A Fortune-Teller Told Me

by Tiziano Terzani

  Ka Non accompanied us to the door. As we took our leave she said to me: “Soon you will fulfill your mission. Now that you have seen once, you will see again.” And with that sibylline pronouncement she let us go.

  One of the sisters drove the van. The other was in shock. She said that for some time she had known she must do something, but she was afraid. She even feared her own powers. Once, for example, walking past a bar where she knew her husband spent many of his evenings, she had said, “I hope that place burns down.” The next day she heard it had been destroyed in a fire.

  One of the women remembered the translation of “pintar.” It means “genius.”

  The hotel I was staying in was dusty and grimy, but the sort I like, with large rooms, high ceilings and wooden stairs: everything rather threadbare, but with a past. For two nights I had slept very well in the big bed with its kapok mattress and hard pillows stuffed with tea leaves. But the third night I had a terrible nightmare. I dreamt I was in a place full of stairs with people of different colors climbing up and falling down. I tried to catch them all, but didn’t have enough arms. At one point all the stairs shuddered as if in an earthquake, then tumbled down on top of each other and on top of me, too. I woke with a start and realized that the bed really was shaking. Day was dawning, and building work had begun next door to the hotel. Workers in yellow helmets swarmed around bulldozers that were digging their rapacious steel teeth into the ground. A giant crane was driving iron piles for a new building in the heart of old Malacca.

  12/AN AIR-CONDITIONED ISLAND

  Every city has its own way of presenting itself, of putting its best foot forward. Singapore’s is the airport. The airport is its made-up face, its shop window, its visiting card. People arrive and depart there, and they really need see nothing else, the airport being the essence of all that Singapore has to show: its efficiency, its cleanliness, its order, its status as Asia’s biggest supermarket of consumer goods, futility and respectability.

  The charms of the airport were lost on me, earthbound as I was. Like all the other undesirables, penniless backpackers, immigrant Malay day laborers and poor Russian traders, I arrived in Singapore by the back door: overland from Malaysia. That was how the Japanese arrived in December 1941. In those days Singapore expected everyone, even possible invaders, to come by sea; the sea was its link with the world, the sea was its wealth, and toward the sea pointed all the artillery of its formidable defenses. They were utterly useless. The Japanese avoided the big guns by simply taking them from the rear. In the same way I avoided being seduced by Singapore: I saw its rumpled early-morning face, without makeup, unprepared and from an unintended angle.

  The Causeway, an artificial umbilical cord linking Singapore with Malaysia, underlines the fact that this vainglorious island city-state is, physically at least, a mere minuscule appendix of the great Malay peninsula. There is nothing special about it, nothing spectacular. I approached it at dawn. Through the train window I saw, against the background of a bloodred sun, four tall chimneys pouring black smoke into the air. Alongside the railway ran three huge iron pipes for the imported water that keeps the city alive, and a superhighway jammed with the cars and motorcycles of commuters who live in Johore Barhu, where the cost of living is lower, and work on the island, where wages are higher. Singapore looked like any other place in Asia, with the shacks, the rubbish heaps, the rusty corrugated iron, the patches of vegetation and weeds—remnants of nature waiting to reclaim any land left to itself.

  The first Singaporeans I saw from the train were like those I had known years ago: plastic sandals, black shorts and white T-shirts, exactly like the protagonist of one of the first stories I heard when I came there to live in 1971. A doctor had among his patients an old man in black shorts and singlet, so simple and humble that he squatted in the waiting-room armchair with his shirt rolled up over his stomach. The doctor took him for a pauper and charged him less than the others, sometimes not at all, until one day he looked out of the window and saw him climb into a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. He controlled the city’s entire rice trade.

  For me that old man has always been the epitome of the Chinese of the diaspora: self-assured but inconspicuous, powerful but reserved and modest for fear of arousing the jealousy of the gods or the rulers. There are very few left like that. The new generations of Chinese are afraid only of not being seen to be rich. They wear all those things that give them security and—they think—respectability. Singapore is like that, too; hence its eagerness to be on display, all shiny and modern, starting at the airport.

  The railway station, on the other hand, had a dilapidated air which I liked. When it was built, in the 1920s, it was completely paved and tiled with colored rubber that muffled the noise. The silent elegance of those days was enhanced by the shabby calm of a place that is no longer fashionable. Few Singaporeans use it; many do not even know it exists. The old station has no part to play in the Singapore of our times: it is an embarrassment, like a poor relation.

  We got off the train and had to queue for an hour for passport control. The policemen sat in smelly cubicles, surrounded by huge books, some nearly a foot thick, containing the list of all Singapore’s “enemies.” There were no computers and every passenger was checked, minutely, by hand. The most assiduous in filling out the forms and answering the usual questions were a group of Russians, who tried their best to ingratiate themselves with the impassive customs officials.

  In my mind echoed the opening line of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the great Chinese classic: “Empires wax and wane.” How quickly the Soviet Empire had waxed and waned! Only a few years ago the Russians were the proud citizens of a great power, and as such they were feared and respected. Now, poor devils, half ridiculous and half pathetic in blue jeans and trainers, they travel for days and days by train toward the Mecca of consumer goods, hoping to fill their bags with something they can sell back home for a ruble or two: calculators and silk panties, cigarette lighters, video recorders, electronic gadgets and brassieres.

  It really is a strange animal, the economic system which nowadays is expected to save the world! No one makes anything with their own hands anymore, no one works out how to make a cooking pot or a flute or a cart; the best thing they can think of is to go to another part of the world and buy something to resell elsewhere, at a profit.

  Shopping, shopping, shopping. In rich countries it has become a way of life, in poor ones a way of surviving. Is there not perhaps something profoundly wrong in all this? And is it not understandable that some of the young, like the “madmen” of Al Arqam, are trying, with their autarchy, their turbans and their women in black, to have nothing to do with it?

  For some people, the sight of the world rushing ever more blindly toward materialism reinforces the belief that only some dreadful event, like a plague or a great famine, can restore order and give men back a sense of life. With the end of the millennium so near, such ideas readily find followers, especially among idealists looking for a cause. The current resurgence of religious fundamentalism, in its different versions, can also be seen in this light.

  For me, returning to Singapore was like going to find one’s first love again. It was there, in 1965, that I first smelled the tropics, first enjoyed the heat and the colors; it was there that I realized how being far away made me feel at home. I was only there for a few days, but the impression ran deep. In 1971 I came here to live. I had left Olivetti, had studied China and the Chinese language in New York, and as I could not find a way of getting to Peking and did not want to go to Taiwan, I had decided to go and live among the Chinese of “the third China,” the China of the diaspora. We stayed in Singapore four years. There Saskia took her first steps, Folco went to his first school, and I wrote my first book.

  I had friends and acquaintances in Singapore, but I had not told anyone I was coming. I wanted to revisit the city alone, to form my own impressions, and above all to be free to write what I wanted without fear of getting my friends into
trouble. Because Singapore is like that: behind all its alluring and welcoming shopping malls, shopping arcades and shopping centers, it remains a police state, a society shot through with a subtle fear. Also, I wanted to be like a newcomer, to give myself to what Singapore had now become, and what so many foreigners found extraordinary.

  It did not take me long to realize that in the fifteen years I had been away from Singapore, the city had changed beyond recognition. There were new streets, new flyovers, new gardens and squares. Even the people were no longer the same. I saw them at the bus stops, all elegant and well dressed; but nobody spoke. I noticed more and more people with nervous tics, as in Japan. The warmth and kindness of the Indians, the voluptuous naturalness of the Malays, the sarcasm of the Chinese, the leisurely pace, due perhaps to the sluggish heat of the tropics, had disappeared.

  The heat itself had disappeared. I remembered Singapore as being torrid, at times scorching. There was an hour after lunch when even in our house among the trees the air was so steamy and immobile, the chirping of the cicadas so deafening, that we used to lie under the fan and wait for the liberating crash of a rainstorm or a breeze from the sea. In the new Singapore, however, it was literally cold. Cold in the hotels, in the shops, in the public buildings, in the offices, icy in the restaurants, in the underground, in the taxis, in the hospitals, houses, cars. Apparently the conditioned type was by now the only air Singapore could breathe. The whole island seemed to be under a huge bell jar, living an artificial, efficient life that had lost contact with the surrounding nature, with the heat of the Equator. Women no longer wore light blouses, floral sarongs or silk trousers; the new national costume had become the jacket and skirt with stockings or tights, just like London or New York.

  Once upon a time Singapore was a city full of smells—smells of mold, damp earth, fresh fruits, decaying vegetables, fried garlic, rotting wood. These too had disappeared.

  For a visitor like me, the new Homo singaporianus inevitably first presented himself as a taxi driver, and the initial impression was horrible.

  “Take me to Alexandra Park.”

  “Are you going to see friends?”

  “No.”

  “Do you live there?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you live, then?”

  “Far away.”

  “Are you in Singapore to do some shopping?”

  “No.”

  “Business? How many days are you here for?” And on and on until we reached my destination.

  Nosy and intrusive as policemen, the taxi drivers struck me as reflecting all the banality of the new Singapore, where seemingly nothing was left to chance or to free individual choice. Just looking at the dashboard of a taxi, with the box of tissues, the bottle of rose-scented deodorizer, the form on which every ride had to be recorded, and a series of notices which the law required to be plainly posted, gave me the creeps. One card, with the driver’s photo, gave his name, license number and a telephone number to call if you wanted to report him for some misdemeanor. Another gave the weight of the wheels, the maximum number of passengers, and the speed he could go at. Another said “Be loyal to Singapore.”

  My main worry was how to proceed with my journey. I wanted to go to Jakarta by ship, but once again this proved highly difficult, for the reason I knew all too well by now: the ships carried only cargo. It was incredible. The roadstead of Singapore, the second-largest port in the world, was full of ships—ships of all flags, all tonnages, all types—ships waiting to load and unload and then sail off, some undoubtedly for an Indonesian port where I would be glad to go. But none of those ships wanted me as a passenger. Finally I managed to speak with an official of the Singapore Port Authority who promised to help me; and then—this is typically Singaporean—he asked what my real reasons were for wanting to travel by ship.

  Singapore is a paradise for tourists, but they must be the kind of tourists that Singapore wants. As long as you’re not looking for a ship, you can find everything here, and find it cheaper than anywhere else, because Singapore is a free port and there are no taxes: a suit in twenty-four hours, a precious jade, a fashionable pair of glasses, a swimming costume, the latest record, the smallest camera, the most powerful stereo, the lightest personal computer. There are whole stores stuffed with them. Singapore is the Bethlehem of the great new religion: the religion of consumerism, of material comforts and mass tourism. There is no need for cathedrals or mosques. The new temples are the hotels. By now it is the same almost everywhere in Asia. There are no more beautiful palaces or pagodas to grace the urban panorama: only hotels. Hotels are the centers of life, the places where you meet, reflect, have fun, unwind, enjoy yourself. Hotels are what cafés, churches, squares and theaters once were—all rolled into one. In Kuala Lumpur as in Hong Kong, in Seoul as in Bangkok. In Singapore everything better than anywhere else.

  I spent the first eighteen years of my life in Florence, and I do not think I once set foot in a hotel. In Asia you are always in one. You make appointments to meet in them, you eat, you celebrate holidays and birthdays, you get married. In hotels you go swimming, shopping, dancing. The new Asia’s affluent youth scarcely know anything else. Taking a walk, for many of them, means going from one hotel to another, often by way of huge shopping malls with their marble pavements and plastic trees. Yes, Singapore is on the Equator and on the verge of the jungle, but the best trees, which by now you see everywhere, are artificial ones. They need no rain, only a little dusting now and then.

  I soon realized that I did not know the rules, the etiquette and the taboos of this new society. I had invited to tea the secretary of an important official at the Foreign Ministry—its office is on the thirty-ninth floor of a hotel—to enlist her help in finding a ship, and to discover which in her opinion were the best fortune-tellers in town. We met in the lobby of a big hotel, and I asked for some hot water to add to the pot. “Sorry, sir, but our tea is unrefillable,” replied one of the very young waitresses, dressed in “Chinese style” with the skirt slit up to her bottom to appeal to the tourists. What an extraordinary expression! Only the Singaporeans could invent it: unrefillable tea.

  One day, in the very center of town, I passed the office of a firm which, according to the large sign in the window, was a shipping line that ran a service exclusively between Singapore and Indonesia. When I entered and made my usual request for a passage to Jakarta, a vacuum formed around me: the director was at a meeting, the sales manager was out to lunch, and all the other employees, blind and deaf, had their heads buried behind their computers. My friend M.G.G. Pillai had warned me: “In Singapore you’ll be suspect. Nobody trusts anyone who doesn’t travel by air, and in business class, who doesn’t stay in a first-class hotel and who doesn’t pay by credit card.” He was right. The question in the minds of all those clerks who tried not to see or hear me was obvious: a terrorist?

  In a society where countless things are forbidden, from long hair on men to the chewing of gum, where there is one correct form of behavior, a reaction prescribed for any situation, the most unacceptable thing is to deviate from the norm. The social duty of all is to help their neighbor behave properly, not to help him be different. I was only passing through, but even I had the sensation of being constantly guided, either by people (“Take my advice: go by plane!”) or by some invisible presence. Everywhere in the new Singapore you hear metallic voices issuing announcements or advice from hidden loudspeakers in hotels, lifts, escalators, in the underground, on lampposts. Everywhere you see notices remonstrating (“Don’t bring AIDS home”) or imposing prohibitions (“No fishing from the bridge,” “No spitting”). Others offer fatuous warnings: “Watch your head! Low branches ahead,” you read if you are about to walk under the few old trees remaining along the river. For those who fail to get the message there are little pictures showing how a branch can strike your head.

  To mold the citizens into what the system wants, there is a succession of “campaigns”—to keep gutters clean, to plant tr
ees, to water flowers. When I arrived there was a campaign for “wellness,” and the 1,800 employees of a local firm had pledged to keep fit by not using the lift for a month. As I left they were initiating a campaign to starve the city’s last free creatures to death: “Let’s not feed the pigeons. They bring diseases and nuisance,” said the street signs.

  Even so, it was splendid! Seen from the height of Fort Canning, where I went running every morning, Singapore was a dream city, with its transparent skyscrapers like geometric clouds against the sky, its immaculate gardens, and no traffic jams. The university was a delight: perfect avenues, ultramodern libraries flooded with sunlight, lawns in various shades of green interspersed with playing fields and thick shady trees—a splendid creation. Nothing was left to chance, from the combination of different-colored grasses on the slopes to the curve of a branch bent back to avoid obstructing cars. But I only had to talk to someone and I was again in despair.

  “Our students are of tip-top quality. They’re trained up to an international level, and they’re politically trustworthy. They know when to speak, and above all when to keep quiet,” the director of a university research institute told me. He saw this as a sign of maturity. All of a sudden I hated the flower beds, the trees, the beautiful lawns and the sunshine in the libraries.

  I spent my days in a continual seesaw between admiration and disgust, between wonder and horror. “This is the future, and it works,” I said to myself in moments of depression.

  The future is the invention of one individual: Lee Kuan Yew, a man of great intelligence, great arrogance, great ambition and no scruples. Lee assumed the reins of government in 1959, and was holding them when the republic left the Malay Federation in 1965. In 1990 he retired as prime minister, but he remains an “emeritus member” of the government, and is still the ultimate tribunal for all decisions.