Singapore Swing (23 page)

Which is why his name is now on the memorial wall: there is no body and there exist no documents that prove his guilt; the fog of war has seen to that. The Singaporeans and their historians have no doubt, like Razeen, and there have been many attempts to wipe his name from the memorial. But as there was no confession, the Commonwealth Graves Commission in charge of the memorial wants irrevocable proof. I can't see why a conviction by a court-martial at the time isn't good enough.

The soldiers are preparing for the final ceremony. Rifles are being unloaded from a lorry and arranged on a table in a row. I approach and caress one rifle-butt as I would a lion. The Commander sees me and comes over. He is young, early thirties, and Razeen confirms my reading of the epaulets: this is
Major
Marcus Tan who greets me.

‘A wonderful place to bring your soldiers, Sir,' I say half-respectfully, half-fearfully for I have been a bit too close to those weapons. But the major, assertive, self-confident and very congenial does not notice – or does not show it. He points at the conscripts standing saucer-eyed at ease, for whom the sense of occasion appears overwhelming.

‘They're getting their rifles for the first time,' he says to me. ‘I believe that this place enhances the significance of the ceremony. There are many brave men and women buried here.'

‘I couldn't agree more, Sir,' I say, as martially as I can muster, and shake his hand firmly.

Jacky is waiting for me at Tantric. She buys me a pint.

‘Heavy day,' I say. ‘World War Two. Kranji.'

She's not interested.

‘Did you meet Richard?' she asks instead.

‘Yes.'

‘And?'

I smile mischievously. ‘It was good,' I reply.

‘I'm glad you two got on so well together.'

I am not so sure. Richard has been cool since that first date and is always busy whenever I come into the bar – or rather busier than usual.

‘Meet Tim,' says Jacky introducing a long-haired, bespectacled Caucasian who is standing next to her.

‘Hi, I'm a geek,' he says to me and, as if in a rush to prove it, he tells me a joke. ‘You look as if you are going to get this. No one else understands it.'

‘Go on,' I tell him.

‘Kurt Gödel, Werner Heisenberg and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar –'

‘Hold on,' I stop him. ‘Noam Chomsky I know. He defined formal grammars, cognitive psychology and that. Heisenberg is he of the Uncertainty Principle. But Gödel?'

‘He was a pioneer of mathematical logic,' Tim replies grinning. ‘No one knows him, hehe.'

I have a bad feeling about the joke.

‘Anyway,' he continues chirpily, ‘Heisenberg looks around him, and says “What unusual company. And we're in a bar. I am certain that this is a joke, but I have no idea whether it's funny or not”. Gödel considers the proposition for a minute, and replies “It could be. But in order to tell whether it really is, we'd have to know whether it was funny to someone outside the story, and as we're inside the story we'll never be able to know.” At which point Chomsky interrupts “Of course it's a joke, you're just telling it wrong!”'

Jacky and I glance at each other as Tim pisses himself laughing.

‘I like him,' I whisper. ‘He's weird.'

‘Me too,' she replies and squeezes my hand.

I take a good look at Tim who has gone to the bar.

‘He's straight, isn't he?'

‘Yep. But he's really cool.'

I tend to agree with her. ‘Do you like him?'

She nods.

‘A lot?'

She wriggles away.

‘As a friend,' she whines. ‘As a
friend
'.

I put a mental bookmark to follow this up while Tim returns with a bottle of champagne and a carafe.

‘What's this?' I ask.

‘A French 75,' he replies, and he clearly doesn't mean a vintage. ‘Try it.'

‘What's in it?' I ask.

‘In the bottle? Gin, lemon juice and sugar.'

He half fills my flute glass with the lichen-coloured mix and tops it up with champagne. I taste it. A champagne sour if ever there was one, and very nice it is, too.

It doesn't take long to get me drunk on an empty stomach. So I don't know whether it is the effects of the French 75 or whether I really do see Dan walking through the door.

If it is him, he looks the perfect picture of health.

T
he Wise Old Man had lived at the edge of the village for what seemed like centuries. Even the wrinkliest inhabitants remembered how, as children, they used to pass by his hut part afraid, part curious, but always – always – respectful. Such deference arose not simply because the Wise Old Man was, well,
old
, but because he managed to live without possessions and without needs, surviving only by the charity of strangers. This was not any Wise Old Man: this was the wraith of an
arhat
; the exhalation of a true bodhisattva.

The Thief wasn't local; he had come from afar. He didn't know of the Old Man, of his station in this life and the next, of his suspected and expected holiness. What the Thief knew was that this hut, casting a ghostly silhouette under the bold full moon was situated away from the village. Even if its occupants were not asleep, they could summon little help by shouting.

The Thief kicked the door in. It fell on the floor, broken, unused to sudden lurches. The Thief entered and checked his surroundings.

There was nothing inside.

No, not nothing worth stealing;
nothing
. No bed, no sheets, no table, no clothes, not even an empty rice bowl.

Does anyone live here
? wondered the Thief.
Someone must, because it's clean. And the door was closed properly
.

Behind him, he heard steps.

He turned around abruptly only to confront a wizened old face with a long white beard and a bald head that reflected the moonlight like a lamp.

The Thief saw the Wise Old Man and spat down in disgust.
The hut of a beggar
. This was not his lucky night.

The Wise Old Man knelt down and caressed the fallen door.

‘I was looking at the stars,' he said apologetically.

The Thief pushed him aside and walked out without uttering a word.

‘Wait!' cried the Wise Old Man.

The Thief stopped but did not turn around.

‘You came here to rob me and found nothing. I can't let you go like this.'

The Thief made a half turn, his face questioning the beggar with the corner of his eye.

A beggar who was taking off his rags and who stood in front of him as naked as he'd appeared from his mother's womb
.

‘Here, take these,' said the Wise Old Man. ‘Take my clothes. They're the only things I've got.'

The Thief stood there watching the sorry collection of skin and bones that stood in front of him, his lower lip trembling.

‘TAKE THEM!' This time the voice of the Wise Old Man was masterful, commanding.

Part afraid, part curious, but always – always – respectful, the Thief took the Wise Old Man's rags and bowed down deeply until his elbows touched his knees. And then, with a swift gait, he left in the direction he had arrived.

The Wise Old Man's eyes followed the Thief's shadow as it slowly fused with the farthest darkness. Then, when there was no movement left to follow, he sat down and stared at the silver disk up in the sky.

‘Poor man,' he whispered. ‘How I wish I could have given him this moon.'

- 26 -

‘A combination of egos and too long in power. A whole generation has grown up not knowing any alternative. It no longer occurs to anyone to speak out of turn.'

I'm back at the Raffles, having a coffee at the Empire Café and doing the unthinkable: talking politics with Singapore's most distinguished human rights activist, Alex Au, who has just characterised Singapore's leaders.

‘Now, this is not really serious research. But I've noticed that one-party governments whether elected or not, tend to last for seventy years at most. It's some king of magic number. The Soviet Union. The PRI in Mexico. The Kuomintang in China, then Taiwan.'

So when is Singapore due a change?

He thinks for a second and he bursts out laughing: ‘Good God, 2030.'

I expected someone who corresponded to
Private Eye
's image of ‘Spart': one-issued, tunnel-visioned, humourless. I had not bargained for an individual who is warm, witty and very intensely human.

‘You can't take life too seriously,' he responds.

Although middle-aged, he can convincingly cut two decades off his age; I tell him that. He chooses to ignore it.

‘Lee Kuan Yew – how old is he now? He had his eightieth birthday a few years ago and,' he pauses ominously, ‘his father died around the age of a hundred. But physically he is frail. The change is visible. Of course, that doesn't mean people are not
frightened
of him.'

I wonder how many streets are they going to name after him when he dies.

Alex laughs. ‘People will be confused! Look at how many Raffles places we have. The airport will go first.'

The jokes underline one fact. For someone whose personal signature is all over Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew has kept a remarkably low profile: not even a stamp bears his portrait. Those who call him a dictator don't know enough about dictatorships.

Although now dubbed a ‘human rights activist' by
The Straits Times
, Alex started as a gay activist. He is the intrepid Yawning Bread, the author of the website I discovered at Changi airport, who has been criticising the government for more than a decade: like my Singapore Paranormal Investigators, he's another online character whom I just had to meet in person.

I tell him that his blogs are extremely well-written.

He thanks me with that permanent disarming smile. ‘I know the government reads them. And
The Straits Times
. To get story ideas.'

I admire him. Not only because of his incisive commentary, but also because of his courage; this is Singapore, not Sydney.

‘It doesn't take much courage,' he says. ‘In the beginning my blog was more involved with gay issues. Over time, I have become more political. How many times can you write about gay marriage? After a while you've lost the public. But I suppose I've also changed myself. The entries were shorter in the beginning. They are longer now: more serious, less partisan.'

Is he not afraid?

‘After ten years I think I know very well where the lines are. And because I think I know where the lines are, I feel safe that I won't trip myself up. The most gratifying thing is that it's not just me. Other people in the gay community watch what I do and use me as an example of what
they
can do. They say: if Alex can write that, then I can, too,
lah
. I hope that I function as some kind of catalyst, because the most vulnerable position for any community to be in is to have only one leader. If that leader disappears, then that's it. In Singapore's gay community there are many leaders now doing different things – though not necessarily in sync with each other.'

He laughs again.

‘Singapore can be a fascinating little place. When I look around South East Asia, this bloody little city seems to be in the lead. Everybody wants to form his own gay group. We even have a gay, non-denominational church. They have no money, of course, so they operate out of a large room near a cinema that regularly screens low-brow sexually-titillating films. Halfway through their Sunday services if you excuse yourself to go to the loo, you are cruised.'

Alex has long been the face of People Like Us, the country's first – though not last – gay organisation. Unlike SPI they are unregistered. Singapore's bureaucrats may be ready to embrace the paranormal but are terrified to regularise the habitual.

‘We applied twice for registration, but the authorities turned the application down. And in Singapore it is a criminal offence to be a member of an illegal organisation, a law from the time of the secret societies. But now with the AIDS epidemic, they need us. So a minister invited me – and others – for an informal chat. The day before, his PA called me to ask me what my name tag should say, so I told her. And when I arrived, there it was: “Alex Au, People Like Us”. There I was, a member of an organisation that is not supposed to exist, discussing AIDS measures with a minister. What do you call that?'

Absurd?

‘I call it pragmatic. When they need us, they don't care about the rules.'

But the rules are there to catch them out, if ever the authorities want to.

Alex nods sagely. ‘I'll tell you something really absurd. I had organised a public poetry reading once, and we had to submit every word of every poem for vetting. Now, poets being flurry creatures, in the last minute some went, “I don't want to read
this
poem, I'll read
another
” or they changed the order or whatever. So we were concerned, because there were two persons at the back checking what was being recited. But did anything happen? No.'

I abhor censorship.

‘You'll like this, then. As you know Singapore retains the death penalty for several offences. Someone organised a play in December 2005 about the death penalty. They had the permit, they had weeks of rehearsals, everything. Just by chance, the opening night was the day after a very high-visibility hanging. I think it was a Vietnamese Australian who was caught smuggling drugs. So the MDA – Media Development Authority, how Orwellian is that? – withdrew the licence. But – and here the fun starts – they also tried to be helpful and expedited the approval of a new play that was written hastily, two days before it was scheduled to be performed.'

Two days.
Was that enough time?

‘That's the point. They couldn't. And they had sold tickets, they had committed themselves to renting the theatre space and so on. The playwright wrote a play about a father–son relationship within 48 hours but they had no time to rehearse it.'

I fall over laughing – it sounds so comical.

‘Yes, it was funny. Every single line was whispered from the sides and the actors repeated it. Which served a different purpose: it was as if some unseen power was telling them what to say and what not to, which is what had happened in reality. So, a play about the death penalty was turned into another play about censorship.'

How very Ionesco.

‘This was truly absurd, yes. But normally they are pragmatic in the way they do things. For instance, there was a case once of HIV transmission from mother to baby during pregnancy. Now, there is evidence from clinical studies that if HIV drugs are administered to a pregnant woman early on, there is a very good chance that the baby will be born virus-free. So they passed a law that every woman who shows up in a maternal clinic
must
be tested for HIV.'

The means justify the ends?

‘Do you know how they dealt with the SARS epidemic? With a surveillance camera mounted in your home! It worked like this: I serve you a notice of quarantine that you must stay in your room for seven days. How do I check on you? Answer: I install a video camera in your living-room and, on unexpected moments, an officer who sits in an air-conditioned office miles away, dials you number: “Mrs Lim, please tell all six members of your family to come and smile.” They all parade in front of the camera. “Thank you Mrs Lim. Sorry for the disturbance.” Now the officer can call at any time. If you think the UK is bad with all these CCTV cameras on the streets, what do you say to that?'

I don't know. What does one do?

‘I don't know either whether to defend it or not, but it worked. We were free from SARS.'

The Singapore way.

- 27 -

The waiter has arrived and I can't help noticing that fried carrot cake is on the menu. I chuckle: ‘It sounds like something the Scots could have concocted,' I say to Alex and proceed to explain the toe-curling concept of deep-fried Mars Bars. I can tell he is bewildered.

‘It's nothing like that,' he protests. ‘It's not sweet and there's no carrots. It's like a pancake with shrimps and radish. Quite tasty.'

I am feeling brave, so I order it, along with
char kway teow
, a local dish of fried flat noodles with soy, chilli and prawns. The search for the perfect
char kway teow
in Singapore is akin with the one for the Holy Grail, what with everyone recommending this hawker stall and that; let's give Raffles a try.

Like two conspirators, we wait for the waiter to leave before we continue talking about Singapore's reputation. ‘Singapore deserves a
mixed
reputation, and it gets a
bad
reputation,' Alex says.

I agree that it's grossly undeserved. Some unfortunate decisions like banning the importation of chewing gum, were picked up heavily by the media. Guess what – we now have similar laws in London regarding littering streets with chewing gum: penalty £1000. Is Singapore leading the way? I ask in jest.

Alex jumps on my comment. ‘Yes! Where did your mayor get the idea about electronic road pricing? Your Oyster Card– isn't it based on our ez-link card? And didn't Tony Blair introduce detention without trial?'