The House of Life 1

by Vann Chow

  The old man, delighted at the compliment, now replaced the pink perfume bottle with a blue one. “Madame, this is an Aqua Glass Perfume Bottle Atomizer with a brass spritzer. It has a diamond stippled pattern with four indents going around the sides.”

  “Spray it on me. Spray it on me!” Elise begged, anxious for the next surprise.

  “Madam, don’t you want to examine the first pair a little bit more closely?” Jade asked. “Since we’ll have to wait till the first perfume to evaporate before....”

  “Oh! That’s no problem at all, Madame.” The old man pronounced. “Your humble servant has procured a ‘roof vacuum system’ from the humans who own the store at daytime.” He then pulled the dangling string and triggered the revolving fan to life. The shoes dissolved into the air in seconds.

  “It’s called an electric fan.” Elise corrected him, amused at how little these supernatural beings know about the world in daytime.

  “Ah-huh. I see Madam is educated in technology? That is the most impressive for a young woman of your caliber!” The old man inquired but before Elise could say anything, Jade faked a cough to stop her.

  The old man caught on, “Let’s try the second pair, shall we? “He kneeled down next to Elise feet and sprayed the second perfume on her feet. It’s a dark blue stiletto heavily adorned with gorgeous blue diamonds.

  “Oh, I LOVE IT!” And so Elise tried all three pairs of shoes.

  “Madame, please don’t hesitate to raise any question. Your humble servant would be the most privileged to answer them.” The old man said when Elise was hopping around the mirror pyramid looking at her feet, overwhelmed by the beauty of these luxurious heels that she could never afford to buy and probably would never venture to try on in reality.

  “How do you make the shoes?” Feeling that was probably an invasion of intellectual property, she rephrased herself. “You know, where I came from shoes just come in shoeboxes. Ugly cardboard shoeboxes!”

  “We are heavenly chartered shoemaker. We never put our shoes in substandard conditions! All our perfume bottles are imported from glassmaker all over the world, all heavenly chartered!” He defended.

  “Why do you keep telling me about the glass bottles?” Confused.

  “Oh, Madame! You have a very progressive mind!” The man threw his hand in the air with fervor. “Very soon women are going to be bored with perfumes in glass bottles and they are going to ask me, ‘Why do you keep telling me about the glass bottles!’” He lowered his voice right then and confided to Elise. “I have an idea myself of putting the perfumes in ‘soft bottles’ the humans made! It would revolutionize the whole fashion industry!” He said excitedly.

  “Do all shoes and clothes come from perfume?” Elise now thought of the fragrance that lingers around her body. Someone has sprayed a dress on her while she was sleeping.

  “Why, my lady? Everything a woman could want can be found in fumes. Heels, evening gowns, jewelry…Let me show you something. It’s my secret. I only show it to someone with exceptional vision.” Here he extracted a half-emptied bottle of Evian mineral water stored in one of the chests in the store and hand it over to Elise with meticulous care.

  “It’s a plastic bottle!”

  “Exactly! I went to a factory in Mainland China last year when the Heavens commissioned me to tailor shoes for a diplomat and his family from France. The factory could make millions of these in one day and they could mould them into any shape you want! This one has the French mountains on it!”

  Elise couldn’t help but smiled at how sincere yet simple-minded the old man was. The same man who claimed that he worked for the ‘Heavens’. Shouldn’t they know everything from way up there? She thought to herself.

  “I don’t think plastic is any good. They look rather cheap, no offence. I personally think that only handcrafted glass bottles can match the excellence of your shoemaking art. You should stick with them for as long as you can!”

  “Madame, I believe there is no time for chitchatting. We have been out far too long. Master must be waiting already.” Jade interjected.

  “Alright then! The first pair it is!” Elise hastily decided. The old tailor quickly wrapped up the light pink tinted perfume bottles in layers of silks and set it upright on a transparent octagonal glass case soldered with a brass handle at the top. The beautiful golden tassel that linked to the goat leather atomizer hung freely through a small hole at the top and swayed with elegance when Elise sashayed back into the horse carriage with Jade.

  The Truth

  Outside the imposing wooden doors that belonged to the Siu’s Mansion on Temple Street, there were growing levels of activities as the time of the banquet approached. The mansion of the physician’s family was surrounded by a great stone wall. Within the walls, in front of the mansion, was a sheltered roundabout under a huge red canopy. It was jammed with heavily adorned horse carriages, cycled rickshaws, pedicabs, classic black English cabs, shiny Mercedes Benz and limousines with tinted windows. They were queuing for their chances to drop off their anxious passengers, many of whom were in their best evening outfits and their bodies oozing with the most precious perfumes of the highest fashion they could acquire. There were handsome princes and beautiful princess, government officials, court members of earlier dynasties, diplomats from foreign countries, chairmen of banks, head of notorious gangs, powerful business men and their female companies. There were TV celebrities and talented opera singers but there were also men mixed in them with no particular talent yet inherited a wealthy death among these other men, too.

  Outside the main gate of the Siu's estate, throngs of common ghosts that came on foot had been gathering. The first ghost nearest to the gate was an old woman who looked like she was about seventy-year-old, although who knew how old she really was? She had been sitting on her orange plastic stool for the past three or four Shishens, along with many who had experience to the banquet before. They all hoped to get a good seat where they can get plenty of food and in range of seeing Master Siu. Each one, despite destitute and without an official invitation, were in their best appearance. Men have dug up suits and gowns from their burial sites, burnt properties, shattered ruins of their collapsed wardrobes from previous lives or inside the coffin where their bodies were held and women have used the paper-money sent to them by their caring relatives still alive to have dresses and shoes tailored. Many women were comparing and admiring one another’s outfits. Some girls from the 20th century was telling girls from the 30s that they no longer need to wear mandarin dresses, yet another complained that their headmaster had insisted to use it as uniform instead of more stylish tartan miniskirts. Some foreign missionaries were comforting a crowd of peasants who were willing to listen to them preaching. A few women from ancient times who were wrapped in floating silk stood out distinctively because the tail of their sleeves alone measured longer than three yards. There were children among them too. Running and bumping into each other, playing with mud, playing with fingers, sucking fallen barks from trees, laughing or crying. A vast majority of unlucky ones had to come with what they had on at their moments of dead, some even did not have a single piece of rag on, yet they had combed their hair. Everyone wanted to look their best for the festival tonight.

  Among these people, some died a natural death of old age, some came down with incurable disease, some murdered, some assassinated, some died in a fight, some died in the womb as infant, some died of natural disasters and there were some took their own lives. Many of them died for money, but some died for fame. Some died for power, some died for peace. Some died for themselves, yet some died for their people. Some died because of their mistakes but many died because of their beliefs. Among them, however, there were people who had died, unfortunately, for nothing. Regardless of the reason of death, they have all come to the join the biggest banquet of the year.

  At about one and a half Shishen away from the start of the banquet, the chief security officer had dispatched a division of fifty trained men to ens
ure the order of the mansion inside and out, making sure that people who were invited to come in stay in their places in one neat line and anyone who’s not invited was picked out from the mix so they couldn’t sneak in.

  Even at the back of the mansion, the small back door where Elise had ridden out to get her shoes earlier with Jade was now gridlocked with wooden wagons from different times in histories and heavy duty trucks from modern automobile makers from Ford to Isuzu for last minute unloading of supplies for the biggest and most important banquet of the year. With considerable difficulty and some waiting, Elise’s horse carriage finally got through the traffic. Again with swiftness, Jade brought Elise back into the House of Siu stealthily through the winding staircase for servants and trusted contractors. Elise could see into the unnamed doors now, many of them wedged open by newspapers and cardboard boxes for convenience. A few doors were yet still shut, but not undisturbed. Ghost laborers covered in heavy fumes of sweats passed in and out of the unopened solid doors freely with loads of materials on their back.

  Elise looked out through the watch tower, there were probably ten or fifteen thousands of heads bobbing outside in a sea of color. An influx of mixed odors, pleasant, unpleasant, bitter and sweet, ancient and fresh have raised up from these people, for all of them only had traces of themselves that still linger the earth, and that was their…

  “Stinking souls. You’ll get used to them. Very soon you will not notice the difference between living among human and living among ghosts. Many of them are just like you and me…”

  “Michael!” Elise turned around and spotted him standing at the threshold of the watch tower. Instinctively she ran towards him and crashed into his chest for the second time in the same night. Or different night—Elise had lost all sense of time. Among the sponginess excess of pink fabrics of her dress, Michael had found his way through to the solid, collapsing creature of a girl swaddled within. How beautiful is this girl! He found his heart throbbing violently the second time for this tender sweetness of a girl, whom had made him committed the very first mistake of his career in the Chamber of Life and Nutrition, and hugged her tight in his arm.

  “It was a mistake on my part. No doubt. I’ve brought troubles not only unto me, but to her too. What an idiot. What an idiot I am!!” He thought. Once again, as have many times in this night, he had castigated himself with harsh words. “But it’s not an incorrigible mistake. Luckily not a mistake big enough to jeopardize my career and render me non-existence.”

  "Are you alright?" He asked Elise. "I know I owe you an explanation for all these...I'm really sorry for giving you a scare."

  “It's okay...” Elise said weakly, “I don’t need your apology. I know that you are in trouble for me being here, too. But yes, I need an explanation. I am so confused. Where am I? No, that’s not the question. I know where I am. We are still on Temple Street, aren’t we? I was just being thrown back in time, am I right? All I want to know is WHEN and HOW are we going back to reality? It’s a fun place here. Your mansion is very beautiful. But we are not going to stay here forever, right? We mustn’t stay here forever. You and I both still need to go to Bilious on Monday. No, you can stay…this is your home. But I can’t. It's past midnight. My parents…they must be worried sick. Can I at least call them? I don’t know, telegraph them or something? I am sure there is some kind of communication device in this era!”

  “Yes…yes, there are plenty.” Michael paused. “The thing is…I am need to tell you the truth now. Promise me that you will remain calm.” He begged.

  “What? What is it? Tell me. I am not a crybaby. I just really need to know what’s going on.”

  “Elise, listen.” He paused again to gasp for air, his lips trembling for fear of the consequences of the words he was about to say. The silence lasted awkwardly long that Elise sensed nothing good was going to come out of it.

  “Uhhh…I can’t!” He had to give up yet he was angry with himself for acting so cowardly, so he stood up and wanted to walk away, yet his knees buckled, his heart awash with wrenching sympathy and his mind was an absolute empty. He felt himself weak, only now did he know the calamity of truth. Now he thought he finally understood its power. Weaken, he leaned against the jagged stones window sill covered in ancient green mould and he realized that Elise was staring at him intently, waiting for the piercing moment of truth.

  “Elise, you cannot go home anymore because you are dead. — You would have to wait for your chance seven days after your death to project your spirits into their dreams.”

  “You’re crazy!” Elise replied, thinking that she must be in some pathetic joke the ghosts had played on her to test her mental states. “I am not dead. At most I’m in a dream. Or I’m hallucinating. It must be the turtle jelly.”

  “I am sorry. I understand it’s very hard for you to get used to this idea…especially because I’ve misled you to believe that you were still alive after your transition point.”

  “My what?”

  “You had an accident. It happened in between 1:14am to 1:15am, across the street from Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station Exit H. Do you remember that you ran through a red light? You were hit by a car. You were instantly thrown off about three-hundred feet and smashed your…” He stopped. “I am sorry…the details must be very hard to bear.”

  Those words had a special power on Elise. As soon as she heard them, she saw in her mind's eyes at once the event that Michael was describing to her. She felt the forceful smashing of the front of the BMW on her body, and she felt the weightlessness she experienced when she was flying in midair, and she felt the wetness on her head, moisted from gushing of blood from the wound on the back of her head down her neck, drenching her shirt as soon as she landed on the pavement.

  Elise screamed.

  Michael lifted his head to see Elise’ tortured expression of disbelief, and saw what was left was a pair of bulging, glossy black pearls setting inside her skull without spirit. Her whole core was shaken by the truth that she struggled internally to dispel the sincerity of what she just heard.

  “This must be too much for you. I am sorry, Elise,” He said. Yet Elise didn’t stir a bit. “I was assigned to look into your case, to judge what kind of person you are and where you should go in your next life…I believe I haven’t told you the whole truth about me but you are in no shape to understand that right now. All you need to know is, your ‘Yang’s life’ has expired and you suffered a death that was pre-described in the ‘Book of Life and Death’. You were supposed to know the truth of your death at the moment of the impact from me, as soon as your spirit leaves your body, but because of my stupidity and undoubtedly selfish attempt to make a connection with you —you are a very attractive girl—and I can’t bear to dispatch the soul harvesters on you. Instead, I sent them away and let you live on for a few more hours...”

  “The Black and White Missionaries.” Elise opened her mouth slowly and muttered, “from the folklore.”

  “Yes. Many people believe that they are just legends, but they do exist. And they worked for me, and for the Chamber of Life and Nutrition. They are brutal creatures but they too can be tamed,” said Michael. “Elise, I will reassure you, that you will go through this transition as smoothly and as painlessly as possible because I am here to help you. Death is nothing but a phase. It happens to everyone. You’ve nothing to be afraid of.”

  “A phase?”

  “Yes, a transition phase to the next life — or not. Normally it would depend on the result of your trial. It is my job to make a recommendation to the judge for you in accordance to your past deeds in the human realm, but I have made a terrible mistake of befriending you. Your chance of getting through to the next life would be an absolute zero if anyone finds out we know each other. But I have already come up with another plan. You’re to become one of us. You’re to be my wife, then you could live on forever in between the two worlds. Your soul would be safe with us.”

  “Stop it! STOP IT!” Elise interrupted him. “Who are
you? Why are you still making up stories like that? Aren’t you ashamed? What do you want to do with me? I am in a place where things don’t’ make sense and you’ve lured me here. You’re a devil. You’re a DEVIL! Stop messing with my mind and pretend that you…you care about me!”

  “No! Elise. Don’t over-react.”

  “Over-react?! Am I over-reacting?” She shouted. “I don’t care if I am alive or dead! You’re a liar! The only thing I know now is not to trust a word you say because you’ve been lying to me since the very beginning!” Hysterical, she grabbed pieces of broken grovels from the ground and hurled them at Michael.

  “Elise. Listen to me. I am sorry.” The stones brushed by him and missed. Although they missed him, something inside Michael ached.

  “I thought you were...I thought you could be a friend! And now you’re asking me to be your wife. Why are you acting so strange right now? If this is a nightmare, wake me up now!”

  In a moment of heat, Michael had slapped her in the face. She slapped him back more forcefully before crashing into the ground. Tears started to swell in her eyes and her face was reddened from the slapping. Her aching palm, however, brought her more pain than anything, because she realized that it hurt just as much to slap somebody back.

  Neither of them spoke for what seemed like a very long time.

  Dying

  Dying had proven to be the easy part of the game for Elise. The psychological impact of understanding that she had met her destruction, however, was hard to phantom for even the experts of the human minds, let alone the person herself. The strike of the knowledge, the recognition of the factual, the inevitable succumbing to death, the retraction of resistance to an overpowering conviction of the truth — whichever ways we choose to describe it, were still not enough to capture the intensity of the mental blow that occurred to Elise. This great awakening dissolved her body. Her hands grew limb, her legs turned numb. Her mind was in a neural turmoil as if a warfare between the cerebrum and the rest of the body had broken out. Life had taken the course of no return. The perception for the future was no longer clear to her.