by Jeremy Tiang
wasn’t serious.
The next High Commissioner, Gerald Templer, wouldn’t take the job unless he was given an armoured limousine—purchased second-hand, it was rumoured, from Éamon de Valera. He had it fired on by a machine gun, and was impressed to find every bullet repelled. Templer didn’t die in office, which could be considered a success.
Mr Chiam was full of such stories, which he told with the enjoyment of a born entertainer. Their dinner table was never silent, as he took advantage of the newcomer to recycle all his anecdotes, now embellished just enough to still be credible. Mrs Chiam laughed politely, but her mind was elsewhere. A thin, worried woman, she was always silently calculating if she’d cooked enough rice to feed these ravenous men, if there were enough buns for the children’s breakfasts the next day, how much of the housekeeping money she had left that month. Seng laughed too, though it wasn’t always clear how much he understood—he was Hainanese, while Mr Chiam, like Nam Teck, was a Cantonese-speaker.
Nam Teck sat with Seng in a corner of the crowded kitchen, jammed against the tiled wall by the foldable table—square, so it could be used for mahjong on festive occasions. Mr Chiam was at the head of the table, of course, and Mrs Chiam was near the stove so she could refill bowls and plates as needed. Between them were a variety of children—the oldest girl on a grown-up stool, the others in bamboo low-chairs decreasing in size like Russian dolls.
Mrs Chiam served up boiled and fried things that were simultaneously bland and too salty. Nam Teck thought of his mother’s cooking, quickly put together but delicious, flavoured with wild plants from the jungle—workers weren’t searched coming into the camp. The days after the common kitchen were abandoned, when the villagers were allowed to cook in their own houses again—that’s when he ate well. Good fortune in the mouth, as the Chinese say. He was careful to mention nothing of this, though, afraid of coming across as a mummy’s boy.
He was especially keen to seem a proper man when Seng was there—Seng, who’d come over on a ship all the way from China. He was ashamed of having complained about a childhood in the barbed-wire village, when Seng told his story, in broken Cantonese, of being crammed in the hold with almost no sunlight, having to fight for the food and water lowered down to them, of bodies piling up and being flung out to sea. Nam Teck had nightmares for days after that, imagining the trail of corpses cutting a line across the South China Sea, like the dotted-line sea routes on the oldest child’s educational map of the world.
They started their day early. People were always popping by, imagining their auto problems could be solved quickly before work. Sometimes this was possible, but mostly the cars had to be left behind. Nam Teck turned out to be a quick learner—already good with tools, and vaguely aware of how engines worked, he was able to pick up from Seng what the different parts were and the peculiarities of each model. They worked without interruption for much of the day. Nam Teck was tired by sunset, a gratifying exhaustion that made him feel he had done good work. So this is life, he thought. It was 1961 and he was seventeen years old.
•
When he visited the village on a rare day off, it didn’t appear any smaller, as he’d expected after six weeks in the big city. The dirt streets on a tight grid, the gaudy village temple, the sun-blistered wooden housefronts. If anything it seemed larger with the fences gone—there were still traces of metal stumps, and they’d left the watchtower, but already the people on the perimeter had extended their back gardens outwards.
His mother was a little thinner. She didn’t always bother cooking, she said, now it was just the two of them, and Auntie Poh was too old to do much of anything except a bit of cleaning and sewing. Mostly she sat outside in her unravelling rattan chair, smiling at the neighbours as they went by.
He brought his mother a swan made of seashells he’d bought from a Malay girl at the market. She scolded him for wasting money, but he said the shops in KL were not as expensive as she might imagine and besides, Mr Chiam paid him well. This wasn’t actually true, but compared to village wages, he still wasn’t doing too badly.
His mother made far too much food, and with her usual efficiency it was all ready at the same time. She dished it up and he carried it to the table, noticing that the sheet of lino tacked to the wood was peeling and covered in burns. He invited Auntie Poh and his mother to eat, and picked bits of meat to put into their bowls. His mother grunted as if to say, So, you haven’t forgotten your manners.
Later on, when Auntie Poh had gone to bed, his mother told him how things were improving in the village. They were thinking of putting more telephones in, so they wouldn’t have to queue any more (but we don’t queue, he thought, because we have no one to call). And the houses would get their own bathrooms soon, rather than the communal toilets on every street.
He realised, of course, that she was asking him to come back, even though she must know there was no future there. She talked about him opening a shop, or even going away to university and coming back to teach at the village school. You’re clever, she said, we’ll find the money from somewhere. He let her speak, he couldn’t stop her even if he had the heart, these words had been stored up all the time he was gone.
She knew it was hopeless, he was already tainted with the big city. His voice was coarser and he walked so fast—he must think how slowly people in the village ambled, but why shouldn’t they, you could cross this village in twenty minutes at a crawl. Still, she didn’t appeal to him directly. If he hadn’t said no, she could still hope he’d change his mind.
That night, he slept on the usual mat beside his mother’s bed. He noticed she hadn’t filled in the shallow pit under the bed, the one they’d been meant to dive into if they heard gunfire. It took him a while to drop off, because his head ached from how badly he wanted to come back here, and how badly he wanted to escape. He lay awake, his thoughts chasing each other in circles—Could he stay in the city even if he lost his job? Or should he think about university? He’d been one of the top students at the village school.
The next morning, his mother watched as he ate two eggs, soft boiled in a bowl. She could neglect the rubber trees for a day, she said, they weren’t going anywhere. Rubber prices had fallen since the army left, but he wasn’t to worry, they had enough for themselves. He should keep his money and make sure he ate properly. She made him describe Mrs Chiam’s cooking, and snorted when he said she served some dishes cold. She must be from the north, a Cantonese would never do that.
She didn’t ask when he’d visit again, and didn’t urge him to take more food than would fit comfortably in his bag. Take care of yourself, she said. And maybe write a letter, if you have time, I’ll get Auntie Poh to read it to me. Don’t work too hard, you’re still growing, you mustn’t wreck your body.
Her smile said: I know I must let you go, I’m being brave about this. He felt nothing but guilt and restlessness as she hugged him, unexpectedly tight, his mother who’d never been demonstrative. To fill the silence as they waited for his bus, he told her about KL, the wide streets and elegant candy-coloured buildings. As the bus carried him away he looked back at her waving, and in the end it was his mother who looked smaller than he’d remembered.
•
Nam Teck began to discover that he liked girls. He’d always expected that he would, but only in a theoretical way, until he arrived in Kuala Lumpur. The city teemed with alluring bodies, spilling from scoop-neck blouses, lengthened by high-heeled shoes. His feelings, sweaty and consuming, became unknown to him. He’d always been a simple kind of chap, but now he found he had to be subtle. On the bus, he looked from the corner of his eye, from behind a newspaper—never directly, never staring, knowing only that if one of them looked back at him he would die. They smelt of flowers and musk.
There were girls in the village, of course, but he’d grown up with them, and well into their teens they seemed children still. Dashing about in loose T-shirts and rubber slippers. Untamed home-chopped hair and muddy knees. Not like city gir
ls, cool and unknowable.
He tried asking Seng if he had girlfriends, but Seng smiled mysteriously and brushed him off. I want to know how to talk to girls, he cried. You’re too young, said Seng, if you have to ask how. This was not the answer he wanted, and now he couldn’t ask again. He wished he had a father, surely this was the time when fatherly advice would be most welcome. There was Mr Chiam, of course, but Mr Chiam met his wife more than a decade ago; they probably did things differently back then.
The talk in the village school, he could now see, was hopelessly innocent. The cobbler’s son, who’d seemed so risqué with his lewd remarks about the Red Cross nurse’s fortnightly visits, was now revealed to be a drooling bumpkin. Even his pencil sketches of female anatomy, passed from boy to boy in the school toilets, seemed suspect and possibly inaccurate.
Because Seng was not an unkind man, he took his roommate dancing. He’d rather have been with his own friends, but Nam Teck was fairly presentable, being tall for his age, and Seng was young enough to remember the awkwardness of being suspended just short of manhood. He even lent the boy his cologne, and they headed out into the night, smelling—as Mr Chiam whispered to his wife the instant the door shut on them—like a Thai tart’s bathroom.
They went to the BB Dance Hall, a striking art deco building in Bukit Bintang (an architecture student once explained “art deco” to Seng, and he liked the idea that buildings were not just buildings, but belonged to schools and had special names). At night it was festooned with bulbs, and the letters “B B” shone out of the darkness in vivid neon yellow. Young men and a handful of girls milled about at the entrance, the men in open-necked shirts and startlingly tight trousers. Nam Teck quietly promised himself that half his next wage packet would go towards new clothes. For just a moment, he considered making some excuse and going home. Instead, he spit-slicked his boring straight hair off his forehead and followed Seng in.
Seng bought a couple of booklets and handed one to Nam Teck. It was full of brown slips, each lightly printed with a couple of angular beige men playing brass instruments. There was a serial number, and across the bottom “Good for one dance.” Seng had to explain this to him, though he was fairly certain Seng couldn’t read English either. Someone must have told him.
Still unsure how it worked, he stood aside as Seng strode across to talk to a girl—a lady, actually, they were too poised and polished to be called anything else. He ripped a ticket from his book and, daringly, tucked it under one of the bracelets on her wrist. She deftly transferred it to a beaded purse, and as the music struck up for the next number, a cha-cha, they burst onto the dance floor, Seng moving his hips and feet with surprising dexterity, the woman matching him and appearing to have a good time.
Nam Teck waited out three more dances, before steeling himself to approach. The women were seated on a little platform across the room. He said hello to a short, kind-looking one in a purple flowered cheongsam. This was nowhere near as challenging as he’d feared. As soon as he presented her with his coupon she was on her feet, asking his name. She was called Rosie, she crooned, like the flower. He folded her into his arms and swayed, pressing the entire length of his body against hers.
He got a coke from the bar, let a couple of fast dances go, then found another lady who looked friendly. She was called Malady, she told him, and of course they could wait for a slow dance, ooh, here’s one starting now. Her hair was piled into a high twist—a beehive, she told him, patting it—and her bosom strained disturbingly against the shiny fabric of her dress. She wriggled from side to side and uttered little squeals as they danced.
When all his tickets were gone, he didn’t dare ask for another book, in case he couldn’t afford one and looked a fool. Seng was nowhere to be found, so he walked home on his own, needing to put one foot in front of the other to clear a line through his thoughts and make himself tired enough to sleep. His dreams were pleasantly filled with dark rooms and pale languid arms. When Seng came in at five in the morning and noisily thumped into bed, it barely disturbed the surface of his sleep. The next day, they grinned at each other, but he already knew better than to ask for details.
•
Occasionally they had an argument at dinner about whether they were Chinese or Malayan. Can’t we be both, asked Nam Teck, who wasn’t very good at arguing and not bothered either way. Seng insisted he was Malayan. He would never go back to China and who cared if he didn’t speak a word of Malay? This was his home.
Mr Chiam claimed his entire family was Chinese, even though every one of them was born here. The British don’t care about you, he said, red in the face, And now the Malays don’t either. You know what they call us? Pendatang, visitor. You think they will ever let us belong?
They had the sort of lopsided discussion where one person gets very heated and no one else cares much about the issue. Mrs Chiam looked embarrassed when her husband thumped the table, and tried to collect their plates as a distraction. Seng had a wolfish grin of amusement, as if merely baiting his employer, although Nam Teck had noticed he’d been teaching himself Malay from a little book. 1962 was turning out to be a very strange year for the country. The British were supposed to have left, but lingered awkwardly like bad guests at a party. The Chinese newspapers were a fervid mixture of nationalism and speculation about this new thing, this Malaysia. What did it mean, to carve a new thing out of chunks of land like this? Who would be in it? Would Brunei, Sarawak, Singapore? Singapore especially, with its firebrand prime minister and general mulishness, might be hard to live with. Such a small island. Cut it loose, they said. Let it drift away.
Nam Teck wondered what language they would speak in this new world. He had Cantonese and Mandarin, but only passable Malay and no English at all. Seng was trying to learn Cantonese in addition to Malay. What’s this, he asked Nam Teck, holding up a wrench, a soup spoon, a sponge. Nam Teck obligingly said the word in Cantonese, and he repeated it thoughtfully, then in Hainanese as if to map the new word onto the old.
They should both be learning English, Mr Chiam admonished them. The future would belong to the English speakers. Don’t be fooled that the British were going, didn’t they see they’d leave their systems of government, and the country would still send the brightest to Cambridge, to come back speaking with a potato in their mouth? They’d have to keep up. It was a sobering thought, but neither of them had any idea how to start with this, and there was too much to do already. They could read the letters, but not much more.
Mr Chiam’s own English was, as he liked to say, rather jolly good. He could send his voice up into his nose the way some of them spoke, although when an actual ang moh came into the garage and he scurried to serve them, he was deferential, cheerful, playing the obliging servant for their entertainment. They seemed to enjoy that, watching him caper and smile with all his teeth. “Come again-ah, Mr Smiss sir. My regars to Missers Smiss.” Even Nam Teck could tell that not all of his sounds were correct, but he seemed to make himself understood.
They relied on Mr Chiam to decipher the English-language news on the radio, just in case the ang moh and the Cambridge-educated Malayans had secret news that didn’t make it into the Chinese press, but so far all the facts seemed to tally—there’d be a new government, a different kind (no one seemed to know different in what way), more elections, the British were definitely going, any day now, although a few might stay behind to manage the transition. And it would be Malaysia, not Malaya—in Chinese accomplished by adding that one character xi, “west” into the name.
When Sukarno announced Konfrontasi, it seemed like just another voice joining the party. This new country was a threat, he said, a construction of the nekolim. He roared to crowds of thousands, threatening to “Crush Malaysia,” and they responded with raised fists. The Malayans affected disdain. He’s just a rabble-rouser, they said. He’s only at large because the Japanese let him out of the Dutch prison. His ideas are crazed—he wants us to join Indonesia, and the Philippines too—Maphilindo, what a
name. Who thinks up these things?
But beneath that, there was fear. Indonesia didn’t have a particularly good army, but it was large, and sheer numbers would make it unpleasant if they did invade. Malaya had just come out of twelve years of Emergency, and the Japanese before that. They didn’t want any more, and worried what this charming man would persuade his people to do. Already, terrorists were sneaking in and blowing up buildings in Singapore.
Nam Teck should have been fearful too, but managed to shrug it off. There wasn’t much he could personally do, and he didn’t have the resources or inclination to leave. Like most of the people around him, he cultivated a wait-and-see attitude. Mrs Chiam stockpiled tinned food just in case.
Taking up rather more of his attention and energy was finally having intercourse with a woman. He learnt how ask shopgirls out in such a way that they felt flattered, not annoyed, how to win them prizes at funfairs and spend hours sipping tea, talking about nothing at all. When it finally came off, he almost woke Seng up to tell him, but the person he was becoming whispered that this would be gauche. Anyway, the fact is the first time was not entirely satisfying and frankly a little painful, but he got better at it quite quickly.
•
By his third Chinese New Year after leaving the village, his mother no longer asked him when he was coming back, or even if he was eating properly. He felt this a minor victory, that she trusted him to take care of himself. She no longer feared he’d get all his money stolen by clever city thieves and end up starving in the streets. Instead she focussed on the future: when was he getting married, when would he give her grandchildren? The neighbours joined in this chorus, having popped by to see the prodigal son and give him a token red packet. Even old Auntie Poh, now bedridden, chirped from her pallet that the city must be full of girls available to a strong young man like him.
