It was Sunday, her day to luxuriate in bed with the perverse intent not to rise until the hour of noon that officially marked the end of the morning to compensate for the previous six days’ tyranny of the alarm clock.
At about six in the morning, when it was still dark, the phone rang shrilly. It was Maggie. She said, ‘Miss Seetoh, did you read your newspaper yet? Look at page six of The Singapore Tribune. Also the Chinese newspaper. They even show picture.’
It took Maria a few seconds to shake off the languor of sleep and ask, ‘Maggie, what on earth are you talking about?’
The girl, wherever she was, whatever she was doing in her new life, had not left off her old love of positioning herself with new knowledge that others would have to come begging for, exerting new power that would require others to come pleading for forgiveness. Maria would never forget that day in the café when Maggie had gone all out to humiliate her.
But the girl’s voice had none of the remembered defiance or malice. She repeated matter-of-factly, ‘Miss Seetoh, I just told you. Look in newspaper. Better the Chinese newspaper. More news.’
‘But, but – Maggie, wait!’ The girl had already hung up. Maria was sure, as she got up quickly, that it would not be the last of Maggie’s calls.
She wished that her former student, hard, bitter, relentless, were completely out of her life. Somebody had told her that Maggie had been seen in lounges and bars with hard-drinking men, almost unrecognisable in the full unabashed trappings of the playgirl companion: heavy make-up, tight-fitting clothes with plunging necklines, black stockings, high-heeled shoes, the defiant cigarette in the pouty red mouth. She wondered what was happening to her sister Angel.
The Singapore Tribune ignored suicides unless committed in unusual circumstances that made for newsworthiness over at least a successive week’s reporting. It carried a brief report only of the suicides of Mark Wong and Loo Yen Ping but the details in the report were tantalising enough to promise follow-up reports: both were wearing the blue-and-white uniforms of St Peter’s Secondary School, a mixed Catholic school, when they plunged from the twelfth storey of a block of flats in the vicinity of the school, probably in the early hours of Saturday morning; both carried farewell letters to various people in their pockets; both had died on the spot. Probably the most tantalising detail was the fact that they had jumped side by side, their wrists bound together by a red silk scarf.
The Chinese newspaper carried a picture of the dead couple, under a large white plastic sheet, with the right foot of the boy peeping out, as well as of a hysterical Mrs Gloria Wong kneeling beside the bodies, supported by two relatives or friends. The report was very detailed. Mrs Wong was screaming again and again, ‘I curse the day that you were born!’; she could have been directing the curse at the girl who had caused her son’s death, or even at her son who had brought her so much suffering despite all her efforts to give him a good future. The newspaper reporter, looking to flesh out his report, quickly concluded that parental objection had been the cause of the suicide pact. He did some quick, skilful investigation and interviewing of those relatives who were prepared to talk. He made much of the fact that the pair had been classmates in St Peter’s Secondary School, and that the boy had chosen, in death, to wear his old school uniform. How had he got the information that the silk handkerchief of intimate union in death bore the couple’s initials? There was reference to a small teddy found on the scene. Maria remembered that Yen Ping had told her of her having embroidered their initials on its collar.
Mrs Wong had been too distraught to say anything after the cursing; she had fainted several times, and had to be carried into a car and taken home. There was no mention of the parents or relatives of Yen Ping arriving at the scene of the tragedy. The Chinese newspaper reported, accurately, that the boy was preparing to go to the United Kingdom for further studies, and, inaccurately, that the girl was preparing to join him there. In the following days, journalistic enthusiasm overreached itself, and managed to secure some pictures of the couple in happier times, which were splashed in the newspaper. One showed Mark and Yen Ping at some school outing, dressed in their blue-and-white school uniforms, another in an unidentified place with trees in the background, standing very close to each other, but not touching. The Straits Tribune did not have any follow-up report on the request of the Deputy Minister of Trade and Business who was related to Mrs Gloria Wong.
‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ gasped Maria, and rushed to the bathroom to be sick. The school would be full of the terrible news the next morning, but meanwhile, she found herself being propelled along, pale and hollow-eyed, in a thick, dark fog that seeped into her mind and clogged it, preventing her from thinking clearly, and into her heart, suspending all feelings except shock. In the numbed state two thoughts occurred but were soon absorbed back into the dark, chill numbness: should she put a call to Brother Philip in Ireland to let him know, since she had been confiding the story of poor Mark and Yen Ping to him? And should she go to the mortuary to take a look at the two broken bodies, as they really looked in the tragic culmination of their love, bearing the marks of their violent death, before the embalmer came to do his work of erasing the brutal truth with his powder and paint? Maria had seen few corpses in her life, and they all looked peaceful and serene as they lay in their coffins, the lines of anxiety or pain on their faces smoothed out, their hands placed gently by their sides or folded upon their chests. Sister Elizabeth, despite the ravages of her cancer, actually looked beautiful, as if she were in calm, undisturbed sleep.
No, there was no point calling Brother Philip; she would only sound incoherent in her distress, and be unable to answer the questions that he was sure to ask. No point distressing him when he was so far away, unable to do anything. And no, she shouldn’t go to the mortuary not only because there might be regulations about admission for only family members, but also because she feared that each time she wanted to remember the much loved students, memory would conjure up only an image of two blood-encrusted bodies lying on cold stone slabs in the mortuary. She thought of the time she saw them sitting on the stairs of a school staircase, Mark helping Yen Ping neaten her plaits, combing out her long hair and watching with a waiting clip in his hands as her fingers expertly did the plaiting.
In her album of memories of the dead, the images would be carefully selected for their special pleasant associations. But it had a dark ugly twin that forced itself into memory and night dreams. It bore only fearsome images – of impenetrable forests and murky ponds, bodies and rings lying at the bottom of the ponds, owls hooting, children in flight – and she knew that it now included that newspaper picture of the crumpled bodies of Mark and Yen Ping lying under a large white sheet, with Mark’s right foot, bereft of its shoe, protruding.
The shock of an event could actually elicit hope; something so shocking could not have happened, so it could only be a nightmare. She had heard of a bereaved mother who covered her ears against the news of her son’s fatal fall from a cliff during a school camping expedition, screaming: ‘No, no, no, go away! This is a bad dream, and I’ll wake up tomorrow and find Barry coming downstairs for breakfast!’
At no time did Maria surrender to the sense of surreality that gripped her and say, ‘It’s not true, there must be a mistake somewhere,’ so that her faculties, instead of being mobilised for denial, were readying themselves to accept and cope with the brute truth of an unspeakable tragedy – Mark Wong and Yen Ping were truly dead and gone, in a suicide pact, oblivious to the messy aftermath of police investigations, parental grief, a whole school in shock.
Maria paced the floor by the phone table, wishing Maggie would call again; Maggie, the inveterate seeker of information bent on ferreting out every tantalising detail, might by now have more to share. What was in the letters addressed to the parents? The Chinese newspaper had reported several letters now in police hands; could one of them have been addressed to her, the teacher they had trusted with their innermost secrets? She would keep the letter in tender, anguished memory for the rest of her life. She suddenly remembered their pledge of eternal love written in blood, which Yen Ping had shown her, worn in a little silver locket round her neck. Mark’s token must have been hidden in some secret place; had he taken it out and worn it too, just before their plunge from the high-rise block of flats? The meticulousness of the young couple, seen in the care they had taken over their various class assignments could be extrapolated to the planning of the pact – the choice of day, time and place, the choice of clothes, the selection of the binding scarf.
In her mind, Maria had a vivid picture of the couple, huddled together in the dawn darkness on the twelfth floor of the building, speaking in low voices, checking, for the last time, that everything was in order and as planned, going through the various items they wanted to take with them in their final, loving journey together.
Why had they chosen that spot? Did it have some sentimental value for them, having been one of their trysting places? Maria suddenly remembered that in one of her stories for the creative writing class, Yen Ping had described a suicide pact between two young lovers; they had not plunged from a tall building, but waded into the ocean together, and there was mention of a silk scarf tying their wrists together. Had the young lovers, even as they were telling her of their plans to study hard and prove themselves worthy of their respective families’ trust, already decided to die together? Maria cried out in her anguish, ‘Oh Mark, oh Yen Ping.’
All morning, she waited by the phone, longing for a call from Maggie, from a colleague who might have happened to get the news early, from a student in the creative writing class who might have hurried to the scene, from Mr Ignatius Lim, from anyone at all. On impulse, in the late afternoon, she went to the scene of the tragedy; it had been cordoned off by the police. She stood looking at the spot where they had fallen together, now cleaned of the blood that must have gushed out simultaneously from their bodies as they hit the ground together. What were their last words to each other? These could have come from any of the poems written on the favourite pale blue paper, which, if they had not been so profoundly felt, would have been dismissed as worthless cliché in the creative writing class: ‘Our bodies may breathe their last, but our love breathes on in the silent wind and stars,’ ‘We will meet on love’s eternal shore where no more tears will flow, where love can only grow.’
On the other hand, the last words could be the unuttered ones of sheer panic, as they looked at the hard ground rushing up to meet them, and suddenly saw, in a flash, that perhaps after all, they had made a mistake too late to undo. Did they see the years of arduous study in college, and patient waiting, culminating in a marriage and a happy family life, all wiped out by a mistake which carried its own fearful momentum, ending only when their bodies and the hard ground were brought together in one blinding, pitiless second? Perhaps they saw themselves falling through the air together in slow motion, like a giant soft toy thrown out of the window by an angry child, sailing slowly downwards, its limbs flopping about gently, ending in a black void of nothingness, while friends, family and schoolmates went about their usual business in the world.
Mr Ignatius Lim held an urgent meeting with his staff. His face taut with anxiety, he told them there would be police investigations including interviews with Yen Ping’s teachers; this was the special demand made by Mrs Gloria Wong who had already informed him that nobody from St Peter’s Secondary School would be allowed to attend Mark’s wake or funeral. She had placed an obituary notice the day after his death, with a recent photograph of him in coat and tie; it had said simply that Mark Wong Lam Yoong, aged seventeen, had passed away peacefully, leaving behind his beloved mother Mrs Gloria Anne Wong and ended with the terse request: ‘No wreaths please.’ Mr Ignatius Lim said, his brow knit with worry, ‘It is most unfortunate that St Peter’s has been implicated, most unfortunate indeed. Our good name will be gone. The Ministry will want to conduct its own investigation.’ He shifted about in his chair and continued, ‘And all because of some poems that the deceased had written to each other in the Creative Writing Class, which, as you all know, has been converted into the Remedial Language Lab.’ He avoided looking at Maria, as did everyone else at the sombre meeting.
She thought, the bastard, he only cares about the reputation to his school, and rose to say, in an even voice, ‘I’m sorry about this unfortunate incident, and take responsibility for the poems which Mr Lim just now mentioned, because I had encouraged my students to express their thoughts and feelings freely. I would like now to give notice of my resignation.’
Then she walked out of the staffroom. She would have liked an immediate resignation, but the twenty-four-hour notice entailed financial costs she could not afford. Besides, she needed time to be with her students, to explain things as best as she could, to give closure to her life at St Peter’s Secondary School. It was the practice of the school to give a farewell dinner to a departing teacher; she would remember to write a brief note of polite refusal to Mr Lim.
Outside, at the gates of the school, she did not turn back to have a look, nor wipe the tears from her face. They were not for poor Mark or Yen Ping, but for herself, for she had failed them, as she had failed Maggie. As soon as she reached home, she would consign that plaque of merit, awarded to her on Teachers’ Day, to the dustheap of memory’s shame.