Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  Who were these Singaporeans? As far as Maria could tell, they were the ordinary men and women who daily walked the busy streets and frequented the bustling shopping malls and open eating places of the clean, bright city. They represented the widest possible spectrum of Singapore society, coming from plush offices in the city’s busiest business district and the most rundown of old shophouses tucked inside Chinatown. She saw a woman in her thirties, dressed in a smart black business suit and carrying a leather briefcase, walk up, place a spray of purple orchids, then return to her waiting Mercedes. She watched a middle-aged man – was he the same man who had vigorously declined to take pictures of Big Bird that day? – arrive with a woman who was probably his wife; she carried a small bunch of lilies that looked like a delicate bridal bouquet and placed it gently beside the business woman’s orchids. A group of three women who looked like school teachers had a joint offering of a large bunch of white roses which one of them placed reverently on the ground while the other two looked on. There was a small transparent jar filled with water, carrying a single stalk of some unidentifiable orange flower that would outlast all the other offerings in the late morning heat. A little girl of about six, holding several stalks of gladioli, opened her mouth to say something to her mother but closed it again when she saw the silencing maternal forefinger raised and placed against the lips. A man profusely sweating in a dirty shirt and shoes must have taken time off from his work at a construction site or some road repair works, holding in his hand a little bunch of dahlias that had probably cost him his lunch. Another man who looked like a cook, wearing a white singlet still carrying stains from his kitchen, came with a woman who must have hurriedly changed into neat skirt and blouse; she placed a small basket packed with tiny golden showers and ferns and then bowed her head reverently. An old woman in a wheelchair, and an elderly man with a walking stick – V.K. Pandy was also attracting the sick and disabled who had come, not to seek healing but to pay their respects to one whom society had injured beyond healing.

  There were envelopes with cards inside, lying among the flowers, with the name of V.K. Pandy written on some of them, mostly in the awkward block letters of a childish or an unsure hand. What did they say? What messages did Singaporeans have for the poor dead opposition member? They could only be words of praise, condolence, consolation, respect, compassion, but most of all, praise. The sheer temerity was staggering. Were not the writers afraid that the anonymity of the messages was no protection against the cards being traced to them and used against them at a later date, when it came to getting a job, getting a promotion, getting a study grant, a business licence?

  If there were the dreaded surveillance cameras around, for one single moment in the life of the society, Singaporeans dismissed them and said, We are not afraid. Let us do what ought to be done. For one single moment in the life of a society, a bond of fellow-feeling united Singaporeans, more powerfully than the camaraderie of cheering for the national team in the football stadium, even than of standing together, hand on heart, to sing the national anthem on National Day, because it was unrehearsed and came from the depths of a consciousness too difficult to articulate except through the public act of simple, silent tribute.

  It was weird, this spontaneous coming together of Singaporeans who otherwise lived their separate lives and went their separate ways, as if their common purpose had taken a life of its own, moving to its own momentum, growing, swelling, like a huge organism sometimes seen creeping along on forest floors, far bigger than the sum of the millions of tiny creatures that were its component parts which now had no choice but to act in accordance with its will. Nothing of the kind had ever been seen in Singapore.

  Maria thought, I have to be part of it, before it disappears. Such an organism had but a short life cycle; soon it would reach its peak, then rapidly decline and vanish into its myriad component parts, each once again helpless on its own. Soon Singaporeans would go their separate ways again and forget they had ever come together that astonishing day to pay their respects to the most denigrated man in their midst.

  Remembering a small florist shop behind Middleton Square, Maria dashed to it and was told by the owner that all her flowers had been sold; she had never had such good business. She had some artificial sunflowers, though, that looked like the real thing. ‘Quick, give them to me,’ cried Maria and was back in Middleton Square in an instant. She scribbled a short message, ‘Dear V.K. Pandy, I do miss you. Maria’, and laid it on the artificial sunflowers.

  She could not bear to tear herself away from the strange sight, her eyes roaming from the immense carpet of bright blooms to the sombre faces around. She saw a few balloons floating among the flowers and a small teddy bear, as if something connoting joy and celebration and innocence were needed as a counterweight to the sadness of the occasion. Then something caught her eye. It was a blue folder of cuttings of newspaper reports of V.K. Pandy over the years, opened at precisely the page to show him at his moment of greatest triumph, years back, when he unseated a member of the great TPK’s party at the general elections; he had a stack of garlands around his neck that came right up to his ears and was waving jubilantly from his perch on the shoulders of cheering supporters with their fists raised in the air. Who was that follower who had loyally kept a record of the vicissitudes of the man’s long political career before he returned to die in his ancestral country? Could he have been Big Bird whose loyalty had taken a big risk that day?

  A large greyish bird circled overhead, its squawks being the only sound heard in the whole square. Some from the crowd looked up; already in their minds a story was shaping about V.K. Pandy’s spirit in the form of a bird, returning to see how Singaporeans were reacting to his death. The story would accrete absurd details as it was passed on: the bird circled a number of times over the crowds; it was an owl and it alighted on one of the bouquets; it was a strange-looking bird that nobody had ever seen before and it alighted on precisely the newspaper cutting showing V.K. Pandy’s moment of triumph, staying for a few seconds before flying off again.

  A group of tourists in shorts, T-shirts and hats stopped to watch. Curious to know what was happening, they got only apologetic smiles from the locals who moved away. There was enough danger for the day; nobody wanted to take the additional risk of providing information about the political opponent to foreign journalists, especially one from the blacklisted International Courier, even if anonymity was guaranteed. A man in his forties whispered something very quickly to a young woman who was scribbling in a reporter’s pad, mouthing an urgent condition: ‘Don’t quote me.’

  Maria was sure that a face looking out of a parked car some distance away was that of Dr Phang, but when she moved to have a closer look, the face turned and the car moved off. Was the man there in the capacity of a government spy, since he was a senior officer in the Ministry of Defence? What manner of man was he that while one part was claimed by loyal service to the great TPK, which included the maligning of the great one’s adversaries, another part rebelled against the subjection to the point of making secret donations to the arch enemy? She was almost certain that it was through his intervention that the Big Bird incident had not resulted in more fines for V.K. Pandy and his supporters. And what manner of woman was she that while she was now paying tribute to V.K. Pandy, she had actually helped her husband in the crafting of his vicious letters against the poor man to The Singapore Tribune? She remembered the rare occasions when she and Bernard had laughed and joked with each other over the letters. Like everyone else, she had been complicit in the tragedy of V.K. Pandy.

  She suddenly had the idea to write a letter begging his forgiveness, undeterred by the sheer futility of opening up one’s heart to the dead, as she had done once, when she wrote a long letter to Bernard and placed it inside his coffin. Letters to the dead were free of all falsehood, and were useful to the living in bringing relief to an over-charged heart. She would tell him she was so sorry for providing her husband with all those scathing epithet
s that must have been so hurtful, and would he forgive her?

  Very early the next morning, when she went to Middleton Square to lay her letter among the flowers, she found that everything was gone. Overnight, the square had been cleared, and all that remained was a faint scattering of remnants of leaves, ferns and flower petals. She wondered about the fate, in particular, of that file of newspaper cuttings: by now the efficient machinery of surveillance and control would have traced the owner. She looked up, and saw one of the balloons with its long string entangled on a TV aerial sticking out of a building. Then she looked down again and caught sight of a burnt-out stub of a red candle on the ground, half hidden under a scrap of newspaper. Had someone been praying to V.K. Pandy? Obviously, an inveterate Singaporean punter ever on the lookout for the lingering presence of the dead, whether in accident sites or funeral parlours, since they were the most reliable source of winning lottery numbers, had made an unobtrusive appearance in Middleton Square.

  Thirty

  Winnie’s wedding was the only bright spot in a vast desolation of broken, bleeding hearts.

  Having made up her mind never to see Dr Phang again, Maria yet waited eagerly for his call for their next meeting. Women were ever Marys who were quite contrary, running away from men, running to them. The last meeting would have to have something of closure and finality about it. She was determined for it to be in the public setting of the Bon Vivant Café or a restaurant, not the dark isolated area of parked cars outside the Botanic Gardens, where, under the combined influence of a beguiling ambience and the man’s unfailing charm, she might succumb once more and agree to a love tryst in a hotel room. Their last meeting, after which they would never see each other again, should leave her pride intact, her good spirits restored, her peace of mind assured. Above all, the honesty she never wanted to lose in herself because she valued it so much in others should remain protected. She had been carried away by whatever romantic follies that sometimes overpowered common sense and decency in even the most sensible woman, but had been saved in time, ironically, by that most toxic of all human emotions: jealousy. One day, she thought, she might even say to the fearsome monster acknowledged in song and literature, thank you, you saved me. Right now, she could only cry out, enough, enough of the pain and anger.

  Rehearsed speeches,in her experience with Bernard, had been a dismal failure, but she felt they would succeed with the amiable Dr Phang who would listen without the slightest frown on his handsome, open face. She had actually written down the last speech for the last meeting to make sure she got her message across clearly, firmly, truthfully. Until she did that, the waiting would be unbearable, requiring enormous effort to hide her nervous tension while standing in front of her class and teaching them the strategies of avoiding the most common grammar mistakes in the exams.

  ‘Yen Ping, you’re crying. What’s the matter?’ she asked as the girl struggled to hold back her tears. They were sitting at a table in a quiet corner of the canteen where they were not likely to be heard. Mark’s mother was abroad on one of her business trips, and she had got her younger sister to stay in the house for the entire duration of the trip to keep an eye on Mark. The sister who took her responsibility very seriously sometimes accompanied him to and from school in the chauffeured car. She had on one occasion done a secret search of Mark’s room, and discovered some of the poems that Yen Ping had written to him and also a small teddy bear with their initials sewn into its collar.

  ‘Miss Seetoh, I don’t know how long we can go on like this,’ said Yen Ping tearfully. She revealed that they had only managed to meet once that week, and only for a few brief minutes, and he had managed to speak to her twice on the phone, also for only a very brief while. They had devised a system of codes for their phone contact. She said, ‘Miss Seetoh, next week on Friday, Mark’s auntie won’t be able to accompany him to his maths tutor’s house; can we meet at your place on his way back?’

  The young couple had apparently managed to work out some plan by which the chauffeur would be told that Mark would have to consult Miss Seetoh for half an hour on an important school project, during which time the man would be sent on an errand to town that would take a convenient forty minutes.

  Maria said, ‘You know, Yen Ping, I don’t feel comfortable about all this deceit. I suppose your parents don’t know either?’

  The girl had already told her parents she had broken up with Mark.

  The enormity of their love carved out its own path of explanation and justification; if they told lies, those lies could only be the whitest of white, reflecting the purity of their purpose.

  ‘Yen Ping, let me ask you this,’ said Maria hesitantly. ‘Do you and Mark feel uncomfortable about all these lies, I mean, I can’t imagine either of you deceiving others like this?’

  Apparently the pair, still looking like lost babes in the woods, had thought out every move to thwart parental suspicion. Without their being aware of it, they were following to perfection the wise biblical advice to be both dove and serpent. The time of dove was over, and serpent had to take charge to survive the pitilessness of parents.

  Yen Ping said, her lips trembling, ‘Oh Miss Seetoh, I don’t know what we can do without you.’

  ‘Yen Ping,’ said Maria looking at her with frowning seriousness, ‘I hope you and Mark won’t do anything stupid – you know what I mean?’

  There had been a dream in which Yen Ping’s mother dragged her by the arm to the kitchen, to watch the girl, pale and crying, bent over the sink, retching dreadfully. ‘See!’ screamed the woman. ‘My daughter’s pregnant, and it’s all your fault. You let them use your bedroom for their secret meetings. You, their teacher! Shame on you!’

  Yen Ping tried to hide her shock at Miss Seetoh’s unseemly suggestion. ‘We promised ourselves that we would remain pure for each other till our marriage, Miss Seetoh.’ Neither Mark’s Christianity nor her Taoism made any such demand, she explained, but their special love did. ‘I’m going to tell you something we’ve never told anybody,’ she said, her eyes shining through her tears. ‘We made our promise in blood.’

  They had made small incisions in their wrists, mixed their drops of blood and written their initials with it. ‘We each have a copy of the promise,’ she said, ‘and I keep it close to my heart. See?’ She pulled out a small silver locket from under her shirt, and opened it to reveal a roll of paper inside. Young love was transcendental, awe-inspiring.

  Beside its pure sheen, Meeta’s and Byron’s affair was all dross. Since the evening of the Polo Club ball, they had been dating, mainly on Meeta’s initiative. As he grew more anxious to get out of what was an increasingly tedious affair, she grew more demanding, assuming the rights of the officially acknowledged partner who in the past would have been able to sue for breach of promise and compel the man to marry her.

  ‘I never slept with her,’ Byron confided in friends. ‘I tried once. Couldn’t. That woman’s off-putting.’

  For a while, Meeta tried what she had in the past disdainfully called ‘the Winnie exercise in futility’. Thus had she overwhelmed Byron with gifts and favours, such as expensive soup dishes of healthful black chicken and ginseng which she had got the maid to brew for hours, ordering books he had expressed an interest in, that were not available in Singapore’s book-stores, looking all over town for a special table lamp he wanted. Byron fled before the avalanche of gifts, sometimes pretending not to be at home when the doorbell rang and he peeped out to see Meeta’s formidable person outside, all garbed in bright sari and jewellery, carrying something in her hand.

  ‘Do you think she could be slightly – this?’ Byron asked a confidante, twirling a finger against the side of his head to indicate the beginnings of lunacy.

  The confidante told him about a woman he once knew who became so unhinged by unrequited love that she stalked the poor man in his office, his home, his favourite hawker centre, and once called him twenty times in one hour, until he had to change his phone number and also the locks i
n his apartment.

  A man by nature too indolent to upset the weaker sex and risk a confrontation, he made all sorts of excuses when Meeta phoned him, until he ran out of them and one evening forced himself to say firmly but very kindly, ‘It’s no use, Meeta. It’s not working. You’re a very nice, attractive person, but it isn’t working.’ At that advanced stage in her infatuation, Meeta was prepared to cling to any shred of hope; the absence of outright hostility was all that it needed to sustain itself. Desperate hope could be pathetic, and the intelligent, perceptive part of Meeta must have occasionally recognised the depths to which it could sink in each desperate excuse to rationalise away his remissness: ‘Well, he tends to oversleep when there’s a storm. Also, you know how dangerous the roads are when it rains like that.’ ‘His sister-in-law was on a visit with her children. She’s very demanding and requires him to be them all the time.’ ‘He’s confused by his feelings. This is the first time that he’s taken a woman seriously. I’ll have to be patient.’

  It was now Winnie’s turn to say, ‘Meeta, you’re wasting your time; he’s simply not interested.’

  Safe in Wilbur’s love and devotion and happily preparing for her wedding, Winnie was unaware that her advice, confidently and cheerfully given, could only hurt by the sheer contrast in their present positions, a contrast that would be even more pronounced in the future after she left the house they had been sharing for so many years for her new home in Washington.