The Moonlight Palace (13 page)

“You must help me with my husband,” she gasped.

What husband? I had always assumed that Sahhdie was a spinster. She had no children. She appeared to be wed to Kahani’s Emporium. Seldom did she stir from the front of the store except to swoop like a hawk on some unsuspecting sales clerk. Not once had I seen her husband call for her.

But I threw the polishing cloth on the counter—for once she did not scold me for being untidy—and hurried around the counter to come to her aid.

“Where is he?” I said.

She jerked her head. “In the back. Ron is out having lunch. There is no one else to help me.”

I trotted after her, even when she threw open the door of Mr. Kahani’s office without knocking and barged in though he was dozing on his sofa, his socked feet twitching in his sleep.

I looked around for Sahhdie’s husband. Was he crouching in a corner? “Where is he?” I asked.

“Are you blind?” she roared at me. And she pointed at the sleeping Mr. Kahani. She raced to his side and put her head down on his chest, listening. Of course, I thought. Of course she was his wife.

“His breathing is very shallow,” she said. “Help me get him to his feet. He needs air.”

I asked no more questions but flew to her side. Together, we managed to sit Mr. Kahani upright, though his head kept lolling to one side and resting on Sahhdie’s arm. His lips were a frightening shade of bluish gray. We put our arms around him and half-walked, half-carried him out the back door of the shop.

She groped one hand into her jacket pocket and drew out the large ring of keys. “Wait,” she said. “Tell Bridget to lock the safe. She can give the keys to Ron when he comes back. Hurry!”

I raced to Bridget’s area of the store, among the estate jewels.

“Stop!” Bridget said. She put up her hands as if to ward me off, but I thrust the keys into her hands and gave her Sahhdie’s message. Bridget was not looking at me, however. She did not even appear to take in what I was saying, nor was she surprised to hear that Sahhdie was Mr. Kahani’s wife. Her gaze was fixed on one particular case of estate jewels. I followed her look. For an instant, it was as if my limbs had been turned to stone.

“Aggie,” she began. “I wanted to tell you—”

I heard Sahhdie call out from the back of the store. There was no time to talk, no time to take in what my eyes had seen in the display case. I raced back to the door, and together Sahhdie and I dragged Mr. Kahani into the fresh air. Still, he did not fully waken. His body hung forward, a deadweight between us. He was like a sleepwalker.

“What is wrong with him?” I asked. “Is it his heart?”

“Opium,” she said shortly. We dragged him farther down the street. Mr. Kahani rolled his head and moaned.

“Where are we taking him?” I asked.

“Anywhere but to the docks,” she said. “It began when he was a lighterman. Mr. Kahani has had a lifelong stomach ailment that caused him great pain. He found he could work longer hours and better with opium—he felt it strengthened him. Even when I met him—there were dens all along Boat Quay and on Pagoda Street and Duxton Road. Nearly all of the lightermen were addicts.” She glanced at me. “It’s worse when he tries to stop. Then he takes twice as much afterward. He is a very good man,” she added fiercely. Her face was flushed with shame. She could not look at me, nor I at her.

“Of course he is,” I said.

“He would not harm a beetle. He hurts no one but himself.”

We stopped in front of a bench on Klang Lane, outside a little store that sold dry goods. We settled Mr. Kahani onto the bench. A little color had returned to his lips. He sighed. His eyes fluttered.

“Go now,” she whispered. “He would be furious that you had seen him like this. Go, and don’t say another word to me about it.”

I did not argue with her. People passed by us, staring curiously. I resented their looks almost as much as Sahhdie.

Just as I was leaving, she grasped my hand and pressed it. “Thank you,” she said.

I walked quickly back to the store, my heart and head full. I pushed open the front door and went directly back to the estate jewels. Bridget was waiting for me, biting her lips.

“I didn’t want to keep it from you,” she said.

I bent over the glass case, my arms curved as if to protect it. Inside lay most of the jewels from the Kampong Glam Palace—my nei-nei’s earrings, my grandmother’s blue pearls, my mother’s diamond wedding necklace.

“Uncle Chachi made me promise,” she said. “Mr. Kahani, too.”

“How much of it is gone?” I asked.

“Not much,” she said. “A few pieces. The emeralds sold a few weeks ago. After your British Grandfather died—”

“They lost the pension,” I said. “Oh, Chachi. My Nei-Nei. They must have been desperate.”

“Are you furious?” she asked.

I shook my head, dry-eyed. “Just at myself,” I said. “This is madness. It has to stop.”

“They were doing it for you,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “And I’ve been letting them. I’ve been letting them sell off pieces of themselves to keep me whole. And the funny thing is, I don’t know about the palace anymore. —It seems like a place made out of moonlight.”

“People fight ferociously to keep their dreams intact,” said Bridget. “Nation
s . . .
flag
s . . .
religion
s . . .
”

“Emeralds,” I said. “I always wondered what made gold and silver precious. Just because they’re pretty?” I looked at Bridget’s long patrician nose, her green eyes so filled with concern. “You’re prettier than any emerald I’ve ever seen,” I said. “That’s a fact.”

“I wanted to tell you,” she said.

“I’m sure you did.”

“Don’t let the old folks know,” she said.

“I won’t,” I promised. “We’ll think of something.”

“Something better than emeralds,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “But what? —I wish I weren’t so young and stupid.”

“Well, you won’t be either one forever.”

THIRTEEN

De Profundis

I
f I say that I walked my way out of the depths, I do not mean it in some figurative way. I did all right as long as I was busy,—and I was busy much of the time. But even the school day and the work hours had to end sometime, and then I was left alone again with guilt and grief, the absence of British Grandfather, and the facts of my unutterable foolishness, and these things threatened to sink me. It seemed if I stood still for even an instant, I was enveloped in despair.

So I took to my feet and marched here, there, and everywhere—to the well-lit harbor, through Arab Street, across the Kim Seng Bridge where it overlooks the source of the Singapore River. I spent many nighttime hours walking around Singapore. Never had I known my home place as I knew it now, in darkness. I walked till my legs and lungs began to ache, for only then did my heart’s ache ease up a little.

It was not lonely. It was not frightening or dangerous, though the old folks would have been up in arms had they known how long and far I wandered. Luckily for me, they went to bed earlier and rose earlier now—another one of those ways in which the living step in to take the place of the dead, for British Grandfather had always been our early riser—and besides, Dawid was good enough to pretend to escort me whenever needed, and would have done so in fact, but I was no kind of company for anyone, and could only heal if left alone to do so. I would let him walk me as far as the furthest gate of the palace compound, and no further.

Singapore was a night-blooming flower. Vendors hawked their wares from the riverbank to Jurong Hill. The streets were occupied with young couples strolling hand in hand; on flower carts hung necklaces of white jasmine. Down by the quay, dozens of green teahouse lanterns flickered off the black face of the river, like fireflies. The marble buildings glimmered at night. White-shirted men filled the Kampong Glam Mosque, called to evening prayer and lingering afterward to drink coffee and talk at little stands and cafes.

Every neighborhood became my neighborhood—the Colonial section; the rundown back alleys; the orchid gardens. There was a market in Little India that would swell with customers at ten each night, no earlier and no later. It is a well-known fact that Indians like to buy in a crowd. They happily jostled one another for oranges and crackers in what the British would have considered the middle of the night.

My steps consumed the distances, and only at night was it possible to walk a long way, for during the day I would have sizzled under the Singapore sun. With each mile, my feet seemed to tell my brain, “You know nothing at all.” At first this was uttered with recrimination, but after I had walked long enough, it became a comforting refrain. After all, perhaps, unbeknownst to me, there was some way still to save the old folks in the palace. Perhaps—for the first time in my life, I allowed myself this thought—it did not matter so much whether we saved the palace or not. I had been wrong about everything else, I might also be wrong that our happiness depended on one crumbling edifice. Walking in and out of little gardens and courtyards, my steps taking me over bridges and along the water, past flowering tembusu trees and water hyacinth, past benches and temples, I saw that the beauty of Singapore existed well beyond our palace door. The same flowers bloomed in luxurious abundance. The same birds sang.

I had other, even stranger thoughts as I walked. All my life, I had been taught that Sir Raffles had rescued the Singaporeans from themselves. Before him we were nothing. Perhaps this was not strictly true. Perhaps, I thought, admiring the slanting roofs, the colorful shophouses glimmering in the dark, perhaps we Singaporeans had survived not because of the British, but in spite of them. Singapore had a long habit of opening its arms and welcoming foreigners, enveloping them, making them part of itself.

Had Omar Wahlid been right, then? It was true that our mosque and palace had been constructed on a bribe. British sterling had paid for it. Should it all be destroyed? Perhaps, in order to start afresh, we needed to do away with all the old structures, the old assumptions. Would these precious old things need to be torn down in order to make way for the new? I had to admit to myself in all honesty that I did not know the answer.

I also discovered on those long, grievous walks a gift I did not know I possessed. I found within me, even while I mourned my grandfather’s death, an irrepressible desire to be happy, an inborn buoyancy. I am sure it is this, more than anything else, that was responsible for my surviving the flu pandemic as a tiny child. That and a strong pair of lungs—Nei-Nei Down claimed I’d come into the world howling.

Perhaps I was just a shallow person. My depression bored me, poverty was not very interesting, either, and I never could tolerate being bored. To stay gloomy in Singapore is nearly impossible. I defy anyone to do it. Everything conspired to distract and cheer me. Bicycles were the great craze then, and young people rode their cycles even at night, at peril to life and limb—and pedestrians. It kept things lively, however. The large wheels made a whirring sound like insects in the grass. Often, the cyclists rode in groups of four and five, singing popular songs. One could not help but hum along. It was as irresistible as the smoky-sweet smell of grilling meat encircling the hawker’s carts. They say that the ocean is always calm and still, many fathoms down, no matter how wildly it may churn on the surface. I discovered a similar calm in myself as I walked and walked around, in long, looping parabolas. And it’s a lucky thing, too, for one more hurdle lay just ahead.

Coming home from one of these long walks, one night I found Dawid waiting for me on the porch. I knew that he often waited up for me, but usually he kept to his room. As I rounded the particular curve in the road that brought me in sight of the palace—and, I imagine, within view to anyone watching for me—I would see the light in his room go out. It was, in fact, a very comforting sight.

But this night, Dawid sat with a lantern on the table beside him. He spoke to me as I came up the front steps, as if he dared not wait until I had reached the top. “I need to ask you a question,” he said.

My heart plummeted. I could think of nothing good he might ask. But I kept my voice steady. “Must you?” I said. I found myself putting one hand up, as if to ward off a blow.

“Yes,” he said. I was relieved he was smiling at least. “Here,” he said, “I brought you out a pitcher of water. You need to drink more water,” he said, handing me a glass.

“You sound like my grandmother,” I replied, accepting it.

“That’s promising,” he said wryly. He patted the settee next to him, and I sat down. “I need to ask, because otherwise I will be haunted by the unasked question all the rest of my life.

“My father wants me to return to India, to take on the family business,” Dawid went on. “I am the only son, with four sisters. His heart is not good. I was able to convince him that I need to finish the year at Raffles. But beyond that, I fear his health will suffer. I cannot allow that. I need to go home.”

“You will be missed,” I said. This was another blow. We would be quite despondent without him. I could not imagine the palace bereft of Dawid.

“I have two girl cousins,” he said. “Twins, as a matter of fact. I know that your great-uncle has always preferred male boarders, but they wish to enroll in Raffles Girls’ School.”

“We will be honored to have them,” I said. “God willing.”

“God willing,” he echoed solemnly. “I always thought I would hate the life of a businessman. In fact, I like it quite a lot. When I go home in the summers, I am happy at the factory. The work suits me exactly. I am not the artistic type, and I have no real interest in the other professions, such as medicine or law. I like talking to people. I even enjoy adding up numbers and placing things into columns. I like keeping track of the motion of things. I like things tidy.”

“—Unlike the rest of us,” I said.

Tidy Dawid was old Sanang’s special favorite. She made no bones about it. Sometimes we teased Sanang that she was in love with Dawid. “One could do worse,” she answered tartly.

“What’s more, I find I am very drawn to the goods that we sell.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

I knew I should have remembered what Dawid’s father did for a living, and Dawid looked rather pained that I did not. He shut his eyes for an instant, as if to block out the sight of me. “We sell fine rugs,” he said. “Wool and silk. They are like paintings. This past month, I have been learning quite a bit about them, and now I can easily tell an original from an imitation.”

“That is a good skill to have,” I said, thinking of Geoffrey.

“Yes, it is. I think I will have a good life,” said Dawid, “and I wish you would let me share the rest of it with you.”

I let the words settle there between us a moment, in true Singapore style. Perhaps I hoped if I let them rest long enough, they would simply disappear. They might vanish into the night without a trace. They did not. I looked at the settee on which we sat, made of woven rattan. Bits of it had broken off over time. I thought of the moment when Nei-Nei Down had told me the truth about Geoffrey Brown, and the long, large crack in the marble floor. I wondered if I would always remember all the important moments of my life like this, and if I was the only one who did so, if there was something wrong with me. I picked at a broken piece of rattan with my fingernail.

“I am very honored,” I began.

“Don’t,” Dawid said, touching my wrist to make me stop tearing up the settee.

“You’re very sweet,” I began again.

“Stop, Agnes. We are very old friends. A simple yes or no will suffice.”

“Then no,” I said.

He jumped to his feet. He paced up and down the porch, and then sat down beside me again. He turned to face me. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I know how much you will miss me.”

“I will miss you terribly,” I said. That was the honest truth. It was also true that I was tempted with some tiny portion of my mind, tempted to say yes, if only to save the old folks from absolute destitution. Wouldn’t Dawid’s family take us in? Perhaps. But what about old Sanang, and what about little flowerlike Danai? And how on earth would any of these considerations be fair to Dawid?

“Perhaps I love enough for both of us,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I’m sure I do.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” I said.

“Couldn’t you learn to love me?” he said. “In time?” The settee was made of woven strips of rattan, but under the wavering porch light, they looked like individual squares, each separate from the others. Again, I was tempted—but only briefly. “Is that what you did?” I said. “Learn to love me?”

“No,” he said. “That is true. It was nothing I needed to learn.”

“You will love somebody else in time,” I said. “And then you will wonder how you could ever have thought you loved me.”

“I will never wonder about that,” Dawid said.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. I picked up his hand and held it. It was no longer pudgy or damp, I realized, as it had been when he was a child. It was a very nice hand. A man’s hand. Perfectly firm, perfectly dry. He let me hold it. He looked down at our linked fingers.

“You needn’t be,” he said. “I had to ask.”

We sat outside for another hour at least, barely speaking, our hands still folded together. I had no desire to let go. We had been holding hands from the time we were children, I in my long skirt uniform, Dawid in his jacket and tie. The time this last night passed quickly, though we spoke little. I think we both drew comfort from that hour. We knew it was likely the last time we would ever hold hands.

Around this time, Uncle Chachi began acting so peculiar that I feared we would lose him, too. He became snappish and irritable, finding fault with each of us and in everything. Though he had always been so easygoing, he had become a malcontent. “It is not right,” became his constant refrain. “It is not right, it is not decent.”

Old Sanang had taken down the black mourner’s bunting crepe from the doorway a few days too early and received a scolding. The gardener had disfigured some prized azalea bushes. Nei-Nei’s cooking was either too spicy or too bland, served too cold or so hot it scalded Chachi’s tongue. He went around shaking his head in constant disapproval, and spent more of his time alone in his “office,” praying, grumbling, and napping.

With Nei-Nei turned gentle and tender, and Uncle Chachi complaining, I barely recognized our household. When my great-uncle scolded me for walking too heavily on the wooden floorboards, disturbing him at his work, I finally confronted him.

“Uncle Chachi, tell me what’s wrong,” I said.

“You put too much weight on your heels,” he said. “That is why your footsteps are so loud. You must learn to lean forward, onto the ball of your foot and your toes.” He demonstrated, there in his office.

“No,” I said in an even voice, “I mean, what is really wrong? What is troubling you?”

“It is indecent!” he burst out. “A man and a woman, not married, not related, living together under the same roof. It is not right.”

I looked at him blankly.