The Harmony Silk Factory (11 page)

When Johnny and Snow appeared at the new picture house in Ipoh, a gentle commotion broke out in the crowd. Every head turned to see if the whispers were true. Was that really Johnny Lim—at the pictures? And was he here with T. K. Soong’s famous daughter? What did she look like? Where was she? For most people it was too much to bear, and throughout the film, a constant murmur of voices filled the auditorium. It was the first time many there had ever seen Snow. Men leaned forward in their seats, peering down the aisle just to catch a glimpse of the back of her head; women touched their own faces, noticing all of a sudden how plain they looked compared to her. And when the lights came up there was pandemonium. Johnny and Snow were nowhere to be seen.

Afterwards, the couple dined at the famous Hakka Inn. For Johnny, it was the realisation of many childhood fantasies. They were presented with roast suckling pig and jellyfish, black mushrooms and abalone, steamed grouper and a large dish of noodles. These were things he had never eaten before. He felt ill at ease going to smart restaurants. They were too bright for him, too full of movement and voices, and he always felt as if he was being watched as he ate. He had only ever been to restaurants to celebrate the conclusions of particularly large business transactions. This time, he tried to think of the experience as the biggest business venture of his life. Because to him, it was.

Once Johnny had overcome his initial awkwardness, however, he began to notice how rich and sweet the food tasted. He ate quickly, sinking deliciously into this newfound land of honeyed aromas and silken textures. He was like the rat in the childhood proverb, dropped onto a mountain of fragrant rice grain.

“The food is good,” he said. She did not know if it was a question or a statement, so she simply nodded, and he returned to his solitary feast.

Snow watched him feed. She wondered, as she always did when she was sent to meet a new suitor, whether she would be happy with the man before her. She always took it for granted that she would end up as the man’s wife. The choice was not hers, and accepting her fate early would make it less of a shock. So far she had not met anyone with whom she thought she could be happy. Even the superintendent’s son, beautiful though he was, would have been unsuitable as a husband. He was far too inward-looking and concerned with the neatness of his clothes to notice her. Living with him would have been like gazing at the stars. A marriage could not be happy if the husband was prettier than the wife, that much she knew.

This new man did not bring her much hope either. As she saw it, the problem was not that she considered herself beyond his reach (beautiful wives and ugly husbands often made good matches), but that he did not seem to appreciate that she was at all attractive. For a while she entertained the idea that he had been tragically hurt by the death of a lover. He had a reason for being withdrawn, a sad and compelling story. She looked closely at his face for signs of a life or a love lost. She found him attempting to force an entire black mushroom into his mouth. This particular one was larger than the others, and he was having difficulties. He stretched his mouth sideways like a smiling fish in order to accommodate it; his lips quivered in an attempt to accept the sumptuous gift from the chopsticks. Eventually he succeeded, but then, after a few uncomfortable chews, was forced to spit the mushroom onto his plate. It landed softly on the gravy-soaked rice, and he repeated the whole exercise, this time succeeding easily. His chopsticks immediately reached for another mushroom, and he noticed Snow looking at him. His lips were thick and slicked with grease.

“The food is good,” he said, raising his eyebrows slightly.

She nodded, eyes fixed on his lips. No, she thought, there was no love story here. He was not capable of love. It was better that she prepared herself for this now.

He walked her to the bottom of the steps leading up to her house. All the lights were out, which usually meant that Patti was listening at the darkened window.

“The evening was enjoyable,” Johnny said. Again, Snow was not sure if this was a question, but all the same she could not bring herself to agree.

“I am sure I will see you again,” she said, and she went into the house, walking swiftly to her bedroom to avoid her mother’s interrogation. Strangely, she did not hear Patti’s footsteps or the opening or closing of doors. The house was full of a confident, approving silence.

 

 

SIX MONTHS LATER they were married, after a courtship which, as T.K. would say, was “full of propriety and politeness.” Johnny moved into the Soongs’ house while he searched for a new home for himself and his wife. During this time he revelled in the Soongs’ hospitality, becoming so accustomed to it that he almost believed it was
he
who was being generous and welcoming: the lavish parties were thrown by
him;
the elaborate dinners were prepared by
his
cooks; the people who came to the house were
his
guests. To these guests, it seemed obvious that the sumptuous events were paid for by this rich new tycoon, and Johnny did nothing to dispel this presumption. Instead, he adopted a demeanour of excessive modesty to fuel the belief that he was indeed the magnanimous, yet somewhat reticent, host.

Guests: Thank you, Mr. Lim, for such a splendid dinner.

Johnny (as self-effacingly as possible): Oh, please, no—thank Mr. and Mrs. Soong. This is, after all, their house. They have enjoyed having you here this evening, I know.

Guests (to themselves): What a noble, honourable man is Johnny Lim, too gracious even to accept thanks. How respectful to his elders, how civilised, etc. etc.

For the Autumn Festival in the year they were married, for example, the festivities at the Soong house were referred to as Johnny Lim’s party, even though he had nothing to do with it. That he played no part in its organisation was clear from the extravagant yet tasteful nature of the evening’s revelry and the type of people who were in attendance. It was the first significant function at the Soong household since the marriage of Snow to Johnny, and it was an event that was talked about years afterwards. Many of the guests were English—and not just the district education officer either, but luminaries such as Frederick Honey and all the other
tuan besar
of the British trading companies. It is said that even Western musicians from Singapore were engaged to perform for the evening. A striking operatic troubadour, six and a half feet tall, sang whimsical songs in French and Italian. His face was daubed with theatrical paint which obscured his fine features, but even so, everyone present commented on the delicacy of his looks and the flamboyance of his costume—a flowing cape of Ottoman silk lined with iridescent scarlet. He sang so angelically and played the piano with such lightness of touch that no one could believe that he had not come directly from the great concert halls of Europe. “What
is
someone like him doing here in the FMS?” people wondered aloud as he improvised familiar songs, teasing his audience. The noble Mr. Honey sportingly lent himself to all the women as a dancing partner; he skipped to a traditional Celtic tune, linking arms with his companions as their feet clicked lightly on the teak floorboards. Johnny stood awkwardly in a corner, surveying the scene, trying his best to seem proprietorial and calm. He smiled and tried to tap his foot to the music but couldn’t keep in time. A scuffle broke out among the servants in the yard outside, and it was up to the magisterial Mr. Honey to restore peace. All night there was a constant stream of music to match the flow of alcohol. “It’s at times like these,” the guests said, watching Mr. Honey regaling a group of men with stories of adventure, “one almost feels glad to be in Malaya.” At the end of the evening, when the air was cool and the tired guests began reluctantly to drift home, they realised that the music was no longer playing; the lid of the piano was firmly shut. As the guests departed from the darkening house rubbing their aching temples, they struggled to remember what had happened throughout the course of that evening: it had been too wonderful to be true. Had he really existed, that painted troubadour? He had simply vanished, phantomlike, into the tropical night. What a marvellous party Johnny Lim had given, they thought; what a marvellous man he was. They certainly made a lovely couple, Johnny and Snow.

 

 

NLY ONE PHOTOGRAPH survives of my mother. In it, she is wearing a light-coloured samfu decorated with butterflies. The dress clings delicately to her figure, slim and strong like the trunk of a frangipani tree. Her hair is adorned with tiny jewels too small for me to identify. When I hold a magnifying glass to the picture, the poor quality of the old paper makes the image blurred and soupy. Her face is young and soft. Sometimes, I stick the photo into the frame of a mirror so that I can see my own face next to hers. My eyes are her eyes, I think. The photo is too old to give me any more clues. I found it when I was fifteen, in an old tin box in Father’s closet, together with the pictures of Tarzan. It was in a cracked leather frame far too big for it, and when I looked carefully I could see that it was because the photo had been carefully torn in half. Two, maybe three other people would have been in it, but only my mother and father remain, sitting close to each other but clearly not touching. They sit at a table at the end of a meal; before them the remains of their feast appear as dark patches on the white tablecloth. Behind them, merely trees. Beyond those, a part of a building—a ruin, perhaps, somewhere I do not recognise. I am certain it is not in the Valley. Throughout the years I have looked at hundreds of books on ruins: houses, palaces, temples, in this country and abroad. Not one resembled the place in the photo. I do not know where it is. Perhaps it does not even exist.

On one side of this incomplete portrait, a hand rests on my mother’s shoulder. It is a man’s hand, of that I am certain. His skin is fair—that too is obvious. On his little finger he wears a ring, probably made of gold. It looks substantial, heavy. Time and time again I looked at the ring through my magnifying glass, but it gave me no clues. It was just a ring.

I took the picture and hid it in my bedroom. Father never mentioned it, and neither did I. I wanted to ask him whether there were any other photographs of my mother, but I never did, because then he would have known that I had stolen the picture. I never dared ask him about my mother; I never knew what questions to ask. Besides, I know he would not have told me about her even if I had. All I have to go on is that single photograph. Whenever I look at it I fold it in half so that Johnny is hidden and I can see only my mother.

 

 

FEW YEARS AGO I did something I thought I would never do. I succeeded in visiting the old Soong home, the house my mother and father lived in. I had always known where it was, tucked away a mile or so off the old coast road, west of the River Perak, yet I had never seen it. Partly this is because it is difficult to get to. There are no bridges here, and to get across the river you have to drive a long way south and then double back, travelling slowly northwards along the narrow roads that wind their way through the marshy flatlands. During the latter half of the Occupation, the house was used by the Japanese secret police as their local headquarters. They brought suspected Communists and sympathisers there to be tortured in the same rooms where T.K. and Patti and Snow and Johnny once slept. The cries of those tortured souls cut deep into the walls of the house, and when I was a boy I knew—as all children did—that the place was haunted. In those days I did not know that the house had been Snow and Johnny’s. Back then it was merely one of those things children feared in the same way they feared Kellie’s Castle or the Pontianak, who fed on the blood and souls of lone travellers on the old coast road. We were taught to fear these things and so we did, never once questioning them. We believed in those things as we believed in life itself. When, several years ago, I finally learned of the significance of the house, I simply smiled, as if someone had played a joke on me.

How funny it is that the history of your life can for so long pass unnoticed under your nose.

 

 

HEN I SAY I “VISITED” the Soongs’ old home, I am exaggerating slightly. My first attempt to visit the place was not entirely successful. I had planned everything meticulously, but in the end my efforts proved to be fruitless.

I decided to go as a Tupperware salesman. This was the first thought that came into my head, and it seemed a sensible one, as Tupperware was all the rage in the Valley at the time. I purchased a large selection of Tupperware in different colours and sizes and loaded it into my car. I stole a brochure from my dentist’s waiting room and bought a new briefcase into which I packed several “order forms,” which I had typed myself. I put on a tie, of course, and combed my hair differently. I had of course allowed my hair to grow longer than usual, as I thought this would help me to feel like a different person. I gave myself one last look in the rearview mirror of my car before I set off, and I was pleased with what I saw. My own mother would not have recognised me.

The door was answered by a pubescent child—a girl, I think, though she was dressed as a boy. I searched her face for a resemblance to me but found none. She stared at me with fierce eyes.

“What are you selling?” she snapped. She sounded much older than I had thought.

“Tupperware,” I said, suddenly feeling confident at the sound of the word. I stepped aside and pointed at my car. Large piles of Tupperware rose into view through the windows.

“We don’t need . . .”

“Tup-per-ware,” I said slowly. “Would you kindly ask your mother?”

“She’s not here.”

“Anyone else here?”

She closed the door and bolted it. “There’s a tall man selling things,” I heard her call out to someone inside. When the door opened again a young woman stood at the entrance. She looked at me coldly but did not speak.