by Lees, Julian
‘‘Did she know me?’’ challenged Mabel. ‘‘Did she … did she breastfeed me, coo over me? Did she put pink ribbons in my hair? Or was I always unwanted?’’
‘‘You were never unwanted.’’
‘‘Oh, really. I suppose she abandoned me because she loved me so much.’’
‘‘No, because she loved me so much.’’
Lu See rose from her chair and went across to the Florence stove. She filled the kettle with water and put it on the boil and spooned tea leaves into a pot. Reaching under the sink, she pulled out the bottle of Dewar’s, unscrewed the cap and took two long swigs.
Mabel’s eyes were red and moist. ‘‘I want to see her.’’
‘‘You can’t … Tibet is shut off from the world.’’ Lu See’s voice went dead on her as Mabel turned her back and stomped upstairs. Lu See heard the slam of a door, the sound of a bolt being dragged shut, followed by a wail like an angered bird-cry. Alone in the kitchen, Lu See listened to her daughter stamp about her room, hearing the darkness close in on her. ‘‘What have I done?’’ she mouthed.
Eventually all went quiet and in the silence she felt something inside her strain and break in two, like a guitar string, strung too tight for nineteen years, finally snap.
‘‘More teh tarik!’’
Lu See jolted free from her daydream. She found herself sat with pen cap in hand at the cashier’s desk. She told Dungeonboy to see to Fishlips Foo and wondered if, at this very moment, Mabel was being shot at, or worse, floundering in a shallow ditch bleeding to death. God’s sake Mabel! Why are you doing this to me? Why, when I always taught you not to venture outside after dark, not to visit the Tung Wah Association assembly hall on Klyne Street and certainly not to speak to the watermelon sellers who everyone suspected to be communist spies. Maybe I pushed her away, into the arms of the bandits. If you tell a child never to smoke cigarettes, one day it’ll lead to an exploratory puff behind the garden pagoda. Lu See let out a protracted sigh. Boiling water will both soften a carrot and harden an egg.
Mabel longed to be independent, to be forward-thinking, but the moment Lu See told her about Sum Sum, she grew rebellious and rash too – didn’t she realize how dangerous it was for her to have joined the Malay Communists? She’d be tried as a traitor, and where did that put us, her family; will I, thought Lu See, be branded a sympathizer for raising a daughter this way?
A few years ago, before Mabel disappeared, Lu See would bump into Mrs Kuok in church or Mrs Viswanath at the Indian spice store and one of them would say, ‘‘I saw your Mabel with that MCP boy. You must be so ashamed.’’ But Mabel had never caused her mother to feel shame; rather the women’s words led to a kind of fear to rise in her, together with a swelling of sorrow in her chest.
Lu See rubbed her eyes with her palms and glanced at the crumpled sheet of paper on the floor. She picked it up and set fire to it with a match. Mabel had been gone for over a year and in that time Lu See had never been able to write a letter through to the end. What was the point, she asked herself. There was no place to send it in any case.
7
The giant snake had come across Mabel’s dangling arm probably thinking it was a type of rodent. Having wrapped its coils around it, slowly numbing the flesh, the python began to feast. By the time Bong heard Mabel’s screams, the python had realized its mistake and was desperately trying to disgorge its dinner. ‘‘Kill it!’’ she shrieked. Without hesitating, Bong hacked into the snake’s dense body, running a parang across its thick olive skin, severing its spine; already half of Mabel’s arm had been expelled by its strong cheek muscles. When they pulled the snake free from her she found that her saliva-soaked fingertips had already started to wither and break down from the python’s digestive juices. All along her arm and forearm, its long, backward-curved teeth had dug into the tissue, locking onto flesh as it swallowed. The shock put her to sleep for most of the day.
‘‘Let her sleep,’’ Bong told his men. ‘‘Make sure she doesn’t develop a fever from infection. A snake’s mouth is full of bacteria.’’
They observed her throughout the morning, as the stickiness of the night was cooked and burned off by the sun. While they prepared the python for the pot, removing its head and cutting a deep incision along its belly to remove the innards, they watched her as she slept in the shade. Before long, her clothes had turned black with sweat.
They took her perspiration to be a good sign.
As soon as she woke at noon Mabel fretted over the wounds on her arm. She prodded the bandage with the tips of her finger, hoping that the mercurochrome and antiseptic powder were strong enough to fight off potential sickness from the python’s bite. Flexing her right hand, she noted how the skin of her fingertips was fluffy and had turned a curiously pale shade of purple. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any infection.
The stress of the last forty-eight hours had exhausted her. She was ravenous. She was always ravenous now. Her late-afternoon meal had been a bowl of grilled grasshoppers, shredded green bananas and a thumb-size dollop of rice. She couldn’t stomach eating the thing that had come so close to eating her. Apart from the fruit that fell from the trees, there was so little food that they usually had to rely on villagers smuggling rice to them in bicycle tyre tubes and hollowed-out pineapples, but with the unexpected arrival of a hundred and fifty pounds of python meat, the camp was buoyant.
‘‘You must rest,’’ insisted Bong.
‘‘No,’’ she said with sinewy brusqueness, ‘‘I want to keep maximum active. What can I do?’’
‘‘We’re not moving base until tomorrow. You can help secure the perimeter if you like.’’ He searched her face. ‘‘Are you sure you feel up to it?’’
‘‘I’m sure.’’
The men helped create several covered pits that when trod on impaled its victim on bamboo stakes. Mabel used Bong’s parang to whet the tips of the bamboo. She’d been working for almost an hour and had just completed constructing a nightingale floor around the camp – a floor specially constructed out of dry attap fronds that popped and crackled if trodden on – when she felt a chill up her spine. She pivoted to see who was creeping up behind her but saw no one. The bright yellow eyes of the snake flashed though her head like serrated hooks and immediately she thought of the Pontianak again and tried to dismiss it as silly primitive superstition. But with darkness fast approaching Mabel couldn’t help but think of stories regarding the haunted forest and remember what she’d been told about the underworld – that dusk was the time of day in Malaya when the bad spirits came out to cause harm, searching for isolated souls to inhabit.
As she returned to camp a wind was blowing. The trees creaked and groaned. They were huge trees, taller than the houses she grew up in; so tall that when fruit fell they hit the earth with a splat. In the sparse light Mabel checked the bandaging on her aching right arm as well as the small cut on her left elbow, caused by tree thorns. The damp weather caused skin to swell, making it soft and easier to cut: septicaemia and inflammation were a constant threat. Thankfully, the wound looked fine. She peered up into the darkening sky; soon it would be as black as a witch’s cauldron. All about her men sat about nursing bandaged arms and legs; they hovered around the open fire, waiting for the water to boil in the earthenware cooking pot.
Arranging herself for the evening on a stubble of fallen sunwarmed leaves, under a pyramid of palm flags, Mabel removed her medic’s bag from her back and emptied its contents. Lit by the light of a dammar torch, she laid out a sheathed knife, needle and thread, a bottle of antibiotic pills, two tinkling bottles of mercurochrome, a flask of fresh water, three grimy sachets of antiseptic powder, a dozen tubes of morphia, cotton rags for bandages, syringes, a roll of sticking plaster, a tin of sulphanilamide tablets and a sepia photograph of Teoh Lu See standing at the entrance to her restaurant in the city, smiling, waving at the camera; her pale hand long-fingered and elegant. Mabel looked at her own stubby short-fingered hands. Her nails were shot – spl
it to the cuticles and caked black with mud. As a child she’d wondered aloud why she looked nothing like Lu See, asking Uncle Big Jowl: why is Mama so tall and fair and I’m short and dark? Of course nobody had revealed anything. Your father wasn’t very tall, was usually the stock answer.
Mabel removed the wooden pins – ones she’d made herself out of bamboo – from her hair and shook it free. There was another photograph of Lu See crammed into her back pocket, but the daily diet of rain and heat had all but rotted it to shreds. She tugged it loose and gazed at the mottled face of her ‘mother’, her mind fertile with accusations.
If only she’d told me earlier, thought Mabel. Why had she tried to hide the fact that my real mother abandoned me? Why wait until I was nineteen before telling me? The fact that she’d maintained the lie for so long hurt. It made my whole life a fiction; it made me a fraud. Had she been protecting me from the truth? That I was a bastard child? Mabel gritted her teeth; she didn’t need protecting.
Mabel often wondered what might have happened if she’d found out herself, accidentally. Would that have been worse? Perhaps if she had found out earlier, her life would have taken a different course. Maybe she wouldn’t have run off with Bong; perhaps she’d have continued her studies; she might have even made plans to go in search of her birth mother. She certainly wouldn’t be here now, getting even with the world.
But whom am I really punishing – Lu See or myself? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!
Mabel inhaled a deep lungful of air. She didn’t feel bitter about it any more, didn’t feel as if the sky was pressing down on her like a black hammer, but she did feel that familiar chest twinge whenever Lu See popped up inside her head.
And then there was the letter. The letter from her real mother to Lu See written on the day they parted – the day I was abandoned, discarded like a toy in a sandbox. This she housed in her waterproof map pouch, free of mildew and mud and insects. Lu See said that Sum Sum had left it on the kitchen table for her.
She read it through for what must have been the hundredth time:
Lu See, my sister, my friend,
I write this letter in middle of night while you still sleeping. When you wake up I will be gone. Please understand that this is the most difficult decision I ever make. I am leaving, Lu See. The Gods have summoned me and such is my destiny – to return to my ancestral home. Something happened to me when I first came to Cambridge which make me realize I must return to my homeland, return to my mother and return to my religion. I only wish I could speak to you but I know you will stop me.
When the baby is exactly a month old, Lu See, you must paint the tip of her nose with soot from the underside of a pan to keep away envious ghosts. Even though at first this baby’s scent is not what you crave and the smile is not your own baby’s smile, I know you will grow to love her. Be good to each other. Right now, I think you need her, and she needs you.
I found Uncle Big Jowl’s red ang pow envelope and will take just enough to pay for train journey to Felixstowe. I will use one of the boat tickets to reach Penang. From there I will find my way to Tibet. Please do not follow me or try to stop me for this is the direction my life must take.
One thing you must do for me is register baby’s birth. I learned that this must be done within first 42 days. Give her the Teoh family name. She will wear it with pride.
I have bought enough KLIM powder milk to last 3 months. I also give you my blue note book full with Pietro’s recipes and many rosemary pots. I am sorry I did not tell you I was going to leave. If I did I know you try to stop me.
I will always treasure you.
Sum Sum.
Mabel folded the letter and replaced it in the waterproof pouch.
Not far away, Bong was settling himself down for the evening. She watched him rub his tired face, his eyes too laden with sleep to focus on the map spread across his knees.
In the past few weeks whenever they went on scouting trips within the forest, not an hour went by without Mabel and Bong exchanging clandestine touches. She’d known him since that first day he’d appeared out of the forest in 1945, with a Japanese service pistol stuffed in his belt.
They’d met again after his grandfather had swapped the jungle for the city and bought a bicycle repair shop in KL. And as a teenager Mabel was forever wheeling her rusty vintage Hawthorne in for repairs – a retreading here, a bolt tightening there. Although she did not realise it at the time, she’d been in love with Bong since her final year at Convent Bukit Nanas. He’d gone around the campus stealthily trying to recruit young women, although most girls were intimidated by his easy confidence and bold stare. Not Mabel though. She just grew jealous when she saw him chatting to her classmates. His passion for the cause was irresistible, and even though she didn’t truly believe in the communist doctrine herself, she joined the movement: her physical need to be by his side was stronger than her political doubts.
There were occasions of course when she found living in the jungle almost intolerable, but each time she threatened to leave he would say it wasn’t for much longer – just one more month, one more week – and then he would make love to her and she’d fall under his spell all over again.
But they rarely made love nowadays; an officer could not be seen philandering with his medic, the only woman in his platoon. Curiously, Mabel found that the longer he restrained himself, the more excited she grew. These pauses in passion added a new dimension to their relationship.
His status didn’t stop them from playing silly pranks on one another.
Earlier, as she was building the nightingale floor, Mabel had caught a tiny tree frog and imprisoned it in her pocket. She crept over to where Bong was resting and, whilst his back was turned, inserted it into his water canteen before crawling back to her bed of leaves. Watching from the corner of her eye she sat cross-legged, waiting for Bong to put the canteen to his lips.
Five minutes later Bong gagged and Mabel immediately fell about, hand over her mouth, choking on her laughter. Sliding over to her on his hands and knees, he gave her bottom a sharp slap. ‘‘What am I going to do with you?’’ he admonished.
Mabel drew him close, cuddling him from behind, burying her face between his shoulder blades. ‘‘I know what you can do with me …’’ Her left hand brushed the front of his trousers, pulling at the drawstring belt.
‘‘Aren’t you supposed to be injured?’’
‘‘I am. I need tender and devoted care.’’
‘‘I thought you’d had enough of snakes for one day.’’
Her fingers wandered on, searching and finding the growing bulge in his pants. ‘‘Perhaps we can have a jungle wedding,’’ she whispered playfully.
She waited for him to turn around and give her one of his withering glances. When instead he simply smiled, her heart lifted. ‘‘Maybe I’ll wear a tiara of jasmine flowers in my hair or have a garland of white frangipani looped on my wrist.’’ He grunted, taking her hand and placing it to his lips. ‘‘And you, my handsome groom, will wear a crown made from dangling crocodile teeth. What do you say?’’
‘‘Maybe,’’ he said with a chuckle, wrinkling the sides of his mouth.
‘‘Really?’’ She stared into his eyes. ‘‘You’ll consider it?’’
He turned over and held her close. The evening sky was being lit by the light of fireflies. ‘‘Yes, I’ll consider it.’’
A week later, with rain drenching the makeshift camp, Mabel huddled under a banana tree canopy. ‘‘Bong, how much longer can we go on like this? Living like animals, being hunted?’’
He was fiddling on the dial of a radio receiver. ‘‘Quiet, I’m trying to get the right frequency.’’ The radio emitted a strange high-pitched sound.
‘‘We’re like a bunch of bank robbers on the run from the law.’’ She threw a pebble at him. ‘‘You’ve dedicated your life to the Party. Your father did the same before he was killed by the Japanese. All for what?’’
‘‘It won’
t be long now. The MCP leaders are trying to negotiate a truce.’’
‘‘I’ve heard that one before.’’
‘‘No, really.’’
‘‘Do you promise me?’’
He kept tuning the radio. ‘‘I promise you. Not much longer. Then we’ll have all the time in the world to be together.’’
She manoeuvred through the rain and hugged him. ‘‘Tell me again, why you do this, what you believe in.’’
‘‘I’ve told you this before many times.’’
She snuggled up against him. ‘‘Tell me again.’’
‘‘Before this all started, before the fighting began, the Chinese in Malaya had nothing. They were denied the equal right to vote in elections. Apart from the very wealthy, very few had any land rights to speak of. We have changed all that.’’
‘‘I’m so proud of you.’’
‘‘Proud of me?’’ His spectacles slid down to the tip of his nose. ‘‘How can you possibly be proud of me? Have you seen this ragtag army I lead?’’
‘‘I’m proud because you believe in something. You care about your cause. I love you for that.’’
‘‘Do you?’’
‘‘Of course I do, you silly fool!’’
‘‘Well, you’re only human.’’
She eyed the radio receiver. ‘‘Where did that come from?’’
‘‘It came from our man in Bilang village, together with some cash and several boxes of ammunition.’’ He banged the receiver set. ‘‘Just wish I could get the thing to work.’’
Cocooned in this blanket of intimacy, Mabel pressed her cheek into his chest. She breathed in his scent and sweat. Her mother once told her that life was not made up of days or weeks or even years, but of moments. Feeling Bong’s arm around her shoulders with a son et lumière supplied by skylarks and fireflies, watching the phosphorescent jade insects dance a tango to the beat of the rising moon, this was one of those moments.