She feels sick and keeps burping up garlicky gas from the noodles. “I’m sorry. Just bloody thoughtless of me.”
He looks intently at her. They are both stricken by the question she has asked. The sooner they bury the episode, the better for everyone. The blackest day in the Chows’ annals, and she is remembering it, like an anniversary. “You’re always like that. You think this is your PhD thesis and you have to pursue the truth no matter what. No matter how many people will be screwed again. What’s the fucking point?”
She is hesitant, in case her brother blows up again. “So…you do think the truth is not out yet?”
“I don’t know and I don’t fucking care.” He makes a wild gesture at his stall. “This is all I have now and this is all I care about.” Then he realises a few people are turning to stare at them. The crowd is beginning to grow. Without saying another word, he stands up and goes back to his stall.
Ling sees her brother attempting to immerse himself in his cooking. He always had a good mind for adapting to adverse circumstances. When they were children without much pocket money, Ming was already an entrepreneur, trading in fanciful marbles or whatever was the fad of the times. He knew he was no Einstein, so he swotted through school, going without sleep for days on end to get into university. Now, when he has never cooked a proper meal before, Ling sees him as Hawker of the Year, so dextrous with his tools, as though his hands were extensions of the utensils. He seems to have found once again his place in the world, a humble one, but nonetheless one of peace. She should not have disturbed that.
She leaves the basement food court without saying goodbye. Ming’s eyes follow her to the escalator until she disappears from his sight. He drops the wire basket with the bamboo handle and tells his assistant to take over. After removing his apron, he leaves the stall.
The escalator takes Ling up to the swanky shops on the next floor. She looks into an evening gown shop and sees the shop assistant eating her lunch contentedly behind the counter. Instinctively, she is hoping to see her eating Ming’s beef noodles.
She wanders out of the shopping mall and walks past the Hyatt Hotel, where skinny bellboys carry stuffed luggage behind fat tourists. Next to the hotel, the cool air from Far East Plaza draws her in. She sits by the pattering fountain in the atrium of the huge shopping block and watches shoppers sucking their teeth after their lunch as they gawk at the dizzying array of goods behind glass windows. Gold watches, diamond watches, opal-studded watches, Rolexes, Omegas, Cartiers and all the other European brands the locals love to learn to pronounce. This is what the government has given the people, and this is what the people want, thinks Ling. Who am I to tell them otherwise? They might just accuse me of doing it to protect the family name. They’ll spit at me for tearing the feelgood fabric of society. And they’re right, I am doing it for Pa. They can eat and shop their souls away for all I care. They deserve the government they get. The country can go to the dogs and I won’t lose sleep over it. But heinous crimes were committed. Emperor or no emperor, someone must be responsible for it. But they may just scapegoat someone again, like the way they scapegoated Pa. The questions swirl in her head. What do I hope to achieve? What will they do to me? And Matthew. Will he wait for me?
Someone knocks her bag off her shoulder from behind and continues walking away ahead of her, without so much as a mumbled apology. So, I am of no consequence, she tells herself. She walks along Orchard Road and stops before her reflection in the tinted glass panel of a building. That is all I am, an insubstantial reflection. Nobody gives a shit how her father died. The buses still run, the shops still open and the people still rush on with their lives.
She walks to the bus stop and without thinking about it, boards a crowded bus in which passengers are choking up the exit door. The bus driver yells at them to move to the back but no one budges. She is crushed between the entrance door and a man in front of her. Standing on the step, she sees an old woman with a big carrier bag wobble her way to a window seat while the teenager on the aisle seat is glued to his Game Boy. Ling is startled back to reality when the bus driver shouts at her for blocking his view of the side mirror.
Having no room to move, she gets off at the next stop, at the Esplanade. She looks out to the sea and admires the viaduct flying over the mouth of the Singapore River, the CBD skyline resplendent in the sun. The country is emerging from a recession. The building frenzy has started again and each tower threatens to be taller than the last one. If the whole of her father’s life had gone to build a little of this, he would have felt he had not lived in vain. He would have been redeemed in his trampled grave. Would he want her to disrupt all he had dreamt of building—the seamless running of this shining city-state? But surely her tiny, insignificant self could not cause a dent in the ironclad juggernaut, even if she wanted to?
The tide brings in the detritus of the busy seaport. Rusty cans, plastic bags and a bloated cat carcass. If the surface is so unlovely, Ling shudders to think what lies at the bottom of the sea. She walks away to avoid the sight of the dead animal. A few stragglers are lying on stone benches in the shade of coconut trees, enjoying the sea breeze. In a country of full employment, every able-bodied person is expected to be working in a factory, office or construction site at that time of the day. If they are night-shift workers, they should be sleeping at home to rest themselves properly. People who sleep on public benches in broad daylight are loafers, no-good doers, bums. At the Satay Club on the waterfront, the tantalising aroma of charbroiled satay induces her to order ten sticks of chicken and a ketupat. She sits at one of the concrete tables cemented into the ground and watches the satay man barbecue the meat. She predicts that the delightful hawker centre enjoying the open space and sea view will not withstand the remorseless advance of the city planners, and will soon be resettled into an air-conditioned food court in some shopping mall. She looks across the Padang at the green-domed Supreme Court. Through the thick walls of the court, she sees a judge locking up the loafers from the park benches for sleeping in broad daylight and defiling the national landscape.
When she was a toddler, her father was a fuzzy, mysterious giant who carried her on his shoulders to see processions of colourful floats and men on stilts during Chinese New Year. As a child, she thought there were certain things children were not supposed to know about adults, and therefore did not ask. In her teens, she hated being a daughter because of her father’s view that the greatest virtue a girl could have was to know how to please. The rebel in her conspired with Yang to do “secret things” in retaliation. She had for a long time seen her escapades into the neighbour’s chicken coops, the coffin shop below their house and the Changi prison forays as the high points of her life. The few times her father had expressed approval of her behaviour was when she had shown him her school report card. Reaching adult femalehood had removed her completely from his field of vision. She became, to her father, nothing more than a being primed for marriage and childbearing.
But in a crisis, she knew her father would protect all his children. Such as the time of the racial riots, when her father had rushed to her school in his Morris Minor to collect Hoong and herself, then to Yang and Ming’s school. Risking a violent confrontation with the Malays, he had gone out to get rice and dried food in case the riots stretched into weeks. He had shut all the windows and bolted the door of the old shophouse with the long dark hallway on Neil Road, in case the riots spread to their area. When Ling and her siblings and mother were huddling together in a room furthest from the door, their father reported back to work to try to restore some order to the country.
Then she recalls the time when the world seemed to darken around her, shadowy with conspiracy. The time, that irreversible moment, when she had found the diary.
TWENTY-FIVE
MORNING IS SLOWLY bleaching the sky bright. Ming is at the butcher’s in Chinatown for his daily supplies. He looks at his watch and remembers that not so long ago, this was the time he returned home from the bar to sl
eep. He now goes to bed at the time he used to start the day. And he now knows everything about a cow—the kind of feed it needs to produce the most tender meat, the taste of each part of its body, techniques to slice the meat to coax out the most flavour. But he can never bring himself near an abattoir, for he can’t bear to hear the screams of the beasts, let alone watch the goings-on inside. He is thankful that, like the farms, all abattoirs have been relocated to Malaysia. At the butcher shop, he averts his eyes from the back room, where he imagines disembowelled carcasses with their stomachs slashed open hang from the ceiling, blood on the floor. He can only handle the cuts in the shop front and the butcher knows his orders well. He watches the butcher’s knife cleave close to the bone of a hind leg, cutting off exactly four kilograms from the rump, then chopping up some bones. Ming places the lot in his shopping trolley and thanks the butcher for the free bones he will use for his broth.
He leaves the shop and walks to the street stalls for bean sprouts and coriander. As with every morning, he first looks for the old woman who sells the vegetables discarded by the wholesalers at Ellenborough Market. He will nod at her and place some money in her hand. She will flash her toothless smile and mumble what a good man he is, long after he’s gone. But today the space she occupies next to the live chicken stall is vacant. Ming quickens his steps towards the chicken seller.
“Do you know where is Old Auntie?” he asks in Cantonese.
“Oh, I heard she was hit by a lorry this morning, on her way here from the wholesale market.”
“What! Do you know which hospital she was taken to?”
“How do I know? I think it must be her. They say a whole basket of vegetables was scattered all over the road.”
Ming stares at the scraps of brown-black vegetables on the street, in the space where the vegetable woman usually sets up. He steadies his voice and attempts another question, fearing the answer. “Do you know if she’s still alive?”
The chicken seller shakes his head, returns to his stall and pulls a flapping bird out of the cage.
Ming drags his trolley to his van without getting the vegetables he needs for the day. He drives off and heads towards the Singapore General Hospital. He parks outside the A&E department, leaving the beef in the van to sit in the heat. He dashes towards the admission hall and fires a load of questions at the nurse at the counter. By the time the meat in the van has putrefied completely, he is taken to the mortuary to identify the body. When the hospital attendant lifts the sheet from the face, he jerks his head away and looks at the hand instead. The leathery skin that pulled a basket of vegetables day in day out for god knows how many years. The hand that had probably never known a gentle touch, only a lifetime of toil. Did she have any relatives or close friends? Where did she live? Did she have an address at all? Ming cannot provide any information for the attendant. He does not even know her name. At the cashier counter he pays some money for the cremation and storage of the ashes in the likely event no one comes to claim the body.
When he exits the hospital building, he forgets he has parked his van outside the A&E. He forgets that his stall assistant is waiting for him to set up, waiting for the supplies, forgets he has customers waiting for that bowl of beef noodles. He does not know where he is supposed to go. He just sits on a bench in the hospital garden. He is breathing normally. He feels a little cold though and reckons sitting in the sun will help him remember what he is supposed to do. His dry eyes tell him he is all right. Why shouldn’t he be? He has survived his father’s death and come out a successful entrepreneur. What is another death, particularly of someone who is no one to him? Just an old woman who lived and died alone. He sits on the bench for several hours without any food or drink until dark. Then he makes his way back to his van. He does not see the parking ticket flapping on the windscreen, does not smell the stink in the vehicle. He drives home.
As he lies in bed that night, he does not feel the sting on his sun-burnt skin.
TWENTY-SIX
LING LOLLS ABOUT on the wrinkled Italian couch that has lost its gloss. She has just eaten a simple lunch with her mother, cooked by the loyal Mary-Joan. She props her head on one armrest and her feet on the other. Before, she would loathe sitting on the couch for fear of creasing its expensive skin. But then, she had felt more like a guest before than a member of the family. She looks out of the splendidly pretentious French window to the garden where the plants have been brought back to health, luxuriating in their green and red. Thanks to Yang’s loving care, the hibiscus bushes have spread to their full stature. They are on an austerity drive so all-day air-conditioning is no longer affordable. The day and night curtains are a waste of fabric, only adding to the heat in the house.
Mrs Chow has got rid of the high-maintenance Japanese carp. In their place, she has adopted a cat. She covers what’s left of the lunch with porcelain plates, keeping the food on the table in the off chance that Hoong will eat when she gets back from school. Yang will return from Hong Kong in the next day or two and she goes to the kitchen to plan the menu for Sunday, when all her children will be home for dinner. She has persuaded Ming to close his stall earlier that day so he can join the family. With the wisdom that comes from having lived for over 60 years, she gathers that another day the family is together is another day gained. She talks animatedly with Mary-Joan, working out the shopping list, with the fridge door open. Her cat scoots out from under the fridge, feeling the cold draught. She got the ginger cat from her mahjong friend, believing that since cats have nine lives, this one won’t die on her too quickly. She was not allowed to keep pets when her husband was alive. Now Hoong has pointed her finger at the tabby for the disappearance of the fish. Mrs Chow told her the cat eats only their dinner leftovers and anyway, it was she who released the carp into the Singapore River. Hoong almost flipped and said the golden carp could have fetched a fortune in the aquarium market but they would now die in the dirty river. To add to her daughter’s annoyance, the moulting cat is leaving trails of hair all over the house.
But Ling, lounging on the couch, finds the house welcoming now. Her mother’s pet jumps up and rubs its body against her leg. Ling spreads her toes and strokes the cat’s neck and stomach. The animal closes its amber eyes and purrs. Ling looks up the movie-set staircase and sees her father on the landing, beaming in his Sultan regalia. She is uneasy about Yang having been in Hong Kong since her return from Sydney. What could he be doing there? Getting more money from Yvonne Law or checking up on the “foreign agent”?
The entrance gate creaks and Ling knows it must be her sister. Hoong spends a long time at the door, juggling her handbag, school bag and a bunch of keys. She comes through and sees Ling lying on the couch.
“You heard me struggling with the locks and you didn’t think of getting off your bum.”
“I’m giving the kitty a massage.”
“I always wonder about your priorities in life.”
“Come and play with this sweetie puss. It can bring down your blood pressure.”
Hoong dumps her bags on the floor and sinks into another two-seater. Their mother comes out of the kitchen and asks Hoong to eat the food on the table. Hoong says she has already had lunch. Their mother goes back to the kitchen, having half expected the answer.
“How was your day?” Ling asks, both her feet at the cat’s satisfied body.
“Usual.”
“When will they promote you to principal?”
“You’ll become a mother before I become a principal.” She turns away from the bright window towards the bulky backrest of the couch.
“A bit difficult when Matthew is not around.” Ling looks longingly at the cat.
“You’re not staying here for long, are you?”
“Dunno.”
“What the hell are you doing here, by the way? I thought you were happily married in Australia.”
Ling looks at her father’s portrait again. “Heard from Ma about your custody case. Can you appeal?”
Hoong
turns to lie on her back and looks up at the ceiling. “I can, but the chances are slim.”
Ling wants to say some words of encouragement, but instead, joins her sister in staring at the ceiling.
“Ling. You think—you think the judgement has anything to do with Pa?”
“No. Please. The judges are vulgarly rich men and of course they’ll side with their own kind.” The cat becomes uncomfortable with Ling’s fidgety cold feet and hops off to the garden through the French window.
“All men, except for the Chows, are bastards,” Hoong intones in a priestly fashion.
“All men, except for the Chows and Richards, are bastards,” Ling announces at the top of her voice.
“All the Chins and male judges of the world are a bag of shit.”
“All the Chins and male judges of the world are a bag of shit with no anus.”
“All the Chins and male judges of the world are a bag of shit with no anus, with worms crawling in their entrails.”
The two sisters laugh and yell more abuse till their mother comes out of the kitchen.
“It’s all right, Ma. We’re just practising voice projection.”
Mrs Chow pats Hoong’s shoulder. “Don’t be so angry. That kind of people, Heaven will take care of them.” She asks her daughters to stay home for dinner, then goes up the stairs to have her afternoon nap. Ling and Hoong, exhausted from their shouting, lie back and close their eyes. The lace curtain balloons in the warm breeze. Ling hears the mellifluous tinkling of a wind chime but there isn’t one in the house. Her mind drifts to the wind chime hanging in the window of her Sydney flat to catch the breeze from the Pacific Ocean.
Death of a Perm Sec Page 19