Once my son-in-law had left, Hui Lin, Weng Yu and my other sons helped me slowly up the stairs one step at a time so that I could lie in bed while waiting for the ambulance. It was just as well I moved, because the ambulance took over an hour to arrive.
That was how I found myself once again inside a noisy car as it sped along, siren blaring. Except this time I was the centre of attention. A young man fussed over me, while Hui Lin held my hand. Forced to lie on my back, I was unable to see a thing. I became dizzy from the spins and turns the vehicle took on its tortuous route towards the General Hospital. By the time we arrived I felt more ill than I had at the start of our journey.
This time there was no waiting team; the ambulance men simply wheeled me inside, while Kwee Seng and Hui Lin followed on foot. My daughter held my right hand as we passed through endless open-air corridors. I was aware of an army in white uniforms: men and women, locals as well as ang moh bustling to and fro, speaking in a tongue I could not understand. The smell I had previously noticed when we had brought my second daughter hung even more pungently in the air. Out of curiosity I raised my head once, just before we turned a corner, to be rewarded by the sight of a worker scurrying past. In his hand he carried a bag bursting with a dark red fluid the colour of liver. When I realised what the bag contained, I felt as if a boulder had knocked me over. All the colour must have drained from my face, because the doctor who examined me was concerned about my pallor.
He came bounding towards us, a picture of health and cheer even at five in the morning. He bent to touch my cheeks, and my overwhelming memory is of his ears, lobes of skin slightly pink and so long that they wobbled like Nyonya jelly. After the doctor exchanged a few words with my son-in-law, I was told his name was Dr Pillay and that he was the Assistant Medical Officer. When I indicated that I was well enough to sit up, the entire team swung into action. In no time at all I faced the world from a chair. The doctor and I sized each other up. I saw that he was a fair-skinned Indian with a narrow nose. Hoping to put me at ease, Dr Pillay flashed a set of perfectly white teeth. Around his neck hung the black tube I recognised as the heartbeat instrument I had seen hanging around the necks of various doctors. Placing his right hand around my left eye, Dr Pillay pulled my eyelid up. That was when we really did stare eyeball to eyeball, and I noticed the droopy moroseness of the doctor’s own eyelids.
Dr Pillay prodded me for a good ten minutes. Every so often he barked orders at a nurse, also Indian. At one point, with the handles of his heartbeat tube inside his large ears, he placed the metallic surface at the other end firmly on my baju while telling me to breathe in and out deeply. To my surprise I was able only to take shallow breaths; anything else exhausted me. ‘Do you feel tired?’ Dr Pillay asked. Via my son-in-law I told him I had been weak for a while, but since I was getting old this was hardly surprising. Dr Pillay’s response was to shoot me a quizzical look. He fired off questions which made me blush. He wanted to know, for example, how often I went to the latrine. Then he asked if I had noticed anything unusual when I passed water. Had I seen ants, for instance? I glanced first at my daughter Hui Lin and then at my son-in-law, who both had expectant looks on their faces.
When she saw me hesitate, Hui Lin spoke up. ‘Mama, do you know?’ she asked, and I had to nod despite my reluctance to confess.
The surprise in my daughter’s eyes made me slightly ashamed. ‘I not want anyone to worry . . . ,’ I offered lamely.
As soon as he heard about the ants, Dr Pillay announced that he suspected diabetes, or ‘passing sweet urine’, as the Chinese call the illness. Unfortunately the doctor told me he would need samples, one of my urine and another of my blood. My blood! I brought my hands to my face and gasped. The doctor, who seemed oblivious to my fears and my gathering tears, turned towards his nurse and began shouting orders. Hui Lin came to stand beside me, whispering, ‘Don’t worry, Mama, everything will be fine,’ but as soon as I caught sight of the needle I felt faint. It loomed large in my mind, unlike the narrow acupuncture needles I was used to seeing in Dr Wong’s clinic. ‘No!’ I screamed. Kwee Seng assured me there would only be a small prick and I wouldn’t feel anything. My son-in-law tried to show me how tiny the point of the needle was, but instead of calming me their intervention increased my anxiety.
After another exchange between the doctor and my children, it was decided that I should lie down. The doctor and nurse helped me on to a bed in one corner of the room. I was crying openly by then, which no doubt distressed Hui Lin, who soon joined me. Together we sounded like a funeral cortège. When I finally felt the prick in my arm, the pain wasn’t as bad as I had imagined, and I surprised myself by remaining conscious throughout. Still, my head was spinning afterwards from the thought of so much blood draining away.
We were told the test results would take two weeks. When three weeks later I returned to the hospital, Dr Pillay’s grim diagnosis was confirmed. Medication wasn’t available in Malaya, he said, and even if it had been, it would have been prohibitively expensive. ‘So, you anything also cannot do-ah?’ I asked in a mixture of astonishment and relief – astonishment that we would be given nothing, not even a small tablet, but also relief, since it meant I would not be subjected to humiliating rituals.
Dr Pillay nodded, large ears wobbling. His lack of medical weaponry didn’t prevent him from barking out a command: ‘Aunty, you must stop eating Nyonya kueh!’
Finally the good fortune I had enjoyed in recent times appeared to come to an end. Now more than ever my life would rest in the hands of Kuan Yin.
In the days following my diagnosis, the most that my children allowed me to do was to sit on our barlay chewing betel nut leaves with Siew Lan and the other well-wishers who called. The enforced idleness was challenging. Instead of resting, I kept up a constant shuffle from our inner hall into the kitchen. I shouted out commands, lifted the lids off pots and pans and generally made my presence felt. The household sighed in relief when an unexpected visitor arrived, bringing with him a proposition which finally kept me occupied.
The man was none other than Yap Min Kang, the tailor whom Weng Yu had evicted from our shophouse. He came to see how I was and to ask for assistance. The favour he sought – help with a deposit he needed for premises he wished to acquire – would take my life down a path I never could have imagined. Given the circumstances of his eviction, I could hardly refuse the request. I listened. The shop he was eyeing up was in a good location. I visited it the next day and was once again mesmerised by the smell of the rolls of cloth he kept everywhere and the sight of his scissors snipping. I judged his business to be sound.
In case he was unable to repay the money I lent, I asked Yap Min Kang for thirty rolls of fabric as security. In addition, he agreed to pay me interest of 2 per cent every month on the loan. Such income was what made the whole enterprise appealing. The rate I offered was less than half that charged by the Indian men in town – the Chetties, immigrants from India who controlled the moneylending business in Ipoh – but at the time I simply thought I was doing a favour to someone I had known for ten years.
It did not occur to me to ask for paperwork. On the day we sealed our deal, Yap Min Kang simply turned up at our house several times carrying rolls of fabric under his arm until he had brought thirty rolls. When that was completed, I invited him to the barlay for a cup of tea. We shook hands, I handed him his money and that was that.
I never expected word to spread about this small act of mine. Within days strangers came knocking on our door, all asking for loans. Like the tailor, none of them had a guaranteed income. Most were like me – women who couldn’t read or write and who felt uncomfortable signing the pieces of paper demanded by the Chetties. Surprised by the deluge, I spent a week pondering what to do. Lending to Yap Min Kang was one thing, but what of the others?
In the end I lent selectively, my choices guided by intuition. I scrutinised the faces of those who came to see me; anyone with shifty eyes I refused to do business with, which meant
turning most away. The rest I made enquiries about, finding out who their parents and family members were and visiting their premises. I always turned up unannounced so that I could examine the businesses for myself. All that I had was the word of my borrowers; we never signed any papers. ‘Chye Hoon, you crazy-lah!’ Siew Lan declared through a mouth stuffed full of betel leaf cud, influenced no doubt by her husband, who would never have entered any agreement without papers. Yet none of my borrowers ever missed a payment; they were simply grateful someone had been prepared to lend them money. My fiery reputation no doubt helped. Besides, I always asked for some form of security, a portion of which I kept throughout: rolls of fabric from the tailor, three bicycles from another man, catties of tin from a panhandler and so on.
In this way I generated additional income for my family. At the end of each month I would send my youngest son, Weng Choon, around town to collect the debts people owed. He went on our bicycle with the bell, ringing in receipts during those lean years.
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Meanwhile my eldest son struggled. Clients did not come to see Weng Yu just because of his grand qualification. For fifteen months my son could barely earn enough to keep his two members of staff. He kept no income for himself and stopped giving me a monthly allowance.
Weng Yu limped on, unable to bring himself to ask for help. It was only after twelve months that he finally swallowed his pride and came to borrow a small sum from me. He was bright-eyed, telling me excitedly about the renovations he wished to implement on the shophouse, as if they were his idea. Of course I lent him the money free of interest – I wanted to see the boy succeed after all.
Towards the end of 1932, chinks of light came from among the dark clouds. The first piece of good news arrived from London – from my fourth son, Weng Yoon, who by then had commenced the final year of his law degree and was doing exceedingly well. The next glimmer of hope was brought by Weng Yu, who marched in one day with a wad of banknotes in his hand. ‘Mama!’ he said, thrusting the notes towards me. ‘For you!’
I looked enquiringly at my little prince. ‘What for?’ I asked. My son’s smile brought out his dimples, and for a moment he looked just like his father.
‘Business has picked up,’ he announced happily. ‘I should be able to give you an allowance from now on.’
When I counted out the money, it came to twenty-five dollars, a pleasing amount. For weeks afterwards Weng Yu’s cheeks continued to be flushed. Imagining that business must be good indeed, I wondered whether I had been mistaken. Could it be possible that this dreamy artistic boy of mine might actually have a talent for making money?
I soon learnt from Hui Lin the real reason for her eldest brother’s good mood: he had met a girl. My daughter said little about the object of Weng Yu’s interest other than that she was the daughter of one of his clients, a prosperous merchant who had recently built a mansion along the Gopeng Road.
The sound of such wealth alarmed me. I knew I would have to keep my promise to let my son choose his own wife in Malaya, but that did not stop me from burning with curiosity. By asking a question here and there, I had within a week found out everything important about the girl without having to leave our house.
Her name was Mei Foong. She was the second daughter of a Chinese immigrant, a man called Kwok Man Leung, whose wife, a devout Buddhist, had steeped their home in traditional Chinese values. The first thing people spoke of was the girl’s beauty: shining hair tied up in two braids which fell lustrously down her shoulders and fair skin, without a blemish anywhere. Beauty concerned me less; I wanted to know what sort of first daughter-in-law she would make. It took persistence before I heard about Mei Foong’s impeccable manners. From an early age, I was told, she and her siblings were taught to have respect for their elders and the right attitudes of worship. They apparently stood daily before their ancestors and their gods, which set my mind at rest a little. Of course Mei Foong enjoyed trappings I could never have afforded. These included a personal maid, who was on hand to dress her, fan her when she perspired and generally look after her every need.
Despite Weng Yu’s burst of good fortune, I could not see how my son would maintain a girl of Mei Foong’s background in the lifestyle to which she was clearly accustomed.
Mei Foong was reputedly clever, having received seven years of education at the Anglo-Chinese Girls’ School – enough to be able to earn a living as a teacher. Though the girl conversed in Cantonese at home, she also spoke Hokkien and of course English, which she would have learnt at school. All of which, Siew Lan told me, made her highly desirable as a wife, and if Weng Yu didn’t snatch her quickly, someone else would.
I sighed at this unexpected conclusion. I had worried that some unworthy girl would snare my handsome British-educated eldest son, but Siew Lan pointed out that the advantages in this case were very much the other way round. If the Kwok and Wong families were to be united, it would be the hand of fate; there was little I could do to either hasten or prevent it. Moreover, I could not find anyone with a bad word to say about the girl or her family. Rich they were, spoilt she apparently was not. Even Meng Seng, always sparing with compliments, spoke highly of Mei Foong’s father. In his limited dealings with Kwok Man Leung, he had known him to be a man of his word.
Whatever happened, I could not intervene. I forced myself to sit back, awaiting signs from Kuan Yin.
The pounding on our front door was frantic, as if a disaster had befallen Ipoh. I unlatched the bolt to find Rokiah on our five-foot way, her face crushed in misery. ‘Come quickly-lah, Makche Wong!’ she cried out in Malay. ‘Tuan has fallen. Please hurry!’
At the time I was dressed in the checked green-and-white baju and sarong I wore only at home, their fabric faded from years of scrubbing. It says a lot about my state of mind that I did not even think to change. Despite looking like a beggar, I dashed out with Rokiah towards her waiting rickshaw. The man ran as quickly as his legs could manage, while Rokiah told me how Se-Too-Wat, who had complained of feeling unwell for a number of days, had collapsed in the living room. Fortunately their boy, Don, now a grown man of twenty-five, was on hand to fetch a doctor. Still, Rokiah whispered that she wasn’t sure the Tuan would survive. ‘Very pale . . . as if life had left him,’ she confided.
When we arrived, an ambulance was parked outside along the driveway, and two men in white paced up and down. I could hear Siew Lan crying inconsolably, and I knew then that we had come too late. I entered the house to find my friend arguing with a third man in a white uniform. Every now and then her son weighed in. They spoke in English, so that neither Rokiah nor I had any idea what was going on.
As soon as she saw me, Siew Lan rushed up and threw herself into my arms, burying her face into my right shoulder. ‘Chye Hoon . . . Oh, Chye Hoon.’ In between my own tears I looked up to see the boy whom I called Tong deeply affected by our distress.
‘Don’t worry, Mother,’ he told Siew Lan in Hokkien. ‘I won’t let them take him away.’
When the men in white eventually left, Siew Lan regained enough composure to let me know what had happened. Evidently the ambulance men had wanted to remove Se-Too-Wat’s body so that they could cut him up. ‘What for?’ I asked. Tong replied it was because no one knew the reason for Se-Too-Wat’s death. He told me it was probably a heart attack, because his father had had heart problems for a while, but the medical authorities didn’t know for sure. Without cutting him up, they would never really find out.
This unfortunate thought drove my friend wild again. ‘You think!’ Siew Lan exclaimed. ‘He dead already, still want to cut him up. What for? He not going to come back-lah . . . Imagine go disturb old man like that!’
Soon Meng Seng hobbled in to offer his condolences. Between us we helped Siew Lan and her children in whatever way we could: I with supervising the preparations of food and drink, the patriarch with the renting of tables and chairs and a canopy outside in case it rained. Hundreds of people were expected, because Se-Too-Wat had been a prominent membe
r of the white community, and my dear friend Siew Lan was of course well respected everywhere.
Until the day of the funeral I stayed at their house to keep my friend company. Not surprisingly Siew Lan walked around unsure of the ground beneath her feet. She burst into tears at the slightest provocation, and I was glad I was there to hold her hand. During the day my friend would wander between guests. In the evenings she sat next to me in the garden, chewing betel leaves and sipping coffee with that distracted look which told us she was lost among memories.
My eldest son, on learning that Se-Too-Wat had passed away, wept. After he dried his eyes, Weng Yu came to help Siew Lan and her children. His tall figure strode the garden, leading guests towards chairs and carrying cups of coffee and tea.
I was so busy that I had little time to grieve. It was only after the funeral service, held in a church and in English – which meant I could not understand anything – that images of Se-Too-Wat rushed at me in furious assault. That was when I cried for this white devil who had become a dear friend through the years. I recalled the day Se-Too-Wat married Siew Lan and how smart he had looked in his pristine white suit with the red carnation attached to his lapel. I sobbed at what I owed the man: a husband for my eldest girl and a job for my eldest boy, without which Weng Yu might never have begun a business. I remembered how Se-Too-Wat, arms dripping with sweat, had willingly borne the prickly heat of Taiping to tail my errant son-in-law.
Whenever I thought of our Taiping adventures, I became ashamed. Until then this white man had been an irritant, his spidery hairs more important to me than the kindness in his heart. Now that he was gone, I realised how good Se-Too-Wat had been to our family. I wished I had thanked him when I still had the chance.
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After her husband passed away, Siew Lan felt bereft. ‘Like my right arm chop off already,’ she explained in unusually macabre fashion. My friend lost her pleasure in life, eschewing even the betel leaves she once adored. ‘Teeth also no have. How to chew?’ she grumbled.
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 36