Piaf &etc.

The precise chair beside the .... well, fire-place it must be termed. A recess, timber surround, iron screen and immediately beside the chair a brass — running the finger and nail across the surface in order to be sure — stand that holds a brush, pan, rod and.... Something of a puzzle the middle item. A rake perhaps. But no ordinary garden variety article. This is an elegant show-piece like back in the day Louis XIV might have had at Versailles. First meeting here the gal was over a half hour late. Pretending to be more bookish than in fact, she had said Yes, she knew Kinokuniya. A few weeks prior she had been gifted The Alchemist, the most appropriate book found at the Bras Basah secondhand shop for her level of English. In the event she read the Indonesian version online and must have kept the paperback as a memento. After twenty minutes a text asking which Takashimaya tower, A or B, housed Kinokuniya. Forty-five minutes altogether possibly waiting with pleasant anticipation. Eventually turned up with a beautiful entrance and, aided by her fine azure blue scarf, carrying off excellently well the role of Maid at High-end Cafe. Not the only domestic servant sighted at these tables at Paul Takashimaya, beside Kinokuniya Bookshop on Orchard Road, but certainly the only one in her own right as a guest, customer, a patron seated on those upholstered chairs. Usually maids help bring in the baby or grandma at Paul, after which they are excused and wait near the escalators for the lunches and afternoon teas to be taken. Nervousness kept well under wraps that day, hardly noticeable. Not many scrutinizing eyes could have guessed. Within however there were butterflies; the girl felt herself transparent to all around. Did she take a cafe at all? She might have declined in the end, the baguette or croissant that had been urged likewise. Too nervous; possibly concerned about the loo there and certainly not wanting to ask on a third or fourth date. Attendance by the nice older Malay waitress added pressure — in her scarf and without a ring on her finger her transgression must have been perfectly self-evident, she thought. (Neet was a religious enthusiast, one of the earliest outings to the Shia mosque out beside the Chin Chamber of Commerce on Cross Street; second included Our Lady of Fatima on Victoria Street opposite the library. Though ultimately dooming the prospect, highly interesting.) Overwrought. One other meeting followed at the very same table beside the fire-place at Paul, during which the girl was prevailed upon to try the cafe and something else. As she hadn't eaten it made a poor substitute for lunch—something that was not known at the time. After that meeting Neet had "begged" we make other arrangements; there was a generic Indon eatery over the road in the Lucky Plaza tower. Instinct perfectly in order of course. Vile, idiotic, grotesque. Dreadful mimicry, like so much else in yellow middle-class Singapore that was always in hot pursuit of highest European style and culture. Fake chandeliers, waiters in white dust-jackets, heavy drapes pulled back on a forty-five degree angle at all the windows, gilt mirrors, Piaf covers and aircon to freeze your balls. Above all else the fire-place. Singapore. The equator. Inevitably the recall, a kind of replay, of mother's story of her own first entry to a fashionable cafe at the market town of Herceg Novi on the water's edge in Montenegro in the 1930's, in company with her older friend and clanswoman Ljubica. Sixteen or seventeen years old; the pair of gendarme beaus much older, their firearms laid on the table amongst the plates and cutlery in order to impress the kampung girls. Not long after Ljube married her chap, while mother on a pretext broke off the agreement with her keen Herzegovinian. Made the chap angry; he had informed them of his conquest back in his own village. On the mountain paths once afterward he had stopped her and threatened, — This will pass judgment on you. Touch on the holster; or possibly actually drawn his gun. One of their last encounters rain had just burst and happening upon the fellow mother made a point to approach and ask for his greatcoat for her trek up the hill for the sheep and goats. At the time all the heads of households kept rifles at home, Grandpa Rade having once famously shot a snake threatening the younger daughter. Mother’s father always remained the epitome of a man, one difficult, not to say impossible to match. Replays on all manner of levels.