Ministry of Moral Panic Read online

  “This is possibly the most exciting debut collection of stories by a Singapore writer I’ve ever read. Amanda Lee Koe has a breathtaking range. Like crystals, the stories are prismatic—but also jagged. Sometimes they deal with uncomfortable subject matter, like rape, or challenging characters, like a self-mutilating, sexually precocious girl. But this is a writer who takes risks. This is the kind of book that will get under your skin because the author herself has spent devoted hours under her characters’.”

  —Alfian Sa’at, author of Malay Sketches

  “Witty and wonderfully inventive.”

  —Clarissa Oon, The Straits Times

  “There is nothing staid or predictable about an Amanda Lee Koe story, and readers expecting another local writer waxing lyrical about the everyday intricacies of HDB life will be pleasantly disappointed. Each story is inventive in its own way, and showcases her astute observational powers and flair for writing in equal parts. [They] break the mould of ones set in Singapore and dealing with Singaporeans, and look set to inspire a new generation of writers by changing their perception of what local short stories can be.”

  —Jennani Durai, The Straits Times

  “There is a deftness of touch, a sureness of intent, a knowingness of accomplishment that makes it hard to believe that Ministry of Moral Panic is Amanda Lee Koe’s first book of fiction. She has marked out in virgin territory a realm of her own, a kingdom of weird, non-conforming, stubborn passions in Singapore. And she has done so without resorting to the usual pieties of understanding and tolerance. She has looked directly at the contorted subject and drawn every contortion that she could see. The collection is eminently readable. I should know; I read it straight through—all fourteen stories—on my flight from Singapore to New York. I had not been able to read on a plane for a while. Too uncomfortable and distracted. But these stories carried me to the end.”

  —Jee Leong Koh, author of The Pillow Book

  “Amanda Lee Koe’s melancholic, often heartbreaking tales of urban malaise are elegies of individual yearnings. At her best, tides of words flow like movements of music, their cadences aspiring towards the magic of poetry. In this debut collection, the author has distinguished herself as a competent, lyrical raconteur.”

  —Quarterly Literary Review Singapore

  “Amanda Lee Koe is mesmerising. Her characters sleepwalk out of a Haruki Murakami novel, across the forgotten set of a Wong Kar-wai film, before nestling in a subway with warm paninis of lust, hysteria, anomie, dissonance and fresh lettuce. One of the finest writers in her generation.”

  —Daren Shiau, author of Heartland

  “Once in a while a book excites me so much that I can’t get over the excitement to sit down and continue reading. This is one of them. It is one of the best works in Singapore today and highly recommended.”

  —Oh Yong Hwee, author of Ten Sticks and One Rice

  “I finished this book in one sitting. It is—for the lack of a better adjective— unputdownable. Evocative and inventive, Amanda brings something new and original to the Singaporean literature scene. She paints her characters so vividly; honest, raw, and flawed. I like how her characters are displayed as quintessentially Singaporean, and that they are also nonconformists, in a sense. They are not merely two-dimensional—they possess a rich layer of personality, with real dreams and desires.”

  —The Book Jacket

  Copyright © 2013 by Amanda Lee Koe

  All rights reserved

  Published in Singapore by Epigram Books

  www.epigrambooks.sg

  Edited by Jason Erik Lundberg

  Cover design and layout by Lydia Wong

  These pieces were originally published (in slightly different form) in the following places:

  “Flamingo Valley”, Bellevue Literary Review, Fall 2013

  “Pawn”, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Vol. 12, No. 3, July 2013

  “The King of Caldecott Hill”, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Vol. 12, No. 4, October 2013

  “Love Is No Big Truth”, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, March 2013

  “Laundromat”, From the Belly of the Cat, Math Paper Press, October 2013

  “Siren”, Eastern Heathens, Ethos Books, March 2013

  Published with the support of

  National Library Board, Singapore

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Lee Koe, Amanda, 1987-

  Ministry of moral panic : stories / Amanda Lee Koe. – Singapore :

  Epigram Books, 2013.

  p. cm

  ISBN: 978-981-07-5732-8 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-981-07-5733-5 (ebook)

  I. Title.

  PR9570.S53

  S823 -- dc23 OCN855509308

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  With thanks to Amelia Ng, Wei Fen Lee, Wei-Ling Woo and Winnie Wu—ALK

  First Edition: October 2013

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Bud,

  left standing.

  Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore’s airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL world. There was no dirt whatsoever; no muss, no furred fractal edge to things. Outside, the organic, florid as ever in the tropics, had been gardened into brilliant green, and all-too-perfect examples of itself. Only the clouds were feathered with chaos—weird columnar structures towering above the Strait of China.

  The cab driver warned me about littering. He asked where I was from.

  He asked if it was clean there. “Singapore very clean city.” One of those annoying Japanese-style mechanical bells cut in as he exceeded the speed limit, just to remind us both that he was doing it. There seemed to be golf courses on either side of the freeway . . .

  “You come for golf?”

  “No.”

  “Business?”

  “Pleasure.”

  He sucked his teeth. He had his doubts about that one.

  — William Gibson, “Disneyland with the Death Penalty”, Wired, 1993

  Flamingo Valley

  LING KO MUI, the hot fuss of Flamingo Valley, the old Malay man says. Oh ho, you still gots it, don’t you, baby.

  All the old Chinese men and women turn up their yellow wrinkled faces like sea turtles, and Deddy Haikel gives a flourish that looks like shazam. Ling Ko Mui creaks her gaze tentatively toward him.

  Yes, you! Deddy Haikel says, I’m talking to you, girl, but her clouded eyes have swivelled back to the television set, where some Mandarin travel show is playing.

  Didn’t you ask me to take you for a ride on my motorbike?

  Didn’t you come see me play the National Theatre?

  Didn’t your Chinese boyfriend beat me up on Bencoolen Street?

  It’s Deddy Haikel!

  He picks up his guitar, which is never ever too far away, and begins strumming the first few chords of ‘Barbara Shimmies on Bugis Street’. His voice isn’t like it was any more, not since the throat operation, but it reaches into Ling Ko Mui and she looks up at him, her squinting eyes almost meeting his.

  The woman is nyanyuk, one of the old Chinese men croaks to Deddy Haikel, twirling a finger beside his temple. Doesn’t remember anything. Can’t even recognise her daughter.

  Deddy Haikel lets the riff sag, props a leg on a chair and says, Hey, this whole ward is the nyanyuk ward, isn’t it? Don’t think you’re so smart. You’re soft in the head too. He turns back to Ling Ko Mui, but she has averted her eyes,
in exactly the same manner as when she was eighteen and he asked her for a dance.

  There are things that cut through swathes of memory, there are things you take with you that are non-essential, that drag you down, but you can’t offload them because there is only one way to throw them overboard and that is for you to walk the plank.

  • • •

  He’d finished his set in the small pub, covers of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, played on a guitar he’d saved up a year and a half to purchase, delivering newspapers on weekends. He’d skipped school to see Cliff Richards & the Shadows at Happy World in 1961 and could there be anything better?

  He’d come off the small raised platform and was making his way to the bar. The pub, popular with British servicemen, was a short distance away from the barracks. In the mass of khaki uniforms, there was a young Chinese girl in a full white skirt, prim on a bar stool. He wondered if she was here with someone—it was rare to see girls out alone in the evenings, much less in bars. When he reached the bar she turned.

  You’re very good, she said.

  Thank you. Do you come here often?

  My father owns the pub. We live upstairs.

  It must get noisy.

  It does, but I love music. The only thing I don’t understand is why it’s always only the Eurasians and you Malays. We don’t ever have Chinese musicians coming in to play.

  He laughed. You Chinese are too busy trying to be businessmen. Making real money.

  That’s sad.

  Nah, it’s how the world works—it’s how your father can give me five dollars for playing tonight’s set.

  Listen, I’m starving—will you take me to eat? I saw that you ride a motorbike. I’ve never been on one.

  Sure. What would you like to eat?

  Surprise me. As long as we get there on your motorbike.

  • • •

  They sat across a rickety aluminium table at a kedai makan, platters of nasi kandar and sup kambing between them. Ling Ko Mui picked up a fork and spoon. Deddy Haikel considered the cutlery briefly, then reached in with his right hand as he normally would.

  Is there a technique?

  To?

  To eating with your hands?

  He showed her how to gather the rice into a loose ball, packing it more tightly as he went along. She imitated him with her own hands.

  Only with your right hand.

  Why?

  Well . . . the left is unclean.

  I could wash it.

  No, not like that. The right hand is for eating, and the left hand—the left hand is for cleaning your bottom.

  Ah, I see.

  Do you like the rice?

  It’s delicious. But why is Malay chilli sweet?

  It helps the musicians write better love songs.

  • • •

  Every Friday evening, he would play the 8–9pm set at the pub owned by Ling Ko Mui’s father, and when her father was busy at the counter, they would sneak out for supper on his motorbike—Malay food one week, Chinese food the next. Her father was cordial enough to Deddy Haikel the musician, but Deddy Haikel the suitor would have been tossed out the back door like the beansprout ends and chicken bones left over from dinner. Over teh halia or hot Horlicks after supper, they would talk about music. She told him he ought to get a backing band, that he ought to write his own songs, that she could help with the lyrics.

  Once, he came to the pub an hour earlier. Her parents were at the temple of the Goddess of Mercy, her younger siblings playing catch on the street. They ran upstairs, light-footed, and she drew the curtains together before unearthing her father’s record player from under a Chinese silk doily. They crouched close together as he watched her delicate fingers put on an imported Petula Clark record, tuning the volume down. When ‘Ya Ya Twist’ started playing, Deddy Haikel got to his feet and put out his hand. Ling Ko Mui hesitated, then took it; they danced in the gathering twilight, ceiling fan whirring slowly above them.

  She started singing softly with the music as he held her close, and then closer. He loved the sweet, nasal quality to her voice and he closed his eyes, letting his thoughts race through—perhaps she could be a backing vocalist in his band? Would they have a Malay wedding, or a Chinese one? Could he give up the Qur’an for her? Would she give her own parents up for him, the way he was prepared to give his up for her? He wanted to say something, but the record was ending, running empty under the needle. Ling Ko Mui pulled away from him gently, kneeling by the floor to flip the vinyl.

  • • •

  There was a Chinese girl I was gila in love with, Deddy Haikel says to the young nurse, as she listens to his heartbeat, assessing the damage of this second heart attack. I would have done anything to get into her pants, and it wasn’t even about that.

  There was a Chinese boy who felt the same way about her. I didn’t know about him, but he knew about me. I was walking down Bencoolen Street one day when someone tapped my shoulder. When I turned around, he punched me right in the face. He’d sent his men to do the legwork: they knew I played Friday sets at her father’s pub and that I had supper with her after. That she would put her arms on either side of my waist as she rode pillion on my motorbike.

  He smelled of treated cuttlefish and shrivelled red dates; told me he was the son of a dried sundries merchant and that they were made of money. He could give Ling Ko Mui the life a girl like her deserved. I went at him, but he had these lackeys with bad teeth and white singlets under unbuttoned shirts. They broke a rib of mine.

  When I lay in hospital I thought about it like a carnival act. I’d reach into my throat, all the way in, and unearth this rib between my thumb and forefinger. I’d transfigure it into a bone-china rose and press it into her soft palm. She’d understand, she’d wrap her fingers around it and tell me that her heart had fallen on my side of the fence.

  You’re nothing, the merchant’s son had said into my ear as his men held me back. You’re just a loafer, sitting in the shade of a palm tree, playing your stupid songs to ten people in a pub. If I see you hanging around her again, you’ll find the head of a pig on the front door of your father’s house. My men are everywhere: if you speak with her, you’ll find a parang in each of your kidneys the next morning—don’t think I’m not up to this. He stamped my guitar to bits and spat into my face. Besides, you’ll be doing yourself a favour, really—did you ever think for just one second that she would really go with a Malay boy?

  That was when I knew I had to make it.

  My guitar was my life. I stole money from a Chinese medicine hall and bought a new one, practised day in and day out. I stopped looking at girls. I stopped looking into the mirror. I grew calluses atop my calluses on my fingers. I made love to my guitar.

  It took years, and I’m not going to pretend like it was easy, but I did it. I became famous. We had the adoration of schoolgirls and young women: Malay, Chinese and Indian. I never stopped looking for her face in the crowd, or imagining it, but deep down I knew he was right—she would never have been mine.

  • • •

  A constable was flagging Deddy Haikel’s motorcycle down. Deddy Haikel’s hair hung to his shoulders, blasé to the deterrent posters plastered all about town: Males with Long Hair Will Be Attended To Last. He wore motorcycle boots, a shirt with the top three buttons undone, and drainpipe jeans. These jeans were the sort that the police couldn’t pass a Coke glass bottle through—the test that determined if your pants were too tight. If the Coke bottle couldn’t come through your pant leg, you would have to remove your pants.

  Deddy Haikel knew all the lyrics to the White Album, and John Lennon was his favourite Beatle because he’d heard through the grapevine—fancy Liverpool and Singapore neighbouring cities, not colonial affiliates—that when John Lennon met Yoko Ono, they went back to his place and made love all night. When John’s wife, Cynthia, who had been out of town, walked through the door the next morning to see Yoko wrapped in her towel, all John said to Cynthia was—Oh, hello.


  That is how a rock star should be, Deddy Haikel thought, as he lit a cig, as he picked chords on his guitar, as he thumbed the calluses on his fingers, as he rode a Malay girl, as the police were unable to pass the Coke bottle through his pant leg—Oh, hello.

  Pants off, the Chinese constable told Deddy Haikel in Malay. Deddy Haikel shrugged his shoulders, grinned at the fellow. He wriggled out of them, with some effort because they were that tight. He hoped they wouldn’t discard his jeans, that secretly back at HQ they would squeeze their fat Chinese calves into them, checking themselves out in the mirror, wishing they too could adopt these vistas of fashion, music, rebellion. Sighing as they holstered their batons, as they downed the dregs of their sock-kopi so as not to doze off on duty.

  Deddy Haikel thought—a glowing, swollen thought that felt like the beginnings of a hard-on—as he passed his jeans amicably to the constable: in exactly twenty-four hours, I’ll be on a stage. Paid to make girls scream. Don’t you know who I am? Tomorrow I play the National Theatre. A sold-out show.

  • • •

  3,420 seats in the amphitheatre. 3,420 seats filled, and they all know the lyrics to every song, this makes him want to cry.

  The back of the guitar against his pelvis, every twang amplified.

  Malay girls, Chinese girls, Indian girls—all ages, and the same with men, but it is the girls he sees and the girls he hears, and they are screaming his name.

  Mid-set someone throws a bullet-bra bustier onto the stage. As he leaves the microphone and bends to pick it up, he’s thinking, John, hey John, I get it.

  Deddy Haikel forgets to breathe because the song is his breath. He is thirsting and he is drinking in every yearning face in the crowd. He is not looking to a faraway point in the distance like his manager told him to, he is revelling in the specificity of each face, and he can see in their faces that they all want to touch him.

  Twelve songs but it feels like it’s just the first one even at the last. They think so too, they have banded together to demand Encore, encore.

  Barbara shimmies down Bugis Street