Heaven Has Eyes

by Philip Holden

  She smiled and slowly shook her head.

  And she was right yet again. Yee Siong had his secretary call the young man and they met for high tea in a discreet corner of one of the huge tourist hotels. As the older man waited, the camera picked out Jing Wei walking cautiously across the marble floor, the thirty dizzy storeys of atrium opening up above him. His body was hunched in defiance; when he entered the lounge, he stumbled on the thick pile of the carpet. Yet Yee Siong was all charm. He rose to shake Jing Wei’s hand, indicated a plush chair next to his own. They made small talk as the crisply-dressed waiter took their orders. The young man perched warily on the edge of his seat. Yet Yee Siong kept the conversation bubbling along; there was none of the underlying malice that the wife had shown. The food came, open sandwiches and small scones with condiments arranged on a pyramid of silver platters. When the tea had been poured, Yee Siong gestured for him to make the first selection. They ate and sipped tea and the young man began to grow impatient; the confrontation he had anticipated was being delayed, he felt, by the infinite diversions of conversation.

  “Mr Tan,” he said finally. “I’m really grateful for you meeting me like this. But I’m sure you didn’t meet me today just to talk like this over tea.”

  Yee Siong held his gaze for a few seconds and smiled. Jing Wei was right, of course. And courageous and tactful to raise this point without seeming rude. He had to confess that the Tan family had been concerned when they’d heard Ting Ting was dating someone of whom they knew nothing; the young man should understand that they were concerned about their eldest daughter and about the family’s future. Possibly that might sometimes make them overreact. And so they’d run some background checks. They’d been impressed with Jing Wei’s record. He and his wife were modern people; it would be wrong for them to stand in the way of Ting Ting and her preferred choice for a partner. And they thus thought that they might offer Jing Wei a position in the family business. Something modest at first, of course, but with good prospects if things went well, both personally and professionally.

  Tea slopped into Jing Wei’s saucer. Yee Siong touched him affectionately on the arm. “You don’t have to give me an answer now. Think about it and let me know.”

  He passed Jing Wei a business card and just at that moment, his mobile phone rang. He answered, barked an order, then returned it to his pocket. “I’m afraid I have to go. Urgent business. But make yourself at home here.”

  He spread his hands wide, as if to embrace the plush carpet, the tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the solitary, silent, grand piano and then the soaring emptiness of the hotel interior. As Yee Siong stood up, the young man leaned forward and reached for his wallet, but the older man waved him away. “It’s already taken care of.”

  The camera drew back as the music gathered again; the young man sat with his head in his hands, marooned in the vast lobby, his lonely chair woven into gorgeous expanse of carpet.

  Adelyn nudged him, pointing to the clock on the wall. “We need to get going. The rally’s starting soon.”

  “Ba?” Zi Qiang asked. “Do you want to come?”

  But the old man smiled and shook his head, reaching for the last slice of pear.

  • • •

  The MRT station was cold, gleaming steel and polished granite. Before they took the escalator upwards Adelyn stopped and reached out for his hand.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “Feels funny. Just one minute.” Their fingers sought each other like small, frightened animals. Then he felt it too; a sense that the floor and walls, even the escalator railings, were no longer quite solid. Only a moment, a stirring, perhaps deep underground, and then everything was still again. Knots of people passed them and ascended; not the smooth flow of rush hour, but rather a slow, persistent trickle against gravity, falling upwards into the heat of the night. Outside, they were surprised to find darkness had already fallen, the last pink of the sun still showing through a scratch in the clouds. They walked towards the stage that rose up in the distance, looking for all the world like a boat waiting to be lifted by a rising sea—like one of those pictures of the ark in childhood story books, slowly filled up by a patient line of paired animals. There was something similarly elemental here; the crowd flooded inwards, like insects sucked upwards to a light. At one point, there was a green metal railing that they somehow flowed around; then a line of carts selling cooked food or water, trimmed with yellow bulbs like squid boats staking out a line in the darkness and then the coarse grass of the field itself, softened with rain. He stumbled and Adelyn passed him a torch from her bag. When he looked down, his sandals were licked over with liquid, brown mud.

  Nearer the stage, the crowd thickened and they came to a standstill. Above them, dull orange clouds reflected back light from the street lamps; on each side, the empty, echoing faces of housing blocks. He peered over a neighbour’s shoulder towards the fluorescent lights and banners on the stage. A rustling in the crowd. Someone was shouting on a megaphone. Sit down. The wall of bodies in front of them folded like a curtain; he reached into his backpack for the beach mat and unrolled it. But the people standing behind them did not sit. Later, when they looked at pictures of the rally in the newspapers, Adelyn would say, we must have been just there—in the last seated row, that bay, lit up by light from the stage, just before the cliff of standing figures that stretched far off into the darkness.

  They waited; the time the rally was due to start came and went. Zi Qiang found himself in conversation with an older man on his right, a retired schoolteacher, his hair thin, faced etched with shadows. He’d been to many opposition rallies over the years, he said, but this one seemed different; bigger, of course, but not simply that. The feeling wasn’t the same. How so? Difficult to say exactly, he shrugged and sipped water from a bottle.

  Time crawled. Someone nudged Zi Qiang’s toe, softly stroking the skin on the top of his foot between the sandal straps. He reached forward to catch Adelyn’s hand and then looked down in surprise. A frog, its body no bigger than his thumb. He placed it on his palm and cupped his other hand over it, not quite sure whether he was protecting or capturing the animal. He could feel it settle there, the skin of the throat fluttering against his skin in either breath or heartbeat. Then the music started and the lights came on. He placed it carefully on the mat by his feet.

  The speeches began. First, an older man, in awkward English, and then switching to passionate Tamil; the crowd roared approval, though few understood what was being said. They looked around for an Indian face. He’s saying we’re not children, a voice told them from the darkness behind, saying there’s more to life than family and food.

  A second speaker, a younger woman, nervous, her Mandarin fired out like bullets from a machine gun. My country is not a business, Zi Qiang translated for his neighbour. I won’t be bought. He looked down. The frog had hopped away.

  Then the third speaker, taller, more remote. Adelyn nudged him. “The chairwoman.” He’d seen her on television, but she seemed different here, less self-assured. She spoke first in fractured, bookish Mandarin and then switched to English.

  “Like she’s come down from Emei Shan,” Adelyn said.

  “Listen.”

  She talked about stories, how often we believed in them, how we think they will never end. But stories were made by people; they had the power to end one chapter, however well told it had been, and begin another. The crowd slowly warmed to her as the speech progressed and she stepped down from the podium to thunderous applause.

  And then, at last, the Secretary-General came forward to speak; a stocky man, garlanded in purple flowers. As he stepped up to the microphone, a few drops of rain fell. A thin rain, just enough to cool the crowd before it passed over. He waited for a moment, as if puzzled, then spread out his arms, looking skywards, as he reached for the microphone.

  “Ti wu mak.”

  “What did he say?” Adelyn asked him.

  “It’s Teochew. I don’t unders
tand.”

  The older man turned to them. “Heaven,” he said. “Heaven has eyes.”

  Two Among Many

  THEN RAFFLES SAID, ‘O Sultan, hear what is enacted by English law. The murderer according to it shall be hung; and if not alive, the corpse is hung, notwithstanding. Such is the custom of the white people.’ Then at the same time he ordered the corpse to be brought and put in a buffalo cart, which was thereupon sent round the town of Singapore to the beat of the gong, informing all the European and native gentlemen to look at this man who had drawn blood from his Raja or Governor; and that the law was that he should not live, but in death even he should be hung. When they had sufficiently published thus, then they carried the corpse to Tanjong Maling, at the point of Telok Ayer, where they erected a mast on which they hung it, in an iron basket, and there it remained for ten or fifteen days, till the bones only remained. After this the Sultan asked the body from Mr Raffles, which was granted: Not till then was it washed and buried.

  —Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, Hikayat Abdullah

  She will not meet him for two years. But when she steps forward, when the alarm sounds under the lintel of the metal detector, when the brisk woman in her crisp blue uniform comes forward with hands extended to pat her down, it’s decided. The date remains to be fixed, but it is certain that they will meet.

  She has waited in Changi Airport for hours, after the crowded flight from Phnom Penh, bumping through turbulence over the Gulf of Thailand. Her connecting flight delayed, she’s walked the pastel corridors with their low lighting, taking in the purple orchids, the koi pond bridged by a narrow, parsimonious arch. It’s cool here. Quiet. The heat outside must be just like the heat of the cities she’s visited before—Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok—but she’s insulated behind glass, like the quick fish in the tank in the waiting lounge. Outside the planes bake on the concrete, gleaming white, wings sharp as knives.

  She’s passed through the airport once before to change planes, just as she is doing now. Today’s different, though: she’s much less certain of herself. More time to think things over. As much as she would like to forget, she cannot quite avoid her purpose here. She’s calm, but it’s a willed calm, carefully maintained, like the pruned beauty of the palms in the light well. This submerged nervousness leads her to seek familiarity, and she searches for comfort food. She finds a Starbucks, marooned like an island in a vast expanse of purple carpet. She orders a latte; they take American dollars, but return change in an unfamiliar currency. When she sits down, she sorts the coins idly with her spare hand. Different colours, different sizes, but all mirroring each other: on one side, a crest, on the other, flowers.

  His housing estate has corridors too, lined by planter boxes of purple bougainvillea and trim palms, maintained by an invisible army of workers who vanish each morning. It’s in the north of the island, connected to its fellows, to the city centre and to the airport by the arteries of the MRT and highways. He likes the fresh paint, the well-scrubbed tiles of the estate, the bus that always comes on schedule, the solid pillars of the Light Rapid Transit system. Everything is cared for. When the LRT passes blocks of flats, its windows mist over automatically, shielding balconies lined with washing and potted plants from the prying eyes of passengers. Yet when he goes to the kopitiam each morning, he’s looking for a sanctuary from this overwhelming newness. Not that the coffee shop’s so old, but in the twenty years or so since it was built, it has already acquired reassuring layers of grime. In one of the angles where a pillar meets ceiling, a pair of swiftlets have made a nest, a small pocket of feathers and twigs glued to the walls. Today he pauses momentarily to watch one of the birds return with food, noticing the high-pitched chirping of the young birds in the nest, the way the yellow rims of their unformed beaks open and close. He’s glad that no one’s thought to clear the nest away. Then he sits down gratefully at a Formica table worn white by the scraping of plates, finds that his hands tremble when he unfolds the newspaper. He’s gestured for coffee; they know him here, and the kopi o arrives promptly.

  He has counted out the change for the coffee vendor carefully in preparation, but he still fumbles when he picks it up. His palms are sweaty, and the silver and gold coins cling together, eluding his fingers. More haste, less speed. Then he pulls them free. Next the roti prata arrives, a pillow of folded, crisped dough, and he repeats the performance with greater success.

  He arranges everything on the table precisely, like a surgeon preparing for an operation. To his left, the newspaper, unfolded to the letters page, weighed down in one corner with a bottle of chilli sauce so that the overhead fans will not turn the pages prematurely. Nearer to him, the kopi in a heavy china cup printed with English flowers, a fading colonial memory caught beneath the glaze, mismatched with an orange plastic saucer. He stirs it so that the sugar will dissolve, takes an experimental sip. The handle is tiny and difficult to grip; he pinches it tightly between two swollen fingers. Finally, he reaches to his right. He eats the prata with spoon and fork, pulling the layers apart along hidden seams, dipping a small piece into the curry sauce, feeling its soapy texture on the tongue followed, after a moment, by an explosion of taste.

  At Starbucks, she drinks her coffee, reassured at how it tastes the same as in any other airport. It will also taste the same in Sydney, when she arrives late in the evening or now—in all probability—early the next day. The accompanying croissant is dry in her mouth; she chews with deliberate slowness. Later, in the interview room, she will tell them everything about her that they want to know. Who she met in Australia before she left. Who paid for her trip to Cambodia. Where she went. Who she met there. Eventually, her whole life, from the beginning. She was born in a refugee camp on the Thai border; her mother had fled from Laos, but she’s not Laotian: she’s ethnic Chinese. Teochew. She never knew her father. They—her mother, herself, a younger brother—migrated to Australia when she was four. She cannot remember much about her childhood. But later life was hard: she couldn’t afford to go to university. She did sales and marketing, but her brother got into debt. Into trouble. He needed money. And so…

  Now she returns the tall glass with its plastic stirrer, the empty plate speckled with crumbs, to the barista. Not the woman who first served her, but a young man with a mullet and a tattoo that curves down from the neck until it’s hidden by the collar of his shirt. He nods to her, but doesn’t speak. He can’t place me, she thinks; he doesn’t know what language to use. And I won’t help him. Here I am one among many. In Australia, every now and then, a stranger can burst open my sense of belonging: the man in the shop who tells me I speak English very well; the immaculately dressed old lady who asks me if I am an “Oriental”, and, when I nod, speechless, continues, “Oh well, dear, never mind.” In the few days I spent in Vietnam, the taxi drivers knew from the way I dress that I was from somewhere else; once or twice they thought I might be viet kieu, overseas Vietnamese, and gave an experimental greeting, only for me to answer them conclusively in my mangled phrasebook pronunciation, my broken tones. It is just here, at this airport, that I fit in, in transit between lives.

  When she shoulders her pack, she feels the tug of the packages taped to her lower and upper back.

  He is also one among many. She’s flotsam, moved across continents by the currents of the world. He’s like a limpet. He has stayed here, stubbornly, while the world has changed around him. First the British, under whom he started working. Mr Grouse, the Superintendent, taught him well. In his teens, in his twenties, everything that was solid began to melt: colonial retreat, insurgencies, elections, merger with Malaysia, and then, in 1965, unlooked-for independence. He remembers the press conference on a flickering television screen, the prime minister who paused to wipe away tears at the failure of a life’s work. And then, when he was still married to his first wife, a reverse process: the sudden solidity of the nation-state, the deep freeze of post-independence politics. Through all this, he’s kept his job, kept up his standards. Some thin
gs never change. He still uses, in his work, the 1913 tables that the British devised but long since abandoned. He’s tried unsuccessfully to pass on his skills, trained two successors who each left the service when the time came to shoulder responsibility. Even if he’s supposed to be retired now, the government still calls on him when he’s needed.

  He sips his coffee.

  They are both Catholics. She went to church faithfully, every Sunday, for as far back as she can remember. At ten, she took her first communion. Even when she returned home from uni, after her brother had said he wouldn’t go any more, she would accompany her mother to church, performing the masquerade of a double life. But she, like her brother, has long since ceased to believe. Forget other worlds: the business of living in this one is more than enough. She remembers. Money to help her brother? She could go to Cambodia, pick up a package through to Sydney. Through Singapore? She laughed in incredulity. You don’t understand, the man had told her: they don’t mind if you take stuff through, in transit. They just don’t want it coming into their country. Here’s the name, the phone number, when you’re in Phnom Penh.

  In Cambodia, even on Tonle Sap, they have churches, boats with a high pitched roof and a wooden cross that float across the lake. In two years’ time, before the meeting in the prison, they will ask if she would like to see a priest; she’ll acquiesce, and they’ll talk, separated by glass. Even in prison, she’ll play this masquerade again: on the surface she’ll be numbly calm; on the inside something will move restlessly within her, like a bird beating itself against glass. She will allow the priest to think he has comforted her.

  He goes to mass faithfully, every Sunday. He likes the grandeur, the ceremony, the statue of the Virgin Mary garlanded with flowers as he climbs the steps in the morning heat up to the church that has no walls, the nave supported by pillars only. His first wife said to him, haven’t you read the Ten Commandments? How can you carry on doing the job you do? But for him, it has never been like that. Your life is a series of compartments, like the segments of the oranges his Chinese neighbours give him at New Year. When government service calls him, he will leave his flat in the cool of the night, go to the prison, spend hours checking that everything is in working order. After it’s all over, he’ll return in the midday heat, sink into the soft leather of the couch beneath the ceiling fan, pour himself a single glass of brandy.