The Harmony Silk Factory
Tash Aw
A landmark work of fiction from one of Britain’s most exciting new writers: The Harmony Silk Factory is a devastating love story set against the turmoil of mid-twentieth century Malaysia.Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, The Harmony Silk Factory is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman – a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer – whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley’s most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel’s narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow too; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, who also loved Snow to the end of his life. A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era.Haunting, highly original, The Harmony Silk Factory is suspenseful to the last page.
TASH AW
The Harmony Silk Factory
Dedication (#ulink_d7b527ef-f85f-532a-bd78-6c451aa73098)
For my parents
Contents
Cover (#uebc394c1-babe-5117-aa37-da99b17d3499)
Title Page (#uf56aa1af-74e7-5fb4-9ee8-5dbe404cd04c)
Dedication (#u1d554716-aa5e-596d-b7e3-c9a09e9c7073)
Part One: Johnny (#ua5deb4fa-9836-55c8-a0a5-3227c510e9a8)
Part Two: 1941 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Three: The Garden (#litres_trial_promo)
P.S.Ideas, Interviews & Features (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Book (#litres_trial_promo)
Read On (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE Johnny (#ulink_bc985850-f9b0-5fcf-a025-dc01ff249f62)
1. Introduction
The Harmony Silk Factory is the name of the shophouse my father bought in 1942 as a front for his illegal businesses. To look at, the building is unremarkable. Built in the early thirties by itinerant Chinese coolies (of the type from whom I am most probably descended), it is the largest structure on the main street which runs through town. Behind its plain whitewashed front lies a vast, cave-dark room originally intended to accommodate light machinery and a few nameless sweatshop workers. The room is still lined with the teak cabinets my father installed when he first acquired the factory. These were designed to store and display bales of cloth, but as far as I can remember, they were never used for this purpose, and were instead stacked with boxes of ladies’ underwear from England which my father had stolen with the help of his contacts down at the docks. Much later, when he was a very famous and very rich man – the Elder Brother of this whole valley – the cabinets were used to house his collection of antique weapons. The central piece in this display was a large kris, whose especially wavy blade announced its provenance: according to my father, it belonged to Hang Jebat, the legendary warrior who, as we all know, fought against the Portuguese colonisers in the sixteenth century. Whenever Father related this story to visitors, his usually monotonous voice would assume a gravelly, almost theatrical seriousness, impressing them with the similarity between himself and Jebat, two great men battling against foreign oppressors. There were also Gurkha kukris with curved blades for speedy disembowelment, Japanese samurai swords and jewel-handled daggers from Rajasthan. These were admired by all his guests.
For nearly forty years the Harmony Silk Factory was the most notorious establishment in the country, but now it stands empty and silent and dusty. Death erases all traces, all memories of lives that once existed, completely and for ever. That is what Father sometimes told me. I think it was the only true thing he ever said.
We lived in a house separated from the factory by a small mossy courtyard which never got enough sunlight. Over time, as my father received more visitors, the house too became known as the Harmony Silk Factory, partly for convenience – the only people who came to the house were those who came on business – and partly because my father’s varied interests had extended into leisure and entertainment of a particular kind. Therefore it was more convenient for visitors to say, ‘I have to attend to some business at the Harmony Silk Factory,’ or even, ‘I am visiting the Harmony Silk Factory.’
Our house was not the kind of place just anyone could visit. Indeed, entry was strictly by invitation, and only a privileged few passed through its doors. To be invited, you had to be like my father, that is to say, you had to be a liar, a cheat, a traitor and a skirt-chaser. Of the very highest order.
From my upstairs window, I saw everything unfold. Without Father ever saying anything to me, I knew, more or less, what he was up to and who he was with. It wasn’t difficult to tell. Mainly, he smuggled opium and heroin and Hennessy XO. These he sold on the black market down in KL for many, many times what he had paid over the border to the Thai soldiers whom he also bribed with American cigarettes and low-grade gemstones. Once, a Thai general came to our house. He wore a cheap grey shirt and his teeth were gold, real solid gold. He didn’t look much like a soldier, but he had a Mercedes-Benz with a woman in the back seat. She had fair skin, almost pure white, the colour of salt fields on the coast. She was smoking a Kretek and in her hair she wore a white chrysanthemum.
Father told me to go upstairs. He said, ‘My friend the General is here.’
They locked themselves in Father’s Safe Room, and even though I lifted the lino and pressed my ear to the floorboards I could hear nothing except the faint clinking of glasses and the low, muffled rumble which by then I knew to be the tipping of uncut diamonds on to the green baize table.
I waved at the woman in the car. She was young and beautiful, and when she smiled I saw that her teeth were small and brown. She was still smiling at me as the car pulled away, raising a cloud of dust and beeping at bicycles as it sped up the main street. It was rare in those early days to see expensive cars and big-town women in these parts, but if ever you saw them, they would be hanging around our house. None of our visitors ever noticed me, though, none but that woman with the fair skin and bad teeth.
I told Father about this woman and how she had smiled at me. His response was as I expected. He reached slowly for my ear and twisted it hard, squeezing the blood from it. He said, ‘Don’t tell stories,’ and then slapped my face twice.
To tell the truth, I had become used to this kind of punishment.
Even when I was young, I was aware of what my father did. I wasn’t exactly proud, but I didn’t really care. Now, I would give everything to be the son of a mere liar and cheat because, as I have said, that wasn’t all he was. Of all the bad things he ever did, the worst happened long before the big cars, pretty women and the Harmony Silk Factory.
Now is a good time to tell his story. At long last, I have put my crime-funded education to good use, and have read every single article in every book, newspaper and magazine that mentions my father, in order to understand the real story of what happened. For more than a few years of my useless life, I have devoted myself to this enterprise, sitting in libraries and government offices even. My diligence has been surprising. I will admit that I have never been a scholar, but recent times have shown that I am capable of rational, organised study, in spite of my father’s belief that I would always be a dreamer and a wastrel.
There is another reason why I now feel particularly well placed to relate the truth of my father’s life. An observant reader may sense forthwith that it is because the revelation of this truth has, in some strange way, brought me a measure of calm. I am not ashamed to admit that I have searched for this all my life. Now, at last, I know the truth and I am no longer angry. In fact, I am at peace.
As far as it is possible, I have constructed a clear and complete picture of the events surrounding my father’s terrible past. I say ‘as far as it is possible’ because we all know that the retelling of history can never be perfect, especially when the piecing together of the story has been done by a person with as modest an intellect as myself. So now I am ready to give you this, The True Story of the Infamous Chinaman Called Johnny.
2. The True Story of the Infamous Chinaman Called Johnny (Early Years)
Some say Johnny was born in 1920, the year of the riots in Taiping following a dispute between Hakkas and Hokkiens over the right to mine a newly discovered tin deposit near Slim River. We do not know who Johnny’s parents were. Most likely, they were labourers of southern Chinese origin who had been transported to Malaya by the British in the late nineteenth century to work on the mines in the valley. Such people were known to the British as ‘coolies’, which is generally believed to be a bastardisation of the word kulhi, the name of a tribe native to Gujarat in India.
Fleeing floods, famine and crushing poverty, these illiterate people made the hazardous journey across the South China Sea to the rich equatorial lands they had heard about. It was mainly the men who came, often all the young men from one village. They arrived with nothing but the simple aim of making enough money to send for their families to join them. Traditionally viewed as semi-civilised peasants by the cultured overlords of the imperial north of China, these southern Chinese had, over the course of centuries, become expert at surviving in the most difficult of conditions. Their new lives were no less harsh, but here they found a place which offered hope, a place which could, in some small way, belong to them.
They called it, simply, Nanyang, the South Seas.
The southern Chinese look markedly different from their northern brethren. Whereas Northerners have candle-wax skin and icy, angular features betraying their mixed, part-Mongol ancestry, Southerners appear more hardy, with a durable complexion that easily turns brown in the sun. They have fuller, warmer features and compact frames which, in the case of over-indulgent men like my father, become squat with the passing of time.
Of course this is a generalisation, meant as a rough guide for those unfamiliar with basic racial fault lines. For evidence of the unreliability of this rule of thumb, witness my own features, which are more northern than southern, if they are at all Chinese (in fact, I have even been told that I have the look of a Japanese prince).
I have explained that my ancestors probably came from the south of China, specifically from Guangdong and Fujian provinces, but there is one further thing to say, which is that even in those two big provinces, people spoke different languages. This is important because your language determined your friends and enemies. People in our town speak mainly Hokkien, but there are a number of Hakka speakers too, like my Uncle Tony who married Auntie Baby. The literal translation of ‘Hakka’ is ‘guest-people’, descendants of tribes defeated in ancient battles and forced to live outside city walls. These Hakkas are considered by the Hokkiens and other Chinese here to be really very low class, with distinct criminal tendencies. No doubt they were responsible for the historical tension and bad feeling with the Hokkiens in these parts. Their one advantage, often used by them in exercises of subterfuge and cunning, is the similarity of their language to Mandarin, the noble and stately language of the Imperial Court, which makes it easy for them to disguise their dubious lineage. This is largely how Uncle Tony, who has become a hotel tycoon (‘a hôtelier’ he says), managed to convince bank managers and the public at large that he is a man of education (Penang Free School and the London School of Economics), when really he is like my father – unschooled and really very uncultured. He has, to his credit, managed to overcome that most telltale sign of Hakka backwardness, which is the lack of the ‘h’ sound in their language and the resulting (and quite frankly, ridiculous) ‘f’ which comes out in its place, whether speaking Mandarin, Malay or even English. For example:
Me (when I was young, deliberately): ‘I paid money to touch a girl down by the river today.’
Uncle Tony (in pre-tycoon days): ‘May God in Fevven felp you.’
He converted to Christianity too, I forgot to say.
Johnny Lim was obviously not my father’s real name. At the start of his life he was known by his real name, Lim Seng Chin, a common and truly nondescript Hokkien name. He chose the name Johnny in late 1940, just as he was turning twenty. He named himself after Tarzan. I know this because among the few papers he left when he died were some old pictures, spotty and dog-eared, cut carefully from magazines and held together by a rusty paper clip. In each one, the same man appears, dressed in a badly fitting loincloth, often holding a pretty woman whose heavy American breasts strain at her brassière. In one picture, they stand on a fake log, clutching jungle vines; his brow is furrowed, eyes scanning the horizon for unknown danger while she gazes up at him. Behind them is a painted backdrop of forested hills, smooth in texture. Another picture, this time a portrait of the same barrel-chested man with beads of sweat on his shoulders, bears the caption, ‘JOHNNY WEISSMULLER, OLYMPIC CHAMPION’.
I’m not certain why Johnny Weissmuller appealed to my father. The similarities between the two are non-existent. In fact, the comparison is amusing, if you think about it. Johnny Weissmuller: American, muscular, attractive to women. Johnny Lim: short, squat, uncommunicative, a hopelessly bald loner with poor social skills. In fact, it might well be said that I have more in common with Johnny Weissmuller, for I at least am tall and have a full head of thick hair. My features, as I have already mentioned, are angular, my nose strangely large and sharp. On a good day some people even consider me handsome.
It was not unusual for men of my father’s generation to adopt the unfeasible names of matinée idols. Among my father’s friends, there have been: Rudolph Chen, Valentino Wong, Cary Gopal and his business partner Randolph Muttusamy, Rock Hudson Ho, Montgomery Hashim, at least three Garys (Gary Goh,‘Crazy’ Gary and one other I can’t remember – the one-legged Gary) and too many Jameses to mention. While there is no doubt that the Garys in question were named after Gary Cooper, it wasn’t so clear with the Jameses: Dean or Stewart? I watched these men when they visited the factory. I watched the way they walked, the way they smoked their cigarettes and the way they wore their clothes. Did James Dean wear his collar up or down in East of Eden? I could never tell for sure. I did know that Uncle Tony took his name from Tony Curtis. He admitted this to me, more or less, by taking me to see Some Like It Hot six times.
So you see, I was lucky, all things considered.
My father chose my name. He called me Jasper.
At school I learned that this is also the name of a stone, a kind of mineral. But this is irrelevant.
Returning to the Story of Johnny, we know that he assumed his new name around the age of twenty or twenty-one. Occasional (minor) newspaper articles dating from 1940, reporting on the activities of the Malayan Communist Party, describe lectures and pamphlets prepared by a young activist called ‘Johnny’ Lim. By 1941, the inverted commas have disappeared, and Johnny Lim is Johnny Lim for good.
Much of Johnny’s life before this point in time is hazy. This is because it is typical of the life of a small-village peasant, and therefore of little interest to anyone. Accordingly, there is not much recorded information relating specifically to my father. What exists exists only as local hearsay and is to be treated with some caution. In order to give you an idea of what his life might have been like, however, I am able to provide you with a few of the salient points from the main textbook on this subject, R. St J. Unwin’s masterly study of 1954, Rural Villages of Lowland Malaya, which is available for public perusal in the General Library in Ipoh. Mr Unwin was a civil servant in upstate Johore for some years, and his observations have come to be widely accepted as the most detailed and accurate available. I have paraphrased his words, of course, in order to avoid accusations of plagiarism, but the source is gratefully acknowledged:
• The life of rural communities is simple and spartan – rudimentary compared to Western standards of living, it would be fair to say.
• In the 1920s there was no electricity beyond a two-or three-mile radius of the administrative capitals of most states in Malaya.
• This of course meant: bad lighting, resulting in bad eyesight; no night-time entertainment; in fact, no entertainment at all; reliance on candlelight and kerosene lamps; houses burning down.
• Children therefore did not ‘play.’
• They were expected to help in the manual labour in which their parents were engaged. As rural Malaya was an exclusively agricultural society, this nearly always meant working in one of the following: rice paddies, rubber-tapping, palm-oil estates. The latter two were better, as they meant employment by British or French plantation owners. Also, on a smaller scale, fruit orchards and other sundry activities, such as casting rubber sheets for export to Europe, making gunny sacks from jute and brewing illegal toddy. All relating to agriculture in some form or another. Not like nowadays when there are semiconductor and air-conditioner plants all over the countryside, in Batu Gajah even.
• In the cool wet hills that run along the spine of the country there are tea plantations. Sometimes I wonder if Johnny ever worked picking tea in Cameron Highlands. Johnny loved tea. He used to brew weak orange pekoe, so delicate and pale that you could see through it to the tiny crackles at the bottom of the small green-glazed porcelain teapot he used. He took time making tea, and even longer drinking it, an eternity between sips. He would always do this when he thought I was not around, as though he wanted to be alone with his tea. Afterwards, when he was done, I would examine the cups, the pot, the leaves, hoping to find some clue (to what I don’t know). I never did.
• So rural children became hardened early on. They had no proper toilets, indoor or outdoor.
• A toilet for them was a wooden platform under which there was a large chamber pot. Animals got under the platform, especially rats, but also monitor lizards, which ate the rats, and the faeces too. A favourite pastime among these simple rural children involved trapping monitor lizards. This was done by hanging a noose above the pot, so that when the lizard put its head into the steaming bowl of excrement, it would become ensnared. Then it was either tethered to a post as a pet, or (more commonly) taken to the market to be sold for its meat and skin. This practice was still quite common when I was a young boy. As we drove through villages in our car, I would see these lizards, four feet long, scratching pathetically in the dirt as they pulled at the string around their necks. Mostly they were rock grey in colour, but some of the smaller ones had skins of tiny diamonds, thousands and thousands of pearl-and-black jewels covering every inch of their bodies. Often the rope would have cut into their necks, and they would wear necklaces of blood.
• Poor villagers would eat any kind of meat. Protein was scarce.
• Most children were malnourished. That is why my father had skinny legs and arms all his life, even though his belly was heavy from later-life over-indulgence. Malnutrition is also the reason so many people of my father’s generation are dwarfs. Especially compared to me – I am nearly a whole foot taller than my father.
• Scurvy, rickets, polio – all very common in children. Of course typhoid, malaria, dengue fever and cholera too.
• Schools do not exist in these rural areas.
• I tell a lie. There are a few schools, but they are reserved for the children of royalty and rich people like civil servants. These were founded by the British. ‘Commanding the best views of the countryside, these schools are handsome examples of the colonial experiment with architecture, marrying Edwardian and Malay architectural styles.’ (I quote directly from Mr Unwin in this instance.) When you come across one of these schools you will see that they dominate the surrounding landscape. Their flat lawns and playing fields stretch before the white colonnaded verandas like bright green oceans in the middle of the grey olive of the jungle around them. These bastions of education were built especially for ruling-class Malays. Only the sons of very rich Chinese can go there. Like Johnny’s son – he will go to one of these, to Clifford College in Kuala Lipis.
• There the pupils are taught to speak English, proper, I mean.
• They also read Dickens.
• For these boys, life is good, but not always. They have the best of times, they have the worst of times.
• Going back to the subject of toilets: actually, the platform lavatory continued to be used way into the 1960s. But not for me. In 1947, my father installed the first flush cistern and septic tank north of Kuala Lumpur at the Harmony Silk Factory. Before that, we had enamel chamber pots. My favourite one was hand-painted with red-and-black goldfish.
• So imagine a child like Johnny, growing up on the edge of a village on the fringes of a rubber plantation (say), tapping rubber and trapping animals for a few cents’ pocket money. Probably, he would have no idea of the world around him. He only knows the children of other rubber-tappers. They are the only people he would ever mix with. Sometimes he sees the plantation owner’s black motor car drive through the village on the way to the Planter’s Club in town. The noise of the engine, a metallic rattle-roar, fills Johnny’s ears, and maybe he sees the Sir’s pink face and white jacket as the car speeds past. There is no way the two would ever speak. Johnny would never even speak to rich Chinese – the kind of people who live in big houses with their own servants and tablecloths and electricity generators.
• When a child like Johnny ends up being a textile merchant, it is an incredible story. Truly, it is. He is a freak of nature.
• Unsurprisingly, many of the poor Chinese become communists. Not all, but many. And their children too.
Mr Unwin’s excellent book paints a vivid picture indeed. However, it is a general study of all villages across the country and does not take into account specific regions or communities. This is not a criticism – I am in no position to criticise such scholarship – but there is one thing of some relevance to Johnny’s story which is missing from the aforementioned treatise: the shining, silvery tin buried deep in the rich soil of the Kinta Valley.
3. The Kinta Valley
The Kinta Valley is a narrow strip of land which isn’t really a valley at all. Seventy-five miles long and twenty miles wide at its widest, it runs from Maxwell Hill in the north to Slim River in the south. To the east are jungle-shrouded limestone massifs which you can see everywhere in the valley: low mountains pock-marked with caves which appear to the eye as black teardrop scars on a roughened face. There are trails through the jungle leading up to these caves. They have been formed over many years by the careful tread of animals – sambar and fallow deer, the wild buffalo and boar, the giant seledang – which come down from the hills to forage where the forest meets the rich fruit plantations.
As a boy, I used to walk these trails. The jungle was wet and cool and sunless, but by then I had learned where to put my feet, how to avoid the tree roots and burrows which could easily twist an ankle. The first time I discovered a cave I wandered so deep into it that I could no longer see any light from the outside. I felt with my hands for somewhere to sit. The ground and the walls were damp and flaky with guano. The air was rich with an old smoky smell, like the embers of some strange sugar-sweet charcoal fire. There were no noises other than the gentle drip-drip of water. The darkness swallowed up my movements. I couldn’t see my hands or my legs, I couldn’t hear myself breathing. It was as if I had ceased to exist. I sat there for many hours – I don’t know how long exactly. Nor do I know how I found my way out of the cave or what made me want to leave. Night had fallen by the time I emerged, but it did not seem dark to me. Even the light from the pale half-moon annoyed my eyes as I made my way home.
As long as a hundred years ago, the first Chinese coolies discovered these caves and built Buddhist temples in them. For them too these caves were a place of comfort and solace and refuge. A few of the larger temples survive today. My favourite is the Kek Loong, which contains an enormous Laughing Buddha. People say his expression conveys infinite love and wisdom, but to me he has always looked like a young boy, naughtily chuckling because he has done something wrong.
You would expect that a valley would be bounded by two mountain ranges, but that is not so with the Kinta Valley. To the west, as soon as you cross the Perak River, the mangrove swamps begin to unfold before you. The land is flat and muddy, crisscrossed by slow-running streams. The journey to the coast takes you past coconut plantations and fishing villages. Everywhere there are flimsy wooden racks of fish, slowly drying and salting in the sun and the sea breeze. In most places along the coast it is difficult to know where the land ends and the sea begins. There are a thousand tiny inlets which break the coastline, an intricate tapestry of coves. This is where the notorious nineteenth-century pirate Mat Hitam used to hide, deep among the mangrove trees. From here he would launch raids on the hundreds of trading ships following the trade winds down into the Straits of Malacca, for three centuries the most lucrative shipping lane in the world. The straits were, and still are, sheltered and calm – the ideal route for a ship laden with tea, cotton, silk, porcelain or opium, travelling between India and China. Here, the men of such ships rested their weary, wary souls. Shielded from the open, treacherous waters of the Indian Ocean, they gathered their spirits before striking out for the South China Sea. It was said by fishermen and merchant seamen that the straits were the most beautiful place in the world. The water was smooth enough for a child’s boat to sail peacefully – the gentle waves caught the amber light of the setting sun and the breeze, steady and warm, propelled you at a speed so constant that seamen were said to have become mesmerised. Some insisted that they felt in the presence of God.
It is here, in this idyll, that Mat Hitam and his men struck. For nearly twenty years, his small fast boats terrorised the stately ships filled with valuable cargo. Mat Hitam himself became a godlike figure, feared for his ruthlessness. It is an established fact that he was the rarest of all people: a black Chinese. No one was certain where he came from. Some theories say that he was from Yunnan Province in southern China, but it is more commonly believed that he was not an exotic foreigner, and was instead born within these shores. Whatever the case, I have no doubt that his mysterious appearance aided his exploits. He died in 1830 (or thereabouts), in the early days of British rule in Malaya. His last victim was Juan Fernández de Martin, a Jesuit missionary who, as his throat was cut, placed a curse on Mat Hitam so powerful that two weeks later, the Black Pirate died of a twisted stomach. He was bleeding from his eyes as he died, and the expression on his face was ‘empty as hell and full of fury’.
His spirit lives on in the hidden coves and apparently sleepy fishing villages which dot the coastline. They are impossible to police, and it is here that Johnny smuggled 20,000 tons of rice from Sumatra during the drought of 1958. I am told that small boats carrying illegal Indonesian immigrants land here every day. I’m sure that if Johnny were alive today he would find some way of making money out of this.
At one or two points along this coast, the sea does appear cleanly and without interruption. One such place is Remis, where my father once took me to swim. It was the first time I had swum in the sea. As I walked on to the beach the dry needles of the casuarina trees, scattered across the sand, prickled underfoot. It was a very hot day and even though the afternoon sun was weakening, the sand was still white to my eyes and warm to the touch. When I was waist-deep in the water, I turned to look at Father. He was standing in the pools of shade cast by the trees, watching me with his arms folded and eyes squinting slightly. I walked until I could barely touch the bottom with my toes, then I started swimming, kicking off with uncertain froglike strokes. At some point, I stopped and began treading water, my arms flailing gently in front of me. The sea was deep green, the colour of old, dark jade. That was the first time I ever noticed my skin, the colour of it. Not brown, not yellow, not white, not anything against the rich and mysterious green of the water around me. I turned to look at Father. I could barely make him out in the shade, but he was still there, one hand on his hip, the other shading his eyes from the sun.
On the way home I asked him if I could go swimming again. I was twelve, I think, and I wanted to go to the islands around Pangkor where I had heard the sun made the sand look like tiny crystals. I longed to see for myself the Seven Maidens, those islands that legend held disappeared with the setting sun; I yearned for their hot waters. But Father said he wouldn’t take me.
‘Those places no longer exist,’ he said. ‘They are part of a story, a useless old story.’
‘Why can’t we go just for a day?’ I ventured. ‘Have you ever seen them, Father?’
‘I told you, I hate islands.’
‘Why?’
‘Actually, I don’t like the sea much,’ he said simply.
I knew better than to test him when he was in one of these moods. I noticed, however, that even though I had just spent the afternoon in the sun, my skin was white compared to his. It refused to turn dark, remaining pale and unblemished, a clean sheet beside his dirty sun-mottled arms.
No one ever stops to visit the valley. Buses hurry past on their journey north to Penang, pausing briefly for refreshments in Parit or Taiping. Their passengers sit for ten minutes at zinc-covered roadside truck stops, sipping at bottles of Fanta and nibbling on savoury chicken-flavoured biscuits; and then they are away again, eager to leave the dull central plains of the valley for the neon lights and seaside promenades of Georgetown. When I was young it was possible to spend a week in Ipoh without hearing a single word of English. No one had a TV in those days (apart from us, of course). Then, as now, Western visitors were rare. The only white people I ever saw were the ones who had to be in the valley – alcoholic planters and unhappy civil servants. Only once do I remember seeing a tourist, and even then I was not certain he had come to the valley by design. I was indulging in a favourite childhood pastime, climbing into the lower reaches of the giant banyan tree that dominated the river bank near the factory. I reached for the thick hanging vines and swung in a broad arc, rising high until I faced the giddying sky; and then I let myself go, tilting and falling into the warm water. When I surfaced I saw an Englishman sitting on the bank, his folded arms resting on his raised knees. A canvas satchel hung limply across his shoulders. The other children who were with me ceased to play; they splashed quietly in the shallows, nervously hiding their nakedness in the opaque water. I wanted to climb the tree and dive into the river again, but the Englishman was sitting at the base of the trunk, perched uncomfortably on the lumpy roots. It did not occur to me to be afraid; I simply walked up the slippery bank towards the tree, passing very close to him. I noticed that he was not looking at me, but staring blankly into the distance. He was not an old man, but his face was just like my father’s, scarred by a weariness I had rarely seen in other men. He looked lost; I am sure he had wandered into the valley by mistake. I climbed swiftly up into the branches, crawled out to the end of a large bough, and as I fell forward into the water I caught a glimpse of the man’s thick silvered hair. When I emerged from the water he had gone, and the other children were singing and shouting again. The white man was a spy, we agreed, laughing, or a madman. Or perhaps, said Orson Lai, he was a ghost who had returned to haunt the scene of some terrible crime. Yes, we decided, our voices hushed with childish fear, he had to be a ghost. No one ever visits the valley.
Nowadays, there is even less traffic through the small towns of the Kinta. The new North – South Highway allows a traveller to speed past the valley in less than three hours. The journey is soothing, untroubled. You fall asleep in air-conditioned comfort and, in truth, you do not miss very much. Between the hills and the invisible sea, the landscape is flat and unremarkable. Nothing catches your eye except for the many disused tin mines, now filled with rainwater. You see them everywhere in the valley, quiet, gloomy pools of black water. I used to search for the largest ones, the ones so big I could pretend they were the ocean itself. But this pretence rarely worked. Once I stepped off the tepid, muddy shelf which ringed the pool, I was in water of untold depth, water which now covered the work of my ancestors. The temperature plunged. Every year boys from my town drowned in such pools. The shock of the cold made their muscles seize up. This was how my friend Ruby Wong died. He was my only friend from my childhood and he was a good swimmer, one of the best. Although not nearly as strong as me and slight in build, he had a smooth, easy stroke which barely broke the water yet propelled him steadily at considerable speeds. He could swim without coming to shore for an hour at a time. Once, we swam across the swirling brown waters of the Perak, Ruby leading the way. We were not even out of breath when we reached the other bank.
This time we had chosen the old mine near Kellie’s Castle. It was known that only the bravest could swim the biggest pools, and there were few larger than this. We were only fourteen but we did not think twice about swimming it. Night had begun to fall when we got to the pool. I undressed quickly, eager to feel the water. Swimming in the dark felt different, special: the absence of light made my skin look less pale. The sky was blank and black with cloud. There was no moon; nothing was illuminated. Even the ripples of the water as we slid into the pool did not show.
On this swim, as on every other, there was no purpose, no silly races, no ‘first to the other side wins’. We just swam. A few feet from the edge, where the shelf fell away, I prepared myself for the cold. It gripped my whole body, squeezing the air from my chest. I breathed sharply, chokingly, but I had known that feeling before and so I continued to strike out. Pull. Kick. Pull. Kick. I heard Ruby’s choking breaths echoing my own, but I kept on swimming into the blackness, my eyes closed.
‘Jas,’ came the first call. Ruby’s voice breathed the word, it did not speak it. ‘Jas.’
I opened my eyes and searched for him in the infinite darkness. ‘Ruby?’ I said, still swimming forward.
By the time I realised, several seconds later, that he was no longer there, it was too late. I swam furiously in different directions, not knowing where to look, where to turn next. In the moonless night I thought of the chickens we kept in the yard behind the factory. I don’t know why they came into my thoughts. When you entered the coop to select one of them for slaughter they would run away in zigzags, never knowing where they were going or who they were escaping from. The victim always had a vacant expression on its face, not terrified or even sad, just lost.
Of course it was fate that the first car I met, after walking an hour on the deserted road, was Father’s. It had to be Father who found me, naked and wild-eyed. I shouted out what had happened to Ruby. Whether I made sense or not I don’t know.
‘He’s not playing tricks on you,’ Father said. That was just how he spoke. Never asked questions, always statements.
‘No, I’m sure!’ I screamed.
‘You’re not telling stories.’
There was no need for me to answer.
‘Then he’s dead already,’ he said, opening the door for me to get in. ‘We’ll go back for your clothes tomorrow.’
I was afraid he was angry with me for making him go all the way home before doubling back to Kampar for his evening playing cards. I was afraid, so I said no more.
And that is how my friend Ruby Wong died, more or less.
This, then, is where the Kinta Valley lies, trapped between hills and swamps. This is the valley which became Johnny’s little empire, where he was man and boy, where he started a family, where he was once respected by his people, where he destroyed everything.
4. How the Infamous Johnny Became a Communist – and Other Things
In 1933, two things happened. The price of rubber fell to four cents per pound and Johnny killed a man. It was the first man he killed, and although rumour had it that he did it in self-defence, I believe that the terrible deed was just as likely to have been carried out coldly, with malice aforethought (which I have learned amounts to murder). In any case, the exact events are unclear, and the records from the Taiping Magistrates’ Court are somewhat muddled.
At this point in his life, Johnny was working in the Three Horses tin mine just off the Siput – Taiping road. Many young men (and women too) had begun to work in the mines. The price of rubber was now so low that many plantation owners – even English and French ones – were forced out of business. The plantations ceased to operate and were soon overwhelmed by the jungles which surrounded them. The morning bells which roused the workers ceased to toll, and the kerosene lamps which illuminated the scarred bark of the trees were no longer lit. There was no more work to be found in the plantations. So the young people began to drift further and further away from their villages in search of work, and most of them ended up in the mines.
By all accounts, Johnny was a well-regarded boy. He was quietly spoken, diligent and unimaginative, and was therefore perfect for working in the mines. Although barely in his teens, Johnny was no longer a manual labourer. He had risen above that. His work did not involve digging into the wet, heavy soil for twelve hours each day, nor carrying basketfuls of ore from the bottom of the open-cast pits to be stored, ready for melting. He did not have to do this because, in spite of his lack of intellect, Johnny had one other attribute: a gift for understanding machinery.
There is a story about how Johnny first discovered his in-built ability to assemble and operate machines. There are many different versions of this story, but the essence of it is as follows. Johnny was thirteen years old. He had been drinking palm-flower toddy with some other delinquents, and he had enjoyed it. The sensations were new to him, as fresh in his body as the morning sun that follows a monsoon night. He went to see an old Indian man who lived on the edge of a rubber plantation, who brewed toddy the old way – the only way they ever did (and many still do), illicitly, hushed-up in the half-dark of the jungle. The man collected the young flowers himself; he soaked them and bought the yeast from Cold Storage in Georgetown. He fermented the toddy just as he might have nurtured children. He remembered when each barrel was filled – born – down to the day, the hour even. He knew what the weather had been like at the time of each filling, and he knew how this would affect the taste of each vat of toddy. He knew which ones would be sweet or sour or just strong and tasteless. Whenever he produced something memorable, a toddy of remarkable clarity or distinctive taste, he would give it a special name – White Lakshmi, perhaps, or Nearly As Good As Mother’s Milk.
Johnny was fascinated by this. He visited the old man often, and drank often too. But all this time he was disturbed by the way the toddy was brewed. He didn’t like the old kerosene drums the old man used to ferment the toddy in. Some of them were rusty, and on others the lids didn’t fit properly. The old man said that this was the way things were done, that toddy had to be varied and different. Every sip had to provide you with the sensation of stepping off a cliff without knowing what lay beneath. Mad fool, Johnny thought; he did not accept this. He wanted every mouthful of toddy to be as good as the best toddy he had ever tasted. He didn’t enjoy discovering a bitter toddy, or a new and unusual one. He knew, too, that people sometimes fell sick after drinking toddy; they became blind, they died. On top of all this, one day when they had been filling bottles, they found a rat at the bottom of one of the barrels. It lay bobbing amid the sediment, curled up and peacefully preserved in the alcohol. Not even the cat touched it when they threw it out into the long grass.
So Johnny went away and thought for a long time. He drew pictures in the sand, idle mid-afternoon sketches of simple machines. He didn’t know what he would do, but he knew, instinctively, that he would do something.
People still talk about Johnny’s invention in the valley; they say nothing as magical has been seen since. Not even the revolving dining room at the Harmony Silk Factory, built when I was in my teens, could rival Johnny’s first, instinctive creation. This is high praise indeed, for the revolving dining room was itself a much-admired feature of our house. The entire floor would split in half and a partition wall would emerge from a vault beneath the floor, separating the one large room into two smaller ones. Hidden in the ceiling, behind the walls and under the floor was a simple but highly effective clockwork mechanism. Polished mahogany panelling adorned the room, drawing the attention of a visitor (more specifically, a policeman or a rival ‘businessman’) to the décor rather than the construction of the room. Fake European masterpieces, painted by artists in Penang, hung in gilded frames on the walls. (I looked them up in books when I was at school, and discovered that my two favourites were The Fall of Icarus by Bruegel and The Death of Actaeon by Titian.) One of the two rooms – the second, smaller one – was built into the thick rear wall of the factory, making it soundproof and totally secure. The purpose of this was originally to provide a hiding place in case of an emergency. It was conceived of at a time when we had a new police superintendent who arrived in the district determined to put an end to all crime, from the most petty thefts to the largest organised rackets. The new Sir was often seen striding down the main street of our little town, his bushy flamered moustache always immaculate, his waxen English skin still strangely unblemished by the sun. He never spoke to anyone, and people began to fear him. This was when our revolving dining room was built. Endless sketches were made, parts were ordered from Singapore, carpenters all over the country were put on notice, timber was felled in north Borneo. By the time the necessary machinery had been installed, however, the superintendent – Malcolm – was firmly in Johnny’s pocket. He came to the factory and drank Napoleon brandy late into the night, and he acquired a Chinese mistress called Wendy. When he visited our house, I noticed he had a gold wristwatch with an ebony face. It looked brand new.
But it was Johnny’s first creation, the Amazing Toddy Machine, which was the most famous and enduring. Although very few people actually saw it, its reputation was widespread, and its products enjoyed even farther afield. At the heart of this new invention was a large glass tank in which the various raw components were mixed. Everything could be seen clearly in this tank – the initial chemical reaction, the colour, the consistency – and regulating the process was made easier. Nothing was left to chance. The transparency of the machine allowed the brewer to intervene if he thought something was going wrong. The tank was sealed, so any impurities (not to mention animals) could not find their way in. As the system grew, Johnny found a way of increasing the output dramatically – more glass tubes were attached, linking more tanks to each other, all bubbling away at various stages of ferment. At some point a distillation mechanism was added, ensuring the final product was as clear and smooth as spring water. For a while, purely as a novelty, the toddy was filtered through layers of mangrove-wood charcoal, drip by slow drip. People were puzzled by the taste of this, but fascinated too, and soon even more glass tubes and tanks were added. At its height, the machine was said to have resembled a tiny crystal mountain, sparkling with a life of its own.
Johnny’s gift for machines has always been evident to me. Even as a young child, I knew that while other people could perhaps take apart a car engine and then reassemble it, not everyone could do it as Johnny could. It wasn’t so much what he did but how he did it – steadily and gently, with a rhythm all his own. The parts of the engine fell away into his hands like pieces of silk; he held greasy steel bolts the way you or I might hold a newborn chick. I used to watch him fixing things. Whenever he repaired a clock – that was my favourite – his short peasant’s fingers, clumsy in every other way, would suddenly move with all the delicacy of a silk-weaver’s. Where other men might have used tweezers or screwdrivers or other tools, Johnny seemed only to use his fingers, touching each part of the clockwork. I always pretended to be doing something else – passing through the room or reading a book. He never knew I was watching.
The Toddy Machine was the beginning of a particular episode in Johnny’s life that goes something like this:
Armed with this gift, this knowledge of machines, Johnny becomes well known. People all over the valley hear about the toddy, they hear about the young man who made it. The mines need people to work in them, but these are hard times for the Chinese mines. They have been in the valley for fifty, sixty years, long before the railway was built between Port Weld and Butterworth. They are big, open-cast mines with old-fashioned gravel pumps. But it is not good for them now because new mines have opened all over the valley. British mines.
What makes these British mines different is that they do not need many hundreds of coolies to work in them. This is because they have, at the heart of the mine, a mechanised colossus never seen before in these parts. It is called a Dredging Machine, and it does the work of a thousand coolies. It sits astride the mine as the goddess Guan Yin herself sat on a vast lake, floating for all eternity. The Chinese fear this machine for they do not possess one. The British do not need many men, they simply need a few good ones. Of all the Chinamen in the valley, only one will be able to understand the Dredging Machine, and it does not take long for the British to learn of his existence.
The first time Johnny sees the dredger he does not see the monstrous, angry machine everyone else sees. Instead, he sees a living creature. He understands it at once. He sees limbs – huge mechanical limbs – and a body; he senses organs buried deep within it, and a heart too. It is as if he has always known this thing. When he is shown the machine, the words of explanation are as familiar to his ears as the rising and falling of the damp November winds. He has heard them a thousand times before. Even on that first day, he wants to start working with the machine. The British man who is in charge stands behind him, watching as he works the levers which turn the cogs which run the pump which fires the pistons which bring the ore up to the surface from the depths of the mine. The five minutes – the test of Johnny’s understanding of the machine – turn quickly into ten, twenty, forty minutes, an hour. Johnny and the machine cannot be separated. The machine wants to be worked by Johnny. ‘Quite remarkable,’ the man in charge says. ‘The dredger loves this boy.’ They are like a mother and her child who, after a lengthy separation, fall into each other’s arms with relief. Johnny is then taken to the longhouse where the special workers are given lodgings. It is made of rough, unplaned wood, full of splinters which embed themselves in Johnny’s feet and hands. The rain drums loudly on the zinc roof, but the house is dry and secure. Johnny sleeps on a thin mattress laid out on the floor. At night he can hear the scratching of small animals, but they are outside and he is inside. He is also given a piece of paper saying that he is now an employee of the Darby Tin Mine. Everyone is smiling. They do not yet know of the bad things Johnny will do.
About two months after Johnny first begins working at the Darby mine, the dredger breaks down for the first time. At first no one knows what to do. In case of emergencies, the workers have been told that one of them is to run to the foghorn and sound it three times, long and hard. The meaning of an ‘emergency’ is unclear, though. Only twice before has the foghorn been sounded: once when the monsoon rains, heavier than usual, washed away an entire face of the mine; and another time when the Chief Engineer’s wife, the only Englishwoman in the area, appeared suddenly and without reason, in the middle of the afternoon. On other occasions, even when someone was badly hurt or even killed in an accident, no alarm was raised and work went on as usual.
For a long time, there is nothing but a huge, empty silence. The roar of the dredger, which usually drowns out every other sound, is not to be heard. The workers do not know what to do. When at last the foghorn blows, pathetically, three times in the mid-morning air, it barely carries to the cream-painted hut where the British Sirs sit, leafing through papers which no one else can understand. One by one the Sirs come out of the hut, each fixing his hat to his head. Their shirts are damp and stick to their skins. Their faces, the workers can see, are heavy with heat, fatigue and disgust.
‘Call for that Chinaman Johnny,’ No. 1 Sir barks as the Sirs stand assembled before the broken behemoth. Johnny is brought to them. His hands and forearms are covered with grease. His face is dirty and grey with dust and lack of sleep.
‘What’s the matter with this bloody machine?’ No. 1 Sir says.
‘I’m not sure. Sir.’
‘You’re not sure? What do you think we pay your wages for?’ No. 1 Sir screams.
‘Calm down. Wretched thing probably doesn’t understand you,’ Sirs Nos 2 and 3 say. ‘Look at him.’
Johnny stands there with black hands hanging loosely at his side.
‘All right. Do you know where the problem is?’ No. 1 Sir says, slowly this time.
Johnny nods.
‘Well then, take me to it, don’t just stand there like an imbecile.’
They go deep into the machine. On a clean blue canvas sheet laid on the floor, Johnny’s tools are neatly spread out, ready for use. Dozens and dozens of tools, all shiny and clean.
‘Here,’ Johnny says, pointing.
The Sirs walk around the part of the machine which Johnny has pointed at. No. 1 Sir has his hands in his pockets. No. 2 Sir checks his fingernails as he paces back and forth. No. 3 Sir rubs his brow. Sirs Nos 4 and 5 say and do nothing – they are young, and do not yet know anything.
‘It’s the belt,’ says No. 1 Sir.
‘It’s the rotator,’ says No. 2.
‘It’s the oil supply. The wiring, I mean,’ says No. 3.
Johnny says, ‘The parts in the gearbox are broken, I think. They are not moving.’
‘Well, fix it,’ No. 3 says.
‘The machine – it requires new parts,’ Johnny says. ‘Maybe.’
‘You bloody well fix it now,’ No. 3 Sir says. His face is red and shining with sweat.
They watch as Johnny goes back to the machine. He does not know what he is going to do, how he is going to fix this unfixable problem, but he knows that he will find a way. Somehow, he will.
Piece by piece, Johnny takes the gearbox apart. He brushes each piece with a wire brush, washes it in water, then wipes it with grease. He gives it new life. He feels no fear: his hands are calm and strong and his eyes are cool and level. Turning to pick up another tool, he catches the eye of No. 1 Sir, who is blinking to keep out the heat and dust of the afternoon. At last, Johnny turns to the Sirs and says, ‘It is ready.’
The Sirs look at each other. ‘About bloody time,’ No. 1 says.
Johnny walks to the control box and rests his hands on it. He trusts the machine, he trusts himself. The whirr of the dredger is uncertain at first, but soon it becomes a steady growl, and then the familiar roar fills the entire space, drifting out into the valley, singing in Johnny’s ears.
One by one the Sirs walk back to their cream-coloured hut. ‘Imagine – millions of tons of ore under our feet,’ No. 1 says, putting his wide-brimmed hat on. ‘That damned Chinaman will be the ruin of us all.’
‘Nearly twenty past four,’ says No. 2.
‘Just in time for tea,’ says No. 3.
Johnny packs up his tools, one by one, making sure he cleans the grime and grease from each one. He wraps them up in his blue canvas cloth and listens to the song of the machine.
Four days later, the machine breaks down again. Once more, Johnny is summoned to repair it, and again he succeeds. The next day it breaks down again. And the next day too. By now Johnny has taken to sleeping next to the faulty part of the machine. He can hear its heartbeat, feel its pulse. It is weak and failing.
By now the workers have become used to the great silence that has fallen over the mine. They know there will be no work for them. Without the machine, the tin remains buried deep under their feet. There is nothing to wash, nothing to grade, nothing to store or melt. So the workers sit around, placidly chewing tobacco or betel leaves, their lips and tongues becoming stained with the juice of this stupor-inducing nut. As the days go by, the dry earth around the longhouse becomes pock-marked with patches of red spittle.
At the start of the second week without the machine, the Sirs come to where Johnny is working. His tools are laid out on the mattress beside him. Some of his tools have had more rest than he has.
‘What on earth is this monkey doing?’ says No. 1.
‘I told you not to let a Chinaman loose on the dredger,’ says No. 2.
Johnny looks at them with young eyes made old by work.
‘So,’ says No. 1, ‘what do you have to say for yourself?’
Johnny blinks. Their suits are white and blinding in the sunlight. ‘I need new parts,’ he says, turning back to the machine.
‘How dare you answer back!’ No. 3 shouts.
‘Parts indeed.’
‘It’s his fault anyway.’
‘When,’ No. 1 says slowly. ‘Will. It. Be. Fixed?’
Johnny’s chest rises and falls heavily. He doesn’t know how to answer. ‘Soon,’ he says. But he knows it is useless. The machine is dying in his hands, like a sick child on its mother’s breast.
‘Soon?!’ No. 1 explodes.
‘Soon??!’ echoes No. 2.
‘What does that mean?’ say Nos 3, 4 and 5.
Later that morning the Sirs make an announcement at a specially arranged workers’ meeting outside the cream-painted hut. The workers are told that they will not be paid to sit around doing nothing. The mine cannot afford to pay their wages if no tin is being processed.
‘It is simply uneconomical for the Darby mine to continue like this,’ says No. 1, his voice rising above the angry murmur. ‘As long as the Dredging Machine is not working –’
‘But that is not our fault!’ someone shouts.
‘– as long as the Dredging Machine remains –’
‘That is none of our business! Get the damn machine working!’
‘Until the machine is fixed,’ says No. 1 with all the authority he can muster, ‘THERE WILL BE NO PAY. So go home, all of you.’
‘That’s the problem with coolies,’ says No. 2 as the Sirs back into their hut, locking the door.
‘Where’s that lazy dog-boy?!’ the men outside shout. ‘Where’s Johnny? It’s all that bastard’s fault!’
‘Let’s teach him a lesson!’
‘My children will go to sleep hungry!’
‘Damned son-of-a-whore!’
‘He’s doing this to kill us all!’
When they find him they are swift and brutal. They hit him with their bare fists and kick him with shoeless feet, again and again. Johnny closes his eyes as the first blow strikes him on the side of his face. He crashes on to the machine and feels it press against his body, cold and lifeless. Soon he can no longer feel pain. He does not see or hear the men set fire to his mattress. ‘That will teach him to sleep all the time, lazy animal. Now maybe he will work to fix this machine.’
By the time they leave him they are no longer angry. They walk slowly off the mine and go home, heads bowed, arms hanging limply by their sides.
When Johnny opens his eyes again it is night. He sees, through swollen eyelids, the grey bulk of the machine. Slowly, he moves his head so that his ear touches the dredger. He can hear nothing, and suddenly his arms and legs and head and chest start to hurt, and he collapses again.
‘You had it coming, I must say,’ No. 2’s voice says. ‘You’re not as clever as I thought.’
In the dark, Johnny can barely make out No. 2’s figure standing over him.
‘I told him,’ No. 2 says, pacing slowly before Johnny, ‘I told him not to do it, not to take on a dirty Chinaman like you. I told him a Chinaman’s place is IN the mines, loading and carrying, but no – he had to put you in charge of the machine. A Chinaman operating the biggest dredger in the valley? Well, that’s plainly ridiculous. And he fed you and clothed you and housed you. What foolishness.’
‘I need new parts,’ Johnny whispers.
‘Over my dead body,’ No. 2 says. ‘You are responsible for what’s happened, you cretin.’ He kicks Johnny’s tools into a pile. Many of them have been burned with the mattress, their shiny faces now blackened with soot.
‘Pack up,’ No. 2 says. ‘I never want to see you here again.’
Feebly, Johnny begins to gather his tools. They are still hot from the fire.
‘Don’t forget,’ No. 2 says, ‘that you are responsible for this machine. It’s your fault.’
Johnny raises his gaze to meet No. 2’s.
‘Don’t you dare look at me like that,’ No. 2 says. He kicks Johnny away with the tip of his shoe.
Johnny’s hand lands on his pile of tools. He finds that his hand has come to rest on a screwdriver. Its handle is smooth and fire-warm. Johnny grasps it and thrusts it deep into No. 2’s thigh.
The court case was short but complicated; there were many difficulties. First of all, no one was certain of Johnny’s age, not even Johnny himself. It was not unusual for children of lowly rural backgrounds to have no birth certificate – why was there need for one? – and as a result, the precise date and location of Johnny’s birth remained a mystery. Advocates acting for the Darby mine insisted that Johnny should stand trial for the most serious charge: attempted murder. His physical appearance alone, they argued, suggested that he was at least eighteen. But Charlie Gopalan, a local barrister who specialised in such criminal cases, convinced the magistrate that Johnny was merely fourteen, and should not, under the circumstances, go to prison, where he would surely fall under the influence of communist guerrillas. Mr Gopalan was a man who had earned the trust of the British. He had studied at the Inner Temple and his clothes were nicely tailored in Singapore. His round-rimmed glasses added to his serious, scholarly manner. In pictures from the newspaper archive in the Public Library, he appears a small, neat-looking man, often holding a briefcase and a hat. He is even said to have begun translating Homer’s Odyssey into Malay. His word, in any event, carried much influence.
There was also the matter of No. 2’s condition. Johnny had managed to stab him in the fleshy part of the thigh, in exactly the place where the artery is at its thickest. The blood loss was immense. It was reported in court that the two men were found nearly lifeless, writhing feebly as if swimming in a shallow pool of blood. For a month after the stabbing, No. 2 remained in the General Hospital in Ipoh. Though he was for some days on the brink of death, he improved steadily. Doctors praised his bravery and admired his ‘buffalo-like’ constitution, and his progress was such that by the time of the hearing, he was able to walk, albeit gingerly. The familiar rosy-pinkness of his complexion was by now fully restored to his cheeks.
Thus the case against Johnny was half-hearted, the lawyers becoming increasingly bored as the days wore on. In the face of Mr Gopalan’s persuasiveness, the magistrate decided that it was sufficient that Johnny received ten lashes of the rotan, ‘to teach boys like you to know and respect your position in society’. He was cleared of all charges.
What no one knew at the time was that gangrene or septicaemia or some other mysterious infection had worked its way into No. 2’s blood, unnoticed by the doctors who had tended to him. He collapsed, was rushed to hospital, but again made a near-miraculous recovery. Once more, doctors marvelled at his God-given strength, and when he collapsed a second time they knew he would pull through – and he did. Month after month this continued, until finally No. 2 died, exactly a year and a week after first being stabbed by Johnny.
The coroner had no choice but to record a ‘death by natural causes’ verdict.
I do not believe that Johnny would have been saddened by the news of No. 2’s death. I believe, in fact, that it was this first killing which hardened in him a certain resolve. Now he was a killer but he did not feel bad. He knew, for the first time in his life, the sensation which was to become familiar to him later in his life, that powerful feeling of committing a crime and then escaping its consequences. It was this incident which set him on the path to becoming the monster he ultimately turned into.
It was many years before he could find work easily. Ordinary people were fearful of a person such as Johnny. He might not have been a criminal in the eyes of the law, but the law didn’t understand human nature. The law couldn’t always tell good from evil, people said. For a long time Johnny moved from town to town, village to village, plantation to plantation, never knowing how long he would stay or what he would do next. Without the kindness of strangers he would surely have perished. It was during this period of his life that he experienced his first real contact with communists. It was inevitable. The valley was, at the time, teeming with them – guerrillas, sympathisers, political activists. An ill-humoured youth full of hatred (for the British, for the police, for life), Johnny was perfect communist material. Of the many journeyman jobs he was given during these years, I’m certain that all but a handful were communist-inspired in some form or another. This wasn’t surprising, given that every other shopkeeper, farmer or rubber-tapper was a communist. These people offered Johnny more than an ideology; they offered a safe place to sleep, simple food and a little money. That was all he cared for at that point in time.
5. Johnny and the Tiger
I like to think of those years which Johnny spent wandering from job to lousy job as his ‘lost’ years, the years which became erased from his life, the years during which he vanished into the countryside. I see him disappearing into the forest as a boy and emerging as a man. That is certainly what seems, extraordinarily, to have happened. Who knows? Perhaps something terrible happened to him during those years in the wilderness, something which turned him into a monster. Or maybe it was the irresistible force of fate which led him down this path; maybe he was simply destined, from the day he was born, to jump off the back of a lorry on to the dusty, treeless main street in Kampar, in front of the biggest textile trading company in the valley. No one knows about the small odyssey which led Johnny to Kampar. All anyone can be sure of is that one day he turned up and got a job, his first regular employment since the Darby mine incident, at the famous shop run by ‘Tiger’ Tan.
The reasons behind Tiger’s name were a mystery. By all accounts, he was a gentle, softly mannered, home-loving man who, on account of his devout Buddhism, never ate meat, even though he was one of the few people in the valley who could afford to eat it every day. He had plump arms which hung loosely by his side when he walked. His movements were slow and unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world. He looked every bit the prosperous merchant that he was.
You would never have guessed that in his spare time he was also the commander of the Communist Army for the whole of the valley.
By the time Johnny came under his employ at the Tiger Brand Trading Company, Tiger Tan’s life seemed, in every respect, a settled state of affairs. After many years, he appeared to have laid to rest the unfortunate events relating to his short, sad marriage. His wife had left him very soon after they had married. She took their baby daughter with her and converted to Islam in order to become the third wife of the fourth son of the Prince Regent of Perak. She went to live in the teak palace on the gentle slopes of Maxwell Hill, and it was there that the child was raised, amid the splendour only royalty can provide. The child was given an Arabic name, Zahara, meaning ‘shining flower,’ though neither her name nor her hardy peasant-Chinese blood could save her from dying of typhoid when she was seven years old. After her death, her mother was sometimes glimpsed at the great shuttered windows of the palace singing old Chinese love songs at the top of her voice. She sang with perfect pitch, her tongue capturing the words and releasing them across the valley like grass seeds in the wind. If you strolled along the path which ran along the grounds of the palace, you could sometimes hear these songs:
A traveller came from far away,
He brought me a letter.
At the top it says ‘I’ll always love you,’
At the bottom it says ‘Long must we part.’
I put the letter in my bosom sleeve.
Three years no word has faded.
My single heart that keeps true to itself
I fear you’ll never know.
It took Tiger a full twenty years, perhaps more, to forget the pain of his wife’s desertion. At first, he spent every waking hour trying to convince himself that both his wife and child had died; he told himself over and over again that they had travelled to distant lands and perished in their journey. As the months went by he began to believe it. All his friends, all the people who came to his shop – none of them mentioned the fate of his young family. They could see his suffering and did not wish to add to it. They understood that the human mind is a strange creature. Unless it is reminded of something regularly, it gradually forgets about that thing. In that way we may forget about the most terrible things that happen in our world. Little by little, Tiger’s memory began to lose its imprint of his wife and baby daughter until, truly, they ceased to exist in his world.
All that had happened a long time before Johnny showed up at his shop. Tiger’s life had long since become settled. His business had been flourishing for many years and now he began to sink more and more into the comfort of his home, a modestly sized but comparatively luxurious stone-and-teak house on the outskirts of the little town. He filled it with exotic furniture – Portuguese chairs from Melaka, English pine tables treated with wax to protect against the humidity, painted chests of drawers from ‘Northern Europe’. He had a formidable collection of books too. Marxist texts in Chinese, mainly, but also a number of English-language books, including a small collection of Dornford Yates novels.
In his spacious garden there was a small orchard. He tended to his fruit trees with great care. He especially loved the mango trees for their dark tongue-shaped leaves, which kept a thick shade all year round. Of all the fruits, however, he loved the rambutan best, and the ones he grew were considered particularly fine: deep red in colour and not too hairy. He took these down to the market where he sold them wholesale. The few cents he made from this gave him as much pleasure as the hundreds of dollars he made each month from trading textiles and clothing, and so he began to devote more time to his garden. He pruned the trees so that their shapes would become more attractive and their new branches more sturdy; he agonised over which trees to use for grafting new stock; he tied paper bags over the best fruit to protect them from flying foxes and insects.
For Tiger, it turned out to be perfect timing that, just then, a strong, hungry-looking young man came asking for work at the Tiger Brand Trading Company.
When Johnny first arrived in town, he did what he always did. He drifted into the nearest coffee shop and had a glass of iced coffee and a slice of bread with condensed milk. He asked the shopkeeper for work – there wasn’t any. Coffee shops were usually poor sources of work, for they were almost always small enough to be run by the members of a single family. Out on the street, he stopped a few people and asked them where they thought he might find work. All of them echoed what the coffee shopkeeper had told him: ‘Tiger Tan’s well-known shop,’ they said, pointing at a large shophouse in the middle of a terrace on the main street. It was a busy-looking place which seemed to be full of expensive, high-quality merchandise. He realised, as he approached the shop, that fine red dust had settled all over his clothes during his three-hour journey from Tanjung Malim.
‘I’m looking for work,’ he said to a girl unloading fat bales of cotton from a lorry. The girl jerked her chin in the direction of the shop. ‘Ask boss,’ she said.
Johnny hesitated before going in. The shop smelled clean and dustless. There were many customers inside, and there was laughter and a rich hum of voices, punctuated with the click-clack of an abacus.
‘Yellow shirt, over there,’ the girl said as she pushed past Johnny.
Johnny looked over to a darkened corner. A neatly dressed man sat quietly in front of a pile of papers and a small money box. He had kicked off his shoes and was sitting with one ankle resting on the knee of another. Every few seconds he lifted his chin and fanned himself with a sheaf of papers. His hair was combed and brilliantined.
‘I want work,’ Johnny said simply. ‘I am a labourer.’
Tiger looked at him hard, assessing him quickly. After all these years he had become a sharp judge of character. It was well known that Tiger could see things in you that you might not have realised yourself.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked Johnny.
‘Lim.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘What do you mean, nowhere? Everyone comes from somewhere.’
‘I mean, I don’t know.’
‘OK – where have you just arrived from?’
‘Tanjung Malim.’
‘Before that?’
‘Grik – and before that Kampung Koh, Teluk Anson, Batu Gajah, Taiping.’
‘That’s a lot of places for a kid like you,’ Tiger said. This boy looked perfectly ordinary to him – no distinguishing physical features, nothing unusual in his behaviour. He could have been any one of the young drifters who turned up at the shop from time to time. And yet there was something curious about this particular one, something which, unusually, Tiger could not put his finger on. ‘Tea?’ he said, offering Johnny a chair.
Johnny sat down, his baggy shorts pulling back slightly to reveal hard gnarled knees criss-crossed with scars.
‘Of all the jobs you did,’ continued Tiger, ‘which one did you work at the longest?’
‘Yeo’s plantation.’
‘Near Taiping?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yeo’s pineapple plantation, right? The boss is Big-Eye Chew – that one?’
Johnny nodded.
A small smile wrinkled Tiger’s eyes. ‘Why did you like it?’
‘I liked the other workers,’ Johnny said, looking at his reddened, dust-covered canvas shoes. ‘I liked the way they lived. Together. The bosses too.’
‘I know that camp well.’
‘The workers there were like me. But I couldn’t stay. I had to go.’
‘Why?’
‘I had done bad things, people said.’
‘Sometimes that happens.’
Johnny cleared his throat. Tiger poured more tea.
‘What are you good at?’
‘Everything,’ Johnny said, ‘except machines.’
Johnny proved to be one of the most diligent employees ever to have worked at the Tiger Brand Trading Company. He began by doing what the other casual workers did – packing, loading, storing, sorting. Back-breaking work. But Johnny was not like the other illiterate workers. He observed and he learned. Soon, he knew the names of all the different textiles he handled, and how they were made. He learned to tell the difference between chintz and cretonne, Chinese silk and Thai silk, serge and gabardine. He especially liked the printed patterns of milkmaids and cowsheds on the imitation French cotton made in Singapore. But more than anything, he loved the batik and the gold-woven songket which were delivered to the shop by the old cataract-eyed Malay women who had made them, here in the valley.
‘Put them on the last shelf, over there,’ Tiger snorted, pointing to a recess in the farthest corner of the shop, every time a new supply was delivered. ‘Low-grade rubbish.’ Compared to the imported foreign material, it was true that the batik was rough. The dyes were uneven and the patterns, traced out by hand, were never consistent. The colours faded quickly even on the best ones, leaving only a ghostly impression of the original shades. But Johnny liked the irregular patterns. He must have, because later in his life, when he could afford to wear anything he wanted, he would always wear batik for special occasions such as Chinese New Year or Ching Ming. They were his lucky shirts too. He would wear them if one of his horses was running in a big race in Ipoh, and sometimes, if he had to put on a jacket and tie, he would wear a lucky batik shirt under his starched white shirt, even though it made him hot and sweaty. He had red ones, blue ones and green ones. The blues were my favourite. From far away, when he wasn’t looking, I used to trace the outlines of the patterns with my eyes. Brown dappled shapes stretched like sinews, swimming in the deep pools of the blue background. On his back these shadows danced and shifted quietly – hiding, folding over, tumbling across one another.
In Tiger’s shop, however, batik was considered second-rate, hardly worth selling. You didn’t go to Tiger Tan if you wanted to buy ordinary material made in broken-down sheds in Machang.
‘Remember,’ Tiger said to his employees, ‘this is a place where little dreams are sold.’
Before long, Johnny was given more important tasks, such as counting stock and then, finally, serving customers. Tiger gave him two new white shirts to wear when serving in the shop, and Johnny kept them clean and neatly pressed at all times. It turned out he was a natural salesman with an easy style all his own. Like Tiger, Johnny was never loud nor overly persuasive. He pushed hard yet never too far. He cajoled but rarely flattered. Although he always tried to sell the most expensive things in the shop, he knew it was better to sell something cheap than nothing at all. He had a sense for what each customer wanted, and he always made a sale.
The incident with the White Woman, for example, became legendary. Like so many other things in Johnny’s life, this incident seemed to happen without the faintest warning or explanation. Why she should have picked him instead of any other person in the shop no one will ever know. Perhaps there was no reason at all, just one small step on the curious path of fate.
The White Woman was a mixed-race widow of great and strange beauty. She stood a full six feet tall and although all who saw her agreed that her features were striking, none could agree on exactly what her features were. Everyone said different things of her face. Was she moon-faced or gaunt? Doe-eyed or cruel? Butter-skinned or powdery-white? She was the mistress of a rubber planter in the valley, a Frenchman named Clouet (‘Kloot’ was how people pronounced it) who drank too much samsu and did not care for his plantation. He had suffered badly in the great crash at the start of the thirties and now all he had left were a few hundred acres of dry rubber trees and a wife who hated the mosquitoes and skin rot of the tropics. He had a woman he loved, but their lives were a forked path. He could not live with her nor be seen in public with her for fear of losing his job. He wasn’t even allowed to take her with him into the Planter’s Club. Every so often, her washing lady would come into town and spread gossip about Clouet taking the White Woman away to France. But everyone knew it would never happen.
A hush crept across the shop when she entered. She stood for a second, casting her gaze from shelf to shelf, inspecting the bales of cloth and the neat piles of folded-up clothing. Three times a year, she came into Tiger’s shop to buy the best of the new merchandise. Usually, she would send a note in advance of her visit to let Tiger know when she would be arriving and what she needed to buy. In addition to all the usual items on a wealthy woman’s list, such as French tablecloths and plain unbleached Indian cotton for the servants’ clothing, she would also include camisoles or nightdresses because she knew that Tiger would prepare discreet little parcels for her, protected from the gaze of the other customers. Tiger would make sure that he was personally on hand to receive her, but on this occasion, no note preceded the visit. The White Woman had unexpectedly passed through Kampar. The recently built bridge at Teluk Anson had been swept away by floods the month before and work on a new one had not yet started. Her diverted journey took her too close to Tiger’s shop for her to resist temptation. Tiger, however, was not there that day, and all who were present in the shop noticed her displeasure. She kept her hat on and picked at the beads on her purse while she looked around the shop, casting her gaze upon the assistants until finally, her scowl came to rest on Johnny.
‘I will assist you if you wish,’ Johnny said. He was the only one of the people in the shop who dared to speak.
‘Where is Mr Tan?’ the White Woman said.
‘He is away today – on business,’ Johnny said. ‘I am in charge today.’
The White Woman approached the counter and laid her purse on the glass cabinets displaying lace handkerchiefs. Johnny noticed the soft black satin of the purse. Across the black surface, little beads were stitched meticulously into the shape of a dragon chasing a flaming pearl across a stormy sea.
‘What would you like, madam?’
‘Show me something beautiful,’ the White Woman said, looking at Johnny. ‘Do you think you can do that?’
Johnny looked her in the eye. ‘I think so,’ he said.
He moved slowly from one end of the shop to the other, touching bales of cloth, feeling their texture before deciding whether to take them or leave them. Sometimes he unfurled a length of fabric against the light and narrowed his eyes. No one in the shop knew exactly what he was looking for – he seemed to be searching for something hidden All this time the White Woman watched him with increasing fascination, her initial irritation beginning to fade. She could not figure out what this curious young man was doing. There seemed to be a mysterious logic to this actions – but what?
‘Here,’ he said at last, ‘these will make you happy.’
‘What’s this one?’ she said, feeling some cloth between her fingers. It was thin and silky with a single cream-coloured flower printed across it.
‘It’s French.’
‘It doesn’t look French to me. The pattern isn’t very rich.’
‘But it is French, madam, the very latest, I am told. You can wear it next to your body, even in the hot months. See how it touches your skin,’ Johnny said, gently sweeping it over her hand.
‘I’d use it for tablecloths.’
‘This,’ said Johnny draping another length of cloth over his shoulder, ‘is very special.’
‘It has no pattern at all.’
‘That is true. But see how the light shines on it, and through it?’
‘Am I to wear that?’
‘Of course not. But your windows – are they big? I thought so. Use this to make curtains.’
‘Curtains? Without a pattern?’
‘I have seen them in the latest American magazines,’ Johnny said, holding up the cloth in front of his face. ‘I can see you but can you see me?’
‘No.’
‘Next, my favourite, something so beautiful it will take your breath away,’ Johnny said, undoing a brown parcel.
‘It’s batik,’ the White Woman said, plainly and somewhat quizzically.
He pushed a plate of pink lotus cakes towards her and refilled her teacup.
‘We are exporting this,’ Johnny said, dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘to Europe. No one knows about this yet. This is specially made for us –’
‘But it looks like ordinary batik.’
‘A batch of the very same material with exactly the same pattern has just been sent to Port Wellesley for shipment to London, Paris, America.’
‘I see.’
The people in the shop were intrigued. This was the first they had ever heard of batik being shipped to Europe. Their minds raced. Was it possible that the same sarongs used by their grandmothers would be used in London? How did Tiger keep this secret?
The order was placed, the notes counted out and the goods dispatched that same day to the White Woman’s home.
‘You sold her batik,’ Tiger said over and over again, reaching for the whisky when he learned what had happened. ‘She will never come back to the shop again.’ His mood lightened, however, when he realised that Johnny had sold the entire stock of unsellable batik which had languished for many months at the back of the stock cupboards. He had also got rid of a large quantity of cheap Chinese gauze at a highly inflated price. The peony-printed satin, an expensive lapse in Tiger’s judgement (he had over-ordered from the new mill in Singapore before he had even seen a sample), was sold without a single cent’s discount.
After a few days a note arrived from the White Woman, thanking the Tiger Brand Trading Company for always keeping beautiful yet practical textiles in stock. The note singled out Johnny for special praise, and Tiger proudly showed it to all his customers. He also began to regard Johnny in a new light.
During the time he worked in the shop, Johnny lived in Tiger’s house along with several other young men and women, all of whom (so Johnny understood) worked in one way or another for the party. Although they were all employed at Tiger’s shop, their paths did not otherwise cross. In the evenings they went their separate ways, disappearing into the night and reappearing before daybreak for their communal breakfasts, always taken at 5.15. Johnny wondered what kind of things they did after they slipped out of the house at night. Attending passionate lectures, plotting attacks on administrative buildings across the valley, spying on VIPs in Ipoh, cleaning machine guns, setting booby traps deep in the jungle. Maybe they were even killing people. The thought made him shiver with excitement. He wanted to be with them.
Johnny himself had not yet experienced life as a true communist. Up to that point he had, of course, worked in many places run by people with communist leanings, but he had never yet been approached to do anything. Someone had given him a leaflet once. The words seemed cold on the thin paper, and did not arouse in him any feelings of duty. He tried reading some of the books on Tiger’s shelves. He reached, first of all, for Karl Marx, though he did not know why. Perhaps he had heard that name before, or perhaps the simple, strong sound of the words as he read them slowly to himself compelled him to take it into his room. Das. Ka-pi-tal. He said it several times in the privacy of his room. His lips felt strange when they spoke, and he felt curiously exhilarated. But he had not understood anything in the book. Even the Chinese version was beyond his comprehension. What the words said was plain enough, but the meaning behind them remained hidden from him. He grew to prefer the English version. Every night he would look at the book, reading a few lines in his poor English, hoping he would suddenly find a trapdoor into that vast world he knew lay beyond the page. Somehow it made him feel more important, more grown-up, as if he was part of a bigger place.
One Friday afternoon when all the shops were closed and the muezzin’s call drifted thinly across town, Johnny came across one of the other men in the garden. He was resting in the shade of a chiku tree, legs apart, sharpening a parang with smooth, strong strokes. His legs and bare torso were flecked with cut grass and his hands rough with dirt.
‘I need to light a bonfire,’ Johnny said, ‘to burn grass and old leaves. When will you be finished?’
‘I’m finished,’ the man (Gun was his name) said.
Johnny started for the far end of the garden beyond the fruit trees where he kept the tools. The steady metallic ring of the sharpening blade cut the hot afternoon air.
‘Hey,’ Gun said, ‘I heard about you.’
‘What about me?’ Johnny said, barely turning around.
‘The Darby mine. Everybody knows.’
‘So what? I can’t even remember that.’
Gun began to laugh – a high-pitched wail, like a wounded animal’s call in the middle of the jungle. ‘Hey, brother, don’t have that hard look on your face. You’re a real big-time hero, don’t you know that? Everyone talks about the guy who chopped that English bastard’s leg off.’
‘I didn’t chop his leg off.’
‘Sure, of course not,’ Gun continued, eyes squeezed shut with laughter. ‘Come, sit down.’
‘Who told you – Tiger?’ Johnny said, watching Gun carefully. The parang was balanced between Gun’s knees, glistening and hot.
‘No, everyone knows. Like I said, you’re famous, brother. Why do you think you’re still alive and healthy? Why do you think you’re always able to find work? Have you thought about that? It’s because we – our people – take care of each other here in the valley. In the whole damn bastard country, in fact. The whole bloody wide world. Do you agree?’
‘I suppose.’
‘OK, look. I’ll explain something to you. Come, sit down I said. You’re still new, fresh, as far as I can tell – even though you’re one goddam murderer already!’ Gun broke into laughter once more, baring his cigarette-stained teeth. ‘You have backsides for brains, you have no idea about the work we do.’
‘I know everything about the shop.’
Gun looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘Not the shop, you goddam idiot, the army. The communist army. M – C – P,’ he said in a slow, under-the-breath voice. ‘Know what that stands for? Malayan Communist Party. That’s who we work for.’
‘I knew that, sure,’ Johnny said, kicking a clump of grass. ‘Where do you work?’
‘You think I’m going to tell you, you bloody dogshit? You’re not one of us. Not yet anyway. Trouble is, Tiger wants you in the shop, not out there doing what the rest of us do.’
‘What do you do?’
Gun lifted the parang and held its blade erect before Johnny’s face. He looked at it with cold black eyes and smiled with his yellow-brown teeth. With a single fluid swipe of his arm he brought the blade down on to the ground before them. It sliced sharply into the earth, clinking against the tiny pebbles in the soil. He smiled at Johnny, the corners of his upper lip curling back hard. ‘That’s what we do.’
Johnny’s face coloured, his blood ran hot. He had felt the rush of air against his cheek as the parang swept past him. He had seen the sun glinting off the blade. At last, he knew he was truly and irreversibly a communist.
‘What I think,’ Gun said, as he prised the parang from the soil and wiped it clean with his fingers, ‘is that anybody who can cut up and kill an English big shot, well, that person might be very useful to us.’
‘Will I fight for the liberation of man’s soul from the chains of bourgeoisie?’ Johnny said.
Gun stared at him blankly.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Johnny said.
Gun laughed. Johnny could not tell if it was in contempt or in friendship. ‘That’s up to Tiger,’ he said.
The only problem with being a communist – for Johnny and for Tiger – was that it interfered with business. It interfered with running the shop and serving customers and deciding which clothes to display in the glass cabinets. For Tiger, the problem was one he had faced for many years now. He had become accustomed to it all – the rotten, ever-present fear of exposure and arrest, the risk of betrayal. Sure, he was among his people; and yes, he knew he had their trust. All the same, he was careful not to make enemies. He never took advantage of suppliers or customers. People are people, he told himself. A single vengeful word whispered in the ear of the District Police Inspector would be sufficient for Tiger to be locked up in Tambun Prison for the rest of his life. For more than a decade, this fine gentleman had coordinated the activities of the Perak guerrillas from the genteel surroundings of his shop. Now, as the 1930s drew to a close, the strain of this duplicity weighed heavily on him. The knowledge that he was sending young men to be shot, maimed or imprisoned for life began to disturb his sleep. He wanted to close his doors to the world, to shut himself in his home with his books and furniture and fruit trees, but no: the call from China was becoming more urgent, more violent. The Japanese were in Manchuria now and Chinese all over the world were being called to arms. These were times for action, the party said, for the enemy was at the gate; but all Tiger longed for was to grow the perfect guava. He felt age in his bones and reluctance in his heart. In his sleepless nights he had the same thought over and over again: he had to stop, he could not go on.
He was glad he had Johnny.
Early one evening when the sun had calmed to a deep amber, an idea came into Tiger’s head which made him shiver gently with happiness. He had spent the day planting papaya seedlings he had grown from the seeds of his own fruit. Though the work was not heavy, it was enough to make a man of his age feel as if he had earned a rest. After dousing himself with cold water he sat in the cane armchair in his library with his supper of cold noodles. When he finished those he poured himself a small glass of cognac. He had not been to the shop at all that day. He thought of Johnny, he thought of the customers; he tried to fill his ears with the noise of the shop, the smooth-sharp sound of heavy scissors cutting through cloth, Johnny’s low mumbling voice, the clink of coins on the glass counter. He wondered how the shop looked without him in it, and the image of the Tigerless place did not trouble him. He knew then that the Tiger Brand Trading Company would survive his death and, more than that, would flourish. His whole world – which he had created – would grow unendingly. The thought was cemented when, at that moment, he saw Johnny running up the stairs at the front of the house, leaping two steps at a time. Elation mixed with relief, that is what Tiger felt. Now he knew there was no more reason for him to continue the struggle.
‘Johnny,’ he called, no longer able to keep his thoughts to himself.
‘What’s the matter, Tiger? Are you all right?’ Johnny’s brow creased with uncertainty.
‘I want you to sit down with me,’ Tiger said.
Johnny sat perched on the edge of a chair facing Tiger. He could feel the frame of the chair pushing through the thin upholstery, cutting into his buttocks.
‘Courvosier?’ Tiger said, holding up the bottle of cognac.
‘No, thank you.’
‘It is said,’ Tiger said, his face glowing and puce-coloured, ‘that tending to your garden is good for your soul. I can certainly testify to that. After a day’s work I feel cleansed. Funny, isn’t it?’ He chuckled gently.
Johnny looked mystified.
‘I don’t know how to explain this feeling to you. It is as if the work I put into looking after my plants makes me a better man. It makes me feel that I am a good person –’
‘You are a good person –’
‘– and for those few hours that I am in the garden, none of the bad things I have done in my life matter very much; they do not exist in my garden.’
‘You have never done any bad things.’
Tiger smiled. ‘Don’t speak. Listen. You know I have worried about the shop. You know I am an old man now. That does not mean I do not care about the future of the shop, the future of everyone who works there, everyone who depends on the shop. I care. But I am old and tired, and soon I will die. I have spent much time in my garden lately, I know, but I feel no harm can come from this. Why? Because I have you, and you are ready for greater things.’
‘Greater things,’ Johnny repeated in his blank monotone.
‘Yes, greater things! Tell me – what would happen to the shop if I was dead?’
‘Do not say that.’
‘But what if? What if? What would you do then?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know.’ Johnny’s face was stubborn and dull.
‘Do you think the shop would survive?’
‘Yes.’ Johnny’s reply was instinctive.
‘Why do you think it will survive?’
Johnny did not answer.
‘Because of you. All that is mine will be yours upon my death.’
Johnny did not protest, but remained expressionless as before.
The following weeks saw a small revolution in the textile business in the valley. Following the example set by the larger companies in KL and Penang, Johnny introduced village-to-village selling. It had always occurred to him that there were many people who might have wanted to visit the shop but, for one reason or another, were not able to. In many parts of the valley, the roads were little more than dirt tracks twisting through the jungle. When the rains came they washed mud on to the roads, and in the hot season the dust was so heavy and the sun so strong that a traveller could barely open his eyes. If these people could not come to the shop, Johnny thought, the shop would go to them.
Every Tuesday Johnny would cycle out into the jungle, taking with him a selection of cloths, heading for small villages beyond the reaches of the single tarred road running between Kampar and Ipoh. Each journey would last two full days and nights, and on the morning of the third day Johnny would reappear at the shop with no merchandise left on his bicycle. He built a little wooden platform on the back of his bicycle, fashioned from an old piece of teak which had once been the seat of a chair, worn smooth through years of use. Johnny lashed this tightly to his bicycle, and then tied the bales of cloth to it so that they stuck out at right angles. He soon became a familiar sight in the smaller villages of the valley – a stern-faced man riding a funny contraption which seemed less like a bicycle than a moving pile of textiles. The children looked forward to hearing the ring of his bell every few weeks, for he always brought with him a large bag of boiled sweets which he would distribute generously.
But sweets were not all Johnny brought. In each of the villages, he would seek out the people known to have communist sympathies. He brought news, from Tiger, of what the party was doing in the rest of the valley. He told them about secret lectures and campaigns to raise funds for the movement in China. He gathered information too, and soon he knew which farmers had sons who wanted to join the party, which villages were not sympathetic to the Cause, which people could be relied upon to provide donations. He knew the villages as he knew people – some were friends, some reluctant allies, others plain enemies. There were beautiful ones, ugly ones, dull ones, naughty ones. Soon he knew everything. More than Tiger himself.
On these trips Johnny began to feel a swelling sense of duty. Not only was he working to cement the future of the shop, he was imparting the word of the party. True, this wasn’t quite the same as hand-to-hand combat in the jungle, but representing the party in his way was surely more noble and demanding. His way required cunning beyond that of a simple soldier. It required charisma and intelligence and, above all, the ability to read and write. In this respect Johnny had became superior to the other men, for he was now armed with literacy. On each journey to the outlying villages he took with him the Communist Manifesto in English, together with a pocket dictionary he had found in Tiger’s library. He also took an exercise book in which he wrote out all the words he did not understand. Fraternity. Absolutism. Antagonistic. Jurisprudence. He wrote these down on one side of the page and on the other he wrote out the meanings of the words in Chinese, simplifying and paraphrasing them to facilitate the memorising process (Proletariat | Me).Then he simply looked at the lists of words, learning them by heart. As he cycled along the uneven tracks, veering to avoid the rocks and the potholes and craters carved out by the floods and the droughts, he spoke the English words aloud, letting the Chinese translations echo silently in his head. At first they seemed strange and fascinating. Sometimes his voice seemed not to belong to him – he did not recognise the person who made these wonderful sounds. But soon he grew to love these noises. He loved feeling the words form at the base of his throat and then well up in his mouth before dancing in the quiet jungle air.
When at home, he began to creep more frequently into Tiger’s library. For a long time, this was a place which had intimidated and mystified him, but now it began to feel warmer. Its allure became stronger yet less forbidding. But which ones should he read? They were still indistinguishable from each other. He could by now read most of the words on the spines, but the names – they were names, weren’t they? – remained shadowy and foreign. Once, he ran his fingers along the spines of a row of guava-coloured books, feeling the indented gold letters with his fingertips. Perhaps the touch of his flesh against the printed letters would suddenly reveal all kinds of hidden secrets. He came away, breathlessly, with A Choice of Shelley’s Verse and something by Dornford Yates. Those two books kept him busy for many weeks. He filled three whole exercise books with lists of new words which would stay with him for the rest of his life. As an old man he would often quote Shelley, muttering under his breath if he thought no one was listening. The fitful alternations of the rain this, the Deep’s untrampled floor that. I don’t think he ever fully understood the meaning of it all.
From time to time, though, he still felt a shiver of excitement when he thought about the dark, rough life of a soldier like Gun. He had once visited the home of a small-village communist lieutenant and spied, through a half-open door, a rifle propped up against the wall. It leaned brazenly on the wooden slats like a household implement to be picked up and used casually at any time. That night Johnny slept in the next room, not ten feet from the gun. He dreamed he was walking barefoot through the night-clad jungle holding that same rifle. He walked into a clearing lit by a fire. It smelled of meat and mud. The men were laughing, their heads thrown back, their throats open wide. The gun was light in his hands as he shot each one of them in the head. When he woke he looked at his hands. They were strong and calm, but his pulse was throbbing heavily.
6. Three Stars
Some people are born with a streak of malice running through them. It poisons their blood for ever, swimming in their veins like a mysterious virus. It may lurk unnoticed for many years, surfacing only occasionally. Good times may temporarily suppress these instincts, and the person may even appear well intentioned and honest. Sooner or later, however, the cold hatred wins over. It is an incurable condition.
I can pinpoint the exact moment when I knew for certain that my father was afflicted with this terrible disease. I had just left school and announced my intention never to return to the valley. I was eighteen. I did not want to see the Harmony Silk Factory again. Father did not flinch at my words; he merely nodded and said, ‘I will take you to your destination.’ It was raining heavily as we drove through Taiping, where he was to drop me off at the bus station. We drove through the Lake Gardens, along avenues lined with umbrellas of dropping jacaranda. Raindrops found their way through the gaps in the barely opened windows and fell lightly on my arms. Without warning, Father slowed to a halt and got out of the car. He walked on to the grass and stood in the rain, gazing out at the silvery lakes. I had no desire to get wet, so I remained resolutely in the car; I had no idea what he was doing. At last I could bear it no longer and, holding a spare shirt over my head, ran towards him. I stood at his side for a while and suggested that we move on. He had a curious expression on his face, as if concentrating on something in the distance. ‘Do you know,’ he said quietly as if speaking to himself, ‘the word “paradise” comes from the ancient Persian word for “garden”.’ I did not reply; I tried to remember if there had been an article on this subject in the latest Reader’s Digest. ‘The Persians had beautiful gardens. They filled them with lakes, fountains, flowers. They wanted to recreate heaven on earth.’ His eyes blinked as the wind blew fine raindrops into his eyes. I looked into the distance, trying to locate what he was looking at. I thought, perhaps my father was capable of appreciating beauty; perhaps he was not completely black-hearted and mean after all. In the midst of the downpour I began to feel guilty that I had judged him harshly all these years. I was scared, too – scared of discovering someone I had never known, a different father from the one I had grown up with. But then I heard a sharp slap, and saw that he had swatted a mosquito on his neck. A small black-and-red smudge appeared below his jowl where he had caught the insect. ‘Bastard,’ he spat as he walked back to the car. His voice was as hard and cold as it always had been, and his eyes were set in anger. As we drove away I knew that I had been mistaken. That tender moment had been a mere aberration; it changed nothing. My father was born with an illness, something that had eaten to the core of him; it had infected him for ever, erasing all that was good inside him.
Why I did not inherit his sickness I do not know. Someone told me at Father’s funeral that sons never resemble their fathers. What passes from elder to younger lies far beneath the surface, never to be seen or even felt. Perhaps this is true, but if the inheritance remains undiscovered, how are we to know it exists at all? I am merely thankful that I have never known any of my father’s traits in myself. I could not, in a thousand years, comprehend the crimes he committed.
It did not take Johnny long to become known across the valley. As Tiger’s right-hand man he automatically gained the respect of the people he met, and as Tiger became more withdrawn, Johnny’s presence was felt more keenly than ever. People even began to seek Johnny before Tiger if they had any information to share or money to give. It was during this flowering of confidence that Johnny went to Tiger with a proposal.
‘I want to give a lecture,’ Johnny said. ‘The kind you used to give, open to all. I have been reading, you see. Books.’
Tiger’s eyes shone with pride. This boy was now truly a man.
‘Nothing too big,’ Johnny continued. ‘I want to tell them about the books I have read. About idealogy.’
‘Yes, i-de-o-logy. Good. Tell me, son, what has made you want to do this?’
‘I want to help people – just as you have helped me.’
‘How are our people these days? You have stopped bringing me news. I guess everything must be fine.’
‘Everything is fine. One or two small things. Nothing bothersome. I don’t want to trouble you with anything but the most serious.’
‘I see … thank you. Is there anything on your mind?’
‘No.’
‘If there is something, you must tell me. You are a fine, capable man but you are not yet ready for the whole world.’
‘Am I not?’
Over the next few weeks Johnny spread the word that he would, under Tiger’s auspices, be holding a lecture in Jeram. Things were not going well in the party, he said. He had discovered this during his travels. There was a worm eating its way to the heart of the party and its awful progress had to be halted.
‘A lecture? What kind of thing is that?’ some people said.
‘A big meeting,’ said Johnny, ‘with free beer for all.’
The lecture was held in a large wooden shack on the western fringes of the Lee Rubber Plantation near Kuah. The unruly shrubs of the jungle had crept in among the rows of rubber trees and it was difficult to see the paths leading to the shack. It was not a comfortable place. Many years ago it had been used to store processed rubber sheets, but it was too far from the administrative heart of the plantation and, long abandoned by the owners of the estate, it was now used as a not-so-secret place for local young men to meet and drink toddy and samsu.
The shack was nearly full, with people squatting or sitting cross-legged on the dirt-covered floor. A few kerosene lamps hung from rusty nails on the walls, casting a poor, dull light on the small assembly. When moths fluttered too close to the lamps, the light would flicker and pulse, and huge shadows would flash around the room.
‘Strong leadership is key to survival,’ Johnny said as he walked round the room. He was wearing a coarse green canvas shirt. On its breast the three stars of the MCP were stitched roughly into the fabric. With one hand he brandished a copy of the Communist Manifesto (in English, for added effect) and with the other he handed out bottles of warm Anchor. Most of the people there were too poor to buy beer and many had never even tasted it before. ‘Without a strong leader we are doomed.’ He spoke with the loud, authoritative voice he had been practising for some weeks. ‘A weak leader, one who does not live with his men, is damaging to the Cause.’ He grasped the three stars on his breast.
‘Yes, damaging to the Cause!’ several people roared, raising their bottles aloft.
‘The Cause!’ others echoed.
‘This is no time to be soft. We cannot sit back and shake our legs. Resting On My Laurels, Westerners say. Look what’s happening in China.’
‘Look what’s happening in China!’
‘Look what’s happening in China!’
Johnny suppressed a smile as he noticed the rapidly emptying beer bottles and reddening faces in the audience. ‘If the Japanese Army invaded the valley next month,’ he continued, ‘would we be able to fight them? No! Why? Because we are not prepared. Why? Because our leaders are not strong.’
‘Curse our leaders! Damn them!’
‘If we are not properly led, then the Japanese, the British – anyone can destroy us,’ Johnny said, opening a crate of whisky.
‘No, no one can destroy us!’
‘Not if our leaders are strong. But our leaders are not strong.’
Bottles of whisky were passed among the men and women in the room. They drank straight from the bottle, taking one sharp gulp before passing it on.
‘What’s that coward Tiger Tan doing, huh?’ someone cried. ‘Where is he?’
‘Tiger? Who is that person? He is invisible nowadays.’
‘He has done a lot of good in the past,’ Johnny said.
‘The past? Shit! What about tomorrow?’
‘I was OK in the past but in the future I might be six feet under – because of Tiger!’
‘Tiger is a good man,’ Johnny said.
‘But a weak leader!’
‘A weak leader!’
‘Johnny should be our leader!’ someone said, and soon there was a chorus of similar voices. Over and over they chanted his name.
Johnny smiled. ‘Tiger is a good man,’ he said simply.
I have often wondered how Johnny must have felt when he cycled back from his triumphant lecture, tasting real power for the first time. I imagine his eyes black and hard, his mind calculating, always calculating. I have travelled along many of those same tracks, both as a child and as an adult. The roads are surfaced now, mile after mile of broken grey bitumen. There are still many potholes; not even tar can withstand the force of a flash flood. Recently, I decided I would cycle the route from Jeram to Kampar, from the site of the long-destroyed shack to where the Tiger Brand Trading Company once stood. I did not know where to begin this journey. The jungle had long ago swallowed up the old rubber plantation, so I made a rough guess and skirted along the notional western border of the vanished estate. The hut and the rows of rubber trees were no longer there, of course. They were only phantoms of the mind now.
I struck out for Kampar in the weakening five o’clock sun. The road was deserted. There was – is – little reason for anyone to visit Jeram, and in many places the surface of the road was hidden under layers of pale mud. The rain had carved shallow gullies in this mud, and I decided to follow these scars, travelling in broad arcs along the road. I imagined they were Johnny’s tracks, made just after his lecture. They were not straight because he had been intoxicated with power. Like Johnny, I cycled like this for many miles, my sweat-soaked shirt stuck to my back and my eyes blinded by the sun.
Still I could not feel Johnny’s wild excitement; I could not understand.
His thoughts did not become mine, and so I cannot tell you why he would go on to do the things he did.
A month after the lecture, Tiger Tan was found dead in a clearing in the jungle not far from his home. He had been shot twice, in the face and in the heart, though the post-mortem could not determine which shot had killed him. Either way, it seems certain he knew his killer. The shots were clean and accurate, fired from very close range, suggesting that he had been in the company of his murderer. Of his face, all that remained was his mouth. In the numerous newspaper reports following his killing, his mouth was described simply as being ‘open’. It was obvious to all, however, that the wide-open mouth was an expression of shock and terror, his last stifled cries ringing hollow in the endless jungle. Maybe he did not even cry out. Maybe he opened his mouth one last time to ask ‘Why?’ It was a terrible way to die, for sure. Many years later, a young boy who did not believe in the Legend of Tiger Tan went fishing in the area where Tiger was killed. Perhaps he even walked over the exact spot where Tiger’s body lay. As he waded through the cold shallow water, he became aware of a man strolling aimlessly through the trees. The man kept appearing and then disappearing in the dense foliage. He was wearing old simple clothes and he seemed to be talking to himself. ‘Must be a madman,’ the boy chuckled to himself as he continued fishing. As he was leaving the jungle, the boy heard that the man was repeating the word ‘Why’ over and over again. ‘Why what, old man?’ the boy called out as he approached him. It was only when the figure turned round that the boy saw his face, a seething, boiling mass of shapeless flesh.
Nothing had been stolen from Tiger’s pockets. Neither his gold wristwatch nor his jade ring had been taken. Later, the police gave these items to Johnny. They folded them up in a white brocade cloth the Chief Inspector had bought from Tiger’s shop some time before, and placed the delicate parcel in a black lacquer box. They brought it to the shop, where Johnny was making preparations for the funeral. They bowed low and gave Johnny the box. Witnesses to this scene say that the great Johnny, who was never known to cry, had ‘blood-red’ eyes, ‘glasslike’ with tears. He accepted the box graciously and said quietly, ‘This is the beginning of a new time.’ All who were present felt the truth of these words.
The box remained with Johnny for the rest of his life – a symbol of triumph, perhaps, or at least the start of a new life.
The funeral lasted three days, during which the shop remained closed as a mark of respect. On the third day, once the minor ceremonies were over, the final offerings to Tiger’s spirit were made in the middle of Kampar. Anyone who had ever known Tiger was free to attend. A crowd began to gather before the morning became hot. Many people had travelled overnight to attend the occasion, and now stood waiting patiently for their turn before the great, dead man. Even small children queued up to pay their respects. When they approached the coffin they peered nervously at the body. ‘Pai!’ their parents commanded, and so they did, bowing their heads and lowering their burning joss sticks three times.
Little bundles of paper money marked with silver and gold were handed out to all those who came. Each person took this paper money and dropped it into a huge tin drum which held within it a fierce fire, a bonfire of heavenly money for Tiger’s afterlife.
During the days of the funeral Johnny was the focus of attention. He was seen everywhere, organising everything, talking to everyone. Many people remarked how difficult it must have been for him and how well he was coping, but then again they didn’t expect any less. Here was a great man, they said, a pupil in the mould of the teacher, a son in the image of the father.
In the middle of the afternoon, while people waited for the priest (who was late) to arrive, a cloth supplier was seen to approach Johnny. No one heard his exact words, but it became widely known that he asked to speak about business arrangements with Johnny now that Tiger was dead. Perhaps he wanted payment up front; perhaps he wanted to withdraw the shop’s credit for the time being; maybe he even threatened to expose the shop’s communist links in order to extort larger payments from Johnny. Perhaps he had simply misjudged Johnny’s character, believing that the young man would not be as firm as old Tiger had been. He was wrong. Johnny turned on him with cauldron-black eyes and struck him with a single smooth blow administered with the back of the fist. The man’s entire body spun from the force of the blow and collapsed on the floor. Johnny had his men drag the man out on to the dusty road, where he was left to recover in dazed silence, in full view of the scores of mourners. None of them had any sympathy for him, and a few even rounded on him, telling him he should be ashamed at his lack of courtesy. No one was deeply sad when they heard, some months later, of reports from Penang of this man’s death by stabbing in a bar fight in Georgetown.
Johnny had arranged for an altar to be built in the shop. White marble framed with carved jade – nothing too showy. A photograph of Tiger was set into the smooth marble face. It was a picture from his younger days, hair waxed and neatly combed, his gentle smile revealing only one gold tooth. An offering to Tiger was laid out before this altar, chrysanthemums and boiled eggs and a poached chicken. An earthenware jar was placed here too, full of burning joss sticks lit by the processing mourners who came to bow to Tiger’s image.
Not a word was said when Johnny took over the Tiger Brand Trading Company, running and controlling every aspect of its business as Tiger had before him. It seemed perfectly natural that this should be the case. In fact, it might be said that the people of the valley would have been shocked if Johnny had not taken over. There was a new sense of urgency at the shop. Business was as brisk as it ever had been, but both the workers and the customers noticed that there was more energy in the shop now. No one could explain this – it came from Johnny, was their simple explanation. Small things changed too. New light bulbs were fitted, making the shop less gloomy, so it could stay open later, well after dark. People would call in for a chat on their way to dinner. They would share jokes with Johnny and with each other as he counted up the day’s takings. The light in the shop made everything look golden.
Very soon, people began to forget about Tiger. For a time, however, there was talk about who might have killed him. The police? Unlikely. They didn’t have enough evidence about Tiger’s ‘other’ activities. A rival businessman? Never. Tiger had no rivals, and besides, without Tiger there would be no business. A rogue bandit? No – remember he still had his valuables with him. Most likely it was a traitor, a police informant whom Tiger had taken aside to reprimand. The man (or woman) had panicked and shot Tiger. But some people – generally when drunk – began to say things about Tiger, things no one would have dared to say before. They said maybe he deserved it. He had got fat and lazy and he enjoyed his money just a little bit too much. Sure, he’d done a lot for the party, but he’d become a danger. He wasn’t the one cycling from village to village keeping the Cause alive in the valley. He wasn’t the one making money for the shop, money that could buy food and clothes for our boys in the jungle. All Tiger did was to tend to his goddam fruit trees. Sometimes he was even seen picking weeds from the grass in his garden, for God’s sake. What a stupid thing for a man like Tiger to do. They weren’t saying that they were happy he was dead, but they weren’t saying they were sad either.
Johnny still found time to visit the odd village as he had done before, but his old contacts knew that their boy was now a man, and now they would have to travel to him. A few times a year he organised lectures which grew less clandestine and more well attended. At these events there was generous hospitality, free food and drink for everyone. There was less lecturing, more laughing. The people loved him. Like us all, they wanted someone to worship and adore, and so they poured their hopes and fears into this young man who they did not, and never would, truly know.
It was at this point in his life, when he was just becoming a famous man, that Johnny met my mother.
7. Snow
My mother, Snow Soong, was the most beautiful woman in the valley. Indeed, she was one of the most widely admired women in the country, capable of outshining any in Singapore or Penang or Kuala Lumpur. When she was born the midwives were astonished by the quality of her skin, the clarity and delicate translucence of it. They said that she reminded them of the finest Chinese porcelain. This remark was to be repeated many times throughout her too-brief life. People who met her – peasants and dignitaries alike – were struck by what they saw as a luminescent complexion. A visiting Chinese statesman once famously compared her appearance to a wine cup made for the Emperor Chenghua: flawless, unblemished and capable both of capturing and radiating the very essence of light. As if to accentuate the qualities of her skin, her hair was a deep and fathomless black, always brushed carefully and, unusually for her time, allowed to grow long and lustrous.
In company she was said to be at once aloof and engaging. Some people felt she was magisterial and cold, others said that to be bathed in the warm wash of her attention was like being reborn into a new world.
She was magical, compelling and full of love, and I have no memory of her.
She died on the day I was born, her body exhausted by the effort of giving me life. Her death certificate shows that she breathed her last breath a few hours after I breathed my first.
Johnny was not there to witness either of these events.
Her death was recorded simply, with little detail. ‘Internal Haemorrhaging’ is given as the official cause. Hospitals then were not run as they are today. Although many newspapers reported the passing of Snow Soong, wife of Businessman Johnny Lim and daughter of Scholar and Tin Magnate TK Soong, the reports are brief and unaccompanied by fanfare. They state only her age and place of death (‘22, Ipoh General Hospital’) and the birth of an as yet unnamed son. For someone as prominent as she was, this lack of detail is surprising. The only notable story concerning my birth (or Snow’s death) was that a nurse was dismissed on that day merely for not knowing who my father was. As Father was absent at the time, the poor nurse responsible for filling in my birth certificate had the misfortune to ask (quite reasonably, in my opinion) who the child’s father was. The doctor roared with shock and disgust, amazed at the nurse’s ignorance and rudeness. He could not believe that she did not know the story of Johnny Lim and Snow Soong.
Snow’s family was descended, on her father’s side, from a long line of scholars in the Imperial Chinese Court. Her grandfather came to these warm southern lands in the 1880s, not as one of the many would-be coolies but as a traveller, a historian and observer of foreign cultures. He wanted to see for himself the building of these new lands, the establishment of great communities of Chinese peoples away from the Motherland. He wanted to record this phenomenon in his own words. But like his poorer compatriots, he too began to feel drawn to the sultry, fruit-scented heat of the Malayan countryside, and so he stayed, acquiring a house and – more importantly – a wife who was the daughter of one of the richest of the new merchant class of Straits Chinese. This proved to be an inspired move. His new wife was thrilled to be married to a true Chinese gentleman, the only one in the Federated Malay States, it was said. He in turn was fascinated by her, this young nonya. To him she was a delicate and mysterious toy; she wore beautifully coloured clothes, red and pink and black, and adorned her hair with beads and long pins. She spoke with a strange accent, the same words yet a different language altogether. This alliance between ancient scholarship and uneducated money was a great success from the start, especially for Grandfather Soong (as he came to be known), who was rapidly running out of funds.
His talent for finding an appropriate partnership appears to have passed on to his son TK, who proved to be even more astute. While managing to cling on to his father’s scholarly heritage, TK also managed to learn the ways of the new Chinese – the ways of commerce and industry. He did so through his wife, Patti, who was the daughter of no less a person than the kapitan of Melaka’s right-hand man. TK and Patti were a formidable pairing indeed.
TK had always shown exceptional promise, even as a young boy. He passed his examinations in law at the University of Malaya with the highest honours and for a brief spell studied at Harvard before impatience, boredom and cold weather brought him home. For a while, he considered pursuing a career in banking in Singapore, but opted instead to return to the valley, where there were none of the distractions that abounded in Singapore – nightlife, foreign money, women. He was a notable calligrapher and painter, and his home was decorated with many scrolls of Tang poems, written in his own flowing hand. Many of them have been rehung in that old house, the same house which was Snow’s home and, briefly, Johnny’s too. The house is now inhabited by Patti’s relatives – my cousins, I suppose, though I do not know them.
Like me, TK was the only son of a wealthy family in an area where wealthy families were uncommon. People would have known and talked about him simply because of who he was, even before he had done anything of note. It is a difficult thing to live with. When you know that everyone talks about you behind your back, while looking at you with silent eyes, it can sometimes have an effect on you. For although people may admire your standing in life, they may also boil with jealousy and hatred. It makes you think differently from other people, and eventually it distorts your personality. That was the case with TK. A young man like him wearing smart Western clothing and spending his time painting would have aroused much comment. In the end, it was the burden of what other people said that made TK settle down and build a life and a family for himself, just as his father had before him.
First, he changed his appearance. He swapped his Western suits for the traditional Chinese clothes his father once wore, the attire of a Manchu civil servant – long shirts made of the richest brocade, trousers of plain, good silk. This kind of dress was no less conspicuous in rural Malaya, and many people thought it was merely a phase which he would soon leave behind. But he persisted with it to the end of his days; it is how he is dressed in the stiffly posed photographs that survive. He continued reading classical Chinese texts; he wrote and he painted. But his demeanour changed. Whereas before he had been flamboyant and easily excitable, now he was serious and calmly spoken. At last, sighed his parents, he took an interest in business. He benefited from family connections and became involved in large-scale enterprises such as commercial loan-making and the import and export of tin and rubber to Europe. He got married too.
Patti was said to have been a woman of notable beauty, although to my eyes hers must have been a beauty of that particular age. Certainly, the worn sepia-tinted portraits do not do any of their subjects justice, but even so, she appears sullen and withdrawn. If you look closely, you can see where Snow inherited the cold streak that she was said to have possessed. Patti’s mouth is drawn tight and thin, her eyes hard and dark. Her looks are not dissimilar to her daughter’s but her beauty (if it is beauty) is of a harsher variety.
Though I close my eyes and search my memory I cannot recall ever having seen TK and Patti Soong, my grandparents. They exist only as ghosts, shapeless shadowy imprints on my consciousness. Sometimes I wonder if there is any chance that I might have liked them, loved them. Even ghosts and shadows are capable of being loved, after all. But always, the answer is ‘No’. I would not have loved them even if I had known them, because when the debits and the credits have been weighed, TK and Patti fall on the wrong side of the line between good and evil. It was their desire for Snow, my mother, to marry a rich man that pushed her into the arms of Johnny. Nothing can ever atone for that.
By the time Snow was of marriageable age, Johnny was already well known across the valley. He was the sole owner of the most profitable trading concern in the valley and was widely admired in all circles. As with all beautiful young women of a certain background, Snow had already had a good deal of experience of suitors and tentative matchmaking. All of these possibilities had been created and choreographed by her parents. They took her to Penang, KL and Singapore, where she was displayed like a diamond in a glass box. Yet it was closer to home, at the races in Ipoh, that they found the first serious contender. He was a beautiful-looking boy with a powder-pale complexion to match Snow’s. He had large, clear eyes and stood tall and erect with all the dignity you would expect from a son of the Chief Superintendent of Police. When he was introduced to Snow he kissed her hand – kissed it – a gesture he had learned during his days travelling in Europe. He complimented Patti on her sumptuous brocade dress and quietly whispered a tip for the next race in TK’s ear.
It wasn’t long before Snow and the Superintendent’s son were allowed to take tea together. They sat exchanging polite conversation. She talked about books – novels she had read – while he nodded in agreement. Although TK and Patti were pleased with his dignified manner and solid background, it was his family’s home which brought greater excitement to them, for the Superintendent had recently built a modern, Western-style house in which many of the rooms had wall-to-wall carpets. The main dining room had one wall of pure glass so that it served as an enormous window. Such daring was indicative of considerable wealth, an impression which was confirmed by the quality of the jade jewellery worn by the boy’s mother: dark in colour with a barely marbled texture. To top it all, Snow and the boy looked such a pretty pair and would surely attract all the right comments when the time came for them to venture into the public eye.
Thankfully, before such an understanding was reached between the parents, TK and Patti discovered that the boy’s parents were not quite as wealthy as they seemed. The Superintendent’s lavishness at the races had taken its toll on the family’s finances, and it was thought that much of his wife’s fabulous jewellery was borrowed from sympathetic relatives. It was clear that the dowry which TK and Patti expected in return for the hand of their daughter could never be fulfilled.
Scarred by this experience, TK and Patti became cautious and especially thorough in their appraisal of potential suitors. They asked many questions, they made enquiries. They did not want to make the same mistake twice. In letting the match with the Superintendent’s son progress to the extent it did, TK and Patti had been careless. One such mistake was forgivable; two mistakes would not be. Not only would it reflect badly on them, it would also diminish the value of Snow’s attractiveness. The size of the dowry would almost certainly be smaller. Yet their diligent investigations made the prospect of a match more and more remote. Every search turned up some unpleasant detail about the family in question, ranging from full-blown scandals to questionable associations: lunatic grandfathers, homosexual uncles, bastard children, gambling debts, hushed-up divorces.
The plain truth of it was that it was 1940, and there was little money in the valley, certainly nothing that could match the wealth of the Soong family. Snow was not yet twenty. There was still time, but a suitable match had to be made soon.
For all their meticulous planning, TK and Patti’s first proper meeting with Johnny was precipitated by events beyond their control. It so happened that a new man was appointed as head of the British mining concern in the valley, a fine young gentleman called Frederick Honey. He arrived with impeccable credentials, having gained a rugger Blue at Oxford and a keen grasp of tropical hygiene and colonial law from the School of Oriental Studies. His reign over the British tin-mining enterprise was, ultimately, short-lived, for he was lost to a boating accident in 1941, when he drowned in the waters off Pangkor island in a treacherous monsoon storm; his body was never found. It is clear, however, that during his short tenure in the valley, he was much admired. TK Soong was, as you can imagine, quick to see the value of having Mr Honey as an ally, and eager to make an impression on this formidable new tuan besar as soon as possible. It was decided in the Soong household that a gift should be sent to Mr Honey, something instantly suggestive of the Soongs’ status and influence in the valley; something unusual and beyond the reach of an Englishman newly arrived in the country. But what? A whole roast pig, perhaps? No – too ostentatious. A scroll of the finest Chinese calligraphic paintings? No – not grand enough.
‘How about some textiles,’ Patti said in desperation to her husband. ‘From that man, what’s his name – Johnny Lim?’
TK paused. He was inclined to dismiss the idea at once, but the paucity of previous suggestions persuaded him to consider for a moment. He paused for quite some time. ‘It’ll be fruitless,’ he said, but nonetheless decided to summon Johnny to the house.
Johnny had long since ceased to tour the countryside by bicycle, but the call of TK Soong was one he could not resist. He arrived at the house and found himself seated in the enormous room in which the Soongs received their visitors. Its vastness amazed him; his eyes could barely take in the details of its space: the rattan ceiling fans rotating slowly, arrogantly, barely stirring the air; the softness of the light through the louvred shutters; above all, the books, which lined an entire wall, row after perfect row.
‘We have heard many good things about you,’ TK said as Johnny began to unpack his bags on the table which had been specially set up for him. ‘Thank you,’ he said, still marvelling at the books.
Behind his back Patti tugged at TK’s sleeve. ‘How old is he?’ she whispered. She had heard that Johnny Lim was a young man, and in her mind’s eye had pictured a wild-haired, loud-mouthed tearaway with dirty fingernails. Yet before her stood someone neat and compact, who seemed almost middle-aged, whose movements were laborious and heavy with experience. A fleeting image tickled her imagination: Johnny and Snow seated on bridal thrones of the type that perished with the death of nineteenth-century China. ‘I must say, Mr Lim,’ she said as she fingered a piece of English chintz, ‘now that I see your wares, I can understand why people are so complimentary about you. About your shop, I mean.’
Johnny lowered his head and did not answer. He unfolded a length of songket, its gold threads shining and stiff and stitched into an intricate pattern.
‘This piece of cloth, for example,’ Patti continued, running her hand over a piece of brocade, ‘is very beautiful. Very fitting for a woman, wouldn’t you say?’
Johnny nodded.
‘Not for an old woman like me, of course, but for a younger woman. Do you agree, Mr Lim? It must be very popular with fashionable ladies.’
‘No, not really,’ he said truthfully. ‘It’s too expensive.’
‘Ohh, Mr Lim,’ Patti laughed. ‘Truthfully, do you think it would suit a young woman? No one very special or very beautiful, of course.’
Johnny half shrugged, half nodded.
‘Would you mind if I asked my daughter to see this? I’m sure you’re too busy to spend much time with her, but if you could spare a few moments –’
‘I would be pleased to meet your daughter,’ Johnny said. His pulse quickened. Even though he had heard about the Soongs’ famous daughter he had not for a second thought that he would be introduced to her.
‘I’m sure you’re just saying that to be polite, Mr Lim,’ Patti said with a laugh as she got up to leave the room. ‘After all, my daughter is hardly worth meeting. I’m sure you will be disappointed.’
‘I’m certain I will not.’
‘If you insist,’ Patti said, disappearing out of view.
A minute elapsed, and then another, before she reappeared. ‘My daughter, Snow,’ she said.
It took Johnny several moments to gather himself. She was a disappointment, a shock. He had expected a tiny, exquisite jewel, but instead he found himself looking up at a woman who seemed to tower endlessly above him. He breathed in, trying to swell his chest and lift his shoulders to make himself taller. When he looked at her face he found her staring intently into his eyes, and he quickly lowered his gaze. He felt embarrassed, cheated – though he did not know of what.
Poor Snow. She had grown used to being courted by lively, attentive men, but now she was confronted by a suitor who seemed more interested in his fingernails. At one stage she noticed he was gazing at a spot just above her collarbone, and for a brief moment she thought that he was staring at her neck. Then she realised he was looking at the books on the shelf behind her. She tried to engage him in conversation, but it was no use. This curious man sat like a deaf-dumb little orphan child before her. He was small and dark with an impenetrable moon-face. She searched for some clue as to what his character might be and concluded that there was none: no character whatsoever. She began to feel sorry for him. Later, her parents told her that he was a textile merchant, very rich and well known. Snow had not heard of him. As she watched him leave the house, she knew, from the glow of contentment on her parents’ face, that all parties had reached an understanding. The negotiations – the courtship – would soon begin, but the business had already been concluded. That afternoon, TK and Patti had bought from Johnny a few lengths of songket and some hand-blocked European cotton, which would in turn buy them favour with the British. And as for Johnny, he had gained himself entry into a world he had always dreamed of.
Johnny and Snow’s first organised meeting was, unusually, in public and unsupervised. TK and Patti felt that given Johnny’s impeccable and restrained manners, it would not be imprudent to allow the pair to meet in such a way. They were not afraid of the gossip which would inevitably follow. This was, after all, an alliance they wanted people to talk about. All their instincts told them that this was a match they should be proud of.
When Johnny and Snow appeared at the new picture house in Ipoh, a gentle commotion broke out in the crowd. Every head turned to see if the whispers were true. Was that really Johnny Lim – at the pictures? And was he here with TK Soong’s famous daughter? What did she look like? Where was she? For most people it was too much to bear, and throughout the film, a constant murmur of voices filled the auditorium. It was the first time many there had ever seen Snow. Men leaned forward in their seats, peering down the aisle just to catch a glimpse of the back of her head; women touched their own faces, noticing all of a sudden how plain they looked compared to her. And when the lights came up there was pandemonium. Johnny and Snow were nowhere to be seen.
Afterwards, the couple dined at the famous Hakka Inn. For Johnny, it was the realisation of many childhood fantasies. They were presented with roast suckling pig and jellyfish, black mushrooms and abalone, steamed grouper and a large dish of noodles. These were things he had never eaten before. He felt ill at ease going to smart restaurants. They were too bright for him, too full of movement and voices, and he always felt as if he was being watched as he ate. He had only ever been to restaurants to celebrate the conclusions of particularly large business transactions. This time, he tried to think of the experience as the biggest business venture of his life. Because to him, it was.
Once Johnny had overcome his initial awkwardness, however, he began to notice how rich and sweet the food tasted. He ate quickly, sinking deliciously into this new-found land of honeyed aromas and silken textures. He was like the rat in the childhood proverb, dropped on to a mountain of fragrant rice grain.
‘The food is good,’ he said. She did not know if it was a question or a statement, so she simply nodded, and he returned to his solitary feast.
Snow watched him feed. She wondered, as she always did when she was sent to meet a new suitor, whether she would be happy with the man before her. She always took it for granted that she would end up as the man’s wife. The choice was not hers, and accepting her fate early would make it less of a shock. So far she had not met anyone with whom she thought she could be happy. Even the Superintendent’s son, beautiful though he was, would have been unsuitable as a husband. He was far too inward-looking and concerned with the neatness of his clothes to notice her. Living with him would have been like gazing at the stars. A marriage could not be happy if the husband was prettier than the wife, that much she knew.
This new man did not bring her much hope either. As she saw it, the problem was not that she considered herself beyond his reach (beautiful wives and ugly husbands often made good matches), but that he did not seem to appreciate that she was at all attractive. For a while she entertained the idea that he had been tragically hurt by the death of a lover. He had a reason for being withdrawn, a sad and compelling story. She looked closely at his face for signs of a life or a love lost. She found him attempting to force an entire black mushroom into his mouth. This particular one was larger than the others, and he was having difficulties. He stretched his mouth sideways like a smiling fish in order to accomodate it; his lips quivered in an attempt to accept the sumptuous gift from the chopsticks. Eventually he succeeded, but then, after a few uncomfortable chews, was forced to spit the mushroom on to his plate. It landed softly on the gravy-soaked rice, and he repeated the whole exercise, this time succeeding easily. His chopsticks immediately reached for another mushroom, and he noticed Snow looking at him. His lips were thick and slicked with grease.
‘The food is good,’ he said, raising his eyebrows slightly.
She nodded, eyes fixed on his lips. No, she thought, there is no love story here. He was not capable of love. It was better that she prepared herself for this now.
He walked her to the bottom of the steps leading up to her house. All the lights were out, which usually meant that Patti was listening at the darkened window.
‘The evening was enjoyable,’ Johnny said. Again, Snow was not sure if this was a question, but all the same she could not bring herself to agree.
‘I am sure I will see you again,’ she said, and went into the house, walking swiftly to her bedroom to avoid her mother’s interrogation. Strangely, she did not hear Patti’s footsteps nor the opening or closing of doors. The house was full of a confident, approving silence.
Six months later they were married, after a courtship which, as TK would say, was ‘full of propriety and politeness’. Johnny moved into the Soongs’ house while he searched for a new home for himself and his wife. During this time he revelled in the Soongs’ hospitality, becoming so accustomed to it that he almost believed it was he who was being generous and welcoming: the lavish parties were thrown by him; the elaborate dinners were prepared by his cooks; the people who came to the house were his guests. To these guests, it seemed obvious that the sumptuous events were paid for by this rich new tycoon, and Johnny did nothing to dispel this presumption. Instead, he adopted a demeanour of excessive modesty to fuel the belief that he was indeed the magnanimous, yet somewhat reticent, host.
Guests: Thank you, Mr Lim, for such a splendid dinner.
Johnny (as self-effacingly as possible): Oh, please, no – thank Mr and Mrs Soong. This is, after all, their house. They have enjoyed having you here this evening, I know.
Guests (to themselves): What a noble, honourable man is Johnny Lim, too gracious even to accept thanks. How respectful to his elders, how civilised, etc., etc.
For the Autumn Festival in the year they were married, for example, the festivities at the Soong house were referred to as Johnny Lim’s Party, even though he had nothing to do with it. That he played no part in its organisation is clear from the extravagant yet tasteful nature of the evening’s revelry and the type of people who were in attendance. It was the first significant function at the Soong household since the marriage of Snow to Johnny, and it was an event that was talked about years afterwards. Many of the guests were English – and not just the District Education Officer either, but luminaries such as Frederick Honey and all the other tuan besar of the British trading companies. It is said that even Western musicians from Singapore were engaged to perform for the evening. A striking operatic troubadour, six and a half feet tall, sang whimsical songs in French and Italian. His face was daubed with theatrical paint which obscured his fine features, but even so, everyone present commented on the delicacy of his looks and the flamboyance of his costume – a flowing cape of Ottoman silk lined with iridescent scarlet. He sang so angelically and played the piano with such lightness of touch that no one could believe that he had not come directly from the great concert halls of Europe. ‘What is someone like him doing here in the FMS?’ people wondered aloud as he improvised familiar songs, teasing his audience. The noble Mr Honey sportingly lent himself to all the women as a dancing partner; he skipped to a traditional Celtic tune, linking arms with his companions as their feet clicked lightly on the teak floorboards. Johnny stood awkwardly in a corner, surveying the scene, trying his best to seem proprietorial and calm. He smiled and tried to tap his foot to the music, but couldn’t keep in time. A scuffle broke out among the servants in the yard outside, and it was up to the magisterial Mr Honey to restore peace. All night there was a constant stream of music to match the flow of alcohol. ‘It’s at times like these,’ the guests said, watching Mr Honey regaling a group of men with stories of adventure, ‘one almost feels glad to be in Malaya.’ At the end of the evening, when the air was cool and the tired guests began reluctantly to drift home, they realised that the music was no longer playing; the lid of the piano was firmly shut. As the guests departed from the darkening house rubbing their aching temples, they struggled to remember what had happened throughout the course of that evening: it had been too wonderful to be true. Had he really existed, that painted troubadour? He had simply vanished, phantom-like, into the tropical night. What a marvellous party Johnny Lim had given, they thought; what a marvellous man he was. They certainly made a lovely couple, Johnny and Snow.
Only one photograph survives of my mother. In it, she is wearing a light-coloured samfu decorated with butterflies. The dress clings delicately to her figure, slim and strong like the trunk of a frangipani tree. Her hair is adorned with tiny jewels too small for me to identify. When I hold a magnifying glass to the picture the poor quality of the old paper makes the image blurred and soupy. Her face is young and soft. Sometimes, I stick the photo into the frame of a mirror so that I can see my own face next to hers. My eyes are her eyes, I think. The photo is too old to give me any more clues. I found it when I was fifteen, in an old tin box in Father’s closet, together with the pictures of Tarzan. It was in a cracked leather frame far too big for it, and when I looked carefully I could see that it was because the photo had been carefully torn in half. Two, maybe three other people would have been in it, but only my mother and father remain, sitting close to each other but clearly not touching. They sit at a table at the end of a meal; before them the remains of their feast appear as dark patches on the white tablecloth. Behind them, merely trees. Beyond those, a part of a building – a ruin, perhaps, somewhere I do not recognise. I am certain it is not in the valley. Throughout the years I have looked at hundreds of books on ruins: houses, palaces, temples; in this country and abroad. Not one resembled the place in the photo. I do not know where it is. Perhaps it does not even exist.
On one side of this incomplete portrait, a hand rests on my mother’s shoulder. It is a man’s hand, of that I am certain. His skin is fair – that too is obvious. On his little finger he wears a ring, probably made of gold. It looks substantial, heavy. Time and time again I looked at the ring through my magnifying glass, but it gave me no clues. It was just a ring.
I took the picture and hid it in my bedroom. Father never mentioned it, and neither did I. I wanted to ask him whether there were any other photographs of my mother, but I never did, because then he would have known that I had stolen the picture. I never dared ask him about my mother; I never knew what questions to ask. Besides, I know he would not have told me about her even if I had. All I have to go on is that single photograph. Whenever I look at it I fold it in half so that Johnny is hidden and I can only see my mother.
A few years ago, I did something I thought I would never do. I succeeded in visiting the old Soong home, the house which my mother and father lived in. I had always known where it was, tucked away a mile or so off the old coast road, west of the River Perak, yet I had never seen it. Partly this is because it is difficult to get to. There are no bridges here, and to get across the river you have to drive a long way south and then double back, travelling slowly northwards along the narrow roads that wind their way through the marshy flatlands. During the latter half of the occupation, the house was used by the Japanese secret police as their local headquarters. They brought suspected communists and sympathisers there to be tortured in the same rooms where TK and Patti and Snow and Johnny once slept. The cries of those tortured souls cut deep into the walls of the house, and when I was a boy I knew – as all children did – that the place was haunted. In those days I did not know that the house had been Snow and Johnny’s. Back then it was merely one of those things which children feared in the same way they feared Kellie’s Castle or the Pontianak who fed on the blood and souls of lone travellers on the old coast road. We were taught to fear these things and so we did, never once questioning them. We believed in those things as we believed in life itself. When, several years ago, I finally learned of the significance of the house, I simply smiled, as if someone had played a joke on me.
How funny it is that the history of your life can for so long pass unnoticed under your nose.
When I say I ‘visited’ the Soongs’ old home, I am exaggerating slightly. My first attempt to visit the place was not entirely successful. I had planned everything meticulously, but in the end my efforts proved to be fruitless.
I decided to go as a Tupperware salesman. This was the first thought that came into my head and it seemed a sensible one, as Tupperware was all the rage in the valley at the time. I purchased a large selection of Tupperware in different colours and sizes and loaded it into my car. I stole a brochure from my dentist’s waiting room and bought a new briefcase into which I packed several ‘order forms’ which I had typed myself. I put on a tie, of course, and combed my hair differently. I had allowed my hair to grow longer than usual, as I thought this would help me to feel like a different person. I gave myself one last look in the rear-view mirror of my car before I set off, and I was pleased with what I saw. My own mother would not have recognised me.
The door was answered by a pubescent child – a girl, I think, though she was dressed as a boy. I searched her face for a resemblance to me but found none. She stared at me with fierce eyes.
‘What are you selling?’ she snapped. She sounded much older than she looked.
‘Tupperware,’ I said, suddenly feeling confident at the sound of the word. I stepped aside and pointed at my car. Large piles of Tupperware rose into view through the windows.
‘We don’t need …’
‘Tupp-er-ware,’ I said slowly. ‘Would you kindly ask your mother?’
‘She’s not here.’
‘Anyone else here?’
She closed the door and bolted it. ‘There’s a tall man selling things,’ I heard her call out to someone inside. When the door opened again a young woman stood at the entrance. She looked at me coldly but did not speak.
‘I’m selling Tupperware,’ I said. ‘It’s from America. It’s very useful.’
She remained silent. I felt my nerve begin to weaken. I had to make a final attempt. ‘May I come in and show you?’ I smiled.
She held my gaze for several seconds. I held my breath to hide my nervousness and tried not to blink.
‘OK,’ she said and let me in.
I stood in the middle of the large sitting room and looked around me. The room led out to a verandah which ran along the entire length of the back of the house. Through the half-open shutters I could see that the land fell away to the jungle, which appeared as a soft green carpet. The walls of the room were decorated with long scrolls bearing Chinese calligraphy. They were executed in a flowing and flamboyant hand, the characters swirling and greatly exaggerated. One scroll caught my eye. It was the famous Tang poem by Li Po:
Moonlight shines brightly before my bed,
like hoar frost on the floor.
I lift my head and gaze at the moon,
I drop my head and dream of home.
‘What are you looking at?’ the woman said. She had a slim face and clear skin. She too looked nothing like me.
‘I was just admiring your calligraphy,’ I said. ‘It’s very beautiful. Did you do it?’
‘No,’ she said, suppressing a smile. Her shoulders dropped and her voice became softer. ‘No, that was done by my great-uncle.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘He must be a famous artist.’
She giggled. ‘No, he wasn’t. He’s dead now. He died during the war. My family saved all his paintings from the Japanese, and we put them back on the walls just like they were when Great-Uncle TK was alive.’
‘That’s interesting. He died during the occupation, did he? What was his name? Maybe I’ve heard of him.’
‘TK Soong,’ she said. ‘Say, you’re asking a lot of questions, aren’t you?’
‘Oh, I apologise. It’s not every day a poor salesman like me sees calligraphy of this standard, you see.’
She smiled again.
‘And like I said, I may have known him.’ I looked at the scrolls once more, keeping my back to her so she could not see my eyes. Though my head remained tilted upwards my gaze scanned the sideboards and cupboards for signs of photographs or mementoes – anything.
‘I don’t think you could have known him,’ she said. ‘How old are you, exactly?’
‘Look who’s asking questions now,’ I laughed. ‘How old do you think?’
‘Let me see …’ she said. I turned round and presented my face to her, smiling. ‘I’m usually good at guessing people’s ages, but you’re difficult.’
Behind her I caught sight of myself in an old mirror. The glass was scratched and blurred and dusty, silver strips peeling away behind it.
‘Why are you touching your cheek?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ I smiled. ‘So how old am I?’
‘I’d say in your forties. Late forties maybe.’
I opened my eyes in mock horror. ‘Not too far wrong.’
‘Then you definitely wouldn’t have known Great-Uncle TK. Or if you did you must have been a tiny baby. He died in 1943.’
‘How did he die?’
‘Well …’ she said, looking at her fingers, ‘you know …’
‘I’m sorry I asked. I’m just a stranger after all.’
‘It’s OK, really. I’ll tell you – the Japanese. That’s what everyone says. I don’t know the details.’
‘Did he have any children?’
‘Just one. My mother’s cousin. No, second cousin – I’m not sure.’
‘Did she live here too? Your great-uncle’s daughter, I mean.’
‘Of course. Don’t all children live with their parents? In fact, she lived here even after she was married.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘She was married to Johnny Lim, you know – the notorious Johnny Lim.’
‘Oh yes, I think I’ve heard of him – I’m not from around here, you see.’
‘Oh. Where are you from, then, Mr Tall Man?’
‘KL.’
‘Wow, long drive.’
‘It’s not bad. I stay in Ipoh for a week at a time.’
‘Sounds like you miss home.’
‘Not really. So, your mother’s cousin who was married to Johnny …’
‘Lim.’
‘Johnny Lim, yes. I guess that must have been her room,’ I said, pointing to a door which seemed to open into a larger room.
‘No, that was my great-uncle and great-aunt’s room. That one was Johnny and Snow’s,’ she said, pointing to a closed door. She paused and looked me in the eye, as if remembering something. ‘Hey,’ she said, taking a step towards me, ‘how did you know my great-uncle’s child was a girl? I didn’t tell you it was a girl.’
‘Supernatural powers.’ I tried to laugh but my face suddenly felt hot.
Just then an old man’s voice called out from behind the closed door. ‘Who is it, Yun?’
‘No one, Grandfather. Go back to your nap.’
The door opened and a bald, bent-over man emerged. He had sparkling clear eyes which widened when they saw me.
‘Good afternoon,’ I said, trying to sound cheery. ‘I’m selling Tupperware.’ It sounded like a lie.
I did not recognise him. I was certain I had never seen him before, and what’s more, I was sure that he had never seen me. And yet the way he looked at me made me nervous.
‘I know you,’ he said.
‘Oh really?’ the young women giggled. ‘You know this guy, Grandpa?’
‘Your face,’ he said. ‘I know your face.’
‘Who is he, Grandpa? Tell me,’ the young woman said. ‘I’m dying to know.’
‘Excuse me,’ I said suddenly, ‘excuse me for interrupting your afternoon.’ I walked towards the door, opening it in one swift motion, and when I reached the top of the stairs I began to run, leaping three steps at a time.
‘Hey, Mr Tall Man, what about the Tupperware?’ the woman shouted as she came after me.
I didn’t look back as I drove away on the dry, dusty road that wound its way through the plantation. The car jolted over rocks and potholes but I didn’t ease off until I reached the main road. My face was hot with embarrassment and anger. I had still not seen the room my mother had slept in.
By the time I reached home I had resolved to go back to the Soong house as soon as I could.
And so a few months ago I went there again. I had left a gap of about six months – plenty of time for me to regain my composure and for the people at the house to forget the strange travelling salesman who had fled before selling anything. I drove through the swampland with the sea-salty air swirling through the open windows. I left the car and walked the final mile to the plantation, my stride measured and calm. It was a night of perfect clarity, you must believe me. The moon was bulbous in a velvet sky and made my clothes shine. I stopped and looked at my hands and saw that my skin, too, had become pale and phosphorescent.
The house was dark. It looked exactly like the house from my childhood nightmares. It was waiting, ready to take me. I walked up the steps and tried the front door. I put my ear to it and listened for movement. Nothing. I walked along the verandah to the shuttered teak doors and put my hand on the rain-washed panels, pushing gently. They fell open at once, making no noise. The room burned with moonlight; where it fell on the floor the boards turned a startling white before me. I saw my reflection in the mirror. When I reached out to touch it, it shattered into a thousand pieces. In the broken pieces I could see parts of my face and they were hot to the touch. I stepped over the shards of glass and walked towards Snow’s room and stopped at the threshold before entering. I came into a small windowless anteroom. I could make out two chairs and a coffee table. At the far end of the room I noticed another door and made my way towards it. I know this door, I thought, I know this place. I have been here a thousand times before. I have carried it inside me since I was born and I know all that it held within it. A bed. An old man asleep on it. Next to him, a beautiful woman: Snow. The walls are hung with waterfalls of hot red silks. Snow opens her eyes and rises to sit up. Her hair is sleep-tangled but I can see her eyes have not shut. They have not rested for many years now. She turns to me and smiles. Come, she says and I walk slowly to her. She holds her arms wide open and I kneel before her slowly slowly lowering my head into her breast. Her arms close around me, her hands stroke my hair. Don’t cry she says don’t cry my child my son. Her fingers smooth my face my cheek my brow my dry cracked lips. With her long white fingers she pulls her white blouse aside and gives her white breast to my mouth. Drink my child my son she says and I drink. When I finish I can smell my breath and it is sweet and soft. Are you happy my son she says and I nod. I feel something cold and hard on my cheek and when I turn my face I see it is a pistol, Johnny’s pistol. She turns her body and lets me see the old man on the bed. I do not see his face but I know it is Johnny, I know it is. She puts the pistol in my hand and her lips to my ear. Her breath is cool and powdery and flutters like a moth. Shoot him she says shoot him for all the things he has done. Once more I bury my face in her breast but she is laughing pushing the pistol into my hand. Shoot him. Her skin is wet with my tears. Mother I say. The gun is cold and hard, her skin is soft and wet. Don’t cry my son she says don’t cry. I cling to her with all my life and she kisses me on my forehead.
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