Launch Pad

by Shelly Bryant

  “That is very good news.”

  “Yes, it really is.”

  The next time she heard the Parameswara’s man at her father’s home, he said, “Sang Rajuna Tapa, the Parameswara needs you to open the store houses. There is a shortage of grain.”

  Her father took a long time to answer. When he did, he said, “I’m afraid the shortage of grain extends to the royal stores. We have no more left. We cannot help the people.”

  “Then they will starve.”

  “They will.”

  “What will we do?”

  “We? We will starve with them.”

  The following weeks were terrible times. She heard constant reports as they were brought to her father, tales of people dying of starvation. She, though, had a regular supply of food, brought by her mother and sisters, and it soothed her wounded heart after the humiliation she had endured. Her tummy swelled as she lay quietly on the mat, getting up several times a day to walk and build her strength. Her mother said time would heal her sorrow.

  It would not heal the people’s hunger. They grew weaker each day. Eventually, they opened the gates of the fortress so they could send out a party to seek help from Ayuthaya to the north, hoping the conflicts between the two kingdoms were far enough in the past that a neighbourly offer of help would come.

  But when the gates opened, Majapahit was waiting. The whole army burst into the fortress, massacring the half-starved people.

  When it was finished, blood had turned the streets into a series of ghastly red canals. Only Sang Rajuna Tapa’s family was left alive. Not one person in his household had come to harm.

  As she lay on her mat, she heard men approaching the house, calling her father’s name.

  “Wikramawardhana,” her father greeted the Majapahit king, his tone full of respect.

  “You have done well, Sang Rajuna Tapa. And we have spared your family. You may continue to live here on Pulau Ujong in peace, as my loyal subjects.”

  “Thank you. Are we the only survivors from Singapura?”

  “No. Parameswara and some of his household fled.”

  “Fled?”

  “Yes. They left the island. My scouts say they headed north.”

  “What will they do?”

  “They will resurface somewhere eventually, as has always happened in such times. It was when Chola attacked Sri Vijaya that Singapura was born, you know. Now, who can say what the offspring of this event will be?”

  There was a very long pause. Then her father said, “You know what happened to my daughter?”

  “Yes. I am sorry for your loss. Would you like for my soldiers to try to recover her body from the jungle for a proper burial? It has been months, but perhaps…”

  “There will be no need.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, my lord, I don’t think you do.” Then her father called her, “Adik, come out here.”

  Slowly, she rose from her mat. Keeping one hand on her back, she walked into the main room, eyes lowered and head bowed.

  “She’s alive!” Wikramawardhana said.

  “Yes, she is,” her father said.

  “And…whose child is it?”

  “Parameswara’s, my lord,” she answered for herself. “There was never anyone else. It could not belong to any other man.”

  “Let us not say that,” Wikramawardhana replied harshly. “It is not prudent. Let us make him the son of a man of Majapahit. You will marry her to one of my subjects immediately.”

  She looked at her father, wondering what he and fate had in store for her now. He returned her gaze, then looked back at Wikramawardhana. “Yes, that is seemly,” he said, then took her by the arm and handed her over to their new king.

  It was too dark to see the waves that washed beneath them as they sat waiting on the jetty, but the sound of the incoming tide was like the voice of a fifth companion to their party. Three of the four men huddled close together on the raised boards, sheltering from the coolness of the night breeze coming from the sea. The fourth, a white man, leaned against the wooden handrail, smoking, the light at the end of his cigarette a tiny beacon for the boat they had expected an hour earlier.

  “Still no sign of it,” the white man said, turning his back to the rail and positioning his backside more comfortably against the planks.

  “They’ll be here,” Azhar said.

  “They better, mate, or this’ll be the last time I spend 18 SHELLY BRYANT Tan Swee Nee, Barber 19 a night out here in the middle of the jungle waiting for a shipment from you.”

  “It’s not actually the middle of the jungle,” Aaran said. “The jungle extends several miles inland from here.”

  “Don’t get smart with me,” the white man said. “You know what I mean. If he doesn’t show soon, you can forget about doing business with me and my lot again…”

  “They’ll be here.”

  The fourth man, Ah Yeo, spoke over Azhar’s repeated assurance, “Ah Sir, you know this jetty is very famous, right? It’s where Tan Swee Nee first arrived in Singapore. Brought his little boat here from Malaysia, but originally he came from Fuzhou.”

  “Who’s Tan Swee Nee?” Aaran asked. “A pirate?”

  “A barber,” Ah Yeo said.

  “How does a barber get to be famous?” asked the white man at the rail, flicking his cigarette butt into the sea.

  “Not from cutting hair,” Ah Yeo said. “From cutting throats. So yah, a bit like a pirate, in a way. He came here a long time ago, back when you Brits still ran everything.”

  “I’m not a Brit. I’m Australian born and bred, thank you very much.”

  “Aiyah, Brit, Aussie…same to me. Ang moh. When you ang moh still ran things. Tan Swee Nee came to Singapore back then, a hundred plus years ago. He came here, and life was really not easy. He wanted to bring his wife and kid over from Fuzhou, but could not afford. Finally, he went to the Henghwa clan and made some connections there. They were the ones who brought his wife and kid over. A girl, about ten years old.”

  So Tan Swee Nee, he had to work very, very hard, Ah Yeo said. Every day he was at Ching Jia Li there, working in a small lane near where the other members of his clan also worked. They helped his wife find work in a factory near Boat Quay. Their daughter sat every day by Tan Swee Nee’s chair, watching him cut hair and shave beards. She was very clever. Every time new people came to cut hair, she heard them talking different languages, so she tried to learn. Before long, she could not only speak Mandarin and her Henghwa dialect, but also Malay, Cantonese, Bengali, Hokkien, English, Teochew, Javanese, Hainanese, Portuguese, and even a bit of Tamil and Hindi. Back then, everyone could speak many languages. No choice. Got people coming from all over, sure must learn many languages once they come to Singapore. So this girl, she was very clever. She listened, then she learned. Like that, she helped Tan Swee Nee run his business, collecting money and getting new customers. All the customers, they liked Tan Swee Nee’s daughter because she was so clever. She was also very pretty, so the men liked her a lot.

  Then one day, one ang moh man came for a haircut and shave. As soon as he saw Tan Swee Nee’s daughter, he liked her very much. Actually, he said he loved her. This fellow was very rich, owned lots of warehouses at Boat Quay, and lots of factories and shophouses, including the factory where Tan Swee Nee’s wife worked. He also had a few other kinds of businesses in Chinatown—pawn shops, gambling houses, opium dens, brothels, everything. So, he saw Tan Swee Nee’s daughter and thought she would be good for his Chinatown business, since she was so clever with languages and also beautiful. Maybe he wanted to keep her for a little private business too, you know. So he told Tan Swee Nee he wanted the girl to work for him, but Tan Swee Nee didn’t want. He knew what happened to girls in those kinds of places, even good girls, and he didn’t want his daughter to end up like that. So he told the ang moh man, “No way. My girl work here is better.”

  That ang moh man wasn’t used to having people say no, especially not Chinese people, and sure no
t one who cut hair down at Ching Jia Li. So, he made life really hard on Tan Swee Nee’s wife, making her work long, long hours in his factory. But it didn’t work, even though Tan Swee Nee and his wife felt very pressurised. They said, “Work like coolies also never mind, we’re tough people. Sure can manage.”

  So one day, the ang moh man finally got his guys to go bully Tan Swee Nee’s wife when she was walking home from work—it was late at night, since the ang moh man made her work OT every day. She kena raped, and kena cut, but she didn’t want her husband to see her like that. She tried to get help on her own first, so her husband didn’t have to see. But no one wanted to help women like that, not back then, and no one wanted to cross the ang moh towkay either. So, in the end, Tan Swee Nee’s wife died on the streets that night, looking for someone to help, and too ashamed to go home.

  Next day, the ang moh man told Tan Swee Nee’s girl, “You come with me, or your daddy’s next.” So she never tell her father, just went like that. She worked in that ang moh fellow’s opium den, and later in his brothel. Everyone knew about it, but Tan Swee Nee, he couldn’t do anything to stop it. His business went downhill, because he was so sad about his wife and daughter. When he could barely make ends meet already, Puan Kasih took pity on him and so she went and helped him.

  Puan Kasih owned a shophouse at Ching Jia Li. Before, Tan Swee Nee always set up his barber chair outside her door. Now, she told him he could move inside, use her second storey to run his business. That way, he wouldn’t have to see that ang moh man every time he came into Ching Jia Li with all his guys, showing off and talking big.

  So Tan Swee Nee, he moved upstairs to Puan Kasih’s shop. She kept selling her kueh-kueh, and sometimes she sent people up to Tan Swee Nee for a haircut. But for Tan Swee Nee, mostly he just sat thinking about his wife and little girl, getting sadder and angrier all the time.

  One day, Puan Kasih sent this Indian guy up to get his hair cut. She followed the Indian fellow up, grumbling all the while. She told Tan Swee Nee, “This fellow ah. He cheated me. He’s just off the boat, and says he can’t pay for the kueh-kueh he ate. But my shop girl saw him take out a fat purse at another shop up the alley just a few minutes earlier. You charge him more for his haircut, then can pay me later for the kueh-kueh he stole, can?”

  She said all this in Malay, since the Indian guy just arrived and couldn’t understand.

  So Tan Swee Nee, he nodded to Puan Kasih and says, “Boleh.” Then he said to the Indian guy, in broken English, “You want haircut?”

  “Yes, and shave,” the Indian guy said. “A nice, close shave.”

  Tan Swee Nee started to shave the guy. His razor was long and sharp, and very shiny. He liked the way it felt when it scraped the Indian man’s skin. But he was not careful enough, and his blade nicked the guy. So that fellow, he scolded Tan Swee Nee. “You stupid Chinaman! What you wanna do, kill me?”

  And right then, Tan Swee Nee snapped. He thought, Yah, that’s exactly what I wanna do. So he put more pressure on the blade, and blood started spurting from the Indian guy’s throat. It was a good cut, right there where you bleed really fast, so fast you can’t scream. Like that, the Indian guy died really fast, and Tan Swee Nee, he was left with blood all over his hands, and a big mess in his room.

  Just then, Puan Kasih came up the stairs. Tan Swee Nee, he was really scared. He’d sure kena kicked out of the house now, and get locked up and eventually hanged for murder.

  Puan Kasih looked at his hands, then at the dead Indian. Her eyes got big and round, and she opened her mouth wide. She said, “Did you get his purse?”

  Tan Swee Nee was a bit confused, so he never answer. Puan Kasih walked over, dug through the Indian man’s clothes and found his purse. It really was a fat purse.

  “If you don’t want to get caught, we better come up with a plan,” she said to Tan Swee Nee.

  “What to do with the body?”

  Puan Kasih thought for a while, then said, “Cut it up into small pieces, like that.” She showed him the size she wanted, about the size of the end of her little finger. “Then I’ll take care of it.”

  Tan Swee Nee nodded, then said, “What if someone comes to look for him?”

  “Won’t. He’s new here. No one knows him. Oh, and— when you finish cutting him up, don’t forget to mop up the blood.”

  Tan Swee Nee spent the whole night doing what Puan Kasih said. Then, when she came upstairs early in the morning, before any other shop was open, the two of them carried the little pieces of the Indian man down to her kueh-kueh shop.

  That day, Tan Swee Nee slept all day, not dreaming at all. Puan Kasih, she made lots of money on her new special dish, mutton curry puffs. Everyone said they were the best curry puffs ever, the meat very fresh.

  After that, Puan Kasih had fresh mutton curry puffs once a week. She and Tan Swee Nee both started to get rich. No one noticed the missing Indian sailors—they were all far from home, no family here anyway.

  Later, they started plucking Chinese sailors from the crowd too. The Chinese sailors usually had even more money on them, gold sewn into the hems of their clothes. Puan Kasih added chicken curry puffs to her menu. Later, Malay and Indonesian sailors started to disappear too. Sardine curry puffs appeared on Puan Kasih’s shelves. Once in a long while, she advertised potato curry puffs, but the frequency of ang moh sailors disappearing could not keep pace with the other races.

  After a while, Tan Swee Nee told Puan Kasih, “You remember the ang moh man who killed my wife and stole my daughter? Let’s get him in here. You’ll have lots of ingredients for potato curry puffs from that fat ang moh.”

  “Tak boleh,” she said. “People will notice if he goes missing. Anyway, so long ago. You should forget your wife and move on. My husband also died long ago, you know. Look how well I’m doing without him. If he’s around now, you think we two could have such a happy partnership like we do now?”

  But Tan Swee Nee, he was a bit blur about that hint from Puan Kasih, because he was obsessed with the thought of taking revenge on that ang moh man. He watched out his window every day, and he always saw the ang moh man strutting here and there along Ching Jia Li, bullying everyone he saw. Tan Swee Nee thought, I have to get him.

  Finally one day, he came up with a plan. He can do this without Puan Kasih’s help. He wrote on a big board in red letters, hoping to attract the ang moh man’s attention with the English name he’d chosen for himself—because the ang moh, they never really bothered to learn other languages like the people in Ching Jia Li did. Ang moh never had to learn local things if they didn’t want to. So anyway, he wrote: Sweeney’s Barber Shop, with an arrow pointing upstairs.

  One day when he was watching, he saw the ang moh fellow coming, and he noticed that the man’s hair and beard look a bit long, so he ran down and hung the sign outside, arrow pointing up his stairs. Then he went upstairs and wait, wait, wait…

  Before long, the fat ang moh man came up. He sat in the chair. Tan Swee Nee, he tied the towel around the ang moh man’s neck, lathered up his face, and said, “Close shave today, Ah Sir?”

  “Yes, yes,” the ang moh man said.

  “Good. I’ll give you a shave to die for,” Tan Swee Nee said. Then he pulled out his shiny razor and slashed the throat, just like that. He went crazy, slashing and chopping and cutting—until that ang moh was nothing but a bunch of tiny pieces of meat scattered on the floor and splattered on the walls.

  Tan Swee Nee sat on the floor, never calling Puan Kasih, and not cleaning up the mess. By lunchtime, the smell of blood was very strong, but he couldn’t be bothered. The ang moh man who killed his wife and stole his girl was gone, and Tan Swee Nee—he was not really happy or anything like that. Just tired.

  After a while, the blood started to drip through the floorboards into the shop downstairs. It dripped right onto the head of the police constable, a big Sikh man. The Sikh police took his curry puff and went up to see what’s going on. He saw Tan Swee Nee, sitting there in all the blood
and with pieces of meat all over the room. The constable arrested him and took him to jail.

  At first, everyone felt sorry for Puan Kasih. Just when her business was going so well, all these years after her husband died, she suddenly got this kind of problem. So unfair. But eventually, everyone said her curry puffs weren’t as good as before. No flavour. They thought she must be shaken after having that murderer upstairs, so now she lost her touch. After a while, they forgot all about her, till one day, her kueh-kueh shop closed and she disappeared. After that, life at Ching Jia Li just went on as usual.

  “That’s disgusting,” Azhar said.

  The white man standing at the handrail laughed. “It’s funny,” he said, “but it’s not very original.”

  “Yeah,” Aaran said. “You got that from the ‘curry murders’ that happened seven or eight years ago—when that woman killed her husband at that church.” Before Ah Yeo could open his mouth to object, Aaran winked, shaking his head slightly. Ah Yeo smiled, understanding passing between them.

  The Australian laughed again, his tone filled more with contempt than merriment.

  In the distance, a light flashed, moving up and down with the tide. The sound of an outboard motor reached their ears at precisely the same moment they noticed the lights.

  “See,” Azhar said, “I told you they’d be here.”

  It was easy to imagine that the Peregrine was aimlessly adrift, just the way Hamasaki would have liked it. This was always his favourite part of any run, when they were weeks away from land in every direction, as far south in the Indian Ocean as they could go without sighting Antarctica. The rest of the crew usually started to get restless at this point in a run, but none of them ever let Hamasaki know it. The boys all wanted to be included on the next run, and complaining about being sick of the sight of endless waters didn’t earn a guy another invitation to join Hamasaki’s crew.