*
Squeaky giggling of this kind highly unusual in these parts. The fact that it arrived from the night, nearing ten o'clock, added to the surprise. A child's squeal is occasionally heard hereabouts even in the midst of the alarmingly low birth-rate. The scavenging pigeons around the Mr. Teh Tarik lunch-tables often excite young children unused to such forms on this island. (Pets are uncommon among a vertically arranged community; almost any animal other than the human require a journey out to zoos and enclosures in Singapore.) This remarkable kerbside piping inserted into the dark street and its churning traffic was not a happy child's pleasure. Without the evidence of the eyes, before the source was located, one would have guessed an early teen, a young lass relating something for mum and tripping over herself in her narration.... The beautifully behaved and mannered young teens down the other, lower end of Geylang Road can never be heard in the shrill, piercing register of Western youngsters. Teenage-hood in the Western sense—one wants to say does not exist in the traditional Malay community in Singapore, even in these current times. Certainly the display over these eight months opposite the old, now fenced-off Malay Kampong, beside Geylang Serai, strongly suggests such a conclusion.
This woman at the corner Tasvee table tonight, sitting with the three Chinese Singaporean men, was in her late forties, if not crossed beyond. The voice belonged to her and no one else. Yet in the first moments one looked on for a time disbelievingly. Remarkable and unusual for certain. One is hard pressed to recall anything approaching this woman's counterpart back home, either in voice or manner. Certainly in the last forty or more years in the large cities. Safe to say the example is exceedingly rare on our shores. Here something similar has been witnessed previously, perhaps not quite at this level of showmanship.
The woman was likely a mainlander; a local Chinese was longer odds. Rarely are the local women of that age entertaining a table of men in these quarters. Nevertheless, at the same time her age spoke against the working China-gal. These are certainly older than the other working girls, the trafficked young girls from other neighbouring countries. But the mainland girls in Geylang are usually mid thirties at the outside. This woman was at least ten years older.
My how she was brightening the evening for these good fellows. How grim and funereal they would have sat without her there, like all the others chewing their tasteless cud. Like schoolboys almost she makes them smile, grinning and bending in their seats. Under her power one can see the schoolboy in each of them. The oldest was the quiet, impish one in what schooldays were available back in his time. Thin, sharp and pinched features, something of the parrot added by the brushed-back hair. From the middle band at school the youngest came; not remembered for anything in particular; good fellow with a ready laugh. When the woman worked her magic the crows-feet around his eyes goughed deeply. Ten years younger than the other he may have been, entering his middle sixties. That was another remarkable matter: seeing such free and light spirits amongst men of this age. Uncommon anywhere, outside of play-acting for grandkids perhaps.
Newly laundered white slacks; blue, mauve, pink and lavender in thin stripes across the synthetic top, the colours stretched a little thinner over her broad back. Later a string of tight pearls were revealed at the base of her neck. The drabness of the men's attire beside these feathers was the visual counterpart of the aural.
A sudden streak of an exotic flock over a barren landscape. Precious water improbably bubbling in a desert. Cooling air arrived after a scorcher. (Old man Lee Kwan Yew here has aircon as the pinnacle of all human invention.) More than anything it was the voice that broke all the usual bounds of the nightly Tasvee workingmen's gatherings.
The woman is not the garrulous type. This is not ceaseless jabber. Though they can't be properly heard or differentiated from the general tone of the others, the men certainly partake in the exchanges. When the woman enters, however, even before the uplift of her laugh, an entirely new element announces itself. The lightness and lilting rhythms cut the night like a meteor. Without warning the startling high note of the mezzo pitches into the flat recitative, runs on its rise and further stretches out and beyond. The trilling elaborations of her laughter following carry her notes away from the listener, who is sent scurrying in order to keep up. These lucky chaps receive the woman's cantabile like stage-extras at their posts, smiling faces turned up to her though she sits lower in her chair. In the kitchen on the other side of the rowdy shop and out at the back wash-stand men surely turned to look over their shoulders, young Indian and Bangla lads who thought they were missing an eyeful somewhere.
Love in a marketplace among the produce might have been her theme, the boy and girl and none able to stand between. Nevermind the dirty street with its cars and lorries, the cheap prata and curry she has just finished while the men waited on her.
La-da-di-da-da-da du-du-du-di-di
And then her self-pleasure and delight in her ringing laugh tinkling onward and further.
The old buggers certainly comprehend the bounty bestowed. This is no casting of unappreciated pearl. Like the lady, all three chaps have dyed their hair. (Not for the occasion: rare is the Singaporean under seventy who has made peace with his aging.) The elder sits cross-legged; middle leaning against pillar beside his chair pretty much out of the picture. The youngest on the other side is the one faced directly by the woman. This one gets her chief attention; the overflow to the elder and the other the referred pleasure. Gleefully they collect her pealing voice. Almost the entirety of their own contribution arrives in dumbshow two tables off.
How does she keep up such continuous theatre at that pitch? How deep is her reservoir of fine, tireless spirit? Like a pair of birds her hands raised over the table fluttering together more than once in the delivery of her lines. Elbows crooked, arms at ninety degrees and fingers dancing as if in backward piano playing. There was no wave of hands. The hands remained steady. It was the fingers in motion, very much as if over a raised, imaginary keyboard. On her face the men kept their gaze while she dazzled like that, the fingers something like the shadow blades of an overhead fan on them. A virtuoso of that rank unacknowledged by any of the other tables.... It seemed improbable. The other men, certainly the older, in pairs or singly, were doing their best to ignore others' merrymaking.
The fellows certainly share their companion's sense of humour. Perhaps something of their own witticisms was what had at least in part inspired the woman. The light-hearted ease, the largeness and expansion, was entirely her own personal gift and talent.
The old fellow on her right gets a good squeeze at the end of a fine, rollicking passage. Sitting with one leg over the other close beside the woman's chair, she can easily let her hand fall on the blue trouser leg. The wasted calf beneath the fabric fits snug in her little palm just at the merry end of what she was saying. There!... Comradely in equal part to the tease. One can be sure the elder parrot of the company retained feeling in his limbs. The squeeze delivered shot up that leg a certain distance known only to himself. However, it was on the woman's face that the man kept his eyes for the after-glow transmitted. One of his elbows rests on the table. He sits swiveled facing her, slumped in his chair but head erect. She and the youngster tete a tete; the other getting the scraps. This last fails to get a direct look from any of them for the duration, while the company holds. Never mind that; he is very much within the circle.
At one point the elder-parrot had attempted to get himself off for a ciggie. Out of the pack the intended cigarette had been drawn. From the table the man had risen, taken two or three paces, before promptly returning. For the remainder of the time he sat mindlessly clutching the unlit cigarette within his palm. That was better than returning it to the pack or dropping on the table. Absent himself was more than he could bear.
At an earlier point still he was concerned the woman might be sitting parched. The remainder of the prata had still not been cleared, a can of Coke beside. The man repeated his offer and showed his earnestness by turning toward the cigarette stand attendant and extending a finger. It was toward the can that the woman politely pointed with gratitude, his generosity fully acknowledged. But, no, thank you very much indeed. In danger of springing a leak here. Much obliged.
One or two of the men had been sighted at the Tasvee tables on earlier occasions. At Tasvee each night the men sit quietly over their food and drink. Some in the younger range keep a look-out over the road and either side for one of the China-girls passing. The duck-head elder's craning neck seemed familiar. This lady here was certainly a rare catch. She may not have been able to reprise her performance in a smaller space, but surely it was worth the venture. At some fit point one of them — the youngster was well-placed, or perhaps the cagey shy one unexpectedly — would draw this artist from the table and away. Instead, at what seemed like a mid-point in the evening, the trio surprisingly let her rise from the table and step out down the road toward one of the Eateries on the other side. No chase given. No sense of ship-wreck resulting. There should have been a much stronger picture of disappointment. Amongst themselves they start up a little chat, a spot of de-briefing, and don't even look after her, completely missing the lovely marching gait, arms swinging, but not in the soldierly fashion; rather laterally with outstretched hands across her thighs. A fitting exit for such a star.... Ah lads, my dear dunderheads!
The diva had made off toward Khadijah mosque. Twenty minutes later the crowd was still emerging from the mosque, awaiting their rides on the roadway and hailing cabs. A family group on the other side ran for the No. 40 bus that rounds back east to Bedok, mother and daughter out front and the older dad making up the rear. Under the sheltered walk-way grandmothers were clasped by the elbow as they passed, because of the dark and the uncertain steps. One hundred people stretched along the roadway in their simple finery. Many a year our own devotional crowds have lacked this kind of dignity — Quakers and Amish perhaps aside. Preparation of stretched plastic shading over the forecourt of the mosque had been erected in days past. Tonight was the grand occasion, the Prophet's birthday.
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