The Catherine Lim Collection Read online

  The

  CATHERINE LIM

  collection

  © 2011 Catherine Lim and Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited

  The Serpent’s Tooth first published in 1982; They Do Return ... But Gently Lead Them Back first published in 1983; O Singapore!: Stories In Celebration first published in 1989; The Woman’s Book Of Superlatives first published in 1993. All books first published by Times Editions Pte Ltd.

  Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions

  An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

  1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196

  Cover design by Lock Hong Liang

  Framed butterfly photo by Photolibrary

  All rights reserved

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  eISBN: 978-981-435-189-8

  Contents

  The Serpent’s Tooth

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  They do return ... but gently lead them back

  The Old Man in the Balcony

  A Boy named Ah Mooi

  The Legacy

  The Story of Father Monet

  Grandfather’s Story

  Of Moles and Buttocks

  Full Moon

  The Anniversary

  The Exhumation

  Of Blood from Woman

  Lee Geok Chan

  Two Male Children

  A Soldier Stalks

  They Do Return ... but Gently Lead Them Back

  K.C.

  O Singapore: Stories In Celebration

  The Malady and the Cure

  Sorry ... Temporary Aberrations

  Kiasuism: A Socio-Historico-Cultural Perspective

  In Search Of (A Play)

  Goonalaan’s Beard

  A Singapore Fairy Tale

  The Concatenation

  ‘Write, Right, Rite’; Or ‘How Catherine Lim Tries to Offer only the Best on the altar of Good Singapore Writing’

  The Woman’s Book of Superlatives

  Prologue: Images

  The Enemy

  For The Gift of a Man’s Understanding

  Bina

  The Paper Women

  The Rest Is Bonus

  The Song Of Golden Frond

  The Solace Of Guilt

  The Revenge

  The Feast of the Hungry Ghosts

  Transit to Heaven

  About The Author

  The Serpent’s Tooth

  Prologue

  In the end, said Angela, and her voice quavered in remembrance of all the pain and sadness – in the end, I was left alone to pick up the pieces, to clear the mess.

  The old one, as you know, I put in Mount St Luke. No hospital in Singapore could offer better care (or charge higher fees). But she died peacefully, at last, and her ashes lie in the temple at Tank Road, as she wished.

  The howling idiot foster-son who had been such a burden, I returned to his mother. To the very end, she protested she did not have the means to care for him – a troublesome hulk of an idiot, 30-years-old. She was leading up to it – I knew it all the time – we settled at $3,000, and now I think she’s taken him to Lumut, to live with an old relative.

  My poor little Michael – I don’t know how long he’ll take to recover from the trauma. Can you imagine his sufferings under the influence of the old demented one and the idiot foster-son? Dr Phua is doing his best, and I pray to God every day that my son will be all right soon.

  My Mark and Michelle are my support in these sad, sad days. I thank God again and again that the sufferings they went through did not affect them too badly. Mark’s got the PROMSHO scholarship and Michelle’s returned to her training sessions. Her coach tells me she will be in top shape for the ASEAN swimming carnival in June.

  And my Boon – what can I say? He’s gone through so much, and been taken advantage of so shamelessly by others, from a Minister to a servant girl. I pray people will recognise his real worth. Sometimes people never see you for what you really are.

  And what can I say of the family that was supposed to stand together and help one another in times of trouble?

  All, all fled – at the first sign of trouble.

  That Wee Tiong and his wife – please, please, the very thought of those vipers will make me lose my calm all over again. They have their houses and their stocks and their gold bars intact – good luck to them.

  As for Wee Nam and that helpless, hysterical wife of his – I wish them well in their new home in Canada. One of these days I’m going to find a letter in Boon’s pocket that he’ll not dare show me – another letter begging for money. You mark my words.

  I’m left alone to pick up the pieces, to clear the mess.

  Everyone’s gone.

  And that Wee Siong – I shall thank God to my dying day that he never came back. He would have killed the old one instantly. He wouldn’t have let her die in peace in her old age – he, the darling of all her hopes.

  All, all fled, and I’m left to put things in order again.

  You speak about my calm, my courage. But you don’t know my dreams. I haven’t begun to speak about the torments at night yet. They return, you know, the demons return in the dreams, and they howl at me. How can I ever forget the old man’s coffin knockings and the old woman’s curses charged with thunder and lightning?

  Last night, I had the dream again – the wooden house in Changi – you remember the big old wooden house in Changi? Only it wasn’t in Changi but in some graveyard, and she was there – she hit me a
cross the face with a bamboo stick –

  I can’t afford to remember.

  I’m the only one left to clear the mess.

  I’ve just about cleared the mess, thank God.

  Chapter 1

  The signs of death were there already, months before it took place, at the birthday party itself. There was the laboured breathing as he was helped up his chair to thank the guests and acknowledge the yam sengs; his voice was barely audible and the stiff wispy beard on his chin quivered as he rasped his ‘thank you’ and sat down again. There was the strange brief fit of crying – fortunately, so brief that only those at his table noticed it; he had begun to talk of a brother long since dead. It was strange, for he had never referred to this dead brother before.

  Signs of death – but they went unnoticed in the loud festive atmosphere of the restaurant, the best Chinese restaurant in Singapore. Twenty tables booked for the occasion, the menu carefully chosen by Angela herself, offering the famed restaurant’s most expensive delicacies.

  “I’m sick to death of the usual sharksfin soup and spring chicken and steamed pomfret,” she had said and proceeded to order 12 dishes, each more exotic and expensive than the preceding one.

  The cost, the cost – it was just like the stingy Wee Tiong and his equally stingy, spiteful wife to worry about costs for an aged parent’s 75th birthday dinner. The brothers always shared out the costs of the birthday dinners and the costs of medical treatments of the old ones; it was a vague, understood thing from the time each brother had started working and drawing a salary.

  The cost – Wee Tiong had been most concerned when Wee Boon told him that it would be at the Shanghai Restaurant.

  “I thought we had agreed it would be at the Kai Leong Restaurant – ”

  “I know, I know,” said Wee Boon, “but Angela said the food there is no good, and for a 75th birthday dinner, it might as well be the best.”

  And at this point Angela had stepped in and said, with the casualness of a well-rehearsed response, “You needn’t worry about the extra cost, Wee Tiong. Boon will see to that. You pay your original share, that’s all.”

  The shifty eyes behind the thick lensed glasses had glanced up sharply, the muscles on the long narrow face tensed to deflect barbed words, but Angela had wandered off, leaving behind a faint fragrance of Helena Rubinstein, to talk to Mee Kin, to discuss the relative merits of yam pudding and red bean pancake for dessert.

  Later, at the dinner, Angela saw him, this most detestable of her brothers-in-law, a true shifty-eyed grasping Chinaman, down to the absurd Chinaman haircut where the razor ran close to the skin at the back, but left comically sharp wedges of hair at the sides. He was whispering to his wife and both smiled their sardonic smile of criticism.

  “I suppose,” she told Mee Kin later, “they were saying that we were showing off, that we had deliberately set up an impressive affair for the benefit of Minister. Whatever Boon does, he interprets as currying favour with Minister; he can’t accept the fact of his elder brother’s superior education and personality. I think when Boon becomes Member of Parliament he’ll die of envy, bite on his tongue in jealous hatred and swallow it. There are no brotherly feelings between them – they are worlds apart, you see, and it’s the fault, if you analyse things carefully, of my father and mother-in-law.”

  Angela’s intense dislike had infected the children; they did not like Second Uncle, they were cautious when he spoke to them, for he spoke to them always with a laughing, goading contempt, his eyes glinting

  behind his glasses, his neck twisting. “Ah Mu-ck, Ah My-ker, Ah Mee-sae” he called in imitation of the grandparents’ struggling efforts with English names, and then he laughed a sharp, malicious laugh and shook his head.

  “Those who follow Western ways are those who eat Western shit,” he once said, to nobody in particular. “Western followers, Western shit-eaters!”

  His own four daughters were named ‘Chwee Kim’, ‘Chwee Sim’, ‘Chwee Lian’ and ‘Chwee Hwa’.

  “Stingy Chinaman,” Angela said to her friends, “Counting every cent. Living in that miserable two-room HDB flat in Geylang so that he will always have the excuse not to be able to take in either of the old ones, when the time comes. But do you know he has a bungalow in Victoria Park, rented out to an American family for $3,000 a month, and an apartment in Wan Yu Heights, also rented out to foreigners? He gives $100 a month to the old couple – I believe he recently reduced it to $75, I must check with Boon – and the ang-pow for Chinese New Year, and his share of birthday dinners, and you can’t extract a cent more. Why the Shanghai, not the Kai Leong Restaurant? Why Peking Duck, not Spring Chicken? I’m sick of his calculating ways; my Mark calls him ‘Uncle Abacus’. I believe Mark wrote a humorous composition once on ‘My Relatives’ and then he suddenly decided to call his Second Uncle, Uncle Abacus! The teacher got him to read the essay to the class. I’m sick of his stinginess to the poor old couple and in the end, I always tell Boon, forget this sickening nonsense about your share and my share. We pay. We pay for everything. We can’t afford to lose face. You attend a dinner for a friend’s parent at the Shanghai or Imperial and then you call them for a return dinner at the Kai Leong or some dingy stupid place? No thank you. We pay, that’s all. Money’s no problem.”

  That was evident from the diamond ear-studs – “1.02 carats per side,” Angela confided – the diamond and jade necklace, the diamond rings. They were brought out from the bank vault for special occasions like these. “Imagine wearing them at the Kai Leong! I would look out of place,” said Angela laughingly.

  She bustled about, the hostess, diamonds sparkling, the silk dress and jacket splendid on the slim figure. She moved deftly from table to table, the consummate hostess, urging everyone to eat more, heaping spoonfuls of steaming food into the bowls of old men and women, friends and relatives of the old couple, amidst timid, laughing protestations that they had had so much to eat already. She spoke to Wee Tiong and Gek Choo for a brief while – for the sake of propriety, for the family must not be seen to be divided in a public place. She spoke amiably to them, exhorting them to try more of the jellied prawns, patting their daughters on the heads and cheeks, noting later to Mee Kin, “Even on an occasion like this, she was too stingy to get a decent dress – did you see that outmoded shift, and those ugly home-made shapeless dresses on her daughters? Such pretty little girls too. A pity.”

  She spoke with greater amiability to Wee Nam and Gloria. Third Brother was less spiteful, Gloria did not have a quarter the malice of that Gek Choo with the shifty eyes and tight mouth – “husband and wife were looking more and more alike every day,” she laughed to her friends. Typical Chinaman and Chinawoman. Wee Nam and Gloria were less repulsive – “but one of these days,” said Angela with a sigh to Mee Kin, “one of these days, I shall tell you about this wastrel brother-in-law of mine, always stretching out his arm for loans from Boon. Loans, he calls them. I wish he could be honest and say ‘gifts’. He’s been owing Boon money since 1976, while my Mark was still in primary school. Flitting from job to job, business to business. His poor wife a nervous wreck. But that’s another story. You’ll hear endless stories about my in-laws,” she said with a sharp laugh.

  She urged them to eat, heaping food on their plates and into bowls. Gloria’s people, Angela whispered to a friend as she moved on, were the lower class Eurasians in Singapore: her brother was a drummer in a seedy night-club, wanted by the police for drug-taking on a number of occasions, her two sisters had married common English or American sailors and gone abroad, her mother helped out in her church for a pittance.

  She moved from the Eurasian table, jewels sparkling; she had noted how Gloria’s mother’s eyes had travelled, dilated in disbelief, over the necklace, ear-studs, bracelet, rings, in the brief while she was at their table.

  She was glad to go to the children’s table. She surveyed her children proudly, dressed in their best. Mark was reading aloud to the other children the signs on pillars and wa
lls in the restaurant and in the menu, in both English and Mandarin. He was on his way to being the best bilingual student in his school. The others listened, awe-stricken or giggling. She went up to Michael – Michael, the only child who gave pain; what wouldn’t she give to have him like Mark? She went up to him and asked, “Are you eating, Mikey? Would you like more soup? Here, let Mummy help you to more soup.” But the boy shook his head and looked, pained, into his empty bowl. My best-looking child, thought Angela sadly. Friends have remarked on his handsome features, his beautiful long eyelashes. Why is he so difficult? But now she only smiled at him and joined in the merriment of the other children.

  She whispered to Mooi Lan, “Keep an eye on Michael, see that he eats well. Make sure the idiotic one does not come to give trouble.” She trusted the girl whom she could never refer to as ‘servant girl’; Mooi Lan was the children’s ‘chae-chae’. Mooi Lan was the only one who had ever seen her weep over Michael; she would remain the only one.

  The idiotic one, the imbecile foster-son, did come over to the children’s table but he did not make trouble. He merely stood there, grinned at the children while they stared back or giggled, and then he clapped his hands excitedly, as if he had discovered some wondrous thing. He stood beside Michael, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Thirty years old, a brutish hulk of a man with a seven-year-old child’s mind and a child’s endless capacity to embarrass and irritate.

  Mark shifted his chair, displeased. The idiot slobbered, saliva flying; Mark moved his chair further away with a snort of disgust. Mooi Lan got up and tried to direct the idiot back to his own table, the table of the inferior relatives. He resisted; he persisted in standing beside Michael, now two hands gripping the boy’s shoulders; he talked to the boy in his slobbering way, painful to see or hear. Michael was about to get up and be led by him to the inferior relatives’ table when Mooi Lan adroitly intervened, put the boy gently back in his place and led the idiot one back by the hand to his table. Then she returned, looked across several tables to Angela who was watching all this time, tense, and received a nod of approval.