by Yap Swi Neo
Another group of children and women weaved the leaves into table baskets for fruit, eggs, spools of thread and needles and other knick-knacks; they folded pretty art pieces like chickens, flowers and insects, and strung them together into mobiles which were hung on the verandas; women weaved them into fans, hats, lamp shades, bracelets, headbands, rings and necklaces and little anklets for the babies. These Pak Haji sold in town before Hari Raya.
We had a feast that evening – a breaking of fast. The school desks became the grand dinning tables. The women brought out their beautiful sarong batik as tablecloths, each section with different designs and colours. In the gerengseng we fried ikan bilis, and sambal belacan fried rice, the anchovies added crunch; sayur lemak enriched with freshly squeezed santan and beef rendang. It was the largest communal campfire meal I had attended. With a little prodding, the coconut husks, dried twigs and leaves generously gave of their popping laughter and light to illuminate the cool evening. The children ran around and played. After dinner, folks brought out their jembe drums, gongs, aluminium basins, pots with lids and sticks and together they made music. What madness I thought, making music with a potpourri of kitchen utensils, but there was method in their madness. It was the original full orchestra, each ‘instrument’ knew its part.
Later, Pak Haji fetched his Philips radio and inserted his cassette tape of popular songs. He held up a packet of twelve new batteries, enough battery power for the evening. The spontaneous request, ‘Burung Kakak Tua’ by Anneka Gronloh, was played repeatedly. Grandmothers smiled toothless smiles and sang along, it was their song, ‘Nenek sudah tua, giginya tinggal dua’.[14] Anita Sarawak, Sharifah Aini, P Ramlee crooned the evening away. The beat enticed the folks, young and old to ronggeng and joget, popular Malay dances.
My pupils egged me, ‘Cikgu, teacher, we ronggeng lah, sama sama.’
‘Cikgu, I you ronggeng ok?’ and Mazlan cheekily took my hand and gyrated to P Ramlee’s ‘Bujang Lapok’ and ‘Do Ray Me’ – both award-winning hit songs.
I was fooled by the slow-paced beat and rhythm of the ronggeng and happily joined the women. The music was catchy, and as hands and legs swayed, so did the hips with turns and twirls. The younger folk unabashedly strutted their stuff, not unnoticed by Pak Haji and his wife. When Pak Haji thought the gyrates were several too many, and hips were touching hips, he beat the gong, announcing, ‘We work very hard make coconut oil, cook makanan, dancing, time to go home and sleep, we work some more tomorrow.’
They begged, but Pak Haji was adamant. Only with the grandmothers’ appeal – ‘Satu lagi, “Burung Kakak Tua”, kita pun tua, ta’ ada gigi’ – did he relent. ‘Satu kali sahaja.’ Everyone sang the last song of the evening with such gusto I wondered whether the next village would be awakened.
The weekend was over. It was time to go to bed and be ready for school the next day. I had a room in the front veranda on Pak Haji’s home. In the freshness of the night air, the crickets chirped, the leaves rustled their lullabies and I fell into peaceful slumber.
‘Cikgu, ronggeng bagus ya? Mahu ronggeng lagi? I want some more,’ Mona asked me the next morning.
‘Can you speak in English, please?’
The class roared, actually the whole school roared. Silly request, why ask a question when I already knew the answer?
‘Teacher ronggeng dance very good. You want ronggeng I more?’
‘Yes, I do. I enjoyed it very much, thank you. Now we do spelling.’
‘Cikgu, you ronggeng me, boleh? Can? I very good.’ Sirul jumped up on the desk to ronggeng and soon the whole school was ronggeng-ing. Pak Haji appeared. Without a word, discipline was restored, lessons continued. I was sure I was teaching, not sure though there was learning, amidst the ronggeng and Anneka Gronloh and P Ramlee belting their songs in the silence that followed. Nonetheless the eyes, the smiles, the body movements spoke volumes and loudly too, in perhaps not so childish innocence.
That Friday, Mak Hajjah gave the guru besar and teachers a small bottle of coconut oil. She explained the beauty secrets of coconut oil. ‘As hair oil hair very shiny. Kalau put on face every day, no wrinkles. See I sixty-two years skin so cantik, Pak Haji say my face so beautiful.’ She sensuously stroked her face and neck, cackled with laughter, a wink in her eyes. ‘I drink one spoon morning, so my body clean, toilet no problem.’
‘Mak Hajjah, how do you know this?’
‘My mother teach me. Her mother teach her. Her mother mother teach her. Now I teach you, and all the people in kampong.’
That weekend I viewed kampong life with new eyes. I had wondered how they managed without showers in the privacy of bathrooms, ice-cream on hot afternoons, and electricity. Then again how would they yearn for something they never had? They had their natural air-conditioned homes. The cool breeze sailed effortlessly through the open doors and windows; fellowship versus privacy; ice-cream stored perhaps for months in some dark, dank warehouse cold room versus freshly made kueh-kueh to be shared. There was never a need for padlocks, only a latch and that too, to secure the doors and windows from the wind. They had survival skills, living skills, social skills, community living skills, loving skills, happiness skills. Theirs was the good life, in the kampong without the interference of modern concepts of a good life.
Decades later, many tycoons, popularly celebrated as ‘captains of industry’, would seek refuge in the very same environment they had destroyed, now a back-to-nature retreat, available at a premium. ‘Progress’ had stolen the ways of the kampong, and the ‘progress-ers’ in their later years would seek the serenity of kampong life. There might no longer be any kampong life as it once was. The present shamelessly advertised ‘Relax, Enjoy the Simple Ways of Kampong Living’ getaways are artificially created by other ‘captains of industry’ – the kampong life with modern amenities. I was fortunate to have lived the genuine kampong life, if only for eight weeks in 1966.
* * *
A local Malay term for ‘pematang sawah’, the raised ridges between padi fields enabling farmers to walk between fields. ↵
Primary schools were classified from Standard 1 to 6; secondary schools from Form 1 to 5. ↵
Your mum is going to the toilet. ↵
My mother caught a chicken. ↵
My mother is frying salted fish. Delicious. ↵
Hari Raya Puasa marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. It is a time of forgiveness within the Muslim community and a time for strengthening of bonds among relatives and friends. ↵
Lots of uses, especially coconut milk from which you get virgin coconut oil. ↵
Coconut milk squeezed from fresh desiccated coconut meat. ↵
Pronounced ‘eye-eh’; water. ↵
Flowering fronds of the coconut. ↵
Forbidden to Muslims. ↵
A spicy condiment. ↵
Woven palm leaf pouch. Ketupat is boiled rice in the sarong. ↵
‘Grandmother is old, only two teeth left’; lyrics from ‘Burung kakak tua’. ↵
You Might Want To Marry My Husband
The premise of this story is based on true events, but the narrator is a man whose wife is sick. My husband passed away at 54, of cancer. He was concerned about my well-being. He said that I should not wallow in widowhood. I am a widow, twenty-three years on. How does one un-love a much-loved spouse?
That’s what my wife said. Verbatim. You might want to marry my husband. Not you as one particular woman, but her single and available women friends. Trusted girlfriends she grew up with, played with, went to school with, who have remained BFF – Best Friends Forever.
I am lost for words when I first heard her say it to her widowed elder sister. Her sister and I are aghast; the cancer has created hallucinations that we are having an affair. She justifies her appeal. We know she’s dying, lying in the hospice from Easter and now it’s Christmas. She reprimands us, let’s not play word games, all those clichés, ‘You’ll soon be on your feet, believe me.’ No, she doesn’t believe us or anyo
ne else. We don’t believe it either. She claims doctors are pathological liars with C patients. I would not go that far. Doctors give hope, I believe.
It happens when her BFF visit, the single ones. They are confused, uncomfortable, eyeing me suspiciously. I suspect she widens her net in case her sister and I have no fondness for each other, are too familiar with each other, think the relationship is somewhat weird.
‘My love, please, you are going to get well. Your friends are uncomfortable when you say that. I feel embarrassed, it might appear I will forget you and find comfort in another woman’s embrace. I love you. Forever.’
‘Darling, I don’t want you or anyone to mourn my passing. We have had twenty-five happy years, just you and me. And sister.’
‘My love, please, Dr Raj is the top oncologist. We have him.’
She smiled. Was it a smile? Or a snigger, an acceptance of her disease? I do not know.
Where are we now? We are in the prime of our lives, she is fifty-one, a successful interior decorator, and I, at fifty-two, run a successful travel agency. Her sister lost her husband in an accident just three years into their happy married life. She now works in my agency. We are a threesome. So, to my wife it’s perfectly natural that her sister and I marry, after her passing, of course.
I need an explanation for this strange behaviour. I need an explanation for her sister and her BFF to whom she has made such a proposition.
In her hospice bed, she explains, ‘Things happen, people change, but life goes on. A death of a spouse is a loss, sure, it is a loss. But grieving doesn’t help one to live. Life is meant to be lived, to be happy, to enjoy companionship. We’ve had a good twenty-five years, a quarter of a century together. I’ve always been happy with you. Are you hap …?’ She dozes off, too tired to continue. The big C makes its presence felt as it had for over twenty years.
She asks me my purpose in life.
‘To love you and be with you.’
‘Wrong answer,’ and laughs like a child whose trick question baffles her friends. ‘Try again.’
‘To love you and care for you and be with you always.’
She laughs. ‘Almost correct answer.’
‘Be with you always.’
‘As till … when? Say it, my darling,’ she pleads. ‘Say it, as in our marriage vows.’
‘Till death do us part.’ She clasps my hand, smiles and is happy I get the answer ‘right’ – ‘Till death do us part.’
She cringes in silent pain. I feel helpless, nothing I can do to ease her pain. I feel abandoned, how could she leave me in the prime of our lives? I study her, to internalise what she says. Can one love a DECEASED? Does one cease loving a DECEASED? Can one un-love a much-loved spouse? Can one love another all over again, after an intense love affair with a spouse? Can one, can I love another woman with the same intensity and passion as I love my wife? I do not know, and not until my wife is a ‘DECEASED’, maybe.
How do I love my wife? By her bed, monitoring the machines recording her heartbeat, her blood pressure, the silent drips of the liquid antibiotic and painkillers slowly easing their way into her system, the urinal bag hanging on the inner side of the bed, a receptacle for pale orange fluid with blots of blood. Every now and then she opens her eyes. I hold her hand. She smiles. She does not laugh much now. She smiles. She nudges me, ‘My love, go home, sleep. You are tired. I am fine.’ No, she is not fine. Her lips do not say the pain she is suffering. Her face does, despite her smiles. I remember a poem I learnt in school, about loving – how many ways can one love. Can we count the ways we love? The different kinds of love? Can’t remember it.
She whispers a request, ‘Tell our love story.’
She loves our love story. With every retelling it becomes more magical, the ‘I love you’ more intense. Our love story … where do I begin? She whispers again, ‘I want to die in a love story’.
My wife is a happy woman, never saying a harsh word to anyone. We meet at our university freshmen dance. She catches my eye, standing alone in her red dress, a purple sash, a green scarf with orange polka dots, and yellow shoes.
‘Hi, I’m Jason.’ She laughs, I think, for no apparent reason. It is contagious, I laugh, too. I mutter, ‘Interesting dress sense.’
She laughs again. ‘I’m planning a career in interior design, so I’m playing with colours, designs, to gauge responses. Do you like it?’
‘Yes, I do.’
She laughs, ‘You are lying. I read minds.’
‘What am I thinking now?’
Unabashedly, she holds my hand, and giggles, ‘You are attracted to me, and I like you. What do you do?’
‘I am into the travel industry.’
‘Great! We will make a perfect match. I will offer my interior design skills to hotels, motels, restaurants, pubs and cafés; you will bring in tourists to these establishments. Our company will be J and J, Jason and Juliet. Wonderful!’
We plan our dreams. She does part-time work at cafés, pubs, restaurants, hotels, motels. She talks to patrons about what attracts them to food and beverage outlets. Is it the décor, the food, the beverages, the hospitality of service staff? She writes the responses in her notebook. I do part-time work in travel agencies, to learn advertising, securing hotel rooms, budgeting, and organising inbound and outbound tours. When we graduate we have a good idea of what makes good business plans. We marry right after graduation; pursue our dreams. Within six years we set up J and J Travel Agency for mid-budget travellers. We are happy.
We want a family. Not successful. Medical tests confirmed the big C of the womb. The operations save her; they also confirm we are not to be parents. That has not stopped her loving and enjoying our nieces and nephews, growing with them into adults.
‘We have the best of parenthood. No diapers to change, no sleepless nights, no worries about allergies, schoolwork, friends, teenage angst, boyfriends, girlfriends. As aunt and uncle we have the privilege to spoil them, just a little.’ A tinge of sadness in her gentle voice.
Not true. We change diapers, talk to their friends, worry as parents of teenagers. We spoil them in grand ways.
My wife and I spend weekends with her sister and her husband. The sisters are soulmates, chattering and whispering and giggling and casting side glances at us two husbands.
‘You are bitching about us. We are bitching about you too,’ I tease. We laugh and go out for pizza and beer.
My wife quivers. Her sleep is restless, her breathing heavy, at times she grasps for breath. ‘Water please,’ she murmurs. ‘More water, please.’ The water spills over her lips, she doesn’t drink. Or she can’t drink. I don’t know.
Water. I remember our first cruise, compliments of the cruise operator, Star of the Sea. My tour groups are regular clienteles. We have a private suite, a room with a view of the rolling waters and the sky from here to eternity.
Some kids at the next table at breakfast are sharing what they see from their porthole rooms right in the belly of the ship. ‘We see fishes, octopus, sharks, whales, and Ariel. She’s so beautiful, so graceful, long brown hair and a gorgeous blue tail. Wish I could swim with her.’
‘I want to see mermaids, too, and mermen as well.’ We request for a porthole room in the belly of the ship.
The captain finally gives in; he, too, wants to see mermaids and mermen. One of the galley staff has to give up his room for the night. No mermaids, no mermen, no whales, no octopus, no sharks, no fishes, no nothing. She laughs, then, feels sad for taking over the cramped room for staff. She leaves a comfortable tip under the pillow.
Her sister and I sit by the hospital bed watching her, loving her, dying with her. Am I, ‘I’, without her? She, our lifeline of happiness, and I and her sister, being, doing, living, together.
It startles me that she reads my thoughts, ‘Are you happy my love?’ she asks, what she has never asked. ‘Be happy. We have done lots of fun things, the travels, the friends, and all that. But happiness is not just doing fun things, it is doing
meaningful things as well.’ The big C is raising its frightening, ever-growing tentacles to devour the colon, stomach, liver, slowly sucking its way, one sucker after another.
I feel guilt. Is it me that had created the stress that resulted in the C? That one time I had insisted she accompany the outbound group to Korea, as she speaks enough Korean. It was ‘A Korean Winter’ package. She was recovering from flu. She returned home coughing and feverish. It was a severe case of flu leading to pneumonia. I feel directly to blame for her sickness, that I didn’t do enough to help her when she became ill.
‘What do you like to do, something meaningful, my love?’
‘I can’t do it, you have to do it for me. Stamps, the stamps.’ I receive hundreds of mail from all over the world. She carefully cuts out the corner of the envelopes with the stamps, soaks them in water, and dries them. They are neatly enveloped in the pages of the stamp albums, a cupboard full in our home office. The stamps are her children, she says, and they are great investments. I love her too much to argue the futility of keeping such common stamps. What am I to do with them?
Then she asks her sister, ‘Are you happy?’ Her sister‘s deep river of tears flows in silence, in love and in pain. She touches her heart. ‘My heart is a pocket where I keep all my loved ones.’
My wife smiles, ‘I have a large pocket too, to keep all my loved ones. I’ve sealed my pocket.’
What now my love? How does one live on without a soulmate?