by Tash Aw
For Tiger, it turned out to be perfect timing that, just then, a strong, hungry-looking young man came asking for work at the Tiger Brand Trading Company.
When Johnny first arrived in town, he did what he always did. He drifted into the nearest coffee shop and had a glass of iced coffee and a slice of bread with condensed milk. He asked the shopkeeper for work—there wasn’t any. Coffee shops were usually poor sources of work, for they were almost always small enough to be run by the members of a single family. Out on the street, he stopped a few people and asked them where they thought he might find work. All of them echoed what the coffee shop keeper had told him: “Tiger Tan’s well-known shop,” they said, pointing at a large shop house in the middle of a terrace on the main street. It was a busy-looking place which seemed to be full of expensive, high-quality merchandise. He realised, as he approached the shop, that fine red dust had settled all over his clothes during his three-hour journey from Tanjung Malim.
“I’m looking for work,” he said to a girl unloading fat bales of cotton from a lorry.
The girl jerked her chin in the direction of the shop. “Ask boss,” she said.
Johnny hesitated before going in. The shop smelled clean and dustless. There were many customers inside, and there was laughter and a rich hum of voices, punctuated with the click-clack of an abacus.
“Yellow shirt, over there,” the girl said as she pushed past Johnny.
Johnny looked over to a darkened corner. A neatly dressed man sat quietly in front of a pile of papers and a small money box. He had kicked off his shoes and was sitting with one ankle resting on the knee of the other leg. Every few seconds he lifted his chin and fanned himself with a sheaf of papers. His hair was combed and brilliantined.
“I want work,” Johnny said simply. “I am a labourer.”
Tiger looked at him hard, assessing him quickly. After all these years he had become a sharp judge of character. It was well known that Tiger could see things in you that you might not have realised yourself.
“What’s your name?” he asked Johnny.
“Lim.”
“Where are you from?”
“Nowhere.”
“What do you mean, nowhere? Everyone comes from somewhere.”
“I mean, I don’t know.”
“Okay—where have you just arrived from?”
“Tanjung Malim.”
“Before that?”
“Grik—and before that Kampung Koh, Teluk Anson, Batu Gajah, Taiping.”
“That’s a lot of places for a kid like you,” Tiger said. This boy looked perfectly ordinary to him—no distinguishing physical features, nothing unusual in his behaviour. He could have been any one of the young drifters who turned up at the shop from time to time. And yet there was something curious about this particular one, something which, unusually, Tiger could not put his finger on. “Tea?” he said, offering Johnny a chair.
Johnny sat down, his baggy shorts pulling back slightly to reveal hard, gnarled knees crisscrossed with scars.
“Of all the jobs you did,” continued Tiger, “which one did you work at the longest?”
“Yeo’s plantation.”
“Near Taiping?”
“Yes.”
“Yeo’s pineapple plantation, right? The boss is Big-Eye Chew—that one?”
Johnny nodded.
A small smile wrinkled Tiger’s eyes. “Why did you like it?”
“I liked the other workers,” Johnny said, looking at his reddened, dust-covered canvas shoes. “I liked the way they lived. Together. The bosses too.”
“I know that camp well.”
“The workers there were like me. But I couldn’t stay. I had to go.”
“Why?”
“I had done bad things, people said.”
“Sometimes that happens.”
Johnny cleared his throat.
Tiger poured more tea. “What are you good at?”
“Everything,” Johnny said, “except machines.”
Johnny proved to be one of the most diligent employees ever to have worked at the Tiger Brand Trading Company. He began by doing what the other casual workers did—packing, loading, storing, sorting. Backbreaking work. But Johnny was not like the other illiterate workers. He observed and he learned. Soon he knew the names of all the different textiles he handled, and how they were made. He learned to tell the difference between chintz and cretonne, Chinese silk and Thai silk, serge and gabardine. He especially liked the printed patterns of milkmaids and cowsheds on the imitation French cotton made in Singapore. But more than anything, he loved the batik and the gold-woven songket which were delivered to the shop by the old cataract-eyed Malay women who had made them, here in the Valley.
“Put them on the last shelf, over there,” Tiger snorted, pointing to a recess in the farthest corner of the shop, every time a new supply of batik was delivered. “Low-grade rubbish.” Compared to the imported foreign material, it was true that the batik was rough. The dyes were uneven and the patterns, traced out by hand, were never consistent. The colours faded quickly even on the best ones, leaving only a ghostly impression of the original shades. But Johnny liked the irregular patterns. He must have, because later in his life, when he could afford to wear anything he wanted, he would always wear batik for special occasions such as Chinese New Year or Ching Ming. They were his lucky shirts too. He would wear them if one of his horses was running in a big race in Ipoh, and sometimes, if he had to put on a jacket and tie, he would wear a lucky batik shirt under his starched white shirt, even though it made him hot and sweaty. He had red ones, blue ones, and green ones. The blues were my favourite. From far away, when he wasn’t looking, I used to trace the outlines of the patterns with my eyes. Brown dappled shapes stretched like sinews, swimming in the deep pools of the blue background. On his back these shadows danced and shifted quietly—hiding, folding over, tumbling across one another.
In Tiger’s shop, however, batik was considered second-rate, hardly worth selling. You didn’t go to Tiger Tan if you wanted to buy ordinary material made in broken-down sheds in Machang.
“Remember,” Tiger said to his employees, “this is a place where little dreams are sold.”
Before long, Johnny was given more important tasks, such as counting stock and then, finally, serving customers. Tiger gave him two new white shirts to wear when serving in the shop, and Johnny kept them clean and neatly pressed at all times. It turned out he was a natural salesman with an easy style all his own. Like Tiger, Johnny was never loud nor overly persuasive. He pushed hard yet never too far. He cajoled but rarely flattered. Although he always tried to sell the most expensive things in the shop, he knew it was better to sell something cheap than nothing at all. He had a sense for what each customer wanted, and he always made a sale.
The incident with the White Woman, for example, became legendary. Like so many other things in Johnny’s life, this incident seemed to happen without the faintest warning or explanation. Why she should have picked him instead of any other person in the shop no one will ever know. Perhaps there was no reason at all, just one small step on the curious path of fate.
The White Woman was a mixed-race widow of great and strange beauty. She stood a full six feet tall, and although all who saw her agreed that her features were striking, none could agree on exactly what her features were. Everyone said different things of her face. Was she moonfaced or gaunt? Doe-eyed or cruel? Butter-skinned or powdery-white? She was the mistress of a rubber planter in the Valley, a Frenchman named Clouet (“Kloot” was how people pronounced it) who drank too much samsu and did not care for his plantation. He had suffered badly in the great crash at the start of the thirties and now all he had left were a few hundred acres of dry rubber trees and a wife who hated the mosquitoes and skin rot of the tropics. He had the White Woman, whom he loved, but their lives were a forked path. He could not live with her or be seen in public with her for fear of losing his job. He wasn’t even allowed to take her with him into the
Planter’s Club. Every so often, her washing lady would come into town and spread gossip about Clouet taking the White Woman away to France. But everyone knew it would never happen.
A hush crept across the shop when she entered. She stood for a second, casting her gaze from shelf to shelf, inspecting the bales of cloth and the neat piles of folded-up clothing. Three times a year, she came into Tiger’s shop to buy the best of the new merchandise. Usually, she would send a note in advance of her visit to let Tiger know when she would be arriving and what she needed to buy. In addition to all the usual items on a wealthy woman’s list, such as French tablecloths and plain unbleached Indian cotton for the servants’ clothing, she would also include camisoles or nightdresses because she knew that Tiger would prepare discreet little parcels for her, protected from the gaze of the other customers. Tiger would make sure that he was personally on hand to receive her, but on this occasion, no note preceded the visit. The White Woman had unexpectedly passed through Kampar. The recently built bridge at Teluk Anson had been swept away by floods the month before and work on a new one had not yet started. Her diverted journey took her too close to Tiger’s shop for her to resist temptation. Tiger, however, was not there that day, and all who were present in the shop noticed her displeasure. She kept her hat on and picked at the beads on her purse while she looked around the shop, casting her gaze upon the assistants until, finally, her scowl came to rest on Johnny.
“I will assist you if you wish,” Johnny said. He was the only one of the people in the shop who dared to speak.
“Where is Mr. Tan?” the White Woman said.
“He is away today—on business,” Johnny said. “I am in charge today.”
The White Woman approached the counter and laid her purse on the glass cabinets displaying lace handkerchiefs. Johnny noticed the soft black satin of the purse. Across the black surface, little beads were stitched meticulously into the shape of a dragon chasing a flaming pearl across a stormy sea.
“What would you like, madam?”
“Show me something beautiful,” the White Woman said, looking at Johnny. “Do you think you can do that?”
Johnny looked her in the eye. “I think so,” he said.
He moved slowly from one end of the shop to the other, touching bales of cloth, feeling their texture before deciding whether to take them or leave them. Sometimes he unfurled a length of fabric against the light and narrowed his eyes. He seemed to be searching for something hidden—no one in the shop knew exactly what he was looking for. All this time the White Woman watched him with increasing fascination, her initial irritation beginning to fade. She could not figure out what this curious young man was doing. There seemed to be a mysterious logic to his actions—but what?
“Here,” he said at last, “these will make you happy.”
“What’s this one?” she said, feeling some cloth between her fingers. It was thin and silky, with a single cream-coloured flower printed across it.
“It’s French.”
“It doesn’t look French to me. The pattern isn’t very rich.”
“But it is French, madam, the very latest, I am told. You can wear it next to your body, even in the hot months. See how it touches your skin,” Johnny said, gently sweeping it over her hand.
“I’d use it for tablecloths.”
“This,” said Johnny, draping another length of cloth over his shoulder, “is very special.”
“It has no pattern at all.”
“That is true. But see how the light shines on it, and through it?”
“Am I to wear that?”
“Of course not. But your windows—are they big? I thought so. Use this to make curtains.”
“Curtains? Without a pattern?”
“I have seen them in the latest American magazines,” Johnny said, holding up the cloth in front of his face. “I can see you but can you see me?”
“No.”
“Next, my favourite, something so beautiful it will take your breath away,” Johnny said, undoing a brown parcel.
“It’s batik,” the White Woman said, plainly and somewhat quizzically.
He pushed a plate of pink lotus cakes toward her and refilled her teacup.
“We are exporting this,” Johnny said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “to Europe. No one knows about this yet. This is specially made for us.”
“But it looks like ordinary batik.”
“A batch of the very same material with exactly the same pattern has just been sent to Port Wellesley for shipment to London, Paris, America.”
“I see.”
The people in the shop were intrigued. This was the first they had ever heard of batik being shipped to Europe. Their minds raced. Was it possible that the same sarongs used by their grand-mothers would be used in London? How did Tiger keep this secret?
The order was placed, the notes counted out, and the goods despatched that same day to the White Woman’s home.
“You sold her batik,” Tiger said over and over again, reaching for the whisky when he learnt what had happened. “She will never come back to the shop again.” His mood lightened, however, when he realised Johnny had sold the entire stock of unsellable batik, which had languished for many months at the back of the stock cupboards. He had also got rid of a large quantity of cheap Chinese gauze at a highly inflated price. The peony-printed satin, an expensive lapse in Tiger’s judgement (he had overordered from the new mill in Singapore before he had even seen a sample), was sold without a single cent’s discount.
After a few days a note arrived from the White Woman, thanking the Tiger Brand Trading Company for always keeping beautiful yet practical textiles in stock. The note singled out Johnny for special praise, and Tiger proudly showed it to all his customers. He also began to regard Johnny in a new light.
During the time he worked in the shop, Johnny lived in a room in Tiger’s house along with several other young men and women, all of whom (so Johnny understood) worked in one way or another for the Party. Although they were all employed at Tiger’s shop, their paths did not otherwise cross. In the evenings they went their separate ways, disappearing into the night and reappearing before daybreak for their communal breakfasts, always taken at five-fifteen. Johnny wondered what kind of things they did after they slipped out of the house at night. Attending passionate lectures, plotting attacks on administrative buildings across the Valley, spying on VIPs in Ipoh, cleaning machine guns, setting booby traps deep in the jungle. Maybe they were even killing people. The thought made him shiver with excitement. He wanted to be with them.
Johnny himself had not yet experienced life as a true Communist. Up to that point he had, of course, worked in many places run by people with Communist leanings, but he had never yet been approached to do anything. Someone had given him a leaflet once. The words seemed cold on the thin paper, and did not arouse in him any feelings of duty. He tried reading some of the books on Tiger’s shelves. He reached, first of all, for Karl Marx, though he did not know why. Perhaps he had heard that name before, or perhaps the simple, strong sound of the words as he read them slowly to himself compelled him to take it into his room. Das. Ka-pi-tal. He said it several times in the privacy of his room. His lips felt strange when they spoke, and he felt curiously exhilarated. But he had not understood anything in the book. Even the Chinese version was beyond his comprehension. What the words said was plain enough, but the meaning behind them remained hidden from him. He grew to prefer the English version. Every night he would look at the book, reading a few lines in his poor English, hoping he would suddenly find a trapdoor into that vast world he knew lay beyond the page. Somehow it made him feel more important, more grown-up, as if he was part of a bigger place.
One Friday afternoon when all the shops were closed and the muezzin’s call drifted thinly across town, Johnny came across one of the other men in the garden. He was resting in the shade of a chiku tree, legs apart, sharpening a parang with smooth, strong strokes. His legs and bare torso were fle
cked with cut grass, and his hands rough with dirt.
“I need to light a bonfire,” Johnny said, “to burn grass and old leaves. When will you be finished?”
“I’m finished,” the man (Gun was his name) said.
Johnny started for the far end of the garden beyond the fruit trees, where he kept the tools. The steady metallic ring of the sharpening blade cut the hot afternoon air.
“Hey,” Gun said, “I heard about you.”
“What about me?” Johnny said, barely turning around.
“I heard about the Darby Mine. Everybody knows.”
“So what? I can’t even remember that.”
Gun began to laugh—a high-pitched wail, like a wounded animal’s call in the middle of the jungle. “Hey, brother, don’t have that hard look on your face. You’re a real big-time hero, don’t you know that? Everyone talks about the guy who chopped that English bastard’s leg off.”
“I didn’t chop his leg off.”
“Sure, of course not,” Gun continued, eyes squeezed shut with laughter. “Come, sit down.”
“Who told you—Tiger?” Johnny said, watching Gun carefully. The parang was balanced between Gun’s knees, glistening and hot.
“No, everyone knows. Like I said, you’re famous, brother. Why do you think you’re still alive and healthy? Why do you think you’re always able to find work? Have you thought about that? It’s because we—our people—take care of each other here in the Valley. In the whole damn bastard country, in fact. The whole bloody wide world. Do you agree?”
“I suppose.”