fact, it was during this period of imprisonment that he first discovered sexually explicit sites. At first he hated himself for trawling endlessly through them, but he was surprised at how his initial feelings of wariness and guilt soon gave way to an unthinking numbness, and he would spend hours sitting in the semi-dark staring at images that were initially shocking but quickly became dull. He would fall asleep at odd hours because he could not stop sifting through the pages for new images of graphic sexual acts, even though he felt nothing when he looked at them. He went to bed feeling empty and full of anger at his fans outside, for they were the ones who had forced him into this position.

      Finally his management company called a press conference at which Gary appeared, happy and smiling, saying that he had taken some time off to return to Malaysia to spend time with friends and family following a ‘sad occurrence’ which he would rather not discuss in public. Relieved that he was alive and in good health, his fans did not press any further, assuming that his temporary disappearance was somehow linked to the fact that he was an orphan, raised by distant relatives with whom he had enjoyed no closeness. His troubled youth following the death of his mother was well documented – it was something that made him appear human and vulnerable to his fans. As his manager once told him, his childhood tragedies were a great selling point. But though he was grateful for his fans’ loyalty and adoration, when he looked at the mass of jubilant teenage faces at his next concert, he found their joy so empty and unquestioning that it unnerved him, and he could not get rid of the feeling that had entered his soul during the ten days of confinement in his night-dark apartment. It was unmistakable. He had started to hate them.

      That three-week period of internment and difficult public relations upset his tightly packed schedule and cost him in many ways. Not only was the cancelled concert an expensive write-off, but the negative publicity surrounding his sudden and mysterious disappearance caused several projects to be suspended, and one or two sponsors even doubted whether they should continue to support him. His calendar became compressed to the point where he could not fulfil his obligations, and his scheduled participation in the Beijing Olympics music video was cancelled, depriving him of a chance to be seen widely by the biggest audience of them all.

      Now he had to work twice as hard to penetrate the Mainland market, his management team said. Everything they did over the coming year would be geared towards establishing him in China – every song he recorded, every TV show he appeared on, every commercial he shot, every hour he slept, every meal he ate. He had everything it took to be a superstar in China, but it would be hard. He had to be ready to sacrifice everything. Gary thought about all the things he had already sacrificed – friends, a social life, family commitments, love, relationships. And he was not at all frightened by what he was about to embark on, because he had none of the things that people normally hold dear. He had nothing to sacrifice.

      The giant billboards that stood along the elevated highway bore the poster announcing Gary’s ground-breaking concert in Shanghai. Music Angel has arrived! The Angel of Music is here to save us … His image was spread across each billboard, his newly gym-toned torso showing through a shirt that had been strategically slashed to display his abdominal muscles, the result of eight months’ work with a personal trainer. His head was bowed to show off his thick black hair, that looked slick with sweat, and computer trickery had provided him with a giant pair of angel wings, giving the impression that he was landing gently on earth after a celestial journey. It was impossible to miss these posters. As his car drove him along the busy highway, he reckoned that they appeared every couple of miles, each time positioned in the middle of a cluster of three billboards. On one side of him there was a young woman dressed only in underwear, her index finger to her lips, which were pursed in a hushing shape; on the other side were washing machines and refrigerators.

      He had just performed a sell-out concert in Wuhan which had been widely covered in the local press and gained enormous publicity for his principal sponsors, a soft-drink company. They had shot a TV commercial to coincide with his tour, a big-budget production involving sophisticated computer graphics, in which the Angel Gary flies over a devastated landscape defeating gruesome monsters by shining a light that emanates from his heart. As Gary flutters softly to earth, the desert around him turns lush and green. The power to turn darkness to light, he whispers, looking at the camera with his trademark sideways glance before taking a sip of soda.

      It was remarked within the industry and by the public alike that Gary was looking great. After many months of limited public appearances, during which he was rarely photographed, he had unveiled his new image – muscular and with a streak of danger. He was still boyish and innocent-looking, but his presence now carried a faint physical threat, as if he had a dark side to him. His stylists and costume designers were showered with praise, as were the people at the record company who had devised the new marketing strategy.

      ‘Thank goodness we invested so much in your gym work,’ his agent said as they drove past the fifth billboard. ‘Your physical condition is crucial. We can’t afford to have a repeat of Taipei last year.’

      Gary did not answer. As usual, the previous night’s concert had left him both exhausted and unable to sleep. It was always like this. The adrenalin of the performance would rush through his veins, and he would feel the deep pounding of the bass notes reverberate in his chest and ribcage hours after the concert had ended, when he was lying in bed trying to sleep. Every tiny light in the room – the green