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They are strange creatures, grand and noble and proud, and when an old man is perched on a rock, tossing them breadcrumbs and slimy salted cockles, he is given to Thought and Introspection. He muses that, if Thought and Introspection should have anthropomorphic personifications, Thought would look moody and preoccupied and Introspection would have a faraway look in its eyeballs, or any eyeball equivalents.
Or perhaps it is just this old man, who is not playing one or knick knack on anyone's thumbs, who experiences such things when he is perched on a rock and watching them gambol in the water. Indeed, who can tell? For very, very few have the privilege to even see them, much less watch them. But it is my prerogative, you see, because I am their guardian, in a way, and as far as they let me be. I am their farmer. In a way I inherited them. It is a family business.
They are wild things, in that they are very jealous of their liberty, but by no means are they cross-eyed and foaming at the mouth. They have dignity, and majesty, and gravity.
You respect things with gravity. There is a kind of force about it.
They are strange creatures.
I am telling this story from the islands of Singapore.
***
Tall, bony, and hoary, he had been a schoolteacher (although his students probably had had plenty of other names for him) and a holy terror (and those things that they called him were probably not quite so holy).
I have it on good authority that even the swaggering, robust boys in the school he taught in, the sort that seemed to be perpetually trying to expand their lung cavities and put as much distance between their chins and the ground as possible, went into a sort of rodent-like panic at the end of each year trying to find out of they would have him for any of their classes the following school season. If the timetables foretold such and certain doom, these young heroes would each deploy an even greater power, videlicet Mummy. Said maternal champions then laid siege to the headmaster's office with the popular campaign of Change My Son's Class.
I turned my nose up at these boys, and was condescending, and if I was going to be condescending I was going to do it properly, so I snorted as well.
"Wimps," said I.
I lived with him.
My mother and father had decided that they did not quite like each other as much as they had initially thought, and my grandfather, mother, brother and self went to live in a new house.
Old Man, my brother and I called him. It was descriptive.
Not old man, mind you, because that would have been disrespectful, but Old Man. I daresay he rather liked it, because I got the impression he took it in the context of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea.
Sometimes I added an adjective, so that it became Scary Old Man, but I never honoured him with it aloud, because I was not a lemming.
My brother went to live with my father soon after, my mother went to work, and so most of the time it was Old Man and myself.
I lived in complete and utter fear of him. Adjectives exist for a reason.
It was not that he ever hit me, no sir, not at all. My mother took care of the good wallopings any healthy young lad needs growing up. But he was fearsome, and had a frightful temper, oh boy what a frightful temper it was, and when he shouted, you had to shut your eyes and some small part of you inside somewhere that wasn"t quivering in absolute terror was expecting, when you opened your eyes once more, to see only the front door frame remain standing with the door creaking half off its hinges (Because everyone knows that, no matter what happens to the house, the front door frame will always remain standing with the door creaking half off its hinges).
Back then as a child, I never learned to love him. People have suggested that I might have, even then, under all that fear, done so unconsciously. I like optimistic people.
At some point, Old Man moved away to live by himself on his teacher's pension of two hundred local dollars a month. He said that my mother had enough on her hands what with work and trying to raise a son by herself without having to worry about him, and that he would be fine on his own. He was headstrong and stubborn and it would have been just as productive to argue with his socks.
He told my mother he had an old house on Pulau Rahsia, a tiny, inconsequential island among our southeastern cluster off the mainland, and so off he went.
Pulau Rahsia is a little south of the cluster, and very often is passed over by cartographers. There is a small village and a tiny school, and a couple of shops no bigger than sheds. There are no real roads; just winding narrow paths of yellow earth and dust, bald of grass. The grass there is stunted and dry for the sun is always too hot and bright.
Old bicycles lean against old huts. Little boats -sampans- are seen anchored to the shore or parked on the sand. It is a quiet place. Whatever is uninhabited is covered in undergrowth.
Old Man's "house" was just another hut, a deceptively ramshackle thing of zinc plates and attap and wooden planks and rusted nails and mats woven from dried coconut leaves.
What one saw most, were the waters, that glimmered dark tangerine and green, and something else. I think that even then, I had felt that there was more to the island than bicycles and dust.
I would go there, once a fortnight, hiring one of those sampans with outboard motors, from the mainland. I never really stayed long enough for any of those trips to amount to a real visit, and I must confess I never was really keen to.
Old Man would be out most of the time, so sometimes I didn"t even enter the hut. I would just leave whatever provisions or small packages my mother had sent with me for him at his doorstep. There really weren"t enough people with enough time and enough interest to steal anything. And then, I would go home.
I did, however, learn something of his life, with these fortnightly deliveries, and that he was just the same Old Man.
Here is how stubborn the old gentleman was. Permit me to present my case before you.
How much can one live on for two hundred dollars a month? My mother would send a thing or two his way, occasionally, but she herself did not have much to go by on. What was more, Old Man smoked. It is not cheap to char and shrivel your own lungs.
But being the smart Old Man that he was, he knew he had to make the money stretch, and here is what he did, and woe is me if I am fooling you. He would go out, each month, to the store and buy those cheap packets of instant noodles in bulk, and limes, and a bottle of vinegar, and tinned sardines. He would boil the noodles in their soup base. He would slice the limes and mix them in with the vinegar, and thus had himself a modest pickle. And he would open a small tin of sardines. Sometimes, there would be a tin of powdered milk.
For he was an old man, and he basically knew what he needed. He needed vitamins (the limes), and he needed calcium (the sardines and powdered milk). And he survived on that exact same meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner and no mistake, for years. Try and beat that.
Then, one day, after a long hiatus brought about by school exams, I once again hired a sampan to bring Old Man some small provisions. I was thirteen.
He had learned that I was on my way. When I found him he was busy getting ready a welcome.
I shall never forget the sight of that old man hurriedly but meticulously preparing a second meal out of his meagre stock of noodles, limes and sardines especially for my arrival. He seemed genuinely happy to see me. No Spanish Inquisition nor Reign of Terror could have made that manly lad that was myself admit it at the time, but I was touched, and I think, at that moment, greeting him, I recognised him as my grandfather for the very first time.
In the spirit of such an epiphany I impulsively volunteered to stay over for the weekend, to help with his few chores or errands. He seemed surprised but agreed.
Of course, I soon realized that I had not thought this one out quite through. That night, out of near mortal boredom, I armed myself with a battery-operated torch and stole out of the hut to salty sea air, slightly minty with the night. I walked down to the shores and the rocky drops, and the little cliff-like protrusions. I had never been past this particular creaky wooden jetty (its successor had been built before I had ever visited the island), and so I made for it. The island began to decline where I walked on the shore rocks, and I headed for the western side of the island, which was deserted and the beach more cluttered with junk.
Here, Nature and Time had somehow conspired to terrace the beach and the main island quite neatly. Sand, mud, rotten wood. Planks lashed together with frayed ropes that had loosened and fell about like inebriated snakes, and splintered remnants and carcasses of sampans littered here and there.
I had been absentmindedly picking through the flotsam and jetsam when I saw it.
It was distinctly a chunk of mutton from the favoured mutton soup I had brought for Old Man. Coincidence? Deus ex machina? Who can tell. There were spices clinging to it too, and the spinach leaves my mother was so fond of feeding anybody she could get her hands on. I hated spinach leaves, so it stands to reason that I was very good at noticing them.
Then I heard a faint splash, and a sort of bubbly rumbling. I saw the water stir nearby, and something whitish was shimmering beneath the surface. Pulau Rahsia was hiding something from me.
The watery burst of snorting and snuffling confirmed it.
I considered investigating, but something delicately pointed out that a midnight swim in sea waters that held something I had no idea about was not clever.
So I waited for awhile more, watching, hoping for anything else that might happen. But nothing did, and it was getting late, and I wanted to get back to the hut before Old Man awoke and came after me. So I did.
But Old Man would not have been Old Man if he had not been worryingly astute.
The next evening he said, easy as you please, "You went out last night."
" -- ," I said cleverly.
He gave me a beady look. "You are next in line, boy."
"Line?" I repeated, unsettled by his words, so like those of a soothsayer foretelling something ominous.
"You are next," he nodded. "I suppose now is as alright a time as any. Follow me."
I had never disobeyed him directly before and never had after and so this sentence, its original intent being to say that I did follow him, is redundant, really.
Young boys like to boast. It is like a chemical reaction. Reacting to the thing you have found boastworthy, you get this excited bubbling feeling inside, and it keeps growing until you have found a victim. Once the voluble stage of the process has been completed, the reaction produces a lot of hot air, hence the happily bloated, buoyant feeling after.
I had had friends who had boasted of exciting trips to Sentosa Island and the banks of the Singapore River, where you can see statues of the Merlion.
Well that day I saw the merlions, small letters and all, and was told I could never boast about it.
It is like the rest of us getting excited whenever someone reaches the top of Mt. Everest, when probably every other day the Nepalese people climb as high up it as it could possibly matter to pick up litter and keep the place clean so that we can get excited over the next person who reaches the top of Mt. Everest.
I will tell you about the day I first saw a real live merlion. But before that I should like to mention five things that stand out the most starkly in my memory.
1) The sunset seemed particularly slow that day, and I remember thinking that the great celestial orb of flame and fire, the sublime patriarch of the stars, seemed to be struggling to tread the horizon to stay afloat. 2) I had been more curious than surprised when Old Man, armed with a drawstring pouch and a pail, led me past the old creaking wooden jetty. 3) As I followed Old man past the old creaking wooden jetty, one of our neighbours, whom I had always known as just Uncle Leh, called out to Old Man, "Taking the boy to see them today? Remember to tell him about the salted cockles." 4) The spinach was still there. 5) The first merlion that had risen out of the water that day had had one solitary bronze lock amidst its mane of white.
***
I am not lying about the sun that evening. The heat of the afternoon had let up in favour of crepuscular rights. The sun was trumpeting its retreat by leaking lots and lots of orange into the sky.
"You haven"t seen the last of me!" it seemed to have been yelling, and if it had had a fist, would have been shaking said fist. "In fact, just you wait twelve hours and see what happens!"
A salty warm breeze was gently blowing, not enough to tease the sand, and the deepening light flirted with beached rocks and detritus. Standing there on that small beach on that tiny island and gazing out towards the horizon, where it was an elemental festival of air, water and fire, watching the colours clash and merge and streak and dance, and knowing that something fantastic was about to happen, that was the greatest feeling in the world.
Old Man took a handful of something out of the pouch and began scattering it over the surface of the water.
I just stood and watched. "What is... that?"
"Powdered mother-of-pearl. The neighbours bring it for me, and I have some stock of it that my father left behind."
He must have seen the expression on my face.
"They like the shine," he explained. "They will rise towards it."
The deep greenish water began to boil and churn restlessly, and ghostly shimmering shapes began to bloom and glow just beneath the restive waves, growing in size and number. Suddenly the water erupted in spectacular bursts, one after another, as what seemed like ivory white towers emerged, rising, rising. One might have been witnessing the returning ascent of a lost sunken city of white marble.
When the sprays of water began to subside, there began a thunderous noise. Roaring. Each of the creatures, as they came up in turn, tossed their white heads and shook their snowy manes, sending water flying once more. Heads and torsos of lions, and tails of fish. Their alabaster fur was carpet-like, and thick milky silken manes streamed, dripping. Their scales were like white porcelain, with a hint of silver or bronze when the evening light touched them right.
Eyes the colour of midnight; blue that was so deep it was black. Some of them were easily thrice my height. And these towers roared, and it was incredible, for I had never heard anything like it.
When they were done pitching about and shaking off water, the merlions quietened down, and began to gaze at Old Man and me expectantly, lazily gliding about the water, or just bobbing with the waves. "They swim like seahorses," Old Man informed me absently, peering into the pail, and for both the whole thing had apparently lost its novelty.
"Ah," I managed.
"What are they, boy?" Old Man asked, grinning. My answer was, "But they don't exist!"
"Oh dear." Old Man scratched his head absently. "Then I think you"d better let them know."
I gawped and gawked and goggled and stared.
Old Man slapped his knee and roared himself, with laughter. "Felinus piscatorius," he said, chuckling. "Otherwise known as merlions. What do you know about them, boy?"
For want of better things to say, I stupidly began reciting my impressive school textbook knowledge, about how the Merlion was a symbol of an isle that had been discovered by a Javanese prince named Sang Nila Utama. The first thing he had seen on the island had been a lion, or a singa, which is lion in Sanskrit and now Malay. Pura, or city, and so it became Singapura, or Singapore. Lioncity. Or maybe Leopolis, if you like Latin. Oh, so the Merlion is a symbol of the country, the lion half to represent the Singapore now, and the fish half to symbolize the city's beginnings as the humble fishing village that had been known as Temasek.
Old Man listened interestedly, looking amused.
"That is very interesting," he said.
"You know all that," I said stupidly.
"And more," said Old Man cheerfully. What a different Old Man he seemed!
And he handed me the pail. It was filled with small, plump, glistening, blackish things.
'salted cockles," he said with relish. "There's nothing so much they like as for a snack. Toss them some and see if I"m wrong."
They darted and glided in and out and about the water and their jaws snapped up the flying cockles neatly.
As we were flinging the cockles, Old Man said, "The merlions are our duty, our inheritance. You and I, boy, are merfarmers."
"?" cried I. "???"
"Our family have always been. The mainlanders do not know of them. Tourists cannot know of them. It is a family secret, handed down from generation to generation."
"But the villagers know about them?"
"Of course, boy, and some of them help out once in awhile when they feel like it. But the merlions acknowledge our family as their keepers."
"But- how...? Why?"
"Because, a long time ago, right on this island, my great-great-" here Old Man paused and did a quick calculation, before continuing, "great grandfather found the first one. These are their waters. And now," he said with pride, "You"re next in line."
"But if it is such a secret, then why do we have the Merlion statues, and symbols and chocolates, and souvenirs?" I asked.
Old Man nodded sagely. "However careful we are, there are bound to be sightings. Some years ago, a man -Brunner, I think his name was- saw one of them. I think he would rather not either have believed nor admitted to seeing a local chimera, and then turned a potentially psychologically trying episode into a logo."
"Ah," I said. Then after a pause, I ventured uncertainly, "But how do you maintain them?"
"They need effort to care for and breed and maintain, not money. Or not much," said Old Man shrewdly.
I learned that in the next ten years that I continued to visit Old Man. He taught me everything he knew and everything I know now, as a merfarmer. He taught me how to feed them, that their favourite food was meat and shrimp, how they hunted, that they snacked on cockles and breadcrumbs. He taught me how to swim with them, how to train them to avoid being seen, how to ride them and how to persuade them to let me ride them. He taught me all about the birthing processes and the nursing females. He taught me that there were different merlion species, and to be careful with those that were half-shark. He taught me how to earn their respect, how to calm an angry merlion by blowing cigarette smoke into its face so that it got docile and drowsy and fuzzily amiable. He taught me that they got offended if you called them catfish.
I once heroically dove into the waters in my school uniform and swam the currents to rescue a drifting merlion cublet, and was all proud and boasting about it.
Old Man's response was, "Impressive for a first-timer, but you lack style."
Old Man took to the bed a lot during his last couple of years, and as a young man working two jobs I tended to him whenever I could spare the time.
And then suddenly, one day he was up and about and walking and active and even ate breakfast at the table. And I knew. Perhaps not scientifically, but I knew just the same.
The next day, Old Man passed away on his small camp bed with me next to him. And he knew and I knew, that he had left me a legacy.
The bond between us was sealed that first day I followed him and his pouch and his pail past the creaking wooden jetty. I am now a dapper old grandfather myself, to three funny little people, and we are the best of friends. Pshaw, I"m not a scary grandfather, so there's no need to bother with any grandfatherly redemption as far as they"re concerned. But one day I shall bring them to see the merlions for the first time, and the sealing of bonds will take place again. That is what I shall do.
And what about the secret? you demand of me. You have now revealed the existence of these creatures to outsiders by telling this story, you say.
Well, of course you know that you have just read something which is a work of fiction and that merlions do not, in fact, exist.
Sitinadia Xiu is a twenty-year-old Singaporean female of mixed blood - half Hokkien, half Bugis (with hints of Peranakan and Teochew and rumours of Mongolian). Of course, she's really quite proud of her heritage, notwithstanding the fact that she's not quite sure what it is exactly that she inherited.
Xiu has been to far too many schools for one person. It has always been part of her strange paradoxical nature to obsessively chase qualifications and prestigious schools while at the same time hating school with a passion. Currently "on a break," she occupies her time with books, writing, self-teaching, books, reading, books, writing, learning, crafts, and amateur photography.
© Sitinadia Xiu
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