The Nicholas Linnear Novels (184 page)

S
O-PENG, NICHOLAS LINNEAR’S
grandfather, was born into a family of undistinguished Chinese merchants, hard-working men who nevertheless toiled their entire lives beneath the frustrating weight of ill fortune.

His mother was something else altogether.

So-Peng’s family had been in Peninsula Malaysia, it was said, since the 1400s, trading variously in silk, tortoiseshell, and ivory. Early in the 1800s they had moved to Kuala Lumpur, on the peninsula’s west coast, attracted by the breathtakingly quick fortunes to be made in the newly opened tin mines. The vast sums of money they made were soon gone, as they gambled, made incautious investments, or were swindled outright.

Still, they persevered, a virtue that must have been in their genes because it was passed down to So-Peng.

So-Peng had spent the first ten years of his life near Pahang, on the east coast, where his father was then involved in importing silks and black teas from China. So-Peng, however, had little interest in being a merchant and none at all in being burdened by ill fortune. He was far more clever than his father and his uncles, almost as quick-witted at nineteen as his mother was at thirty-four.

So-Peng was so like his mother, Liang. She had been a child bride, had borne him when she was but fifteen. No one knew her origins—whether she was Hokkien like So-Peng’s father, whether she was Chinese at all, fully Chinese, or, as was sometimes said, Sumatran. She never spoke of her origins and, out of respect, So-Peng never asked her, though he often burned with curiosity.

So-Peng’s mother was very smart. She knew everyone of importance everywhere the family lived for more than a few weeks, and what was more important, these people often owed her favors. So-Peng knew that she had saved his father from absolute insolvency more than once by her rather miraculous intervention. She managed to do so, moreover, without causing her husband any loss of face.

By 1889, when he was nineteen, So-Peng had accomplished many things. He was, for instance, proficient in an astonishing array of Asian and ancient Indo-European languages and dialects. Having spent his upper school years in Singapura, the Lion’s City, as Singapore had been named in 1100 A.D. by lords of the Srivijayan empire, he had the advantage of not only the best teachers in Malaysia, but also the best opportunities that the labyrinth of backstreets overflowing with canny Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Sumatrans could offer.

He had worked on the city’s docks, in its wholesale markets, its bars, restaurants, and hotels, had even shipped out for six months on one of the new steamships that had more and more been replacing the merchant clipper ships ever since the Suez Canal had been opened in 1869, cutting down on the distance between Europe and Asia. He had immediately grasped what others would not for some time: with the advent of the steamship, Singapore would burgeon in importance as a major port. Hitherto, the settlement had been wholly dependent on the winds for its naval trade. January and February brought the northeast monsoon winds which were favorable for the junks from Siam and China. Six months later, in the autumn, the winds shifted, bringing the boats from the subcontinental Malay Peninsula. Ships under their own power would free Singapore from the whims of the weather; trade could continue the year round.

So-Peng had, in other words, tried his hand at many jobs, and had become master of none. At nineteen, in fact, though his mind was full of knowledge, he had no profession and, what was worse, he was penniless.

His fondest memory of his childhood before he had moved with his family to Singapore was of warm May nights when he and his best friend, a Malay named Zhao Hsia, would sneak out of their houses and rendezvous to sit amid the foliage ringing the beach at Rantau Abang.

So-Peng could clearly see the host of stars, blue-white, blue-green, and red, strung across the heavens. The two boys were enveloped by them as completely as they were by the croaking of the tree frogs, the cries of the night birds, the incessant clicking of the insects, the stirring of the palm fronds.

Before them starlight and—if they were lucky—moonlight as well, illuminated the churning surf, and farther out, on the South China Sea, they could see the winking lights of swift ships bound southeast for Borneo or northwest for Thailand.

But as much as they loved this spot in the night, So-Peng and Zhao Hsia had not come to the beach to stare at the stars or the passing boats. Neither had they come to swim.

Soon their gazes lowered from the star-strewn sky, moved closer than the silvered wavetops, the shadowed troughs of the South China Sea. They watched, instead, the progress of the surf as it rolled up onto the dark beach, retreating only to return again, an indomitable force—the creator—upon the sand.

And from the saltwater they at last saw emerging the black, humped shapes for which they had been waiting. The shapes were enormous as they detached themselves from the waves. The surf churned all around them, and they left this, too, in their wake. As So-Peng watched, he seemed thrown back a million years to another age, another time. He whispered to them in Vedic, a language so ancient that he was certain they would understand it.

Within the sheltering sands the shapes ceased to move. Soon, above the hiss and suck of the surf, beyond the insects’ drone, the boys could hear the peculiar sound of sand being stirred and moved.

So-Peng and Zhao Hsia waited, learning patience. For this was the end of May, the beginning of giant tortoise season. The boys were here clandestinely. The tortoise of this region was much prized by the Malays and the Chinese for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that the animal’s domed carapace was a lucrative source of revenue exported out of the peninsula. What the boys were here to do was strictly forbidden—
haram,
Zhao Hsia, who knew many Muslims, would say, although this was civil custom and not religious law. If they had been caught, they would have been thrown into prison, and So-Peng suspected that not even his mother would be able to intervene successfully on his behalf.

There were already tortoises on the beach. So-Peng and Zhao Hsia looked at one another. They were physically ill-suited as friends. So-Peng was already tall, towering over the chubby Malay with a sinewy grace that seemed all the more pronounced in Zhao Hsia’s presence. But they shared a daring and an unquenchable curiosity that transcended dictates and custom. They were natural explorers, drawn together by their fascination of the different and the bizarre.

Slowly, the boys crawled out from the shelter of the foliage, snaking their way along the sand on their bellies. When they came upon a tortoise, Zhao Hsia touched its horny carapace. So-Peng, fascinated, watched in the dim starlight as its head and legs withdrew into its shell, rendering the fiercely protective creatures harmless. Then they turned the tortoise over and took its eggs.

Back within the cluttering shadows of the ferns and fronds, they carefully cracked open the eggs, drank the viscous insides. They smacked their lips, making contented noises as they gorged themselves on this forbidden delicacy.

When So-Peng was almost eleven he and his family had moved to Singapore. Afterward he often wondered what had happened to Zhao Hsia and whether the two of them would ever lie again in the unquiet darkness of Rantau Abang, waiting for the forbidden to come their way.

In Singapore’s wide-open atmosphere, it was perhaps surprising that So-Peng had never been involved in anything illegal. What was even more surprising, however, was that it took the murders to bring So-Peng to his true vocation.

Two shipping merchants were murdered within ten days of each other. It was during the height of the summer, the hottest in recent memory, when the sun, white and bloated, simmered even the normally cooler Singapore quayside. The ocean lay flat and listless; not a breath of air stirred on its own, and the breezes created indoors by the ceiling fans moved like sludge against a pier piling.

The murders horrified a community normally inured to death. The British authorities said it was the work of smugglers involved in their internecine warfare. Because the murders occurred on the fourth and the fourteenth of the month, and four was the number of death, the Chinese were certain that the murders were some form of retribution by relatives for the victims’ past sins. Revenge was the motive given by the Malays as well, who pointed out that a pig’s foot was found in the mouths of both Muslim victims—pork is strictly
haram
to Muslims. But they were just as certain that the murderers were Western because it was their opinion that no Muslim, and certainly no Buddhist, would so profane the strictures of religion.

Liang, So-Peng’s mother, had another theory entirely. She had seen the curious eight-pointed metal stars that the police had extracted from the throats of the two corpses, and one night at evening meal she put a name to their murderer: tanjian.

Tanjian, she said, had no god, followed no religion, and thus had no compunction about behaving blasphemously. Tanjian, she said, created their own laws, adhered to their own peculiar dictates which deviated radically from those of society. They were, she said, kingdoms unto their own selves, harnessers of the night and of every evil thing that made their home in the darkness.

All this talk was meant, of course, to frighten So-Peng’s brothers and sisters. Liang possessed the very yang—that is, male—quality of using fear as a way to discipline her children. She was more involved in her children than she was in anything else, which was, So-Peng supposed, a direct result of having married a man such as his father. He had no interest in his children save that they were the inevitable result of the sex act, in which he appeared to have a great deal of interest.

When So-Peng was alone with his mother, she said to him, “Now nothing will keep them from their studies.”

“You mean all that about the tanjian was a lie?” So-Peng asked.

“It was not a lie,” she said. “Neither was it the truth.”

So-Peng thought a moment. “Is this a puzzle?”

She smiled at him, an expression filled with pride. “You are so grown-up,” she said.

She left him to go to her own chambers. Alone in the kitchen, So-Peng considered what she had said, and as he restlessly wandered the house, he considered the nature of the puzzle she had left for him. Their house was large, in a wealthy area of the city, for his father, at Liang’s urging, had two years ago invested in a new firm that had begun to import rattan, black pepper, and giant nutmeg from Borneo. The venture had so far proven highly successful.

After a time the silence in the house proved oppressive. Outside he heard young voices raised in anger, and passing through the garden, he went out in the street.

He saw two of his younger brothers and several of their friends facing off against one another like two armies on a field of battle. Between them a small yellow dog stood, yelping, its bony hindquarters quivering, its tail tucked between its legs.

One of So-Peng’s brothers had a firm grip on the ruff of the dog’s neck, unmindful of its obvious terror. He kept pulling the unfortunate animal toward his side of the street while one or another of the other boys tried to drag the dog to their side.

“This is our dog!” So-Peng’s brother said defiantly.

“No, it’s ours!” the most aggressive of the other boys cried. He had a flat face that reflected his anger like a mirror.

“We found him first,” another of So-Peng’s brothers said hotly. “He belongs to us.”

“You found him near our house!” the flat-faced boy shouted, growing ever more angry. “That makes him ours. And it makes you thieves!”

“You’re the criminals!” So-Peng’s brother said, heaving on the panting dog. He pointed to dark scars upon the creature’s flanks where the fur had failed to grow back. “Look how you have mistreated him! You are hateful!”

“We hate you more!” the other boys shouted.

Watching the intensifying fight, So-Peng felt himself grow unutterably sad. To others, perhaps, the incident might appear trivial, quickly forgotten. But So-Peng saw in this childhood acrimony the seeds of something far larger. He recognized the universal, inevitable conflict of man, the image of the eventual usurpation of the world by those not content with what they had, or those too poor to have anything of their own. The need for conquest had risen full-blown out of innocence like a Hydra in a glade of dancing poppies. The long march into the night of the spirit had already begun.

So-Peng advanced upon the opposing would-be armies just as fists began to shake, stones picked up from the gutter. In a moment the former friends would surely come to blows.

Reaching in between the boys, he seized the cringing, whimpering dog, the only truly innocent party in this dispute. He picked it up, cradling it as he stroked its quivering flanks. In a moment its head turned and it began to lick his hand.

“This animal belongs to neither of you,” he said.

“But, brother—”

So-Peng’s fierce stare cut off his brother’s protest.

“We want him!” cried the flat-faced boy. “He’s ours!”

“And what would you do with him,” So-Peng said, turning on the lad, “beat him some more?”

“I never beat him!” the boy said in that defiant way children have that makes it clear they are lying.

“But you kicked him,” So-Peng said, reaching briefly out to touch the boy with his spirit. “You punished him just as your parents punish you. Is that not the truth?” He watched as, tongue-tied, the lad merely hung his head.

“You see?” So-Peng’s brother said triumphantly. “We were right!”

“And what would
you
do with the animal?” So-Peng asked his younger brother.

The boy shrugged. “Keep him. Let him go. I don’t know. What’s the difference?”

So-Peng said, “Did you think of how you would care for him?”

“Care for him?” So-Peng’s brother wrinkled his nose in confusion. “He’s just a dog.”

“Look at him. He’s frightened and in pain, just as sometimes you are. How can I expect you to understand. You are all too selfish, thinking of yourselves and nothing else. None of you deserve his friendship or his love.” The contempt in So-Peng’s voice was so evident it penetrated their childish shells.