So the income from this tuition I will set up like a bund around a padi field, to control the dissipation of my shrinking pool of savings. ABRAHAM’S parched again. And why on earth is the boy studying Latin? No one values knowledge for its own sake any more. What PROMISE does the language hold for him?

 

 

It is Folly alone that stays the Fugue
of Youth and beats off louring Old Age.

— Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

One

To endure three score and ten years once seemed the greatest possible victory. History is written by its survivors, survival elevated into triumph. Yet now that I near that full measure of my days I have discovered the flaw fatal to this happy scheme of things: longevity alone is not enough. He who captures the minds of the young is in truth the victor. And the young are so impressionable. A generation of new students, perhaps their passage into teachers, another generation of their students, and all that I have lived by will be forgotten. Even my Victor, my son Victor, is a stranger. Quite uninspired by my dreams, my old-fashioned ideas: knowledge for its own sake, virtue its own reward. Young, hard and ambitious, with the capacity for success that I have always lacked. Yet what will he succeed in? The amassing of wealth? The accumulation of power? Nothing of any true worth. His success will be my final failure.

I am old and grey, and it is all I can do to muster my thoughts from far-flung melancholy, from childish rage at my own son’s assurance, and press them into duty in pursuit of the interest and attention of the young lad who sits before me. Not to mention of his parents’ wallets. ‘There can be no fine thoughts, no nice agonies of conscience, until a man has bread in his belly.’ Krishna, you old rogue, you always had an answer. Every departure from principle and right conduct could find its necessity in your silver tongue. But you at least I have outlasted.

Perched at the dining table, hands clasped in front of me, I wonder how I look to the boy. He probably sees me as all bones, and indeed my skin is taut across the protruding knuckles. With my head bowed, and my scalp showing beneath my thinning hair, I probably look like a monk to him. I am convinced that I frighten him. Old men always frighten young boys, perhaps for good reason: we are what they must become. And so they fear us, or else despise us; two sides of the same coin. I must wax less philosophical, concentrate on the moment, show him that I am not to be feared. Respected yes, but feared no, or else I risk losing him, this my first pupil in over a year. Is he hard inside, like Victor? They cannot all be like that, not from the beginning. It is education that turns them so. Perhaps I can still reach out to him. After all he’s chosen to study Latin. A boy who wants to study Latin cannot be beyond redemption.

‘In two years’ time or so you will sit the ‘O’ Level. That may sound a long time away, but if you want to do well, as I’m sure you do, you must work hard now. Your parents tell me this is the first time you are studying Latin?’

‘That’s right.’

At least the boy has answered, and in a clear and steady voice. I make eye contact now, looking up at him, over the black frame of my spectacles. Was it always so difficult? Did teaching always feel like this, as if one were a charlatan about to be unmasked: the old pontificating to the young when their own lives have fallen so short? I must halt this querulous speculation. It is not helping.

‘That is good. You will have no bad habits to unlearn. But you must want to learn. Latin is like anything else. You struggle at first, you may feel frustration when you can’t learn everything at once, but in the end, when you have mastered it, that’s your reward. You want to learn?’

‘Yes, Mr Isaac.’

‘Latin is a wonderful language. Like English, it is the language of conquerors. And like English, it has been the vehicle for the spread of the Gospel.’

The ceiling fan revolves slowly overhead, stirring the air just a little, without any great enthusiasm. This is my fault: I asked for the speed to be reduced, for nothing would make my task harder than having my papers fly hither and thither as I seek to address the boy in a calm, dignified and yet inspiring manner. In front of me a glass of cold water gathers drops of condensation. They swell until gravity sets them trickling down the side of the glass. Thankfully the mother-of-pearl coaster on which it stands has a rim which stops the pool of water from leaking out across the polished rosewood. If not, the Primer that I have opened between us would face a threat from a different element. And as usual my attempts at foresight would be rendered nugatory.

‘The Romans won for themselves a great empire. They started out as a band of wanderers, who escaped from the ruins of Troy after that city had been sacked by the Greeks. The story is told in The Aeneid, an epic poem by Virgil, which we will study. Part of it, in any event. In the end this band of wanderers settled on the seven hills of Rome, a city no bigger than Singapore.’

The boy is staring at my lips. Either he’s impressed, or he’s noticed that I forgot, in my rush not to be late for this first lesson, to put in my dentures. Struck by how solemn he looks, and anxious over what his thoughts may be, I almost forget what I am about to say. Somehow, all my years of teaching perhaps, I recover my composure.

‘Gradually they subjugated the whole of Italy. Then they fought a number of wars with Carthage, where Hannibal came from. Carthage was in North Africa, and victory over Carthage brought the Romans control over the whole of the Mediterranean Sea. Then they expanded north. The army, commanded by Julius Caesar, conquered Gaul, the name of France in those days. We will read part of his account of these conquests. Even the island of Britain fell to the Romans. Now, boy, why do you think that the Romans were so blessed in their conquests?’

For a moment I think that he’s not going to answer, that his thoughts are wholly adrift, and I hesitate between patient repetition and harsh rebuke. Before I come to a decision, he speaks.

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘For the spread of Christianity. The Roman Empire served God’s purpose by establishing a common language for the preaching of God’s word. What language was that?’

‘Latin, sir.’ Good, he is following. Yet I’m still worried about the impression my words may be having. This link between language and religion always worked in the mission school in which I taught, but I am aware how unsophisticated it is to insist on such a connection, especially today, when the young seem so protected, so spoilt, yet somehow so worldly, so confident. Soft in their self-indulgence, yet hard in their lack of illusions and ideals. How can they accept the possibility that God’s mysterious ways might be so transparent, so reducible to the logic of evangelism? I am not at all sure that I do.

‘Yes, good. Not Hebrew. Not Greek. Latin. Christianity spread to Britain in the language of the Romans. And then, more than a thousand years later, the British Empire brought Christianity to the world. In English. You understand?’

He’s nodding. He understands.

‘So that is why it is good that you should learn Latin. Open the book now. Yes, chapter one. We will start with the first conjugation of verbs. Do you see that table? You must learn how verbs change their endings depending on their person, tense and mood. Person and tense I’m sure you understand. Mood I will explain another day. It’s all very simple really. You have a root, in this case “am”, “a”, “m” and then you change the endings to make your meaning. “Am-o”, I love; “am-as”, you, singular, love; “am-at”, he, she or it loves; “am-amus”, we love; “am-atis”, you, plural, love; “am-ant”, they love. You must learn in this way. Understand?’

No doubt he does. He’s probably convinced that Latin is boring and mechanical, and that I’m a withered old man who will teach him by force of repetition, whether he wants to learn or not. He must regret his decision to embark on the subject. Or was it his parents? Did they insist? I know how you feel, I want to say, I was young once too, but stop myself just in time. Part of a teacher’s advantage is to seem different, to wear the authority of difference. I am here to make you like I am. A man schooled in the ways of the world. Experienced and assured. A stern but loving father whose guidance, where necessary, extends to the rod. But is that the kind of teacher I wanted to be?

My own father, standing over me, yes, with a rod, over Mercy and me, for we were both, in a concerted effort, refusing to eat the rice and curry that Mother had prepared. Father’s voice always slowed at such times. Explaining in measured tones how many hours he had to work to put each meal upon the table. How many hours of shuffling paper, dealing patiently with hospital administrators, Englishmen who knew nothing about how the place was kept running, who only knew that they, by dint of their skin colour, commanded the people like my father who were the cogs and wheels of the system. How old was I then? At an age when fear of Father was beginning to change into a desire to emulate him, when love of Mother was transforming into contempt for her weakness, holding Father’s arm and crying that he should not beat us. Certainly it was I who took the first mouthful of food. Mercy, her eyes fixed upon me, received the beating.

I am glad when the lesson ends. It’s so long since I have taught, tutored, whatever, that at first I hardly knew what to say. Lack of practice, that’s all, made me feel an imposter. After a while the old rhythms began to return, the adjustment of pace, form and content in sensitive response to the pupils’ mood. Teaching for me was a calling, a desire to guide the young and unformed into knowledge and understanding. Without the rod. The modern world, I believed, must abjure the old ways. The arrogance of those who ruled, keeping their subjects safe and reasonably prosperous, must give way to the democratic participation of all. Colonialism was fading, its shadow diminishing, and young saplings of independence were thrusting into the sunlight. Youth, days of power and possibility. Yet in the end was it not I who was out of step with the world? I, believer in the necessity of freedom, who was fundamentally out of joint with society? Must security and comfort always be preferred to the rigour, the pain, of thinking for oneself? Must we always fear our inner selves too much to allow our outer selves true autonomy? No wonder I could not remain a teacher.

Two

The day after the Prince of Wales and the Repulse arrived at the Naval Base is a day I will never forget. At school everyone was talking about it; that and the Australian troops who had also just arrived.

Gopal, the son of a lawyer and the natural leader of the class, was pretending to be an Australian soldier whose bush hat had been knocked down over his eyes so that he could not see. He was blundering around, banging into desks.

‘Strewth, not fair, you Nips … leave my damn hat alone …’ He grappled with an imaginary enemy.

The door swung open. Gopal scrambled back to his place in an instant. Absolute silence, everyone at attention at their desks. Mr Motilal glared angrily around the room, his black-framed spectacles sitting awkwardly, slightly askew, on his bulbous nose, giving him a cross-eyed appearance. His shoulders were rounded and slumped forward, making a hump of his shoulder blades. He was North Indian, and so never would have understood, even had he known of it, the Tamil nickname ottagam, meaning camel, given to him by Gopal, and gleefully adopted by the rest of the class, even the Chinese, Malay and Eurasian boys. Everyone knew that the cause of Mr Motilal’s anger was the same as that of our merriment. He was vexed because the arrival of the British ships and the Australian troops clearly indicated that the British would not let Singapore, their prize possession, slip from their grasp, and that, to save us, they would defend the whole of Malaya. How could the Japanese now dare to strike across the Gulf of Siam from their new bases in Indochina?

It was an open secret that Mr Motilal sided with the Japanese, and looked forward to a Japanese-led war of Asian liberation from the White Man’s domination. Even the school principal, a soft-spoken, red-faced Welshman, Mr Thomas, apparently knew of Mr Motilal’s leanings and viewed them with an amused tolerance.

‘Sit down, boys.’

Mr Motilal taught geography. He stood now by the blackboard, his large nose in profile, staring at the globe that faced him from the other side of the blackboard. He turned towards us.

‘Today we will revise Lancashire, the industrial heartland of the British Empire. What are Lancashire’s chief industries?’

Gopal answered first. ‘Theft, sir, theft.’

‘Don’t be funny, boy.’

‘No, sir; theft of cotton, jobs and money from India.’

Mr Motilal smiled for the first time that day. ‘Very good, Gopal, but not an answer for the examinations. Textiles is certainly one of Lancashire’s major industries. What are the others?’

Those days of preparation for war were etched in vivid reds, whites and blues. There were red, white and blue flags along Coleman Street, flying from lampposts, as the Australian troops passed through, heading upcountry in their large two-and-a-half-tonne trucks, covered in green canvas. And in harbour, indomitable and proud, were the mighty capital ships of the Royal Navy.

But that bold blue moment of euphoria, speckled with red and white flags, did not last much beyond the arrival of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. Early one morning, about four o’clock, sirens awoke me, drawing me to the window, where I stood transfixed by the sight of Japanese aircraft, in the neatest of arrow formations, flying high in the sky, illuminated by searchlights yet apparently invulnerable to the puffs of anti-aircraft fire. Bombs were dropped in the centre of the city, and hundreds of civilians killed or wounded. Not one Japanese aircraft was downed. Even now I remember how my anger mingled with excitement, and even admiration, for those daring aviators.

Memory, having swept me back to the heady days of the War’s eve, now drops me indecorously back in the present. I am seated at my desk, facing the row of books that stand against the wall between dusty bookends — large ungainly wooden elephants whose tusks have long since broken off. The spines of the books are marked by frequent use. The pages are yellow, blotchy and discoloured. Looking at these repositories of learning, my best friends, I pity their sufferings from our heat and humidity. Scholarship can never conquer in these parts: every seeming victory is mocked by the steady workings of the climate, a climate that rots wood, paper and fabrics with democratic indiscrimination. Perhaps it was always a hopeless battle — and with that thought comes anger, momentarily shaking my body, reminding me of my increasing frailty, leaving me slumped in the chair.

I have at least a new pupil, although he is less a prospect for scholarship than a source of much-needed lucre. Anything would be better than having to depend on Victor. My son has done so well, has sold his soul so readily to the marketplace, has turned his back so firmly on all that I stand for, that I must never give him the satisfaction of contrasting my parsimony as a father with his generosity as a son.

So the income from this tuition I will set up like a bund around a padi field, to control the dissipation of my shrinking pool of savings. Two afternoons a week means a hundred and fifty dollars, enough to cover most expenses, including the rent of this room.

Perhaps we might manage thrice a week. But to secure that, I must first ensure the boy’s interest. His eyes (when they were not wandering off towards the sliding glass door that opened onto the back garden) seemed to be blank most of the time. Is he just a fool, a rich boy without an interesting thought in his head, or can he be a dreamer, his thoughts in flight all afternoon? Why on earth is the boy studying Latin? No one values knowledge for its own sake any more. But then what can the reason be? His father’s command, perhaps, based on the belief that the rigours of Latin can knock discipline into the most feckless of souls? If the boy is a fool, the more likely alternative, hard work is his only hope, and the only cure. But if Richard is a dreamer, although hard work remains essential, I must also find some way to spark the boy’s imagination, to set the fires of his mind burning towards his Latin texts.

When I first studied Latin, it was very much by rote. Declining and conjugating with such ardent repetition. As with mathematics, it took a long time before the patterns began to form of their own accord. Only when Mr Clarke took over the class did I really begin to understand the magic of the language, a language of conquerors and poets, of centurions and eunuchs. Mr Clarke was a great bear of a man: red face, heavy cheeks, big belly … I think he was drunk most of the time. I don’t honestly know how he kept his job. Sometimes you could smell the whisky on his breath even in class. But inside that bear of a man was an exquisitely fine mind of enormous sensitivity. He used to read Virgil aloud, rolling the words off his tongue, keeping the metre with a wagging finger, and his face, his ruddy, thick-jowled face, would be transformed, exalted … Sometimes it was all I could do not to laugh, but at other times I trembled upon the very edge of tears. The funny thing was that he seemed to teach better when he was drunk. When he was sober he was terribly impatient. But when he was drunk, even the slowest could keep up, because, whether he was aware of it or not, he kept repeating himself.

It was Mr Clarke who first made me understand that only in something that is wholly useless, utterly irrelevant, can we glimpse true beauty, the beauty of the divine.

Three

My wife’s photograph, framed in silver, catches my eye. It’s funny, it’s been on my desk for so long that it usually doesn’t register in my vision. Once my sleeve has wiped the dust off the glass, her eyes sparkle, and I bring the photograph closer to my eyes to examine her lips pouting to cover her front teeth, her dear darling teeth that in moments of doubt she would berate in the mirror: ‘you refugees from a rabbit warren, go and curse someone else’s face.’ She could never believe that I delighted in her mouth, in the hesitancy, the vulnerability, that the thrust of her teeth imparted to her lips. She would cover her mouth with a hand when I said such things, or tuck her chin into her shoulder, shielding her lips from my gaze. Gradually though, little by little, enduring the tempestuous tossing of her head, I would work my lips towards hers, until finally our lips were joined. ‘Rani, my dearest.’ The words slip out, as if they are just part of an ordinary exhalation of my breath, yet still somehow they find an echo, a hollow echo, in this bare room. It has been so long, so long since I felt her touch, smelt her scent of sea air, sandalwood and musk; so long that I spend weeks, trapped in the grind of my everyday routine, the daily chores that swallow up the hours, weeks without a thought of her, as if she belonged to an age long past, a dream from which I have long ago awoken.

The photograph is in black and white. But I remember her sari: the deepest of reds, with a pattern of flowing leaves marked out in gold thread along its edge. The picture was taken at Albert’s Studio in Stamford Road, soon after we were married, before Victor was born. By then I had been teaching for some years, teaching English and Latin at St George’s. We drove there in our white Morris Oxford. The school holiday. Chatter, light-hearted chatter, as the car sped towards the studio, my window down all the way in spite of her protests that the wind would ruin her hair, hair which she had spent an hour oiling and combing. For a moment, the rush of air is once again on my cheeks, and yet, perhaps I have confused another occasion, another drive. Does it matter?

We had a number of pictures taken, some together, some apart. One of us together I particularly remember. She seated, I with my arm on the back of the chair. Her chin raised, gaze a little distant, lips formed in that characteristic pout. I stared directly into the camera, a severe, stern expression on my face. A young man, strong, sure of myself. It was the age of independence, the age for men of independent minds. But where is that picture? Victor had one copy made for himself, but the original should still be here with me somewhere.

The trunk at the foot of my bed hoards papers and brown envelopes, infusing them with the smell of mothballs. The disorder makes me uneasy, for it affords myriads of hiding places for memories. They lurk within, ready to seize me should I reach inside. I distrust the grip that memory, sparked by some chance reminder, can exert, throwing me into melancholy, longing or despair. Yet I must see that photograph.

I lift out an envelope, which looks promising, the right size for photographs. But it contains only letters. The handwriting … of course, they’re from Rose, Rose Chinappa, who wrote so diligently after she left for England with her Englishman.

My dear Abraham,

The sea stretches endlessly in all directions. How insignificant I feel, adrift on this vast ocean. It is as if this great liner were no more than a cork bobbing on the surface of a pond. What more proof is needed of the grandeur of the Lord’s work?

Yet, even though the sea seems without end, suddenly we arrive at our port of call, and we are returned to a human scale and perspective. I have been told that tomorrow we land at Colombo, and I shall be posting this letter from there.

Charles has taken such good care of me. Of course I never expected otherwise, yet somehow each new kindness takes me by surprise, and sends a little wave of happiness rolling through my heart. We both have First-Class cabins, and are treated by the stewards as I used to imagine only royalty might be. I do so wish you had come to see us off: you would have seen my cabin then and I would not have to describe it to you.

The bed runs half the length of one wall, and has a wooden railing to stop me from falling out at night. Perhaps if the seas were rougher it might prove its usefulness, but thus far it has served only as an obstacle to my getting into bed each night! The sheets are starched white cotton, changed every day, and there is a top sheet below the blanket, but folded over it at the head of the bed. I didn’t dare tell Charles I’d never seen a bed made up like that before! There is a porthole on the other side of the cabin from the bed, through which I can see, even as I write, blue sea and blue sky, barely distinguishable one from the other. I am sitting now at a little table, not really a proper desk, and I have my books arranged in front of me, including, may I say, your kind gift of the Bible.

It is all such a contrast from the voyage I was on when last I left Singapore.

Do you remember our earlier parting? On that boat all was fear and uncertainty, loved ones left behind to face those dreadful Japanese, who only days before had sunk the Prince of Wales and the Repulse.

Today, by contrast, I am sailing into a new future. I hope you will come and visit us in our new home, one day. But first, find yourself a good Christian girl to look after you. And work hard at Teachers’ College.

May God bless your endeavours.

Yours ever,
Rose

In spite of my reluctance to reawaken childhood desires and youthful lusts, I reach at once for the next letter, beguiled by an image of Rose, smiling, her long, black hair pinned up into a bun.

My dear Abraham,

It was wonderful to see Sushila again. How close we became during those four years, those dark years of the Occupation. Now she is married, and has a baby girl! Imagine! Of course, I knew, as you know from her letters, that she had delivered, but to see the adorable creature in her arms, that’s a joy. And she’s Joy too; that’s what they’ve named her. She has such bright eyes and chubby cheeks, and the most mischievous smile I’ve ever seen, unless one counts that cherub in the Annunciation in St John’s, the one to the right, who looks more like he’s going to drop the lilies onto Mary’s head than hold them aloft in her praise.

I also met George, her husband. He is dark, with thick eyebrows and bushy sideburns, rather quiet really, but I dare say he is a good person. His father is a priest and has such a loud voice and firm handshake, the complete opposite of George, who seems quite shy. George’s sister, Shantini, has married Sushi’s brother, Joshua, and he has now found a good job in Service. I did not meet them, however, since we were in port for only one day, but at least Sushi has now met Charles, after all my letters about him, and I have met George, and George’s father, and little Joy.

Charles is working hard every day. He says that the last three years he has been out of touch with events in England, and he says that, as in Malaya, there have been many changes. But at least there is no more rationing in England. Charles tells me not to expect too much, that England is not as grand as I think, it is not all palaces and gardens, but I cannot help being excited. And so is he. He will not admit it, but I know, I can tell he is excited because he has not seen his family for three years and now he is bringing home a bride. What will they think, Abraham, of their Tamil daughter-in-law? I am a little scared of this, of meeting them. Do you think I am brave, Abraham, as I like to think, or am I just foolish? Will I be back with my tail between my legs, as Father says?

But I must not trouble you with my fears. I believe Charles when he tells me everything will be all right.

Please write to me when you can. I do not want to lose your friendship.

May the Lord bless you, Abraham.

Yours ever,
Rose

My eyes hurt a little — the writing is just a little unfamiliar in its youthful neatness. Rose’s handwriting has grown bolder, bigger, wilder, with the passing years. The old pain rises in my heart, the pain of parting, of losing her. Charles, slight, frail, pale Charles, yet with a strength of voice and manner that captivated her. He was with the Colonial Legal Service, coming out soon after the War ended. Lived off the River Valley Road, riding a trishaw to the Courts each morning, his immaculately turned out grey suit and white topi an impressive contrast with the trishaw, whose metal frame was polished by its pedaller with black shoeshine till it gleamed and sparkled in the early morning sun.

Charles attended St John’s, where Rose and I sang in the choir, seated across the aisle from one another. I am sure she really did look especially beautiful that first morning when Charles joined the congregation, the sun streaming through the windows behind her, highlighting the sheen of her hair, her eyes dancing and her bosom heaving as she sang.

Charles spoke to Rose afterwards, at breakfast in the church hall. They were out of hearing, but I saw her smile, her mouth opening to laugh. Annoyance, anger, quickly overwhelmed by helplessness. Did she know, ever really know, how I hungered for her, how she haunted my dreams, that fine long neck and cascade of hair, her small, even, white teeth? How could she not know, when I stared at her across the aisle each week, she smiling each time I caught her eye, tossing her head back a little as if to give her voice more room? But I was just a little boy, all of two years her junior, first singing in her row, then, after that one year’s absence from the choir as my voice broke, across the aisle. How could she look upon me with anything other than amused affection, or sisterly concern?

Four

The evening after that first air raid the Chinappas came by, the parents bringing with them Rose and her elder sister Lily. The parents went inside, leaving Rose and Lily out on the verandah with me. Mercy, as ever, had to help serve the guests. This she did in her usual reluctant, hesitant manner, as if she had been called upon to perform a difficult and dangerous feat. She should have been a boy, for her awkwardness made her a clumsy hostess. Even when there were no guests, and she helped Mother in the kitchen, her efforts always seemed on the verge of disaster: she would allow water to boil over or drop the plate her hands were blindly drying. But that evening at least, as far as I can recall, there was no mishap. Did she serve tea that day? No, I’m sure it was ginger beer, and crackers perhaps, Jacob’s Cream Crackers. When she had finished, Mercy came out onto the verandah to join us.

It was the last half hour of daylight, when a boy’s thoughts turn to dinner. The Chinappas’ arrival meant that dinner would be delayed, and I was anxious to know what it was that had brought them uninvited to our house at such an inconvenient hour. And with all four of them in such solemn procession. But Lily’s presence kept me silent. I was always intimidated by her. The four years by which she was my senior, and perhaps even her younger sister’s friendship with me, made me in her eyes an entirely undesirable companion in conversation.

Rose spoke first. ‘We have booked tickets for the passage to Colombo. We will be staying with relatives there until the Japanese have been sent packing.’

The back of my throat went dry. To speak seemed impossible.

‘Appa and Amma think your family should come too. At least you and Mercy and your mother.’

In the late afternoon sun the shadow of the house reached a long way down the gravel driveway. Into that shadow came a sudden chill. Then a moment of silence, broken by Mother’s voice, calling for Mercy. She stood up and went back into the house.

At last I found words, but dared not look at Rose. ‘You know my father won’t want to leave … the hospital may need him.’

‘Appa also said he couldn’t leave, at first, but Amma talked him out of his stubbornness.’

‘But my father doesn’t work for himself like your father, he’s at the hospital. I heard him telling my mother yesterday that he can’t … won’t leave as long as the English doctors stay. After all, they’re the ones the Japanese would … you know … if they ever…’

Rose lifted up her head. She was sitting on the verandah step, on the edge of the garden, while I was now standing a little to her side. She wrinkled her nose, and my knees weakened. In that same moment I was stirred to anger, for she had no idea of her effect on me, and suddenly it seemed intolerable that she should, without even knowing it, hold such power over me.

‘I hate the Japs. Funny little men. Why are they so greedy, why don’t they stay at home?’ She spoke in a pouting tone of voice that I had not heard from her before.

If Father stayed, Mother would too. Would Mercy and I then be sent on our own to Colombo? Near Rose, safe from bombs and all those dreadful things that the Japanese had done in China and now appeared to plan for the rest of Asia, yet cut off from all the action. But why bother to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of going or staying? The fact was that my fate lay in the hands of my parents. Whether I went with or was separated from Rose was no doubt being decided at this very moment, and decided with no suspicion that the question of leaving for Colombo could not, in my mind, be framed in any other way. Again the knowledge that my passion was locked away, cloistered from the world, from Rose even, enraged me. Looking away from Rose I answered her question with another, hardening my voice into carelessness.

‘And the British? Why didn’t they stay at home?’

Now at last Lily, who had been sitting at a distance, unconcerned and aloof, spoke.

‘Abraham, you really are a silly little boy. Everyone knows the British came here with the Bible, doing the Lord’s work. The Japanese are heathens. You know what they did to the Christians in their own land — they crucified them, hundreds and hundreds by the roadside. And you know what they’ve been doing in China. Listen, boy, they’ll do the same thing here if they ever get the chance. If you want to stay here and be their friend, please don’t let us stop you, but please don’t involve Rose or myself.’

I was about to join battle, roused, notwithstanding my usual trepidation, by the insult, when Rose caught my eye. So I kept quiet, putting my hands in my pockets and staring at my feet. Mercy reappeared at that moment and sat down beside Rose. ‘What’s the matter? Why is everyone so quiet?’

Rose put her hand on Mercy’s arm. ‘I think we’re all a little strained. We’ll be leaving soon and perhaps we shouldn’t talk, should just listen to the birds.’ Rose paused, and sure enough the birds had begun to chatter, gathering in the trees in the garden as darkness fell. ‘I hope you will both come to Colombo.’

Lily shot a single, narrow look at Rose. I caught it from the corner of my eye, as I stared into the darkening sky in which stars were beginning to appear. It was a look of warning, warning Rose not to patronise her. Still, Lily kept her silence, and her distance. After a few moments I sat down next to Rose, on the other side from Mercy. A light evening breeze was ruffling the trees, whose dark crowns were silhouetted against the sky. Once the darkness settled in, the birds quietened, conceding the night air to the cicadas. Mercy stood up to fetch a mosquito coil, which she lit and placed to one side of the verandah. Its fragrance drifted among us, as we sat there between the insects humming in the darkness-enshrouded garden and the adults whispering in the lighted interior of the house.

That feverish sleepless night it seemed that the lives of millions hung in the balance, and, among them, mine and Mercy’s. I could not sleep, nor, I imagine, could Mercy, after our parents told us that we would be sent to Colombo in the care of the Chinappas. To Colombo, where we could stay with our mother’s sister, whose husband was in Service.

I tossed and turned all night, too hot with the blanket covering me, too cold with it off. Rose was in my mind that night, as in so many nights since. Most of all her scent as she sat beside me on the verandah, the smell of talcum powder freshly applied after a bath, but also something else altogether, something much more exciting. Was that the night I first imagined unwinding her sari and laying my head between her cool breasts? Such thoughts could only have made it harder for me to sleep, and when I did so, perhaps only when dawn was poised to break, it must have been to dreams of her, perhaps to the dream of her that recurred so often during the dark days of the Occupation, a dream of a boat, rocking gently on the seas, the two of us rocking gently together, rocking with the waves, until suddenly the boat was sinking, the sea sucking us down into its murky depths … and I would fall back into consciousness with a jolt.

We did not go to school the next day. The rickshaw man who normally took us to school was paid his wages for the week and given a note to pass to our school principals.

That day became a day of packing. Mercy and I had a sturdy metal-framed trunk each. I started with my clothes, and my shoes: my spare white canvas shoes and my black leather shoes for church. Mother gave each of us a photograph, taken the year before. She was seated, Mercy resting awkwardly in her lap, while Father stood behind and slightly to the right of the high-backed chair, one hand resting on its back. I stood in front of Father, the grasp of his other hand secure upon my shoulder. Where is it now?

No matter how hard I worked at packing my trunk I felt I could never complete the job, let alone set sail for Colombo. Every so often I would wander over to the window. The glass was dirty, as if the impending hostilities had made Mother neglect her domestic duties, as if the threat of war made all such activities dwindle into insignificance. The window was streaked with dirt and its sill lined with the remains of tiny insects and fragments of leaves. I stared out at the garden, at the rambutan tree, which would soon be heavy with fruit, whether the Japanese reached Singapore or not. What a shame to miss this year’s rambutans, or did they have them too in Colombo? What trees, come to think of it, did they have in Colombo?

It took Mother’s intervention to get my trunk packed. Where I dithered, daunted by the number of things, unsure what to pack or in what order, she, after the obligatory scolding of my sloth, packed fast and neatly. When she had finished, she called me over, and, ruffling my hair, showed me where everything was: underclothes, sarongs, shirts, shoes, Bible. Over them all she laid out a blanket, folded in half. ‘It may be cold on the ship.’

Was it that day or the next that Father came home in the late afternoon and gathered the family about him in the front room? I approached reluctantly, expecting a family prayer in anticipation of our parting. I did not relish the prospect of tears from Mother, who might even be joined in them by Mercy. Not that I displayed my reluctance, for Father’s command was law.

We formed a solemn circle around Father, seated in his armchair.

‘The Prince of Wales and Repulse are sunk. The Japanese have landed near Kota Bharu.’

He spoke abruptly, in a firm voice, without preamble. Mother wailed, ‘How? How can it be?’ until Father spoke to her, quickly and sharply, shifting into Tamil to make the point more strongly, telling her to pull herself together and not scare the children. Silenced, Mother sat down on one end of the settee. For some reason I was more excited than scared, even as my mind burned with the thought of those great grey vessels, fiery coffins, sinking fast beneath the waves, flames that singed the lungs of the crew doused only by the drowning sea.

‘As a result of that the whole town is panicking. I went to the shipping line offices but there are no tickets, for love or money no tickets.’

Father’s words stand out against a backdrop of Mother’s tears.

‘I went to see Chinappa. He’s made me an offer which I have accepted.’

Mother looked up, a sob dying on her lips.

‘He will give me his ticket. So there is one berth. For Mercy … or for Abraham.’ The pace of his words accelerated. ‘Abraham is the elder. It will be easier for him to live without us in Colombo. Are you ready to go?’

I looked from Father’s anxious, uncertain face to that of Mercy. Her lips were pressed tightly together, a thin, pale line, as if set in stone.

‘What does Thangkaichee want?’ I stammered over the words. When Mercy said nothing, I looked back at Father, Mother, and then once more at Mercy.

‘Mercy?’ It was Father, his voice quiet.

Finally she spoke, her eyes fixed on him. ‘I will stay with you.’

Mother, wringing her white handkerchief, now broke her silence. ‘But Mercy is a girl. She will be safer in Colombo … we do not know with these Japanese…’

Father stood up. He walked to the window and tapped his fingers on the sill. Looking out into the garden he spoke again.

‘Amma is right. Mercy will go.’

I too stood up. The air felt so close and damp, and Mercy’s sullen silence so oppressive, that I had to go outside, where at least there might be a breeze. Why she was not happy to be delivered from the hands of the Enemy I did not try too long to understand, for my thoughts were already turning to my imminent separation from Rose.

Five

Like so many other nights of my past, tonight is troubled and sleepless. That night on the eve of war, when I believed myself bound for Colombo. Another night, driving through the rain, in search of Mercy. And then that night when I stayed in bed instead of following Rani into the empty midnight streets. This night, of course, is more commonplace, just another night when I wander back over my life and its many turnings. Surely my life can withstand any scrutiny: it has always been an examined life, at every step I directed my energies towards becoming a good son, good brother, good husband, good teacher and good citizen. There cannot be many others who, awake in their beds at night, may honestly share this boast. But then why am I not rewarded with the grace of sleep, calm repose after a lifetime’s toil?

Today was not a good day. First of all, the Yeos’ car was not on time to pick me up from the bus stop at the edge of the estate where they live. Fearful of missing a lesson, and the remuneration that comes with it, I began to walk in, struggling with the incline of the hill. I had almost reached the point at which hopelessness sets in, the increasing number of rests required seeming proof of Zeno’s theorem, when the Yeos’ Mercedes pulled up, its smooth purr mocking the rasp of my breath.

The boy was in the back seat, smiling in welcome, or perhaps laughing at my frailty, my painfully slow gait. The Malay driver reached over and opened the front door, gesturing for me to get in.

It took me an age to do so, and when I had finally settled into the seat and tried to pull the door shut it did not close properly. The driver then spoke to me in a most insolent manner. ‘Tak tutup.’

I opened the door and tried to slam it. The double click told me it had not fully closed, had rebounded from the catch.

The driver sighed. He undid his seatbelt and reached across me, pushing my hand away from the door handle. He opened the door and slammed it hard. As he buckled his seat belt once again and put the car into gear I heard him say, softly but distinctly, no doubt intending to be overheard, ‘Orang tua.’

I attempted to fix the man with a glare invested with the authority of my vocation. But the driver kept his gaze on the road ahead. If I am old and grey-headed, at least I am an old teacher. Surely age establishes the depth of my learning. I deserve respect, even if I have to force my tired old body to walk in the hot afternoon sun in order to earn my daily bread. What is the world coming to?

After that beginning how could the lesson go well? The boy’s boredom was on display in his long, lingering sideways glances towards the sliding glass door that leads to the garden. It was, perhaps, only to be expected: with Latin one has to build a solid foundation first, only later does it become enjoyable, the game of detective when reading a dense Latin text, striving to catch nuances and resolve ambiguities.

But how to explain all of that? That room, the carved wooden frieze nailed to the wall, stolen originally from who-knows-what temple, the marble floor, and, under my feet, the hand-woven silk carpet. How can I explain to that boy, who no doubt has only to express a wish for it to be granted by his indulgent parents? How to tell him that one has to work hard now in order to secure future gains? For Richard, studying Latin is probably a whim which will soon fade away. In my day I kept my nose to the books, even in the midst of the Japanese Occupation, when, my schooling interrupted, I had to work as a translator. In spite of this, I still studied, at night, devouring any books I could get my hands on. Yes, even when I was tired from a long day at the Transport Ministry, always at the beck and call of that young Japanese officer (what was his name now — Kamaguchi or Hamaguchi?), constantly being called upon to explain peremptory orders to bewildered civilians. I studied, dreaming of liberation, of the day when the rule of law would return, and I could start life again. I worked, suffering in the present for the sake of my future.

How can I explain that to this boy, this child weaned on television, on programmes that consist of a succession of flashing numbers to teach one counting, pictures to teach words and the alphabet, and cuddly animals acting out short scenarios that express simple moral lessons? For this boy education has to be entertaining, has to be fun. But real education is not like that: education, like medicine, is something good for you, no matter how bitter its taste. A teacher can do little to sweeten the pill, only seek to inspire his pupils to make that extra effort of ingestion.

Mankind, in the name of progress, lightens his burdens with each passing generation. Automobiles to travel in, calculators to do our counting, microwave ovens to do our cooking. At the touch of a button the accumulated toil of millennia whirs into service of the humblest individual. It is supremely democratic, yet its levelling has reduced us all. Comfort turns us sedentary, weakens our characters and softens our backbones. While the race grows ever more powerful, capable of destroying the entire world at the touch of, yes, another button, the individual becomes more feeble, more narrowly conscribed in his competence. Who can be hunter, farmer, cook and homemaker? Let alone doctor, engineer, lawyer and teacher?

On a handful of specialists (themselves incompetent outside their speciality) our abilities in any field rest. On the complex workings of a system no one person can rightly comprehend, let alone control, our comfortable lives depend. Even our storytelling we now leave to so-called professionals, to the vast production of drivel that spews forth daily from our televisions. Drivel because to entertain all, it cannot upset or challenge anyone.

So if I am an old man, unable to open a car door, incompetent in the modern world of buttons and machines, I am still no worse than any other, no worse than that insolent driver, slave to the gears and levers of his machine. And in my mastery of Latin I have chosen precisely that speciality on which nothing depends, thus freeing myself from the chains of the system. I am not driven, like so many others, into justifying my life in terms of the extent to which others need that fragment of mankind’s inheritance in which I have specialised. An absurd and meaningless justification, for what value is there in guardianship for the period of your working life over that tiny corner of the world? So what if the particular corner that you have chosen (tax law perhaps, or orthopaedic surgery) bestows on you a higher income than the average? Your life is no more valuable, you who watch the same television and eat food that, no matter how much more elaborately prepared, how much more expensive than your neighbour’s, remains in essence the same. For life to be of value we must resist this dependence on others, this childish satisfaction in others’ dependence upon us. If I have difficulty in obtaining gainful employment, such is a small price to pay for my liberation.

Yet I do need the money. I am not nor will ever be truly free. Why is it that I still feel this is a battle I might have won, when surely it was lost centuries ago?

At least I succeeded in giving the boy homework before I left. Vocabulary for the first conjugation and first declension. Every word to be memorised by the next lesson. He protested at having to work over the weekend, but I held firm. The boy will drift if left to his own devices. I must establish a framework for learning, and hope that he catches the feel of the language and becomes interested of his own accord, before he gives up in despair.

When the Chinappas came to the house to collect Mercy on their way to the boat that would take them all out of harm’s way, safe and sound to Colombo, the sky was overcast, filled with dark brooding clouds that seemed to jostle one another in their rush to obscure the sun. The trunk had been sent on ahead. Father had said we should not go down to the docks. In recent days, when other ships had sailed, there had been a crush of people at the dockside, pushing, shoving, hoping that by some miracle they would find a berth, to anywhere, anyhow, so long as they could escape the Japanese demons.

But Mercy was not happy at being abandoned, here, at the door of her own home, not even escorted by her family to the ship. Her face darker even than the sky, she refused to talk to me, and, when Mother and Father in turn hugged her to them, her arms remained by her sides.

Although unsettled by Mercy’s behaviour and assailed by an unease the source of which I still cannot fathom, I was nonetheless more anxious about Rose. It seemed fundamentally important to say goodbye to her properly, to elicit from her some gesture of affection that I could hold in my memory when we were apart. We stood together in one corner of the verandah. I remember moistening my lips with my tongue and then speaking to her in a soft, low voice.

‘I will miss you, Rose.’

‘Don’t be silly, Abraham. We’ll be back soon. I expect the Nips will be stopped soon, maybe before Kuala Lumpur.’

‘I will miss you anyway.’

Rose reached out a hand.

‘You are silly. Please be careful. Be brave but don’t be foolish.’

There must be something else I could say, something she would remember across the miles. I had to find the words, and find them at once. She paused a moment, her smile a little quizzical, as if she too expected something more. My mouth opened, then closed. How foolish I must have looked, like a carp bumping up against the glass sides of a fish tank.

Then she was gone, turning to rejoin her family. I stood there watching till they were out of sight, the thought that any gesture must be inadequate, must seem too frivolous, keeping my arms frozen by my side.

‘It’s good that you are packed, son. In any case, unless those people are stopped, you and I will go to Lim Chu Kang. There is a small farm there. Appa says there may be more bombing in the city, and that it is too risky to stay here. He wants us to travel tomorrow.’

‘And Appa?’

‘He will stay here. When it is safe he will come, or send word to us.’

I walked slowly back up the driveway to the house, my shoes scuffing on the gravel, until Mother started scolding. I remember disappearing into my room and shutting the door, unable to talk to my parents as Rose slipped away. I sat on the edge of my bed and stared out through the dirty window pane. Rain began to fall, a sudden rush of water that drummed against the glass. Momentarily it seemed that the water was washing away the dirt. But then (and this was a moment that has come back to me many times across the years, whenever I watch from indoors the start of a thunderstorm) I realised that all that was happening was the replacement of old dirt with new. The fragments of leaves, soil and dead insects that littered the outer sill of the window were being brought to life, made to dance, by the pounding rain. They jumped up against the window pane, smearing it anew. The rain’s futility brought a strange comfort to me, then and each time I remember it. If I had lacked the courage to speak to Rose as my heart urged and as the moment demanded, and if it was then that I lost Rose — well, that was the way of things.

I remember too that as the rain consoled me I was overtaken by a giddy excitement. Rose might be leaving, but there was war looming on my doorstep. I half-regretted banishment to Lim Chu Kang, for if there was to be more bombing I wanted to see it. Perhaps I would distinguish myself by my bravery. Perhaps by the time Rose returned I would be acknowledged as a hero and given a medal to wear upon my chest. To see opportunity in danger, to seek out proofs of one’s courage and strength: such is the vanity of youth. Surely to have survived this far, to have managed as well as I have done, surely that is achievement enough? Why then the prick of these recurring memories, why this disturbance of what should be a tranquil old age? Don’t I deserve a rest, Mercy, won’t I join you soon enough? I am not at fault, for you to haunt me so.

Six

In Lim Chu Kang I made two discoveries. I learned that smelling funny did not make Chinese people any less decent or kind than ourselves, and that working with one’s hands did not make one any less a human being. It was not that my parents had ever openly espoused propositions to the contrary, but somehow such had been the assumptions upon which my childhood was founded.

The farmer and his wife were hardly distinguishable one from the other, any differences having been weathered and eroded by years of exposure to the sun. Their three daughters, who giggled whenever they saw me, walked to school every day. Theirs was a Mandarin school, so even with them I could communicate only by means of simple Malay. Their textbooks took pride of place in the main room of the house. One entire shelf was reserved for them.

There was an altar outside the house. Mother, I am sure, kept her eyes averted from it, wary of heathen infection, but I was fascinated by its gaudy red paint, by the burning joss sticks and the offerings of fruit and rice. Beyond the cemented compound were a chicken coop, a well and the toilet outhouse. A large earthen jar collected rainwater for bathing. Past them were the undulating fields of vegetables: long beans, tomatoes, kai lan and others whose names I no longer recall. Clustered above them, at the top of the hill, were fruit trees: durian, jackfruit, guava and rambutan. I remember one afternoon eating guava until I was sick. My retching produced little more than an acidic bile, and the discomfort lasted into the night. An early lesson in the advantages of temperance.

Another day, as I was walking back after an afternoon’s roaming, the sun already setting, I spotted the middle daughter proceeding to the earthen jar for her bath. Quickly I ducked behind a bush and watched her pour a scoopful of water over her shoulders and commence soaping. Of course she did not remove the cotton wrap she had about her, but as she progressed it clung ever more closely to her curves. A wicked excitement gripped me, as I sat there seeing but unseen. Joy mingled with shame in my release, the moment broken by my mother’s voice calling for me. I scrambled back to the house by a roundabout route that I hoped would not compromise my hideout. Later that evening I shook my head in innocent denial when the girl, smiling all the while, wagged her finger at me. I wonder why I felt unable to express to her the desire that she had kindled in me, why I have always desired more than I have acted. Moderation perhaps, an understanding that restraint is a virtue.

Mother spent most of the days tut-tutting at the household arrangements. The cooking she held in particular scorn, and would mutter to me about the crying shame of it all when garlic was chopped finely and fried until charred. ‘Burnt like that it’s very bitter,’ she would say without fail each mealtime. I, however, was fascinated: the great iron wok, black as night; the intense heat of the fire; and the rush and roar of ingredients as they were stirred in. Everything was faster and hotter than at home, where curries would bubble over a low flame for hours. There was a sense of vigour, of brusque impatience, that made our kitchen, and us in consequence, seem idle and slothful.

Richard’s kitchen must be like that. All fervour and hurry. They have a maid from the Philippines, for whom the robust haste of Chinese cooking must be quite unnatural. He has decided to continue with his Latin lessons during the Christmas holidays, and, perhaps with more time to study, has begun to make surprisingly good progress. The important thing is to catch his interest, to show him how Latin can unlock a door through which one can glimpse the underlying pattern of the English language.

Another key to sparking the boy’s enthusiasm is to start him on the translation of sentences that are no longer reminiscent of baby-talk, or, better still, on short prose passages.

Yesterday I gave him a description of a battle from Julius Caesar’s account of his conquest of Gaul. Caesar’s Latin is simple, intended for the widest readership, and so this passage, save for one or two sentence constructions simplified for beginners, was almost intact. I could see how the passage interested him with all its talk of phalanxes and carapaces, and the satisfaction he obtained from being able to manage most of the passage with minimal assistance was quite apparent. Seeing this tempted me into indulgence. I lost myself in reminiscences that can only have bored the boy.

‘Reading about battles and foreign conquests also brings to my mind the dark days of the Occupation. I was about your age — no, perhaps a year older — when the Japanese came. That’s something, isn’t it?’

Richard’s curiosity seemed to have been aroused, as well as a measure of disbelief, as if he was trying to picture me at his age, and managing only a vision of my worn and wrinkled face on the body of a young boy.

‘What was it like?’

Embarrassment brought me to my feet. ‘I should be going, I suppose.’

‘Tell me about it.’

I had started, and could hardly refuse such an earnest request. I sat down again.

‘There’s not much to tell, Richard. I didn’t have any grand adventures you know.’ Frankly, I was busily searching my mind for exactly that — some grand adventure to impress the youth. ‘When the Japanese captured Singapore it was just me and my parents. My sister had gone by ship to Colombo, several weeks before the Japanese reached Johore. It was a good thing she left then, and not later, because many of the later transports were sunk, you see, because people in their desperation resorted to the most unseaworthy of vessels … and enemy action too, that got worse. … You know Colombo, I suppose, where it is?’

‘Sri Lanka, capital,’ he murmured.

‘My father packed my mother and me off to the countryside, Lim Chu Kang. It really was country then. We stayed on a farm. My father wouldn’t let us stay in town because of the bombing…’

The boy’s face momentarily convulsed, as if I had said something funny. Unable to fathom what that might be, I was overtaken by an uneasy feeling that anything I might say must seem the ramblings of an old man. Was I just prattling on for his mocking amusement? My words quickened in my anxiety to finish the story and take my leave.

‘My father stayed in town. He was working at the hospital, the General Hospital. As a senior clerk in the hospital administration. We stayed on this farm for what seemed like months. Father visited us once a week, driving out with a friend who owned a car, or else borrowing a hospital vehicle. We didn’t get much news except from him. We could hardly communicate with the farmer and his family, or their neighbours. They all spoke dialect, hardly any Malay, and certainly no English or Tamil. But it was fun. No school. And there was so much to explore: the chicken coop, the fields of vegetables and then beyond them the fruit trees, and rows and rows of rubber trees. But as the weeks went by there was more bombing…’ Another convulsion. The beginnings of a giggle. ‘…in town, and gunfire in the distance, until suddenly all was quiet. Not a sound. Only the cockerel kept up his crowing. After two days of quiet, we were desperate to find out what had happened. Who had won? Right up until the last moment we hoped for a miracle, for the Japanese to be turned back. Then, one morning, when I was watching that cockerel bossing his hens around as he must have done every day of his adult life, quite oblivious to the fact that the world was at war, I saw Father, walking up the road towards us. He had walked all the way — can you imagine? — more than six hours’ walk, from the city. He must have started walking a few hours before dawn … and when he reached us he, even he, my father, was tired out. He walked past me, hardly seeming to notice me, straight into the farmhouse in search of Mother. And when he saw her he sank right down into the nearest chair, flopped over like a sack of rice.’

‘Why did he have to walk?’

‘The Japanese had straightaway taken over the hospital. And they were commanding every vehicle they could find. They’d come down the Peninsula, all that way, many on bicycle or foot, and I imagine they thought it was someone else’s turn to walk. Anyway, he told us to stay there (though we could hardly go anywhere else) until he could send us word that it was safe to return … and of course we needed transport. Even a bullock cart would be better than Mother and me walking. He walked back, that same day, in the afternoon, after lunch, and after talking to the farmer, in a mixture of dialect and Malay. The farmer had been a patient at the hospital or something — I can’t quite remember how my father had found him.’

‘But how were the Japanese?’

‘One learned to get along with them. To bow and scrape at the appropriate times. My father was useful to them, as a hospital administrator, and they never touched him or any of my family. But he did no more than the bare minimum. He did not like or respect them. Fear them, of course, everyone feared them. But all he did was keep working, keep doing his job. He did not raise money for them from the Jaffna community or anything like that. I stopped school after picking up enough Japanese to work as a translator. My father told me to stop, because the Japanese took over the schools and he was sure they would not last.’

‘You knew that right from the beginning?’

‘Father did. Somehow he always knew things. Others thought the British had been beaten far too soundly ever to return. The Americans too — they were torn to pieces at Pearl Harbour and in the Philippines. It wasn’t that he doubted the strength of the Japanese. For many years he had warned that a war was coming. The Japanese were too strong to let Britain and America dominate the Pacific. He knew they were a powerful country. He knew too that they were brutal and would do anything to win. He visited the POW camps, with medical supplies when there were any, and he saw the POWs wasting away, while Japanese officers strutted around in smart uniforms … No, his belief that the Japanese would not last long came from something much simpler — how could Japanese domination of the world be God’s will? The Japanese brought nothing to Singapore but their guns. They despised the Malays, although they treated them best of all. The Chinese — how they hated the Chinese … for everything that a Japanese person thinks makes him special, better than the rest of the world, comes from China. That sense of inferiority made them especially brutal towards the Chinese. As for Indians, they wanted to use us against the British. They dreamed of rebellion against the Crown in India. Nor did they secretly despise us, as they did the Malays. They knew we could work hard and that the Buddhist part of what they call their religion came from India … But they did have a horror of our skin. Our colour. Father had seen Japanese people steeling themselves before submitting to treatment, to being touched, by an Indian doctor. Now, what was I saying?’

‘How your father was sure the Japanese would not win in the end.’

‘Oh yes, of course. The British had brought God’s word and a system of law that protected all, regardless of race. The British thought their civilisation was best, but at least wanted to share it, you understand? The Japanese were even more convinced of their superiority, so much so that they believed their superiority was inherent in their race and could not be exported to other, inferior peoples.’

I stopped at this point, my breathing heavy. I had lost my bearings somewhere in the course of my monologue. Was this what Father had thought or what I now believed? Father so rarely spoke at any length of his thoughts or feelings. I was putting words into his mouth. And why was I unburdening myself to this boy? I should have resisted his probing. Memories are elusive creatures, like butterflies. The more one tries to capture them, to put them on display, the more tangled one becomes in the net of one’s remembrance.

‘Do you mean the Japanese lost simply because they did not win over the people they conquered?’

‘You’re right. In Singapore they didn’t. Or the Philippines. They did to some extent in Indonesia, where some people thought the Japanese were an improvement on the Dutch. But I’m saying a little more than that.’ Suddenly convinced once again of the truth of my words, remembering less the dark days of the Occupation than the bright years of my twenties, when Singapore was surging forward upon the tide of Merdeka, my voice strengthened. ‘Ideas count, not just force. I knew that Britain would win in the end because they had better ideas, however imperfectly they practised them.’

‘You mean Christianity must triumph … democracy must win?’

Was the boy mocking me? A moment earlier I had been so sure of my insight, claiming it for myself rather than Father. Yet stated like that, as a universal law, it sounded absurd. The Bible certainly does not promise the triumph of right over might, not in this world. Only in heaven will the sins of the world be judged and condemned.

‘I don’t know, boy. Maybe not.’ My voice subsided to a whisper. I took my glasses off and, to conceal my confusion, massaged the bridge of my nose and rubbed my eyes.

‘What about collaborators? Did you know any?’

I was relieved at the question, for it turned the conversation away from the theory that I had propounded and had come to doubt. I put my glasses back on and focused my gaze firmly upon Richard, only to be nonplussed by the intensity of his interest. ‘Of course. There were so many…’ I lost my train of thought for a moment, but then it came back to me, the face of Selvam, soft and pliable like latex, no doubt the product of the poisonous sap that ran in his veins. ‘This family who were our friends, their eldest son worked for the Kempeitai. What power he wielded! What fear he commanded! Oh, yes … what an empire he built for himself, extorting money — no, he was cleverer, he extorted only durable valuables, jewellery, things like that, and how many followers he had … really a king. But of course, the fortunes of war changed. You have read the history?’

‘Yes.’

‘How the British held onto Burma, and then the Japanese navy was destroyed by the American bombers?’

‘Yes, at Midway?’

‘That’s right. So this gentleman had to start singing a different tune. Tried to use his influence to help people rather than rob them. But that wasn’t easy. The clearer it became that the Japanese would not win, the meaner they got, and, as their lackey, he had to get meaner too.’

‘What happened when the British came back?’

‘He disappeared. Went upcountry for many months. Then he came back, and with the money he’d made during the war, went to England to study law. He became a very successful lawyer.’

‘Didn’t he get put on trial or anything?’

‘No. Perhaps he didn’t deserve any punishment. Perhaps I’m too hard on him. Maybe he had to do what he did. Or maybe…’

‘Yes?’

‘Maybe it is too much to expect justice in the world.’ This thought, contradictory to that of a few moments before, had triumphed. ‘Man is fallen. Why should it surprise us that the wicked and the unjust succeed where the pure of heart fail? Only in heaven will justice be done.’

Seven

I see Victor once a week or so. He makes a point of treating me to a meal, the dutiful son. His apartment parades his youthful prosperity. This unsettles me. I am forced to sit on the edge of one of his large armchairs, for fear that I may otherwise sink into its depths, never to re-emerge. I prefer a straight-backed chair, such as he has in the dining room, but today I have decided against fuss.

I am irritated that Victor is fetching me a soft drink. Where is the wife who should take care of such things? Thirty-three and still not married. Of course courtship is different these days. I cannot interfere; that would only cause resentment. Still, there never seems to be a woman around, no one more than a friend. My son works too hard. It really is not healthy. Somehow the human race has trapped itself into accepting an ever faster pace of life. Twenty years ago no one worked beyond normal office hours. Nowadays Victor describes what he calls ‘pulling an all-nighter’ with an utterly absurd pride.

Perhaps my real concern is for myself. I’m sixty-eight and the burden of my years seems to weigh ever more heavily upon me. Father, born at the turn of the century, died in his mid-sixties, only a few years after Victor’s birth, a few months after a stroke had left his right side paralysed. A desire to see grandchildren aches within me, to watch them pass the threshold that separates infant from child, so that they may carry me in their memories for the rest of their lives.

As Victor hands me my glass of ginger beer, I am struck by the paunch spreading across his middle and the cheeks unshaven because it’s Sunday (a habit he did not inherit from me). With his hair thinning on top the boy looks practically middle-aged. Is he deliberately not marrying in order to spite his father? Abandoning his body to a lawyerly middle age in order to mock me, to mock those days when we played badminton or cricket together?

Of course it may just be a required attribute of the successful lawyer. A junior partner in a substantial law firm, a firm of good repute. Very few can climb so far, so fast. The boy has often said how important it is for a lawyer, for whom seniority seems to count more than ability, to look old. He’s wiser than his father too, for he abjures politics, saying one can be perfectly comfortable keeping within the bounds set by our rulers, and that there’s no reason why anyone should risk his career, or worse, for the sake of more freedom than he would know what to do with. His circumspection has certainly paid dividends, for he has, at his young age, been able to afford a professional decorator to do up his apartment, located on the fringes of one of Singapore’s best residential areas. It was the decorator who chose this absurd armchair, whose taste is reflected in the painting on the opposite wall, two squiggles of red and blue paint. That’s the point though. This is not a home. It’s a display of his arrival in the world. Only a woman in the house could make it a home.

Victor will take me out to dinner shortly. There is no question of a meal at home. His imported kitchen of oak cabinets and red-tiled countertop is used, I imagine, only for the making of coffee and toast in the mornings. After dinner, he will no doubt dutifully drive his father home.

‘I’ll just change my shirt, then we can leave.’

He wanders off to the bedroom. The boy has often suggested that I come and stay, for after all there is a spare bedroom, but I have always refused. Surely it is undignified for a father to be dependent on his son, to live in his son’s house. In any case, I would be an intruder, and a hindrance. I might hamper his efforts to find a wife. If only Rani were still alive! She would have found Victor a good Tamil girl by now, and persuaded him to meet her, get to know her, and in the end marry her.

Cousins and old friends often speak to me, including some with unmarried daughters, yet I have always declined their help. How can I ever broach this subject with Victor? ‘You Father, you of all people counselling marriage?’ But perhaps I should subdue this fear, show some courage (which after all no one can say I lack), and act now, soon, before more years slip away.

My reverie is broken by the ring of the telephone.

‘Can you answer please?’

I pick up the receiver. ‘Hello.’

‘Hi Victor. Free this evening?’ Something about the voice makes me uneasy.

‘No. This is Victor’s father. I’ll ask him to come.’

‘Thanks, Mr Isaac, sir. Tell him it’s Johnny.’

I put down the receiver and call Victor to the phone.

‘Hi, Johnny … no, not this evening. … I’ll call you … later … ten, ten-thirty … Bye.’

In the lift lobby I find myself asking questions.

‘Who’s Johnny?’

‘A friend.’

‘I never heard of him before. Is he a lawyer?’

‘No. He … he runs an art gallery.’

‘I don’t like the way he sounds.’

‘Dad, he’s a friend. Why should I care how he sounds?’

Victor’s tone of voice puts a stop to any further questions. There are echoes of Mercy in that tone. How stubborn she was! Nothing could shake her from her resolve!

When she came back from Colombo, after the War ended, she was so quiet. She seemed never to speak. If she was not reading, then she was staring into space. When someone else spoke to her she would shut the speaker up before he had managed a complete sentence, adopting that same firm tone of voice that Victor had just employed.

She was like him in one other way too. She refused to marry. How Mother fretted and worried! How Father raged! But to both cajolery and anger Mercy remained impassive, as unmoved as a block of wood. She would sit there, her eyes locked in front of her, her hands on her knees, and say she would marry when she was good and ready, not a moment sooner.

No, it was not immediately after the War that she refused to marry. She could not have been older than eighteen or nineteen then. It was later, a few years later, perhaps only shortly before Rose set sail for London. At first our parents tolerated her silences. She had been separated from them for a number of years, important years for a young girl. Perhaps she felt a stranger, and needed time to get used to her family once again. But after a few years had passed, when it had become clear that Mercy had no enthusiasm for anything except her weekly trip to the public library, they began alternately to coax and nag her.

As for me, I could not complain that she was sharp or offensive. It was just that she kept her distance, so that I was never really sure what she was thinking. It’s the same with Victor now. Why does the boy never confide in his father?

When we reach Victor’s car I wave away my son’s arm, but do, however, leave it to Victor to close the door.

‘Where are we going to eat?’

‘Would you like to have Thai food? A new restaurant just opened nearby.’

‘I don’t understand all these new restaurants, all these new tastes. No wonder young people are so confused today. They don’t grow up on a steady diet … so they lack a clear reference point — Jaffna cooking, Cantonese, whatever. It’s just a jumble … Thai, French, hamburgers. No wonder everyone is so confused.’

Victor smiles: an amused, tolerant and patronising smile. No one takes an old man seriously.

‘OK. Thai food. But not too hot, please. My stomach can’t take all those little chillies.’

As I feared, the chillies did unsettle my stomach. In consequence, the night is punctuated by frequent trips to the toilet, undertaken in the dark and on tiptoe, for fear of waking the other occupants of the flat. The room is rented from a young South Indian couple. Their little girl sleeps in a cot in their room and if I wake her, her bawling will rouse her parents and keep all of us awake for the hour it will take to calm her. The effort of attempting sleep in the brief intervals between these hushed journeys soon exhausts me beyond the point where success remains possible. I try to occupy my mind so as to evade any excursion into the past. For a while I thumb listlessly through Augustine’s Confessions, my stomach reproached by its call for men to turn their thoughts away from nature and nature’s appetites. But the familiar words are strangely unsatisfying, as if for the first time I am realising that Augustine spoke to a different age, to men of a different cast of mind. Resigned to the inevitable, I succumb to the temptation to return once more to my trove of Rose’s letters.

My dear Abraham,

I will be posting this letter at Aden tomorrow, together with another letter that I have already sealed. Thus, I write this letter, one might say, as a postscript.

Last night I lay awake, thinking about all of you at home. My thoughts, dear Abraham, turned especially towards Mercy. She is spirited, and stubborn, for knowledge of which qualities I must thank the time we spent together in Colombo. She proved herself very able in her studies there, and I was given to understand that the teacher of literature at the convent school had the highest regards for her.

I mention this, dear Abraham, because I am convinced that it would be a shame if she were not encouraged in her studies, or worse, discouraged or prevented from their continuance. I remember that you told me that she had not fussed, or shown any real anxiety, when your parents indicated that she had studied all she needed in order to become a good wife, but, Abraham, forgive me, you must learn that people, especially women, do not always express how they feel.

Forgive me once again, Abraham, if I seem to be interfering, but Mercy and you are sister and brother to me. You told me of that incident with the tea, and I have thought upon it over these past few days. Abraham, if your parents are unable to understand, well, then you must, and you must make them understand.

There, I have said what I wanted to say. Take these words, please, only as I have intended them, as words from your loving sister.

May the Almighty bless you and guide you.

Yours ever,
Rose

My hand trembles as I put the letter down. For a moment the paper trembles too, rustling against a stack of books. Loving sister. Her brother. I stand up and walk to the window. The room is in a three-room Housing and Development Board flat, on the tenth floor of a block that stands among hundreds like it in this new town of Toa Payoh and elsewhere across the island. What happened to the old neighbourhoods, the houses, streets, and fields that hugged the curves and folds of the earth? How have I ended up here, standing in one concrete box among thousands identical to it, my position within the grid of Singapore fixed by the coordinates of street, block and apartment number? And where is Rose now, where in that green and pleasant land? And Mercy? Her face appears for a moment, lips set firmly, head held high on an upright neck, and then it disappears, back into the shadows cast by the reading lamp.

I moved in here about two years ago, shortly after the couple were married. The boy’s parents have left Singapore to retire to India, where no doubt they must live comfortably, on the father’s savings and pension from the Malayan Railway. The girl’s parents live with one of her brothers, in one of the newer housing estates … Tampines, I think; somewhere in the east at any rate.

My room faces the common corridor that runs the length of the block, providing access to all the flats. The window is divided vertically by iron bars and horizontally by aluminium shutters. The shutters are open, and peering through them I can see the brick and concrete wall of the adjacent block, some thirty metres distant. From here I can see neither ground nor sky; for a view of either I must leave the room and stand outside in the common corridor.

I keep to myself, to this room. The girl frequently offers food, which I only accept when the demands of politeness forbid otherwise. It is only on Deepavali, for a special meal, that I cannot avoid joining them. Frankly, I am not sure that they are all that clean, least of all in the preparation of food.

Suddenly I remember that I have switched on the electric heating coil to boil water in an enamel mug for tea. A hope that it may quiet my stomach, or at least expedite the clearing of my system must have motivated me. The water’s been boiling for some minutes now, and I hurry to switch off the element at the mains. I pour some of the hot water over a tea bag placed in a cup. Victor introduced me to tea bags. I wonder now how I ever had the patience to deal with loose tea leaves. Yet even though I am grateful for their convenience, I am saddened by the thought that this incessant striving for the easiest way to do things, though no doubt the engine of progress for society, must inevitably weaken us, make us less and less capable as individuals, and moreover that this convenience goes hand in hand with the decline of the family. Which is cause and which effect? Do tea bags, by reducing dependence on wife or mother, hasten the family’s break-up, or is it merely that the break-up of the family has unleashed a demand for an easier way to make tea? Rose’s words come to mind. She even urged me to take action of some sort or other, but didn’t I always do everything possible for my sister? Didn’t I?

How angered I was by Mercy’s behaviour that day! There we were entertaining Mercy’s first suitor, all of us, and especially me, on best behaviour, and she had let us all down, and herself too. Mother’s sister had made contact through one of her own friends with a good Jaffna Tamil family, Methodists, who lived in Johore, across the Causeway. Their son, having entered the priesthood and taken charge of his first parish, was in search of a good Christian wife. We were Anglican, but that was no real barrier. We were not Catholics or Hindus, and that was all that really mattered. Mercy was perfect for his requirements, for she had sufficient education to be a valuable support to him in his parish. He for his part seemed to our parents to be close to ideal: not only a man of God, but one already entrusted with his own parish, and so financially secure and with a promising future.

It was a Saturday afternoon, but I was dressed in my Sunday best. Mother had spent the previous day making a number of delicious sweetmeats, the responsibility for the best of which would be quietly, but firmly, attributed to Mercy.

Mercy had been taken by Mother a few days before to find a new length of material for a sari, and, immediately after a light lunch on that momentous day, Mother began to fuss and toil over her daughter’s appearance: oiling and plaiting her hair, helping her to apply her make-up and, later, adjusting her sari. Father wandered in and out, complaining that the man was a priest, for God’s sake, surely he wouldn’t be interested in the girl’s appearance. Mother of course knew better, and, exasperated by what she called his nonsense, eventually shooed him out of the room, and forbade him further entry.

While I accepted that the first visit of a suitor and his family was a matter entirely within Mother’s responsibility and expertise, I nonetheless felt that she was overdoing things. A family can only assist in bringing together a daughter and a prospective husband: surely the rest is up to the two individuals. Mercy, I could see, was a little overwhelmed by the occasion, and I was sure that the reason for her silence and her fixed smile (the determined expression of someone undergoing, and desperate to survive, an exhausting test of endurance) was fear, a fear induced by Mother’s apparent belief in the overriding importance of this first meeting. As she dressed and coiffed Mercy, she chattered on about her visit with Father to Johore Bahru the previous week, when they had met with the young priest’s family. What a handsome man he was, how confident of manner and polished of speech! On and on went Mother’s patter, rambling from one fine quality to the next. No wonder Mercy was overawed. She had been made nervous to an extreme, and that, combined with her natural clumsiness, must have been the cause of what happened. It had not been a sign of anything else, not a portent of things to come. Rose had presumed too much, and I was never guilty, most certainly not, of any sin of omission.

At last they had arrived, fifteen minutes after the time agreed upon. The parents entered first: the father in a dark suit, his face solemn and his step measured; the mother, by contrast, in a red sari, her face eager and her eyes darting quickly around the room, no doubt noting the cane furniture, the grandfather clock and the wooden General Electric radio. Then came the go-between, our aunt’s friend, white-haired, yet her step light and brisk as if buoyed up by her triumph in bringing these two families together. Bringing up the rear was the young man himself, but I immediately realised that he had hung back, not from shyness, but rather from a desire to emphasise his nonchalance about the present proceedings. His priestly collar was displayed beneath a proudly uptilted chin.

Father and I greeted them all, and asked them to take a seat. Mercy and Mother were of course not present yet: they were still in the kitchen making tea to bring in together with the sweetmeats. How resentful I felt, sitting stiffly in my chair, of the scrutiny I was receiving. I lacked the confidence to return that scrutiny, to meet that young priest’s gaze with my own, or run my eyes over him, to check in my turn the other’s posture and dress. Father talked, polite enquiries as to health and the pleasantness of the journey, until Mother entered, followed by Mercy. Mercy did not look at the assembled company. Her eyes remained demurely downcast. The young priest made no more than a vague movement, the merest hint of getting to his feet, when Mercy was introduced to him. He settled back into his chair, his legs crossed as if he were a buyer in an auction awaiting an appropriate moment to enter the bidding. His eyes wandered over Mercy as she bent down to place the tray of teacups on the low table in the centre of the room.

Mercy served the father, the mother and the friend before serving the young priest. I am convinced that, as she walked towards the man, their eyes met. I remember well the look of that young man, a mixture of the anxiety brought on by lust and of the triumph caused by the certainty that his lust, if he so wished it, would be satisfied, all in good time. I remember the anger that sent blood rushing to my ears, so that what happened next seemed to take place at a great distance. Mercy, as if halted by the young man’s stare, paused momentarily, and then the tea cup appeared to take on a life of its own, to jump from her hand and fall, slowly, towards the young man’s lap, the hot brown liquid outpacing the falling cup, exploding into his crotch, while the cup fell onto the chair between his legs, bouncing and falling without breaking onto the terrazzo floor.

I remember standing up, as if trying to catch that cup before it fell, as the room went deathly quiet, the only sound the blood pounding in my ears. Then the young man screamed, shouting at Mercy. It was an accident, surely, the girl was nervous, and Mother ran to the priest’s side, apologies pouring from her lips, trying at one and the same time to quiet him and to rouse him to follow her to the bathroom, where the spill could be quickly and efficiently dealt with. The young man was responding, the shock and pain had only been momentary, everything was going to be all right. He was beginning to get to his feet, when I heard the sound, a gurgle that started in Mercy’s throat, growing into something else as her mouth opened, growing into a roar that seemed to shake the windows.

The cup of tea has gone cold in my hands. That scene is as vivid as if it were being re-enacted now, here in this tiny garret. The young man shaking off Mother, standing up and brushing roughly past Mercy towards the door. His parents following, grim-faced: the mother waving her hands, as if protecting her son from my sister; the father stern, but his pace quickening as he strode towards the door. None of them looked back, as if mindful of the fate of Lot’s wife. The friend, however, appeared unable to tear her gaze from this personification of Sodom and Gomorrah: she left the room backwards, staring at Mercy, from whom, in fierce bursts, rattled the machine gun of her laughter.

Eight

Mercy’s spilling of the tea was the talk of the town, or so it seemed at the time. The self-importance of youth. The world ignores our antics rather more than we wish to believe. It was not just myself, however. My parents felt their humiliation keenly, and this fuelled a fierce anger towards Mercy. Mother scolded and nagged. Father was less voluble, but his exasperation at Mercy’s conduct was no less visible. I was dismayed by her behaviour, and confronted her that same evening, in her room, to which our parents had ordered her.

‘How could you do this? Why did you agree to meet him in the first place?’

‘Was I asked?’

‘You could have said no.’

‘Appa and Amma just want to be rid of me, to marry me off.’

Mercy was seated on the bed. I stood over her.

‘That is so unfair. They want what’s best for you. They took a lot of trouble.’

‘Yes, of course. Enough, Annai. Your words are just the gibbering of a monkey.’

A spasm of anger shook me. My fists clenched, but I resisted the urge to strike her.

In the days that followed, Mercy slipped from my mind. Rose, as ever, ousted all else. The next day, as I recall, we arranged to meet at the Adelphi Café. That day she told me what I had long dreaded to hear.

‘Charles and I are to be married.’

‘Rose…’ I was silenced by a sudden rush of hatred for that pale man, whose complexion was dirtied by a thousand freckles. How confidently Charles had captured Rose, made her his possession. My eyes closed as I struggled to clear my mind. Rose’s voice was so cheerful, so sure that I would share her joy. Should I say something to her, or hold my peace, even though this must be my last opportunity? When I opened my eyes her smile had frozen into puzzlement. ‘Rose…’ I tried again.

Her hand reached across the table and grasped my arm.

‘Say nothing.’ And then she took back her hand and, her eyes shining in the reflected light of a happy future, told me of their plans, to marry and live in England, for Charles to return to the English Bar. I heard but did not listen, regretting already my obedience to her command, obedience born of habit, knowing that this second chance to speak had passed, and that it was almost certainly my last.

I did not go to see Rose off, pleading classes at the Teachers’ College. Our goodbye, at the Chinappas’ house on the eve of her departure, was stiff and formal, even though Charles was not present. The nights that followed were restless ones, my mind wandering to Rose, her voice soaring from the choir stalls opposite, that narrow gulf of nave widening with the ocean over which Rose’s liner now voyaged. Yet in time she sank from my conscious mind, as I concentrated on learning in order to teach. Submerged in my subconscious, she was like a rock on which my thoughts would suddenly founder when I least expected, its sharp edges tearing at my composure.

Through one of the part-time tutors at the College I found an opening for Mercy to teach English at a primary school, a post for which a teaching diploma was not required. To both my surprise and my parents’, Mercy accepted the position. Father, initially a little concerned that his daughter should postpone the sacrament of marriage for the base coin of employment, overcame his doubts when I reminded him that some time would undoubtedly pass before another suitor dared venture up our driveway.

Mercy seemed to grow with her new-found career. She ate better, as if storing energy for the next day’s teaching. She took to wearing skirts, not every day, but once or twice a week, and quickly made friends in the staff room. With them she went shopping or even to the cinema. One day I bumped into her, in town, together with a Chinese lady whose slim figure had drawn my attention before I recognised my sister. The two of them were smoking, their chatter punctuated by laughter. As Mercy introduced me I tried somehow to combine a friendly smile for her companion with a disapproving frown at Mercy’s cigarette. Mercy must have been struck by the contortions of my face, for she kept giggling throughout the introduction, so that anger at her chased away the pleasantries that had begun to form in my mind. They excused themselves and walked away once it became apparent that I had little to offer by way of conversation.

As the months passed however, our parents’ thoughts turned back to the search for a husband for Mercy. To Mother especially, the fear that Mercy might never marry had become a burden that literally seemed to weigh upon her, so that she had begun to stoop and her sari to hang loose upon her listless frame. I gathered up my courage and told Father that it was essential for the matter to be discussed fully with Mercy. I endeavoured to explain that a young woman of Mercy’s temperament might not see marriage and children as the only goal of her life. Father exploded at the uttering of such atheistic blasphemies, calling me a Communist like those black-and-whites, before subsiding, his head resting on his arms. A few moments later, he roused himself and, shaking his head in disgust at the modern world, agreed that Mercy would of course be consulted.

So one evening, after the dinner plates had been cleared away, the four of us sat back down at the dining table. To my surprise, Mercy sat calm and still as Father spoke of their plans once again to seek a husband for her.

‘I am sure I need not explain to you the benefits of having someone who will provide for you when we are gone. And children, Mercy. To marry is to serve the Lord’s purpose.’

Mercy smiled. ‘I can always provide for myself, Appa, and I’m sure St Paul would disagree with you about marriage, but really as long as the man’s modern-minded, I will not protest.’

Mother looked at her, her voice weary. ‘And you promise no more of the old nonsense.’

‘Oh that,’ Mercy’s voice was light and melodious. ‘That was an accident. I just couldn’t help laughing, everyone was so serious.’ And she laughed, a gay tinkle.

So Mercy was married, to a young, newly qualified doctor whom Father knew personally and approved because he worked hard at the hospital, whom Mother endorsed once she had checked his background, and whom Mercy liked, for doctors were by the nature of their profession modern, and David, for he bore that good and honest name, appeared gentle and attentive to her, while not without a sense of humour. After the initial meeting, they went out alone a few times, and, said Mercy to my horror one evening, she had tested her smoking on him. ‘He’s not like you, you old man in boy’s clothing … he smokes himself.’

At the wedding I assisted the young doctor, in fact assumed the duties of best man. In that capacity I quickly learned to respect David’s confidence and the calm way in which he dealt with the planning of the wedding and the reception. Father gave Mercy away. His face was grave yet his eyes beamed contradiction to the firm set of his mouth as he steered her slowly up the aisle, bathed in the warm, applauding gaze of friends and relatives. Mother could not stop crying, even after the service was over and we were at the reception in the church hall.

Mercy turned to me and said, ‘She’s crying more today than when I left for Colombo, when she might never have seen me again.’

‘Marriage means the loss of her daughter,’ I replied, regretting my glib words as Mercy’s lips froze, fixed in the outline of the smile that a moment before had animated them.

David, taking advantage of a pause in the number of people who wished to shake his hand, leaned over.

‘She’s lost into safe hands, that’s for sure.’ He put his arm around Mercy’s waist. ‘I hope you’re ready to be an uncle.’ He winked at me, while I wondered why the blood had fled from my sister’s lips.

Nine

Invited to the Yeos’ cocktail party in the week before Christmas, I find their house transformed. It is filled with people, friends and business associates presumably. I am terrified by all these beautiful, rich and self-assured individuals, and regret accepting the mother’s invitation. She was probably as surprised as I was when I said how pleased I would be to come. And why have they invited me? What have I to offer them? Or, since after all this is the season of giving, is it intended as a form of bonus, to give me the chance to eat and drink well?

Stepping into the house, I can see that it has been thoroughly scrubbed, carpets vacuumed and beaten, marble floors polished and furniture waxed. The contents of the crystal decanters on the bar, whisky, brandy and sherry, sparkle through the cut glass. I feel like wandering around on a tour of inspection, for I am really quite heartened to find that I am perhaps not alone in my trepidation at these social occasions. For the Yeos to put in so much effort they too must be nervous, anxious to make the right impression. Of course not to impress me, to imagine such a thing would be folly, a false gratification, but nonetheless the reminder that there are others of whom even the Yeos must be in awe is strangely encouraging. Catching sight of the row of Indian silver elephants (bull, cow and three calves of various sizes) that adorn the sideboard, I have to resist the temptation to walk across and find out if I can see my teeth, my dentures, reflected in their curved surfaces.

In the back garden stands a large canvas tent, its stark outlines only slightly softened by baskets of hanging flowers. Although it is not raining, I am impressed by their foresight, their decision not to leave the comfort of their guests, too numerous to be satisfactorily accommodated within the confines of the house, to the vagaries of Providence. There is a bar at one end of the tent, staffed by waiters in white jackets that seem to be one size too small. Some of them circulate among the guests, taking orders for drinks, or handing round trays of tidbits, multihued arrangements upon little roundels of bread. I think of Katong, of those seaside bungalows, the beehives and slit skirts of the tycoons’ mistresses, all those parties to which I and those of my ilk were never invited, and, thus moved, reach out and grasp one of these variegated morsels. It looks better than it tastes.

I take a drink off a tray, thinking it to be orange juice, and discover that it is in truth some sort of punch with a definite alcoholic kick. It has been a long time since I drank alcohol, and for some reason I decide, in the spirit of festivity, to carry on breaking my long abstinence. I finish the first glass, and take another. Suitably charged and emboldened, I plunge into the mêlée, and soon realise that the apparent chaos disguises a careful ordering of the guests into dozens of discreet clusters.

I pause on the fringes of one such cluster, its members turning slightly towards me and throwing me quick, friendly glances until I am included in their conversation. This is easier than I expected. They seem genuinely interested in my teaching of Latin. I am a novelty perhaps amidst these captains of industry, tyros of politics. The pursuit of power has so plainly triumphed over intellectual enquiry that I must seem a welcome change. I am at once the centre of attention, and seize the opportunity to reach out to these men of action, to grace their lives of toil and effort with a little speculatory enlightenment.

‘The Romans transformed city state into empire on the backs of their warriors and merchants. Can we not do the same, minus perhaps the warriors? Can Singapore not aspire to the same or greater glory?’

There are murmurs of assent, exchanges of approving glances.

‘Our problem, however, as the Romans soon came to realise, is that money and power are not everything, not even a good guarantee of more money, more power. This is the essential insight. As the Romans learned from the Greeks, acquired from them the accoutrements of civilisation, so must we too learn, and not just from the West, from Britain, lately Great, but also from the grand old civilisations of Asia: India, China…’

Richard’s mother appears and steers me to one side. I am delighted that she has singled me out. She looks resplendent in an off-the-shoulder ballgown with puffy sleeves, a shimmering green fabric. She looks like Imelda Marcos, and I tell her so.

‘Mr Isaac, Richard is along here. Let me take you to him.’

As she pulls me along with her she turns to me momentarily and says the punch is rather strong, don’t I think? All the better for it, I say, raising my glass and smiling at any ladies that we pass. So this is how the well-to-do spend their evenings. How splendid. This is what I missed, all those years ago in Katong.

Ah, there’s Richard. He’s engrossed by some pompous, red-faced fellow who’s pontificating upon some ponderous subject or other. I say hello to him, we exchange a few pleasantries, and then find ourselves running out of conversation. In the silence of our pauses I hear the man waxing eloquent upon Western conspiracies against Asia, against the Chinese.

‘Lau Teng Kee, a Member of Parliament,’ Richard whispers.

Looking at the man, glass of no doubt Scotch whisky in his hand, I immediately conclude that he is one of those men in Government who believe themselves more important than they really are, but are never disabused of their inflated notions of themselves because they are nonetheless of some importance. Anyone of greater power and importance is never given the opportunity to take such men down a peg or two, because they always abase themselves in front of those with more power.

‘Now, you have to understand the motives of the USA. You think they care about human rights? If you do you are naive, a dupe. Here in East Asia at last we have got our acts together, doing business, making money, making things better and cheaper than the Americans. So of course what do the Americans do?’

The man pauses, looking slowly round the group. He smiles at Richard, and looks somewhat puzzledly towards me.

‘Let me tell you. They stir things up. They try to rock the boat, so that we can’t go faster than them. They turn students against teachers, workers against bosses and…’ He looks at the only woman among us, a smile forming at the corners of his mouth. ‘…women against men. Do you think they really care for the rights of students, workers or women? No way, as the Yanks say, no way. They just want to cause trouble for all the governments in the region, slow down our economies and keep the white man on top.’

He looks round again, visibly gratified by the rapt, attentive faces. Richard appears fascinated by what the man has said. This irritates me, my pupil’s mind captured by such drivel. I hesitate, stumbling over the words that I do eventually piece together.

‘Aren’t the Americans rich and democratic? Can’t the two go together?’

The man laughs, a little nervously perhaps. He is unsure who I am, whether or not I may, in spite of my humble dress, be of some importance. He evidently concludes that I am not, and launches a counterattack.

‘I should have thought the answer is obvious. We East Asians do things by consensus. We all agree on a goal and then don’t waste any more time talking about it. So we can concentrate on achieving the goal. But the Americans want us to argue with one another so that we lose sight of the goal. Perhaps the gentleman is naive, taken in by American propaganda.’

‘How do you know that we all agree on your goals, if you do not ask us first?’

The man looks visibly flustered, and I flush with my success. Perhaps I should after all have stood for Parliament. If this is the calibre of its denizens, why, I would have been a veritable star.

‘Of course, my dear fellow, I’m not denying there shouldn’t be consultation. It all depends on the circumstances, what sort of threats and dangers there are. In the old days, with the Communists knocking on the door, we had to be absolutely tough, resolute. Now of course the nation can afford a slightly more open style of government. We shall of course consult. All I’m saying is that unlike the Americans we know when to pull together, when to shut up for the sake of the common good, and just because Communism seems, and I repeat, seems, to have collapsed, doesn’t mean there are no more threats. I think America is a potential threat, because it is they who are scared, scared of us. They would like nothing better than for us to descend into anarchy or chaos, like…’ And here he pauses, as if to make sure that I am listening. ‘…like India, or one of those dark places in Africa.’

I am incensed, but only for a moment. Then weariness descends upon me. To think that the future of my country lies in the hands of men like this, of the narrowest parochialism, the glibbest complacency. Is there no one who can articulate a future other than the superficially material, riding upon the growth of the nations around us, living off their energy, their endeavour, as we sip whisky in our secure little havens? Or will any such man inevitably be crushed, the immense machinery of government turned against him, while our citizens lower their heads and busy themselves, making money for the good of the nation, or else wining and dining prospective spouses in the pursuit of babies, another national duty in which I never excelled. In the end my reply is tangential, veering into irrelevance.

‘I thought we supported the Americans. Didn’t we support their bombers in Kuwait?’

‘That’s a different matter entirely. There they were defending our interests as well. It just so happened that our interests coincided. They’re not white knights in shining armour, you know, these American bom-bers as you call them.’

Suddenly everyone is laughing. I look around at their faces, reddened by alcohol into a florid harshness. I have spoken other than in their manner of speaking, betraying my upbringing, my Tamil otherness, most of all my insignificance. What are the words of a Latin teacher to those of a man of influence, a man with business to turn your way? How could the others not laugh at me? I turn to leave the party, keeping my head erect even as the room dissolves before me. Somehow, by some immense effort of will, I keep the path immediately before me in focus, keep my legs moving. It would not do to faint here, here in the midst of my enemies. Sliding door. The brightness of the living room. Hall and blessed exit beyond.

Open air, breeze upon my face and I am better. It is a long walk out to the main road. Looking back I see Richard, emerging from the doorway, his face in shadow. I cannot see his eyes, do they mock me, me his old teacher? I turn away, attempt to quicken my pace, and then he is beside me. The futility of an old man’s haste! I scowl at him, and then see his concern.

‘Mr Isaac, are you all right?’

‘Go back, boy, of course. Time to leave.’

‘I thought you were going to get him. I don’t think anyone’s argued with him in ages. Mum calls him the man without a spine. Mum and Dad were in University with him. He was a real radical then, wanted to change the world…’

‘As you do, no doubt?’ I curse the irony in my tone. The boy is sincere, and I, I can only mock.

‘I’ll never be like him.’

I look at him now with new eyes, see the firm set of the jaw, the strong eyes that hold mine.

‘I believe you,’ I say, and reach out a hand. The world is not yet lost, nor I with it.

Ten

Seated in Komala Vilas in Serangoon Road, to which I have come to salve my humiliation at last night’s party, breaking off a piece of vadai to dip into the coconut chutney, a glass of sweet, hot tea in front of me, yet another teatime comes to mind, many years before, when vadai too was served. Vadai is probably my favourite teatime snack, and Mercy no doubt had sought that day to please me. At first I try to shrug off the association, to concentrate instead on the delicious contrast of crisp, deep-fried exterior and soft, doughy interior, my tongue mining unerringly the treasures of fried onion and green chilli buried within. Yet the vadai itself now seems to pull me irresistibly into this recess of my memory.

It was a few months after Mercy’s wedding, that day when I was invited to tea at David’s parents’ house. It was there that the couple intended to stay, at least for the first few years of their marriage. The house stood in its own compound in a lane off Race Course Road, within walking distance of the bus stop on Serangoon Road where I alighted. Then, as now, this was the commercial heart of the Indian community, where spices, cooking pots, tiffin carriers and material for saris could be bought from dozens of stores all in fierce competition with one another. Walking here always thrills me, yet at the same time the crowds oppress me. When someone brushes against me, fear of contamination, in spite of myself, flies through me, as if I am unable to shake off the centuries of caste and tradition. I remember clearly once (that day perhaps?) passing a vendor of betel-nut sitting on the pavement, a row of filled green leaves arranged on the wooden tray in front of him. The memory is vivid: the vendor looking up at me, hopefully, deferentially, his red-stained mouth opening in respectful greeting. I strode on without a word.

When I reached the house I found it surrounded by a wall of about a man’s height. The plaster was grey and crumbling, patchworked with green moss. The iron gates were shut, and a dog snarled menacingly from behind them, its brown coat ragged and diseased, revealing mottled pink skin where the fur was thinnest.

‘David, Mercy,’ I called. The dog began barking and pushing at the gate.

A voice called from within, harsh words, directed at the dog, and then Mercy appeared, her face pale, except for dark rings around her eyes. She held a big clump of keys grasped tightly in her right hand, as if she were a prison warder admitting a visitor to the cells. She stepped down from the verandah towards the gates, shooing away the dog which growled even at her, and then opened them. I stepped inside, and nodded awkwardly at her, avoiding the traditional Tamil embrace for relatives: nose to cheek with a sharp inhalation of breath.

The front room was bare, except for a settee and two armchairs, thin cushions on a rattan frame and a low side table on which stood a glass vase filled with dusty plastic roses. The walls too were bare, except for a pendulum clock whose dull tick filled the room.

‘Ginger beer or some tea?’

‘Ginger beer will be fine. Don’t trouble yourself.’

‘No trouble.’ She offered me a wan smile.

She disappeared into the back of the house, returning a few minutes later with a frosted glass filled with ginger beer and two small plates, one with a piece of fruitcake on it, the other with a vadai, a splash of chutney by its side.

‘David was supposed to be back, but he may have to work late at the hospital.’

I nodded, then, with a broad sweep of my arm to indicate the household, asked, ‘So how’s married life?’

She smiled, her lips pressed thinly together, her eyes downcast. Then she looked up, her face solemn. ‘As good as could be expected, Annai. One must make adjustments.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’ Impressed by her new-found practicality, I was searching for appropriate words of praise and approval when David’s mother appeared at the doorway. I stood up to greet her. She enquired after my health, and when I replied that I was in general well, she retreated.

‘David’s mother is very nice.’

Mercy looked at me again, her eyes widening. She seemed about to say something, then bit her words back, and only after that began to speak.

‘Yes, she is … only she likes things done her way.’

I laughed. ‘Don’t we all?’ I took a mouthful of the vadai. It was cold, and had gone a little soggy.

‘How are Appa and Amma?’

‘Fine. When are you and David coming to visit?’

‘I don’t know. David is always so busy.’

‘You could drop by on your own.’

‘I don’t think…’

I had lifted the ginger beer to my mouth and seemed to miss the conclusion of her sentence. I put the glass down, and must for a moment have contemplated asking her to repeat her answer. But presumably her gaze was intent elsewhere, perhaps on some dusty spot that the servant had overlooked. Instead, having abandoned the vadai, I picked up the fruitcake, and, after first turning it over in my hands, began to chew on it slowly, fixing my attention on it.

‘I’ve given up smoking.’

‘Good, good,’ I mumbled through a mouthful of the cake. My mind had wandered to a letter I was drafting, a letter to the Editor of The Straits Times, concerning self-government and the various racial communities in Singapore. I wished, having first set out my credentials as a member both of a racial and of a religious minority, to stress the importance of a unified political structure, one which would avoid divisions along racial lines. I had already formulated an opening sentence: ‘If the maxim of imperial control is “divide and rule” then that of democratic self-government must be “unify and consult”.’

‘More ginger beer?’

I roused myself. ‘No, I’ve had plenty. I must, I suppose, be going.’

She seemed disappointed that I was leaving so soon, but perhaps it was just that she was a little tired by the responsibilities of married life, responsibilities to which she was, in her own felicitous phrase, adjusting. She stood up and followed me to the gate. The dog ambled over from its place of repose, beneath the shade of a stunted rambutan tree, and sniffed my ankles. I withdrew them quickly, and a sharp word from Mercy made the dog retreat, its head cowed but teeth bared. I paused as she swung the gate open.

‘God keep you in his care.’

She made no reply, so I turned and strode off, not looking back, my mind returning to the argument of my letter, an argument which, in that age of new directions, of limitless possibilities, would make a difference.

In those days all seemed possible. Unlike my parents, I was thoroughly excited by the prospect of Independence. They had left Ceylon and come to Singapore as administrators of Empire and were concerned that their welcome might not outlast the coming of self-rule. As they saw it, self-rule must mean in effect the rule of the majority, and who were the majority but the Chinese? From time to time Father talked of returning to Ceylon, but took no concrete steps towards that objective, nonetheless counselling caution, and detachment from political activities.

I became an active member of the Teachers’ Union. I had no doubt that I, and other Tamils, could fully contribute to the shaping of Singapore’s future. It was simple: the British had taught that all men were equal and therefore should participate, through political parties and elections, in the government of their nation. All one had to do was finally, after all these years, put British theory into practice. All sections of society should be free to voice their opinions. It was in this spirit that I drafted and submitted my letter to the Editor of The Straits Times.

Safely back in my room, I seek it out. That letter was a great triumph surely, something to weigh against all the rest.

The Editor, The Straits Times

Dear Sir,

If the maxim of imperial control is ‘divide and rule’, that of self-government must be ‘unify and consult’.

I speak, sir, as a gentleman proud of his Jaffna Tamil heritage, yet also respectful of the heritage of his neighbours, the Indian, the Chinese and the Malay, for in this island, or this Peninsula, we are fortunate in the rich and abundant diversity of our forebears.

In the debate on constitutional arrangements that must proceed henceforth with ever greater urgency as we speed towards the desideratum of self-government, I urge that we do not fall into the error of separate electoral rolls, nor into that of guaranteed representation of a particular community, whether by appointment or otherwise.

We must encourage the participation of all in political life, as equals and as citizens, not as members of this or that particular community.

The foundation of this participation can be one thing and one thing only: the right to speak one’s mind.

I remain, sir, your obedient servant.

Abraham Isaac

Attached by a rusting paper clip to the yellowing carbon copy of the original submission is a clipping from The Straits Times, headlined ‘Equal Not Separate’. The text is smaller than the typescript of the carbon copy. I need not bother to bring out my magnifying glass to read it, for the letter must surely have appeared complete and uncut.

The day that it appeared a number of colleagues made a point of congratulating me. Wasn’t that the day I had my first serious discussion with Krishna? He was my fellow representative to the union, and he sought me out to announce his disagreement.

‘This is very wishy-washy. It is not enough to be equally free to participate in politics. We are equally free to dine at the Raffles, but neither of us can afford that pleasure. An agenda for social change, Abraham, an agenda for social change.’ His voice slowed for emphasis, as if he were addressing a union meeting. ‘Freedom is meaningless unless there are jobs, houses, education.’

‘Am I denying that? This letter only addresses one point — are we to be a nation of equals regardless of race and religion or are we to have separate communities, coming together only at the top, a coalition of different races?’

‘Irrelevant question. Let us have a progressive platform first. Then we can choose between separate representation or equal participation depending on which is more popular, which will keep the right men in power to get on with what matters.’

‘Such as?’

‘Industrial self-sufficiency. Better housing. This S.I.T. is a joke. Here we are, perhaps the richest spot in Asia, and some people live in slums. Government has to take charge: clear the slums, acquire the land, build cheap housing. But at the same time make sure that we control movement over the Causeway. People, I mean, not trade. Otherwise every time you improve conditions in the city all the kampung dwellers who don’t even know how to use the jamban will come flooding in.’

For a moment his face bobs in my memory, his teeth flashing white beneath a trim moustache and short curly hair. His skin was dark, but his eyes were bright and filled with mischief, so that no matter how serious he appeared to be when talking politics I always expected him at any moment to break into smiles and say he was only teasing. I respected his opinions, yet felt always on the verge of irritation, for the man assumed the air of someone a few steps ahead of his contemporaries. Damn the fellow for his presumption, for his belief that everything he might do was right, no matter how much his friends might get hurt in the process. Well, the man’s luck ran out in the end.

Why does that thought bring me no satisfaction? Why am I unable to contemplate his memory with equanimity? I turn away from such questions, turn back to the folder.

Amongst the press clippings, letters to the press, a copy of a speech I once made to a union meeting (how many days of thought and worry went into that speech, attempting to find the right balance of fiery radicalism and administrative competence!), I espy, unfamiliar in this context, a corner of green letter paper. It has to be a letter from Rose, filed in the wrong place.

My dear Abraham,

I was so pleased and proud to receive the newspaper clipping that you sent me. I think that you expressed the point very well indeed, and that it was a point that demanded to be made. Charles read it and is in full agreement.

I was somewhat concerned to learn that Mercy has given up her work as a teacher, but am reassured that in your view it is best for her to concentrate, at this time, on her husband. I take it that you are hopeful of good news in that regard.

I, dear Abraham, have precisely that good news. I am expecting, praise the Lord. Charles’ mother especially, but also his sister Jennifer, have been very kind, fussing over me. His sister drives, so sometimes she comes to take me out. One of my neighbours, a Welsh lady (she says we are fellow colonials, victims of the English — to members of which wicked race we are both married!), is also a great support.

At first, Abraham, I can admit now, I lacked confidence. Everything seemed so strange: the currency, the food, the weather. Everything was so grey, so cold, baths so occasional. The English are very austere, and, even though rationing has long since ended, an enjoyment of food appears to be regarded as sinful. Really, apart from the buildings, all stone and brick, elegant and well-built, no matter how humble the occupants, one would think that Singapore were more prosperous than England!

But now I am beginning to relax, to find my feet, and of course now I have this wondrous spark of life growing within me, a daily reminder of the possibility of miracles.

Abraham, you are now secure in your job, your sister is married, surely it is your turn? I hope to hear good news from you soon.

Yours ever,
Rose

Eleven

I sit in my room, stiff and straight-backed on the chair, facing the window. The lights are off, but the fan revolves slowly overhead. The curtains are undrawn, the aluminium shutters open so that the corridor lights stripe the room into alternating bands of light and darkness.

How could she, how could she have done it to me?

It was late at night, the house shrouded in darkness except for the pool of light at my desk. I had been reading, yes, I can remember even now, John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, its cover dark and sombre, the title typeset in heavy and portentous lettering. I had been dreaming of a new nation, the possibility of rational men in power, disinterestedly taking those decisions that tended to the public good, seeing myself perhaps among them, Abraham Isaac, ushering in a new age of enlightenment, a new order, when I was roused by the shrill ring of the telephone. Striding quickly to it, anxious lest the noise awake my parents, I was ready to reprimand the caller for the lateness of the hour.

‘Annai, is that you?’

‘Mercy, it’s very late. We’re all in bed.’

‘I had to speak to you. It’s David…’

‘What’s the matter? Has he had an accident?’

‘No, it’s me…’

‘You’ve had an accident? What is it?’

‘No…’

‘Then why are you calling?’

‘Annai, I can’t stand it.’ Her voice rose to a wail. ‘He won’t let me smoke and his mother … his mother…’

It’s not good for you to smoke.’

‘His mother, she keeps on and on about a baby.’

‘Why should she? She knows you’re trying, aren’t you?’

There was no reply except for Mercy’s sobs. The woman was hysterical. If only she were present in front of me I could slap her face and snap her out of this nonsense.

‘Mercy, pull yourself together. David is a good man, I know.’

‘What do you know?’

‘Mercy, if you’re going to talk like that … Look, you should go to sleep. Things will be different in the morning.’

Silence.

‘Mercy, what will David think of all this nonsense?’ Still silence, a silence that provoked, set the words tumbling in a torrent. ‘Look here, Mercy, there’s no point in working yourself up. Sleep first. Then in a day or two you and David should come over for dinner. You’d like that, right? I’ll ask Amma to invite both of you…’

‘He won’t come…’ The words seemed to speed like bullets across the telephone line. ‘He looks down on Appa, and on you.’

The woman was hysterical. She was just trying to stir me to anger against David, but for what reason I could not fathom. ‘Where is he now?’

‘Working, drinking, I don’t know … he…’

‘Mercy, you shouldn’t talk like that … not about your husband. Go now and sleep.’

‘Annai you’re my brother, my elder brother, but you never look after me.’

‘Mercy, I don’t know what you mean. David is there to look after you.’

‘It’s no use. I can’t … Goodnight. Goodbye.’

‘Go and sleep now. Goodnight.’

That at least is how I remember it. Whether it had taken place exactly like that, with Mercy’s hysteria bubbling up only after her first few sentences, evaporating into rock-hard silence and then finally reviving with double its original vehemence, or whether she had simply been hysterical throughout, I cannot now be sure. How could I take her seriously, when her words were obviously the product of that girlish nonsense to which she was so prone?

I did return to my book, but how could I have been able to concentrate? My mind must have been distracted by concern for my sister. What was the matter with her? She had always been stubborn, yet I had come to believe that she was prepared to make the adjustments necessary for married life. I only hoped that she had not expressed her feelings in the old way, such as pouring hot tea on David’s lap, or worse still on David’s mother. I imagined that old lady, her thinning white hair tied up in a bun, her dry bony hands struggling to pull her sari away from her flesh at those parts where the scalding hot tea had soaked through the fabric. Intolerable! Imagine the scandal!

Eventually I must have settled back to my reading, to the science of managing means towards desired ends, the role of representative government in the achievement of this task at a national level, and the fundamental importance, nonetheless, of personal liberty, the first essential in the development of the individual as a progressive being.

At one point I tried to sleep, putting down the book, switching off the desk lamp and going to bed. But at that time I always found it hard to sleep. Mill’s arguments (or whatever I had been reading that day) would race through my mind. Even lying motionless in bed, my eyes tightly shut, I would become dizzy. This no doubt must have prompted me to resume reading, even as the night outside grew darker.

A little after 3 a.m. a car swung into the driveway, its headlights sending shadows chasing through the house. My mind dulled by lack of sleep, I shambled towards the front door.

Looking through the grille that extended across the doorway, I watched David emerge from the driver’s seat. The engine was still running and, as he crossed the beam of the headlights, he became, momentarily, a black shadow.

‘Where is she?’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t be funny. Who else would I be looking for?’

David had come up close to the front door, so that there was only a foot, and the metal grille, between us. His eyes were bloodshot, his mouth twisted. There was whisky on his breath. Just as Mercy had said, only for me to upbraid her.

‘She’s not here.’

‘Liar. How do you know who I’m talking about if she’s not here? Where else would she be?’

‘She’s not here. Don’t call me a liar.’

‘Open up.’ The man was bellowing.

‘I will. If only to show you she’s not here. But you must not wake my parents.’ I surprised myself by the firmness of my voice.

David looked away, then back at me.

‘Of course I won’t. I’ll be quiet.’

‘Switch off the motor first.’

He did so, and the headlights too, while I unlocked the grille and pulled it open. My brother-in-law entered the front room, his head jerking around wildly, checking all the corners of the room. Then he looked at me and a cunning smile formed on his face.

‘She’s hiding with her parents, in her parent’s room.’

‘No, David, stop…’

But it was too late. David had run down the short length of hallway and thrown open the door of our parents’ room.’

‘Meeerrrcy!’ It was a long drawn-out shout that began in sharp accusation, then wavered, ending in what sounded almost like a plea for forgiveness.

I reached the door only a stride behind him. Father had jerked upright, his face clearly visible in the light cast through the open door. Fear, then anger, passed over his features. Mother half-rose, then fell back into the darkness beside Father.

‘What is it? What in God’s name?’

David made no answer. He was crying, slowly sinking to his knees.

The rest of the night passed in a haze, a blue-grey fog of driving along dark and quiet streets, a haze punctuated by stops at the homes of Mercy’s friends, of no help even if they could be stirred from sleep, and then dissolving into more driving that grew ever more aimless as the sky began to lighten and other cars appeared on the roads.

The police found her first. They had telephoned David’s parents’ house half an hour before we arrived there, the sky already tinged with pink but the air still cool. I was chilled from the wind upon my face. My throat was parched and I longed so much for a hot drink, Milo or even coffee, that all thoughts of Mercy had been driven from my head.

David’s parents were in the front room. The mother was crying, her eyes red and swollen. His father was standing by the front door.

‘Mercy has shamed us.’

Anger rose from the pit of my stomach, swelling my chest.

‘She has killed herself.’

Suddenly I saw him, his face swollen with drink, fists etching bruises into her body. I wanted to scream, to shout, to batter David with my fists. Tear away his mask of learning, smash his pretence to the art of healing. Murderer. The word was on my tongue, yet I did not speak. Something held me back and I stepped outside, struggling to put my racing thoughts in order. The dog appeared, emerging from the shadows, its tongue lolling from its eagerly grinning mouth. ‘Wretched cur,’ I spat out, half-hoping that David, trembling on a chair within, would think the reference was to him.

Of course, I should have thrashed the bugger, then and there, when I still had the strength to do it. Look at me, sitting in this chair, the light from the corridor striping me like a convict from an old cartoon, my shoulders hunched, my arms leaning on the desk. I’ve left it too late, everything too late. That moment, as anger flamed first within my breast, I should have struck at least one blow of vengeance, for Mercy’s sake. For Mercy, my dear, dear sister, for Mercy. Now it is too late, and I can never be forgiven for my inaction. ‘Mercy,’ I breathe, the palms of my hands pressed together, in an attitude of prayer.

The funeral took place on the following day. Thankfully the church was sufficiently enlightened to accept the funeral. ‘The manner of her passing is between her alone and the Lord,’ the priest had reassured us.

During the service the sky was overcast, the air swollen with the expectation of rain. The church was not filled. Many were not present who, not so long before, had attended the wedding. David of course was there, his face bloated with grief, his presence a provocation. His mother accompanied him, her face tense and strained but with no sign of tears. His father did not come.

Lily Chinappa approached me at the entrance to the church, a moment after the hearse doors had closed on the coffin. As if it were only yesterday I can remember how, as she extended her hand, her body seemed to back away, seemingly wary of contagion. Damn the lot of them.

Watching my parents share tears with my paternal uncle’s family, I saw how the dishonour bound up in Mercy’s choice of death caused to them the profoundest pain. Mercy, after all, had inherited their blood. Why did they submit so quietly, shouldering their burden of humiliation without a word of anger against him who was the true cause?

Few of the congregation followed the hearse to the cemetery, for, by the time the service was over, the skies had opened. The rain, taking on the colour of the clay soil, ran red between the graves. The grass was slippery and the footing uneven, so of the women who had accompanied the hearse, all of them clad in elegant saris and flimsy slippers, only Mother risked the indignity of falling by following the coffin to the grave. I left the carrying of the coffin to the professional undertakers, for Mother needed an arm to lean on and another to hold an umbrella, somewhat ineffectively, above our heads. I guided her gently to the head of the grave, which was protected from the rain by a tarpaulin, anchored at each corner and along the sides by bricks. The tarpaulin was then pulled away and the coffin lowered slowly into its resting place. The priest concluded the rites, throwing a clod of wet clay onto the coffin. Father followed suit, then I, pausing before letting the clay slip from my hand. I held my hand up to the rain, letting it wash off the red stain.

A few days after the funeral, forgetting my pride, neglectful even of my dignity, I wrote to Rose a letter spotted with my tears. It was a letter that I soon wished I had not dispatched, for I had addressed Rose with a frankness only possible with a wholly distant, perhaps invisible, confessor. Once I pictured her reading the letter, possibly in the kitchen, her hands washed for that purpose, interrupting the chopping of vegetables or the cleaning of fish, I regretted the candour of the epistle. How could she understand me at such a distance, not be critical of the stand I had taken? Such resolution might not be as Christ counselled, but surely when a man has behaved as David had done it could not readily be forgotten or forgiven.

I received her reply with a not inconsiderable trepidation, and let it lie upon my desk for a day or more unopened. At last I took my knife to it.

My dear Abraham,

When I read your letter I wept. I could not stop. I lay down in our bedroom, the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun, and thought of all the times we spent together. Mercy was a fine spirit, perhaps too spirited for this drab and dreary world. Do not blame David. Still less yourself, Abraham. Perhaps it was God’s plan to remove her from a suffering she could not endure — I know what the priests say, what Mercy did was a sin, yes in the abstract perhaps, but only God truly knows why we do things, and I for one am sure she will not be condemned a sinner.

Abraham, you must not spend the rest of your life in mourning. Repentance and prayer are important, but they should not consume your life. Bitterness must be overcome. Look outwards, look to others. You have a lot to offer.

May God bless and keep you.

Yours ever,
Rose

How could she blame me for Mercy’s death? Had I not always taken care of her? The audacity! Writing from thousands of miles away, having long since abandoned her own family in Singapore, she dared to apportion blame, grant dispensation and offer encouragement like some distant deity. It was my own fault; I had made this possible. I had raised her on a pedestal, so why should I be surprised that she believed herself raised in judgment above me?

Twelve

It’s funny how even the worst memories pass, and one’s mind, of its own accord, moves on to happier times. I put away the letter, switch off the reading lamp and settle back into bed.

Dismayed by Rose’s letter and knowing no one who might share my grief and anger, I threw myself into work at school. Labour is perhaps the greatest virtue: I worked harder at lessons, striving to win rather than command the interest of the pupils. For a while I gave up the tracts that I had been studying and turned over my evenings to preparing for the next class. At first I was nervous about departing from time-honoured lesson formats. These were built around the assignment of poems to recite from memory, or else the prescription of Latin texts for which an authoritative translation had, as with the poetry, to be memorised. I was equally nervous about abandoning traditional forms of discipline: the throwing of chalk at any pupil who dared to talk to a neighbour during class or the use of a ruler on the palms of errant boys. I worried, how I worried, that forsaking the old ways might cause an immediate descent into anarchy, but believed that real learning took place in spite of, rather than because of, the old methods.

So, fortified by the conviction that these were new times that demanded new methods and bold action, I began to seek the boys’ understanding of what they had been tasked to translate. I strove to win them over by my earnestness, by the effort that I put in, by my breadth of knowledge and, most of all, by my delight in the poetry or the texts. At times I had to feign this, but believed any dissimulation to be justified by the ends that I sought. I had to make the boys believe that they were engaged in something important, something that, if they too worked hard, they would learn to enjoy, and from which they would benefit.

The central puzzle was how to motivate a pupil who might speak Hokkien, Tamil or Malay at home. English was already a foreign language, and Latin twice foreign. The old answer, self-fulfilling so long as the Empire endured, that Shakespeare and Virgil were the necessary accoutrements of the civilised man, and civilised men obtained the best jobs, crumbled with each step towards Independence.

One day, during a free period, I discussed this problem with Krishna in the staff room.

‘I can see your problem. For me it’s different. Most of the boys have already made up their minds whether Maths is important. If they want to be doctors, yes. If lawyers, no. So I just tell them what they have to learn, and help those who want to learn. But if I were you I would tell the boys this. The future is uncertain. If things don’t change, or don’t change much, then English and Latin will be useful for all the old reasons. But if things do change, then Britain will be the enemy. So know his language, know his culture.’

‘I can’t tell them that.’

‘But it’s true. And it’s the great advantage we have. It’s easy to know them. But they’ll never know us — they think understanding us is a waste of time, that their civilisation has all the answers. That’s their mistake.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘But you should be careful, Abraham. You’re become too popular with your students. Some of the other teachers are unhappy. I heard Lim complain yesterday that you were staying back to give extra lessons. He’s probably scared that he’ll end up having to work harder, but he’s making noise about lack of discipline among your pupils, claiming they’re badly behaved, that the only reason why…’

‘That’s so unfair.’ I could not contain my dismay and agitation.

‘I know it is. But since when was life fair? He said that the only reason why you had to give extra lessons was because you were behind in the syllabus, and that you’re behind in the syllabus because you can’t control your class.’

I took Krishna’s words seriously. I was not so naive as to believe that ideals prove themselves. My pupils would have to do well in the School Certificate Examinations or else I would be blamed for neglecting educational standards. But I refused to return to traditional methods. Instead I redoubled my efforts to win the interest and respect of my pupils. I took special care with the slower learners and the ones who seemed uncomfortable with my informality. The reward for my patience was the increasingly dedicated atmosphere of the classroom. At first some of the pupils resisted the changes. Perhaps they were worried that they could not cope with the additional freedom given to them, and feared that the absence of forced learning, euphemistically and somewhat fondly called ‘spoon-feeding’, would be reflected in poorer grades in the examinations. Or perhaps they found it easier to deal with a teacher who acted as a teacher and did not confuse things by becoming a friend. They had been cautious, holding back in class, refusing to participate fully in discussions. But then, as it became clear to them that they received more attention than before, and therefore more rather than less guidance, they began to open up to me.

There were moments also of pure inspiration. Those three boys who attended both my English and Latin classes — what were their names? I can recall their faces: one a little pudgy, another gaunt with black-framed glasses and thick lenses like a Maoist intellectual, the third … no, even his face I’ve forgotten. The Maoist, not that he ever was one, became Perm. Sec. … his name will come to me at least. Those boys were something special; they began to use the literature they studied to interpret the world around them. Hamlet, which I was always in danger of reading as a personal reproach of my failure to avenge Mercy’s death upon David, was to them a study of the process of decolonisation. The ordinary Singaporean was like Hamlet, his heritage despoiled by the interloping colonising Claudius. How then to act? Vengeance or forgiveness? The Aeneid came to stand for all the problems of an island-state and the quest for nationhood, suggesting how one small city could in the end become the focus of a great empire. What days those were, when even literature seemed to speak to the spirit of the age! How I looked forward to those classroom discussions, and how hard the struggle, in my enthusiasm for these grand exegeses, not to lose sight of the authors’ original concerns.

This was also the time when I grew closer to Krishna. We were about the same age, in a staff room dominated by old and weary men. My suspicion that he was deeply involved in politics was confirmed when he introduced me to a new political party. Krishna proclaimed it to be the party of the future. It was not made up of tired and privileged liberals who in their hearts lamented the imminent passing of British rule, nor had it fallen prey to the naivety of the Communists, who thought that, once they had exterminated their political enemies, there would be a brotherhood of man. Those men were hard-headed practical types, who knew how to make things work. Sure, they were in politics for power, but who wasn’t? They were Socialists, and so would direct their skills and talent, not simply to strengthening their own positions, but also to securing the common good.

I became a member of the Party, and took on greater responsibilities within the Teachers’ Union. The Union had become an increasingly vocal and influential part of the Civil Service Union, and I became involved in the publication of a newsletter. This we produced as cheaply as possible. I would spend hours with the production team, cranking the handle of the cyclostyling machine, sorting the pages and stapling them together. Those hours together quickly generated strong feelings of solidarity. We worked in an office on the second storey of a shophouse in Tanjong Pagar. Beneath the office was a kopi tiam to which we would adjourn for kopi and char siew pao. Krishna would sometimes turn up, although he was less involved in the Union, and more involved in the Party. Then we would talk into the small hours. Our discussions grew longer and more heated as the first elections which would result in real, albeit limited, self-government approached.

I remember my disappointment when the Party announced that it would field only four candidates in the elections. This seemed a foolish move. The Party would be doomed to opposition, leaving an opportunity for another political party to take power and consolidate its grip prior even to full independence. But after a night of argument I accepted Krishna’s position that the time was not right to take over the reins of government. Any government would be hamstrung by the continuing supervision of the British and in particular would be torn between the need to press for immediate independence and the need meanwhile to provide orderly and efficient administration. By staying out of government the Party would avoid this dilemma. It could call vehemently for full independence, spreading its influence among the rank-and-file while leading agitation against the government’s sloth in achieving independence. At the same time, if the government failed to keep order it could be criticised for its inability to govern effectively. If, on the other hand, the government had to crack down on striking unions or rebellious students in order to maintain its grip, it could be reviled as a stooge and lackey of the British. I can’t help but admire his perspicacity.

About that time I penned an article for the newsletter in which I analysed the political stances of the various parties and the personalities who were their candidates. The article was quiet and reflective in tone — I was after all addressing teachers and not a rabble — but it unmistakeably reached the firm conclusion that the Party was the only one which had both the vision and the ability to guide Singapore’s future. When the newsletter containing the article was distributed, the principal summoned me. I entered his office righteous, mind made up that I should appear indignant even at the fact that such an interview could be regarded as necessary. But I doubt that the firm sense of righteousness could have entirely stopped my stomach’s nervous churning.

The principal was at his desk writing when, after knocking, I entered. He was an Englishman, a tall man, but with his head turned down towards his notepad, I could see how red and blotched was the scalp of his balding crown. He sought in vain to conceal this condition by combing strands of wispy blond hair across it.

After a few moments the principal looked up and gestured towards the stiff-backed chairs placed in front of his desk. I sat down. A few moments later the principal put down his pen and looked up.

‘I read your article. Fine piece of writing. Now, I have no objections to it or to your continued involvement in the Union or in politics or whatever. I’ve also heard good things about your teaching. A number of parents have said that their sons have become much more interested in English and Latin, and much more hardworking, because of your teaching. Keep it up. I have just one thing to say.’

I curled my lip, to express contempt for the censure that must follow.

‘Please exercise your discretion carefully. Remember, the pupils’ success in exams comes first. Their political awareness second. That’s all.’

I stood up and left, disappointed that there had been no confrontation, no opportunity to prove commitment to the independence movement and disdain for the colonial government. When Krishna questioned me afterwards I could not resist hinting at a severe rebuke by the principal, nor could I withhold a shrug of my shoulders to suggest defiance in the face of all threats.

A youthful boast. It had shaded into a falsehood by which I had sought to mark myself out from the general mass of mediocrity. What vanity, and yet surely it cannot be said that my life has been wholly ordinary. Even if I did not act to punish David as I ought to have done, have I not, in the end, nonetheless distinguished myself by my courage, or at least by some quality of steadfastness of which I can be proud?