DESPERATE TIMES
By Maureen Lim
The evening calm was shattered by insistent shouts and thunderous banging on the front door of the Tan bungalow. In the main hall, Bibik Siew Tin, her son, his wife and their baby stood silently staring at the door.
Siew Tin sighed. It was not the first time that the Japanese soldiers came calling. It was common knowledge that soldiers would frequently gain entry into local houses in search of young, unmarried women. That was the reason Siew Tin had hastily married off her 18-year-old daughter Bee Lian, minus the pomp and ceremony that usually accompanied such an occasion in a wealthy Peranakan family like theirs. After all, her husband, Tan Guan Seng, was a prominent figure in Singapore’s business circles. A lengthy, grand wedding was expected, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
Three surly soldiers barged in and surveyed the house. Once they were satisfied that there were no young maidens to be had, they stormed off.
The matriarch’s mind wandered back to the events of the past year. No one imagined that the mighty British battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battle cruiser HMS Repulse would be sunk off the east coast of Malaya. Who would have thought that the invincible British Forces could be vanquished by the Japanese army who invaded Singapore on bicycles? The inhabitants of Syonan-to struggled to survive. With a severe shortage of rice and other staples, many declared that they could not bear look at another piece of ubi kayu (tapioca) again after consuming it at every meal, months on end.
Those who had pre-war money (not the wortless Japanese “banana” notes) hid their cash in Jacob’s Original Cream Crackers tins and buried them in their gardens. Siew Tin herself had taped stacks of banknotes to the back of two ancestral portraits that hung above the family altar. “Rather ingenious,” she thought smugly. But alas, her gold jewellery was gone forever! She sighed at the memory of the many pieces she had bartered for her chuchu’s (granddaughter’s) milk powder. “When the child is older,” thought Siew Tin, “I will tell her how she ‘ate up’ all her grandmother’s gold jewellery!”
Siew Tin smiled slyly when she thought about her secret. “I may have lost all my gold, but I will never part with my anting-anting berlian (diamond earrings)!”
The earrings were an unexpected gift from Guan Seng when their son was born. Large berlian (diamonds) set in a bintang (star) design. The family jeweller had assured her that the stones were top grade. They sparkled so brightly and never failed to elicit compliments at weddings and other grand parties that she and Seng attended, often at the Raffles Hotel.
Her precious earrings, carefully wrapped in grease-proof paper, now lay hidden in her tempat sireh (A set of small containers and a pair of cutters used to prepare betel leaf and areca nut for chewing. The tempat sireh is a personal item that most nyonyas had).
Siew Tin thought long and hard before choosing a hiding place. A teapot, a kamcheng or some other vessel might not have been so safe as these were regularly handled by many, but the tempat sireh was hers alone. No one else used it. Once, her sister who was visiting had approached the set, but Siew Tin swiftly intercepted and offered to prepare ‘Bibik’s chewing gum’ for her. A close shave!
The earrings were small enough to be buried deep in the lime paste. Whenever she prepared her sireh, Siew Tin was careful to gently scrape the surface of the paste. The only other person privy to her secret was her daughter, just in case anything should happen to her.
Siew Tin was also grateful that she still had her silver and pearl earrings, the ones reserved for tua ha (mourning). Peranakan tradition dictated that gold jewellery was not to be worn during mourning, so when her Mama died, eight-year old Siew Tin had to have shaved garlic stems inserted into her pierced earlobes to keep them from closing up. What a horrid experience that had been! The stems were so thick! She winced when she remembered the pain. It was much worse than getting her ears pierced by a Katong goldsmith who jabbed a hot needle into her six-year old earlobes, then slid on a pair of slender gold hoops.
Siew Tin and her family survived the war years relatively unscathed, thanks to an unlikely friendship.
The former school next to the Tan bungalow served as a Japanese Officers’ Club during the war, complete with female entertainers. Siew Tin often wondered if they were they real geishas from Japan. From her verandah, she had a good view of the Club. By mid-afternoon each day, the ladies would start to doll themselves up. They whitened their faces and pinned sparkly ornaments to their elaborate black wigs. At dusk, uniformed men began to stream through the wrought-iron gates. As the sake flowed, the officers became increasingly boisterous. Music, male guffaws, feminine squeals and shouts of “Kanpai!” filled the night air, sometimes so loudly that Siew Tin was sure her sister who lived further away at Longkang Besar could hear them.
One night, a uniformed officer, complete with holstered revolver and a sword at his side, knocked on their front door. The majies (maids) were terrified, so Siew Tin answered the door herself. To her surprise, he was not drunk or looking for young girls, but had merely dropped by to enquire if the loud sounds from the Club were disturbing the family. Siew Tin invited him in and offered him tea. That was the start of an unexpected friendship with Hontoku-san.
He often dropped by for a chat and sang Japanese nursery rhymes to Siew Tin’s chu chu as he bounced her on his knee. Perhaps she reminded him of his own daughter back home. He sometimes brought extra rations of rice and sugar for the family. Siew Tin served him her homemade kueh. Kueh kosui (steamed rice flour cake rolled in grated coconut) quickly became his favourite.
Then one day in 1945, Japan surrendered. Crestfallen, Hontoku-san paid the family one last visit. He sat in his usual seat – a black mother-of-pearl armchair in the main hall– and announced that he was returning home in disgrace. Years later, Siew Tin tried to find him, through advertisements placed in Japanese newspapers, but she would never know what had become of the kind soldier.
After the war, Syonan-to became Singapore again, but so much had changed. Siew Tin retrieved her diamond earrings from their hiding place. She had made up her mind; she was not going to wait for special occasions to flaunt them. “I shall use them every day,” she thought. “Goodbye to desperate times!”