“Hm, an old merchant family. I don’t recall anyone from there recently.” My face fell, and he gave a dry cackle. “Don’t give up hope, the womenfolk are often secluded. She may yet be there. I think they have one or two houses still in the merchant quarter.”
I cast my eyes down to hide the sudden beating of my heart. Was it possible that my mother was still here? A shiver ran over me, rendering me deaf to the old man’s querulous voice.
“I said, how did you die?” he repeated. “I want to know all about you, so young and pretty.” The loose skin on his throat trembled like a turkey’s wattle.
“I fell,” I said hastily. “It was dark and I slipped on the stairs.”
He looked disappointed. “Did anyone push you?”
“Perhaps. My cousin was very jealous of me. We were both interested in the same young man.” I hurried on, describing the horse-faced girl to him and the paroxysms of jealousy we had both suffered over an unnamed beau. That at least was true enough. Partway through I paused. “Are all the old Malacca families represented here?”
“Yes, even some whose line has already died out.” He named a few and I listened carefully, satisfied when I heard him mention Lim. So it would probably be fairly easy to find Lim Tian Ching’s abode.
“Go on, then,” said the old man with a leer. “Tell me about your cousin. Did you fight with her?”
I thought quickly, “Oh yes, we really set to it one day. We rolled around on the bed and tore each other’s clothes to shreds with our teeth. But tell me, now that we are here in the Plains of the Dead, does anyone have special escorts? I heard that you could bribe the border officials.” My voice faltered, fearing I was asking too many questions.
“Nonsense! Nobody can bribe the border officials.” He regarded me with suspicion, so much so that I hastily took my leave. Even then, he pursued me down the length of the street before I managed to shake off the lecherous creature. The old man had appeared harmless, almost mad in fact, but I wondered uneasily whether he had merely been toying with me. Well, there was no use fretting over it. At least I had a good idea where Lim Tian Ching might be found.
After backtracking for a while, I headed toward the merchant quarter. That was where the Lim mansion was and, likely, some semblance of my own ancestral home as well. Almost angrily, I debated with myself. Time was short and I really ought to go to the Lim mansion, yet I hesitated, thinking of my mother’s face, a face that I had dreamed of often but could never recall. She had never had her portrait painted while she was alive. It had been so long since she had left me that I no longer knew whether the memories I had of her were my own or merely conjured from tales told by Amah. I turned Chendana’s head toward my own neighborhood. I would pass by and see what sort of dwelling existed here. It wouldn’t take long, I told myself. Just a few moments, that was all.
The streets became increasingly familiar in a strange way. Parts of them looked nothing like what I remembered, yet there was a spatial recognition, some trick of proportion that sang out to me. In some places where there ought to have been buildings, there was nothing but old trees and rocks; in others, there were three or four fine dwellings occupying the same spot. And of course, everything was much farther apart, as though the original streets had been stretched to twice or even thrice their width and length. On one corner, which in the real Malacca held only the shell of a decaying house, there was a grand mansion. From behind the imposing gates came the faint sound of laughter and women’s voices. I shuddered as I passed. Despite the gaiety, I couldn’t help remembering what that house looked like in the living world, with its roof fallen in and the wild grass breaking up the cracked stone floors. There had been tales about that house ever since I was a child. Some said that a plague had killed all the inhabitants. Others that the last master of the house had gone mad and butchered his wives and concubines, laying their bodies out in the courtyard until the stones ran purple with old blood. As a child I had avoided that house, my head full of frightening tales told by Amah. Now, seeing it as it might have been in its days of glory, I felt terrified yet drawn to it. What would happen if I knocked upon those doors? With an effort I pulled myself away. Curiosity was my besetting sin, I told myself.
As we reached the corner before my house, my throat tightened. Something whispered to me that if I wanted to remain among the living, these things were better left unknown. Yet I pressed onward stubbornly. I wanted to see my mother. How wrong could that be? At first glance, the curving wall that surrounded our house looked exactly the same, but when I reached the front I had a surprise. There were three houses on the site. Each house occupied the same space with no overlap. I stared until my head began to swim. It was some trick that I could not fathom, yet no matter how I peered from the corners of my eyes, I still saw three dwellings.
The first was a grand mansion, somewhat in the style of our home in Malacca, but far more imposing. The ponderous front doors were twice the height they should have been and from behind the serried walled courtyards I could see the upper balconies rising like monoliths. It was as though my home had, in some nightmarish manner, grown like a fungus overnight. Despite the size and splendor, there was an air of decay about it, as though it had begun to crumble from within. The second house was a medium-sized abode in far better condition. It was like a child’s drawing of a house, serviceable and sturdy but with no pretensions to grandeur. The third was barely a house. It was very much like Fan’s dwelling: a little box, crudely made and roughly finished with a narrow door and mean dark windows. I hesitated before my choices, then dismounted. The second appeared the most welcoming, so I walked up to its front door. As I did so, the other houses melted away into the periphery of my vision. I knocked, but there was no answer. Just as I tried again, I heard a harsh voice call out from the side.
“What do you want? She’s gone, and good riddance too!”
Chapter 22
I peered at the door and windows, but the voice called out to me again. “Here! On the other side!” Obediently, I retreated until the trio of houses appeared again and then I saw her. Leaning out of the narrow doorway of the smallest house was a frowsy, elderly woman. Like Fan, she too wore funeral attire, though her clothes were faded and worn. Her cheeks, once plump, had fallen into hanging pouches and two lines were etched disagreeably from the corners of her nose to her mouth. Her eyes, however, were sharp, stabbing into me like embroidery needles.
“Are you talking to me, Auntie?” I said politely.
“Whom else would I be talking to? If you’re looking for her, she’s long gone.”
“Who lives in this house?”
“You don’t know and yet you go knocking on doors?”
“I was seeking a friend. Someone said she might be living in this quarter.”
The woman looked at me contemptuously. “I don’t believe you.”
My face burned. “If you don’t wish to help me, I’ll bid you good day, then.” I began to retrace my steps, fuming at her rude behavior. Why did ghosts behave like this in the Plains of the Dead? They seemed to have forgotten every civility, the genteel codes of respect that bound our society.
“Huffy, aren’t you? I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you. Just that I don’t believe you.”
“What don’t you believe?”
“That you’re looking for a friend. A friend! When you’re the spitting image of her!”
I turned in surprise. “Who are you referring to?”
“Why that hussy. That whore!”
The woman disengaged herself from the doorway and took a few steps toward me. Her frame, once large and heavy, now sagged as though it had been stuffed unevenly with lumps of hard cotton. “Surprised?” she asked. “You never would have guessed from the way she looked. Daughter-in-law of the Pan family, indeed!”
I opened my mouth but no sound came out. The woman ignored me, her words spilling from her as though they had bee
n pent up for decades as, indeed, they might have been. “Coming here to look for your precious mother, is that right? I’m sure your father told you nothing but good things about her. He was always a weak, foolish boy.” I flinched as though she had slapped me. How quickly she had penetrated my anonymity!
“I know all about you,” she said, a thin smile stretching her lips. “Even when you were in her womb. I’m your grandfather’s third concubine. You should be addressing me as ‘Grandmother,’ or haven’t you any manners?” She drew closer and I stepped back. “It wasn’t easy, being the third concubine, you know! The other women in the household were so jealous of me when he brought me in. Not his wife. She’d given up by then, but the first and second concubines made my life miserable. But all I had to do was get a son by him. His other sons had died except for your father, and I knew what he was—weak!” She stopped for a moment, regarding me with a triumphant air.
I blurted out, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you.”
It was quite possibly the worst thing I could have said. If she had been irritable before, she was absolutely enraged now. What did I mean, I had never heard of her? How dare I disrespect my ancestors? I retreated down the path, beaten back by her vitriol, but seeing that I was about to leave, she mastered herself into some semblance of reason.
“Oh, but I have so much to tell you,” she said. “Don’t you want to know more about your mother?” At this I stopped, hating myself at the same time for falling for her tricks. “At least you should have the courtesy to stop a moment instead of running off with no manners.”
The problem with the dead was that they all wanted someone to listen to them. Each ghost I had encountered had a story that it was only too ready to share. Maybe it got lonely in the afterlife. Or perhaps those who lingered longest were the ones who could not bear to give up. Something told me that I might regret listening to this woman, but I couldn’t help myself. “What is it you want to tell me?”
“Changed your mind, then?” She smiled unpleasantly. “Well, some company is better than none, I suppose! Your family has neglected me shamefully. I still get a little stipend now and then when they burn incense for the ancestors, but it’s not very much, is it?” She gestured at the mean little house behind her. “And your grandfather promised to bury me in the family lot. But I showed him. I got my revenge even from beyond the grave.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been waiting for years for someone else from your family to come along. The last person was your mother. But then she wouldn’t talk to me afterward.” She darted a swift glance at me.
“I came to see my mother,” I said. “If she’s gone, there’s no reason for me to stay.”
“Oh, but she’s not gone far. Don’t you want to find her?” I had assumed my mother had passed on to the Courts of Hell, but the woman was smiling again. “Sit down,” she said. “I want to tell you a story.
“You have to understand that I wasn’t always so unpleasant to look at. Once I was a fresh young girl like you. Pretty enough for your grandfather to choose as a concubine, though I was just a servant at the time in his friend’s house. Your grandfather didn’t know that I already had a secret lover, the second son of the house. When I became pregnant, I thought my lover would surely marry me or take me as a concubine. But he abandoned me. He wanted someone better. Oh, I was filled with grief and jealousy! Who was it, this woman who had stolen him from me? A young lady, he said. Daughter of the Lee family, not a servant like me.”
I winced, recognizing my mother’s maiden name, and the old woman laughed. “I see you understand where this is going. My lover made me get rid of the baby. He said that she would never marry him if he had a bastard. Do you know what it’s like to have a child torn from your body? I screamed so much that I couldn’t speak for days. After it was over, my lover arranged for me to become your grandfather’s concubine. The old man was besotted enough not to notice I wasn’t a virgin. I didn’t want him, but I had no choice. But my lover didn’t get what he wanted either. Your mother turned him down. She wouldn’t marry him—oh no! He was only the second son after all, so he married her cousin instead.
“By that time I had other troubles. All I needed was a son to secure my position, but I couldn’t get pregnant again. I thought maybe your grandfather was too old, so I decided to get a child by some other means. Your father was a handsome young man then, but no matter what I did, he ignored me. Finally I cornered him, but the fool only stammered and wept. He was in love with someone else. Of course, it was your mother.
“How do you think I felt then? That woman took everyone from me, one after the other.” The old concubine’s face was raw with emotion. Shame burned my cheeks. I didn’t want to hear any more but I was frozen. “She married him—why not? He was the only son of a rich family. That snake pretended she knew nothing of what had happened, but I wasn’t fooled. And I still couldn’t get a child. I wanted a baby—my baby that I had lost to the abortionist. I couldn’t bear it!”
Her voice rose in a howl, so painful that I cringed, but she hissed at me. “One day I brushed past her on the upper landing. She put her hand over her belly and I knew. Your father was behind her and he said with a foolish smile, ‘We’re having a baby.’ I couldn’t control myself. I flew at her and we struggled on the stairs. In that instant, your father lunged forward and grabbed her. She was safe. I fell all the way down and broke my neck at the foot of the main staircase.
“Oh, you needn’t look so horrified! I’m sure nobody in your household ever mentioned this to you. They said it was an accident. But if your father hadn’t brushed past me to snatch her back, maybe I wouldn’t have fallen. They made a hasty funeral for me. Your grandfather burned some grave goods, but after a year or so he simply stopped. So you see, I had plenty of reasons to be angry with your family.
“The first few years after I died, I spent all my time spying on the world of the living. I passed through the house so often that in the end they exorcised me. There was a cook who could see ghosts. He was the one who went to the master and said that my unquiet spirit was in the house. So I had to come back here, to this hovel in the Plains of the Dead. And I waited. I was young when my life ended. Only twenty-one, the same age as your mother. I know, I don’t look like it anymore. That’s because I traded it. There are ways to get around everything. I found a demon who ate the essence out of my spirit body. And in return he sent the smallpox to your house.
“Your mother and grandfather succumbed quickly, though your father survived. Can you imagine the looks on their faces when they arrived here and found me waiting? But they didn’t stay. No, they didn’t. Your grandfather was only here a few years and then he was called on to the courts for judgment. And your mother? Well, she’s still around but can’t bear to live in the house your father burned for her. Never accepts her spirit offerings, or anything like that. She’s gone to be a whore in someone else’s house. Anything to get away from me.”
There was a dull pain in my chest, a squeezing breathlessness. My head rang with the echoes of her story. I wished I’d never gone to look for my mother. All I had found was a monstrous tale of old sins and deep bitterness. With difficulty, I controlled my voice.
“Why didn’t you send the smallpox to your lover, who made you lose your child in the first place?”
She lifted her brows. “It’s none of your business what I chose to do. In the end, everyone who’s ever crossed me will pay for it. You’re upset about your precious mother. Well, let me tell you just where she went and what a good, kind person she is.”
Instinctively I shrank back.
“That’s right,” she said. “When I told her what I’d done, she went straight off to the household of my lover. Oh, he’s not dead yet. In fact, he’s still in the world of the living. She probably thought I deserved whatever I had suffered at his hands and went to live with his family, no doubt to plot some re
venge against me. That’s where she is—a kept woman in the Lim family mansion!”
I had thought that nothing she said could shock me more than her earlier revelations, but I was wrong. “The Lim family?”
“That was your mother’s revenge on me. Stupid woman! As though I care what she does with herself.” She opened her mouth as though to unleash another tirade, and for the second time that day I fled.
The Lim family. All paths led back to their door. Our destinies seemed darkly tangled, and for the first time I considered the burden of the Buddhist Wheel of reincarnation. Groaning beneath its weight, individual lives were forced to play out a farce time and time again. The image of the Anglican church in Malacca rose before my eyes together with its green and quiet graveyard. When I died, I thought, I would rather rest there undisturbed than continue like that old concubine, eaten up by her schemes of vengeance from beyond the grave. But what did I really know about anything? My world had been turned upside down.
Chapter 23
For some time I let Chendana wander at will, not caring what path she chose. I clung to her back, hugging my thin pajama top and wondering how this dead version of Malacca had become so cold. A breeze blew unceasingly, at first barely noticeable but over time wearing down my defenses until I shivered uncontrollably. Little things began to fall into place. I remembered Madam Lim telling me in her soft voice, when I first went to her house, that she and my mother were cousins of some sort. The general air of gloom in our family, which I had attributed solely to my mother’s death, must have held lingering echoes of the death of the Third Concubine, Old Wong and Amah’s dislike of our main staircase, and everyone’s reluctance to speak of the past. I remembered the pitying glances of other amahs when Amah took me out as a child. Now it occurred to me that they might have seen me as an unlucky creature, born of a household plagued by ill fortune. As for the Third Concubine’s lover, I had little doubt as to who that might be. Lim Teck Kiong, father of my tormentor Lim Tian Ching and false friend to my father. It seemed that he had never ceased meddling in our affairs.