The Harmony Silk Factory (16 page)

In truth there was little for me to do. By the time I returned to the factory from KL, all the arrangements had been made. People were only too keen to help. Mrs. Ginger Khoo and her five children looked after the catering, serving a thousand meals over the course of the three days. Gurnam Singh, one of Father’s former chauffeurs, who had had to give up work because of chronic syphilis (now cured, he told me), was on hand to organise the tables, chairs, and electric fans. Father’s closest friends, his old business partners, were in charge of the most important things: the priest, the undertaker, and the paper offerings. Securing my arrival was another one of their tasks, and my appearance was greeted with some relief.

“I am glad you have decided to make peace with your father,” Mad Dog Kwang whispered in my ear.

“There was never anything broken that needed repair,” I replied.

“Oh,” he said.

Many hundreds came to pay their respects. All kinds of people turned up—princes, peasants, politicians, criminals, pensioners, toddlers. They travelled from far afield, not just from the remotest reaches of the country, and some came from abroad. There were mourners from Hong Kong and Indonesia and Thailand, together with the odd Filipino. A few white men were there too, though where they were from was anyone’s guess. One of them was an Englishman, I think, though he was so old it was difficult to tell. He sat folded over in a wheelchair, barely able to move amid the crowd of bodies, looking lost and confused. He seemed not to be able to speak, though occasionally he coughed and wheezed a few curious sounds. “Is he mute?” I asked Madam Veronica (as she now liked to be called—when I was a small boy I knew her as Auntie Siew Ching).

“Don’t know. I heard that something happened to him in the war,” Madam Veronica said as she adjusted the gold bangles on her wrist.

“What’s his name?”

“Can’t remember. Peter Something. Or maybe Philip Something.”

I found myself standing next to this ancient Englishman on the first day. Trails of thick spittle hung from the roof of his gaping, trembling mouth, but no words emerged. Finally he repeated a few sounds; he clutched at my sleeve and stared at me with wild staring eyes.

“What the hell is he saying?” Mad Dog said as he walked past.

I listened carefully. “He is asking me who I am. He is asking what my name is.”

The man’s head jerked and nodded involuntarily as he spoke. I felt strangely sorry for him. “I’m Johnny’s son,” I said, wondering if he could understand me.

“Johnny’s son,” he repeated blankly, “Johnny’s son.”

“People say I don’t look like him,” I said patiently. “I take after my mother, you see.”

When he looked at me I could see the fine red veins in his yellowed eyes. “Sons never resemble their fathers,” he said before wheeling himself away slowly.

“Shit, you could understand that guy? No one even knows what language he’s speaking,” Mad Dog remarked in an uninterested way.

“Crazy foreigners,” Mrs. Khoo said as she swept past me carrying a plate of fluffy white buns in each hand.

Children played with yo-yos and plastic action heroes which Gurnam had handed out. “Where did you get so many toys?” I asked him.

“I found them at the factory,” he said, “many bags full of them. Just arrived from Taiwan.”

We burnt the paper offerings on the second evening, once all the minor rituals had been dealt with. Father’s friends had ordered the most elaborate and expensive offerings they could think of, the grandest luxuries fit for a man of Father’s standing. Firstly, there was a paper motorcar, a Mercedes-Benz, bronze-coloured as Father’s last car had been. It was five feet long and had a paper chauffeur sitting at its paper wheel. Then there was a paper aeroplane, a Boeing 747.

“Is he going to need that in the afterlife?” I asked Mad Dog.

“He never got a chance to fly in an airplane,” he replied, smiling, “so we thought we would give him a treat.”

Finally there was a paper house, virtually life-size, a replica of the Harmony Silk Factory. It had galleried windows overlooking the courtyard as the factory did, and an open-air kitchen at the rear. I wandered around this house, looking at the tiny details. Little potted ferns, carefully painted green, decorated the red-tiled courtyard. They were the only kind of plant which ever grew happily in the courtyard, and their dark leaves used to add to the coolness of that sun-shielded space. The shutters had been painted pale jade, and through the open windows I could see the black-and-white chequerboard floor of the upstairs sitting room. I saw the rosewood furniture that we never used, preferring instead to sit on rough wooden chairs. Father’s safe room was there too, locked as usual. The shop was full of beautiful things, colourful cloths and sparkling glass cabinets and boxes of jewels. The revolving dining room no longer revolved, but it had its European Old Masters on the walls. My bedroom, which looked out onto both the courtyard and the back of the house, was kept as neatly as always. Through the window I could see the river, wide and brown and muddy. I could see the wooden pontoon underneath the ancient banyan tree. We used to swim there, my friends and I, diving from the bridge into the warm, thick water. We used to climb the tree and swing from its trailing vines until we were twenty yards out and then let go, splashing from a great height into the river. Early in the evenings we would creep onto the pontoon and lower pieces of meat on fishhooks into the water to catch catfish, which emerged from murky recesses to feed at night. From my window I could see the herons and egrets and storks wade through the shallows in the morning. I used to wake up early—at dawn, when everything was pearl-coloured and soft—so that I could see them flying smoothly across the mist-covered water, their sleek heads tucked gently into their necks.

My books lined the teak shelves that Father had built when I was ten and hungry to read. If I thought he was in a good mood I would read him stories from these books, singing and screeching as I imagined the voices of all the characters. Occasionally he would smile. I was pleased because I thought I had made him happy, and I would embellish my stories further, making them up as I went along. When he smiled he looked as if he remembered what life really was, and so I would tell even more stories. But sometimes he would realise I wasn’t just reading from the book; he would get angry and scold me for making things up, for telling tales. His face would turn black with fury, as if he hated me more than anything in the world. Life would drain from his face, leaving it empty once more.

We set fire to the house, the car, and the aeroplane just as it was turning dark. Hennessy XO was poured in a ring around the paper replicas to protect against thieving spirits; its heavy perfume laced the twilight air. As Johnny’s son, I had the responsibility to set the offerings alight, and I did so quickly, touching my burning roll of newspaper to the house in as many places as possible before the flames became unbearable. I ran back to stand with the other mourners. We stood under a purple sky and watched the house burn down.

Death, I remembered Father saying, erases all traces of the life that once existed, completely and forever.

 

 

HE NEXT DAY I left as soon as I could. I slipped away from the throng of people returning from the cemetery and headed for my car, hoping to leave before I was missed. I did not want to say too many goodbyes.

The old Englishman in the wheelchair had parked himself in the kitchen, where he sat nodding and mumbling to himself. He was holding a parcel wrapped in a piece of cloth. He held it up to me as I approached him.

“Thank you,” I said, resenting the number of gifts I had managed to acquire over the three days. People felt the need to provide me, the only son, with tokens of their respect for Father. And so I received an array of useless objects: small crystal swans, plaster-of-paris Eskimos, and mugs bearing the prime minister’s portrait. I did not stop to open the box and hurried instead to the car. I threw the cloth-wrapped parcel into the boot together with all the other unwanted presents; its contents rattled as it landed on a cuckoo clock.

The Englishman followed me out, wheeling himself along the uneven road. “Where are you going, my son?” he said.

“Swimming,” I said as I got into my car.

I didn’t drive back to KL. I headed east instead, crisscrossing the winding river until I found myself in the swampy flatlands of the coast. I veered north, turning into ever-narrowing roads until I could smell the salty winds coming in off the sea. Just south of Remis I caught the first glimpse of the foam-tipped waves through a thin forest of casuarinas. I had not been here for many years. I drove along until I found somewhere to leave my car. I undressed slowly under the trees, the dead needles tickling my feet. It was midafternoon and there was no one but me on the wide white beach. I walked across the hot sand into the water, watching the tiny crabs scurrying away from my path. Where the water was deeper, the waves folded over gently, catching the sun on their crests so that the light sparkled across the surface of the water. It was as if someone had cast tiny jewels all over the ocean. I swam far out from the shore, floating calmly in the blue-green water.

SNOW

ACCEPT YOUR FATE. Accept your fate. Mother’s words invade my dreams. I pray I do not talk in my sleep. Johnny must not know. Not yet.

SOMEONE NEW came to visit us today. I was having my afternoon rest, dozing uneasily—my mind boils constantly, never capable of rest—when I heard voices in the yard at the front of the house. I became aware of one of the servants chattering rapidly. The second voice was unfamiliar. I lay in bed listening to it for a while, but could not recognise it. It was a man’s voice, deep but not rough—a true baritone, I think Father would say. He was speaking flawless Malay, of the variety rarely heard in the Valley nowadays—that is to say, old-fashioned courtly Malay. As I listened more carefully, however, I detected the slightest hint of an accent, though again it sounded unfamiliar to my ears. He asked to speak to Father; he said that he had recently arrived in Kampar—“from abroad”—and had been advised to call in on the famous T. K. Soong. He apologised for the inconvenient timing of his visit but wondered if the servant would nonetheless announce his arrival to Mr. Soong. He mentioned his name but I did not hear it.

Eventually I heard Father come out of his study.

“Professor? Welcome, welcome,” he said. “Thank you for your letter. How good that you are here.”

“Please,” the visitor said courteously—in Mandarin, as if to make a point—“you embarrass me with your kindness.”

Father laughed and replied in English, “It is an honour to meet you.” There was a strange quality to Father’s voice, one I had never heard before. He sounded nervous. He led the visitor into the large sitting room and I could no longer pick up their voices clearly. Across the corridor I could sense Mother pacing about in her room. Cupboard doors opened and closed. Her small jewellery box dropped and scattered its contents onto the floor.

After some minutes I decided it was no use trying to rest—the weather is so hot now that it is impossible to sleep at night, much less during the day—so I resumed my reading. I am revisiting
Persuasion,
which I am finding curiously annoying.

 

 

T WAS MOTHER who knocked on my door. “Are you
decent
?” she asked, and broke into a laugh. I could tell immediately that she was with our visitor.

I opened the door to find her standing with a very tall man dressed in a light-coloured linen suit. I thought he was Chinese, but his features seemed wrong. I remained standing at the narrow doorway with my arms folded.

“This is our daughter, Professor,” Mother said. “Nothing to look at, I told you, didn’t I?”

“On the contrary,” the man said, bowing slightly. “Kunichika Mamoru,” he said, extending his hand. On his little finger he wore a ring of muted gold, heavy and stately in the European style.

“The professor has just arrived in the Valley—all the way from Japan,” Mother said. She pronounced her words like a schoolgirl, stretching vowels interminably and emphasising special words. “All” became “aaaaaall,” and “Japan” “Jap-
an
.”

“Don’t speak so loudly,” Father said, appearing behind Mother. “You’ll embarrass the professor.”

“How can you embarrass someone so clev-
er
?” said Mother, pushing past me into my room.

The man laughed.

I introduced myself, stressing my married surname.

“Your parents did not tell me you were married,” Kunichika said, smiling. I noticed his eyes move to take in the framed wedding photograph on my dressing table. “But now that I have seen you I am glad that you have a husband to keep you safe from prying eyes—including mine!”

Mother laughed. “Professor, you would not be interested in a
thing
like her!”

“Yes, Professor Kunichika, I am extremely fortunate to be married to my husband,” I said, looking him straight in his crystal-clear eyes. My neck felt hot and bare. I became aware that I had lifted my chin to look up at his face; suddenly that pose seemed stiff and awkward.

Mother snorted as she began, instinctively, to clear my books from my desk, tidying them into a pile in a corner of the room.

“Please, call me Mamoru. I insist,” he said.

He had very thick hair, black and glossy. His angular features—sharp nose and strong cheekbones—were accentuated by the colour of his skin, which was pale and spoke of Northern climates. At certain moments he even looked slightly European. His body was lean and languid, but he seemed to be a man of considerable strength. Perhaps it was merely his height which created that impression.

“Isn’t the professor the handsomest man you have ever seen?” Mother said, linking her arm through his.