by Vann Chow
As soon as she stepped out of the boudoir, instead of a narrow, moldy hallway she was expecting that led back and forth between the living area and the master bedroom, she found herself on the second floor of an old extravagant Shanghainese mansion flooded with lights. A magnificent crystal chandelier hung above her splendidly. The huge compilation of beautiful crystals in a upside down pyramid, each one big as a peach, exquisite as an angel’s tear drop, played with the light emitting from minuscule light bulbs sitting on the tip of glass candles on the gilt frame. Twined carefully around them were branches of crafted gold leaves. The spacious mansion swathed in a warm orange glow appeared ever dreamier to Elise because the whole second floor was lined with mirrors, from one wall to another and on the ceiling above her. However, Elise felt that there was something wonderful about these mirrors that she couldn’t quite fathom. Sure she could see herself and Jade’s reflection as they passed down the corridor, yet, behind their reflections, there were thousands of exotics artifacts mounted on the deep red walls across the whole room — bronze Buddha heads, small shrines of historical figurines with pots of burning incenses, vivid Chinese watercolor paintings of birds and flowers, great mountain landscapes and impressive waterfalls, bamboo fans etched with Chinese poems, ancient wooden cravings and more indiscernible objects of great antiquity that Elise had only seen in the history books. Elise wanted to go take a closer look but had only gotten her head hit hard.
“What happened to this world?” Elise thought to herself. If two mirrors were facing each other side by side with an object between them, the results would be an infinite extension of the room with multiple reflections of the same object sandwiched in between. However, there was only one Elise and one Jade inside the mirror, not a million of them. And on that side of the world, she was in a pink European court dress, in contrast to the suit she was wearing. Here there was no painting on the wall. There was nothing on the other side whatsoever. The whole room was just lined with pieces of unbroken length of mirrors. Elise now decided that in a realm where physics didn’t even apply, she would feel better by simply just accepting things as they came than to over-rationalize them.
Ahead of them now was a free standing staircase that looked down into a big entrance hall. Following Jade, Elise walked carefully down a crimson and gold carpeted staircase, flanked by wooden railings on both sides that were dotted with golden decorative balls as big as a fist. When they reached the entrance hall, also covered with the same preposterous crimson and gold carpet and expansive mirrors, Elise heard noises made by heavy paws of an animal approaching them quickly. Alarmed, she tucked Jade’s sleeves. Jade turned around and laughed.
“It’s okay,” she assured Elise. Right then, a huge brown dog leaped out from nowhere into Jade’s arm. She almost fell over from the weight of the dog yet her countenance was one of immense happiness. The dog started to lick her face and she petted it as if it was her own. “My boy, how was your journey? Good boy!!”
“This is the same dog that…that looks like…” Elise tried to explain herself to Jade but she couldn’t. Nothing would come out right. “It can talk!”
“Yes! I can talk.” The dog had stopped frolicking with Jade.
“You can?”
“I am not always a dog but it has its convenience. Like now.” The dog said to Elise, who was wild-eyed.
“Was Master Siu very angry again?” Jade inquired wearily.
“Yeah. Thanks to you,” The dog threw a nasty glance at Elise.
“Me?” Dumbfounded.
“It’s not her fault. She has met my worldly counterpart apparently. That might explain her delayed departure.” Jade smiled to Elise.
“You dumb woman. You’ve made Michael forget his priorities.” The dog said to Elise.
“I don’t know what you are talking about! You and the ghost woman were the ones who caused a hubbub…we were about to leave for street opera!” She retorted, not knowing whether her arguments made sense or not.
“Do you think they will be punished?” Jade asked the dog.
“Of course they will be, but not me! My righteous brother and the stupid bitch who only cared about her looks can’t escape the master's grip but a half-ghost-half-canine can certainly do much better. It’s animal instinct. My hair goes up on their ends when troubles are near. Whenever that happened, the first thing I do is sniff around for ways out.” The dog said to Jade with a smirk.
Jade sighed. “You should be careful! Master Siu will be boiling with anger when he sees you eventually in the ruling.”
“As an animal, I’ve accepted my fate of being the scapegoat — or more precisely, “Scapedog” when things go eschew. Every year when something goes wrong during this time of the year, I am always the one to blame.”
“Don’t think like that. You are to blame because you’ve an important post in the court! You are an appointed official.”
“Yeah, right,” the dog spat. "Jade you're a servant, you have an easy life. You don't understand my pains."
“Hey, you insolent canine! Listen, I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about but Jade was just trying to comfort you. You are being awfully rude to her for spitting in her face and…I demand that you apologize to her now.” Elise said.
The dog snorted. “Ha! Listen to yourself. You are the one who has gotten us all in trouble in the first place. Your “boyfriend” is now being reprimanded in the library. Thirty years of service! He’s helped many to great lengths with his power, but never a misconduct quiet like this one. No. You’re the first woman he’s ever set eyes on.”
“Fifty years…?” It seemed that things were in a different time scale in this parallel universe. Even if Michael had lied about his age, at that’s would still be too big a number to put on his head. One couldn't possibly start working the day one was born, could one?
“Jade, can you please explain everything to me. I don’t know who to trust but you. You were nice to me back at the chamber, if that was really you. I am very confused right now I think I might be sick.”
“Madame, I’m only a servant who serves the House of Siu. An honest, simple woman who does whatever her masters ordered her to; who puts on any type of disguise for his purpose; who repays the masters' kindness and gentle manners to a servant by not asking too many questions. I beg you for forgiveness because I cannot tell you anything. I might be the woman you saw in the pharmacy and my husband, whom you’ve met was also here, but I have no recollection of it. I can assure you, however, that you will know in time when the Master Michael speaks to you. When such time comes, however, you must face it with strength and not weakness. That’s all the advice a mother can offer to another mother’s child. Now let’s go get you a pair of shoes.” Jade shot a quick glance at an antique clock on top of a wooden accent table under the staircase. “We don't have much time left.”
Jade turned to the dog and said, “I suppose you should go clean yourself up and supervise the arrangement of the banquet, huh?”
“I’ve got it. Stop nagging, Mama,” he barked.
“What is this dog? Who is he?” Elise asked Jade when they were far enough away from him. “He calls you Mama.”
“Oh, my mistake! It’s my job to introduce you two. I am so sorry, Madam.”
“He’s such a rude ‘dog’,” Elise said, trying desperately to construct appropriate sentence to describe this new spices she had come into contact with and in the end decided to go with the original word, dog. “I don’t know if I want to get to know him. Yet he has Michael’s face when he transformed into a man!”
“Master Ken and Master Michael are twin brothers. They call me Mama, and my husband their father out of habit because we were the closest things they have to parents. They were being entrusted by Master Siu, their grandfather, to us to take care of their everyday living. They lost their parents because of a fire in the Chamber of Life and Nutrition."
"A fire?" Elise repeated. "Was that the fire that the second wife of Master Siu start
ed?"
Jade nodded. "The two brothers were treated quiet differently already when they were young. Master Michael had greater clerical potential to the Master Siu and was given all the proper education to prepare his succession in tending this household after the Master himself. But who can blame the Master for having a favorite in that regard? Ken has always loathed the formalities of the House. He raised himself on the streets in the disguise of an animal, he learnt to run like a leopard, howl like a wolf and fight like a boar in the wild. Eventually Master Siu put him in a position where his strengths are most well used. He might seem rude when he speaks but if you get to know Master Ken longer, he is actually quite friendly.” Jade smiled as she started to lead Elise into a less glorified passageway hidden behind a tall oak door. “Sorry dear, you have to travel through the underground passageway for now.”
“Oh. That’s fine.” Elise replied.
“Normally only servants come here so you’ll have to excuse its modest appearance. Master Siu would like to keep your early presence here a secret.”
“What for?”
“Just watch your steps.” With dexterity Jade jogged down the passageway, followed by Elise whose curiosity was mounting to a bubble about to be burst. Dimly lit candles lined their way down a flight of spiral staircase made from big chucks of stones. Small oak doors dotted their ways. Each one of them have a neat name plate in gold mounted next to the door frame, with the severity much like a principal’s office. None of them have words etched on them, yet there were different kind of noises that came through them. One sounded like a kitchen — the unmistakable scrapping of metal spatulas on cooking woks, clanking of dishes, repeated plops of knives slicing and cutting industrially on wooden chopping boards. And another one that sounded like a butchery because of the horrifying animal wailings. Then here was another one that might have been a cafeteria for the servants for Elise heard the sound of men and women chatting and laughing. Though some of the rooms were absolutely quiet, some other rooms like this one she just passed by was occupied. A man of particularly loud, grim voice was talking in a lecturing tone, as if he was prepping his comrades of the day’s mission. Every now and then when he paused between sentences in his speech, a collective of male voices would chant in uplifting spirit in unison. When Elise reached the final landing of after what felt like a good twenty minutes of nauseous descending, Jade pushed a simple wooden door open and a small backyard came into view. There was a horse carriage outside waiting for her. Elise and Jade shuffled into what appeared to be Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage or something very much like it, and with no further delay, the horses sprinted away, carrying Elise to the much awaited shoemaker.
The Shoemaker
To her disappointment, the ride didn’t last very long. It felt like as if the carriage had only just turned around the corner. Jade pulled the small curtain on her side of the carriage apart.
“Good. Not too many customers,” Jade said. “I’ll go talk to the shoemaker first. Once he gets rid of all the other customers, we can shop. Try to go in as quick as you can. Remember we don’t want anyone to see you in a House of Siu’s carriage.”
“I can have the whole store to myself?” She exclaimed excitedly. “This is like celebrity treatment. Paparazzi waiting to spot me? This is incredible.” She laughed in her seat. Jade who had no clue what she was talking about, jumped off the carriage and walked into the shoe store.
With nothing to do while she was waiting, Elise peeked out into the streets through a small gap of the parted curtains to see where she was. A young couple in modern clothing with beer bottles in their hands were kissing and fondling passionately in front of the shoe store, oblivious to their surroundings. Elise scooted herself to the other door to look at the other side of the street where their carriage was parked. A black BMW M3 sports car painted meticulously with stripes of burning flames on the length of its body flashed by like wind, dragging up little whirlwind of dusts on its tail. After it had passed, the street had revealed itself to Elise the most unexpected way imaginable: the original way. She was still in Temple Street. It appeared exactly as the way it was before everything had happened — the food stalls, the fortune teller’s desk, the flea market, they were still all there. There was one difference, however, no longer was the street filled with the sounds of hawking and bargaining. The stalls were all closed. Gates have been pulled down. An old woman was burning something in a metal bin from which shoots and flames taller than her leapt out from time to time. Paper-money burning was a widely practiced ritual in China, especially when the seventh day of the seventh Lunar month was approaching, which was usually around June or July. Abandoned family members of the deceased often burn luxury items made out of paper, man-size paper dolls of servant boys and girls, and money all made out of papers to their dead relatives so they can live a better life in hell. It wasn’t an unusual sight in Hong Kong. Apart a few other people walking sluggishly home, the street was almost deserted. Temple Street had a closing hour just like anywhere else, it appeared.
Suddenly it occurred to Elise that she could escape now. She could just leap out of the carriage and run home. Run to the MTR station, get a taxi, whatever. She could just up and leave now that Jade wasn’t looking. She saw a policeman in an unmistakable light blue summer uniforms and a shiny metal badge on his chest patrolling the street at that very instance. “This is the perfect opportunity. Thanks God! Tell him you’ve been robbed and you need money to go home. He’ll take care of you. He will believe such a story. Kidnapped by supernatural beings? Not so gullible. But robbery, he would understand! It happens all the time in this part of town, right?” Elise told herself, her hands shook vigorously under her lap and her heart pulsated at the speed of light.
“Go now!” A voice in Elise’s head commanded her. She leapt forward to the latch of the carriage door but at that instance, something strange had happened outside that made her retracted her hand as if the latch was made of a red-hot burning iron.
The policemen had bent over and dipped his hand into the bin, his face half buried in the flames. There was a loud crackling noise but he didn’t flitch and his hand buried deep inside the flaming bin fishing for something. Elise gasped. He could burn himself like this! Yet the old woman didn’t help. She didn’t even seem to notice his presence. Her expression was preoccupied and her dry, scaling lips parted to mutter things a woman deranged by grief would say, begging her son to come home and at the same time kept throwing wads of paper money in the flame. When the policemen finally pulled away from the bin, he had wads of intact banknotes in his hands, unharmed by the fire. And they appeared real too, unlike the paper ones the woman had thrown in. Joyfully he shuffled the banknotes into his pants’ pockets. Several other beings had appeared from nowhere and clustered around the metal bin too now, envious at the policemen’s good fortune. Their hands hung excitedly on the rim of the can and stared into the fire of wealth. At once they all started to put their hands in and extracted out banknotes from it. The crowd became bigger and bigger. Elise had no idea where they had all come from. There were small children, too, running and tripping themselves clumsily as they came over to the cove of treasure this old woman had put out for her dead son, and apparently had no idea to who her offerings have gone instead.
“It’s a show we’ve put up.” Jade had climbed back up to the carriage and had been watching her when she realized that Elise wasn’t paying any attention to her signals. “To divert the attention away from us. You don’t know there were so many of them wandering the streets until you lure them out from their lairs with money. They all love money. Ghosts and humans alike, regardless of age and profession.”
There was not a single pair of shoes in the shoe store. Elise was not given any time to reflect on that, however, because an old tailor with a slouching back from years of hard work at the bench measuring, cutting and sewing pieces of expensive leather together, who was in the most typical outfit you would associate for man of such occupation — ol
d man’s vest with cotton lining. measuring tape strung casually around his sagging shoulders, sleeves rolled up that indicated he was always ready to whip up something for their patrons — had approached her with jumpy enthusiasm about her royal arrival. She was the special guest he had been waiting in years, according to this small man. Jade quickly dispelled any notion of this man by explaining that she was not a member of the House of Siu but a valued house guest. The old man said it didn’t matter to him, he was very delighted to be able to help the lady to find her perfect shoes. Then he asked them to take a seat on the velvet ottomans at the center of the stores around a circular rag where in the center a small pyramid of mirrors were placed for women to examine their shoes on their feet, and on he went into a small backroom for a good five minutes. When he emerged, he had in his hand a wooden tray on which three transparent bottles of perfume dispensers were placed in the most careful and precise manner at each corner of an imaginary equilateral triangle, resting on top of a black silky decorative fabric.
“I thought we are buying shoes?” Elise whispered into Jade’s ear. Jade smiled knowingly.
“He is the finest shoemaker we have in the area, don’t you worry!” She assured.
“Madam, could you hold out your feet. I will put these carefully tailored heels specific for evening parties on you.” Elise followed suit. The man picked up the first pink hued bottle and started to spray the liquid on Elise’s feet with an atomizer.
“This is a pink perfume bottle with acid etched floral trim all the way around. This is depression glass from the early 1900's. Comes with it is an attached rubber atomizer and is made in Czechoslovakia. You can see its mark on the gold metal top.” The man then asked, “Would you like to hear about the shoes too?”
Right then a pair of pink satin sling-back with pointy heads materialized out of thin air on Elise’s feet. The fit was perfect! Amazed, she stood up and started to pose in front of the mirror. “This is amazing! Shoes from perfume! What kind of technology is this? Show me the next pair!”