He was born Koh Beng Chuan on 26 September 1980. The Cold War dominated the headlines, along with the hotter Iran-Iraq war which had escalated quickly in the preceding days before his birth. Closer to home, the ongoing conflict between Vietnam and Kampuchea was a concern whereas within home itself, the government was calling for people to cut their fat intake as well as raising awareness on road safety issues. The day before Alvin was born, Singapore had recorded its 199th death from traffic accidents, a milestone it would rather have avoided. Singapore in 1980 was not a poor nation but it was still a good decade or so away from being considered a modern state.
The lives of Singaporeans were similarly a mesh between past, present, and future. Koh Beng Huat, Alvin’s father, ran a contracting firm his own father had founded meant to be a family legacy. Old Mr Koh liked to imply that cunning had helped him found the firm as much as hard work had. Quite unlike many of his generation, Alvin’s grandfather had only two sons and two daughters. Another legacy of the old man was an insistence that all his grandchildren be given ang moh – Western – names to mark their arrival into modern society. Thus Beng Chuan was given the name Alvin, while his two elder sisters were Iris and Rose.
Alvin’s mother exhaled a sigh of relief that could be heard all through the corridors of Kandang Kerbau Hospital when he was born. It had been a relatively easy pregnancy but the stakes had never been higher. Had it had not been for her husband’s parents, death might have been the only option for her daughters and herself if a third daughter had been birthed.
Mrs Koh, née Lee Ah Mui, lamented the cost of her triumph. Death remained part of the equation, but she convinced herself that the exchange of four lives for one was more than worthwhile. She also decided to be grateful to have had her eyes opened to her husband’s obsession over producing a male heir. He was ready to replace her with the vixen who had boldly intruded into their lives. Still, Mrs Koh couldn’t bring herself to celebrate the other woman’s downfall. She had paid a price for their adultery. What price would Beng Huat pay, his wife wondered.
Iris and Rose were overjoyed with their brother’s arrival, though in a far less calculating fashion than their parents. Alvin was pampered by the whole family and was more than a little spoilt in his infancy. However, despite his coddled childhood, he developed a strong sense of independence and self-motivation. His grandfather would say that the gods had blessed him with gifts he would need to overcome the trials and tribulations which awaited him.
When Alvin was barely nine years of age, the first of life’s challenges came knocking. His father’s death was as unexpected as it had been premature. His mother had found his mutilated body prone on the floor of his office where he had been working late the night before. His failure to return home had prompted his wife to make an early morning visit to the firm.
The children had been spared the details of their father’s death and of the horrific injuries he had been subject to before his eventual death. There were murmurings though. Through the years they heard two main variations of the morbid tale. One version explained his death as a robbery gone wrong – but this was unlikely since nothing had been stolen.
The other story that floated around was that a worker who had been previously dismissed by their father had returned to exact his revenge. This sounded more plausible given that the firm had taken liberties with their workers in the name of ‘modernisation’ and ‘upgrading’ of its business activities. Alvin could recall heated discussions between his father and some other adults which had taken place when either his grandfather or his mother had brought him to visit the firm. Alvin remembered his grandfather lowering the tempers in the room with his persuasive voice and the respect he commanded as the firm’s original founder. Traditional piety was formidable even in a company preparing for the future.
Alvin did not let the rumours about his father’s death cast a shadow on his own life. It had been had making sense of the tragedy, especially for a child of his age. Nevertheless, he steeled himself to carve out his own path to the future. His resolve was strong and was only shaken when his grandparents passed on in close succession to each other, some six years or so after his father died. They too had faded into remnants of the past. It was hard, but Alvin had made a point of strengthening his self-control and restraint.
He would have succeeded too had it not been for his mother. She had never seemed to recover from the shock of his father’s death. Every once in a while, she smiled when the children did well in school, or at family gatherings. Her real face, however, was the cold, unfeeling one which surfaced behind closed doors. Initially, Alvin had assumed she was heartbroken at the loss of her spouse and had forgotten how to love again. He learnt in time that she had more love for his sisters and himself than she had for her late husband. But her maternal affection was being tempered by a darker emotion he did not understand. He doubted she understood it either.
In December 1998, Alvin had been preparing to enlist for National Service after completing his ‘A’ Level examinations. Mrs Koh summoned her three children into what had been their father’s study before his death. The room had been mostly left untouched since the tragedy. They only ever entered it for the customary spring cleaning before the Chinese New Year.
Their mother was sitting in the high backed chair that sat behind the plywood desk that was their father’s workspace previously. There was a scrapbook laid open across the desk, its pages adorned with photographs, newspaper clippings, and some other written material Alvin did not recognise. He could see that his mother had been crying from the red in her eyes. She cleared her throat before speaking in a voice that quivered, suggesting more tears were waiting to burst through.
“There’s something you all need to know about your father.”
…to be continued
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