The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong Read online

  ‘Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!’

  ‘What your Kai-yeh gave me.’

  Cha-li stared at the head and vacant eyes. ‘Did he … ? Did

  he … ?’ Helpless, she turned to Rose.

  ‘He raped me. Then I tried to abort him.’

  Rose patted the lolling head, which said, ‘Ugh! Ugh!’ and more spit dribbled.

  ‘Good morning, Madame Mei Kwei! Good morning, Ugh-Ugh!’ two girls called out in Mandarin as they came down the stairs, their nipples showing under their skimpy nightdresses. Cha-li remembered seeing them when she was walking Saddam Hussein. One of the girls approached them and planted a kiss on the lolling head. ‘Ugh! Ugh!’ The distended mouth dribbled more spit, and the wrists strained at the belt that strapped them to the

  armrests.

  Rose turned away. ‘Let’s go back. They’re getting ready to eat.’

  Cha-li followed her back to the first house. The sun had come into the living room, and the light that bounced off the white marble floor hurt Cha-li’s eyes. Her head was swimming.

  ‘Is Robert the mastermind?’

  ‘No. Robert has to settle his gambling debts. I … ah! I need the money and so do these China girls. They have something to sell that the Indians want to buy. Robert brings the Indians. I bring the girls. Everyone is happy. It’s not a crime.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  Rose drew the curtains. ‘Report it to the police if you want. I don’t care what you do.’

  ‘Why? Why didn’t you tell me what he did?’

  ‘Tell you?’ Rose’s laughter bordered on the hysterical, a wild gleam in her eyes. ‘Tell you? The bastard’s monkey girl? The Great Lord’s Chosen One with a paper gold band on your head? And a fake gold chain around your neck? The bastard was holding the bloody chain while you pranced before the devotees, drunk in their adoration. Strike me dead, Cha-li! I couldn’t tear open my heart to a prancing monkey in silk robes!’

  She wanted to slap Rose, but walked to the front door instead and stopped at the doorway, surprised at the sudden weight in her limbs. Her shoulders sagged. The memory of the gilt headband that she’d worn in those days made her cringe. It was made of cardboard and cheap plastic, painted gold. Later, she had bought the bronze headband to replace it.

  The sunlight outside hurt her eyes, which were beginning to tear, the same eyes that had remained shut when footsteps were shuffling in the middle of the night into the kitchen where Rose slept. Rose’s mouth was moving, saying something to her, but she couldn’t catch the words. She kept thinking of the lolling head and dribbling mouth next door.

  ‘The … the temple will be demolished. Very soon,’ she said without turning around. She couldn’t face Rose. She wanted to shut her eyes, shut out the noonday glare, but she forced herself to keep them open, fixed on the green lawn outside sizzling in the midday heat. ‘I … I can get a flat big enough for the three … three of us … er … you and him …’ Her voice trailed off.

  2

  Ah Nah: an Interpretation

  ‘A long time ago in a remote part of China, a man went to live in a forest so far away and so deep that, for years, nobody saw or visited him. The people in his clan village forgot all about him until one day, years later, they were shocked to hear that the man had a son, and his son had passed the imperial examinations and been appointed the judge of their district. When the man’s clansmen heard this piece of great news, they were filled with great pride. “At last, heaven has honoured us,” they exclaimed and they flocked to the city, hoping to catch a glimpse of the young judge, their fellow clansman. Those who saw him went home and told their families that the young judge had a handsome pointed face with large intelligent eyes.

  ‘Meanwhile the man, now old and bent with age, was overcome with great joy and happiness. His son took him to the city to live in the judge’s official residence. Not long after that, the young judge had a strange dream. In his dream a dog had looked at him with such sad and intelligent eyes that he had awakened with tears in his own eyes. He asked his aged father what the dream could mean, but the old man shook his head sadly and said nothing. That same night the judge dreamt about the dog again, and again he woke up with tears in his eyes.

  ‘After the third night the judge could not take it any more. He consulted a monk who listened to his story very carefully. “Set up an altar in the courtyard of your residence,” the monk said. “Offer incense and burn joss papers. Kneel and kowtow three times to whatever you see in the fire.” Puzzled yet determined, the young judge did what the monk had instructed. He offered incense and ordered his servants to burn large quantities of joss paper. True enough, there it was again! Seated in the heart of the fire was the sad-looking dog! His servants were amazed. The young judge was speechless and his aged father was sobbing. “That is your mother, my son,” the old man confessed.

  ‘On hearing this, the young judge knelt down at once, crying out in a loud voice, “Mother!” He knocked his head on the stone floor and kowtowed three times. The sad-looking dog smiled as the fire died out. That night the young judge slept peacefully.

  ‘Strange story, eh? Some stories are like this, right or not? A story is like a pebble. You fling it into the lake and its ripples spread in ever-widening circles as it sinks to the bottom of our unconscious. There it stays forever. That’s why stories are dangerous, right or not? They mould our lives.’

  A long pause. We sip our tea. I can’t take my eyes off this woman in front of me.

  ‘Mummy told me that story when I was three. “Always honour your mother, no matter who she is!” That was what she used to say. For many years I could never see any other meaning in that story. It was always what Mummy said it meant—respect your parents, and that was it. No other interpretation entered my head. It was only after I’d found out that Mummy had betrayed me that I began to see other possibilities.’

  ‘That’s how an indoctrinated mind works,’ I say.

  ‘Scary, isn’t it? Look at the judge’s father in the story again. The old man was a nonconformist, right or not? He lived his own life in the forest, took his own suffering like a man and the storyteller rewarded him with a gifted son—a son who passed the imperial examinations, a son who became a judge. What more could a parent want? That was the highest blessing in imperial China! And look at all those villagers. They were the conformists. Living in a community, doing the same things that others did. But, ah, did they get a son who passed the imperial exams? So there you see! That’s why this story is never found in your Singapore schoolbooks. D’you think the authorities would let such a story run loose in school? They hate this story. Aha! Not what you’re thinking. No, no, they don’t hate it for that. Not because it’s dirty. Don’t think dirty. Dirty minds see dirty things. If you ask me, I can tell you all about dirty men and dirty minds. No, the authorities, they don’t like nonconformists. They hate us. And in this story the nonconformist was blessed with a successful and filial son. This story is subversive! Think about it. The nonconformist was rewarded and blessed. Don’t you like it when you see it this way? Oh, do say you like it!’

  ‘I like it.’ I nod and smile at her.

  ‘You’re looking at the name card I gave out at the story seminar. That’s right. It just says Ah Nah. Just call me that. Surname? No. No surname. I’ve no family name. Who’s my family? My roots are in the rubbish dump. That’s where my own flesh-and-blood mother threw me when I was born. You look shocked. Nothing should shock you by now. That was where Mummy found me. At the dump. She’d heard scuttling noises, she said. She’d spied some rats crowding around something. At first she thought it was just a dead kitten but it turned out to be a newborn baby—me. There! Look. I’m not ashamed. These pink welts above my breasts are where the rats bit me when I was a newborn. What you read in the papers is real. Teenage girls pregnant with fear are fiends. They turn against their own flesh in the womb. Sometimes when I go to the shopping malls, I look at their unlined teenage faces. They cling to their boy
friends’ arms and I fear for them. But that lasts only a moment, you know. After all, what’s there to be afraid of in life, right or not? Life is a mud pond. You mess around in it. You fall. You pick yourself up and learn to walk again. Then you fall again, and you rise again. That’s how we survive, right or not?’

  Her mellifluous Cantonese has the polished grace of someone who has studied the language of Hong Kongers for years. When Ah Nah laughs, the whole living room sparkles with her laughter. I never thought a white-haired woman could be so elegant and beautiful. She has left her hair uncoloured—a bold and rare move. Every Chinese woman has black hair these days, even the seventy-year-old grandma. But Ah Nah wears her hair white, looped into a simple chignon, held up by a few hairpins. She looks simple yet so elegant in her loose-fitting silk qipao with a single pearl button on her mandarin collar. She sits in the armchair, relaxed and confident with the feline grace of my Persian cat. Her face lights up when she smiles, and the wrinkles curl around her eyes. I make a lightning pencil sketch of her in my notepad. I just have to capture this spirit of intelligent inquisitiveness. We’re seated, facing each other in her apartment overlooking Hong Kong Bay. I can’t seem to take my eyes off her.

  When I was twelve or thirteen, a strange scene took place in our neighbourhood one afternoon. I can still remember that afternoon as clearly as though it were yesterday. I was doing my homework when the phone rang.

  Mother answered it. I heard her exclaim, ‘Are you sure or not? So? So what happened? Oh, the gods!’

  The moment she put down the phone, she rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a broom and dustpan and went out into the blazing sun. I followed her and, to my amazement, the aunties and grannies were out in full force, all pretending to sweep their driveways and water their plants! It was three o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was still blazing! They seemed to be waiting for something. Every now and then one of them would look across the road at our new neighbour’s house. But Madam Chan’s door was firmly shut.

  ‘Taxi coming!’ someone called out.

  A yellow-top taxi swung into our lane and stopped right in front of Madam Chan’s house. Out jumped an amah dressed in a white samfoo top and black silk pants. This elegant maidservant opened a black cloth umbrella and used it to shield a teenage girl who was emerging from the taxi. The girl’s head was covered with a red cloth. The front door of Madam Chan’s house opened, and the amah and girl hurried inside. The taxi sped off.

  ‘Did you see that red cloth?’

  ‘Did you see her face?’

  ‘No, lah! How to see? Her amah is so smart. Covered her up with a red cloth.’

  ‘She has to. The red will ward off evil and bad luck. It’s been barely two days since the old man died on her.’

  ‘It’s bad. Very bad! No man will ever want her again.’

  Everyone was talking but no one was listening to anyone. Then, seeing us children standing around, listening avidly, the aunties and grannies trooped into Mrs Lam’s house. My mother didn’t come home till it was time to cook the evening meal. That night when Dad reached home, Mother gave him a blow-by-blow account.

  ‘She’s been a pipa girl since she was fourteen,’ Mother said.

  ‘The papers here say sixteen.’

  Dad stabbed at his copy of the Chinese tabloid which featured a black-and-white photo of a girl with a cloth over her head.

  ‘Sixteen sounds better than fourteen. Anyway, don’t believe all that the papers say. We should know better, we live next door.’

  ‘So after that, what’s been happening?’

  ‘Nothing so far. The door’s been shut all day and the curtains are drawn. The poor girl must still be in shock.’

  ‘She should be. An old bugger died on top of her.’

  ‘You watch your words.’

  ‘What’s there to watch? It’s an ugly world out there. Children should know.’

  Encouraged by Dad’s comment I asked, ‘What’s a pipa girl?’

  There! I told you so, my mother’s eyes said as Dad answered my question.

  ‘Pipa girl is a pretty term for pretty girls who work in old men’s clubs in Chinatown, especially in Keong Saik Street in the old days. My own grandfather was a member of one of those clubs, I remember. Now when I think about this girl next door, I think about Grandpa. But my imagination is very filial. It daren’t go any further.’

  Mother glared at him. While my parents argued about the merits and demerits of talking about such things in my thirteen-year-old presence, I quickly flipped through the evening tabloid and read about the seventy-three-year-old man who was found dead on top of Ah Nah in Kuala Lumpur. His family had thought that the old man had gone for his morning constitutional when, in fact, he had gone to visit his pipa girl. Unfortunately his exertions must have been too excessive, for he collapsed and died on top of her. The teenage girl was so petrified that she went into a state of catatonic shock. She lay under the corpse for more than an hour before Lan Chay, her amah, sensing something was wrong, burst into the room and screeched for help. The other residents and clients in the brothel managed to lift the dead weight off Ah Nah. Then someone called the police. Ah Nah was taken to the station to make a statement, and that evening the tabloids hit the town. Since then the scandalmongers and bloodhound press had been pursuing her. Overnight, Kuala Lumpur changed and was no longer a safe and anonymous place to work in. She fled south and came home to her adoptive mother, Madam Chan. But the scandal reached Singapore even before she did, and that was how our neighbour, Mrs Lam, knew of her arrival. As I read the papers that evening, Ah Nah’s name was on everyone’s lips and our neighbours, including my parents, were placing bets on certain numbers on account of her.

  ‘So you took down the taxi number?’ Dad asked, his eyes glinting with greedy dreams of big bucks.

  ‘What do you think? That was the first number I looked at.’

  My parents’ enthusiasm over the numbers that night was downright disgusting. It was the only time that I was ever ashamed of them. Was that all they could think about? A girl with a red cloth over her head had felt the icy touch of death, and all they could think about was the winning numbers in a lottery.

  ‘It’s blood money, I know. If I touch 4D and win, I won’t feel good. But everybody’s doing it. I’ll feel worse if her number comes up and we didn’t bet.’

  Mother lit three sticks of incense and stuck them into the urn of ash before the Goddess of Mercy. But I was feeling unmerciful. The Goddess of Mercy heard me. Ah Nah’s numbers never came up.

  ‘You asked if I think about my mothers? No. This is the first time I’m talking about them. Here! Let’s drink to the two of them! To the one who gave birth and the one who gave life! I kowtow three times. Like Na Cha, the Lotus Boy, I shred and return my flesh to the one who gave birth to me. I break and return my bones to the one who gave me life. I am now free! You smile and think this is childish in a sixty-seven-year-old woman. But fairy tales like Na Cha are powerful. That’s why this version of the boy who shredded his flesh and returned his bones to his father has never entered the textbooks in Singapore. Interpretation shapes meaning. The official interpretation of Na Cha is that of a filial son who saved his parents from the wrath of the Dragon King. And the unofficial interpretation? Ah, that’s the subversive one. To his stern father, the boy returned his bones. To his pleading mother, he returned his flesh. What was left was his—an untouchable soul to do with as he wished! He took it with him up to the mountains to begin a new life. Free at last from the chains of his father’s authority. Look at you! Chained to your seat. Come over here and sit beside me. You’re amazed, aren’t you? That I, a former prostitute, can talk like this?’

  My heart is beating fast. My pulse is racing. I am a grandfather, I tell myself. I am an old man. But darn it! You only live once! I lumber over and sit beside her. Her hair smells sweet. Will she let me hold her hand? The skin on the back of her hand is loose and mottled, but her fingers are long and slender. I can still reme
mber the first time I chanced upon her. I had wandered into our back yard that Lunar New Year. She was standing alone near the wire fence that separated our two houses. She saw me so there was no avoiding her.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ I mumbled.

  Her eyes lit up.

  ‘Your roses, they are lovely.’

  Her voice was soft and shy.

  ‘I planted them,’ I managed to croak.

  I was fifteen then, and so choked up with pleasure that I could feel an embarrassed heat rising to my face. My ears were burning. I knew that I was turning the colour of beetroot so I bent down quickly and picked a pink rose.

  ‘There! For you.’

  I thrust the rose through the wire fence. Startled, Ah Nah stepped back, her eyes wide with fright like those of a young trapped animal.

  ‘No, no, I can’t. Mummy won’t like it.’

  ‘It’s just a rose, just a rose,’ I assured her as calmly as I could. I regretted my own boyish boldness. My god, did I do something wrong? My insides were shaking as I pulled back my hand through the wire fence. I flung the rose into the bushes. Ah Nah shook her head and quoted a Cantonese saying:

  ‘Owe a debt of gratitude, repay with a thousand years of remembrance.

  Owe a debt of flowers, repay with ten thousand years of fragrance.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ I muttered, crushed by the weight of her Cantonese proverb. The English proverbs I had learnt in school were like ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ or ‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch’. Light little sayings that we had rattled off during English Language lessons.