by Jeremy Tiang
Central Police Station didn’t look particularly large from the outside, but beneath it was a warren of cells, grey concrete and stifling, a little larger than her bedroom at home. By the time they’d finished their interrogation, her body was soft and tired, and she could no longer be certain what she’d said to them. Had she given them something they could use against the cause? She hardly knew anything, she consoled herself, so it wasn’t like there was much she could have divulged.
They left her in an almost empty cell, just a chair and a thin mattress on top of a cement slab. Still feeling hollow, she folded herself under the threadbare blanket, and even with the prickly sheet and sour-smelling pillow, not to mention the lights she had no way of turning off, she slipped into a profound sleep with no dreams, and woke feeling scrubbed clean, despite the sharp pain in her neck and the buzzing of the electric light.
She lay there for a while, trying to remember where she was, until it hit her. Never mind. Another day. There was no toilet in her cell; she had to knock on the door for the guard to come let her out and escort her down the corridor, then stand there the whole time she was inside. She tried to wash up as best she could, but didn’t have a toothbrush and had to make do with rubbing a finger hard over her teeth. A couple of days later, she was moved to Outram Women’s Prison.
Still, no one could explain why exactly she was there, or what would happen to her. The guards stared blankly if she asked anything. One snapped, “You should have thought of that before,” no matter the question. Never mind, focus on surviving each day. She was able to piece together a sort of routine. Mostly, she was alone in the cell, her meals slid through the door on a metal tray—usually something grey and greasy, with too much salt in it. (A few weeks later, she stopped noticing, and by the time they let her out, she had acclimatised so much that normal food tasted overspiced, almost an assault.)
The only time she saw the other prisoners was during exercise time, an hour in the open yard with guards staring across at them, as if they might suddenly take it into their heads to scale the three-metre wall. It was all women here, just a handful of them—Lina and few others—though more trickled in over the coming months. They didn’t know where the men were, elsewhere in this building or back at Central. Talking was only allowed if the wardens were in a good mood, so they had to communicate in patchy chunks. She knew all of them, anyway, at least by sight. Although they all believed passionately that women were every bit as capable as men, and didn’t subscribe to feudal notions of patriarchy, the fact was that the movement’s leadership was overwhelmingly male, and the few women in the top ranks tended to notice each other.
They traded what information they could, but there wasn’t a lot to know—it seemed unlikely that the authorities themselves had much of a plan. There was no hurry, certainly, as far as the government was concerned—detention without trial had no timeline on it, and the state of emergency justified anything. It had only been five years since the assassination of Sir Henry Gurney at Fraser’s Hill, and it would have been a huge embarrassment if anything similar were to take place in Singapore. Better safe than sorry.
Still, the stoicism of her comrades put the heart back into Siew Li. They seemed almost happy to be there, gleeful to have got under the skin of important people. So what if they were missing school? There was no use receiving an education while the British were in charge—Chinese speakers like them would never be employed in the colonial system. Being here, having done what they did, would stand them in much better stead for what was to come, when a mighty wave passed over the land and swept away the white men. What impoverished minds those others had, the ones who could only imagine contorting themselves to fit in rather than smashing their confines.
For a while, some of them tried to continue their studies, Siew Li amongst them—if only for something to do. But it was too difficult—they were only allowed to have three books in their cells at a time, and she needed a dictionary to make sense of anything, then kept getting stuck on this or that point, not being able to look it up anywhere because she’d used up her allocation. Finally she gave up, and just read more Lu Xun, which felt more familiar and comfortable, anyway.
They had a visit from a lawyer, a young chap who wasted no time telling them he’d been to Cambridge. He greeted them in halting Chinese and said something about how he hoped they were holding up, then switched to English and barrelled along, as if daring them to keep up—a lot of nice-sounding words about getting rid of the British and standing up for the students. “But what can you actually do, when they can hold us as long as they like without evidence?” said Lay Kuan, and a frown appeared on the lawyer’s otherwise confident brow. “We’re doing what we can,” he said smoothly.
Lay Kuan was the natural leader of the group—a little older than the others, she’d already finished school and was mostly involved with the student union in an advisory capacity. She was the one who’d spoken to the warden and got them allowed books, and had even negotiated for them to receive newspapers (always a day late, though, and with certain articles snipped out). When she could, Siew Li tried to get close to her, wanting to learn her poise and intelligence, which made Lina’s toughness seem hollow. Crucially, Lay Kuan got things done. So many ways to be a person, thought Siew Li. She felt unformed, as if she could be any shape at all.
Most of the time, though, she was alone, and that was when the air pressed down on her, when grey fog filled her mind and she couldn’t make herself do anything at all, not even sleep. The only thing that helped was if she looked at a picture in one of her books, preferably a landscape, and imagined herself amongst the trees and beneath the sky, staring until she could see herself there, walking calmly and steadily into the distance until she was out of view, leaving behind just the soft rustle of leaves and the gentle wind.
•
The first time Jason came to see her, she almost didn’t recognise him, and then thought she’d been in there so long that her mind had finally given way to hallucinations. It was a visitation, as if there were an aura around him, his school uniform glowing against the grey concrete floor and gunmetal chairs. He smiled when he saw her, and it was like an open window, cool, fresh air filling her lungs.
There hadn’t been many visitors. Her mum had come a couple of times, but just sat there crying, saying useless things over and over—why couldn’t you just stay out of trouble, why did you have to make such a fuss—until Siew Li grew embarrassed and told her not to bother, this wasn’t good for either of them. Now she just sent what she could, clothes and books from the titles Siew Li gave her. The leadership had all been taken, of course, and no one from lower down showed up for fear of guilt by association. She couldn’t blame them—who knew how many more arrests were planned, what lists had already been drawn up?
“Why did you come?” she asked, half-suspicious, and he said simply, “I kept thinking about you.” And even though, to be honest, she hadn’t thought about him all that much since being there, it felt good to know she meant something to a human being other than her mother. Here was Jason, head smooth with Vitalis hair oil, stolid and even a little boring, and he was exactly what she needed. He asked politely how she was, and she said she had nothing at all to report, just the four walls of her cell. So instead, he told her with great seriousness about his team’s preparations for the inter-school debate competition, and about some American film he’d seen, one she hadn’t even heard of. The world keeps spinning without me, she thought.
He didn’t stay long, but came often. It was hard to keep track of days, but he had a talent for showing up just as she was starting to wonder how long it had been. It was nice to have someone. All the other girls had large families, squabbling and fussing, and she had him. None of them, she realised, had any friends outside the movement, or at least none close enough to visit now. They weren’t supposed to touch, but now and then he brushed his hands against hers and she felt a tingle.
“If you weren’t here, I’d probably go ma
d,” she said to him one time, instantly regretting it in case it sounded like blackmail. He seemed to understand, nodding gravely and telling her more about the book they were reading in class, something by an old English man. She didn’t mind, he had a way with these stories that let her understand, if not why they were interesting, at least why they were interesting to him.
A few months in, she found she was able to talk about what was happening to her, and then it burst from her in chunks: describing her tactics for keeping cockroaches away as she slept, speculating what animal exactly their lunch meat had come from. He nodded kindly the whole time, responding to her last point to show he’d been listening.
“But you’re all right?” he’d say, after one of these monologues, and she’d have to stop and think if she was. They weren’t questioned very much any more: really, it was just a matter of form, in case a confession or denunciation might suddenly have occurred to them after all this time. It wasn’t clear if anything she said would earn her release, and even if that was the case, she could hardly buy her freedom at such a price. This was transitional, she told herself, the world would bend towards fairness, and soon it would be unthinkable for people to be locked up merely for their beliefs.
The outside world receded, and soon she thought of it in the same hazy way she did places she’d only read about. At least in normal prison, you knew exactly how long you’d be inside. She could be released the next day, or never. The uncertainty was killing. Once, she noticed Jason looking at her strangely. “What?” she tried to smile. “You said ‘home’, but you meant here,” he said gently.
She told the others about her fear—that her mind was growing weak. “You mustn’t,” said Lay Kuan sharply. “No time to be feeble. You have to know exactly what you’re going to do on the outside, so you can start right away when we’re released. Otherwise you’ll waste time. Like when you set a caged bird free, but it’s forgotten how to fly.”
Jason visited less often after starting his National Service. He seemed quite happy about having to do it, but then he’d been able to finish school—the system had been designed with him in mind. She held onto this thought, but still found herself infected with his boyish excitement. It did sound almost fun when they crawled through patches of jungle and learnt to put up tents. After his first time firing a rifle, he showed up aglow. Their trainers were Israeli, he told her. They knew about fighting.
She wondered if he’d told the other boys about her, his little Communist girlfriend. Something told her not—it would be inconvenient, and he struck her as being very good at compartmentalising. She didn’t say anything. It was enough that he kept coming.
The longer they were there, the more latitude the guards gave them, allowing them to spend more time in the courtyard where at least there was sunlight, at least they could talk. It didn’t help. When they spoke of what they’d do when they got out, the first things they’d eat, it never seemed real to her, though it was easy enough to join in and say what was expected of her. Lay Kuan had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of stories and quotes to keep the despair away, and the great gift of making the gleaming utopian future seem inevitable, if they just waited this out.
There were nights when Siew Li lay on her concrete slab staring at the patches of mould on the ceiling, trying hard to pull thoughts out of the overwhelming fear that filled every inch of her. If she fell asleep in this state, she dreamt that her cell was made of living flesh, that the walls contracted with each breath and pulsed with bulging veins. Waking, she’d lie perfectly still as the world realigned itself. How long had she been here? She wished Singapore had seasons, like she’d read about in books, so there’d be variations in temperature, and she could sense the passage of time by how the air was changing.
Lim Chin Siong came to visit the women—he’d been let out a couple of weeks before, and the government had sent him with a message. There was a hold-up over some paperwork, a little more investigation was needed for one of the women, but the rest of them would soon be free to go. “No,” said Lay Kuan right away, “We’re not leaving anyone behind.” The others nodded, and so did Siew Li. She wondered if she was the one, and was glad Lay Kuan hadn’t asked. Better not to know.
When she tried later to work out the sequence of events, Siew Li found she had no memory of how much time passed between that visit and being let out, whether it was days or months. She’d find it was morning, and have no idea if she’d slept that night. She started declining exercise sessions, claiming to feel unwell, and the guards left her alone. Jason must have visited during this time, but she didn’t remember that either.
•
After all that, their actual release came as something of an anti-climax. A guard came to her cell and told her to get ready, then an hour later she was able to change back into the clothes she’d arrived in—which still fit, it seemed her body hadn’t changed—and then they were being sent through the gate into a crowd. Lay Kuan immediately started waving and talking to reporters, and the others went to their families. Siew Li looked around for her mother, and instead there was Jason, still in his uniform. He led her away and into a taxi. They were pulling away when she realised she hadn’t said goodbye to the other women, didn’t even have their phone numbers, but of course they would see each other again.
Her mother was waiting at the flat, having cooked a huge amount of food. Siew Li was made to do the usual things—pour flower water over her head, to wash away bad luck; offer incense to their ancestors, for protection. Her bedroom was exactly the same, fresh sheets on the bed, although she noticed some of the books on her shelf were in the wrong order. Her mother put food on her plate and Jason told her all the news she’d missed, even things he’d already mentioned on his visits. They were treating her like someone who’d been ill a long time. Her mother seemed quite happy for Jason to be there. She wondered if they’d been meeting while she was away.
By the end of her first week out, she was starting to feel herself again. It may have been the familiarity of her surroundings that helped her slip back into this life, or her mother’s determination to behave as if the last two years had merely been an unpleasant interruption, that they could all simply pick up where they’d left off. The country was going through a big change, anyway, and everyone was unsettled.
The school wouldn’t take her back, naturally, but she didn’t want to go back anyway, there was more important work to be done. Too much was happening. The Emergency might be winding down, but the British were still here. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to happen next, but this couldn’t be the end of the struggle. The sorts of protests they’d organised before now seemed childish—they’d always been going to fail, she could see that now. Who would ever be swayed by schoolboys and girls chanting so earnestly and waving their banners? They needed to be strategic. Look at Chin Peng, the Ma Gong leader, walking away from the Baling talks and returning to the jungle because he didn’t like the terms the British were offering.
For months, she applied for every job that was advertised, with no success. This might have been because she hadn’t finished secondary school, or just that whenever anyone asked if she could explain the odd gap in her CV, she told them frankly. It was her comrades who helped in the end—Lay Kuan found her a position at SATU, the new association of trade unions. Nothing too exciting, just processing papers, but it made her feel valued again. It was good to have somewhere to go, some reason to put on proper clothes and see the same people every day. Lina was working there too, having had similar trouble finding employment.
Jason had finished National Service and started at the university. He’d decided on Economics, because the country would need a lot of help finding its feet, and he was convinced this was the best way for him to make a contribution. When he explained their lectures to her, all Veblen curves and Public Sector Borrowing Requirements, it was like something from a different planet, but still she felt proud of him. She felt very grown up, seeing her clever boyfriend in the evening, b
eing in the office during the day, looking over contracts and discussing the best way to exert pressure on bosses. Strike action felt riskier, under this Chief Minister, and while some of them spoke proudly of their time in detention, there was a quiet awareness in the group that it was best to tread with care. They were still finding their feet, and for the leadership to disappear again might be catastrophic.
Lina gave her a hard time for dating Jason, but then Lina wasn’t dating anyone, and didn’t seem to have time for anything but the unions. How to explain to her that the ideologically correct men were off-putting outside of work, with their strangled voices and tendency to lecture Siew Li earnestly whether she was in the mood or not? Jason was solid and unthinking, and that was a relief. She knew she was doing vital work, and someone needed to stand up to the exploiters, but she also took guilty pleasure in the world Jason showed her, the easy humour and comfort, the living rooms full of books for pleasure, not improvement.
She was nervous the first time she met his parents, bracing herself for disapproval, but there was none. “Young people have so much passion,” said his father. “Look at those Fajar chaps, always making so much noise. Glad to hear you have a steady job. I approve of women working. It’s a different era now.”
His little sister Mollie was quiet that first dinner. When Siew Li asked Jason afterwards if she’d said something wrong, he blinked. “Oh, no. She’s just shy.” Mollie was a year younger than Jason, Siew Li’s age, yet felt to her like a small child. She found Mollie’s clothes (mostly pastels) and breathy voice infantile, though she’d never say so. But then what must Mollie think of her? Coarse, uneducated, not good enough for her brother. Mollie was even better-spoken than Jason—her vowels rounder, her vocabulary more extensive.
A few weeks later, Siew Li was running some errands on Orchard Road when she ran into Mollie outside Robinson’s, holding hands with a boy, both of them still in their school uniforms. She was mid-laugh, her face more open than Siew Li had ever seen it. Mollie blanched, but then quickly recovered and, with the immaculate manners of a convent girl, introduced her companion. The boy had a cocky grin, Eurasian by the look of him, and told her to call him Barn, “or Barnaby if you’re feeling formal.” He offered his hand like a diplomat.
