by Dawn Farnham
She let her head droop unconsciously, in an expression of sadness. Zhen saw it and felt the honesty of the movement. He looked at her for a moment and then moved away, towards the bedroom.
Lilin rose, watching him climb the stairs, his body lithe and supple. The emotion of a moment before evaporated. But her resolution remained. She went to the nursery where Lian was sleeping and bent her head and kissed her pretty pink cheeks.
Zhen closed the door quietly behind him. This bedroom was where they had been married. He looked at Noan, lying silently on the bed. He had tried to be a good man to her. Perhaps he had not been the man she wanted. Zhen knew well how Noan felt about him, but his heart had always lain elsewhere.
He went up to the bed and took off his jacket. He lay behind Noan and took her into his arms, cradling her. Though she was unresponsive, he began to kiss her neck and shoulders, touching her gently with his hands. She was swollen, not only her belly but her feet and ankles. He felt a great compassion for her.
“Noan, Noan, soon we will have another child.”
He kissed her gently, nuzzling her neck. She felt him move next to her, but still it was as if she was dreaming him.
“You bring me joy. Boy or girl, it will bring me joy. And we shall make more children, many more.” Zhen caressed her belly.
“Lilin is cruel. An unhappy, cruel woman. Do not believe what she says.”
Noan lay still, unresponsive. It was as if she could not hear.
Zhen turned her to face him. Her face was red, bloated. He knew there was something terribly wrong. He put his hand on her belly and felt the movement of the child.
“Tomorrow I will bring herbs for you to drink. But you must wake up.” He took her face in his hands. Her poor, bloated face. “Wake up, Noan.”
He remembered that Xia Lou loved it when he kissed and nibbled her lips, as if she was sweet sugar that he could not resist. He touched his lips to Noan’s and began to kiss and bite gently, the lower lip, the corner of her mouth, taking her lips in his softly, sucking and nibbling. He put his hands in her hair and held her.
Noan realised, suddenly, that she was not dreaming. She opened her eyes and looked into his, and awoke from that long trance. He smiled at her and continued kissing her until she raised her arm and put it around his neck.
“You,” she said hoarsely, keeping her lips on his, “you will not go to the …”
She stopped, confused. Zhen continued to hold her hair with his hand, firmly, keeping her head near his, kissing her lips and cheeks.
“Ssshh,” he murmured. “Nothing will change for us. You are my wife. I am a man of the Tao, Noan. Your joy is my strength.”
The reverie dissipated like clouds in the wind. Zhen did not lie. She pulled his lips to hers, crushing his lips to hers and he held her tight, kissing her. Noan sighed, touching his face.
“My head, it hurts so much. Husband, I …”
Without warning she fell back, and her eyes closed. At the same time, her waters broke and Zhen felt the sudden wetting of the bed. He rose, horribly alarmed, and went to the door, calling the maid. Within a few minutes the midwife had arrived, and he was bowed out of the room and the door closed.
Nothing was ever told to him of that terrible night. The midwife never spoke of finding Noan in a swoon, her contractions started. Nothing could revive her. For an hour they tended her, bathing her body, the midwife feeling the contractions. And then, without warning, Noan had convulsed, her body shaking violently. Her head had jerked up, and her breath rattled in her throat, and then she had simply stopped breathing.
The midwife’s apprentices were thrown into a panic, whimpering, their eyes wide with fear. Evil spirits had entered her body, surely. They trembled and moved away from the bed. But the midwife had seen it all before. The awful bloating was a symptom of something very wrong. She had seen many women in this state, and few survived. It was too common to be a cause even of horror any more. The mother was dead. Now only the child could be saved, and by saving the child, they would save the mother too, from a life of eternal damnation.
The midwife had sworn severely at her helpers. She ordered one to immediately inform Noan’s mother and send for the undertaker and priests. She took out her instruments and made a long cut in the abdomen and released the child. Within seconds the baby let out a lusty scream. The midwife slipped a necklace of red woven cords and a dragon pendant of red jade over the baby’s head. This would ensure that the soul of the child would attach itself to the necklace and not to the cord, which she quickly cut. The birth was over. The child was born, and the mother was dead. The child was bundled up and removed instantly from the scene of death.
The midwife sewed up the body, chanting incantations, keeping the spirit at bay. Everyone knew that the newly dead were confused and would search instinctively for a living body to enter. One of her helpers banged a gong. Spirits disliked loud noises more than anything. The two others, intoning incantations, quickly cleaned up the blood, dressed the corpse and moved her to another room. Noan lay on a mat, a yellow cloth covering her face, her body covered in red cloth, with silver bank notes to ease her passage. Spirit money was burning in urns on either side of her. Two priests entered the room, sprinkling realgar wine about the floor, lighting incense, pasting paper cuts of Zhong Qui, the dispeller of demons, on the door lintels and windows, surrounding the body with red candles. Soon the undertaker would come and the body would be ritually washed and prepared for the coffin.
The priests began banging a small gong and shaking the bells, intoning the Sutra of the Bloody Pond. A cockerel was brought in and its throat cut swiftly; the blood flowing onto the floor, helping to rescue Noan from this xue hu yu—court of the bloody pond—the destination of women who died in childbirth.
Noan’s mother stood looking down at the dead body of her child. Her beloved first child. She did not care that she should not touch the body, which was impure and full of the pollution of death. She knelt and took Noan’s hand from under the cloth. Tears sprang to her old eyes. She had loved this little firstborn, her obedient child who prayed for her parents, her husband and her children. But, thank the gods, Noan had given birth to a son. Now her soul would not be trapped in the bloody pond. The midwife had known of the gravity of this birth, had made sure the child was born quickly. She was grateful to this woman. Now Noan would not return as a Jiang Shi, a vampire, her soul wandering the earth. In three years when her bones were disinterred, there would be a ritual—the breaking of the bloody bowl—and the son would drink red liquid, symbolising his mother’s blood. He would free his mother from this hell, and she would be reborn.
Noan’s mother tied the amulet containing the Sutra of the Bloody Pond and the Lotus Sutra to her daughter’s wrist and put her cheek onto the cold hand and cried for joy at this blessing. Then she rose and returned to her husband and her son-in-law.
Baba Tan and Zhen were in the sitting room. They had both known since the girl had been sent out, for all the family was present in the house. Tan had not moved since hearing this, the sounds of the gongs reverberating faintly from above. His daughter was dead. A grandson had been announced, but this joy was suddenly eclipsed. His health was waning; he could feel it. A few short years ago he had felt like a young man again with the nubile young concubine. He was only forty-three years old now, but a bout of fever had laid him low, and he had not fully recovered. The death of Lilin’s son had affected him in strange ways. He had never shown his grief at the death of that baby boy. It was forbidden to show the slightest emotion at the passing of a very young child. If a child died it was yao shou—deprived of longevity. To die so young meant an infection, an evil spirit. But somehow, he had mourned him quietly, inside. Now, Noan, his favourite child. He sank into the chair and said nothing.
Zhen, too, was sitting in a chair, his head lowered. He could hear the servants moving with quiet efficiency, covering the mirrors, any glass, with red paper. The gods on the altars were covered in red cloth. The rit
uals of death were swift, for time was of the essence, before the miasmic pollution of mortality could take effect.
Not Noan, he thought. Sweet Noan. He felt turned to stone. His philosophy should accept her death as a natural movement, her soul passing into the infinite, the birth of his son a completion of a circle. Master Zhuang said that death and life are destined; heaven lies in the constancy of morning and evening. But at this moment he could not find comfort in that idea.
Noan’s mother looked at these two men, the most important in her life. Her husband: she had tried to honour him as was her obligation. She had given him children, not sons, of course. Not sons, but daughters, and her first daughter had married well. Her son-in-law was truly a son, for he would carry out the rites for them when they died.
She saw her husband had lost strength. He had sought a new woman to confirm his virility, his continuing power as he aged. What creatures were men. They had few burdens. They had no need to find strength to cope with the vicissitudes of life. Women carried these burdens for them. In life and after death, women kept the spirit of the family alive. A thought, never before contemplated, entered her head. In strange ways, men, who were supposed to be the heart of the family, actually meant very little. They made children, they brought money, but in every other important way they were irrelevant. Men could not find the strength in death, for they had not the fortitude to give life. The women carried both burdens. Her husband could not cope with this, but she must.
She went up to Zhen and bowed before him. “Please go to buy water from the river,” she said quietly.
Zhen looked up. He did not understand. His knowledge of funerary rites was very poor.
“Sorry, honoured mother,” he said. “I do not understand.”
“Water,” she said. “You go to the river, to the spring, and gather two buckets of water. A servant will go with you.”
She held out her hand. In it were two coins. “Pay the river god for the water.”
Zhen took the coins and stared at them.
“One bucket is for you to wash your son. His first bath must be by his father.”
Noan’s mother swallowed and stopped briefly, checking her emotion. “The other bucket is to cleanse your wife.”
Zhen looked up. Noan’s mother had known this man for six years. The small revelation which had struck her a moment before she put to one side. Zhen was an exemplary son-in-law, had become a son, for he had taken their name. He was a man who acted with circumspection, wisdom and good sense. He was beloved by her husband, she knew, and treated her with every respect. He had been a good husband to Noan, given her children, now a son, which had saved her, which redeemed her soul. In all that time she had never seen him betray the slightest emotion. But her heart softened now as she saw tears come to his eyes.
Zhen rose quickly, holding the coins in his fist and left the room. Zhen did not go to the river, though. He went to the spring, one of the small springs which ran at the base of Bukit Larangan. This water was at its purest here, emerging untouched from the earth. He knelt before the spring bubbling between two rocks. He cupped his hands and took the water into them, watching it move over them in an unceasing stream, over the coins which lay there. He cast the coins into the lower stream and watched them tumble away, then put the water to his mouth and drank, running his hands over his face. There was no sense in this death of Noan. It was as random as her birth.
“Life follows upon death. Death is the beginning of life. A simple transformation from being to non-being, from Yang to Yin.” The words of Master Zhuang echoed in his mind. He wiped obstruction away. He watched a water drop glint in the sunlight and fall slowly from his hand. Noan had reentered the great river. She was not locked in some ghastly hell, as he knew her mother believed. She was free, soaring like the wind over the treetops, flying with the water over rocks. His son had been born. “Life follows upon death.”
He called the servant to bring the pails, filled them and turned back to the house.
41
Noan was gone, buried on the hill near her grandparents.
The men had gathered to consider the family arrangements. Zhen had three girls and his baby son, Kai.
The boy and two of the girls would be raised at River Valley with Tan’s own young children, supervised by their grandmother. Lian, Zhen’s second daughter, would be given to Lilin. She had no child, and her behaviour had improved so much it was deemed suitable for her to take this child for her own. Zhen had little say in this matter. Baba Tan, having lost his eldest daughter, was adamant that his second must have the dutiful affection of a child.
Ah Teo made no objection. He was happy to be rid of Lilin. His second wife had given him a son and was pregnant with another child. Lilin was given a residence, a new house on South Bridge Road. Zhen had made it clear he would not share a house with her. The Market Street house was put up for rent and quickly taken by a Spanish merchant for his wife and growing family. Zhen moved into his shophouse on Circular Road, glad to be done with the painful memories of the mansion.
Zhen felt deeply mistrustful of Lilin. But his children must be cared for, and Lilin had proved contrite, and Zhen knew that Lilin cared for Lian in a way she did not for any of his other children.
Zhen knew what lay ahead. Endless proposals by the matchmaker for suitable brides. Even Baba Tan would not be immune to her blandishments. Zhen was young and very eligible. There were scores of young daughters of Chinese merchants scattered throughout the whole of the South Seas for whom he was a most desirable match. Merchants who could add great wealth and influence to the Tan house.
Lilin’s anguish at her sister’s death rapidly dissipated. She entered her new home, her hand in Lian’s. She smiled. From today her whole life would be dedicated to one thing. To raise Lian to distrust men, to groom her beauty to entrap just one man, Zhen’s son Ah Rex, and to destroy Zhen and his English bitch.
Ah Rex was soon to be ten years old, and Lian was just eight. Today, with Lian under her power, she would start to tell the little girl stories about boys, how one special one was waiting for her and begin to plant the seeds of mistrust for all but Ah Rex.
She would begin the dedicated task of teaching Lian English. For this she had to consult Zhen. She had already engaged the services of a Eurasian clerk and planned to pay him well for his abilities, but she dared not do it without Zhen’s approval. To get this she had to plant the seed in his friend Qian’s head. Only this way, if Zhen thought it came from Qian, would it have any hope of success.
She approached Qian at his godown. Lian was missing her sisters, so she was spending a day or two at River Valley. She had cried for several days, but Lilin had cuddled her and played with her, and together they had walked along the bayside at Telok Ayer, and she had bought Lian a pretty hair pin and told her she was Auntie’s special girl.
Gradually, Lilin knew, Lian would grow to love this undivided attention. And Lilin liked it too. It was good to spend time with her pretty little girl who turned heads when they walked together. Instead of sharp gossip, now Lilin reaped praise.
Qian received Lilin coolly. He knew her reputation, knew of all the havoc she had caused the Tan household.
“I should like English lessons for Lian,” she said to Qian, adopting a tone of modest petition. Lian was promised to Ah Soon. Would it not be well for his son’s future wife to have some knowledge, to assist him in his life? Ignorant women made ignorant children. Qian’s own wife, it was well known, was clever and shrewd. Many went to her for advice. She was a credit to Qian’s reputation. Lian could be such a credit to Ah Soon. Would Qian consider it and speak to Lian’s father?
Despite himself, Qian was pleased at her words, for there was truth in them. Swan Neo was clever, and Qian’s household was one of efficient and tolerant harmony. Despite, or perhaps because of, the unusual nature of his domestic arrangements, he admired Swan Neo and was glad she was at his side.
He told Lian he would broach the subject with Zhen,
and several days later, Lilin had her answer: Zhen did not object. She smiled. Whilst they imagined Lian was destined for Ah Soon and she was respectfully obedient, they would grant her any reasonable wish.
Now she had merely to think how to get Ah Rex’s trust and bring these two children together.
42
Charlotte spent the next weeks planning her wedding. She had written letters to Scotland and Batavia. She tried desperately not to think of Zhen and their dreadful parting. When she felt optimistic she thought it just as well that they might never meet again.
When she felt lonely, she felt despondent.
Charles, she thought, it is time for us to marry and to leave this town. Only then will I begin to forget.
In the meantime Charlotte had kept her word. Alex and Ah Soon were permitted to play games with crickets with Uncle Qian and Uncle Zhen. She allowed Alex to spend time in Baba Tan’s godown with Zhen, helping with the merchant business. She knew Alex liked to be by the quay. Tarun had taken Adam with him once or twice, but her younger son’s Chinese was not fluent, and Adam had quickly tired of these trips. He much preferred his English school friends, English games and Malay companions, to the rough and tumble of the riverside.
But Alex loved it and loved his Uncle Zhen. For Alex, Zhen always had time, to show him the godown and how it worked, to take him upriver to the sago factories, to fly kites on the hill, to tell him of his own childhood growing up in China, to fill him with legends and tales of his homeland.
The days went by in a monotonous regularity of heat and rain. Charlotte had received a letter from Aunt Jeanne, announcing her departure from Scotland and her great joy at Charlotte’s remarriage. Charlotte had arranged everything through an agent in Aberdeen. Both she and Robert agreed it was time for their aunt to come and see them and their children. Charlotte was looking forward to spoiling her, showing her Singapore and her great estates in Java.