by Ng Yi-Sheng
She didn’t wait for an answer. She rose, unlatched the door, and trundled her suitcase along with her, before he could slacken her resolve. But she caught his last words as she turned around to lock up behind her.
“Ha na ha na ha na. You’re like an old woman.”
In the years that followed, Mrs Tan learnt many things. She became a great expert at cooking meals for one in her rented flat, and began to grasp the pleasures of reading alone and rearing cats. She enrolled in a zumba class, and discovered that her body was not as old and inflexible as she had thought it was. A hairdresser told her she looked good with a pixie cut, and friends showed her how to buy clothes that complemented her newfound youth. A senior consultant, visiting from Belgium, taught her to orgasm, deeply and uninhibitedly. She came to understand that there was no shame in giving such pleasure to herself, nor in instructing her partners in the art of doing likewise.
Yet she never learnt what became of her husband. She had been fully prepared for silverpox to become a nationwide pandemic, and had steeled herself for news of a mass quarantine, or compulsory vaccinations, or at the very least a cautionary notice to arriving tourists.
Instead, she heard nothing. She scanned the news for reports on infection rates or prevention programmes, and drew a blank. After a few weeks, it occurred to her that she no longer saw men and women in the streets with discreetly perforated skins. At the end of the year, she returned to the flat. She found it abandoned, her husband’s cables and CPUs stacked in their bedroom, the plates she had used for the feast washed and stacked in the wrong order. She was not shocked: after all, she had been monitoring the joint bank account she had shared with Mr Tan, and it had remained conspicuously untouched.
She did not report her husband’s disappearance. She did not believe he was dead, or in any danger. He had merely changed, as people do. He had departed on a strange journey, like a mighty ship from a quayside jetty, while she was left behind, waving a handkerchief on the docks.
As time passed, she thought of him less and less. And then only on the precious occasions when a lover shared her bed, and she undressed.
Then she was no longer an abandoned woman. She was a body laid bare.
Maybe hiding a hole.
Gleaming like a distant star.
The Boy, the Swordfish, the Bleeding Island
I.
There are three ways the story is told:
The first comes to us from the Sulalatus Salatin, better known as the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals. This masterful work, edited by Tun Seri Lanang (1565-1659), a vizier in the royal court of the Johor Sultanate, chronicles six hundred years of Malay history, providing invaluable data on the world of precolonial Southeast Asia.1
One key sequence describes how 14th-century Singapore is visited by a plague of swordfish:
So great was the number of those killed by the swordfish that there was a panic and people ran hither and thither crying, ‘The swordfish are come to attack us! They have killed thousands of our people!’ And Paduka Sri Maharaja went forth on his elephant escorted by his ministers, war chiefs, courtiers and heralds. And when he reached the sea shore, he was astounded to see the havoc the swordfish had wrought; how not a victim of their attack had escaped; how those who had been stabbed rolled over and over and died; and how the number of victims was ever mounting. And he ordered all his men to form a barricade of their shins, but the swordfish leapt upon them and anyone they stabbed met his death. Like rain came the swordfish and the men they killed were past numbering.
Presently a boy was heard to say, ‘What are we making this barricade of our legs for? Why are we deceiving ourselves? If we made a barricade of banana stems, would that not be better?’ And when Paduka Sri Maharaja heard this he said, ‘That boy is right!’, and he commanded his men to build a barricade of banana stems. And the swordfish came on: but as soon as they leapt, their snouts stuck on the banana stems, where they were cut down and killed in numbers past counting, and that was the end of the swordfish attack. (Seri Lanang: 25-26).
This brief but charming tale has been repeated ad infinitum in the Malay world, passing from page to mouth to become a cherished part of regional folklore. In Singapore alone, it has inspired an early feature film,2 various children’s picture books,3 theatre productions,4 poems,5 even a work of public statuary.6 The clever boy—named “Hang Nadim” by later storytellers—is lauded for his youthful genius and promise, while the foolish king is derided as a doddering relic of the ancien régime, an emperor who has no clothes.7
The crux of the tale, however, lies in its devastating conclusion:
Sri Maharaja then returned to the palace and his chiefs said to him, ‘Your Highness, that boy will grow into a very clever man. It would be as well to be rid of him!’ And the king agreed and ordered the boy to be put to death. (Seri Lanang: 26)
Accounts differ regarding the means of Nadim’s execution. Some claim he was bound in chains and drowned in the sea.8 Others contend that assassins invaded his hillside home with swords, and that the heinous deed unleashed a curse upon Singapore: a torrent of blood, spilling endlessly from the boy’s body, engulfing the land, staining its very earth.9 Storytellers then point to the ground beneath their feet, indicating the deep crimson hue of Singapore’s soil. This, they declare, is evidence that the land still bears the stain of Hang Nadim’s martyrdom. (Geologists, in contrast, attribute the coloration to the presence of weathered lateritic soil, high in iron oxides.)10
According to Portuguese records, Sri Maharaja was later assassinated by his political allies, an act that precipitated the downfall of his kingdom.11 Abandoned by its people, the land languished in obscurity for half a millennium, until its annexation by the British East India Company in 1819. Under colonial rule, the ruins of the old kingdom were demolished to make way for a modern metropolis, virtually obliterating its existence from the archaeological record.
A just punishment, perhaps. For as Tun Seri Lanang states:
When this boy was executed, the guilt of his blood was laid on Singapore. (Seri Lanang: 26)
II.
The second version of the tale comes to us from the little-researched field of early Singaporean fantasy, specifically from the corpus of the cult author Iris Fonseka (1945-2003).
Born in the wake of World War II, Fonseka led a placid childhood in a small, middle-class, Eurasian ethnic enclave on Singapore’s eastern coast.12 She is said to have professed no literary aspirations in her youth, neither as a schoolgirl at the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, nor as an undergraduate at the University of Malaya’s English Department.
However, all this changed in the mid-60s, when she found work as an assistant librarian at the National Library of Singapore, then housed in the red brick building in the shadow of Fort Canning Hill, where children played soccer amidst the gravestones of forgotten kings. It was here that she became intrigued by her country’s early history, taking advantage of her access to the nation’s archives to research the legends and lore of that era. In due course, she chose to channel her findings into her first novel: Swordfish Sunrise.13
The book begins as a straight retelling of Hang Nadim’s tragedy. However, a third of the way in, the tale takes an unexpected twist:
Noiselessly, the assassins entered the boy’s hut. His sleeping figure lay alone on a straw mat, wrapped in a checkered sarong. Roaring in unfettered savagery, they thrust their krises mercilessly into his form.
Yet something was amiss. No hot blood spurted onto their faces, and the gobbets of flesh spilling onto their hands were deathly cold. Suddenly, the light of a torch-flame lit the room, and they saw, at once, that they had been tricked: no child lay in the cot before them, but the corpse of a massive fish, dressed in torn cotton cloth.
They peered back and saw the boy, holding a torch aloft, flanked by an assembly of villagers, each wielding a cleaver, a parang or a hunting spear. A childish yell, and the peasants fell upon them, tearing them to shreds.
Indeed, t
he chiefs had not grasped the depths of his cleverness. In spite of his tender age, he had the foresight to understand the violent machinations of the court, and the deadly consequences of his utterance. And he had followers: the people of the kingdom, who recognised him as their true saviour from the plague of swordfish.
Standing over the bodies of his would-be murderers, he considered his options. Never would he be safe from the king and his followers, unless he fled his home—or else rallied his fellow countrymen and fought back. In the glow of the leaping flames, he mused upon this thought.
Thus, on the morrow, Paduka Sri Maharaja awoke to the screams of women. He stumbled to his feet, wheezing as his wives and his concubines came rushing into his bedchamber, barely able to comprehend their news. For they had gone to bathe that morning, and in the sacred pool, they had found the charred bodies of two assassins… (Fonseka, 1969: 32-33)
Fonseka’s novel continues in this vein, chronicling the boy’s prolonged battle with the king, devoting somewhat dry, repetitive passages to gory combat scenes and praise for the child’s prowess at hand-to-hand combat. More ingeniously, she introduces the use of Chinese gunpowder as a crucial weapon in the peasant revolt, tipping the scales in favour of the rebels.
A climax comes in the form of a prolonged Wild West style showdown between Nadim and the haplessly obese Sri Maharaja, who is ultimately slain upon the steps of the palace, his throat cut, his entrails ripped from his still-heaving belly. The author then concludes her tale with a new version of the familiar aetiological myth: it is the king’s blood, she tells us, not the boy’s, that stains the earth of the land.
Swordfish Sunrise was not a commercial success, nor was it a critical one.14 The genre of alternate history was then poorly understood, and Fonseka did not improve matters by proclaiming, in her preface, that the tale was “an authentic narration of events”. Today, her work is easily understood as a deliberate interrogation of Western historiography, one of those daring experiments in style and form so common in the 60s15—an assertion that in the new age of independent Singapore, citizens now wielded the power to rewrite the past.
In reality, however, the patriotic fervour of Singaporeans was often tempered by anxiety. The country was small, impoverished, crime-ridden, racially and linguistically divided, lacking in natural resources, traumatised by the bloodshed and famine of the recent Japanese invasion, spooked by the threat of Chinese-funded communist militias and Indonesian terrorists. The eventual success of the country was by no means assured.
Perhaps this was why Fonseka felt the need to extend the scope of her narrative. Two years after her maiden effort had gone into print, she presented her small pool of readers with a sequel, Sultan Nadim.16 In this work, she shared a vision of a 15th-century Singapore that had achieved superlative glory under the leadership of her precocious hero–an unapologetic affirmation of the potential of her homeland.
She reasoned that Hang Nadim might easily have assumed kingship after toppling his predecessor, and that he would have embraced Islam out of political expediency, as did many chieftains in early modern Southeast Asia. She then entertained the possibility that this young, intellectual monarch would also have been inspired by the Prophet’s injunction in the Hadith to “[s]eek knowledge, even as far as China”.17 While on hajj in the Middle East, he could have been moved to gather a wealth of texts on mediaeval Islamic science. Perhaps he would even have followed the example of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid of Abbasid Iraq and founded a House of Knowledge: a prototype of the modern university, an institution dedicated to the pursuit of natural philosophy. Advances in science thus gathered might have given him the necessary advantage to repel all foreign threats, and even attracted some very worthy pilgrims to his court:
The barbarian stood sweltering in the throne room. He was young, with only the beginnings of a stringy blond beard on his chin. Nor was he in the best of spirits, being fatigued from the months of seasickness and abuse that he had endured on the long voyage east from Venice—for indeed, he had only been able to secure his safe passage by offering the basest of favours to the mariners. Yet there was a strange glimmer of genius in his eye that was not unfamiliar to the older ministers. For they, after all, still remembered the juvenile years of their ruler.
It was noon. The nobat players sounded their fanfare, and with that, Nadim entered the room, clad in a baju and tengkolok of shimmering ruby silk, followed by a retinue of maidens bearing golden parasols. He nodded to the barbarian, who, to everyone’s surprise, executed a flawless obeisance. ‘Praise to the Sultan,’ he uttered in perfect Malay.
‘You are well met,’ Nadim replied. ‘Tell us, stranger, what brings you to Singapore?’
‘Your Majesty. Even in the far-off lands of Christendom, we have heard of your glories. We know of your wise and just rule over your people, which has brought them affluence and joy.’
He gestured at the columns of the teakwood palace that housed them, inlaid with Moorish mosaics of glass and semi-precious stones. Then he paused to wipe his brow. He was not yet used to the tropical heat of this land.
‘We know of your victory over the Majapahit invaders, giving you mastery over the spice routes of the Moluccas, the goldmines of Sumatra and the temples of Java. We know of your confederacy with the states of the Chersonese, which has granted you sway over the kingdoms of Kedah, Langkasuka and Patani. And we know of how you have ruled over these various peoples justly, without preference of kinship or creed, so that its residents fear neither prejudice nor persecution.’
‘Ah, so you seek refuge,’ Nadim smiled.
‘The inquisitors of my city had charged me with the gross crime of buggery. The interrogation alone would have been my death.’
Nadim raised an eyebrow. His realm was indeed remarkable for its tolerance: it was home to Sunnis, Shi’ists, Mahayanists, Theravadists, Jews, Zoroastrians, Shaivites, Vaishnavis, Jains, Papists and Copts. Indeed, the brightest stars of his House of Wisdom were the mathematician Parameshvara of Kerala and the astronomer Jamshid al-Kashi of Persia.
It was therefore of no import that this man was an infidel. But a sodomite? He rubbed his beard.
‘Have you a craft?’
‘I am a painter, sire. I studied my art in the workshop of my master Verrocchio in Florence. But more than a painter,’ the barbarian exclaimed, laying down a notebook on the teak floor. ‘I have endured my seasickness on the Indian Ocean by thinking up designs for machines, rare machines with which you may conquer the globe.’
Nadim beheld the drawings at his feet. A bizarre flying chariot with spinning rotors at its zenith. An armoured vehicle, wherefrom arrows and other missiles might be loosed in war. Creations to rival the clockwork marvels of Al-Jazari.
‘What shall we call you?’
‘Leonardo, your majesty, from the humble hamlet of Vinci.’
‘You are most welcome here, Leonardo of Vinci. Together we shall make your dreams a reality. You shall work with the most learned of my scholars, and teach my subjects your arts and sciences. And provided your loyalty remains steadfast, you shall have everything,’—he looked away tactfully—‘your appetites require.’ (Fonseka, 1971: 97-100)
Nadim’s tolerance soon pays off. A message arrives from his network of spies, revealing that the Emperor of China is amassing an armada against him. The remainder of the novel is largely devoted to protracted descriptions of battles between the Chinese admiral Cheng Ho and the barbarian Leonardo, who emerges as a master strategist, an engineer of mechanised battleships, and a crafter of palm-wood helicopters, armed with cannons of Greek fire.
By the story’s end, the Forbidden City in Peking is reduced to a wasteland of ashes and rubble. Nadim is crowned as the Imperial Sultan of China and the Malay Archipelago, founding his new administrative capital at the southern port of Chinchew and marrying a Ming Dynasty princess as a sign of his legitimacy to rule under the Mandate of Heaven. A bacchanalian regatta is held along the Grand Canal, the shorelines animated with fire
works, performances of wayang kulit puppet shows and barong dances—all overseen by Leonardo, who is so delighted with the eunuchs and gender-bending opera stars who populate this freshly conquered territory that he resolves to make the Middle Kingdom his home. As a gesture of grace towards the land he has decimated, he executes a portrait of the princess bride, which becomes variously known as Si Senyum, or the Mona Hang Li Po.
Yet the annexation of China does not mark the ultimate extent of Nadim’s empire, as is shown in the novel’s final paragraphs.
He stood on the deck of his ship, glad to be homeward bound. This last war had been a trial for him, as the constant ache of his joints reminded him that he was young no longer, that the bright boy was growing old. Yet he had much to show for his years: the spoils of a dozen fiefdoms, his name on ten thousand lips. Bracing himself against the salty wind, he faced the captain.
‘What news, then?’
‘The sailors we rescued, sire. They’re our men. Admiral Hang Tuah, and his second-in-command Hang Jebat.’
Nadim beheld the bedraggled pair as they approached him, sodden with seawater, yet with strange grins on their faces.
‘We pay Your Majesty tribute,’ Hang Tuah proclaimed. ‘We were blown off course to a strange land, far, far to the east of even the great southern continent. There, there are cities of savage men who wear ornaments of feathers and gold, and who build mighty stupas, cutting out the hearts of their brethren on the capstones. We barely escaped with our lives, bringing back this one treasure.’
Here, Hang Jebat knelt before him, hands outstretched, proffering a strange round fruit, blood-red and the size of a duck’s egg. ‘They call this the tomato,’ Hang Tuah continued. ‘It is rich in taste; as rich as the land where it was planted.’