The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds
Page 19
I began my story, explaining the turmoil I had felt for weeks, a turbulence so violent it was affecting my sleep. That was the reason, I said, I had decided to consult more than one priest. I told the fatt shi what I had done since my husband passed away, how I’d sent my boys to a Chinese school first and then transferred them to an English school without consulting Kuan Yin. I told him about the change I had noticed in all my boys, especially the eldest, and how worried I was that I had angered the gods through my lack of attention. I wondered aloud whether I should send my girls to school too. I told him about my sickly youngest child, who was in bed with yet another cough. We had been to a doctor repeatedly and I now needed help. What should I do?
The fatt shi listened patiently, interrupting only to ask a question here and there. When I had finished, he invited me to join him in prayer. There was a simple altar just inside the shelter of the cave, a table on which a small statue of the Lord Buddha had been placed, illuminated by an array of candles. We laid down my offering of fruit, lit three joss-sticks each and began chanting. The fatt shi led the sutra, while Siew Lan and I followed in unison.
How long we stood there I cannot say, but the sun was high in the sky when we left. I loitered in the clearing for as long as I could to savour that glorious mountain air one last time. I was disappointed that the fatt shi could not give me an answer then and there. We would need to make the same trip again in a fortnight, when he promised to tell me what I wanted to know.
Meanwhile trouble was brewing. On Siew Lan’s next visit, I could tell as soon as she entered our house that something had happened.
‘Got problem-ah?’ I asked.
‘Have war,’ she told me.
‘Really?’ I looked up in surprise. ‘Where?’
‘Europe,’ she replied.
It was the middle of 1914. Siew Lan explained that a war had broken out in which many countries were involved, including Britain. Her husband, she said, had become very sad and told her constantly that he would have gone off to fight if he’d been younger.
‘Ai-yahh! Good heart! Good thing then he not young-lah,’ I said. I had never understood this obsession men had about fighting. I took in Siew Lan’s news about a war and kept it somewhere at the back of my head. Unlike the other problems I was facing, this war that was being fought so many miles away seemed unconnected to me. It was too remote, too much of a white man’s war.
Within weeks, however, our kueh sales declined. For no apparent reason the townspeople became reluctant to spend money, even on eating. Next the price of tin plummeted and was the talk of the town once more. Mining coolies flooded in, searching for work. Not for the first time, some sought to return permanently to China, while others tried their hand at whatever they could: they swept roads, pulled rickshaws and did odd jobs here and there. My boys mentioned that their school was emptying; classmates whose parents could no longer afford the fees left.
I realised then that the white man’s war, despite being fought a distance away, was having an impact on Ipoh. Whether or not I liked it, our destinies were intertwined, and for the first time I understood why many locals supported the British in their war efforts. I paid more attention to Siew Lan’s updates as the war, which rumbled on, became almost as real as Weng Foo’s numerous illnesses.
In the two weeks between my trips to the Nan Tien Temple, my youngest son continued coughing badly. His chest filled with fluid and he brought up green phlegm. His head, though not burning, remained hot. We had already visited Dr Wong a second time when Siew Lan pressed me to see another doctor, one of the local boys who had come back with a set of Western medical degrees. ‘No,’ I told her firmly. ‘What Chinese doctor do, I understand. The herbs, plants, those I know. But English doctor-ah . . . you don’t even know what the medicine made from.’ Besides, I pointed out, I was still waiting for word from the fatt shi.
Until then, I kept constant watch over my son, barely sleeping for seven days and seven nights.
Two weeks later, at the appointed time I went to the Nan Tien Temple. I was alone, and the fatt shi looked grave when he saw me. His answers were brief.
‘The gods have said you can leave your boys in the English school, but don’t send your girls. As for your youngest son, give him to Kuan Yin to be her godson. That’s the only way he can become healthier.’
With that, the priest rushed off. Throughout the ride home I pondered his words. I did not know what adoption by the Goddess of Mercy entailed, but I knew I would obey the gods no matter what it took. At last they had spoken. Sitting back in the rickshaw, I stretched my legs out, suffused with relief, imagining the face of the young man Weng Foo would one day become. In the distance Ipoh’s limestone hills shimmered.
22
The following afternoon Siew Lan rushed to our house. She was meant to have accompanied me on that second trip to the Nan Tien Temple, but her son, Don, had fallen ill with fever. Impatient for news, she turned up as soon as Don was better.
‘So?’ my friend asked breathlessly.
Her look of anticipation melted when she heard what Fatt Shi Tan had said.
‘Hmm . . . ,’ she muttered. Her normally large eyes narrowed and fixed directly on me. ‘So, you think what about his answer?’
‘Have what to think?’ I said quietly. ‘I ask, he give answer, now must listen.’
The delicious smells of sambal frying tickled my nostrils. I had not long been home from traipsing around town with kueh; with the back of my head still pounding from the heat, the last thing I wanted was to talk about the girls. I had already decided to leave the boys at their English school, a thought which gnawed at my soul, because with each passing day my sons acted more like our rulers. They refused to wear their sarongs at home. They whispered in English, even amongst themselves. They consorted with others who did likewise, ceasing to play with the neighbourhood boys who had previously been their friends. There was little doubt my sons were drifting away. Yet the gods had made it clear I should let them be, and I consoled myself with the thought that what I was doing was best for their futures.
The subject of my daughters seemed less straightforward. At the back of my mind lay the certainty that men did not like smart women, and it would be easier for my daughters to marry if they didn’t go to school. But the fatt shi’s instruction not to send them also tore me apart. How could it not when I remembered how I too had once craved to learn?
From the look she gave me, I saw that Siew Lan sensed this ambiguity. Her ringing silence made her own opinion abundantly clear. She arched her right eyebrow sceptically upwards, while I shifted uneasily on the barlay.
Seconds passed which felt as heavy as the hours. Abruptly Siew Lan announced that my eldest son, Weng Yu, had turned up at her house while I was away at the caves.
‘He want what?’ I asked, perplexed.
‘He want see Se-Too-Wat. Weng Yu not know how to do his homework, ask questions.’
I sighed. The image of my dimpled son seeking help from a hairy white man with alcohol breath unsettled me, but I didn’t have the heart to say so to his wife. Besides, I could not have helped Weng Yu with schoolwork. ‘I hope he no disturb your husband,’ I said as mildly as I could manage.
‘No, Chye Hoon, don’t worry,’ my friend replied breezily. ‘Se-Too-Wat like Weng Yu. He say very good boy. Now already clever speak English!’ After a pause Siew Lan added with a knowing look, ‘Weng Yu now big boy. Good he speak to a man.’
I coloured, letting Siew Lan’s remark drop as the smells from the kitchen told me lunch was ready. The pungent aromas of dried shrimp, chillies and coconut milk wafted into the inner hall. I closed my eyes, inhaling those comforting childhood scents.
The Kuan Yin Temple was the first temple I had stepped into after Peng Choon and I arrived in Ipoh, but its location proved inconvenient for regular visits. It stood off Brewster Road at the top of the town, which made it a lot further than the Pa Lo Old Temple, where I had met Siew Lan. After the births of our children,
I preferred praying in the quiet of our home, and the early years in Ipoh saw me venturing to the temple less and less. There came a time, after our fifth child, when I began to visit the temple only on festival days. The temples were at their most crowded then: everyone went, including those who only showed up when they needed help and remained godless the rest of the year.
In the weeks leading up to Weng Foo’s dedication ceremony, I tested the patience of Tai Fatt Shi Ong at the Kuan Yin Temple, though he never showed it. He was the head priest, a tall man with a kindly face who spoke in a deep, solemn voice that reminded me of Father’s. ‘Asking Kuan Yin to adopt your son is a big step,’ he said. ‘You must be ready.’ Fatt Shi Ong pointed out that Weng Foo would be entering into a sacred bond from which release would be possible only when the boy sought it himself, which he could do just before marrying. Until then Weng Foo would be expected to revere his godmother, the Goddess. As a sign of his fidelity, Weng Foo would have to renounce the eating of beef, the meat of a sacred animal.
The fatt shi presented these details as we meandered through the gardens. Like his counterpart at the Nan Tien Temple in the caves, he too walked at a pace. I puffed and panted trying to keep up, all the while imagining life without the delights of prawns and chicken, pork and fish. I knew that what the fatt shi was proposing was far from vegetarianism, yet I wondered where it would all end once my son stopped eating beef.
Beneath the leaves of an acacia tree, its glorious shape spread out above us like a Chinese fan, the fatt shi sensed my uncertainty. He reminded me what the act of adoption meant. ‘You are giving your son to Kuan Yin,’ he said. ‘In return, she will take care of him in this and other lives.
‘Are you ready?’ Fatt Shi Ong asked. When I looked away, the priest proposed giving me more time. ‘Come back and talk to me whenever you want.’
My nerves over Weng Foo must have caused me to lose some of the steel for which I had become famous, for it was just then that the incident with Weng Yu occurred.
My eldest son was thirteen and had been at the Anglo-Chinese School for two years. He often visited Siew Lan’s house, where he spent time with her husband and son. It was a friendship I grudgingly accepted, since the boy continued to do well in school. The reports Weng Yu brought back at the end of each term, read first by Siew Lan’s husband and then relayed to me by my friend, were excellent. Weng Yu had never had trouble at school, which is why when he returned one day to say that his teacher had asked to see me I was surprised.
‘You naughty-ah?’
‘No,’ he replied.
‘You say “No, Mama”, not just “No”.’
Weng Yu looked sullenly at me. He was nearly my height by then, but not so tall that I couldn’t stare him down. Our eyes bore into each other’s, before my son dropped his gaze, mumbling ‘No, Mama’ so reluctantly that I could hardly hear him.
‘What, Weng Yu? You so soft speak I also no hear.’
‘No, Mama,’ he repeated, after which he added a phrase under his breath, a hiss he assumed I would never hear – ‘Silly old woman.’ Through a shaft of light in the inner hall, Weng Yu’s words shook motes of dust. He moved off quickly, his willowy figure bat-like across the darkness of the stairwell. None of my children had dared answer back before, and I stood numb. There was my son slipping away, yet neither my jaws nor my limbs could move. I thought of the warrior Hang Tuah and his wonderful sword. Where was my own magic sword when I most needed it?
On the day of Weng Foo’s adoption ceremony, I carried a basket in my lap. Its contents had been put together in accordance with the fatt shi’s vague instructions. Bring something sweet, a bit of fruit, some vegetables and some clothes, he had said. Four items that sounded so simple, yet they had been anything but. The fruit was easy: oranges, since they were the mainstays in temples. But nothing else had been obvious. Kueh for something sweet, but which type? While chanting before our altar, the idea of steamed kueh came to me; I associated vapour with cleansing, which seemed fitting for the occasion. There were many I could have chosen, of course, so I opted for one of my favourites. The seri muka which lay in my basket were dazzling: to me their diamond shapes resembled little edifices, temples of green coconut custard sitting rather elegantly on top of sturdy bases of glutinous creamy-white rice. The kueh had been easy to make, and I hoped Fatt Shi Ong would approve. Even the Nyonya-style vegetables, replete with dried lily buds and thin slices of flower-shaped carrots, I was unsure of. As for ‘clothes’, I had assumed that anything made of silk would do and had purchased a Chinese silk suit. At the last minute I stuffed as many dollars as we could spare into a red packet, which I tucked deep inside my basket, to be used as amends for any mistake I might have unwittingly made.
Once we arrived at the temple, everything happened quickly. It was so simple that I felt cheated. Fatt Shi Ong, dressed in his usual yellow robe, greeted Weng Foo and me. He led us into a gloomy room with high ceilings, where a table had been set up before the large statue of Kuan Yin. A handful of worshippers were scattered around but I barely noticed them, because my attention was arrested by the statue of the Goddess. Her thin lips, painted a dark red, smiled at me. Her eyebrows, mere slivers, had been painted plucked, while her almond eyes slanted upwards in a knowing look, as if to tell me all would be well. Above the golden orb framing her face, she had thin black hair coiled into a bun, which, except for the absence of five-pronged pins, looked exactly like mine. I bowed in deep reverence.
The fatt shi placed our offerings on the table. He spread them out so that the Goddess was surrounded by our gifts. He then handed me three joss-sticks and my son a single one before leading us in prayer, after which he gave Weng Foo another name, Poh Hoi, meaning ‘wave of the sea’. At the sound of those words my son beamed; light shone across his thin face; he stretched out malleable lips and flashed beautiful white teeth at me. Weng Foo’s smile will forever be in my store of memories, though he never used the name again. Fatt Shi Ong explained to us that by inviting Kuan Yin to be my son’s godmother, the boy was forming a lifelong bond he had to keep until he was released. Turning towards me, the fatt shi reminded me that release from this bond was possible only on Weng Foo’s marriage, at which point he would need to return to this same temple for another ceremony. Until then he was to avoid beef and to offer prayers to the Goddess every year on her birthday. Turning a final time to my son, Fatt Shi Ong told him in a voice filled with authority, ‘Poh Hoi, you have a new godmother, who will look after you. Revere both her and your mama.’
In the next weeks little Weng Foo became stronger. For the first time he kicked a ball with his brothers on the open land behind the Lahat Road. I thanked the Goddess. The peace I had been seeking had finally come.
23
On the week after Weng Foo’s ceremonial adoption, I went by rickshaw to the Anglo- Chinese School. The school had been transformed by then; the new brick building Mr Ho-Lee had spoken about on my first visit had been completed and opened. It was enormous, set on two floors and extremely long, with corridors that ran all the way from one end to the other. The whole school carried an air of grandeur and wonderful symmetry. With intricately carved balustrades and beautiful arches, it looked impressive from just about any angle. Yet the school walls had an unfinished quality, with large segments of exposed red brick, as if there had been no money left over to plaster them. On second glance I decided that the patches of bare brick were too evenly spaced to have been there by accident.
A huge ceremony had been held the previous year to celebrate the opening of this elegant building. Parents of all the boys were invited, but with so many illustrious persons attending, I decided not to go. I had sensed relief on Weng Yu’s part, though I told myself I was simply imagining things.
On walking along one of the famous corridors in the school, I had to concede that the white devils knew a thing or two about construction. The place would withstand the test of centuries, unlike our wooden shacks or even the elaborate temples I was used to. I
burned with pride at the thought of six sons within such a majestic institution. Gone were the attap sheds I had previously spied; in their place new classrooms stood, each with rows of wooden desks and chairs facing two huge blackboards at the front.
I made my way to Weng Yu’s classroom. By the time I arrived, the boys had finished for the day; the room was quiet and only his form teacher remained, together with Mr Ho-Lee.
‘Peng Choon Soh, chiak pa boey?’ Mr Ho-Lee said jovially by way of greeting. The headmaster was as friendly as ever, but he had aged in the intervening period. Noticing deep wrinkles around his eyes for the first time, I wondered how old he was. A new class teacher stood beside Mr Ho-Lee, a fresh-faced devil with fine hair, yellow like shredded ginger and skin as pale as death who looked all of twenty. The contrast between the two was stark. Introducing the new man as Mr Wee-Lem, Mr Ho-Lee explained that Mr Wee-Lem was a recent arrival and could only speak basic Malay. In apologetic tones, the headmaster asked whether we could switch languages – given my Nyonya dress, he assumed I would not mind – to make it easier for the new teacher.
I smiled but immediately found I could barely understand Mr Wee-Lem, whose Malay was heavily accented. ‘Your son Weng Yu is very talented, Makche Wong,’ he began. ‘In music.’
I frowned, unable to make his words out. Mr Ho-Lee stepped in to explain that Weng Yu appeared to have a gift for music. ‘His voice, Makche Wong, his voice. Very good-lah!’ They might have used another word, but that was what it came down to – Weng Yu’s good voice.