Singapore Noir

by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

  “I took Davey to the reserve this morning. We spotted a baby macaque in a tree. I don’t know which thought the other was funnier.” He told her this because she never asked anymore. Somewhere between Buenos Aires and Nairobi she’d stopped wondering how Ed spent his days. In Singapore she’d briefly become curious again, because of Davey, but it turned out baby news bored her. She cooed over Davey in the morning, once Ed had him dressed and in his high chair. She sang to him at night if she was home before his bedtime, though those early evenings slowly grew rare. She read parenting books, but not, as Ed did, to learn what to do, how to be a new person with the new person that was Davey. Ellen read to find out what Davey should be doing, what his accomplishments ought to be in this month, and this and this. She compared Davey with the child in the books—an average child, and shouldn’t Davey be more advanced than that?—and with the children she met, children of expats, of transplants, of locals. On weekends, before the midday heat chased her indoors, she’d walk with Ed and Davey in the Children’s Garden or to a breakfast of noodles at a hawker center. Davey’s chubby friendliness made the cooking aunties cluck and chuckle: what a buaya he was, a little flirt! Ellen basked in their adoration, but Ed understood: admiring Davey, they were admiring her. She was kiasu, Ed thought, cutthroat competitive, as she always had been. He used to admire her fire and drive, having little ambition of his own; but now that Davey had become her proxy, it began to trouble him. The aunties asked to hold Davey, which Ellen affected to think about and then graciously permitted—Ed always allowed it—and at first they tried to give him sweets but they soon learned that was only for weekdays, when Davey was alone with Ed.

  Ed, enchanted with Davey’s first smile, his first tooth and first word, suggested on his first birthday that they think about another child. Ellen barked, “Are you crazy?” and went off to bed alone. Ed took a folding chair out onto the walk in front of the ground-floor flat and sat in the evening breeze. Ellen kept the air-conditioning cranked up high; Ed didn’t like it, living in a temperature Singapore never felt. Crazy? He considered. Well, maybe. Huat sio oreddy. The man’s mad.

  Across another year Ed took Davey to the garden and the reserve, to the market and to other kids’ homes to crawl and then walk and then run around in a chattering tribe like monkeys. He cooked fried dough, sweet potato leaf stew, biryani, chili crab for holidays. He told Ellen about Davey’s day while Davey laughed and mashed his hands in his rice and Ellen nodded and floated farther away. At the end of the year she told him she’d found someone else and she’d like him to move out.

  He wasn’t surprised. Though he wasn’t happy, he knew his unhappiness stemmed largely not from the loss of Ellen, long since lost, but from her insistence that they share custody of Davey.

  “What mother would just totally give up her son?” she said, blinking.

  What mother doesn’t know the names of his friends? Ed thought, but he understood. Ellen resisted Asia in Singapore, as she had Africa in Nairobi and old Europe in Prague, but still, this was about that most Asian of notions: saving face. Not with the cooking aunties, who would have mattered to Ed but meant nothing to Ellen; but among her colleagues. This ornament, this piece in the game that Davey was to her, it would make her look bad, cold-hearted, to give him up.

  Ed didn’t protest, though, because he saw immediately how it would be and he was right. Ellen hired a nanny. A smiling Filipina named Maricor, who lived in the ground-floor flat three nights a week in the room that had been Ed’s office. Ellen made no adjustment in her life for Davey, still left for work early in the morning when the light was clear, and Maricor didn’t mind at all that Ed usually appeared an hour or so later, to go with them to the reserve, the garden, shopping at the market for spices and fruits. Ellen knew, and Ellen didn’t care, as long as Ed waited until she was gone so she didn’t have to see him, wasn’t required to make small talk and act as though they were still connected. They were, of course, because of Davey, who would connect them forever. But Ellen, as always, was eager to leave one life behind and begin the next.

  Twice, on weekend days—weekends were always Ed’s, because, as Ellen explained, if she wasn’t working through a weekend she needed Me time—Ed and Davey ran into Ellen and her someone else in the Smith Street wet market. The someone, a boisterous Russian with a big smile, was a client of Ellen’s firm. He tickled Davey’s chin and seemed happily baffled by the noise, the bright colors of signs and stalls, the profusion of spices and fruits he called “foreign” and “exotic.” Ellen kissed Davey, smiled thinly, and steered her Russian away as soon as they’d exchanged enough substance-free sentences so that everyone could see she was perfectly comfortable in Ed’s presence. Watching her examine fine powders, peeled bark, and round berries in spice stalls, seeing her make purchases he was sure she had no idea how to use, Ed wondered if she was hoping to learn to cook. Ellen, he thought, cooking: none of their friends back in New York—or anywhere else—would believe it. But Singapore did strange things to you.

  Ed settled into the new arrangement and found it not uncomfortable. The nights Davey spent at Ellen’s, Ed missed him, missed cooking his rice porridge in the morning and teaching him his new word of the day. Ed worked late into those nights, so his days were free for Davey and for Maricor, whose calm company he was coming to enjoy. Maricor had good English—one of Ellen’s criteria for a nanny—but Ed also spoke with her in Singlish, Maricor laughing with delight when he surprised her with a new phrase. Ellen had rolled her eyes when he’d used Singlish words: “It’s not a real language, you know.”

  * * *

  Six seasonless months drifted by. Ed and Ellen were quietly divorced, Davey adjusted easily to his double life and started to speak in full sentences, both Singlish and English—with the occasional Spanish word thrown in, and sometimes Russian—and the languid heat of Singapore seeped deeper into Ed’s pores, melted the suits out of his wardrobe and the hurry out of his steps. Expats and young people raced around him, career-building, but the old, true life of the island was indolent and slow and kind, and that was the life Ed lived until Ellen called one morning to say she’d been promoted again. She was going to Moscow.

  Ed congratulated her: he knew she was happy. Moscow was the plum placement in Ellen’s firm and she’d worked hard for it.

  “Sergei says he can get you a work visa, no problem.” Ed heard the pride in her voice about her well-connected Russian before he understood what she was really saying.

  “I don’t want to go to Moscow.”

  “We can’t very well share custody long-distance. I know people do, but study after study shows that’s not the best thing at all for the child.”

  Study after study? Best thing for the child? “You’re taking Davey?”

  “Of course. I’m his mother.”

  Phone to his ear, Ed stared dumbly out the window. He lived now in another ground-floor flat a few blocks from Ellen’s, a place with a small patio where Davey and Maricor sat on the paving stones building a tower from wooden blocks. Davey wore khaki shorts (“Like Daddy’s!” he’d shrieked with glee when they’d been presented to him) and Maricor’s red sundress pooled around her knees. “Davey doesn’t want to go to Moscow.”

  “What are you talking about? He’s a child. He has no idea where he wants to go.”

  The patent error took Ed’s breath away. He tried to picture Davey, who’d never worn a sweater, all bundled up in parka, scarf, and boots, with a no-nonsense Russian nanny pulling his mittens on. He wondered where a child would play if nine months of the year it was too cold to be outdoors. Like New York, he realized, but worse, and what did New York parents do? Sent their kids to preschool boot camp so they’d be fast-tracked to MIT or Yale.

  “There’s an American School in Moscow,” Ellen was saying, “and a couple of international schools as well that would be good for him. Sergei looked into it already. I start the fifteenth of next month—that’s more than four weeks, that gives you plenty of time. You can s
tay in a hotel until you find an apartment. My firm might help.”

  Ed hung up thinking, Kena sai, lah. Kena sai. Hit by shit.

  Early Sunday, when Maricor went to Mass at Good Shepherd Cathedral, Ed and Davey went to Malaysia. They made the trip every few months, always by ferry because they were in no hurry and Davey liked the boat ride. Sometimes they went right on through Johor Bahru all the way to Kuala Lumpur and spent the night. From time to time they went to the beach at Desaru. Almost always, whatever else they did, they shopped at the Larkin wet market for spices and vegetables. The market aunties in Singapore laughed at Ed about this, for they scorned Johor Bahru because of its dirt and crime and general not-Singapore-ness, and claimed everything found there was available in Singapore. Ed would shrug and smile and say, “Most can, some cannot, lah,” and join them in laughing at his Singlish.

  On this trip he bought some things he had seen previously but hadn’t had a reason to pick up. He took Davey to the beach and they got home quite late, Davey sleeping in Ed’s arms, the heft of him at once heavy—he was getting big—and weightless. Davey didn’t wake up when Ed put him to bed and slept soundly while Ed organized his purchases.

  The next afternoon, Monday, was the day of the week when Ed delivered Davey to Ellen. In practice it was almost always Maricor who received him, Ellen staying late at the office. This night, while Maricor gave Davey his bath, Ed inspected Ellen’s kitchen, noting the increased number of bottles and shakers and jars of spices and herbs, the powders and chunks and leaves and liquids Ellen had never paid attention to when he was cooking. He was careful how he handled them. If there was an organizing principle he couldn’t see it, but Ellen had systems for everything and had never liked Ed to disturb her things. When Davey was all scrubbed and sleepy, Ed read him a bedtime book from the pile he’d brought over, Ellen having no idea what children, or her own child, liked to read. After Ed kissed him good night, Ed and Maricor sat down as usual for a cup of kopi-gau, Singapore’s signature condensed-milk extra-strong coffee that had driven Ellen, from the day they arrived, to thank God that Singapore also had Starbucks.

  “Has she been cooking?” Ed asked Maricor, waving his cup toward the shelves.

  Maricor’s smile was sweet, but also amused. “On Sunday, she tell me. Ella necesita el fin de semana, the whole weekend, to prepare. She mix curry spices herself, lah.”

  “Is it good, the food she makes?”

  “I come Monday. She and Señor Sergei, they eat it all up before I get here.” She added, “He is very polite, Señor Sergei. He always eat what she make.”

  Ed smiled too, understanding: if the curries Ellen made were good, Sergei wouldn’t need to be polite.

  * * *

  Not much changed over the next two weeks. Ellen’s conversations with Ed, ever short and to the point, were about nothing now but the impending move. It was a good thing the furniture in the flat was all rented, and whatever wasn’t (a few mirrors: Ellen had thought the flat needed more of those) the landlord could inherit. Ellen never brought anything from one life to the next. In his flat Ed had carved masks from Nairobi, matryoshkas from Prague. Ellen had her Russian work visa, her plane ticket; she was taking the last few days off work before she left, to accomplish her final errands, and she suggested Ed do the same.

  Ed spent half a day getting Davey a passport and bought two tickets, for himself and Davey, for a few days after Ellen’s. “I need time to get settled before you two come,” she said. Ed’s answers didn’t matter so he hardly offered any. He met Maricor at Ellen’s on midweek mornings, took Davey home with him Thurdays, brought him back Mondays. He shopped at the market and cooked beef rendang and jicama-filled popiah. They didn’t go back to Malaysia; there was no need.

  Now, on this Monday afternoon, the last before Ellen’s moving date, Ed and Davey sat entranced before the old man with the erhu. Because of the impromptu concert, they’d get to Ellen’s later than usual, but now that Ed thought about it, it was probably better this way. The old man would see how relaxed Ed was, how sweet he was with Davey; that would be useful if the police found him and asked. It would be hard on Maricor, the shock of finding the bodies when she arrived; Ed had been hoping to save her that but it occurred to him now that after she called the ambulance she’d probably ring Ed and tell him not to bring Davey into the flat. That would be easier on the boy. Ed would rush there in any case, and leave Davey outside with her, and go inside and try to take charge, though by then the police would be there and he’d be interfering. He’d be unnecessary, except to tell them, in low, shocked tones, that Ellen absolutely didn’t know her way around the kitchen or the market; that he’d warned her once or twice that not everything sold in the wet markets was edible, and that some herbs were easily mistaken for others.

  Later, once the poison was identified as cerebera odollam, suicide tree, he’d shake his head blankly and say no, he had no idea where she’d gotten it, nor any idea what she’d thought its use was, though when it was ground it probably looked like any number of the darker spices used in curries and maybe that was her mistake. He’d tell the police he’d heard suicide tree could be bought in Malaysia but he hadn’t seen it here, which didn’t mean it wasn’t for sale, but that no, no, there was no possible way this was a suicide, double or otherwise, because Ellen had been promoted to Moscow and was very excited and planning to go.

  Ed ruffled Davey’s hair. Yes, things were buay pai. No, better than not bad—everything was shiok, lah. Great. He settled more comfortably against the mahogany tree, wiped sweat from his face in the hot, rich air, watched the old man’s macaque hands, and waited for his phone to ring.

  TATTOO

  BY LAWRENCE OSBORNE

  Geylang

  When he was hired by Hiroshi Systems, Ryu was offered a family apartment in Bayshore Park for himself, his wife, and his son. Relocated from Japan, they had little idea where they were, but the condo faced the sea over the East Coast and a cooler wind swept through the private roof garden where he and his son Tomiko grew pepper plants in pots and arranged a little Zen enclosure of white pebbles within a square of white tea shrubs.

  At thirty-two, Ryu was viewed favorably by his cynical superiors, though he was never quite fully aware of the degree to which he was being groomed for more exalted responsibilities at the commading heights of Hiroshi Systems. He was given a company car and a Malay driver to take him every morning down to Orchard, where he stayed until late at night working at a seven-floor HQ decorated with silk scrolls and antique samurai swords.

  More conscientious and puritanical than his peers, he rarely joined the raucous drinking parties that were held at Orihara Shoten or Kinki. He was never seen paralytic under a table chewing on a napkin or ramming yen notes into tassled hostess bras. He punctually called Natsuo an hour before he left the office to make sure that when he got home Tomiko was not yet in bed. He prized the hour that he could spend with his son, reading in bed or watering the shrubs on the roof, the seven-year-old following him around with a watering can. After he had put him to bed, he and Natsuo ate together in their ocean-view dining room and afterward, according to their mood, enjoyed an hour together in bed or watched old Zatoichi movies animated by the incomparable Shintaro Katsu. They were the same movies his mother used to watch.

  Their life went on like this for six months. Natsuo’s mother visited from Osaka, and Ryu’s father visited from Hiroshima. They went to the movies in Orchard once a week while the Filipina nanny looked after Tomiko, and on Wednesday nights he took Natsuo to Gordon Grill for an English meal followed by a Baked Alaska, a dish so lavishly outmoded that it felt startling and arousing to them. Once a month they sat behind candles at Tong Le and peered out over the lights of a city they did not understand and never would. It seemed like a place they should be enjoying, but which they did not know how to enjoy. The most enjoyable, the most sensual thing about it for them, was the heat.

  Natsuo worked part-time at a Japanese food consortium, and she had mo
re hours to feel out her adopted city than her husband did. But that same enjoyable heat dogged her when she spent time in it and she too often felt her will sapped as soon as she hit the streets. During the rains, she went to the movies by herself and grew a little plumper on daily servings of kaya toast; she went to spas in five-star hotels and had her nails done after her massages and wondered if this was decadent or virtuous. There was no way of knowing. Whether or not she was a typical expat Japanese wife never occurred to her. It was the passing of time that was the great problem, the riddle with which she had to grapple. And then there was the buying of lavender-flavored Hokkaido milk and sake from Meidi-ya supermarket.

  Ryu had little time to himself. One night, however, when he had finished work earlier than expected, he got into a cab on Grange Road and asked, as usual, to be taken home. While they headed eastward, the driver caught his eye in the rearview mirror and offered him a smile.

  “Tired go home, lor?”

  “Why—do I look tired?”

  He touched his face and caught a glimpse of the wan specter in the same mirror. It was true, he looked appallingly sapped.

  “No fun after work, bad time, lah.”

  Fun after work? The concept, so ubiquitous around him, had never really occurred to him. Yet the driver’s surprise made perfect sense. He was hurrying home to the same routine he enjoyed every day, but as it happened the word enjoyed was a slight exaggeration.

  Feeling suddenly resentful, he fired back: “So, what do you suggest?”

  “If you like it, I’ll take you for some relax.”

  “I think I’d like that,” Ryu blurted out, and before he could change his mind the driver had shifted lanes and then turned away from the usual road.

  “Where, then?” Ryu asked, leaning forward weakly.

  “Don’t worry, san, a place where Japanese gentlemen like.”