The Red Thread

by Dawn Farnham

  Every week she took half her money and sent it home to her parents in the Chinese village through the Teochow money office, which she trusted. She knew she would die in this place and never go home, but her sense of duty was strong. When it all became too much, she would eat opium. When she told Zhen this, he had taken her face in his hands.

  ‘No, do not think this. Harden your heart a little. Become good friends with the mistress and help her. The way out is to become the mistress yourself. I am nothing now, but one day I will have some influence here and you will benefit. I have told the mistress that you are a good girl and to treat you well.’

  She had thought this was just the usual talk. The men often boasted of such things. But after each encounter with Zhen, her spirits had risen and she had begun to believe him. With such belief came, she realised, love, and this was a dangerous thing for an ah ku whore to have. She hated the filthy mistress of the house, but from Zhen she drew the strength to hide her real feelings. The old mistress liked Zhen and grew sickeningly coquettish in his company. Although she cared nothing for the stupid girl he went with, she had heard through the owner of the brothels that he was a kongsi man and had found favour with powerful families here. It was enough for her to keep her temper under control.

  Zhen and Qian met one cool evening on the riverside. Qian had news. He was convinced now that they were being considered as marriageable material.

  Zhen had been getting the same idea. They had talked to other men in the godown and on the quayside and learned the family situation of the two towkays—daughters requiring husbands. Zhen and Qian had discussed it at length over glasses of grog in the drinking houses on Hokkien Street. It was only a matter of time before the proposals came from one direction or another, and they would take them up immediately. No family, no aid, no women in Si Lat Po for them. Both men knew that only this way could they find wives and wealth in one fell swoop. Their first hand view of how poor coolies struggled with the hardships of life here—a great swarm of men who would never know family, children, home, who would end up broken, addicted to opium, deprived of affection and dead at a young age—had been a stark lesson. Fortune had truly smiled on them.

  They had talked about their preferences. Qian favoured marriage into the family of Baba Tan, who seemed an equable man despite all the peculiar habits of the house. Zhen was not sure. He couldn’t always understand Baba Tan, but Tan did make an effort to speak more regular Hokkien with him. Sang was a hideous old creature, but even though he was Cantonese, they could speak together easily. Well, it was out of their hands anyway. They could merely wait.

  The wait was not long. Two days later Incheck Sang and Baba Tan met at Sang’s house. After the usual pleasantries they got down to business.

  Tan was slightly anxious and wiped his face with a large handkerchief. Sang eyed him curiously, a long fingernail curled over his lips. As he waited for Sang to speak, Tan thought about his daughter’s happy, grateful face. She would make a wonderful wife for this man Zhen, she had told him, and give him many grandsons. Only now had he begun to realise that he might have made a terrible mistake by letting her see this fellow. Sang was always going to get first choice. The words fell like stones upon Tan’s ears.

  ‘I have decided to get the tall one, Zhen, for my daughter.’

  Tan’s heart sank. Before him rose a storm of domestic trouble. His mind was working so hard he felt his brain might explode. It had never occurred to him that the old corpse would choose the man who so resembled the son-in-law who had run off with his money.

  Tan had been certain that Qian would be Sang’s choice. He had to change the old skeleton’s mind somehow, but he had to be careful.

  ‘Really, that is interesting,’ Tan said calmly. ‘I thought Qian would have been more suitable. A quieter man, more obedient, perhaps. But I am just as well pleased to get him. Zhen seems more willful. May I ask your reasons for this choice? I have other daughters to consider, and your wisdom on this matter would be helpful to me.’

  He coughed slightly into his handkerchief at this blatant lie.

  Sang eyed him with a rheumy gaze. He was not deceived.

  ‘I may not have long for this world,’ he said. ‘I need a man in this house, fresh masculine blood. One who can make a grandchild quickly. He is clever, learns fast. He is not like the other bastard son-in-law. I made a mistake with that one, I see it now. You cannot speak clearly with Zhen, but I can. He knows the kongsi ways. You have seen him; he is powerful, and his blood will enrich my line. In many ways he reminds me of myself when I was young.’

  Tan’s eyes narrowed in an effort not to laugh at the vain old fool.

  ‘This Zhen takes risks but is smart with it,’ Sang said. ‘I will make him an offer that he will find very acceptable. I will make him my heir officially, and immediately and he will take my name.’

  It was a lost cause. Baba Tan had never seen Sang so animated. He had made his choice, and Tan knew there was nothing he would be able to say to change the old man’s mind. When he left Sang’s house, a black cloud followed him up High Street, along North Bridge Road and over the rickety bridge.

  Zhen was in the back of the cool, dark godown when Tan came back along Boat Quay. He watched the towkay quietly. The man was deep in thought and sat heavily on one of the seats outside. Some decision had been taken, Zhen felt it.

  Then the figures of some foreigners, two men and a woman, appeared in silhouette in the door frame. Tan rose and greeted them. Zhen moved slowly forward to the window beside the covered way. As he looked through the shutters he saw the woman’s face. It was her. She was looking around, and for a moment she gazed straight at the shutter. He thought they might enter the shop, but within a few minutes they had taken their leave and moved out along the quay. He retreated from the window.

  She was beautiful, more than he had remembered, her eyes like the evening sky. Who could he ask about her? Baba Tan, of course, but he didn’t know the words, and it might be somewhat dangerous. The old clerk was messing about upstairs, sorting and weighing pepper into small sacks. Zhen ran lightly up to the next floor and, to the old man’s shock, grabbed him by the neck and pushed him towards the window. The shutters stood open, and he thrust the fellow’s head out of the window. The foreigners had moved only a short distance down the quay and were now talking to some Arab fellow in white robes and another Chinese bloke who went by the name Whampoa.

  ‘Who are they?’

  The old clerk looked at him as if he was mad.

  ‘Who are they—the foreigners? Come on, you old fool, you must know.’

  ‘All right, keep your shirt on. Of course I know; they visit here all the time. Let me go.’

  Zhen was suddenly ashamed of his roughness with the old man, and let him go with an apology.

  ‘Well, let me see, the Chinese bloke is a Cantonese. Whampoa’s his name. And the Arab fellow is called Al Sayed.’

  Zhen shook his head impatiently and made a fist. His fleeting remorse had deserted him and he wanted to smack the old fool in the head. He said quietly,

  ‘Not them. The others. The woman.’

  The old clerk looked up at him and leered.

  ‘What d’you wanna know for?’

  Zhen raised his fist.

  ‘Hao, hao. The older man is that fellow that does all the building stuff round here. His name is Kuliman. The other young one is the police chief, Mah Crow, and I think that is his sister. I don’t know her name, but I hear from the Chinese who go to the white men’s temple that she is a teacher of their language. They live at the police house round the mouth of the river.’

  Letting the old man go, Zhen gazed down the quay at her until he thought his eyes would drop out of his head. He did not like the way that Whampoa was looking at her.

  He did not understand this effect that she had on him. Did he love her? Impossible. Love at first sight? Rubbish. Yet he watched them without looking away, until finally the three foreigners left the quayside and he went
back to work.

  That evening Zhen ate quickly with Qian on the bayside and told him he was visiting Min. Qian was always embarrassed about this. He had started to realise that he might feel more aroused by men than women. The incident with Zhen had simply made him aware of this possibility. He was not concerned about ideas of homosexuality. The pleasures of the cut sleeve were as ancient as China itself.

  ‘In olden times the gay boys,

  An Ling and Long Yang.

  Fresh, fresh blossom of peach and plum,

  Glowing, glowing with a brilliant sheen,

  Happy as nine springs

  Pliant as branches bent by autumn frost’

  Qian was not inclined to any particular religion or philosophy. He supposed he was the usual mixture of bits and pieces: Buddhist, sometimes Taoist, mostly Confucian. And it was this latter, his Confucianist duty to marriage and family, that had him worried. If he was going to marry, certain things would definitely be expected. He would have liked to talk this over with Zhen, but he was afraid. He loved him, but knew that there was no possibility of … though he often wished it.

  Zhen made his way along Market Street and down Battery Road, past the Indian moneylenders on Chulia Street. He had never come this way and felt a certain trepidation as he turned round the big foreigner’s house and along the small road down by the fort and on to the river’s edge. He settled down on his heels and looked towards the river mouth. From here he could see the police house quite clearly, though all the blinds were down. There was activity visible, as shapes moved to and fro against the light. He imagined her inside the house, inside her room, on her bed, and felt himself becoming aroused. Ashamed for this spying, he stood up and brought himself under control. A soldier on the walls of the fort called out something incomprehensible and waved him away. Zhen moved slowly down the quay.

  His mind was sure now. They would meet; it was inevitable. Nature would take its course. The river of life, the eternal pull of yin and yang in the transcendent Way: this would bring them together. That and perhaps some English lessons. He smiled and, feeling light-hearted, made his way through the thronged streets towards the Thien Hock Keng temple to light some incense and, just for fun, see what the fortune sticks had in store.

  18

  Baba Tan was an unhappy man. He had preferred Zhen over the rather more fey Qian, despite that man’s reliability and quiet cleverness. His daughter, he knew, would be miserable. He rued horribly the day he had decided to let her see the two men. His forefathers had known this. A girl should have no say in marriage. She should just obey her father. As he thought this, a vision of his daughter’s crumpled, accusatory face rose before him. His wife would silently blame him, for the viewing had been his idea. He hung his head in his hands.

  Still, there was a little hope. He had managed to convince Sang to wait until after the Ching Ming Festival, which was only two weeks away.

  Baba Tan’s parents were buried in the cemetery on the Hill of Teng, in Singapore, near the Hang San Teng temple. The festival was less time-consuming for him than for Sang, whose ancestral tablets were in Malacca. He hoped that the festival would keep the old man away from Singapore long enough to figure out a solution to this marriage problem.

  Inchek Sang, by contrast, was a happy man. Seated in his room, on his tiger-skin rug, he was thinking about his decision to make this new man, Zhen, his heir. The pathetic adopted boy would pass down to second son. He had spoken to no one but Tan of his decision yet, not even the prospective bridegroom, but he was confident of the answer he would receive. Zhen was smart enough to know where his best interests lay.

  Sang had agreed with the baba to wait until after Ching Ming. It was fitting that this announcement would first be made to his ancestors, and it was a mere two weeks away. Though Sang’s ancestors were buried in his village in China, tablets to them were in his house in Malacca. He would travel back there to pay them tribute. His own grave would be here in the cemetery, on the hill, not far from the temple to which he was a major donor. His death tablet would be in his house on the ancestral altar. His will specified that this property was to be kept forever untouched, a temple to his soul. He was considering bringing the tablets of his dead relatives here, too; he would speak to the abbot of the temple in Malacca about it while he was there. He would be travelling to Malacca with his wife and the boy within a few days. There was much to do.

  He rose and, locking the door carefully behind him, went across the courtyard. He felt like skipping, his heart was so light. He stopped to admire the bamboo in their pots and the newly budding pink lotus in the small pond. The lotus was the symbol of the eternal cycle of life, of the hope of a spotless spirit rising from a bed of mud; it was the chance of redemption for all his sins through new life. Happiness would re-enter this house as the petals of the budding lotus slowly bloomed into full flower. For the first time in years, a smile came to his lips, revealing his few remaining uneven, yellow teeth.

  He entered his office and took out his calligraphy brushes and ink. Once this man Zhen was installed, he could begin to relax, take up the scholarly pursuits he longed for as old age came upon him. He would read the classics, practice again the calligraphy his father had taught him. A tear came to his eye and dropped onto the exquisite ink stone which he had inherited from his father. A man that he had hated in life had, in the long years following his death, gained a place of unexpected affection in his heart. Now, at the prospect of new life here, a grandson perhaps, his eyes welled up.

  Turning, he sat at his desk and began to draft the letter of agreement with Baba Tan. Before he left for Malacca he wanted everything clear and in writing. No changes of mind.

  Only then did he notice a scroll lying at the side of his desk tied with a red ribbon. Unrolling it, he began to read. His eyes flew open, and he gasped. Suddenly his body felt as it was being tightened in a vice. A searing pain shot across his chest and down his left arm. His face contorted with in agony, and his head jerked. His false queue caught on the horn of the dragon which was carved into the back of his rosewood chair, flew off and landed on the floor. His head dropped with a thump to the desk as his heart beat its last, and the breath leaked from his mouth. His hand fell, and the letter fluttered down, landing delicately on the pile of hair at his feet. His pupils gazed their last on the red-faced statue of Guan Di which stood on his altar.

  An hour later his youngest daughter discovered him when she brought him tea in his favourite teapot and cup. Swan Neo put the tray down calmly on the desk and stood over him. She had never liked her father. Her life, and her mother’s, had been misery inside these walls. She did not care that he was dead; in fact, she was pleased it would cause pain to the first mother and her daughter. For a moment she felt afraid of the unknown to come, now that this certainty was gone. But the fear passed. Slowly she poured some tea into the cup and sipped it, savouring each drop, her gaze fixed on the old man’s staring eyes. Hopefully he is in the first court of hell, staring horrified into the Mirror of Retribution as his life and his sins roll slowly before his eyes. How wonderful the moment when he realises that the next stop is the Lake of Filth and Putrefaction. She smiled, gave him a vicious flick on his dead bony nose then, gathering up the tray, she went to tell her mother.

  With no man in the household to deal with this event, Ah Liang was informed. His first reaction was shock and disbelief. But on arrival at his master’s house, he saw that all the statues of the deities had been covered with red paper and the great mirror in the hall was shrouded. The servants were draping white cloth over the entrance doors. It was true.

  The first wife and daughter were sobbing in the courtyard; the second were nowhere to be seen. He told them to go and prepare the main hall for the coffin’s arrival and light incense on the ancestral table. Sang’s coffin had been made years before. It was carved from a huge piece of mahogany, coated and recoated seven times with tung oil from China until it was a deep black. Ah Liang was not good at this kind of thing
, but he knew enough to have already sent for the coffin from Sang’s godown, where it was stored. The priest from the temple and the undertaker were on their way, and he had placed a red wax seal across the lock of Sang’s strong room.

  He touched the old man’s hand, which was cold, and said a silent prayer to Amitabha Buddha to care for his friend’s soul. He was not a religious man, but this seemed the right thing to do. Sang’s bald pate looked so sad a tear came to his eye, and he searched for the queue.

  Then he noticed the letter on the floor.

  Father-in-law, he read. He stopped in shock. A letter from the son-in-law. They had all thought he was dead. I have repented of my ways and now wish to re-enter the household. By law, I am still married to your eldest daughter and I am sure you will consider her happiness and agree to a meeting. The letter had come via one of Sang’s shops in Medan. The shock of reading it must have caused his death!

  The son-in-law must be at the end of his opium-addicted tether to have imagined reconciliation possible, Ah Liang thought. Simply to have revealed himself put him in mortal danger. A glimmer of hate lit in Ah Liang’s eyes and his hand curled into a fist. He folded the letter and put it carefully into a pocket inside his jacket.

  Sang’s left hand was clutching a paper. Ah Liang quickly checked that there was no other correspondence which needed to be hidden and very carefully extricated the paper from between Sang’s long fingernails. It was addressed to Baba Tan and began by talking of their agreement about the two men, Zhen and Qian, chosen to be their prospective sons-in-law, their understanding that the man Qian …