by Ming Cher
“If I am you, I will say my parents have no money to pay school fees, they ask me to stay at home.”
“Did that before lah!” Kwang erupted. “That fuck face teacher made me stand behind the classroom for half a day! If it happens again I have to see the school principal.”
Knowing his pride, Ah Seow made fun of Kwang. “Will your legs be shaking if you face the school principal?”
“Don’t talk cock lah!” He landed a playful punch on Seow’s arm, fully aware that the same old lies would have to be repeated. By nature, Kwang was a quiet person, a dreamer with inscrutable schemes and private tricks. Ah Seow, a sensitive boy, followed him around like his alter ego.
Making their way home before the village awoke and leaving their bare footprints on the muddy tracks, Ah Seow had only a vague idea about using the five spiders to test Chai’s creatures. How exactly was his boss going to plan his next move? Ah Seow was not sure, so he fished around again. “What do you see in your glass?”
“You don’t know anything about Panther Tiger,” Kwang scoffed. He walked on without a word for a while, then said dreamily, “I want to know everything about Panther Tiger. Sometimes I like to be a Panther Tiger.... What my mother hates is what I like...!”
“What do you see?”
“Ask Swee Kim.”
“My sister? I thought she doesn’t like Panther Tiger anymore since our mothers’ big quarrel. She blames you. What did she say?”
“She said it has a crab face, I said it has a monkey face and let her look at it with my magnifying glass.”
“And then?”
“And then Kim said I have a monkey face like spider. I jumped at her, she kept laughing nonstop,” he said cheekily before dashing down the slope. Ah Seow shouted after him, “You disturb my sister again!” Although a few months younger, Kim had suddenly shot up to more than half a head taller than Kwang. Her usual skirt had turned into miniskirt, and her light cotton tee-shirt had started to fill out with her vibrant breast buds. Kwang liked to rub her rounded bottom and say, grinning, “Big bum!” And she would always bark back in mock anger, her ready-to-laugh eyes teasing him: “Snake head, mouse eyes!”
• • •
The next day, a Saturday, Kwang’s mother was at home doing housework. Kwang pretended to study hard, as usual reciting any English word that crossed his mind to ‘bullshit’ her.
In a low-key match that afternoon with Chai’s deputy, San, the son of Wong, at the playground shaded by the huge banyan tree, their spiders won three matches out of five. The matches were watched by only a few dozen spider boys, who betted.
When Ah Seow came back with the news, he heard Yee threatening loudly to beat Kwang. “You look after your brothers, if I come home and hear complaints about you, I will give you a whacking!” She turned to Kwang’s two little brothers, “Same for the two of you! Remember what I say, behave yourself! I will take you all out to eat char siew bao once a month if you all behave yourself.”
The youngest son asked, “How many can I eat?” Roast pork buns were his favourite.
Hard work and constant strain had made Yee look ten years older than her age. She had suppressed anger in her eyes, which frightened Kwang like hell. She softened a little and dug into her pocket to give the boy ten cents. Raising her voice again, she said to Kwang, “You listen carefully! I leave you to look after the house. I found a good permanent job as a second cook in a very rich man’s house. Their rice drum is full enough for one month.”
Yee took out some money and counted it twice, privately thinking about her hard life. She placed her hopes in Kwang, whom she believed was a star at school, because he had shown her false school reports.
In a way, she was pleased as she held back her tears and handed him the money. “There’re forty dollars here, one dollar a day for food at home, twenty cents a day for schooling. Come and see me once a week. I want to know what happens at home. The rich people have a son, same age as you, make friends with him. That will help to keep the rice bowl going. Have to be smarter than other people nowadays.”
“I know, I know,” Kwang nodded tactfully.
“Clean yourself up. Then I show you my boss’s place.”
Kwang hurried to the common well with a towel over his shoulder, his heart and mind singing, “Freedom! Freedom to be free and wild at last!”
When Ah Seow met him at the well to report the three wins and two lost matches, he didn’t care. Instead, he exclaimed dramatically, hands held up to the sky, “The heavens at last open the eyes for me!” He was imitating desperate chap jee kee women when they burst with joy upon winning a prize in the illegal lottery.
That evening, returning from the rich man’s mansion, Kwang celebrated generously. He brought home three bottles of Pepsi-Cola, a steamed chicken costing three dollars, a dollar’s worth of assorted meat and vegetables, and an apple for each of his brothers for dessert. He invited Kim and Ah Seow to feast together. Ah Hock, a quieter man since Pau Shen died, rubbed Kwang’s head with his big hand. “Ayaa?” he asked in his deep voice. “Whose big birthday are you celebrating tonight?”
“Eat with us, Uncle Hock!” Kwang evaded the question.
Ah Hock at nearly fifty years old. Despite patches of white hair at the side of his ears, he was still strong, and still the same man who liked what he liked in his own simple, odd ways. He loved his daughter more than gold, and what she liked was what he liked too. He was engaged at eight, married at eighteen, and didn’t have any children until he prayed for God’s help. He knew Kim and Kwang got along well. He also knew what had happened: Kim had told him about Yee when he arrived home. He’d already had his daily bottle of Guinness stout. He smiled at Kwang and walked back to his room to read his Chinese comics.
During the feast, it was all spider talk about the big return match with Chai the next day.
Ah Seow said, “You spent so much on food today, you have enough for the match tomorrow?”
“Why scared? I still have forty dollars for food from my mother, here!” He smacked his pocket a few times.
“Don’t borrow money from me again!” said Kim, who ran the washing, marketing and cooking chores for Ah Seow and for Ah Hock, who worked as a cargo labourer.
“Don’t worry,” Kwang grinned. “I can now catch Panther Tiger any time I like. This time sure to win back.”
Ah Seow asked, “How many matches tomorrow?”
“Seven all together.”
“Late night at the temple tonight,” Ah Seow said. “We go and spread the news at the playground. Blind Man is telling stories tonight.” The Kuan Yin Temple was open till late on every first and fifteenth day of the lunar calendar.
Kwang’s kid brothers wanted to go for stories; Kim acted on impulse. She stood up, tied her jet-black hair into a ponytail and said, “I go and ask my girlfriends to come. You and Ah Seow go and wash the dishes. Wait awhile for me.” And the long-legged girl left in her flowery, baggy, samfoo pants.
Ah Seow had a psychic sense developed from listening to too many ghost stories and fairy tales. He was afraid of the dark. He went into his room for the six-inch nail that he kept under his bed for defence against the pontianak, the female vampire that supposedly loved eating boys’ testicles.
That night, at the temple courtyard under a binjai tree, Blind Man said, “Even a small boy can make a wild tiger in the jungle run away.”
The children chorused, “How?”
“First of all”—he coughed lightly and raised a finger—“the boy must carry an umbrella. Must be brave when he meets the tiger in the jungle... he must remember… all tigers will pause to study their victims for a while before attacking… just like all animals. So, slowly and steadily, the boy must walk forward, step by step with the umbrella open a little, and close it… open a little bigger… and close, bigger and close, bigger and close, as he get closer. To puzzle the tiger—and whoom! Blast the umbrella fully open suddenly with a loud scream about ten steps away!” Blind Man demonstrated the full umbrella blast
to his giggling listeners.
“That will make tiger run like a rabbit.” He sipped his tea to relax and listen to the chattering before he told another story, about the Three Foxy Sisters.
In between stories, Ah Seow and Kwang went to the playground, which was busier, with older boys and adults strolling, talking or eating the food sold by itinerant hawkers. The latter shouldered their wares on two baskets hanging from both ends of a bamboo pole, and their sizzling gas lights flickered as they moved under the full moon.
Kwang’s sudden appearance surprised the spider boys from different sides. Many crowded around him and Ah Seow to ask for information. To fan the feelings of excitement and anticipation over Kwang’s return, the boys told their faithful supporters to spread the news about the match on the next day and about Kwang’s new spiders. They especially wanted to win over the kids that did not yet take sides, as these were, potentially, Kwang’s new supporters.
That night Kwang tossed about on his bed, dreaming of winning much glory and a lot of money at the annual Spider Olympic Games. Every year, spider boys within each district competed among themselves for the three best spiders to present at the Olympics. The previous year’s winner also won the right to hold the grand game in their territory in the following year. Bukit Ho Swee had no such honour in its history. In the former year, the winner was the Redhill group of boys; the Changi boys were second. Kwang’s spider had been knocked out in the semifinal. That alone, though, had made him popular overnight and won him the respect of all the spider boys in the village, especially Chai, son of Big Head and spider voice of the gambling den operator.
Kwang and Chai had been best friends until the end of the previous year, when a joke degenerated into abusive words at the playground. Many spider boys witnessed that fight. Kwang called Chai’s grandmother, Ah Paw, a witch. Chai called Kwang a madman’s son. Kwang leapt at Chai in a frenzied attack, catching the taller and heavier boy by surprise. They fought like mad dogs until they both rolled down the slope to a busy footpath near the temple. It took two men to tear them apart. Spider boys called it a draw.
Kwang’s swollen face—black eyes, bloodied lips, bee-stung nose—did not receive any sympathy from Kwang’s mother. She gave him a second hiding. As far as she was concerned, not studying hard was bad; fighting was wrong; and playing with spiders was the worst.
Serious spider boys in the village numbered more than a few hundred and they were split into two groups: those supporting Kwang and the ones behind Chai. Cash-rich Chai was an expert in picking winning spiders, and he had been buying expensive spiders to knock Kwang’s out in the competitions. Because Chai had monopolised the spider business for so long, more people had begun to speak well of Kwang again. Previously, the pressure of losing their bets all the time made many of Kwang’s supporters walk out on him, while some others decided not to take sides but to become independent third parties instead.
3
Ah Seow
FREEDOM FROM HIS mother’s dominance was sweet! Early the following Sunday morning, Kwang took his spiders out on the bamboo balcony for a war dance and examined them under his magnifying glass. He wanted to grade them.
“Don’t disturb me!” He waved his little brother away. “I give you all twenty cents each to eat what you want.”
Ah Seow asked his boss, “What time do you want the match to start at the playground?”
“Any time after twelve,” Kwang replied. “If Chai is okay.”
Like an ambassador, Ah Seow went to see Chai’s assistant, San, to arrange a time. San was the son of Wong, a calligrapher, and only a few months older than Ah Seow. Wong also wrote letters on behalf of illiterate villagers to their relatives in China.
Wong’s house was on a busy corner near the centre of the village. Just outside, there was a wet herbalist, dry herbalist, wooden-tong maker, birdcage maker, cooper, pot maker, tailor and barber.
At Wong’s house, there was a small shed where orchids sat in hanging pots of charcoal chips. From outside, Ah Seow could see Wong at his working table, grinding ink chalk in a marble bowl on his working table. The desk was next to a window, which had a commanding view of the small village. Ah Seow hesitated before knocking on the opened door and nodding politely.
“Morning, Uncle Wong! Is San home?”
“San just went out to buy some coffee. Sit down and wait awhile.” Wong gestured with his head towards a long cane settee behind him. He turned back to grind his chalk, gently adding a little water at a time. The space he occupied was his office and living room combined.
The serenity of the old calligrapher made Ah Seow at ease. He moved to the end of the settee for a better view and saw Wong straighten up and take a deep breath. In one continuous stroke of his brush, Wong wrote a picturesque word, ‘Dragon’, in the centre of a square foot of red paper.
Ah Seow tiptoed forward to watch. “Waah!” he exclaimed softly on seeing the Chinese character, which looked alive with fury and vitality. “Uncle Wong,” he asked. “How much do you sell a word like that?”
“Depends on the angpow from the marrying couple,” Wong said, referring to the generosity of the couple in deciding the size of the monetary token. He laid down his brush to stick a cigarette between his lips and release a stream of smoke out of the window, as if animating Ah Seow’s dragon. “The next word will be ‘Phoenix’.”
Ah Seow’s curiosity was interrupted by San’s return. “Hey, Ah Seow! What is the new news?” He held coffee in a used condensed milk can, which dangled on a raffia string that had been threaded through a tiny hole into the lid and then knotted. In his other hand, San had some toasted bread spread with kaya and wrapped in newspaper. Like his father, San had a pleasant face and looked like he was thinking when he was talking.
Ah Seow winked, his hands imitating spiders wrestling.
San put the coffee and bread on top of a chest of drawers beside Wong’s working table. “Don’t worry about him,” he said, patting his old man. “We can talk about anything in front of him. My father knows everything in the world.”
The man of the village twisted his son’s ear playfully. “The last person I want to blow my horn is you.” He grinned at Ah Seow. Behind his thick glasses, his eyes looked big, like a dragon’s eyes.
Ah Seow was glad to have the attention. But before he could speak further, Wong said, “Bet fifty cents for me on the last match.”
The old man’s offer took Ah Seow by surprise. “Real or not real, Uncle Wong!”
Dragon Wong took the change from his son’s takeaway and pushed the coins into Ah Seow’s hand. “I am not joking with you. This world is made for people to see. Money is made to be used.” He sounded playfully serious.
Feeling the coins in his hands, Ah Seow lost his shyness and asked, “Why don’t you bet on San’s side?”
“My son can see near, cannot see far,” Wong replied and returned to his world of writing big words for ceremonial occasions for a living.
Once outside, Ah Seow said straightaway, “My boss wants to have seven matches today. You think Chai will be ready by twelve o’clock?”
“Twelve o’clock is good time. Betting big?”
“Easily more than ten dollars a match.”
“That will be a fight… Chai will be waiting for it,” San said. “Ha, good for us too.”
“We both know that,” Ah Seow smiled back. “Shall we go and see Chai together to confirm the time?” Like a close friend, San offered Ah Seow a sweet from his pocket. They both took a shortcut through narrow lanes and into the most compact part of the village. Each time they saw the familiar faces of spider boys, they announced loudly, making an ‘X’ with their fingers to emphasise the time, “Twelve o’clock! Twelve o’clock!”
Activity in the village never ceased. Somebody was always busy doing this or that. Fatty’s Family, a gang of nine, made cakes around the clock. Somebody was slowly stirring fine coconut flakes marinated in gula melaka—palm sugar syrup—and pandan leaves in a giant wok, ba
lanced on a clay stove with a slow-burning charcoal fire.
The aroma of the pandan leaves made them feel hungry. “Good good smell!” San sniffed a few times. “Want to eat?” he encouraged Ah Seow, who agreed to the meal.
At a three-wheel cart operated by Fatty’s fat sister, Ah Seow spent ten cents on kueh lopis, a triangular-shaped steamed glutinous rice cake, sprinkled with grated coconut and moistened by gula melaka, and wrapped in banana leaf. San paid ten cents for kueh lapis, another type of steamed glutinous rice cake with nine coloured layers. With the hot snacks in their hands, they found a corner to squat down and savour their food. Ah Seow took in the aroma of pandan leaves first and ate his cake slowly. San peeled his colourful cake, chewing one layer at a time.
After the snack, they went straight to Chai’s house behind the banyan tree, isolated from the other houses. It was here that Big Head’s mother, Ah Paw, had been exorcised by the blood of a black dog twelve years ago. The house was adjacent to Chai’s father’s gambling den, a wooden hut with a corrugated iron roof. Outside, at the patch of dry and hard red earth, men wearing undershirts or who were shirtless and revealing tattoos, chatted away in a relaxed mood; some were listening to the merboks singing in their cages. Big Head was rocking comfortably on a rattan chair by the entrance, puffing a pipe and soaking up the nine o’clock sunlight like he was taking notice of nothing and deep in thought. He was already bald and his left eyebrow was broken into two parts by an old knife wound. He was wearing only a pair of pyjama trousers, so the boys could see the old-fashioned tattoo of Nezha, the child-god warrior, on his chest.
“Chai’s father!” Ah Seow whispered nervously.
“Don’t worry about him,” San said in a low voice. “Just walk straight in, he is half asleep.”
• • •
Inside, a large one-metre-tall concrete tank stood in the middle of the concrete floor, collecting rainwater from an opening in the corrugated roof. The half-dozen filled ashtrays on the fantan table revealed that the previous night had been busy. Of the five mahjong tables, only one in the far corner was occupied: four tired-looking men, cigarettes on their lips, were shuffling their mahjong chips to build their four walls for a new game, the tiles making clashing sounds as they hit one another. They paid no attention to Chai’s grandmother, Ah Paw, who moved about emptying their ashtrays into a bucket. Her face was lined with wrinkles, making her look like an old owl in a black samfoo, the traditional Chinese trouser suit for women. Her back was hunched—like a camel’s hump.