Miss Seetoh in the World (39 page)

‘Hey, why that serious look all of a
sudden?’ he said, tickling her chin with a blade of grass he had plucked. They
were lying on a stretch of grass, still naked, under a large tree beside a pond
in the Botanic Gardens.

She said, ‘Here’s a riddle. Two guesses.
What lies at the bottom of the pond?’

‘No idea. Anyway, who cares?’

‘Well, two rings.’

‘Who cares?’ he repeated. He held up her
left hand and slipped an imaginary ring on the engagement finger. ‘You’re
engaged to me, Maria Seetoh. I pronounce you fiancée and dearly beloved.’

‘Enough of rings,’ she said and made a great
show of removing the imaginary one. ‘From now onwards I am a free woman,
wearing no ring of subjugation.’

‘Why do you women think we subjugate you?
You’re as much in the game as we are!’

They fell into a long silence, during which
he traced, very slowly, the contours of her right breast, then her left with a
forefinger. ‘You have a beautiful body,’ he said. They were silent again.

Then she said, ‘I have a horrible sensation
that Olivia is hiding somewhere with her private detective and watching us.’

‘I thought you had promised not to bring up
her name. Anyway, have no fear,’ he said jauntily. ‘I’ve packed her off to Hong
Kong. She’ll be so busy shopping with her mother and sisters she will forget to
return to Singapore!’

She said again, this time even more
nervously, ‘I have a horrible feeling that Bernard is hiding somewhere,
watching us and ready to pounce at the right moment.’

‘He’s dead, you silly girl. Now come to your
beloved Benjamin.’

‘I know he’s dead, but I know he’s somewhere
here, ready to pounce.’

‘Well,’ he said, in a burst of laughter,
‘why don’t I do the pouncing for him,’ and the next moment he was on her and in
her.

The sensation caused a loud pounding in her
heart and ears, and she woke up. Lying very still in the darkness, she was
aware of the warm convulsions of pleasure gripping her entire body, reaching to
its every shuddering corner and crevice. She thought with a smile of Winnie’s
shameless listening outside Meeta’s bedroom door to catch the wild moans and
thrashing movements that could last a full five minutes. Perhaps at this very
moment, she and Meeta were in a sisterly camaraderie of the dream-induced
throes of pleasures. She was thankful, since her mother’s room was just across
the corridor that she did not have the telltale unruliness of Meeta’s night
dreams. Even worse, the room that Por Por shared with the maid was next to
hers; it had thin walls and Por Por was a very slight sleeper, roused even by
the distant bark of a dog or the honking of a car.

Even the mere sight of a letter addressed to
her brought unease. When V.K. Pandy, without a word, handed her a brown
envelope with her name written on it, she felt a little frisson of alarm. She
had, as usual, after her visit to the dispensary in Middleton Square, walked up
to him, in the most casual way, and bought his pamphlets, gesturing, with a
smile, for him to keep the change. Each time he would say, looking at the
money, ‘Oh my, my, are you sure, Miss? Thanks, Miss.’

He looked shabbier and thinner than ever,
and on the few occasions when she had actually stopped for some minutes to talk
to him, he had launched into his usual diatribe against the great TPK for
ruining his life and possibly bringing about his wife’s cancer.

‘The Almighty God is just after all,’ he
said bitterly, referring to TPK’s wife’s numerous health problems. ‘As you
Chinese say, Sky God has eyes and ears.’

Inside the taxi on her way home, Maria tore
open the envelope and expected more reproach from a world that she was not at
all helping in its distress. Maggie had accused her of heartlessness; would
V.K. Pandy denounce her for cowardice? Would he ask why she had stayed in
fearful hiding instead of coming out to support Big Bird and why she vanished
from the scene as soon as the police arrived?

The message, written in neat, old-fashioned
handwriting on old-fashioned blue letter paper, said, ‘Dear Miss Seetoh, from
what I can see, you are a good, intelligent, kind person. I would appreciate it
very much if you could join me for lunch at Raphael’s Place on Junie Street
(just behind Middleton Square). I have important things which I want to talk to
you about, because I trust you.’ Trust. She had begun to distrust that word
about herself, because a student had repeatedly thrown it back at her.

The day of the lunch would be a Saturday;
V.K. Pandy must have inferred she was a teacher and would not be free for
lunches on weekdays. Another concession must have been the written form of the
invitation instead of a verbal one that would have attracted attention. V.K.
Pandy could not have been unmindful of the very brief duration – barely a
minute – that she allowed for each encounter with him, as if she, like the
others, was aware of the presence of those infamous surveillance cameras that,
as it turned out in the end, had been no more than a figment of the fearful
imagination. He probably also understood that as a teacher, she came under the
strictures enjoined upon the entire civil service against any political
activism, meaning any support of the opposition.

Before the end of his first month in St
Peter’s Secondary School, Mr Ignatius Lim had already circulated three
reminding messages to the staff and singled her out for special attention. As
she sat before him in his office, and he poured out coffee and went into a
long, smiling preamble on many subjects including the highlights of his career
in education, she could not help thinking, ‘The man’s detestable. How I miss
the principal.’

At last he said, ‘I understand, Miss Seetoh,
that you sometimes buy the pamphlets of the opposition member.’ The school had
its spies, and she had no idea how thorough they were. ‘May I remind you, as
your principal, that this is contrary to official regulations.’ He fished about
busily among a pile of important-looking papers on his desk, pulled out one,
and put on his reading glasses. ‘Ah, here it is. It says ‘No civil servant
should –’ ’

Maria, all outward calm, was all roiling
irritation inside. She had to grip the sides of her chair to prevent the
contempt from pouring out: ‘May I remind you, Mr Ignatius Lim, that you are the
best example of the civil servant becoming less civil and more servant by the
day.’ She had shared the scathing pun with Dr Phang who had reacted with a
self-deprecating roar of laughter that Mr Ignatius Lim would have been
constitutionally incapable of.

It was a rather pricey Italian restaurant
and Maria had already planned on how to take over the settling of the bill
without embarrassing poor V.K. Pandy who was gratefully receiving donations
casually dropped at his side in Middleton Square by compassionate Singaporeans.
She had some wild conjectures as to the purpose of the lunch – to get her to
help in raising funds to settle his debts and pay for his wife’s cancer
treatment, to get her help, as a teacher of English, in the writing or editing
of his pamphlets, to get her support to draw public attention to the fear
gripping an entire society under the great TPK, as Big Bird had done.

What she was not prepared for was his
announcement that he was quitting politics for good and returning to India, to
the village of his birth and boyhood. Why was he telling her, of all people?

He said he had been touched by her
generosity and her kindness. ‘Altogether you have bought my pamphlets thirteen
times, Miss Seetoh, more than any other Singaporean,’ he said. ‘I don’t think
you bother to read them; you probably just throw them away, but that doesn’t
make your kindness less.’

Some diners at the restaurant easily
recognised V.K. Pandy, nudged their companions and began casting curious
glances in their direction. Even if Mr Ignatius Lim had made a severe
appearance then, she would not have cared. Her heart went out in overwhelming
pity to the man who looked very old and defeated. She asked him about his wife.
‘A little better, thank you. She’s responding quite well to the treatment.’ She
asked him about his plans. ‘I will live a quiet life. There’s an ashram near my
village that I will go to for peace of mind.’

She struggled to find the correct words for
an intention shaping in her mind. ‘Mr Pandy, it will make me very happy if you
will accept a small donation from me –’ She had had less money since her
husband’s death, having to make a large monthly allowance to her mother, which
she suspected went to the useless, gambling adopted son. But she felt that
financial assistance, more than kind words, was needed by the unfortunate V.K.
Pandy at this critical juncture of his life.

He pushed back the envelop containing her
cheque saying, ‘No, no thank you. Right now, we’re okay.’ He leaned towards her
and his face was contorted in the vitriol of a gathering rage as he said, ‘It’s
not even the hundreds of thousands I’ve lost, my house, my business. It’s my
dignity, my pride! You know what the great man said to me?’ His voice rose in
its pain, and the diners at the nearby tables looked down and concentrated on
their food. ‘He said to me, ‘You are nothing but vermin! You will come crawling
to me, and then I will grind you under my feet!’

Maria felt anger rising on his behalf. Tua
Peh Kong who sat on a throne with a mass of writhing worms under his feet was
alive and well in Singapore. V.K. Pandy was by now gesturing angrily with both
hands and raising his voice. ‘I am a man! I am a human being! I am a
Singaporean! He has no right to use all kinds of insulting words to me.’

Publicly the great TPK made it clear that
political opposition in Singapore was a useless legacy from British colonial
rule, creating nothing but disruption and disorder and thus hindering the smooth
carrying out of government policy. He said any thorn in the side of the body
politic should be yanked out at once, singling out V.K. Pandy for special
opprobrium. V.K. Pandy said, ‘You know why? I’ll tell you why. I had caused him
the greatest humiliation of his life. When his party lost that seat to me and
he saw Singaporeans wildly cheering me and hissing at his defeated candidate,
that must have been the moment when he swore, ‘That man will come crawling to
me, and I will grind him into the ground!’ Well, TPK, I will show you! I will
show who comes crawling to whom.’ Aware of the sheer impossibility of that
absurd self-promise, V.K. Pandy’s eyes flashed with angry, hot tears and his
hands trembled.

She had to do something to calm him down. It
was not exactly appropriate, but it might work. Taking out a folded piece of
paper from her handbag, she passed it to him and said with a smile, ‘Here, read
it. It’s a poem on the great TPK, which I was inspired to write after a friend
gave me an idea. We had a good chuckle over it.’

Dr Phang had made a bet with her. ‘If you
can get The Singapore Tribune to publish it, you win one hundred dollars.’ She
had said incredulously, ‘The Singapore Tribune? Are you crazy? Well, you’ve
already won your bet, but I’m not paying you one hundred dollars.’

V.K. Pandy read the poem. A small twisted
smile appeared on his face. ‘I like it,’ he said, ‘especially the comparison of
Tua Peh Kong’s thunderbolts to TPK’s crippling defamation suits. I like the
ending:

Even Tua Peh Kong must bow before a greater,

Who has no thunderbolts, no warrior suit, no
throne, no spears

Who has no name

Because simple humanity needs no name.

‘I like it very much. May I have it?’

‘Of course,’ said Maria, and was glad that
the man’s fury had abated enough for him to start eating his pasta. There was a
whiff of alcohol about him that added to the overall appearance of defeat and
despair.

He said, as they shook hands before leaving
the restaurant, ‘You will not see me again in Middleton Square or anywhere in
Singapore. I leave for India in a week’s time.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Pandy, and good luck. Do take
care.’ The newspapers carried a very brief report of his departure; almost
immediately there were rumours circulating about how the man had gone back to India
to die in his native village, for, unknown to anyone, he had a serious illness
that he had kept secret for years. Then for months afterwards, all thought of
V.K. Pandy vanished as if he had never existed.

‘Oh no,’ thought Maria when she reached home
and her mother handed her a note, saying, ‘It’s from Heng. It’s urgent, he
says.’ Why were people coming to her with their problems in writing, as if to
use hard documentary evidence against her, if necessary, in the future? I’ve
got a headache and a paranoia coming, she sighed. I want nothing more to do
with the world! She slumped into a chair.

‘What’s his problem now? Why can’t he just
tell me? Or why don’t you tell me, Mother? He must have told you about it.’

‘Read it,’ said Anna Seetoh miserably.

It was a long, type-written letter which,
even at a glance, looked too tedious to be read, for it was peppered with
figures and even diagrams. The innocuous technicalities were a cover for the
desperate message. Heng was making a request: could she buy over his half of
the flat that would go to them jointly after their mother’s death? He proposed
a sum which he said was much less than the market value; indeed, in a few
years, she would be able to sell the flat for a good profit if she wanted, as
the accompanying figures and diagrams proved. He did not mention the debts that
were behind the urgency of the letter, but as a softening touch, he referred to
his decision to send his autistic son to a good but rather expensive school for
children with special needs.