The wharves were frantic, noisy places, with ingots of tin stacked like a child’s building blocks on one of the quays, waiting for shipment. The Sungei Perik, Silver River, was wide and as brown as a turtle’s back as it flowed west to the Strait of Malacca. Hundreds of sampans dodged like irritating flies in and out of the shipping lane, always on the lookout for business, gathering together in their bustling water village beside the wharf. Connie stopped briefly to ask the way of one of the Malays who was wielding a steel-bladed parang, a native machete that could split a man’s skull. He was chopping the greenery off a pile of pineapples and humming to himself in an odd, nasal drone. He pointed with the tip of his blade to a shabby collection of shacks that ran alongside the rail track.
‘There,’ he said.
‘Thank you. Terimah kasih.’
‘Not good,’ he added. ‘Not for lady.’
She wiped sweat from her eyes, narrowed her gaze and with a thumping heart inspected the tumbledown dwellings. They were built from scraps of corrugated tin and rough lengths of bamboo.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not good.’
Those words buzzed in Connie’s mind as she ventured into the shanty town, and ducked through layers of washing that hung limp in the humid air, stretching across the street on drunken wooden poles. She felt like an intruder. She was acutely aware that she was conspicuous and unwelcome. And the smell of the place made her stomach heave. White women didn’t come here, didn’t step gingerly in clean white shoes over the central gulley that ran along the alleyway, holding her breath so that she wouldn’t have to inhale the stench of excrement and cooking waste that clogged its path. But still she searched.
The jumble of tiny shacks stretched on and on, but only the fortunate ones were raised on bamboo stilts to avoid the inevitable flooding that must race through here each time the heavens decided to let loose. The dingy huts were perched against the railway bank, covered in soot from the belching steam engines that roared past at intervals, and made the tin walls shudder with fright.
So this was where Sai-Ru Jumat lived. This was her home. Connie’s heart missed a beat as a sharp pain spiked through her chest. Was her home. Was her life. Was where she woke each morning and dreamed each night. Connie pictured the short figure in the green sarong, squatting on her front step like these other women who were regarding her with such wide wary eyes. She could hear Sai-Ru’s voice, clear and sharp. Listen, white lady. It whirred in her head. I curse you. Connie could feel her nerves jumping and hammering. How was she to bridge the gap between what was and what is?
She found the house. It was leaning against its neighbour, and stood out from the others because of its white garland of flowers, the mark of death. That’s what she’d been told to look for when she’d asked a woman the way. Now she was here, the horror of what she’d done to Sai-Ru’s family threatened to suffocate her, and she almost turned and ran back the way she’d come. No one would know. Except herself, and Sai-Ru. She would know.
She stood on the plank of timber that was the front step, and tapped the half-open door that only just clung on with one hinge. There was no sound from within, and she felt a treacherous ripple of relief. She could leave. But as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she made out the figure of a young man sitting cross-legged, alone on the floor in the centre of the room. He was so still that for a moment she thought he was a statue, but then with a jolt she recognised him. Neat limbs elegantly folded, dense black hair and smooth skin that glowed like amber. His eyes were fixed on her, unblinking and the expression in them, even in the dim light inside the shack, shocked her. Hate was too weak a word for what she saw in them. He was Sai-Ru Jumat’s son.
‘Selamat pagi. Good morning,’ she said. ‘My name is Constance Hadley.’
He did not reply. But neither did he remove his gaze.
‘Excuse me, maaf,’ she contined awkwardly. ‘I know this must be a bad time for you, but may I come in?’
Still no response. No flicker of movement. She stepped into the room, and stifling heat hit her like a hammer to the chest. Her lungs fought for air. She became aware of the strong smell of glue and wood cuttings. He was seated on a woven mat surrounded by small flat wooden cases of various sizes and in different stages of finish. Some had glass fronts and had been polished, others were still raw and awaiting attention. He must have seen her eyes flick to them, but he made no comment.
‘I’ve come to apologise,’ she said softly, ‘for what I did to your mother, and to offer you help.’ She waited. ‘Talk to me.’
For the first time, those intense black eyes released her and turned away. Talk to me. You are so young. She removed her hat, crouched down on her knees on the sawdust that speckled the floor, so that her eyes were on a level with his.
‘I know you hate me,’ she said evenly, ‘and you have good reason to. But don’t let it stop you accepting some recompense from me because …’
She noticed he was looking at his hand. On its palm lay a butterfly. Not just one of the small, garish creatures that flitted through the riot of bougainvillea and frangipani in her garden, but one of the gigantic jungle ones, its wingspan wider than his whole hand and trailing two long black tails like bootlaces waiting to be tied. It was exquisite. The colours of its wings filled her eyes with iridescent blues and lilacs and a vivid splash of gold. It must be dead, because it didn’t move, and it dawned on her that that’s what the cases were for. Already, she realised, two of them were lined with white satin and inside was pinned an assortment of butterflies. They were like miniature coffins.
Sai-Ru’s son did not take his eyes off the butterfly on his hand, as if its beauty created a refuge from the ugliness he saw in Connie. She wanted to snatch it from him, to hold it to her heart. To steal its beauty.
‘Do you sell them?’ she asked.
Without looking at her he murmured, ‘White people buy. Dead things. They like.’
Connie thought about the antelope’s head on the wall of her husband’s study, of the magnificent tiger-skin rug on the floor of her friend Harriet’s drawing room. Of the elephant’s foot that was a useful stool at the Club.
She blushed. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘They do.’
A silence filled the tiny room. Connie looked around her. In one corner there lay two bedrolls bundled out of the way, but she noted no sign of mosquito nets. On a shelf there were a few pots and pans, while under it a primitive stove had been built out of bricks. Surely it was dangerous to light a fire here? She glanced up at the roof and felt sick. A spider the size of a Bentley was hanging by a thread from a rafter above her head. Don’t scream.
‘What is your name?’ she asked. She thought he would not reply, but he did.
‘Razak.’ He licked his strong white teeth as he said it, his attention still on the butterfly. If he was aware of the spider, he was indifferent to it.
‘Well, Razak, as I said, I would like to help you and your sister.’
‘Don’t want. No help. Not you.’
‘Let me. Tolong. Please.’
‘Tidak. No.’
Nevertheless, she took a manila envelope from her handbag and pushed it towards him, the paper rustling like lizard’s skin over the matting. ‘This will pay for your mother’s funeral. And a bit more.’
A lot more.
This time he looked at her. A cold, direct stare from black eyes. ‘Go away.’
He was young, she reminded herself, no more than fifteen or sixteen. His hatred had made him arrogant; his rage had hardened the soft line of his mouth. She had done that to him.
‘I would also like to offer you a job,’ she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Either on my husband’s rubber plantation, the Hadley Estate, learning skills with the trees, or if you would prefer, in the smoke sheds or the godowns here in Palur.’
She watched his face. He half closed his eyes, dipping his thick long lashes to hide himself from her. But his hand must have tightened because the butterfly suddenly fluttered its great wings and C
onnie cried out, startled.
‘It’s alive!’ she exclaimed, and saw that the lower half of its body was trapped between two of his fingers.
He lifted his other hand and stroked its furry back.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured.
‘White people want to kill everything.’
Her cheeks were burning, and sweat zigzagged down her neck. ‘If you like, you could work in my garden.’
Again the black stare, then, with the butterfly still between his fingers, he reached behind him and drew the tiny stub of a candle in front of him and a cardboard book of matches that bore the name of a nightclub: The Purple Pussy. He struck a match, lit the candle and stood it on the mat, before picking up the envelope and opening it. He extracted a twenty-dollar note and held it over the flame. It caught quickly, flared between his fingers and curled into black flakes as he dropped it on the mat. He took another note and another. Each one burned.
Connie said nothing. In silence, he burned ten notes in the hot little room before she leaned forward and snatched the envelope from the mat.
‘Enough!’ she said. ‘You’ve made your point.’
She rose quickly to her feet, ducking to one side to avoid the blasted spider. ‘I can’t bring her back,’ Connie said quietly to the sleek head bent over the butterfly, denying her words the anger that flared inside her. ‘But I can give you what your mother would have wished for you – a better house, a job, even an education. Isn’t that what you want?’
‘Tidak biak,’ he said with a strange nasal sound that was more like a dog’s snarl than a human utterance. ‘No good. You no good. You go. She curse you.’ He spat on the mat.
Connie said no more. She tucked the envelope of money at the back of the shelf, forcing herself to ignore the centipede that was slithering around inside one of the cooking pots, and walked out of the door. Her throat was tight, her hands shaking. Sweat ran between her breasts. As she set off up the alleyway, bombarded by the sun’s onslaught, she realised that she had forgotten her hat. She cursed under her breath and glanced back inside the gloomy interior, but she chose not to return there. Razak was still sitting, his hands in his lap. He had torn both wings off the butterfly.
4
The sky ached today, as though it still mourned her mother’s death. Maya Jumat could feel its white pain like cuts in her dark skin. The air tasted of salt on her tongue and she licked her lips, feeling them tighten with anticipation. Today would be a good day. The sky knew it, but it didn’t want her to be happy. She shook her head, tossing her glossy black hair around her shoulders, and showed the sky her sharp, dangerous, white teeth. No one wanted her to be happy. Except Razak, her brother. She tucked a vivid scarlet flower behind her ear in defiance, gripped the stems of the other blooms in her arms and dodged between the cars, nimble as a cat.
‘You want buy, lady?’
She thrust her hand clutching a few blossoms through the open window of the purring black car that had stopped at the crossroads in front of the station, and flashed a wide smile. She wasn’t stupid. The flowers were for the white lady, a weaselly creature with aimless eyes, but the smile was for the red-faced man behind the wheel.
‘No,’ the woman said flatly. ‘No.’
‘Plees. Pretty. For you.’ She dropped the bunch in the woman’s overripe lap. The man revved the engine. Maya stood on the running board and widened her smile at him, showing him the tip of her pink tongue. ‘A dollar?’
‘For God’s sake, Eunice, give the bloody girl a dollar, will you?’
The lady switched her attention to her man, saw the spark in his eyes as he followed the soft folds of Maya’s sarong draped over the curve of her young breasts. With undue haste she pushed a dollar into Maya’s hand, but as the car drove off she tossed the flowers out of the window. Maya scrambled and scooped them up before the car behind had a chance to drive over them, and she received a loud blare on the horn in return. She ran between the rickshaws and motorcars, searching again for a good one to target, watching out for her bare feet. More than once some bastard had rolled a tyre over her toes. She spotted a Rolls slowing down.
‘Flowers? Pretty. You buy.’
‘Get in.’
The rear door of the chauffeur-driven car swung open, and a white man with doughy skin and a ginger moustache as big as a fox under his nose reached for her wrist. She backed off fast. The Sikh in a turban in the driving seat didn’t even glance over his shoulder, as though he were used to such moments.
‘I no for sale,’ Maya declared. ‘Just flowers. Two dollar.’
‘Don’t be silly, girl, come for a ride. How much?’
‘Ten dollars. I virgin.’
‘Like hell you are.’
‘Show money.’
The car behind sounded its klaxon.
‘I’m no fool,’ he smiled sourly. ‘I know girls like you.’
‘I not like other girls.’
She darted her head forward as if to kiss him and he preened himself on the leather seat, but instead she snatched the gold tiepin from his cravat and vanished. Melted into the crowd of brown faces as easily as a fish makes itself invisible as it slides and shimmers within its shoal.
‘Why man so stupid?’ Maya shrugged, and for the next two hours touted her flowers, hopping from car to car. Yes, today was a good day, she had been right. She sealed the precious dollars safely in the pouch tied at her waist and kept a sharp, hostile lookout for others encroaching on her patch. When the sun was at its highest in the sky and the tarmac burned the soles of her feet, the traffic at last grew thin, so she took a break in the shade at the back of the station’s ticket office.
She squatted on the ground in the red dust and sucked on the discarded skin of an orange. She closed her eyes and took her time deciding which dream to unfold in her head today. The one where she married an old man who died suddenly – with a little help from herself – and left her the richest woman in the whole of Malaya to do whatever she chose. Or the one where she was paddling in the river, the water as cool as ice cream on her hot shins, and she found a giant pearl as big as a kingfisher’s egg and when she showed it to Razak, like a bright eye in the centre of the palm of her hand …
‘Get up!’ A kick landed firmly on her thigh, jarring the bone.
In less than a heartbeat she was on her feet, ready to run. ‘Piss off, Hakim.’
‘What the hell are you doing? I don’t pay you good money to sleep all day, you lazy slut.’
‘You don’t pay me anything, you liar,’ she retorted.
But she was careful not to push him too far. Hakim was the boss. He was the one who allocated the various roads to his street-sellers. He was short and plump, and owned a network of businesses throughout Palur that always required a never-ending stream of cheap labour. It was in his hands to give her a bad patch for the day or a good one, if he felt friendly. Today he had given her a decent patch near the station because she’d allowed him to kiss her this morning. Just her lips, she’d insisted, nothing more. She was strict about that. No one touched her body. Not ever. No one.
That, she had to admit, was the trouble with the rich-old-man dream. He’d want to put parts of himself inside her, and rub his ancient lizard skin against hers. She shuddered.
Hakim clipped her around the ear and laughed, flashing a row of gold teeth as though he would take a bite out of her.
‘Don’t you get smart with me, Maya. Let’s see what you’ve got.’
He reached for her pouch. She knew better than to resist. She stood immobile, scowling at him while he emptied its contents into his hand, counted it twice and pocketed the coins.
‘What about me?’ she demanded.
He dropped a meagre few cents back into the pouch.
‘That’s not enough!’
He laughed. Behind him, four gangly youths laughed with him, his pet wolf pack.
‘That’s all you get,’ he sneered. ‘You’ve been lazy today.’
She clamped her teeth
on the inside of her cheek to shut herself up. With no comment she turned to scamper away, but Hakim seized her hair and wound its long strands around his fist, dragging her head back, stretching her neck painfully. She squealed. He leaned his face so close that the dark skin of his oily cheeks touched hers, but there was no pleasure in it this time. His eyes were black and cold as a shark’s. His other hand shot down the front of her sarong, his fingers groping her small breasts as he yanked out the silk fold of material fastened there. She moaned.
‘Thieving whore!’ he shouted.
He slapped a hand carelessly across her face. Not hard; she’d felt worse. But enough to knock her off balance, so that she stumbled into one of the wolf pack. It was the one with a milky eye and knife scar across his throat. He was probably younger than she was but already heavily muscled, and he twisted her arm almost out of its socket just for the fun of it. She whimpered pitifully, but Hakim took no notice.
He removed the dollar bills from inside the silk. ‘Listen to me, you slut. Try to cheat me again and I will mark you so bad that no one will want to look at your smile ever again.’ His gold teeth loomed over her. ‘Understand?’
She nodded and tried to squirm out of the wolf cub’s grip. Her bare feet scrabbled in the dirt.
Hakim slapped her again. ‘Shut up and listen. I want you at The Purple Pussy tonight. Leena is sick.’
‘No. Please, Hakim. I don’t like …’
He hit her, harder this time. She felt blood ripple down her chin.
‘Just be there.’ He raised his hand again.
She didn’t wait for it to land. She sank her teeth into the wolf cub’s cheek, sprang free when he screamed and was off racing round the corner of the building when she heard Hakim’s final shout.
‘Be there or be dead, whore!’
She didn’t stop running. People looked at her. No one except little children ran in the tropics. It was too hot, and sweat glistened on her limbs. Damn Hakim. Damn the gold-fanged snake spawn to a thousand hells. But as Maya wove her way through the crowded streets and lingered for a moment to catch her breath in the dusty shade of a Buddhist temple, listening to the insistent wind chimes hanging from its swooping eaves, her hand clutched at the gold tiepin fixed to the inside of the knot that held her sarong and she laughed, a wild, angry sound.
The White Pearl Page 4
