The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong Read online

  Cha-li unlocked the side gate, collected the mail from the red letterbox and opened the door to her private quarters. Exhausted but hungry, she cooked a bowl of instant noodles and ate it while sorting through her mail.

  What’s this? She tore open the letter from the National Development Board. Her application to renew the temple’s lease had been rejected. We regret to inform you that the temple’s site has been rezoned for public housing … Cha-li swore under her breath. Lord Sun Wukong’s Temple had been here forever. This was her home. She must see Kai-yeh and let him know the bad news at once.

  2

  Outside the ward in the Goddess of Mercy Home for the Aged Sick, Mr. Singh, the night watchman, looked flummoxed. The gate, which he had padlocked the night before, was unlocked again this morning.

  ‘The third time this week, Mr. Singh,’ the staff nurse said.

  ‘But Miss Tan, I lock the gate last night!’

  ‘No, you didn’t. The gate was open when I arrived. And you weren’t at the gate.’

  ‘I had to go to the loo.’

  ‘We have residents here suffering from severe dementia. The gate must be locked at all times. I have to report this to the matron.’

  ‘If you report, then I susah-lah!’

  ‘If I don’t report, and something happens, then how? I’m not going to be responsible, you know!’

  Sitting on a chair next to the bed, arms resting on her lap, Cha-li stared out the window and pretended not to look at Kai-yeh’s wizened face. Curled like a shrivelled foetus on his side, Kai-yeh was following the altercation outside his ward with avid interest. Neither of them spoke until the nurse and watchman walked away.

  ‘Troublemaker,’ Cha-li hissed. ‘You did it, didn’t you?’

  Kai-yeh’s eyes lit up. For a second, Cha-li saw the simian features pass through his wrinkled face like a wind moving across water. Then his lungs seized up. His chest heaved with the effort to draw in air. Fourth stage, the doctor had told her. The cancer had spread to his lungs. When his coughing worsened, Cha-li summoned the nurse. An oxygen mask was placed over his nostrils. Aahh … ah, Kai-yeh dragged in each breath of air. Cha-li placed a hand on his chest. Gradually his breathing quieted. He waved off her hand, and pointed to the mask clamped over his face. Cha-li took it off.

  ‘I … I … Rose. Bring … her … back here.’

  ‘What? Kai-yeh. Did Rose visit you?’

  He coughed again and again, and could not stop. Each explosion was worse than the one before. The young Malay nurse strode into the room and clamped the oxygen mask back on. ‘You should go. The patient has to rest.’

  Cha-li bent down and whispered in the old man’s ear, ‘Kai-yeh, you hang in there. I’ll find Rose.’

  His eyes remained closed; he gave no sign that he’d heard. Cha-li knew he wouldn’t last long. She had to find Rose before Kai-yeh entered the eternal Peach Garden.

  She drove back to Potong Pasir via Aljunied Road, past Mount Vernon where the crematorium used to be, where the Christian cemetery and its dead slept in peace, where love had made the evening air fragrant when Rose held her hand as they walked among the tombstones and kissed in front of the dead.

  She slowed as she turned onto Serangoon Road, and let the trucks and buses roar past her. New condominiums and shopping malls had replaced the black-and-white colonial bungalows. No remnants of the dairies, duck farms, vegetable gardens and attap houses remained. Rural disarray and abundant greenery had given way to concrete flyovers, congested roads and blocks of flats built by the Housing and Development Board. The only real village left in Potong Pasir was St. Andrew’s Village, a school complex with a chapel and an artificial rugby pitch. Butterfly Avenue and Sennett Estate, on the other side of Upper Serangoon Road, were part of the Potong Pasir constituency now, although this could change in the next general election when boundaries would be redrawn, and the authorities would once again deny that such redrawing of electoral boundaries was gerrymandering.

  Cha-li thought of going to see the opposition MP, but changed her mind. She doubted that the old man, Chiam, could save the temple sitting on land slated for development. The temple was famous for its support of the opposition. Since the early 1980s, Kai-yeh had invoked the spirit of Lord Sun Wukong to help Chiam See Tong win in every general election, and Chiam’s success was credited to Lord Sun Wukong’s benevolence to the people of Potong Pasir. Cha-li smiled. So many stories had circulated to explain how Chiam, a humble lawyer with less-than-stellar school results, had held his own against the might of the PAP in general election after general election. No, the temple was doomed. The authorities would sooner bulldoze it to the ground than preserve it.

  Cha-li parked her car and went into the temple, surprised to find Robina Lee among the women praying at the altar of the Monkey King.

  ‘Good morning, Wong Sifu,’ the women greeted her.

  In their eyes, she would always be Sifu or Master Wong, who channelled the spirit of the Monkey King. That she was also a private investigator was irrelevant to them; it was just a job to fill her rice bowl. Periodically, Cha-li suffered pangs of unease. She was a fraud burdened by a sacred duty that had been imposed on her as a child. As the chosen one, selected by Kai-yeh, who had consulted the Monkey King’s spirit before anointing her as his successor, she had to serve in his absence. Years of performing the rituals, the chanting and the comforting had won her scores of grateful devotees, women who respected and adored her. Some had even been her lovers when she was young, handsome, lonely and pining for Rose.

  ‘Good morning, Sifu!’ the women called out to her again.

  ‘Good morning, good morning!’ she said, laughing as she opened the door to her office. Robina followed her inside and closed the door. She was wearing a dark pantsuit and sunglasses. When she took off her glasses, Cha-li saw the wretched look in her eyes. Her face was puffy, and there was a dark bruise on her right temple.

  ‘Did your husband do this?’

  Robina shook her head, and Cha-li didn’t press her.

  ‘He slept in the baby’s room last night. He didn’t want me near him.’ Robina’s voice was flat. ‘You must give me a ritual cleansing. Please.’

  Shocked by the request, Cha-li tried to focus her attention on the case instead.

  ‘I have checked out your husband’s new office in Shenton Way. His clients are all Indians. Rich fat cats who are buying up our luxury condos.’

  ‘Robert is repulsed by the sight of me.’

  ‘He’s running some kind of consultancy that includes real estate.’

  ‘Help me, Wong Sifu,’ Robina pleaded, kneeling suddenly.

  ‘No, no, please. Please stand up.’

  ‘Our little boy is only six months old. Robert owes people a lot of money. My father-in-law does not know it yet. I fear … I …’

  ‘Wait, Robina. I know. I ran a check—’

  ‘He’s bewitched. It’s that vixen. Please, Wong Sifu, help me. The family … the … the scandal will ruin his father. Please, Sifu!’

  Cha-li sighed. She was hoping it wouldn’t lead to this. ‘Go into the prayer hall, Robina. I have to change.’

  She did not move until the woman had left the room. Then she locked the door.

  The anointed are never free. They must respond to the cries of the broken and lost—Kai-yeh had drilled this into her from a young age. They sought her, these broken hearts. She had tried to tell them that Lord Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, was a figment of an author’s imagination, but all to no avail. Besides, there were the women’s testimonies. Lord Sun Wukong answered my prayers, some claimed. He granted me a son, declared another. He made my husband stop seeing that woman and come back to me.

  She sighed. The women’s beliefs had tinted their perceptions and shaped their universe. Lord Sun Wukong was the godly spirit who came to their aid. If she was tempted at times to tell them to pray to a rock, which would work just as well, she restrained herself. If praying had helped these women to sit still long enough
for their problems to work themselves out, what right had she to destroy their faith in something higher than themselves? No bloody right at all! She yanked off her blue jeans and pulled on a pair of gold-coloured silk pants. Then she took off her red checked blouse and slipped on a white silk shirt and the Monkey King’s bronze headband. She gazed at the woman in the mirror, dressed in silk pyjamas.

  Would her features turn simian when she was as old as Kai-yeh?

  She was six when Lord Sun Wukong, through the intercession of Kai-yeh, chose her to be his young messenger. Thrilled and scared that she, and not Rose, was the Chosen One, she had knelt before his altar and drunk a cup of tea mixed with holy joss ash. Lord Sun Wukong was a wise, courageous, shape-changing god in the Taoist pantheon of deities, Kai-yeh told her. Capable of forty-nine changes; he could change himself into a fly, a beautiful woman, a monster or a rock at the blink of an eye. That’s what I want to do, she declared. Kai-yeh laughed: That you will, my child. That you will.

  Later, in school, she discovered that the English storybooks referred to the deity as the Monkey King. In the temple, however, he was respectfully addressed as Lord Sun Wukong. His altar was covered with a red velvet ceremonial tablecloth embroidered with the Eight Immortals. The cloth reached down to the floor, hiding anyone under the altar from view. This was where she and Rose had slept as teenagers, hugging each other close each night, especially after Kai-ma’s death when Rose refused to sleep in the kitchen alone. Kai-yeh sleepwalks and touches me, she complained.

  The temple’s drum boomed. Her assistant called out in a loud voice: ‘Make way for His Excellency, Lord Sun Wukong!’

  Cha-li took her rod and glided into the prayer hall.

  3

  The following week, on Monday evening, Cha-li waited in the parking lot of Tower Block One, Shenton Way. Outside, a thunderstorm was pelting the city hard. After two weeks of blistering sunshine and high humidity that caused her shirts to cling to her back, the weather had finally turned. The storm raged as she sat in her car, watching Lift Lobby Two and the white Mercedes parked near it. Robert Lee should appear at any moment. By seven, the storm petered out. Several men and women walked out of the lift, got into their cars and drove off, leaving large gaps between the remaining cars. Bored, Cha-li continued to keep an eye on movements in the lift lobby as a light drizzle started to fall on the city’s grey towers now gleaming wet in the lamplight. Another hour passed, and still no sign of Robert Lee. Lift Lobby Two was brightly lit and empty, most of the executives having left the building by now. For the past two weeks, Robert had left his office between six and seven. Tonight he was late, but he could dash out of the lift any minute. Two evenings ago, she’d had to duck her head and pretend she was reaching for something in the backseat when he’d come out of the lift suddenly with an Indian client in tow. Tonight she was better prepared. She had donned a wig and changed her glasses.

  At 8:46 p.m. Robert Lee came out of the lift, alone. He drove out of the parking lot with Cha-li tailing him through heavy traffic to Orchard Road and the Hilton. She did not follow him into the hotel this time. Instead, she drove home to collect Saddam Hussein. Tonight she would try a new strategy.

  At ten p.m. she parked her grey Toyota near the playground on Butterfly Avenue and got out. ‘Come on, Saddam boy. Okay, okay! Let’s go!’ Her fox terrier jumped out of the car, pulling at its leash. Laughing, Cha-li jogged after Saddam Hussein—taking the dog out at night was good camouflage. Running down the lanes gave her a chance to observe the corner house on Butterfly Avenue from different vantage points. She could see a pattern beginning to emerge.

  As she came around the corner, Robert Lee’s white Mercedes stopped in front of the corner house. His passenger, a well-groomed Indian male in a long-sleeved blue shirt and dark trousers, stepped out and pressed the buzzer on the gate. When it opened, Robert Lee drove off.

  Back inside her grey Toyota with Saddam Hussein panting in the backseat, Cha-li checked her notes again. For the past several nights, Robert Lee had brought a different Indian male to the house. Sometimes, Robert went in with his guest. But last Tuesday night, he had dropped his Indian guy off and driven away, and Cha-li had tailed him back to his home. Last Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights, Robert had parked his car and followed his Indian guest into the house. About two hours later, the two men had returned to the car and driven back to the Indian’s hotel. Just this week alone, she had followed Robert to several high-end hotels. On Monday night, it was the Fullerton. On Wednesday night, it was Marina Bay Sands. On Friday night, the Ritz-Carlton. On Saturday night, the Shangri-La. But all these details hardly spelled adultery. Robert Lee was simply the chauffeur for his rich Indians. She’d not seen any women coming out of the corner house yet except the one in red who looked like Rose.

  She flipped over several more pages in her notebook. Nothing important in there. Her surveillance of Robert’s office had yielded little except a list of his dinner appointments with Indian clients, who inevitably ended up going to the corner house for dessert. Which was interesting. Is the house a brothel? Unlikely. Butterfly Avenue was not Geylang Road. Sennett Estate was in one of the city’s respectable middle-class areas. It’s true that some wealthy Chinese had bought houses here for their mistresses, but this had not dented the estate’s respectability. Besides, Cha-li had not seen any young women emerging from the corner house. Was the woman in red the sole magnet that attracted the Indians? But if the woman was Rose, she’d be fifty-five and considered over the hill, no? Unless … unless she was offering something kinky.

  4

  On Sunday the matron phoned. Kai-yeh had taken a turn for the worse. When Cha-li arrived at the home, Kai-yeh was hooked up to a ventilator and drip.

  ‘Is he in pain?’

  What she really wanted to know was: Is he going to die? He was all the family she had.

  ‘He’s stable for now. The doctor has given him an injection.’

  Cha-li slumped into the chair next to the bed. She stroked the old man’s hand. His eyes opened. He raised his forefinger with some effort, and tried to speak. But all he managed to croak was ‘Rose.’ After that, he had to breathe hard to make up for that expense of energy.

  ‘Kai-yeh, I’ll find her.’

  Cha-li parked the rental van outside the corner house. Pulling a cap on her head, she got out, pressed the buzzer on the gate and shouted into the intercom, ‘Karang guni! Collect old

  newspapers!’

  The gate opened, and she walked up the driveway. The front door was ajar.

  ‘Come in!’ a woman shouted from the kitchen.

  Cha-li stepped inside the spacious living room. Its walls were apple white, and the floor was made of white marble. A large white sofa and two armchairs upholstered in white leather sat on a thick beige and grey carpet. The woman who came out of the kitchen didn’t seem surprised to see her.

  ‘I knew you’d find me sooner or later.’

  ‘Rose.’ That was all Cha-li could manage. Her throat was dry.

  Rose, meanwhile, said nothing. She had not moved from her spot near the kitchen. Cha-li peered at her. Wearing a pink housecoat, she looked like the aunties who came to the temple to pray. At fifty-five, Rose was no longer the young dark beauty queen who had held men spellbound as she gyrated onstage with a python in the Great World Cabaret and broke Cha-li’s heart. A hard glint appeared in Rose’s eyes as she looked at Cha-li, who searched for something to say now that she was face to face with the girl—no, the woman—she had once loved.

  Scenes from their past came and went in her head. She saw their two naked bodies, tinted red by sunlight shining through the red tablecloth covering Lord Sun Wukong’s altar, as Rose’s fingers reached into the deep moist recesses between her thighs, stirring feelings of love, guilt and shame. Ashamed of what she felt, and conscious that she was Kai-yeh’s chosen successor, while Rose was just the temple’s waif, she fought hard to suppress her feelings. Until one day, Rose was gone. Gone without a word. Frantic w
ith worry, and sobbing her heart out, Cha-li went to the police. A missing person’s report was filed but nothing came of it. She wept long and hard every night. For months she haunted the places they used to visit. Kai-yeh was philosophical. Rose is a temple stray. Strays come and go. It’s their nature, he said, and encouraged her to study hard.

  Five years later, Cha-li became a private investigator. She was on duty in the Malaysian town of Ipoh when she chanced upon a large black-and-white photo of Rose in the Great World Cabaret. It showed a scantily clad sultry beauty with long, dark tresses, and a large python curled around her. Shocked, Cha-li sat through Rose’s show before charging into her dressing room backstage. Fuck off, Cha-li! I don’t owe you an explanation! The cabaret! Now, that’s my temple! It’s where I dance like a woman. Sexy and beautiful. You! You prance around that temple like a dressed-up monkey! Stung, Cha-li left the cabaret, and hadn’t seen Rose again.

  ‘You might as well take off the cap.’

  Cha-li pulled off her hat and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans.

  ‘Why have you come?’ Rose asked in a hard voice.

  ‘Kai-yeh is dying.’

  ‘Good! May he rot in hell!’

  ‘He gave you a roof over your head, Rose.’

  ‘Keep your pious shit, Cha-li. You’re blind, and a fool. He gave me more than that. Come.’

  Cha-li followed her into the kitchen. Rose threw open a door, and Cha-li walked into the kitchen of the house next door. She followed Rose into the dining room where an old woman was trying unsuccessfully to feed a young man strapped to his chair. The young man’s large shaved head was lolling on the back of the chair as though his neck was too soft to support it. Spit was dribbling from the corner of his mouth, which was making guttural sounds. The old woman wiped off the spit with a washcloth, and shoved another spoonful of rice into the gaping hole as though to stop the ugly sounds coming from it.