by Lees, Julian
James smiled. ‘‘Thessalonians?’’
‘‘Precisely.’’
James began to flick through the pages of the bible on his lap. ‘‘Let me guess. Chapter 15, verse – ’’
‘‘Cha! Will you two be quiet for once!’’ cried Mother. ‘‘Every other minute it’s the bible say this, the bible say that, Jehovah said this, Jehovah said that, knick-knick, knack-knack. Can’t we have one nice evening together without preachings and bickerings! Why can’t you have the quiet grace of your sister?’’
Peter frowned.
‘‘You’ve upset him now,’’ said James.
Mother shelled a nut and tossed it in her mouth. ‘‘One harsh word and he fall into a sulk.’’
‘‘No, I’ve not.’’
‘‘Peter, you cannot act like a cissy-cissy all your life, especially now that Ah-Ba has gone to walk a new path. Cha! Look at you, face like basket of crabs.’’
‘‘Colonel Tozawa says he wants me to prepare peppered crab for him next week,’’ said Lu See.
‘‘Why must you mention his name?’’ challenged Mother. She was forever fearful that her daughter might be sleeping with this non-Chinese, barbarian invader. ‘‘Whatever you do, withstand his advances.’’
‘‘Mother, really …’’
‘‘They are all rapists.’’
‘‘He is a gentleman,’’ Lu See said, unsure why she needed to defend him.
Her mother’s furrowed brow promised to engulf her entire face.
Sensibly, Lu See changed the subject. ‘‘What are you preparing?’’
‘‘Satay dip-dip sauce.’’ Lu See felt her mouth moisten at the image of grilled meat skewers and the puddle of peanut sauce she dunked them in. ‘‘But we’re using squirrel again instead of chicken, so don’t tell Mabel. Come, nah, grab me that bottle of soy, then chop up a half inch piece of galangal with some ginger.’’ Mother began pounding peanuts. ‘‘We finish this before bed, no more talk.’’
Lu See worked her knife into a gnarl of ginger. She had never been much of a chef before the war, and was far less experienced than the Colonel imagined. But she persevered. With the house and money gone she needed the work – it was a long fall from her earlier intellectual aspirations. Cambridge seemed a lifetime ago. Sometimes she had the sense that she was living in a dream, that her past was made up of imaginary seductions rather than real memories. She looked at the slivers of ginger and felt a sudden punitive urge to slice into her own flesh. A clench of guilt and regret pressed against her chest. It was simply a reflex, an instinct. She winced and waited. Seconds later the urge had waned.
The following night, up in the big house, as Lu See stood beside the mahogany sideboard watching Tozawa spoon bubble and squeak into his mouth, he turned to her and smiled.
Nonplussed, she smiled back.
‘‘How old are you, Teoh-san?’’ he asked, dabbing cabbage remnants from his moustache.
‘‘Excuse me, o-colonel-sama?’’
‘‘Your age. I gather since your husband died you have not remarried, and I am curious about your age.’’
Lu See felt herself colour. ‘‘Forgive me, o-colonel-sama, but in all the time I have worked here, you have never asked me about my life.’’ Indeed, it was the first personal question he had ever put to her. She was unsure how to respond.
He sucked air through his teeth and grinned. ‘‘Perhaps with this dreaded war drawing to a close I am throwing caution to the wind.’’
‘‘I don’t understand.’’ His words lingered with her. She wanted to ask him exactly what he meant by the war drawing to a close. Were the Japanese on the verge of surrendering? Were they about to withdraw from Malaya? She’d heard rumours that the Allies were closing in, that submarines bringing Gurkhas had reached Malayan shores, but she hadn’t dared dream.
A silken smile. ‘‘It is a simple question, Teoh-san. I wish to know when you were born.’’
Lu See hesitated. She felt her heart expand in her chest and her breath pull tight. The blood in her veins turned cold. ‘‘I have an eight-year-old daughter.’’
‘‘Quite.’’ He looked at her, encouraging her to go on. ‘‘But I asked you your age, not hers.’’
‘‘I am 28.’’
‘‘Ahhh-so.’’ His dark eyes narrowed and shimmered with moisture. ‘‘Very young still, very young.’’
He took a sip of whisky and watched her over the rim of his glass.
Lu See could sense his eyes painting patterns across her body. In the months she had worked for the Colonel, apart from the odd fondling gaze, he never once made advances towards her and for this she was grateful, but suddenly she felt a shift in him. Her face became tangled with dread. She made to change the subject. ‘‘H-how is your meal tonight, o-colonel-sama?’’
‘‘Very fine, as usual.’’ He placed the crystal tumbler down carefully. ‘‘So, you are 28 and you have an 8-year-old daughter.’’
Silence.
‘‘You have been very protective of her since the New Order took control of Malaya.’’
Lu See swallowed. ‘‘I’ve done what any mother would do.’’
‘‘A mother’s will is like iron when her child is in danger, no?’’ His lips twitched, an odd secret smile.
Panic ignited in her and spread like sparks on kindling.
‘‘She will make all sorts of sacrifices, no?’’
Lu See could not hold his gaze. Her eyes fell to the floor. Outside, the sultry hiss of rain fizzed the air. She thought of Tozawa’s stubbly toothbrush moustache brushing her skin and shuddered.
‘‘I make you feel discomforted, Teoh-san?’’
Again, she said nothing.
‘‘It was not my intention to do so. Forgive me. The reason I ask you such questions is because you are a beautiful woman. And in times like this beautiful women such as you can become very ugly so very quickly. They need protecting, you see.’’ His moustache twitched with his smile. ‘‘Otherwise they might disappear. And I would not want to see you disappear.’’
Lu See made a tiny pleading gesture with her hands. ‘‘Your Special Protection Certificate has helped me on numerous occasions, o-colonel-sama.’’
‘‘I am certain it has. But I have not done enough personally to ensure your safety. You work for me. You are my responsibility. Tell me, how do you return to your family at night when you finish here?’’
‘‘I walk down the hill.’’
‘‘That must take you many minutes to reach the village.’’ Involuntarily Lu See glanced at her wristwatch – Adrian’s old wristwatch. It had stopped working years before, but habit dictated she keep it close to her skin. ‘‘And the road is unlit,’’ he continued. ‘‘Are you not afraid of bandits?’’
Lu See wanted to say that she was more scared of the Japanese patrols and the sentry who searched her person each night for pilfered food. ‘‘I am used to it, o-colonel-sama.’’
‘‘And what if it is raining, like tonight?’’ Tozawa stroked his toothbrush moustache with his thumb knuckle. He made a little motion with his head. ‘‘No longer will you walk down the hill. From now on I will tell one of the servant-boys to take you directly to your home. He can drive the scout car.’’
Lu See blinked a few times before bowing, her hands on her thighs. ‘‘You are too kind, o-colonel-sama, but I really cannot accept.’’
‘‘You must accept. I will instruct the sentry guards of the new arrangement. Now, clear my plate and bring me your sweet dish. I have waited all day to taste this pie of yours and can wait no longer.’’
2
Tuesday evening, three days later. Lu See pulled the toad-in-the-hole from the oven and plated it up. It was hot in the kitchen and the warm breeze coming in through the open, mosquito-mesh window did not cool anything. Earlier in the day, she was told to lay out the dinner settings for two; Colonel Tozawa was having a guest for supper.
‘‘Do you know who the guest is?’’ she asked the servant-boy.
He shrugged.
She placed the two Blue and White china plates on a tray together with a large bowl of boiled peas, and told the servant-boy to serve the colonel.
A moment later, as soon as the servant-boy left with the tray, Lu See adjusted her ornamental hair clips and made her way into the dining room.
She struck a respectful pose beside the mahogany sideboard as his meal was presented, ready to receive his compliments or complaints. The guest was a man, dressed in a white linen suit. He was seated with his back to Lu See. She could tell by the colour of his hair that he was either Japanese or Chinese. From the moment that she entered the room she smelled the liniment on his skin; the vulgar scent of camphor.
When he turned to look at her, she obediently lowered her eyes.
‘‘What do you think of our Teoh-san?’’ asked Tozawa in English.
‘‘Pretty, but a little on the old side,’’ the man answered, returning to his food.
‘‘Old? She is only 28,’’ retorted Tozawa. They spoke as if Lu See wasn’t in the same room.
‘‘Does she have children?’’
‘‘One only.’’
The man in the white suit tutted.
Lu See raised her eyes a fraction. Tozawa looked at her and smiled a thin smile. She watched the servant-boy pour three fingers of whisky into the colonel’s crystal tumbler. As he shuffled across to replenish the guest’s glass, the man in the white suit placed a flat hand over his glass and shook his head.
Something about him was vaguely familiar.
Lu See did not move. She watched him eat. She was silent. And then she recognized the slope of his shoulders.
The man turned his head a fraction. She tried to hide her eyes from him. Too late. ‘‘Why are you looking at me?’’ he said.
She gasped. Recognition made her mouth pull taut. No, it couldn’t be! Not after all this time. It couldn’t be him.
‘‘You!’’ she yelled, making no attempt to hide her shock. The man in the white suit dropped his fork. There was no mistaking the mole on his left cheek. It was the Black-headed Sheep.
Tozawa jumped to his feet. ‘‘What are you doing! How dare you act so disrespectfully to my guest!’’ He stepped up to her and raised his hand, threatening to slap her across the mouth. ‘‘Boujakubujin!’’ He ordered her to go out into the corridor and kneel.
She left the room and knelt in silence on the tatami mat, head bowed. She tried to listen to the conversation taking place in the dining room, but heard nothing. The silence scared her. Eventually, Tozawa appeared with a crystal tumbler of whisky in one hand. He held a Katana sword in the other. He was swaying a little bit. She could smell the alcohol on him.
He stood staring at her, dressed in his wooden slippers and green trousers.
‘‘Explain,’’ he said in a soft yet menacing voice.
‘‘He is a Woo.’’
‘‘You told me the other day, Teoh-san, that you had no problems with the Woos.’’
‘‘I don’t. I only have a problem with that man.’’
‘‘That man is a very important friend to the Imperial Army.’’
‘‘Years ago he did something terrible.’’
‘‘We have all done something terrible in this war.’’
‘‘He will cause me harm.’’
‘‘I assure you, he will not. Whatever went on between you in the past is no longer his concern.’’
‘‘How do you know?’’
‘‘He told me.’’
‘‘And now he is an informer.’’
‘‘He is a loyal servant to the Emperor.’’
Silence.
‘‘Just as you, Teoh-san, are a loyal servant to the Emperor, no?’’ He smiled a thin smile.
Tozawa at this point might have expected Lu See to turn her eyes away timidly, or lower them to the floor. Instead, she raised her chin and looked defiantly at him. ‘‘I warn you, o-colonel-sama, I will not be in the same room as that man.’’
‘‘You warn me?’’
She kept her eyes fixed on his.
His moustache twitched. He raised his sword a fraction.
‘‘You know,’’ he said with a tired sigh, ‘‘you really should not wear so many ornaments in your hair.’’ He finished his whisky with a gulp. ‘‘People might think you are a prostitute.’’
Cautiously, she began to remove the ornamental clips. Her hair fell around her shoulders. She felt the touch of cold metal on her throat. She flinched. Tozawa pushed some strands of hair away with the tip of his blade. She could see a quotation written in Japanese text engraved on the haft of the sword.
‘‘I was to be his ‘gift’, was that it? You were going to repay him for his good work by offering him me.’’
‘‘Is that what you think?’’ A sadness marked his face. ‘‘You are so very wrong, Teoh-san.’’ There were red cobwebs in the whites of his eyes. She could almost see the disappointment bleed out of him.
‘‘What will he do to me? I made him lose face in there.’’
‘‘He will do nothing. He has bigger fish to fry than worry about you.’’
The ends of his black toothbrush moustache glistened with whisky. For several moments he watched her, studied her mouth and eyes.
‘‘Go home,’’ he ordered.
She went.
3
On a high Tibetan hilltop perch, with the wind gusting and the earth brown and hard, Sum Sum watched from a distance as her mother’s body was carried in a white cloth and laid in a foetal position on the cold stones. Soaring above, in a rising current of air, a pair of vultures watched, black tip feathers extended, their wings bent forward slightly.
The village daodeng, the man overseeing the burial task, set alight a clump of juniper to attract more birds. The fragrant incense rose with the wind. More vultures appeared.
They landed within a few feet of Sum Sum’s mother. Bristling their bushy neck plumes like feathery boas, they patrolled the corpse, circling it, hopping from stone to stone. First five or six drew near and then over a dozen arrived, followed by another dozen.
Sum Sum knew what was coming next. She held her breath. The daodeng raised his axe to his shoulder and brought it down on her A-Ma’s spine, severing her into several parts. The vertebrae snapped like faraway gunshots. Next with a long knife he began tearing the muscles from the bones in long strips and mixing tsampa flour into the separated flesh. Finally, with a low whistle, the daodeng invited the birds to begin feasting, clapping his hands and encouraging them as he would a flock of sheep.
Throats stretched out, their pale beaks and foreheads suddenly polluted with blood, the vultures began squabbling in their squalling tones. Sum Sum watched her mother slowly disappear.
Entrails were snatched from beak to beak; guts and organs were gorged on.
She decided she wouldn’t stay for the crushing of the skull.
The Tibetan sun rose above the horizon line, extending coral shadows from its copper-coin eye. Sum Sum turned away and made her way down the hillside path.
The wings of her earflap hat beat against her cheeks as she rushed to meet her brother, Hesha. A sergeant with the Gurkha Rifles, he was returning that morning from the Burmese front on four days’ compassionate leave. She wanted to hug him hard to her chest and feel his heart beat against her ear. It was excitement that made her hop over the stones, not sadness. It was excitement that blurred her eyes with tears.
For the first time in almost seven years, Sum Sum found herself alone with her brother. They were at their family home, a house made from sun-dried bricks and timber posts. She draped a white narrow scarf, a kata, across his shoulder and bowed. Hesha accepted the scarf with both hands. ‘‘Look at you,’’ she said. ‘‘Skinny as a skeleton in a desert.’’
As they settled down on the floor, on horse fur cushions in front of a short table, sipping hot cups of butter tea from wooden bowls, she began to tell him about their mother’s passing. Hesha listened in silence, dipping h
is head every few moments with reverence, speaking the names of deities in praise of her memory.
Hesha looked relieved when Sum Sum said that many birds came to feast on her flesh. ‘‘Let us hope that her soul has migrated.’’ She wanted to tell him more but the words knotted in her throat.
He trailed a finger across his forehead and gazed out of the window, into the sky. He blew on his bowl of butter tea, eyeing the stacks of firewood and the saddle gear on the floor. ‘‘We are destined to lose the ones we love otherwise we would never realize how much they meant to us.’’
Sum Sum touched him on the arm. ‘‘Here,’’ she said, handing him a bowl of tsampa. ‘‘You need to put some extra layers of flesh on your bones.’’
Hesha accepted the tsampa, which he ate with his hands, and together they reminisced about their early childhood before Sum Sum went to work abroad, beyond the plateau. ‘‘Do you remember the kites you used to fly in the springtime?’’ she asked.
Sum Sum watched her brother’s face crack into a smile. ‘‘Old widow Bayarmaa used to chase after me with a broom each time my line got tangled up with her washing.’’
‘‘And do you remember the day A-Pha took you to the horse festival and you rode a Mongolian pony?’’
‘‘I ended up back to front on the saddle!’’ They laughed out loud.
After a quarter of an hour Hesha gave a muted yawn. The thought recurred to Sum Sum during this uncharacteristic lull in conversation that perhaps Hesha might wish to talk about his recent exploits. She asked him if being a sergeant meant he was assigned a great deal of responsibility. ‘‘Many responsibilities,’’ he replied.
‘‘Like what?’’
‘‘I am in charge of a platoon. I must set an example on the battlefield to my men. And when not fighting there is also equipment to maintain which I have to oversee.’’
‘‘Tell me about Burma. You never write.’’
His face grew solemn. ‘‘I do write. I write many letters, my sister, but not to people I know.’’ She told him she didn’t understand. ‘‘I write to the families of the dead. Each month five maybe six letters to Nepalese mothers and fathers. I tell them about their sons who have been shot or stabbed or blown into the sky. The words are like black ravens visiting my heart. I am sick of writing.’’ Hesha turned his face away, shielding his hurt from her. Sum Sum recognized the gesture. It was the same reflexive manoeuvre he used to make as a boy whenever A-Ma scolded him.
