A wild entry from Helen this morning, positively raging she was and without any preliminaries. From the get-go there was something clearly the matter. Helen had entered the kitchen with her shopping trolley, which she kept inside the main entry door. Ordinarily, when Helen needed to fetch it she came in from her room and immediately took it outside. A woman of the neighbourhood who she didn’t know but who knew Helen had approached her the night before to offer her rice. Helen fed birds (illegally), right? She could use it, right? Turned out later there were 6-7 packets of a kilogram or more that almost filled Helen’s trolly, when she was encountered shortly afterward by the waste bins after breakfast. In the kitchen Helen had little time to talk. While she spoke her hair shook and came loose in a couple of places. No time to talk, OK, Helen reiterated sternly. She wasn’t going to be held up. The woman was going to leave the rice at the corner of the lane toward Onan Road. Later in the subsequent conversation by the bins it turned out the woman concerned might have been a Malay man’s maid from Block 2, sent over on the errand. The man often passed by there and knew Helen and her feeding, like so many others. There was the rice and around the corner in Onan proper by Galaxy Tower, a cat that Auntie Ena formerly fed had overnight passed away. As Auntie E was weak on her pins now and found it hard to come down, Helen had accepted the responsibility for that particular cat too. Last night she had noticed it looking poorly; for some few days she had not been eating her food. Something was wrong when a cat was not eating Helen’s choice food, but in this instance the cat had not looked that bad. Then this morning she was dead. At the waste bins when Helen had calmed down she told how she had come upon the cat in the morning, saw it lying there and when she came up to pat it found it stiff. The cat was not particularly old, maybe fifteen years. Helen had been feeding it since 2020. Dog years were x 6-7 in human terms, Helen more or less agreed. In cat reckoning it was a factor of 3, Helen said. Making this particular cat 80, Helen had calculated in the kitchen. (Later in the morning Wan Ling had explained the more complicated life terms of cats.) Ordinarily there was nothing wrong with Helen’s arithmetic, or reasoning. Clearly she had been in a state. Off to get the rice. Don’t want to talk to you. At the bins Helen was met coming up from the slope and showed the rice in her trolley. That would save her $40-50. Monthly Helen spent $30 just for the bird food. Helen fed the crows, pigeons, mynahs & sparrows only at night and careful about it. So many people had the so-called bird problem wrong, the government included. In the telling in the kitchen it had seemed someone had brought the dead cat to the rubbish bins for disposal. Out there later when we talked again there was no sign of it. No. There it is, Helen indicated toward her door, where a large cardboard box sat on the paving beside Helen’s outdoor chairs. It was of course Helen herself who had brought it over. Some of the sharpness again in that, though not as bitingly as in the kitchen earlier. If it was up to her, Helen would dispose of the body in the large green waste bin. What was the use of anything else? But in this case Helen could not do that. Over coming days Maureen would notice Bush Girl’s absence and ask after her. Helen had called Maureen between times to convey the news, knowing that Maureen would want to arrange a cremation. $120-30 wasted, according to Helen. What was the sense once the cat was dead? This had long been a point a friction between Helen & Maureen. Instead of helping Helen with the cost of good feed that saved on vet bills, Maureen spent money on hopeless cases, $8-9K recently on a couple of doomed cats whose condition the vet had clearly explained. Irrational. Money down the drain. But one could not reason with Maureen. Maureen would come over shortly to see off Bush Girl. (Not Gal, Helen had snapped earlier in the kitchen leaving for the rice.) It was Maureen who gave all the cats their names; by which Helen meant the outdoor cats. Helen had names of her own for her litter.

Geylang Serai, Singapore

 

 

2.

Lorong 16 corner the fellow was truly tickled to receive the order. Not a little astonished.

— You want Jiang Cha? Yes, sir.

Local not more than one-point-five rattling at the tables with the customers. Now the man was newly delighted.

10pm was too early for the girls; only a small number had landed. Men drinking beer, including one or two Whites. Perhaps that was some part of the surprise. Jiang Cha. Ginger tea.

A good deal stronger brew was going down on the other side, three large shot glasses with Carlsberg chasers. Somehow the Danes had cornered the market in Geylang.

Seasoned lads here knew what they were about, seen off a couple of novices and settling in for the evening. Gestures like sober judges weighing life and death. The big beefy carrot-top needed another treatment; his faded tattoos too dated from an earlier generation’s inferior ink.

Budget One Hotel on the main road; off further two 81s faced each other. The Hotel 81s had started as hourly Love Hotels in Geylang. Now they were all over the island and the founder likely one of the billionaire class.

On the pavement workingmen using thumb and forefinger for nose-blow. The locals had disowned their cousins from the Mainland long ago—perhaps here with somewhat lesser contempt. Middle Geylang was almost entirely Chinese.

The first star in seven weeks stood high above the neon, pale and faltering. A single example standing in for the mass invisible in the grey cover.

It was Pure-heart, Minhtan the Viet, who had commented on the absence of stars here a few weeks before.

Ho Chi Min presumably was not the standard Minhtan had in memory; even in her childhood that city’s night skies could not have been covered by stars. Minhtan must have been thinking of her hometown two hours out, where she had been brought up by her divorced teacher mother; her “idol,” Minhtan had called her.

In youth Minhtan had not allowed her mother to re-marry, being unable to accept any of the suitors.

My mistake, Minhtan had frankly confessed.

Working in the capital as a materials engineer, Minhtan had been sent to Singapore for training by her German company. Chosen especially no doubt.

On the walk back from dinner that night under a blank sky the absence of stars had been felt by Minhtan. Earlier sitting at the table in upscale Katong, the Amerindians had come to mind during the conversation. Minh tan; Pure heart.

The young woman contained a great deal in her short, slender person. Like her manner and movement, the talk was measured and decisive.

For the first week here Minhtan had been chaperoned around the city by a newly married Filipino colleague, whose wife was jealous and monitored her husband’s movements by phone and GPS. Minhtan could not help scoffing a little in her report.

Freedom was essential in a marriage, in living, Minhtan maintained. Belief too. Minhtan herself needed both, she said.

The ruling principles stood clear without any need of elaboration with Minhtan’s words; something like newly emerged stars from the blank heavens above us, in fact. Freedom and belief together; not an automatic pairing usually.

Somewhere where Minhtan had lived there had been masses of stars; it sounded like the numberless cover that gave off enough light to see. Much about Minhtan made it easy to believe throughout her life the woman had been drenched in starlight.

It had been a pleasant evening. There was no surprise when Minhtan had not accepted the invitation upstairs at the hotel. The suggestion had been one of those reflexes that sometimes sprung out unintentionally. Another date during Minhtan’s short stay had seemed unlikely.

Now there were two more stars out above the Geylang street, dim and barely visible in the grey blanketing. Scanning more carefully, an unsteady third too on the other side. Champagne Hotel‘s vanilla signage skipped a couple of letters further down along the slope.

Two generations here, like so many in other cities across the globe, had lived beneath only empty stretches of night sky.

Katong, Singapore

 

 

3.

Tableau (Good Friday)

At first you wondered whether the four on the end were connected to the nearer five—a woman with two boys and a girl and the chap sitting with his group of four.

The entire row was almost filled.

No, they were a unit alright: husband and wife with their seven children.

The eldest was the girl beside mother, eighteen or nineteen. The three young in the middle were girls.

Eldest boy sat opposite dad and next eldest lad opposite mother.

Earlier dad had given the youngster beside him a hand massage, with the suggestion of good expertise. Chap sent a brief, sliding smile behind when he had been turned working the girl’s fingers and saw himself being observed.

Not a whimper of any kind from the children for the duration, the quiet in the row making it seem two groups of strangers had been thrown together.

In the beginning dad appeared the only one armed with a phone. One Hard Rock Classic sported by a junior; dad advertised a coming six pack, on the back of his tee in this case. Unbranded like this, and the Islamic garb declined, one wondered where this woman would have shopped in the Republic. Prices at the mall were beyond the family budget.

The wife was not hankering for any of the handbags at the boutique up past the Levis outlet; nor her eldest either. A day or two earlier a chap had been found taking a photograph of a pink studded item displayed in the window. Imitations were cheaper, or secondhand online.

Quiet, patient youngsters. There was no sign of fidgeting or swinging legs beneath the tables. These children would never play on an inflatable castle (currently erected in the mall beyond the KFC, where rock-climbing was provided other weekends); nor take turns in the sandpits or on the play cranes & backhoes at Diggersite, at the head of the rear escalators. (XXXS hard-hats & work boots were available there.)

Did these people even have television at home? Music or toys?

Patient sitting and hardly a sound; certainly nothing audible behind from any of the chairs.

It was unlikely the crew would get any goreng pisang after the meal.

One could make a spectacle of oneself here; merely watching was beginning to overwhelm.

Fascinating.

The Coke cups came with the iced water at Al Wadi, 30 cents. (Twenty without ice.) In fact it may have been Nutri Soy cans that were being shared. The older lads had their own tall plastic cups—Iced Milo and limun.

Elder precedence was laid down: the oldest wore a simple necklace and the boy opposite dad gold-coloured watch. (The latter’s phone came out afterward.)

One could not ask questions; they would have been blurted.

Father Lazar had had five siblings, counting the first boy who was lost in infancy. Mother the same. One-room thatched stone houses at 1,000m above sea level. But that was another generation; dark side of the moon. (The kampung living had been a universal across the globe, once upon a time. Doklen je srece bilo, while there had been fortune, Bab said.)

Even congratulating the old guy here—only in his early or mid-fifties—the words would have failed.

Unexpectedly, a red ten was produced by dad and eldest brought back from the counter a couple of Cokes with ice-cream floats for sharing. Sore-hands took a few sips from dad’s offering only because he pressed, sipping on the straw once and then again when he pressed again. One or two others had a taste.

Altogether stupendous the whole while; vivid like a genre painting by one of the old masters. In time Eldest noticed the observation and must have quietly wondered to herself.

Not even the pair of lads on dad’s side was drawn by the EPL on the screen. Eldest opposite kept his back turned throughout.

The drizzle came unnoticed and suddenly the rain was angling in, causing dad to bunch closer to Sore-hands. Being out of sorts, the child received the cuddling coolly. All here had learned to share the affection of mum and dad in their turn.

A coin was produced for a new face doing the rounds at those tables, framed in virginal white and baju the same. Practiced old auntie smile.

Elder boy was given the coin. The lady having turned to the next table, lucky for her she turned back again in time. One of the seasoned Indian-Malay group she must have been, who had come from the gates of Khalid for any of the worshippers who had been missed there.

This dad could not manage the Friday sermon, living the holy life as he was instead. It really did appear the complete picture.

Forty minutes later a bag of fries appeared, with chilli. They would not have such a treat every day of the week.

Hardly a smile, much less chatter between any of them. The under-current however bubbled up at many different points up and down the line—in the looks passed among the youngest three; the closeness apparent between the two boys opposite mother; and in the responsible manner of the eldest delegated for delivery of the various items to the table.

On such a day, sitting among these people, you would make them wonder. Going back to the room the night before, one of the chaps at the Haig at parting had offered, “Happy holiday.” For the upcoming. With the community’s own practice, the people assumed the same for the marker days of others. The Chinese in Singapore allowed what they called “Free-thinkers;” they were found here and there among their groups of Daoists, Buddhists and the rest. For the Muslims in particular, such a category was more than a little baffling. In the official record on the identity cards in Indonesia, each citizen was noted as belonging to one of six designated faiths. Anything else was inconceivable.

Geylang Serai, Singapore