The next morning, he reported that he had heard and seen nothing, but conceded that he felt a strange chill lasting for a few minutes, which could have been the duration of the ghost’s visit.
The campus is strangely hushed in the evening, except for the chirping of nocturnal insects and the occasional cry of a bird; this is the time when the soldier emerges to make his rounds, although nobody sees him now or hears his heavy boots crunching the gravel outside or creaking the floorboards inside the houses.
Teng has recovered, though still pale and wan from his illness, and has settled down in another job. Although he never talks about the soldier, he must sometimes dream of him, as Rose and I occasionally do. Never pleasant dreams these; for the hollow cough, the footsteps, the touch in the darkness, through the distorting medium of the dream, become even more terrifying.
They Do Return ...
but Gently Lead Them Back
Ah Cheng Peh’s second wife returned even before the seventh day, in fact on the very evening after her burial in the cemetery. The sackcloth cowls of mourning were hardly removed when somebody saw her standing near the ancestral altar that held the portraits of two generations of forebears.
She was dressed as when alive – in neat long-sleeved blouse with a row of jade ornaments for buttons, sarong and embroidered slippers. She stood there saying nothing and when the person who saw her quickly signalled to the others to come and look, she was gone.
She appeared once again that evening, to a different member in the household, and everyone wondered if they had been amiss in any part of the funeral arrangements, for this return could signify displeasure. They offered joss-sticks and prayers before the altar newly set up for her, and waited to see if she would return again on the seventh day.
The floor was strewn with ashes so that if she came, her footprints would show. Her bed was all in readiness with a clean bedsheet and pillow-cover, while on the altar were two lit candles and a pot of freshly cooked rice with a small empty bowl and a pair of delicate ivory chopsticks beside it. In the morning, the family did find the footprints in the ash, there was a hollow in the pillow where the head had lain, and when the cover of the rice pot was lifted, it was found that the cooked rice had been disturbed a little at the edges with the tips of chopsticks.
After the seventh day appearance, Ah Cheng Mm never came again, not even in dreams, to her family and relatives.
An old servant of ours, whose husband had died when she was quite young, said he too had returned on the seventh clay. The level of the water in the glass left on the altar table was considerably lower, and the two fish left with the cooked rice bore the imprint of fingers.
There were no such preparations for an uncle’s return when he died, for by that time, customs such as these had been left behind. My cousins and I, with the irreverence and brashness of young people who believed that their education had made them superior to the older people around them, talked endlessly, on the night after he was buried, of ghosts and visitations from the dead. What nonsense, said one of my cousins, a young fellow who prided himself on his knowledge of science,
Superstition. Tricks of the imagination. Auto-suggestion. We were all in a light-hearted mood most unbecoming of a house of mourning, but I suppose because we were young and westernized, we were accepted with resignation by the older members in the family who, in their black clothes and sepulchral expressions, flitted about in the darkness like so many ghosts themselves.
We dredged our memories for ghost stories to share, each story becoming more outrageous than the next. Fancy embellished memory in the most extravagant manner; I remember I told one tale after another of ghost lovers, of a dead nun, of a murdered family. I told the story of my classmate in Primary one, a girl whose name I could not quite remember – was it Beng Khim? – who had died in a road accident and was seen by some, including our class teacher – actually sitting at her desk in the classroom.
The principal of a boys’ school that one of my cousins attended had collapsed at his desk. He died of a heart attack on the way to hospital and soon after that a teacher, staying back to mark his pupils’ exercises, heard footsteps approaching the principal’s office which could be seen from the staff room. The teacher turned, saw the back of a man entering the office, and with thoughts only of nabbing a burglar or intruder, ran out to accost him. He saw no one; the door to the office was locked, and he was about to conclude that it had been the work of an over-wrought imagination, when on impulse he looked in through a small window into the office and saw, sitting at the desk and writing something on a piece of paper, the principal himself. So life-like was he – the shirt he was wearing was a favourite grey-striped one – that for a moment the teacher even forgot that he had attended his funeral only the week before, so that when he looked up, the teacher blurted out a “Good evening, Mr Chiam” with the nervous flutter of a schoolboy caught peeping. The ghost said nothing; he merely looked, unblinkingly, and it was then that the teacher was overcome by a sense of foreboding.
Making his rounds later in the evening, the school jaga found him in the corridor outside the office, distraught and trembling. He was incoherent for a few days and was on sick leave for a fortnight. When he recovered, he asked to be transferred to another school.
The story of the principal’s ghost was hushed up by the school authorities for fear of creating fear and panic in the school, but somehow it spread, in hushed awe-stricken whispers, and a few others claimed to have seen the ghost of the principal.
A Buddhist monk was called in to perform the necessary rites of propitiation. He chanted throughout the night because the ghost was a powerful one and could only be persuaded to leave after sustained chanting of the special prayers to send it back to its home.
I remember what had struck me most about the whole incident was not the ghost’s appearance itself, but the fact that a man who, with his rotundity and loud coarse jokes was the very essence of life and earthiness, had been transformed into a spirit from the next world, able to evaporate into grey mists at the crowing of the rooster.
The only time I had seen Mr Chiam was when he came to my school with some visitors; I remember him clearly because of his very loud laugh as he was talking to the principal of my school. And now he was a ghost who stalked the earth and was, unaccountably, seen only by a chosen few.
Ghosts do return, said Lau Ah Sim, the wise and pious old woman in the town of my childhood, but when they do, gently lead them back. Call them by their name, then tell them to go back quickly to their new home. If they refuse, be patient with them, and gently lead them back.
I think Lau Ah Sim must have led back lots of ghosts in her time. Her assistance was sought when the ghost of a little girl began appearing to her family and disturbing them. The child ghost did no harm, but it was said that she was continually pestering the family in one way or another, touching them, tugging at their clothes, making odd noises in their ears. One member of the family fell ill as a result, and Lau Ah Sim was called in to chant prayers and lead the ghost back.
She made a trip to the girl’s grave in the cemetery, chanting prayers in her old tremulous timbre, and the ghost never did return. The little girl, in a last dream to her mother, had appeared to be asking for something. Lau Ah Sim declared that the daughter’s umbilical cord had to be burnt; the mother promptly went to the cupboard where she kept her children’s umbilical cords separately wrapped up in reel paper, took out the one bearing the girl’s name on the outside, and burnt it.
Your daughter is now reborn, she will never pester you any more, said Lau Ah Sim.
My disbelieving cousin guffawed at the tale in great amusement, but even he must have felt uneasy that night when the dogs started howling in the darkness outside, for that meant a ghost had come. The howling was an agonized, prolonged wail and there was no full moon.
Nobody said anything, all went to sleep quietly. The howling continued and finally trailed off into a thin wail, and one of the aunts quietl
y got up to light a joss-stick and place it in the urn before uncle’s portrait on the altar, to lead the ghost gently back.
K.C.
K.C. never told me about his rather colourful – to say the least – life in the five years I had known him. Or at least he never told me in a systematic, deliberate way. It was always the incidental mention of somebody or some incident in his conversations which led me to interrupt and say, “Rome? Monastery?” or “Did you just say your father was Wee – ? Why, you never told me!” as if a five-year friendship entitled one to know everything about one’s friend.
K.C. never told anyone else though – he had a great impatience for trivia, and to him details about one’s life were trivia and not worth telling. Over the years, I had pieced together whatever information I had about K.C. from himself or from the few people who knew him.
He came from a very wealthy family; his father was none other than Wee——, whose financial empire stretched from Indonesia to Hong Kong, but clearly K.C. wanted none of that wealth. His family continually struggled with his refusal to conform to their plans for him.
In his younger clays, he went off to Italy to join a monastic order, one which practised extreme asceticism: the monks slept on stone floors in tiny cells even in winter, grew their own vegetables and never once raised their eyes to look upon a female form.
K.C.’s interest in Catholicism first began while in the university, and with characteristic single-mindedness, had actually abandoned his studies in law to devote himself to a study of the faith.
The thought of a contemplative life behind the high walls of a monastery obsessed him; within months he got baptized and was on his way to Italy. The extreme regimen of life in the monastery took a severe toll on his health and he developed tuberculosis. He returned home and was nursed back to health by his parents.
In spite of his unconventional behaviour which must have been most mortifying to his conservative parents, he was much loved by them. Indeed, he was the favourite of a family of four sons and three daughters. None of the others remotely resembled him in his eccentricity; they all became professionals, successful businessmen and businesswomen in their turn.
Someone who knew his family once told me that K.C. was so uninterested in material wealth and creature comforts that he never carried money around, never bought a new shirt or tie. His mother took care of everything, unobtrusively going into his room to slip a few hundred dollars into his trouser pocket, together with a clean handkerchief.
His parents had felt that a wife would solve all their problems; a wife and children could not fail to turn him into the conventional, respectable family man they wanted him to be. They were impatient to turn over their millions to him.
Their task was made no easier by K.C.’s total indifference to women. It was neither the cultivated indifference of the superior male nor the cynicism of the misogynist; it was simply that women – at least during that period of his life – did not fit into his scheme of pleasure.
His pleasures were purely intellectual; his being naturally bashful, and his rather oversimplified view of women as fragile creatures who nevertheless possessed remarkable powers for keeping their men in a state of thrall if they wished to, kept him away from them all the while he was in the university, and made him the oddity in a campus known for its Lotharios.
His mother tried to matchmake him with a soft-spoken, decidedly genteel Indonesian Chinese girl, the daughter of a wealthy timber magnate, but the activity was all on their side for when the subject was broached, he simply burst out laughing. Mixed with all that erudition and spirituality was an irrepressible sense of humour.
Musing over a delightful piece of gossip which I had heard, I finally confronted him with it one day. He chuckled and made no attempt at denial. His resourceful mother had actually planted a beautiful woman in his room to awaken his libido, for the poor misguided parent had concluded that it was the best thing to do to interest him in women and marriage.
She waited anxiously to see the success of her efforts, and at the end of two hours, went to knock timidly on the door and ask whether they wanted any supper. K.C. was not to be found; the girl was perched prettily in one corner, patiently awaiting his return. How he had slipped out without his mother’s notice she could hardly imagine.
“You were in a room with a beautiful woman and nothing happened?” I teased.
“Nothing happened,” he grinned.
And yet, I suspected he was far from being the virginal ascetic-intellectual he made himself out to be. There was a period in his life – possibly after his recovery from tuberculosis when he took on a job in the Philippines – when he got involved with women. He was not particularly good-looking, being tall, stooped and skinny, but he had a charm that was irresistible, and his sense of humour, his tremendous zest for life, attracted all who met him.
I met him under rather unusual circumstances. Being a non-driver, and hopelessly inept on the road, I had, on several occasions, fallen foul of traffic laws for pedestrians.
On one occasion, bewildered by what I perceived to be conflicting signals at a very complicated junction, I had ventured right into the middle of the junction, causing at least four vehicles to screech to an abrupt stop and at least two irate drivers to glare at me from their windows. The traffic policeman untangled the mess before motioning me to the other side of the road.
Blushing, I faced him, aware of a knot of curious onlookers. And then I had an idea. I had often been mistaken for a Japanese woman; and so, f faced the disapproving policeman who asked for my particulars in English.
I said haltingly: “I – Japanese. No spik Englees!” The policeman was about to close his little book and wave me on when a man stepped forward and said, in the same deliberative lilt, “She no Japanese. She Catherine Lim. Spik Englees and write Englees!”
I stared at him, and then we burst out laughing. The policeman, somewhat confused, let me off with a warning.
“How did you know me?” I asked delightedly, expecting that he would declare himself a fan.
“I read your book,” he said, “In fact, I’ve got it here. I was curious, after the reviews, but found it disappointing.”
The deflated ego of a writer does not normally admit of any politeness or friendliness, but I had been so taken in by the novelty of the situation and was at the same time so impressed by the refreshing candour of this stranger that I continued to laugh in good humour.
“But I did like the story of the old woman who dreamt of the Goddess Kuan Yin,” he said, not by way of softening the severity of his earlier remark, but as a continuation of the natural flow of his thoughts.
“I had an experience akin to that once –” He paused. I quickly said, “I would love to hear about it.”
“Maybe one day,” he grinned before moving off, and I was disappointed that all the while he had been talking to me and waving my book about, it had never occurred to him to ask for my autograph.
I next saw K.C. in a public auditorium. I had attended a public lecture given by a visiting expert on Asian religions, and there he was sitting in the front row, listening intently. It turned out that his knowledge of Asian religions was more extensive and profound than the expert’s, but this could be perceived by only a few in the audience through the drift of his questions and the substance of the comments he made.
As I was leaving the auditorium after the talk, I felt a light tap on the shoulder and turned round to see K.C. grinning and asking, “And how’s the new book coming along?” I had told him, at our first meeting, I was working on another collection of short stories.
How do I explain the attraction that K.C. had for me? He has been dead these six months and I still have that sealed letter which he made me promise not to read till a year after his death, but I am convinced that it was not the attraction of a woman for a man; rather it was the compelling power of an individuality, nay, an eccentricity that stood out all the more in the midst of relentless conformity. It was the sheer p
ower of a sense of purpose uncomplicated by considerations of wealth or public opinion; it was the love of life, the zest for knowledge and new experiences; it was above all the sparkling wit and sense of humour which was equally at home with urbane satire and earthy ribaldry.
Perhaps it was also the very unusual circumstances of his life – being born into a rich family, renouncing wealth and influence for a stint in a monastery, surviving a bout of tuberculosis to plunge into deep, philosophical studies, including Buddhism.
His life had all the trappings of a true tale of romance and must, in a city where lives predictably follow the sequence of job, marriage, family and respectability, fascinate if not captivate. Yet, looking at K.C., looking at the cheap cotton shirt, at the terribly outmoded pants, one would not invest him with any of this romantic aura.
He was always reading books and enthusiastically recommending this book or that for me. We shared an interest in literature, philosophy and the supernatural. K. C. mentioned a seance he had attended during his stay in Italy (that was when I learnt of his stint in the monastery) and that he saw what appeared to be a spirit, but was convinced there was some trickery in the whole affair.
His attitude towards the supernatural was an odd mix of cynicism and naivete; for instance, those cases of psychic phenomena that scientists had conceded were inexplicable he held with extreme skepticism, yet he was profoundly convinced that he had had three previous lives, one of which he could remember clearly.
Some people regarded him as a genius teetering on the brink of insanity; I simply found him one of the most interesting people imaginable and one with whom I could be completely at ease.
I was aware that our relationship might give rise to glib speculation. Moving easily between my world of conventional values and modes and K.C.’s maverick world where these values and modes never operated, I was conscious of some curiosity among friends about the nature of our relationship. But K.C., who had created his own world and was completely comfortable in it, was never bothered. That made for an open, uncomplicated relationship that one cherishes for life, whether with man or woman.
The Catherine Lim Collection Page 24
