Last night big Beefy disturbed and engaged the author in equal part. Initially, neither the pineapple tray, nor the peeled mandarins managed to put a sock in it. One thing after another from the side-lines, like dripping water on rock.
Di di da da da, ba ba ti da, until the man finally produced the twitch he was seeking.
Nothing like coherent enough at first.
What say you Beefy? What was that?
Once more the man repeated it, in that strange construction of his own.
Beefy had not learned all his English inside during self-improvement classes. Robert Ludlum had not come into the hands of an illiterate in the cells. Yet formal schooling had been mighty light-on for Beef. Who would have thought him any kind of reader at all?
Leaning back in his chair. Often the man slotted one upon the other at the pavement tables for very good reason. Not to wonder.
Leaning, belly-leading, face up-tilted.
Shortly before, Beef's attention had been drawn to the crescent moon over his head, at the zenith. What was it, three day old now? Trusty old bright lamp of gold.
Bulan sabit.
Bulan; moon. Sabit they called the thing you used in the jungle abutting the kampung for razoring the greenery. Beef didn't know that much English.
The scythe, Beef. The sickle…Yeah, yeah. We used the same in my kampung, believe-you-me.
That was shortly before.
Now, leaning, belly leading, said Beefy the following, more or less word for word.
My heart say why have no rain.
The gist most certainly; syntax close approximate, 10:1. (Beef was a man of the track.)
Just like that, poetical without trying or straining.
Sounds like literary palaver, the author accepts and fully understands.
Resist your yawn, Dear Reader. Bear with us two some.
Beefy heard his heart speak of itself. Only the man could attempt to answer how the beating organ could be heard like that from within. From the author's side of the table, there had been nothing audible.
Next thing, in the same stride, Beefy placed his hand on his chest as he repeated the words, coyote-like, head back-tilted.
My heart say why have no rain.
Almost the Red Indian chieftain up on a prairie hill-top, sans the feathers, toward the clear, darkened sky. Moon behind high.
Beefy contemplative & heart-sore.
The author can be trusted when he reports, Beefy did not possess a crop sown in the recent past. Nor was there any fruit on the branch awaiting a sign from the heavens.
In the luscious richness of the Equator, farming was never of the sort to which we are accustomed in the temperate zones. In all his born days, Beefy had never bent over a garden-hoe; the crescent scythe or sickle the man may know, but only from distant acquaintance.
The usual, conventional, honest day's toil aint ever been Beef's line. Running opium in kero tins last days of late-late Empire, snatch-and-grab, was more like. Inside the man read Robert Ludlum and now fancied himself something of a literary critic, advocating smoothness, sweetness. Above all, return to the square.
Back to the square. Round-arm action Beefy usually signing the sketch.
Back to the square.
First base. Where you started. Where one was at.
The prison compound exercise-yard originally, possibly.
The simple truth. Essence. Something of that kind Beef appeared to mean.
Remarkable the blubber actually talked good bit of sense, usually.
Grieving heart here small wonder. Three weeks now and more in this gross misnomer of a monsoon athwart the Equator in Singapore, without a single drop of rain.
The Nor-Easter was always the heaviest wet of the year, teeming, pouring, flooding across the island. Nada this year so long. Zilch. Grievous and difficult to credit
Geylang Serai, Singapore 2011-26
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