by Kevin Kwan
“Yes,” Nick replied.
“Has she lived here a long time?” Peik Lin couldn’t resist trying to find out more as she craned her neck, trying to get a better look.
“Since she was a young girl,” Nick said.
Nick’s answer surprised Peik Lin, as she assumed that the house would have belonged to his grandfather. Now what she really wanted to ask was, Who on earth is your grandmother? But she didn’t want to risk seeming too nosy. “Well, you two have a great time,” Peik Lin said, winking at Rachel and mouthing the words Call me later! Rachel gave her friend a quick smile.
“Good night, and get home safe,” Nick said, patting the roof of the car.
As Peik Lin’s car drove off, Nick turned to Rachel, looking a little sheepish. “I hope it’s okay … but it’s not just the family. My grandmother decided to have a small party, all arranged at the last minute, apparently, because her tan hua flowers are going to bloom tonight.”
“She’s throwing a party because her flowers are in bloom?” Rachel asked, not quite following.
“Well, these are very rare flowers that bloom extremely infrequently, sometimes once every decade, sometimes even longer than that. They only bloom at night, and the whole thing only lasts for a few hours. It’s quite something to witness.”
“Sounds cool, but now I’m feeling really underdressed for the occasion,” Rachel said pensively, eyeing the fleet of limousines that lined the driveway.
“Not at all—you look absolutely perfect,” Nick told her. He could sense her trepidation and tried to reassure her, placing his hand on the small of her back and guiding her toward the front doors. Rachel felt the warm, radiating energy from his muscled arm and instantly felt better. Her knight in shining armor was at her side, and everything would be just fine.
As they entered the house, the first thing that caught Rachel’s eye was the dazzling mosaic tiles in the grand foyer. She stood transfixed for a few moments by the intricate black, blue, and coral pattern before realizing that they were not alone. A tall, spindly Indian man stood silently in the middle of the foyer next to a circular stone table clustered with pots of enormous white-and-purple phalaenopsis orchids. The man bowed ceremoniously to Rachel and presented her with a hammered silver bowl filled with water and pale pink rose petals. “For your refreshment, miss,” he said.
“Do I drink this?” Rachel whispered to Nick.
“No, no, it’s for washing your hands,” Nick instructed. Rachel dipped her fingers into the cool scented water before wiping them on the soft terry cloth that was proffered, feeling awed (and a little silly) by the ritual.
“Everyone’s upstairs in the living room,” Nick said, leading her toward the carved stone staircase. Rachel saw something out of the corner of her eye and let out a quick gasp. By the side of the staircase lurked a huge tiger.
“It’s stuffed, Rachel.” Nick laughed. The tiger stood as if about to pounce, mouth open in a ferocious growl.
“I’m sorry, it looked so real,” Rachel said, recovering herself.
“It was real. It’s a native Singaporean tiger. They used to roam this area until the late nineteenth century, but they were hunted into extinction. My great-grandfather shot this one when it ran into the house and hid under the billiard table, or so the story goes.”
“Poor guy,” Rachel said, reaching out to stroke the tiger’s head gingerly. Its fur felt surprisingly brittle, as if a patch might fall off at any minute.
“It used to scare the hell out of me when I was little. I never dared go near the foyer at night, and I had dreams that it would come alive and attack me while I was sleeping,” Nick said.
“You grew up here?” Rachel asked in surprise.
“Yes, until I was about seven.”
“You never told me you lived in a palace.”
“This isn’t a palace. It’s just a big house.”
“Nick, where I come from, this is a palace,” Rachel said, gazing up at the cast-iron and glass cupola soaring above them. As they climbed the stairs, the murmur of party chatter and piano keys wafted down toward them. When they reached the landing to the second floor, Rachel almost had to rub her eyes in disbelief. Sweet Jesus. She felt momentarily giddy, as if she had been transported back in time to another era, to the grand lounge of a twenties ocean liner en route from Venice to Istanbul, perhaps.
The “living room,” as Nick so modestly called it, was a gallery that ran along the entire northern end of the house, with art deco divans, wicker club chairs, and ottomans casually grouped into intimate seating areas. A row of tall plantation doors opened onto the wraparound veranda, inviting the view of verdant parklands and the scent of night-blooming jasmine into the room, while at the far end a young man in a tuxedo played on the Bösendorfer grand piano. As Nick led her into the space, Rachel found herself reflexively trying to ignore her surroundings, even though all she wanted to do was study every exquisite detail: the exotic potted palms in massive Qian-long dragon jardinieres that anchored the space, the scarlet-shaded opaline glass lamps that cast an amber glow over the lacquered teak surfaces, the silver- and lapis lazuli–filigreed walls that shimmered as she moved about the room. Every single object seemed imbued with a patina of timeless elegance, as if it had been there for more than a hundred years, and Rachel didn’t dare to touch anything. The glamorous guests, however, appeared completely at ease lounging on the shantung silk ottomans or mingling on the veranda while a retinue of white-gloved servants in deep-olive batik uniforms circulated with trays of cocktails.
“Here comes Astrid’s mother,” Nick muttered. Before Rachel had a moment to collect herself, a stately-looking lady approached them, wagging a finger at Nick.
“Nicky, you naughty boy, why didn’t you tell us you were back? We thought you weren’t coming till next week, and you just missed Uncle Harry’s birthday dinner at Command House!” The woman looked like a middle-aged Chinese matron, but she spoke in the sort of clipped English accent straight out of a Merchant Ivory film. Rachel couldn’t help but notice how her tightly permed black hair fittingly resembled the Queen of England’s.
“So sorry, I thought you and Uncle Harry would be in London at this time of the year. Dai gu cheh, this is my girlfriend Rachel Chu. Rachel, this is my auntie Felicity Leong.”
Felicity nodded at Rachel, boldly scanning her up and down.
“So nice to meet you,” Rachel said, trying not to be unnerved by her hawklike gaze.
“Yes of course,” Felicity said, turning quickly to Nick and asking, almost sternly, “Do you know when your daddy gets in?”
“Not a clue,” he replied. “Is Astrid here yet?”
“Aiyah, you know that girl is always late!” At that moment, his aunt noticed an elderly Indian woman in a gold and peacock-blue sari being helped up the stairs. “Dear Mrs. Singh, when did you get back from Udaipur?” she screeched, pouncing on the woman as Nick guided Rachel out of the way.
“Who is that lady?” Rachel asked.
“That’s Mrs. Singh, a family friend who used to live down the street. She’s the daughter of a maharaja, and one of the most fascinating people I know. She was great friends with Nehru. I’ll introduce you later, when my aunt isn’t breathing down our necks.”
“Her sari is absolutely stunning,” Rachel remarked, gazing at the elaborate gold stitching.
“Yes, isn’t it? I hear she flies all her saris back to New Delhi to be specially cleaned,” Nick said as he tried to escort Rachel toward the bar, unwittingly steering straight into the path of a very posh-looking middle-aged couple. The man had a pompadour of Brylcreemed black hair and thick, oversize tortoiseshell glasses, while his wife wore a classic gold-buttoned red-and-white Chanel suit.
“Uncle Dickie, Auntie Nancy, meet my girlfriend Rachel Chu,” Nick said. “Rachel, this is my uncle and his wife, from the T’sien side of the family,” he explained.
“Ah Rachel, I’ve met your grandfather in Taipei … Chu Yang Chung, isn’t it?” Uncle Dickie asked
.
“Er … actually, no. My family isn’t from Taipei,” Rachel stammered.
“Oh. Where are they from, then?”
“Guangdong originally, and nowadays California.”
Uncle Dickie looked a bit taken aback, while his well-coiffed wife grasped his arm tightly and continued. “Oh, we know California very well. Northern California, actually.”
“Yes, that’s where I’m from,” Rachel replied politely.
“Ah, well then, you must know the Gettys? Ann is a great friend of mine,” Nancy effused.
“Um, are you referring to the Getty Oil family?”
“Is there any other?” Nancy asked, perplexed.
“Rachel’s from Cupertino, not San Francisco, Auntie Nancy. And that’s why I need to introduce her to Francis Leong over there, who I hear is going to Stanford this fall,” Nick cut in, quickly moving Rachel along. The next thirty minutes became a blur of nonstop greetings, as Rachel was introduced to assorted family and friends. There were aunties and uncles and cousins aplenty, there was the distinguished though diminutive Thai ambassador, there was a man Nick introduced as the sultan of some unpronounceable Malay state, along with his two wives in elaborately bejeweled head scarves.
All this time, Rachel had noticed one woman who seemed to command the attention of the room. She was very slim and aristocratic-looking with snow-white hair and ramrod-straight posture, dressed in a long white silk cheongsam with deep purple piping along the collar, sleeves, and hemline. Most of the guests orbited around her paying tribute, and when she at last came toward them, Rachel noticed for the first time Nick’s resemblance to her. Nick had earlier informed Rachel that while his grandmother spoke English perfectly well, she preferred to speak in Chinese and was fluent in four dialects—Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and Teochew. Rachel decided to greet her in Mandarin, the only dialect she spoke, but before Nick could make proper introductions, she bowed her head nervously at the stately lady and said, “It is such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for inviting me to your beautiful home.”
The woman looked at her quizzically and replied slowly in Mandarin, “It is a pleasure to meet you too, but you are mistaken, this is not my house.”
“Rachel, this is my great-aunt Rosemary,” Nick explained hurriedly.
“And you’ll have to forgive me, my Mandarin is really quite rusty,” Great-aunt Rosemary added in her Vanessa Redgrave English.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Rachel said, her cheeks flushing bright red. She could feel all eyes in the room upon her, amused by her faux pas.
“No need to apologize.” Great-aunt Rosemary smiled graciously. “Nick has told me quite a bit about you, and I was so looking forward to meeting you.”
“He has?” Rachel said, still flustered.
Nick put his arm around Rachel and said, “Here, come meet my grandmother.” They walked across the room, and on the sofa closest to the veranda, flanked by a spectacled man smartly attired in a white linen suit and a strikingly beautiful lady, sat a shrunken woman. Shang Su Yi had steel-gray hair held in place by an ivory headband, and she was dressed simply in a rose-colored silk blouse, tailored cream trousers, and brown loafers. She was older and frailer than Rachel had expected, and though her features were partially obscured by a thick pair of tinted bifocals, her regal countenance was unmistakable. Standing completely still behind Nick’s grandmother were two ladies in immaculate matching gowns of iridescent silk.
Nick addressed his grandmother in Cantonese. “Ah Ma, I’d like you to meet my friend Rachel Chu, from America.”
“So nice to meet you!” Rachel blurted in English, completely forgetting her Mandarin.
Nick’s grandmother peered up at Rachel for a moment. “Thank you for coming,” she replied haltingly, in English, before turning swiftly to resume her conversation in Hokkien with the lady at her side. The man in the white linen suit smiled quickly at Rachel, but then he too turned away. The two ladies swathed in silk stared inscrutably at Rachel, and she smiled back at them tensely.
“Let’s get some punch,” Nick said, steering Rachel toward a table where a uniformed waiter wearing white cotton gloves was serving punch out of a huge Venetian glass punch bowl.
“Oh my God, that had to be the most awkward moment of my life! I think I really annoyed your grandmother,” Rachel whispered.
“Nonsense. She was just in the middle of another conversation, that’s all,” Nick said soothingly.
“Who were those two women in matching silk dresses standing like statues behind her?” Rachel asked.
“Oh, those are her lady’s maids.”
“Excuse me?”
“Her lady’s maids. They never leave her side.”
“Like ladies-in-waiting? They look so elegant.”
“Yes, they’re from Thailand, and they were trained to serve in the royal court.”
“Is this a common thing in Singapore? Importing royal maids from Thailand?” Rachel asked incredulously.
“I don’t believe so. This service was a special lifetime gift to my grandmother.”
“A gift? From whom?”
“The King of Thailand. Though it was the last one, not Bhumibol the current king. Or was it the one before that? Anyway, he was apparently a great friend of my grandmother’s. He decreed that she must only be waited on by court-trained ladies. So there has been a constant rotation ever since my grandmother was a young woman.”
“Oh,” Rachel said, stupefied. She took the glass of punch from Nick and noticed that the fine etching on the Venetian glassware perfectly matched the intricate fretwork pattern on the ceiling. She leaned against the back of a sofa for support, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. There was too much for her to take in—the army of white-gloved servants hovering about, the confusion of new faces, the mind-blowing opulence. Who knew that Nick’s family would turn out to be these extremely grand people? And why didn’t he prepare her for all this a little more?
Rachel felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see Nick’s cousin holding a sleepy toddler. “Astrid!” she cried, delighted to see a friendly face at last. Astrid was adorned in the chicest outfit Rachel had ever seen, quite different from how she had remembered her in New York. So this was Astrid in her natural habitat.
“Hello, hello!” Astrid said cheerily. “Cassian, this is Auntie Rachel. Say hi to Auntie Rachel?” Astrid gestured. The child stared at Rachel for a moment, before burying his head shyly into his mother’s shoulder.
“Here, let me take this big boy out of your hands!” Nick grinned, lifting a squirming Cassian out of Astrid’s arms, and then deftly handing her a glass of punch.
“Thanks, Nicky,” Astrid said as she turned to Rachel. “How are you finding Singapore so far? Having a good time?”
“A great time! Although tonight’s been a bit … overwhelming.”
“I can only imagine,” Astrid said with a knowing glint in her eye.
“No, I’m not sure you can,” Rachel said.
A melodious peel rang through the room. Rachel turned to see an elderly woman in a white cheongsam top and black silk trousers playing a small silver xylophone by the stairs.*
“Ah, the dinner gong,” Astrid said. “Come, let’s eat.”
“Astrid, how is it that you always seem to arrive just when the food is ready?” Nick remarked.
“Choco-cake!” little Cassian muttered.
“No, Cassian, you already had your dessert,” Astrid replied firmly.
The crowd began to make a beeline for the stairs, passing the woman with the xylophone. As they approached her, Nick gave the woman a big bear hug and exchanged a few words in Cantonese. “This is Ling Cheh, the woman who pretty much raised me from birth,” he explained. “She has been with our family since 1948.”
“Wah, nay gor nuay pang yau gum laeng, ah! Faai di git fun!” Ling Cheh commented, grasping Rachel’s hand gently. Nick grinned, blushing a little. Rachel didn’t understand Cantonese, so she just smiled, while Astrid quickly
translated. “Ling Cheh just teased Nick about how pretty his lady friend is.” As they proceeded down the stairs, she whispered to Rachel, “She also ordered him to marry you soon!” Rachel simply giggled.
A buffet supper had been set up in the conservatory, an elliptical-shaped room with dramatic frescoed walls of what appeared from a distance to be a dreamy, muted Oriental scene. On closer inspection, Rachel noticed that while the mural did evoke classical Chinese mountainscapes, the details seemed to be pure Hieronymus Bosch, with strange, lurid flowers climbing up the walls and iridescent phoenixes and other fantastical creatures hiding in the shadows. Three enormous round tables gleamed with silver chafing dishes, and arched doorways opened onto a curved colonnaded terrace where white wrought-iron bistro tables lit with tall votives awaited the diners. Cassian continued to squirm in Nick’s arms, wailing even louder, “I want choco-cake!”
“I think what he really wants is S-L-E-E-P,” his mother commented. She tried to take her son back from Nick, but the child began to whimper.
“I sense a crying fit on the way. Let’s take him to the nursery,” Nick offered. “Rachel, why don’t you get started? We’ll be back in a minute.”
Rachel marveled at the sheer variety of food that had been laid out. One table was filled with Thai delicacies, another with Malaysian cuisine, and the last with classic Chinese dishes. As usual, she was a bit at a loss when confronted with a huge buffet. She decided to start one cuisine at a time and began at the Chinese table with a small helping of E-fu noodles and seared scallops in ginger sauce. She came upon a tray of exotic-looking golden wafers folded into little top hats. “What in the world are these?” she wondered aloud.
“That’s kueh pie tee, a nyonya dish. Little tarts filled with jicama, carrots, and shrimp. Try one,” a voice behind her said. Rachel looked around and saw the dapper man in the white linen suit who had been sitting next to Nick’s grandmother. He bowed in a courtly manner and introduced himself. “We never met properly. I’m Oliver T’sien, Nick’s cousin.” Yet another Chinese relative with a British accent, but his sounded even plummier than the rest.
