by Ann Massey
‘Mei Li, are you awake?’ whispered Lada urgently.
‘Yes, Grandma,’ replied Mei Li, wiping her eyes surreptitiously with the edge of her sarong.
The party had wound down and most of the women had
climbed up the steps to their rooms, but the men were still enjoying themselves and Lada knew there would be a lot of sore heads in the morning. Normally she would have pestered Entri until he left the gathering and came to bed, but tonight she hoped he would continue celebrating long into the night because she needed to talk privately to her granddaughter.
‘You don’t want to wed this man … do you?’ asked Lada. She didn’t believe that her granddaughter could possibly want to marry Langkup. The wizened Indonesian fisherman was only ten years younger than Mei Li’s grandfather. But you can’t always tell with girls, she thought wisely. Maybe she wants to be a wife at any price.
Mei Li had been weeping quietly out of respect for her grandparents, too polite to let them know how wretched she felt about the marriage contract. But Lada’s soft words opened the floodgates and she began to sob noisily.
‘Hush,’ said Lada, lying down and putting her arms about her, pressing the girl close to her breast, running her fingers through her tangled, silky hair, whispering endearments, consoling her as she had when Rubiah had deserted the howling baby seventeen years ago.
After a while Mei Li ceased weeping. She raised her head and smiled at her grandmother, her wet eyes swimming in tears. ‘I was just upset at leaving you and Granddad.’
‘Never lie to me,’ said Lada. ‘Tell me the truth. Do you want to sleep with this man?’
Mei Li shook her head. ‘But I must. Granddad has given his word and … you need my bride-price.’
‘Bah! You’re not to think of that. Mei Li, listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you. Many girls from our tribe have married men from Langkup’s tribe and some have lived to regret it. My own daughter, Bata, married a man from their village. You won’t remember her, Mei Li. You were barely walking when she was married…’ Lada broke off, too upset to continue.
‘What happened to her?’ asked Mei Li. It was rare for her formidable grandmother to be affected by emotion or talk about the past.
‘She died,’ replied her grandmother starkly, ‘and her husband sold her little girl – my granddaughter – to a brothel. You know what that is, don’t you, Mei Li?’
Mei Li nodded. She’d learned about prostitutes from some of the boys who liked to boast about their exploits in the city after the market was over for the day and they had money in their pockets.
‘Men call them whores but I call them slaves. The girls have to go with six or seven men a day and the man who runs the brothel keeps the money. They have nothing and live in squalor.’
‘What happened to the little girl, your granddaughter?’
‘I don’t know where she is. It’s better that I don’t know.’ Lada wiped her eyes. ‘If your grandfather ever found her he would kill her, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to you,’ she said fiercely.
‘But Granddad loves me.’
‘Your grandfather is sick, old and desperate. He doesn’t want to know too much. Maybe I am condemning Langkup unfairly, but even if he is a good man I won’t have you tied to someone you don’t love. Come on, get up, there’s no time to lose.’
‘But where can I go? I can’t hide forever.’
‘There’s only one thing to be done. You have to find your mother.’
‘My mother?’ repeated Mei Li, stunned.
‘Yes, Dedan says she still lives in Miri. You must go to her. She’ll help you. She’s your mother, after all,’ said Lada firmly, although she felt far from confident. But surely Rubiah wouldn’t turn her back on her own daughter. No one was that hardhearted.
Lada urged Mei Li to get her things together. She watched her for a moment and then crept silently down the steps. Pleased, she saw that both Entri and Langkup were snoring noisily under the longhouse, almost drowning out the sound of foraging pigs, screeching monkeys and a stringed orchestra of insects. She snatched up the remains of the roasted boar, wrapped it in a banana leaf and placed it in her basket. Then calmly she made her way behind the longhouse.
The leafy, flourishing garden stretched far in all directions. Fruit and nut trees were growing on raised beds. Lada walked between the rows, picking bananas, breadfruit, rambutans – her granddaughter’s favourite – and coconuts for their milk. She walked over to the swamp, filled now with the drooping, tawny heads of dying paddy rice, to where lush clumps of vibrant green tapioca grew wild. She stripped the plants of their youngest leaves only; eaten raw, the young leaves made a good feed. While she worked her sharp, quick brain never stopped thinking. By the time she returned to her room she’d worked out how her granddaughter was going to get away. The village was situated close to the mouth of the river. Rivers were the main arteries in this mainly undeveloped state, and Lada knew that if Mei Li followed the Pangup she would eventually find the main river that flowed to Bandar Miri.
‘You must seek out Dedan and ask him to take you to your mother’s house,’ she instructed Mei Li. ‘Show her this,’ she said, taking off the heavy beaded ornament, the ‘collar of the matriarch’ that guaranteed her the support of her people, a custom even Rubiah was obliged to obey.
Mei Li couldn’t believe that Lada was giving her the one valuable thing she owned. She knew the intricately carved neck ornament would be treasured by collectors interested in early native Sarawakian jewellery. It had been passed down the distaff side of Lada’s family since their chief had led his followers into Sarawak, and they’d settled at the mouth of the river, named Pangup after their great chieftain.
‘Put it on, girl,’ Lada said impatiently.
Mei Li looked at the ebony necklace in disbelief. ‘I can’t wear it. I’m not worthy.’
‘Foolish girl.’
The matriarch blinked away a rare tear. A complex, powerful woman descended from an ancient chieftain, plain-looking Lada had married the only man who’d asked for her. It had been an unequal marriage. Entri was a good but simple man who was no match for his clever wife. Lada had never expected to experience passion – especially not now, when she was an old woman – but that was how she felt about her granddaughter. She loved Mei Li single-mindedly with an intensity she had never felt for either her husband or her own children.
You’ll never know how dear you are to me, Little Lotus, she thought, looking mistily at the treasure her daughter had spurned. Lada had been captivated by Mei Li ever since she was an infant. Used to her own babies, she found this alien child intriguing, so different from her own daughters. She could see little of Rubiah in the girl, except for the colour of her hair. Mother and daughter were both exquisite, beautiful representatives of their cultures but as different as a vivid, showy snapdragon and a pure white lotus. Lada found it hard to understand why the young men of the village weren’t captivated by her granddaughter’s graceful, willowy beauty. Idiots, she thought dismissively, to gulp down the common oyster and pass up this lustrous pearl.
‘It’s beautiful.’ Mei Li marvelled at the beads, each of which was carved with a tribal totem.
‘Wear it on your journey. Other travellers will respect you as a head woman. Here, let me help you.’ She lifted up Mei Li’s silky, fine hair, marvelling at its softness, so different in texture to her own coarse grey strands.
‘It’s a long trip.’ She smoothed Mei Li’s hair and fussily arranged the ornament just so. ‘I’ve packed some food for you,’ she said, handing her granddaughter the heavy basket. ‘Come now, child, don’t dally. It’s time to say goodbye.’
‘I don’t want to leave you,’ said Mei Li, her voice breaking.
Lada drew the tall, slender girl to her and hugged her awkwardly. Mei Li bent her head and kissed the top of her tiny grandmother’s head. They stood this way for a while, so silently they could hear the beat of each other’s heart.
Lada whi
spered, ‘I’m glad I had you. I thank the spirits for you every day, every single day. But now it’s time for you to leave the longhouse.’
‘But where shall I go?’
‘You must find your uncle Dedan. He still works at the same drycleaners in Miri. He is a good, generous man. He will help you find your mother.’
‘I’ll find work and when I’ve saved enough I’ll give it to you and then you won’t need to work so hard and you can pay one of the boys to work in the paddy fields. Or I could find us a place and you and Granddad can come and live with me.’
‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Lada, but in her heart she knew she’d never leave the village and never see this darling girl again. Her only solace was in knowing she’d given Mei Li the chance to find her own people and that lecherous old Lankup wouldn’t enjoy her. Not ever.
‘I’ll miss you,’ said Mei Li.
‘Be careful,’ said Lada.
‘I will,’ Mei Li said, and tramped towards the forest, turning to wave every fifty metres.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ Lada whispered and sank to the floor. All the tears she hadn’t dare shed in Mei Li’s presence came pouring out and she wept for the loss of the granddaughter she loved.
Chapter 15
BY MORNING. MEI LI WAS MILES AWAY FROM HER VILLAGE. Exhausted, she paddled the canoe into the shallows and dragged it up the bank. Too tired to eat, she lay down beneath a tree on the bank of the slow-moving river. She slept fitfully. Ever since she’d been a child she’d been frightened by cautionary stories of small children taken by man-eating crocodiles or enormous pythons, and she’d always been scared of swimming in the river or walking along lonely jungle tracks.
When she woke she sat on the edge of the bank and dipped her feet in the cool water. Fat frogs croaked and iridescent dragonflies whirred, competing for the humming mosquitoes flitting in the shallows. Overhead a hornbill screeched. Mei Li looked up and smiled. She always found the large-headed bird, with the long curved horn on top of its prominent bill, comical. As she watched, it took off, disturbing thousands of sleeping butterflies, hanging in clusters, from the branches of the tree. Within seconds the sky was filled with a dizzy mass of bright, twirling, turquoise-like, storm-tossed teal. On the other bank a group of naked children splashed playfully in the shallows. Mei Li waved to them, then dragged her canoe into the water and set off once more upstream.
When she looked back the butterflies had disappeared. The hornbill, a joke in repose yet majestic in flight, was racing back to its young, a newly hatched cobra wriggling from its horn covered bill. The children had resumed their boisterous game, the encounter with the stranger quickly forgotten.
Refreshed, Mei Li paddled strongly and easily along the river for hour after hour, thinking how surprised her mother was going to be to see her. But will she want me? she wondered. Will she let me stay? Mei Li knew her mother hadn’t wanted her when she was a baby so why would she want her now? Dedan said she was stuck up and didn’t want her rich friends in the city to know she was a native from a longhouse in the jungle. Well, if that was how she felt about them, Mei Li didn’t want anything to do with her either. She would seek her out because she had promised her grandmother, but she wouldn’t beg. She would rather starve to death than ask her mother for anything.
I’m not going to cry, she told herself, and blinked back her tears. Why should she get upset over someone she had never met? She would think of something else. At least she didn’t have to marry Langkup. She knew he was old but she’d never thought he’d be that old. She shuddered at the thought of the wizened, drunken old man putting his bony arms around her, his dry, cracked lips pressed against hers, his fetid breath in her mouth. Grandmother was right. She had to run away. There was no way she could bring herself to sleep with Langkup, not even for her grandfather’s sake.
When she recollected her surroundings, she had no idea of how far she had come or for how long she had been travelling. Staring at sky and river, she couldn’t fathom up from down, so clear were the images in the reflective river mirror. Disorientated, she felt as if she’d fallen into unbounded space and she had no idea of herself in relation to the natural world. It seemed surreal and she felt peculiar, as if she were alone in the universe.
Mei Li’s life hitherto had been confined and structured. Like a wasps’ nest, the village was an interdependent community. At home in any room of the longhouse, she was a child of the tribe as well as of her grandparents. But now her world had been thrown into chaos. Distraught, she realised she’d put herself outside her tribe forever. She winced, imagining her grandfather’s embarrassment at having to admit to Langkup that his bride had fled from the marriage he’d arranged and celebrated so publicly with all the families from their longhouse. Entri would have lost face in front of the whole village. He was a proud man brought low by the loss of his leg and his livelihood, and she knew her defection would be a devastating blow to his pride. How can I be so selfish, she thought, after everything he’s done for me ever since I was a little girl?
Ashamed, she was tempted to turn back, beg his forgiveness and agree to marry Langkup. But she remembered how her grandmother had cried when she told her what had happened to Bata and what she’d risked to help Mei Li escape. So she kept on paddling. The world righted itself and the fugitive journeyed further down the stream.
She rounded a bend and to her dismay saw there were two channels. One flowed all the way to Miri and the other was the headwater of the Pangup, which rose in a hidden valley deep in the jungle. The Pangup was a branch of one of the many small tributaries that flowed into the main river basin. With no way of knowing which was which, she gambled on the wider of the two and set off resolutely down the left-hand fork.
Neither Mei Li nor her grandmother had anticipated that Langkup would take off after his runaway bride. But then they’d only met him for the first time when he came to claim boat and bride, unlike Entri, who’d known him for years. The two old fishermen had been working the waters off Sabah and Sarawak since they were boys, but it was just a casual acquaintanceship and Entri had no concept of the type of man to whom he’d pledged his granddaughter’s hand. Back in his own village, Langkup had a bad reputation and was known as a man it was wise not to cross. Right now Lankup was seething, picturing his enemies spreading the story and making him the laughing stock of the South China Sea.
But Langkup had been crafty enough to conceal his rage from Entri and persuaded him to ask the chief if he could borrow the tribe’s fastboat. ‘I just want the chance to talk to her,’ he’d said to Entri. ‘If she still doesn’t want me, at least I’ll know I tried and there’ll be no hard feelings, old friend.’
The fastboat reached the point where the river divided barely fifteen minutes after Mei Li. Langkup was better informed because he travelled the river often, so he knew the narrower stream on the right led to Miri. Half an hour later, when there was still no sight of his quarry ahead, he realised she must have taken the wrong branch. He moored the boat under an overhanging tree and settled down to wait for Mei Li to discover her error and backtrack.
Two hours later Mei Li’s canoe rounded the bend and she saw the boat by the riverbank. Apart from watching the children playing in the river that morning, she hadn’t met another soul and her spirits rose at the prospect of company. At least she’d be able to find out if she was going the right way. She headed over without any thought of danger, expecting to be invited back to the stranger’s longhouse in accordance with traditional Dayak courtesy to travellers.
Langkup heard the splash of the paddle and crouched down on the floor of his boat.
‘Anyone there?’ Mei Li called. When no one answered she beached the canoe and clambered over the side. Instantly she saw Lankup hiding in the stern and turned to flee, but he was too quick for her and threw her roughly to the ground.
‘So you think you’re too good to marry with Langkup. You’d rather be a burden to your family than marry a weak old man, eh. Well, we’ll soon se
e if I’m so weak,’ he said with a fearsome smile, exposing betel-blackened teeth filed to savage razor-sharp points, an outdated custom still practised by the fierce interior tribes.
Tribesmen wore necklaces made of antique beads and pierced the lobes of their ears; the ornament worn in their ears denoted their standing as a warrior. Langkup was wearing ear- ornaments made from the beak of the helmeted hornbill that were carved like the canine tooth of the tiger-cat. Mei Li knew that only a man who has taken a head with his own hands had the right to wear them. In horror, she looked down at his hands and what she saw made her blood run cold. On both hands his fingers were covered with the dreaded tegulan, each tattoo corresponding with the taking of a human head. She began to tremble, thinking he’d kill her too and hang her head from the rafters of his longhouse.
Langkup would have been amused at her fears. Women were too hard to come by to sacrifice. His wife had died some ten years back, and although he was a successful fisherman with his own boat, all the women he courted had refused him. He thought it was because his wife had told tales about him, but she hadn’t needed to; her bruises and broken bones spoke for her. As he grew older, the need for a wife had become less urgent. An old widow – a dried-up, worn-out stick of woman – used to cook for him. She’d lie with him too if he paid her extra. But since that one time when he’d got a bit rough with her she’d stayed away. She wouldn’t even cook for him now. He knew she’d told all the women he couldn’t get it up any more by the way they stopped talking and then started giggling when he passed by.
