“Can I have one too?” Ming asks.
Hoe Yuan Hai extends the pack to him. When Ming has extracted a cigarette, the man lights it for him. Ming sucks greedily at the cigarette. He watches Hoe observe him.
“If you are willing to co-operate, you will be able to go home before the night is over.”
“What is it you want to know?”
The deputy director gets off the desk and stands over Ming. He takes a puff from his cigarette, turns his face and blows out the smoke. “Did your father leave you any documents, books or…journals before his death?”
“Can you be more specific? He passed me several documents and books in his life time.”
Hoe bends down and splutters, “Stop pretending! You know what I am talking about!” Smoke and saliva land on Ming’s face.
“I’m sorry. I’d really like to help but I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Did your father leave you any private journals or diaries, outside the scope of your business that your father passed you just before his death? Any documents, books or journals that did not belong to him?”
“Then who do they belong to?”
“Just answer my question!”
Ming sucks again at the cigarette, feeling the warm air caress his lungs. “I can’t think of any.”
“Think, think very hard if you want to save your neck. You’ve got three years hanging over your head. But if you prove yourself useful, we’ll see what we can do for you.”
“What have those journals got to do with my case?”
“Just tell us what you know.”
Ming wraps his arms around his body and stares at the neat stack of blank A4 paper. The ballpoint pen is still capped, resting almost parallel to the paper. He asks for another cigarette and a glass of hot water. When the two requests are acceded to, he asks for the air-conditioner to be switched off.
“No more demands. We’re giving you a last chance to save yourself.”
“I can’t think in this condition.”
The deputy director glares at Ming. Then he looks at one of his assistants standing behind Ming and points his chin towards the aircon duct above. The droning of the 1,000-watt air conditioner stops, exacerbating the silence. Ming believes the deputy director’s compassion is prompted by the desire to hear him think. But nothing comes to his mind. He forces it to go back to the day before his father died, two days before, three days, four days… There were several days when he did not wish to see and had not seen his father. That was when the newspapers had splashed the news of the permanent secretary being investigated by the CPIB, and speculated the connection to one of his children handling massive jobs from the ministry. He had hated going to work then, hated having to deal with his colleagues in the office and rivals in court. He took a week off and went to Western Australia for a farm stay. He did not even like animals. After his moody holiday, he visited his parents and Yang at their home in the East Coast.
“How was Australia?” his father had asked him at dinner.
“Good. More sheep than people.”
“How’s work?”
“All right. How are things at the ministry?”
“All right,” his father replied, as he picked up a piece of chicken.
“They have suspended Father,” Yang said.
Ming dropped his rice bowl on the table and drank single-mindedly the soup his mother had spooned into his bowl. He remembers there was a great deal of noise from the chewing and slurping, which he had not noticed before. The noise became intolerable so he left the table and turned on the television.
“Next time don’t put so much salt in the chicken,” Chow Sze Teck said to his wife, and retired to his study.
Ming had changed the channel when the nine o’clock news came on. He could not stand watching his father one more nanosecond on TV. He looked around his father’s mansion. He was alone in the lounge with the fish in the tank for company. Yang had left for the pub and his mother was in the kitchen supervising the maid. He pressed the channel buttons one by one, watching without seeing a single pixel on the screen, and then switched off the TV. He climbed a few steps up the stairs and dithered by the painting of his father on the landing. He turned back, walked towards the kitchen, felt for the car key in his pocket and said goodbye to his mother. In the driveway, he saw out of the corner of his eye, his father looking down at him from the study window. He drove away without looking up. When he reached home, he reproached himself for his cruelty. Three days later, it was too late for him to make it up to his father.
“So, Mr Chow, where are the documents your father gave you?” the deputy director brings him back to the present.
“Documents? I thought you said private journals?”
“Documents or private journals, whatever! Did he pass you any of those things or not?”
He pauses. “I don’t think so.”
Hoe Yuan Hai moves to stand inches away from Ming. “Chow Ming, don’t test my patience. You want cigarettes, I give you. You want hot water, I give you. You ask for the aircon to be switched off, we switch it off for you. I can keep you here until tomorrow morning with the aircon blasting at you and the lights glaring all night on you. Don’t force me to do that.”
“I’ve been thinking till my skull cracks. My father left me some properties and shares, which I have disclosed in the asset declaration. But he did not pass me any journals.”
The deputy director grabs Ming by the collar, drags him up from his chair and kicks the chair away with a crash. He throws Ming against a wall and smashes his fist on the wall, just barely missing Ming’s face. He speaks through clenched teeth. “Your life is in your own hands. You think about it carefully.” Then he storms out of the room.
The air-conditioner resumes its droning and the spotlights continue their cheerful radiance.
Dinner is a repeat of lunch. Ming is not given any more cigarettes or hot water. The cold acts on his bladder and he keeps going to the toilet. The goons think it is a ploy. One time in the toilet, Ming sees himself in the mirror and notices his skin has turned red and is peeling on his cheeks.
A second team takes over from the first for the midnight shift and they too prefer to stand behind Ming in the room. Ming feels the crisp cold air in his nostrils and thinks his nose is about to crack like the tip of an iceberg. He looks at his watch every five minutes. It is now 10.43pm. He doesn’t know when the deputy director will come back again and doesn’t know if he wants him to come back. He wishes like hell he knew something about those damned journals. If it was him they are after, they could have brought charges against him without a shred of evidence, never mind the damned journal. What the fuck are they fishing for? And what will they do to him next?
Every conscious second, he is distracted by his body, which is fast losing heat and energy. He is no longer sure if he is still in control of his body and mind. His only certainty is that if someone were to punch him in the stomach at that moment, his body would collapse into a frozen mound. He puzzles over whether anyone knows or cares he has been kept incommunicado for over 13 hours, and that his face came very close to being smashed.
He folds his arms on the desk and drops his head on his arms. He falls into a delirium of swirling frost. He sees his father drowning in a frozen river. He calls for help but no one comes. He is too scared to jump into the river to save him. More snow falls around him, and river and sky blend into a white sheet of A4 typing paper.
Someone shakes his shoulder and he wakes with a jump. He cannot move his hands, which are approaching something like rigor mortis. His neck is corpse-stiff. Then he remembers where he is. He runs numb fingers through his hair and straightens his tie. He asks to go to the toilet.
“You can go home now,” says a voice from behind.
He climbs to his feet and shuffles out of the long dark tunnel. He passes through the two doors with the special lock, into the grimy car park. He stands in the morning sun to defrost his body and thanks heaven it is
still intact.
SIXTEEN
THE DIARY OF Edward Wee:
14 October 1962
Malaysia is now cast in stone. No one can deny that I have brought to birth a democratic and just nation. But we’ll see and hear no end of those trounced in the referendum.
17 November 1962
The Tunku just doesn’t seem to understand that if he doesn’t take any action now, the communists might just wreck the whole merger. I have to call an election soon and if Lim Min Tong wins, he will proclaim the referendum null and void and throw the merger out of the window. The Socialist Party could well win if an election were held tomorrow. Where will that leave me? Go back to my practice and be consigned to the dustbin of history?
21 December 1962
Blast. We lost the by-election in Kampong Bahru. Sze Teck’s men are keeping their ears to the ground and all indications point to a Socialist victory in the next general election. Sze Teck had the audacity to tell me that if we do nothing, Lim Min Tong will be the next prime minister. Democracy has failed us. We have adhered to our promise to give the people freedom to choose their government. But now the people are using this power to hold my government to ransom, making demands for welfare and the release of political detainees. If they think I will bend to their will, they are very much mistaken. I will not resort to populism to win their vote.
The people are seduced by the romance of a self-determined Singapore, free from the yoke of neo-colonialism. They do not want to know the hard truths about building a nation. Lim Min Tong and his ilk don’t know the first thing about terms of trade. And without the Japanese and the Americans, where are we to find the money to build Jurong Industrial Park and create jobs for the unemployed?
Unless the Brits are willing to suspend the Constitution and ban the Socialist Party, I’m finished. Is this what my hard labour of the past 10 years has come to? What am I to do? Let the people have what they want and everything go to the devil if Min Tong’s party wins? The Tunku and his sycophants will die laughing.
2 February 1963
Flew to KL and did my damnedest to drill into the heads of the Internal Security Council the need to curb the mass hysteria. Min Tong and his comrades are luring more unions to their camp. They are agitating for free trade unions! That will translate to no end of wildcat strikes.
17 March 1963
There is a God, after all. Min Tong has dug his own grave by openly pledging solidarity with the armed revolt in Brunei. He will live to regret this. The Tunku is shaken by the uprising as it may spread to Sabah and Sarawak and the merger will become history. I’ll make a trip to KL tomorrow. Assure him I will never let that happen in Singapore. But he has to help himself before I can help him.
21 May 1963
The Internal Security Council has worked out a list of the hard-core communists. We divide those to be detained into first and second categories. Lim Min Tong heads the first category.
2 June 1963
It’s payback time. Last night the Internal Security Council sanctioned Operation Red Star at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur. This morning 400 police officers in Singapore, and another 150 Malayan officers in Johore, cast the dragnet over the island. By 2am, 120 communists on our list were arrested. The fools brought this upon themselves.
Still, I sent a letter to Min Tong in Outram Prison, offering him exile to Indonesia. He would not be allowed to return to Singapore again. In the larger scheme of things, Min Tong is not a pivotal communist figure, but he could shake up the ground. This gesture would portray me as a man of honour, not out to destroy my adversary but simply to neutralise him. Alas, he turned down my offer without a second thought. Perhaps he too wants to show himself as a man of honour, not to be seen abandoning his comrades but continuing the struggle in prison.
He may have earned my respect for him, but that makes him an even more formidable foe.
12 June 1963
The trade unions incited Chinese middle school children to protest outside Parliament House during a session today. Good thing Livingstone did not flinch and sent riot police to quell the mob. Once again, Red Star has not failed as an effective security operation to mop up the great unwashed. With their leaders locked up, the unions’ much vaunted organising ability has been paralysed. If these students think they can take over the mantle, they’ve got another think coming. Thank Heaven there has been no carnage on my turf.
15 August 1963
My government is sallying forth for a solid second term in office. All the more delicious to join Malaysia on 16 September. The trade unions can scream blue murder till they go hoarse. I’ll deal with them after the celebration. Do they seriously think I would allow my country to be held ransom by a bunch of union mafia picketing at the drop of a hat?
I am now the undisputed prime minister of Singapore. There have been rumblings in Malaya that my title should be changed to chief minister like the other states. They must be quite out of their minds. I didn’t sweat blood just to become a mere chief minister!
4 March 1964
Less than a year after the merger, those Malay extremists are hurling insults, saying I’m arrogant. They should just go back to their kampungs and plant rice.
25 June 1964
They are now calling me “the enemy of Malaysia” and clamouring for my arrest. I’d better ring Telford and see if I can have a chat with him. The Brits would not want to see Malaysia flounder. Nor myself arrested, I hope. If it weren’t for me, they would have a whole army of communists on their hands, who would sooner pledge allegiance to Sukarno than the Tunku. With Indonesia stoking the flames, calling Malaysia a neo-colonial plot, the Tunku must know I am not his enemy. He had better control his extremists and tackle Sukarno’s saboteurs with a firm hand.
21 July 1964
Yesterday marked a sad day for Singapore. It was the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday and riots broke out during a procession by 25,000 Muslims. The island was a scene from Dante’s “Inferno”. Thirty-six dead and 554 injured. The Malay ultras are blaming me for the riots, accusing me of inciting racial hatred.
The abbot’s words have come true. Blood is spilt but who is really responsible? The ultras, the communists, agent provocateurs, Sukarno’s volunteers? Or me? I have gone along my whole life doing things which mean something, but they always come to nothing. I’m exhausted. Why did I choose this treacherous path?
5 August 1964
It is only 2pm but the city looks desolate. Policemen are nowhere to be found. People are still too scared to come out of their homes. Cows and goats are grazing on football fields and even on the roads. The shopkeepers have drilled planks across their shutters for fear of looting and arson. From my office window here, I can see the dark patches in the Padang ground where they burned my effigies. The city looks like Calcutta—rubbish, broken bottles, overturned cars, rats, mosquitoes, beggars. The light has gone out of the city.
6 October 1964
This is the beginning of the end of our short-lived marriage. The Tunku has stepped in and threatened to boot Singapore out of Malaysia after I sweated blood to achieve the merger. And the Malay ultras are howling for my arrest.
8 December 1964
Everything will plunge to zero tomorrow. The merger is a lost cause, and I may get thrown into the prison I’ve sent others to. The joke is on me, indeed. Caesar had his Brutus and I have the ultras. Nothing but an irrevocable joke. Blood is shed, communists put away forever—still, ours remains no more than a playground for the fanatics playing their game of evil vs evil. History will remember me as a village idiot whose antics boomerang on him, bringing much mirth to the villagers. Better that whole millennia just fall away and be forgotten.
SEVENTEEN
MATTHEW RICHARDS TREADS through the concrete maze of the country’s heartland. He finds her block easily enough the third time around in an estate where the numbers don’t run sequentially and one prefabricated block looks the same as another. He walks along the covered pavement to protect himself
from unidentified falling objects, gives the smelly lift a miss and climbs the 12 storeys to Ling’s flat. Since his past two visits, there has been no let-up in the neighbours’ predilection for stormy cooking and spilling the appendages of their urban lives into the corridors. Matthew now associates the aroma of garlic fried in a hot wok and incense ashes with seeing Ling, as if those two ingredients alone would transform thoughts of his mortal beloved into bodily presence.
He has rung and Ling is expecting him. But she did not expect him to come with her favourite char kway teow, moist with sweet dark sauce and fresh cockles.
“From the famous stall in Marine Parade. I drove from one end of the island to another to get you this.”
Ling tilts her head, inviting him in. “We get that in Sydney too.”
“Ya, but not authentic lah. They use ang moh ingredients.”
Ling gets two pairs of chopsticks and they eat out of the packet; two plates fewer to wash in a sink of dirty dishes. In the cramped kitchen with a round table for two persons, Matthew and Ling sit close to each other and the food. He fidgets a little with his chopsticks and the slippery noodles. To eat the long, uncut noodles without slurping and without the black sauce smearing his chin is a minor feat for the Indian who is used to a fork and spoon.
“I’ve not seen a more uncouth diplomat.” Ling laughs and takes a piece of tissue paper from a box buried under the day’s newspaper to wipe his mouth.
“The Singapore High Commission doesn’t serve such tasty food to dignitaries.”
“I thought you learned grooming at the SDU.”
“I never go there.”
“Why not?”
“The women there are all single, desperate and ugly.”
Ling swallows a cockle. Matthew drops his chopsticks on the table, leans over and kisses her. He tastes the sweet dark sauce on her mouth.
He pulls at her T-shirt, takes her to the bedroom and presses her down to her bed. His hands, with their tea-coloured palms and chocolate skin, cup her olive face as he searches for telltale lines that might uncover something of the past. He is plagued with insecurity every time he sees her, not knowing what she thinks and what she thinks of him. And what those eight years and her father’s death have done to her. The afternoon sun throws shafts of dusty light through the louvred windows on the bed. He wipes off the sweat glistening above her lips. He moves his hands slowly, hesitating at every stage to gauge her response before he advances deeper into the once-familiar territory. He removes her T-shirt and she helps him by arching her back. He fumbles at the hook of her bra and she lies still on her side. He runs his index fingers round her dark nipples, and meeting no resistance, gives each one a long, hard kiss.
Death of a Perm Sec Page 11