“So what we have here, in your opinion, is a case of arrested development?” I ask skeptically. For I think she reasons too simply.
“More or less, Robert Lam,” she answers. “It is men who do not grow up who do all the damage. Look at Hitler. He was too fond of dress up and parades and magic. Everyone said, ‘Where’s the harm in that?’ But look what happened.”
“For heaven’s sake, Fan, be serious. What Hitler did was not bad, it was evil. There is a difference.”
“Is there?” she says. “Perhaps you are right, but it has the same source. A man thinks of himself, like a baby does, and when he does not get what he wants, he is angry. When he is big he likes to give orders…. But why do you ask?”
“Why? I don’t know,” I say. But I am wondering if we are born like that—bad or even evil—and it is only by chance we do good. For that’s what it feels like.
There is a cool touch on my hand on the wheel. “You are too hard on yourself,” says Lam Fan. “If you are unhappy it is because you forget you have a choice,” she says. “You always have a choice, no matter what.” Then she slides the pilothouse window open and puts her hand out to the spray blown back from the bow.
—
It was cold on the island, and it rained and it rained. The lepers grew thin from the scarcity of food. For once he had found the storehouse, Oung Moi Toy had all the supplies moved into his room.
And there he lay with provisions stacked around him; with spoiled fish on the table and rotting chicken drying in a pan, and with a pile of well-thumbed novels by his bedside.
Oung Moi Toy: within the foursquare boundaries of his room; and city-bred; who would no more think of venturing beyond the immediate clearing and the view of the beach than he would of letting the lepers forget to cook his food for him.
There were no more efforts at food gathering. For the lepers were not allowed out of Moi Toy’s sight, and they had managed, so far, to keep India’s presence on the island a secret.
Chou You’s face wound did not get better. Ah Chee coughed and stayed on his pallet, where Ng Chung nursed him when he had a few moments to spare from his work. Kong Ching Sing, who could only sip fluids, looked like a cadaver; and Nap Sing, the poet, wrote only one new line.
“I had always yearned to go to the land of Gold Mountain,” he had written, “But instead it is hell, full of hardships.”
Sim Lee was also fully occupied attending to Moi Toy’s needs, but from time to time he managed, with help from the others, to leave a bit of cooked food at the back of the clearing for India. Although the lepers themselves were near to starving.
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, they had not given up hope. There were conversations at night while Moi Toy slept, and whispered messages in passing as they went about their business in daylight. For months they observed their tormentor, alert to any hint of weakness. And as autumn progressed into winter and the rain gave way to days in which the sun appeared in pale, cold crispness, they began to perceive a change.
Oung Moi Toy was becoming restless. He began to wake early and to pace the beach. He could not sleep at night. For what was he to do now that he had his kingdom running smoothly, now that he had finished the liquor and smoked the opium and read all the novels? It was only now, with a surfeit of leisure, that he really felt imprisoned.
He practised meannesses: hiding the grindstone so that Ng Chung had to struggle with a dull axe to cut the wood; demanding more and better food and taking from the lepers the little they had; breaking dishes and commanding the others to repair them when they had no means of doing so; throwing their shoes and clothes into the ocean; taking Nap Sing’s pen; and so on.
For this was what it meant to be a man like Toy: he was full of desires that could not be met; and he had tremendous appetites for all the ways in which men with weak intellects prove to themselves that they can and do remain alive.
Certainly, he was not a man at peace with himself.
And what the lepers had noted, and what made them think that it was nearly time to act, was the fact that Toy’s restlessness, his feeling that the world had left him out, had made him vulnerable. He was lonely and unhappy, and there was nothing he wouldn’t risk to be satisfied.
On a bright, cold morning, with the sun settled in the sky like a pale silver disk, Sim Lee and Ng Chung sat, wrapped in blankets, on the porch. From one of his pockets, where he had kept it hidden for months, Sim Lee brought out a pair of dice; he warmed them in his palms and breathed a prayer to his ancestors, then he winked at Ng Chung. For the dice were to be the weapon of choice in their assault on Oung Moi Toy.
Sim Lee shook the dice in a bowl, then emptied them onto the planking. He had thrown a six and a three. It was now Ng Chung’s turn. He threw two fives, and, having the highest number, he then threw the dice ten times in a row, first predicting his final total.
So it went. They kept score with sticks, laughing and joking as they questioned each other’s rough mathematics.
The click-clack of dice; the smell of cigarettes, for Ng Chung had saved, for just this occasion, a small store of tobacco; laughter; mild quarrelling; then the sounds of the other lepers joining in. Gathering round the scene of merriment.
Toy came out of his room to watch, his eyes heavy with sleeplessness. Sim Lee smiled at him, but took no further notice. Ng Chung shared his cigarettes and moved aside so that Nap Sing could take his place. Sim Lee, it seemed, had had a sudden run of luck. But as the others joked, and as the smoke spiralled up to the height of the rooftop, Oung Moi Toy hung back. They knew, for he had told them over and over, that he was a lover of all games of chance. He had broken all the banks in all the gaming houses in San Francisco, he had said. But it is a funny thing about gambling: you cannot just step into a game, you have to be asked, for what is gambling but companionship and equality—for each player has the same chance.
Toy cleared his throat. He shuffled his feet (in slippers made from Ching Sing’s socks) back and forth. He sighed. But the one thing he could not bring himself to do was swallow his pride and ask.
Although he wanted, he wanted to very much….
“Well,” said Sim Lee, suddenly looking up, “we have played this game too long. Does no one know another one?” There was silence. “Perhaps you, Oung Moi Toy,” Lee said, after looking around him, and letting his eyes rest at last on the giant man as if surprised to find him there, “could show us something. Surely there is much that you could teach us if you wanted. We would be happy to learn.”
Shyly, almost as if he feared the invitation might be withdrawn, Oung Moi Toy stepped forward.
“Yes,” he said simply, “gambling was my favourite pastime. I know many games.” He sat next to Lee, close by, but not touching, and began to instruct them.
But now the rules changed. Since it was Oung Moi Toy, a real gambler, with whom they played, they had agreed to raise the stakes. They bet their clothing, their blankets and washbasins, even their dishes. And by the end of the day, even the coins that each man kept to be placed on his eyelids at death. No matter what the game, no matter how he threw, Toy could not help but win. Fortune, it appeared, had decided to favour him.
Then Nap Sing, who over the past few hours had said almost nothing, got to his feet. He dusted his hands and looked down at the others. His face gleamed in the late, but still silvery, light.
“Tell me, Oung Moi Toy,” he said accusingly, “why is it that you never lose?”
Toy glanced up, puzzled. Then he looked away, embarrassed. In the pause that followed, Kong Ching Sing coughed, and there were the sounds of Chou You’s laboured breathing from the open door of his room.
“Let us go on with our game,” said Ng Chung, with whom Toy was currently playing. And he touched Toy on the elbow. Toy jerked away, but Ng Chung apologized, and so Toy shook the dice to continue the game. But before he could cast them down, Nap Sing again interrupted.
“Do you win because you are so smart?” he asked him. “Or is it bec
ause you are so strong and everyone is afraid of beating you?”
Toy, flushed with fellow feeling, hesitated to answer. He did not want to be bothered; he wanted Nap Sing to go away so they could get on with the game. At last he shrugged and said, “I am a lucky man, I suppose.” But Nap Sing would not be put off. “Oh,” he said, “is it luck that makes you win? Thank you for explaining. For I was beginning to think that you were cheating.”
This time Toy could not let the insult pass. He was on his feet in an instant, his bulk looming over his accuser.
“You take that back,” Toy demanded.
“No,” said Nap Sing. “You are not an honest man, you win by cheating. You dishonour all my friends.”
Slowly, still not wanting to fight, still cherishing the earlier mood, Oung Moi Toy drew his knife. He held it in front of him like a piece of thoughtful evidence.
Sim Lee also rose to his feet. “I am sorry,” he said apologetically, “I am sure that Nap Sing doesn’t mean it. He is unwell.” But as he spoke he laid his hand ever so gently on Moi Toy’s wrist. Toy jumped away and stumbled against the veranda railing, then into Ah Chee. As he scrambled away from Ah Chee, tripping over his feet and losing a slipper, Nap Sing began to laugh, and the others, even Sim Lee, still crying apologies, also looked amused.
“Please come back and play with us,” cried out Nap Sing. “You must not be afraid. You are one of us, too.”
Oung Moi Toy recovered himself, and although shaken—since only moments before he had felt himself among friends—he brandished his knife with seriousness.
“I will kill anyone who tries to touch me again,” he said, meaning it. But behind Toy, where he had quietly placed himself, stood Ng Chung. In his hand he carried the axe. He raised it, his cramped fingers gripping the handle, ready as soon as he could get within striking distance to use it on Oung Moi Toy.
“Why are you afraid of us?” said Sim Lee calmly, hoping to keep Toy’s attention on himself. “We are weak men, sick men, we cannot harm you.” Almost, the moment was right. But at this juncture, pivotal as it was, Kong Ching Sing, who could not walk and who sat in Chou You’s doorway, began to scream. For Chou You had suddenly stopped breathing.
“You have killed him!” Ching Sing cried to Oung Moi Toy, “you have killed my friend. Chou You is dead! It is all your fault! You struck him, when you came, with your knife! Murderer!” he cried, crazed with anguish. “Murderer, murderer!” And he began to crawl across the porch towards the giant.
Toy halted, looked around him, and felt his strength deserting him. He was imprisoned by the building, by the sea that flowed inwards from the outside world. Overhead there were ravens, calling and beating their wings. The grotesque, misshapen, leprous men were beginning to encircle him.
What was he to do, this invincible man with the knife in his hand? For he could not kill them all before they reached him, and he knew that he could not stand it if once more they touched him.
Then, like a stir of mist in the mountains, he thought he saw a form emerge from Chou You’s cabin. If it was a ghost, it wasn’t that of the newly dead man—for that simpleton’s shade could not have moved him. It was himself he saw. Vague, shrunken, disfigured. Leprous. And it smiled at him in welcome.
He broke before that phantom, pushed through the ring of lepers, and vaulted over the railing, scattering men behind him. And, dropping his knife as he stumbled across the garden, he ran like an animal diving for cover, inland.
—
“There she blows!” Several plumes of spray are spouting in the distance. “Quick, Fan,” I shout, “make ready the gear!”
I push her out of the pilothouse, grab the glasses, and, with one hand on the wheel, scan the spot where I saw the whales blow. The sun is flaring from the ridges of the swells, and I have to blink several times before I can see the next columns of vapour.
“Fish on the port bow!” I cry and push the throttle wide open. As we close with the whales, I shout, “I think they’re sulphurs, Fan, when we’re within a few hundred yards I’ll throttle down and you take over the wheel. Hand me the lance.”
I turn to take it from her, but she is empty-handed.
“Hurry up, Fan! You’re wasting time. I told you to get the gear!”
“Leave them alone, Robert Lam,” she says quietly. “There’s a mother and calf there, can’t you see that’s why she’s lying on her back? The young one is feeding.”
“I can still kill a male, Fan. Now do what I told you, get me the gear!” The whales have stayed on the surface, perhaps because of the calf. I throttle back to almost nothing. The Rose tosses uneasily. Holding the harpoon head in my hand, I leave the wheelhouse and creep forward onto the fo’c’sle deck. We are within thirty yards of the glistening, rounded creatures. They lie quietly, as if waiting for us.
“Dive!” I scream at them. “For Christ’s sake, dive! I dare you!” I raise my hands, feeling not just the weight of the harpoon head but the whole length of the lance. Mussel shells to cut through the skin, flukes made of antlers, which will open up as barbs and hold the lance in the body…. The whales swim gently away from us.
“Easy, Fan,” I cry, “easy after them.”
The mother and calf are in the centre, shepherded by four adults. One on each beam, one ahead and another astern. Like a convoy. Like the Silverbell that long ago day of the war, when we were picked out from the middle of our escort and struck with torpedoes.
When all the men who were below, or whose quarters did not give access onto the deck like mine did, were lost. Unlike me, Robert Louis Lam, who was rescued. Despite what I had done. With my eyes on the mend, and my hands stained with blood. Lifted from the middle of that wreckage and burning oil, with the submarine poking up its periscope nearby, and the Free French ship bearing down to save us. Not leaving us behind. Not thinking of herself.
When we are within a range of twenty feet, I throw. Eighteen feet of yew, with the cherry-bark rope coiling off the deck. The harpoon strikes, then all the other spears of all my comrades strike as well, although mine was first. And the sealskin bags keep the beast from going under, and as the blood pours into the sea, and the desolate calf swims dizzily, the men jump onto the whale’s back, and are still holding on when she stands up straight on her tail, then topples over, lashing the sea into a frenzy of foam. And I jump from the deck of the Rose to join them all in the water. With a knife in my hand. And strike and strike and strike, even as I go down…
—
As Oung Moi Toy ran into the forest, afraid for his life. Ran and clawed his way through the brush, his clothes torn by brambles, stumbled and fell over roots and windfalls, and got up to keep on running, until even he, in his terror, had to stop to catch his breath.
At the edge of a clearing.
With his chest heaving and his ribs aching, and the feel of each place the lepers had touched him burning.
He sobbed with his bleeding hands clasped over his face. His heart thudded, and the veins in his temples throbbed. When he dropped his hands from his eyes, his vision was clouded with a thin red mist. He was under a sentence of death. For he knew what he had never admitted before: that he was a leper himself.
Suddenly Toy dropped to his knees and vomited. He spewed, over and over, into the leaves, filled with self-loathing, and the decay of his body, the sharp sourness of the pain in his belly. His weakness.
But slowly, for instinct was Toy’s great gift, in the midst of his wretchedness and the revulsion that shook him, body, soul and spirit, he sensed that he was not alone. He wiped his face with clean leaves, and slowly, as if fearing to startle a nervous animal, he raised his head.
At the far side of the clearing there was a cabin almost hidden beneath a fir tree. Branches embraced it closely, but its tin roof caught the last of the light that fell from a dull pewter sky. Standing in the doorway of that place, alertly watching him, and dressed in men’s clothing, was the unmistakable figure of a woman.
Toy stared at her, at first
fearful of finding himself with another apparition. But the woman was real. The light touched her hair and flamed it. Clothes had been hung to dry on nearby bushes. There was the smell of smoke, and smoke issuing from a chimney. A neat pile of wood. Drying seaweed.
The fine hairs along the length of his spine lifted. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together, he loosened the cord that bound his queue, stretched it between his hands, stood up, and advanced.
As on that evening in Freetown, on the verge of blindness and sick to death of myself and the loss of my future—for what would become of me once I could not see, and had nothing to offer in the midst of a war—I came upon a girl standing quietly beside her bicycle outside her door.
And even as she smiled at me and offered to read the future in my palm, I knew what I would do: oh, Lord, Fan, she had her hair tied with a scarf, and wore gold earrings, and those platform shoes that the women wore and in which they couldn’t run.
I was drunk, Fan, but I did know what I was doing when I pushed her inside that room. She crouched in the corner, with her pee running down between her legs because she was so frightened. I talked to her, urging her, trying to reassure her, although nothing she could have said would have stopped me.
I didn’t care, Fan. Her eyes were red with fear, her ebony skin glistened with sweat: I thought she was the last woman on earth. I remember every detail. The way her nostrils fluttered like butterfly wings with her breathing, the stiffness of the buttons on her new cotton dress. The blood that spilled in a little gush when I was through.
She was the husk of herself by then, Fan, not real at all. Pale, insubstantial, despite the stink that filled that room as she emptied her bowels. Still, I thought it would be all right. That I could fix it up. For I promise you, Fan, I did not plan to leave her like that. I would have stayed, explained, helped her dress and clean up, told her about myself, what had happened to my eyes, why I had done what I’d done…. I was a grown man, Fan, I wouldn’t have left her alone….
To All Appearances a Lady Page 27