by Jeremy Tiang
The girl flinches as if he has smacked her, and the grouped teenagers rustle like they want to say something but do not dare. You people, says the man, you people coming here, we let you into our country and you just take advantage, shouting and making noise and leaving your rubbish anywhere. When will you learn that we have laws here? If you don’t like to obey our rules you can just go back home, go away.
You think you’re so clean, we’re the ones who clean up after you, sneers Neelish, and we all nod because it is true, we have seen how dirty the streets are each day, how the troops of sweepers clean them just before dawn. We see this and think we are lucky to at least be doing our work, making something that will last, not vanishing unremarked with the sunlight.
We are all motionless now, we have faced people like this before, whenever we try to rest in a park or under a block of flats they come and tell us to leave, not to make the place untidy, not to sit so close to their children. But now there truly is nowhere for us to go, and we wait to see what this man will say. He is a child himself, really, and we pity him as his powerlessness dawns on him and he almost weeps to look so helpless in front of his group. I warned you, he says, but the energy has gone out of his voice. He kicks hard at the fire, scattering it, and then almost runs away, his sneakers soot-smeared and his charges flocking after him. Their red T-shirts all have a sturdy cross and the name of a church on the back, marked out in tartrazine yellow.
He’s the same age as my son, says Feroz, I don’t think he’d dare to talk to his own father like that. Neelish drops to his knees and says with an unexpectedly soft voice, Thambi, are you all right? And we see Jairam brushing the embers off his stump and saying, Yes, don’t worry. He wasn’t able to get out of the way, of course. He is bleeding a little, the skin on his wound is so fragile still, but fortunately the fire doesn’t seem to have touched him.
We use any cloth we can find to clean him up, but not the sea water, it’s too dirty. Those people, says Mohan as the hymns start again up the hill, but we shush him because there is no point being angry, no point saying anything nor wondering if they will actually call, if the police will be waiting at the docks when we go back. No one rebuilds the fire and it dies out, and then there is only amber light from the lampposts by the path, and the glimmer of the moon on us.
I’m fine, says Jairam again, and Neelish says, You’d better be, we don’t have any way to get you off this island, you’d better be fine. Jairam is pale from having been in the dormitory for the last four months, on only one-third sick pay and our employer arguing about every step of the medical compensation, and we know that he is a long way from fine, but it serves no purpose to talk about it.
There is a streak of stark white light over the city that turns into a starburst of magenta, and then one of green and yellow. It’s started, says Feroz without enthusiasm. We sit and watch the fireworks as they spiral and dance in the sky, the reason Neelish persuaded us to come to this island, and the view is as impressive as he promised, but they are not for us, and we see now that we were mistaken in thinking we would be able to enjoy them, they are as foreign and untouchable as the gleaming buildings across the bay, as the teenagers now securely behind the fence of their campsite.
The display goes on for about ten minutes, zigzags and circles and arcs. When the last spray has fizzled away, they play more music. At the parade, people will already be starting to leave in order to beat the crowds and on TV the hosts will be screaming, Happy birthday, Singapore! We stay where we are, still sitting, looking at the sky where afterimages linger.
After a long time, Jairam speaks. In the village I come from, he says, every year twenty thirty forty men come to Singapore, they pay so many lakh taka to the agents and disappear, sometimes we never see them again, or they come back and still have debts, but one or two of them will send money home and reappear after many years, so rich, gold teeth and all, the only concrete houses we have belong to people like that, and I thought I could be one of them, someone has to be lucky so why not me, why not take the chance, and now.
He stops there. Neelish looks at him, Neelish who was beside him when the high-tension steel cable snapped and swung free, whipping through Jairam’s leg. We know he still wonders whether he could possibly have moved a little faster, pushed his friend out of the way, maybe flung himself into its path. Nothing more for anyone to say.
And so we remain where we are, one by one lying down on the sand, allowing our eyes to shut. Across the water the celebrations trickle to an end, and even though the lights of the city are as bright as before, something else ends, some energy, as Singaporeans remove themselves and return to their flats, happy to have experienced something positive together and ready for a day of rest, a pause in their busy schedules.
And then we are all sleep, except Neelish, who stands and looks at the sea. Feroz snores raspily and Jairam’s bad leg twitches, but they do not wake, and Neelish takes careful steps towards the water, leaving his slippers neatly on a rock before he steps into it, still warm even this late at night. He feels coarse sand and pebbles beneath his feet and the greasy sheen of dirty water against his skin but continues, his trousers wet and then his shirt, kicking his legs when they no longer reach the bottom.
When Neelish reaches the floating barrier he ducks under it and then is in the open sea, slight currents pulling him this way and that, the rolling black surface just visible. From this angle, the city buildings seem even higher, even further, but he continues striking out towards them, not looking back, his face tight and angry as if the water has offended him. Now he thrashes his arms and legs in an inexpert way, his energy pouring into the ocean, propelling him forward a few inches at a time. The waves swell and tumble, but he keeps his head above them. It is just under a mile to the mainland. Perhaps he makes it.
Sophia’s Party
FOR WEEKS NOW, they’ve seen the enormous flag drift through the sky every weekend, held between two rumbling chinooks. Today, the actual event, seems almost an anticlimax. They spend so much time rehearsing, says Sophia, pulling trays from the oven. My mum was in the SOKA contingent a few years back. My god, every single weekend for months she was in that field waving her yellow scarf.
They just want it to be perfect, says Huixin, who has come round early to help with the preparations. Everyone will be watching on TV. Even more audience than the Taiwanese serials. Super-embarrassing if someone messes up.
Nicholas is on the sofa, where he is supposed to remain. Sophia has forbidden him to help—so he won’t over-exert himself, she says, but really he suspects because she finds him clumsy, always knocking things over or taking his eyes off saucepans for the crucial ten seconds it takes a sauce to burn. He is trying to be careful anyway, although the operation was months ago and he feels almost normal now.
Instead, it is Huixin who dances round the kitchen on noiseless feet, chopping and rinsing as instructed, now and then returning to her wine glass as delicately as a butterfly to nectar. Their domestic helper Veronica has been given the evening off and instructed not to return before midnight—not just so the guests can be sure it was Sophia who cooked, but also because her windowless room off the kitchen is needed as a staging area. At the moment, chips and crudités line up on the bed in the order in which they’ll be served, and a tray of meringue nests on the floor waiting to be filled with fruit and cream.
Sophia’s National Day dinner is becoming a bit of a ritual. This is only their third year at this flat, but already her close friends know to keep the date free. Come round around five, no need to bring anything, well, a bottle of wine if you insist. An informal gathering, they sit around reminiscing about the parties they used to have all the time. Nicholas remembers his friendships at the same age, student pubs and too much cider, but Sophia’s circle seems to have met in parents’ living rooms and dorms instead, centred around food instead of alcohol.
They tried early on to invite both sets of friends, but the guests separated almost immediately, milk and oi
l, the Singaporeans in a closed ring on the sofa set, and Nicholas’s lot on the balcony if they smoked, in the kitchen if they didn’t. Sophia later said, What do you expect, they have nothing in common. Nicholas could reasonably have retorted that his friends that evening came from at least six different countries—but instead, he quietly agreed they should take turns to curate the guest list for future parties.
Sophia has gone to some effort decorating the flat. Red and white pennants dangle from the ceiling, and a large Merlion balloon, tied to the balcony railing, bobs in the evening breeze. You said you didn’t care about all this, protested Nicholas as she roamed the flat with her staple gun. She claimed it was all ironic, but he found himself wondering whether Singapore’s famously monolithic education system hadn’t left its mark on her after all.
It’s time, it’s time, says Huixin, and darts over to put the television on. The parade doesn’t actually start for another hour, but the girls insist on watching every minute of pre-show coverage. A well-groomed woman in a linen jacket sits amongst the white oblongs of a cheap studio set. She says, Hello, I’m Diana Ser and the girls chorus, Hello, Diana! The stirring music settles down, and Diana’s perfectly made-up face shifts and tautens just the right amount to connote excitement as she tells them what’s in store this evening.
They angle the screen so they can see it from the kitchen, and return to work, laughing like schoolgirls as they chop onions. Do you remember, says Huixin, and wades into a long story about their time in college, sharing an apartment in their sophomore year, adrift without a meal plan for the first time. There are many culinary disaster stories from this phase of their lives. Now Huixin recounts the occasion Sophia’s baked mushrooms caused the entire building to be evacuated. It wasn’t my fault at all, Sophia still insists. American fire alarms are far too sensitive. They weren’t even slightly charred.
From the sofa, Nicholas throws his eyes out of focus so the thin figures in the kitchen could be college girls still. He often wishes he’d known Sophia then—what he thinks of as her pure state, clean, not yet plated over with experience—although there’s little chance she’d have been attracted to him-at-nineteen. Like many Englishmen, he is mildly fascinated by the glamour of American universities, and sometimes imagines Sophia in her tight college sweaters, surrounded by sleek blondes in cut-off jeans and frisky cheerleader outfits.
As if they have burst from his fantasy, a convoy of girls in short skirts tumble onto the field, waving pom-poms in complicated unison. Diana’s voice explains that this is a clip of secondary school students rehearsing, as they have been for months, for their part in the event. Pulling back to the studio, she introduces their teacher, an excitable thirtysomething with receding hair and silver-rimmed glasses. My girls are so enthusiastic, he says. I have to shoo them home after practice so their studies don’t suffer.
He is followed by a succession of behind-the-scenes volunteers, the make-up artists, the puppet-makers, the choreographers, some shown in their workshops or studios, others sharing Diana’s sofa, explaining what the occasion means to them, how they have worked as a team, as a family to achieve this. Nicholas is as patriotic as the next man, but he finds such displays discomfiting, mawkish. Still, the broadcast is handsomely produced, stirring images of young people rehearsing dance steps against the setting sun, of an old man correcting his granddaughter’s fingering on the sitar.
And in between, the camera pulls back to the seating stand, where rows of people wave balloons, oddly blank-faced but apparently determined to have a good time. Tickets are free, but must be balloted for months in advance, and every year there are rumours of them changing hands on Gumtree or Craigslist for hundreds of dollars. Can this really be? But people will buy anything these days.
The government arrives. Huixin cheers, her little flag held high. The Ministers parade in, all in dumpy red-and-white polo shirts and slacks, what Sophia calls “tragic-casual”. They wave at the crowd and look around for their seats. The Prime Minister is in an odd confection, vermillion triangles slashed across with cream. He’s probably wearing some local fashion designer, says Huixin knowingly. Like Michelle Obama.
And now, the announcer’s voice booms across the field, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Ladies and gentlemen, the Red Lions! A trio of fighter jets appears over the city. As they zoom closer, the doorbell rings. Not during the Red Lions, screeches Sophia, her eyes glued to the screen as she walks backwards to the front door. She lets in two people and shushes them, Red Lions, shh. One by one, men in scarlet jumpsuits are disgorged from the planes and tumble gracefully onto the narrow strip of grass. They all land feet first, running from momentum, somehow graceful even while trailing yards of silk behind them.
I don’t know why you get so excited, it’s exactly the same every year, says Huixin, when the last parachutist has made his drop.
But just imagine if one year someone landed in the wrong place or something, wouldn’t you want to see it?
Huixin snorts. That will never happen. Nothing ever goes wrong on National Day. Do you know, they even seed the clouds the week before so it won’t rain on the big day?
Hi, says one of the new guests. I’m Brian. His round, pleasant face is slightly pitted from acne. He holds a firm hand out to Nicholas. Oh, sorry, don’t you guys know each other? says Sophia, stricken, as if she has failed some kind of test. No—Nicholas has met the wife, Joy, several times, but this is the first time Brian is joining her. Usually only one of us can come out, because of the baby, he explains earnestly, but tonight my mother volunteered to take care of her.
Can we help? says Joy, but Sophia waves her away, already on her way back to the kitchen. It’s under control. She mashes olives into tapenade while Huixin hollows out little cucumber boats ready to be filled. On the counter in front of them sit a row of cookbooks, Jamie Oliver and River Cottage and Mrs Violet Oon, all open to the right pages and covered in meticulously detailed post-it notes. Sophia’s dinner parties are run with the military precision of a parade, and she has worked out the timing of each dish with breaks in the schedule for her favourite bits of the show.
Marooned on the sofa with Brian and Joy, Nicholas is saved from the need for conversation by the next item, the army marching in. This is Second Armour Brigade, bellows the announcer. This is Sixth Division Engineers. Watching from her perch, Diana says how proud she is of these brave men, defending our nation. The propaganda parade, Nicholas snorts, then wonders if he has made a faux pas from the unyielding faces of the other two. Later, Sophia will inform him that Brian is fiercely loyal to his unit from National Service, and is perennially disappointed not to be chosen for the parade as part of his reservist duties.
With the army installed in rectangular blocks across the field, the choir file into their tiered stand. A tiny girl, perhaps eight, steps forward and begins the verse, a capella for a few bars before the band gently comes in underneath her. The other singers join her for the chorus. It is that song, the theme song of the year that has been playing everywhere, even spewing out of the new video-screen bus stop ads, a blandly memorable tune. This light is mine, this island light, warbles Huixin, a semi-tone flatter than the choir. Pace yourself, advises Sophia. We’ll be hearing it a few times tonight.
The captain shouts a command in Malay and the troops begin moving again. The camera picks out their firm arms, their rigid faces, and Nicholas feels his crisp European disdain of military matters melting around the edges. He thinks of himself as a pacifist, above the tinsel pomp of soldiers on parade, yet there is something seductively virile about these men in uniform, the regularity of them.
Part of this is chagrin at his own body letting him down. He is back at work now, and even though nobody mentions the operation, there is a definite sense of being on light duties, even sidelined. The banking world is not one to tolerate weakness, and physical deficiency of any kind receives minimal sympathy. Like a slowly bleeding wound, it only encourages the sharks to circle.
The president appears, in a grey suit, white hair slicked back. He stands awkwardly as the National Anthem plays and the flag is raised. Nicholas looks around the flat, but none of the others show signs of rising to their feet, standing to attention. The parade commander raises a sword to his face, almost kissing it, and shouts, Mr President, the parade is form up ready for inspection, SIR. Nicholas winces at the bad grammar, before reminding himself not to be such a neo-colonialist.
For a moment, it is like being in a military dictatorship. The president, in a follow-spot, walks at a stately pace down the rows of soldiers, who hold their rifles high, bayonets unsheathed. In the bay beyond the floating stage, gunboats fire into the air. On the giant screens at the back of the stage, a montage plays, telling the story of Singapore’s army, boys leaving for National Service, fathers and sons serving in the same unit.
When the president has finished his slow progress, constantly stopping to examine an insignia or share a few words with a second sergeant, he is escorted back to his seat. More orders are shouted, and a line of men raise their rifles into the air and fire, one after another, a string of pops and explosions. Nicholas feels a shiver of unease, more at the cheers of the crowd than the noise—how can anyone listen to rifles being cocked and fired without even a whisper of terror? But the other faces in the room are rapt, Brian cocking a finger as if he too held a firearm.
Then the troops are marching off the field and just like that, the show of force is over. It is dusk by now, and illuminated screens slide onto the stage while neon-bright lasers slice through the darkening sky. Sophia skips in from the kitchen with a tray of Doritos and dip, and when the doorbell goes, she pirouettes to answer it. The music shifts from Sousa marches to a soupy mix of national songs as the performers begin to file on, all brightly made-up in neoprene costumes.
