by Jeremy Tiang
Trondheim
I WAS ON the overnight train from Oslo to Trondheim when I heard another Singaporean voice, which took me by surprise. I had already spent a week in Scandinavia without encountering any of my countrymen. It might have been too early in the year for the inhabitants of a tropical island to venture this far north—it was barely spring, and there was still snow on the ground.
The voice belonged to a young woman of about my age, twenty-seven, who was trying to persuade the conductor that her ticket was temporarily missing. She had a great deal of charm, but was obviously lying. Realising he was unlikely to let her off, she switched to explaining with great fluency that her credit card had been stolen the day before, so there was no use asking her for money.
I hesitated—it was very inconvenient, I enjoyed my solitude and besides, had just come to an exciting point in my book—but finally decided I would have to help, and called to the conductor. I knew very little Norwegian, and his English was far from perfect, but we understood each other well enough for me to indicate that I wanted to pay for her ticket—billett—and hand over a large amount of kroner. Train tickets always cost so much more when you haven’t been organised enough to book them in advance.
After that, she felt she had to come and sit with me, even though there were a great many empty seats in the carriage, and I couldn’t think of a polite way of asking her not to. She had very little luggage, just a small bag that she swung gracefully into the overhead rack before slouching next to me. She had long hair that stopped me from seeing her face properly.
There was a pause, longer than I would consider polite—so long, in fact, that I had almost gone back to my book—before she said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I could feel my voice was a little stiff, and tried to sound friendlier. After all, she was a pretty girl. “Where did you lose your ticket?”
“I never had one.” I had suspected this, but felt a little angry that she wasn’t even bothering to pretend.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she continued. “I know you’re being a gentleman, but I thought, what could they do? They surely wouldn’t stop the train just to make me get off.”
“It’s not a non-stop train. Didn’t you look at the timetable? There’s a stop at Lillehammer, at 3.07am.”
“Lillehammer!” she laughed. “Why not? I’ve never been to Lillehammer.”
I decided she was a bit crazy, and turned to look out of the window at the snow, which was falling again, in heavy drifts. I knew we must be passing beside a fjord, but it was too dark to see anything except the clumps of falling white, skewed by the wind. We were only just outside Oslo, yet it felt like the end of the world.
Maybe she felt some of the dull loneliness that Norway seemed to be swathed in, or maybe she thought I was angry to have bought a ticket for someone who didn’t care where she went, but she started to explain that she’d lost her Rough Guide, and was happy to cross the country by boat and train, looking at pine forests. “Why Trondheim?” she suddenly asked.
“I’m just staying there for a day,” I replied. “A chalet in the mountains outside the city. I want to do some skiing, and then another train further north.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Reindeer. The Northern Lights.”
“Why?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Surely no one has ever needed a reason to see the Northern Lights.
“So which are you?” She looked at me appraisingly, her eyes narrowed. “Singaporean or Malaysian?”
“Singaporean.”
“I thought so. Civil service?”
I nodded. “Engineer.”
“You don’t have to tell me. Glasses and checked shirt. Plus you have two ballpoint pens in your shirt pocket.”
I laughed, trying not to sound uneasy.
“You’ve studied here?” she said, making me feel uncomfortable with the way she was looking at me, as if I were a specimen. I felt like I was once again in the army, and everything important about me could be deciphered from the little tags sewn onto my uniform.
“You’ve studied here,” she repeated, as a statement this time.
“In Norway?”
“In Europe.” She gestured impatiently, taking in the whole continent. “Let me guess. London, Imperial College?”
“Wrong,” I said, childishly pleased that she was capable of making a mistake. “Munich.”
“Government scholar?”
I nodded.
“Your German must be very good.”
“It’s all right,” I said, trying to be modest. “I lived there for four years. That’s why I can speak a bit of Norwegian, they’re quite similar languages. And you?”
“The same.” She smiled, a sad smile that made her look older. “Singaporean, government scholar. Leeds, English.”
This didn’t surprise me; she had the look of someone who read a lot of storybooks. “So you’re not an engineer.”
She laughed as if the idea was ridiculous. “No, I’m a teacher. They make all the English grads become teachers.”
This was probably true, but then I couldn’t imagine what else you would do with an English degree. She didn’t look like a teacher, or rather she looked like the teacher who was different from all the others, the one who wore fashionable clothes to school and once a year went bowling with her form class. I decided that all the boys in her class had a small crush on her, and all the girls went to her for boyfriend advice.
Singaporean etiquette suggested that I should ask her which junior college she had gone to, especially as we were about the same age and probably had friends in common, but that conversational route seemed unspeakably boring just then, so instead I asked her how long she had been travelling.
“About ten days, I think.” Her brow wrinkled, as if she was searching her memory. “I wanted to go somewhere cold. I found some cheap fares to Germany on the Internet, and I kept heading north. I didn’t realise that everything here would be so expensive.”
I nodded with feeling, having just paid the equivalent of fourteen Singapore dollars for a sandwich at the train station.
“And I wanted to see a fjord,” she said. “I thought it would be like an Ibsen play. Pine forests, despair, cold water. Trolls in the mind.”
“I know Ibsen,” I volunteered. “The Doll’s House. About women’s rights?”
She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn’t heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes. Trying to reach safer ground, I asked, “Which of his plays do you like best?”
She paused before replying. A teacher’s pause, designed to make sure the class was quiet and paying attention. “When I was in Oslo, I went to see a play at the National Theatre. It was by Ibsen, Little Eyolf.”
“In Norwegian?”
“Yes. It doesn’t matter, I know the text well enough to follow it. It’s about a young couple who have a crippled child, and they blame each other for the accident that caused his injury. They still love each other, but she’s from a rich family, and he’s obsessed with his work, so they’re beginning to drift apart. Then a strange woman comes to visit them. She lures their son into a fjord and he drowns.”
“What happens to the parents in the end?”
“They get on with their lives, somehow.”
“That sounds a bit tragic.”
“He didn’t write cheerful plays. Life isn’t like that.”
“That’s why I seldom go to the theatre. So depressing. Why not cheer up a bit? I prefer comedies.”
Again, she looked at me like I was an idiot, as if she was tired of explaining things to me. I suddenly felt very angry. Of course she knew more about plays than I did; she was a girl, and a literature teacher. If we were talking about torques and pressure gradients then she would be the one to look stupid.
“I feel like Little Eyolf sometimes. That’s why it’s my favourite play; I feel like I’m c
rippled, and nobody understands what I really need. Sometimes I think I should drown myself.”
I was starting to realise what kind of girl she was. “You come from a wealthy family, right?”
“We’re okay.” She looked a bit startled. Maybe I had changed the subject too abruptly.
“And you live in a big house. Sixth Avenue?”
“Toh Tuck. How did you know?”
I nodded, and didn’t bother to reply. I had met a lot of girls like her. The pretty ones in the arts stream who giggled and whispered to each other during their Maths lectures, if they went to Maths lectures. In their spare time, they read a lot of Sylvia Plath and wrote indifferent poetry for the school magazine. Knowing where to pigeonhole her comforted but also puzzled me; girls like that don’t end up in faraway countries, scamming train fare off strange men.
She looked annoyed that I wasn’t answering her question, then threw her hair back and pouted in a way someone must once have told her was quirky. “Do you travel a lot?” was her next line of attack. I felt like I must be gaining status in her eyes; she sounded like she was really interested in me.
“Whenever I can,” I replied. “I have a lot of annual leave, and I’ll lose it if I don’t take it.”
“Most people don’t go so far away. Everyone I know just goes to Langkawi.”
“I want to see every country in the world before I die. I have a big map on my wall at home, and whenever I go to a country I colour it green with highlighter pen. Anyway, aren’t you quite far from home yourself?”
“It’s different for me.” I thought this was patronising of her, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t really think of Singapore as home anymore. I don’t really know where I belong, but I like to be far away.”
I could tell that she thought she was being controversial, but I’ve met a lot of people like her, especially amongst overseas scholars. Some people spend a few years living outside Singapore and then think that gives them the right to criticise everything. I’ve seen them talking and laughing during the national anthem, making fun of the National Day Parade. Normally I try to avoid these people, but something made me snap at her, more fiercely than I had intended, “Why do you bother living there if it’s not your home?”
“I’m bonded,” she said. “You must be too. I’ll have to keep working for them for a few more years. I don’t have a choice.”
That was true, of course. I had forgotten that she had said she was a scholar.
“It’s a prison,” she went on. “I can apply for a transfer to a different school, but I can’t get away. I’ve asked my parents to buy me out, but they need to pay for my brother’s studies. He’s doing Medicine in Australia.”
“It’s not so bad being bonded. I quite enjoy it. It’s a nice job, the salary’s quite okay, and it means I don’t have to think. Why spend time worrying what to do? Jobs are all the same anyway. Just work hard and you’ll have time to enjoy life afterwards.”
She sighed. “I don’t mind teaching. In fact, I really like the kids, some of them are my friends on Facebook. But I don’t like not having a choice about what I do.”
“You knew the conditions when you signed that bond. Didn’t you read the deed? Why would you expect them to pay for your studies and then not get anything in return?”
“I was eighteen. Who on earth can think long-term at that age? I just wanted to get out.” This must have been an argument she had used effectively before, because she was looking at me as if expecting me to nod and agree. “Do you think little girls dream about becoming teachers when they grow up?”
Something had been bothering me for a while—a vague sense that her story did not quite fit—and now I realised what it was. “You’re a teacher.”
She nodded. “GP and English Lit. And I’m in charge of the cross-country team.” I looked at her dubiously, and she blushed. “I used to like running. Anyway the new teachers always get the unpopular CCAs.”
“If you’re a teacher, what are you doing here?”
She tried to laugh, but I think she knew I’d worked it out. “What, who says teachers cannot go to Norway?”
“You said you’ve been travelling for ten days now, but the March holidays are only one week long. How come you’re still here? Don’t you have to go back and teach?” I realised I was pointing my finger at her and quickly lowered it, in case it looked like I was accusing her of something.
“I’m not supposed to be here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was supposed to go back four days ago. Nobody knows where I am now; I haven’t turned on my hand phone or checked my e-mail. They probably think I’m dead.” She laughed her crazy laugh again, and I wondered if she had actual mental problems. “No, they probably think I’ve run away. Everyone in the school knows how much I hate it there. I’m always complaining in staff meetings. I don’t mean to make a fuss, but they provoke me.”
“You’ve run away?”
“AWOL teacher!” She was still making funny noises that could have been laughter, or small cries of pain.
“Are you in trouble?” I found myself saying, aware that I was talking like a character from a film. She didn’t seem to hear me.
“I was in Germany first of all. I did A-Level German, so I thought it would be a good place to start. I took the train from one town to another, without any plan, just drifting. When I started to run out of money I knew I should go back, and my week was up anyway. I was in Hamburg, standing by the harbour, looking out towards the Baltic Sea. The sky there seems too big, all sunset, it made me feel like I was lost, like I was nothing. So instead of going home, I bought a ticket on the ferry to Oslo, and then I couldn’t afford a hotel so I thought I’d try my luck with this train.”
“Are you going to go back?”
“I don’t know.” She looked impatiently at me. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to sit under a bridge and kill myself.”
“It’s not that,” I protested, annoyed that she found me so easy to read. “Your parents must be worried.”
She frowned, but was saved from having to reply by all the lights going out just then. The conductor must have finished checking tickets for the whole train, and now we were settling down for the night. Around us the other passengers were yawning, putting their books away, finishing conversations.
We reclined our seats, and opened the hospitality packs we’d been given. These contained a blanket, ear plugs, eye mask and inflatable pillow. I tucked myself in, but didn’t use the earplugs or mask—I had the feeling she still had more of her story to tell. My glasses were tucked into my shirt pocket, so she was now just a blurred silhouette against the greater blur of forests rushing past the train windows.
For a while we stayed like this, silent, just the thrum of wheels and sharp splatters as bursts of snow landed against the windows. The carriage seemed to become a single, warm, breathing mass as we sliced through the night, the only human beings for a hundred miles. I felt myself sinking through layers of something dark and thick as people pulled down their window shades and even the moonlight waned.
When she spoke again, her voice seemed deeper, as if she was pulling at something within herself that didn’t want to come loose. “I’ve travelled to so many countries. My family likes taking holidays; ever since I was a small girl, we would go somewhere different every year. Australia or Canada or Korea. One year we went all over Africa. Then when I was a student, I spent all my money inter-railing, all over Europe. I always feel like I need to escape.”
I was now starting to feel sorry for her. “You shouldn’t run away.” I tried to make my voice gentle, so it wouldn’t sound like I was scolding her. “Why don’t you tell your parents how you feel? If you’re really so unhappy, I’m sure they’ll help you.”
“I talked to them. They told me not to be silly; nowadays you should be grateful that you have a job. Teaching is an iron rice-bowl.”
“Maybe you can ask MOE to transfer you to a different school, sometim
es a change of environment can make you feel better.”
“Can you find a school where I don’t have to go for three-hour staff meetings, or spend all my time filling up forms, and all the other teachers don’t tell me how I should behave?”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad. Maybe you just need to change your thinking?”
She turned away from me a little. “Why do men always think they need to have an answer? It’s okay. I don’t expect you to solve my problems for me.”
We fell into silence again. I had never met a girl like this before; she seemed contained in herself, but behind the stillness she was an open wound. I didn’t know what to say to her. Normally when I go out with girls, we talk about movies or food, but I didn’t think she would be interested in these things.
Then her voice came again. “You must think I’m very selfish, only talking about myself. Tell me your problems, Calvin Tham.”
I wondered how she knew my name—for a moment it seemed like she could really read my mind—then remembered that it was written on the side of my book. I hate people stealing my books; if you write your name down the side, then it’s on every page. She must have taken note of it earlier on.
“What kind of engineer are you?”
“I trained as an electrical engineer, but to be honest, I haven’t used a lot of that. I seem to be doing mostly admin work.”
“Where are you?”
“Ministry of Manpower.”
“You tell people what to do.”
“In a way, but it’s not that simple.” I started to explain to her exactly what my job entailed, but the air between us seemed to solidify, and I realised I wasn’t sure myself what I did. I tried to remember my working day, but Singapore seemed unaccountably foreign, like a previous life. I had only been sitting at my desk ten days ago, but it was a blur—I didn’t know where the last few years had gone. What did I do when I got into work every day? I turned on my computer, checked my messages, then—what? For the next few hours, what? Day after day clicked by in activities I could no longer list. Perhaps I had always been on this gently creaking train in the dark, all my life, and Singapore had only been a dream. At this moment, anything seemed possible.
