Читать книгу The Thorn of Lion City: A Memoir - Lucy Lum - Страница 5

Two

Father told me how that chestnut tree had buried his father in the mud and how his mother’s tears had mixed with the rain, and that was why he had come to Singapore in 1919, when he was five. His mother was called Kum Tai, and she was only twenty-nine when the tree fell on her husband. At first Kum Tai was frightened by the hustle and bustle of the city, and as the only work she knew was farming, she bought an orchard of rambutan and mangosteen fruit trees in Nee Soon, north of Singapore, with the money from the sale of her home in Hainan.

Kum Tai named my father Poh-mun, but often called him Po-pui, which means precious seed. Father told us that when he came to Singapore he liked the different people in his new country, and their many languages, which he didn’t understand. There were brown-skinned Malay men and women in colourful sarongs, and there were Sikhs from India, who never shaved or cut their hair and wore cloth wrapped round their heads. There were Indian tea-sellers, who carried copper urns heated by charcoal fires on bamboo poles and sold ginger tea or Ceylon tea; some carried rattan baskets full of delicious roti. Father would listen to the different dialects, like nothing he had heard in his village in China, and became determined to understand them. He looked forward to visiting the town’s bookshops, and spent whole afternoons hiding among the shelves, reading and dreaming.

Kum Tai hired workers for the orchard and a servant to cook and clean. The workers spoke different dialects and she became frustrated when she could not communicate with them: when they misunderstood her instructions, they pruned the trees in the wrong way. She did more and more of the work herself, spending long hours in the plantation. At night the sweet smell of rambutan attracted swarms of bats – the locals called them flying foxes – which would tear apart the soft, hairy shells of the ripe fruit and feast on the white flesh inside. In China Kum Tai and her husband had hired fruit-watchers, who had patrolled all night and slept during the day. But in the new country my grandmother, fearful of the cost of hiring extra workers, protected the trees herself. She walked through the orchards with a lantern and a long stick to scare away the bats, and by dawn she would be exhausted. Father would find her asleep in a chair.

‘You are working too hard,’ my father said. ‘Let me do it, Mother. Let me stay up and frighten away the bats. It is only for the fruit season.’

‘Do you know why we left China after your father died?’ she said. ‘You must not be a farmer here. You must read your books and then, some day, you will be someone. It is the only way for you in this new country.’

One day, while she was supervising the plantation workers, Kum Tai fell and broke her ankle. She had to be carried back to the house. A bonesetter was called, but he did not come, and throughout the night my father heard his mother cry out in great pain. He went to her side to hold her hand.

The next morning, Lum Pang, the bonesetter, appeared at the farm. He was just five feet tall, very fat, and Father said his grin stretched from ear to ear. Everyone called him Fat Lum. He held his surgery every morning on the pavement of a busy side-street in Singapore. Fat Lum was so fat that the little stool he sat on disappeared beneath his stomach and thighs so that he seemed to be sitting on the ground. He worked next to the tooth-puller, who had a spittoon and cases of extractors and offered only one service: a toothache meant that a tooth had rotted and must come out. When the tooth-puller was called away, he would leave a set of extractors so that Fat Lum could cover for him.

When Fat Lum saw my grandmother’s ankle, he busied himself grinding roots, leaves and cacti in his granite mortar with the pestle, and softened banana leaves over his charcoal fire. Then he spread the mixture on the leaves, which he gently wrapped round my grandmother’s ankle and tied with fibres from a banana tree-trunk.

Fat Lum was a widower and, like Kum Tai, a native of Hainan Island. He had settled in Singapore many years earlier, and spoke the dialects, English and Malay. Everyone thought he was a very good bonesetter, and while Kum Tai was waiting for her ankle to mend, he came each morning with a fresh mixture of ground herbs and banana leaves. When Fat Lum applied them to her leg, he would help her with the instructions to the plantation workers, in their various dialects, then tell them what needed to be done. For the first time in the few months since she had bought the plantation, everything went smoothly for Kum Tai – especially after Fat Lum had come to work for her, alongside his bonesetting. He asked if she had space for him to live there, rather than travelling from his home in the city. He had no family ties, he said, so there was nothing to stop him. Because my grandmother was a widow, she could not allow him to sleep in the main house: that would have led to gossip and she would have lost the respect of her neighbour. Instead she put him up in one of the outbuildings used for storing fruit.

My father was pleased that Fat Lum was living with them: it would ease his mother’s workload. Fat Lum helped him, too, with the dialects. Father loved to follow Fat Lum round the orchards, listening as he gave orders to the workers. Sometimes they would speak Hylam, their mother tongue, but often Fat Lum would use another dialect – the more my father could learn, the less likely it was that he would be a farmer and end up killed by a chestnut tree, as his father had been.

Fat Lum did more and more for Kum Tai and soon he was setting hardly any bones. When he had to respond to an emergency, he would make up for lost time on the farm at the weekend, repairing the house and the outbuildings. Father would gobble his dinner each evening, then rush out to find Fat Lum so that they could sit together on the bench by the duckpond and talk. They would stay there until it was dark when the mosquitoes drove them inside.

One day Fat Lum went to the city and came back, in the middle of dinner, with a stack of books under his arm. Father’s eyes lit up. ‘Uncle Lum, are these English books for me?’ he asked. When Fat Lum nodded, Father stretched out his arms, then remembered his manners and looked at his mother: he did not know whether he should accept the gift. Kum Tai saw the joy in his eyes and knew how much he wanted the books. But she was proud: she did not want it known that she accepted gifts from her workers. On the other hand, she did not want to upset Fat Lum. She insisted on paying for the books, and said that next time all three of them would travel to the city to buy books so that Father would learn not to be a farmer. As they were in the middle of their meal, she asked Fat Lum if he would like to join them. She expected him to say no, because he was an employee, but he said, ‘Yes,’ with a smile, and lowered his huge body into a fragile rattan chair, which groaned under his weight.

Father had never seen so many English books. ‘Thank you, Uncle Lum,’ he said, as he leafed through them. ‘Can I read with you every day?’

‘Of course you can, my son,’ said Fat Lum, ‘and you must come to me if you do not understand something.’

Kum Tai noticed that Fat Lum had called him ‘my son’, and was happy that the pair got on so well together.

After that, Fat Lum and my father would sit by the duckpond each evening with the books, and if it began to rain they would shelter in the outbuilding among the crates of ripe rambutan and scarlet, green-stemmed mangosteen. Kum Tai began to worry that her son was spending too much time away from her so, instead of sending meals to the bonesetter in the outbuilding, she began to invite him to dinner so that she could keep an eye on them both. Father would bolt his food and wait for Fat Lum to finish. Then they would sit and read together under the light of the oil lamp until Kum Tai said it was time for bed. Sometimes Father would be asleep already with a book in his hand, and Fat Lum would carry him to bed. Then he would return to Kum Tai and they would chat late into the night.

Kum Tai was alone in a strange country and was grateful for the bonesetter’s attention. She thought him a good and honourable man, and feelings for him stirred in her heart. One evening, after dinner, he asked her to marry him. Father was awake in his bed in the next room and waited anxiously for her reply. He knew how difficult it had been for her, alone on the plantation, and since the arrival of the bonesetter her life had been easier. He wanted her to marry again and to sit by the duckpond with Uncle Lum.

Kum Tai and Fat Lum were married at the Chinese Consulate, then had a wedding dinner at a restaurant. The next day Fat Lum told Father that ‘Lum’ meant forest, like their plantation, and that it would be best if Father changed his name to Lum. Kum Tai agreed that they should all bear the same name, so when Father went to register at the Anglo-Chinese Primary School it was under the surname ‘Lum’.

He excelled at school. ‘Study hard,’ Kum Tai would remind him, ‘and get a government job. You must mix with city people, not farmers.’ Father told me that he spent his holidays with friends, hiking, camping and swimming in Penang, and that he always worked hard for his exams. ‘One day we will sell the plantation and move to the city,’ his mother told him. ‘But everything depends on you passing your exams and finding a good job.’

Fat Lum took over the running of the plantation and dealt with all the paperwork. Kum Tai was glad that all she had to do was sign the letters. She did not stop guarding the orchards though, and when the trees were fruiting she would walk about with her long stick and a lantern, frightening off the bats. In the mornings she was so tired that Fat Lum could get hardly any sense out of her. ‘Why not shoot those flying foxes?’ he asked. ‘Buy a gun. A few bangs here and there and they will fly away.’

Father told me that at first after Kum Tai bought her rifle things were easier. She only needed to fire a few shots and the bats would be gone for the night. Sometimes she would kill some and take them home to make bat soup. She added medicinal herbs to strengthen Father’s weak bladder so that he did not have to rush out in the middle of his lessons.

One night, shortly before the rambutan harvest, Kum Tai was in high spirits when she went out with the rifle to patrol the plantation. As she walked through the trees she thought of the life they would have in the city after her son had passed his exams. The rambutans had turned red and were very ripe and there were more bats than she could ever remember, so she shot many rounds into the night sky. She was under a cluster of trees firing her rifle when, suddenly, there was a thump on the ground and she saw a dark shape a few yards from her. She approached with her lantern and, as she drew closer, saw a dead monkey. Blood was pouring from its chest and its hands were clasped as if in prayer. Kum Tai felt faint and began to tremble. She turned and ran through the dark. ‘Aii-ee, aii-ee,’ she cried. ‘I have killed the monkey god! I have killed the great monkey god! My life is not worth living.’ As she ran, the low branches of the fruit trees cut her face and eyes and, Father told me, as we sat under the big teak table, the wounds eventually caused the loss of her eyesight.

Back at the house, Kum Tai knew what she had to do. She took hold of the rifle by its barrel and smashed it on the cement floor, screaming at the evil spirit in the gun: ‘Get out, get out, get out!’ she cried. But the rifle would not break, so she ran outside and threw it into the duck-pond. It sank to the bottom and was never seen again.

After that night Kum Tai was never the same. She became tense and nervous, and would not go into the plantation. Soon she was unable to work at all and Fat Lum had to take over. She would mumble to herself about how she had shot the monkey god out of the sky, and Father would try to comfort her. ‘It’s like any other meat, Ma,’ he told her. ‘They serve monkey at all the best restaurants in Chinatown.’ But Kum Tai would put her hands together, showing Father how the monkey’s had been clasped in prayer, and she would turn her head and walk away, whispering sadly to herself.

Fat Lum ruled the plantation like a dictator. If a worker arrived a few minutes late he was sacked on the spot, and if anyone was disrespectful he, too, was replaced. Kum Tai did not discuss the farm with him: she had lost interest in it. Father hoped that in time she would regain her health and take back control from Fat Lum, but she did not improve. Instead she began to worry about her only son finding a wife and starting a family.

‘Listen carefully, Poh-mun,’ said Kum Tai. ‘Your father was young when he married me. It is time for you to take a wife. I want to see grandchildren before the end of my days.’

The first time Father saw my mother was at a meeting arranged by the local matchmaker. It happened like this. One day Father and Kum Tai sat at a table near the entrance of a little tea-house in Chinatown and, at the appointed time, a rickshaw, with the hood down, pulled up in front. The matchmaker and the bride-to-be, my mother, were inside.

‘She will make you happy, Poh-mun,’ whispered Kum Tai, pointing to the girl sitting next to the matchmaker. ‘That is Chiew-wah. She will be a good wife, trust me.’

Father told me that she was only fifteen, and he had stared shyly at her, unable to speak. The rickshaw stayed for a few minutes, then left. Kum Tai explained that it was not necessary for him to see Chiew-wah again before the wedding, that love was like the wind and would soon blow through them. She talked to him every night about his duty.

The matchmaker negotiated a dowry to be paid by my father’s family and a trousseau to be given by the family of the bride. Chiew-wah’s mother had discovered that my father’s family were well-off and requested ten tables for the guests of the bride’s family at the wedding dinner; she demanded a fine restaurant and the very best food. My mother Chiew-wah’s trousseau included a set of new teak bedroom furniture, three sets of embroidered linen, a jade bangle, jade and pearl earrings and a thick necklace of pure gold. Father told me that the Singer sewing-machine had been a wedding gift, the very best model, and that was why Mother never let my sister and me use it.