Out of the blue, an ah soh who lives in the next block rang us this morning.
“Where’s your mommy?” she said, as aunties often do.
My father had picked up the phone, so he said, “My mommy? My mommy has been dead for a long time.”
But she had called with some serious news: Someone was dead at the foot of my block, someone who seemed to have jumped out a window.
My father and I walked from window to window in our home to see that someone for ourselves. What we saw, in the end, was bright red newly-spilled blood, a handful of policemen and the contours of a body – man? woman? young? older? it was impossible to tell – that the police had covered with white canvas.
I looked up and down the block, looking for an open window. Which home had he or she fallen from?
“It’s either the 5th floor or the 7th floor. Windows are wide open,” I said to my father.
He went to the next room to tell my mother, who had come out of the bathroom.
I stood at the window myself, feeling nothing. Then, the tears came. If indeed it was a suicide, how desperate had he or she been to think of jumping, then do it? The worst I wished for, the one time I was desperate, was a convenient car accident to end everything. I did not think of jumping, of actually, actively dying. I am sad for this someone. Namo Amitabha.
2 comments:
Yes, there is something really depressing about a certain unknowable someone jumping off a block of HDB flats. I think that's why 12 Storeys, despite its limitations, worked.
I finally found WKW's Fallen Angels at the pirates btw (have seen it but wanted to rewatch). Along with his first one As Tears Go By. Also purchased the 2046 soundtrack which is excellent n actually better than the movie.
fallen angels...when i think of that movie, i think of that haunting chyi chin hokkien song, si mu de ren. if you should see that song at the pirates, lemme know.
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