By Jonathan Tan Ghee Tiong

Some deaths were a closure, others a disclosure, spilling out what should have been buried when the body returned to the soil. You chose disclosure when you took your leave from life. Had you known better, you might have fled Berlin, ditched the double life, settled things all around. Perhaps it was unfair that I faulted you. You thought time was on your side — a good heft of it — to end the stolen affairs, to bring them to a thoughtful resolution. That was so like you.

Surely nobody could live constantly thinking each day was his last. That would have driven us mad, as if every moment required us to perch on an outcrop of rock, always on the verge of falling. No — life didn't work that way. We knew death would come, and still we woke each morning knowing, somewhere in our hearts, that we were living a day less.

Just last month, when I came to Berlin, I saw in you the same energy and eagerness for life as before, waiting for me at Tegel Airport. You couldn't wait to show me around, taking my hands the way you always did. You were still flesh and blood — still capable of anger, even livid as you dodged my question.

Why were there frilly underthings hanging out to dry in your bathroom?

As I took in what you said, you admitted it yourself: your reasons did not stand up to scrutiny. You infuriated me when you insisted your marriage was beyond repair. When you declared that Yuanxin was your ultimate in life, I gave you my blessings and wished you both well. How could I not be upset when you began to reason out the presence of the brunette in your apartment?

Yuanxin was too demanding, you said. You could not fulfill her needs, could not bring her to what she desired. Pinnacle of it all, you hollered — resentment seeping from your eyes, your body shaking with fury. You felt diminished, unsure of yourself, until you met Judith.

You-deeth. You pronounced her name with care so unlike the careless streaks in you. She was there when you arrived in Berlin, when the city alienated you and German slipped past you — menus, street names — eluding your grasp as if you were afflicted by dementia. A familiar sparkle crossed your face when you spoke of how she was your bedrock, of the time her arm locked in yours as you wandered the city, forcing the guttural syllables of street names into memory.

In Tiergarten, near the Brandenburg Gate, you shared your deepest secret — how you crossed towards Rousseauinsel and made out with her. In a discreet corner of the sprawling park, your hands unclasped her brasserie, and your fingers followed the curve of her lips; you took in her tongue and learnt to love again.

Hadn't we been there before? Had it ever crossed your mind to consider whether your actions were cruel?

Your love for Judith was as fearless as your adoration for Yuanxin in our salad days. Marriage, I thought, had become too much of a sedative for you — you stepped outside it in search of new playthings. You shook your head in denial. You came to Berlin to work, you said plainly.

Then why?

It just happened, you said — so matter-of-factly it was as if such things were inevitable when one lived away from home. So you meant to say that straying from one's marriage was only natural in the scheme of things?

You shook your head again. It happened because you were lonely in Berlin. Having someone to share your thoughts after a hard day's work made life more meaningful.

More meaningful? I asked.

You hurried to clarify. Judith came into your life at a moment when you needed someone to share it with. The way you rationalised your actions left me shaken. I had always thought of you as someone with a fine mind — one that cut the clutter and shone with clarity. Had Berlin's cold blunted that edge, the logic in you coming undone?

You begged me not to tell Yuanxin anything about your dirty affair. Why should I? It was you who would have to say something to her — what that something was, I wouldn't know. All I wanted to understand was this: were you going to spend the rest of your life straddling two lives in two cities?

You had lived in Berlin for 10 years. I was glad to hear of your plans to return home to Singapore for good. I looked forward to a swig of Bavarian beer with you in one of our old haunts in Tiong Bahru, sipping in the balmy air of evening — not in the snapping cold of Berlin, where I could barely hold the mug without a shiver.

You once mentioned that you bought a house in a quiet cul de sac in Bedok because Yuanxin loved the lushness of the rain tree — canopied lane leading up to the house. You did not wish to rob her of the pleasure to enjoy the new home and rough it out with you in Berlin.

Besides, there was Joel. Your eyes glazed with concern that he might find it hard to adjust to a new life there, given the language barrier. I sensed your distraction; your mind locked inward. You had long decided that they would not come with you to Berlin. You had it all planned out — going to Berlin to live your own life.

Knocking your beer mug against mine with a "Prost!" as the Germans would say, you left many things unsaid, as you always did.

Against the odds, you made it as Vice President — a feat for an Asian in an all-German company. In the same breath, your doctor gave you a clean bill of health. What ran in your family — the stroke that crippled your father, the heart failure that took your mum — you believed, with the doctor's assurance and the trinity of medication, diet and exercise, could be kept at bay. Besides, you're young like me. Death, you thought, would be as remote as being hit by a passing train.

Turning 40 was hardly a time to contemplate the suddenness of death. The big four-oh felt like a new beginning — renewing lost passions, rewriting what needed doing better, setting the stage for greater things ahead. I was genuinely happy that things were going so well for you in Berlin. Life was strong then, unrelenting, your future sure and steady.

"The tragedy of ageing," you liked to quote Oscar Wilde, "is not that one grows old but that one is once young." You must have thought, later on, how those words had eluded you. So had I.

Do you remember how you would wave Aristotle in my face, urging me to join you in the pursuit of a considered life?

On weekends, we went on food runs. In your creaky but reliable, quirky-purple second-hand Honda Civic, we made our rounds to the bakery to collect leftover confectionery, re-packed them back at the shelter, then set off to distribute them in red plastic bags to the residents in Tiong Bahru.

In Berlin, you helped out in soup kitchens, ladling bowls of piping-hot lentil soup or goulash to Berliners living on the streets. That was where Judith volunteered, co-founding the soup kitchen at a corner in Friedrichstrasse Station.

Ah — there. That was the place where you once held my hands tight and told me, in no uncertain terms, how thousands were packed off from the city, sent on journeys that ended in death, to concentration camps quietly sprouting beyond its edges. Their secrets — like the one between us — dissolved into the shallow breath we let out as the snow fell hard on the ground.

I couldn't fathom your death.

How could you have just died in your sleep so soundlessly, without a word more from you? Where was the fighting spirit in you, the determination to run your own destiny?

The news drifted in like a far-flung flake of snow blown from Siberia, taking a long while to settle, to register in my mind that you were gone. Really gone.

I couldn't fathom what love was to you, really.

Perhaps the picture told it all.

The picture above your TV in the apartment — you kissing Judith on her flushed cheeks, the stately Reichstag behind you, the German flag fluttering dreamily against a snow-freckled sky.

So I wanted to ask you — what about us? Did it mean anything to you at all?

Do you remember the shot you took of us under the sheets, before Yuanxin, before Judith — even came into the picture?

Or had you long forgotten?

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