by Jeremy Tiang
“That sounds about right. Never get between a Singaporean and their aircon.”
“Can you blame them? If you lived here, your brain would melt without it.”
“My dad, though. He just had fans.”
“Henry, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but your dad was—eccentric.”
“I’d noticed. It’s strange, there are all these things I thought were normal, and it was only when I was grown up that I realised they were just my family.”
“Lots of people have that.”
“It’s so strange that he’s gone. I think I expected him to outlive me.”
They walk past hoardings for a new condo development, the outside painted with optimistic renderings of poolside idylls and retro interior design, populated by ethnically ambiguous but light-skinned figures. “This used to be a field,” says Revathi. “I guess it was too much to expect, that they’d actually leave the empty space alone.”
“Singapore property developers abhor a vacuum.”
“Silly. Come on, let’s get some food.”
Tiong Bahru Market is where he remembers it. They have done it up, fresh paint, even escalators, but the building remains essentially the same. Fresh food downstairs, cooked food above. Revathi is more up to speed with the current etiquette—put a packet of tissue paper on an empty table to claim it, then go order your food.
The food stalls are laid out in three long rows, joined in a triangle, surrounded by functional plastic tables. The central airwell keeps things cool, as do slowly turning fans on the high ceiling. Suddenly wanting to experience all the tastes of his childhood, Henry orders too much food: chicken rice, simmered in fragrant stock and served with chilli; double-boiled herbal soup; fried oysters in an omelette; and a shaved-ice concoction for dessert. At the cold drinks stall, he watches as the lady pushes thick stalks of sugarcane through a mechanical crusher, squeezing out sweet green liquid.
“Are you starving or something?” says Revathi, eyeing his spread over her plate of fried noodles.
“I got carried away.”
He eats too fast, and too messily. A mouthful of rice, a spoonful of soup. Thinly sliced shallots, crisp edges of fried egg, and the syrupy cool of the ice. Food spills down his shirt, but that can go in the machine later. There is an ominous crack, and torrents of rain begin to fall outside. He has a memory from boyhood, walking through this warm, fat tropical rain. If it doesn’t stop soon, perhaps they’ll go out into it; home is only a short distance away. He has another spoonful of dessert, and finds a buried piece of yam, crushing it against the roof of his mouth, sweet and powdery.
•
The funeral takes place in a church. Janet insists that their father accepted Christ just before his death, which Henry does not find very likely, but it seems to make her happy. “We’ll see him again, he’ll be waiting for us,” she tells him, almost gaily, as if that’s not a terrifying prospect. He tries to tell her again that he hasn’t been a believer for a long time, but Janet hears only what she wants to. When an in-law asks Henry which church he attends in London, Janet jumps in with, “Henry hasn’t found a church that suits him yet,” and then “He works too hard. I always tell him he should make the effort to get up early on Sunday, but he’s so lazy.” He lets it go. We must find comfort where we can.
They are in Janet’s church in Queenstown, a large modern building with stark white walls and a lot of tinted glass, although from the train he was startled to see a banner reading “Homosexuals Can Change” unfurled across the roof in bright colours. The whole place hums with air-conditioning and a heavy floral scent. Walking in, the visitor is seized by two greeters who proffer a hymnal and a photocopied order of worship. Other ushers take over to seat people, filling up from the front. It is a well-drilled operation, and scaled to deal with large numbers, with radio mikes and video screens projecting close-ups of the pulpit to all corners.
Janet frets at the low attendance. “I told everyone,” she fusses. “His old colleagues, all the cousins, but so few of them got back to me.” The five occupied rows do look a bit sparse in all that space. She waves, smiling tightly, at each new arrival. Most of these seem to be her friends, middle-aged Chinese men and women with the pale, dutiful look of the professional bureaucrat.
Henry is in the front pew with Janet and her family. He shakes hands firmly with his brother-in-law and admires his nephews—young men now, taller than him, at the age when they’re a little embarrassed to be related to old people. He nods at them and they smile back, perfectly friendly. He is a distant figure to them, while he’s watched them grow up through the pictures Janet sent. He regrets not having reciprocated with more e-mails. Stella comes late and takes a pew at the back, earning a scowl from Janet.
The pastor is a squat Chinese man with a kindly face, though his eyes gain a hint of steel when he talks about God. He reads from a sheet of paper, something about the life and career of our brother Jason Low, and speaks some words of comfort for the family. There is a reading from the Bible. Janet’s face is solemn, like her husband’s, but there is a sparkle in her eyes, as if she is being told something of great value. Henry wishes Revathi were here, to make him feel less like the only heathen present, but she said it would be weird to go to the funeral of someone she’d never met.
Afterwards, they have tea and sandwiches in the small Sunday School room. Janet has allocated half an hour for this. Foam play mats are stacked in a corner, with quantities of colourful books. He picks one up. Stories from the Old Testament, in comic form. On the cover, a square-chinned Daniel faces down the lions in their den.
There are not many people he knows, but strangers come up to him and express their condolences. Everyone is bracingly unsentimental, which he appreciates. There is little to be said about a death when the family’s feelings can best be summed up as guilty relief. They ask him about life in London, and seem genuinely interested in what he has to say. Janet hovers, passing food around: curry puffs, plastic beakers of weak squash. When she judges enough time has passed, she chivvies everyone downstairs, where a chartered bus is waiting.
Henry finds himself sitting next to a young woman who turns out to be the daughter of a second cousin. She is an optician now, and meets Janet regularly for coffee. “Your sister holds the family together,” she tells him. “She organises a dinner at least once a year.” Not that Jason ever went to these gatherings; to be honest, she confesses, she was rather frightened of him. His quick temper. Once, Henry would have responded with stories of being hit with a belt as a child, of his father’s volatility and implacable rage, but now he judges it better to smile gently and say nothing. The good thing about age is the accumulation of injuries reaching the point where each individual hurt seems less significant.
The bus drops them off at Mandai Crematorium. They file into the windowless room. It looks like a lecture theatre at one of the newer universities. The coffin is already at the front, with a glass panel through which Jason’s face is visible. They have shaved his face and combed his hair in a strange way. He looks like he is made of wax. Sitting down, Henry feels tears beginning to come, and looks across at Janet to see her also red-eyed and blurry. She nods grimly at him.
The pastor says a few more words, and Janet rises to make a speech thanking everyone for coming. Again, she talks about her father being reunited with his wife, their mother, in the next world, and both parents waiting there for their children to arrive. People nod, and Henry feels he has to nod too. Fortunately no one seems to expect him
to speak.
Then they are on the move again, up a staircase, past an indoor waterfall, and into a gallery overlooking a featureless room, panelled in wood like a squash court. Two attendants push the coffin in on a gurney, then slide one of the panels open to make a door just wide enough for the coffin to glide in onto a hidden conveyor belt. It disappears from view, almost an anti-climax.
Downstairs, Janet hands out packet drinks. People come up to shake their hands, and t
hen disperse. Stella hugs Henry and says something about meeting properly another time. Winston leaves to ferry a gaggle of aunts to the nearest MRT, and then it is very quiet. They are far enough from the road to be insulated from traffic noises. Henry and Janet sit on a wooden bench in the lobby, waiting for their father’s ashes.
•
The MRT has sprouted all kinds of new lines since Henry last rode it. The stations are like something out of science fiction, gleaming palely with underground light. TV screens on the platforms show public-service videos between announcements. A group of bad actors notice someone furtively leaving his bag beneath a seat. What are they to do? It could be a bomb! The next train arrives before they can take action, so Henry never finds out whether they were blown up.
Revathi accompanies him a couple of stations, because she wants to see the new line, then bails. He tries to get her to join them for dinner—Janet won’t mind, probably—but she has a lot to do. He’d been afraid of leaving her alone while he did family stuff, but it turns out she wasn’t lying about this being primarily a work trip. Her schedule is full of meetings of all kinds—she seems to have an endless number of people to interview and events to attend. His friend, he is discovering, is a different person here than she is in London, where she is quite happy to hang out in pubs with him for entire aimless afternoons.
Janet and Winston live in Sengkang, near the top of one of those unfeasibly tall new private developments with a faux-European name. He has to change trains twice, the second time to a driverless light-rail that runs alarmingly close to the buildings on either side, all steel and exposed concrete like a Brutalist nightmare. He wonders what it must be like to live surrounded by so many people stuffed into identical little boxes, but bites back the thought. At least people have somewhere to stay, for the most part.
He gets lost trying to find the condo—the blocks seem laid out randomly rather than sequentially—and arrives breathless and late. Winston pats him hard on the shoulder and takes the flowers he brought. “Chrysanthemums!” he smiles. “Is this a funeral?”
Janet takes the bouquet to put into water. “Henry doesn’t know all this,” she says, “He’s been living in ang moh land too long. Never mind, we’re not pantang.”
Vaguely aware of having made a faux pas, he takes off his shoes and pads into the living room. He hasn’t visited since they moved, and is impressed by how sleek the furnishings are in this new place. Ministers earn quite a bit here, he remembers. There is a handsome bookcase in pride of place, though its contents are mostly business manuals and management guides.
The boys are out—“I told them to stay and see their uncle, but young people are so busy”—and Henry can’t be hurt by this. He ought to have made the effort to know them better, if he’d wanted them to stay home for him. Instead, he has Janet’s pinched good cheer and Winston’s bonhomie. “So, Henry, you’ve been so-called writing,” booms his brother-in-law. “Is that going well?”
The maid brings out the food. White rice and a few simple dishes. Henry wonders if she’ll join them, but she retreats into the kitchen after making sure they have everything they need. Conversation over dinner is surprisingly uncontentious—what the press is saying about Winston’s latest speech, how well the boys are doing. He’d thought they might talk about their father, but other than complaining about the funeral catering, Janet doesn’t bring up the subject, and he finds he doesn’t want to either. Maybe that’s for the future, when they’ve had more time, or maybe they’ve already said all that ever needed to be.
He looks across the table at his twin and thinks, If there was ever an argument against genetics—our faces aren’t that different, but everything else is. Is it just all our different choices, cumulatively, or something more fundamental? He feels it like a physical void between them. As if he could reach out and still not be able to touch her.
To be honest, this feels flat. This dinner, like the funeral, like this whole trip, is hollowed out. What did he expect, closure? The rest of the evening is the same, amicable, less stressful than he’d expected, but still he feels like he’s only skating over the surface of ice too thick to crack. He remembers many dinners with their father, he and Janet sitting in tense silence, afraid of angering him. Now that they can talk, it turns out they never had that much to say to each other in the first place.
Revathi is still out when he gets back to his father’s flat. He wonders if she’s met someone. She has a non-exclusive arrangement with another journalist back in London, a younger man whom she refers to as her toyboy—but that barely seems to slow her down, as if she’s determined to age as disgracefully as possible.
Needing to be active, he starts tidying up again, wondering why he’s doing this, when the flat now belongs to Janet. There’s something about the ritual that feels necessary. Like a laying out of the body, as if his father had put himself into these objects he’d felt compelled to accumulate, scared to lose anything more.
He works to the point of exhaustion then lies down, but cannot make his eyes shut. The night swirls around him, traffic noises and a child somewhere practising piano scales. Probably too early for bed, but he feels something cold clutching at him, and being very still seems the best way to slough it off. How much longer, he wonders, but there can be no answer till he formulates the rest of that question. It’s a relief when his phone chirps, and he can sit up again. It’s a text from Stella, asking him to lunch the next day with some of her friends.
•
The address Stella gave them turns out to be a shopping centre so run-down Henry is surprised it still exists. It’s perfectly sound, but he’s come to expect malls in this country to be fortresses of marble and gleaming glass with all the usual high-end chains, not this unremarkable three-storey white-and-tangerine slab. There are no brand names at all here, just small businesses, tailor shops and maid agencies, and at the far end, a Chinese restaurant that hasn’t been redecorated since at least the eighties. Stella stands
outside, waving.
“So glad you came,” she says. Her partner Maryam, whom Henry hasn’t seen for years, grins widely. He introduces Revathi, and they go inside, where it looks like there is a party of some sort going on. “Is this a wedding?” asks Henry, before realising they are the youngest people here—everyone else is closer to seventy, or maybe older. Yet it does look like one, a few dozen guests seated around numbered tables covered in heavy damask, their centrepieces co-ordinated to the streamers over the raised stage. They all seem to know each other. Is this some sort of club?
Stella has saved them seats at one of the far tables. She introduces the others, whom she seems familiar with. “This is Geok Leong, she was quite senior in the General Labour Union. This is Halim, he’s a historian these days, wrote a book recently about the movement, you might remember it. And over there, that’s Ng Lay Kuan, maybe you remember her? She was an MP very briefly in the sixties, before your time of course. Never got to take her seat.”
The old leftists, she explains, meet for lunch once a year. She only found out about this a few years ago, and now she joins them regularly. When Henry continues to look bemused, she shrugs. “Sure, I guess it must seem a bit strange to you. I first heard about it a few years ago and thought I’d see what it’s like. Everyone’s really lovely.”
“Do they mind outsiders joining?”
“Don’t be silly. Anyway, you’re not an outsider, you have family connections.” And indeed, he is surprised by the outpouring when Stella mentions who his mother is. Ng Lay Kuan embraces him, and says Siew Li was one of the best ones they had, such a shame—
He braces himself, but their stories are sweet and not particularly revelatory. He already has all this information, about her work with the unions, her detention. As for what happened after her disappearance, there is nothing—these people weren’t in contact with her any more than he was.
Everyone is keen to chat as the food starts to arrive, course after course. There is lots of gossip, rehashing
of old episodes and catching up on each other’s latest ailments. Revathi is beaming—there’s an article in this, he can see her thinking. Henry catches up with Stella’s life—she’s still making ends meet giving tuition, not doing much else. Halim asks Henry if he’s still angry with the government for what it did.
“I haven’t really thought about that in a while. It’s all in the past.”
“The ISA is still around today.”
“They say they only detain terrorists, though.”
“They called us terrorists too, you know. If there’s no trial, no need to produce evidence, you can call people anything you want.”
“Your ma was right to go,” says Lay Kuan, suddenly looking fierce. “Otherwise, locked up like us, no chance. Some people are still outside. Can’t come back. How can you say everything is in the past, when there are still people trapped outside? You mustn’t blame your ma, whatever you do.”
He can only nod, and is fortunately saved from having to reply as the performances start just then. A trio of erhus drone out a melancholy tune, and then someone does card tricks. There are some songs, and a skit from the old days, something about a girl almost betraying her village but coming to her senses just in time.
Next are the speeches, some in English in deference to the few non-Chinese comrades, the rest in Chinese. Henry finds he understands enough of the language to keep up a whispered commentary to Revathi. Not much of what they’re saying is important, anyway. This has the feel of ritual, of words being spoken not only because they are true, but to keep them from being forgotten.
Afterwards they sing a chorus of “Unity is Strength”, then rise to mingle. Revathi is in her element, going up to people and charming their stories from them, even though they barely have a language in common. Stella wants a cigarette, so Henry goes to stand outside with her.
