The folder that Hiang received from Nur via General Sofi had this short story that Nur wrote describing an encounter he had with a fellow student at the National University of Singapore. Here is the story titled "Vietnam".
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VIETNAM
by Noor Jalidin
191Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDmR7w6E207
I fought the Vietnam War.
I am not an American and I have never seen Vietnam, but I have fought it. I have been there and back, fighting the Vietnam War. How is that possible? I fought it in my mind.
In my mind I saw myself in a Huey Chopper over the padi fields and green hills of Indochina. I saw myself with other American greenhorns, an M16 in hand, in the uniform of the US Marines.
The chopper floated and zig-zagged its way across valleys and ridges, one of several that filled the sky, an entire column of them. It landed on the top of a hill, and I jumped out with the others.
I was a lieutenant and I was shouting into a phone carried by a Marine. Then life exploded - the chattering of AK-47s, the whinning of incoming mortar shells, the thunderous roar of explosions, the howling of fallen men. The earth shook, and the sky rained dirt and stones. 191Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC52T6lzwTx
SHIT! Where the hell is the artillery?191Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP3B8uZk9G1
Where the hell is the covering fire?191Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡez7Y8VrVXP
Where the hell is the air support?
Then it came. Several choppers released their rockets and machinegunned the bushes where the VCs were, and the firing stopped. I directed my men to pour heavy fire into the VC area, grenade launchers, GPMGs, mortars, the works. After half an hour of endless firing and counter firing, it was over. The VCs were gone, some dead, the rest fled.
Amidst peace, I fought the Vietnam War.
I
She was the single ray of sunshine that cut through the gloomy clouds of a stormy sea. The first time we talked was at the bus stop outside the Boys Brigade Headquarters along Alexandra Road. We were in camp attending a Campus Crusade Leadership Training course, a three day affair held during vacations. I was a third year engineering student immersed up to my neck with lectures and tutorials, and she was unknown to me.
At the third day of camp, we were to be released out to the world to preach the Good News. I had been a Christian all my life, a Malaysian who had lived a nomadic life, skipping from town to city, and city to city. Singapore, I hoped, would be my last stop.
It was shining hot that afternoon, sometime around two. I stood leaning against a dilapidated railing next to the bus stop. Cars and buses rumbled by, and fellow campers milled around looking out for their buses.
I looked at my shoes, a well used Nike that had clocked over a hundred kilometre on the University track. It was dirty with mud stains from the last run. It had rained and I love running in the rain. I get a sense of the heroic out of such stunts, panting for air, water dripping down my forehead and over my eyes and nose, with lightning flashes illuminating the landscape. Here I am charging through the trenches of World War I, rifle in hand, jumping over craters, with explosions all around, and comrades dropping on my left and right. Next, I am on the battlefield of Waterloo and mounted above a stallion, a sabre raised high, galloping through the cannon fire of Prussian artillery, ablaze in the uniform of Napoleon's cavalry. What a charge.
"Hullo."
I looked up and saw her, not for the first time. I had seen her before, this girl. I retrieved myself clumsily from my leaning posture and attempted a smile.
"Hi," I said.
"I like your cartoons," her eyes flitted from the ground to me, then to the ground again.
I was caught off guard momentarily, then remembered.
"Oh, you mean Garfield?"
She nodded, then asked, "Where did you learn to draw?"
"Nowhere," I shrugged my shoulders. I was as nervous as she. There was a slight trembling in her voice, a quivering that one associates with nervousness. Sensing this, I relaxed. Garfield was the cartoon featured in the Camp's handbook whose entire design from first page to last was my responsibility. So she had liked it.
"You are very creative," she said.
"Thanks."
My eyes jumped to an approaching bus. I couldn't care less whether the conversation ended there. She resembled my sister and Cheez! my sister is no beauty.
"What's your bus number?" she asked.
"Seventy-six, what's yours?"
"Fifty-four."
We talked for awhile, then my bus came and I went aboard.
II
Engineering was not an easy course to do. Third year, they said, was the toughest. The tragedy about engineering was that there were only four girls in my class of ninety-eight students. Casanova, I believe, would have freaked out.
Campus Crusade, in a way, was an outlet for that most important of male passion: girls. Crusade was organized according to faculties. And within each faculty, each Crusader was assigned a Bible Study Group - commonly known as BS group - comprising of fellow faculty mates. The BS groups were single sexed, never co-ed.
During that Leadership Training Camp I had been attracted to two girls and I wanted to get to know them better. So I suggested to my BS leader an inter BS squash match. He agreed.
I called the first girl up, and she returned a negative reply. Her BS leader wasn't interested. I called the second girl and received an affirmative answer. And so we scheduled a match date for next week.
III
It was near five in the evening, and the Sports and Recreation Complex was a glittering gold under the blazing sun. I alighted from my car, locked the doors, and started the slow walk to the squash courts. I couldn't see any of my BS mates around.
As I walked through the entrance of the Complex, I saw her on the upper level, holding a squash racket and a bag.
It's not possible. What have I done?
She saw me instantly and waved. I waved back. She came down the stairs, bubbly and hyperactive. She behaved like a schoolgirl being given a new toy at Christmas. She couldn't keep still. If she had been sitting on a chair, the chair would be fidgeting all over the place.
"Are you playing?" I asked, apprehensive but smiling.
"Yes," she said through her smile.
I noticed a streak of blood on her arm.
"What happened?" I asked looking at the wound.
"I fell on my way here."
"Do you need some first aid?"
"Ahh, it's nothing."
"I suppose you need to change," I said noticing her jeans and sleeveless blouse, and escorted her to the ladies.
When the other girls and my BS mates came along, we started the game. I realized as the game progressed that the other girls flocked around her. She seemed at ease giving them instructions, her hands gesturing here then there, her eyes fixed at an imaginary spot in space. And it hit me: she was the BS leader.
"What's your name?" I asked in the middle of our conversation. Her head which was tilted toward me moved away from me. We were seated on the audience seat.
"Seet Liang," she said, her expression changing from bright to gloom.
"So, you are Seet Liang."
It was a familiar name mentioned several times before. I gathered from past references to that name that she was considered a giant in Crusade. I was a rookie having just joined them a few months back when third year began.
"What course are you in?" I asked.
"I'm doing my honours in Chemistry."
Another heavyweight. Only the top ten percent of the Science Faculty get to do their honors year.
She was looking at me with a perplexed look. Her next question was unexpected.
"Why did you arrange for the squash game?" her tone less friendly.
It was an unusual question, and I hesitated.
"To interact," I answered.
Later, when we played a game together, she was totally unselfconscious skipping around the court with her arm fully stretched out for the ball like a dancing ballerina. How do you catch balls that fall into a corner? she asked, and I showed her. Can you help me by giving me some practice shots? she asked again. Sure, I said, and lobbed a few shots into a corner for her to retrieve.
That day, she was the only girl I played squash with. If there were other girls, I couldn't remember. In fact, I couldn't remember playing squash with anyone else that day. I had even forgotten if the girl I had been attracted to had been there or not.
IV
The reading room of Yusof Ishak House was a messy affair. It was made up of three levels joined by staircases. Huge rectangular tables of mahogany brown filled up the majority of the space.
Studying space was minimal; stretch out your hand to either side and you would touch the head of the person next to you. It was comical studying this way; one couldn't pick one's nose at random, one couldn't fart at random, and one couldn't curse in frustration at random.
After ten minutes of intense perusal of the lectures, you had only the faces of fellow students in front of you for relaxation which wasn't much.
I was trying to understand the concept of singularity in Robotics, which included amongst other things such idiocies as the Jacobian, Newton-Euler, and other outer space terms. After an hour of this ponderous crap I was about as frustrated as a eunuch with an overwhelming sex drive.
I began thinking about Seet Liang and the squash game, which was three weeks ago - the way she played, the things she said, and her behaviour. Just a week ago I had seen her at the Crusade prayer meeting held on the rooftop of the library.
We were split up into groups of twos and threes and sat cross-legged on canvas sheets spread out on the floor. We were given a list to pray about. Each person in the group took turns praying until the list was covered.
When my turn had finished, I glanced around at the other groups and saw her no more than ten feet away with two other girls. She was staring at me with a pained look. I didn't smile and turned back to the praying.
When the meeting ended, we dispersed. While walking down the staircase from the rooftop, I saw her again leaning on the railing and looking at me, smiling.
"Hi," she said.
"Oh, hello."
I stood there wondering what next to say.
"How's your week?" she asked.
"As usual," I smiled.
I was holding a guitar helping a Crusade staff carry it to his car, and the man had disappeared around the corner.
"Well, see you," I said and walked hurriedly after him. I turned my head to look at her and there was that pained expression again, looking at me.
V
"Hello, Seet Liang please," I said.
"Speaking."
"Hi."
There was a slight pause, then, "Oh, hi!"
Her voice - which had a perpetual laughing tone - sounded a lot like Elizabeth McGovern in the film 'Ordinary People', a trifle high at times, with a throaty base.
"Just wondering how you're doing," I said.
"Oh, fine," she said. "How are things with you?"
"Okay."
A long pause followed.
"Why are you calling?" she asked.
"For a chat," I said, and she giggled.
Our first phone call must have lasted an hour. What's your favourite book? I asked, and she rattled off a list of authors including A J Cronin. Then she gave me a review of A J Cronin's The Citadel. I followed that with my rendition of James Michener's Chesapeake. I mentioned George Patton as my favourite military figure and asked if she had seen the movie 'Patton'. She said yes, and asked if I had seen 'Taps' two days back on TV. Yes, I said, but I missed the ending and asked her to describe it, and she did. Then we discussed World War II. Have I heard of Leyte Gulf? she wondered. Leyte Gulf? I said. No, I haven't heard of Leyte Gulf. What's that? Oh, it's a battle fought in the Philippines in a place called Leyte Gulf when the Americans returned. Why haven't I heard of Leyte Gulf, I asked myself. It must be something isn't it to be doing your honours, I remarked. Ahh, it's nothing, she said. Just get a few B's and one or two A's and you're in. You're very creative, she said. Where have I heard that before, I wondered to myself. I remember seeing you at the Orientation Camp in July, I pointed out. Do you swim? I asked. No, I live on a hill so I don't need to swim. Did you see 'Tender Mercies' on TV the other week? she asked. Yes I did, and added, I love Robert Duvall. She concurred and said she liked him in Godfather I. Really? I said, Godfather's one of my all-time favorite. Do you like football? she asked. Sure, I like football. I like watching the British League, she said. Wait a minute, you watch football on TV? I asked. Yes, I watch football on TV, she confirmed. And why haven't I heard of Leyte Gulf? I wondered.
It was only during the third phone call that I gathered enough courage to ask her out for a date. And she said yes.
VI
We arranged to see a movie at the Lido Theatre, which in those days was still standing at the junction of Orchard and Scotts Road.
I was ten minutes late as I walked into the lobby and tried to look for her in the sparse crowd. Then I saw a figure clad in white approaching, and I recognized her - short wavy hair, reddish cheeks, and small smiling eyes. The pinkish tinge colouring her otherwise fair skin was natural, she wore no make up.
She was dressed prettily in a white blouse and a white skirt that reached to her knees, revealing a good curvaceous figure that was pretty near my height.
I apologized for being late and asked if she had bought the tickets. No, she said, and I proceeded to the ticket counter to get them.
As we sat in our seats waiting for the movie to begin, we talked of things: books, movies, studies, wars. It was a repeat of our phone conversations, but with different material. Her general knowledge matched mine and in some cases overwhelmed me. I had never met a girl, old or young, with so good a grasp of knowledge, above and beyond the call of duty. And I considered myself a maestro of the general.
The movie was a Disney comedy about a robot that developed human traits after being struck by lightning. She laughed uninhibitedly throughout the movie, a feminine schoolgirlish laughter, though she was way past her teens.
After the movie, we had a light meal and continued our conversation. What is it about her that captivates me? I wondered. The way her eyelashes flitted up and down when she talks? or was it her uninhibited joyful smile? or could it be her Elizabeth McGovern voice? Or was it the fact she tried so hard to capture my attention? Or was it her academic striving for the stars? I couldn't tell. But she was captivating.
Later, on the way to her house in my car, she described a trip she made to Europe a year ago. She had wanted to visit the dungeons of a castle to imagine how prisoners lived in the Dark Ages, but her friends wanted to shop, she complained.
I mentioned that I consider myself an expert on the Vietnam War.
Oh? Tell me about it.
It was the only war the Americans lost, I told her. Kids barely out of their teens fought it. And the US found itself deeply entangled in a war which they knew nothing about. 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam, at least 50 000 of them killed in action. It spanned three presidencies - almost a decade - divided the nation, contributed to the present deficit, and the shame still haunts them fifteen years after it ended.
Why did the Americans lose? she asked.
They were haughty, arrogant, I replied. They thought since they had always won, they could never lose. But Vietnam was an entirely new war, something unique. You didn't know who your enemy was. You couldn't tell if the peaceful villages you pass by were VC or not. (VC refers to Viet Cong, the communists) It wasn't like World War II tank warfare where you had wide open spaces and you could see a German tank coming at you. There in Vietnam, they didn't know when to shoot and when not to. And they made mistakes, lots of it.
Her home was a semi-detached house in a posh area of Marine Parade, one of those upper middle class haunts. When I dropped her off, she asked me in, but I declined. We shook hands. Can we do this again some other day? I asked. Sure, she said and we waved good bye until we were out of each other's sight.
VII
Throughout university I never really understood the significance of lectures. Some lectures weren't worth attending because the lecturers practically read from the notes. Some mumbled to themselves while looking at their shoes. And some went so fast, you wondered, if it was that easily understandable, why attend at all?
Then, there were those few gems, three or four a year out of the crop of fifteen or so, who knew what they wanted to convey and conveyed them beautifully. We lived for these lecturers, we flocked to them, we respected them.
I told Seet Liang that about the only reason why I attended lectures was to wait for that crucial phrase, 'This is important' or to gauge how long a lecturer dwelt on a topic. This gave us ideas on where to concentrate our effort when the exams came.
Our friendship was blossoming. I wondered where it would lead to because I knew something she didn't. I was nowhere as good as she was in studies. Would that matter? It didn't to me, but what about her?
The truth was I had repeated my first year. In fact my repeat first year result was surprising. I had walloped five A's in contrast to the five F's the first time around. Perhaps it was the anger I felt, that sense of being cheated and maligned.
I remember that scene in the film 'Ben Hur' where Judah Ben Hur, a Jewish Prince,had confronted his Roman friend Messala, who had unjustly condemned him to slavery and his family to the dungeons for the attempted assassination of the Roman Governor of Jerusalem.
"Is it possible, Messala?" Judah Ben Hur pleaded. "Is it possible you could do this to us, the people you have known, the family you have loved."
And Messala had explained coldly and logically that he, the Tribune commanding the Roman Legions in Jerusalem, wanted to discourage treason amongst the Jews, and "by condemning without hesitation, an old friend, I shall be feared."
And Judah Ben Hur, at that moment, vowed vengeance.
And I had sought vengeance.
VIII
The exams were only two months away. All seven subjects were to be examined in one go at the end of the eight months of slogging.
One trait that had stubbornly marked my character was the desire to understand my work. I found the workload too overwhelming to have that luxury, but I persisted in understanding anyway. This, in a way, contributed to my pitiful performance in first and second year.
I had only one strategy for my third year. It was what I called the second-line-of-defence strategy. It was near impossible, given my situation then, to clear all seven subjects in one go. The system was flexible to allow you a second attempt at the papers after failing the first time. It was called the supplementary exam. My strategy was to clear five of the seven subjects in the main exam, and then tackle the other two in the supplementaries. But there was a risk involved. You must pass at least four subjects to qualify for the supplementaries, or else repeat your third year. And that was my biggest fear, repeating the third year.
A desperate cavalry charge against incredible odds, that's how I saw it; something like the Charge of the Light Brigade, that fiasco of the Crimean War in the age of cavalry and guns. More than six hundred British light cavalry, armed with lances and resplendent in blue, rode into the 'valley of death', with Russian guns to their left, Russian guns to their right, and Russian guns dead ahead, blasting away. At the end of that gallant charge barely two hundred survived.
I could feel it. It was going to be one hell of a charge.
IX
The invigilator of the first paper of Mechanics of Solids was the lecturer himself. It was half an hour after the paper had begun that I executed my plan.
From where I sat I lifted up my hand to catch the lecturer's attention.
"Yes?" he said upon arriving at my desk.
"Sir, I'd like to leave."
He looked startled.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
He looked at his watch, a trifle longer than necessary, wondering, I suppose, whether he should encourage me to stay and do whatever I can.
Then he said sounding dissapointed, "Okay, you may leave."
I collected my stuff - my matriculation card, and my stationary - and walked past the bent heads of my course mates who were furiously scribbling formulas on paper.
It was morning, close to eleven when I sat in the empty canteen and sipped coffee. I have done it, I thought. But there was nothing to rejoice about. So far, only two subjects had been examined and there were two more weeks of exams. Then after that I would have to hunker down and prepare for the supplementaries which was two months away. After the main exam there was no such thing as a holiday. We had to report to our assigned companies for twelve weeks of industrial training. Then there was always that difficulty of studying and training nine-to-five at the same time. After the supplementaries there would be only two weeks of vacation time left before the roller coaster ride begin again. Added to this bleak future was the possibility of the other bleaker future - I don't qualify for the supplementaries or I don't clear the supplementaries and I have to repeat third year.
X
Something wasn't right. She seemed restrained, tense even.
"What's your plan now?" I asked.
"Relief teaching," she answered. "I'm applying to Tanjong Katong JC to be a relief teacher."
She smiled, but not as uninhibited as before. It was a polite smile rather than a happy-to-see-you smile. Could it be the exam? I have more cause to be tense than she because I had one more subject to go and she had finished hers.
We had bumped into each other after our examinations which were held in the same building, at the same time, and had decided to have dinner together at Pizza Hut.
In the past three weeks I had averaged four hours of sleep a night. And it wasn't good sleep. It was the kind that kept you tossing and turning, with a jumble of formulas and facts appearing and disappearing throughout the four hours. So I wasn't in an energetic mood.
Something's definitely wrong. She hasn't asked me a thing ever since we sat down ten minutes ago.
"How's your paper?" I asked.
"I think I'll pass," she smiled.
Midway through the meal, she delicately placed her half eaten piece down and said, "I'm applying for a scholarship to study in the States."
She might as well told me she has a boyfriend. I held my pizza in midair eyeing her as she looked at me.
"It's a teaching scholarship for one year," she continued. "It's not confirmed yet. In fact I'm not sure if I want to go. I want to know what you think about it."
Till today I can't remember what I said or if I said anything. I had expected something but not this. I had called her three weeks before the exams and for the first time she didn't seem thrilled to hear me. It was a dull conversation and I had to do most of the talking.
The rest of the meal passed uneventfully. Later when I dropped her off at the Marine Parade Library, she didn't wave good-bye. She said 'thanks' in the car, got out, and walked briskly into the library. She didn't turn around at all.
It must have been that day just before Chinese New Year, when I called her three times at intervals of two hours. She kept telling me she couldn't talk because she was spring cleaning her house. I should have fled the city that day because it was the week long Chinese New Year break. I should have fled the city so I wouldn't have been able to call her.
XI
The exam result came out three weeks after the last paper ended. I scored three F's, two C's, one B, and an A. The A was for Computer and Control, the subject I had chosen for intense scrutiny. It was close. I had passed the minimum required to qualify for the supplementaries. Operation Second-line was still on.
Seet Liang had cleared all her papers and had been awarded a first class honours. I was certain now that something's wrong. I had met her at the Crusade Thanksgiving held after the exam at Sentosa and she had given me the cold shoulder. She had adopted again the 'Queen's English' accent which I had once commented was preferred by those with an insecurity complex.
Then when I called her, she wasn't enthusiastic in talking. She gave excuses for cutting short our phone conversations: 'My mother wants to use the phone', 'I need to go out now'.
I managed to ask her out for tea after the results came out. As we sat eating ice-cream, I tried to revive again the aura that coloured our conversations way before the exam.
"Have you seen the 'Mission'?" I asked referring to Robert De Niro's latest movie.
"Yes."
"I like Robert De Niro. I think he was good."
"Hah! I don't think so. Robert De Niro, a priest?" she eyed the ceiling.
"What's happening?" I finally asked.
She hesitated, then maintaining her smile, she answered, her voice higher than usual,
"You're going too fast."
"Is it the exam result?"
"No."
I wasn't convinced.
"I'll slow down."
It was her most irritating trait, she would say one thing out of politeness rather than say what she meant. "I'll call you," she had said as a parting shot when we had met accidentally on campus just after the results were out and she had known my results. But she didn't call. Once when I asked her out for a movie, she suggested I call someone else - a Seet Liang first.
It got to a point where I had decided not to take it anymore. It was to be my last phone call for a long time, I told myself, because I had to preserve my mind for the supplementaries. It lasted fifteen minutes.
"My mother's waiting for a call," she said. "We can't talk long."
"Alright, we'll stop here then," I said abruptly. "Good-bye."
I placed the receiver down after hearing her say a startled "bye".
Ten minutes later she called me back for the first time in our relationship.
"I've got two tickets to a music concert. I wonder if you'd like to come." she said.
"Sure."
She gave me the time and venue, and the call ended there.
XII
The concert was held at the Victoria Theatre where the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, Singapore's founder,hung poised above a fountain.
I stood waiting for her near the fountain, my neck aching with lack of sleep. My routine was pretty fixed now, in the fourth week of the industrial training: wake up at 7.30, reach office at 8.30, leave office at 5, eat dinner, watch TV till 8 or run, mug from 8 to 12, then sleep. It wasn't good sleep. It was the kind where you would be aware when the first light of dawn filtered through the window, and when you wake up you would ache all over.
I saw her coming toward the fountain, emerging from the lighted darkness of dusk, dressed in a red skirt and a white blouse. She smiled when she saw me.
"Sorry I'm late," she said.
There was still fifteen minutes to go before the concert start.
"You want to get a drink?" I asked.
I was nervous.
"Okay."
We sat in the minuscule canteen of the Theatre and I got us two packs of Chrysanthemum tea. She had difficulty retrieving the straw from its transparent plastic packaging. Holding the straw vertical with both hands, she pressed the straw down hard on the table. The stubborn straw wouldn't emerge from the packaging. Then she started banging the straw on the table, her two hands still firmly wrapped around it. Still no result. All this while I looked at her, fascinated by the tenacity of her effort. Finally, she gave the straw to me smiling sheepishly. I tore open the plastic via the ready-made rent, retrieved the straw and gave it to her. That picture of her sheepishly and tenaciously jackhammering the straw on the table was to be my favourite memory of her.
The concert was staged by students from a secondary school who covered the entire spectrum from classical to pop, except for heavy metal. We didn't talk much throughout the concert. Hardly at all.
"How's the music?" she asked after the concert as we walked toward my car.
"Not very interesting."
"I thought you like music, but I guess I was wrong," she said coldly, her words biting into me.
I didn't respond. It was unfair, but I didn't respond. It was a sullen five minutes walk to the car.
Somehow, I felt this car ride to her home was important, the last conversation for a long, long time to come. What can I say that would matter?
As the car headed toward Marine Parade, I broke the silence.
"What are you afraid of?"
She didn't answer immediately.
After a full minute, she said, "You're too intense."
There was that sense that something was about to happen, that all the conversations and maneuverings of the past eight months was to climax in this one conversation. I felt like cavalry before a charge - first the order to trot, then the gathering of speed, finally the cry 'Charge!', and the full speed gallop.
It was a charge I had held back for as long as I could. But the hour had come, and I charged releasing the pent up fury of many years. It all came out, that secret I had wanted to hold back for better times.
I have a nerve condition on my face, I told her. It started when I was fourteen, way back in Penang. I lived with it without knowing what it was. I never told anyone until I was doing my A-levels. All I felt was a tugging on my face, my left side, a tugging that I couldn't control. It felt like there was something up my nose. It was there all the time, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. It affected my sleep, it affected my concentration. Finally when I sought a doctor's opinion, the doctor said I was imagining it. That shattered me, what that doctor said. How could I imagine such a thing? I asked. But the doctor insisted I was imagining it. And others after him did the same, ear-nose-and-throat specialists, GPs, skin specialists, psychiatrist. It drove me nuts, this thing on my face, until I flunked my first year. For THREE YEARS, from A-levels until first year, the doctors told me I was imagining it. I was alone during that period. The church, my family, my friends, they went along with what those doctors said. It's a horrendous feeling to question your sanity, to wonder if you're crazy up there. It's character assassination of yourself egged on by people you trust.
And it wasn't just those three years, it was all those years since it began of trying to figure out what was happening, wondering "Am I mad?", "Is this insanity?" Me, a one-time school prefect, and a school debator, one for whom achievements came as a right.
Flunking first year was the end of the road for me, the end of my dreams. I had lost everything, my will to live, my goals, my trust in people. I was just waiting, waiting for the end. I couldn't sleep, I withdrew from people, I was deep in depression and anxiety. I was a dead man. You cannot imagine the loneliness of those days, the utter helplessness and paralysis I felt. I felt deserted by everybody, including God.
I argued with the University doctor who had said it was impossible for such a thing to happen, that in all the years of medical science, the symptoms I described could never happen, who insinuated I wasn't fit for University education. I argued with her and told her I wanted more than her opinion. I wanted medical proof. Objective medical proof , that nothing was wrong. And she referred me to a neurologist.
Within five minutes, that neurologist confirmed it. He described it as a nerve entrapment, nothing imaginary about it. He said the texture of the skin differed, the left from the right, and there was definitely a patch of numbness there in that region. Nothing psychological about it, he said.
What caused it? I asked. It could be anything, he said. What about a bee sting? I had a bad bee sting there when I was eleven. That bee sting was so toxic my whole body swelled. Could that have caused it? That's unlikely, he said. But don't worry about it. It's nothing. You look highly strung up, he said. You bet I am.
I would have joined the Black October terrorist group there and then, had they a recruitment booth at the Hospital. I would have joined them and go on a bomb spree, burn all the hospitals and clinics I could find. Then I would have rounded up all the white-coated SOBs and kick their asses all the way to Changi Prison for impersonating God. Have some shot to get the point through.
I WENT TO THE WRONG DOCTORS, that's what happened. The nerve thing was so specialized that only a neurologist could recognize it. And when doctors can't see anything wrong they'll say you're imagining it. Can you understand, Seet Liang, what I went through?
I was trembling and I tightened my grip on the steering. I turned to look at her. She looked bewildered and didn't say a thing.
That's what happened in my first year. And I'm getting over those years. Can you understand that?
She didn't reply. For the rest of the journey she didn't say a single word and I didn't press her.
When the car stopped in front of her house, she said 'Thank you', got off, and did her 'Marine Parade' farewell again. She didn't look at me when she locked the metal gate after her. She didn't turn to look at me when she walked into the house and shut the door.
On my way home, I couldn't see the road well because of the tears. I was an O-level top-scorer, the best of three hundred, I wanted to tell her. I had wanted to tell her that for sometime.
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Five years later
I am waiting in the lobby of the airport for my flight that will take me away from this place. The dust has cleared and I can see with clarity the events of those tumultuous years.
I cleared my supplementaries and went on to finish my final year without a hitch. For a long time after I got it, I had to hold back the urge to burn that piece of colored paper with the University emblem certifying 'in accordance with statutes' that I was a bona fide engineer. After graduation I was unemployed for a year, and thereafter drifted through two jobs. I don't know if I want to be an engineer anymore. I don't know what to do with myself, really. There's only one certainty. I want to get away from this place, as far away from this place as I can.
I never contact Seet Liang for a long time after the concert. She was awarded the scholarship and went to the States for a year. We were practically incommunicado, except for one or two letters and one phone call.
Over the years I met other girls, but none aroused me the way she did, none made me feel alive the way she did. Occasionally, in between gaps of several months to a year, when she had returned, I called to see how she was, if she was married. No she wasn't. She still isn't.
A year ago, I tried to win her back. I wrote her letters. I called her. I sent her flowers. I kept at it for four months. But she was adamant. She would have nothing to do with me. She wanted a clean break, she said. She insisted she had found us incompatible from day one.
"Which day is that?" I asked confronting her in her office carpark because she refused to meet me, " the bus stop or the squash game?"
She thought awhile, her lively eyes flitting here then there. She said squash uncertainly.
"I like your cartoons."
"You mean Garfield?"
"Where did you learn to draw?"
"Nowhere."
"You're very creative."
She was the single ray of sunshine that cut through the gloomy clouds of a stormy sea, the sole flower that bloomed in an arid barren desert, costliest of my casualties throughout the raging conflict, most precious of my losses. I saw myself in her. It was as if she was the female version of me had I not been cut down by the nerve thing - the dedicated achiever, the unstoppable juggernaut, the star student.
The 747 is now aloft and making a turn. I look down for the last time at the lights of Singapore, where for eleven years I had sojourned, and where I fought my Vietnam.
The End
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