House of Trembling Leaves, The

by Lees, Julian

  ‘‘He’s a Woo!’’ someone yelled.

  ‘‘So what if he is! He knows what’s coming to him!’’

  Kneeling, the man lifted his hands towards the gathering crowd, sobbing like a child, pleading for their help. The onlookers stood paralyzed.

  One of the MPAJA soldiers shoved him with his foot.

  Lu See stood on her toes, straining to see if it was who she thought it was. The MPAJA soldier struck him in the face. His head twisted. There was a mole on his cheek.

  Mabel looked at her mother in alarm. Quick as a shot, with the man’s screams ringing in his ears, Lu See took her daughter’s hand but Mabel’s leg muscles had locked with fright. ‘‘We must go,’’ hissed Lu See. ‘‘Now.’’

  The little girl’s feet suddenly came alive. ‘‘Yes, Mama.’’

  ‘‘Don’t look back, Mabel. Whatever you do don’t look back.’’

  There was a thud of wood on bone as they drove their rifle butts into the man’s chest. The snap of ribs reverberated around the village square. Lu See quickened her stride, almost pulling at Mabel to keep pace.

  The dog continued to bark.

  ‘‘What about her!’’ someone yelled. ‘‘The one that worked for the Colonel!’’ Other voices joined in, surrounding her like a blanket, but the pulsing in Lu See’s ears drowned out all sound, all thought. Her instinct was to get away, as fast as possible. Turning past the toddy shop, she dropped the basket of turnips. She and Mabel hurried up the windy road towards the big house, close to sprinting now, feeling as though at any second someone was going to grab them from behind and pull them down.

  The sun beat down. But despite the heat from the day Lu See’s blood ran cold.

  That night Mabel fell asleep in her mother’s arms. Having kissed her eyes shut, Lu See caressed her daughter’s head and then carefully removed Mabel from her bosom. She went to the verandah and stood in the shadow of the moon. Her mother appeared at her shoulder. ‘‘Are you all right? Hungry?’’

  Curtly: ‘‘I’m fine.’’

  ‘‘You cannot tell lies to me. Your face the same as when you eat bitter marrow.’’

  ‘‘I said I’m fine.’’ She folded her arms. ‘‘I’m always fine. I’ve been fine all my life. Forthright, resilient and fine, that’s me.’’ She turned her mouth down.

  ‘‘Don’t make that face, Lu See. Your father hates it when you make that face.’’

  ‘‘Ah-Ba’s dead, Mother.’’

  ‘‘I know he’s dead. What makes you think I don’t know he’s dead?’’ She shook her head.

  ‘‘You still sleep with his slippers at the foot of your bed.’’

  Mother ignored that. ‘‘Mabel told me what happened today in town.’’

  ‘‘It was nothing, just a settling of old scores. They got hold of one of the informers.’’ Lu See pictured the man the MPAJA soldiers were attacking. It was him, she was certain of it; it was the Black-headed Sheep.

  ‘‘Nothing?’’ Mother shot her a look. ‘‘What do you mean nothing? They killed the man. They strapped his body to the angsana tree by the church and placed a sign over his head. There’s talk that he was a Woo as well.’’

  Lu See covered her mouth. ‘‘So he’s finally dead.’’ She closed her eyes, wishing she could share the news with Sum Sum.

  ‘‘I heard you were chased,’’ said Mother.

  ‘‘We weren’t chased.’’ She rubbed the skin of her forehead. ‘‘I wish Mabel wouldn’t make things up.’’

  ‘‘This would not happen if you had husband. Your father, he felt the same every time we discussed you, he got worried sick, saying, ‘She must find a husband before she turn old like dried prune.’ ’’

  Lu See didn’t want to get into this – the last time they talked about her widowhood her mother made out she was responsible for her father’s depression. All that worrying, she claimed, made his mind bloat up, like a balloon full of heavy water.

  ‘‘And then you ran away to England and came back with a baby!’’

  Uncle Big Jowl appeared at the door. ‘‘Baby? Someone pregnant? Not you, Lu See?’’

  Lu See pinched finger and thumb to the bridge of her nose, dramatically. ‘‘No, I’m not pregnant.’’

  ‘‘So, who?’’ Nonplussed, he looked to his sister then to his niece; when neither replied he left the room.

  Mother shook her head. She looked at her hands for several moments. ‘‘Shameful, meh, that your father should kill himself like he did.’’ She sighed. ‘‘Now I have to wear my grief like an open wound.’’

  Lu See squeezed the skin between her eyes again. They’d found him barricaded in the wet kitchen with the gun by his side and an arterial spray of red garlanding the wall. His body lay at a grotesque angle and at first Lu See couldn’t work out why the top of her father’s skull was missing, why his tongue hung on his chin, why there was a sliding mass of blackness over his forehead. That was when she registered the flies. Swarming like a black bubbling crust over the angry raw flesh.

  They placed a towel over his face and together she and Mother scrubbed the blood and brain scrapings off the wall, unable to say a word. They looked at one another as if to ask are you okay? But they weren’t okay. They wouldn’t be okay for a long, long time. They rolled a blanket out and helped set him down, stretched out as if asleep. They covered all the mirrors in the house and left him in the main room smelling of camphor and oil-smoke; just sat and watched over him until the city policeman arrived. There was no wake, no fancy funeral. They couldn’t even afford chrysanthemums.

  ‘‘Call me old fashioned, nah, but you should have a man to support and protect you. At this rate only man who will come for you is undertaker when you old. Tell me, who will take care of you, Lu See, when I die?’’

  ‘‘Mother, please.’’

  ‘‘And you are already so lonely to boots.’’

  ‘‘I’m not lonely.’’

  ‘‘You should have married Cheam Chow when you had the chance.’’

  ‘‘Shouldn’t you be telling me to take my time, to wait for love to come to me, to be careful and not get hurt?’’

  ‘‘No.’’ Mother stared at her, motionless. ‘‘You should find a man. You want me to speak to matchmaker?’’

  ‘‘No, I do not.’’ Lu See folded her arms across her chest and turned away.

  ‘‘Mabel, your daughter, she needs a father figure, but no, you too stubborn to marry.’’

  Lu See snapped. ‘‘I was married once. And he died! Or have you forgotten?’’

  ‘‘Not forgotten.’’ She tilted her head this way and that. ‘‘Nobody has forgotten. Especially not the Woos. When you returned from England without Adrian, many of them reproached you! They still reproach you.’’ Mother saw the look in Lu See’s eyes and extended a consoling arm. ‘‘All I’m saying is you should have married aaa-gain, find someone to take care of you, take care of Mabel. Now look what happens, people chase you down the street.’’

  ‘‘Oh for God’s sake!’’ Lu See couldn’t hide the annoyed twang in her voice.

  ‘‘Not God’s sake, young lady, it is our sake I’m worried about. I told you time and time again, don’t work for the Japanese. I said if they lose the war there will be all hells to pay.’’

  ‘‘How else was I to bring food to the table? How else was I going to keep the family from harm?’’ Mother pretended not to hear. She seemed to be able to suck the insides of her ears shut. She scratched her palms. ‘‘Whatever you think, Tozawa protected us.’’

  ‘‘And who will protect us now, meh?’’

  A pointed silence.

  Remorse etched across Lu See’s face, peeking out like the tips of an adulterer’s shoes from behind a curtain.

  ‘‘They will come for you eventually,’’ said Mother. She sipped from a cup of tea, which she placed on the verandah ledge by the trails of bougainvillea. ‘‘They will call you lousy traitor and shave your head and tear your clothes from your shoulders like call girl.’
’

  ‘‘Trust you to say such a thing.’’

  ‘‘What? You want me to put sugar in my mouth and tell you sweet lies? I’m simply warning you. They will tie a can to your tail and run you out of town. Best maybe if we all go to Kuala Lumpur where nobody know you.’’

  ‘‘I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m not going run away like a criminal.’’

  ‘‘Cha! You putting us all at risk.’’

  ‘‘I’m staying. It will all get better when the British return, just wait and see.’’

  ‘‘Stubborn. Pig-headed. Proud.’’ Mother prodded her finger at Lu See with each adjective. ‘‘You say you spend the whole war protecting Mabel and now with new danger loomings you choose to do nothing.’’

  Lu See gave an exhausted sigh. Her mother always fiddled with her head like this, like a dentist picking at a painful tooth. ‘‘I am not choosing to do nothing. I am standing my ground. I haven’t done anything wrong.’’

  ‘‘You sided with the Japanese.’’

  ‘‘I never sided with them.’’

  ‘‘What do you mean never?’’ she hissed at her.

  Lu See wanted to throttle her mother senseless. She wanted to grab her by the throat and shake her. Not because she was asking for it. Not because she deserved it. Simply because it would shut her up.

  ‘‘I worked for Tozawa because I knew he would shield us – you, me and Mabel – from other Japanese. It was self-preservation.’’

  ‘‘There is no law-order here. One stray accusation, one lazy-bits of finger-pointing and they will come with fire torches and burn this house down. Their rice is boiling over.’’

  ‘‘Mother, you’re being silly. We just have to be patient; it will soon die down.’’

  ‘‘Patience was never your strong point.’’

  ‘‘The villagers know us. We’ve always been good to them.’’

  ‘‘Damn-short memories. They forget all we did for them before the war. What they remember now is that you worked for Colonel Tozawa, in his household.’’

  ‘‘And that’s all it was, work, simple, honest hard work. I didn’t betray anyone. I didn’t exploit anyone.’’ Lu See swung at a trailing bougainvillea vine with her hand, but it was her voice that was thorned with anger. ‘‘I didn’t sleep with the bloody man. I wasn’t his bloody mistress!’’

  ‘‘Foolish and stubborn, that’s what you are.’’ Mother snatched her cup of tea from the verandah ledge and retreated indoors. As she disappeared she called out of the gloom: ‘‘Come, nah, if you are hungry. I will cook you something to eat, no more talk.’’

  A light rain began to fall. Every plap, plop and sploosh seemed to be trying to tell Lu See something. Is Mother right? she wondered. Should I pack up and run? Would they really cut off my hair?

  Lu See felt her breath pull tight. She trembled. The night was beginning to cool but she wasn’t cold. A tremulous sense of playing with fire seized her. There was something she had to do.

  She stared in the direction of the village, but her gaze went beyond the tiny swell of yellow lights in the distance. She needed to see the body.

  Somewhere in the distance Lu See heard the sounds of firecrackers exploding. Or is it gunshots? She couldn’t be sure.

  As she made her way down the drive she could see the silhouette of the church up ahead, lit by the light of the three-quarter moon. She rubbed her hand over her face and then hid her trembling hands under her armpits.

  She crossed the field.

  The angsana tree waited for her. Stalks of tall grass on either side of it were trampled down. There were footprints in the mud left by the men who had strung him up.

  Her heart beat like a hammer against cloth. She approached the tree and noticed a stool had been kicked away from under him. She forced herself to look up.

  The men had left him for the crows and monitor lizards to feed on.

  The body swayed gently from the hanging rope. The noose was tight to the trachea; it made his face contort like a gargoyle from a cathedral perch. Mouth pulled taut in a grimace, chin on his chest, eyes open.

  She searched his face in the dim light. Yes, she said, there’s the mole. It’s him pumpkin-head. He’s really dead.

  Satisfied, she started back across the field, before pulling up. A shiver went through her. Wait! There’s something not right. She turned slowly, then ran back to the tree and looked again at the leering skull. The grimacing face seemed to mock her. She reached for the stool and stood on tiptoes. With a sense of revulsion she pushed her hand into the tangle of hair and lifted the head to the moonlight. There’s the mole … but … there’s been a mistake. Something’s wrong here. Something’s muddled. And suddenly she realized. It’s on the wrong cheek. The mole is supposed to be on his left cheek not his right. It’s not him. It’s not the Black-headed Sheep.

  She felt powerless. It was like waking from a nightmare and wanting to scream only to find not a muscle in her throat could move.

  For the first time she wished she still had Colonel Tozawa to protect her.

  6

  As the Tibetan grasslands turned green, the festival of the mountain gods drew a crowd of villagers, all bestowing offerings of food to the deities. They gathered by the ndekheng, the village shrine, women on the left, men to the right, to burn conifer branches in the sangkong furnace. Dancers beat rectangular goatskin drums and swayed in circles, entreating the heavens to grant a bountiful harvest. And in the centre of it all the lhawa, the trance medium, spoke in garbled tongues, exorcising the soil of evil, as his male disciples pierced their cheeks with long metal needles.

  Not far away, assembled under the shade of a tree, Sum Sum and her fellow novices sat at Jampa’s feet. Wild flowers grew everywhere, pale green shoots pushing up through the dry earth. They were in the middle of a lesson on the sacred Ayurvedic texts.

  ‘‘Caterpillar Fungus,’’ Jampa expatiated. ‘‘We use its flesh to strengthen the body’s immunity and to regulate blood pressure.’’ She removed something from the lining of her robes and made a click-clack noise with her tongue. ‘‘Ndug’re, here we have a piece of Indian Snakeroot. You identify it by its lush green leafage and black berries but the part we use is the root. The story goes that a man from Burma watched a mahout feeding this root to his uptight elephants to pacify them. Now it is used as a hypertension drug in the West.’’

  Sum Sum had heard much of this all before. Her mother had been a ‘tip-top medicine woman’. Listening to prayer hall manager Jampa drone on about indigenous herbs and their role in medical science was like listening to the ticking of an old clock with the pendulum oscillating lazily from side to side. It was lulling her to sleep. She felt her eyelids droop and her jaw muscles tweak.

  Her boredom must have registered on her face because Jampa called out her name, ‘‘Sengemo!’’ she commanded with a smile that could eat through steel wool. ‘‘Will you kindly summarise what I just said.’’

  Taken aback, Sum Sum blinked. She hadn’t been expecting a question. Unnerved and a little embarrassed, she recovered by mumbling something about an elephant.

  Without giving her a chance to expand, Jampa thrust her right hand under Sum Sum’s nose. ‘‘Smell that?’’

  Drawing everyone’s attention to the bit of dried tuber in her hand she began to bay. ‘‘Snakeroot,’’ Jampa bellowed in the manner of a lunatic reciting her mathematics tables. ‘‘Known in Sanskrit as chandrika. Treats hypertension. High-blood pressure. Lowers fevers. Harmful to women during pregnancy. Also used as antidote to the bites of venomous snakes.’’ She glared at Sum Sum. ‘‘Sadly, it does not help to concentrate the mind. And don’t sulk, Sengemo, it ruins your face.’’

  It was turning out to be a bad day. Only that morning Sum Sum had been scolded by the caretaker of the temple for startling the reclusive abbess. The abbess had been seated at a bench that overlooked the valley, enjoying a sense of calm. She was singing a quiet, rambling mantra to herself, a hundred-syllable hymn. Nobody was to di
sturb her. The dawn air was fresh and cooling; there were birds twittering in the trees. She was halfway through the Vajrasattva yik gya when Sum Sum, without waiting for permission, promptly sat down by her side.

  ‘‘Ai-yoo, beautiful sunrise, no? They call me Sengemo. What’s your name?’’

  Sum Sum had barely perched herself on the bench when the tsampa really hit the fan. The caretaker of the temple rushed out from the shadows with her finger wagging and her robes flapping. ‘‘What in the name of Moggul and Trazil do you think you are doing?’’ she hissed like a wounded adder. ‘‘Leave Her Reverence alone! This is her quiet time! Away! Away!’’

  The abbess glared at Sum Sum, eyes fixed like twin cannonballs. ‘‘Give her fifty lines of the Tengyur to copy out.’’

  How was I to know she was the abbess? Sum Sum complained to herself over breakfast. It’s not as if she wears a brass nameplate on her chest. She peered at the shaven-headed septuagenarians slouching over their bowls at high table. Everyone here over the age of fifty looks alike, lah!

  ‘‘Country Mallow, Giloy, Bitter Oleander, Night Jasmine, Khas-khas,’’ Jampa’s voice broke into her thoughts. Sum Sum was back under the shade of the tree once more. ‘‘Indian Pennywort, Senna, Wild Indigo.’’ Jampa rattled the names off with a crash, thud, bang, like a frenzied woodchopper. ‘‘Even the petals of the Hibiscus flower are used in our medicines. Can anyone tell me how we use the Hibiscus?’’

  A fat little novice raised her hand. She had a round face and the traces of a moustache. Sum Sum thought she could have easily played Oliver Hardy onstage.

  ‘‘I know all about Hibiscus,’’ she said in a shrill voice. ‘‘My grandmother used them for treating her carbuncles.’’

  ‘‘Ndug’re! Very good. Yes, beat the flowers into a paste and use as a poultice over the swelling.’’

  ‘‘What about you, Tormam, what do you know of Hibiscus?’’

  Everyone looked over at the shy person sitting near the back. Sum Sum immediately recognized her as the young woman who slept beside her in the dormitory. On hearing her name, Tormam blushed and stuttered. ‘‘I … it … it can be used to heal … the leaves can be crushed and mixed with water … to help problems with the passage of urine.’’