by Ng Yi-Sheng
Millie drapes her arm around her, concerned.
“Cheer up, doll. Japan’s strong too now. You helped defeat the Krauts in the Great War, remember? And now you’re duking it out with the Chinese and Russians in, what do you call that again, Manchuria?”
Yoriko is lying on her side, eyes tightly shut, thinking of her brothers again. Both are now officers in the Imperial Army: sturdy young men, handsome in their tailored uniforms, and angry at the shame their land has endured. Both have told her in their letters that a Golden Age will soon be upon them, when Japan rules the entire eastern half of the globe. The races that have insulted her honour shall be mere vassals of their empire, they promise. For every indignity she has suffered, their women will suffer a hundredfold.
She clutches this white woman for a moment, absorbing the warmth of her body, imagining the war that will soon rage across the oceans as their nations battle for power. In the darkness, she sees the bombs falling across her city, incinerating them both. How their flesh will be scorched, perhaps into their very shadows.
“You should go back,” Millie’s saying. “They’re strong now. They’re rich. They have everything you could ask for.”
“No.”
“I’ve seen the photographs in the papers. It’s a whole new country.”
“That is why it is no longer home.”
Slowly, they rise from the bed. She lets Millie help her back into her kimono, arm by arm, teaching her to tie the obi about her waist. Then, with her finger and thumb, she snuffs out the lamp wick.
“It is not such a bad thing, you know,” she says in the unlit room. “To be lost, to never go home. It is a kind of peace. Perhaps it is even a kind of freedom.”
III.
Now it’s Monday morning, June 21, and the pilot is at Kallang Aerodrome once again. Her next stop is Bandoeng, in the Dutch East Indies, then Australia, then Papua, then the great expanse of the Pacific.
She checks her instruments, snaps on her goggles, then takes a whiff from her bottle of smelling salts, compensating for her lack of sleep the night before. The monsoon rains are coming, she reflects, and is surprised that her heart registers no fear, no trepidation at this danger. The runway crew give the signal for an all-clear, and she takes off.
Elsewhere on the island, a small woman is riding the bus, fanning herself with a triangle of silk and peony. She alights at Kranji, and walks the remaining two kilometres to reach the cemetery where the ashes of her sisters lie under nameless stones.
She sits with them, unspeaking. Then, without provocation, she raises her head and sees an aeroplane, crossing the sky towards the east.
She knows she will never see the pilot again. Nor will she leave this island, come flood or fire, war or drought. One journey has been enough. And yet she raises a hand as if to catch the strange metal eagle, and shuts her eyes.
I don’t know where I am, she thinks. But I’m flying. And I’m free.
No Man Is
One day, I decided to be an island. I took off my clothes and walked into the sea, then floated there, bobbing along with the tide, suspended by my inflatable tube and water wings.
It was quite nice. The sun burnt hot on my face but the water below was cool and lovely. Whenever I got bored, I just gazed up at the puffy white clouds, the seabirds weaving their aerial patterns, and the glinting green sparkle of the ocean itself.
Sometime around sunset, my grandmother found me. She paddled over in her kayak and just stared at me for a while, with a mixture of love and regret. “Ah Boy, what are you doing?” she finally asked, even though she knew the answer perfectly well.
“I’m being an island, Por Por. Please go away.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Islands also must eat, you know,” she said, and handed me a curry puff and a bottle of Newater. I was about to protest, but then I realised I was a little hungry and thirsty after all, so we had supper together. She’d even brought me a little piece of raffia string, so I could use the empty Newater bottle as a flotation device.
“Ah Boy, your skin so red. Come, I apply some sunblock.”
“Islands don’t get sunburn,” I told her, raising my forehead so the cream wouldn’t get in my eyes.
She unloaded the rest of her supplies. They included several Tupperwares of home-cooked food, an ice cooler of canned drinks, a wetsuit, a set of family photos (laminated) and a waterproof mobile phone. She tied them all to my inflatable tube, and they fanned out from me like flower petals.
“I don’t need these, Por Por.”
“Aiyah, I kek sim only. Worry for you. You see shark, then how? Call me ah?”
She planted a kiss on my forehead and paddled off. It was getting dark, so I shut my eyes and let myself drift to sleep.
In the morning, I was gratified to find that a little hermit crab had crawled onto the ice cooler. There was also some seagull guano in my hair, which was good, since I wanted to increase my landmass.
Then around lunchtime, my grandmother came again.
“Hello Por Por,” I said, my mouth full of chicken rice.
“You like? I never ask whether you want wing or drumstick.”
“I’m an island now. You don’t have to come and look after me every day like I’m a little kid. Also, I’ve told you a million times: I like drumsticks.”
“Aiyoh, boy, your hair so dirty.” She dove into her sports bag and retrieved a container of shampoo.
“Por Por! I don’t want!” I snapped. But it was too late. She’d washed the poo clean out of my hair. I sulked as she lathered it with her hands and rinsed it with bottled water.
“Your handphone how?” she asked.
“The battery’s dead.”
“So fast?”
I’d played the free Nokia games for a few hours that morning, when the cloud formations were particularly uninteresting. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“I want to call you, then how?” she fretted. “I never bring charger. I never bring generator.”
“It’ll be fine, Por Por.”
She had, however, brought a portable radio, so we spent most of the rest of the day listening to live coverage of the Malaysia Cup. This was quite enjoyable, although she kept doing little victory dances in her kayak whenever anyone scored a goal. It scared away the crabs and the seabirds, which went against my long-term interests. I was harbouring ambitions of becoming a biologically diverse habitat.
That night, before I went to sleep, I picked up some seaweed with my toes and draped it artistically around the crown of my head. Its scent, I thought, might attract some wandering gull towards me. Maybe she’d nestle in the crook of my elbow, cawing as I slept. Maybe she’d build a nest about my ears, laying her eggs and regurgitating semi-digested fish into the mouths of her chicks…
I woke at daybreak to the sound of a helicopter. It was bright yellow and about thirty centimetres long, with a tiny decal on its side in the shape of a smiley face. Dangling from its undercarriage was a plastic bag, bulging with boxes of pink and green kueh for breakfast. There was also a folded note attached, reading: “So sorry cannot visit today!!! Joint pain!!! Doctor says must avoid exercise. XXXX!!!”
I glanced at the coastline. My grandmother was standing there on the strand with a remote controller in her hands. She saw me turn and she waved enthusiastically, making the helicopter wobble a little.
I didn’t wave back. I turned my back to the beach and stayed like that until the helicopter flew off for good.
Then I ate the kueh. They were delicious.
It rained that night. I wasn’t prepared for this. The cold made my teeth chatter and my nose drip, and I had to hold my breath and grip my inflatable tube as the crashing waves swallowed me up and spat me across the water into the unknown. I tried to think of warm sun and swaying coconut palms; I tried to believe my feet were rooted to the bottom of the continental shelf. But this was hard to do when my lungs were coughing up salt water and my belly ha
d turned inside out, and the surf was beating my face black and blue.
By the next morning, I had drifted out to the open sea, where the sun was hot and the waves were still and the horizon ended in water in all directions. Most of my provisions had been ripped away by the waves, and my eyelashes were completely crusted over with salt. I floated in the sun for a while, barely breathing, knowing only the echo of the thunder that still rang in my ears. Eventually, I became dimly aware of something cold and metallic, nudging the side of my head.
I raised my lids. In front of me, perched on the outboard motor of a boat, was a pirate. She was wearing a tank top and dark glasses, with a length of cloth wrapped around her face and neck to protect her from heatstroke. In her hands she held an AK-47, and she was prodding me gently with the tip.
“You’re alive,” she remarked.
“Yah.”
“Are you hurt? Are you bleeding?”
“Not at all.”
“Alhamdulillah. Thanks be to God.”
She extended her hand, and I grasped it, clumsily. Her grip was strong, and I was floundering around in the wash, steadying myself to clamber onboard with her when I remembered my mission.
“I’m sorry. I can’t get on your boat. I’m an island.”
She looked irritated, then confused.
“You’re an island?”
“Yah.”
“You don’t look like an island.”
“I’m new.”
She mulled over this news for a while.
“If you’re an island, who owns you?”
“Myself, I guess.”
“So you are independent?”
This was an awkward question, so I chose to remain silent.
“You have no flag. You have no army. You are claimed by no nation. Masha’allah, I could annex you,” she mused.
“Sure.” I was by no means sure of anything at this stage, but I wanted to hold my own against this invader. Of course, I was enjoying myself to a certain extent. This, I thought, was a very islandy thing to happen.
“How should I annex you?”
“I think you have to land on me first.”
“Okay, how’s this?” She’d clambered off her speedboat now and was teetering on the raft I’d woven out of spent Newater bottles.
“Very nice. And then you’ve got to say, I annex thee for the kingdom of wherever, you know.”
“Done. I annex thee for the kingdom of… But I don’t work for a kingdom. I’m a pirate.”
“That’s probably okay. I’m yours.”
“What do I do with you now?”
“Mine me I suppose. Set up a government. Register me for the United Nations.”
“You’re not a sovereign nation. You’re just a territory.”
“Oh.” I considered her profession. “You could bury treasure on me. Gold would be nice, or pearls, or diamonds. You’ll have to hide it inside a cave that looks like a skull. And then draw a treasure map in the shape of me, so you’ll remember where you left me.”
Clearly, she hadn’t been listening. She’d instead been dandling her long legs in the water and removing all her clothing, piling it up into a neat little heap for the bottom of her speedboat.
“I think I ought to mark my territory,” she said, and she opened her legs and kissed me.
It was all very awkward and it didn’t take long, but it was a pleasant surprise, considering that I’d only been an island for less than a week. Of course, I considered, this was not what usually happened to islands. Or perhaps it was one of the less publicised aspects of geology. Cradling her in my arms, I decided I could probably forgive myself, and drifted off to sleep.
I woke again at sunset. The waters had grown cold again now, and the air was still. I looked around me. The speedboat was gone, along with the other half of my rations.
I shut my eyes and tried to remember exactly what my lover had looked like, but I kept drawing blanks.
I never saw the pirate again.
About a week passed. I noticed I was growing thin, which annoyed me, because as an island, you need all the bulk you can get. To sustain myself, I drank my fill of rainwater and munched on as much seaweed as I could glean, as well as—just once—a random, very lost fish. My skin had gone all scorched and raw, but I decided this was a net plus. I would never be a truly respectable geological feature if I had no texture.
I spent a lot of my time humming old tunes to myself, things like “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys and “Bali Hai” from South Pacific. Perhaps that was why it didn’t seem strange to me when I first heard the sound of singing in the distance. When it became apparent that it wasn’t my imagination, I theorised that it was mermaids, or perhaps even the bird-bodied sirens from my Ladybird book of Greek myths, or a cruise ship loaded with Italian opera impresarios.
It turned out all my guesses were wrong. It was another island, a Japanese one, by the looks of him. Also naked, but grey-haired, in his fifties or sixties. He was suspended by a bright orange lifesaver, the name of a ship printed on it in faded kanji.
“Hajimemashite,” I ventured.
He stopped singing and grinned. “Doozo yoroshiku.”
“I thought I was the only one.”
“Ha ha! No. We are many. Many, many!” He gestured with his hands.
To my dismay, I realised I could in fact hear other voices, still singing away. I propped myself up, resting my bum on my inflatable tube, and in the distance I could see them. An entire community of maybe a hundred, all shapes and ages and colours, floating on lifebuoys and life vests and dinghies and canoes and kickboards, gabbling along in something resembling a chorus.
“Jaan!” my Japanese associate announced proudly. “Welcome home. Now, you must meet the whole archipelago.”
He tugged me along as he paddled. The other islands turned as we passed them, tittering behind their hands, all the while continuing with their idiotic song. After a while, my host joined in, turning back to me every now and then so I could copy the movements of his lips. In due course, it became apparent that they were several verses into some version of “The Good Ship Venus”, filtered through an endless game of translingual telephone, sounding somewhat like:
Friggy in da wiggy,
Wankee in da pankee,
Master bakey in da gakey,
Fuggle Ulster do!
At the centre of the flotilla was a large rubber dinghy, filled with dirt and sand from which sprouted a scraggly coconut tree, presided over by a tall man in a grimy, guano-stained top hat and tattered tuxedo trousers.
“He is Sainte-Marie,” said my Japanese friend, who had tagged along with me. “He is very important. He is our capital city.”
“Good afternoon, your Capital Citiness,” I said begrudgingly. He did not meet my gaze, but remained standing, keeping his eye fixed on some distant point in the ocean, every now and then raising his telescope to investigate what lay beyond.
Motivated by a sense of decorum, I began stating my provenance, my professional history and where I envisioned myself in five years’ time. But Sainte-Marie dismissed my chattering with a wave of his hand.
“Silence. Without a name, you may not speak.”
“I have a name, actually.”
“An island has no name until it is discovered.”
“But I have been discovered. My founder was a beautiful pirate queen.”
“That is ancient history now. In any case, the word of a pirate has no value. You must wait for the Governor to give you a name.”
“The Governor?”
Suddenly, my Japanese friend grew excited and began splashing his arms up and down.
“The Governor! The Governor has arrived!”
The other islands clustered around him, twittering to each other, getting their lines from “The Good Ship Venus” mixed up.
Eventually, a little tugboat appeared. At its helm was a fat little man in a mac and sou’wester, not unlike an off-season Santa Claus impersonator. Hidden in the midst of his g
rey beard and moustache was a tiny cigarette, which he puffed continuously, switching it from one side of his mouth to the other with his lips alone. The islands waved at him, their singing now turned to chanting, less tuneful and more urgent than before. He beamed back at us, radiating charm and munificence.
Then, in a single majestic motion, he lowered his body, picked up a sack and threw it at us. The islands dove for it in a rabid frenzy, and as I leapt in, I saw that inside were bananas, pineapples, oranges, bags of tapioca crisps and plastic-wrapped loaves of bread, virtually all of which we managed to salvage before they sank or floated out of reach. Another sack was full of bottled mineral water, labelled in Thai or maybe Khmer, I couldn’t tell. A third sack, which the islands fought the hardest over, was full of dirt.
“Your Grace,” Sainte-Marie proclaimed, after the initial squabbles had died down. “A new island has come to light.”
A further sequence of harrumphs and coughs followed. The Capital raised an eyebrow and then addressed me once again.
“The Governor is curious about your ancient history. What did the Pirate Queen call you?”
“Nothing.”
“Then what kind of biome do you support? Desert? Tundra? Taiga? Savannah or Grassland? Temperate Deciduous Forest or Tropical Rainforest?”
“Marine, mostly. But I’m aiming for Tropical Rainforest.”
“Any native populations?”
This was a tricky one. Should I count myself, or not? Does an island live upon itself? I went for the easiest option.
“None noteworthy.”
The Governor looked aggrieved, and paced about on deck for a while. Finally, he slapped his thigh and mumbled a few words to Sainte-Marie, who nodded soberly, then flung open his arms to announce the news.
“Young island! The Governor has spoken. From henceforth, you shall be known as… New Sainte-Marie!”
There was applause amongst the islands, but some discontented murmuring as well. “I thought I was called New Sainte-Marie,” my Japanese friend whispered, sadly.