The Catherine Lim Collection (41 page)

Ah, my lady sways.

MR CHOW POCK MOOK: Yes, Sir, my
mudder
,
my grand
mudder
, my aunties they all say that Miss Sha-lilyn Jal-dah is
very ‘
suay
’, is no good for me – if I marry her, it will be very bad
luck for me. Chinese believe if marry certain type of women who are ‘
suay
’,
man will suffer bad luck for many years. My
mudder
says Miss Sha-lilyn
Jal-dah’s mouth not lucky mouth, and she has black mole on one cheek which my
grand
mudder
says it will cause bad luck in family. Also, way she walks.
Her feet point outwards, so pushing, pushing away good luck and money, whereas
if feet point inwards, very good, keeping in good luck and money. I don’t mind
too much, Sir, I educated man, so not so superstitious. But my
mudder
and grand
mudder
and aunties, they are still old-fashioned and they think
Miss Sha-lilyn Jal-dah is a very ‘
suay
’ woman, no good for man. I cannot
tell the SEU this because will feel very bad, because they already spend so
much money on the project, and they say I am best civil servant and my boss say
too.

ENGLISH BARD:

‘Be not a servant to your passions,’ said my
spirit.

But how can I still the storm in my aching
breast?

How quell the passion and lust?

Yes-lust-unashamedly I say it –

O woe betide me! I am lost

O Love’s Lust Lost

MR CHOW POCK MOOK: Ah, Sir, ah, you speak the
high class English too, that is not so easy to understand for me. Oh, Sir, I
want to understand Miss Sha-lilyn Jal-dah but our meetings, always something
happen to spoil our meetings. The SEU say must bring present for lady to make
her happy, I bring her fish-head. Very good fish-head, Sir. I ask the
fish-seller at my market to specially reserve for me. If not buy by 9.30 every
morning, all his fish-head sold out. Very good quality, and cost me $9.50! I
bring the fish-head to Miss Sha-lilyn Jal-dah’s house, and I look at her face,
and she is not happy at all. As a matter of fact, she look very angry, and she
just put the fish in the fridge and say nothing. Do this, not right, do that,
not right, what she expect me to do? I think even if die for her, she will not
be satisfied!

ENGLISH BARD:

Wouldst thou die for me? She cries.

I wouldst for thee!

Cold steel, gleaming in the darkness,

Leaps, plunges straight into that heaving
bosom

And she dies

With his name imprinted loving on her lips.

MR CHOW POCK MOOK: Sir, I’m sorry to say I
still cannot understand you. You speak all the difficult English and English
poetry. I think, Sir, it’s waste of time to come to you. I should have gone to
Confucian Sage instead; he give good advice, you only say poetry that appear
all nonsense to me – goodbye, Sir.

The crowds are coming.

The crowds keep coming.

Goonalaan, standing on the raised platform,
clutching the microphone in one hand and raising the other high in the air, in
munificent act of bestowing blessings, looks magisterially upon the eager
upturned faces around him. He begins to speak. A hush falls upon the crowd, and
all eyes are riveted on the tall dark man on the stage, a man whose wild shaggy
mane of hair blown about his face by the strong evening breezes, whose
protuberant belly straining against the tightness of his cotton shirt down the
front part of which run streaks of fresh ceray juice, all compel attention.

Goonalaan begins to speak. “Oh Singaporeans,
Singaporeans, now is time for you all to change. Change, change before it is
too late, I tell you! This people in this country got a God, that people in
that country got a God, they pray, they worship their God, they do good, holy
things, but what is Singaporeans’ God? I will tell you. It’s money, money,
money, money. That is the Singaporeans’ God!”

The crowds roar their approval. By now, more
people have arrived, and the piece of vacant land, approved by the authorities
as the site for the pre-election campaign rallies, is filled to overflowing.

“Here is the Singaporeans’ God!” shrieks
Goonalaan, holding up high above his head for all to see, a $50 note. There is
another roar of delight from the crowd.

“We Singaporeans, we get more and more and
more materialistic!” Goonalaan continues, his whole countenance aflame with
righteous wrath. “We only think of money. When Singaporean, born, marry, make
love, even die, can only think of money. Got money in their eyes, got money
flow out of their ears, I tell you!
EEEE!
” The shriek of dismay is not
connected with the evil propensity of Singaporeans that is being declaimed, it
is caused by a sudden gust of wind whipping away the $50 note from Goonalaan’s
fingers. The note now sails serenely above the heads of the crowds, with
Goonalaan’s arms waving in helpless pursuit.

“My money!” gasps Goonalaan. But his
distress is short-lived, for a young man in the audience snatches the errant
note from the air, bounds up the stage and returns it to Goonalaan who returns
it to his shirt pocket.

“Oh, we Singaporeans, we don’t have heart
left,” cries Goonalaan, bringing both hands down with a resounding thump upon
the upper left side of his chest, “if you cut open Singaporean in operation,
sure cannot find any heart! And we don’t have soul left,” Goonalaan continues,
now jabbing the left side of his head with a forefinger, with equal force, to
indicate that he is totally aware of the respective sites of residence of these
two vital organs in the human body. “We only think of getting rich, so the rich
getting richer and the poor getting poorer. We enjoy, enjoy all the time, we
never got time for the less fortunate. And we pretend, pretend we so good, but
all the time we are like the rotten meat, all nice outside but inside got all
the filthy worms crawl all over!”

Carried away by this analogy, Goonalaan now
proceeds not only to describe the worms but to act out their movements; he
wriggles and squirms and at one point actually writhes on stage, in imitation
of a deadly snake. Nobody is quite sure at what point the comparison of
Singaporeans to worms has been expanded to venomous reptiles, but the crowd
loves it and applauds wildly.

Springing up from the stage, Goonalaan
screeches, “If you want to save our beloved country from evil, vote me! Vote
me, Goonalaan, as your Member of Parliament! As Member of Parliament, I am
promising that I will working very, very hard to change Singapore! I will
change all people to be the good people with heart and soul, not the
materialistic people only thinking of making money and very selfish towards
others. I WILL CHANGE SINGAPORE!”

Here the crowd roars its loudest. Somebody
begins to shout “GOON-AH-LAAN” and the cry is taken up by the others –

Three cheers for

GOON-AH-LAAN!

GOON-AH-LAAN!

GOON-AH-LAAN!

Deeply gratified, Goonalaan pauses to take a
deep breath, then resumes the haranguing.

“Look around you,” he cries, raising both
arms high up in the air and effecting a graceful, semicircular sweep.
“Everywhere in Singapore got tall buildings, big hotels, our hotel tallest in
the world, our airport the best in the world, our big, big department shops
full of expensive things London, Paris, New York, all got the goods in our
department stores, ourMRT, our thousand thousand cars, our thousand ships and
planes, our high-rise housing estate, condominiums ... ” The long list leaves
Goonalaan quite breathless; he pauses, then raising his voice to a shrill
falsetto that reverberates in the night air, over the heads of the mesmerised
thousands listening to him, he cries out, “But what use of all this? What use,
I ask you? Got one war only – BANG! – everything destroyed. You think our
Singapore ships, guns, better than Russian guns? Or got one earthquake only –
WHAM! – all big beautiful buildings will crashing down, all big big heap of
rubbish. We build and build, this building taller than that building, this
building tallest of all – every year competition – everyone want tallest,
tallest buildings in the world – and you know what will happen? All will make
Singapore to sink. Singapore such a small, little island only, cannot even see
in the map of the world. You think can carry all the heavy, heavy tall
buildings? Sure to sink one day. So one minute got Singapore, next minute,
people ask, where Singapore? Where all the rich Singaporeans?”

The crowd, apparently undismayed by such a
horrendous vision of their future, continues to cheer loudly.

“So you see all this money, money and
affluent society and materialistic, no use at all,” cries Goonalaan. He looks
around challengingly, then prepares to deliver the coup de grâce. “What I want
you to do is this,” he shouts, his eyes glittering, his mane of hair swept back
from his face and pushed into an awesome halo of stiff upright strands.

“I ask you to have heart and soul! I ask you
to be good, kind, loving people, not selfish, greedy people. Good, kind, loving
heart and soul will remain. They remain because they are the things of God.
Buildings and hotels, MRT and fighter planes, they all things of man, and they
will be destroyed. But things of God remain forever and ever and ever on this
earth!”

Here Goonalaan, to stress the importance of
his message, raises himself on his toes and spreads out his arms wide. The
effort causes the last remaining shirt-button, up to now bravely holding back
the protuberant belly from view, to burst and fly off, so that the protuberance
is now fully exposed. This confers upon Goonalaan a striking resemblance to
those mendicant holy men in the East who are often depicted with great round
bellies and strings of beads draped on these rotundities. Goonalaan’s round
belly is bare of holy beads, but at this point, an admirer goes on stage and
drapes a garland of flowers round his neck.

“Thank you,” says Goonalaan softly.

The crowds are coming.

The crowds keep coming.

Election day arrives. The returns start
coming in at the polling centres. Goonalaan watches anxiously. The roars of
approval and delight at his rallies are still ringing in his ears. As he pops
another pellet of ceray into his mouth and begins to chew slowly, he smiles
with quiet self-confidence. The votes are counted and announced.

Goonalaan is not voted in.

Goonalaan is invited to make a statement by
the TV crew filming the results for the thousands of Singaporeans staying up
through the night in front of their TV. Goonalaan is very calm and composed.
But an implacable fire burns in his eyes, and the stiff tangled locks on his
head give the aspect of an enraged warrior deity about to hurl a thunderbolt.
Goonalaan says menacingly, “Today I know truth about Singaporeans. They say one
thing and they do another thing. They not sincere at all. They very selfish and
materialistic and get worse and worse. I give them chance to change. It is
golden chance, one chance in one million years. But they refuse. They prefer to
go on doing their wicked thing. They do not want to listen to my voice. They do
not respect my voice. Okay, okay. They think will no longer hear my voice. But
you think Goonalaan a coward? You think Goonalaan a weak person with no guts?
You think Goonalaan lose election, means that he go away, like a big coward?
NO! Goonalaan not that type, Goonalaan is man of principle – believe something
is right, will try, try, try to do it. People in Singapore change, insincere, afraid,
pretend, give up, but Goonalaan never give up!”

Here Goonalaan pauses, gathering energy for
the climax.

“I will tell you what I going to do!” booms
Goonalaan with ominous power: ‘You see this,’ pointing to a somewhat unruly
stubble on his chin, the effect of some shaveless days. “You see this beard?
Well, I not going to shave or wash my beard until Singaporeans become less
materialistic! Even 100 years, I will not shave or wash. My beard will always
be there, to tell Singaporeans what they really like, very evil and selfish
people. People now no need to read newspaper article or magazine to know about
Singaporeans, only look at beard and will know the truth! You don’t want to
hear my voice, now you have to watch my beard!” And here Goonalaan, to emphasize
the new and portentous function of that bodily feature, gives it three forceful
tugs.

The picture of Goonalaan then fades from the
screen.

Singaporeans talk of nothing but Goonalaan’s
beard the next day, and the next.

At first there is only amusement.

Goonalaan positions himself in the centre of
Singapore’s busiest shopping area. He spreads a newspaper carefully on the
ground outside a large departmental store, sits cross-legged on it, closes his
eyes and remains totally still. He is oblivious of the hurrying shoppers around
him. But they are not oblivious of his presence. They are certainly not
oblivious of his beard. In less than a week, it has sprouted ten centimetres!
It is a bushy beard of a strange variety of hues. It is a beard that compels
the attention of every Singaporean because it has been set up as the
Singaporean’s moral barometer. It is the collective social conscience of
Singapore.