Singapore Noir

by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

  Back inside her gray Toyota with Saddam Hussein panting in the backseat, Cha-li checked her notes again. For the past several nights, Robert Lee had brought a different Indian male to the house. Sometimes, Robert went in with his guest. But last Tuesday night, he had dropped his Indian guy off and driven away, and Cha-li had tailed him back to his home. Last Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights, Robert had parked his car and followed his Indian guest into the house. About two hours later, the two men had returned to the car and driven back to the Indian’s hotel. Just this week alone, she had followed Robert to several high-end hotels. On Monday night, it was the Fullerton. On Wednesday night, it was Marina Bay Sands. On Friday night, the Ritz-Carlton. On Saturday night, the Shangri-La. But all these details hardly spelled adultery. Robert Lee was simply the chauffeur for his rich Indians. She’d not seen any women coming out of the corner house yet except the one in red who looked like Rose.

  She flipped over several more pages in her notebook. Nothing important in there. Her surveillance of Robert’s office had yielded little except a list of his dinner appointments with Indian clients, who inevitably ended up going to the corner house for dessert. Which was interesting. Is the house a brothel? Unlikely. Butterfly Avenue was not Geylang Road. Sennett Estate was in one of the city’s respectable middle-class areas. It’s true that some wealthy Chinese had bought houses here for their mistresses, but this had not dented the estate’s respectability. Besides, Cha-li had not seen any young women emerging from the corner house. Was the woman in red the sole magnet that attracted the Indians? But if the woman was Rose, she’d be fifty-five and considered over the hill, no? Unless . . . unless she was offering something kinky.

  4

  On Sunday the matron phoned. Kai-yeh had taken a turn for the worse. When Cha-li arrived at the home, Kai-yeh was hooked up to a ventilator and drip.

  “Is he in pain?”

  What she really wanted to know was: Is he going to die? He was all the family she had.

  “He’s stable for now. The doctor has given him an injection.”

  Cha-li slumped into the chair next to the bed. She stroked the old man’s hand. His eyes opened. He raised his forefinger with some effort, and tried to speak. But all he managed to croak was “Rose.” After that, he had to breathe hard to make up for that expense of energy.

  “Kai-yeh, I’ll find her.”

  * * *

  Cha-li parked the rental van outside the corner house. Pulling a cap on her head, she got out, pressed the buzzer on the gate, and shouted into the intercom, “Karang guni! Collect old newspapers!”

  The gate opened, and she walked up the driveway. The front door was ajar.

  “Come in!” a woman shouted from the kitchen.

  Cha-li stepped inside the spacious living room. Its walls were apple white, and the floor was made of white marble. A large white sofa and two armchairs upholstered in white leather sat on a thick beige and gray carpet. The woman who came out of the kitchen didn’t seem surprised to see her.

  “I knew you’d find me sooner or later.”

  “Rose.” That was all Cha-li could manage. Her throat was dry.

  Rose, meanwhile, said nothing. She had not moved from her spot near the kitchen. Cha-li peered at her. Wearing a pink housecoat, she looked like the aunties who came to the temple to pray. At fifty-five, Rose was no longer the young dark beauty queen who had held men spellbound as she gyrated onstage with a python in the Great World Cabaret and broke Cha-li’s heart. A hard glint appeared in Rose’s eyes as she looked at Cha-li, who searched for something to say now that she was face to face with the girl—no, the woman—she had once loved.

  Scenes from their past came and went in her head. She saw their two naked bodies, tinted red by sunlight shining through the red tablecloth covering Lord Sun Wukong’s altar, as Rose’s fingers reached into the deep moist recesses between her thighs, stirring feelings of love, guilt, and shame. Ashamed of what she felt, and conscious that she was Kai-yeh’s chosen successor, while Rose was just the temple’s waif, she fought hard to suppress her feelings. Until one day, Rose was gone. Gone without a word. Frantic with worry, and sobbing her heart out, Cha-li went to the police. A missing person’s report was filed but nothing came of it. She wept long and hard every night. For months she haunted the places they used to visit. Kai-yeh was philosophical. Rose is a temple stray. Strays come and go. It’s their nature, he said, and encouraged her to study hard.

  Five years later, Cha-li became a private investigator. She was on duty in the Malaysian town of Ipoh when she chanced upon a large black-and-white photo of Rose in the Great World Cabaret. It showed a scantily clad sultry beauty with long, dark tresses, and a large python curled around her. Shocked, Cha-li sat through Rose’s show before charging into her dressing room backstage. Fuck off, Cha-li! I don’t owe you an explanation! The cabaret! Now, that’s my temple! It’s where I dance like a woman. Sexy and beautiful. You! You prance around that temple like a dressed-up monkey! Stung, Cha-li left the cabaret, and hadn’t seen Rose again.

  “You might as well take off the cap.”

  Cha-li pulled off her hat and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans.

  “Why have you come?” Rose asked in a hard voice.

  “Kai-yeh is dying.”

  “Good! May he rot in hell!”

  “He gave you a roof over your head, Rose.”

  “Keep your pious shit, Cha-li. You’re blind, and a fool. He gave me more than that. Come.”

  Cha-li followed her into the kitchen. Rose threw open a door, and Cha-li walked into the kitchen of the house next door. She followed Rose into the dining room where an old woman was trying unsuccessfully to feed a young man strapped to his chair. The young man’s large shaved head was lolling on the back of the chair as though his neck was too soft to support it. Spit was dribbling from the corner of his mouth, which was making guttural sounds. The old woman wiped off the spit with a washcloth, and shoved another spoonful of rice into the gaping hole as though to stop the ugly sounds coming from it.

  “Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!”

  “What your Kai-yeh gave me.”

  Cha-li stared at the head and vacant eyes. “Did he . . . ? Did he . . . ?” Helpless, she turned to Rose.

  “He raped me. Then I tried to abort him.”

  Rose patted the lolling head, which said, “Ugh! Ugh!” and more spit dribbled.

  “Good morning, Madame Mei Kwei! Good morning, Ugh-Ugh!” two girls called out in Mandarin as they came down the stairs, their nipples showing under their skimpy nightdresses. Cha-li remembered seeing them when she was walking Saddam Hussein. One of the girls approached them and planted a kiss on the lolling head. “Ugh! Ugh!” The distended mouth dribbled more spit, and the wrists strained at the belt that strapped them to the armrests.

  Rose turned away. “Let’s go back. They’re getting ready to eat.”

  Cha-li followed her back to the first house. The sun had come into the living room, and the light that bounced off the white marble floor hurt Cha-li’s eyes. Her head was swimming.

  “Is Robert the mastermind?”

  “No. Robert has to settle his gambling debts. I . . . ah! I need the money and so do these China girls. They have something to sell that the Indians want to buy. Robert brings the Indians. I bring the girls. Everyone is happy. It’s not a crime.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  Rose drew the curtains. “Report it to the police if you want. I don’t care what you do.”

  “Why? Why didn’t you tell me what he did?”

  “Tell you?” Rose’s laughter bordered on the hysterical, a wild gleam in her eyes. “Tell you? The bastard’s monkey girl? The Great Lord’s Chosen One with a paper gold band on your head? And a fake gold chain around your neck? The bastard was holding the bloody chain while you pranced before the devotees, drunk in their adoration. Strike me dead, Cha-li! I couldn’t tear open my heart to a prancing monkey in silk robes!”

  She wanted to slap
Rose, but walked to the front door instead and stopped at the doorway, surprised at the sudden weight in her limbs. Her shoulders sagged. The memory of the gilt headband that she’d worn in those days made her cringe. It was made of cardboard and cheap plastic, painted gold. Later, she had bought the bronze headband to replace it.

  The sunlight outside hurt her eyes, which were beginning to tear, the same eyes that had remained shut when footsteps were shuffling in the middle of the night into the kitchen where Rose slept. Rose’s mouth was moving, saying something to her, but she couldn’t catch the words. She kept thinking of the lolling head and dribbling mouth next door.

  “The . . . the temple will be demolished. Very soon,” she said without turning around. She couldn’t face Rose. She wanted to shut her eyes, shut out the noonday glare, but she forced herself to keep them open, fixed on the green lawn outside sizzling in the midday heat. “I . . . I can get a flat big enough for the three . . . three of us . . . er . . . you and him . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  SPELLS

  BY OVIDIA YU

  Tiong Bahru

  We were minding our own business! Never causing no trouble! And then, for no reason, you came and cursed us! You are wicked—evil!”

  The accusation bursts out of the figure lurking by the vase of welcoming lilies on our rooftop terrace as we come out of the lift.

  “Please—not another suicidal teen!” says Renee, my flatmate, only partly in jest.

  Living in a modern condo in a heritage conservation district where walkups are the norm means an unexpected visitor to our private penthouse lobby is a potential mugger.

  The woman turns on Renee: “You busybody slut, this is all your fault. You made this one curse me! Now my husband is gone and my boy has diabetes and the doctor says he has some lump growing inside so he has to go and operate!”

  Renee retreats before the barrage of Singlish and spittle.

  The woman has the fierce, focused intensity sometimes seen on people verging on insanity. Her hair looks dirty and she smells . . . a stale, sour odor of unhealthy, unwashed flesh and fabric envelops and moves with her.

  If I were meeting her for the first time, I would classify her as crazy.

  “Should we call the police?” Renee asks quietly from behind me.

  “Call Gary,” I say. I stay between Renee and our visitor. Gary, chairman of our management committee, lives in the other penthouse in the Banyan Tower and is a reliable witness.

  “It’s all your fault! You destroyed my family! And now you are making my son get sick and—and—”

  Tears and memories overcome her words. She cannot make herself say the word die. But I know it is not only her son that these harsh raw sobs are for as she twists herself in agony against our front door.

  “And that stupid maid. Can you believe the girl had the cheek to offer me money for my boy’s treatment? Whoever heard of such a thing? I told her, if you so laowah and got so much money to throw at people, why are you here washing toilets? I told the police, I told the maid agency, if the girl got so much money she must have stolen it from me! Those useless people come and tell me I’m the one that owes her back pay!”

  Renee, ever softhearted, moves over to comfort the intruder. Instinctively, I reach out an arm to block, to protect. The blue ceramic vase shatters on the wall rack beside her head and—

  “Did you see that?” The madness in the woman’s voice rises and she shrieks again. “Did you see what she did? I didn’t break that—but I know you are going to blame me!”

  “No one is blaming you . . .” Renee says, but she retreats to safety behind me. She obviously doesn’t recognize the woman.

  It is not surprising that I remember her. After all, I remember everything about Tiong Bahru since the 1930s and it was only a year ago that I first encountered our not-yet-mad visitor at the newly reopened market. The old stigma of subsidized government housing is forgotten in our district’s graceful curved balconies and pastel wooden shutters, and the vegetable patches between rows of terraced walk-ups are tended by a mix of original inhabitants and recent arrivals. In the prewar days the buildings were called mei ren wu or houses of beauty because mistresses of wealthy businessmen lived here. Now that coffee bars, modern bistros, and retro bookshops have moved in, property prices have gone up, attracting real estate agents like this woman.

  * * *

  The first time I saw her was at the market when she cut in front of me at the chwee kueh stall. Chwee kueh is rice flour and water steamed into delicate discs and topped with fried pickled vegetables and sesame seeds. It is still one of Renee’s favorite treats.

  The woman had her husband, maid, and two children in tow and was talking loudly about the profits she intended to make. “I don’t see why this place is supposed to be such a big deal. People buying to rent to homos and foreigners—that’s why the prices are so high!”

  She complained about the quality of the chwee kueh. She complained about the seating and the birds and she scolded her daughter for not eating, her husband for not listening, and her maid for not stopping her son from throwing his fork and plate and water bottle at the birds.

  Then she slapped her maid for trying to collect their unfinished food in a plastic bag. “So dirty! People will think we don’t feed you!”

  The maid had not been given anything to eat or drink. But the maid was not as thin as the daughter, who had transferred the food from inside her bowl to under her plate, bypassing her mouth. I noticed, even if her mother did not. She might have been a pretty girl, I thought, if not dwarfed by her mother’s size and manner.

  That would have been the end of it had the woman not appeared in front of the Seng Poh Road ground-floor flat I was living in then.

  I recognized the smug, strident voice mocking our simple wooden doors and painted window grills even as she stuffed Best Price Offered for Your Property flyers through them.

  “I tell you, these days all the rich homos and poor ang mohs want to live here. These stupid old people don’t know what they are sitting on—eh-eh-eh, boy-boy, don’t throw!” A crash followed.

  I opened the door to find her pale pudgy son had smashed the arowana tank on the five-foot way with a cup cactus. Water and broken glass were mixed with porcelain fragments and the pink-tipped petals of the crushed Sedum rubrotinctum were being smeared on the cement walkway by my two desperately flailing fish. The boy had already picked up another pot off the wall rack, a three-inch Tiger’s Jaw in a clay pot, and was looking around for his next target. When he saw me his eyes gleamed; he raised his arm in my direction but squeaked and dropped the plant as its needles twisted around and jabbed him. The husband and maid were nowhere to be seen, no doubt distributing flyers elsewhere, but the anorexic daughter was standing there looking both sullen and alarmed.

  The woman smacked the girl on the back of her head, making the chubby boy forget his pinpricks to crow in glee. “Why didn’t you watch your brother? This is all your fault!”

  * * *

  Now the lift doors open again. Handsome, efficient Gary appears with his two Filipina maids and chauffeur, assorted neighbors, and an apologetic security guard. They are armed with kitchen knives, Gary’s golf clubs, and a Koran.

  “Police are on their way,” Gary says. “Renee just said you had a psycho up here—I didn’t know if she meant psycho as in suicide, murderer, or opposition party member.”

  “She’s the wicked one! She took my husband away! She’s killing my son!” the woman shouts at them.

  Here, at last, we have arrived at the heart of the woman’s bitterness. Not surprisingly, Renee still doesn’t recognize her. Instead, stress and incredulity burst out of her in a sudden spurt of laughter.

  “Her? She’s not into men and she won’t even eat meat because she won’t kill animals!”

  Now the woman stops, her attention caught, and really looks at Renee for the first time. “And she took you too. I never knew you were so serious about singing. I thought you were just play
ing the fool. For once in your life, listen to me. Tell her to stop killing your brother!”

  Renee looks confused. Fortunately, Gary steps in and directs his chauffeur and our security guard to take the woman downstairs. She is still struggling with them when the police arrive.

  The policemen take the woman away, of course. One of them shyly tells Renee he has all her CDs and always watches President’s Star Charity when she sings on the show. She gives him a can of chrysanthemum tea and an autographed photo and he goes off happy, promising he will make sure she is never bothered again by this “whacko nutcase.”

  The woman is still shouting. We can hear her at street level, the desperation in her voice growing with the distance.

  “She cursed me! She cursed my whole family! She stole my daughter!”

  I had not cursed the woman or her damned family. As her daughter had helped transfer my poor suffocating fish into a tub, I had spoken quietly to the woman, outlining the future coming to her. There is no need for harsh tones when your words hold power. Even her daughter, measuring capfuls of water conditioner into the tub as she held the plastic hose steady, had not heard a thing.

  Besides, it was already clear to me then that her husband had left her bed for another months before and was well on his way out of her life. Likewise, her son’s cancer had already been hovering, a dark miasma of stickiness in the air around his soft, sickly body. All I had done was name it and bring it to the surface. I know the smell of sickness very well. I was only twenty-seven years old when I died of diphtheria during the Occupation.

  Some things hang in the balance and a word spoken is all it takes to tip it . . .

  “Will she be all right?” Renee says. She looks beautiful and concerned. “She’s crazy, isn’t she?”

  No, the woman is not crazy yet, but she will be soon. And she is likely to find herself labeled crazy long before that happens. Perhaps after she tells her story to her boss—her shift supervisor at McDonald’s who, though sorry for her, will be forced to fire her because of parents’ complaints that she frightens their children. And of course the police and the court-appointed psychiatrist will label her delusional and psychotic.