State of Emergency

A Novel

Jeremy Tiang

ISBN: 978-981-1700-98-9
First Edition: October 2018
© 2017 by Jeremy Tiang

Author photo by Oliver Rockwell. Used with permission.
Published in Singapore by Epigram Books
www.epigrambooks.sg
All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1

ALSO FROM THE EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE

2017

The Riot Act by Sebastian Sim (Winner)

Sofia and the Utopia Machine by Judith Huang

9th of August by Andre Yeo

Nimita’s Place by Akshita Nanda

If It Were Up to Mrs Dada by Carissa Foo

18 Walls by Teo Xue Shen

Band Eight by Tham Cheng-E

2016

The Gatekeeper by Nuraliah Norasid (Winner)

Fox Fire Girl by O Thiam Chin

Surrogate Protocol by Tham Cheng-E

Lieutenant Kurosawa’s Errand Boy by Warran Kalasegaran

The Last Immigrant by Lau Siew Mei

Misdirection by Ning Cai

Lion Boy and Drummer Girl by Pauline Loh

2015

Now That It’s Over by O Thiam Chin (Winner)

Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao! by Sebastian Sim

Death of a Perm Sec by Wong Souk Yee

Sugarbread by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Annabelle Thong by Imran Hashim

Kappa Quartet by Daryl Qilin Yam

Altered Straits by Kevin Martens Wong

for my parents, Helen and Victor Samuel

“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.”

­­—Walter Benjamin,
Theses on the Philosophy of History
(trans. Harry Zohn)

1

Jason

Mollie Remedios died in the explosion that tore apart MacDonald House on 10 March 1965. She was at her desk in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank adding columns of figures when the wall behind her shattered, followed by the ceiling. She suffered several broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a basal skull fracture that killed her instantly. She was 24 years old.

There were three fatalities apart from Mollie—two girls who worked in the same office (the newspapers called them all girls, even though one of them was nearly 40 and divorced), and a driver for the neighbouring Borneo Malaya Building Society, killed by a drainpipe detaching and crashing decisively through the roof of his car. Thirty-three other people were taken to the General Hospital, where seven were warded with serious injuries.

The three dead women, wholesomely pretty, would be on the covers of all the newspapers the next day. Mollie in particular was featured for her youth and promise; the tragedy of her being so recently married, leaving a baby behind. The driver lay unconscious in hospital for five days before dying, and so missed out on most of the publicity.