‘Sorry-lah, no have,’ the man replied. ‘Japan-made bicycles more cheap. We here no have them, Japanese shops got-lah.’
I asked to try out a bicycle anyway. Looking clean and lustrous, they were certainly tempting. ‘No problem,’ the man said. ‘Which one?’
I pointed to a medium-sized bicycle with a sturdy seat and a bell on the front. ‘Good choice,’ the man told me approvingly. ‘I am called Lee Tsin-sang. I think you sit on one before, yes?’
When I shook my head, I saw the surprise on Lee Tsin-sang’s face. ‘Hmm . . . you want to try a tricycle first?’
‘No!’ I said impatiently. ‘I want a bicycle.’
While I stood beside the vehicle, the man lowered the seat. Then he wheeled the bicycle on to the road for me and beckoned me over. All the while Lee Tsin-sang continued to hold the handlebars. I strode towards the machine with my heart pumping, trying to work out how I would get on to the seat in my sarong. Lee Tsin-sang helped me, and I was soon sitting firmly. With both feet on the pedals, I became terrified of not being able to get down and told him to continue holding on while I made sure my feet could touch the ground.
Once I was certain I could reach the safety of land without having to climb off, I felt ready to go. ‘You must pedal, otherwise you fall,’ Lee Tsin-sang said.
As soon as he took his hands off the handlebar, the bicycle swerved to the right. The thing had a mind of its own – I was utterly powerless. Everything happened so fast. One second I was in position, both hands firmly on the bar at the front, a foot on each pedal, the next the front bar had turned sideways and my feet were somewhere else – where exactly I couldn’t tell – but I was no longer on the seat. I felt myself slipping quickly. I would have fallen hard, right on to the road, had Lee Tsin-sang not grabbed the bicycle from behind with one hand and with his other hand clutched my arm in time to catch me.
Siew Lan came running up. ‘Chye Hoon, you good-mah?’ she panted.
I nodded, face puffed up with indignation, because I hadn’t managed even a single round on the pedals. I wanted to try again.
‘Really-ah, Chye Hoon? I scared you hurt yourself,’ Siew Lan said in a concerned voice.
With Lee Tsin-sang standing by, I lifted myself slowly on to the hard bicycle seat. I put my right foot on the pedal and turned it round a few times to make sure it worked. Then I took a deep breath. Holding tightly on to the front bar, I gingerly lifted my left foot on to the second pedal. That was when the problems began. The bar swung wildly from side to side, as it had the first time. I wobbled. Trying desperately to put my feet on the road, I came off the seat and knocked hard against the front bar. In that split second a rip could be heard – the sound of my sarong tearing – and I found myself in a heap on the road. The bicycle bell rang from the impact. Fortunately I escaped with minor injuries; when Lee Tsin-sang and Siew Lan helped me up, they found a small tear at the side of my sarong, though only my hands were grazed. However, a bruise appeared the next day, and I could not walk properly.
As I handed the vehicle back to Lee Tsin-sang, I felt deflated. Not only had my pride been dented, but I was deeply irritated with myself. It had looked so easy when I observed others riding, yet balancing on two wheels was clearly no small feat.
‘Hard in a sarong,’ Lee Tsin-sang said sympathetically, trying to help me save face. ‘You want to try a tricycle?’
I shook my head. With their additional wheel, those were even more expensive, and I had no wish to humiliate myself further. As we climbed into a rickshaw, Siew Lan held on to my hands, because I remained shaky on my feet. ‘Only your first time ride bicycle. You do very well-ah, Chye Hoon,’ she whispered. My dear friend would have thought me crazy if she knew that I hadn’t given up on the idea – far from it. But I had learnt one important thing: I would not be the person to ride it.
The next time we saw each other, Siew Lan tackled me again about sending my girls to the English school.
‘You already see boys’ school – why not go to girls’ school too?’ She looked hard at me across the table.
Outside, thunder rolled across the Kinta plains. I didn’t know what to say. ‘You scared what?’ my friend persisted. Where to begin? There were so many things. ‘Tell me,’ Siew Lan said encouragingly.
And so I started, right from where my life had commenced, in Songkhla. As the rains came down that Friday afternoon, Siew Lan sat with me, sipping coffee and chewing betel nut leaves. I caught sight of her gums every now and again, their dark brooding stains peeping out at me. I told her how I had been curious from a young age about the mysterious squiggles Father used to draw with his quill pen and ink, how I even toppled his inkpot and was forbidden thereafter to watch him. I recalled my many battles with Mother, including the time I bit her arm because I wanted to go to school. Siew Lan burst into laughter at this, telling me in the nicest possible way that I must have been a little monster.
I laughed too, but when we began to talk about my daughters, my heart turned heavy. I mentioned the ambitions I had harboured for them, how we had tried, and failed, to find a Chinese school. ‘But now have English school!’ Siew Lan exclaimed.
‘I know,’ I said pensively.
‘So then, you wait for what? Your sons do well in new school, isn’t it?’
That was exactly the problem: the boys had settled in easily – perhaps a little too easily. Within a fortnight my eldest son, Weng Yu, had begun clamouring for Western-style shirts and trousers. ‘English shirts better for English school, Mama,’ he told me. Following this example, his brothers did the same. When I refused to allow English dress, a war had ensued, during which Weng Yu refused to speak in our house. Silence was his weapon; he ground my spirit with it until I relented, as he knew I would. I forgave my little prince, knowing how the boy’s heart ached for his father, as mine did. After all, what did clothes matter? The result was that my sons were now walking down our hill on the Lahat Road in sharp-collared shirts and crisp white trousers.
But I knew our struggle was about more than that. The Anglo-Chinese School had changed the boys, especially my eldest son. ‘How?’ Siew Lan demanded.
Through the open windows, the rain fell in sheets, beating hard against the gravel road. I struggled for words. The difference was difficult to fathom – a slight sneer perhaps, even an air of superiority.
‘Weng Yu?’ Siew Lan said, frowning. ‘But he such nice boy!’ I took a sip of coffee. ‘Maybe . . . you just imagine it, Chye Hoon.’
I shook my head. Weng Yu, I pointed out, had also stopped playing with the neighbourhood boys, whom I realised didn’t speak English.
‘Hmm . . .’ was all Siew Lan said by way of reply, but she added, ‘You spoil Weng Yu too much.’
Betel nut juice stung the insides of my mouth. I moved the cud, already well chewed, to the front, the part between gums and teeth, where I rolled it from side to side with my tongue. My friend’s reprimand brought a sigh. What could I do? Weng Yu reminded me so much of his father that just catching sight of him melted my heart. Besides, he was my eldest son; how could I not spoil him?
‘Ai-yahh!’ Siew Lan cried out. ‘Why we talk about this for so long? Nothing to do with your girls even! Tell me, why not visit girls’ school?’
Outside, the rain slowed to a trickle. Clouds had parted, to let a sliver of sunlight through, which brightened the barlay floor. I sat uneasily, thinking about Hui Fang, who was then nearly fourteen and unable to walk anywhere without attracting male attention. Her sister Hui Ying, just a year younger, was even better-looking but wholly unembarrassed by catcalls; she would stab any man who dared whistle at her with an icy stare until he lowered his head. I smiled wryly whenever I thought about my second daughter. Her papa’s death had blunted none of her battle instincts; instead, she had grown up overnight, one day all arms and legs, the next sitting still, worrying for her younger siblings.
‘My daughters soon marry,’ I told Siew Lan.
‘Yes-lah, Chye Hoon, is like that, but you
want them well prepared, isn’t it?’ Siew Lan retorted. ‘In this life anything can happen.’
Though Siew Lan had said this calmly, she had a knowing look which left me in no doubt as to what she meant. I took a deep breath.
‘Going to school also may be no use to me, my friend,’ I said softly. ‘My cooking is more important. Bring us money.’
‘Good heart! Why you speak like that? If you know how to read and write, today you also not know what you do!’
‘Maybe more hard for me to marry,’ I said. I reminded her how marriage had almost eluded me.
‘I keep telling you, the world now different. If your girls not know how to read or write, they are at disadvantage!’
I could no longer think. Somewhere at the back of my mind were competing voices, one telling me to send my girls to school as I had once wanted, the other warning me not to. I was aware of an anxiety that would not let go. A picture of the large spider’s web I had tangled up and broken earlier that day came to haunt me; I felt sorry for the poor spider as I grabbed the delicate white threads in my hands, twisting them up and throwing the whole lot into a dustbin. The feel of the threads had made my skin crawl, and I had gone immediately to wash my hands.
When Siew Lan touched my arm, I jumped. My friend looked me squarely in the eye. ‘Your daughters are already good cooks. Why not let them read and write too?’
A shadow fell across the barlay. The sun, which had peeped out previously, now slunk back behind the storm clouds, which continued to adorn the skies. ‘I . . . I scared, Siew Lan. I scared . . . lose my boys.’
The unexpected confession brought tears to my eyes, though I had no idea why I was crying. I told Siew Lan how I had failed to consult the temple priest before allowing my sons to change schools. Why, I didn’t even ask Kuan Yin for her blessing! What had I been thinking? My feelings, still in a state of ferment, were expelling their poignant odours.
‘I . . . I . . . h-have to consult the priest,’ I finally stammered to my friend.
21
In the same period I became increasingly worried about my youngest son, Weng Foo. Little Weng Foo had a special place in my heart because he was the only child to have been born after his father’s departure for China. Perhaps my troubled mind had affected him, for Weng Foo came out tiny, and his health had always been precarious. Enticing Weng Foo to eat was a running joke in our house. Short of leashing my son to a chair so that Li-Fei could force morsels down his throat, there seemed no other way of improving Weng Foo’s figure, which was that of a stick insect on two legs. He caught every cough and cold in town and was often down with fever. Just days after Siew Lan’s visit, he complained of a sore throat. Soon, with his head feeling hot, he began coughing like an opium smoker, and it looked as if I would have to take him to see Dr Wong yet again.
Visits to the clinic were a ritual we had started a few years back. In the months after Peng Choon passed away, I had had little time to deal with Weng Foo’s health. Whenever he lay awake crying at night, I would rock him in my arms until he went back to sleep. The next day, as soon as I finished my kueh rounds, I would take him to see Dr Wong, a physician trained in Chinese medicine who had a clinic on Treacher Street. We became such regular visitors that the nurses at the Lee Chai Dispensary knew my son by name. Dr Wong’s herbal concoctions soothed Weng Foo’s ailments but failed to fatten the boy. Or indeed to strengthen him; when the next illness came to town, he would again succumb, and the trip to Treacher Street would have to be repeated.
With the kueh business on a sounder footing, I had more time to focus on my children. I wondered what else I could do for my youngest son’s health. Feeling Weng Foo’s hot head and hearing his splutters, I thought it time I added his ailments to the list of questions I would take to the temple priest. I made an appointment at the Nan Tien Temple. My visit could not come soon enough.
The temple is one of several shrines built within the limestone caves surrounding Ipoh. A newer temple had been opened next to it, but until that day I had never been to either, because the trip to the caves was arduous. From where we lived the journey took a good hour and a half, and longer if the rickshaw puller happened to be tired from his previous efforts, which meant that the pullers often had to be enticed with double the usual fare.
As I sat in our vehicle with Siew Lan, all was quiet along the Gopeng Road. We were each deep in our thoughts, interrupted only by the sound of the puller’s soft footfall against ground baked dry by the searing sun. Just outside Ipoh large compounds came into view; these surrounded the mansions of the wealthy, which were concealed behind solid brick walls. Through heavy metallic gates I caught glimpses of what lay beyond – the sprawling pale buildings in the English style of the school my sons attended. Some of the houses were so grand they had long driveways with large porches, obviously designed for several motor cars, as well as fat, incongruous towers. Their fine shuttered windows and red-tiled roofs stretched for miles.
Eventually the houses gave way to a luxuriant emerald on both sides of the road where secondary jungle had been cleared. There were open fields, many overrun with weeds – the lalang – that grow everywhere on this land. In between the clumps of lalang were small estates dotted with rubber trees, where I could see Klings, the labourers brought in from southern India, at work. Many were cutting slits into the barks of the rubber trees, the streams of white already visible from the gashes they had made. Yet others collected the cloudy liquid from small cups that hung suspended on the trunks. Every now and again, when we spied a clearing a Malay kampong would come into view, and raised wooden houses would peep out from beneath clumps of coconut and betel palm trees.
Always in the distance were the hills. I had loved Ipoh’s hills from the moment I set eyes on them. On rain-soaked afternoons when everything outside was cool, the trees became dark, turning the hills black. Light mist occasionally drifted in, its white veil like the brushstrokes on a perfect Chinese painting. On hot mornings I could see the exposed rock more clearly and marvelled at the shapes which had been created: narrow pendants stretching down like long teardrops, and in the opposite direction, thick mounds rising up from beneath, seemingly without effort, sculpted by years of the rain and wind that had lashed down over the Kinta Valley.
The head priest, Tai Fatt Shi Tan, was strolling in the gardens when we arrived. He was a short man, barely taller than my five feet two inches. He was clad in the black slippers and robes of a monk – a simple yellow tunic that fell to his toes, which he wore wrapped around his shoulders. As he greeted us, a line of monkeys with cheeky grey faces scuttled past, swinging their long tails from side to side. A lone fruit seller had set up a stall in the garden, and I bought a handful of oranges from him. In front of us the temple soared. It had been built into the opening of one of the caves, and reaching high up, it beckoned with its air of mystery.
The fatt shi walked quickly. We had to run to follow him. Fortunately the main entrance wasn’t far. As we hurried along, I saw that the walls of the temple were made of solid brick and had been freshly painted white. Once inside I was surprised by its dark interior. Perhaps that was to be expected, it being a cave, but given the many windows dotted around, I had expected more light. It took several minutes before my eyes adjusted to the gloom within.
When I could see once more, I noticed a round gold-coloured urn filled with ash. Used joss-sticks were planted into the grey mass, some with ends still alight and continuing to flicker red like the dying embers on hot coals. The smell of burning incense wafted through the air. In the distance I heard the hum of sutras echoing through the caves. A shiver ran through me; whether because I was moved by the soft chanting or by a sudden blast of cold air, I couldn’t tell.
A long set of steps rose up, so high that my neck hurt just peering at them. I silently hoped the fatt shi wasn’t about to lead us there. It was then, while craning my neck, that I saw the magnificent shapes hanging down from the roof of the cave. They had been carved into the stone b
y water, which continued to seep down. Some of the rock glistened like polished marble, and a trickling could be heard every now and again. For a minute I forgot everything. I could only stare at the majestic art before our eyes – the weeping needles and pieces like immortal creatures, part dragon, part lion, all carved into the rock.
‘You look. So beautiful-hah?’ Siew Lan whispered. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘See that one there?’ I pointed to a low-hanging piece in a corner of the main room we were traversing. From where we were and with the little light we had, the rock face had turned a breathtaking green, the colour of pure jade.
The fatt shi led us further inside, deep into the belly of the cave. When I realised we would not have to climb steep steps, I breathed a sigh of relief. The path along which he took us was flat but dark. The lamp the fatt shi held in his hand barely illuminated our way. ‘Careful here,’ he said as we went down a narrow alley where the roof of the cave was so low that we could nearly touch it with the tops of our heads. Walking along that alley, I had to use my hands to guide me, and for the first time I felt Ipoh’s hills in the palms of my hands. The rock was solid yet amazingly smooth. It didn’t cut into my flesh even when I ran my fingers along its edges.
As we walked, the chanting became louder. The cave eventually opened on to a clearing, where an inner temple stood. There the monks were evidently in prayer. Trees had been planted in the open space, around a small pond in which a handful of turtles were basking. To this day I remember how still it was – not a sound could be heard apart from the chanting of the monks. The air smelt fresh; it was cool, clean mountain air which came straight from the hills. A peace descended on me and I remember thinking instantly that this would be my place of rest, this place where the breath of the gods blew.
The fatt shi invited us to sit down under a tree where a heavy stone table and a few chairs had been placed. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked. I looked at him, this calm, mild-mannered man who must have been sixty but whose face remained remarkably youthful, with barely a wrinkle in sight. After Siew Lan and I had sat down, he placed a pair of round gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose and surveyed us before setting his glasses down firmly on the table.
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 18