Ministry of Moral Panic

by Amanda Lee Koe

  O shokuji o o tanoshimi kudasai.

  What does that mean?

  ‘Enjoy your meal.’

  • • •

  He didn’t finish the kamameshi—perhaps it was a bad recommendation. She really ought to know this, she feels guilty. She places the wooden box and the cup on her tray, wipes the table with her rag, spreading the smell of damp.

  He’s gone, but what is she to do. It isn’t an autograph that will make her feel better. It isn’t as if there’s any way for her to tell him what he was to her; is to her. If only she could remove her apron, roll up her shirt, show him the awkward scorch marks from where her mother used the iron on her a decade ago, the period of time coinciding with him playing the blind singer who loses his memory, if only he would say nothing but touch them lightly, trace all seven of them across her ribcage and sternum, then unroll her shirt back down.

  She takes the soiled dishes to the back, furtively spooning some rice and beef from his plate, with the spoon he’d used, shoving it into her mouth. The beef is overdone. She licks the spoon, using her teeth and tongue to scrape the congealed grains of rice and gravy on it.

  • • •

  Fifteen minutes from closing time a phone call to the restaurant’s main line, asking for her. The manager hollers for her, trying hard to listen in, pretending to check off the day’s reservations at the counter, but he is summoned over by a dissatisfied customer, whose omu rice is too soggy.

  Hello?

  Hello. It’s me. The one you recommended the kamameshi to.

  How did you know my name?

  Isn’t that what your nametag’s for?

  Is there something I can help you with?

  I’m in a suite in the hotel on top of the casino.

  I’m not that sort of girl.

  I’m sorry it comes across that way—I just want someone to share the view with. Have you seen things from this high up?

  Isn’t it funny?

  What?

  You were in a serial about a casino before there was a casino, and now you’re in a hotel suite in a casino.

  Life mimics art.

  I loved you in that show.

  Thank you.

  I cried when you had to lick the bad guy’s boot. Did you really, or was it a camera trick?

  I did it. I was young and I wanted it to feel real.

  You won Best Actor for that at the Star Awards that year.

  You remember.

  I watch everything you’re in.

  The manager hollers for her to clear a table.

  I have to go.

  My room number is 2926. You don’t have to come up if you don’t want to.

  • • •

  It isn’t that she wants to go up, but that she feels compelled to. When you’ve stared at something out of a box—fibre optics, satellite signals, photons, a piece of furniture—for so long and you’re given the chance to feel its edges, the shape of it, it’s difficult to not want to touch.

  She’s changed out of her waitress uniform in the toilet. Her manager asked excitedly, impatiently, all bad breath and yellowed teeth: Who was that? Nobody, she said. She knows right after she leaves, the manager will go around telling all the other wait staff what a slut she is.

  She ensures she isn’t being followed as she waits for the lift, as she steps in and presses up instead of down.

  • • •

  Top of the evening news the next day: King of Caldecott Hill Attempts Suicide in Marina Bay Sands Suite. Everyone’s talking about it, even the Malays and Indians, though he only appears on the Mandarin channel.

  Depression, breakdown in marriage, fingers burnt on the stock market, bad investment, lost his life savings at the casino, the rumours are flying. She doesn’t care what the reason is, but how could she not have seen this coming?

  She sees him as he was in the casino serial: confident and coasting in one scene, in the next tearing off his clothes shouting: “我服输 ! 我服输 ! 我服输 ! ”2, humiliated yet a man of honour, keeping his word to the casino kingpin when he’s lost the bet, he’s forfeited a million dollars in a card game, he’s walking out into the night.

  • • •

  The interrogation room, it’s how it looks on the telly, the harsh white light, the one-way window. She’s given a glass of water.

  What were you doing in Mr Li’s room?

  We were talking.

  What were you talking about?

  About the shows he’d been on. I watched them all when I was a kid. About me as a kid.

  What is your relationship with Mr Li?

  Nothing.

  Come again?

  We don’t have one, in any way.

  Why then would he invite you to his hotel room the night before attempting suicide?

  I don’t know.

  You’re not being cooperative here. Let’s try this again. Why would Mr Li invite you to his hotel room the night before attempting suicide?

  I don’t know. Because I told him he was always the good guy?

  What is this about?

  He always played the good guy. On TV.

  For how long have you known Mr Li?

  I’ve seen him on TV.

  For how long have you known Mr Li personally?

  Just last night.

  How did you meet?

  I’m a waitress at the Japanese restaurant in the hotel. He had dinner there.

  How did you end up in his room?

  He called the restaurant at closing time.

  And?

  And asked if I wanted to go up to his room.

  Did you and Mr Li engage in sexual activity?

  No!

  In physical activity, excluding intercourse?

  No.

  None whatsoever?

  Well . . . I showed him my scars.

  What scars?

  When I was a kid, my mother used to hit me. Sometimes, she used a hot iron.

  Where are your scars?

  On my ribcage.

  Why would you show them to Mr Li?

  Because—you wouldn’t understand. Please, please let me go. I haven’t done anything wrong.

  We’re just trying to do our job here, ma’am. It looks like a suicide attempt, and we understand from the coroner that the time of death was after you left the room as per the time-stamp on the CCTV, but we need to carry out thorough investigations.

  You think I had something to do with his condition?

  You were the last person to see him alive. We need to understand what you were doing in his room. The chronology of events. So back to the scars—why would you show them to Mr Li?

  When my mother hit me when I was little, I used to imagine that he was my, my father. Or my uncle. Or my older brother. Or my lover. It didn’t matter which it was. He was a good guy. He was the good guy. He would have protected me. I watched every show he was in. It made me feel closer to him. I felt safe thinking of him. I could imagine him saying my name, putting himself between my mother and me, taking me in his arms, looking at my wounds.

  Where was your father?

  He left when I was seven. My mother had many men over the years as I was growing up.

  Were you, or are you, in love with Mr Li?

  (pause) What is love?

  (pause) Did you hope to one day be with him?

  That’s not really love, is it?

  (pause) Did you hope to one day meet Mr Li?

  No.

  Why not?

  In my head I already knew him.

  (pause) Did Mr Li exhibit any odd behaviour in your company?

  No, besides that I thought it odd that he would want to talk to me.

  Did he seem emotionally unsound?

  No.

  What was his behaviour like?

  He was calm. Charming. A little wistful.

  Did you at any point see the gun, or were you given the knowledge that he had in his possession, the gun?

  No.

  Do you know that it is illegal to
possess a gun in Singapore?

  Yes.

  Do you know that it is illegal to be in the knowing company of someone in possession of a gun in Singapore?

  No.

  What time did you leave Mr Li’s suite?

  I fell asleep and left around nine the following morning.

  You shared a bed with Mr Li?

  We were lying down and talking, yes.

  Were you touching in bed?

  No, not at all.

  Were you under the covers or over the covers?

  How is this question relevant?

  Do you know that Mr Li is married?

  Yes.

  That he has two children?

  Yes.

  Still you thought it okay to spend the night alone with him in a hotel room.

  We were talking.

  The CCTV shows that Mr Li gave you money, in the lift.

  He gave me twenty bucks to take a cab home.

  But you didn’t take a cab—you skipped the long line of cabs at the hotel lobby.

  Yes, I took a bus home. I’m not rich. I’m not used to taking cabs.

  How do we know this monetary exchange wasn’t payment for your services?

  Because if it was, I wouldn’t be so fucking cheap?

  Pardon?

  Why don’t you just check the sheets and his underwear for sperm?

  We did.

  And?

  And there were samples.

  Of?

  Of male ejaculated bodily fluids.

  What? We didn’t do a thing.

  Why do you think Mr Li invited you to his room?

  I think it was because he could feel it.

  Feel what?

  That I already knew him.

  Did he say this?

  No.

  Then why do you say this?

  You asked me what I thought.

  • • •

  They let her off after three more hours of grilling. They ask if she has anyone to call to pick her up and she says no, she doesn’t. On the public bus home, she thinks about his calm smile, his warm hands. The way he propped himself up against a pillow. She thinks about the sperm staining his underwear.

  She wants to speak with his wife, to tell her “我们之间没有发生任何关系...”3 just like on the telly. She wants to bond with his wife over him, to grieve with her.

  • • •

  Five years later—the way time goes by so conveniently in the last episode of the series, near the end, to make a point, to contextualise a plot turn, to ambiguously tidy up a convoluted and improbable end. Most often it ends with the lead character standing on a breakwater, looking out to the dirty sea—

  Just like in the drama serials, he lay in a coma.

  Unlike the drama serials, he never got better.

  She quit bussing tables at the Japanese restaurant the day after the interrogation. The manager called to let her know there were reporters and photographers lying in wait for her. The manager tried to pry details from her—Well I have to tell the press something, don’t I?—and she hung up. She didn’t bother to chase down her last pay cheque.

  She took a second-class degree at a private university and started on a marketing job soon after, marrying a colleague two years later. He was a quiet man who loved her gently. She was happy about this; all she wanted was someone who would never hit her.

  Every year on a certain date, she excuses herself to go to the hospice where the King of Caldecott Hill lies, asleep. In all these years, a new King had not been crowned. There were Princes and Queens, but no Kings. There’d been no funeral, no eulogies, no farewell, since he wasn’t properly dead.

  Sometimes in the afternoons, at odd timings, they still play reruns he starred in. Him at nineteen, at twenty-three, at thirty, at forty-one. The skilled gambler, the patient surgeon, the stoic husband, the anti-hero special agent. Immortalised on film reels, his naturally tanned skin pulled over those cheekbones, the intensity of his gaze. She looks out for these reruns in the telly guide, sets a timer recorder for them. When her husband works late or meets up with his army buddies for a drink, she curls up on the sofa and watches them back to back. “难道我们真的是有缘无份吗 ? ”4 the King of Caldecott Hill says impetuously to the lead female, index finger curled around her chin, tilting her face to catch the light. She pauses, rewinds, replays.

  Half his face was destroyed by the bullet tearing through; it lies in a craggy, floundering mass of skin. His left eye socket droops beyond his non-existent cheekbone, while much of his jaw and lips are a blown-out shipwreck.

  It hadn’t shocked her at all, from the outset. She’d asked the nurse if she could touch. The nurse had asked her relationship to him; she said it was complicated. She touched.

  Over the past year, his hair began turning white. She finds this alarming, and brings with her on her next visit a box of hair dye from the pharmacy. The nurse accedes, proffering her old towels to line his shoulders, and a C-shaped shoulder-resting basin to catch drips.

  As they wait for the hair dye to be absorbed by his roots—and it is wondrous to imagine that in there, a part of him is still capable of absorption, as it were—the nurse says to her in an undertone: This means that she will know there’s someone else who visits him.

  Who?

  His wife.

  She hasn’t thought of this, to be honest. Of course she’s always feared bumping into the wife at the hospice, but she always manages to convince herself to chance it. On every visit, she makes sure to position herself with a view of the long corridor, and she’s long familiarised herself with the swiftest exit route from the other side of the room.

  How often does she come?

  Once every two or three months. She comes with the children.

  What do they do?

  Talk to him a little, talk amongst themselves. Show him old photographs. They stay around twenty minutes each time.

  Tell her you did it, won’t you? That you coloured his hair? It was a leftover from another patient’s and you didn’t want it to go to waste.

  The nurse is silent, but it feels like acquiescence. They both watch the King of Caldecott Hill, breathing measuredly via the respirator. Sometimes when she watches him for too long, she thinks she sees a finger of his twitching.

  • • •

  In every Chinese drama serial, there comes a point where the male lead raises his eyes to the heavens, holds up three fingers and attempts to swear his eternal love for the female lead. Lest he proves untrue, he invokes, with a Chinese idiom, celestial retribution and certain death—“如果我, xxx, 做出任何对不起 xxx 的事, 我将会被天打雷劈。” 5, The female lead, being Chinese and superstitious, fears the attraction of misfortune and never allows the male lead to complete the utterance of this line, often pulling down the raised hand coyly, in feminine concern mixed in with shy delight at his willingness to demonstrate devotion.

  Doesn’t he look better now, she says as she gently towels his hair dry, the smell of ammonia permeating the ward. Still so handsome, isn’t he? The nurse bites her lip. Don’t worry, she says to the nurse, I’m not kidding myself that he’ll ever come to.

  She touches her scars through her blouse, all seven of them, one by one, each with a different finger. That was how he’d done it when she was twenty-one, when she’d lifted up her shirt, as if he’d sat down to a piano to practise a scale. She swallows and remembers the stock line she’d seen and heard the King of Caldecott Hill utter so many times, through the years, as his onscreen lover would draw her last breath, courtesy of a car accident; a brain tumour; a knifing by a psychopath; that misty glaze to his eyes, the same way his voice would catch in the back of his throat each time: “不管天长地久, 只需曾经拥有。” 6

  _____________

  1 I will use ten dollars to win your entire casino!

  2 I admit defeat! I admit defeat! I admit defeat!

  3 There were absolutely no relations or occurrences between us.

  4
How is it possible that we were fated only to meet, but not destined to be together?

  5 If I, xxx, do unto xxx any manner of betrayal, may the heavens punish me via lightning striking me down dead.

  6 Eternity is not the crux; the only necessary knowledge is that we once possessed each other.

  Every Park on This Island

  Bukit Timah Hill

  The Bear says: We had a forest in our backyard. It caught fire one summer.

  The Bear says: I never finished exploring it.

  The Bear says: Well, what I mean is it was eleven acres.

  He’d asked, casually, if we had nature trails here in Singapore. I said we could try Bukit Timah Hill, and then I realised I’d asked him out, but right before I froze up he said, Sure. Looking for directions there, I come across a factoid: that it is the highest point on this island, at an altitude of 163.63 metres. It makes me feel funny, because when I imagine the word altitude, I imagine thin air, the need to acclimatise.

  He opens up his bag—knapsack, he says—and takes out a Ziploc.

  For you. Trail mix.

  It’s a mixture of almonds, raisins, peanuts, M&Ms and granola, and somehow I think it’s the sweetest thing ever.

  We sit on the root of a tree sharing the trail mix, watching fat red ants go by. He tells me that on his boyhood nature trails in Pennsylvania, they would see white-tailed deer and red foxes. A small chameleon appears and crosses in front of us slowly, like some sort of visual cue or subtitle. I find myself laughing. Somehow he gets it, and laughs too, a deep, throaty laugh.

  I’ve never made a special trip to any park or hill in Singapore, I say as we part at the bus stop. I sure can tell, he says. Which girl would wear stuff like that to hike? The Bear points to my vintage T-straps, my sweetheart-neckline sundress.

  Hike? When the hill is less than two hundred metres tall and the routes are all paved? I say. I must take you to Fort Canning Park one day—there’s an escalator built into the side of the hill, can you imagine that?

  How about, he says, We go to every park on this island.

  Every park on this island?

  Every park on this island.

  Clementi Woods

  When I get home to my tenth floor flat in Clementi Woods, I boot my laptop up. On this island that calls itself a garden city, there are twelve city and heritage parks, thirteen community parks, six coastal parks, five southern ridge parks, six nature parks, four nature reserves, seven riverine parks, the Botanic Gardens, the Zoological Gardens, and the Gardens by the Bay. I draw up a map, mark them all out, and pin it to the corkboard above my desk.