by Gwee Li Sui
No money? That’s fine. After some time, when you reach the “pioneer generation” age, there’ll be many medical subsidies available to you.
(Really?)
But that’s not the case now. The diabetic in the neighbouring bed is older than you, so he’s part of the “pioneer generation”. As soon as the scheme is publicly announced tomorrow, his leg amputation will be free. (Though not really free, it’s taxpayers footing your bill, the money going to that legal knife-wielder.)
He also belonged to the pioneer batch of National Servicemen, who, back in the day, were the “Beat Generation”. That was an anti-war era, a time of rising economic prosperity, when the four Asian dragons were at the height of their powers.
And then? In the new century, he entered the “embarrassed generation” not allowed to retire and claim his own CPF, forced to keep working, a portion of his salary continuing to be deducted and placed in his account in preparation for his future retirement (though he might not live long enough to see the monthly payouts). We use the hard-earned cash of yesteryear to pay our ever-increasing medical bills.
Yet, the current generation was also unable to enjoy the benefits. The helpless doctor sat down patiently, gently pressing on his numb right leg.
“You’re fine,” the doctor comforted him. He stared at the ceiling rather than look directly at that itemised bill. Turning over, his gaze alighted on the television screen on which a presenter was explaining the new assistance schemes in dialect, the same technique they had used during the SARS epidemic. His young lo-kun had his head lowered, surfing on his handphone. He took a sideways glance at the bill. This was no ordinary visit to the polyclinic, and the expenses would surely be high.
He let out a breath. After all, he was of the generation who had witnessed great turbulence. Everything would be fine in the end as long as “pioneer generation” was one of those helpful terms that could be pushed forward with the passing of time.
When it comes to the $8 billion assistance fund, we’ve managed to avoid drowning in the floods of conversation around it. Who can understand that nameless emotional stirring? He looked like a scabby old dog licking its wounds, sunk into a mouldy existence, waiting for an opportunity to escape the eyes of family members begging him to depart early. He probed his festering right hip.
The cold wind blowing down from the ceiling tattooed itself across his memory. He was the generation being bid farewell. Goodbye to confusion and dementia. Goodbye to this island he had once ploughed back at a time when his surroundings were disappearing even faster than memory…
Someone looked over impatiently from the waiting room. He coughed energetically, strenuously pretending that nothing had happened. The lo-kun stared steadily at the computer screen, his finger still, uncertain what to do, unable to understand if some tragic meaning lay behind that long coughing fit. Just like his departed father (whatever generation that was), who also gave such a signal before his own departure. His father’s medical bills were once a painful memory of his university days, a page that couldn’t simply be turned over, like a tattoo that seemed frivolous at first glance.
Such a Person
That evening, the void deck was full of family and close relatives.
When the mortician arrived to place Eighth Uncle in his coffin, everyone stepped back on either side to give him room. Uncle had prepared the clothes he wanted to be laid out in while still alive – apparently the uniform he had worn back in the day while being trained in guerilla warfare. The outfit now appeared baggy on his scrawny frame. As for a hat, Eighth Aunt said that he had had too many strapped on his head during his lifetime and that she wanted him to depart with the sky above him free and clear.
She quietly tucked a little red book into his left chest pocket. The mortician carefully cleaned the old scars on his right arm even though they would be covered by the long sleeve of his shirt.
A few of the cousins were busy checking the contents of the obituary, particularly the accuracy of the family relationships and names. As for Eighth Uncle’s own name – wasn’t it just Mr. Chan How Ming? Why the extra two words “Chan Zan”?
Who was Chan Zan? How come we had never heard of him? We looked for the answer in Eighth Uncle’s metal trunk. Apart from some colonial-era documents and yellowing photographs, there was also an old thread-bound book of classic poems with a dedication on the title page: “From your comrade-in-arms, Socialist Youth Group.” We also found some newspaper clippings, one of which was headlined “Former MCP (Ma Gong) member surrenders…” and a picture beneath which was printed “Chan Zan”.
“What’s MCP?”
“Malaysia Crashes Planes?”
“It sounds like Multi-Coloured Porcelain – some antique of Uncle’s.”
“It’s those kings of the jungle.”
“Perhaps it’s some utopian landscape.”
“Ma Gong – maybe it’s a distant relative of Ma Yun.”
“You’re all wrong,” said Eighth Aunt. “Chan Zan is still alive in the jungle. So let him rest there in peace! No rituals during the wake. He sent a dream not long ago, saying someone wanted to see him…”
The darkness that Eighth Uncle was now walking through, the Marx of his youth once visited.
Salvation Solution
BY OVIDIA YU
Before it happened, everything was already wrong with my life. I was living in a filthy three-room Ghim Moh flat full of vacuum cleaners and Salvation Solution storage bags guaranteed to triple your storage space, store your excess curtains, cushions, and carpets, and keep your stuffed animals and holiday winter wear out of sight. I used to sell Salvation Solution (“We’ll suck up all your cleaning problems!”) vacuum cleaners until the company closed down. Literally. One Monday, the warehouse building office they operated out of was closed with “For Rent” signs up. They owed me several months of commission, so I kept the demo machine and all the bags.
***
The whole business started on the first day of the Hungry Ghost month. I remember people were burning incense sticks and presenting prayer cakes and oranges. Puasa was still on, so, for a couple of days, there were hungry Muslims by day and hungry Chinese ghosts by night. I lit a couple of joss sticks for my mother in front of her picture even though I did not have a proper altar. The old man next door had set up the most elaborate altar on our corridor to pray for gambling wins, but the gods didn’t seem to hear him. Everyone else heard him raging at his losses or ranting drunk over small winning. At least he stopped hitting his wife and son since his son got so much bigger than him. The son, Ah Boy, was about my age but not too bright. Then again, who was I to talk? Ah Boy made three hundred dollars a month handing out free newspapers at Buona Vista MRT station with his mother. I made zero and was steadily sinking further into debt, and we were both trapped there in our tiny old parent-owned HDB flats.
At least the old man was quiet that morning, had been quiet for a few days.
***
Then Eva Sharon appeared. Eva Sharon Png was a thin woman with an eager head that bobbed ahead of the rest of her like a discontented balloon on a too long neck. “I knew you would be at home on Sunday, Dave. Still not going to church, eh?”
Eva Sharon owned one of the nail spas in the row next to the kopitiam downstairs. That is how I met her, trying to sell them Salvation Solution storage bags. It was my bad luck, given that she was not there every day. If she had not been there, I would have teased and flirted with the bored China girls staffing the place. We would have chatted and drunk the chrysanthemum tea they made for clients. I wouldn’t have sold any bags, but it would have been a pleasant half hour. Instead, Eva Sharon had latched on to me, and I had not been able to shake her off since. She even followed me back to my flat, popping up with, “I forgot to give you my name card, so I brought it to you!”
I had hoped that she would stop coming because, on her last visit, she got into a fight with Old Man Teo over his prayer items in the corridor.
“The sme
ll is getting worse,” Eva Sharon sniffed. “From your neighbours’ place, I think.”
“The smell?” I opened the grille door and stepped out, closing the door behind me.
“It’s your neighbours. I think their food offerings are decaying.” She bobbed her face towards the Teos’ front window. “I’m going to complain and get the town council to come and do something.”
Eva Sharon was very good at nagging the authorities until she gets what she wants. “Complaining is very effective. I will pass you my samples of complaint letters and lists of people to send them to. Only every complaint letter you send, you must change some things, so they are not all the same. There are some starting with ‘I live with my aged parents –’ and ‘I am a family man concerned about my children –’ that I have not used yet.”
She told me that she had learned the technique from her church, which issued cell group leaders with complaint letter templates and lists of addresses for their members to send letters and emails to. It was a sore point with Eva Sharon that, despite all her hard work for her church, she was not a cell group leader.
“You can get them evicted. You shouldn’t have to put up with this.” She peered into the dark room. “So dirty also. If this place was done up nicely, it could be quite nice. You deserve better neighbours than these people. I can help you. I can help you with a lot of things, Dave.” She sounded bossy, boastful, and pleading and reminded me of my primary school maths teacher. Even Ah Boy had been better at maths than me. I looked at the Teos’ windows and thought that they were no dirtier than mine.
“Children shouldn’t be exposed to things like that.” Eva Sharon’s attention had returned to prayer items in the corridor.
“There aren’t any children on this floor,” I told her. Ah Boy and I had been among the last children to grow up on our block, and we were the only ones left. All the others had moved on, moved up and moved out. But Eva Sharon was in full flow and not listening.
“It’s very unsettling for young minds, and that is bad for them. Anyway, it’s against the law for them to put things in the corridor. Laws should be enforced, otherwise people stop taking them seriously. We are already organising people in these few blocks to petition to remove the prayer bins in corridors and downstairs. Oh, by the way, I already put your name down on the petition. And your mother’s name also.”
“My mother’s dead.”
“Look, I know, and you know your mother is dead, but these people are not going to cross check every name on the list, right? Those neighbours of yours I put them down also, all three of them. I got the names from residents’ list. Don’t worry, they don’t speak English, don’t have email, nobody is going to check. Anyway, it’s for their own good. If this place gets cleaned up, property values will go up.” In addition to investing in nail spas, Eva Sharon was also a real estate agent and personal financial advisor. “Are you worried they will come and look for your mother and ask how she signed the petition? Eh?”
Eva Sharon nudged me and laughed. I was not sure if she was joking with me or threatening me, so I moved away from her and didn’t say anything. Then Ah Boy and Madam Ang came up the stairs, and Eva Sharon turned her attention to them. They worked from 4 a.m. to 9 a.m. distributing free newspapers at the MRT station and looked exhausted. Getting ignored and pushed aside by people can be more tiring than working.
“You have to clear up all this. It’s against the rules to have it here. It’s against the law,” Eva Sharon said loudly. “You have to remove it all at once or you will be kicked out of the flat.” They did not seem to understand what she was saying.
“Not our stuff,” Ah Boy struggled to answer Eva Sharon in English, but Madam Ang, her eyes flat and uncaring, ignored her. She unlocked the padlock on the grille door (which did not close fully on its own) and went into the flat.
“So rude!” Eva Sharon said. “Did you see that, Dave? Did you see how she just turned her back on me? Who does she think she is? I am not going to let her get away with this! And that smell – it’s disgusting, it’s unhealthy. I’m going to report them to the PUB. I’m sure Apostle Matthew Shen has contacts there.”
Ah Boy looked at me as though wondering whether I had set Eva Sharon on him.
“Please don’t,” I told her. “I will help them clean up.”
“It’s not your job, Dave. Don’t get involved.”
“I’ll help them. Please leave.”
She stared at me as though I had betrayed her. Then she stormed off muttering. I heard “ungrateful” and “ignorant” before she turned down the staircase. I waited until I saw the top of her head leading her body across the road to the nail spa before I turned to Ah Boy and said in Hokkien, “Show me.”
***
The stink of decomposing flesh made me gag. It was strongest at the flat’s utility room next to the toilet. The layout was exactly the same as in my flat next door. Except that, instead of boxes of vacuum cleaner parts and bags, they had stacks of newspapers and cardboard and bags of flattened drink cans. Mr. Teo Loon Kai curled up in a sleeping position on a cardboard mat next to the old bicycle he was always oiling but never rode.
“That is where he always sleeps,” said Madam Ang through hands cupped over her mouth. “I sleep in the bedroom. Ah Boy sleeps in the front room.”
“How long has he been lying there?”
They looked at each other.
“He came back with the Wanbao, and we thought he was going to sleep,” Madam Ang said.
“Uncle?” I said. Even though I knew he was not going to answer, I spoke out of habit as I approached him. “Mr. Teo?”
I leaned over and looked around the dried vomit staining the Chinese evening newspaper beneath him. “Tuesday?”
Madam Ang and Ah Boy nodded, “Tuesday.”
“In those five days, Uncle never moved or made any sound?”
The paper was folded to the Singapore Sweep results. Mr. Teo was still clutching a Singapore Sweep ticket in his hand. When I extracted it, his fingers felt like bloated condoms. The front said, “First Prize 2.3 million.” The back of the ticket where you are supposed to write your name and IC number was blank.
Holding my breath, I walked back through the flat and out to the corridor. I could still smell the decaying dead man on my clothes and seeped into my skin and the insides of my nose and lungs. The other two followed me like stray dogs who already had all hope kicked out of them, instinctively following anything that moved.
***
“I think he had a heart attack. Couldn’t you see something was wrong?” I heard the anger and panic in my voice. “Why didn’t you do something?”
They looked at each other. “We avoid the back unless we have to go to the toilet.” Madam Ang said.
“When we come back home from work, we are too tired to do anything,” Ah Boy said. “When we saw him lying there, we didn’t think anything about it. He is usually lying there, not doing anything.”
“I turned on the radio on for him the way he likes it,” Madam Ang said.
“We thought that Pa was in deep sleep, so we didn’t want to wake him.” Ah Boy said. “When Pa is awake he is always grumbling and shouting and scolding us for nothing.”
“Do you want to hold a wake?” I asked. “Or do you want the pension?”
I knew that Old Teo, like my late mother, was one of the last few on the old pre-CPF civil service pension scheme. Distributing free newspapers got Madam Ang and Ah Boy a miserable $300 a month. But, if Old Teo was not reported dead, the pension money would keep coming. It would probably not be much more than what I got from my mother’s pension, but it was better than nothing. They did not answer. I made a decision.
“Wait here.”
I came back with three N95 masks, a Salvation Solution vacuum, and a couple of Salvation bags. The N95 Particulate Respirator is supposed to be at least ninety-five per cent effective against solid and non-oil-based particles. My mother had bought up as many boxes as she could lay her hands on, ho
ping to make a profit when the haze came back. She did not live to see her profit, but luckily I still had the masks. I gave one each to Madam Ang and Ah Boy. The mask did not block out all the odour, but knowing I was not breathing in ninety-five per cent of the solid and non-oil-based particles from my decomposing neighbour helped.
***
Salvation Solution storage bags are airtight and watertight and guaranteed to keep contents protected from dirt, bugs, moisture, and mildew. Each bag comes with a patented Turbo Salvation valve that removes air fifty percent faster and more efficiently, reducing the formation of bad odour. You just pull the air out with your Salvation Solution vacuum, holding the hose steady until the package is as flat as you like. Once you remove the hose, the flaps snap shut, and your Salvation will be sealed for the good of your household.
***
I hoped that Eva Sharon had given up on me. But, two evenings later, she was back. A noisy Hungry Ghost Festival dinner organised by the dragon and lion dance centre was going on downstairs, and I was on the corridor watering some of Old Man Teo’s plants.
“We need to talk. I can help you if only you will see it. And I was led to share with you that you can help me. In the New Dawn Salvation Baptist Church, only husband and wife teams can reach top leadership positions. It is so that the people have lifestyle role models. In fact, only husband and wife teams can head any cell group, not only the large ones. I will do all the work. I am already doing more than those other people are. I just need to get a husband.”
“Why not marry someone from your church?” I asked.
For a moment, I thought that she was going to shout at me, maybe even hit me, so much irritation flared up in her. But then she got her face under control and forced a smile over her frustration that made her look even more frightening.