Dos Korsang / Undecided
It was not even dawn when they set off for the island that did not exist, the little boy-girl and their faithful, brave boyfriend. It could not be, of course; the only window to visit the island that did not exist, the boy-girl had discovered by chance, scrawled in nearly-illegible Kristang in a carbon copy of a baptism register from the early 1890s, was to be embarked on the sea toward it between 4.02am and 4.25am on the second Saturday of the month. The maximum number was two, no more, no less – dos jenti namas, ngka ngua, ngka tres. In the early 1890s, there had been five spots one could ask for a boat; by their time, the time of the Lion City without Lions, there was only one. But one was enough, at 4.02am, on the second Saturday of the month, with a friend.
They camp overnight on the shores of Rower’s Bay, a pale-green tent from Decathlon that the boy-girl’s boyfriend had managed to snag from a Shopee online sale for $3. It was illegal, but then, what was legal in the Lion City without Lions? Buses came and went; the last 117M departed at 1.43 in the morning, and then it was them and the moon, and the stars, and each other, and the dusky heart of darkest morning.
“Are you sure?” said the boy-girl to their boyfriend, at 3.34, when neither of them could sleep for sheer, terrified anticipation, and the moon hung low over the Yishun Dam.
“Sure, sertu,” said their boyfriend, holding them tight.
It becomes 3.39, then 3.47, and at 3.53, they make their way to the Jenal Jetty, just across the other side of the road. Nothing stirred, except the wind and the sea, cleaved in two by the Dam, and the road sprawled across the top of it. Dark, but not pitch-black; this is Singapore, and more importantly, this is Seletar –the industrial lights of Pasir Gudang are bright, blaring and alive, even at 4am. But it is cold, cold in Singapore, of all places. The boy-girl clutched their boyfriend tightly. A jacket would have been nice. The boyfriend wraps the tent material around her as they dance onto the bobbing pier, and the boy-girl takes a tentative step into the unknown.
“Astah!” they say, unevenly, reading hoarsely from a crumpled piece of paper. “Lo’ beng chua. Astah! Lo’ beng forsa. Astah! Lo’ beng – “
“Ok, ok. Enough, lah, huh?” says a reedy voice from behind them, not unkindly, which is all that stops the boy-girl from yelping and falling into the water from fright. The boyfriend takes their hand, also not unkindly. Reedy voice. Soft, sea-worn hands. A lantern, of sorts, bobbing on an end of a metal rod that looks like it came directly from a very generous chair. Not old, but getting on. Not angry or afraid, but tired. Tired-excited. “Papiah Kristang? You speak Kristang?” says the man. No stars in the sky, but weary, glimmering stars starting up in his eyes. The boy-girl and the boyfriend nod, warily and earnestly.
“No one,” says the man. “No one in so long.”
“Nus kereh bai Pedra Jambu,” says the boyfriend. We want to go to the Jardine Gate. The man looks at him, impressed. Clearly the boy-girl is the protagonist, but the boyfriend can speak too. “Ki kauzu olotu teng nali?” says the man, really the harbourmaster, the syahbandar of this lonely little jetty. What business do you have there? The boyfriend hesitates. Now it is the boy-girl’s turn to squeeze his hand. Safe, secure, their hand is in his as they slide, shift, slip and stream, struggling, squeezing, suffering – not suffering, not anymore, soft in the water next to the boyfriend and the syahbandar. The boy-girl has become who they are, one half of who they really are, and tears are filling the Syahbandar’s eyes.
“Jenti di mar,” he says, in wonder, and soaring hope. “Sertu jenti di mar.” And it is true, for the syahbandar is speaking of the merboy, the merman, bobbing in the dark, ancient water, next to where the boy-girl once stood on the dock.
“Sertu, sior,” says the boyfriend, for even though he is not of this heritage, he has made a home in it, and made a home with this beautiful, radiant boy-man who is now really who they are, and impressed this lonely, wonderful syahbandar enough to take them to the island that does not exist. Wet fingers dance across the little hairs on his ankle; the dugong machu is alive, and he is alive, and the syahbandar is alive.
“Isti yo sa kauzu,” says the boy-man, as they shift back to normal, shift back to boy-girl, and dry themselves on the dock. Kauzu is a difficult word to translate in Kristang. This is my cause. This is my reason. This is who I am. And it is. The syahbandar has accepted, in wonder and in joy, and nods. “They do not know you are coming?” he says. The boy-girl and their boyfriend look at each other. The syahbandar understands. “They will understand, I think,” he says. “But be careful. They have been alone for a long, long time.”
“Not any more,” says the boy-girl. It is quiet, and dark, and cold, and 4.09am, but the way they say it brings a ruddery, shuddering flame into the hearts of their boyfriend and of the syahbandar. The boyfriend squeezes the boy-girl’s hand even tighter.
They put out to sea in the syahbandar’s motorboat. Raja Laut, it is called. King of the Sea. 4.12. 4.17. Toward the lights of Pasir Gudang; behind them, the pinpricks of Seletar and Punggol, and together, above them, the clouds, faintly outlined and illuminated, purple dreams floating under the soaring heavens.
4.21. 4.23. The boy-girl feels both of the true halves of them stir within their heart, and feel-hears the soft thudding and pounding of their boyfriend’s heart, crushed against their left shoulder.
“I’m okay,” he says. “Yo podih.”
4.24.
“Nus podih,” they say, and the flame lights up briefly inside their boyfriend once more. The clouds have given way to great, sweeping plains of night, and Gudang is to their left, such that the vista of the Straits and the open sea is all they can see, looking straight ahead.
4.25. And they are looking straight ahead. Heart, and heart, and syahbandar, calling within themselves for the dawn…and without a doubt, 4.26, it is there, suddenly, ahead of them, just as the scrawl said it would be.
Many things are forgotten on purpose, said the boy-girl’s grandfather, once upon a time, ja susudeh ung tempu, once upon a time when the cancer came again, another time, another year, before the seas began to rise and the winds began to fall, and the world began to fall to its own ends. Before the boy-girl knew so much sadness it almost killed them. Don’t forget this, whispers their grandfather, holding his rosary, but the boy-girl knows it is not the rosary that their grandfather means. Don’t forget that with a purpose, you can find anything. You can remember anything.
I will remember this, says the boy-girl to themselves, as the syahbandar pulls them toward the even littler jetty of the island known as Pedra Jambu. We will remember this. Neither they nor their boyfriend know why it is called Pedra Jambu, Pink Rock in Kristang, or who decided to name it that way; and both of them are too caught up in the moment, too enthralled, too alive, to ask the syahbandar, who has docked them now. They climb onto the jetty. “The same words,” says the syahbandar. “Papiah kung forsa. Speak them with strength. I will come back for you.” The boy-girl’s boyfriend tries to give him the little roll of money they prepared, with a pack of cigarettes and Merdeka vouchers. The syahbandar refuses, but the boyfriend sets it all down in the hull of the sampan, and the syahbandar clasps his hands together, tears again filling his eyes, the flame shuddering to life in his heart. The boat pulls away.
Pedra Jambu imposes. A curving, crescent strip of beach, and looming jungle in front of them. The jetty is perched precariously on a little rocky outcrop, and bobs in the sea; the boy-girl nearly topples into it, but their boyfriend catches them, and they make their way up to the foot of the deep, dense jungle. No shelters here, no lifebuoys, no rest huts, no remote-control police camera units; this is where Singapore is not Singapore, where nothing exists, because nothing on this island should exist. It is on no maps, in no apps, between no National Library catalogues, found in no half-forgotten rambling 15th-century European travelogues. Because there is no one here, unless one knows who is supposed to be here.
And the boy-girl knows who is supposed to be here.
“Are you sure?” they whisper. Terrified. Shivering. Trembling. The boyfriend squeezes their arm. The two of them are stood back against the imposing gloom, as if fence and wall invisible both conspire against them, pressing them to the beach between the jungle and the shore. No lights here at all except the moon’s stern gaze, and a bitter string of stars. The boy-girl’s boyfriend checks his watch. The time is correct, like the scrawl says. 4.43am. According to the legend, they are waking up now, right around now. This is the right time. This is the right place.
“Do it,” says the boy-girl’s boyfriend.
“Yo teng midu,” says the boy-girl. I am afraid.
“Yo pun,” he says, fondly, shakily, determinedly. I am too.
The boy-girl bites their lip too hard, drawing a little blood, and then, crumpled piece of paper in hand, begins to read. It is an old, old verse, stolen out of a bit of a nonsense, a quasi-nursery rhyme taught to the boy-girl by their grandfather, then painstakingly searched, and cross-referenced, and analysed, and reinterpreted, matched to the scrawl in the Baptism register, reinvigorated. After the first line, their boyfriend joins her, his heart aching, his hands clasping theirs.
“Ki podih fazeh nona
Sorti natural
Skapah di jenti
Apinyah pra animal.”
Three more times. Louder. Braver. At the end of the last line, something moves in the trees. The boy-girl tenses, but they know what they must do. They are ready. The boyfriend is holding their hand.
A voice. A voice from within the trees, at 5.06am.
“Jenti Kristang?”
“Yo jenti Kristang,” says the boy-girl, defiantly, tearfully. I am Kristang.
“Halkuniya?” says the voice. Surname?
“Aeriyang,” says the boy-girl. Her father’s surname. “Yo sa pai Aeriyang. Yo sa mai Nonas.” And her mother’s.
“Bos sa noibu Kristang?” says the voice. The boy-girl’s boyfriend stirs, instantly ready to leap into the sea if necessary. They hadn’t thought about this. The scrawl hadn’t said anything. The boy-girl is about to speak, but the boyfriend squeezes her hand.
“Yo ngka,” he says, clearly, proudly, unabashedly. “Yo ngka. Yo jenti muru.” He even uses the word, even though he hates it, because he knows he is a stranger on this island, and he must play by its rules. “Mas yo ja prendeh tantu.” But I have learned. He pauses. “Ta prendeh bolotu sa linggu bunitu.” I am learning your beautiful language.
Silence, for a while, for time and space, for this meeting. Their world is empty, placid, awaiting the next step, the next turn of the wheel.
“Kifoi bos teng naki?” says the voice, finally. Why are you here?
The boy-girl and the boyfriend look at each other. The boy-girl has tears in their eyes, and both of them, both of them now, have fires in their hearts, even though only the boy-girl can turn their fire into liquid, shifting gold. But this is what they came here for. This is why they are here for each other, and here for the owner of the voice.
“I love you,” says the boy-girl to the boyfriend, and he says nothing, all his love is given to watching the boy-girl shift, slip, stretch, suffer, suffer beyond words, but suffer to become who they really are, who they have always been and who they always will be, once more. Boy-girl, and boy; and now, as sudden as their arrival on Pedra Jambu, it is just boy, and next to the boy, wild, alive, bright, even in the darkness, a great, immense form, redolent of scent unknown to this modern world. A wild thing, a brave thing, a thing afire: a great, blazing girl-woman of the land, were-tiger, a trigera, the last known to Singapore, and still unknown, for the trigera has carried this secret in her heart her whole life, ever since her grandfather said goodbye to her for the last time, and she became, truly, one of the Last People, the first in her family in generations, and the last seen in Singapore for a very long time.
“Isti yo sa kauzu,” says the trigera, a second time, her tale wrapping lazily around her boyfriend’s arm. And then, shifting, struggling once more, into the water, a third time. “Isti pun yo sa kauzu,” says the merboy, the merman, the dugong machu. And once more, into the boy-girl, dripping sea, and hope, and fire, all over their boyfriend’s slippers. “Isti pun yo sa kauzu.”
“Bos Trukang,” says the voice in the trees, and the word breezes through the boy-girl and their boyfriend like a soaring dream. No one has said that word in generations.
“Sertu,” says the boy-girl, trembling, taking a step toward the trees. And this is really their cause. Really their reason. “Nus sabeh bos pun.”
And we know it is yours too.
They emerge, then, at last, from the trees, from the shadows, from the night, and step into the space the boy-girl and the boyfriend have fought for, here on this island that does not exist. They are old, older than the boy-girl’s grandfather when he returned to God and the heavens above, and they are alive, alight, ablaze, and that is all that counts.
And they are afraid. The boy-girl sees the deep, dreadful fear in the old Trukang’s eyes, the years that have worn and scuffed themselves deep into the rings beneath them, the ache that has set into old, lonely hands and limbs, no matter how many times they transform themselves into man, into woman, into dugong machu, into trigera. A stumbling. A blinking.
“Kifoi,” says the old Trukang, crumpling to the ground in front of them like wind in their sails finally leaving their body, and they sit, folding to the ground with them, each taking one of the old Trukang’s hands. “Kifoi bos – bos – ”, they struggle for words, and then it all slips out of them, the struggling, the suffering, the tears, the rage.
The boy-girl pauses, and hesitates, and then gives up, and wraps the old Trukang in the embrace of deep time, in the embrace of their grandfather, and his grandfather before him, and all the jenti of this good earth who have loved, and lost, and struggled, and suffered. Shifting, struggling, suffering into trigera. The old Trukang is weeping, and weeping, and she is there, a new she-tiger of the Lion City without Lions, and her boyfriend is there, and they are there. This is being. This is the night. This is the dawn.
We have always been people of the sea, said the girl’s grandfather, and people of this land, this beautiful land, hours before he left the girl forever, and joined the sea, and became one with the boy-girl forever, and gave the girl his spirit, his fire and his joy. You have hidden who you are for so long, he said to her, his voice crackling, his eyes dimming, his spirit rising. Do not hide from me. Do not hide from anyone. Not anymore.
“The time of hiding is over,” says the trigera, gently, kindly, in English, and again, in Kristang. “Onsong numistih skundeh kung onsong.”
“Gobernu,” mumbles the old Trukang. They are afraid, afraid of the state, afraid of the people, afraid of everyone. They are all alone. They hav been all alone their whole life, ever since the jungles were cleared and the seas polluted, since Riau and Johor and Jambi and Ujong and Bintan and Batam were carved up and split away, ever since the lines were drawn. Not this, not that. Neither man nor woman nor both, neither human nor animal nor both. There was nowhere else to go. This was where to go.
And this is nowhere, now.
“Birah kung nus,” says the trigera, and carries the old Trukang into the water. Shifting, struggling. The merman is floating by the side of the old Trukang now, looking out into the invisible shroud that divides Pedra Jambu from the rest of the coming dawn.
Return with us.
“Gobernu inda,” says the old Trukang. Some fears die hard. The state is still there.
“Gobernu inda,” affirms the merman. Something is breaking across the shroud. Light, and the sun beyond. His boyfriend plays with the merman’s hair, his tears running through it, joining the water beneath, letting the fire beneath come to light. To light. The fire is still in the old Trukang. The merman knows it. And knows what he has to say.
“They are still there,” he says, kissing his boyfriend’s hand. “But so are we.”
And it was late past dawn when they set off the island that did not exist, toward the island that still did, and still could.