But he was wrong. One day when Zul was cleaning his canvas shoes at home, Shekhar called.
‘Aye, Zul,’ he said, ‘Where are you? Why aren’t you coming to work?’
‘Boss, I thought you didn’t want me work with you after what—’
‘Aye, what gave you the idea? Come to work from tomorrow, lah. OK?’
‘OK, boss,’ he said.
‘You are still upset about the things I said to your face the other day, eh?’
Zul didn’t say anything. There was a beat of silence over the phone.
‘Never mind, lah,’ Shekhar said. ‘People say things when angry. Understand or not?’
‘Hmmm …’
‘By the way’, Shekhar said, ‘a maid had come looking for you.’
‘Which maid?’
‘Don’t know, lah,’ he said. ‘A plump-sized one. Said lives in Block 77. She was saying you saved her job.’
‘Is that so?’ he said, his heart suddenly swelling with happiness.
Next day, after work, when he went over to the playground, he had a pair of masala dosas wrapped in brown paper.
‘Who is it for?’ Shekhar had asked him when he was leaving the counter.
‘For a friend.’
‘The plump one?’ he joked. Zul had got out of the shop without answering Shekhar, just throwing him a mysterious smile.
Melly came running to him when she saw him approaching the playground. ‘Where have you been … Zul?’ she said.
So, she knew his name. Must be Shekhar; otherwise, how would she know his name?
‘Ummm …’ he searched for appropriate words. ‘I was away for a few days.’
‘I’ve been looking for you for days,’ she said, her eyes dancing with joy after having found him. ‘Thanks for your help the other day. You saved the boy and my job.’
Blushing, he sat on a bench next to her, passing the food packet. ‘What is this?’
‘A little gift for you.’
She accepted the gift with a smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said. He could see her stubby finger poke around the warm packet, but she did not open it in front of him.
He had left soon after handing her the gift. While he was seated next to her, he had felt his body shaking with desire, and not knowing what to do with the heat numbing his mind, he had said, ‘I’ve some errands to run. So, I will take your leave now.’
He could read the disappointment in Melly’s eyes. Still, he walked away. He had his own castles to build in the air.
The next day, they met at the playground again. She thanked him for the dosas. ‘Zul, I love that Indian food. Bring it for me everyday, will you?’
‘Why? Are we friends?’ he said.
‘Of course, we are,’ she said, putting her hand in his. Melly’s fellow maids giggled at a distance seeing the two shaking hands.
From that day onwards, bringing a gift in folded-up paper became a routine for Zul—sometimes he would bring dosas, sometimes vadas and idlis. The good thing was that Shekhar did not mind Zul’s wrapping the food items for his girl.
‘How is the romance going, lover boy?’ Shekhar would tease him.
He didn’t mind his employer’s joke and would leave the stall with a bowed head.
Day after day, he kept bringing gifts for Melly. On the days she would not come to the playground, he would go to a leafy glade by the Whampoa canal and gobble down the soft and warm dosas or idlis, daydreaming about her, remembering her smile, her talks, her gestures.
One day, she brought him a return gift: a T-shirt. It was yellow, with a picture of Superman on it.
Accepting the gift, tears welled up in Zul’s eyes, which he tried to hide from her. But she caught him averting his eyes. ‘Oh Zul, you are so sentimental,’ she said. The remark comforted him, allowing him to let the tears flow down and form a small delta under his eyes.
He could not stop crying because he did not remember anyone giving him a gift, not since the days when he was a child. His father brought gifts for him: clothes, small toys, sweets from the hawker stalls. But his father was long dead.
‘Thank you for the gift,’ he said, choking with emotion.
One month after that, they had met on a Sunday and she had spent the whole day with him, walking around Geylang and then Toa Payoh. He told her everything about himself: his dead father, his dead little brother, his ailing mother who was a cook, and his security guard big brother Ali. She also told him about her dead father in Indonesia, her seamstress mother and her school-going little sister, Tissie. In the evening, before going back, she had kissed him on his cheek. ‘I want to marry you, Zul,’ she declared.
First, he could not believe her. But then, when he realised what he had heard, he felt as if he were a cup of bland, warm water into which Melly had thrown a spoonful of sugar.
He didn’t know how to reply to her or what to say.
‘You are kidding, wa?’ he said, kissing her. ‘I would do anything to get married to you.’
‘Then marry me,’ she said, throwing her plump figure against him. It was either the weight of her body, her tight hug, or the ache of happiness in his heart that made him swoon. His head on her shoulder, he saw a small girl running after a balloon in the park. The red balloon was going up in the air, away from the girl’s grasp. He felt as if he were that balloon, full of the air of happiness.
The following day, he confided in Yousuf—his Friday prayer kaki. Yousuf worked in an office opposite the hawker centre where Zul worked and often came to eat his lunch at Shekhar’s. ‘I’m a social worker’; that’s what he had said in his introduction to Zul. He was a tall, lanky man with a kind smile. There was something honest and humane about him that gave Zul the confidence to confide in him.
‘It’s good that you are in love, Zul,’ Yousuf said, smoke curling forth from his mouth and nostrils. ‘But yours is a tricky situation.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘The girl, Melly, is a foreign worker, a domestic maid, isn’t she?’
‘That’s true. So?’
‘Don’t you know that you can’t marry a foreign maid just like that?’
‘Really, brother?’
‘Yes, foreign maids here are not allowed to marry Singaporeans or even permanent residents. They can’t even get pregnant while they are working here.’
‘Tch,’ Zul sighed, wringing his hands. ‘What to do, brother? Just tell me what to do and I will do anything to make the marriage possible.’
‘You will have to get government permission for this.’
‘Gahmen permission?’ Zul said with disappointment. He stayed away from gahmen as far as possible. But now he had to deal with the gahmen.
‘Yes, gahmen permission,’ Yousuf said, patting his back. ‘You need to get that. Is she educated?’
‘Who?’
‘The girl you want to marry.’
‘Yes, more than me. She is half a graduate, she went to college in her country.’
‘That is good,’ Yousuf said, drawing on his cigarette.
Zul looked on at him like an innocent pup, waiting for his lord’s command.
‘Not to worry, brother. I will write you a petition, a letter, and you go and meet the local MP.’
‘Who?’
‘MP. The Member of Parliament of your constituency, the guy you had voted for.’
‘I don’t even remember who I had voted for. I think that fellow lost the election.’
‘Never mind.’
‘Where?’
‘What where?’
‘Where to meet this MP? Go to Parliament or what?’
‘No, no, brother,’ Yousuf said, touching his hair. ‘In one of his Meet-The-People sessions.’
‘Where?’
‘Meet-The-People’s session!’ Yousuf repeated himself, taking a hard puff. ‘That’s where people go with their problems to their local political leader. You’ve never been to one?’
‘I don’t remember going to one.’
‘Anyway, you d
on’t worry,’ Yousuf said, crushing the cigarette butt in a makeshift ashtray made of a used can of Milkmaid. ‘In a day or two, I will bring you a written petition and you go and meet your local MP. OK, brother?’
Zul had nodded his head, but he was already feeling uncertain about this whole meeting with the MP business. He wanted to marry a girl and that’s a simple thing that every man does. Then why should the gahmen come in between the marriage of two people, he thought.
A few days later, with great trepidation, he went to meet the MP and gave his assistant the petition, a page of typed gibberish that he could not read, but he trusted Yousuf to have captured the pain of his heart in it. The MP had taken the sheet from him with a smile and put it away in a file.
‘The government will let you know about it,’ the MP’s assistant said when Zul asked him what would happen next.
‘You mean a letter would come to me?’
‘A letter or a call,’ said the man, dismissing him.
Weeks passed, but he did not hear from the gahmen. He was seeing Melly everyday and they both talked about the letter from the government that never arrived. They dreamed about their future together, about their home, their kids—it all filled his heart with a desire to live his life that so far, had seemed so meaningless to him.
Weeks turned into months. He tried to see the MP many times during the Meet-the-People sessions, but every time, access was denied him. ‘You’ve given your application, and you will hear from the government.’ That’s all he was told by the MP’s assistant. His cup of patience was almost empty.
Following Yousuf’s advice, he decided to meet the MP one last time. He had decided that he would fall at the politician’s feet and ask for his help in his matter.
On the evening he was going to meet the MP, Melly called him.
‘What are you doing, Zul?’ she asked him.
‘Getting ready,’ he said, tying the laces of his shoes.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To meet the MP.’
‘Be careful, Zul,’ she said, her voice touching his ears like a soft feather. ‘Be polite, don’t lose your temper in front of the MP or any other officer, OK? I know you are angry. There has been no response, but you don’t show your anger. You show you are a responsible person, that you want to start a family …’
‘OK,’ he blurted.
‘Must call me later to tell what happened, OK?’ she said.
‘Sure, lah, darling,’ Zul said, getting out of his house.
Melly whispered a kiss into Zul’s ears before ending the call. Then, with quick steps, he walked towards the elevator.
Then a thought clouded his face and he went back to the house. Like a man possessed, he went through the contents of his drawer in his room. His facial muscles relaxed when he found the object that he was looking for and carefully tucked it into his socks. With a song on his lips, he strutted out of the HDB block.
The MP, wearing an untucked white shirt and a pair of white trousers, was making a small speech when Zul entered the room. The room was full of people, the MP standing up in a corner of the room. Zul stood at the back of the crowd, near the door. He felt uncomfortable in the room. The crowds, especially of educated people, made him nervous.
‘With the new policy of active aging, we want to change the dynamics and the lifestyle of our silver population …’ the politician declared. He was speaking in English mixed with Mandarin, and whatever he was saying made little sense to Zul.
When the MP’s speech ended, people clapped. Zul joined them in the clapping. The MP, a balding man in his late forties, pursed his lips in a smile, shook his head and looked at the crowd triumphantly. Then he took a seat on a chair and visitors, in groups of two or three, mostly aged Indians, Malays and Chinese, started approaching him with letters and papers in their hands.
When he tried to leap at the MP, jumping the queue, a man dressed in white stopped him. ‘Wait for your turn, will you,’ he growled.
‘It might be too late, sir, if I do.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The last time I came to meet the man, I was asked to wait, and by the time my turn came, it was time for him to go somewhere else.’
‘It must be some emergency if he had to go like that last time, you understand? He will meet everybody who comes to meet him.’
‘I must meet him, sir,’ he tried to sound as sweet as possible. ‘It is an emergency for me. I’ve been trying to meet him for weeks …’
‘Then wait for your turn,’ the man shouted. ‘Wait. Order. Discipline. That’s how business is conducted here.’
The high-pitched oration of the man’s voice caught the MP’s attention. He looked at the two fellows engaged in a verbal duel.
‘Hold it,’ the MP said, ‘and come here.’
‘Wa!’ Zul was mad with joy, his prayers were going to be answered. He gave a condescending look to the man he was quarrelling with and walked over to the MP.
‘Haven’t I seen you before?’ the MP asked him in a flat voice. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Sir, I had given my application some months ago,’ be blurted.
‘Application for what?’ the MP said, looking at him quizzically. Then he looked at his assistant.
His assistant whispered something into the MP’s ear. A smile spread on the politician’s face.
‘So, you are the man,’ the MP said, looking him up and down as if he were sizing up a man whose gumption outstripped his calibre. ‘The man in love with an Indonesian maid?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very well. What do you do?’
‘I work in a restaura—’
‘Yes, I know what you do for a living. You are a cleaner,’ he said, emphasising the word ‘cleaner’. ‘My question was only rhetorical.’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘Never mind,’ the MP said, looking intently at him. ‘Look, you are a cleaner, and you want to marry a foreign maid …’
‘Yes, sir, I want to start a family,’ Zul repeated the line that was taught to him by Melly. ‘Together, we will start a family.’
He remembered her words. ‘You must say to the MP “I want to start a family.” The government wants more babies born in Singapore, understand?’ Yousuf had approved the line.
‘But how?’ the MP asked him. ‘How do you want to start a family? Do you know what it takes to start a family.’
‘Hard work, sir. Both of us are working …’
‘Hah,’ the MP threw his hands in the air in exasperation. ‘What future do you have? A cleaner and a maid. What future, eh? I cannot ask the government to change rules for you.’
‘But I must marry Melly, sir,’ Zul cried, tears welling up his eyes, his voice cracking.
‘But why a foreign maid?’ the MP shouted, his face red with anger. ‘Can’t you find a woman in Singapore? We’ve plenty of women here who can’t find …’
‘Because I love her, sir’ he cried, falling at the feet of the MP. ‘And she loves me.’
The scene between Zul and the MP interested everyone in the room. A real life drama, a rarity in Singapore, better than the farce on the local TV channels. Someone took out his smartphone and began to shoot the sequence—good material for YouTube.
While Zul sobbed at the MP’s feet, he felt a hundred pairs of eyes boring into his back. But all he could see then was an image of Melly—she was being pulled away from him by a group of monsters dressed in white. She was crying helplessly and the only person who could help her was Zul. And for Zul, the only person who could help him was this man on whose feet he was hunched over.
‘Look at you,’ the MP said. ‘Today, you want me to help you marry a foreign maid. Tomorrow, you will come asking for some HDB flat, then you will come asking for financial help, then you will have children. What will you do … homeless, jobless? Pitch a tent at East Coast Park? How will you afford a good education for your children? What will they become when they grow up? This vicious circle of poverty will go
on.’
There was silence in the room and everyone hung on every word that was coming out of the MP’s mouth.
Then he heard the MP laugh like a hyena. ‘This man here says he loves a maid,’ the MP cackled. ‘Love! Ha ha ha! Don’t you know that romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the poor? Can somebody tell him that?’ A pause for effect, and then he continued, ‘Don’t you have a sense of responsibility? How come a maid and a cleaner want to start a family?’
While he sat curled at the MP’s feet, the MP’s laughter triggered something inside him. Click; something snapped in his brain’s machinery, like the popping of a grenade’s clip. ‘Don’t the poor have a chance at love?’ he wanted to shout. ‘Don’t they have the right to raise a family? Why must the world and its happiness belong to the rich only?’
His body began to shiver with rage. His mind started whirring, things began to appear blurry before his eyes. He saw monsters pulling Melly away from him and a man in white seemed to laugh at his helpless situation.
His hands reached for the folded object in his socks. And as the MP bent down to pull him up, his hand worked like a bolt of lightning. Before anyone could realise what was going on, he shouted, ‘Monsters!’ and in a sally of anger, plunged a knife into the MP’s soft belly.
The knife belonged to his little brother, and had survived from his kampung days. His brother always carried this knife whenever they went around hunting birds, stealing fruits in the kampung.
The MP’s eyes bulged in surprise as if a pair of invisible hands was at his throat. A jet of blood forcefully spurted out from the MP’s abdomen, covering Zul’s face in a warm, red splash. Howling, Zul gasped for breath, kicking his hands and feet around. The MP flopped on the chair. The room filled up with shrieks, cries.
‘The mad man … stabbed the MP.’
‘Crazy man!’
‘Beat the bastard!’ someone shouted.
A kick landed on Zul’s tummy, followed by a punch on his face. He fell on the floor and passed out. Next time he came to his senses, briefly, he heard the wail of an ambulance. Then he found himself in a hospital and, later on, in a prison cell. Three winks, three different places.
Crime Scene: Singapore Page 12
