House of Trembling Leaves, The

by Lees, Julian

  She closed her eyes, contented.

  They held one another until somewhere in the distance they heard a crackle, scarcely audible, a faraway sound like King Kong cracking a finger knuckle.

  Suddenly, the men spotted a shadow in the sky; the shadow of a vulture spreading its wings. Alarmed by the whirr of an engine, they got to their feet just as the RAF Hornet swung down from the clouds and aimed its machine guns at the forest floor. For the briefest of moments Mabel’s breath seemed to suspend, hanging high in the trees. A small tremble of fear passed over her face, flaring her nostrils.

  ‘‘Put out the torches and the fire!’’ someone hollered.

  The aircraft sound swelled.

  Instantly, Bong was scrambling, shouting orders, reaching for his rifle. ‘‘It’s the radio,’’ he cried. ‘‘They must have rigged the radio.’’

  Bullets peppered the overhanging foliage, punching fist-size holes into the ground. Moonlight came streaming through, etching shadows, throwing glints of silver on the forest floor. Birds scattered. Gibbons leapt in panic from tree to tree, swinging from branches a hundred feet tall, searching for cover.

  Instinctively, Mabel fell to the ground and wedged herself against a tree root. There was another sharp pop of gunfire as the plane tore through the nimbus. ‘‘Run!’’ someone yelled. She picked up her feet and sprinted, zigzagging with her arms shielding her face, losing sight of the world around her. After several seconds she slid to a halt and lay breathless as her elbows sank into the mud. She wanted to get up and flee but she didn’t recognize this part of the jungle; she might run out of cover and running might expose her and get herself shot. She clamped her eyes shut and prayed.

  A low inhaled whistling came from the skies. She felt the air pressure drop. The explosion that followed seemed to blow a hole in the atmosphere. Mabel’s chest and stomach emptied as earth and rock erupted, pitching gouts of earth into her face. The harrowing WHUMP split the air, jolting the bones loose in Mabel’s vertebrae. She was thrown headlong across the oily sludge like a human javelin.

  Soil splinters rained down on her. A red mist filled her eyes. She tried to move, but parts of her body had gone numb. Eventually she rose to her knees and found the world had fallen silent except for a buzz of silver noise shrilling in her head. She shouted but couldn’t hear her own voice. Splattered with her comrades’ blood and gristle, she screamed out their names but heard no reply. The loud metallic tocsin ringing in her head just grew louder and louder.

  All about her hot fragments of bomb matter lay sharp and hissing in the ground. Everything was caked with dust and debris. She realized that at any given moment another shell might explode. But she didn’t care. All she wanted was for the red mist to disperse and for her head to stop ringing. All she wanted was for the blood to stop oozing from her ears. And then gradually the smoke began to clear. A dead man’s face peered into hers, his jawbone white, teeth exposed. She held up her arms to protect herself and saw others shrieking all about her open-mouthed but silent. Flesh hung from branches like threads; charred trees tilted and collapsed; mutilated birds lay burning, cooking in their feathers. A panic gripped her heart and her teeth began to chatter uncontrollably.

  Wiping the gristle from her eyes, she began to grope through the mud. Her hand happened upon a severed foot. A few yards away sprawled a man. His chest had been blown open. Part of his spinal column jutted out. There was nothing left of him from the knees down. Only then did she see the round glasses.

  Seconds later another low inhaled whistling dropped out of the skies. She ran for cover. The shockwave snapped her head forward; a white heat stung her shoulder. And then the forest turned black. Too black to see.

  8

  A full ten days had passed since Lu See donated the dozen battery-operated radio receivers to the Communists. She hadn’t heard anything new from Stan. There had been no further communication from ‘the mule’. She was a bag of nerves. Rather than partake in conversation, she sat by Il Porco’s cash register and listened to her mother and Uncle Big Jowl prattling on about how Malaya was changing for the worse.

  ‘‘I mean, it’s the way they look at me sometimes,’’ Mother told Uncle Big Jowl as they sipped teh tarik. She was complaining about the Malays. ‘‘It’s just like the way they looked at Lon Chaney Jr., you know, when they realize he is about to change into the Wolf Man. As if there was some sort of monster inside of me.’’

  ‘‘What you expect from a bunch of inbred satay-eaters!’’ cried Fishlips from across the room.

  ‘‘Do you mind, Mr Foo! This is private conversation,’’ Mother retorted.

  ‘‘Hum gaa chaan!’’

  ‘‘This sort of problem will only get worse,’’ said Uncle Big Jowl. ‘‘Plenty of tension growing, aahh, between Chinese and Malays. Chinese are only just seeing the effects of Article 153 of the constitution recognizing the Malays as ‘special class of citizen’. Singapore is making one stink of a fuss.’’

  ‘‘Well, I’m pleased you agree with me,’’ said Mother, sounding not the least pleased. She scratched her palms.

  Later, having shut the restaurant for the night at 11 p.m., pulling down the iron grille at the front with a pole, Lu See went to the cash register and extracted a red $10 bill from the note stash and shoved it into the envelope marked ‘Juru’. She then climbed the stairs and stepped through her dog gate. As soon as she clicked on the ceiling fan and removed her apron, hanging it on the back of the door, she was greeted by six wagging tails and yelps of delight.

  The dogs were all waiting to be fed. She filled the six bowls in her high-ceilinged kitchen with biscuits and scraps, and then lit mosquito coils and stationed them by the window. Shortly after, following a quick bucket shower, she pushed her way past all her accumulated possessions. Amongst the mountains of old books and newspapers was her frayed eel-skin trunk, Mabel’s rusting Hawthorne bicycle, several brass pots and pans, a dressmaker’s mannequin, bamboo stepladders, cushions, walking sticks and umbrellas lashed together with string, sewing machines, a massive Radio Flyer wagon and a huge collection of paints and canvases.

  It was all junk, but Lu See didn’t have the heart to throw any of it away. Since the war, ever since she lost everything to the Japanese, she’d been a compulsive hoarder. Nothing, however beaten up or old was thrown away; everything she kept carried an emotional resonance, but after years accumulating things she now had no place to put them. Still, she was convinced that one day all of these bits and pieces would have bartering value.

  She looked at the clasps of her old eel-skin trunk. Many years ago she had hidden something in there: a letter from Sum Sum written as she sailed from Felixstowe, fleeing England and leaving Mabel and Lu See behind. She had promised never to show anyone that letter, never to tell. It was a secret between Sum Sum and Lu See. The trunk had not been opened in years.

  She picked up the dressmaker’s mannequin, ignoring the ache in her stomach, and tried to stuff it into a cupboard but the doors had warped from the humidity and the dummy’s arms kept creeping out.

  At that very moment the electricity cut off. Not just in her apartment but across the neighbourhood; streetlamps, building lights, lanterns extinguished. Plunged into blackness, Lu See groped her way along the wall, bumping into all manner of things, feeling her way through the darkness like a catfish using its whiskers against the river floor. ‘‘Dungeonboy!’’ she called down the stairs, into the abyss.

  ‘‘Haak mung mung, haak mung mung!’’ he yelled back, before breaking into yet another Doris Day song.

  ‘‘See if you can find the candles, will you?’’

  He sang a gobbledygook of mixed-up lyrics.

  ‘‘They should be somewhere in the kitchen, maybe in the chopstick drawer.’’

  Dungeonboy soon put his head around the door with a flashlight; he had found the candles and lit three of them. Lu See fed some batteries into her radio. The station was playing Bill Haley and the Comets.

  ‘‘Okay,
lah,’’ he said, chuckling, admiring the flames. ‘‘No burn hair today!’’

  ‘‘No, thank goodness. Goodnight, Ah Fung.’’

  ‘‘Goo-nye, Missie.’’

  Lu See retired to her bedroom and lay on her bed for several minutes. ‘‘Knackered,’’ she said aloud, burying her face in the plump white pillows. Running the restaurant drained her. She hadn’t been prepared for how much work it was – the daily grind of cooking, cleaning, going to the wet market. Back in her student days she’d have the stamina to study for ten hours without a break, but this sort of toil was back-breaking. It exhausted her and her tiredness often made her impatient, quicker to argue with people. Sometimes she grew frustrated that she wasn’t pursuing an academic career. All those good grades wasted, she thought. Still, she had to push on and make ends meet.

  Recently, there had been mornings when she didn’t feel up to going to pig alley to buy fresh cuts of pork. She couldn’t stomach seeing the hogs hung in the open air, some with their testicles still attached so that the shoppers knew what they were getting. But then the sight of her batik apron hanging on the back of her door would give her the strength to ignore the pain in her intestines and before she knew it she’d be stirring a stew pot and sprinkling rosemary into the stock, keen to see the first customer come through the door.

  She closed her eyes. Her stomach still ached and she was sure, again, that she had a mild fever. She tried to lift her knees into a standard yoga position but failed because one of the dogs came barrelling through the door and attempted to climb aboard, balancing on its hind legs and pawing the mosquito curtain. ‘‘Not now, Pebbles. Mummy needs her rest. You stay on the floor.’’ Obediently, Pebbles wagged her tail and busied herself by sniffing the bed legs, which were stuck into Campbell’s soup tins filled with water to stop invading ants.

  Moments later, feeling restless, Lu See got up to clear away the tower of magazines on her desk and return to a letter she had started three days before. It was a letter to Sum Sum. After returning from Cambridge in late 1937 she had heard nothing from her friend for eight years, not until the end of the war, when Sum Sum’s brother, Hesha, had delivered a letter. That was when Lu See learned that Sum Sum had taken vows at the Ani Trangkhung nunnery in Lhasa. But however hard she tried Lu See could not obtain official permission to enter Tibet to visit Sum Sum. The Tibetan Foreign Office consistently refused to grant her the necessary travel permit.

  Pen hovering, her eyes scanned the page:

  My dearest Sum Sum,

  Still no news of Mabel. I know I wounded her by telling her about her parentage, but I cannot understand why she must rebel like this and risk her life for a cause she hardly understands. Was I too protective of her? Is she now redressing the balance by rebelling? Now that the tables have been turned I know how my poor mother must have felt when I ran off to England all those years ago.

  Things are quieter in KL now, but there is still tension in the streets, especially now with the new constitution. I fear there is bad blood growing between the Chinese and Malays.

  Things are quieter for me too. At night, I often feel like a little seed left to germinate all alone. When I cannot sleep I listen to the house creaking. It’s almost as if it’s talking to me. Often I wonder if there is a ghost here. Thank God for my dogs! Have I ever told you about my dogs? There’s Pebbles the dominant, assertive mother of three, her tiny pups Lightning, Thunder and Rain; there’s Boris with the curly tail and happy eyes, and finally Goose, a black-haired spaniel who likes to howl at passing fire trucks.

  Guess what? I found the painting I did of you on the MS Jutlandia. It was in an old trunk. It’s faded terribly but I can still make out the old pumpkin-head!

  I want to send you photographs of Mabel but I’m told that letters going in and out of Chinese Tibet are heavily censored, that photographs of any kind are destroyed.

  I asked Stan Farrell about Aziz. I know you once said you didn’t care what happened to him, but I feel you ought to know. Stan wrote to the War Records Office and finally received a reply a few weeks ago. Aziz was killed in action in Burma fighting with the 50th Indian Tank Brigade in 1943.

  Lu See stopped writing. She pictured Aziz and his waggling head, laughing and joking with Sum Sum on the deck of the Jutlandia. The candlelight flickered and distorted her face. She looked about the room without seeing anything. Shaking off the memory she opened a packet of shrimp crackers and then took up her pen again.

  The newspapers still print the names of captured guerrillas; sometimes they even name those that have been killed. Mabel may be hurt, hurt badly, but there is no way of knowing. I wish I’d spent more time with Mabel, more time hugging her. I’m sorry to sound the way I do. Perhaps I’m a sentimental fool. We’ve had yet another blackout and I think it’s affected my mood.

  Do you remember the three-legged crocodile those men caught on the tongkang all those years ago? I think about what those men said – that it was a curse, that the missing leg would reappear in your dreams and snatch away your firstborn.

  This must be the hundredth letter I have sent you, yet still there’s been no reply. Perhaps you never receive them. I wait for news. I yearn for news. But answers never come.

  Lu See set her pen down and lit a fresh mosquito coil.

  The weight of worry made her heart heavy. She hung her head and closed her eyes. The room was silent apart from the distant sounds of chorus frogs clicking from the house drains.

  A shout from outside made her jump. When she opened the window she saw a black Fiat 600 with red diplomatic licence plates and twin Italian flags attached to the bonnet. Its headlights illuminated the unlit street.

  A man in a white suit and fedora paced about below, huffing and tut-tutting like an agitated hen.

  ‘‘Who is it? Who’s there?’’ she cried, but the man did not look up or respond. The red licence plates made her recall the invitation to the Italian Ambassador’s residence on the 13th. Today was the 13th. She hadn’t gone, hadn’t even bothered to reply. Was the man here to reprimand her for not turning up? Had she caused a diplomatic ruckus? Surely not.

  She peered down at the man in the fedora and debated whether she ought to find out what he wanted.

  She glanced in a mirror. Look at the state of me. I’ve got no make-up on. And my hair! She tried not to imagine how she would look to a visitor: a rather lonely, flat-chested, eccentric Chinese single mother who lived with her stinky dogs in an armpit of a small shophouse full of pre-war junk …

  She heard a hyena laugh emerge from below.

  … who’ll die one of those big city old lady deaths, all alone in her room, probably trapped under something heavy, where nobody will find her for weeks until the smell gets so bad that it drifts down the street …

  Lu See smiled at her own moroseness.

  She descended the stairs and jerked the iron grille skyward.

  The man in the fedora turned at the sound. His hat was tilted at an angle, obscuring his face. On seeing her, he planted his feet wide apart like Gary Cooper in High Noon, and held his hands at his sides, fluttering his fingers as though about to draw.

  She noted a papal amount of rings on his hands. A bright pink handkerchief cascaded from his breast pocket, rustling in the night breeze. Then he reached up and snatched his fedora away to reveal an enormous forehead. ‘‘Brah-haaa!’’

  His teeth shone like silver lira coins.

  ‘‘Pietro!’’ howled Lu See. She rushed up to him and held him tight. ‘‘Is it really you?’’

  ‘‘Oh, my dear loo seat. It’s so wonderful to see you.’’ He laughed, head thrown back, with a broad smile on his face.

  ‘‘What on earth are you doing here in Malaya?’’

  ‘‘Doing here? I’m the new Italian Ambassador, you silly moo, and the new Italian Ambassador simply hates being stood up. The last person to stand me up was that pretty second year Botanist from Caius.’’ He swept a hand to his brow ostentatiously. ‘‘When you didn’t show �
�� quelle horreur! So after the party ended, I nipped into my little Feee-yat and abracadabra my boyfriend’s an actor, here I am.’’

  ‘‘I cannot believe it,’’ she said, hopping on her toes in delight. ‘‘I just cannot believe you’re in KL.’’

  ‘‘I know! They sent me to some treacherously ghastly places before, full of fat-witted fop-doodles. Places where the so-called elite hold their knives like pencils and drink tea out of saucers. But you know what they say.’’ He smoothed the lashes of his eyes with a bejewelled finger. ‘‘Travel broadens the behind.’’

  Lu See hugged him again. ‘‘Will you come inside?’’

  ’’Actually, dear loo seat, I was thinking of a late supper at Fatty Crab’s. I’m ravenous. You know what it’s like; I never eat at my own parties.’’

  ‘‘I can cook you something here. Do you like curry noodles?’’

  Pietro looked aghast. ‘‘Make me fart like a Roman emperor. No, it’s Fatty’s or bust. Besides, I fancy a glass of their Chateau de Coques Roche.’’

  ‘‘But I’m not dressed, look at my hair – ’’

  ‘‘You are a raddled old mess, aren’t you? Not to worry, just give your cheeks a pinch for colour and …’’ He removed the satin trim from his fedora, made a bow for her hair and smiled at her. ‘‘Tah-dah! Cinderella’s all tubbed and scrubbed for the ball. Simply wonderful being a girl, isn’t it?’’

  Fatty Crab’s was by the racecourse, a ten-minute drive away. Wedged in the front of the Fiat in between a hornbill and Pietro, Lu See felt a bit like a sausage roll.

  Pietro’s teeth emerged from his mouth. ‘‘He’s called Hartley. He’s a gift from the Sultan of Selangor.’’

  ‘‘He doesn’t bite, does he?’’ She studied the bird’s red eyes and its capacious beak and casque.

  ‘‘No, but he has a scorching wit. Just keep your nose away from him; he might think it’s a palm nut or a cocktail sausage. Speaking of sausages: what news of my favourite Tibetan, Sum Sum? I gather you resuscitated her old blue recipe book.’’