“Hey, hurry, hurry, slow coach! The bus is coming! We’ll be late.”
“Okay, okay!”
The whole group clambered up the bus to Jurong for yet another meeting with the workers. The ten boys and girls settled noisily into their seats.
“Hey, you saw Mr Mak today? We nearly died of shock. He was bald!”
All the girls in the group screamed with laughter.
“He sure is turning communistic.”
“Ah, ah, you’re forgetting what Mr Mak said about hair and ideology.”
“Ooooh, he was so cute! You should have seen his face when we stared at him,” shouted one of the girls. Another peal of laughter.
The bus driver and conductor frowned. The bus conductor came up to them and knocked his ticket clipper on the back of the seats.
“Ten tickets to Jurong, please,” said Yean.
“Hah?” shouted the bus conductor, his voice rising above the roar of the engine. “Kong-sa-me?” he demanded in Hokkien.
Flustered, Yean put up ten fingers and said, “Jurong.”
He gave her the tickets and flung a look of disgust at the whole group.
“Ang mo kau ah! Deng lang buay hiau kong deng lang wuay! Chinese not know how speak Chinese,” he shouted his English translation to the bus driver for the benefit of the students who would not have understood otherwise.
The bus driver laughed good-humouredly and answered him in Cantonese: “Chap choong! These people! These fat fat yau can only say I see, you see, I no see. Forgotten their ancestors already. Study ang mo, speak ang mo, act like ang mo,” and he guffawed at the stupidity of such English-educated Chinese.
Yean and her group remained angrily silent, ignoring the rude comments. Yean knew Cantonese but there was nothing much they could do without it turning into an ugly confrontation in the crowded bus. The rest of the passengers, used to multi-lingual life in the city, were keen but uninvolved observers. Most were glad to keep out of this “sensitive issue” as the media would have termed it.
The bus screeched to a stop and about twenty people tried to get in. An Indian boy clambered up through the rear door meant for exit.
“Hey, hey, you! Get down, get down!” the bus conductor shouted in his best English. “Come up front lah you people. Got front door, don’t want to use front door. Make life susah-lah! Don’t move!” he ordered the bus driver. “Get down, get down!” he shouted and glared at the Indian schoolboy till embarrassed and angry, the boy got off the bus. “Ya, move now.” The bus conductor turned to the passengers to vindicate himself. “Basket he! Ask him to get down don’t get down. Still stand there. Wah! His grandfather own the bus or what? Come up front like everybody else, lah! You go back I not see you, I ring bell and door close susah lah, right?”
The passengers averted their faces. No one answered him. Yean ignored the rising anger in her heart. She couldn’t defend the boy. Like the others, she had been helplessly glued to her seat, afraid of ugly scenes. She hated this small tyrant and was determined to report the incident to the Jurong group later. With this in mind, she forced herself to register what the imbecile was raving about.
“Ya, some passengers like this. They make life difficult—this complain, that complain. They write letters to Straits Times—show off only that they know a few words. I also can speak English,” and he turned to the bus driver and laughed raucously at some private joke. “Some women farny too—so fussy—say we conductors cheeko. What man? I married. I want cheeko I go to my wife! I can go Johore Road too, why I want cheeko on bus? This my work. Not my fault—bus crowded and women still want to come up, sure get touch touch here and there, lah. Farny women and not good looking some more!”
Yean turned away and concentrated on the long dreary drive to Jurong.
“But you can’t blame him. This is his only way to let off steam. He has been oppressed all his life and you’re the elite. You can think. You can write. You have the power of articulation. He’s one of the silent oppressed.”
“He sure was silent, boy,” Peter remarked but his sarcasm was lost on Marie, bent as she always was on judging individuals in terms of class background which was in line with the SWA’s current theory developed under Mak’s direction. This particular bus conductor, however, did not seem to belong to the silent oppressed while the elite in this case were not as articulate as they were reputed to be. But Yean had discovered that Sis was now more interested in strategising their moves, having adopted the language of the liberal left, than in discussing issues which questioned the validity of the SWA’s assumptions. Nevertheless, the SWA was dealing with human hardship and Yean, so aware of her own good fortunes, was eager to help. She would never repeat what she had done in Ser Mei’s case—avoid ugliness and withdraw.
At the Workers’ Hostel, Pei Lan reported that one of the girls at the textile factory had had half her hair torn off by the machine.
“There, now you see how the proletariat is exploited and yet remain silent,” Mak said triumphantly.
“You should all visit the girl tomorrow and ask the union to fight for compensation even though she is an illegal worker,” Marie directed, much to Mak’s satisfaction.
“We would follow up on the story and write an article on industrial safety and employers’ responsibility,” Hans added.
“This is the result of allowing the multi-nationals to dump their third-rate machines here to exploit our workers,” declared Mak angrily. “Do you know that according to the latest figures, not released, of course, two-thirds of all the girls in electronics change jobs because of poor eyesight? They spend eight hours a day threading those tiny wires.”
“Ya lah, and they complain we work here, work there, never want to stay long in one place,” Pei Lan added bitterly. “Then also corruption, people eat money. If supervisor like you and you give him sex you get easy job. If he hate, you die, lah.”
The students, especially the girls, were shocked.
“What about the men hah?” they asked.
“Don’t know ah, ask Ah Huat, lah.”
Ah Huat, a construction worker looked up, his dark sunburnt face glowering. “They suck our blood,” he sputtered, fists clenched.
Marie gave him a warm smile as a reward.
Ah Huat muttered, “Nothing but low pay and dangerous work.”
“But if they’re getting low pay, how come I see so many of them going for dim sum? My father says they’re fairly well-paid nowadays.” One of the girls asked Marie as though Ah Huat was not capable of answering for himself. Ah Huat kept quiet and studied their faces while Marie rose to his defence.
“You like to live well. Workers like to live well too. Ah Huat is in construction. It’s dangerous work. He lives from day to day and if he doesn’t live it up now and then, he will have gained nothing when he dies. While he is alive, he wants to give his best to his family so he brings them out for dim sum. Just like your father. Isn’t this a natural human aspiration?”
Hans smiled approval, as the students looked a little shame-faced at Ah Huat who eyed them without a trace of emotion on his face. Marie returned Hans’s smile with a grateful, almost shy glance and looked away immediately. But Hans continued to admire her profile. Soft rich lips. Her face mirror-smooth like the surface of a lake, depths holding the promise of feelings yet to emerge, feelings asleep waiting for him to waken them. He would open her hard encrusted shell, pry it open gently, and roll out the lustrous pearls into his hand. Hans was absorbed by his own fantasies.
Marie got up and walked out of the meeting room. No, she should not. She should not. She should not let herself be fascinated by his hands. Such big generous hands. Strong yet sensitive hands. Hands that make a cat purr. Hands that say beautiful things to a woman. Hands ... she stopped. The Lord would have to forgive her again and again and again.
“Mak, don’t you think the workers tonight are fantastic? They were so analytical and perceptive, especially just now when they were describing the local power structures in the factories,” said Marie as she sat down beside Mak to wait for the others to come out of the meeting, not wanting to go in and be distracted by Hans again. “I wish the students could be like this.”
“What do you expect?” Mak growled. She had not even noticed that he had followed her out of the room. “The bourgeoisie is a dying race. The proletariat will take over soon. Upon their backs rest the future.” He knew she liked the ideologue in him so he continued. “In the Philippines and Indonesia, the students are more radical. They work very closely with the workers. Here!” and Mak ended his speech with a snort of disgust just as Hans came out of the meeting room with the rest of them.
Marie rushed off. She was sending the students home in the convent’s car and had to be back at the convent before ten o’clock.
“Those sisters don’t like it if I’m back too late. They don’t understand what I am doing up here. They probably think I drive students up and down Jurong for fun.”
The edge of irritation in her voice that the others recognised as time to be silent and not probe.