I have a deep sense of romance about these kelongs, along with the many other settings, characters, nuances, and quirks that you’ll see in these stories. They’re intense, inky, nebulous. There is evil, sadness, a foreboding. And liars, cheaters, the valiant abound.
This is a Singapore rarely explored in Western literature — until now. No Disneyland here; but there is a death penalty.
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
March 2014
Part I
Sirens
Last Time
by Colin Goh
Raffles Place
Last time.
That’s how Singaporeans say both “on a previous occasion” and “in the old days.” As in, “Last time I saw her, she was wearing an emerald-green Moschino dress that accentuated her clavicle,” as well as, “Last time, Singapore lawyers also used to wear wigs.”
There’s a photo of me wearing a wig on my desk at the firm. It’s made of white horsehair, fringed with several rows of frizzy curls (the wig, not the photo). I’m also wearing a black robe with wide, open sleeves and a sort of flap over the left shoulder, the garb of an English barrister.
It’s made by Ede & Ravenscroft, I said, handing her her tea. They’re the queen’s robe makers.
“You graduated in England?” She blew lightly on the tea before taking a sip. I’d left the door of my office open and could feel the eyes of the rest of the firm searing into the back of my neck.
No, I laughed. I had the picture taken during a holiday in England just before my final year at the National University of Singapore’s law school. I’d been visiting friends who were graduating as barristers and thought it fun to get myself snapped in their ridiculous getup as well.
She raised an eyebrow.
It’s ridiculous, I said, shaking my head. We stopped being a colony over forty years ago, but Singaporeans who study law in Britain are still in thrall to the “tradition.” (In hindsight, I am annoyed that I felt compelled to illustrate this observation by making quotation marks with my fingers.) I guess it’s an understandable impulse, I continued, like visiting Disneyland and buying a souvenir T-shirt. But they soon learn we have to be who we are.
As she lowered her cup, my eyes followed the lipstick she’d left on the rim. The Singapore legal profession did away with wigs ages ago, I added. They’re simply too hot for our tropical climate. In Singapore, pragmatism invariably trumps sentiment.
“But you still wear suits,” she replied, picking up the photo frame and turning it over slowly. She ran a long, tapered finger over some lettering on the frame’s back. “Made in China,” she smiled, placing the photo back on my desk.
I remember my scalp tingling. It’s funny the details that stick in your head.
“Last time, this all used to be the sea,” our driver said, motioning with his hand as we headed down Marina Boulevard toward the Sands.
She didn’t say a word, but her gaze was clearly fixed on the casino’s dolmen-like silhouette.
I adjusted my tie and said, People say it looks like... and here I fumbled. I didn’t know what Stonehenge was in Mandarin, so I just said it in English.
“What’s that?” she asked, without looking away from the window.
A very ancient monument in England, I said. A group of stones that archaeologists think was a burial ground of some sort.
“You know too much about England.” She leaned back in her seat and reached over to pat my jaw. “You should get to know China more. You’re Chinese, after all.”
I’d like that, I said softly. Through the rearview mirror, I saw the driver waggle his eyebrows at me.
The last time I saw the Comrade was in the casino’s main theater, on the night of her final performance. I was in the back row, tapping away absently at my iPad as she went through her routine of mic checks and lighting cues. A Facebook message came in with a photo of some of my fellow junior associates raising their middle fingers at me. Bastard gets to bill for spending time with her, ran a comment. What does that make him?
I smiled and looked up to see her waving at me. I waved back, and then realized she was actually waving to someone else behind me. Feebly lowering my hand, I turned around to see the Comrade lolloping down the stairs in a way that might have been comical except for the ashen look on his face.
I shot up and began shimmying toward the aisle, but was stopped by a grim-looking Mr. Chong, who’d appeared at the head of the row of seats. “Better stay here,” he said. He was my boss, so I did.
Meanwhile, the Comrade had already stormed onto the stage, where he’d begun barking at her in his impenetrable Beifang accent. Clearly bewildered, she reached out to touch him, but he brushed her hand away and began stabbing an accusatory finger at her. From my vantage point, I couldn’t make out their exchange, but she was now pleading with him. And when she tried to pull him closer, he struck her across the face.
I immediately bolted from Mr. Chong’s side. By the time I reached the stage, two of her security detail had pinned the Comrade to the floor. He didn’t put up a struggle; he seemed to know he had crossed a line. Her entourage was now swarming around her, but she waved them away with one hand, the other cradling her cheek. She wasn’t crying. In fact, it was the Comrade who was whimpering, fat tears streaming down his Botoxed face.
Shall I call the police? I held up my phone as I drew closer to her.
She whipped her head around, a brief yet intense flicker in her eyes that jolted me. Then she fell into my arms with a shudder. “No,” she whispered. As I held her close, I could see, past her perfect shoulder, Mr. Chong leaning over the orchestra pit, rubbing his jaw.
The first time I was in Beijing, I realized I wasn’t truly Chinese after all.
Ethnically, perhaps. My family could trace its lineage to the Daoguang Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and I spoke Mandarin fluently enough that I’d anchored my secondary school’s Chinese debating team, a detail Mr. Chong felt necessary to invoke while explaining why he was dispatching me to the PRC to handle some matters for the Comrade.
Culturally, though, I had more in common with the American attorneys seated across from me at the conference table. Over dinner, we merrily shot the breeze over Seinfeld, Star Wars, and the byzantine narratives of the X-Men while the Comrade and his comrades downed their Château Lafite-Rothschild with Sprite.
But when she walked into the private dining room, I felt a ripple inside me, as if my ancestors had cast a plumb line into the well of my soul.
I’d heard the rumors about her and the Comrade, mostly from my secretary, who follows these things. But I never got the fuss, since I didn’t know who she was. I loathe Mandopop, which I find either derivative or treacly or both, and a starlet canoodling with a businessman with party connections just wasn’t news.
But seeing the Comrade drape his nicotine-stained fingers over her knee, a spider crouched atop a magnolia blossom, I was surprised to feel something akin to anger. I was just as surprised to find myself afterward at a music store in the Gulou district buying her entire back catalog.
Initially, I’d chalked it up to being starstruck, but the crush’s load never ebbed. For some unfathomable reason, she attended almost every meeting I had with the Comrade. In fact, she asked almost all the questions while he mostly nodded as he puffed on one Double Happiness cigarette after another.