Ah Mun Cheir could make us popular at school with her kitchen magic, but I never once saw her pick up a book except to put it back on the shelf, or a newspaper except to fold it and put it out of the way. She used to shake her head when we were doing our homework and tell us not to read our books for too long because we were using up all the learning in them and leaving nothing for our brother, should we ever be sufficiently blessed to get one.
She had one day off every month when she went to her kongsi house in Yau Tet Shin Street. I asked her once what she did there and she just said, ‘Talk, loh!’ I could not see how anyone could talk for a whole day, but Mei told me many maids kept a bedspace at the kongsi in case they lost their jobs, and on days off they gathered to play cards and gossip. ‘What do they talk about for a whole day?’ I asked. She just rolled her eyes and said, ‘Us, of course.’
Apart from us there was one other subject about which Ah Mun Cheir possessed encyclopaedic knowledge, and that was ghosts. Ghosts and superstitions and the awful fate that awaited wayward children. She knew all there was to know about the Ten Courts of Chinese Hell and precisely what terrible punishment had to be endured for what wrong deed on earth. If she caught me telling a lie she was quick to tell me that the Chamber of Tongue Ripping was waiting for me. If she thought I was being disrespectful to my elders I would end up frozen in the Chamber of Ice. There was no limit to the ghastly fates that were in store for our souls, except she didn’t say souls. What she said was ‘ghosts’.
Ghosts meant further confusion. On the one hand there was Ah Mun Cheir and her good ghosts, as in ancestor spirits, and bad ghosts who were far greater in number because they were, essentially, everyone else who had ever lived and died, although it appeared it was only the Chinese who qualified. Bad ghosts were always looking for an opportunity to do evil things to you even before you ended up in the Ten Courts of Hell. Ghosts lived in houses we were never to go near, they were often on the prowl at night, in certain months, in certain places, and if you were not aware of it you could walk right into a nest of them and your fate would be sealed forever. You might even step on one somewhere without knowing it and that would make you sick. In fact, whenever we fell sick that was just what Ah Mun Cheir would say, that we had stepped on a ‘dirty thing’ – ghosts were so bad she did not even like to use the word. She told us solemnly more than once that when little boys did a pee on the ground they always had to say jair mair, ‘please move aside’, to any spirit so they would not get peed on and offended. This one, at least, was gratifying to hear because it meant that there seemed to be something actually beneficial to being a girl.
All these were the ghosts of the afterlife. But then there were the ghosts of this life, namely foreigners. Malays were ma lai gwai, which means Malay devil; Indians were ke ling gwai, Indian devil; and the English were gwai lo, devil person. But as gwai also means ghost, then they were also Malay ghosts, Indian ghosts and English ghosts, and so we Chinese were to think anyone who was not Chinese was really a ghost.
Even that was not the end of it, because apart from Ah Mun Cheir and the Chinese in general, there was also the matter of my convent. Every time we went to chapel we had to drop onto one knee, make an imaginary cross, and say, ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’ When I first experienced this ritual I thought that somehow the gwai lo nuns, who were mostly Irish, must also be partly Chinese as they obviously believed in at least one ghost. But in fact it was more than that – these people actually believed that God was a ghost, and that was beyond even anything the Chinese could conjure up. And then again, if they were talking about their gwai lo God being the Holy Ghost then actually what they were saying was also Holy Devil, because gwai means both ghost and devil, but putting those two words together, Holy and Devil, was what the nuns called blasphemy and saying such a thing would probably have me enduring a Court in English Hell, which was a hell I was yet to really come to terms with.
Going with Ah Mun Cheir to the market that day was no surprise in itself, but what she said that time made me start to think that things might be changing again. The Ipoh wet market was in five big pavilions where you could buy just about anything, from turtles and monkeys to all manner of cold-blooded lizards and snakes. There was a pavilion for pork catering mainly for the Chinese, one for mutton and beef for the Malays, and others for fish, vegetables and chickens and such where there was something for everybody. It was a noisy place where every language in Malaya was shouted, never merely spoken, and wooden clogs clattered over wet and slippery concrete floors. Ah Mun Cheir often stopped to speak to other maids, chattering away so fast in Cantonese, or even the mysterious village dialect they shared, that I did not have the first clue what she was talking about. But I did understand that Ah Mun Cheir always managed to get in the last word. Ma used to say that Ah Mun Cheir was very good at che dai pao, which literally means ‘shooting off big cannons’, although ‘tell big fibs’ is what it actually means. No one’s story ended without Ah Mun Cheir topping it.
When I went to the market with my mother she allowed me to watch an old fortune-teller with a canary, and that morning I stopped as usual. And as usual when I was with Ah Mun Cheir, she pulled me away. So my first question that day was this: why did she stop me from watching?
‘That woman lie,’ she said. ‘Cannot trust, lah.’
It didn’t seem like much at the time, but I think it was the first occasion she had ever been moved to explain herself to me. I was encouraged to continue. ‘How do you know?’
‘Ah Ping tell me,’ she said, meaning Mr Yew’s old amah next door.
‘How does Ah Ping Cheir know?’ I asked.
‘Ah Ping know everything, lah.’
I scurried along beside her for a moment, pulled by her hand as her baggy samfoo pants flapped in my face. ‘Does she know why Mr Yew is digging for tin in his back garden?’
‘Hah? You talk nonsense.’
‘No I don’t. He’s digging for tin. I’ve seen it inside his tent.’
‘Nobody dig for tin inside tent. How to dig for tin in little hole like that?’
‘Isn’t Mr Yew a tin miner?’
‘Used to be tin miner,’ she said. ‘Not now, lah. Last mine near Pantai Remis. No one can find tin so close to sea like that. Big loss. He retire, move to Gopeng Road to relax.’
Later at home I looked up Pantai Remis and found it on the coast, just as Ah Mun Cheir had said. I was impressed. I said to Mei, ‘Did you know Mr Yew’s last tin mine was at Pantai Remis?’
She looked up from her book, and I expected her to make some scathing remark, but I didn’t fully realise yet that things were changing. ‘Is that so?’ is all she said.
Once again encouraged, I carried on. ‘Ah Mun Cheir says it’s a silly place for a tin mine and that’s why Mr Yew now lives next door.’
‘What does Ah Mun Cheir know about tin mining?’ she scoffed.
I knew this was a reasonable observation. What did Ah Mun Cheir know about anything, really, beyond the narrow confines of her experiences? We all found endless amusement in her understanding of basic anatomy, for instance, although controlling ourselves until she was out of earshot. If we had a blocked ear, whether it be from swimming or bathing, she would blow ardently into the other ear, expecting the water to be blown out the way it got in. Who knew where she got such ideas? However, I did know how she had come by her information about Mr Yew and his endeavours in the tin mining industry.
‘She says Ah Ping Cheir told her,’ I said.
‘She believes everything Ah Ping Cheir tells her, and most of it is che dai pao.’
I looked at Pantai Remis on the map. ‘Do you think Pantai Remis is a good place for tin mining?’
‘How should I know? Look it up in Pa’s books.’
I went to our father’s study, considered all the books lining the walls and wondered where to start. Confucius really wasn’t much help to an inquiring mind.
‘Try this one.’ I turned to
see Mei pulling a book from a shelf behind me. It was Handbook to British Malaya, and she flicked through the pages to a diagram: Active Tin Mining Fields in Malaya. ‘There you are. Where’s Pantai Remis?’
It was a map of the Malayan peninsula covered with black splotches, but there was no splotch marked Pantai Remis. ‘It’s not here,’ I said.
‘Then perhaps Ah Mun Cheir and Ah Ping Cheir don’t know what they are talking about,’ Mei said. ‘Anyway, that is not why he’s living next door. Ma says he only bought that house because it was cheap. No one wanted to live there because the Japanese lived there during the war.’
Ah Mun Cheir had explained herself to me, and now Mei was confiding in me. I could see that things were definitely on the up. ‘So do you think Ma is better at che dai pao than Ah Ping Cheir?’ I said.
Mei laughed, but it was not her usual mocking jeer. ‘She certainly is,’ she said. ‘You’d better remember it, too.’
In a week of changes, the biggest of all was during our next lesson with Mr Ho. Mei had again found an excuse not to be there, and Li had been sent onto the veranda to practise. I was still subject to the tapping pencil, chanting aloud over and over, yaht-yahn-yih, yaht-yahn-yih, without having a clue what it meant. When I had mastered the ear to Mr Ho’s satisfaction, he moved me on to the hand, bending over me and guiding my wrist as I wrote inside the little squares. Remember to watch the geese, he said. Of course, I said nothing.
Eventually he seemed satisfied with my attempts and told me to practise hard, which is what he always said. But that was when the usual routine changed. He took one of his large sheets of paper and wrote twelve characters. I recognised the opening to the Sahm Ji Ging. He started tapping his pencil again, the signal for me to chant the words, this time all twelve.
‘Yahn ji chor,’ I began, gently swaying to the pencil’s rhythm, and chanted through the words ten times before Mr Ho stopped tapping.
‘Now you know two hundred words, we start with the brain.’
He pointed his pencil at each three-character line in turn and began to explain to me what I had been learning in the Confucian tradition for the past two years. ‘Men at their birth are naturally good, their natures are similar, their habits become different.’ He looked at me to see if I understood. ‘Again,’ he said, and repeated it ten more times, prompting me to join the chant.
‘Next time we do twelve more,’ he said when we had finished. ‘Soon your brain catch up. Practise hard until next time.’
It was such a change in routine that for a moment I completely forgot my Confucian discipline and a question escaped my lips. ‘When will my heart catch up?’
He studied me for a moment, and then reached inside his bag and said, ‘This was for later, when you understand more. But I give you now.’ He handed me a Chinese comic, the kind I had seen displayed in the musty old bookshops in Theatre Street. ‘This one Sui Wu Chyuhn. Water Margin, they say in English. Pictures help you to read, help you to understand.’
‘Will my heart catch up if I read this?’
‘Maybe can,’ he said. ‘You must learn so you can read real Water Margin. Read all classics. Only by reading in Chinese can you understand. What Chinese words say is for the brain. What Chinese words suggest is for the heart.’
‘You mean the poetry waiting for me to find,’ I said.
What he did then was most uncharacteristic for Mr Ho. The corners of his mouth spread just a little. In fact, so little that few would even notice.
He fastened the latches on his bag and turned to leave, but I thought opportunities like this were so rare I should perhaps venture one more question. ‘Why should I watch the geese?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Look at wrist, look at goose neck,’ he said, and left.
I took myself straight down to Sahm Ji Ging and looked at them. Sahm was sitting, probably warming an egg, Ji was pecking at some old grass cuttings, and Ging stood at the wire and honked for food. I looked at my wrist and at Ging’s neck as her head bobbed with each honk, and knew that if I was ever to get to the bottom of Mr Ho’s conundrum, there was one more person I needed to consult.
When my father came home I told him what Mr Ho had said about a goose’s neck, and he took me into his study and pulled down a large book. He sat at his desk, switched on the lamp and seemed to know precisely where in the book he was going.
‘Come, look at this,’ he said.
Spread across two pages was a peach-coloured Chinese painting with dozens of red seals and lines of calligraphy. ‘I wondered when you were going to ask. This is why I got you the geese.’ The painting was of a man sitting in a pavilion by a lake in the mountains. ‘That’s Wang Hsi-chih.’ He pointed to the lake. ‘See what he’s watching? Geese. Wang Hsi-chih said his calligraphy was inspired by nature. He said by watching animals he learned the secrets of movement. Animals don’t think about their actions, you see. They act according to nature. He was particularly fond of geese because they had a delicate action. So if you watch how the goose turns her neck, you will learn how to turn your wrist. That is what Wang Hsi-chih said, and that is what Mr Ho means.’
I looked at my wrist again, bobbed it up and down, and tried to remember how Ging’s neck was different to any other and why it should be so inspirational. I must have been frowning.
‘Don’t get too concerned about a goose’s neck,’ Pa said. ‘It’s really only when you start using a brush that will matter. What Mr Ho and I want you to understand is that you can always learn from the old masters, whatever you are doing.’
I looked at the picture of the old master sitting in the pavilion by the lake watching the geese. ‘Is Wang Hsi-chih really my ancestor?’
‘Not really. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from him. You know Uncle Hung Jeuk? Hung is also the name of Confucius. Hung Fu Ji was his real name. Confucius is not really Uncle Hung Jeuk’s ancestor, but he learns from him. Uncle Hung Jeuk knows more about Confucius than anyone I know.’
It sounded almost absurd. Uncle Hung Jeuk, who was really Uncle Humphrey, and Confucius? I knew about the books he carried in his pocket, but … ‘He’s not even Chinese,’ I said.
‘So what have you been learning at school about Jesus Christ?’
‘Well, Jesus is the …’
‘You don’t have to tell me. I just want you to think about it.’
Think about it? Not listen, not obey, not chant … think. As much as I had thought about anything in my life I thought about those words my father said to me, like the first vital twinkle of enlightenment sparking deep inside my fledgling system of belief.
And that brief spark led quickly to the next thought: that I would never have heard those words if I had not disobeyed Confucius and asked a simple question.
When Pa put the book away I considered what he said about Jesus. I thought about how he had ridden into town on a donkey, just as the nuns had told me, and how Lao Tzu had also ridden on a donkey, just as Pa had told me, but Lao Tzu had ridden out of town and facing backwards.
‘Pa, why did Lao Tzu ride his donkey backwards?’
Pa turned from the bookshelf and he already had a smile on his face. ‘You have been thinking, haven’t you?’ he said. He squatted down next to me and held my shoulders. ‘Some say it was Lao Tzu’s way of saying that he was turning his back on the world.’ He twisted me around and then back again. ‘But I think he was saying he trusted that donkey the way we should trust our instincts. Act according to nature, remember? Can you think about that?’
I did think about that. In fact, I spent a lot of time thinking about such things that year, and what I thought was that the only way my heart was ever really going to catch up was by disobeying Confucius.
I launched my strategy of Confucian disobedience at home. When Ah Mun Cheir had a job for me in the kitchen that I couldn’t quite get my head around, I asked. When I heard something I thought Mei might be capable of explaining without laughing, I asked. I tried my luck at school as well, even asking Miss Mak abou
t what she was writing on the blackboard, but she was one person too far. I got poked and prodded and told to clean out my ears and listen the first time.
When I went on an errand with Uncle Beng Woo to deliver papers to Mr Davies at the courthouse, I asked him if they were about Toh Kei. He didn’t answer, so I asked him again, a little louder.
‘Shh!’ he said. ‘Must not talk about him.’
‘Why not?’ I whispered. ‘Pa says he’s a CT, not a bandit. And Uncle Hung Jeuk says he has medals.’ Uncle Beng Woo said nothing, but I saw him set his chin defiantly. ‘Pa says he is a wonderful leader,’ I added.
He shot me a black look. ‘Not his real name.’
‘What is his real name?’
‘I don’t know. He made up that name because it sounds like his hero. Everyone must know then how things would turn out.’
‘Who was his hero? I thought he was the hero.’
He stopped walking and looked around. Satisfied that no one was near enough to overhear, he said, ‘Toh Kei’s hero is Trotsky. That one a communist. They say Toh Kei learned to be communist like Trotsky by disobeying father. Now don’t talk about him any more.’
A Chinese who disobeyed his father? I could hardly comprehend such a state of affairs. How could I not talk about it? ‘Do you know him?’
He looked me sternly in the eye. ‘Japanese Time … I with him in jungle.’
‘Is he a good man?’
He sighed deeply and looked up at the clouds that were already gathering for the day’s rainstorm. ‘When I know him, Toh Kei was good man. Wonderful leader, like his name say. That time we fight Japanese who take our country. Now he want to take country for himself.’
Who was fighting who didn’t mean much to me, so I asked him about what really mattered most when you are eight years old. ‘Uncle Beng Woo, did you like Toh Kei?’
Again he looked up at the clouds. The stern look slowly softened into a smile. He sighed once more. ‘Rain soon. Must hurry.’
The Heart Radical Page 10
