Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  He invited her for a movie and dinner date, the first time they would be out on their own together. Father Rozario had said to her, ‘Bernard is one of the finest, most God-fearing men in the parish.’ The God-fearing virtues were less commendable than a few things she was beginning to notice about him: he was utterly sincere, never said anything fatuous, was unfailingly polite to everyone, including lowly waiters, petrol pump attendants, maidservants and he spoke impeccable English.

  Through habit she had developed an enormous capacity to smile politely through male bombast: she had seen her mother nod encouragingly through her father’s beer-sodden promises of making big money and buying her a big house, even while he was in hiding from the loan sharks, sometimes waking his family up in the night to run to yet another secret location.

  In her student days in the university, she had been the object of interest of a fellow undergraduate who basked in his self-given name of Valentino, and in his reputation, also self-initiated, as the biggest heart-throb on campus. He took his boasting to an incredible level of braggadochio that no longer had any connection with reality and that at the same time, was suspiciously inaccessible to verification, since none of the conquests were girls on campus.

  There was a Francis Sng, a fellow parishioner of the Church of Eternal Mercy, who talked endlessly about his job, his salary, his good standing with his boss, his sheer good luck at selecting the right stocks in the market that were now yielding amazing dividends, the devotion of his mother and aunts who regularly fed him the most expensive and healthful herbal brews from Korea, completely oblivious to her suppressed yawns. She had only been out once with the obnoxious man, on a church outing, during which he chose to sit next to her, his large, sweaty face and loud voice obtruding upon her attention all afternoon until she made an excuse to go to the washroom and returned to take another seat. If on a Repulsiveness Scale of one to ten, he and Valentino scored a nine, the quiet-voiced, well-mannered Bernard Tan was out of that hall of male infamy altogether.

  She asked him about the heroic time when he took care of both ailing parents, and was impressed by his simple modesty. He had nursed both of them to the very end, and had been particularly close to his mother who had died from a very painful liver disease. ‘It’s difficult to talk about those times,’ he said, ‘and if you don’t mind, I’d rather not.’ She wanted then to reach out to touch his hand. But no, she thought, that might give him the wrong impression.

  Nine

  ‘Can we stop here for a short while?’ said Bernard, slowing down his car along a small gravel path, and for a moment, as she looked out into the surrounding darkness and saw tall trees silhouetted against the night sky, she had a wild thought that he was going to kiss her or do something alarming.

  Years ago, when she was still an undergraduate at the university, she went on a date with someone on a motor scooter; he took a different, unfamiliar route to the campus coffee house, stopped in a dark spot with shady trees, got down from his scooter, and kissed her. She was about to resist his advances when, in the most unexpected way, her attention suddenly became diverted by the sight and sound of a couple in a nearby bush, and then of two more couples, in different parts of the secluded spot, all clearly too engrossed in their activities to notice any onlooker. It was intriguing new knowledge in her innocent world which she would have been happy to acquire without help from that stolen, disgusting kiss.

  Bernard had managed to persuade her to go out for a second movie and dinner date which she secretly swore would be their last, for she was now completely convinced that she could never marry him. His intensity was beginning to frighten her. To the discomfort of the evening was added the sudden fear of an attack of passion; both feelings vanished in a gasp of astonishment when he laid a small blue velvet box on her lap, opened it and revealed the most beautiful diamond ring she had ever seen. ‘I got it from Tiffany’s,’ said Bernard not with arrogance but in appreciative acknowledgment of her taste and worth. ‘The salesgirl was kind and patient enough to help me select it. I hope you like it.’

  He took the ring out from the box and picked up her left hand to slip it on the engagement finger. It was at this moment that astonishment gave way to panic which mounted by the second.

  ‘No, no,’ she gasped, and as she did not withdraw her hand, Bernard deftly slipped on the ring.

  ‘Don’t worry about the price, I needn’t tell you,’ he smiled, and promptly told her.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said again, her powers of resistance still locked inside her cold limbs, her stuttering tongue. For a moment she found herself in the grip of an experience as amazing as it was intimidating in her simple, ordered life, an experience tantamount to a life-or-death matter that required her to quickly commandeer all her resources of clear thinking and honest feeling to deal with it.

  ‘From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were the one for me,’ he said fervently. ‘I couldn’t wait for the day of our engagement, and it has come.’

  He had a rich repertoire of the suitor’s language, and he dealt it out, systematically and with feeling. Her mind was working quickly, to enable her to break out of the paralysis of movement and speech. This was not her understanding of how a woman got engaged and married, her feelings unconsulted, the whole affair circumstantial only, finalised and closed with the formality of a ring. The deep-seated, long-standing fear of losing her world and her freedom, akin to the primordial aggressive safeguarding of territory, asserted itself powerfully and she said, in clear distinct tones, ‘Bernard, I thank you very much, but no, please no, we can’t be engaged.’

  At this stage, still completely convinced that he was at the end of a long, laborious but divinely blessed mission, he said, ‘We could wait a little longer if you like, though I don’t see any need for that.’

  She felt a rising tide of annoyance at the presumptuousness, which gave an edge to her voice as she said, ‘You don’t understand. I don’t want to be engaged to you. I don’t want to marry you – or anybody.’ Capable of only the gentlest remonstrances, she surprised herself by the brute delivery of truth.

  By the light of a faint moon in the sky, she saw his expression change quickly to frowning puzzlement. ‘But wasn’t it clear to everybody that we were serious about each other? Weren’t you encouraging me all the way?’

  The word elicited the sharp response that she had used for Meeta’s teasing accusation. ‘Oh no, I wasn’t encouraging you at all,’ she protested and was almost tempted to let out the second part of the protestation lying silent upon her tongue, ‘You chose not to see all those signs of discouragement; you almost forced upon me those lifts in the car, those gifts to my mother and Por Por, those –’

  Years later, she would be even more painfully aware of how the very same acts and words could have completely different meanings for men and women, accusing each other across an enormous chasm of misunderstanding.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Bernard very softly, as if talking to himself. He turned to her and said, with a hint of pleading in his voice, ‘All those times we were together –’ It was his turn to leave the utterance unfinished, fearful of being dealt another of truth’s humiliating blows.

  There was silence for a long while, as he stared out into the night. A man with a disposition to be magnanimous towards others, and an unshakeable belief in his own worth, he was now reeling from the sheer incredulity that a woman on whom he had lavished all that magnanimity and who therefore must be aware of all that worthiness, could reject him. Having sedulously built up a whole superstructure of intention, purpose, understanding and expectation, he now saw it crumbling before his eyes.

  His face stark and taut from the sheer incomprehensibility of it all, he at last said, very slowly, ‘Listen, I want you to understand this. I am a man of principle and honour. I want to get everything right. I don’t play games.’ He made a final attempt to confront the devastating reality and challenge it. ‘Surely you don’t mean what you just said. Surely you’re not
telling me that –’ he began, and she cut in to say with a rush of breath, her heart beating wildly with the urgent need to hasten a bizarre episode to its end, ‘No, I’m not interested in you.’

  She saw his stricken face, and suddenly felt a surge of pity that made her stretch out her hand to touch his, saying with all the kindness of tone she could muster, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He moved his hand away abruptly, and continued staring into the distance, his whole body rigid in the shock of his discovery, the veins throbbing fearfully on his neck and temples.

  The courtship had been an enormous investment of time, money and energy, impossible to envisage losing. Trying to save it, he made a last desperate effort – a reminder to her of the magnitude of his gift, and a gentle reproach for her disregard of it. ‘One would imagine any woman would be grateful to receive a twenty-thousand dollar ring –’ Instantly he saw his mistake for she replied with some hauteur, ‘It would make no difference if it cost a hundred thousand dollars.’ Her tone belied the mounting terror of a situation spinning out of control; only outwardly was she in charge, dealing one pitiless blow after another.

  Meeta had often said to her, shaking her head, ‘You may be so intelligent and well-read, my dear, but you’re as naïve as a child in the ways of the world.’ She was not naïve; she had an instinctive sense, as well as the inner strength, for doing the right thing, the worthy thing. Could he hear her heart thumping so hard she could faint any moment?

  She removed the ring from her finger and held it out towards him. ‘I want to thank you again for your generosity –’she began and then all was confusion, which would, in the years to come, be a fearful memory that would return again and again in her dreams.

  She saw him, in a whirl of white-faced fury, grab the ring from her, get out of the car, stand by the side of the gravel path and in a mighty swing of his arm, fling it far out into the darkness of sky, trees and bushes. The image would be permanently seared into her memory – the man, the gesture of angry despair, the brooding night sky, the silent forest trees. He returned to the car, breathing heavily, and without a word drove her straight home. ‘Bernard, I’m sorry –,’ she quavered, now in tears, but his car had already roared away.

  That night she had a dream in which, in slow motion, she saw the arc of the flung diamond traversing the night sky, like a silvery trail of spittle from the bared jaws of a great night predator as it sprinted, with easy graceful movements of its long lean body, after its prey.

  ‘It cost me a fortune, did you know that?’ Bernard shouted in rage. ‘Do you know I’m now in debt to the loan sharks?’

  ‘I never asked you,’ she said calmly and then added, ‘Let’s start looking for it. We won’t leave till we find it.’

  They cut their hands on sharp branches, pricked their fingers on thorny bushes, brushed giant ants off their clothes, all to no avail. Father Rozario, then her mother joined in the torrent of rebukes. ‘It’s all your fault! You’re the most selfish person on earth! You’re a cold, unfeeling bitch!’ Then suddenly she saw the diamond, glinting beautifully in a patch of mud.

  ‘There it is! Look, Bernard, your diamond!’ She picked it up from the mud and handed it to him joyfully. ‘What will you do with it now, Bernard? Will the shop take it back? You must get back your twenty thousand dollars. Your mother needs it for all those expensive operations. You should never have bought me the ring in the first place, Bernard, because I never loved you. Aren’t you glad I’ve found it?’

  In the dream, speech, loosed from its moorings, bore her truest thoughts and feelings along a joyously flowing current. In the dream, she stood fearlessly facing the others, ankle deep in mud. Livid with fury, Bernard grabbed the ring from her, and flung it into the darkness a second time. ‘Oh no, oh no,’ she screamed. ‘You go look for it again,’ roared Father Rozario, ‘and this time I will have it. It goes to the orphans! Shame on both of you!’ Her mother was crying and drumming her chest with anguished fists. The well-populated dream admitted one more inhabitant. ‘How do you know it’s a real Tiffany ring?’ sneered Heng. ‘It could be a cheap fake for all we know. Show us the receipt, Bernard.’ Bernard ignored him and faced her. ‘Maria Seetoh, you are a curse in my life.’ He picked up a wet branch and struck her across the face. ‘Since I met you, my life has been a living hell!’

  Someone let out a shriek which was powerful enough to punch through the dream and yank her up into the reality of sweat-soaked pillow, rumpled blanket, pounding heart. She sat up, her hair fallen in tangles over her face, her hands pressed against her ears. Her mother came knocking on her bedroom door, ‘Maria, what was that noise? Are you alright?’

  The next day was Sunday, and she did not see Bernard at church. Her mother saved a barrage of anxious inquiries for firing as soon as they reached home, and she wisely chose not to mention the Tiffany diamond ring, now lying somewhere in a forested area near a small path that had no name. Till the end of her life, Anna Seetoh was never told about it.

  From the maelstrom of feelings that crowded the dream, she pulled one out for special safekeeping and solace: her own proud self-assertion which she had expressed to Bernard as they stood in the mud together, and she handed him the ring, ‘I’m free now.’ Gifts if they came loaded with sinister purpose were promptly given back, even in childhood. There was an aunt who once pushed a coin into her pocket whispering something about not telling her mother what she had just heard, and she instantly pulled out the gift and returned it, before running away. I’m free now. In the murkiness of the dream, the declaration, as she made it repeatedly to Bernard, had stood out in the clarity and intensity of relief and celebration, and was now even more powerfully felt in the reality of waking.

  It would give her the necessary strength in the days ahead when she would have to begin the tedious work of dismantling the huge edifice of expectations that everybody had built around them. Her mother, Father Rozario, Meeta, Winnie, the curious parishioners of the Church of Eternal Mercy, the inquisitive Maggie, even her brother Heng, even Por Por who in her lucid moments might demand to see the kind gentleman who had found her wandering and brought her home – all of them, at some time or other, in one way or another, would be told the truth, if only to have the peace of mind to move on to a new phase in her life.

  She had learnt a valuable lesson. A woman had to be mindful of her words and actions if they were not to be construed as encouragement. She had made a dreadful mistake which, fortunately, could be corrected. Her imagination supplied an image that made her smile: a large pile of garbage in the yard, created by her own stupidity and carelessness, which she must clear quickly in a massive spring cleaning exercise before the Chinese New Year, if the gods were not to be offended. Soon the gods were appeased, for the rubbish was all gone. She loved the slate made blank once more, the chalkboard cleared of all its clutter, for writing on anew.

  It would be a truth that needed telling only in its broadest outlines, without mention of the ring, and she would tell it with a firmness and finality to preclude all further questions and speculations. She was once more in charge of her life. In my new life, she thought, meaning of course her inner world only,

  I would admit no one. Maybe only Por Por.

  A fearful object in her dreams, where it was flung into the distance, dug up from mud, caught in a roaring torrent, pulled out from the throat of some forest predator, amidst a chaos of tears and curses, the ring was the subject of much quiet wonder in her waking hours. Nobody would believe my story if I wrote it, she thought. Mortals stamped their love on monuments of marble that towered into the skies for all eternity; lesser mortals with money to spend bought diamonds that had the same enduring power. That Tiffany ring would lie unclaimed under dead leaves long after she and Bernard had passed away. Or it would be dug up, hidden inside huge clumps of soil, and then dumped into a pit, once the bulldozers moved in to clear the forest for the new developments that were springing up all over the island. Or its fate would take it to a muddy
ditch that, with the rainy season, swelled into a stream and flowed out to sea, casting it to the very bottom, its resting place for all eternity, testimony to the sad story, that could not be told, of a man who loved a woman who could not love him back.

  Within two days, she had broken the promise to herself, and told the story. The seductive romance of love’s twenty thousand -dollar tribute had suddenly come up against the brute calculus of life’s realities. She had to act quickly, to find the ring before anyone did.

  Ten

  The project, as she was later to call it, had begun, as with so many things, with the irrepressible Maggie. Two days after the ring incident, Maggie stood outside the staffroom, asking to speak to her, indicating that her presence was urgently needed.

  It was the luckless school gardener whom everybody called Ah Boy, for whose sick wife Maggie had months before collected a small class donation. Now it turned out that the poor woman needed a very expensive operation. A few thousand dollars, whispered Maggie, relishing her dramatic role of the savior when she should be busy preparing for the approaching school examinations. Could Miss Seetoh speak to the principal? If he declined to help, could she pass round the hat among staff members? Maggie on her part would try to get some help from her mother. She looked intently at Miss Seetoh, studying her reaction. ‘Two thousand dollars for the operation alone, and money, money for the stay in hospital, for this and that, for good food and medicine which they can’t afford. My heart feel so much pity for them, I want to help, even if other people don’t want,’ said the girl who had sensed yet another opportunity for self-worth to rise above the daily contempt.