Читать книгу The Thorn of Lion City: A Memoir - Lucy Lum - Страница 6

Three

My father told me all of this while we were under the table with the mattresses stacked on top and around it, and I was curled up next to him in the dark, munching my biscuits. Then I could forget the hungry Japanese silkworms crawling towards us with their bombs. I was happy in that place with my father, who had come from the island where the rain had carried the pigs and the furniture down the river to their new home in the sea with the fish.

Father was only sixteen when he was married, and one year later he had his first child, my brother Beng. He told me how Kum Tai had held him in her arms for the first time. ‘First Grandson! You look just like your father, my Po-pui,’ she said, and tears ran down her face.

‘Why are you sad, Ma? Are you not happy with your grandson?’ asked my mother.

‘I am happy, Chiew-wah, very happy,’ she said. ‘When I look at my grandson, I think of a time before. I always wanted more children, but after Poh-mun I was not able to have another.’ She was lost in thought as she stared at the child in her arms. ‘You must not walk too much or carry heavy things, because it will hurt you,’ she said eventually. Then she told Chiew-wah how she had swum after the pigs and how it had damaged her womb. ‘Don’t make the same mistake,’ she said. ‘You and Poh-mun must have many children, a big family. You must rest. And no housework for one month!’

Father told me that Beng’s birth did not interrupt his studies. In fact it made him work harder. He was impatient to pass his exams so that he could get a good job and move to the city, his mother’s dream. Her eyesight was fading and she talked all the time about the monkey with its hands locked in prayer. She never left her bedroom: Father took her meals to her there, and in the evenings he would sit with her, reading the book of Confucius that she had once read to him.

Early one morning, in the middle of a thunderstorm, Kum Tai jumped out of bed, got dressed and mumbled that she was going to inspect the fruit trees. Father was at school and Fat Lum had gone to the city on business. Kum Tai stumbled outside in the rain and Chiew-wah, with Beng strapped to her back, worried until Father returned in the late afternoon.

Dusk set in early because of the heavy rain and Father lit a lantern and rushed out of the house. He met Fat Lum returning from the city and explained to him what had happened, then went straight to the tree where the monkey had been killed but his mother wasn’t there. He breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps she had gone to a neighbour’s house. And then, in the distance, he saw Fat Lum’s lantern. As he ran towards it, he saw that his step-father was bending over a figure on the ground.

Father and Fat Lum carried Kum Tai back to the house, blood pouring from a deep gash on her head. She had fallen and hit it on a stone. When the plantation workers saw her, some left for good because they were frightened of the monkey god’s revenge.

Father told me that Fat Lum changed after his mother’s death: he wasn’t interested in him any more. He made all the funeral arrangements without consulting him. On the last day of the third week after her death, when the prayer rites had been completed, in accordance with the Taoist observance, Father thought the time was right to approach Fat Lum about the plantation and his mother’s property.

But Fat Lum beat him to it. ‘You can forget about lessons today, Poh-mun. We have things to discuss,’ he told my father, as he was leaving for school.

Father was surprised to hear Fat Lum use his name – he always called him ‘my son’. ‘Can we talk when I get back from school?’ Father asked.

‘No. You will not be returning here. This is no longer your home.’

Fat Lum went into the bedroom. When he came back, he had with him a pile of documents that proved the plantation had been transferred to him.

‘My mother would never have signed those papers if she had been able to read English,’ said Father.

It was no use. ‘Take your wife and baby and leave. Your mother is dead. We no longer have any family connection,’ said Fat Lum. ‘Furthermore, the monthly allowance for your education will be discontinued.’

Father told me that he, Chiew-wah and little Beng went to live with Popo, my mother’s mother, in her flat in Chinatown – where I can remember living as a small child. There, Mother gave birth to her second child, my older sister Miew-kin; the nurses thought it a good omen that she was born on the sixth birthday of the elder daughter of the King and Queen of England. Popo was a devout believer in Chinese astrology: ‘A birthdate that coincides with a royal child cannot be more auspicious for your daughter,’ she said to my mother. For once Popo thought an astrological consultation unnecessary. ‘What better news can the astrologer forecast?’

When Father talked to me under the table about Popo he would lower his voice to a whisper. She did not like him telling us about those years. I would peep round the mattresses to make sure she was not listening to the stories Father was telling me.

Father explained that Popo paid for my mother’s stay in the maternity hospital, and when Mother came home, Popo employed a pue yuet, an attendant for the first month. Every day my mother was washed with towels dipped in hot water in which a mixture of lemon grass, pomelo leaves and ginger roots had simmered for an hour. She had to eat special foods to chase away the wind that enters the body after childbirth: ginger roots, dark brown sugar and black Chinese vinegar were heated, then left to mature in great earthenware pots; later, pigs’ trotters were added to the mixture, cooked, and served to Mother at every mealtime for four weeks. She was made to drink tea made from roasted ginger roots and boiled black beans, which, Popo said, would prevent arthritis in old age.

The pue yuet was the best in the area and Popo paid her well to look after Mother. She spared no expense. Father was not yet working and had no money, so Popo did not consult him. When my sister was born she treated him like a bystander. He offered to care for Beng while my mother nursed the new baby, but Popo would take Beng from him, saying, ‘Go away. This is not a man’s work.’ Then she would mock, ‘Poh-mun, how can you stare at books all day and night when you have two children to care for? You should leave school now and find a job.’ But Father had no intention of abandoning his studies after all the sacrifices his mother had made, so he buried himself in his books and let Popo take control of his family.

A year later, just before I was born, he passed his final examinations and found a job as an interpreter. He told me how glad he was to have fulfilled his mother’s dream that he would not become a farmer, and how proud he was to be earning money for his family at last.

My grandmother wasted no time in reminding him of what he owed her. ‘You are in my debt for life,’ she told him, ‘and you can never finish repaying me. I took pity on my daughter and grandson. I did not do it for you.’

Father told me that she had worn him down with her insults and demands, and that he had surrendered his first pay packet to her. When he talked about these years I could tell from his voice how sad he was, and tired, and I was afraid of the Japanese bombs coming down on my head, through the ceiling and the mattresses and the thick teak table.