Spider Boys

by Ming Cher

  By this time, the tide had reached its peak and the water became calm. Yeow made a last throw out to sea, as far as he could manage. At the moment that he lit up for yet another smoke, a lightning bite on his line caught him off guard and flipped the fishing reel out of his hand. He lurched forward to grab the line and it burnt his fingers. He slipped, but held on to his rod with both hands, playing his new catch backwards and forwards for a good twenty minutes until a one-and-a-half-metre grey shark surfaced near the water’s edge.

  Yeow bit down hard on his cigarette and pulled with all his might. Halfway up, however, the shark escaped with a big splash. Stunned, Yeow looked at his burnt finger, then at the hook, which had straightened out. More than the jaws, it was the mean eyes of shark that reminded him of Kwang.

  Still dazed, Yeow poured himself a hot coffee from the vacuum flask he had brought along and ate two bean buns. Then he packed up for a slow, long walk home.

  • • •

  Back at the house, Kwang, Sachee and a band of spider boys had just arrived home as the two girls were about to go out. Ah Seow was still at school, while Kwang’s little brothers were nowhere to be seen.

  “Look nice!” Sachee said, eyeing the girls. “Go where?”

  “Shopping,” Kim replied, with a meaningful glance at Kwang.

  “Nah, take some money with you.” Kwang told Kim, pulling out a thick wad of notes and flashing a ten-dollar note at her.

  Kim snatched at it and asked pointedly, “You want to come?”

  Kwang scratched his head and didn’t reply.

  “You win again,” Big Mole said admiringly.

  “Yah, win more today,” Kwang said, with restrained pride. “Nah, here.” He pushed a five-dollar note into her hands. “Don’t be shy with me, use some for yourself.”

  “No, no,” Big Mole said, trying to reject the favour.

  “Take it lah!” Sachee grabbed the note and tried to push it into Big Mole’s scrawny hand. “No need to be shy with my Big Brother, take it!”

  Kim also encouraged her friend. “Why you so stupid? Take it!”

  Big Mole took the money shyly and asked Kwang, “Sure you won’t come with us?”

  “Not now lah,” Kwang said, briefly flashing a grin. “I have to feed and look at my spiders first.”

  “I am not going to wait for you,” Kim sneered and dragged Big Mole away with her.

  At High Street, she paid for an expensive pair of fashionable blue jeans and a white embroidered camisole, and put them on straightaway.

  “You dare to spend,” Big Mole commented once the girls were outside. “Where do you want to go now?”

  “Go home now also no use, nothing to do. See if Yeow want to go anywhere.”

  When Yeow arrived home, the cigarette woman informed him, “You just miss Big Mole and that beautiful girl.”

  “Which way they go? I have to catch up with Big Mole.”

  “You can still catch them, that way.” She pointed down a long row of single-storey prewar houses across the road.

  Yeow took his time to wash up and put on some fresh clothes. Big Mole was a familiar face in his territory and tracking the girls down would be easy. Somebody he checked with said, “They just walked into the Seng Lee pet fish shop.”

  Inside the store, which was stacked with fish tanks displaying several varieties of aquarium fish, Yeow was taken aback at seeing Kim bending over some fish tanks near the floor, her buttocks looking provocative in her tight jeans. She was pointing at fish that caught her fancy. “I like that one, and that one.” Big Mole, on the other hand, was habitually chewing on her fingernails and thinking about the fish breeding business. The sight of Kim aroused Yeow, and he pretended to watch the fish on the other side of the store, waiting for Kim to discover his presence.

  “Hey!” Kim finally turned around and noticed Yeow. “Fancy seeing you here!” She held her old clothing in a plastic bag.

  “Almost can’t recognise you.” He smiled. “You look very different, very nice in cowboy jeans... very nice.”

  Kim’s eyes laughed. “You know how to talk!”

  “Er... where is Kwang?”

  “Kwang lives with his spiders. What for talk about him?” She retied the red handkerchief around her ponytail and asked Big Mole, “What about you? What do you want to do now?”

  Big Mole very sensibly understood that the couple wanted to be left alone. “Don’t wait for me,” she said. “I have to go back now, see what Sachee want to do first.”

  Yeow surreptitiously motioned for Big Mole to meet him outside the shop. He gave her fifty dollars and spoke quickly as Kim also emerged from the store. “I am going away tomorrow. Can’t say how long. Keep your eyes open on everybody, okay? You know what I mean?”

  “I know.” Big Mole took the money, her eyes downcast. In the face of her confusion, she crossed the road to catch the bus home.

  Still annoyed at Kwang, Kim said breezily to Yeow, “Where are you going, Bossy Face? I don’t want to go home so early.”

  Even her voice sounded sweet to his ears. Yeow lit a cigarette and said, “I know the best place to eat satay. Do you want to come?”

  “I let you be the boss,” she said, hands on her hips. “How to get there?”

  “Easy.” He hailed a passing trishaw.

  The trishaw took them to the satay centre at Queen Elizabeth Walk, a waterfront eating place near the mouth of the Singapore River. It was a dimly lit, romantic place frequented by couples.

  After the meal, the two of them strolled along the promenade, then sat on a bench to watch bumboats coughing as they chugged along, piled up with bales of rubber, their bodies painted like monster fish.

  “Look! Look at that sampan!” Kim pointed to the striking silhouette of a man standing alone in his small rowboat, manoeuvring his way out on the river. “I wish we can sit on one like that!”

  “That is not a problem. We can hire it from Clifford Pier for a cruise around the harbour.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, not far. We can stroll over there if you like.”

  Kim stood up. “We might as well go now.” She and Yeow crossed the cast-iron Henderson Bridge to get to the other side of the river.

  At the jetty at Clifford Pier, Kim and Yeow watched as motorboats ferried seamen and supplies to and from cargo ships anchored out at sea. There were also many old men sitting in their sampan, gently moving their oars back and forth in the water to stop their boats from drifting. They were waiting for tourist customers.

  “Which one do you like?” Yeow asked at the jetty by the gangway down to the sea. “Pick any one you like.”

  “That one, that one!” She pointed down at a cheerful face under a big, round, pointed hat. The old man was waving up at her encouragingly.

  “Wave back to him,” Yeow agreed, staring into her pretty, excited face.

  Kim waved with the plastic bag she was holding and the sampan man rowed forward and held on to the gangway railing to steady it.

  Kim, clumsy in her tight jeans and with one hand occupied, jumped into the boat and tried to stay balanced. The sampan rocked and a sudden wave caused by a passing motorboat tipped it further to one side, tossing Kim overboard.

  Yeow dived in immediately to grab her, and they crawled breathlessly up the gangway together. On one side of her camisole, the strap had come undone and slipped off her shoulder, fully exposing a single naked breast right in front of Yeow’s face. They were thoroughly soaked. By the time Yeow had sent her back to No Nose Bridge by taxi, her jeans had already shrunk by a few inches.

  “Never mind!” she said boisterously and without regret. “I can give them to Big Mole!”

  And Yeow, who always smiled but never laughed, now laughed for the first time in his life. In fact he howled, like a wolf at the full moon.

  11

  Fate is Strange

  THE AIR-CONDITIONED train to Penang served good food in its dining carriage, but Yeow did not eat much. He could think of nothing bu
t angel-faced Kim. He put on his dark glasses and watched the miles and miles of rubber, coconut and palm oil plantations, rice fields and villages as they passed, backgrounded by the green hills of Malaya.

  When the train stopped for a while at Kuala Lumpur, the movie of the Siew Jee Ho guy he had killed when he was thirteen began to replay over and over in his mind. Yeow started to wonder where his luck was headed.

  Fate had a way of making things meet. This was the anti-colonialist period of the Malayan Emergency; there was a fierce Communist uprising against the British. In the Cameron Highlands, a British brigadier general had just been ambushed. At Ipoh, police boarded the train disguised as passengers and mingled quietly with the other travellers. They were there to sniff out Communist suspects.

  The well-dressed Yeow, with his dark glasses and Rolex watch, caught the attention of the British security chief who, like the others, was dressed as a tourist.

  “Nice watch,” the security chief commented in English. “May I share your table with you, sir?”

  Yeow had no idea what he was saying, so he simply smiled.

  The officer smiled back. “Can’t you speak English?”

  Yeow smiled again and the officer left.

  Many non-English-speaking Chinese had joined the Communist guerrillas under the revolutionary Chin Peng. To wipe out the insurgency, curfews were sometimes imposed in specific areas of Ipoh, Kelantan and Penang, which were close to Chin Peng’s headquarters near the Thai border. Dressed well and speaking English, Yeow was a potential suspect. When the train arrived in Butterworth, where the ferry terminal for Penang was located, a plainclothes policeman tapped him on his back and said, “Follow me.”

  Yeow turned around and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Police.” The officer lifted his batik shirt to reveal handcuffs and a gun tucked in the waistband of his trousers. Yeow, who didn’t want to be seen in handcuffs, quietly followed him to a waiting car. He was taken to the Central Police Station.

  After taking his photograph and fingerprints, enquiring about the nature of his job, and confiscating his identity card and other personal effects, which included more than one thousand dollars in large notes, the officers put Yeow in a long underground cell with no beds, no chairs and only straw mats for sleeping. The cell was approximately the length of a bus, and about half as wide. It was crammed with detainees, all of whom had been arrested at random, with no reason given to them, as under Section 55, the new Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act, detention without trial was allowed. Every day, busloads of people filled the cells. Special agents were planted in every cell to seek out suspects.

  “Hey, how long are you inside here now?” Yeow asked a prisoner with a decent-looking face, who squatted next to him.

  “Nine days today.”

  “Why they dump me here I don’t know. What about you?”

  Decent Face did not reply but instead asked, “Any cigarette with you?”

  Yeow still had his full packet. He stuck a cigarette between his lips and handed another over. “No matches, they took my lighter.”

  “I have.” Decent Face dug out a matchstick as if it were a precious object and lit it carefully so as not to waste it.

  At the same moment a rough-looking face suddenly surged forward. “Whoops!” The unknown person said, blowing out the flame and demanding with a curled finger, “What about me? Pass one over!”

  “Nah!” Yeow snarled. “Take the whole fucking packet!” He threw the cigarette box high in the air for the inmate to catch, but an even quicker hand appeared from nowhere to snatch at it from the air.

  “It’s mine!” Rough Face yelled, and a fight broke out between the two men. Yeow realised that one of them was from the Siew Jee Ho secret society, while the other was from the Kun Thong gang.

  Decent Face could not stand the fighting. He dashed to the front of the cell and banged at the door continuously, crying, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” until the guards rushed in to drag the two men away by their collars.

  The meals were just slops fit for pigs. The lights in the prison cells were switched off early. To prevent the bedbugs on the sleeping mats from crawling all over his body, Yeow squatted to sleep, his elbows on his knees.

  The next morning, when the cell doors were banged open, many prisoners were removed. Newcomers like Yeow were made to clean the toilets. Some others were sent for identification parades, and some for questioning. Many were freed while new ones took their place.

  One newcomer to Yeow’s cell spotted Yeow.

  “Hey! Are you Smiling Boy?” he asked, surprised. “You disappear, long time no see. Where did you go?” he demanded with a frown.

  “What do you mean?” Yeow deliberately scowled. “You must be looking at the wrong person.” He moved away, privately swearing at being recognised.

  On the next day, the pattern was the same. Some inmates were freed, but new prisoners were introduced. On the third day, another person said to his mate, “Hey, that smooth-looking guy is Smiling Boy. Did you talk to him?”

  “Aarrh, fuck him! I asked him, he said he is not.”

  “Two pairs of eyes can’t be wrong, wonder why he lied? I’ll ask him.”

  “What for? He doesn’t want to know us.”

  Sitting at the opposite end of the cell, Yeow pretended to see and hear nothing. He passed the time by quietly observing everybody from a distance. His behaviour caught the attention of Decent Face, who smoked beside him and asked, “Hey, you have any visitors?” He looked well fed and had no worry lines on his face.

  Yeow was ready for his questions. “No,” he answered tamely. “I am from Singapore... I don’t know why I am here.”

  “Smoke?” the man offered him a cigarette and started to ask more questions.

  Yeow fed the undercover agent with information about picking up his aunt’s bones, about how he was arrested for no reason, and about his legal business as a newspaper distributor. The calculated talks paid off when the spy made his report. Yeow was freed the next day after a brief questioning.

  It was the English chief from the train who signed the release papers. “Strikes me as an interesting chap,” he said to his Chinese assistant. “Have you checked with the CID in Singapore?”

  “Yes, sir,” the Chinese assistant answered. “He is clean, sir, no record.”

  “I still can’t make out the Chinese,” the chief admitted. “Tell me, what do you make of him?”

  “I think he lives on girls, sir. A pimp.”

  “I suppose you are right,” the chief said, smoking his pipe, the high ceiling fan whirling gently above him. From his office window on the top floor of the police building, he could look down several streets at once.

  Released, Yeow felt his detention was just bad luck, a case of mistaken identity. On the other hand, he was also glad to outfox the spy. The new confidence gained made him feel he could outsmart anybody. And because the officers at this Special Branch were well paid and uncorrupted, he even got back all his belongings, including the money and the pocketknife attached to his key ring.

  Outside the Central Police Station, there were crowds of people queuing to inquire about relatives and friends, as well as old trishaw riders jostling for customers: “Hey! Hey! Where’re you going? Where’re you going?”

  Yeow hopped onto a waiting trishaw. “Queen Hotel,” he said, remembering the name of an expensive hotel where there would be no gangs hanging about.

  “How much?” he asked on arrival.

  “Three dollars.” The trishaw man wiped his perspiration on a towel over his shoulder.

  Although he knew the price was cutthroat, Yeow paid the full amount. “Pick me up here tomorrow morning, about nine?”

  “To where?”

  “Cantonese cemetery, wait about one hour and return?”

  “Seven dollars all together, all right?”

  It was an unreasonable tourist’s price, but Yeow felt generous and did not bargain. The path leading to the cemetery was too narrow
for a car to negotiate. He wanted to pay his respects at his aunt’s grave before making arrangements for the exhumation. During his early days in Penang, when the going was too tough, he would go quietly to her grave to grieve and complain. It always made him feel better.

  Although dirty, hungry and tired from the previous nights, the first thing Yeow did upon check-in was to make a toll call to Singapore. The Cigarette Woman answered. “I am glad you called. How are you?”

  “Everything’s quite smooth,” Yeow said. He did not want her to worry. “What about things over there?”

  “Fine, where are you staying?”

  “Queen Hotel.”

  “Just in case, what is your hotel number?”

  Yeow read her the number and said, “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Bring some Ipoh peanuts back!” the old woman demanded before hanging up.

  • • •

  After a good bath and a meal, Yeow went to bed and slept soundly. Early the next morning, a loud blast shook the hotel. A waitress in the kitchen upset her tray. “The mountain rats did it again!”

  As it happened, a bomb planted by the Communists had exploded near the clock tower, and fire engines and police cars could be heard screaming. At the hotel lobby, Yeow overheard a staff member cautioning a friendly guest, “Don’t go out too soon. The police are setting up roadblocks everywhere to catch people like crazy!”

  When his trishaw arrived, Yeow gave him the fee without boarding the vehicle, and reserved the man’s services for the following morning. The trishaw man pedalled away happily; it was his lucky day and he decided to gamble on four-colour cards at Trishaw Lane.

  Meanwhile, back at the Central Police Station, where people continued to be freed or brought in for detention, Yeow’s name had already slipped out and caused a minor chain reaction. He became something to talk about among the former street boys, who had now joined different gangs. The stories of the gold shop job and the guy who had subsequently been murdered in Kuala Lumpur resurfaced and reached the ears of the Siew Jee Ho leader. He had not forgotten how their society member had died. “Revenge for each other joins us together,” was his philosophy, even at nearly forty years old.