House of Trembling Leaves, The

by Lees, Julian

  Lu See held his gaze, calmly. ‘‘Get away with what, exactly?’’

  ‘‘Leave my daughter alone!’’ cried Mother, clutching Mabel close.

  The drunk hiccupped: ‘‘Tear off her clothes! Shame her!’’

  The goatherd pulled a pair of shearing scissors from his knapsack. ‘‘We cut the wool from goats and whores,’’ he said.

  Uncle Big Jowl, sucking in his stomach, tried to muscle his way in but was seized and held back by several of the villagers as others, a large boisterous group, formed a ring with Lu See at its centre. Lu See felt a woman’s nailed hand reach forward to grab at her top. The cloth ripped, exposing her bare shoulder.

  ‘‘Let’s teach her a lesson!’’ yelled the drunken fisherman.

  Just then James stepped forward. He pointed a hand to the moon like an Old Testament prophet. ‘‘The upright are the ones that will reside on this earth. The wicked will be cut off from the very world, and as for the treacherous, they will be torn away from it.’ Proverbs 2:21. This woman is innocent, leave her be.’’

  The goat herder arched his eyebrows with surprise and glared at James’ clean-shaven face, taking in his pop-eyed gaze. ‘‘Who the hell are you?’’

  ‘‘I am a lamb of Jehovah.’’

  ‘‘Lamb?’’

  ‘‘Yes, lamb. Baa-baa, lamb.’’ James smiled a beatific smile.

  Temporarily nonplussed, the goatherd fluttered his hand to shoo James away.

  ‘‘Happy are the mild-tempered ones, for they shall inherit the earth.’’ James beamed with eye-bursting gusto. ‘‘I strongly advise you to leave my sister alone,’’ he said. ‘‘She has committed no crimes. And you really ought to shave off that beard. Beards sprout from the forelock of Satan.’’

  ‘‘Precisely!’’ howled Peter from within the melee, finding his voice.

  The goatherd shoved James to one side. Lunging, he snatched at a length of Lu See’s hair and pushed her to the ground amongst the chicken droppings. She fought back, but the years of grappling with livestock had made the man strong. A strip of teeth and upper gum flashed as he snared another handful of her mane.

  ‘‘Renounce!’’ he insisted. ‘‘Renounce what you did.’’

  She saw a glint of metal by her left eye. The jaws of his shearing scissors bit into her hair. She let out a short sharp gasp. Black clumps of hair fell to the ground like scorched wheat.

  She grasped his wrist, holding him at bay. People, their expressions grim and fortress-like, made clicking sounds of encouragement. They jostled forward, eager to witness the Teoh woman being punished. She waited for someone to cry out that she was innocent, that all this was a huge mistake, but nobody did.

  ‘‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’’ Her voice was small and did not sound like her own. ‘‘Get Mabel away from here,’’ she heard herself say. The very thought of her daughter watching this made her chest jump and rear. She’d once read about a village in Borneo that apprehended offenders by doping a parrot, taking it to the identity parade and urging it to fly onto the shoulder of the guilty party. Usually the parrot landed on an innocent who, wrongly accused and powerless to do anything about it, was hanged or beaten with bamboo canes. Lu See’s predicament felt exactly the same.

  Lu See clenched her teeth. Whatever happened she was going to maintain her dignity.

  Women tugged their earlobes in consternation. Men watched with the serpent stares of moneylenders. Somewhere in the background she heard Mother objecting vociferously and her brothers pleading.

  A momentary stillness settled. And then a gunshot cracked the air.

  Lu See looked to see the MPAJA leader with the rubbery lips by her side. Bare-chested, the tall old man aimed his firearm between the goatherd’s eyes.

  Lu See focused on the leader’s smooth, sinewy forearm. She saw the tendons contract as he thumb-cocked the hammer of his revolver; muscles like walnuts pushed under the dark skin. She watched as he adeptly pressed the muzzle a fraction above the goatherd’s eyebrows.

  His sweat-shined knuckles twitched.

  The goatherd’s mouth opened and closed like a dying goldfish. The crowd watched transfixed. The goatherd dropped his shearing blades.

  Nobody moved; it was as though the entire village had stumbled into the centre of a minefield and didn’t know where to place their feet.

  All of a sudden Lu See heard herself speak, surprising herself as words tumbled out of her mouth. ‘‘Please don’t hurt him,’’ she said. ‘‘I can see why he is angry, but please don’t shoot him.’’

  The tall old man ran a tongue across his rubbery lips. The goatherd’s eyes darted about as if for a place to run. But his legs had set with cement.

  The old man’s finger kissed the trigger, caressing it lightly

  ‘‘Hum gaa chaan! Open your eyes, you miserable lot of satay suckers. You see how this woman is? You accuse her of treachery yet forget how she gives out mooncakes to your children. You threaten her yet when the tables are turned she begs for mercy on your behalf.’’

  The MPAJA leader lowered his revolver and gave the goatherd a kick in the arse to help him on his way. Watching him scuttle off, he threw out a calloused hand, which Lu See clutched. The sky came rushing at her too quickly as he pulled her to her feet; she put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. ‘‘This woman is neither a traitor nor a colluder; she is an asset to this village,’’ he added. ‘‘I expect you to treat her as so. Sai yun tau! Dead man’s head!’’

  Gasping and almost rigid with shock, Lu See glared at the sea of faces. Her voice trembled. ‘‘We have all been through a terrible war,’’ she said. ‘‘Some of us have suffered more than others, but let’s not kid ourselves - everyone suffered at the hands of the Japanese.’’ Her insides shook like a reed. ‘‘Everyone lost someone or something dear to them. We have all swum in the same water, but we are all different; we each have our own personal moral code. Mine was to do whatever I could to protect my family. I worked for Tozawa; it’s true; I cooked in his kitchen. But every day felt like I was sacrificing a piece of my soul. In return he paid me a small amount of money. I never gave myself to him. I never revealed any secrets. I never passed him any of your personal information. If you think that is a crime then so be it, but I know I have done nothing wrong. I can hold my head high.’’

  Lu See snapped her mouth shut; she wanted to wail angrily at the crowd, wanted to wave a fist at them. But she just glared at them. The woman from the pith wood shop backed away. The drunken fisherman scratched his throat and beat a retreat to the toddy shop. Ko, the shopkeeper, stared at his feet. Gradually, with embarrassed coughs and guilty collar-tugs, the rest of the squirming throng dispersed.

  Mabel rushed up and leapt into her arms. The force of her body sent Lu See back a step.

  Lu See buried her face in her daughter’s neck. She looked at the tall man and thanked him.

  ‘‘My name is Foo. My friends call me Fishlips. And this here,’’ – he ran a hand through a boy’s straggly hair – ‘‘this here is my grandson, Bong. His parents were taken by Kempeitai. They never returned.’’

  Lu See smiled at the boy with the Japanese service pistol stuffed in his belt; a boy with thirty-year-old eyes in the face of a ten-year-old. ‘‘Hello, Bong. This is my daughter Mabel.’’

  ‘‘Hello,’’ he replied, looking Mabel up and down. ‘‘You ever held a gun before?’’

  ‘‘Come now, grandson, enough excitement for one day. Time we made camp.’’ He spun on his heels and marched off.

  As he turned into the jungle foliage Foo smiled at Lu See as if to say, You owe me one. And then he vanished.

  Only later, having returned to the big house, when reality set in, did Lu See retreat to the back garden to throw up long pink strands of half-digested mooncake. With a violent shaking she leaned her weight on the wall to recover and realized that her mother had been right all along.

  8

  That night Lu See found Mother lying flat on her back on the billiar
d room floor. She had her arm flung above her head. She did not appear to be breathing.

  ‘‘Mother! Have you fallen? Mother!’’

  Her mother stirred. There was half a walnut shell over her left eye and a crudely rolled lit cigar smouldering in her ear.

  ‘‘What the hell–?’’

  ‘‘All okay!’’ blurted Mother, sounding anything but okay. ‘‘This is old-village acupuncture therapy. No need to panic!’’ she said sounding panicky.

  ‘‘Why do you have a walnut on your eye?’’

  ‘‘I soaked it in herbal tea. For treating eye disorders. And burning dried moxa leaves in ear helps circulation.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t know you had an eye disorder?’’

  ‘‘I don’t.’’ She lifted a pyjamaed leg and bent it at the knee. ‘‘It’s my nerves. Seeing what happened to you make them shake all over.’’

  Lu See wanted to tell her not to worry, but what good would that do? All her mother did these days was worry and complain.

  ‘‘I told you about the reprisals, but you always too stubborn. The shame of seeing you kneeling in the dirt today.’’ Her hand went to her heart. ‘‘How can I hold my head up in this community now?’’

  ‘‘It won’t be for much longer. I discussed it with Uncle Big Jowl and we’ve decided to make the move to Kuala Lumpur.’’ Lu See peeked out the window for any sign of villagers. ‘‘He will put the house and the remaining acreage up for sale. We will start a new life in the city. Maybe I can open a small restaurant or something.’’

  ‘‘Restaurant,’’ Mother said with disdain.

  ‘‘But there’s something Uncle Big Jowl and I have to do before we leave. We have to reclaim the pipes we buried years ago and restore the church organ to its former glory. I owe it to Second-aunty Doris and Tak Ming.’’

  ‘‘Restaurant,’’ Mother repeated. ‘‘One of the most powerful families in Penang state before the war … and now? Running a chop suey house,’’ she spat. ‘‘What am I going to do, wash dishes?’’ Lu See pretended not to listen. ‘‘I’m sorry but I still cannot forgive your father selling our land to the Japanese. And for so cheap too! We used to have status …’’ The smoke billowed from her ear. ‘‘In one foul-bowel swoop he turned us into paupers! Paupers!’’

  ‘‘Calm down, Mother. I thought your generation was meant to be good at hiding your feelings?’’

  ‘‘How can I hide when your father acted like fishmonger on a hot day? Everything sell, sell, sell.’’

  ‘‘His actions kept us alive.’’

  ‘‘Alive? Who cares about alive? What about our social standing?’’

  Exasperated, Lu See made for the kitchen. She brewed herself a cup of Boh tea and leafed through the newspaper. ‘‘What’s this?’’ she said, reading a headline. ‘‘Mother, Uncle Big Jowl!’’ she cried, racing into the living room. ‘‘Listen to this! It says here that the chairman of Hip Sing Rubber Processing Co. confessed on his deathbed that he was responsible for the 1935 dynamiting the Juru River dam. He claimed he did it in an attempt to ruin the nearby plantations and buy up land on the cheap.’’

  Her uncle winced. ‘‘Bloody no-good scoundrel, aahh! That fellow like a spider creeping behind a stone.’’

  ‘‘Wait, there’s more. It says that he conspired with the late Woo Hak-yeung, an unashamed Japanese collaborator, who had been cast out of the Woo clan years before. Woo Hak-yeung’s body was discovered hanging from a tree in Juru last week in what was believed to be a retaliation killing.’’

  ‘‘Woo Hak-yeung was known as the Black-headed Sheep,’’ said Uncle Big Jowl.

  ‘‘The man with the mole. So it was him. He really is dead. I must have been wrong; the MPAJA did kill him. Don’t you see what this means? It means an end to our feud with the Woos.’’

  ‘‘Nonsense,’’ said Mother, walnut still attached to her eye like a pirate’s patch, ‘‘this feud started years before that bloody dam-bursting.’’

  ‘‘But we can start afresh now. Forgive and forget.’’

  ‘‘The Woos never forget. Never!’’ said Mother, removing the smoking cheroot from her ear.

  Lu See puffed out her cheeks. ‘‘Well, I have never had an issue with them.’’

  ‘‘They will always see us as their enemies,’’ Uncle Big Jowl said. ‘‘Look how they treat Mabel, their own granddaughter. They refuse to acknowledge her.’’

  ‘‘Well, in order to know your enemy you must befriend him, or at least pretend to be his friend, no?’’

  Uncle Big Jowl fanned himself with a banana leaf. ‘‘What are you suggesting, Lu See?’’

  ‘‘We ask them over.’’

  Uncle Big Jowl’s chin dropped comically like an accordion jaw. ‘‘Ask them over? What, aahh, to a tea party?’’ He laughed, pretending to hold a teacup with his pinkie in the air. ‘‘Cucumber sandwiches on the lawn, snooty British-style?’’

  ‘‘I was thinking more a shot of coconut toddy.’’

  ‘‘Hnn, this country in middle of a food crisis and you want to host a party, is it?’’ smirked Mother.

  ‘‘I’m trying to mend bridges. I want to talk with Matriarch Woo.’’

  ‘‘That stubborn old sow? Cha!’’

  ‘‘You will only provoke them, aahh. Speaking of provoke,’’ he said to Mother, starting one of his tangents. ‘‘Eye injury can provoke cataracts. You should remove the walnut.’’

  ‘‘When was the last time a Teoh asked a Woo to anything?’’ said Lu See, feeling a flicker of impatience.

  The big man scratched his forehead. ‘‘Apart from to knock heads together like coconuts? Never. At least not in my lifetime.’’

  ‘‘Well, there you have it. Time to put that right.’’

  Uncle Big jowl shrugged. ‘‘Better to have Indian pissing out of wigwam than have him pissing in.’’

  The next day Lu See ground her ink stick onto some water and, using a brush, composed an invitation on a Chinese scroll, carefully writing the important family names in black lettering. When she finished and dabbed dry the ink she sent a barefoot village boy round to Swettenham Lodge, the Woo compound, to deliver it.

  ‘‘What, lah?’’ the townspeople asked. ‘‘It must be a trick.’’

  Within hours Lu See received a reply – a short one-word response accepting her offer of drinks.

  From a cabinet in the billiard room Lu See brought out the only glasses she had in the house, a set of mismatched goblets, and set them out on the dining table. She wiped her hand on her skirt and realized her hands were sweating.

  ‘‘Chee-chee! This is how trouble starts,’’ said Mother. ‘‘When you invite a cobra into your house, expect nothing but trouble.’’ She eyed the mismatched goblets. ‘‘You better prepare some small chow. People come expecting food. You better pick up your socks if you want to do everything on time.’’

  ‘‘I think the expression is ‘pull your socks up’, Mother.’’

  ‘‘You look nervous. Do you feel nervous?’’

  Irritated, Lu See snapped, ‘‘Yes, Mother, I am nervous. Aren’t you?’’

  ‘‘Why should I be nervous? You are the one who invite them.’’ She removed her spectacles and polished the lenses against her sleeve. ‘‘All this your idea.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I’m well aware of that.’’

  Mother tilted her head this way and that. ‘‘And a bad idea to boots. How many of them do you expect will come?’’

  Lu See took a cloth and wiped the goblets of dust. ‘‘I think we’ll see the head of the family and perhaps one of his sons.’’

  ‘‘One of Adrian’s brothers, meh?’’

  Lu See swallowed and felt her throat catch. ‘‘I expect so.’’

  Her mother shook her head and scratched her palms. ‘‘You know they’ll come here and start blaming you for his accident.’’

  Lu See gritted her teeth. ‘‘Well, I can’t change that. I’ll just have to swallow it.’’

  ‘‘If you didn’t run o
ff to England he would still be alive, I bet that is what they say.’’

  ‘‘Mother!’’ She threw the cloth onto the table in protest. ‘‘Have you any idea how hurtful your comments can be sometimes?’’

  ‘‘Hurtful? How? No, why hurtful, hurtful to who-ah?’’

  ‘‘To me, to all of us. What is it with you?’’ she challenged.

  ‘‘I speak my mind, that’s all. And if you don’t like …’’ She washed her hands in the air. ‘‘… not my problem. I say what I think.’’ She eyed her daughter. ‘‘Aya, don’t look at me like that. Why don’t you sit down? Now you are even making me anxious, pacing back and forth, back and forth like a betel nut worm.’’

  ‘‘Please, just let me get on with this, will you? I want this to work out.’’

  ‘‘Cha! Waste of time.’’

  Lu See shrugged. ‘‘We’ll see.’’

  Mother couldn’t resist not getting in the last word. ‘‘See, my foot.’’

  The following day the cookboy from the Woo house came with a box of pineapples. He bowed reverently and announced that owing to a family illness Woo-sang senior would not be coming after all and to please accept the gift of fruit as an expression of regret.

  ‘‘Damn-powerful outrageous!’’ bellowed Uncle Big Jowl. He drew on his cheroot and smoke hung blue in the air. ‘‘We’ve been jilted, aahh.’’

  Mother tilted her head this way and that. ‘‘See? I told you, waste of time, liao. Don’t look like that, Lu See, you know it’s true.’’

  The cookboy placed the box of pineapples on a table and turned to leave.

  ‘‘Wait!’’ cried Lu See as he drifted out the door. ‘‘Who is ill?’’

  ‘‘Grandson number one,’’ he replied.

  ‘‘Hold on,’’ she said. ‘‘I am coming with you.’’

  When Lu See arrived at Swettenham Lodge armed with her father’s copy of The Household Physician the cookboy told her to wait in the poorly lit drawing room. She’d been in the house but once before, on her return from England, to inform the family of Adrian’s death. The patriarch turned her out and told her he wanted nothing to do with Mabel, his granddaughter. It had been a traumatic experience, one she preferred to forget. For several minutes she glanced about the Woo drawing room, getting her bearings, wondering how many of the objects had been here in Adrian’s time, how many he had touched with his own hands.