Taxi Ride

The taxi driver was made of stone. Or so it seemed, for as he ferried Jules from his housing estate in Aljunied toward his morning destination, the man spoke not a word, not even an acknowledgment of where they were going, not even a grunt to show that he was alive. Perfectly still he sat, nigh immobile, with only the turning of the steering wheel to preclude any assumption that he was, in fact, a statue rather than a human being.

Jules appreciated the silence. The modus operandi of the majority of Singaporean taxi drivers, at least in his experience, was boisterous loquaciousness, the activity of eager sponges willing to chat on almost any subject imaginable: the government, the road taxes, the building of the new casino (euphemistically labelled the Integrated Resort), their upbringing, their schooling (especially once they sussed out that Jules was a teacher), the water fights with Malaysia, the charismatic and calm new president of the United States (once they discovered Jules was American). All these topics and many more: was he married, was his wife Singaporean, was she ethnically Chinese, how much did he pay for his flat, why was he living in an HDB estate rather than a condo, did he have children, was he disappointed he had a daughter rather than a son, when would he be trying for his next child, in which primary school did he plan to enroll the aforementioned daughter, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. Jules found it difficult to deny the answers to these questions, so affable were these taximen, but the process drained him, bled him of strength, transforming him into an utterer of monosyllabic affirmations.

The landscape of early-morning Singapore rolled past, concrete and glass and steel and carefully managed nature, and Jules thought of what awaited him once the taxi arrived at his destination and once he alighted in the secondary school’s car park, his eyes still heavy with too little sleep, his canvas messenger bag weighed down with marked tests. His later class of the day was to be observed by his reporting officer, his immediate supervisor, the head of the English department, and the Dean of Student Development. Once a year he was subjected to this hour-long torture, set to stammering and sweating and nervous bloviation in the face of his superiors, a process to cast an eye to his teaching methods and the effectiveness of such, but that instead made of him an utter wreck, so different from how he was during his normal lessons, full of lightness and whimsy and passion. So aware was he that this annual observation directly affected the quantum of his year-end bonus and raised the question of his suitability for employment that he gibbered and stumbled through the entirety of these sixty minutes of hell.

The mere thought of his forthcoming observation unleashed a fine patina of saline around the perimeter of his face, in his armpits, down the small of his back, and between the cheeks of his buttocks, dampening his dress shirt and slacks in places that were quickly chilled by the overpowering air con of the taxi’s interior. Were he a stronger man, of more confidence and extroversion, he would have instructed the mute, stone-like taxi driver to return him home, to his wife and his infant daughter, or better yet, to just drive and drive over Singapore’s expressways and flyovers and slip roads until the fare outstripped the cash in his wallet, but look there at the driver’s electronic payment machine—cashless funds transfer—and he with his debit card, so they could roll over asphalt and concrete until his bank account bled dry if he wanted. Would he dare? Could he shirk? Was he a shirker?

But Jules was not even given the chance to propose such a reckless, irresponsible action, for it was in that moment a vast fluttering of shadows filled the sky in front of them, an amorphous assemblage of darkness that still somehow featured coherence, as if a cognizant storm cloud, changing size, changing shape, but retaining a level of...