by Ng Yi-Sheng
Sultan Nadim smiled. With his thumb and forefinger, he placed the gift between his teeth and chewed its sweetness. It seemed there were horizons to conquer yet. (Fonseka, 1971: 301)
If the response to Swordfish Sunrise was lukewarm, critics’ reception of Sultan Nadim was positively vitriolic. The story was mocked as “ludicrous” and even “historically inaccurate”18 —a testament to the lack of understanding that still surrounded the alternate history genre. Nevertheless, the outrageousness of the tale won her some fans. Throughout the 70s, her readings at the Singapore Book Fair and the National University’s Evenings of Poetry and Music were always well-attended by earnest teenage acolytes, eager for further news of this parallel Singapore, so much mightier than their own.
Invigorated by her followers, Fonseka maintained a steady literary output over the next ten years, apparently determined to describe the history of her alternate universe in detail, with each century chronicled in a separate volume of fiction. Her third novel was a 16th-century affair, Feathered Serpents,19 following the downfall of the Aztec and Inca empires under the sword of the Philippine nobleman Lapu-Lapu. Red Fort20 concerned an aerial war in the 17th century against the forces of Akbar the Great in Mughal India, while Broken Pearls21 centered on a takeover of the 18th-century slave trade in the Horn of Africa.
Readers have questioned why these later tales paid little attention to the continued rise of Singapore. One possible answer is that she wished to avoid further controversy—it was in fact rumoured that she had received death threats after the damning review of her second book, specifically linked to accusations that she had shamefully dishonoured the Chinese race. The truth, however, may be that it was no longer a matter of urgency to present a triumphalist vision of the nation’s destiny. The country was indeed rising as a model of Third World progress, with its affordable public housing scheme and industrialised workforce. Success, however dull, was now a reality. How worthwhile was it to consider it as a fiction?
By the 80s, Fonseka’s career had reached its peak. She had been profiled for a cultural programme by the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation,2 and the amateur theatre company Third Stage had approached her with plans to present a dramatic adaptation of her stories. She now had the clout to launch her sixth novel, The Sun Never Sets,23 at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel, with actors from the company performing live readings from the text.
With this volume, Fonseka takes us to 19th-century Europe: a poorer, more beleaguered continent than the one familiar to us, lacking in the riches gained from colonial exploitation. We disembark at the smoggy docks of London, accompanied by the world-weary pirate-turned-imperial agent, Cheng I Sao. She trudges through the desolate city, past the millions of workers toiling in unsanitary factories, manufacturing cheap products for Asian export, intent on fulfilling her mission: to enlist the services of Dr Mary Godwin, a noted prodigy in the field of experimental surgery, rising like a lotus out of the cultural boondocks of the Far West.
Cheng transports Mary to the island of Singapore by hovercraft, granting readers a long-awaited return to this reimagined city. The vessel docks in the night, allowing Mary to witness the carnelian sparkle of the metropolis’ skyline beneath a colossal moon. Once morning comes, we are treated to a lengthy description of a phantasmagorical utopia, wherein crystalline skyscrapers have been grown from synthetic corals, sub-aquatic residences skirt the coast and air-conditioned boulevards wind through the island’s innards. A ring of clouds looming above the skyline turns out to be a cluster of government administrative offices, sculpted from lighter-than-air foam. At the city’s centre, a silver cord extends from the summit of Bukit Larangan, the Forbidden Hill, into the heavens: the connective thread of a space elevator, lifting the empire's minions into the infinite cosmos.
However, it is in a chamber deep below the hill, in the catacombs of what once was the royal palace, that Cheng confronts Mary with the empire’s greatest secret.
The cavern’s interior was ancient, carved with centuries-old images of nagas and garudas, gripping mediaeval weaponry in their claws. Yet the air smelt bitter and chemical: evidence of the ritual scouring of the area with antiseptic mercurochrome, five times a day.
‘Don’t wake him,’ Cheng cautioned her. But already, he had begun to stir. He raised one grotesque eyelid, peering at her intently, then wiggled his rudimentary stump of a body, swimming through the ruddy fluid in his tank towards the glass that separated them.
‘Praise to the Sultan,’ Mary stammered. Then, stupidly, she added, ‘I thought you were dead.’
The creature before her laughed: a horrid burbling sound. Then he spoke, and the harsh noise of his words was instantly decoded and spelt out on a monitor display.
‘I cannot die,’ he told her. ‘I have lived four hundred years now, thanks to my servants in the House of Wisdom. It was the Korean physician, Heo Jun, who first identified the herbal nostrums that would sustain me. Later, Hiraga Gennai of Nippon removed my more extraneous appendages and built this chamber of glass where I might ever be immersed in his longevity serum. But always, I must be careful,’ and now came the burbling again, ‘that I survive. For without me, would the Empire not perish?’
‘The Empire is strong,’ Cheng rebutted dutifully.
‘Ah, you may say this, my girl. But that is because your Parliament lies to you. From this, my inner sanctum, I can sense the very pulse of the world, and I know it is restless. I have heard the rebellious oaths spoken in the Iroquois Territories of Outer Mexica, the demagoguery of the rogue Sikhs of Punjab, the petroleum bombs of the crazed Zulus of Bantustan. Even the yak butter-smeared monks of Tibet immolate themselves in protest, daring to believe they are wise enough to chart out their own destinies.’
A horrible hacking noise, not unlike coughing. ‘And yet the true disease of the Empire lies at its heart. The people of the capital have grown spoiled, and no longer have faith in the system that has grown them so fat. If they no longer believe in the man that made them, what then?’
‘What indeed?’ added Cheng, as per the script. In truth, she had grown slightly weary of Sultan Nadim’s constant theatrics.
At this, the old king pointed a withered, tentacle-shaped limb at Mary. ‘That is why I have chosen you as my caretaker. You are young, from a faraway isle, and have no connections. You have been schooled by the Empire, and are dependent on us to succeed. You shall serve me, and in return for your faith, I shall grant you endless honour.’ (Fonseka, 1987: 115-116)
In the ensuing chapters, Cheng is alerted by a series of clues to a vast clandestine conspiracy that threatens to end the Empire from within. The mystery takes her to every corner of the island, from the levitating mansions of Buginese plutocrats to the Manchu ghettos on the offshore isles. After several false leads, she finally discovers the truth: that Dr Mary Godwin is, in fact, the secret lover and ally of the radical Britannian poet-activist Percy Bysshe Shelley, and has been steadily poisoning the Sultan’s nutrient supply over a series of months.
The climax takes the form of a savage pistol fight in Sultan Nadim’s underground chamber, wherein a fatally injured Mary, desperate to achieve her aims, smashes the glass tank, seizes a ceremonial kris off the wall and stabs her charge in the heart. Cheng empties her barrel into the traitor’s forehead, then races to the Sultan’s side:
His body lay convulsing on the floor, spitting brown water from its mouth, splitting its skin on the broken glass. ‘Call for surgeons!’ she hollered amidst the flashing arc lights, pressing her skirt against his breast to staunch the wound, but already she could hear the gurgling of a death rattle on his blue, bloodied lips…
But no. It was no death rattle. He was laughing, as he so often did, only this time the sound was unfiltered by the fluid of his aquarium, nor by the electronics of the cavern’s supercomputer.
‘Your Majesty,’ she started. But he waved a flipper-like arm at her, knocking away her hand.
‘That girl! She had spirit, she did.’
/> ‘Your Majesty, you have to lie still. Your heart—’
‘I have no heart,’ he chuckled. ‘They removed it a long, long time ago.’
Cheng gazed down at the emperor, whose laboured breathing was slowing, stilling. And as alarms sounded throughout the cavern, she had to lower her ear to hear his next words.
‘Swordfish.’ It bubbled out of his craw. ‘You’re all swordfish, a plague on this island. But I have survived worse, even as a child, half a millennium ago.’ He puckered his lips, and she could feel the clammy vapour of his breath on her cheek. ‘Don’t you worry, young one. The empire I built shall endure. And I shall live forever.’ (Fonseka, 1987: 322-323)
Here the novel ends. In correspondence,24 Fonseka informed one reader that the cycle would be concluded with a seventh book, set in the late 20th century, wherein his burning questions would be answered: whether the character of Nadim survived the attack, and if the civilisation he built was truly destined to fall. She further revealed that the entire opus would be reissued as The Pax Temasika Cycle, together with devastating proof that this counter-factual history was, in fact, the authentic and unadorned truth.
For reasons unknown, these promises remained unfulfilled. Gossip circulated, intimating that this was due to personal illness, or clashes with her employer, or discord with her rumoured lover, the cartoonist Charlie Chan Hock Chye. A popular claim was that she was silenced by the Internal Security Department after being embroiled in the mass detention of the Third Stage theatre troupe in 1987. Frustratingly, such reports were neither confirmed nor denied by the author in her letters. She made no subsequent public appearances, and published no further books. Hopes that she might one day return to her craft were dashed when her obituary appeared in the papers on 10 December 2003.25
Fonseka left no surviving relatives. Her wake was organised by a few well-wishers at the National Library of Singapore, where she remained employed until her death. Since then, her books have not been republished. A glance at the library’s electronic catalogue shows all copies listed as “Missing” or “Not Yet in Stock”.26
III.
There is a third way the story may be told. This researcher (1980– ) will stake a claim to its discovery in the old National Library building at Fort Canning Hill, mere days before the monument was closed for demolition in 2004.
This version of the tale takes the form a systematic act of vandalism against an antique 1821 edition of Sulalatus Salatin, accessible only to librarians and academics. The page narrating the tale of Hang Nadim is missing, and in its place was a type-written leaf of paper bearing the following words:27
The story is wrong.
There was no boy.
There was no king.
There was no island.
There was only the ocean, crashing across itself, for a billion centuries and a day.
We are not blood that colours the earth. We are words written in the surf.
We are voices in dreams. And those dreams are the dreams of fish.
1 Tun Seri Lanang. Malay Annals. Trans. John Leyden. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown (1821). Accessed via the Sejarah Melayu Library, http://www.sabrizain.org/.
2 Singapura Dilanggar Todak. Dir. Omar Rojik. Shaw Brothers, 1962. Film.
3 A. Jalil Haji Noor. Hang Nadim Pahlawan Kechil. Singapore: Pustaka Nasional, 1964. Also Chia Hearn Chek. The Redhill: a Singapore folktale. Singapore: Federal Alpha, 1974.
4 大战红山 (The Battle of Redhill). The Theatre Practice, 1997. Also The Swordfish, then the Concubine. W!ld Rice, 2008.
5 Alfian Sa’at. “Hang Nadim Speaks”. A History of Amnesia. Singapore: Ethos Books, 2001.
6 Chua Boon Kee. 红山小孩的智慧 (Wisdom of the Boy from Redhill). Forged copper and stainless steel. Jalan Boon Lay. 2011.
7 A deeper exploration of these themes may be found in Sophie Sim Meijun. Fishy tales: Singapura Dilanggar Todak as myth and history in Singapore’s past. Diss. National University of Singapore, 2005.
8 See Omar Rojik and A. Jalil Haji Noor. Also, Gwee Thian Hock’s Peranakan rendition, “Singapura di-Langgar Todak” in ASEAN Folk Literature: An Anthology. Ed. Damaian L. Eugenio. Manila: ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information, 1995.
9 See Chia Hearn Chek. Also, Irene-Anne Monteiro and Jenny Watson, Favourite Stories from Singapore. Singapore: Shing Lee Book, 1979. Also, Pugalenthi and Noel Chia. Myths and Legends of Singapore. Singapore: VJ Times, 1991. In social media correspondence, Pugalenthi cites an untraceable textbook from the 1940s.
10 Singapore Geological Survey VI. Singapore: Ministry of Environment. 1973.
11 Tomé Pires. The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: an account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1990.
12 Biographical details have been gleaned from private interviews with Dr Lily Zubaidah Rahim, former president of the unofficial Iris Fonseka Fan Club.
13 Iris Fonseka. Singapore: Merdeka Press, 1969.
14 Robert Yeo, “Swordfish served half-baked”. The Straits Times. 18 February 1970. (36)
15 See, for example, the paintings of the Nanyang School, which combined Western oil painting, Chinese ink and batik techniques, in Kwok Kian Chow. Channels and Confluences: A History of Singapore Art. Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1996. Also, the literary representations of Singaporean pidgin English in Goh Poh Seng’s 1962 play When Smiles Are Done. Accessed via the National Online Repository of Art. http://nora.nl.sg
16 Fonseka. Singapore: Merdeka Press, 1971.
17 A common quotation from early versions of The Sunnah, later disputed.
18 Lim Kay Tong, “Sultan Stinks”. Singapore Monitor. 1 April 1972. (15)
19 Fonseka. Singapore: Merdeka Press, 1974.
20 Fonseka. Singapore: Merdeka Press, 1977.
21 Fonseka. Singapore: Merdeka Press, 1982.
22 Spotlight Singapore. Singapore Broadcasting Corporation. Singapore. 19 July 1984.
23 Fonseka. Singapore: Merdeka Press, 1987.
24 Private collection of the researcher. 12 June, 1989.
25 The Straits Times. B13.
26 National Library Board, Singapore. http://catalogue.nlb.gov.sg/. Accessed 15 May 2018.
27 Anonymous. Undated. Accessed 2004.
SIN
The haze descended on us thick that year. All through August, it crept through the cracks of our doorways and windows, into our homes, our factories, our air-conditioned offices; into our nostrils, our eyes and our lungs. Schools were shut; hospitals were overworked; pharmacies were inundated with demands for purifying masks, which might be strapped around one’s muzzle, a grotesque papier-mâché snout, for the sake of some momentary reprieve from the oppressive weight of the air.
Finally, on a Sunday, after a heavy downpour at daybreak, it dispersed. Citizens blinked in astonishment to see their city again before them, so clear and clean, shimmering in the sunlight. But amidst our familiar trees and high-rises were unknown figures, much like ourselves, but diverse in shape, size and habit.
For the smoke had borne strange passengers. Some appeared like ancient men, withered down to nothing but skin and skeleton; others were graceful women, half their bodies flayed, exposing a mess of yellow tissue, ripe with maggots. Some had massive horns that whorled around their ears like sheep, sprawling antlers like windswept forests, talons like harpy eagles, hindquarters like mountain goats, wings like pterodactyls. Many had fangs and forked tongues; virtually all had eyes that glowed red in the morning heat. Some were as minuscule as moths, others were so tall they peered over the crests of housing blocks, surveying the new land that lay before them.
There was an initial bout of panic. Some unfortunate altercations occurred: the evidence for them remains in the form of photography and online video. In response, the Prime Minister issued a nationwide state of emergency. We huddled with our loved ones in our master bedrooms, doors blockaded by our IKEA furniture, eyes glued to the news on our tel
evision screens and smartphones, waiting patiently for someone to tell us what to do.
Order was established by 6pm. We heaved a sigh of relief, but in truth, we expected no less of our government. A statement was duly issued, and a televised press conference was held at the Istana.
Our visitors, the PM said, came in peace. They were not alien invaders, as was initially feared, nor were they mutant soldiers bred by Malaysian military scientists with the purpose of displacing us.
They were, in fact, from Hell. This had been ascertained through interviews with a handful of the newcomers who spoke identifiable languages: Old Javanese, Acehnese, Pali, Shanghainese, Classical Tamil, and in a singular instance, English.
How had they come?
Through the smoke. In the Seventh Month, the Gates of Hell fly open, and beings may travel between worlds, just as is stated in our common lore.
What were they? Demons? Or lost souls?
They made no distinction between the two.
Why had they come?
They were running away.
What were they running from?
From Hell itself. Further answers were untranslatable.
What did they want?
A new home. In short, they had come to stay.
The PM concluded by announcing that the beings would be placed in temporary housing until further decisions could be made regarding their long-term future. Ministers would have to weigh their losses and benefits, he said. Citizens, too, would have their say.
In the weeks to come, we did not see much of the monsters. A few of us spied them in open-ended lorries, peering anxiously out across the railings at us as police and army servicemen ferried them to their camps. The bravest among us attempted to engage them in dialogue, or to exchange greetings. The warm-hearted ones offered them fresh fruits or dry, crumby cakes. After all, a neighbour muttered, they could be our own ancestors. One could never tell.