The Catherine Lim Collection

by Catherine Lim

  Knowing that the farmer was a shrewd fellow who regarded her with deep suspicion, she waited one morning for him to be out in the fields before paying his wife a visit.

  So convincing was she in her promise of heavenly blessings upon those who would donate generously to her nunnery that the farmer’s wife was quite taken in. The foolish woman went to the hiding place in the earthen floor, brought out the stone jar and handed it, with its store of silver coins within, to the head nun. The nun thanked her effusively and left.

  When the farmer came back, his wife told him what had happened, in her extreme naivete expecting him to praise her for what she had done. Instead, he picked up his changkul and repeatedly hit her in his rage. When he saw that she was dead, his rage turned into an overpowering pity and he knew he would never be at peace until he had killed the one who had brought about this tragedy.

  He ran to the nunnery with his changkul and there struck three hefty blows on the nun’s head until she fell down and died. In his panic, the farmer ran to a tree and hanged himself.

  The spirits of the three deceased then appeared before the Almighty, who sat on his heavenly throne in judgment.

  ‘You have done great wrong,’ he told the farmer, ‘and must therefore be punished.’

  ‘You,’ turning to the nun. ‘have done greater wrong, for you are a selfish, mercenary, cruel woman. You too will be punished.’

  He looked at the farmer’s wife and, whereas his eyes had narrowed in severe censure when they looked upon the farmer and the nun, they now softened upon the gentle, timid woman.

  ‘You are a good woman,’ said the Almighty, ‘and although you were foolish enough to be taken in by this nun, you will not be punished.’

  The Almighty’s plan was simple.

  ‘I’m sending the three of you back to earth again,’ said the Almighty. ‘You will be born and at the appointed time, you,’ pointing to the farmer, ‘and you,’ pointing to the nun, ‘will be man and wife so that you will be each other’s torment. I can devise no greater punishment for you. Since your sin is less,’ he continued, addressing the farmer, ‘you will be freed of the retribution after a time and will be reunited with this woman, without whom you cannot be happy.’

  Then turning to the nun, he told her, ‘You have been guilty of so much cruelty that your punishment will be extended further. While this man and this woman enjoy peace and happiness together, your body will be wracked by the most painful disease, which will, after a long time, carry you to your grave.’

  So the three were reborn on earth, and the Almighty’s plans for them came to pass.”

  Grandfather finished his story and shuffled back to his room, smoking his opium pipe. He paused, before entering his room, to continue, “The woman, much beloved by the man, was to die soon, and he will shortly follow. For them, there will no longer be the pain of another rebirth.”

  Of Moles and Buttocks

  Fourth Aunt-on-father’s-side led a sorrowful life and was ill-treated by her irresponsible, lecherous husband because of a mole situated close to her left eye. Second Aunt-on-mother’s-side, on the other hand, enjoyed prosperity all her life and was always seen with a heavy gold chain round her neck and a stack of gold bangles round her wrist because of her very substantial buttocks. Poor Fourth Aunt-on-father’s-side, in addition to the unfortunate mole near her eye, had flat, truncated buttocks which she blamed more than the mole for her sad life.

  As a child, I expertly explained the fortunes or misfortunes of relatives and neighbours in terms of their physiognomy. I had picked up a valuable store of information on the matter from adult conversations

  and observations, and could, at the age of 10 or thereabouts, look pityingly upon a face that had moles near the eye. I supposed that it must have been because moles near the eyes reminded people of tears and tears meant sorrow.

  I rejoiced having a mole near the mouth; by the same token, a mole near the mouth meant that food was always at hand, that the person would never starve. It was better for a woman if the location were close to one side of the upper lip; that meant she would be the concubine of a rich, pampering man and would never be in want for the rest of her days.

  Fourth Aunt-on-father’s-side’s mole was a particularly large one; it hung – round, black and grotesque – between her nose and eye, and I sometimes wondered if, had somebody just twisted it off, would her fortunes change for the better?

  Her husband beat her continually, especially when he got drunk; her brood of children were, like herself, timid and silent and resentful. The mole – the mole that was causing all this – couldn’t it be removed somehow? I had the vague impression that moles could not be tampered with. They were the seal of judgment of some mighty power, and to try to remove them was to invite the wrath of this power.

  After some time, I gave up the hope of Aunt’s mole falling off by itself, and the almost daily witnessing of the cruel hardships and privations she was subjected to convinced me that to have a mole near the eye was the saddest thing that could happen.

  The buttocks could have overcome the evil effects of the mole, but poor Aunt, although not thin, had extremely flat, fleshless buttocks.

  Now a woman, it was ordained, must have round fleshy buttocks if she were to bring good luck to her husband and enjoy prosperity herself. Grandfather used to complain that he never got rich because Grandmother had unfortunate buttocks; since she enjoyed relative prosperity in her bridal-wear business, I could only come to the conclusion that other lucky features of her physiognomy must have successfully cancelled out the perfidy of the flat buttocks.

  But poor Aunt had no redeeming feature. The elderly relatives had been heard to comment, sadly, on her thin lips, her manner of walk in which her feet pointed outwards – a really unfortunate thing! Whatever wealth was coming was always being pushed away – her low narrow forehead, the failure of the tip of her little finger to extend beyond the last joint line of the finger next to it. Crossing this line signified the overcoming of a most crucial life hurdle, and Aunt had again failed in this. Some people tried to make up for this deficiency by letting the fingernail on the little finger grow long enough to extend beyond this fateful line, but Aunt had never bothered to do that.

  I remember that on one of the rare occasions when she joked and laughed – even then, the sad pinched look never left her face so that when she laughed, the lines gathered in a rictus that was quite frightening to see – she took me aside, patted me on the buttocks and commented that unlike hers, mine would see me through life smoothly and would I remember her once I became the concubine or wife of a rich man?

  Second Aunt-on-mother’s-side, who was enormously fat, always found difficulty in getting up from the low cane chair that she used to sit in outside her house after dinner, picking her teeth and chatting amiably with the neighbours. She had extremely fleshy buttocks; I thought they made her look grotesque, but was ready to concede that if they had brought in all those heavy solid gold chains and stacks of gold bangles and goodness knows what else hidden in her jewellery box, there should be little reason to regret them.

  It was debatable whether the prosperity came from her buttocks or her husband’s, for he too was very prominent in that feature. Although he was by no means fat, the protuberance was most pronounced, and husband and wife taking a leisurely walk side by side on an evening, viewed from behind, would provoke much envy with regard to the double share of Fate’s favours.

  As if still dissatisfied with inflicting Fourth Aunt’s body with a whole range of unfortunate features, Fate had gone on to wreak more vengeance by making her marry a man who had numerous moles on his ears. Fourth Uncle’s left ear, I remember being told, was strewn with moles, some quite large, some small and indistinct. This was the surest mark of a faithless husband, a lecher and a scoundrel. Aunt swore that when they were first married, there were no moles on his ear; they seemed to have appeared at a critical period early on in their married life.

  Much of Aunt’s su
ffering stemmed not so much from Uncle’s womanizing, as from the fact that he had no money left to give her after it. Violent quarrels ensued. Often, Aunt, miserable and humiliated, sent her children around the neighbourhood to borrow rice or sugar or coffee.

  Uncle, after a drink or two, sometimes grew expansive and called his terrified children to come around him, talking to them all the time with good-natured garrulousness.

  “We are poor,” he said with a chuckle, “because of your mother’s buttocks – see how flat and useless they are – and because of the moles on my ear. But then, you know, I can’t help being what I am.”

  Full Moon

  The full moon, startlingly luminous in the night sky and linked, in the child’s mind, with fairy maidens who played on magic flutes and bathed in silver streams, invited the small forefinger to point to it, so that others too might see and comment on its wondrous beauty.

  My forefinger was slapped down immediately, and then, remembering what I ought not to have forgotten, hid my hand fearfully in the folds of my dress.

  “Do you want your ear cut off?” cried my older, wiser companion. “Have you forgotten Ah Hee?” I remembered Ah Hee well. His right ear was almost falling off; an infection was ravaging it and threatening to sever it from his head. The grocer’s boy had pointed to a full moon.

  I went to sleep with a hand on each ear and was relieved, the next morning, to find that no such fate had befallen. In my dream afterwards, the full moon, large and vengeful, converted itself into a gigantic metal disc, approached me, and turned its cutting edge towards my right ear so that I screamed and woke.

  A nervous child, my elders said, and a triangular piece of yellow cloth with some prayer words sewn onto it was given me to wear. Sweat-stained, food-soiled, the amulet rested comfortably against my chest for the greater part of childhood.

  The hospital with its outhouse for the insane was not far from our house. I was brought along on several occasions, when the elders visited sick relatives or friends. A woman who had once worked as a servant for us was in the outhouse for the insane, and from time to time she was allowed out of the barred cells for she was reasonably well-behaved.

  She said to me: “Would you like a biscuit?” She offered to open the tin my mother had brought for her, but I hid behind my mother, afraid to look upon the blotched face with the wild masses of hair that she patted with both hands each time she bent close to speak to anyone.

  I remember my mother kept asking her if there was anything she wanted, and she kept replying, “Thank you very much. You are very kind, but there is nothing I want.” She got up and did a dance, a kind of ronggeng with a sad, tearful smile on her face.

  On nights when the moon was full, the cries of the women in the cells could be clearly heard in our house and I heard my mother say that while Ah Suat Ee was generally quiet and well-behaved, sadly dancing the ronggeng for anyone who requested it, on full moon nights she became uncontrollably violent.

  Her daughter-in-law, who faithfully visited her every day with a tiffin carrier of food, told us confidentially that on those nights, she would throw herself against the metal bars of the cell, wailing piteously. She would quieten down for a while, her head inclined against the metal bars, its wild masses of hair streaked with grey streaming about her face, her hands gripping the bars. Sometimes, however, she wailed through thenight, and the hospital attendant would shout at her for disturbing the peace and threaten to cane her as if she were a child.

  With the child’s love for stories, I had always gravitated towards any group of adults who appeared to be telling tales or exchanging gossip; often they would shoo me away, but I always managed to linger on the edges of adult conversation, carrying away with me awesome tales of avenging ghosts and blood and death. The wails of demon women crying for their mortal lovers became intermingled with mournful cries from the hospital outhouse on nights of the full moon.

  Ah Suat Ee, long before her death, had become a demon woman howling for her lover. The real cause of Ah Suat Ee’s mental breakdown had not been love, but money. Having been cheated by an unscrupulous relative of all her life savings which she had put in a tontine, she had lost her mind.

  On full moon nights, some men repaired in stealth to graves of women who, like Ah Suat Ee, had died in the violence of dementia, or who, like the mysterious young woman in our neighbourhood whose name I have forgotten, had died giving birth and cursing the faithless father of her child. The spirits of these women were invoked, and requests made for prize-winning numbers in lotteries. In the light of the full moon, these spirits sometimes obliged their human supplicants, sometimes exacting terrible payments for their favours.

  As far as I knew, no one had gone to Ah Suat Ee’s grave or to the mysterious young woman’s grave to ask for numbers. But long after the ravings of these two unhappy women had been stilled in the earth, I heard them, saw them, still in their white death clothes. I pleaded with them but still they would cut off my ear and rebuke me for pointing to the full moon.

  The Anniversary

  Hong is my aunt’s cousin’s nephew; we found that out by pure accident when we were studying together at the university.

  Finding the relationship too remote to allow for that degree of confidence which he supposed could subsist only between close kin, he simply cut through all the consanguineous convolutions and called himself my cousin. This way, he did not lay himself open to the idle conjectures of fellow undergraduates who saw us together very often – at lectures, in the university canteen, taking evening walks in the campus. The other protection was in our very visible incompatibility, for while I appeared a robust tomboy, Hong was of that species of small-framed, bent and cowed-looking male that must provoke a certain measure of pity.

  So, thus doubly defended against the speculations of our friends on the campus. Hong, with all the earnestness of a young man in love, confided in me. He was deeply, hopelessly in love with a girl named Teresa; she had been an undergraduate for only a year, having failed her first-year examinations. A quiet, pretty girl, she had attracted at least half-a-dozen young men in campus, including her tutor, but had shown not the slightest inclination to reciprocate that interest.

  Hong persevered to worship her from the long distance imposed both by her coolness and his shyness. Teresa applied to go into the Teachers’ Training Institute. It was a two-year programme, which combined coursework and practical training. She spent much time at the library, preparing lesson notes, making teaching aids, and was apparently contented and happy.

  All this Hong knew, through whatever secret device he had set up to monitor her movements. He seemed to know exactly what she was doing, when and with whom. He told me one day, with an ecstatic glow on his pale thin face, that he had seen her at a cinema with her sister, and had briefly greeted her. She had smiled in response.

  Hong talked about her incessantly in my presence; it had occurred to me long before that he sought no advice, desired no encouragement. All he wanted was a ready listener, and somehow the discovery that I was a cousin of sorts fitted me for that role. He confided that as soon as he had obtained his degree, he would approach her and make clear his feelings. He was very firm on the point that he would make no approach till he had obtained his degree, obviously believing that this would vastly improve his chances.

  After graduation, the opportunities to meet lessened as we went our separate ways. Our paths crossed every once in a while, though, and on one occasion he mentioned having met Teresa and that he had reason to be hopeful.

  Almost two years elapsed before we met again, and this time it was to announce, with all the fervour and intensity that a habitually shy and reticent man could muster, that Teresa had agreed to marry him. Her grandmother had passed away at about this time, and there would have to be a six-month wait, in compliance with some old custom.

  I met them once during the period of their engagement. He had gained weight, and looked much better. There was a new confidence, a new happiness. W
hereas Teresa had been merely pretty in a quiet sort of way, she was now glowingly beautiful. It was clear that they were deeply in love. During the lunch, I was constantly aware of being an obtrusive third.

  Teresa was to fly to Penang at the end of the six months and perform some rites at her grandmother’s grave that would signal the end of the mourning period. There were a whole host of elderly relatives in Penang who would be very pleased by this show of filial piety. Then she would be ready to fly back to Singapore for her wedding, a very quiet and private affair to which they had only invited their closest friends. As the confidante who had patiently listened to Hong during all those years when his timid heart was ready to burst with the secret love it harboured, I felt entitled to be part of that select circle.

  I teased the happy couple mercilessly about the letters they were always writing to each other, even when they were separated for only a few days. During the four days when she was in Penang for her grandmother’s funeral, Teresa wrote no fewer than six letters, and no doubt received as many.

  We did not meet again for some months, although Hong rang me up several times ‘just to talk’. His engagement had made no difference to the ready flow of confidential talk; only now it was the happy, accepted lover talking of future plans, not the uncertain restless young man driven by doubts.

  I remembered, in a vague sort of way, that Teresa was due to fly home from Penang on the 19th. Therefore when the news of the terrible crash was broadcast in the evening news bulletin, I had an uneasiness which I could not dispel until I had rung Hong up. He was not at home.

  Meanwhile, more details about the crash were carried over the radio and television; there were no survivors. The plane had exploded in mid-air and scattered over a radius of several kilometres, in a desolate area of lallang and secondary jungle. All the 112 people aboard had been killed.