The Howling Silence

by Catherine Lim

  At the wake, clad in deep black shirt and pants, she received visitors who came in a continuous stream, for her husband had been one of the most respected civil servants in Singapore. There was one visitor who puzzled her, for the woman, who was in her late thirties, was not only a total stranger, but wore full mourning black and was accompanied by five young children, also in mourning black. Ignoring everyone, the woman immediately went about the task of organising an orderly movement of the five children, beginning with the eldest, towards the corpse in the coffin, to pay their respects. When she looked up and saw Julie staring at her, she said matter-of-factly, “They’re his children,” and continued to supervise the exercise, carrying up the youngest child, a toddler, to look upon the dead man’s face and blow him a kiss.

  Julie was aware of something strange happening to her. She had split into two, one part observing the scene with the fascination of a calm onlooker and the other screaming in silent anguish and about to destroy itself in an explosion of shock, shame, rage and pure lust for revenge. The calm half, remembering that not once in the twenty five years of their marriage had they been a day apart, went up to the woman and asked, almost politely, “Just how did he do it?” And the woman, as if expecting the question, replied, just as politely, “Every Monday and Thursday afternoon.” It came rushing in upon her with the impact of a hurricane or an earthquake, so that she stumbled and had to steady herself: the massive lie about having to lunch with the boss twice weekly, maintained over so many years. The shock of the lie destroyed all calmness; now she was pure fury, screaming so loudly that her sister and a friend rushed up to hold her. She heard herself screaming, “Liar! Liar!” and the woman, still carrying the toddler and not at all comprehending, said curtly, “I can give you all the proof you want.” She had actually brought the proof – five photographs, one of each child, taken at birth, with the father proudly smiling. He was a good provider for that family too.

  “Julie please –” said Annie holding her tightly, for she was still screaming. She broke free, ran into her room and locked herself in.

  A hush fell upon everyone in the room; the shock had not fully sunk in. Later, for days, weeks, everyone would be talking, in hushed voices, of the secret life of Yeo Tee Ngiam, top civil servant, exemplary husband, who fathered a brood of children during his lunch breaks. But now, all awe and titillation had to be suspended in deference to the poor widow.

  Nobody looked at the dead man, everybody looked at the door behind which the living widow had locked herself in.

  After about half an hour, Annie knocked gently and called, “Julie, Julie, are you all right? Julie, please come out.” They heard odd sounds coming from inside the room, of cupboards and drawers being opened and slammed shut.

  Then the door opened. The alarms of the day surely culminated with this one, of the sight of Julie standing at the doorway in a red, slinky dress. She stood with studied insouciance, challenging everybody with her eyes. There was a ridiculous-looking red flower in her hair. The defiance of red was also in her high-heeled shoes, an evening purse, and in the lipstick and rouge, applied with such maniacal energy as to create a carnival caricature, a character right out of a burlesque. In a sea of decorous mourning colours of black, white, grey and blue, Julie’s red stood out in shrieking revolt.

  Somebody gasped; otherwise there was perfect stillness and silence. Everyone watched intently as Julie briskly strode up to the corpse in the coffin and began talking to it. It was still newly dead, and should be able to hear her. “I was going to throw it away,” she said, her voice trembling in a dangerously rising fever of savage triumph, “but I’m glad I didn’t, Ngiam. And I was going to throw this away, too,” she continued, waving a postcard bearing a U.K. stamp, in front of the corpse’s face, “but I think now I’ll give Ron a reply!”

  She adjusted the sequinned straps of the red dress, looked again at the dead corpse and suddenly began shouting in jubilation, “That’s right, Ngiam! That’s exactly what I want! Now you can look all you want! Go ahead, look all you want!”

  The mistress rushed up crying, “Let me! Let me!”, meaning that she too had seen the dead man’s eyes suddenly open, and wanted to be the one to stroke the eyelids gently and lovingly, as that is the only way to close a dead man’s staring eyes.

  Some of the visitors had also witnessed the happening; they would later confirm with one another, and talk about it endlessly, in hushed tones.

  “You get out of my husband’s way,” said Julie fiercely, pushing the mistress away roughly. “He wants to look at me like this; you leave him to do it.”

  Eight months. A year. Three years. She would wear that colour of her solace for much, much longer.

  Adonis

  Samuel was one of those rare males who combine astonishing good looks with a devotion to the scholarly and intellectual life. It was not just good looks that made the combination unusual; it was the vanity surrounding them. A young and handsome but untidy academic heedless of the unsightly stubble or crumpled shirt would not provoke any surprise; a handsome, meticulously groomed young professional who, in the midst of an absorbing study of Shakespeare or Sartre or Kuhn, studies his face in the mirror for blemishes, most certainly would.

  The vanity came only later in his life. I was his classmate in St. Peter’s Junior College and remember that in those days, he was already good-looking, with his fine features, robust, tall frame, and ready, bright smile. We were active members of the Literary and Drama Society and the fact that the plum role of handsome tragic hero for any school performance invariably went to him, could so easily have gone to his head and made him vain about his looks (I, alas, never had the part of the beauteous heroine, only that of some insignificant serving maid or, dressed as a man and ferociously moustachioed, as some minor villain).

  I think it was X.X. Men’s wear that did the mischief. The company, well-known for its trendy sportswear for men, was looking around for a suitable model to appear in its local advertisements. Samuel was spotted while he was walking along Shenton Way – he had just graduated and had started work in a legal firm. His fresh open countenance, bright eyes, good skin, thick hair, radiant smile and impressive height, made him the perfect model. Amused and flattered, Samuel agreed to feature in the advertisements which appeared in the local newspapers and on cinema and TV screens. Suddenly, his face had become one of the most recognisable in Singapore. Suddenly, pretty girls walking along Orchard Road turned to give him a second, a third look, to smile invitingly. Samuel was dazzled. From that time onwards, he felt an overwhelming need to preserve his good looks, as if he could not let all those pretty girls down. His handsomeness had become a responsibility and a burden.

  At the time, I was among his close friends, ex-classmates who had kept in touch over the years. There were six of us; we called ourselves the Sextet. All bright, ambitious young professionals, we strove to achieve the five C’s that defined the successful Singaporean – Car, Condominium, Cash, Credit Card, Country Club membership – but we were also anxious to go beyond the purely material to something far nobler, more worthy of the human spirit, which we spoke of vaguely as “self-fulfilment” and “self-actualisation” and “individuation”, having a fondness for impressive terms. For Samuel, the ultimate fulfilment, as he had many times confided in me, was to be able to retire early and devote himself to reading, writing, travelling.

  Had I, plain-looking as I was, ever harboured any deep feelings for Samuel? I confess now to some secret wish that I could never have been openly articulated, either because I did not want to acknowledge it myself, or, acknowledging it, knew it was hopeless and therefore best left hidden.

  For the Sextet, comprising exactly three males and three females, all former classmates who had got along marvellously in school and who continued to meet as adults, had settled into that very comfortable state of genuine, open, innocent, fraternity and sorority known as Platonic love.

  It was impossible that any romantic attachment would dev
elop between any pair in the group. Samuel, Clarence and Bala on one side and Mabel, Hsuei Fong and myself on the other – we all came together in a happy, friendly, rambunctious way, meeting in one another’s houses, going out together for meals or drinks, even going on holidays abroad together. If it is true that romance needs mystique, then romance was out for any pair in the Sextet, for there could be no mystique if you had gone to class every day in the same school uniform, agonised over the same homework, seen one another wince in the agony of a poor exam grade or a teacher’s sharp reprimand.

  One of the Sextet, Clarence Foo, paired up with a pretty young teacher in a secondary school and hence could spare little time for the group. But he tried his best to make it for every birthday celebration, that being the strongest tradition in the group. It was understood that with the years, more would find outside partners and drift away. But while we remained unattached, we were determined to keep the strong bonds of friendship that all acknowledged to have brought so much joy and comfort to our personal lives.

  Samuel said to me, “Ariadne (that was his nickname for me), I know we will always be friends.”

  I do not know whether that statement, made like a promise, gave me more pain or pleasure. On the one hand, I was pleased by the loyalty of one so attractive and companionable. On the other hand, I was dismayed by a possible underlying meaning: that because of my plainness of looks, this strikingly handsome, vain man could never be attracted enough to go beyond friendship but would be too generous to pain me by relinquishing the friendship, even after, as seemed inevitable, he found a beautiful partner and drifted out of the group.

  I dreaded the day.

  I knew Samuel casually dated a whole range of pretty women. At one time, he almost got serious with an air stewardess, and at another time with a company secretary, both stunningly attractive women, the kind whose faces and figures would appear on the covers of glossy magazines. I knew Samuel was looking for a woman who combined beauty and brains. Beauty by itself would bore him immeasurably after a while, as his need for intellectual stimulation even in romantic settings was very great indeed. Once, as he told me, he took an extremely beautiful woman for dinner, and was aghast to find out that she was incapable of talking about anything apart from a pet Siamese cat and some perceived insult from a girlfriend. Samuel was looking for a woman endowed with both intellectual and physical attributes, to mirror his own endowments. I could only meet half that requirement. Without being unprepossessing, I was no Venus to team up with Adonis.

  “Adonis,” said Samuel ruminatively. The he smiled. “I like the name. Thanks, Ariadne!”

  He sometimes invited me out for a meal or a drink, coming to fetch me in his Alpha Romeo. Sitting together at one of the fashionable French bistros he favoured, we must have attracted curious attention by the marked contrast in our looks, me in clothes that look dowdy no matter what I do with them, him the gleaming exemplar of ultimate male grooming in clothes, hair, skin-care. If I was monochrome, he was vivid rainbow. This contrast, together with an easy back-slapping bonhomie far removed from the amatory coyness, must have caused curious onlookers to conclude that we simply could not be a regular couple.

  Sometimes I found myself wishing we could be a regular couple. But for now I was content to be just the preferred companion for the intellectual sparring he enjoyed. We shared a love for books, discussion, argument, a free roaming intellectual curiosity that could cover amoeba, Existentialism and Papal Infallibility, all in the course of one quick bistro meal. His mind was always scintillating with ideas which he would call me to talk about. Once we talked about the nature of evil for hours on the phone. We also enjoyed trading favourite quotations from favourite philosophers, usually on the daunting subjects of life and death. My favourite was Socrates’ defiant declaration that ‘the unquestioned life is not worth living’; Samuel’s was Anatole France’s wry, crisp summary of the entirety of human history in one sentence: ‘They were born, they suffered, they died.’ That is, until he read something from Marcus Aurelius and excitedly phoned me about it: “‘Today a drop of semen, tomorrow, a handful of ashes.’”

  It became my favourite quotation too. The sheer violence of the imagery appealed to our sense of melodrama: the startling antithesis of stirring liquid life at one end and the sterile dust of death and negation at the other; the shocking reduction of the human body, in its fullness of size and solidity, to a tiny bit of spatial insignificance. Every time we attended a cremation and watched the large coffin enter the incinerator to emerge as a little urn of ashes, we thought of Marcus Aurelius.

  Samuel said, “Sure, it will be today a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of ashes, but what a lot of living in between!” He loved life, enjoying his work, his friends, his popularity, his books. He took meticulous care of his health, avoiding rich food, jogging every evening, doing work-outs in the gym a few times a week.

  It was as if the handsome face and figure in the X.X. Men’s Wear advertisement had to be preserved at all costs.

  Once at a gathering of the Sextet, he made everyone promise that at his death we would make sure to remind his family not to leave the coffin open. “I want to be remembered as the live Sam, not the cold dead Sam,” he said. It was part of a rather engaging, child-like self-centeredness that made him constantly refer to himself by name. “Samuel Lee Ern Hooi was beautiful in life. He was beautiful in death. This is how I want people to remember me always.” And he showed us his favourite picture of himself, standing under a palm on a beach, the sunshine in his laughing eyes, the wind in his hair, as handsome as any movie star.

  Once he visited a friend who was dying of cancer. The shock of seeing an emaciated, devastated body that had once been the most attractive and vibrant, reinforced his horror of leaving behind a last, ugly image in the minds of surviving friends, family, lovers.

  “Nobody must ever see me like that,” he murmured as he stumbled out of the hospital room, meaning that should he suffer the same misfortune as poor Woon Teng, he would either kill himself, or failing to do that, instruct his family to turn away all visitors.

  In February 1991, just a week before we were due to celebrate his thirty-third birthday for him at a special surprise party that we knew he would enjoy, Samuel died in a car accident in New Zealand. It was a horrible accident, in which the car he was in with somebody was crushed by a truck. Samuel was almost decapitated. My first feeling, on receiving the news, was, curiously, one of great relief: “Thank God for the death.” Permanent disfigurement or reduction to a vegetative state would have been crueller for Samuel.

  Getting together to talk in hushed tones about the terrible tragedy and to comfort his bereaved family, we recollected that Samuel had once said he thought it no bad thing to die young, like the romantic poet Keats, and be forever frozen in a permanence of youth and beauty. We told Samuel’s family members about his favourite photograph which they promptly enlarged and framed, to be used for his funeral, and also for the obituary in the newspaper. Samuel Lee Ern Hooi, aged thirty-two, would be remembered, down the years, in the radiance of his youthful good looks, while we would all grow old and gray and feeble. The mangled corpse, lying in the mortuary in a New Zealand hospital, had been quickly identified by a relative who had gone in place of Samuel’s poor distraught parents, and had been quickly put in a coffin to be taken home. Back in Singapore, as the coffin stood in the funeral parlour, its lid remained resolutely shut, in deference to Samuel’s wish.

  The trauma for me began when we denied Samuel this wish.

  Actually, it was Mabel who started it all. Now I wonder if like me, she had nursed deep, secret feelings for Samuel. She was the most inconsolable among us as we sat together in the funeral parlour through the three nights of the wake. On the last night, before the funeral in the morning, Mabel made an urgent request: she wanted to place her birthday gift for Samuel – she said it was a very special gift – in the coffin, beside the corpse, and she suggested that, in the late hours of the night,
when everybody had left the parlour, we, his closest and dearest friends, should open the coffin for this last farewell of gifts.

  The suggestion, so terrifying at first, began to work on us, assuming a strange, irresistible appeal: we each had bought a gift for Sam, selected with great care, in preparation for the birthday party (I had taken the trouble, through a friend in New York, to get a rare edition of a book of Yeats’ poems, which I knew Sam had wanted very much), and had looked forward to seeing the glow of pleasure that invariably greeted each gift. It would be a fitting farewell from loved friends. At the back of our minds was the unspoken question: could we bare to look upon the face of his corpse?

  Mabel’s wish prevailed. In the stillness of night, by ourselves in the funeral parlour, we lifted the coffin lid and put in the birthday gifts. Mabel was weeping silently. The rest of us were dry-eyed.

  I cannot bear to describe what I saw, except to say, very briefly, that I wished, as soon as I looked at the face, I had not agreed to the decision. Suffice it to say that it was the most terrifying sight in the world for me, made more terrifying by the fact of the near decapitation and the mortician’s shoddy efforts at restoration. Samuel Lee Ern Hooi, handsome young man, with the movie-star looks, had been transformed, by a most cruel death, into the most appalling sight.

  For days, weeks, months, the horrible image haunted me. I tried desperately to erase it by superimposing upon it the remembered image of Samuel alive, of Samuel laughing in sunshine and breeze in the favourite photograph. All to no avail.