The Moonlight Palace (2 page)

TWO

In Which I Relate the Family History, Making Some of It Up as I Go

S
ingapore was the smallest British Commonwealth state in Asia. I do not say this to brag, and yet tininess seems as much of a marvel as immensity. It takes energy for something so small to preserve itself. If not for the British Empire, Singapore might have been a crumb of land brushed off into the waters that surround it on every side. Or, more likely, it would have been swallowed by the Malay Kingdom a mere two kilometers north across the narrow Johor Strait.

Like all Singaporean children, I was taught at an early age to heartily thank the English gentleman, Sir Stamford Raffles, who saved the Singaporeans from themselves. I knew a few homely facts, never discussed in our history books. These secrets came down my own ornately curved and twisting family line. For family stories are never as direct as history books, and therefore they are more true.

I had never heard my own history, only overheard it. “Why stir the hornet’s nest?” said Uncle Chachi. Perhaps I had invented a past. I had heard things whispered and hinted at, invented, revised, and argued behind closed doors. But even doors made of tamarind wood were not thick enough to fool a child’s sharp ears. Children live by their sense of hearing. And I, Agnes Hussein, the orphan, had developed better listening skills than most. Let’s agree right here at the outset that memory is made up of one part perception, one part intuition, and one part pure invention.

My family history was a jigsaw puzzle with many missing pieces, and too many shapes that looked like one another. Because I was orphaned at such a young age—I had not yet started school—I believe my relatives thought that any discussion of the past might harm me, even the distant past. So I became a detective early. I hunted for linking bits and corners, and put together something that looks like this:

In 1812, my honored ancestor, the Sultan of Johor-Riau, Sultan Mahmud Shah III, died after reigning peaceably for more than fifty years. Inconveniently, he died without naming an heir. This may have been deliberate, for he had fathered two sons by two women, both of Buginese extraction, famous for their ferocity. Thus, he passed away without offending either one.

The elder son was Tengku Hussein, my great-great-grandfather. Hussein had the advantage of the firstborn. What’s more, says Uncle Chachi, Hussein was handsome like me. He was considered a more likely successor than his younger half brother, Tengku Omar Rahman. Furthermore, his mother knew where the royal regalia lay hidden.

But as luck would have it, Hussein was away in Pahang, in the Malay Kingdom, when his father died. Some said that he was in search of gold. Others claimed he was simply off gambling—even then, people looked the other way in Pahang when it came to placing bets.

“Your people have always been gamblers,” Nei-Nei Down grumbled to Uncle Chachi.

Some maintained Hussein was on a leopard hunt.

“My people have always been bold,” Uncle Chachi retorted.

Others said he was chasing women. No comment here.

Whatever the truth may be about why Hussein was not on hand to claim his throne, it is certain that the aggressive Bugis faction sided with the younger son and his mother, and quickly organized a coronation ceremony for Tengku Omar Rahman, leaving Hussein to cool his heels in the monsoon winds off Pahang.

Whenever my Uncle Chachi was two minutes late to dinner, Nei-Nei Down would say, “The Husseins cannot come on time, even if a kingdom depends on it.”

Poor Tengku Omar Rahman was reluctant to seize the crown and offered it back as soon as Hussein sailed home. (Tengku changed his mind when the Buginese threatened to cut off his head.)

While the two brothers played hot potato with the crown, others plotted to gain control of the kingdom. Whispered rumors contested Rahman’s legitimacy. Hussein’s mother kept the royal regalia locked up in her closet and refused to hand it over.

But in the end, determination and will decided the matter, as it generally does in such events. The powerful
temenggong
of Singapore sided with the returning elder son, Hussein, as did the Malayan nobility. And Hussein’s mother was more ferocious than Rahman’s mother, quicker and cleverer to make alliances. It is said she declared she would not sleep until the royal robes were safely on her son Hussein’s back. Frankly, I don’t think the two brothers cared.

Sultan Rahman barely left off his prayers except to eat and sleep, and spent all his time in a tiny makeshift mosque behind the palace walls. By the time the British showed up to form an alliance against the Dutch in 1818, Rahman had all but disappeared from view. The British negotiated with the mighty temenggong—and with his friend, my great-great ancestor Hussein.

The famous Sir Thomas Raffles (savior of Singapore, as we chanted year after year, in primary school) wasted no time, and before anyone could object, he’d written and ratified a treaty for a prime British trading post in Singapore. In return, the East India Company guaranteed the temenggong and Hussein—now Sultan Hussein—handsome yearly stipends, their own residences, and land.

Sadly, my little-known great-great-grandfather is best known for selling Singapore to the British.

Hussein’s devout half brother, Rahman, was ousted and renamed Sultan of Lingga, and the royal regalia was taken from its hiding place in the closet and placed on Hussein’s back.

As chief of police, head of the army, and the man responsible for public security, the temenggong became the true local leader of Singapore. Singapore was still ruled by men in uniform. It was the other side of our personality. One side was smiling and gentle and happy. I think this was the true Singapore. But let me admit that like anyone else we had a nasty side, and we relegated all the dirty work to the modern-day temenggong.

I have not forgotten about my ancestor. The new Sultan Hussein was homesick for his island of exile. He had been happiest on the Riau Islands, surrounded by his entourage. I think he was ready to bolt—and this would have made things hard for the British. They needed their man to stay put.

“Your family,” said Nei-Nei Down, “is always trying to wriggle out of things.”

“My family is infinitely patient,” replied Uncle Chachi.

In order to compensate him for losses and inconveniences, the British agreed to build Hussein his own palace—an enormous compound on twenty-three hectares east of Beech Road, deeded by the East India Company. This first palace was built entirely of acacia wood, famous for its fragrance, and was large enough to house all his family and entourage from the Riau Islands.

“You Husseins,” said Nei-Nei Down, “love a crowd.”

Singapore continued to change and grow. By 1824, my ancestor’s enormous palace was standing in the way of progress. Sir Raffles had already abandoned Singapore, never to return. The palace was reduced to half its size in order to make way for the North Bridge Road, built by convict labor—home to trolley lines and shops, St. Andrews Church, the public library, and the Raffles Institution of Higher Learning. It was no longer the posh, secluded address it once had been.

Sultan Hussein complained to the East India Company, which then built the grandiose Sultan Mosque nearby. There, they promised, he would be remembered by a worthy Muslim edifice, with its two-tiered roof and golden dome. (Of course, like the palace, the original mosque didn’t survive, either, but my great-great-grandfather did not live to see it torn down.) Sultan Shah Hussein hated the new half-sized palace and lived abroad until his death. His eldest son rebuilt the palace yet again. I think he was an Oxford man. He rebuilt the palace to look like an Englishman’s manor house, with a few grand flourishes.

The new palace sacrificed much of its oriental charm. Gone was the sweet-smelling acacia wood. Gone were the red-and-gold-painted lions guarding the front door; the faces carved into the scrollwork had vanished, the pale-blue tiling on the roof was replaced. The new two-story palace—the one in which I had always lived—was designed by the noted British architect George Drumgoole Coleman and built of pale concrete—concrete!—in the classic Palladian style.

Though it retained a few Malayan touches, our Kampong Glam Palace most closely resembled Coleman’s more famous Singapore building, the Old Parliament House. Tourists often confused the two. Over the years, more than one stranger had knocked at our door asking to see the Parliamentary Chamber and the famous large brass elephant out front. My uncle Chachi relished these visitors. Like many Singaporeans, he was more British than most proper Englishmen.

As time went on, our claim to the palace became shakier. Our original deed was extended in 1836, after the palace’s first reconstruction (i.e., when they cut it in half to make room for progress). Reduced though the palace was, ownership of it rested “with the family of the Sultan of Johor and his heirs in perpetuity, as long as any current male family member lives therein.”

These 1836 papers were real. I had seen them with my own eyes. British Grandfather kept them safe with other important family-related records, because we all knew that Uncle Chachi would misplace them or throw them out by mistake, as he had done with countless other things, including an emerald bracelet he once bought for Nei-Nei Up, to match the sultana’s necklace. Money, we did not have. But we had always possessed remarkable jewelry—our only savings bank and security.

By 1836, the British had ended the East India Company’s control of trade in Singapore. The treaty with my family, therefore, the piece of paper guaranteeing occupation and ownership of the Kampong Glam Palace, occurred in a rare historic vacuum. No doubt the British knew at the time that the law of succession was on their side. They had learned that lesson from King Henry VIII. Without sons, a kingdom was worth nothing.

The Sultan Ali Iskander Shah, my great-grandfather, was well past middle age when the deal was cut, and the sultan’s son, my paternal grandfather, was a sickly teenager. All the other offspring were daughters, and therefore of no account. What the British did not realize was that a new child had recently been born inside the Kampong Glam compound—a yellow-faced, mixed-breed, grinning, lively baby boy: Uncle Chachi.

THREE

The Palace by Moonlight

I
was lying awake one night in November, brooding. It had been a disappointing evening. Dawid and I had heard at school that there was to be an especially large and beautiful full moon that night. We rushed through our dinners, and then debated about where would be the best place for moon viewing. I was all for going down to the harbor. Dawid argued that the best spot was on the hill just above the Sultan Mosque, the mosque built by my ancestor.

I suggested we head to Bukit Timah Hill—the highest point in all of Singapore, a two-hour train ride away. I meant this as a joke. Dawid wanted to check the train schedule. It was said that tigers still wandered the Bukit Timah Reserve. Plus, I pointed out, the moon would have risen and become a small, high circle by the time we arrived. We wanted to see the moon fresh and low.

In the end, we tramped around in circles, looking for a quiet place in Singapore to stand. Of course, we were not the only ones. Young people were rushing toward the harbor. We saw our schoolmates dressed in festive clothes—the girls revealing their kneecaps, the boys in their brightest checked shirts. Out of their blue-and-white school uniforms, they celebrated with every possible color and pattern.

“Like birds in full plumage,” I said. I was not feeling especially sociable.

Dawid shook his head. I could not tell if he, too, disdained the crowds or if he was disappointed to be missing out on a celebration. He was a lonely boy, far from his own people. The palace was an empty place full of old people. My heart softened.

“Come,” I said. “We’ll go down to the harbor with the others. I heard there would be gin on hand.”

“No,” he said. “The moon should be viewed quietly and respectfully.”

“They say our ancestors come back to bless us on the night of the tenth moon,” I told him. “Maybe they are out here looking around for us.”

Dawid’s eyes were large and dark. “That was the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts,” he said. “Months ago.”

“So many ghosts,” I said. “Who can keep track of them?—Let’s try the bridge at Market Street.” I grabbed his hand to drag him in this new direction. I did not stand on ceremony with Dawid; he felt like family.

When we were children together, dancing class was required at Raffles, and the boys and girls lined up on opposite sides of the Great Hall. Inevitably, Dawid made his way to my side, slipping his pudgy hand into mine. He was a chubby boy and his hands were always damp. The other children teased about it—“Ooh, Aggie has an admirer.” “Aggie has a husband!”

Now and again in those classes, Javar, the tallest, gawkiest boy in our class—as tall as a full-grown man by age eleven—would beat Dawid to my side, and then Dawid would stand alone looking helpless. One or the other of these two misfits always came to claim me. As time passed, I became genuinely friendly with both boys. Then one day, Javar’s father died unexpectedly. They named a basketball net after him at our school, the Pavel Prindash Memorial Basketball Hoop. I thought that was worse than no memorial at all.

Soon after the death, Javar’s family moved away. A half-dozen years later, Dawid came to board with us. We were nearly grown now, Dawid and I, in our last year of high school. He was much more studious than I. I sometimes suspected that Dawid was waiting for another opportunity to slip his moist hand into mine. I did not want to ruin a good friendship. Eventually, I knew, he’d meet a nice Indian girl and settle down.

We walked around in circles before we gave up on moon viewing as a hopeless cause. The weather refused to cooperate. The evening was cloudy and cool for November. We were between the monsoon seasons, but it always seemed we had more rain in November than any other time of year. The sky was smeared with clouds. Over by Orchard Road, they had put in the new electrical lights, which made it harder to see the sky. Things looked a little better in Chinatown, where the gas lanterns shone with a silky, soft glow, but still we saw no moon at all, no stars.

Our noisy Raffles classmates had given up the search. We had watched them heading up from the harbor in bright, frilly clumps, the boys shoving each other’s shoulders. They’d been as noisy as ever, but I’d felt nostalgic. Soon we would be graduating and going our separate ways forever.

Dawid and I stopped for bowls of noodle soup at our favorite cafe, which was cheap and where they did not pester us to hurry. The soup was greasy, hot, spicy, and comforting.

“At least we have noodle soup,” I said, tilting my bowl.

“We will always have noodle soup,” he agreed.

We headed home. I felt rain in the air. My hair was starting to frizz. It was late. “Uncle Chachi will be worried,” I said, chewing on my lower lip. This was a bad habit I had.

“No, he won’t,” Dawid said stoutly. “He knows you’re with me.”

“How does he?”

“Because I asked his permission before we went out.” That was one of the many things I liked about Dawid. He was responsible, and as honest as a child.

After another minute or two walking quietly in the darkness, I asked him, “What comes next, do you suppose?”

“Next?” Dawid said. He stopped walking and faced me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean in life,” I said. “Soon we will graduate from high school. Then what?”

“I will go back to India and work for my father,” Dawid said. “And you will find some suitable young man and marry him.” I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or serious.

“No, I won’t,” I told him. “Besides, it’s not just a matter of what we do or don’t do. I wonder about the futur
e . . .
if we will ever find our ultimate purpose.”

“Oh,” he said. Dawid toyed with a splinter of loose wood on a railing in front of our palace. I hoped he wouldn’t accidentally break it off—we had too many repairs we couldn’t afford to make. “I sometimes think my ultimate purpose is to please my parents,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for so long.”

“It can’t be only that,” I said. “Can it?”

“It could be almost anything.”

I gazed at the outline Kampong Glam Palace made against the misty night. I had some vague idea that, like my nighttime dreams, my ultimate purpose was held fast within those walls. But how? And what was I supposed to do about it?

“Shall we go inside and play mah-jongg?” Dawid offered. He’d gotten good at it. Nei-Nei Down had taught him how. It was a game that required great patience; in my opinion, more patience than it was worth.

“I’m sleepy,” I said, and yawned to demonstrate. “I think the noodle soup contains a special kind of stupefying additive.”

“It’s the soy sauce,” Dawid said.

It was not yet ten o’clock, but I did go straight to bed. I craned my neck to check outside my window first, looking up, way up, to see if the moon had decided at last to put in an appearance. Then I lay there awake a long time, trying to reassemble the jumbled pieces of my family’s past and future. I had not finished my history assignment for the night, but I fell asleep with the book in my hand.

As sometimes happens when one goes to bed at an early hour, something woke me before dawn. It was a sound like a rusty gate opening and closing, and then the sound burst into song. A pair of yellow-vented bulbuls had moved into our garden, and the male was singing lustily to his mate. Perhaps he sensed the approach of sunrise, glimmering above the tembusu tree.

When I pushed my window open, I could smell the tembusu’s creamy blossoms. In the dim light, I could see the bright yellow of the male bird’s back feathers. He flitted over to one of the palace’s little ponds. He flew in circles like a bat. When he caught sight of himself in the water, he burst into song again, trying to outsing his imaginary rival. He strutted up and down the lawn, preening. His mate had not moved from the tembusu tree.

“I’m sure she’s impressed,” I told the bulbul. He went right on hopping, singing madly at his own reflection. “Men,” I said, shaking my head.

Arab Street, beyond the Kampong Glam compound, was silent and dark at that hour. The sun rose slowly above the mahogany trees that one of my ancestors had planted. A horse and carriage clopped by, out on an early errand. A few bicyclists rode past, the chrome of their machines glinting in the eerie half-light. Then, a little past seven, it began to rain. I raced downstairs to grab the zinc buckets and placed them below new leaking places in the roof. Running along the downstairs hallway, I could hear Uncle Chachi praying in his room, his voice rising and falling, his head toward Mecca.

Back in my bedroom, I wiped down the wet windowsill. The pair of birds had gone; they were no doubt hiding somewhere. One by one, umbrellas opened in the rain falling on Arab Street: pale-blue and bright-yellow umbrellas; flowered; pink; lilac and red, like flowers blossoming in the downpour.

I knew without a doubt that I had to save the Kampong Glam Palace. No matter how desperate the act, somehow I would rescue it. Even the dirt of the garden was enmeshed in my soul, and in the souls of my ancestors, and I could not be severed from it.