The Catherine Lim Collection

by Catherine Lim

  In Western countries, they have Old Folks’ Homes, said Dorothy who went abroad for a holiday at least once a year. Proper Old Folks’ Homes; not the nasty, filthy ones we have here that the newspapers are always criticising. My cousin who’s married to an American has both in-laws in one of these homes, a really lovely place with plenty of greenery. The old ones do useful things like crochet and paint. They even have folk dancing.

  “There was this article in TIME magazine,” said Angela, “about a certain organisation that helps old people to leave life painlessly. It’s called ‘The Right to Die’ or something like that. The old people in the West – they’re different. They’re less dependent on the young than the old ones here. Lucy and Hua Liang – they’ve migrated to Idaho – have a neighbour, a dear rosy-cheeked 80-year-old lady who lives all by herself, keeps her little house and garden clean and troubles nobody. When these old ones feel they’re no longer able to take care of themselves and are becoming a burden to others, they choose to die painlessly and peacefully. Mark told me he saw a TV programme about this when we were in Australia on holiday a year ago. I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” Angela confided, and she crossed beautifully manicured fingers, raised above the cup of coffee and second piece of cheesecake in the Royale Coffee House.

  The old man lingered for five months.

  “I was afraid it would be years,” said Angela, and at that point Gek Choo made one of her rare comments: “This kind of illness cannot last longer than six months, especially at his age.”

  She communicated by phone; heavy with her coming child, she could not risk contamination in the house of death.

  Angela pitied her old mother-in-law in these dreadful five months.

  “Despite what I sometimes complain about her,” she said to Mee Kin, “I really admire her for her devotion during that terrible time. She used to call him ‘Old Devil’ and ‘One-accursed-with-short-life’, but she spent sleepless days and nights looking after him in his illness. The old man was really dreadful. He was always finding fault with this or that. The pillow was in the wrong position, the hot water was not hot enough, the medicine was not right. He gave her endless trouble. Luckily she had Ah Kum Soh to help her. I had to load that mercenary creature with gifts of food and money to get her away from the mahjong table to help the old woman. What could we do? We’re working wives. You know what Boon saw one day? For some reason the old man was very angry; his face was contorted with rage and he struggled to get hold of his walking stick – the one by his bed – to hit her with. Luckily, Boon intervened.

  One month of mourning blue. That’s sufficient, I think. In the past, it was a whole year of black, then blue, then green or yellow and finally red. What am I going to do with all those new dresses in my wardrobe? And they are mainly pink and red, my favourite colours.”

  Mee Kin offered to lend her some of her prettier blue or white or beige dresses and pant-suits.

  “The children – they don’t need to wear black at all, not even at the funeral, do they? Only we adults need to wear black. Those horrid, shapeless, black samfoos! Do you know,” confided Angela, “I’m almost tempted to wear that Celine pant-suit of mine, the white one with black piping, but I suppose it will look out of place at that dreadful Chinese funeral with the sackcloth head-dresses and horrid yellow-robed priests. And there will be no end of malicious gossip from Chinaman and his wife.”

  It was a pathetic sight – the old man laid on the white-draped bier, shrunk to half his size. Old Mother was weeping copiously and then she went and stood by the bier and began a strange mournful sing-song. Angela concluded it was some traditional ritual, probably a widow’s dirge. Horror of horrors – the idiot one, the source of continual irritation and embarrassment, now proceeded to howl. He howled like a cow (Why like a ‘cow’? Why did she use the old one’s strange analogy for loud, copious weeping?); the tears streamed down the round child-like face, now all blotched and red with the effort of howling.

  “Oh please God, not at such a time,” murmured Angela, and she saw the look of terror on the face of Gloria, the youngest daughter-in-law, of a different race arid creed, bewildered by the clamour of alien customs around her and now affrighted by the sudden howling of the idiot one whom she could never bear being near to.

  Poor Gloria, thought Angela. She saw how Gloria, looking no more than a timid schoolgirl, had actually hidden behind a door, stayed near a tree in the compound, fled to the kitchen by the back door, done everything possible to avoid looking upon the old man’s corpse as it lay on the white-draped bier in the hall.

  “No,” she had said pleadingly to her husband, Wee Nam, when he reminded her of her duty to pay last respects to her dead father-in-law. “No, no” – but she still had to go, dressed in black, to the house of death, and despite her efforts, the wasted, pallid body with the stiff beard jutting ludicrously from the old chin, forced itself upon her sight.

  And now the idiot one – his howling penetrated her ears, reminded her of a film she once saw as a child, of a vampire howling at the moon in a desolate graveyard. Angela felt sorry for her. She knew she had to do something.

  “Ah Bock,” she said gently, “come, I’ll take you to Ah Moi Cheem’s house.” This was a distant relative, in a village way out of town. “Here, look, I’ve some money for you, money for you to spend,” opening her leather handbag. She recollected his ecstatic joy at being given some money once.

  She tried gently to lead him away; he resisted, she winced. Oh, the burden of it all. A huge, ugly, brutish creature – and not even a real son.

  He went on howling; each sob from Old Mother drew a loud wail from him. It was intolerable.

  “What about coming to my house and playing with Michael?”

  The idiot one stopped howling, considered the proposition.

  “Michael,” he repeated and began to smile, the tears still on his face. Angela screamed silently.

  “All right, Ah Bock. Get into my car now. I’ll drive you over to my house,” she said, suddenly heavy of heart.

  She put through a quick telephone call to the capable, reliable Mooi Lan.

  “The idiot’s coming. I simply have to get him out of the way here. He wants to play with Michael. But keep an eye. Make sure he doesn’t do odd things with the boy. Keep them separately occupied if you can. Load him with plenty of food. Just keep him occupied.”

  Oh my God, I’m bound hand and foot, she thought as she drove off with the idiot. She returned, tired and sad, smack into one of those hateful money discussions among the brothers. Chinaman had a calculator – a calculator in a house of death! ‘Uncle Abacus’, ‘Uncle Calculator’, she must not forget to tell Mark. They were discussing the funeral preparations and the cost. Old Mother was too distraught to have a part. She left it to the three sons.

  Click, click, click went the tiny pocket calculator.

  Chinaman – Uncle Abacus – Uncle Calculator was working out the costs, to be shared by the three brothers.

  Request no wreaths or scrolls. Cash donations to be used to reduce expenditure.

  “I leave everything to you,” said Wee Boon, tired and heavy-eyed, longing for the whole thing to be over. The call of Friday poker, Sunday golf, was as strong as ever; he had missed them in the last two or three months.

  “Yes, you handle everything,” said Wee Nam, the youngest brother who was already owing his eldest brother a lot of money and would be owing him his share of the funeral expenses.

  Angela saw him whisper something to Boon, heard her husband say, “Don’t worry.” Her suspicions were confirmed. Parasite. Parasites all round.

  The funeral arrangements went on smoothly except for an incident. Angela was to narrate it to her friends later with the flushed excitability of a person who has witnessed incredible things.

  It was incredible – the sheer macabreness of it all.

  The coffin from Singapore Casket had duly arrived, ordered by Wee Tiong; as the men hoisted it from their van into the house, Old Mo
ther began to rant and rage. The coffin was suspended for a full five minutes on the shoulders of the two swarthy Indians as they looked on, open-mouthed, at Old Mother flailing her arms about in her rage.

  A proper coffin, raged Old Mother. Not your improper modern, useless coffin. The kind of coffin that his father was buried in, that I will be buried in. Cannot you sons and daughters do even this for your old dead father?

  She waved a hand imperiously at the two Indians, to take away the offensive coffin from her sight.

  And the old one then went and stood beside the corpse and began again the plaintive dirge.

  Oh, I can’t bear this; how awful, how gruesome, thought Angela and she saw Gloria run out to retch. It could have been an early pregnancy, but more likely the poor girl had reached the end of her endurance.

  Angela envied Gek Choo, safe at home, her pregnancy a timely excuse to escape the madness.

  The Western coffin was returned to Singapore Casket, a Chinese one procured. It came, hoisted by six men, massive curved bridges of solid planed wood. Angela looked away.

  $3,000 - Wee Tiong could not believe it. The Western one was a fraction of the cost. $3,000 – the swindlers. It was at this point that Wee Tiong threw down the calculator in a fit of vexation and said he was washing his hands off the whole thing. Let Wee Boon or Wee Nam both manage from now onwards.

  It stood solidly in the hall, the dreadful massive structure, associated in Angela’s mind with direful superstitions and terrors.

  “Keep pregnant cats away,” warned Ah Kum Soh. “A pregnant cat jumping over a coffin would cause the corpse to sit up or even walk out.” Someone went to tie up a black-and-white female cat that often came over to rummage in the kitchen bin.

  Please, for God’s sake – thought Angela.

  The matter did not end with the coffin. Old Mother wanted the priests from the temple to perform the various rites.

  “But why so many priests, such elaborate rites?” Wee Tiong’s voice rose to a very high pitch when he was exasperated. “The swindlers. Do you know how much they are charging? $200 a night for all those prayers and chantings. $200 a night per priest for four nights. Why three priests? Why four nights?”

  He said again, “I wash my hands off this business,” but shortly after he relented. He even went to Old Mother and said to her, ‘Whatever you wish, it is our duty as sons to give you.’

  His wife was going to give birth: Who would know what might happen? He longed for a son. Would the anger of his dead father be visited upon him, bringing him the punishment of yet another girl-child, or worse, a dead child?

  There were forces at work that Wee Tiong believed in; he could not afford, at such a time, to unleash these forces. He apologised to his mother.

  Oh, how I long for this whole wretched thing to be over, thought Angela in distress, and it was not only because she wanted to be able again to give her full attention to the children, to supervise Mark’s progress, help Michael with his homework, prepare Michelle for her training sessions at the pool, go out for lunch with Mee Kin and her other colleagues, go through the marketing accounts with Mooi Lan, inquire about a space in the newly opened Singapura Shopping Arcade to set up the boutique that she and Mee Kin were always talking about.

  She was so tired, so tired of the whole thing. She must have lost at least five pounds in the last week. Mee Kin had remarked about the black rings round her eyes. Old Mother’s continuous sobbing troubled, irritated her. Why call him ‘Old Devil’ and ‘Coffin-face’ while he was alive and then weep so piteously at his death? But she knew the tears were not for the old man alone.

  That heartless son, she thought bitterly, suddenly feeling very sorry for her old mother-in-law. Couldn’t he have come home at least for the funeral? First it was some stupid examination, and then some accident that put him in hospital. I bet you they’re all excuses. He fools his old mother right and left. He’s probably living it up this very minute with his Australian woman. And the old fool weeps over his letters and messages and declares that he’s the most filial of the four sons! Boon bears almost the entire cost of the funeral, but the old one talks only of her Ah Siong, her precious one. It’s always Ah Siong, Ah Siong. She longs for him to come back, so that she can stay with him, as if all her other sons are ill-treating her.

  And the most distressing question of all – but Angela did not dare ask it, would not dare voice it, even after the funeral, for she could foresee her husband’s reaction, good-natured though he was. He was sure to be impatient with her, as he had been impatient many times in the past when the matter cropped up.

  Now that the old man was dead, who would Old Mother move to live with?

  Angela did not want to ask the question; she dreaded the answer, the possible consequences.

  Chapter 4

  The door creaked a little and Old Mother, thinking it was Ah Kum Soh or Ah Bock returning home, asked, “Who is it?”

  Having got up and ascertained that it was neither, she stood still and waited expectantly.

  “You have come back,” she said. “You have come back so soon.”

  The old man stood before her, thinner than in life. He said nothing, and he looked at her, not with the look of irascibility as in the last weeks before his death, but with sadness.

  “You have come back,” said Old Mother again. “You have something to ask of me. What is it?”

  The old man still said nothing, and Old Mother became impatient.

  “When you were alive,” she said, “I called you ‘The-one-with-gold-in-his-mouth’. Tight-lipped, as if opening your mouth would mean gold falling out for others to pick up. What is it?”

  The old man kept resolutely silent, not with stubbornness, but with sadness. Old Mother heard a sigh, as from a burdened heart.

  “Is it about your sons?” she asked. And it was at this point that the old man began to weep silently.

  “Do not weep,” said Old Mother, but she did not go up to him to comfort him. In life, she had never touched his shoulder, his arm, to comfort. She referred to him as ‘Ah Boon’s father’ or ‘Ah Siong’s father’, never ‘my husband’. ‘Husband’ embarrassed her.

  “Do not weep,” said Old Mother again. “I will be all right. The Almighty God in Heaven looks after the old. Now that you are in Heaven, you will also take care of me and see that I come to no harm.”

  Old Mother strained to hear. The words came very faintly, with great effort: “Ah Siong.”

  “Ah Siong will take care of me; you take care of Ah Siong, too,” said Old Mother, beginning to weep herself. “You take care of him in that far off country and give him success and happiness so that he can come home soon and take care of me in my old age.”

  The old man nodded, his wispy beard quivering on his chin. He did not disappear in a puff of smoke or haze; he simply walked away. Old Mother saw him close the door behind him. She went to the window to watch him, and saw him walk away in the dimness of the moonlight.

  “Who’s that?” called Angela.

  It was strange – this place she was in.

  “Who’s that?” she called again, and walked into a room.

  The old man was there, lying on the bed. Beside him was a walking stick, the stout one with the brass head that he had, in a fit of vexation in his illness, tried to hit Old Mother with.

  He was dead already – or was he? She thought she heard a rattle from his throat, a kind of rasping sound, as she heard at the birthday dinner.

  She walked up, slowly, deferentially, and he opened his eyes and looked at her.

  “Are you all right, Father?” she said, a little timidly, for the old man never stopped staring at her. “Can I get you anything, Father? A cup of hot water?”

  “He can’t hear! He can’t hear! He’s dead!”

  The idiot was suddenly beside the bed; strange that his words came through so clearly, usually he slobbered unintelligibly. He was carrying Michael on his shoulders; he began to prance around the room and the boy laughe
d with joy.

  “Mikey – Mikey, please get down,” pleaded Angela, stretching out her arms. “Come to Mummy, Mikey.”

  “Not dead yet, but you want him dead!”

  This from Old Mother. The room suddenly filled with people. She could see Ah Kum Soh and the old servant Ah Kheem Chae and another very old servant, Ah Siew Chae who had died so very long ago.

  “This can be easily managed,” said Old Mother with asperity. “Ah Kum Soh,” she said in an imperious voice. “Knock on that coffin. Keep knocking, with your knuckles, like this. That means he will die soon. That means the coffin is saying, ‘Come, come. I invite you. Come!’”

  The knockings on the coffin began. The massive, solid curved surfaces resounded with knocks. It sounded as if several people were knocking on the coffin at once.

  “Knock, knock, knock, knock,” said Old Mother, laughing. “See, the coffin is saying, ‘Come! Come! It’s time!’ Soon he will be dead. ‘The-one-accursed-with-a-short-life’ will be dead.”

  The body was now on a white-draped bier.

  “Put his body into the coffin now,” commanded Old Mother, and two swarthy Indians lifted the fragile white corpse and laid it in the coffin.

  Knock, knock.

  “See, the knockings continue,” said Old Mother. “I will join him soon!”

  The idiot, still carrying Michael on his shoulders, began to howl and to pull her away from the coffin.

  “Oh my God” – gasped Angela.

  “I tell you the child’s a girl,” whispered Old Mother. They stood outside the door, listening for the first cries of the child. They heard the moans of labour inside, soft low moans.

  “How do you know? The child’s not born yet,” said Wee Tiong.

  “It’s a boy, and it’s dead,” said the old man.

  “How can you both talk like that while Choo is inside giving birth?” cried Wee Tiong in anger. Then he said, “Please, Father, please, Mother, do not talk like this.”