The River's Song by Suchen Christine Lim

Author:Suchen Christine Lim [Lim, Suchen Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-906582-57-9
Publisher: Aurora Metro Books
Published: 2014-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

22

So here he is again. Same time, same date, same spot. Weng sighs. What does he get out of it? The same question each year, and each year he can never come up with a satisfactory answer. Each year, he’s here at the riverfront to play his flute. A personal commemorative event, he explains. The small groups of old men seated here and there on the stone benches, and those boys and girls holding hands… ah well, they’re here to pak-tor, out on a date. Not to listen to him, he assures the police officer. He’s not disturbing the peace, but nevertheless, the officer gives him a warning.

He’d started coming here soon after his return from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Since then, he had not missed a single anniversary of the river squatters’ protest. On this day, each year, he comes to the river in the evening, and as though by coincidence, his former neighbours and fellow squatters, old men in their sixties and seventies now, are here too, sitting on the stone benches, enjoying the breeze.

He looks around. This evening, some of the familiar faces among them are missing. They must have passed on, or perhaps they are too old or too infirm to come this year. The number who comes is bound to diminish. When the last of them dies, what happens then? Will he return? Ah well, he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

This year though, something new has happened. The denizens of the Internet have claimed him. The bloggers, the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube users have taken note of his annual performance. Yesterday, he’d stumbled on a blog with a photo of him and the caption: Silent Flautist Strikes with Great Soundscape at the Riverfront. Another blog: Lone Flautist at Boat Quay. Unlike the early years, when no one had paid him any attention, many youngsters these days try to talk to him, but he keeps his distance and silence. He of all people should be aware of the draconian law on public peace and order. So he has not spoken to nor acknowledged their presence, nor the presence of the old men, his former neighbours. Neither has he made any reference to his annual performance at the river to the press. Yet each year, the crowd of listeners grows a little larger, a little younger.

Tonight, the young crowd looks like they number close to a hundred. He has no idea where they come from. The music schools that have mushroomed all over the city, perhaps. The young people are sprawled on the grounds in front of the Asian Civilization Museum. He takes out his flute. Poor ignorant kids. They don’t know what these old men know but can’t articulate. Illiterate and resigned, these former squatters and coolies have neither the skill nor the will to speak the language of prosperous Singapore. They know neither English nor Mandarin. Yet these masters of the Teochew and Hokkien dialects know like the back of their hands the histories of lives left out of the sanitized history lessons taught in school.

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