by Yangsze Choo
After the money was handed over, he hung back, asking yet another question. I suppressed a sigh of impatience. Perhaps he had ghost troubles of his own. Critically, I compared his figure with Tian Bai’s. This stranger was slim with a sinuous grace. Though I could not see his face, I wondered what he looked like. It would be a pity if he were ugly, though I couldn’t think of any other reason to hide a face unless it was hideously scarred, like my father’s. I dropped my gaze, embarrassed at how quickly I had learned to eye men. I could only blame my brief association with Tian Bai, which had sensitized me to the sound of a man’s voice, the touch of his hand. When the stranger finally left, he deliberately attempted to peer beneath my parasol as he passed. Amah forestalled him by lowering it so that he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of my face, but he shrugged and walked on insolently, jingling the copper coins in his belt.
The medium turned toward us. One eye was clouded over with a hazy bloom while the other fixed us with a bright malicious stare.
“In a hurry, are you?” she said. She had a low voice for a woman, with a wheeze at the end of her sentences. Amah hastened to apologize, but the medium cut her off. “I don’t mind,” she said. “It’s my fate to tell fortunes and see ghosts.”
“See ghosts!” I said. Though the sun blazed down, I felt a chill as though someone had dipped my heart in cold water.
“Yes, I can see ghosts,” said the medium. “It’s no comfort to me, but I’m used to them now. Not like you—eh, Little Miss?”
Amah asked, “What can you see?”
“Sit down,” she said, pulling out a couple of rickety bamboo footstools. Once seated, I had the sensation of having literally and socially come down in the world. Only coolies and other rough people squatted or sat on the street like this.
“How much?” asked Amah, always practical, but the medium paid no attention to her. She stared at me, her cloudy right eye roaming beyond my frame to sights unseen. At length she closed her eyes and gave a long drawn-out hiss. Amah and I glanced at each other. Skeptically I wondered whether this was merely some act to intimidate clients, when her eyes snapped open again and she began muttering charms under her breath. She then took out a pinch of gray powder and, placing it on the palm of her hand, blew it at me.
I coughed violently. The powder was gritty and felt like ashes. It stuck to my face and clung perniciously to the front of my dress. I groped for my handkerchief, but Amah was already cleaning my face with hers. As I blinked my eyes open, the medium chuckled. I stood abruptly.
“You give up too easily,” she said. “If you go now, that young man will follow you forever.”
“What man?”
“Ah, young lady. You think I couldn’t see him? I gave him a taste of some medicine. He won’t be back for a while.”
I sat down again. “He’s following me?”
“I’m sure he’ll be back. But at least we can talk without him spying on you, eh?”
“What does he look like?”
She cocked her head to one side, favoring the clouded eye. “A fine well-fed fellow. Only recently dead, isn’t he?”
“Less than a year,” I whispered. “I thought he could only come into my dreams.”
“In your dreams, yes. He talks to you?”
“He says he wants to marry me.”
“And were you betrothed?”
“No!”
“He seems to have some hold on you. The dead don’t usually do this to strangers.”
I flushed. “Well, he said . . . He said he had seen me at a festival before he died.”
“That’s possible. Some who die of love can come back as revenants.”
I couldn’t stop myself from snorting. “Him? Die of love? I don’t believe it.”
“Then did you walk through a cemetery at night? Make a vow to something, even a god or a tree or a river? Did you cast a spell on someone? Do you have a secret enemy?”
I shook my head. “Isn’t he dead? Why hasn’t he gone somewhere else? The Courts of Hell, or wherever the next passing is?”
She smiled. “Don’t we all want to know that! Some stay because of their attachments to this world. Others have no one to bury them so they become hungry ghosts. But this one looks well provided for.”
I shuddered, remembering the vast empty halls and endless corridors of Lim Tian Ching’s mansions.
“He wants something from you.”
“I can’t marry him. Can you help me get rid of him?”
The medium rocked to and fro. “It depends, it depends.”
“I have a little money,” I said stiffly.
“Money? Ah, your money isn’t worth that much here.” Her sharp smile revealed a single canine tooth. “Not that I’ll say no to it.”
“But you just got rid of him!”
“So I did, so I did. But that was just for a while. I can give you something that will keep him away. But it won’t last forever. You want to be completely free of him, you may have to do more.”
“Like what?”
“Now, that I can’t tell you right now.”
I felt indignant, which was, I suppose in retrospect, rather foolish for I had come all this way in disbelief; and at the merest sign of help from this woman, pinned all my hopes on her.
“Take this powder.” She took out another pouch and poured a coarse black dust into a paper cone. “Mix it in three parts of water and drink it every night before you go to bed. If it doesn’t work, you can decrease the water to two parts. But it’s very strong, so be careful. And wear this amulet.” It was a grubby thing sewn of cloth and stuffed with pungent herbs. Finally she took out a fistful of yellow papers stamped with vermilion characters. “Paste these on your doors and windows. That will be five cents.”
That was all? She had spoken at much greater length to the young man.
“Surely there must be more I can do!” I burst out. “Should I go to a temple, give alms, pray to a god? Should I cut my hair off and make a vow?”
She regarded me almost pityingly. “Of course, if you want to. Won’t do you any harm. But as for cutting off that pretty hair and making vows . . . well, why don’t you wait first. Don’t do anything rash.”
Silently, I handed over ten copper half-cent coins, wondering whether I would have received better advice if we had, in fact, offered her tin-animal money. As I leaned over she suddenly grasped my hand.
“Listen,” she whispered harshly. “I’ll tell you one more thing, though it may get me into trouble. Burn hell banknotes for yourself!”
Taken aback by her grip, I said, “The money for the dead?”
“If you can’t do it yourself, ask someone to do it for you.” Turning, she said in a louder voice, “You want promises of success, assurances that all will be well? I don’t do that. Ask your amah here. That’s why I’m the real deal.” She chortled again. “It’s not a gift, my dear young lady. No, no it isn’t. Those feng shui masters, those ghost hunters and face readers. They like to tell people that they can do what they do because they’re so talented and blessed by heaven.”
“And aren’t they?”
She leaned close to me. Her breath was pungent with a yeasty odor. “Tell me, do you think it a blessing to see the dead?”
When we left, she was still laughing.
Our journey back was subdued. I could see that Amah wanted to ask me what the medium had whispered, but she was too proud to speak of our private affairs in front of the rickshaw puller. Instead, I thought over the medium’s words. Burn cash for yourself, she had told me. Did that mean funeral offerings? Was I fated for death? I lifted up my hands and pressed them against my eyes. Against the brilliant sunlight I could see the flush of blood pulsing through them. To die seemed impossible, unbelievable.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught Amah looking at me anxiously, and decided against telling her the medium’s
last instructions, disturbing as they were. I gazed out of the rickshaw, overcome by a flat sense of depression. We were descending the slope of Bukit China, past the enormous cemetery with its rows of Chinese graves. Some still bore traces of wilted flowers and burned joss sticks, but by and large they were neglected.
Most people were terrified of ghosts and would not go near a tomb unless it was Qing Ming. Indeed, some of the graves were so overgrown that you could barely make out the carved characters that proclaimed their occupants’ names. The oldest had collapsed into themselves so that the slope was dotted here and there with gaping holes, like the empty tooth sockets of some giant creature. How different it was from the quiet Malay cemeteries, whose pawn-shaped Islamic tombstones are shaded by the frangipani tree, which the Malays call the graveyard flower. Amah would never let me pluck the fragrant, creamy blossoms when I was a child. It seemed to me that in this confluence of cultures, we had acquired one another’s superstitions without necessarily any of their comforts.
Chapter 9
The medicine tasted like ashes. Like bitter herbs and burned dreams. That evening I watched as Amah prepared it, using hot water poured from a small kettle that she kept for herbal infusions. To Amah all medicine must be taken hot. We had carefully pasted the yellow spell papers on the inside of every window and on the front door. When we finished, it was as though a host of small flags waved from each aperture. Uneasily, I noted how they seemed to flutter even when there was no draft. I hesitated, however, over the medium’s instructions to burn funeral money for myself, not wanting to mention it to Amah. Instead, I passed her a small oilcloth packet. “Can you help me sell this?”
She shook out some gold hairpins. They were old-fashioned and ornate and I had forgotten who had bequeathed them to me. “Why do you do this?”
“Because we need more money and you can’t keep dipping into your savings.”
She protested, but in the end promised to ask her amah sisterhood if any lady wished to buy jewelry. That was the way it was always done. Discreet inquiries, the exchange of gold pieces or jade pendants for ready cash. No wonder every concubine and mistress asked for her favors to be returned in cold metal and gleaming gems. Surely, if I were a courtesan I would demand no less. As it was, the thought that we had come down to selling jewelry scraped at my conscience like a little claw.
I went straight to bed after imbibing the medium’s draught. As I swirled the dark gritty powder in the bowl, I had some misgivings about whether I would be poisoned. In the end, however, I swallowed it and with a feeling of surprise, woke almost ten hours later to brilliant morning light. Amah was hovering anxiously over me, and as I sat up she managed a watery smile.
“What time is it?”
“Almost the hour of the snake,” she said. “Did you sleep well?”
It had been a deep, almost smothering sleep, but mercifully uninterrupted by any dreams. I wondered whether the medium’s secret ingredient was merely a sleeping powder. Looking at Amah’s eager face, however, I couldn’t help but smile back at her.
I made my way downstairs to my father’s study, feeling a pressing need to talk to him about our finances, the marriage negotiations, and all kinds of things that we had not had the occasion to discuss for a while. I even longed to copy poems under his critical eye again. But his study door was closed and when I prised it open, the room was empty. All that remained was the musty smell of books and the heavy sweet odor of opium.
“Where has my father gone?” I asked Ah Chun.
“He went out early.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No, miss.”
Dissatisfied, I closed the study door and leaned against it. What was happening out in the world of men? Had Tian Bai talked to his uncle again? What were we to do with our debts? How I wished I could go out and make inquiries by myself. If only I had a brother or a cousin to rely on. Despite the fact that my feet were not bound, I was confined to domestic quarters as though a rope tethered my ankle to our front door. Even Amah, with her sisterhood placed in the employ of many families, had greater recourse than myself. I had heard nothing further from Yan Hong. Maybe she too had forgotten me. I wondered what Tian Bai was doing, and whether he even thought about me anymore. Disconsolate, I took up my sewing basket and attempted to finish a pair of panels intended as sleeve borders for a new dress. The work kept my hands busy as my thoughts churned incessantly.
I didn’t see my father the next day either, which was worrisome. My father was not the kind of person who liked to go out, partly because of his smallpox scars. I was used to my father’s looks and the few old friends who still frequented our house did not seem to care, but strangers would often stop and stare. When I was younger, I sometimes wondered whether my father would remarry. He had loved my mother, though, and perhaps no second wife, chosen from the dutiful ranks of impoverished spinsters, could have compared to her. She, he had once told me in an unguarded moment, looked like a houri from paradise. Our house was a shrine to my dead mother. My father still worshipped her in his study, and Amah could not help recalling her girlhood even as she helped me grow through mine. I sighed, wondering if Tian Bai would think so fondly of me if we were married. Despite the absence of dreams, I felt weary. There was an ominous heaviness, like the air roiling before a thunderstorm.
Two days later, the front door flew open with a crash. It was early in the morning and the sound reverberated through the house like a crack of thunder. I ran downstairs as fast as I could. In the entrance hall, Ah Chun was white-faced, hands pressed against her mouth. A great stain showed wetly on the door, trickling into a dark pool. It was as though some creature had been slaughtered on our front step. I looked out but the street was empty. Dread filled me, as though I had swallowed a cold and heavy toad, for surely this was unlucky, very unlucky, indeed.
“What happened?” I asked Ah Chun. “Did you see anyone?”
“No . . . there was no one.”
“But why did you open the door?”
She burst out crying. “It opened by itself.”
“Surely you must have seen someone running away?” There had not been enough time, I thought, for the perpetrator to vanish.
“There was no one,” she repeated. “The door was locked.”
“Maybe you forgot to lock the door last night.” Amah appeared anxiously behind her.
Ah Chun shook her head mulishly. “The bolts hadn’t been drawn yet.”
She started to cry again and talked about leaving.
“What do you mean, you foolish girl?” said Amah.
“It was ghosts. Ghosts did this.”
The rest of the day passed gloomily. Ah Chun wept and repeated she wanted to go home. She said she had heard of such things happening in her village before and it always ended in disaster for the household. I looked at the doorstep again after Old Wong had washed it. He was a lean old man, his sparse hair turning gray, but I had never been more grateful for his taciturn presence.
“What do you think it was?” I asked.
“Blood,” he replied tersely.
“But what kind of blood?”
“Pig maybe. Get a lot of blood when you slaughter a pig.”
“You don’t think it was human?”
He scowled. “Little Miss, I’ve known you since you were as high as my knee. How many times have I made you steamed-blood pudding? Smells like pig, I’m guessing pig.”
I looked down at my feet. “Ah Chun says ghosts did this. Do you believe her?”
He snorted. “Ah Chun also says that spirits ate the leftover rice dumplings in the pantry.” With a curt nod, he stumped off.
“Could it be that some thugs mistook our house?” asked Amah hopelessly. Her words sent new fears snaking into my heart. Moneylenders. What had my father been doing? Miraculously he was home. He had been home all morning, in fact, and had slept through the entir
e incident. When he opened the door of his study, the room reeked of opium.
“Father!” I was torn between relief and fear at his appearance. He looked wild-eyed, his face unshaven and his rumpled clothes hanging off his gaunt frame. When I told him about the morning’s incident, he seemed to barely register it.
“Is it gone?” he asked.
“Old Wong washed it off.”
“Good, good . . . ”
“Father. Have you borrowed money from anyone?”
He rubbed his red eyes. “The only man who holds my debts is the master of the Lim family, Lim Teck Kiong,” he said slowly. “And I don’t think he would resort to such tactics. Why should he? When all he wants . . . ” His voice trailed off as he looked shamefaced.
“He wants me to marry his son. Did you say yes?” For an instant, a dreadful suspicion entered my heart.
“No, no. I said I would think about it.”
“Did you talk to him again?”
“Yesterday. Or maybe the day before.” He turned and went back into his study.
Later I told Amah what my father had said and asked her if she thought the Lim family would do such a thing. She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought it of them. But who knows?” Between us lay an unspoken dread. Amah would not give voice to it in case it strengthened any evil spirits, but I wondered if the ghost of Lim Tian Ching had become more powerful. Or perhaps the Lim family, living or dead, meant to drive me to madness.
I took Amah’s thin hand in mine. This hand had dried my tears and spanked me as a child. It had combed my hair and spoon-fed me. Now it was spotted with liver marks, and the knuckles and joints swollen. I wasn’t sure how old she was, but I felt a surge of melancholy affection. Sooner than later she would need someone to care for her. I wondered whether rich and fortunate young ladies ever had to think of such things. In a household such as the Lim family, I had seen so much abundance that even the senior servants had underlings to fetch and carry for them. If I married Lim Tian Ching in a spirit wedding, it would satisfy almost everyone, I thought. Amah would have a better old age; my father’s debts would be canceled. But to live in that household as a widow and be forever separated from Tian Bai! To watch him marry someone else while I was visited nightly by a ghost. I couldn’t bear it.