THE CITIZEN
We are now firmly ensconced in the regime of the daytime. The morning sun beats down upon our backs, much like the government and its machinations. Tan Vee Bun, Robert Sebastian Cheong and I are back in the gondola, making a counter-intuitive beeline towards Sentosa. Tan Vee Bun skilfully avoids the eyelines of the influx of workers and supervisors reporting in for work, whilst looking completely innocuous to any boats that sail past.
Anytime now, Joanne and her minions could descend on us, and we would have to risk jumping into the water and split up, to somehow make it back home. My instructions are to keep together with Robert Sebastian Cheong to navigate the drains, while Tan Vee Bun finds a separate way to return.
About fifty metres away, a flock of students in kayaks paddle past, some of them intent on moving forward, while one or two turn to look at us, mildly curious as to our intentions. Nonplussed, Tan Vee Bun nods to them and they return to their paddling.
We make it to Sentosa, where another co-conspirator -- a squat Indian man calling himself Ravi -- picks us up in a truck. The three of us lie down in the sweltering heat under a tarp as we trust Ravi to drive us back to the mainland. Next to me, Tan Vee Bun has fallen asleep, playing little spoon to Robert Sebastian Cheong, his eyes open and blank, silently processing the events of the night.
Ravi drops us off near Pandan Reservoir, where a wooden raft and three packets of chicken rice lie in wait. Robert Sebastian Cheong hugs Ravi goodbye, and we set off Northward. This time, Robert Sebastian Cheong does the driving, while Tan Vee Bun and I sit cross legged under a makeshift tent built into the wood, silently munching on the chicken rice.
It’s not the best chicken rice. It’s clearly been sitting in the sun for a while, and the rice and the chilli sauce feel insipid, and the chicken is tasteless. I drown it in the watery chilli sauce to get a small modicum of flavour. The chicken rice was clearly not made by Singaporean hawkers.
I ask myself, who is the enemy now? The Singapore citizenry? The puppets of the government? I think back to the evening, filled with the minorities of Singapore, the foreigners, the construction workers, the people who work in the small hours, hosing down the grime of Orchard Road, ignored by the foolish and the blind. If the citizenry is the indoctrinated enemy, what does the non-citizentry become? Is the future in the non-citizentry, the foreigners?
My head moves in circles -- and the clear logic informing my crusade escapes me, spinning and twirling around into an ever shrinking ouroboros. The eddies and riptides forming at the juncture of two oceanic currents. In my mind’s eye, the images of the lizards molting in the bunker underneath Bukit Brown hiss at me. I decide that it is the machinations of the lizards that has done me in. The lizards and their plans and their dog eating ways. I vow to fight them, and whatever they represent.
I look at Robert Sebastian Cheong. Enemy of yesterday, friend of today, and lover of Tan Vee Bun. And then I notice the lizard scales on the back of his neck.
It takes me a few moments for me to process, and then, screaming, I attack. With a yelp, the homosexual falls to the ground and he reaches his arms up to push my face away. In a strange fugue of clarity, I zoom out from myself and float above the raft. I hear myself speaking in tongues, and I see myself sitting on top of Robert Sebastian Cheong as I try to strangle him. Soon, Tan Vee Bun pulls me away and the two of them work to tie me up, gagging me, and then leaving me at the back of the raft struggling and foaming at the mouth.
“He’s gone mad,” Robert Sebastian Cheong says, in that elitist Oxford accent.
“We’ll have to check on the tiles when we get back home,” says Tan Vee Bun, frowning.
I whimper into the gag, moaning helplessly as I struggle to process the metaphysics of the evening. In the distance, a koel sings out its unmistakable call.