Marie got down from the city bus near the Capitol. St Andrews Cathedral looked white and serene in the middle of its shady field fringed by angsana trees, sentinels of the Church’s serenity planted long ago by those nostalgic for the oak trees of the English countryside. Set in the heart of this busy shopping area considered as prime land by the developers of this country and protected by its fence of strong iron railings, the spire of the Cathedral rose high above the trees reaching out to things beyond this earth, above the petty concerns of man below. She turned away and crossed the road to the Capitol cinema, which proclaimed the arrival of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” in loud garish colours. Round the corner was the row of Indian-owned shops with their hotchpotch spread of cheongsams made of cheap-looking red brocade, black embroidered kaftans, trinkets, teak elephants, cameras and bras, all lumped into one huge incongruous display for the bargain-hunting tourist.
Marie wanted to avoid this part of the road so she crossed to the opposite side where she could stroll down the path running along the Stamford canal. This was her favourite part of the city, and she wished that the Public Works Department wouldn’t widen the road again and chop down this row of Flame of the Forest trees, whose blooms were like a streak of wild fire along the canal at sunset. Sometimes she ignored the noise of the traffic, and enjoyed the illusion of walking down a country road with broad leafy runner grass at her feet, and an umbrella of jade green leaves above. But she knew these trees would not be allowed to remain for long so she bade them good-bye too. She remembered how she and Paul used to walk here in the evening to catch the last golden glow of a brief tropical twilight with a light breeze playing among the yellow-green leaves of her twinkling tree. A sigh escaped her. It seemed so very long ago when she had come here with Paul one evening to claim this tree. Its leaves were aglow with the fire of sunset and they were in their first flight of love like the young swallows that used to frequent the Padang. She pushed the memory aside. It had been such a long time since she last watched the sun set and the swallows gather in the trees. When had she stopped noticing such things? She had no time to walk leisurely through the city with Hans. They were always on their way to a meeting. If there were more time she would have liked to show this side of the city to him but there was no time now. She must make her farewells alone.
She turned the corner to that side of the grey hallowed walls of the convent which permitted entry through its triple-arched iron gateway. The row of “instant” angsana was still there, amputated branches stretching hideously in the white heat of the morning. She ignored them and concentrated on the dust patterns at her feet. Grey serried lines of sand grains and the absence of waste paper showed that the road sweeper had done his job early and well. The highly acclaimed image of a clean green city was being effectively sustained by the diligence of workers who, day after day, push the grains of white rice into their mouths, busily manipulating chopsticks or fingers with no other thought in their heads except that their rice bowls be full and the rice grains fluffy. And so they remain all the time on the level of the mundane and the pragmatic becoming the humble small men eating their lives away like so many beetles crawling in the rice bin. Where was their sense of the heroic? That awareness of their significance as the children of God, Creator of this island?
Marie passed through the gates and the roar of the traffic faded into the distance like a muted echo as if the secular world respected this pool of peace in its midst. There was no one around. The convent and its adjacent schools were deserted. Ah, this was still vacation, and she was thankful that on this last morning, she would have the whole place to herself. Even Sister Beatrice and Sister Gabriel were absent from their posts at the gate. She could not bear the thought of having to meet their enquiring looks. At the grotto of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, laced with the bright pink lobes of Honolulu was a single lighted candle. Someone had come early to seek help and blessing. Dear mother, please, answer her prayer speedily, her empathy going out to that unknown soul who, like her, needed the help of Our Lady, mother to all in distress.
She strolled towards the chapel and looked up. High up on this side of its grey walls, a large patch of cement had fallen away revealing the orange bricks beneath, and wedging its way through this hardness was a green plant, a seed dropped by a bird perhaps, and now its bevy of leaves in the orange bricks was the focus of colour in that canvas of grey. Marie smiled palely at this plant growing precariously up there. It spoke of courage and endurance to her. She looked at it for a long time.
The sun was shining on one side of the driveway, and Marie crossed over to the shady gallery with its ancient iron spiral stairway, its intricate pattern of flowers and leaves curling like creepers. She would not go into the chapel just yet; she would leave that to the last, walking past the low-roofed garage, now used as a storehouse. Ah, this open space separating the English primary school from its big sister, the secondary school. This was where she used to play tic-tac-toe and big balloon with all the other blue-clad girls as they waited for the bell of the afternoon session to ring.
“Hey, hey, jaga baik-baik, car coming. Don’t run so fast, why you run so fast?” Sister Gabriel would scold from her post at the marble-top table below the statue of St Francis of Assisi, her shrill Tamil voice nagging the shouting, carefree girls was part of the normal order of things around her childhood then.
“Sista, sista! See, see, my marmy gave me this for my birthday.”
She smiled at this recollection of childish voices. Dear Sister Gabriel. Once when they were late, her gang had tried to bribe their way into the school, hoping to escape Sister’s long lecture on punctuality. She had offered Sister a stick of chewing gum, which she promptly popped into her mouth. Then they had watched her suck, pulling in her cheeks and puckering her aged lips in a great expense of effort and energy because the gum had stuck to her dentures. And they had watched, not daring to laugh and not daring to move away. When at last Sister had extracted the troublesome gum from her mouth, she let forth such a torrent of Tamil-English that the whole gang beat a hasty retreat, and for weeks afterwards, they avoided her and went home by the side gate on Stamford Road.
At the school gallery, Marie rang the bell, its single chime echoing round the empty gallery used for assembly and morning prayers. Sister D—when Irish eyes are smiling—they used to sing to her, presided every morning with Sister E standing solemnly at the side.
“Your breeding and sense of decorum show, girls, they show in your manners,” Sister D used to tell them during morning assembly, standing straight in her modern white knee-length habit, shoulders back and breasts out, while the Pre-U girls in the front row held their breath, waiting for one of her buttons to burst again. It had been fun then. They were all so young and carefree, and she had been so certain of what Life would hold for her. Like that black figure on the wall at the far end of the gallery, she had been so certain of walking toward the light.
In the secondary school, the same sounds of tick-tick-tack tick-tick-tack from Devi’s typewriter greeted her as she went up the stairs as she had done years ago both as a student and as a teacher. These sounds and these grey walls had encompassed all her world then.
“Miss Lee, new cheongsam,” and once again, she saw Miss Lee’s demure smile as she answered, “Give me the properties of an equilateral triangle.”
“Aw, Miss Lee, it’s just after Chinese New Year,” she had groaned.
“Well, you want Chinese dinner after the O levels or not?” Miss Lee’s famous bribe rang in her ears once more.
Marie reached the cavernous school hall with its black curtained stage at one end. “Presenting the Ugly Duckling in Swan Lake,” she heard her own girlish voice of long ago, like the girl ghost she had always believed haunting the gallery upstairs among the stage props. She had been afraid of going into the Art Room too that was haunted by the ghost of a sister who had died during the Japanese Occupation. Her friends had seen the ghost in the gloom of a morning at 6 a.m. sitting on the bare wooden floor upstairs combing her ghostly hair amidst the pots of paint and brushes belonging to Sister Valentine. The ghosts of dead years hung heavily in the stale air of the empty school.
Leaving the hall, she went up to the school library on the fourth floor. Every morning as Head Prefect, she had greeted the librarian, Sister Jude, who smelt of Vitamin A and cod liver oil, her quivering voice matching her nervous movements among her beloved books. She had helped Sister Jude run this library once. And now standing alone among the chairs and tables, and the musty smell of books in their ornately carved cupboards, the hopes and fears of those ancient days rushed back to greet her. With an impatient gesture, she brushed away the tears that threatened; she was getting mushy.
She turned and fled down the stairs running, running, and did not stop till she reached the ground floor out of breath. All those moments she had wasted! All those hopes futile. All her reading, her praying and her hoping turned to nothing! And these books. The lives of the saints! She had read them all, ardent in the first flush of faith and conviction that she was being called to the Saviour’s side. St Joan of Arc. St Bernadette, meek and humble. St Theresa, pure as a lily. She had always wanted her as her model during those novitiate days. But she had failed Him even as she sat now too heavy to move. How could she have failed so miserably and fallen so low? She buried the question as she buried her head in her folded arms, resting on her curled-up knees, too ashamed to face her Creator. She was crying at last, Lord, Lord, do not abandon me. Father Ariola had said in catechism class, “The sacrament of marriage is sacred and holy. God’s blessing is bestowed upon this permanent union of man and woman. Nothing should take place until God has blessed them.” Father had stared into their awed eyes. She had sinned and sinned grievously. She had sinned in the ripples of those exciting vibrations stirred by his gently exploring hands, and the restless ocean that had been caged in her for so long had swelled, rose and surged through her, drowning the both of them in a passion which she had since discovered, was not always as gentle as she had dreamed. The imperative of demand from those we love and who claim to love us in return had shocked and dismayed her, although she still held on to the belief that love-in-service-to-others contained that kernel of freedom she had always sought. It was, however, pointless quarrelling now and wasting time in regrets. Time, the nursemaid and gravedigger of all thought and action. But her sacrament of marriage would be for real and always. This, she vowed to make sure.
She rose from the step upon which she had been sitting, walked briskly down the school corridor, passed the school office, crossed the deserted gallery once again and retraced her steps till she reached the chapel. Entering, she genuflected and slipped into a pew at the back. Then kneeling, she let the tears flow freely down her face in the privacy of the chapel’s holy gloom. Here was where she had been born into faith, into the loving arms of her Saviour. He alone understood her loneliness now. He alone saw what was aching in her heart. And like a ravished pilgrim, beaten and robbed along the way, she abandoned herself to the silent comfort of a loving Saviour whose presence in the tabernacle was signified by the flickering light of the red altar lamp. In that silence, she rested her head on the wooden pew and sobbed her heart out.
After that night’s debacle, she was feeling raw and naked as if Mak had raped her in front of them all in the full harsh light of that electric lamp above his head. Its mere recollection burned her brain, and she had to hold on to the pew to steady herself. A nut, dehusked and shelled, she was empty and hollow inside. Lord, is this my punishment? Is this a sign of your displeasure? Her questions went unanswered. She looked at the figure hanging on the cross, bathed in the blue light from the stained glass windows. No, it couldn’t be, she reassured herself. Her God is the God of love, not vengeance. That was the work of man—deranged and demented man. He was destroyed, Hans had said, by circumstances beyond his control, and she had nearly drowned in his filth. She could not bear to see him again even when Hans visited him, not when she still felt his dirt clinging to her. It would be years and years before she could wash it all away.
But before I leave, I will walk these streets and these roads, stamping my good-byes on them, burying my past with every drop of filth that oozes out of my pores. O Lord, give me strength, just give me strength. She wished she could vent her anger on Mak. He was mad! Stark staring mad! Why, Lord, why? Why did they have to push him over the brink? To show their power? O these vindictive men! These small-minded beetles scuttling in self-importance. How she hated them! Yes, Lord, she hated them even if it meant being condemned to hell for it. She hated this society they had built. Built on fear, claustrophobic as a garrison with walls going up higher and higher. They were misers grasping, accumulating, and perpetually fearing the loss of their hard-won treasures. Their fears condemn the rest to live in prison. So, perhaps then this was indeed God’s way to get her out of a society she had grown to resent? Perhaps it was His Will that she should serve the cause of freedom and justice in another land? At least America would be a free society. There she could follow her conscience and her will.
In this way, she reasoned herself out of sadness and nostalgia and into a willingness to face the new and the unknown so suddenly forced upon her. She got up and left.
“Hey, you’re here already? Did you wait long?” she asked Yean outside the chapel.
“No, not long.” Yean replied, trying to read Marie’s face. But if she had expected sadness, she did not detect it. Marie looked cheerful.
“Have you said your good-byes?”
“Only to that part.” Marie pointed to the secondary school. “I haven’t been to the other side yet, the field that I used to walk around at night.”
“Shall I wait here while you say good-bye to the convent?”
“No, no, I’ll do that tonight. Hans and I are having dinner with the sisters. But we can walk round the field together if you like.”
So Yean got up and walked beside Marie with mixed feelings. After all these years, she was still feeling like clay in Marie’s presence. She had never had the strength to confront her with anything, and felt disgusted by her own ineffectiveness. Now they were walking in silence. If she had the strength, she would say, people have paid a price for you. Are you aware of it? Do you appreciate it? Are you going to waste their love, affection and loyalty? Are you still angry with Mak? He loved you too, only you weren’t aware of it. He did not act out of sheer madness. Jealousy was in it too. Did it ever occur to you that you could’ve been the cause of his breakdown? You heard his big dreams and ideas, his thesis and antithesis, but did you see the man? The person? I’m disappointed. You, who have spoken to us so touchingly about the importance of the soul and the individual, you were not aware of him at all.
But Yean said nothing. Walking beside Marie, listening to her plans for the wedding next week, Yean hadn’t the heart to mention Mak. This would be their last meeting without the presence of the others. What was the use of saying anything? There would be no chance of another meeting to clarify any angry feelings. What was the point then of stripping another person of her illusions if she were not going to be around to take care of the consequences? Marie would have to deal with her own illusions as best as she could. Anyway she had Hans now. Besides, it was arrogance to think you’re the only one capable of helping someone see clearly.
“See, this is where we used to sit at night,” Marie was saying, pointing to some stone seats in the tennis court, intent upon sharing with Yean this aspect of her life in the convent. Yean nodded dumbly.
Had she grown indifferent lately? Perhaps she had already distanced herself from Marie like the others. Perhaps she was just not prepared to walk with Marie through the difficult journey of self-discovery, and therefore, had chosen the easier path of charity—leave Marie her illusions; she may need them to make a new life abroad.
They strolled across the field in the glare of the noonday sun. With Yean beside her, Marie felt some of her cheerful optimism returning. No, Mak had not destroyed her. She still liked what she saw of herself. If trouble and crisis were the true sons of Shiva, then all the mirrors we held up to ourselves would have been smashed as so many illusions. Marie was clinging all the more to favourite images of herself. She looked at Yean, inarticulate, awkward though fiercely loyal. Why should Yean be any different now? All the same, this was their last morning together. She wished Yean would make an effort to say something, say what was in her mind so that they could be more honest and less awkward with each other. If Yean had been able to pour out her thoughts and feelings then, Marie too, would have been able to confess: I, too, have learnt something. I dream a dream but my dream is many-faceted. Different parts of my dream attract different people. I know I attract them but I do not make them like me. How can you, Yean, in your silence blame me? Can you blame the Flame of the Forest if passers-by admire its blooms and stop in its shade? Why blame me for Paul, for Ser Mei, for Mak, Pei Lan or yourself? Must I carry the burden of others’ loves and hates? Don’t I have enough guilt of my own to carry already? You would say I encouraged them. I encouraged them to grow. Is that a crime? Should I have left Pei Lan alone, stagnant in the helplessness and obsequiousness of her slave mentality? Now at least she is sharper in her perceptions, more critical and more aware of herself and her society. Isn’t this a good thing?
Yean was pursuing her own thoughts as they walked silently around the school field. Pei Lan and Ah Huat had been deported to Malaysia, marked forever by their government as dissidents and troublemakers. They would have difficulty getting jobs. Have they benefited from your dreams? Haven’t they been harmed in some ways—their rice bowls cracked? Are they happier for having been made more aware? More critical of things around them?
Yes, Marie was thinking. Yes, they would have been happy left alone, happy as only the ignorant are happy, ignorant that they are the faggots of war and the digits of labour to be moved like chess pieces by those who have mastered the economics of survival. Is this freedom and dignity? Is this what man is all about?
But since no one spoke their thoughts, their arguments remained unsaid, and unchallenged.
That had been their farewell. Yean felt a vague sense of disappointment. No, not vague. If she were true to her feelings she must admit that she was hovering on the brink of bitterness. What had she experienced? Was that a good-bye between old friends who were supposed to have shared commitments, dreams and visions? Why hadn’t Marie said a single word even remotely connected with themselves and their relationship? Their meeting was simply the bright bubbling of a shallow stream of words about her coming wedding and her continued involvement abroad with the SWA. “Having a grasp of Asian realities I would be in a better position to establish contact with concerned Americans there, and contribute to developments here.” Yean had found herself nodding out of long habit. But nodding to what? To what was she agreeing? A war in Vietnam? Refugees in Hongkong? Communism in China? Hunger in Bangladesh? Dictatorship in one place. Corruption in another. Harsh Asian realities. And she remembered Paul’s words at the police station.
“You think you can change things in one grand gesture of defiance. It’s an illusion. Marie celebrates the greatness of the great individual—herself. But here in Singapore, it is only in the day-to-day behind-the-scenes workings of many men, each one doing a small part of the job that real change comes.” Harsh words then, but how true!
She had been so enmeshed by Marie’s dreams and vision of an ideal society that she had been blind to what was going on in the SWA. Where was Mak now? Why was it no one wanted to discuss Mak? Where were his Chinese students? His loyal supporters had vanished into thin air. She had never bothered to keep track of those who came and went in the SWA (because we should trust everyone, Marie had insisted) so now she did not know who they were. How was it that none of them foresaw his madness? Surely there must have been signs? No one, as far as she knew, no one simply became mad overnight. And his sudden attack on Hans and Marie as if he had never trusted them, as if he had hated them all this while. And now here was Marie’s obvious indifference to Mak’s fate. Yean found it difficult to accept.
Mak’s attack had split the SWA. Now she saw clearly there had always been two camps. She had always known this, but her brain had refused to register the fact because it would complicate things for her. It would have meant facing up to her uneasiness about Mak and his Yuan Tung and Nan Hai supporters, opening herself to being criticised for her English-educated arrogance. It would have meant admitting that in the SWA, there was contention for power and influence as in any other political group. They were not there simply because of a desire to save the suffering masses. She realised now it was neither Marie nor Hans nor Mak even—their group of four—who had held the SWA together. They were the visible articulate ones but the invisible members from Yuan Tung and Nan Hai were the backbone, and Mak was their spokesman, communicating only as much as he thought was useful for his own purposes. Now with their disappearance, the SWA had also died out. Even if Marie had stayed, she would not be the rallying point she thought she was. No, she and Marie had been the waterlilies floating atop a deep lake teeming with voracious terrapins, capable of devouring those attracted to the waterlilies. She felt used. Was Mak really mad? And why was Marie so unconcerned? Didn’t she care any more? She hadn’t even asked about Pei Lan and Ah Huat.
“She doesn’t really care. All she wants are stooges for her grand ideas!”
Ken was harsh, but still she had to admit that Marie had changed. Look at Ser Mei and Yin Peng. She had forgotten them. Marie didn’t go for Yin Peng’s birthday, and Yin Peng had wanted to show her that she needed only one crutch to walk now instead of two. Nor had Marie come for Ser Mei’s anniversary mass, and they had waited for her. And now, this silence about Mak. Why this silence? It looked as if Peter and Ken had been right to move away from Marie. She had just said goodbye to Marie through a brick wall. Their group spirit was broken. They were going their separate ways. Was this part of growing up? Inevitable? She felt old as if she were witnessing the passing of an era. What had she lost?
She remembered the night when she had looked up into the eyes of Miss Marie-Therese Wang and thought her the most beautiful person in her universe. Today, she was waking up to an imperfect world of fleeting relationships where even the best of good-byes contains the seed of bitterness. Next month, she was going to California with her mother. She, too, would fly.