The Catherine Lim Collection (26 page)

“I’m leaving my sons, and my sons’ sons a
rich legacy,” said Ah Hoe Peh. When the doctor diagnosed his disease as
terminal cancer of the stomach, he became more urgent about this promise and
the means to ensure that it was fulfilled. He had to give up his opium in the
last weeks before his death; surprisingly, there was little pain in spite of
the ravages of the disease, due, according to his sons, to the numbing effects
of the opium over the years. Wasted to a skeleton, but urged on by his anxiety
to keep his promise of leaving behind a rich legacy – an urge that was daily
becoming stronger with the approach of death – he managed to drag himself to
consult the temple medium.

“At what time will I die?” he wanted to
know. The medium assured him it would be very early in the morning, well before
the first meal of the day. But he was not satisfied. He wanted to be certain
that, it would not be in the evening, when all three meals of the clay would
have been eaten, when therefore no legacy would be left. For a man would have
eaten up everything and left nothing for his sons, and his sons’ sons. A
considerate man had to die in the morning, never in the evening.

Ah Hoe Peh went into his death throes in the
evening, his wife and sons gathered around him and watched as he struggled to
make it to the morning. The death rattle was already in his throat; his eyes
were already unseeing, but still Ah Hoe Peh fought to stave off death, to keep
it at bay till the clock strike and announce the hour of dawn. As the first
faint cock-crow quavered in the cold night air and reached the dying man’s
ears, he smiled at his triumph and the bequeathing of a legacy that would be
enduring.

For years, his family spoke about the old
man’s heroic efforts to stay alive till the moment when the fulfilment of his
promise could be assured. His sons later made good. One of them is a
millionaire, and his millions, he says with profound gratitude, are the three
meals of the day that were selflessly left uneaten.

Were they
ghosts?
Had I actually seen ghosts?

Indian labourers, someone had ventured –
perhaps an Indian labourer and his wife hacking grass beside the church. But
they were not Indian, I insisted. The man was definitely a European, dressed
like a priest, and the woman was Chinese. A trick of the imagination; someone
else had proffered the stereotypical explanation for ghosts. But it could not
be, I countered, for at that time I had no knowledge whatsoever of the French
priest and the Chinese woman who was one of his parishioners. It was only later
that I came to hear of it. It would have been the rarest of coincidences for my
imagination to have given birth to three such characters – the man, the woman
and the baby in the bundle she was carrying – that coincided in every detail
with the characters of that tragedy which took place years before I was born.

I have been puzzling over this since and
have come to the conclusion that the three I saw that day were ghosts. Some
people also claimed to have seen them, sometimes together, sometimes
separately. The one who had seen them most often, it was rumoured, was the
Chinese woman’s husband, who lived a year after his wife and who was plagued
with bad dreams almost to the very last day of his life. He was the cause of
all the suffering, it was said, and it was fitting that he should die in an
agony of madness and fear for his terrible injustice.

Nobody seemed to remember their names, so
they shall be given fictitious ones.

Father Monet was a Catholic priest from
France, possibly one of the first to be sent to this part of the world. He was
an active, dedicated man of God who quickly settled down to his new life in the
new country and almost immediately began looking around for converts. Coupled
with his aggressive missionary zeal, however, was a warm humanity and an
instinctive understanding of people that quickly won him the trust of many. He
mastered Hokkien after only a few months, and spent much time among his
parishioners, preaching to them, saying the rosary with them or simply being a
willing listener. He was a handsome man, tall and fair-skinned, with a dark
luxuriant beard and light blue eyes which exuded a natural warmth.

The Lai family always welcomed Father Monet
into their home to talk to them or share a meal with them. They were devout
Catholics; they boasted of being third-generation Catholics, and their forebears
had been among the first to be converted by missionaries in China.

The elder Lai had a thriving wholesale
business in rice, coffee powder and certain brands of milk powder. It would
eventually be inherited by his son, a young man of about 25. The younger Lai
was a hard-working, intelligent man, but given to bouts of sullen temper and
depression. His parents easily diagnosed the cause to be the want of a wife
and, trusting Father Monet’s judgment more than the town matchmaker’s, enjoined
him to look for a wife for their son.

The request had a very specific object: The
family knew that Father Monet was in the habit of visiting another Catholic
family, comprising a humble tailor, his wife and their very beautiful and shy
daughter who had been given the name Mary Anna Joseph at baptism. The elder Lai
and his wife had decided upon Mary for their daughter-in-law. Their son
appeared not to protest when she was mentioned, and that was encouragement
enough for the elderly couple, who had despaired of ever finding a bride
acceptable to their sullen, silent, hot-tempered son.

Father Monet dutifully approached Mary’s
parents who, in their simplicity and humility, expressed immense gratitude and
hoped the marriage would take place as soon as possible. But as for Mary,
Father Monet could get neither word nor look from her to indicate her true
feelings. Her face retained the very serene, placid expression it always wore;
her lips remained shut when Father Monet asked, “And what about you, Mary? What
do you say to the offer?”

Mary continued to pour out the tea for
Father Monet, her eyes modestly lowered. She served him some rice cakes, but
all that time not a word escaped her lips.

Father Monet paused between mouthfuls,
looked at her and asked, “Are you not happy, Mary? Lai is a good man and a
devout Catholic. He will make you a good husband.”

Looking at her closely for the first time,
the priest was startled by her loveliness, a loveliness all the more striking
for its lack of adornment. The girl wore her hair severely pulled back from her
face and coiled at the back; her dress was always the modest long-sleeved
samfu, in colours that were surely too drab for her vibrant and blooming
youthful beauty.

“Mary, if you don’t wish to marry Lai, I
will not force you,” he said ever so gently. And when her mother began to scold
her shrilly for disobedience, he rose from the table to intervene. The girl’s
eyes filled with tears though she did not once raise her hand to wipe them.

On his next visit, she served him as usual,
with eyes downcast. He looked steadily at her and wondered what went on in her
mind and heart, this intense, outwardly serene girl-woman. At one point, she
looked up briefly to say, not without a certain resoluteness, “I will marry
Lai,” and then withdrew into her world of silence and private thoughts again.
Father Monet was more than a little troubled and wished to speak with her
further, to satisfy himself that the girl was not being coerced into a union
that was indissoluble in the eyes of God. But she gave the impression that she
wanted no more said on the matter.

She married Lai shortly, in the little
wooden Catholic church. It became a matter of urgent duty to Father Monet to
ascertain that she was happy since he felt partly responsible for her marriage.
He continued to visit the Lai home frequently in the first few months. After a
while, he was satisfied.

Mary was apparently contented with her lot.
The in-laws were very fond of her, and as for Lai, there was no husband who
doted more on his wife. It seemed as if a wife were all he needed to get him
out of his sullenness and ill temper. His was a possessive, all-consuming love.
Never once did he let his beautiful young wife out of his sight. In the
openness of the big house which he shared not only with his parents but with
his relatives as well, propriety and fear of being laughed at prevented him
from always wanting to be close to her, to look at her, to touch her. In the
privacy of their room, the largest and most comfortable in the house, there was
no more need to rein in the passion and the desire to possess completely.

Father Monet found it most troubling indeed
as he watched them while pretending to be absorbed by the food they had laid
before him or the antics of the relatives’ small children playing nearby, for
it could not escape his notice that Mary winced at her husband’s every touch
and look. It was hardly perceptible, but the shrewd priest saw it all. His
immediate reaction was to give Mary a good lecture at his first opportunity
about performing her wifely duty.

The opportunity came soon after; it was
evening and the priest had come to join in the family rosary. He came a little
earlier, and found Mary alone in the sitting-room, mending a tear in her
husband’s trousers. The sight was somehow rather reassuring to Father Monet,
and he began to compliment her on her dutifulness as a wife, unaware that as he
went on, she had begun to cry and was already unable to control the tears that
fell freely on the garment now lying on her lap.

“Why, Mary, what’s the matter? Tell me,” he
asked in consternation, moving towards her as her sobs gathered into a paroxysm
that shook her slight frame. He placed his hands on her shoulders, suddenly
full of pity for this strange, gentle woman, so unlike other young women in the
town who would have been glad of half her good fortune.

In the ensuing months, he did not see her
cry any longer, but did notice her husband’s return to his sullenness and
peevishness, a natural consequence for a man who, ardently offering love,
continually finds it repulsed.

Then began a period of intense jealousy; the
younger Lai believing that his wife preferred the white-skinned priest to him.
Did she not always want to be the one to serve him the food and drink, although
his mother or the relatives could perform the duty just as well? And did she
not always somehow find an excuse to come out of her room or the kitchen
whenever he came by?

Tortured by such thoughts, he withdrew yet
further into his grimness, and watched her, and watched him. Although he could
see nothing to torment him further, his mind would not let him rest, but
suggested to him dark and direful possibilities. And then, almost like a
godsend, his wife became pregnant; a new softness came over her features, and
she actually appeared content as she quietly went about her work in the house.

When Lai announced the news to Father Monet,
it was in the warm confidentiality of friendship fully restored. He waxed
loquacious in the expression of hopes for a boy – the first grandson for the
grandparents on both sides. Father Monet was too relieved for words. He left
for France shortly after that, giving them the promise that he would return in
time to baptize the infant.

The period of waiting was marked by extra
visits to church, extra prayers, more works of charity; Lai was ready to take
any precaution against mishaps. He engaged the best midwife to attend to his
wife, and on the evening of the birth, stood outside the locked door of the
room, aware of the footsteps of the midwife inside, the low moans of his wife,
the bustling about with basins of hot water and wads of absorbent paper. He
waited, tense and quivering, and at the first cry of the child, knocked on the
door and fairly shouted, “Is it a boy?”

“It is a boy,” said the midwife after a
pause.

“Let me come in then,” he said, his heart
suddenly swelling with joy, and he knocked yet louder, ready to look upon the
face of his first-born.

The door was at last opened and he strode
in, heart pounding. His wife was lying on the bed, face pale as a ghost. Beside
her was the child wrapped in a towel. The midwife stood nearby, her hands still
wet with the blood and with such a stricken look on her face that, sensing
something amiss, he strode to the bed, flung aside the towel covering the child
and then recoiled in horror. The child was all white and pink: its hair was
white, its eyes were pink; it was not his. He stood staring at it, speechless.
Then he looked at his wife who looked back at him; and then at the midwife who
turned away with a sob.

“In all my years as midwife, I have not
delivered a child like this.”

The pounding in his brain and heart allowed
no other feeling except a numbing sensation that something had gone very wrong.
When the pounding had ceased sufficiently for other feelings to rush in, rage
swelled and took possession with such force that he found himself roaring at
the top of his voice and looking around for something to break, to crush and
destroy.

The porcelain basin was smashed onto the
floor, spilling the water red with the blood. He hit one of the bedposts,
smashed a wooden stool against the wall, and yet his anger was not assuaged.
Uppermost in his mind was the fact that the priest whom he had trusted and the
woman whom he had married and assumed virtuous had betrayed him. The pain would
overpower him until he stopped smashing things, broke down and wept into his
hands.