Waiting for Venus - A Novel

by Robert Cooper

  Ra’mad was at Aberystwyth University during WWII, which explains his accent and choice of words. His regional English is perfect to the point of punctuations like ‘you see’, upon which Ra’mad hangs a lilt from the dales. I half expect him to throw in a boyo or two but he never does. It’s almost as if he has barely spoken since leaving Wales – at least not to humans, rats are another matter.

  ‘Lost a rat, have you? Would that be Socrates, Sophocles or CP Snow?’ My sarcasm makes David snigger and I immediately regret my words. Nobody with a bitch named Barnaby and coming from a long line of Haddocks should make fun of the way a man names his rats.

  ‘Snow, the white one. He’s the only one I let out regularly. He never leaves the flat.’ Ra’mad sounds concerned. ‘He’s well past time for his antidote.’

  ‘What happens if he doesn’t get it?’

  ‘I’m not 100% sure you see, not with Snow. He’s a strong one. An ordinary rat would die, you see. And I would not want Snow to suffer. He’s been with me now for two years.’ So have I, I think.

  I suggest we look through all the cupboards, of which there are an imperial number. It is David who finds Snow, curled up with his nose under his tail, like Barnaby asleep. He must have come down the waste pipe and is in the cupboard under the sink.

  Ra’mad picks Snow up by the tail. It hangs limply. ‘It’s dead,’ he says, sadly stating the obvious. I can’t quite manage regrets and condolences, although the little body does look more like a child’s beloved pet than a mad scientist’s experimental rodent. ‘I killed it,’ Ra’mad continues. ‘Do you think it suffered?’

  ‘How would we know?’ David retorts unkindly. ‘I suppose if you poison a rat or poison a person, there will be suffering involved.’

  ‘Not necessarily, you see,’ Ra’mad replies. ‘If a rat suffers, it always cries. Not like humans. Did you hear any squealing or sobbing coming from the cupboard?’

  ‘No,’ I say in a comforting voice. ‘We’ve been in here half an hour and heard nothing. Barnaby would certainly have reacted if a rat had started to squeak.’

  ‘That’s very good. Very good news indeed.’ I swear Ra’mad’s eyes glint. ‘No pain you see.’ He holds the rat up to the window, inspecting its face in the light. ‘Yes. I’m sure there was no pain. You just went to sleep and didn’t wake up. That was the way of it, wasn’t it, Snow?’ Ra’mad the scientist thanks me quickly and leaves with his rat. Barnaby follows him to the threshold and stands guard there.

  ‘I suppose he’s going to cut it up and do an autopsy,’ David remarks. ‘What a way to get your jollies.’

  Tooting aborts our dissection of Ra’mad’s motives for killing his favourite rat. Venus is here. ‘Come on, Barns,’ I say. ‘We’re off to the reading of Bernard’s Will.’

  * * *

  Venus finds a place to park far from where we want to be and we walk, Barnaby heavy in my arms because I have yet to buy her a leash and can’t have her running into the traffic or befouling the pavement. Venus eventually says, ‘Here we are,’ at a building I swear was not there the week before. We duck out of the street and under the down-blast of one of those cold curtains that restyles your hairdo and reduces your body heat by 50% in one second.

  Mirrored walls and ceiling and non-slip high gloss plastic flooring reflect each other into infinity. Helpful signs in four languages direct our behaviour: no smoking, no spitting, no loitering, no littering and, of course, no chewing gum or peeing in lifts; but nothing about dogs.

  Little cameras on glassy walls track our progress – I wonder if the new high-tech university will be like this. The names of a hundred agencies, organisations and companies are listed alphabetically on one wall, each with its floor and access lift represented by a white number and a letter of the alphabet in a little black box that looks like it will flip over to display a time of arrival or departure. Venus, surprisingly at home in this alien landscape, explains to me, the wild colonial boy, that we have only to match the letter for Tambiah’s office, an F, against the ranks of high-speed lifts and get out when we get to the floor number. Simple.

  Barnaby is huddled in my arms, shivering with cold. We are looking for lift F when a whistle sounds and I know it sounds for me.

  ‘No dogs.’ It’s a female guard with ‘SECURITY’ stretched around her chest.

  ‘Dogs?’ I echo, looking down at the brown eyes and curly tail of my somewhat overfed baby.

  ‘That!’ Security clarifies, jabbing her chin towards Barns. ‘Outside.’ And then, perhaps catching sight of the banner proclamation ‘Courtesy is Our Way of Life’, snaps with courtesy: ‘Dog in street, lah.’ Such discrimination directed against a dog who doesn’t smoke, spit, litter, chew gum or, as far as I know, pee in lifts.

  Venus explains in firm, clear Singaporean that we have been told to bring the dog to a reading of a Will and gives Tambiah’s name and phone number. Security says, ‘Wait’. I bet she knows I’m good at waiting. She unhooks a phone from a wall, taps in numbers, whispers, listens and says, ‘Okay, lah. Lift F. Keep dog off floor. Get out twenty-six.’

  Lift F is long hair carpeted, the colour of an Afghan Hound. The presence of a Malay lift pilot stops me peeing and ensures Barnaby doesn’t leave my aching arms to make love to the carpet. Shedding hair freely in the air around us and looking with confusion at the infinitely mirrored images of herself, me, Venus and the lift boy, Barns sneezes into the stream of Arctic air blowing down on our heads from the glass ceiling. The pilot swings his control lever around one hundred and eighty degrees for maximum G-force and we take off with a resounding ping that sends numbers rolling in the digital display above the lift door. We arrive before our stomachs.

  I had been expecting Tambiah to hang out in a couple of character rooms off Serangoon Road, somewhere between Komala Vilas – all the vegetarian food you can eat from a banana leaf for a Sing dollar – and the twin Sodoms of Bugis Street and Johor Road. But somewhere inside this anonymous structure sits a jolly Tamil with enough of Bernard’s confidence to be entrusted with his Will.

  On leaving the long hair carpeted lift, we tread onto good old Singaporean-pragmatic hemp carpet, made to last and you can smoke its sister. The long corridor has the clean and functional aspect of Mount Elizabeth Hospital. Prints of sailing boats on Lake Geneva are screwed tightly to the walls at precise intervals; why, I don’t know. When we finally come to a glass-panelled door labelled ‘Tambiah’, I feel I should be carrying a get well soon card instead of a large shivering dog.

  Venus opens the door and we walk into anti-climax. The extent of Tambiah Chambers runs to one room the size of my main bathroom and less genial; no toilet or bath. Tambiah is back to the wall behind a desk. Piles of books and bundles of papers tied with string fill available space. I feel like Alice stepping into a filing cabinet.

  Li Fang and I exchange looks of surprise at seeing each other. The super, wearing casuals, sits next to Li Fang. Both look frozen. Tambiah rises and crosses his chambers in two strides. He closes the door behind us and says I can put Barnaby down if I like. I do like – my arms feel like lead. Barns immediately starts to dig through the matting. I rebuke her. She shakes a flurry of fine hairs and sneezes, spreads herself out as flat as she can and pushes herself along the matting. Tambiah bears it stoically. Perhaps his clients normally begin procedures with a roll on his rough-textured carpet and a sneezing fit; maybe a dog sliding across the floor is the ceremonial prelude to any reading of a Will. I rather doubt it but it’s the first time I attend such a rite. Indeed, my first time in any chambers. Tambiah’s squat little one-room office high in a techno tower does not meet my expectations. To me, chambers implies a plurality of rooms and, by the semantic implication of pots to pee in, a toilet – of which I feel a need coming on. All the cold air has got to my sacred parts – or maybe it was the temptation to pee in the lift.

  I ask Tambiah to turn down the air-con or open the window; Barnaby’s aroma goes best with open windows. Tambiah, snug in his wool suit, re
grets there is nothing he can do, the air-con is centrally controlled and the window is sealed. I’m getting a taste of the future.

  Tambiah tells us we are there for the reading of the Will of Bernard Fox and that Superintendent Wong is present as an observer. He notes Venus is not mentioned in the Will and is not a witness to it. He asks if anybody objects to her presence and pauses. The super seems to be searching for courteous words to do just that.

  During the pause I wonder why Venus is there. If she wants to know who got what, she could ask me afterwards. I also wonder, a bit morbidly, what she stands to get when Richard finally croaks. Perhaps the house she lives in now? Perhaps a fortune in investments? I know so little about her and nothing about Richard, I can’t begin to speculate. Yet here she is, about to find out what Uncle Bernard left me.

  Pause done, Tambiah says, ‘Well, then, all right,’ and Venus is in by default. Fitted tightly into his reinforced Windsor chair, Tambiah puts on a serious face and opens a file. The reading begins.

  The Will, Bernard’s first and last, is dated just three days before his death. Bit of a surprise, that. We are then guided through the sound mind bit, which has more the stamp of Tambiah than of Bernard, then it’s into cash flows. Li Fang comes first. Bernard refers to him as his trusted friend of many years, not as the cook across the road; I remember their first meeting as Bernard described it in the exercise book. He gets one hundred thousand Singapore dollars. Nobody seems more surprised than Li Fang.

  Next comes Norsiah, just Norsiah, no surname. Norsiah missing-whereabouts-unknown; she gets the same as Li Fang. Thanks to Bernard’s generosity, Norsiah the cleaner need never wash my knickers again. She must be in her mid-thirties. With her new-found wealth, she still has time to make a good marriage if that’s what she wants. I never looked at her much. She comes when I’m out, she cleans, she takes away my dirty clothes and by magic they reappear clean and ironed in my wardrobe. Never have we had anything approaching a chit-chat. She’s fairer of skin than most Malays and might, I suppose, be considered attractive. A little devil in my head wonders if there had perhaps been somebody other than Barnaby to share Bernard’s life.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ says Bernard in my mind. ‘Not yet you don’t.’

  Then it’s my go. Bernard refers to me in terms that close my throat. ‘My very close comrade who has helped me do what I needed to do, to think, to have ideas and to stay alive until the end.’ He leaves me his entire Central Providence Fund Retirement Benefit, which Tambiah states he has valued at about one hundred thousand Singapore dollars, placing me on par with Li Fang and Norsiah. In Singapore 1980, to a young lecturer, it is an enormous amount of money. Two conditions are placed on the bequest.

  Firstly, that I care for Barnaby and give her a home. Tambiah adds in his own parentheses that what happens to Barnaby is between me and my conscience since ‘care’ and ‘home’ are loose concepts open to interpretation that nobody is likely to contest. Nobody except Barnaby, I think. I am sure Barns has very clear ideas on what care and home mean. ‘And so do I,’ says Bernard in my head.

  The second condition, Tambiah states, he had advised Bernard against, but Bernard had insisted on it. ‘You must ensure publication of The Social History of Singapore University as I wrote it.’

  Tambiah explains. ‘I understood from Professor Fox he had completed a manuscript on this subject and he had discussed some of the contents with you. Unfortunately, the professor declined to leave a copy of his manuscript with me and Superintendent Wong informs me the original manuscript has disappeared and cannot therefore be published. This opens the possibility the Will be contested, if anyone were to interpret the conditions on your bequest in terms of payment for services.’ Tambiah looks rather embarrassed at his failure to tie Bernard down to legally binding specifics. ‘This possibility seems remote and would involve a legal tussle. There is, for example, no way to know if any publication on this subject is, in the professor’s words, “as I wrote it”. The only basis I see for a significant legal problem arising is if the original manuscript turns up. Suppose, for example, Professor Fox gave it to a third party for safe keeping and that party publishes it without your involvement. However unlikely this sounds, I suggest you avoid possible legal problems by allowing me to place the total of the bequest made to you in an interest-bearing trust to be redeemed on publication of the professor’s work if it comes to light, or after one year, which will provide time for any objections to be raised. I will advertise for the professor’s manuscript with a reasonable reward and that way, nobody can later accuse you of not trying to comply with the terms of the Will.’

  Tambiah then produces three sealed envelopes, gives one to Li Fang, one to me and states that the third will be held by him for Norsiah. With as much an air of mystery as he can muster, he explains that the envelopes contain no money or valuables, only letters to each person. Superintendent Wong immediately requests us to read the letters in private before leaving the premises and then to allow him to read them, since anything and everything might have a bearing on the case. Neither of us refuse.

  Reading the letters in private poses a problem given the confines of Tambiah Chambers. The super suggests he and I go outside into the corridor, where thankfully we find a toilet free of Arctic air. I break the magic beam at the urinal and water flushes to present me with a nice clean bowl to pee into. A further automatic flushing follows my withdrawal from the stall. After the symbolic washing of hands that men do in public toilets when others are watching and after a liberal dose of the hot air dryer, I open the envelope. The letter is to reveal how little I know my best friend and only uncle.

  12

  Dead Man Writing

  MY DEAR TOM,

  You should know that Norsiah is my daughter. Bet that surprised you! She was born end-1942 in the Perak jungle. Norsiah’s mother, Syep, was a Semai aboriginal Malay. Her mother and I were together during those happy years in hiding from the Japanese. We had a Semai wedding, nothing on paper so no evidence of paternity. When our daughter was born, I was there and helped her out. There was a dog licking her as I tried to clean her up, so I named my daughter Syou, which means dog in Semai. I thought at the time that if she ever found herself in England, she could simply be Sue.

  Syep was caught by the Japanese shortly before they surrendered in 1945. She used to carry Chin Peng’s messages to a small town on the edge of the jungle, where Li Fang would collect them on full moon days. The messages were all verbal. Li Fang would remember them, return to Singapore, encode them and send on by radio to British forces in Sri Lanka. Messages would come back to us the same route in reverse.

  With Chin Peng in the jungle it was all pages from a boy’s own comic – tommy guns and blowpipes and the occasional sabotage attack on Japanese positions – tremendous fun. Until Li Fang’s resistance cell in Singapore was caught and tortured by the Kempeitai; the information they gave was enough for Japanese soldiers to pick her up as soon as she appeared in the contact village. Li Fang witnessed her arrest and ran back to warn us. She couldn’t tell the Japanese anything other than the report she carried in her head but she could lead the enemy to us, which is why we moved camp. Later, other Semai told me she was raped, tortured and murdered. It is something I have lived with all this time.

  My wife was just one aborigine among many passing through a tiny Malay town. The Kempeitai must have been tipped off. At first, I suspected Li Fang. He could have fed us and the British forces misinformation that would sabotage the whole resistance; since messages were verbal, he could easily have changed them. But, Chin Peng argued, the Japanese would not have cut short a valuable and unwitting source of disinformation and Li Fang at any time could have led the Japanese straight to us had he wished – so I knew it wasn’t him. Plus, Li Fang loved Syep as much as I did. He could not return to Singapore after his cover was blown, so Li Fang stayed with us and fought bravely until Japan surrendered.

  After the war, it seemed kinder to lea
ve my daughter with the Semai than bring her to an uncertain civilisation. Following Japan’s surrender, I was stationed in Singapore. It was a lawless time. Greater-Malaya nationalists found themselves uneasily allied with the mostly-Chinese communists who had fought against the Japanese. I maintained my friendship with Chin Peng but there was no place for me in the politics of the time. I never found the Japanese who tortured and killed Syep; but I did find out who betrayed Li Fang’s resistance group in Singapore and I took my revenge.

  After Japan surrendered, many scores were settled. Collaborators were knifed in the street or hanged outside their houses. Singapore then, for a few lawless months, was a totally different place to the safe haven you know now. Another war followed, this time British and Federation soldiers against Chin Peng. It was not dignified as ‘war’, it was ‘Emergency’. It was 1960 before the Emergency was declared over and I could revisit forest villages in Perak State. Only then did I find my daughter.

  When I found Syou, she was already widowed. She had married at puberty and given birth to one child. Her village continued to assist Chin Peng’s guerrillas and many people, including her husband and child, were killed in a reprisal attack by British soldiers. It is impossible to describe the shame and guilt I felt on hearing that. I tried to make things right by supporting Syou, but it ended with her supporting me. Her mother killed by Japanese because she carried messages for the British, her husband and only child killed by the British. None of it made sense. Even now as I write, history seems a compound of mistakes.

  When Syou came to live with me in Singapore, it was as my Malay servant not as my Semai daughter. I didn’t want her involved in any second-generation reprisals. Syou changed her name to Norsiah for obvious reasons – Malays don’t name their children dog. We have now got used to the name Norsiah and please use it, not Syou, when talking to or about her. People think of her as Malay and she is – aboriginal Malay. In addition to the money I have left my daughter, I have given her a letter certifying that I am her father – it might be useful to her residence in Singapore, since I am now a citizen, although there is no documentary evidence of paternity. But unless she decides otherwise, our relationship should remain secret. There are still men who would take revenge on my remaining family if it’s too late to get me.