Singathology

by Gwee Li Sui

  In those days, secondary school students were mostly free to do as they liked after class. I enjoyed cultivating plants, and so, while my mother hung our laundry out to dry in the courtyard, I built a plant stand out of bricks, three-tiered and capable of holding ten pots of balsam, jasmine, peony, croton, and the like. I bought the plant pots out of my allowance. When the flowers bloomed, the plant stand took on new clothing, full of the village’s leisurely sunlight. I loved hoeing the ground and standing barefoot in the soil as I planted sweet potatoes, sugar cane, and papaya. I watered and fertilised, using our family’s own excrement which seemed especially full of nutrients. Soon we had row after row of oily-green spinach and kangkong as well as sayur manis, which my mum loved to eat fried with eggs. Manis is Malay for sweet. When I see any of these vegetables today, I feel close to them: that’s the legacy of these memories from Cheng San Village.

  I studied at Kong Yiong Primary School, which was located in a two-storey wooden building. The principal Mr. Zheng Yunwen lived on the second floor, and so there was only a wall between our classroom and his home. Mr. Zheng was tall, thin, and bespectacled, with a stern face – yet he was quite amiable when he spoke to us in class. His wife taught in the same school and would walk around every day with a cane in her hand. All the students were scared of her, and she never softened towards them. The school later expanded and started accepting secondary students, and I was able to stay on. The new school building was much better looking although it was still a long way behind the institutions of today in terms of the environment, facilities, resources…

  My mother loved to nag and did so all day long. This was her form of education – she felt the tiny elements of daily life could add up to bad habits, thus affecting a person’s character. My father’s method was scolding, and, when in a rage, he would hit us too. There was one point on which he was unshakeable: he believed that there was natural justice here on earth and that righteousness could not be ignored while treachery must not be copied. He wrote down eight words as a lesson for me: “Govern yourself most strictly; treat others with generosity.” Only once you learnt to be a good person could you take your place in society: my parents were united on this point.

  Being poor, we had no storybooks or toys at home, but we children knew how to invent our own games. Once you stepped out the front door, all around you would be complete freedom with all sorts of things to play with. During these sessions, children took the moral precepts taught to them by grown-ups and incorporated them into their games, and so sins were punished while good deeds were rewarded. There was a chee chea temple at the entrance to the village where Chinese operas would be staged twice a year, once in Teochew and once in Hokkien. These performances were the most exciting time for the village. The stories were old ones, monarchs interfering with justice or treacherous officials persecuting good ones, and I watched them completely enraptured. At the birthday of the Ninth Emperor in Hougang, particularly good troupes such as Lau Sai Tor or Chek Hoon were invited to perform, each with their own famous repertoire pieces. I went to watch with my grandmother and, after that, discussed the plots with the grown-ups. Thinking about it now, the operas’ ideals of righteousness, loyalty, and honour would muddle their way into my heart, setting down roots.

  When I got to school, respect for my teachers came naturally from my innermost character. After half a day of lessons, we’d go home. Schoolwork didn’t make me stressed, nor did exams. Chinese Literature was my favourite subject. The texts were well chosen, and the teachers taught them well, causing me to look up to them even more. The excitement of these words, their authors, and the teacher spread through the classroom, creating a stirring atmosphere. These lessons undoubtedly left their mark on me, without me noticing.

  All of this is in the past – those impoverished times, that dilapidated village, those simple days – and we won’t want them back. The simplicity resulting from poverty and run-down surroundings is, of course, regrettable, but the memories it created still live on in my mind. All through my life, at any moment, they’ve been liable to spring back up with a bang – look here! This simplicity had many valuable things to it, and, if we could only fill in and amend all that is regrettable, then this simplicity could be eternal happiness.

  2

  After walking down a long stretch of road, turn back and ask yourself: which author or book has left the deepest impression on you?

  Dream of the Red Chamber – indeed!

  I’m talking about my attitude to writing as well as how I observe myself and the world, whether emotionally or not.

  By the time I was sitting in Classroom 23 listening to Professor Le Hengjun speak about Dream of the Red Chamber, I was already thirty-three. This novel, my previous reading and knowledge of it, and the person I was then all left my heart beating fast. Chase it! Keep pursuing: your path, your knowledge, your goals.

  Aged thirty-two, I entered the Department of Literature at National Taiwan University. In my second year, I began taking Classical Novels, an 8 a.m. class. How wonderful destiny can be! Not one element was missing: Dream of the Red Chamber, Le Hengjun, myself, all present there, beginning to create possibilities together. All that at a time without certainty – 1982. I began to believe in predestination.

  Professor Le’s eyes sparkled. Such eyes would not be lacking in talent, and they were full of much knowledge and insight, not to mention a deep understanding of humanity. First, you saw her tender smile, then her graceful steps as she walked into the room. At the start of the class, she was always nervous about where to begin. It’s not hard to deliver a good lesson, but good in what way? About the novel? Life? Philosophy? Emotions? The writer? The reader? The academics? So many layers to go through, and, in the end, held firmly in her hands would be the truth, one’s own truth.

  The fog of the world is so pure! But is it illusion? Emptiness? A dream? Nothingness?

  But this was held in one’s own hand: the real thing. If Professor Le held it in her hand, how could she pass it to us? The heart’s strength! No wonder she was nervous.

  Later, I stood at the lectern myself, telling junior college literature students about Dream of the Red Chamber. And now I had a finer understanding of Professor Le’s nervousness. One teardrop for every word – from the pen of Cao Xueqin, I seemed to hear a voice calling faintly. He was using words to summon the true soul to summon the reader. And this call finally melted into tears, one for every word, landing on the heads of every reader in the world:

  The paper is full of nonsense, written through bitter tears.

  They say the writer must be mad, so who knows what he’s saying?

  How were such sensations produced, Cao Xueqin? He wasn’t writing a novel; he was speaking of enlightenment in humanity, in life. The world couldn’t contain such creatures as Baoyu and Daiyu, surely? But it does, it has to. In the space between having and not having, we find the longing, hope, contradiction, compromise, abandonment, and fall of the mortal world. To speak plainly, Baoyu and Daiyu’s love story is a mirror rubbed smooth by Cao Xueqin in order to reflect the world. And, in its image, we see all kinds of truth and falsehood, goodness and evil, black and white, reality and falsehood, bitterness and joy, beauty and ugliness, loftiness and lowness, length and shortness – so many everyday things.

  There is beauty in the everyday. The human animal lives in time and space, and, if it takes care, will see the existence of beauty. Dream of the Red Chamber writes about the everyday exceedingly well. Yet this novel sees the extraordinary in the ordinary and increases our appreciation of beauty. This isn’t abandonment or denial; it’s to see the true nature of beauty, how it can change, how it can be sublimated…

  Daiyu’s death was a sort of awakening, and Baoyu’s departure a kind of seeing. The vastness of the empty earth was a new beginning.

  From the material world, we see the void and what the void contains, the truth in emptiness.

  Editing it for ten years, over five rounds of adding and deleting, C
ao Xueqin wrote Dream of the Red Chamber with his sincere heart, with tears in his eyes. He didn’t manage to empty the world or bring it to nirvana – quite the opposite, the hot tears of Cao Xueqin warmed all of our hearts.

  They also warmed my hand that holds the pen. Fate is a marvellous thing. My writing hand has always been filled with strength from Cao Xueqin, strength from the heart.

  3

  Now it’s near dusk, so the goodness of the setting sun is unbounded.

  I very much treasure my twilight years. After retirement, having shaken off the constraints of the institution, my heart is more open, my footsteps lighter. Birds fly through the air, fish swim through the sea, and I walk through green hills. In the last decade of the last century, I wrote an essay – “There is a Mountain in my Heart.” The image of the mountain has appeared more than once in my writing. Climbing this mountain is a metaphor, which I may explain thus: I stubbornly believe that scaling a mountain is a serious journey, which might be difficult but will come with discoveries, invention, and happiness. The whole process is one of constant nurturing, growth, and tolerance.

  Speaking of seriousness, difficulties, and so on, this comes from my knowledge and experience of the mark society leaves on those, like me, who write in Chinese. Born here, we struggle together for this island nation, flaunting our mother tongue in order to pass on the lifeblood of our culture. The life force of Chinese has been through several challenges, but, after falling and stumbling, its face is pale and bloodless from the weighty burden of having to pass the flame on to the next generation and all of that. The spirit and values of culture ought to live on in the everyday, naturally eliminating chaos, constantly creating new meaning. Having lost its power and vigour, the Chinese language has declined steadily, a setback Chinese literature has never been able to recover from.

  This is a fact I have to face in my twilight years.

  Is there a future for Chinese literature? Or perhaps I should ask: is there a future for literature? In this technologically led world in which fashion and time are moving ever faster, with sounds and images doing their best to stimulate our senses and chase after us? Only those out of step with the times would pursue the dream of meaning, and the most they could hope for would be a small space with a small readership. The world of literature has grown flat and shrunken. What power of recovery does it have? And how much strength does Chinese literature have to claw its way back?

  But then will readers look back one day and say to the writers, to the island-state – Come on, let’s fill this flat world and turn it into a three-dimensional world, one full of sound and colour, a world of the spirit with infinite borders.

  I tend towards positivity and brightness. Literature continues to emit its light – it too tends towards positivity and brightness. At a certain point, it becomes only possible to go back because the nakedly sincere heart of literature is summoning us.

  We need to have a home. At a certain point in his life, Paul Gauguin wrote these words, asking himself and asking us:

  Where do we come from?

  Where are we going?

  What are we?

  Gauguin gave up seeking wealth from the marketplace, abandoning the civilisation of the city, even his own home, and unexpectedly running off to Tahiti in the South Pacific, where he lived on a desert island with the indigenous people. Did he return to nature, where the world began, in order to find the origins of life? Or the value of life?

  As we live, should we seek the origins of existence? Gauguin’s questions are in a sequence that hints at the turning point – where we should search for the meaning of the question. All intellectuals have asked and considered such questions. Philosophers, in trying to answer them, have to climb higher and higher, even ending up among the clouds. Artists, on the other hand, stay here on earth, examining the essential nature of life, the twists and turns of civilisation, the pitfalls of existence – creating a landscape of the spirit.

  Literature allows us to see another side of life. Only when it includes both sides can life be complete and truly happy.

  I reach out in hope that a return is possible. This is where the hard work and meaning of literature reside. I believe this deeply, and the one pursuit I will never give up is writing.

  4

  Fallen petals are not passionless,

  They will become spring soil and nurture new blossoms.

  I have used my words to irrigate the soil of this island nation so that flowers may bloom and fruit. This land is fertile, and, after it has produced new varieties of flowers and seeds…

  And, as for me, I will persevere with my writing.

  Dia Gila Burung

  OLEH SURATMAN MARKASAN

  Hari ini hari Sabtu. Makmang kerja setengah hari. Panas cukup terik, membuat tekak menjadi kering. Akan tetapi sekumpulan budak lelaki, ada kira-kira sepuluh orang, tidak menghiraukan panas itu. Mereka sedang bermain bola di tengah padang bola berlantai simen. Makmang berjalan terburu-buru menuju ke kedai Maydin, di kolong flatnya. Di depan kedai itu ada dua orang kanak-kanak; seorang lelaki memakai seluar pendek sahaja sambil menghisap air batu Malaysia yang sekaki panjangnya dibalut plastik. Isinya berwarna-warni. Di sebelahnya seorang budak perempuan, barangkali kakaknya. Dia lengkap berbaju kurung berserkup kepala, sedang membawa sebiji cangkir ayan berisi air batu yang sama. Makmang masuk ke kedai.

  “Maydin!” teriaknya agak kuat. “Kasi satu botol Pepsi!”

  Seorang Malbari kurus tinggi keluar dan menuju ke peti aisnya, lalu menghulurkan satu botol Pepsi ke tangan Makmang. Lalu Makmang menyerahkan wang kertas lima dolar.

  Makmang duduk di bangku di depan kedai sambil membuka butang bajunya dan meniup-niup ke dadanya sambil katanya, “Ooi, panasnya, masya-Allah!”

  “Baru panas begini kau dah tak tahan?” satu suara dari tubuh kurus tinggi.

  “Ohh! Bang Usop!” seru Makmang.

  “Nanti, panas api neraka macam mana?”

  Makmang mengangguk-angguk sambil menuangkan air Pepsi daripada botol langsung ke mulutnya. “Insya-Allah... orang yang sentiasa mengingat Allah akan sentiasa dilindungi-Nya... kata Ustaz Maksum,” sebut Makmang sambil sendawa.

  “Ohhh! Bagaimana orang yang mengingat Allah... tapi buat kerja yang Allah tak suka?” tanya Bang Usop berseloroh.

  “Allah Maha Mengetahui... dahi-dahi yang mencecah sejadah dan dahi-dahi yang tak pernah kena sejadah lain bang!... Di dahi kita ‘kan ada tanda, Bang Usop, ya!..” balas Makmang kembali.

  Kemudian, kedua-dua orang itu tertawa kegembiraan sambil mengangguk-anggukkan kepala masing-masing.

  “Apa bezanya dengan dahi Bang Usop, kan ada tanda!” sebut Makmang sambil ketawa lebih lebar. Dan, Bang Usop pun ketawa sama, lalu duduk di tepi Makmang. Maydin datang menghulurkan wang baliknya kepada Makmang.

  “Minum, Bang Usop!”

  “Dah minum baru nak pelawa... tak apa, aku baru minum tadi di rumah,” sebut Bang Usop.

  Makmang menyonyot air Pepsi daripada botol Pepsinya dan tiba-tiba datang pula Kak Haji Dollah lalu duduk di sebelah kiri Makmang.

  “Tak pergi mikat hari ini, Makmang?” tanya Kak Haji Dollah.

  Selepas menyonyot kali terakhir air Pepsi daripada botolnya, Makmang yang berambut keriting dan bermuka bujur memandang ke arah Bang Usop dan Kak Haji Dollah. “Saya ingat tadi nak mikat juga ... tapi panas sangatlah hari ini macam dibakar!” Lalu dia meniup-niup dadanya dengan menarik baju kemeja putih yang tidak berkancing. “Dan besok, Minggu... ada peraduan bunyi burung di Balai. Jadi, saya nak ajar burung tekukur dan merbuk saya mengeluarkan ‘kong’ yang baik. Sapa tahu, nasib baik boleh menang...!”

  Bang Usop mengeluarkan sebatang rokok daripada kotak Malioboro jenis gold, dan menghulurkan kotak itu kepada Makmang.

  “Ini tak rasalah, bang!”

  “Aku pun tahu kau memang...”

  “Lucy Strikelah, Bang Usop baru rasa, abang dah rasa belum?”

  “Aku tak sukalah, keras sangat!”

  Makmang mengeluarkan rokok Lucy Strike daripada kocek seluarnya. Dan d
ia menghulurkan kotak rokok tersebut kepada Bang Usop. Akan tetapi Bang Usop menggeleng-gelengkan kepalanya. Sedang Kak Haji Dollah diam, kerana dia tidak merokok.

  “Ini lagi sedap ... macam ada rasa berangin... panas-panas macam ini cukup sedap!” dan Bang Usop melepaskan asap bulat-bulat seperti cincin-cincin keluar daripada mulutnya yang dimuncungkan. Mereka berdua khayal terus dengan menyedut nikotin yang boleh merosakkan jantung mereka. Kak Haji Dollah menggeleng-gelengkan kepalanya, sambil menutup hidung dan mulutnya. “Kau orang ni tak sudah-sudah... terus melakukan kerja membazir!”

  Selepas bersolat Asar di flatnya, Makmang merenung burung-burung di dalam dua sangkarnya. Ketika dia merenung burung-burungnya, dia teringat akan kata-kata Kak Haji Dollah siang tadi, “Ada orang, dia taat solat, taat puasa, tapi dia buat juga larangan Tuhan!”

  “Nampaknya Kak Haji Dollah tu macam menyindir aku,” kata di dalam hatinya. Kemudian dia teringat pula kata-kata Bang Usop, “Aku sendiri tak tahu ya, gila burung ni, merosakkan amalan kita atau tidak?”

  Makmang cantumkan kata-kata kedua-dua teman seniornya itu, kemudian dia hubungkan dengan dirinya. Dia rajin solat, rajin puasa tapi dia gila burung juga. Kemudian, dia teringat akan kata-kata isterinya apabila si isteri marah kepada dirinya. “Abang tu memang rajin beramal ibadah, tapi abang tak buang tabiat abang yang gilakan burung tu... sampai kadang-kadang tak ingat anak bini!”

  “Apa hubungannya?” fikir Mamang di dalam hatinya.

  “Abang belajarlah agama di kelas-kelas di masjid atau di mana-mana, memelihara burung itu berdosa tak? Burung pun macam manusia, dia hendak bebas macam manusia, macam kita... tapi abang kurung dia.” Makmang teringat lagi akan kata-kata isterinya.