The Catherine Lim Collection

by Catherine Lim

  The Song Of Golden Frond

  “ ... to teach in song the lessons you have learned in suffering.”

  (From The Woman’s Book Of Superlatives)

  Golden Frond who died more than 40 years ago sang a joyous song because she was special.

  She was left on Grandmother’s doorstep when she was three by a very frightened woman who was either her mother or kidnapper; the woman asked for the promised money and left quickly. Grandmother brought the child into the house and scrutinised her closely, noting the scabs on her head in between the poor tufts of hair, the swollen belly, the legs crooked from malnutrition. The child stared at Grandmother, biting a corner of her dress. She had no knickers. Grandmother was not daunted. Proper food, regular baths, large doses of her home-made brews to de-worm even the most infested stomachs: the transformation could be startling so that within a year, the child would no longer be recognisable. The evidence was there in the semicircle of her healthy-looking girls of varying ages, just now watching and giggling at the newcomer: in their time, their scabs and lice and worms had disappeared under Grandmother’s capable hands. Grandmother had a household of eight bondmaids then, the most skilful being put to work in her business of making hand-sewn beaded bridal slippers, and the rest to all manner of household work. As the older ones left to be married off, Grandmother replenished the supply of labour by taking in new ones, the youngest acceptable age being about that of Golden Frond, as Grandmother had no patience with babies.

  But that was not yet her name when she appeared before Grandmother and the semicircle of giggling fellow bondmaids.

  “Dustbin.”

  “Dumb. Call her ‘Dumb’. She has not answered any of our questions.”

  “Bad smell.”

  The bondmaids, when they were sold into the household, were given new names, but not nearly as humble: ‘Pig’, ‘Prawn’, ‘Wind-in-the-Head’, ‘Female’.

  “My name is to be ‘Golden Frond’.”

  The sheer audacity of the claim, lisped through lips still rimmed with snot and dirt, was not without its appeal. Grandmother, taken aback, laughed. Her laughter being a most rare departure from a severity of mien all the more fearsome because it always preceded a resounding knock on the head with powerful knuckles, the bondmaids quickly took advantage of it, and laughed in their turn.

  “And why is your name to be ‘Golden Frond’?”

  For answer, the child broke into song, her voice a pitiful little quaver, accompanying her words with well-rehearsed clapping and stamping motions. She stopped, stared at the audience, and when nothing happened and nobody came forward with money or food, she began to recite a poem or bits of poems put together, and when still nothing happened, in desperation the child lifted her dress, waggled her bottom and gathered her lips into a soft flower bud for a kiss, completing the ‘Bad Woman’ routine.

  Grandmother laughed again, shaking her head.

  Golden Frond was allowed to keep her name and over the years rose in beauty to match the splendour of that name while the others correspondingly sank to match the grossness of theirs: Golden Frond, like a bright-faced, slender-limbed goddess moved among a brood of squat, snub-nosed peasant girls with names redolent of rice fields, latrines and life’s meanness.

  Some suspicion attached to her unusual beauty, especially her very fair complexion and curling hair.

  “Serani” the bondmaids whispered. There was probably some Eurasian blood in the child; Grandmother once told the story of a village woman whose child was born with blue eyes and was immediately given away.

  Golden Frond, thus special, stood apart from the rest. When she was five, she was put to simple tasks such as separating out the bridal slipper beads according to size or colour. Sometimes she nodded over the little piles of beads but was jerked awake by Grandmother’s knuckles on her head, but mostly she completed her work well and did not make mistakes.

  When Golden Frond was five years old, Grandfather was 60, First Uncle, Grandfather’s firstborn, was 38 and First Uncle’s firstborn, Older Cousin, was 13.

  Golden Frond’s work, at five years, was to serve the three men in the household in the following ways: in the morning, she listened for the first sounds of Grandfather’s waking up, crackling sounds of a prolonged and laboured clearing of early morning phlegm from the throat. She then brought up to his room a tray with a mug of hot tea and a hot face towel. She would wait for Grandfather to finish drinking the tea and wiping his face, neck and armpits and then take the empty mug and used towel downstairs. The same routine was followed for First Uncle whose room was just across the corridor; the alerting sound in this case was the gush of morning piss into the chamberpot. Golden Frond listened for the last hiss, then went up with the tea and towel. There was an extra towel for Older Cousin who shared the room with his father. In the evening, Golden Frond took up two chamberpots, one for each of the rooms, in readiness for the night. She could manage only one chamberpot at a time, and once, she dropped the large enamel utensil, which went clanging all the way downstairs. She watched, frightened, as it finally settled at the bottom of the stairs, badly dented. Fortunately, Grandmother was not at home at the time, and the bondmaid called ‘Pig’, who did not like her, said, “I’ll tell Grandmother when she comes back, and she will give you more knocks on your head and pinches on your thighs!”

  At five, she was too young to carry the filled, sometimes overbrimming pots down the long flight of steps in the morning, and an older bondmaid was assigned the duty, but when she reached the age of 11, the duty fell on her. Her beauty was already conspicuous at that age and visitors, watching her arrange beads or cut paper patterns would say to Grandmother in a whisper, “That child’s very pretty. She looks different from the others,” and Grandmother would say, “Ssh. Don’t put ideas in her head. She has to earn her keep like everybody else.”

  When Golden Frond was 11 years old, Grandfather was 66, First Uncle was 44 and Older Cousin was 19.

  “Come. Come here.”

  The young man who had been watching the child all the while that she was carrying the chamberpot to his room and placing it carefully on a little square of mat, sat on the edge of his bed with his fat legs wide apart and a smile playing on his face. He had been handsome only up to his 15th year and then an illness which no amount of help from the temple mediums had been able to cure, blew his body up into grotesque proportions and sank his eyes into appalling cushions of fat. Some said his brains too had been softened by the illness which accounted for his odd behaviour. Grandmother had grimly sent for his mother (who had gone back to live with her own parents when Older Cousin was but a child), but the woman under one pretext or another put off the day of return, until Grandmother saw through her wiles and dismissed her completely from all family matters. “He has no mother; he is to be pitied,” she would say.

  “Come here.”

  Bondmaids never disobeyed masters, young or old.

  His trousers were unbuttoned and he watched her, grinning. She stood facing him uncertainly, conscious that he was doing a bad thing and wanted her to be part of it.

  “Come here!” His voice rose to an imperious shout; the grin disappeared in a rictus of pure annoyance.

  At that moment, somebody from downstairs called her name and the child, unlocked from the terror, spun round and ran downstairs, and into a circle of light and loving in the centre of which was old Ah Por, her gentle protectress. Old Ah Por, almost blind, a mere wisp of a woman, was more spirit than flesh in the last years of her life spent in Grandmother’s household. She was Grandmother’s much revered half sister who had gone into a nunnery in China as a girl and then, in her old age, returned to die in the house where she had been born. She did not die till six years later, when Golden Frond had reached the age of 17, and during this time, the girl, put to the task of taking care of the old, half-blind, helpless woman, combing her hair, feeding her, massaging her legs with embrocation oil, felt the thrilling sense of being protected herself. Old Ah P
or’s presence threw a golden cordon of security against the menacing shadows around.

  For the truth was that as she grew into womanhood, she felt the dark, turbulent world of Grandfather, First Uncle and Older Cousin with their incessant demands and appetites, closing in upon her, as it had already closed in upon her sister bondmaids, pulling them into its darkness.

  One day, when she was about 12, she passed Grandfather’s room and saw through the door that was only partially closed, Grandfather on the bed on top of the bondmaid Pig, Pig’s trousers lying in a round heap on the floor and her waist-string a snake-coil on the heap, and a few days later, as she was walking down the stairs, she again caught a glimpse of Pig (or was it Bun?) being pulled into First Uncle’s room and saw the door firmly closing upon them. Older Cousin, monstrously fat, prowled the house, sniffing and gurgling, wanting his rightful share of the spoils. Grandmother moved resignedly in this turbulent world of men and appetites not of her making.

  “They are farmyard roosters, all,” she said grimly by way of explanation, “that go mad with the smell of first blood. What do you expect of roosters in the midst of hens and pullets?”

  The sinister shadows drew closer and were repelled by the radiance of Ah Por’s gentle goodness, for Ah Por, incessantly praying to the deities, had become one herself. Still in this world but no longer of it, she spoke to Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, as to an intimate. No meat touched her lips, in order to be worthy of the Goddess. Golden Frond loved to prepare her meals of rice porridge and soya bean curd, and get ready the joss sticks and flowers for her daily worship at the Goddess’s altar. Upon this incense-filled world of the pure of heart, the tumult of blood and groin could not intrude, and so Golden Frond stayed close by the side of Old Ah Por. She could feel the heavy breathing of desire sometimes come very close, and hear the sharpness of thwarted desire in the men’s curses upon a burst button or a missing penknife or soup that was too salty, men’s curses ringing with the full scatology of the most private parts and odours of woman’s body. Yet she felt safe and at ease, and sang a joyous song as she moved about in her duties.

  When she was 17 years old, Ah Por died. Golden Frond, returning with a warmed bowl of porridge, found her slumped in her chair, her spirit already flown, as she had so often intimated, to be with Kuan Yin.

  Golden Frond wept, her heart breaking. Who was to protect her now? The world of the howling blackness would break upon her soon. This was when she had reached the age of 17; Grandfather was 72, First Uncle was 50 and Older Cousin was 25.

  “Come here.”

  The old man’s voice, firm and authoritative, came through the open door of his room as she was hurrying past. She stopped, head bowed, heart beating.

  “Come here.”

  It turned out he only wanted the back-knocking.

  “The weather’s getting too cold,” he said brusquely by way of explanation, without looking at her. Cold weather made old bones ache, so wives and bondmaids stood behind masters and gently knocked their backs with rhythmic small clenched fists until told to stop.

  “Start,” he said, turning his back to her, still not looking at her and continuing with the mixing of inks at his desk.

  She knocked gently on his back, moving her small balled fists expertly up and down and across the broad expanse of his powerful back. The large, heavy clock on the wall ticked the minutes away. The back, under the impact of the diligently working fists, began to ripple with desire. The old man said, “Stop, that’s enough,” and swung round, and would have caught her by the wrist and pulled her to his bed, as he had done with innumerable bondmaids if a voice had not called then and saved her, a second time. It was not old Ah Por’s voice, for that had been stilled forever and Ah Por’s ashes now lay in an urn in the temple. It was the voice of a man, calling her. She was saved by a man.

  He was a scholar cousin who had been invited into the household by Grandmother; they were told to call him Older Brother. He came with his crate of books, shortly after Ah Por’s death and was given her room, still redolent of the joss fumes. He was gaunt, unsmiling, with the scholar’s taciturnity and impatience with trifles. The bondmaids, their eyes lowered as they moved about, watched him closely and by the second week, were able to conclude that he was unlike the other three and would leave them alone. Indeed, they placed him squarely outside the generality of men: he showed kindness to women.

  “He did not strike me when I spilt the tea.” “I was slow, but he didn’t say anything.” “He said ‘Thank you’ when I brought him the blanket.”

  His kindness at first intrigued them, then drew them to him like moths; they could not stop whispering about him.

  “He’s already 30 but he’s not married.”

  “I heard Grandmother say he won’t marry till he passed some important examinations in China.”

  “I heard Grandmother say they have found a wife for him in China.”

  “Scholars like him don’t want to marry.”

  “I don’t want him to marry and go away to China. I want him to stay here and go on protecting me, as Ah Por would have done.”

  The words were never uttered, only deeply felt by Golden Frond, each time she crept into the circle of whispering bondmaids, but never leaving her own safe, reassuring circle of this man’s presence. For the austere nobility of his scholar’s mien and manner, like the gentle piety of Ah Por before him, had the power of repulsing the unruly forces in the house so that Golden Frond had stepped from one warm shelter into another, and could continue to feel safe. She hung around him, anticipating his every need. He hardly spoke to her but she knew every fibre of his body resonated to every distress signal from hers. Otherwise, how was she to explain his sudden appearance at the doorway to the kitchen, at precisely the moment when Older Cousin, importuning and slobbering, moved aside the braids of hair on her neck to kiss her? In the blistering scorn of his look, as he stood there in the doorway, tall and gaunt, Older Cousin had slunk away. Or his sudden loud call to her from his room downstairs (and he so seldom called to her) at the moment that Grandfather decided that the back-knocking should stop and swung round with menace?

  She worshipped him; she was ready to die for him. The sounds of the men in the house awakening in the morning – the crackling expectorations of phlegm from throat, the steamy hissing of urine into chamber-pots – continued to galvanise bondmaids into feverish morning activity (a younger bondmaid, aged 10 years old, had taken over the tasks from her), but the sound she listened to was the shuffling of papers and books on desk and a small cough which she had learnt to distinguish from other coughs. In a sly and determined way, she had edged a fellow bondmaid out of the duty of making his bed and sweeping his room, and taken this duty upon herself, giving it every loving attention.

  Pig, who did not like her, complained secretly to Grandmother and told one or two more things besides.

  “Golden Frond, it is not proper for you to go so often to Older Brother’s room. You don’t have to clean it so often.”

  “Yes, Grandmother,” said Golden Frond and went on nevertheless. She thought of him as she lay awake at night, and turned over in her mind each of the words (never many) he had said to her during the day, detecting a new kindness here, a new depth of feeling there. Each of a man’s words, let drop in tenderness to a woman, is never left there but picked up by her and turned over and cast this way and that, to catch at more meaning, and if there is none, will soon gather around itself the meanings supplied by the heart’s yearning.

  She sang a joyous song in the refuge of his protective power.

  One day, while they were alone in the house (oh rare occasion!) he told her something. He said he was going away to China, and would be away for many months. He had this very important examination to take.

  Her eyes filled with tears which she was helpless to stop, no matter how much she blinked, bit her lips, bit a corner of her handkerchief, and so she stood there, more miserable than at any time in her life. He was standing with hi
s back to her, looking out of the window, upon a sea of old tiled roofs with desolate tufts of grass in the crevices and a flock of plaintive pigeons wheeling above. At the moment that he spun round upon hearing a small suppressed sob, she looked up at him, frightened and miserable, and when he walked to her, took her hand and led her to a chair, she knew the endurance had reached its end: She burst out in the full release of an overcharged heart. Her sobbing intensified with the gentle pressure of his hand upon her shoulder and the sound of his voice, barely audible, for he too was deeply moved: “Don’t cry.” How could she explain that a man’s kindness to a woman, more than his cruelty, drew tears?

  It turned out that though he was going to China, he was not going to take a wife. All those rumours about a wife waiting for him there were groundless and stupid, he said. She stared at him, hope breaking through the tear stains. The woman who in her imagination had tormented her for months, standing between them and blocking out their view of each other, was now vanquished. But what a hope! Worse than groundless, worse than stupid. She, a bondmaid of no parentage or name, the lowest of the low among women and he, a scholar of good family, destined for wealth and power.

  In the moment of her banishing the hope forever, he rose to promise its fulfilment.

  “I am going to make you my wife,” he announced with simple finality, “I shall make my wishes known to Grandmother who will see to arrangements for the required betrothal ceremony, and when I return from China, we shall be married.”

  He duly sought Grandmother’s permission, dismissed the protestations, requested her to make the necessary arrangements and then continued quietly with his studies. Grandmother later said to her close friends, “What could I do? Men must have their way.”

  In the months that Older Brother was away in China, the sense of peace and well-being continued, for by virtue of the betrothal, his absence, as much as had his presence, encircled her with safety, while all round her were the ragings of appetite and doom. One night, the silence was broken by the screams of the bondmaid called ‘Female’ who had sat up suddenly upon the sleeping mat she shared with another bondmaid, and then staggered up and out of the room in a delirium. Grandmother, waking up in a fright, went to her, calmed her and then returned her to her mat. Mystery surrounded her whereabouts in the next few days, for she disappeared from the house the next day and was not seen again. She was brought home from the hospital on a stretcher and died the next morning. The story pieced together by the bondmaids, whispering urgently among themselves, was this: a few days before the delirious outburst, Female, in the fourth month of her pregnancy, had been quietly taken by Grandmother and a friend to a village abortionist, a Malay woman extremely skilled with her hands, but the abortion was a mess and Female developed complications. Grandmother tried to still the fever with home-made brews, but it continued unabated and Female was finally taken to hospital in a trishaw. She got worse and died after a few days, still screaming in her delirium.