The Harmony Silk Factory (9 page)

“Not if our leaders are strong. But our leaders are not strong.”

Bottles of whisky were passed among the men and women in the room. They drank straight from the bottle, taking one sharp gulp before passing it on.

“What’s that coward Tiger Tan doing, huh?” someone cried. “Where is he?”

“Tiger? Who is that person? He is invisible nowadays.”

“He has done a lot of good in the past,” Johnny said.

“The past? Shit! What about tomorrow?”

“I was OK in the past but in the future I might be six feet under—because of Tiger!”

“Tiger is a good man,” Johnny said.

“But a weak leader!”

“A weak leader!”

“Johnny should be our leader!” someone said, and soon there was a chorus of similar voices. Over and over they chanted his name.

Johnny smiled. “Tiger is a good man,” he said simply.

 

 

I HAVE OFTEN WONDERED how Johnny must have felt when he cycled back from his triumphant lecture, tasting real power for the first time. I imagine his eyes black and hard, his mind calculating, always calculating, as he cycled home. I have travelled along many of those same tracks, both as a child and as an adult. The roads are surfaced now, mile after mile of broken grey bitumen. There are still many potholes; not even tar can withstand the force of a flash flood. Recently I decided I would cycle the route from Jeram to Kampar, from the site of the long-destroyed shack to where the Tiger Brand Trading Company once stood. I did not know where to begin this journey. The jungle had long ago swallowed up the old rubber plantation, so I made a rough guess and skirted along the notional western border of the vanished plantation. The hut and the rows of rubber trees were no longer there, of course. They were only phantoms of the mind now.

I struck out for Kampar in the weakening five-o’clock sun. The road was deserted. There was—is—little reason for anyone to visit Jeram, and in many places the surface of the road was hidden under layers of pale mud. The rain had carved shallow gullies in this mud, and I decided to follow these scars, travelling in broad arcs along the road. I imagined they were Johnny’s tracks, made just after his lecture. They were not straight, because he had been intoxicated with power. Like Johnny, I cycled like this for many miles, my sweat-soaked shirt stuck to my back and my eyes blinded by the sun.

Still I could not feel Johnny’s wild excitement; I could not understand.

His thoughts did not become mine, and so I cannot tell you why he would go on to do the things he did.

A month after the lecture, Tiger Tan was found dead in a clearing in the jungle not far from his home. He had been shot twice, in the face and in the heart, though the postmortem could not determine which shot had killed him. Either way, it seems certain he knew his killer. The shots were clean and accurate, fired from very close range, suggesting that he had been in the company of his murderer. Of his face, all that remained was his mouth. In the numerous newspaper reports following his killing, his mouth was described simply as being “open.” It was obvious to all, however, that the wide-open mouth was an expression of shock and terror, his last stifled cries ringing hollow in the endless jungle. Maybe he did not even cry out. Maybe he opened his mouth one last time to ask, “Why?” It was a terrible way to die, for sure. Many years later, a young boy who did not believe in the Legend of Tiger Tan went fishing in the area where Tiger was killed. Perhaps he even walked over the exact spot where Tiger’s body lay. As he waded through the cold shallow water he became aware of a man strolling aimlessly through the trees. The man kept appearing and then disappearing in the dense foliage. He was wearing old, simple clothes and he seemed to be talking to himself. “Must be a madman,” the boy chuckled to himself as he continued fishing. As he was leaving the jungle, the boy heard that the man was repeating the word “Why” over and over again. “Why what, old man?” the boy called out as he approached him. It was only when the figure turned around that the boy saw his face, a seething, boiling mass of shapeless flesh.

Nothing had been stolen from Tiger’s pockets. Neither his gold wristwatch nor his jade ring had been taken. Later, the police gave these items to Johnny. They folded them up in a white brocade cloth the chief inspector had bought from Tiger’s shop sometime before, and placed the delicate parcel in a black lacquer box. They brought it to the shop, where Johnny was making preparations for the funeral. They bowed low and gave Johnny the box. Witnesses to this scene say that the great Johnny, who was never known to cry, had “bloodred” eyes, “glasslike” with tears. He accepted the box graciously and said quietly, “This is the beginning of a new time.” All who were present felt the truth of these words.

The box remained with Johnny for the rest of his life—a symbol of triumph, perhaps, or at least the start of a new life.

The funeral lasted three days, during which the shop remained closed as a mark of respect. On the third day, once the minor ceremonies were over, the final offerings to Tiger’s spirit were made in the middle of Kampar. Anyone who had ever known Tiger was free to attend. A crowd began to gather before the morning became hot. Many people had travelled overnight to attend the occasion, and now stood waiting patiently for their turn before the great, dead man. Even small children queued up to pay their respects. When they approached the coffin they peered nervously at the body.
“Pai!”
their parents commanded, and so they did, bowing their heads and lowering their burning joss sticks three times.

Little bundles of paper money marked with silver and gold were handed out to all those who came. Each person took this paper money and dropped it into a huge tin drum which held within it a fierce fire, a bonfire of heavenly money for Tiger’s afterlife.

During the days of the funeral Johnny was the focus of attention. He was seen everywhere, organising everything, talking to everyone. Many people remarked how difficult it must have been for him and how well he was coping, but then again they didn’t expect any less. Here was a great man, they said, a pupil in the mould of the teacher, a son in the image of the father.

In the middle of the afternoon, while people waited for the priest (who was late) to arrive, a cloth supplier was seen to approach Johnny. No one heard his exact words, but it became widely known that he asked to speak about business arrangements with Johnny now that Tiger was dead. Perhaps he wanted payment up front; perhaps he wanted to withdraw the shop’s credit for the time being; maybe he even threatened to expose the shop’s Communist links in order to extort larger payments from Johnny. Perhaps he had simply misjudged Johnny’s character, believing that the young man would not be as firm as old Tiger had been. He was wrong. Johnny turned on him with cauldron-black eyes and struck him with a single smooth blow administered with the back of the fist. The man’s entire body spun from the force of the blow and collapsed on the floor. Johnny had his men drag the man out into the dusty road, where he was left to recover in dazed silence, in full view of the scores of mourners. None of them had any sympathy for him, and a few even rounded on him, telling him he should be ashamed at his lack of courtesy. No one was deeply sad when they heard, some months later, of reports from Penang of this man’s death by stabbing in a bar fight in Georgetown.

Johnny arranged for an altar to be built in the shop. White marble framed with carved jade—nothing too showy. A photograph of Tiger was set into the smooth marble face. It was a picture from his younger days, hair waxed and neatly combed, his gentle smile revealing only one gold tooth. An offering to Tiger was laid out before this altar, chrysanthemums and boiled eggs and a poached chicken. An earthenware jar was placed here too, full of burning joss sticks lit by the processing mourners who came to bow to Tiger’s image.

Not a word was said when Johnny took over the Tiger Brand Trading Company, running and controlling every aspect of its business as Tiger had before him. It seemed perfectly natural that this should be the case. In fact, it might be said that the people of the Valley would have been shocked if Johnny had not taken over. There was a new sense of urgency at the shop. Business was as brisk as it ever had been, but both the workers and the customers noticed that there was more energy in the shop now. No one could explain this—it came from Johnny, was their simple explanation. Small things changed too. New lightbulbs were fitted, making the shop less gloomy, so it could stay open later, well after dark. People would call in for a chat on their way to dinner. They would share jokes with Johnny and with one another as he counted up the day’s takings. The light in the shop made everything look golden.

Very soon, people forgot about Tiger. There was no need to remember him now that they had Johnny. They talked, of course, about who might have killed him. The police? Unlikely. They didn’t have enough evidence about Tiger’s “other” activities. A rival businessman? Never. Tiger had no rivals, and besides, without Tiger there would be no business. A rogue bandit? No—remember he had his valuables with him. Most likely it was a traitor, a police informant whom Tiger had taken aside to reprimand. The man (or woman) had panicked and shot Tiger. But some people—generally when drunk—began to say things about Tiger, things no one would have dared to say before. They said maybe he deserved it. He had got fat and lazy and he enjoyed his money just a little bit too much. Sure, he’d done a lot for the Party, but now he was a danger. They weren’t saying that they were happy he was dead, but they weren’t saying they were sad either. He wasn’t the one cycling from village to village keeping the Cause alive in the Valley. He wasn’t the one making money for the shop, money that could buy food and clothes for our boys in the jungle. All Tiger did was tend to his goddam fruit trees. Sometimes he was even seen picking weeds from the grass in his garden, for God’s sake. What a stupid thing for a man like Tiger to do.

Johnny still found time to visit the odd village as he had done before, but his old contacts knew that their boy was now a man, and now they would have to travel to him. A few times a year he organised lectures, which grew less clandestine and more well attended. At these events there was generous hospitality, free food and drink for everyone. There was less lecturing, more laughing. The people loved him. Like us all, they wanted someone to worship and adore, and so they poured their hopes and fears into this young man whom they did not, and never would, truly know.

It was at this point in his life, when he was just becoming a famous man, that Johnny met my mother.

MY MOTHER, SNOW SOONG, was the most beautiful woman in the Valley. Indeed, she was one of the most widely admired women in the country, capable of outshining any in Singapore or Penang or Kuala Lumpur. When she was born the midwives were astonished by the quality of her skin, the clarity and delicate translucence of it. They said that she reminded them of the finest Chinese porcelain. This remark was to be repeated many times throughout her too-brief life. People who met her—peasants and dignitaries alike—were struck by what they saw as a luminescent complexion. A visiting Chinese statesman once famously compared her appearance to a wine cup made for the Emperor Chenghua: flawless, unblemished, and capable of both capturing and radiating the very essence of light. As if to accentuate the qualities of her skin, her hair was a deep and fathomless black, always brushed carefully and, unusually for her time, allowed to grow long and lustrous.

In company she was said to be at once aloof and engaging. Some people felt she was magisterial and cold, others said that to be bathed in the warm wash of her attention was like being reborn into a new world.

She was magical, compelling, and full of love, and I have no memory of her.

She died on the day I was born, her body exhausted by the effort of giving me life. Her death certificate shows that she breathed her last breath a few hours after I breathed my first.

Johnny was not there to witness either of these events.

Her death was recorded simply, with little detail. “Internal haemorrhaging” is given as the official cause. Hospitals then were not run as they are today. Although many newspapers reported the passing of Snow Soong, wife of businessman Johnny Lim and daughter of scholar and tin magnate T. K. Soong, the reports are brief and unaccompanied by fanfare. They state only her age and place of death (twenty-two, Ipoh General Hospital) and the birth of an as yet unnamed son. For someone as prominent as she was, this lack of detail is surprising. The only notable story concerning my birth (or Snow’s death) was that a nurse was dismissed on that day merely for not knowing who my father was. As Father was absent at the time, the poor nurse responsible for filling in my birth certificate had the misfortune to ask (quite reasonably, in my opinion) who the child’s father was. The doctor roared with shock and disgust, amazed at the nurse’s ignorance and rudeness. He could not believe that the nurse did not know the story of Johnny Lim and Snow Soong.

Snow’s family was descended, on her father’s side, from a long line of scholars in the Imperial Chinese Court. Her grandfather came to these warm Southern lands in the 1880s, not as one of the many would-be coolies but as a traveller, an historian and observer of foreign cultures. He wanted to see for himself the building of these new lands, the establishment of great communities of Chinese peoples away from the Motherland. He wanted to record this phenomenon in his own words. But like his poorer compatriots, he too began to feel drawn to the sultry, fruit-scented heat of the Malayan countryside, and so he stayed, acquiring a house and—more importantly—a wife who was the daughter of one of the richest of the new merchant class of Straits Chinese. This proved to be an inspired move. His new wife was thrilled to be married to a true Chinese gentleman, the only one in the Federated Malay States, it was said. He in turn was fascinated by her, this young
nonya.
To him she was a delicate and mysterious toy; she wore beautifully coloured clothes, red and pink and black, and adorned her hair with beads and long pins. She spoke with a strange accent, the same words yet a different language altogether. This alliance between ancient scholarship and uneducated money was a great success from the start, especially for Grandfather Soong (as he came to be known), who was rapidly running out of funds.