Miss Seetoh in the World (43 page)

‘You go on doing what you’ve been doing,
Maria.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Exactly that. I’ve never come across anyone
who thinks and feels as much, as deeply, as agonisingly as you do. Nor anyone
who asks for advice she has no intention of following.’

‘That’s not fair, Brother Phil!’ ‘That’s the
truth, Maria. You’re okay.’ ‘Right now, I feel rotten.’ ‘That’s okay too.’
‘You’re no help at all, Brother Phil!’

‘I never intended to be. Now let’s go for a
proper meal. The stuff in this café is inedible. Let me pay this time. I can
afford it.’

‘Hey, Brother Phil, I feel so much better
already. If it were not for your awful robe of innocence, I think I could give
you a kiss.’

‘And if it were not for awful gossipers like
Mrs Neo, I would return it.’

She thought, ‘Dear, dear Brother Phil. Of
all the men in my life, I like him best of all.’ Loving a man, falling in love
with a man, liking him. Women like her had best stick to the last.

He had some serious advice for her, which he
said he dispensed to everyone who came to him, regardless of the nature of
their problem: get outside yourself, step out of your skin and into another’s.
It works every time.

Maria did not enjoy getting under her
mother’s skin, layered over with years of anxious pleasing of her god by saving
souls for him, like catching fish in a net or gathering grain in fields white
with harvest, now that her own was assured of a place in heaven.

Anna Seetoh said, ‘Heng has agreed to take
instructions in the faith. Father Rozario has arranged for his assistant Father
Dominic to give him the instructions every week.’

With Heng’s conversion would come his
renunciation of the deadly sin of greed, surely the cause of all his problems.
At the back of Anna Seetoh’s mind was the eventual conversion of his wife, now
still worshipping temple deities, the devil’s very own, and of course, the poor
son who, for all they knew, was a victim of Satanic powers. She had given Heng
a bottle of blessed water she had brought back from her pilgrimage to Lourdes,
to sprinkle on his bed every night. Maria thought, poor, poor Mother. It would
be impossible to get under her skin to understand how she was allowing the
unscrupulous Heng to exploit her religiosity. In the same breath that she had
told Maria about his responding well to Father Dominic, she confided, with a
sad shake of her head, that he had gone back to the 4-D lottery.

Maria said severely, ‘Mother, that large sum
of money he’s got from me for his share of the flat – why don’t you keep it for
him in your bank account? He’s going to blow it all up, let me warn you.’

Anna Seetoh always ended any heated argument
about her reprobate son with words of unshakeable trust, her eyes lifted
heavenwards: ‘The good God will never let me down,’ citing cases of sinners
brought back, the sick healed, the fallen raised. Her greatest triumph would be
the return of the blackest sheep of the Church of Eternal Mercy, her own
daughter. ‘You mark my words, Maria. You talk big now, but one day, you will
come crawling back to our Lord and His Blessed Mother and they will receive you
with open arms.’

Maria hated the picture of the ultimate
humiliation the word conjured: herself on abject hands and knees before God and
his pantheon of saints including her dead husband, V.K. Pandy in similar
locomotion of forced humility before the great TPK, a whole society in humble
obeisance to what was being described as the most powerful deity in Singapore,
the acronymic god of the material five Cs of Cash, Car, Condominium, Credit
Card and Country Club Membership.

Her moral report card from dear, wise, kind
Brother Philip would show, alas, the red marks of failure for her behaviour to
her own family. It would fare a little better regarding Mark and Yen Ping. It
surprised her that despite the tight net of vigilance thrown around them by
Mark’s mother, they managed sometimes to wriggle through the tiny interstices,
like small desperate fish, to meet and exchange love notes and poems. But the
net was getting tighter and crueller, and they racked their brains to outwit it.

Yen Ping said, one afternoon, after the
creative writing class, ‘Miss Seetoh, Mark and I need your help.’ Their plan
seemed a simple one: once a week in the evening, Mark would be chauffeured to
and back from his maths tutor’s home; on the way back, could he occasionally
drop by at Miss Seetoh’s house to pick up notes from Yen Ping and leave his for
her? It would take seconds, if Miss Seetoh would allow the maid to be the
messenger; Mark would be all the while in the car, never out of sight of the
watchful chauffeur. Mark would of course have told his mother beforehand that
kind Miss Seetoh was helping him with some useful points for English grammar or
creative writing, and if she insisted on taking a look, he would have enough
material as proof.

Maria, astonished at the vast scheme of
deception of the young lovers who continued to look as innocent and pure as
children, could only marvel at their strength of purpose. She had never seen
them together since Mark was taken out of St Peter’s by his mother, so it came
as a shock when, one afternoon, instead of the usual routine of Rosiah going up
to the waiting car with the putative teaching notes from Miss Seetoh, she saw
them both together, standing at the foot of a flight of stairs leading to her
flat, well out of sight of the waiting chauffeur. ‘Miss Seetoh, I’ll explain
later,’ whispered Yen Ping, and the lovers spent the few stolen minutes talking
in low voices to each other, their foreheads almost touching, their hands
inside each other’s. Yen Ping demurred about how they had arranged the meeting,
keeping even the trusted Miss Seetoh out of love’s secret daredevilry, but
showed her, with tears sparkling in her eyes, a poem she had written for Mark
entitled ‘Dear Heart’ and his response entitled ‘Soulmate.’

Brother Philip said, ‘Maria, if I were you,
I would be more careful about being part of those kids’ secret meetings.’

‘Poor kids, I feel happy for them,’ sighed
Maria. ‘I think I understand them perfectly, for I not only got into their skin
but was able to crawl around!’

The date of Dr Phang’s return from Europe
was not marked on her calendar, but it stood out as if circled by a huge red
reminder of both threat and promise. He called at last on the third day of his
return. ‘Well?’ He was inviting her to lunch, clearly having decided to go back
to square one and start all over again. In the jargon, there was nothing to
lose. She had meanwhile lost much, mainly her peace of mind. Honesty – she had
always prided herself on that and there had been little of it in her erstwhile
foray into the perilous world of secret passion. The greatest peril, jealousy,
once it reared its head, went on a rampage of destruction, sparing nothing, not
even the basic sense of truth and fairness, for women, enraged at the sight of
cheating men, forgot that they were in the cheating game themselves. If she
were ever to be destroyed by any emotion, it would be jealousy. She never
wanted to encounter that monster again.

‘Well?’

‘I think not.’

‘But what do you feel?’

‘I feel not too.’

‘Well, don’t think or feel then. Come and
just tell me your stories. I miss my Sheherazade!’

The news circulated far more effectively in
the underground grapevine of the coffee shops and private homes than it could
ever have had through the official media. In fact, it was not mentioned at all
in any of the newspapers, the radio news bulletins or on TV, not even as an
unverifiable rumour best dismissed. Singaporeans were whispering to one
another, ‘Have you heard? V.K. Pandy’s dead.’ Nobody could trace the source of
the news, but it was said to be a very reliable one, a nephew from India who
had made known that his uncle had died in the ancestral village that he had
returned to shortly after his departure from Singapore. How did he die? Even
the nephew was not sure. Probably a broken heart. He had died a sad,
disillusioned man and on his deathbed had expressed the wish to return to
Singapore which he said he would never forget, for it had been a beloved home
for so many years.

If death softened the image even of the
authoritarian leader or the corrupt politician, it invested the much-battered
political opponent with an aura of sanctity and martyrdom. Suddenly from the
depths of his humiliation, he rose to new, awed recognition. Suddenly, everyone
felt profound admiration for the dead V.K. Pandy, mixed with an overwhelming
pity for the remembered V.K. Pandy whose sufferings at the hands of a ruthless
government had surely been a living hell. The image of the man, solitary in the
vast space in Middleton Square, reduced to a position of beggary through no
fault of his own, came back to seize the imagination and tug at the heart.
While Singaporeans had gone about their business of making money and fattening
their 5 Cs on an already overladen table of plenty, the poor man had stuck to
his principles and in the process lost everything – his business, his house,
his health. While they walked by quickly, their heads lowered in fear of being
seen, he had been the solitary, unafraid voice in the wilderness until struck
down.

Nobody could remember what ideology he
preached but everybody recalled the pathetic sight of the man when he called to
a heedless crowd hurrying past, waving his pamphlets at them as he sat on a
stool in the sun in his shabby, sweat-soaked shirt and tie, and thanked the
small children and maids sent to put donations in his hands, while the furtive
donors looked on from a discreet distance. It was never verified that when he
lost his seat in parliament, he squatted on the ground and cried like a child,
but that image too was conjured up in uneasy collective memory.

Guilt came quickly on the heels of pity, and
some Singaporeans began asking, at least in the private tribunal of the
conscience: had a whole society been unfair to V.K. Pandy? Beside the wretched man,
now dead and his ashes cast into the waters of the holy Ganges, the great TPK,
still very much alive with the thrusting jaw and jabbing forefinger, looked a
much diminished human being. His huge juggernaut of control and punishment,
like the iconic giant tank about to mow down the little man standing in front
of it and calmly blocking its way, was now an enduring symbol of oppression of
all and sundry who dared to oppose him. The indomitability of the human spirit,
courage, strength of will, sanctity of purpose, all hitherto only vague
abstractions with little relevance in a society committed to getting and
spending, suddenly became palpable realities deserving serious thought and
discussion.

Maria, quite by accident, watched the
beginning of a scene that she would remember for the rest of her life. It was
Saturday morning, and she was as usual in the dispensary at Middleton Square,
looking idly upon the spot vacated by the poor V.K. Pandy, now a spirit
hovering somewhere over the vast Ganges, when she suddenly noticed a small
object on the ground close to the spot where the opposition member often placed
his wooden stool. She looked more closely: it was a small bunch of yellow
flowers wrapped in white plastic, tied with a white ribbon. Somebody had placed
a memorial bouquet for the dead man. Then she saw a woman approaching, holding
the hand of a little boy who held a bunch of red and white carnations, tied
with a large white bow. The woman whispered something to the child, and he
placed the flowers close to the first bouquet. The woman then stood, with her
head bowed for a few seconds, before hurrying away with the child: was she
saying prayers for the repose of V.K. Pandy’s soul, or saying sorry for the
time when her little boy broke from her to smile at the outcast and she rushed
to pull him away, terrified of those surveillance cameras?

Maria decided that as soon as she had
delivered the asthma medicine to her mother, she would return to watch what
promised to be a most unusual happening in Singapore.

‘This is unbelievable,’ she gasped, as she
looked upon the floral tributes now occupying a large stretch of ground.

In the half hour that she had taken to
return to the scene, the offerings had multiplied. There were elaborate
bouquets as well as simple single stalks, some carefully wrapped in transparent
gift wrapping paper, all neatly laid side by side, with the merest overlapping,
each visitor claiming space for the full display of his or her offering of
respect and regard, while being mindful of the claims of others. And still they
came. Each bent to place the tribute, then withdrew to make way for others,
staying on to join the crowd that had gathered to watch. The flowers on the
ground were building up to an immense carpet of richest hues, and still they
grew. Nobody made the slightest sound, as if the silence of profound awe were
better than any rhetorical tribute. In the distance, the sounds of moving
traffic could be heard, but in the square itself, perfect silence reigned.

Who were these Singaporeans? As far as Maria
could tell, they were the ordinary men and women who daily walked the busy
streets and frequented the bustling shopping malls and open eating places of
the clean, bright city. They represented the widest possible spectrum of
Singapore society, coming from plush offices in the city’s busiest business
district and the most rundown of old shophouses tucked inside Chinatown. She
saw a woman in her thirties, dressed in a smart black business suit and
carrying a leather briefcase, walk up, place a spray of purple orchids, then
return to her waiting Mercedes. She watched a middle-aged man – was he the same
man who had vigorously declined to take pictures of Big Bird that day? – arrive
with a woman who was probably his wife; she carried a small bunch of lilies
that looked like a delicate bridal bouquet and placed it gently beside the
business woman’s orchids. A group of three women who looked like school
teachers had a joint offering of a large bunch of white roses which one of them
placed reverently on the ground while the other two looked on. There was a
small transparent jar filled with water, carrying a single stalk of some
unidentifiable orange flower that would outlast all the other offerings in the
late morning heat. A little girl of about six, holding several stalks of
gladioli, opened her mouth to say something to her mother but closed it again
when she saw the silencing maternal forefinger raised and placed against the
lips. A man profusely sweating in a dirty shirt and shoes must have taken time
off from his work at a construction site or some road repair works, holding in
his hand a little bunch of dahlias that had probably cost him his lunch.
Another man who looked like a cook, wearing a white singlet still carrying
stains from his kitchen, came with a woman who must have hurriedly changed into
neat skirt and blouse; she placed a small basket packed with tiny golden
showers and ferns and then bowed her head reverently. An old woman in a
wheelchair, and an elderly man with a walking stick – V.K. Pandy was also
attracting the sick and disabled who had come, not to seek healing but to pay
their respects to one whom society had injured beyond healing.