Singapore

- A Sentimental Journey –

by Adriana Carcu

I am looking at the two huge mangos on my kitchen table that my friend Sepi shoved into my suitcase with the words, “In a few days when they ripe you will be grateful”, and I am thinking that they should be proof, solid enough, that I have really been there, in Singapore. A week during the passage to the Year of the Pig: a rush of light and color that still pulses in my memory like the long phosphorescent traces of passing cars in pictures taken with a very sensitive film at night.

The first morning at 5, confused by the jet lag and by the unrelenting call of a rooster, I descend onto the backyard veranda surrounded by luxurious vegetation. Witnessing the rising of the day, I study the architecture of the house, half colonial, half contemporary, the windows of which are graciously divided in black squares, somehow Japanese in design just like the silent gliding doors. Little by little the city unfolds into life; a hummingbird, transparent in its static flight, is courting the cyclamen flowers wrapped around the gate post; the smell of jasmine rice floods the air, a child starts practicing a German tune on the piano, Hänschen klein, ging allein, the dogs are barking; “Post, post” is calling the postman on a motorbike in front of each door. I look at the narrow space beyond the iron gates that separates the backyards and I suddenly see servants, suppliers and messengers with straw huts, rushing along efficiently in a tangled labyrinth, caught up in their archaic, anachronic world. Later I will find out that this space is the access to the sewage and that the iron gates are opened only for plumbing; that is, almost never.

Around noon on the Orchard Road with my host Sepi, I have the surreal feeling that we are the only two people left in the world: not a single human being in sight, not a car, not a movement. I am told that today is the day when people stay indoors with their families and eat.

As days go by, Singapore returns to its characteristic commotion. The downtown has doubled its surface area since my last visit some 10 years ago. A building with the roof like the bumpy skin of the durian fruit; a block like a section through deep green waters, absorbing the palm trees in front, on top of which a canopy made of sheer fans is floating; a gracile steel ribbed Plexiglas roof, diaphanous as the wings of a dragon fly, covering a whole city section with air conditioned streets where bars and coffee shops are lined up like painted beads on a string, and which is imperceptibly going through all the colors of the solar spectrum at night, are completing the dizzying skyline.

Chinatown is awaiting the New Year decorated festively; hanging on red cords are pigs made of paper, of jade, of fabric, of plastic, pigs of gold, of sponge, of glass, are moving lightly in the ventilated breeze. My feet are hurting and after vainly trying to find the equivalent for my shoe size, feeling somehow embarrassed that I grew so big, I finally buy a pair of Chinese slippers made of black silk with ornate trimmings and I put them on. I imagine that they are the slippers of an old Chinese man wearing a costume made from the same material and long black braided mustaches, and everybody will know it and will stare in amazement, will stare in amusement. After a few steps I relax; nobody is looking at me; nobody has time for nonsense here; here everything is in frantic motion. The market, dominated by a colorful Indian temple, is humming; in small shops lined up along the narrow streets mysterious products are heaped up: mountains of candied pigskin, dumplings in an infinite variety of form and filling, rough skin fruit, colorful bundles.

In Singapore one eats a lot, one eats well, eats at length. The keys are scattered with traditional restaurants, but you can also have delicious antipasti or excellent French wines in fancy places. In the immense open-air restaurants, called Coffee Houses, surrounded by rented booths where the dishes are cooked before your eyes with very fresh ingredients, whole families celebrated opulent dinners with strong chicken or seafood soups in which green noodles or crispy vegetables are floating, with dimples made of thousands of air-thin layers, with an infinite variety of rice dishes, with meat, fish or tofu cooked with dense, spicy, yet light, sauces. Crabs and lobsters are floating in black pepper or chilly sauces, cool oysters lay on a bed of ice. One stand sells banana desserts but the best dessert ever is a bowl of freshly cut fruit on ice.

Streams of chilly air are gushing out of the ventilators, a megaphone blasts Chinese music, the woks are sizzling, cell phones are ringing, coffee is taken away in small plastic bags reminding me of perfusion equipment. In the distance the sparkling skyline is pulsing against the indigo background; a bizarre combination of high-tech and tradition that keeps reminding me of Blade Runner.

One day, while we are visiting the beautiful old colonial houses surrounded by sensuous floral explosions and by the banyan trees with a spinney of trunks and long tresses of lianas touching the ground, I look for a stone to take home. It is hard to find stones in Singapore. At the long last I pick up a rosy clump that incorporates small silvery glinting facets. Sepi says with a smirk, “Well done, this is concrete.” But then we conclude that concrete is actually quite an accurate representation of the idea of Singapore and I decide to take it home after all.

On New Year’s day we cross the narrow channel to Sentosa, a huge island resort, where, in an environment so counterfeit that it appears natural all over again, one can spend hours walking around, playing golf, lazing in the shade or bathing. I will be constantly moved by the open manifestations of affection towards children, but especially towards old people who are surrounded everywhere with utmost reverence. At dusk we stop exhausted on a beach dotted with canopied Roman beds. As it is getting dark and the beds seem to be floating on cushions of light, oblong phantom-like shades are moving rhythmically on the chillout music among the palm trees, in the floodlight; we sip at length the second round of margaritas while we are watching the shimmering lights of the world’s busiest naval street.

The last day in Singapore, the day of The New Year’s Parade, a colorful storm of flying ribbons, shiny silk and tinsel, slippery strings of light, graceful dances and loud bursts of joy, closes in a glorious note the journey into a postmodern world.

Sepi was right; it was worth carrying the heavy mangos all the way home. They have ripened today; they taste like those far off lands, that, once you are back, you don’t believe to have really seen.

Heidelberg, Germany, August 2007