When Lakshmnan and Mohini were six years old, they started school. In the morning they went to school, where they learned English, and in the afternoon for language classes, where they were taught to read and write Tamil. Lakshmnan had to wear navy blue shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt, and Mohini a dark blue pinafore with a white shirt beneath. White socks and white canvas shoes completed the outfits. Hand in hand, they walked beside me. My heart swelled with pride. First day at school. For me, too. I had never been to school and was so happy to give my children something I had never had. We started off early and made a detour to the temple first. On that cool morning we placed their schoolbooks on the floor by the shrine to be blessed, Lakshmnan rang the bell, and I smashed a coconut to ask for blessings.
I was twenty-six years old and Lalita six when a card arrived from my uncle the mango dealer. His daughter was getting married, and we were all invited to the wedding. My husband had used up all his leave, and he couldn’t come. I packed my best saris, my jewels, my golden beaded slippers, my children, and their best outfits.
That same polished black car that had picked up Ayah and me from Penang Harbor came to collect us, but Bilal had retired. Someone else in a khaki uniform grinned toothily, touched his skull-cap politely, and stashed our bags in the trunk of the car. I climbed into its leather interior with a sense of nostalgia. I had arrived a child, but now small bodies full of excited chatter, bodies that I had made inside my body, rubbed and bumped against me. The past shimmered briefly in the cool morning air. I remembered the lady with the deformed feet and the procession of dulang washers as if it was a lifetime ago. How life had changed. How generous had the gods been to me. Outside the thin bubble of my thoughts the children quarreled and fought for window space. My hand automatically reached out to slap away Sevenese’s fingers pinching Jeyan’s dark flesh.
Anna was terribly carsick, and Lakshmnan, royally ensconced in the front seat with the window wound down and the wind in his curly hair, twisted around in his seat with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. I caught the driver’s eyes resting on Mohini in the rear-view mirror and stifled a spurt of annoyance. I must marry her off quickly. The responsibility of great beauty sits uneasily on a parent’s head. She was only ten, and already attracting too many adult-sized looks. Sometimes I sat up on my many sleepless nights and worried about it. Friendly spirits stood in my kitchen and whispered caution in my ear. I should have listened to them. Taken more care. Left her white skin in the sun to bake. Taken her father’s shaving blade to her tiny face with my own hands.
Real surprise awaited me at my uncle’s residence. First because he lived on a hill, and hills were generally the preserve of Europeans, and second because he lived in a very large, in fact an enormous two-story house with lofty rooms, colonnaded verandas, and an impressive pitched roof. It was built, my uncle proudly explained later, in the English Regency style of John Nash.
The third, totally unexpected surprise was the impression that my uncle’s wife, who had never laid eyes on me before that day, hated me. I felt it from the moment she opened the door and smiled at me. It stopped me in my tracks, but the moment passed when my uncle ran forward and enveloped me in a bear hug. He looked at Mohini in disbelieving admiration and shook his head from side to side in satisfied approval to see how tall and strong Lakshmnan was. But it was Anna who made him cry as she looked solemnly up at him. Anna was small for her age. She had eyes that begged you to pick her up, and apple cheeks that made you want to bite her.
“Look at her face!” he cried, picking her up and pinching her cheeks. “She is the living image of my mother.” He wiped away tears that had collected in the corners of his eyes. Then he knelt on the floor, kissed Jeyan and Sevenese, and bade us all enter. He had no choice but to ignore Lalita, as she had hidden herself inside the folds of my sari in an acute moment of shyness.
Inside, the stone floor, deep verandas, and extended eaves worked harmoniously together to create a wonderfully cool interior. As I looked around, impressed by the sheer wealth in the room, my gaze met luxurious items from all over the world—beautiful jade figurines in glass cabinets, fine English furniture, exquisite Persian rugs, and gorgeous, gilded French mirrors and armchairs covered in brocade. A veritable Aladdin’s cave. My humble uncle was very rich indeed. I realized that he was not a lowly mango dealer after all and found out later that he had diversified into the lucrative rubber and tin businesses. No wonder there were so many trucks standing outside the house.
My aunt showed us to a large room with a shuttered door that led to a balcony. It overlooked a small, very pretty Minangkabau village. Although I suspected that my aunt secretly detested me, and I couldn’t imagine a reason for it, I was excited about our stay and the grand wedding to follow. Five hundred guests had been invited and the local town hall booked. For two days, large-scale cooking had been going on in mammoth iron pots. When we eventually wandered into the kitchen, twenty-one cakes and sweets were lined in large trays along one wall. Many ladies in saris chatted and gossiped as they cut out and fried small cakes and cookies. In large iron cooking pots, all kinds of vegetarian curries bubbled and toiled. I looked down at my charges and was horrified to see Sevenese’s chunky little hands quickly cramming dozens of sugary shells into his mouth.
The next day I dressed my children in their new outfits and felt pleased that all the hours borrowed from the night cutting and sewing tiny invisible stitches had come to such fine resting places. It was not often that I saw my children in such finery. I had dressed all my three girls in the same green-and-gold outfits. Anna looked adorable and Lalita cute, but Mohini was a gorgeous mermaid with luminous, excited eyes. When we went downstairs, I caught the shudder of rage and damp envy in my aunt’s decorated face and was perversely proud that my shimmering children, innocent and chasing each other, had such power.
It was a great occasion. The vast town-hall floor had been decorated with the intricate classical kolum designs hand-drawn by women on their hands and knees using a thin rice-flour and water mixture. From the ceiling hung hundreds of pale yellow coconut leaves woven into a pretty plait, and mango leaves. Fifty young banana trees, heavy with green fruit and cut at the base of their shiny stems, stood upright to flank the path the shy bride would tread upon. The groom stood handsome and proud at the end of her journey. The bride, when she arrived, glittered like a goddess. Chains dripped from her forehead, hung in thick gold ropes around her neck, and drew together gleaming stones to encircle her waist. The groom sat high on his raised dais and looked pleased with himself.
After the exchange of rings, garlands, and the tying of the thick gold thali chain, preparation for the great feast began at the other end of the hall. When the whole great hall filled with rows of people sitting cross-legged and back to back facing a banana leaf, the servers arrived with aluminum pails of food. The din of human voices died away, and the hall filled with the sounds of eating. There was sour yellow rice, plain rice, and all manner of vegetarian dishes to choose from. Afterward there was sweet broth, kaseri, and ladhus.
In a green tent outside the hall a special table with white table-cloths, flowers, and plates had been set up for the European guests, who wore identical expressions of regal but inaccessible benevolence. It was fascinating to watch them eat with knives and tiny hoelike implements.
There had been many a sidelong glance thrown in Mohini’s direction, some admiring, some envious, some speculative, with plans for their growing sons. It had been an exciting day filled with pomp and splendor, but by late afternoon Mohini was sick. We hurried into my uncle’s car, but by the time we returned to his home, she was running a fever and groaning with stomach cramps.
My uncle wanted to call a doctor, but my aunt, her damp face still unforgiving, clicked her tongue with irritation and sent a servant to bring in some margosa oil. Menachi was a shrunken old woman with narrow shoulders and skeletal limbs. Her lasting beauty was her dark eyes, fringed by thick, sweeping eyelashes. She had to stand
on tiptoe to pour the margosa oil into Mohini’s open mouth, for she was very nearly the same size as Mohini.
“She will be as good as new in the morning,” said my aunt. The old servant’s extravagant lashes fanned down to the ground obediently, but as soon as my aunt’s purple-and-gold-swathed figure had waddled out of the room, she slid up to me. “It is the evil eye, not indigestion,” her old face whispered fiercely. So many people had gazed at my daughter’s beauty and entertained envious notions that their ill thoughts had actually affected her, she explained. Some people had such evil eyes that they could kill with a glance. If they admired a plant, the next day it would shrivel up and die. She had seen it happen before.
A hand like a claw fastened upon my hand. I knew about absorbing the evil eye, by painting a black dot on the faces of defenseless babies to mar their beauty and protect them from envious glances. But Mohini was no baby. Bewildered, I looked at the old lady. “What shall I do?”
She went outside to the front of the house and picked up in her hand a small clod of earth. Then she went to two different areas on the grounds of the house and collected another two clods of soil. Every time she plucked one up, she muttered prayers under her breath. When she returned to the house, she added salt and a few dried chilies to the soil. Holding it in her cupped palms, she made Mohini spit into the mixture three times. Mohini, not cured by the margosa oil, was holding her stomach with her hands.
“These eyes, and those eyes, and everybody’s eyes, that have touched this person, let them go into the fire,” the old lady chanted as she lit the mixture.
We stood around in a circle and watched the mixture burn. The chilies and salt made hissing, crackling sounds and burned with a clear blue flame. When the fire burned itself out, the old woman turned toward Mohini and asked simply, “Well?”
To my utter surprise, Mohini was without pain or fever. When I thanked the little old lady, she nodded modestly. “Your daughter is a queen. Let not too many prying eyes fall upon her,” she advised, her shriveled hand stroking Mohini’s thick shiny hair reverently.
It was December 13, 1941, and I was packing to return home when my uncle came running into our room in a blind panic, his hair tousled and his eyes wild. In a shocked voice he told me that the Japanese had invaded Malaya. While we were feasting and celebrating, they had landed in Penang. Apparently the big, burly British soldiers we had imagined invincible had fled, leaving us to an uncertain fate. Spittle blasted out of my uncle’s mouth as he described the crowds that gathered in a marketplace in Penang just like a flock of dumb animals. How they had stared up into the skies at the metallic birds and watched as the shining beasts exploded bombs onto their upturned faces, all the while unsuspecting, believing the planes to be the mighty British come to save them. And their poor, crazed faces as they picked up severed, smashed limbs from the rubble around them.
War. What would it mean for my family? In my uncle’s terrified, sweat-slicked face I saw all the horrible answers to my questions.
“They will be here soon. We have to start hiding the rice, the precious things. . . .”
We heard a roar in the sky. It was only a plane flying low, but my uncle shuddered and said in a voice cold with foreboding, “They are here.”
The roads were blocked. Travel was impossible. The children and I had to stay.
My uncle’s home was beautiful, and there was always good food on the table, but I was my aunt’s unwanted guest. My uncle was hardly at home, rushing to one meeting after another with fellow businessmen who stood to lose a great deal. For two weeks my aunt supped silently on her mysterious hatred of me. As I walked into the kitchen one day I saw her glance at me and, turning, remark loudly to one of her servants, “Some people pretend that they are coming to visit for two days and then conveniently end up staying for months.”
I had been packed and ready to leave when news came that the roads were blocked and no one could leave. She knew that. She had seen the packed bags. I didn’t plan the Japanese invasion. I decided to confront her.
I walked up to her. “Why do you hate me so much?” I asked quietly.
“Because you borrowed money from my husband and paid no interest,” she hissed viciously, pushing that damp face very close to mine, so close I saw the pores in her skin, the squelching dissatisfaction in the slant of her lips, and smelled the odor of her greed.
My mouth opened and closed, dumbfounded. My disbelieving eyes swung away from her plain face, made grotesque with bristling anger. Away from the eating mouth, outlandishly cerise, and the rabid eyes painted kingfisher blue. Heat rushed into my face as if she had caught me stealing one of the exorbitant showpieces out of her locked showcases. I thought about the many trucks parked at the side of the house and the sacks of rice that piled on top of each other, reaching even the high ceiling of an Anglo-Palladian house.
How could this woman live in this splendid house, filled to the brim with riches that most people only dream about, be waited on hand and foot by so many servants, and have her mind fixed on something as petty as the interest on a loan to a struggling relative from so many years ago? How greedy was the human soul?
“I offered to pay interest, but your husband refused,” I said finally.
The heat in my cheeks receded. I felt cold with anger and deeply sorry for my poor uncle. I wouldn’t have wished such a mean creature on anyone, let alone my favorite uncle. I resolved to leave that day, even if it meant walking all the way back to Kuantan carrying my children on my back. Perhaps it wasn’t the money after all. Perhaps it was the obvious and genuine affection my uncle had for my children and me, but I was very proud in those days. I knew I couldn’t stay another moment longer than absolutely necessary to make the arrangements for the return journey. When my uncle returned, I informed him of my intention, and as nothing he said or did could change my mind, he reluctantly made arrangements for us to travel by boat. It meant a long and arduous journey, perhaps even a dangerous one, but I was adamant. My mouth had settled into a thin, tight line.
The children squealed with delight, barely able to contain their excitement at the prospect of a boat trip. Their babble was filled with roaring tigers and tame elephants that used their gentle trunks to rescue us. My cold silence had no effect on their enthusiasm. When we left, my uncle’s wife didn’t come out to say good-bye. The only news I ever had from her again was after the Japanese had taken away all the beautiful things from her house. By then my poor uncle had lost all his money. He had invested too heavily in rubber, but the years saw only price plunges. Poverty-stricken, she wrote to me to ask for the interest. I sold a piece of jewelry and sent the money immediately.
Menachi ran out with insect repellent, homemade with burned cow dung. I dusted the children with the gray ash, and we set off with a man hired by my uncle.
The journey started in the fetid, moldy mouth of a forest.
It was not the romantic place I had pictured it to be. In the oppressive green gloom things curled, stretched, and grew all around us. Hanging creepers, thick and tangled, brushed my shoulders lingeringly as if they longed to pierce their sharp little suckers into my flesh. Blood, after all, is the best fertilizer.
Trees grew straight and tall, like the columns in my uncle’s home, for hundreds of feet without freeing a single branch until they reached light and air; then they launched into the skies.
Once we heard a deep roar. The jungle played with the sound, channeling it through its tangle of vines and creepers until it was deafening. The guide said it was the roar of a tiger, and a ripple of fear passed through my row of children like a gust of wind flying through a field of elephant grass. The man enjoyed our jerk into terror, our hiss of horror, before admitting that the tiger was too far away to be of any worry. He did not quicken his pace, and slowly the dread of seeing black-and-orange stripes flashing between the green faded.
The humid air stuck our clothes to our skins and caught at the back of our throats. It was like breathing in steam. We trudg
ed along wearily into the strong smell of earth and rotting leaves.
Soon we reached the riverbank, where our boat awaited us.
The river was wide and fast-flowing. I prayed fervently to Lord Ganesha, remover of all obstacles, “Let not the river have any of us. Take us home safely, dear Elephant God.” Then we carefully boarded.
Our boatman was an aborigine. He had big untidy features and tight, honey-brown curls on his head. His skin was burned a deep mahogany by a lifetime in the sun. When he sat still inside his wooden boat, he became a part of it, directing the noisy old thing almost as if it was an extension of himself. His body was lean and sinewy, but he was even-tempered and full of good humor. Once, while he was trying to cut a large comb of ripening bananas hanging over the water’s edge, the boat ground into sticky mud. He found room for the yellowing fruit at the bottom of the boat, then eased himself into soft ooze up to his chest, pulling and tugging at the boat until it was free. Smoothly he flipped himself back into the boat like a dolphin, grinning to show purple gums.
He was caretaker to many fascinating tales about a submerged ancient Khmer city that lay ahead deep within Lake Cini, buried under layers and layers of silt. He recounted in a melodious voice the legend of how the inhabitants of Khmer had flooded their beautiful city to protect it from attack, but when they perished in the last encounter, their Cambodian city had lain buried ever since.
From his thick rubbery lips came mysterious tales about a legendary monster living at the bottom of Lake Cini, with a horned head as big as a tiger’s and a giant undulating body that created waves that could easily overturn a boat. He told his wide-eyed audience that the monster supposedly traveled up the Cini River and into the Pahang River along the route on which we were traveling. The tales were greeted eagerly, but later, when we reached choppy waters that rocked the boat, the children screamed with real fear, convinced that the monster was indeed underneath us and trying to secure a meal.