The Catherine Lim Collection

by Catherine Lim

  “Gloria, Gloria,” said the fervent man of God, touching her on the shoulder. “Come to the true God. Give up your charms and amulets. They are the work of superstitious priests and are a blasphemy to Jesus Christ the Lord!”

  “And you most of all!” he cried, advancing upon Angela with such ferocious zeal that she stepped backwards with a little scream. “You, you, dear Sister Angela! You in whom I had placed my hope. You, who could have been such a helper to me, in the Lord’s vineyard! But you have committed yourself to the powers of darkness too! I shall wage war with your geomancer, Sister Angela, for he, more than any other, is the greatest agent for evil! Under cover of respectability, he is drawing more and more to the Devil. He cast out his net, and you swam into it, Sister Angela, and now you are in his power! But listen, Sister Angela. It’s not too late. I can call upon the powers of good to destroy the works of the powers of evil! Your restaurant will crumble into ruins! See, it’s already crumbling! It will be a mass of ruins, but out of those ruins, Sister Angela, you and my brother Boon will rise, restored, saved, utterly cleansed!”

  “No! No! No!” sobbed Angela, and she thought she actually heard the thunderous sound of concrete blocks tumbling, saw pillars melting like wax to the ground.

  Brother Toh invited all those present to come up, denounce Satan, and throw at his feet all the secret charms, amulets, prayer paper, joss-sticks, prayer beads and other signs of servitude to the forces of evil. The room suddenly filled with people. Angela felt herself jostled here and there, as people surged forward towards Brother Toh in a wave of new fervour and threw the symbols of evil at his feet. Little metal cylinders on red string or silver chains fell to the ground with sharp clinks, stacks of prayer paper or ghost money, joss-sticks, some hardly bigger than match sticks, some as huge as batons were flung in a heap. A large urn for joss-sticks crashed and broke to pieces, spilling out ash, yellowing pieces of paper with charm words written on them fluttered about, then settled on the ground at Brother Toh’s feet. A little metal cylinder rolled close to his feet, it broke into its halves and a small shrivelled piece of flesh tied with red string fell out.

  “Oh, my God – his umbilical cord,” gasped Angela, and she saw him stoop and light a match. The shrivelled piece of flesh sizzled in the flame and was gone, leaving a blackened patch on the floor. Then the flames spread and engulfed metal cylinders, urn, prayer paper, joss-sticks in a brilliant flash of fire which died down in a few minutes to reveal a desolate pile of black ash on the floor. “There!” cried Brother Toh, his eyes shining. “All vanquished! The powers of darkness have been beaten back. Praise the Lord! Thanks be to the Lord!”

  The room reverberated with Halleluiahs. “But where is Mother?” cried Brother Toh suddenly. “How is it that everyone is here except my mother? Where is she?”

  Angela prayed, Please, please, don’t let him find her! He will kill her! She will die of a broken heart to see her youngest and favourite son like this!

  “I know where to find her!” exclaimed Brother Toh with a cunning gleam in his eyes. “I’m going there, and I’m going to destroy all the forces of darkness that are enslaving her! I’m going to free her!”

  He strode off, white robe flapping in the breeze, crucifix firmly clasped in his hand.

  Angela could see him rushing into the temple, picking up the earthen and brass deities on the altar and dashing them to the ground, cleaning the altar table of the rows of joss-stick urns with one mighty sweep of his arm, trampling on the altar offerings of fruit and flowers, holding aloft the crucifix for Old Mother and the temple priests to bend their knees too.

  “Poor mother, poor mother,” sobbed Angela. “But it’s too late now! I can’t stop him.”

  The clock showed 4:30; Angela had gone to bed at three, she had slept a bare one and a half hours – a one and half hours of pure terror, so that now she sat up on the bed, panting, holding a hand to her chest. Boon was snoring nearby, in the deep sleep of utter exhaustion. Angela got out of bed silently, heart still beating very fast. She was now aware of a violent headache; she went to the bathroom cabinet and gulped down two aspirins.

  She got out the telegram and read it again. There was no mention of flight time. Was there hope yet? Would the police or Marilyn keep Ah Siong back for some time and earn their gratitude forever, for saving the old one from torment in her last hours on this earth?

  Chapter 33

  They all agreed later that the expression on the old one’s face, both in the last few minutes before her death, and during the period that she was laid out in her death clothes, was one of ineffable peace and sweetness.

  When it was known that her time was near, all her children and the older ones among her grandchildren were gathered together around the bed. Old Mother seemed to be unaware of everybody except Mark. The boy was now very tall and stalwart, like a man.

  “Ah Siong,” she said with a smile that actually lit up the dying face. “Ah Siong.” She made to touch him. Angela gently nudged Mark forwards, lifted his hand and laid it on the old one’s. The boy did not resist. The tears welled in his eyes.

  “Ah Siong,” rasped Old Mother again. Mark looked to his mother, unsure when he could remove his hand. Sobbing, Angela led him away, and then it was over.

  Michael, on his sick-bed could not yet be told. Wee Nam judged it appropriate to tell Gloria; she said nothing, but later alone, she wept.

  Ah Kum Soh and the idiot foster-son were, mercifully, away then.

  “It’s all over now; her soul is at rest,” Angela said, tired, beyond words. She had lost 15 pounds.

  Epilogue

  “I shall tell you everything, everything, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve gone through,” Angela later told Mee Kin.

  After the funeral, she had taken four days’ rest; she was totally exhausted, and spent the four days sleeping and taking care of Michael who was improving daily.

  “I have put him under the care of Dr Phua, upon the recommendation of Dr Wong, said Angela. He’s the best psychiatrist in Singapore. Mikey’s stopped asking for his grandmother and the idiot one now, and that’s a very positive start. Dr Phua says he’s dealt with more difficult cases.

  My Mark is much happier, and so is Michelle. The events had had a disastrous effect on their nerves, but now they’re much better.

  I hope you don’t think I’m boasting, but Mark’s just sat for the Merit Scholarship exam, you know the one for the cream of Singapore’s students and his teachers tell me that he will easily come out tops. These boys will be groomed for third echelon political leadership. The government’s going to build the Elite College soon; it’s going to sprawl over the cemetery. Did you see the notice of exhumation in The Straits Times and New Nation? Well, we’ll have to make arrangements to have the old man’s grave exhumed. So what was there to do but to have the old one cremated, even though she had expressed the wish for burial? It was government policy; it had nothing to do with our personal inclinations. It would have been the height of idiocy to have her buried there, only to be exhumed almost immediately afterwards. But we provided the coffin she asked for. It was even more expensive than the old man’s, but money was no problem; her every last wish had to be fulfilled. A few thousand dollars reduced to ashes, literally. Her ashes now lie in the temple at Tank Road. We’ve reserved a place for the old man’s ashes next to hers, so that they will lie side by side, as she wished. Did you see the obituary we inserted in The Straits Times? One-eighth of a page. All the names of her children, including the idiot foster-son, and her grandchildren. You wouldn’t believe the amount for an obituary that size. Five thousand. Every cent came from Boon and Wee Tiong. Chinaman and his wife are obviously so happy about the recovery of their son (they’ve never mentioned to anyone that I’m the godmother, but I’m above all this pettiness now) that they did not appear to mind costs this time. I heard they made a fantastic sum at the Stock Market, just before the crash. They’re going to move into their Victoria Park house because Chinaman says his s
on is learning to walk, and needs a garden to romp in. A safe time now for moving out of that wretched two-room HDB flat, isn’t it? But good luck to them. It’s not likely that after this, we’re going to see much of one another. Old Mother was practically the last link. I could still see some of the old greed when I brought out Old Mother’s jewels after the funeral. I had a hell of a time looking for the jewels, but at last found them stuffed in a pillow. She had thrown away the nice lacquer box I’d given her to keep the jewels in, and had put them back in the filthy blue cloth bag. Well, she did express the wish to let the foster-son have the jewels, but she had added that it was up to us to decide. I’d already given $3,000 to that wretched woman to take her son away – far away; it was pure blackmail on her part. She would have gambled away the jewellery in a week. Anyway, there was no fuss over the distribution of the jewels; each took back what he or she had given the old one, and do you know what I did? I gave the diamond ear-studs to Gloria. By the way, she’s leaving for Canada for a vacation and Wee Nam will be joining her shortly. They’re planning to emigrate. I gave her the diamond ear-studs as a farewell gift. I don’t know what Wee Nam is going to do in Canada. He’s enthusiastically talking about some fantastic import-export business; importing batik, silverware, pewter-ware and whatnot from Singapore, and exporting Red Indian decorative ornaments from Canada. Watch out, Boon. There’ll be more forays into your bank account.

  Not that Boon can’t afford, but it’s the old story of the parasites all over again. Did I tell you, Boon’s going full swing into business ventures? He’s expanding the Haryati and teaming up with two others to buy a cosy hotel-cum-restaurant by the sea. He’s much happier now, and if it hadn’t been for my timely intervention, he would have been played out by a servant girl, after being played out by a Minister. That’s a gullible man for you. I sacked the girl; I don’t know what hanky panky she’d been up to on the day my mother-in-law and the idiot one ran away with Michael. She couldn’t give me an acceptable explanation and I’ve sacked her. She was all out to seduce my husband. Now I hear she’s working in a bar with Sharifah. Dorothy told me she saw her one evening, all dolled up, with a man; and wearing a very low-cut black blouse and tight shimmering pants.

  No more of her. I don’t wish even to mention her again, and the children haven’t referred to her, even once. Michelle did ask vaguely, but she’s now too busy training for the ASEAN games to be concerned about anything. My only worry is Michael, but Dr Phua tells me he’ll be all right. I won’t tell him about the jade bangle yet, in case he gets all morbid again and asks for his grandmother or dreams about her.

  Do you know, it’s funny, but our dreams of the old one have generally been pleasant. Gek Choo told me that shortly after the funeral she dreamt about the old one dandling the little boy on her knee and singing to him. She then put an ang-pow into his vest pocket. She was smiling all the time in the dream, Gek Choo said.

  I haven’t been so lucky in my dreams for occasionally I still dream of the old man in his coffin, and the old one in her madness, but look, nothing frightens me now, for I’ve been through so much. The last dream I had of her was after I cleared the things in her room and burnt a great deal of them, including those weird umbilical cords in the cylinder. She had continued to keep them with her jewellery. After the distribution of the various items, I set fire to the old cloth bag and then shook out those weird things from the cylinders and burnt them all. Then I had this dream. She appeared rather annoyed and asked, ‘Why did you burn them?’ and I replied, “Because there’s no more use for them.” She seemed to get very angry and began to curse, and it was then that I woke up. All the mess is cleared now.

  I alone had to do all the clearing up. The new house is ready now. I shall get Aminah and some others to go and clean it and then we can move in. The separate wing will be used as a kind of annexe for guests, or later on, by Mark as a kind of bachelor’s quarters if he wishes.

  Do you know, by the strangest of coincidences, I found from a friend that the Mrs Daisy Perez who bought my antique bed is selling her house and all the furniture in it? It seems she gambled in the Gold Market and lost heavily. Well, I’m thinking of getting back the bed for the new house. There won’t be those dreadful dreams to haunt me any more, for all the devils have been driven back now.

  We’ve heard nothing about that fanatic from Australia. Perhaps he had no intention of coming back in the first place. Somebody tells me he’s in trouble with the police, and yet somebody says he’s back with the divorcee woman or that both of them are in the sect and busy evangelising. But that’s their business. The important thing is that he doesn’t write back to ask for more money.

  What a mess – a big, big mess.

  But it’s been cleared up now, thank God.

  They do return ...

  but gently lead them back

  The Old Man in the Balcony

  One of my earliest recollections is of an immense coffin – perhaps the immensity was derived from the child’s perception of the world from her tiny, three-foot frame, for I could not have been more than four then – standing in a covered part of the stone courtyard of a very old house. The coffin had been bought by the mistress of the house for her father-in-law, who had reached that hopeless stage of senility of having to be fed and bathed like a child.

  I could still see him clearly – a very old man with long white, wispy hair and beard, crouching in a corner of the balcony upstairs, wearing a kind of faded coat, but naked from the waist down. Occasionally, his daughter-in-law would squat down with scissors and patiently trim his hair, beard and fingernails.

  We children used to stare wonderingly at him whenever we were brought on a visit to the house. After the coffin, the old man with no trousers was a natural attraction, and we stood in a cluster just beyond the doorway, staring at him, but at the same time poised for flight should he spring up and attempt to catch us. Of course he was incapable of doing anything apart from eating soft food and soiling himself, but still we associated him with a large fund of supernatural strength that he could always draw

  upon to attack and kill people.

  The coffin had been in readiness for the last 20 years, but the old man lingered on, and his daughter-in-law, whom I remember we called ‘Ah Han Chare,’ had clearly quite forgotten about its existence or had chosen to ignore it as she went about her business of being the town’s matchmaker and bridal helper. She was a jovial, friendly woman who laughed a great deal, and even at that age I remember I was struck by the contrast between her effervescence, her merry laughter and her bright jangling jewels, and the desolate coffin now beginning to gather dust and cobwebs, that had become a fixture in her house. That she had bought it for her father-in-law was a measure of her great affection for him.

  At some time in their old age, men and women fretted about the possibility of dying without a proper coffin to be buried in. To reassure her father-in-law that no such calamity would befall him. Ah Han Chare had bought him the coffin, and from that moment he had ceased to fret and worry.

  “My mother-in-law was a mean, cruel woman, but he has always been good to me,” said Ah Han Chare, explaining this filial gesture. The coffin had stood for so long in the house that soon it lost all its terror for the children in the household. They played around it, and when no one was looking, tried to lift its heavy lid and slip inside.

  On the night the coffin knockings began, Ah Han Chare and Ah Kum Soh, a distant relative who was staying with her, sat up in their beds, listened intently and nodded to each other.

  “It will be soon,” they said. “The signs are here already.” And they thought, without sadness, of the deliverance of the old man curled asleep on a mat in the room next to the balcony, a place grown musty and foul-smelling with urine and dropped food. They listened for a while and counted the knocks, all 17 of them.

  “Perhaps it will be tomorrow,” said Ah Kum Soh. When morning came, she padded softly to the old man’s room, but he was clearly still aliv
e, for he looked at her with his bleary eyes and signalled that he wanted to be carried to his warm sunny spot in the corner of the balcony.

  In the afternoon, someone rushed to Ah Han Chare and said, “He’s dead!” But he was referring to Ah Kum Soh’s husband, an idle good-for-nothing wastrel who wandered through the town all day in singlet andpyjama trousers, picking his teeth. The man had fallen into a drain and died there. There was a deep gash on his head and he had apparently been dead a few hours before being spotted by a passing trishaw man. Ah Kum Soh became hysterical and put the blame of her husband’s death squarely on the old man in the balcony.

  “The coffin knockings were meant for him,” she wept, “but he did not want to go, so my husband had to go instead. You mark my words, there will be more deaths yet!”

  When the coffin knockings were heard once more, Ah Han Chare and Ah Kum Soh again sat up and listened intently. The knocks came distinctly in the middle of the night – knock, knock, knock — becoming more and more faint until they were finally absorbed into the stillness of the night.

  Ah Kum Son’s son, a frail little asthmatic child of seven, had a fainting fit and was rushed to hospital. He did not die, but the whole town – whichby this time had heard of the mysterious knockings at night, and which was talking about Ah Kum Soh’s husband’s death in awed whispers – started rumours about a small corpse being brought home, and of another of the relatives about to die, in response to the coffin’s call.

  “Why doesn’t the old man answer the call?” they asked. “How many must go in his place?” Ah Kum Soh, weeping, stood before the old man as he was crouching half-naked on the balcony, and began to berate him for his heinous crime. He stared at her, eyes grey and rheumy, and once or twice he looked around and called pathetically, “Ah Han! Ah Han!” for his daughter-in-law’s name was the only one he could call now.