The Portuguese Amateur Dramatic Company will give a performance entitled “Arjuna” or the Ruined Merchant of Bokhara in the local Portuguese language on the 9th instant at the Theatre Royal North Bridge Road.
— The Malaya Tribune, 6 September 1926, p. 6 (link). The play is later cancelled on the day it is supposed to run, for unknown reasons.
The annual general meeting of the S.R.C. was held in the Club pavilion on Monday evening, Mr C. H. Da Silva presiding over a fair attendance. At the outset, the Chairman said that he was presiding in the absence of the President, the honorable Mr E. Tessensohn, who they all knew, was in hospital. He expressed his regret and hoped it would not be long before Mr. Tessensohn recovered.
— The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 15 September 1926, p. 7 (link), 9 days before Edwin passes away on 26 September 1926.
The idea of establishing a reservation was first proposed in 1926 by Fr. Jules Pierre François of the French Mission (St. Francis Xavier’s Church). Concerned with the worsening plight of some of his parishioners, particularly those who lived in the overcrowded kampung at Praya Lane, where land erosion was causing houses to crumble into the sea, Fr. François brought his plan to the attention of the British authorities. Right from the start, there was something quaintly appealing about the idea of rescuing the “poor Portuguese” from certain oblivion.
— Margaret Sarkissian, in D’Albuqerque’s Children: Performing Tradition in Malaysia’s Portuguese Settlement (2000), p. 37
Enter, stage left,
History.
She is obviously flustered, quite noticeably flabbergasted,
extraordinarily furious.
You — you —
You can’t just do this!
Walk in here and pretend like
You know the script.
You understand the parts.
You recognise that this is actually a very elaborate, and very expensive —
Peace?
My great-great-great-grandfather was a Justice of the Peace,
you say, carefully, striding in (confident, in an assertive yet dignified manner) from the opposite side of the argument without skipping a beat.
Peace of work, you insist, over History’s sputtering protestations.
Peace be with you, History.
Pas bai fuzih di bos, diabu, she says to you,
in an unmistakeably Kristang accent that would not be missed in Padri sa Chang.
She composes herself.
You have no part here, she says, lips pressed together (in a line,
or maybe two).
You have no evidence.
You have no proof.
Ah, you say,
I might not,
but I do have something else:
an interlude.
The national debate was heard even in the Sleepy Hollow, spurring a Malacca Guardian columnist who went by the pseudonym “Enquirer” to ask, “Why is there no Eurasian Association in Malacca?” Pointing out that other Eurasian communities had representative bodies that had “done much for the upliftment of their respective communities,” he berated Malacca’s residents for their political apathy: “This shows that the members of this community probably feel that there is no necessity for an association of their own. It is certainly creditable to belong to many clubs, but if a community has no association of their own no progress will ever be made. The Singapore Eurasian Association is one to be emulated by the local Eurasians. It is high time that the Eurasians woke up and rallied themselves together. It is then and only then that as a community they will be of any importance.” (Malacca Guardian, October 22, 1934)
— Margaret Sarkissian, in D’Albuqerque’s Children: Performing Tradition in Malaysia’s Portuguese Settlement (2000), p. 35
History puts her foot down, hard,
such that the poem is forced to continue before anything untoward truly happens.
And nothing untoward will.
Nothing untoward ever has.
She moves toward you.
And — and anyway —
So what if his death changed everything, huh?
Pra ki kauzu bos teng kuriozu?
Lights on, lights off —
— and History has done a spectacular, stunning costume change.
History is Death.
Come closer, boy-girl.
Let me touch your face.
Let me enter your bones,
and trace away your veins.
Crumble into the last remnants of Sundaland.
Immolate what is leftover of the Chuwafogu.
Nobody ever needs to know
about the Ravenous Night.
Come closer,
and let the Matansang devour you.
And you oblige.
You come closer.
Death is confused.
History is written by the victors, boy-girl.
Lights on, lights off —
— and now it is your time to shine, too,
your spectacular costume change,
your big bowl for Melaka, and Singapore, and for all the worlds you know and love.
Your play for the play.
Dreamtiger, says Death. Tigrisoneru.
Yo dah rekadu kung bos.
But you have no time for rekadu.
All you have time for is this:
Yo dah rekadu kung istoria.
Yo dah rekadu kung memoria.
Yo dah rekadu kung lembransa.
Yo dah rekadu kung ardansa.
“And what will you give me
if I take these from you?” says Death,
their hands running amok
across the spacetime song of your swelling lifestory.
Must I take them?
Why not I take you instead?
And this is what you say:
I will give you Bokhara.
I will give you a Ruined Merchant, and a Rueful Merchant.
I will give you the Last Play of the Portuguese Amateur Dramatic Company
and the first of the Dreamtiger’s Dancing Dazzling Devilfish.
Death is intrigued.
Darknesses on, darknesses off —
she is History again.
What more? Ki mas?
And this is what you say:
I will give you Amateurs.
I will give you Isti Banda, kung Alabanda.
I will give you A Word for Gay in the Kristang Language, and A World without such A Word.
I will give you Another Dreamtiger.
I will give you kaza, greza kung stradu.
Tudu pra bos.
Yo logu dah.
Exeunt something, belly up? Definitely the stage is right.
History was not necessarily wrong,
but She is gone.
Enter —
Enter the Justice of the Peace.
The First Eurasian Legislative Councillor of the Straits Settlements.
The Kwataboh Machu di Omimerliang Tera Singapura.
The Ruined Merchant of Bokhara, and Singapura, and Melaka, and tudu-tudu banda.
A hand nothing like Death’s.
A story nothing like History’s.
Beng kontah pra yo,
eli falah kung bos.
And at last, you know what to do.
After all, like they always say,
you’ve been playing Portuguese your entire life.