“When I was very young there was a child that I used to play with by the river. Everyday he waited for me and we would busy ourselves playing with sticks and leaves. He never touched anything, just told me what to build. Finally I asked my mother whether I could bring him home for dinner, for he looked thin and hungry. She didn’t believe me when I described him, saying there was no such boy in our village, until I took her to the river and pointed him out. It was then that I realized that he was a ghost, for she couldn’t see him. In fact, she was quite frightened and I got a real thrashing, I can tell you. I was told never to play with him again. Later, I gathered from the bits and pieces that I overheard from the adults that there had been a child lost years ago. He had wandered away one day and his parents, being migrant workers, had no idea where to find him. Nobody ever heard of the family again and the child was forgotten.
“Because I insisted that he was still by the river, my parents concluded that the child had drowned. One day my father went to the riverbank without me and made a funeral tablet for the child since they knew his name, and burned offerings to him. I never saw the boy again. After that, my parents cautioned me not to talk to ghosts anymore.”
“But you did a good thing,” I said.
Old Wong spat out the shell of a melon seed. “Yes, but that was an unusual case. They knew his name and his family. Most of the dead are unknown. And none of them since have spoken to me.”
“I’m talking to you now.”
Old Wong frowned. “You’re not dead yet. And you shouldn’t talk to just anyone who sees you anyway. There are many evil things abroad, many ghosts who mean harm to the living and will try to trick you.”
I shuddered, thinking about Fan and her protestations of love for the old man. “Who taught you that?”
“Aiya, after that incident, my mother couldn’t sleep for worrying about me. And in a way she was right to be fearful. My eyes had been opened and I realized that many of the people that I had taken for granted were probably ghosts. Every day I saw them; the woman in the deserted fruit stall with nothing to sell or the one-legged man in the back of the kopi tiam. He often laughed for no reason, and I had never understood why nobody paid attention to him. Now I realized it was because they couldn’t see him.
“One day a traveling fortune-teller came to our village. He performed tricks with the aid of spirits, but it was easy enough for me to see through his effects. When he discovered that I could see ghosts, he wanted to buy me from my parents. My mother refused, but after the fortune-teller left, she was afraid that he might come back and steal me. That was when she sent me to a temple to become a novice.”
“And did you stay there?”
Old Wong snorted. “What do you think? I’m sitting here next to you, aren’t I? I ran away so many times that in the end the abbot said he wouldn’t have me anymore. But while I was there, he gave me private lessons. Maybe he thought he could train me to become an exorcist. He was the one who told me how to deal with ghosts. Much good that did, however. After my experience with the child by the river, I never wanted to have any more to do with them.”
“Because it was frightening?”
“No, because it was too sad. Most of them I couldn’t help, and I had no interest in making money off them. Cheh, you could say I shirked my duty. But I was always in the temple kitchens anyway, so in the end I ran off and became a cook.”
“And your family?”
“It was better for me to leave. There was always someone asking me to see ghosts, grant favors, or do mischief for them. I just wanted to be left alone.”
I thought about how dismissive Old Wong had always been toward our maid Ah Chun’s hysterics and could not help laughing.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“No wonder you never believed Ah Chun’s stories.”
Old Wong let a grudging smile escape. “That girl! I could have told her far worse things than she imagined.”
“Did you ever see a ghost in our house?”
“Once on the main staircase . . . ” He made a face and said abruptly, “But never you mind. The old master had an exorcist brought in.”
Only much later would I understand the significance of his words, but at the time I was more anxious to ask, “Did you ever see the ghost of Lim Tian Ching?”
He frowned. “No. But you say he came in your dreams at first. He must have some other link. All I can tell you is that he never bothered to come to the kitchen. Also I don’t look for ghosts. I try not to see them or pay attention. It’s the only way I can live my life. To see spirits is a taint, not a talent.”
He fell silent, while I thought of what a fixture Old Wong was in our household. How strange to think that he had kept this uncanny ability buried beneath the surface of his everyday life.
“Old Wong, can you do something for me?” I asked at last.
“What? I hope that you’re planning to come home with me now.”
“I can’t do that. But can you make me an offering of spirit money or food?”
He sighed. “I don’t like to do that. It strengthens the ability of your spirit to stay in the other world. I think you should come back to your body now.”
“What good is it if I’m Lim Tian Ching’s prisoner? Please—give me a little time to find a way out of this.”
“But I have no ancestral tablet to make offerings to you.”
“Just write it on some paper.”
“Little Miss, I cannot read or write.”
I was crestfallen and he saw my disappointment. “I’ll buy you some food that you can take directly, since you’re here with me. And then later maybe I’ll ask your father to write you a funeral tablet, though he won’t like it at all. That is, if he’s still lucid.”
I felt a rush of guilt. “How is my father?”
“Not good. I’m sorry I can’t give you better news.”
“And Amah?”
“Busy taking care of your body. That’s her whole focus these days. She wanted to bring in some medium from the Sam Poh Kong temple, but your father absolutely refused. They had a terrible fight about it. I’m telling you, you better come back soon.”
Despite this worrisome news, it was a strangely pleasant occasion. I tagged along beside Old Wong, just as I had done when I was a child and could come and go more freely. We passed an itinerant noodle seller with a pot of steaming soup at one end of a carrying pole and a basket containing a small brazier and various ingredients on the other. Squatting in the street, he set up his portable stove and cooked noodles to order. I had always wanted to try some, but Amah would never let me.
“Can I have noodles?”
Old Wong looked indignant. “Don’t you know that they never wash the bowl and chopsticks but simply pass them along to the next customer? I can make you far better noodles than that.”
“But I can’t go home right now.”
“You want to get sick?” I couldn’t help smiling at the absurdity of this. “You don’t know,” he said darkly. “No noodles for you.” Then he relented. “Further on there’s a laksa stall. We’ll go there, not this kind of dirty place.”
We entered a narrow alley where canvas awnings were stretched against the sun, and hawkers hunched over charcoal braziers. A narrow gutter filled with foul-smelling water ran through it. Amah would have said it was no place for a girl of good family, as the diners consisted of mainly men, both coolies and other townsmen. Old Wong picked his way past the noisy diners packed together at communal tables. Narrow counters were piled high with glossy prawns, tangled noodles, and mounds of red chilies and fresh cilantro. Fried fish, yellow with turmeric, and crispy begedil, a meat and potato croquette, were laid out on green banana leaves, while satay and stingray rubbed with chili paste were barbecued on charcoal grills. I was so hungry that I felt faint.
Old Wong headed straight to a stall with a li
ne of waiting customers. When his curry laksa arrived, Old Wong presented it to me with a mumbled prayer. Then he picked up his chopsticks and began to eat. To my relief, once it had been dedicated, I was able to savor the spicy noodles swimming in their curried broth. Puffs of fried tofu, bean sprouts, and plump cockles were buried beneath like treasure. Once replete, I chattered gaily as I followed him around, forgetting my sorrows for a while. Old Wong bought bananas and bean paste buns, remembering they were my favorites. I told him I wasn’t hungry, but he said it didn’t matter.
“You may find you can eat them later.”
I nodded, remembering the funeral money that had appeared in my pockets.
“I have no more money on me,” he said. “Are you sure you can’t come back to the house?”
“Not as long as the demons are guarding it.”
“But what will you eat in the meantime?”
Touched by his concern, I turned my face away, unable to speak. We were almost home when Old Wong asked me whether the demons were still on guard. I glanced around, annoyed with myself for unthinkingly following him back, but there was no sign of them.
“I’d better go,” I said.
He opened his mouth as though to say something, but I left swiftly, afraid to draw attention to him.
Chapter 16
As I was now back in familiar territory, my thoughts flew again to the shining thread that I had followed out of my bedroom window and which I had lost while pursued by the hungry ghosts. I searched up and down the street, retracing that earlier route. Just as I was about to give up in despair, I caught its faint gleam with overwhelming relief. Once I had regained it, however, I stood irresolute. If this thread truly led me to Tian Bai, should I seek him out at all? Despite my new suspicions of Yan Hong, it was he that Lim Tian Ching had named as a murderer, and on top of everything, he was preparing to wed another.
Yet I yearned to see him. Foolishly, perhaps, I felt that if I could only look into his eyes again, I would know whether Lim Tian Ching’s accusations were false. After all, there was a history of rivalry between them. And if I could only discover Lim Tian Ching’s secret task and who was behind it, I might have a better sense of whether his vendetta had just cause. I didn’t wish to become like Fan, trapped for decades in the orbit of her lover’s life, yet the longing to see Tian Bai one more time, to find out whether this marriage was his own desire, was hard to resist. In the end, I gave in.
As I trotted along, buoyed by a good meal, my spirits began to rise. The thread in my hand led me away from the walled mansions of the wealthy, through the commercial district and out toward the harbor. The distinctive corrugated sails of Chinese junks came into view, mingled with the white sails of European schooners and a low flotilla of Malay prahus with painted eyes on their bows. Beyond them lay the Straits of Malacca, the turquoise waters clear as glass and warm as bathwater. From here ships came from Singapore and Penang, unloading their bales of cotton, tin, and spices on the bare backs of coolies like a never-ending procession of ants.
With no one to censure me, I was tempted to dip my toes into the waves, but the thread tugged me to the right. Fine as it was, it had a steely strength and its faint hum grew a little higher, like the hunting call of a female mosquito. The road wound down to a row of warehouses where cargo was stored before it was loaded onto the waiting ships. Our family had once had such a godown when my father still engaged actively in trade. I still remembered the excitement in our household when one of his ships came home with a fine cargo and profit, but those days were now only a distant memory.
The road petered out into a dirt path packed by the feet of coolies and rutted by oxcarts, ending at a large warehouse. The heavy doors were barred but the thread led me to a shipping office to the side. All was quiet and the very air, soft with the smell of the sea, shimmered in the afternoon heat. Inside, it was dim and cool, plainly planked with wood that had weathered gray from the sea air, and empty save for a table with a solitary abacus. I guessed this was where the overseer tallied boxes and paid off coolies, but the thread in my hand began to vibrate insistently, leading me through to an inner office stacked with shelves of ledgers and boxes of shipping records. A long window faced the sea, and ranged upon its sill was a curious collection. Pieces of coral lay next to a dismantled brass clock, the tooth of a whale, and a beautiful little horse carved of sandalwood. At the very end of the ledge the thread terminated at a woman’s hair comb. I knew at once that it was mine, the one that I had pressed into Tian Bai’s hand.
A flat sense of depression overcame me as I regarded the objects on the windowsill. What had I expected? That Tian Bai would be clutching my comb on his person, just as I had obsessively carried his watch? Fan had said the glittering thread conveyed the strength of feelings, but what if it was only a one-sided attachment? Perhaps it was fitting that my comb lay upon the ledge, the last in a line of trophies. Doubtless the Quah girl had given him something better to remember her by. Tears of disappointment lurked treacherously in my eyes, but I rubbed them away. Turning to the window I sighed and was startled when I heard another sigh close by.
In my haste, I had barely glanced at the other side of the room, which was sectioned off by screens. Now I walked around to discover that they concealed a washstand and a cot bed. On the bed, fast asleep, lay Tian Bai. One arm was thrown carelessly over his head. Even as I watched, he shifted and frowned. The sturdy column of his neck and the flat muscles of his chest gave him a vigor that made me curious about what he did when he wasn’t sitting at a desk.
I brushed my hand against his forehead, but there was no response. Fan had said she could enter the dreams of her beloved using her thread. I too had one and wondered whether I dared to use it, but my feet were already crossing the room to retrieve it. Plucking the thread between my fingers, I pressed it into his chest. There was a slight resistance, nothing more. Then the world around me swirled and became gray and cloudy.
I stood on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a harbor. The sea was a sullen green, the surrounding peaks blue and misty in the fading afternoon light. Wind shredded the clouds and the air was cold and strange. The bay, deep and curving with numerous inlets, held scores of ships far beyond Malacca’s capacity. There were tea clippers, steamers, and so many junks that the harbor was dotted with their fierce, finlike sails. As I looked around, marveling at this foreign land, I found that I was standing next to Tian Bai. I must have entered his dream, but what was he dreaming of? The wind blew unceasingly; the shapes of the mountains were new to me. Compared with Lim Tian Ching’s flat invasion of my own dreams, there was a vivid clarity to everything. But perhaps that was because he had manufactured a setting. In Tian Bai’s case, I was sure that this dream was a memory, and that this could only be Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor.
I had seen black-and-white lithographs of its long channel and the dramatic peaks that sheltered it, but had never imagined I would ever see such a sight myself. For some time I could only stare transfixed, until the sight of Tian Bai’s profile recalled me. Tian Bai stood a little apart from a group of sightseers who were dressed in a mixture of Manchu and Western clothing. He himself wore a jacket of gray broadcloth with covered buttons, matching waistcoat, and dark trousers. His hair was already cut short in the Western style. They were speaking Cantonese and English interchangeably, but I could understand every word, perhaps because what he heard and saw, I did too.
One young man seemed particularly close to Tian Bai and I guessed that he must be Yan Hong’s husband. He was short, with impish narrow eyes. The others, clearly fellow medical students, laughed at his remarks. The women stood a little apart. I was very interested in their clothes, particularly the boned and waisted walking costumes that nipped in their silhouettes and arched their backs. It was the first time I had seen Chinese women wearing European dress and I supposed that in Hong Kong such attire was fashionable, and the weather cool enough to dress this way without
inconvenience. Eagerly, I studied their hairstyles and jewelry, wondering how they pinned their hair up. As I did so, I noticed a girl who did not look quite Chinese. She was about my age, with a distinctive, almost foreign appearance. Her heavy-lidded dark eyes and creamy complexion with olive undertones reminded me of orchids grown in the shade. As she turned to the woman beside her, I noticed three small moles on the pale skin of her neck.
It soon became apparent that Tian Bai was watching this girl. His eye would rest on her, then swiftly glance away. Despite my own fascination with her, I couldn’t help feeling the sting of jealousy. Yan Hong’s husband came up beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Is this your first time seeing the beautiful Isabel?” he murmured. “Better not let her brother catch you. He’s just over there.”
“What was their family name again?” asked Tian Bai.
“Souza. An old Portuguese Eurasian family. But don’t even think about it.” His grip tightened on Tian Bai’s shoulder, then abruptly let go. “Come, we’re leaving!” he said.
Absorbed by the events unfolding before me, I now remembered with a start that my purpose was to talk to Tian Bai. I concentrated, telling him urgently, You can see me. You can. Obediently, he turned his head with an expression of confusion.
“Li Lan? What are you doing here?”
He stared beyond me at the group of people, now frozen as though time had stopped for them. “I must be dreaming,” he said, and in almost perfect accord the world around us began to ripple and dissolve. Realizing that Tian Bai was beginning to wake up, I thought desperately of the office I had found him in. The harder I focused, the clearer the image became. As Tian Bai looked around, adding his belief to it, it solidified until it was indistinguishable from the real room, down to the open window and the faint sound of the sea outside. Tian Bai was lying on the cot and I was standing beside him.