Glory On High

This afternoon some lingering beneath a speaker in the ceiling of the stationery department at Kinokuniya. It had taken some little while locating with the volume turned down and the elusive voice battling against the hubbub. At first the sound seemed to be coming from a recess in the ceiling completely out of sight. Some soft light was also emitted from beyond that little ledge above the notebook stand. Later a second speaker in the same aisle was found turned off. Thought had been after the KV lunch and print of a couple of pages at Peace Centre a quick reconnoiter hoping to find a volume of old Tu Fu—sometimes confusingly rendered Du Fu, the poor girl at the Info desk needed to be informed. There was nothing of David Hinton’s translation, that had been established a couple of weeks before. Only Hinton’s Analects and the I Ching that had been already purchased. Some hope that the largest bookstore (English holdings at least) in S-E Asia might turn up the Tang star. Chinese city after all. TuF. had been rendered by a couple of previous notables—fair chance you might have thought in Singapore, steady sales ticking over. KinoK had been downsized a couple of years ago, usual chief victims. If you were after motivational, entrepreneurial, investment gurus, biz. management & strategy, conservative histories, mysteries, cololuring-in books, comics, celebrity, cook books, photography, design, more photography and design, you had come to the right place, all cards accepted at the register have a nice day sir. The LKY shelves alone could not have been sent up in smoke with less than three molotovs, not a chance, forget it. Man was hardly dead, only symbolically and figuratively. (The feud between the PM and his sister over accusations of political exploitation in the use of the dear father of the nation’s passing had been hosed down of late, all hush-hush in-family.) They had stocked Tu Fu once upon a time, sold out now, the fine young lass conveyed. She could not be quizzed on the history—it was not possible to punish poor innocents for the sins of the elders. No. Too bad. Good selection of Gel pens in stationery at KinoK, including 0.8s at $3.10 comparable to ArtFriend and Popular, at the shelves there among all the inferior biros and all the soft pastel colour varieties, when suddenly out of thin air one was quite unexpectedly lightly showered by Pavarotti early signatures. First like a compressed TV flowering of a vivid orchid hidden in jungle thicket, O Sole Mio’s rhythmic swelling bathing the brain. It was followed immediately after by Ritorno a Soriento. Melting. Caused one shiver followed by another. Here was a chance to show the locals one’s superior cultivated taste, almost word for word with the big man and phrasing perfect. The little jail-bait schoolgirl’s mum might have had entirely the wrong idea on the loitering. Strange in the Asian (more or less) locale receiving those melodies, the exhalation from that great old bellows. The fact the maestro had been dead all these years now perhaps added feeling, gone the way of Caruso, Mario Lanza, Jussi Bjorling and all the others. That short stretch of waters from the bays of Boka over to Bari, down to Brindisi, Sicily and up on the other side to Napoli rose up. They could have Sorrento, skip that jaunt. Thirty-five years ago there had been no malls in Napoli; in the old town near the waterfront there would be none now. Minimum of ornamental trees and shrubs. The mafia there would be a sight better than the entrenched tropical kind that could not be ousted for the next one hundred years. There was almost as much street prostitution in Napoli as Geylang, no fool would pay for indoor theatre. Fourteen-sixteen hours away for little over a grand. With the usual shuttering for the morning during Ramadan and the danger of the ogre owner Haneefa at the other option at that late hour, it had been Starbs for the morning cafe and attempted revision. As the customers piled into the outlet at the base of OneKM there nearing lunchtime the volume had gone up on the pitter-patter remastered golden oldies and prairie ballads. Something to do with the almost completely overwhelming effect a few hours later of the big man.