by Ng Yi-Sheng
(Such declarations of heightened emotion are standard poetic devices. Nights are seldom as cold or lonely as advertised, as the village elders will often organise month-long public orgies to conserve body heat.)
When the Rightlings and Leftlings have accumulated sufficient funds, their clans will celebrate with a great feast, chortling and carousing late into the day, until all have grown quite tipsy on Mucus. They are then escorted to the entrance of the Ear Canal, where a black barge is tethered to a maypole. The lucky bride or bridegroom is loaded on the barge with all his or her possessions, save for a few that are distributed to friends and allies as parting gifts.
The barge sails deep into the Eardrum, bound for the glittering towers of Brain Stem. The Rightlings and Leftlings return to their farms, ready for another day knee-deep in the green. As for the lovers, they are never heard of again. No news comes from Brain Stem; indeed, no passing travellers claim to have ever heard of such a city.
The Rightlings and Leftlings smile agreeably. All is as it should be.
And Terry lowers her head below the water, flooding her secrets from my sight.
4. PUNCTUATION MARK
Ah, here’s another world, right here on my last assignment, graded F for late submission and unorthodox logic. A community of Punctuarians has made their home in my lecturer’s handwriting. They look very happy.
Punctuarians are a nomadic people. They spend their lives criss-crossing chapters and minutes, following trails of ink. On their backs, they carry their yurts and their wigwams; in their arms they bear their infants and their infirm. Their caravans are massive, and may extend across multiple sentences, especially when said sentences are curt monosyllables, such as “God!”, “What?” and “No.”
Over generations, Punctuarians will migrate fluently from volume to volume, exploring entire libraries and filing cabinets. They document such travel with maps made of their own hair, resembling cats’ cradles or Incan quipus. Their lexical tastes are perfectly democratic: most will find themselves equally comfortable on an antique scroll of The Spring and Autumn Annals as in a ledger of mama shop receipts.
You see, they do not subsist on petty, unreliable fuels such as Truth or Beauty, so scarce in this as well as all other worlds. Instead, they feed on aetheric substance that they call Breath.
What is Breath? The question is meaningless to all but the eldest of each tribe. From my observations and inquiries, I believe I may reveal the following truisms:
Breath is good for you.
It is absorbed through the nostrils and the spiracles of the skin.
It is composed of neither ink nor paper. Rather, its chief ingredient is Flavoured Space.
Too much Breath is not good for you. Young Punctuarians are often warned by their parents that too much Breathing will make them grow bow-legged, diminishing their popularity during bouts of ronggeng.
It has no musical motif.
It moves.
It tastes like chicken.
Should you ask a Punctuarian why his clan has embarked on another grand migration, he will shrug and explain that they are simply following the Breath. This utterance may be used to explain the most unlikely of decisions. Why did the virgin lie about the ghost of her daughter? Why did the family refuse to observe the ritual orgies that mark the year’s end? Why did the young man slaughter his husband at the break of dawn, instead of at sunset? Each was simply following the Breath.
When old age comes upon a Punctuarian, she will find it difficult to keep up with the peregrinations of her tribe. At first, she may allow her offspring to cradle her as they march, yet within the span of two or three journeys, her destiny will become clear.
On the next evening when her tribe breaks camp, she will announce that she is staying put. Her clan will make a great show of dissuading her, but she will not budge. “I am following the Breath,” she will say, sitting lotus-style upon the cold ashes of the past night’s bonfire. After that, there will be no further argument, not even a kiss goodbye.
Separated from the group, the elderly Punctuarian will die. Her skin and bones will decay into the paper that she has made her tomb, and her remains will be mistaken by humans as carbon dust.
And we are left to wonder: did she lie to her loved ones? Did she claim there was Breath where there truly was none to sustain her? Or did she fulfil her purpose by allowing the tides of Breath to consume her?
5. BINDI
I must leave you now: the hour of my favourite Hong Kong teledrama draws near. But before we part, I shall tell you of one last city, one ultimate city that thrives between these four walls. You will find it on the porcelain forehead of the goddess we purchased in Chinatown, she who sits cross-legged on the family altar, her fingers fixed in a mudra of mercy.
The teardrop that graces her brow is no misplaced lipstick stain, no accident at the ceramics factory. It is a Third Eye, and the aliens of our home recognise it as such. For this reason, they have built a temple there; a vast basilica that could house the faithful of the entire cosmos, each assigned to his proper alcove, descending through infinite levels of reality like stairways into darkness.
There are no natives of this city. The hooded acolytes who staff the temple were not born there, nor will they elect to die there. They are lay brothers and sisters, come from the numberless civilisations of the worlds beyond, and will serve only for a time before returning to their individual destinies in parts unknown.
Why do they come?
Because they seek visions. To renew themselves, they must retreat from their muddled lives on other planes. Here they gather, and here they meditate to the scent of charred bones and flaking paint, and here they dream.
What do they dream?
It is hard to tell, because many have taken a vow of silence. Their writings are in stylised hieroglyphics, undecipherable to the uninitiated, and even to the initiated when sober.
Yet I have eavesdropped on their mutterings in the car park, and I will venture to guess that they dream of cities. Implausible cities, ludicrous cities, cities that buck the definition of the word itself. Every city I have described was first born here in the mind of another; every possible permutation of their attributes has been or shall be considered in their minds.
What else is there to dream of, after all? One must always find new ways to live amongst others. New trajectories of society. New compromises between the self and the unself.
As for Third Eye, it makes no claims to be paradise. The passages of the temple complex are filthy; the canteen food is bland; petty theft and fraud are rampant at the souvenir shops. Even the most devout concede that one day, gravity shall perform its inevitable work, and this city, too, shall crack.
But for now, it is a holy place. A meeting place of imaginations, a halfway house between universes.
Cities generally aspire to be more than this. But the Third Eyeans are, for now, content. This much is enough, and shall be enough. As long as the last possible city remains undreamt.
Garden
1299
There is a clap of thunder, and she opens her eyes. The jungle, the sweet black jungle, is behind her at last; beneath her feet is a bed of white sand, and before her is the rolling expanse of the southern seas.
The lion settles on its haunches, and so does she. Together, they endure the majesty of the storm, letting it drench their skin, letting it pour into their mouths and nostrils. Eventually, she sees it: a princely ship, half sunken, tumbled by the waves. It is the size of a cracked seed on the horizon, but as the skies flower with lightning she can almost see the crew jettisoning their cargo, the kingdomless king gripping the brim of his crown, not yet daring to let it slip from his hands.
“Sri Tri Buana,” she says, remembering the name. It is one she has not spoken for a lifetime.
She is ready. A moment’s delay, and she will be lost forever. She steps into the sea, takes a breath and begins to swim.
The End
1398
Dang Ano
m is building a merti. In a basket woven of banana leaves, she has placed an orchid, a betel nut, a slice of Kaffir lime and a ghost-white cempaka blossom. Now she is kneeling before a jasmine bush, searching out the choicest cluster to lend fragrance to her offering.
A koel calls. It is daybreak at the Istana, and the mists are lifting from the royal hill. The other concubines have just begun to stir their limbs. She, however, has been sleepless since sundown. She has heard the harem’s gossip, the whispered words of handmaidens and eunuchs. She knows beyond doubt that she is in mortal danger.
Last night, she had pleaded her innocence to the King. In this very grove, she had sworn before the carven gods that the rumours were groundless fabrications. “Trust your senses, not these slanderers, for they are jealous of our love,” she had cried. Yet in his eyes, she could see her fate was sealed. The honey of his heart had turned to poison.
If the palace chatterers speak the truth, her sentence is already written. In a moment, the guards will come. They will escort her to the marketplace, strip her bare and slaughter her before the crowd. Her beauty will not save her, nor the fact that she is daughter of the Bendahara. The King’s cruelty knows no bounds. This she knew, even when she loved him.
But there is, perhaps, another way out. Her fingers brush aside a frond, and she decides, yes, this might be worthy of heaven. She plucks a sprig of jasmine, perfect as a diadem of stars, and positions it in the centre of her basket. Then, without wasting a moment, she presses her brow to the ground in prayer.
“I call on the gods, the dewas and gandharvas and spirits, to save me,” she says. “Whoever answers my call: I will forever be your servant.”
However, when she raises her eyes, she sees she has laid her merti before a dragon-faced statue of Batara Kala, the Lord of Time. She knows she must make another offering, immediately, to a kinder, more merciful deity, but already she hears their footsteps at the gate, the rattle of krises in their sheaths. Her executioners have come.
Perhaps she can flee. The gardens of the Istana have many paths, running up and down the sacred hill. One of them may take her to the sea.
If she runs uphill, turn to 1613.
If she runs downhill, turn to 1823.
1470
Hang Tuah is wrestling a crocodile. As he grapples with the creature in the surf, he hears the cry of an innocent maiden, and glances at the beach. She is hurtling towards him, wild-eyed, out of a clearing where the Orang Laut tribes have planted a crop of bananas. She is as comely and as finely arrayed as any of the queens of Malacca, yet as he plunges his kris into the belly of the beast, she steps into the sand and disappears…
Turn to 1511.
1511
Pangeran Adipati Agung is eating moss. He has lived like this for a week at the bottom of the well, hands and feet bound, chest-deep in the murk, staling the very waters he must drink. He is near death, but he dares not forsake all hope. For the sake of his daughter, his precious Mas Ayu, he must live.
Now above him he hears a rustle of grass. “Help,” he cries, and kicks his legs in the water, for he knows his voice is cracked to a whisper. “Help me. Help me.” At first, he hears nothing. It must have been a deer or civet cat, he thinks, shutting his eyes and sinking deeper into the mud. But then, a girl’s voice replies.
“Where are you?”
“Here. In the well.”
“Are you a god?”
Despite his misery, he cannot help but be confounded by the foolishness of the question. “A poor prisoner am I. Tengku Bagus, my faithless nephew, lusts after my beloved child. I opposed him; he drugged me and left me to die.”
The circle of sky above him darkens, and the girl’s head casts a shadow on his face. “What is this place?”
“I know not.” He is growing irritated. “I was taken from my home in Telok Blangah. I awoke here.”
“Telok Blangah. So I am in Singapura still.” The shadow retreats, and he is about to cry out again, when she returns to say, “There is an empty hut here, and a dry field of padi. But no ladder or rope. I cannot save you.”
“Then find help.”
“I cannot. I, too, am a prisoner.” The voice is broken by a sob. “I am cursed, and now with every step I take, I am transported to a distant land.”
The girl has lost her senses, he thinks. But it will cost him nothing to be kind. “Where is home?”
“It does not matter. If I return, I will be murdered.”
“Then you are more fortunate than I. Lost you may be, but your destiny is to wander freely, while I die of hunger in this hole.”
There is a silence. “I have been selfish,” the girl admits. “I will do for you what I can.” She removes herself from his sight, but he can still hear her, shuffling about the grounds. Again, she heaves into sight: “Some old crops have survived. There are brinjals, yams, mangoes. I shall throw them to you.” He presses himself against the wall, and they come flying into the waters.
“My lady, I owe you my life.”
“I owe you no less. You have saved me from despair. Wait here. I will search for help, until I am taken from you once again.”
He waits until she takes her leave, then inches his mouth over to a mango. He sinks in his teeth: it is foully overripe, but every cell in his body sings praises to its flesh. He slurps at it for some time, and does not notice when the sound of her footsteps turns into silence.
If she walks northwards, turn to 1910.
If she walks southwards, turn to 1945.
1613
Manuel Godinho de Erédia is burning down a kampung. Already, the night is aglow with his labour: along the river, every rooftop is bathed in flames, their thatchings of dried attap a ripe fuel for the inferno. The villagers huddle and wail, for they do not realise the Portuguese Crown will do them no harm. After all, they will fetch a better price, uninjured, at the Great Assam Bazaar.
Out of nowhere, a figure comes charging at him through the blaze. He raises his musket: it is only after the gunpowder boom that he realises his attacker was a woman.
His men stare at the shattered corpse. He sighs. What a terrible waste of beauty. “Let us not speak of this,” he says. He raises his torch to a parched rambutan tree and observes how it bursts into blossom.
The End
1705
The Peri is pounding chillies. She still delights in the novelty of their taste, though it has been nearly a hundred years since the Portuguese brought them to these shores. For the same reason, she has filled her yard with other exotics of the New World: sweet potatoes, cherimoyas, soursops, papayas, cashews. She has even procured, through a dalliance with a Spanish priest, a frangipani sapling, now planted on his grave. The flowers are lovely: she suspects they will grow popular amongst her kind.
But now her patient is stirring. She tests the paste with a finger on the tip of her tongue, adds a pinch of sea salt, and slathers it over a mound of rice on a banana leaf and glides over to the woven mat beneath the pondok.
“Good morning, my little one,” she says. Anom’s eyelids fly open, making the Peri dissolve into a sea of chortles. “Oh, you are funny. Do not speak. Eat. Drink. Rest, however long you need to.”
“Where is this?”
“I believe in years to come they will call this place Bidadari. A delicious name. As for when, it’s 1117. Or 1627. Anno Hegirae or Shaka calendar, choose whichever one you like. Three hundred years after your kingdom fell, and a little more than a hundred till the next one rises. Splendid, you’re sitting now. Now try and stand for me. Beautifully done.”
Anom balances unsteadily on her feet. “You are like me, then? One who journeys through time?”
The Peri laughs again, her voice tinkling like a hall full of gamelans. “No, no, no. And yes: I make a journey, but only one way, as most mortals do. Yet I am no daughter of Eve. I am a djinn, created by the Almighty from smokeless fire. As such, I have some talent in the crafts of magic, of prophecy, of healing.” She taps a poultice, bandaged against Anom’
s breast. “You have been careless on your travels, little one. Time has hurt you badly.”
The shrill song of cicadas begins to rise in the wilderness. The Peri shushes them, and they fall mute. Anom stiffens.
“Why are you being so kind?”
“Poor girl. So young, and so untrusting. So watchful, and yet not so wise.” There is a cracked porcelain kendi on the side of the anjung; from it, the Peri pours two cups of tea. “I suppose I’ve grown lonesome. I caused a bit of a scandal up in Johor: that silly darling Sultan Mahmud fell in love with me, married me, then murdered his general’s wife over a matter of stolen jackfruit—you know that kind of man?”
Anom slowly nods. She does, in fact, understand the variety of love the Peri speaks of.
“And then the general returned and slew him on his palanquin! Just like that: the royal line of Sri Tri Buana, cut off forever. So I fled here. I decided to lie low for a while, just to avoid getting caught up in history again.”
“I have seen some of our history. I have tried to change it for the better,” Anom says. She sips the tea again: it is spiced with ginger and cloves.
“That’s why you’re in such bad shape. The Lord of Time does not take kindly to those who interfere with His projects.” Now the Peri yawns, her red mouth a gaping rosebud. “But one gets bored, you know? It is such a humdrum century, here on this island.”
She raises a hand to stroke Anom’s cheek. Her fingertips are cool, yet they leave her skin burning.
“Come, little one. Don’t be afraid.” She gestures at the field of crops around her. “Why else do you think I built this garden? To tempt you, to court you. Sooner or later, I guessed, it would draw you to my side.”