When Meng Seng saw Weng Yu, the patriarch extended his free hand. I held my breath as Weng Yu hesitated, but in the end the boy did not dare refuse the proffered hand. Though his manner was stilted, my son addressed the patriarch appropriately and replied when he was spoken to.
Meng Seng even took pains to enquire after my son’s welfare. I was awestruck. Our years together in the bosom of the family had given me little understanding of this man of extremes: filled with the arrogance of males of his generation yet able also to be utterly humble. He asked many questions of my son, more than were needed for polite conversation. When he offered to help Weng Yu find a job, I had to hide my tears.
I held both the patriarch’s hands in mine before he left, the first time I had ever done so. This display of feeling caused his cheeks to burn. He turned away quickly. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said with a dismissive wave of his free hand.
Most men of his age would not have come by. I said as much rather loudly, inducing a heavy silence in our inner hall. Weng Yu did not reply. He walked into his room and slammed the door.
43
After two years of visiting our house, the young man Lim Tsin-sang sought my permission to become engaged to Hui Lin. I thought it was about time he proposed and told him so. With a look of embarrassment the teacher apologised. ‘My personal circumstances, Peng Choon Sau. Please understand,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have money before to marry your daughter.’ As the only surviving child of aged parents, both vegetable farmers, who had to be supported, Lim Kwee Seng had had to save hard for my daughter’s hand. Smiling, I told him that Hui Lin herself would have to agree. There was little doubt in my mind that Hui Lin would accept this serious young man, with his dark skin and eyes like a woman’s, but I had to give my daughter the final word. When I asked whether Kwee Seng would consent to a chin-chuoh marriage, his answer delighted me. ‘Of course, Peng Choon Sau,’ the young man said enthusiastically. I beamed. This was just the sort of son-in-law every Nyonya mother dreamt of having.
Given the changing times, it was no surprise that my third daughter’s marriage to Lim Kwee Seng was a far simpler affair even than her second sister’s wedding. There was much ceremonial simplification, forced on me by my own children, who insisted that I had already done more than enough. Their words made me wonder whether my physical deterioration was becoming noticeable. I had become much heavier after Hui Ying passed away. Even walking up the stairs made me weary.
Yong Soon Soh, gloriously fat as ever, presided once more. I insisted on a dinner and the hair-combing ceremony, but even there we broke with tradition. The bridegroom’s parents were invited to the dinner on the eve of the wedding, a novelty that pleased everyone, especially Yap Meng Seng, who at the time of his son’s wedding to Hui Fang had strenuously argued against his exclusion.
Then after the feast we downed our tea with large helpings of Nyonya kueh. This was my idea, and our guests loved it. As soon as the kueh were carried in, our tables became a riot of colour. There were the pinks and whites of my famous nine-layered kueh, with their peeling alternate slices; the blues of pulut tai-tai, spread thickly with our signature coconut egg jam, a burnt orange in colour; also the greens and whites of seri muka; and of course the princely yellows of banana fritters served cut into bite-size pieces and deep-fried. By the end even my little prince sat licking his fingers.
The wedding was memorable in another way. I had placed Weng Yu beside Se-Too-Wat in the hope of softening my son’s heart. They had Europe and other things in common after all. I wasn’t far wrong. Once they began chatting, Se-Too-Wat casually mentioned a friend of his in Singapore, another white devil, who apparently worked for an important-sounding body that was looking for engineers. Siew Lan’s husband passed on his friend’s address and suggested that my son write to enquire about a job.
A week later, when the boy sent off his application letter, I interceded with Kuan Yin. An official-looking envelope came back, and we waited with bated breath. When Weng Yu was summoned to an interview, the whole family breathed a sigh of relief. My son made his own travel arrangements to Singapore, not bothering me for his train fare or expenses.
The interview must have proceeded well, because he was offered a job. When he eventually wrote, I found out that my eldest son had become an assistant building inspector. This sounded extremely grand. I was suffused with pride that I had a son who was a somebody. Weng Yu was put on a year’s contract at a starting salary of $150 a month. While this wasn’t going to make him a millionaire any time soon, I thought it generous, especially when his housing and travel allowances were taken into account. I gave thanks to Kuan Yin that my auspicious seating plan had played a role, however small, in helping Weng Yu land his first job, and prayed that this turn of events would give my eldest son the boost he so sorely needed.
It was only after Weng Yu had left for Singapore that Hui Lin and Kwee Seng told me what had happened with the white girl. The details made me blush: things Weng Yu would never have told me, such as the scent of roses Helen sprinkled from a bottle on her skin each morning. My son had clearly been besotted.
When Weng Yu read my response to his engagement request, his reaction had been one of fury. The more the boy mulled it over, the more incensed he became. By the time Meng Seng’s letter followed, his wrath was fully stoked. Exploding in passion, he shook both my letter and Meng Seng’s in front of his landlord. ‘Look how narrow-minded the people in my home town are!’ he said contemptuously. This turned out to be a mistake, but Weng Yu was not to realise it until much later.
His landlord, an army retiree, read both letters over many times. The man said little but within a fortnight had announced a long-delayed holiday to Ontario in Canada, where his brother lived. Helen would accompany her father, as it had been a while since her uncle had seen his favourite niece. Although Weng Yu didn’t cherish the idea of Helen being so far, he was hardly in a position to object. The girl herself stormed out of the room with blue eyes blazing – to no avail. When the time came, the army man insisted that my son not accompany them to the port. It was too far, he said, so the couple bade each other farewell at home. Weng Yu spoke of his anguish and also apparently of hers. Helen pressed a photograph into my son’s hands, a picture Weng Yu showed his sister.
For weeks Weng Yu heard nothing. When he eventually received a letter from her father, the message came as a shock. The army man told my son that, after much thought, he had decided it would be better for everyone if Weng Yu tried to forget his daughter, and she him. When my son realised he had no means of contacting the girl, he despaired. The separation began just months before his final examinations and affected his studies badly. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat and was unable to work. Had it not been for a few kindly lecturers, he would surely have failed. As it was, he barely scraped through.
Weng Yu was unable to believe he would not see Helen again. He felt sure she would defy her father, if she only had the means. After graduation Weng Yu found work as an apprentice and chose to remain in London, where he knew Helen would return by the end of the year.
When he next set eyes on her, Weng Yu barely recognised the young woman who walked stiffly towards him. Helen looked as wonderful as in his memories, smelling of roses and with blue eyes glinting, but her lips were tight and her back upright like a pole. On one of her fingers Weng Yu glimpsed a large diamond-studded ring.
‘I met a man,’ she said. ‘We’re engaged to be married.’
The next day my son purchased a ticket for home. Without the girl to whom he had given his heart, a future in London seemed bleak. I knew then that many moons would have to pass before the boy’s wounds could heal.
At the end of his first month of work in Singapore, Weng Yu wrote home. The letter came with a cheque: twenty dollars for me. It wasn’t a big amount, but the fact that he had even thought to send a gift thrilled me. All was not lost with my eldest son.
Weng Yu was then sharing a flat with an old classmate from Ipoh, a frie
nd who was happy to put him up until the outcome of his interview was known. Thereafter the boys came to an arrangement to share the modest premises above a shophouse. I worried when I heard where my little prince was living, but he assured me that the neighbourhood was quiet at night.
Weng Yu continued sending a cheque at the end of each month. For a while we heard little else; we had only a vague idea of what he did from day to day. Out of nowhere a letter arrived with nothing but complaints. My son was evidently fed up with colleagues and bosses alike and ready to resign. The boy’s impetuous nature alarmed me. Resigning from a job, no matter how much he hated it, seemed unwise when he had only begun work a few months previously. I discussed his situation with men who had the relevant knowledge – Meng Seng and Chin Tong, and even Se-Too-Wat, through his wife – and was gratified when they all agreed with me. On the basis of their advice, which I thought would carry greater weight with my son, I counselled Weng Yu against any hasty decision. There were many types of people in this world, I said; unfortunately we sometimes had to work with those we found troublesome, occasionally even with people we detested and had no respect for.
My words must have given the boy pause for thought, because he calmed down. Weng Yu was part of a team responsible for widening Singapore’s roads and strengthening its bridges – the very thing he had envisaged for our town. At the end of twelve months Weng Yu was given a permanent contract. His salary was raised, as were his allowances. When the next cheque came, my son had written it out for thirty-five dollars. He apologised that he could not send more, because he intended to start a business and was saving hard. That, he told us, was the only reason for staying on in Singapore, because not a day went by when he didn’t feel like resigning.
I had mixed feelings when I heard about Weng Yu’s business ambitions. Of all my sons, he was the least astute. He was undoubtedly good-looking, and talented when it came to singing and drawing and pounding chilli-shrimp paste, but he had none of the boldness and practicality every businessman requires for the hard times that inevitably come, nor did he possess the charms needed to woo customers.
Nonetheless, the fact that my son revealed his plans gave me hope. I longed for the day when we could be as we had once been, mother and son, our hearts at peace. I hoped it would come before I left this earth.
By the middle of 1929, dark clouds were sweeping the world. Ipoh continued to flourish, but I heard rumblings from Siew Lan, whose husband started fretting. Independently Yap Meng Seng, whom I had always known as a staunch optimist, took to predicting doom. He claimed the world was about to change. When I asked in what way, the patriarch replied that he sensed a deep slump coming. The business transacted by his bank was on the decline, and this had accelerated in recent months. It was unusual, he said, to see the same thing happening in Malaya, Hong Kong and Singapore all at once. Even in London and New York, business was falling. Although his words were uncharacteristically dire, I took them with a pinch of salt. After all, there had been many falls in demand for tin and rubber before. What could be so different this time?
I was to see in due course. None of us could have envisaged the severity of the downturn, and it’s fortunate that my fourth son, Weng Yoon, had left for England by the time the full force of what hit us became apparent, because I would never have let him go otherwise.
When Weng Yoon spoke to me about his desire to study law in London, the tremors were barely being felt. The word ‘London’ caused me shivers of a different kind, yet as I listened my pride also swelled: this fourth son of mine was nothing if not audacious, for he had quietly saved every cent he earned from four years of teaching at the Anglo-Chinese School to realise his ambition. I had always suspected Weng Yoon of having inherited my spirit, but the style in which he confirmed this stunned me.
Entirely without any prompting, Weng Yoon took the initiative to consult the patriarch, a course of action which pleased Meng Seng. Promptly repeating his predictions of an imminent worldwide slump, the old man said it was a good thing Weng Yoon was not planning to rely on funds that had yet to be raised, but he nonetheless worried whether the pool of money the boy had accumulated would be sufficient. A three-year stay in London, he warned, was expensive. Meng Seng offered to pay for Weng Yoon’s sea passage to and from home just in case. If world conditions became catastrophic, the patriarch further assured my son that he would step in. Being inexperienced in business, Weng Yoon would have never considered these factors. He and I were grateful for the old man’s thoughtfulness. After the disappointing example set by Weng Yu, I could scarcely believe that the patriarch would agree to stand surety for another of my sons. Meng Seng must have been able to see that this fourth boy was a grounded young man, not given to fanciful dreams and therefore likely to succeed, if for no other reason than because he refused to give up.
To seal his blessing, the patriarch held a farewell dinner in Weng Yoon’s honour at the Kum Loong Restaurant, one of the best in Ipoh for Chinese food. The meal must have cost a fortune, for the kitchen at Kum Loong was presided over by a newly installed Hong Kong chef and there were twenty of us in a private room, enjoying delicious shark fin soup and juicy roast suckling pigs with crispy skins.
Weng Yoon, not having acquired his father’s chiselled features, was not as handsome as his eldest brother, but he more than made up for this deficiency with his sharpness of brain and tongue. Weng Yoon’s arguments with his sister Hui Ying were legendary, as were the debates he had won at school. The legal profession seemed apt for so loquacious a person. As I watched my son that night, I was certain that this pugnacious young man of twenty-three would return to become somebody in Ipoh.
With little warning Weng Yu reappeared in town one day. His grumblings about the men he worked with had increased over time, but I was still surprised by so abrupt a resignation. When pressed, Weng Yu revealed that a recent arrival from England had been promoted over him. ‘I decided that resigning was best, Mama,’ he said. I stared at my son, who at that moment looked dreamily out of the window with his nose pointing down at the world. ‘I want to start my own business.’
I had grave concerns over such a plan. Repeating Se-Too-Wat’s and Meng Seng’s warnings, I wondered aloud whether it was a good time to launch a new venture. I was met with an icy glare.
‘What do you know about business, Mama?’ Weng Yu asked.
I retorted, ‘Now twenty years already I have run one.’
The impact was immediate, for my son’s voice softened. ‘Ah, but, Mama, mine is a different type of business,’ he said proudly, as if it would not be subject to the rules of supply and demand.
I already knew that I didn’t like what I was seeing every day in Ipoh town. I was beginning to agree with Se-Too-Wat and Meng Seng: hard times were about to descend, and only those of us who kept our wits would survive.
PART V:
THE TWILIGHT YEARS 1931–8 DECEMBER 1941
44
For the first time in my life I lost interest in the coins Li-Fei brought back from her kueh rounds. I would separate the copper and silver pieces into blocks of ten the way my husband had taught me, but my mind would wander as soon as I began to count. Halfway across the piles of coins, images from the past would assail me, and I would stop, lose count and have to begin again.
I had never been so distracted. For respite I went in search of the delicacies which had saved our lives. The texture of coconut layers flopping on my palm, the feel of grainy rice balls inside my mouth, with their fulsome aroma of roasted peanuts, pandanus leaf and palm sugar, comforted me, but even they could not restore my concentration. For many mornings in a row my routine of money counting took twice as long as it had previously.
Once, Hui Lin found me at my dressing table, muttering as I absent-mindedly caressed a silver five-cent coin with its raised head of a white man. ‘Daughter, I not know how to explain,’ I said in response to Hui Lin’s raised eyebrows. If our neighbours had known what was bothering me, they would certainly have calle
d me ungrateful, because up and down the Lahat Road everyone congratulated me on my good fortune: the women envious of my daughters’ marriages, the men of my sons’ prospects, what with one a British-trained civil engineer, another a law student in London, the rest teachers in well-regarded schools.
Yet unlike Mother, I had failed to pass our culture on to my children. Weng Yu had even been in danger of not returning to his homeland. That had fortunately been thwarted and he was now at home, but Weng Yu bore none of the hallmarks of a Baba. As for the others, they too wore Western clothes and spoke mainly English. It was only with my daughters that I dared hope. Perhaps with the girls, who wore the sarong kebaya and spoke Hakka and Hokkien by choice, I would succeed in passing on our values.
I consoled myself that language and costume were merely outward signs. More important was what we held within our hearts and virtues like respect for our elders, our ancestors and our gods. On those perhaps I had succeeded. Only time would tell, but already I felt distinctly uneasy. I had once vowed to safeguard the magic sword I had been given with every breath I took. Now its powers were fading before my very eyes.
As suddenly as he forgot his local dialects, Weng Yu one day began speaking directly to me again. The words simply burst forth in perfect Hakka, a dialect many describe as coarse, but since it was the language taught to me by my beloved husband, it sounded magical to my ears, especially when spoken by my son.
‘Mama, ngi cho ma kai-ah?’
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 34