Singapore Noir

“You may be wondering why you’re here, and who I am,” chirps Mr. Rao, “but none of that is important right now. What is important is that we do what we must do. But first, the elephant.”

Saiful, who has been staring at Fernando to calm his nerves, almost opens his mouth to ask where he should kiss the beast. But he seems to have lost his voice. Moving close to the bejeweled mammoth, he gently places a little peck on the trunk. Saiful feels like he is performing a perverse sexual act.

Leela, who has not said another word, suddenly snaps to. Her face contorted in fury, she approaches Saiful and slaps him across the face.

“When you kiss Ganesh, you kiss his feet, asshole.”

Somehow, this amuses Mr. Rao greatly and he is sent into a paroxysm of giggles. Even Fernando the cat seems to find levity in the situation, and relaxes his formidably impassive face for a moment.

Saiful does what he is told, his nose registering the fact that the elephant feet are scented with sandalwood oil. Then, as he looks to Mr. Rao, the wide smile on the Indian’s face vanishes. With a theatrical flourish worthy of Houdini, Mr. Rao whips out a leather-bound stamp album. Fernando hisses at the abrupt movement and jumps out of its master’s arm.

“You want this, don’t you?” Mr. Rao opens the album and shows Saiful the pink-colored stamp. “Such a beautiful thing. Do you know that Edward the Seventh was a notorious womanizer and loved visiting high-end brothels whenever he was in Paris? His dick was quite famous.”

Saiful stares at the album and can only dumbly nod his head. He has no idea where any of this is going.

“This is what we must do.” Mr. Rao begins to describe a complicated scheme involving the removal of Madame Zhang and his takeover of her smuggling racket, including the inception of a new side business dealing with the importation of yaba, among other things. Mixed in with that, there is also what Mr. Rao refers to as “the pleasure industry.” He speaks continuously for more than ten minutes, but Saiful quickly loses the thread of the narrative and his mind starts to wander.

“So, how would you get rid of Madame Zhang?”

Saiful snaps out of his stupor. “What?” he says, his eyes beginning to tear from the thickening incense vapors.

“The ball is in your court, as the saying goes. Do it... if you want your stamp back.” Mr. Rao shuts the stamp album, nods almost militaristically, and sashays off into the gloomy recesses of the temple.

“I hope you value your life,” Leela whispers ominously into Saiful’s ears. With that, she too disappears. He is left alone in the candlelit temple. He looks again at the elephant, and wonders how and when he fell down this rabbit hole.

That night when he gets home — after walking for almost an hour — Saiful has a dream. In it, he is with the lovely Aishah, who is all dressed up in a form-fitting sarong kebaya that shows off her ample curves. One minute they are frolicking on a white sand beach, the next they are kissing passionately in the shower. He wakes up in the middle of the night with a raging hard-on, and proceeds to touch himself. But it is just not the same without his girl, who is on a plane to Frankfurt.

Saiful begins to reconstruct the events that led to his meeting with Mr. Rao. The problem is, he has no idea how he could have lost the stamp. He had always kept it in a safe in his HDB apartment, under lock and key; no one had access to it — at least, no one other than he and Aishah.

Is it possible that Aishah...

No, he tells himself. There is no reason she would do a thing like this. After all, hasn’t Aishah always insisted that she has no desire for money, and in any case, didn’t she just sell her one-bedroom walk-up in Kolam Ayer? The woman should be flush with cash.

But wait, why did she sell her apartment? It had surprised Saiful then but he didn’t think it proper to pry. With his heart thumping, he suddenly realizes there are too many unanswered questions. He has to get ahold of Aishah immediately.

When he finally reaches her, the entire airline crew has just checked into an airport hotel in Frankfurt. Saiful never calls when she is traveling, not because he doesn’t want to, but because of the expensive phone charges. But this time when Aishah picks up the call, it is clear she isn’t surprised to hear from him.

“What happened?” she asks quietly.

For a few long seconds, Saiful cannot get the words out.

“I had no choice,” she starts again.

An ache spreads from his chest and envelops his body. He doesn’t need to hear any more; her explanations are like distant thunder in a tropical downpour. The thing is, Saiful has always been mistrustful of people, and Aishah is one of the very few who penetrated his shell.