House of Trembling Leaves, The

by Lees, Julian

  ‘‘Drinking! You take the money and hide it, then use it for your drinking!’’

  ‘‘Look, it’s my restaurant, I can do what I want with the proceeds.’’

  Mother glared at her, more curious than stunned. ‘‘Your uncle and I are silent partners. We own 10 per cent. Maybe you conveniently forgotten.’’ Lu See felt her cheeks grow warm and hid her embarrassment by showing Dungeonboy a chipped teacup.

  The telephone rang once more. This time Lu See was quickest off the mark. After a moment she replaced it on its cradle. ‘‘That was James. He says there are several thousand people taking part in a march. He told us to close up the restaurant.’’

  ‘‘Close up? Why?’’ asked Uncle Big Jowl.

  Lu See wasn’t sure. ‘‘All he said was that they were chanting Maoist slogans and provoking the Malays with slit-throat gestures.’’

  Everyone, including Fishlips Foo, scratched their heads. Unfazed, Lu See stacked a clean plate in Dungeonboy’s outstretched arms, then another. As soon as he had shelved them, he slammed the shutters and returned to wash more dishes. A minute later they heard something. Dungeonboy, at the basin, up to his elbows in soap suds, urged everyone to be quiet. He strained his neck to one side, wiping the soap residue from his arms with a dishcloth.

  A noise approached, throbbing and subterranean, thrumming through from the ground itself like the rumbling sound of heavy rain pulsing in the distance.

  Lu See, Mother, Uncle Big Jowl, Dungeonboy and Fishlips Foo crept toward the restaurant’s bright orange shutter windows and peeped out, spellbound.

  One by one the legion materialized like ants spilling from a blazing anthill.

  Howls of voices whipped the air, echoing back and forth between the shophouses. Throngs chanted ‘Malai Sai! Kill the Malays! Malai Sai! Kill the Malays!’

  Swarm after swarm of Chinese demonstrators filled the maze of streets, jamming the five-foot ways, tumbling in like a downward rush of water from a broken dam. The East is Red! The Communist Party is like the sun! Wherever it shines our doctrine will spread!

  It was like the roar of approaching rapids.

  Lu See clapped a hand to her mouth. She recognized the scene; she’d seen it before: 1936, London. The mob behaved like an out-of-control funeral procession baying for the blood of the dead. ‘‘Malai Sai! Malai Sai!’’

  Mother’s hand went to her throat. ‘‘You hear what they’re saying about the Malays? They say they’re going to kill them. Shall we call the police?’’

  ‘‘I can’t believe this is happening,’’ said Lu See.

  Huge posters of Chairman Mao waved high in the air, peering down from the heavens, levitating over the multitude like a godhead.

  Chairman Mao is the red sun in our souls!

  Arm in arm, they marched, many in flip-flops and wearing only shorts and singlets, brandishing little red books, each one carrying either a picket, a parang, a cudgel or a flaming torch. They yelled at the Malays to crawl back to the jungle and tore down the tin tinkerer’s sign, stomping on it as if it was a mangrove snake.

  ‘‘Where are they heading?’’ Lu See wondered, clutching the fabric of her kebaya.

  ‘‘Why must they come through here, don’t they realize this is a Muslim area?’’ cried Mother.

  ‘‘That’s precisely why they’ve taken this route, to provoke the Malays.’’ Lu See poked her head out into the sea of migrating bodies, raising herself onto her toes. She paused there. The clingy smell of sweaty bodies filled her nostrils, and then, much more worryingly, the oily stink of rag torches being lit.

  Already dimples of destruction were visible: carts overturned here; lamplights and window glass shattered there. Most bystanders had fled in fear, but a few stood transfixed. Some of the local street vendors huddled into a traffic podium at the end of the road like a frightened flock of sheep, staring with bewildered gelatinous eyes. As the crowd thickened they packed themselves ever tighter.

  That was when Lu See saw Pietro. The throng pulled him from his car and jostled him to and fro. She also spotted her Muslim neighbour, Abdul bin Kassim, being manhandled. With the wall of noise still ringing in her ears, Lu See lifted the iron grille and dashed outside. She snatched a burning torch from somebody’s hand and waved it to thin the rabble in her path. ‘‘Don’t you dare touch him!’’ she screamed.

  A Chinese man had his fist around Abdul bin Kassim’s tightly rolled beard; another was tearing his songkok in two.

  ‘‘What do you think you are doing?’’ she spat.

  The scrum hesitated. ‘‘We are teaching these Malays a lesson.’’

  ‘‘This man is my friend and neighbour. He lives next door to my shophouse restaurant.’’

  ‘‘Shophouse restaurant?’’ One of the men flicked his eyes about. He was thirtyish with stick-thin legs. She indicated Il Porco with an arm. ‘‘That is your restaurant?’’ He teetered with surprise.

  ‘‘Please. Look at all the damage you’ve done.’’

  ‘‘But they were asking for it,’’ replied a man with a pimple on his nose.

  ‘‘The only people asking for it are the politicians. They are the ones responsible for drafting these concessions.’’ She pressed herself forward. ‘‘If you have a problem with my friend Abdul bin Kassim, you better think twice. All the years I have been here, not once has he complained about my pork restaurant, not once has he petitioned me to move away.’’ The heat of the torch coloured her face. ‘‘What the hell are you people trying to do? Cause a race riot?’’

  ‘‘We want the government to hear our plight. The Malays are getting all these privileges – ’’

  ‘‘So you decide to burn their businesses down. That’s just stupid,’’ she cried. ‘‘Put your parangs away. If you want to be heard, demonstrate outside the parliament buildings. Leave us alone. On this street we are all Malayans. We are all equal.’’

  The man with the pimple lowered his eyes and frowned at his bony feet.

  Lu See’s eyes blazed. ‘‘Who is in charge of this lamebrain rabble? This is just wanton destruction. You’re acting like animals. Soon you’ll be tearing into people with your bare teeth. You,’’ she addressed the man with the stick-thin legs, ‘‘What do you do?’’

  ‘‘I’m an electrician.’’

  ‘‘Is this a reflection of how you live?’’

  ‘‘How I live? I live a very civilized life, I’ll have you know,’’ he said, taking offence.

  ‘‘Who do you live with? Your ma, your wife, children?’’

  ‘‘My wife and I have two daughters.’’

  ‘‘What would they say if they could see you now? Attacking poor, innocent people.’’ The man frowned at his feet too. ‘‘I’m sure they would be very sad. A nice, intelligent man like you …’’ Lu See glared at him for several moments.

  ‘‘Sorry,’’ he told his feet. A number of men stared at him unsure what to do next.

  A minute later, Stan Farrell’s Ford Anglia came into view with winking lights and the bee-boo-bee-boo of sirens.

  Abdul bin Kassim dusted himself down and retreated to his house, just as Lu See saw Pietro push his way towards her. ‘‘Let me through, you horny-thumbed brutes,’’ he yelled.

  Gradually, the group moved off. They made almost no noise as they went their separate ways.

  Wanting to avoid Stan at all costs, Lu See took Pietro by the arm and led him back to the restaurant, through the tidemarks of vandalism.

  As soon as she sat down, Dungeonboy pressed a cup of teh tarik into her hands.

  Reversing buttocks-first on to a sturdy wooden stool, Uncle Big Jowl sank down with a thump like a wobbly sack of spuds. ‘‘You lucky, aahh. Mob like that can go damn-powerful crazy, lah. They act without head or tail.’’

  ‘‘Ten years ago I would have come out there with you,’’ said Fishlips. ‘‘Hum gaa chaan!’’

  Mother, too, fussed over her. ‘‘Chee! When did you get so bossy, ordering grown men around, hnn? Who did you learn
from?’’

  ‘‘I wonder,’’ she replied, squeezing Mother’s arm. Lu See turned to Pietro. ‘‘You left here very hurriedly earlier.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I received a letter. A rather disturbing letter, actually.’’

  ‘‘I could tell. From?’’

  ‘‘The abbess from Sum Sum’s nunnery.’’

  Lu See straightened up quickly, as if jabbed by an electric cattle prod. ‘‘The abbess? From Sum Sum’s nunnery? I don’t understand. How? Why has she been writing to you? Oh God, has something happened to Sum Sum?’’

  ‘‘She’s all right.’’ He looked sheepish now. ‘‘Sum Sum’s been writing to me for some time now. The clever moo tracked me down by getting in touch with my old Cambridge college; urged them to forward all post to me.’’

  Lu See felt a tinge of jealousy. ‘‘What does she write about?’’

  He looked at her levelly. ‘‘Up until recently, not much. Bits and pieces about wanting to smack Chinese communists over the head with chestnut pans and whatnot. But the last two letters have been most disturbing. Pleas for help, no less. I think she might have been worried about Chinese censors so it was a bit cryptic and cloak and daggerish. A bit like unravelling Rapunzel’s tangled tuchis, but I’ve managed to piece it all together: she’s going to follow the Dalai Lama to India.’’

  ‘‘What? Alone? Across the Himalayas?’’

  ‘‘According to the abbess’s letter, it would seem so, yes, and across to Dharamsala.’’

  Lu See felt a low panic in her gut. ‘‘But I read in LIFE that the Dalai Lama went with horses and … and Sherpas. Going alone would be suicide.’’

  ‘‘What’s wrong?’’ asked Mabel. She was preparing for her night shift at the hospital when she spotted her mother from the corridor.

  ‘‘Nothing,’’ Lu See replied, tossing woollen socks and thick winter clothes she hadn’t worn in years into her eel skin trunk.

  They were in Lu See’s bedroom above the restaurant. Mabel pushed aside some cushions and sat at the end of her mother’s bed. ‘‘It’s something awful, isn’t it? You’re going away to die. You’ve decided to end it all in some secluded place, like a wasteland or an underground grotto. Old elephants do the same thing when they think they’re about to die. They go to an elephants’ graveyard – some dark cave in the wilderness.’’

  Lu See folded a scarf and placed it neatly on a woollen cardigan.

  ‘‘That’s it, isn’t it?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ Lu See said. ‘‘I’m not going in search of some cave in the wilderness.’’

  ‘‘What then? Tell me! It’s bad news. I can tell it is bad news.’’

  ‘‘I wouldn’t call it bad news. Actually it’s all quite exhilarating.’’

  ‘‘Exhilarating?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’ Lu See reached across her suitcase and pulled out a folding map.

  ‘‘What’s this?’’ asked Mabel.

  ‘‘It’s a map of India.’’

  ‘‘For heaven’s sake, I can see it’s a map of India. But what’s that got to do with you? Is that where you’re planning on going?’’

  ‘‘Not just me. You are too.’’ Lu See turned to Mabel. She was beaming.

  ‘‘Oh God! I’ve seen that look on your face before. It’s your crazy look. What is it?’’

  ‘‘I’ll tell you later. Go pack your bags. Bring a thick jacket and winter clothes.’’

  Mabel did not budge from the end of her mother’s bed. Instead she kept eyeing her nervously. ‘‘What the hell is going on?’’

  ‘‘If the doctors here can’t help me, then I’m going to go and find it myself.’’

  ‘‘Find what? What on earth are you talking about?’’

  ‘‘I’m talking about a cure, Mabel. I’m going to go find a bloody cure.’’

  That evening the restaurant was quiet.

  Lu See and Pietro were chatting over a pot of tea when they heard a rap on the iron grille. Stan Farrell stepped gingerly across the threshold with his police cap tucked between arm and ribcage. ‘‘Sorry to interrupt. Just wanted to say all is calm again. Most of the demonstrators have gone home.’’

  Lu See blew the froth from her tea. ‘‘I thought I told you never to step foot in here again.’’

  ‘‘Yes, quite right. I’ll be off then.’’

  ‘‘No, sit down,’’ ordered Lu See.

  Stan did as he was told. Hunched over, he pressed his hands tightly between his knees.

  She glared at him. ‘‘I haven’t forgiven you.’’

  ‘‘I know you haven’t.’’

  ‘‘And I never will. You’re a weasel.’’

  Pietro smoothed his eyebrows with a thumb. ‘‘Careful, dahling, little boys love being insulted by little girls; it makes them feel loved.’’

  ‘‘You’re a weasel and a snake.’’

  ‘‘Fair enough,’’ said Stan. ‘‘But I need you to understand that I was set up, just as you were. I never knew about the bomb. I never set out to hurt you or Mabel.’’

  She raised a warning finger. Her eyes raked his face. ‘‘Whatever you say isn’t going to change things between us. You realize that, don’t you?’’

  Stan drew his lips uneasily over his sticking-out teeth.

  ‘‘And you, Pietro, I saved you from a beating earlier on. That mob would have really roughed you up.’’

  Pietro set his delicate jaw. ‘‘Oh, dahling, you can be such a melodramatic Mary.’’

  ‘‘Shut up!’’

  Both men jumped in their seats.

  Lu See kept her finger raised like a weapon. ‘‘And because you both owe me, you’re both going to do something for me.’’

  ‘‘I am?’’ whinnied Pietro.

  ‘‘We are?’’ said Stan.

  ‘‘You are.’’

  ‘‘What?’’ they asked, swallowing.

  ‘‘Pietro and I are going on an adventure.’’

  ‘‘An adventure?’’ cried Pietro. ‘‘Where on earth to?’’

  ‘‘You are going to accompany me to Dharamsala, India.’’

  Pietro blanched. ‘‘Bronte’s withering tights! India? What, with all those beggars you can smell at twenty paces?’’

  ‘‘Yes, Pietro, I’ll need all your diplomatic weight behind me. And, Stan, you spent a year in Bombay, you have your contacts. You can find out for me how we get from Madras to Himachal Pradesh.’’

  ‘‘When’re you going?’’ asked Stan.

  ‘‘Next week,’’ said Lu See.

  ‘‘Oh, Edesia’s enema! How am I going to cope with all that curry?’’ yelped Pietro. ‘‘What about my wind?’’

  ‘‘Put a cork in it,’’ said Stan.

  ‘‘Oh, brah-haaa, very droll, slippery Stanley, very droll indeed.’’

  ‘‘But what do you hope to achieve, Lu See?’’ demanded Stan.

  ‘‘What I’ve been trying to achieve for the last twenty bloody years: find Sum Sum.’’

  ‘‘How do you know she’s at Dharamsala?’’

  ‘‘It’s the home of the Dalai Lama’s exiled government. If she’s anywhere that’s where she’ll be, at the Geden Choezom sanctuary for exiled nuns.’’ Lu See went to the telephone and picked up the receiver. ‘‘But there’s one last thing I must do before we leave. I have to take Mabel back to Juru. There’s something I need her to see.’’

  Mother, who had been eavesdropping, suddenly piped up. ‘‘Juru? Why on earth are you going back there? Cha! That place now attracts a lower class of people if you ask me.’’

  ‘‘Let’s just say I have some unfinished business to look after.’’ Lu See dialled the number for the hospital and asked to speak with Mabel’s superior, the handsome surgeon. She informed him that her daughter was taking the following day off. And he wasn’t to protest.

  17

  On arrival at Juru train station, Lu See and Mabel rented a pair of bicycles and took the road to Po On Village.

  With the sunshine breaking through the clouds
, they rolled straight through the country lanes, skirting long-legged chickens and kampong women wearing sarongs tied above the chest. They trickled by little streams, pootled through a mango grove where the air was sweetened by fallen fruit and the early-morning rain. Pumping their legs, they climbed up a broad hill, passing a troop of monkeys and an austere-looking water buffalo with an equally austere white bird on its back. Grasping their handlebars tight, they juddered into a field of sugar cane wilting in the heat, before stopping to admire six barefoot boys playing sepak manggis in the shade.

  Potholes slipped beneath Mabel’s wheels. She hit a puddle and with a shout of glee sent a blanket of spray up over her ankles.

  When they reached Po On Village they were amazed that the place looked exactly as it had done in the 1940s. Up ahead they saw the village square, empty now except for some dogs and the odd chicken. Beyond the Chinese Temple was the old toddy shop, the pith wood store and the mosquito-net maker. It was as though they’d been transported back in time.

  ‘‘Are you going to tell me why we’ve come back?’’ asked Mabel.

  ‘‘You’ll see,’’ replied her mother. They cycled in the direction of the big house.

  ‘‘Are you taking me to see our old home?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  Mabel’s curiosity was fully aroused now. Just as she was wondering where Lu See would lead her, they stopped by a 10-foot high wooden gate. An Englishman in a bush hat came striding out of a lodge office to greet them.

  Under his hat, Mabel noticed his complexion was as glossily enamelled as a glazed roast duck – a planter’s face, baked stiff by the tropical sun. He carried a bamboo switch tucked under his arm like a swagger stick. Both women smoothed their hair into place.

  ‘‘Mabel, meet Mr Charlie Fosler.’’ Mabel alighted and shook hands. ‘‘Charlie runs one of the large rubber estates here.’’

  ‘‘Ayup, ladies,’’ he said in his gruff Yorkshire accent.

  With the formalities over Charlie led them over some worn stone steps towards a curve of field and a plantation house by a copse of angsana trees.

  Under the angsanas, streaks of moss glinted emerald in the sunlight. Charlie led them through his house and into the drawing room. An Anglican priest rose from a chair as soon as they entered. He was in his late fifties with grey hair and florid cheeks.