My friend exploded in mirth. ‘You should see your face, Chye Hoon!’
Siew Lan spoke haltingly, as if reluctant to reveal why she was in Western clothes. ‘No-o, I . . . I . . . no go modern,’ she said.
I pointed to the thin crêpe-like material the colour of bean curd which fell from her body in soft folds. ‘Then all this what for?’
It took a change of attire and many sighs before my friend disclosed her news. ‘You cannot tell anyone,’ she said in a complicit whisper. ‘Se-Too-Wat and I go overseas, maybe next year. Go to London and Paree. We want Flora go to see her father’s country.’
My eyes widened. ‘Ooh!’ I exclaimed, blowing air out loudly. I tried to picture Siew Lan in Europe but failed, not having any idea of what Europe could look like. The furthest I managed was seeing big streets and mountains and lakes and people dressed in large coats. ‘So . . . in London you no can wear baju-meh?’
Siew Lan chortled. ‘Of course can, only I think wear their dress easier-lah. Must walk a lot, you know. Not like here. Here we ride rickshaw go everywhere. There I have to walk.’
‘We of course want to see Weng Yu,’ Siew Lan continued. I nodded gravely, my thoughts elsewhere. ‘You hear from him already-ah?’ she asked. When I shook my head, my friend gave me a searching look. ‘Chye Hoon, have problem-ah?’
I hesitated, wondering how I would bring up the subject. Siew Lan and Se-Too-Wat were friends of the Yap family’s after all, and Wai Man was a boy she had personally recommended. Even as I reasoned with myself I knew there was no other way. I had to tackle the issue head-on.
‘Hui Fang think Wai Man have mistress.’
Siew Lan blinked hard. Her drooping eyelids shut tight for a noticeable second before she raised her eyes to meet mine. The air between us changed, becoming at once sombre and anguished, but Siew Lan’s face gave nothing away. Afraid she would not believe my daughter’s story, I prepared to defend Hui Fang. Fortunately that proved unnecessary.
‘She sure-ah?’ was all that Siew Lan asked. I repeated the story exactly as I had heard it from my daughter’s lips that morning. When I finished, my friend looked glum. ‘Ai-yahh, I sorry, Chye Hoon,’ she said, her eyes gloomy.
‘Not your fault!’ I exclaimed. While sipping tea, I added, ‘More important is think what to do.’
With nothing concrete to hold on to, we found ourselves going around in circles. My friend pointed out that we had no proof a woman was actually involved; the boy could have taken up an unsavoury activity – gambling for instance. ‘I not say that is good,’ she added hastily. ‘Just that . . . we anything, also not know. You no got evidence, how to confront a man, isn’t it?’
I laughed. ‘But Siew Lan, wives always no have evidence-mah. How to find proof? Only have what their hearts tell.’
‘This different,’ my friend insisted. ‘We know more that time, we can meet Meng Seng.’
At the thought of the old man, I breathed deeply. Confronting the patriarch would be delicate, since Weng Yu’s future depended on him, and therefore so did mine. Siew Lan of course had no idea about these arrangements, and I certainly was not about to tell her.
Meanwhile, when my friend suggested she speak to Se-Too-Wat, I swallowed. It must have been clear I didn’t like my family affairs being discussed with a white devil, even if that white devil happened to be her husband.
‘Chye Hoon,’ Siew Lan said in a gently admonitory tone, ‘you no let me talk to Se-Too-Wat, then must find someone in Taiping-ah!’
I sighed.
‘Besides,’ Siew Lan continued forcefully, ‘you before want Chinese husband for your daughter, isn’t it?’ I nodded. ‘Hah! Then like this-lah! Chinese men always have mistresses and concubines.’
I breathed even more heavily, not liking the implication of Siew Lan’s words. It wasn’t true, I thought, recalling my own loyal husband. But with so many bad examples among the towkays and prominent Chinese men, how could I argue? I left Siew Lan’s house thoroughly dissatisfied, while her words rang triumphantly in my ears.
‘White men better to women, Chye Hoon.’
35
While Siew Lan and I scrambled to uncover the truth about my son-in-law’s activities, Weng Yu’s first letter arrived.
The whole family jostled into the inner hall after dinner, eager for the grand unveiling of a missive that had travelled across oceans. My breath quickened in anticipation. I expected descriptions of London, its people, the stars in its night sky. Instead my son wrote about architecture. I could scarcely believe it. When Hui Ying’s sonorous voice finally stopped, we had heard only about windows on the roofs of buildings, carvings on pillars and ubiquitous metal railings outside of houses, painted black and supposedly impressive. What was the boy thinking?
The same scene repeated itself through the years. Weng Yu’s letters were always opened with fanfare and read aloud in the pale glow of twilight, yet they left me disappointed. From the height of a dark mahogany chair Peng Choon had imported from China, I wondered what life in London was really like for a Baba boy.
My little prince never told us. On the rare occasions when he did write about his feelings, he said that he missed the Malayan sun. London, with its air of grey dullness, could be drab even in the summer; there, colours didn’t dazzle the eye the way they did in Malaya. His words left the impression of a subdued country in which beauty was kept in check, like the contrast between the English and Chinese quarters in Ipoh town. Weng Yu reinforced my view that the white devils, even if faithful to their wives, were different – so different that we could never truly understand one another.
When Siew Lan mentioned that my son had written to her husband, I was astonished. We were on the barlay, where my friend was spreading white lime across a betel leaf held flat on her left palm. She then chopped betel nuts with my guillotine knife and at the same time told me how impressed Weng Yu was by the motor vehicles around London.
‘There got bus two storeys-kah!’
‘What? Like house-ah?’ I asked.
‘Yes-lah!’
Sipping my Chinese tea, I peered at the brown dregs that had sunk to the bottom of my cup. Holding the cup in both hands, I felt the grainy etchings along its smooth surface, carvings of dragons and borders that were painted in Nyonya green and pink.
‘Weng Yu talk about other students-ah?’
In answer Siew Lan spouted a series of facts: that my son was among fifty students; that two others were from Malaya; that they had lectures six hours every weekday and three hours on Saturday morning—
‘My son say or not the white students-ah . . . they with him how?’ I interrupted.
Siew Lan trained her large brown eyes at me in a frown.
‘Ai-yahh! Chye Hoon,’ she said, inadvertently exposing gums blackened by betel nut juice. ‘They all students-lah! They all same. Se-Too-Wat say your son do well. He very like London!’
A rivulet of dark red appeared on one corner of Siew Lan’s mouth. I took a deep breath. It was clear I would have to read between the lines of Weng Yu’s letters.
At the end of his first year, my little prince announced that he would seek new lodgings with a kitchen, because he could no longer put up with meals of boiled liver and sausages. That was how I realised he had used up the bottles of condiments I had carefully packed. A room with a kitchen in London sounded expensive, and it made me wary. I wrote straight away to remind my son to take care of his funds. When Weng Yu assured me he could stick to his budget, I became less anxious, but then I worried about his having to move further from his college. That was what those years were like – filled with anxiety because my son was so far away.
I was not the only one to notice the vagueness in Weng Yu’s letters. Liew Tsin-sang, the brother of the girls’ teacher, chuckled so much one evening after our family meal that his horn-rimmed glasses quivered. When I shot him an enquiring look, the young man said apologetically, ‘Sorry, Peng Choon Sau, sorry-lah! I just don’t understand! Weng Yu stands on the road to
watch the wedding of two rich strangers and then . . . you don’t even hear who he spends every day with! Strange boy-lah!’
I smiled awkwardly. By then I was certain that the young man had designs on my second daughter, Hui Ying. Having caught sight of him once when Hui Ying walked into the outer hall, I had seen how even his ears coloured, and how he had eyes only for her during meals, when he would offer her choice pieces of meat and fish.
I did not know what to think of the courtship being played out openly before me. With Weng Foo’s demise and my eldest daughter’s troubles, beliefs I had long held were shaken. While I wasn’t in favour of young people choosing their own husbands and wives, I did not have the heart to put a stop to the obvious affection this earnest young man felt for my daughter. For one thing I was indebted to his sister, whose free tuition over two and a half years had helped my daughters attain Standard Three in half the time it took others. The young man himself was much like the son-in-law I had chosen for my eldest daughter, but now I asked myself whether I had not made a serious mistake. Did Liew Tsin-sang’s politeness and prospects matter more than my own daughter’s wishes? I brooded over this long and hard. If it indeed turned out that my daughter liked the young man, which was far from clear at the time, I could not refuse her. But equally, if her feelings were elsewhere, I would not try to persuade her. I would have to speak to Hui Ying in due course.
In the midst of these storms a competitor arrived in Ipoh.
In truth, there had been a handful of women through the years who, envious of my success, had tried hawking kueh around town. Though most of these came from a Nyonya background, there were the inevitable Chinese copycats who thought they could simply add dashes of coconut milk here and spoonfuls of colouring there to turn their own delicacies into Nyonya kueh. They soon learnt. Each had come and gone; none had lasted more than a few years, some not even months. To make kueh every day as we did required passion, supreme dedication and much persistence, because they had us to contend with – the Wong family of established kueh makers.
When Li-Fei informed me about a certain Heng Lai Soh, whose Nyonya kueh were gathering a following among the townspeople, I didn’t think much of it. I only took heed when the pouch of coins the girl handed me became lighter and remained so for many days.
‘How come?’ I asked, trying to sound casual.
‘Because of this Nyonya lady-lah. I tell you already. Her kueh good to eat, you know! Everyone also like.’
Heng Lai Soh apparently came from Malacca, which meant she served some of the kueh differently. She employed an Indian man, Muthu, to carry her wares around town, and Li-Fei had peeked into his baskets out of curiosity. ‘Hmm,’ I mumbled. ‘They look like what?’
Li-Fei said her kueh were pretty enough. ‘Colour not so good to look. But I see one or two types only-lah, Peng Choon Sau. Pulut tai-tai and ondeh-ondeh. Her pulut tai-tai not so blue, ondeh-ondeh not so green. But still nice. And she sell more cheap than us.’
This last point worried me. I supposed it was inevitable that someone would come along sooner or later. We’d had no real competition for ten years, and I always wondered what I would do when it happened.
It was time to investigate. I discussed the matter with Siew Lan as soon as I could, and she, being a dear, loyal friend, assured me that our kueh tasted better. ‘Ai-yahh, Chye Hoon! You no need to worry-lah!’ she said. ‘I see her kueh in town. Not as nice as yours! Really! You no believe, go and ask Hong Seng Soh-lah!’
This in turn led me to the Nyonya woman, whose house stood further along Lahat Road, down the short bit of track known as Thirteenth Street. Herself a widow, Hong Seng Soh had been our loyal customer from the start. On my very first day she had come out to offer condolences and to buy three pieces of our white and green seri muka. Eleven years later she was definitively older, and toothless to boot. ‘Peng Choon Sau,’ she replied cautiously, exposing two rows of gums blackened by betel nut juice. ‘Your kueh good, her kueh also good. I buy from both. What you want me to say?’
I explained that I wished to know the differences between us. Were there types of kueh the other woman was better at? ‘Yes,’ Hong Seng Soh said to my horror. ‘Rempah udang. More spicy than your one! But your nine-layered kueh and pulut tai-tai and angkoo more nice to eat than her ones!’ Hong Seng Soh thought for a minute before adding, ‘And she sell cheaper. So have to buy from both. Otherwise I no money left-lah!’
As Hong Seng Soh roared with laughter on her doorstep, I wondered whether we should reduce our prices. Was that a wise thing to do? I remembered Peng Choon’s story about Ipoh’s first mechanic, the man who had lost loyal customers when, despite fierce competition, he insisted on retaining his prices. Was I behaving like that mechanic, stubbornly burying my head in the sand when the world was changing?
I decided I had to see this new woman for myself. On learning that she prayed at the Pa Lo Old Temple, I visited it in the hope of bumping into Heng Lai Soh.
A meeting did not take long. As I walked in one day with Siew Lan, my friend nudged my elbow. With a flick of eye and head, she indicated where I should look. In a corner, bowed before the image of Buddha, stood a slim woman who couldn’t have been more than thirty, dressed in an ultra-modern white kebaya with intricate lace on its hem and sleeves. The sarong she wore caught my eye too, with its diagonal slivers of green and yellow adorned with motifs. In the dim light I made out pink roses and leaves of various sorts, as well as butterflies etched in brown ink.
When the woman raised her head and saw us watching her, she smiled. Without a moment’s hesitation Heng Lai Soh walked over to introduce herself. From that simple act, I knew that she, unlike the others, would be here to stay. This impression was confirmed by the way she sized me up through narrowed eyes which curved slightly upwards. She seemed to know exactly who I was. ‘I’ve heard so much about you, Peng Choon Sau. A real pleasure to meet.’ The smile she flashed, full of teeth and vermillion lips, was polite enough, if somewhat forced. We bade each other goodbye knowing we would meet again.
Yet when I left the temple I was in no doubt as to what I needed to do. Having seen Heng Lai Soh herself, I concluded that our kueh would always be different. Heng Lai Soh was a modern Nyonya, one of those who would take shortcuts because she lacked the patience for true Nyonya cooking. She would always have to sell her kueh more cheaply. I kept our prices the same, telling customers that if they wanted to eat the best Nyonya kueh in Ipoh, they had to pay. But I also knew that we would need to work harder to keep our customers loyal, and occasionally perhaps even tempt them.
That was when the idea of loyalty chips came to me, chips like those we children had once used for games in Songkhla. Anyone who purchased more than one dollar’s worth of kueh would get five cents of kueh free. To keep count, customers would receive chips: square pieces of rough brown cardboard with the Wong name stamped on them; for every five cents’ worth of kueh, a customer received one of these cards. Anyone who had collected twenty cards could return the whole set to Li-Fei in exchange for five cents’ worth of kueh absolutely free.
With this in mind we set to work gathering cartons and boxes from the owners of provision shops in town. At home we cut the surfaces up into squares and stamped them with the Wong family seal, an old Chinese seal Peng Choon had once used; it lay dusty with age, but its character remained intact.
Se-Too-Wat loved the idea of my cards, as did I. Yet all Li-Fei heard at first were grumbles. ‘Must buy one dollar, then only get five cents-ah! So little . . .’ Yes, those were the rules, Li-Fei told them. They didn’t have to play the game of course; no one was forced to collect chips. But not a single person said no – they all took their cards, which was what I had expected. In this way customers who set out to buy only three cents’ worth of kueh sometimes bought more to add to their collection of cards. The cards gained in popularity after my daughters Hui Ying and Hui Lin painted them with pictures of our kueh in lively colours, when even the children of Ipoh began to clamour f
or them.
36
It took many months for Siew Lan to help me ascertain the truth about my son-in-law. A showdown with the patriarch Yap Meng Seng became unavoidable, but that was a decision I made only after much hand-wringing and soul-searching, when I found myself defending Hui Fang before even Siew Lan, who began doubting my daughter’s state of mind.
‘You say what?’ I shrieked. ‘You think she mad-ah?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ Siew Lan replied hurriedly. ‘But a woman after have child is different. You know what like-lah, Chye Hoon . . .’ My friend’s voice trailed off into the distance.
To placate me, she told me that after Flora’s birth she had imagined Se-Too-Wat guilty of all kinds of misdemeanours. ‘Hui Fang maybe . . . not normal yet,’ my friend added a touch defensively.
Seeing that I was unmoved, Siew Lan again offered to speak to her husband, as she had at the outset, but she added a condition: I had to give my consent. Warily I agreed. Once apprised of the situation, Se-Too-Wat surprised me. He made discreet enquiries so quickly that within days we had an answer. When it was clear that Wai Man’s job hardly required him to travel, Siew Lan proposed a move I never would have thought of: ‘We hire someone to follow the boy.’
‘You mean . . . a spy?’ I said, taken aback.
‘Yes!’ my friend replied coolly, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. She reminded me how we had had her servant Rokiah follow the coolie Ah Boey when we first became suspicious of his meagre kueh earnings.
‘But that is different!’ I exclaimed. Wai Man was a member of my family. How could I ask anyone to spy on him?
I eventually relented, because I could think of no other way to learn what we needed to know. Finding a spy proved worryingly easy. With so many coolies out of work, there were men on every five-foot way looking to earn a few dollars. The challenge was identifying someone we could trust. In the end Siew Lan chose a man with whom she had had some dealings. She warned me that she couldn’t vouch for him, but he looked the best out of a sorry lot. He called himself Ah Long and was as scrawny as his fellow street dwellers, yet Ah Long had retained some of that dignity which distinguishes us from animals. He tried to keep himself clean – to the extent that was possible for someone living on a concrete walkway. In the absence of a toothbrush, he picked his teeth ardently, and he patched the holes on his one singlet and trousers. Despite having come upon hard times, Ah Long wasn’t afraid to look us in the eye. I liked what I saw there: eyes small but alert, dimmed neither by opium nor the hundred guilty acts we were yet to uncover.
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 28