The Feng Shui Detective Goes South

by Nury Vittachi

  ‘But you like the chicken stuff?’

  ‘Chicken stuff is valid and important and scientific,’ he said, with the impatient tone of someone being forced to state the obvious.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I am running a orphanage just outside Kuala Lumpur, praise be to Allah for allowing me grace to do this. Mostly I help runaway kids—teenage boys. Girls also I help. Send to cousin-sister’s house. She is a religious. Boys I hang out on streets very late to find. One night, there was big fight in a bar in KL. Two men fighting over one woman, lost, no money, no family, no friends, no contacts, just pokai. I pick up both men, skinny koochi rats both, throw them out. Kacang putih–lah. Can do with my eyes close.’

  He smiled at the memory. ‘I did not take the girl to my cousin-sister’s house. The men—bloody lembus—maybe they find her there. So I hide her. Something tells me Allah has sent me to help her. She was Chinese. Her features were small. Not so beautiful maybe. A little bit only. Skinny, papan. But she had a big spirit. Very not shy, you know? Had big fire.’

  ‘That is what they used to say about me,’ Madame Xu said dreamily. ‘“A certain fire about her.” A few years ago. Now tell me, who was she? How did she come to be lost in Kuala Lumpur? Was she a girl from the countryside?’

  ‘This also I thought. But not so. I realise she is not local.

  Her skin was whitish yellow and her languages were English and Cantonese. Also I can speak. She is from Hong Kong.

  What for she is in Malaysia? She says she is on holiday. She says she is tourist. But she was not so good at telling lies. What tourist girl end up pokai in bar in KL? No. I tell her, what you think, I am bloody fool? I can guess. She was someone guilty of great crime in Hong Kong. She was hiding in Malaysia. She was . . . on the run.’ He weighted his words with melodrama enough for a Hindi movie.

  ‘What was her name?’ the fortune-teller asked suddenly.

  ‘Clara.’

  She made a note in a diary. ‘A lovely name. Very literary.’

  ‘She stay in my boys’ home outside K L for eight days over.’

  ‘Boys’ home?’

  ‘Sure. Hiding. Who will look for girl in religious boys’ home? I put her in baju kurung. Big kudung over her head. People think she is staff, cook. Only then I had idea of looking at her birth charts. You see, first she was one of my rescued orphan, not one of my client.’

  He suddenly stooped to the ground and pulled a messy pile of papers from his ragged bag.

  ‘But then I decide to do the cards anyway. One afternoon I read her fortune with the cards, with the bones, with the symbols, with the fire method, with the birds, with every method. I look at the lines on her hands. I look at her face. I look at the lines on the soles of her feet. I look at the colour in her eyes. I look at the stripes on her fingernails.’

  He held up a piece of A4 paper that turned out to be a photocopied image of a small hand.

  ‘Results so shocking. First test say she will disappear. Death coming quick-quick. Second the same. Third saw bad, bad luck coming very soon also. You know how messages come by in this business, Madame Xu? Little hints, small-small hunches. This point a little this way, that point a little that way, you interpret this, you interpret that, stick it together, eventually you decide-lah? But this one is totally gone case.’

  ‘I’ve had cases like that,’ boasted Madame Xu, who hated to be bested by anyone. ‘People facing imminent death. Loads and loads of them. Half my clients.’

  He ignored her interjection. ‘Six days ago, I take her to old man who lives in small-small hilltop village south of Melaka: a very, very great man, with very, very great power. He is called Datuk Adzil Abu Hitam Noor. But the bomohs call him only the Great Bomoh. “Usually people ask me to tell their fortunes,” the old man said. “This woman no fortune. She will die on first moon, which will be in ten days. At tenth hour of the day.”’

  Madame Xu stirred uncomfortably. ‘This all happened recently?’ she asked.

  Ismail nodded. ‘Six days ago I took her to the Great Bomoh.

  After, I got some big problems-lah. I tol’ her everything. I did it because I want her to be careful. To stay with me. To stay away from danger.’

  ‘Let me guess: Clara ran away.’

  ‘Yes. Teruk! One day after already she cabut. She left a note.

  It says that if she is going to die, she is going to die happy only.

  She came to Singapore to stay with family member here. I came too. To find her.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said proudly. ‘I found her. She is living quietly with auntie or something. I am staying in small-small hotel near. I visit her. I tol’ her I was wrong. She is not going to die. All a mistake only.’

  ‘But this is not true.’

  He gave a deep sigh, expelling air that appeared to be filled with pain, and sat back in his chair. ‘Yes. I goreng only, bluff her, cheating. Probably she knows. If the Great Bomoh is correct, she will die very soon. On four days. At tenth hour.’

  ‘But you cannot make predictions with such accuracy, surely? Even I cannot, and I am famous for my psychic powers. Why only today someone described my powers as “legendary”.’

  ‘I cannot. But the Great Bomoh . . . and all other evidence— you must look at evidence, Madame Xu. This case very special.’ He sounded desperate and his voice had acquired a tremor. His head had shrunk into his shoulders. He appeared to have terrified himself with his story.

  Silence descended as the two inhabitants of the room contemplated the papers on the table. A green parakeet in the corner of the room, surprised by the sudden peacefulness, filled it with a squawk.

  ‘Two things I want you give me,’ said Ismail.

  ‘Please ask.’

  He thrust the papers at her. ‘I give you see her papers. Got print of her palms, her feet, birth charts, all my research material, like that. Got photograph of her. I wan’ you look at everything, tell me I am right or wrong. Want you to use your own method. If you find out I’m all wrong, I will be happiest man in the world.’

  ‘And if you are right?’

  He swallowed. ‘If I’m right, you must find a remedy please, quickly. Must find a way to reverse her fortune. I come to you because I need to work with best people in our business only. I do’wan’ her to die. She is only nineteen years old.’

  From the pile of papers he was offering her, Madame Xu picked up the print of a tiny female hand. She lifted it to her face and put on her reading glasses. Her eyes widened immediately. ‘It is extraordinary,’ she said. ‘The lifeline. It is so short. And it just stops.’

  Amran Ismail nodded. His eyes were wet and it looked as if he did not trust himself to speak.

  ‘I don’t really like doing readings from prints,’ she continued. ‘I would much rather meet Clara in the flesh.’

  ‘Maybe also can. Later.’ He spoke in a whisper.

  ‘Hmmf.’ The fortune-teller switched spectacles and then held the print very close to her face. ‘Well, you know as well as I do, Mr Ismail, palm readers almost never give a precise date of death by looking at the lines on a hand. It simply isn’t done. It cannot be done. For technical and scientific reasons. And you probably also know that the lines on the hands change as people get older.

  Especially since this handprint is one of a child of nineteen.’

  ‘Yah. And?’

  ‘Nevertheless . . . there is definitely trouble here. I see what you mean. Goodness me.’ She stared at the print in front of her with astonishment. ‘This is really amazing. I can see why you are worried. All three of the major lines are remarkably short.

  They all fade into little wispy endings long before they should.

  This is quite amazing.’

  The bomoh nodded slowly.

  ‘She has no rascettes,’ the fortune-teller continued.

  ‘I don’t know this word. We do different type of palm reading in Sabah.’

  ‘Naturally you would. But mine is the cla
ssical system which has been used for centuries. The rest of you are entitled to your own systems, even if they are wrong. Now rascettes—you better write this down—is the technical term for the rings at the point where the wrist joins the hand. On the inner wrist. Each of these is supposed to indicate thirty years of life. Your client has virtually no rascettes. I have never seen anyone without rascettes before.’

  She lowered the piece of paper. ‘I’ll take the case. It will take me several hours to do the job properly. And I really would like to meet the young lady in question. It is a very serious and disturbing case and I would like to help if I can. This will need a lot of expertise to resolve in a happy way. I can’t guarantee that it is even possible.’

  Amran Ismail nodded again.

  Madame Xu looked at his pained expression. ‘I am a good judge of people, Mr Ismail. And I know that most of what you have told me is true.’

  He moved awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable under her gaze. ‘You mean what?’

  ‘Most of what you have said is true. But you have left out one fact. One very important fact.’

  He said nothing.

  She continued: ‘You desperately want to save this girl’s life because she is one of the teenagers in your children’s home, and has become your most interesting client. But there’s another reason.’

  Amran Ismail stared at her but said nothing.

  ‘You are in love with her,’ Madame Xu said.

  The bomoh sniffed. His face crumpled up and his chin fell to his chest. His goatee trembled. He burst into tears.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, in a tiny voice, ‘Yes, I am-lah.’

  The loud and tremulous wail that burst from the huge man’s throat shocked the parrot into silence and distracted Concepcion from her task of cleaning her beloved new microwave oven.

  The geomancer blinked at the doorway, which was lit in such a way that it was simultaneously painfully bright and far too dark to see anything. Clearly a miracle of modern engineering. Then he looked again at the small piece of paper in his hand. ‘Dan T’s Inferno,’ it said. ‘Mohamed Sultan Road.’ He glared again at the neon sign over the doorway. There were flames around a mish-mash of letters in an indecipherable font, but he could vaguely make out a ‘D’ and a ‘T’. This had to be it. But where was Joyce McQuinnie? He scanned the scene but could not see her anywhere. But then he was a long way away.

  CF Wong was peering suspiciously at the nightclub from a safe distance on the other side of the road. The place was not just unwelcoming, but positively frightening. Not only did the harsh glare of the doorway force onlookers to squint but the entrance emitted deep, fearsome sounds that left him with serious concern for the safety of his eardrum. Who would want to approach such a forbidding scene? The whole building seemed to throb with low thuds that literally shook the ground—he could feel the movement from where he stood, a good fifteen metres away. He couldn’t hear any music as such; just the relentless thump-thump-thump of a disco beat, the stuttering background sound that had become ubiquitous on television and in shops. At this intensity, it was like the heartbeat of a panicking buried monster.

  Although he felt physically repelled by the scene, the geomancer noticed that it had the opposite effect on young people: there was a queue of them outside the doorway and it steadily grew longer as he watched. The individuals queuing to enter were garishly dressed. One young—creature (he couldn’t tell what sex it was)—was tottering slowly forward in the queue on huge platform shoes, surmounted by stick-like legs, and its white-faced friend appeared to be dressed in an ankle-length robe like a monk from a black order. Behind them, a tall young person with pierced ears and a shaved head was laughing next to another creature of indeterminate sex wearing a gypsy scarf.

  A flickering lamppost gave the street the look of an emergency scene. A slight breeze came from the east. There was a smell of frying fish in the air.

  It was dark. He was tired and hungry. He wanted to go home.

  There was a movement in the queue that caught his eye. At the same time he heard his name being called: ‘CF! CF! Over here.’

  He scanned the queue again. The creature with the stick-legs was waving at him. Could it be . . . ? Surely not. He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus on the figure. ‘CF! We’re here,’ it said again.

  It was his intern. He raised one hand in curt acknowledge– ment and set off across the road, his face grim, to join her.

  ‘This is him, this is him,’ he heard her say to her friends as he approached.

  The one wearing the robe said: ‘Cool. A real feng shooee man.’

  ‘Good evening,’ the feng shui master said.

  ‘Hey!’ said Joyce. ‘Thanks for coming?’

  ‘Yo, Mr Feng Shui Man?’ said a small thing next to her who was apparently wearing only black undergarments.

  Wong had read in How’s Tricks: Colloquial English II that sentences with rising tones signified questions in standard English, but he had long ago noticed that the majority of statements made by his young intern and her friends had rising tones.

  ‘My familiars?’ said Joyce. ‘Ling, Nike, Sammo and Dibby?’

  ‘Wotcher?’ said a tall creature with short, vertical hair, nodding at Wong.

  ‘Watch who?’ Wong asked.

  ‘No one,’ it replied, cheerfully. ‘Just wotcher?’

  ‘I see,’ he said, not seeing.

  As Joyce made perfunctory introductions, the queue lurched forward about a metre.

  ‘Dani’s blown us off,’ she said. ‘Dani Mirpuri was gonna come?’

  Wong was amazed to hear the name of a client. ‘Mrs Mirpuri is coming?’

  ‘Nah!’ laughed Joyce. ‘Her daughter. Mrs Mirpuri is waaay too old. She’d never get in.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Wong, who was considerably older than Mrs Mirpuri.

  ‘’Scuse me, Mr Wong. Which way should my bed point?’ asked a creature behind him. ‘Should be east, right?’

  ‘Well, I read that my bed should point north,’ said a thing next to it. ‘Which is right?’

  ‘Yeah. Which is right?’

  Wong looked from one over-made-up face to another. ‘Er . . .’ He hated having to answer questions that treated his complex and arcane art as a list of rules. ‘East maybe is right for one person, north maybe is right for other person,’ he said. ‘Maybe both is right.’

  Joyce laughed again. ‘Ha! That doesn’t solve their problem. They sleep in a bunk bed.’

  There was a general outbreak of giggling at this. Wong wasn’t sure if they were laughing with him or at him, so he merely smiled nervously.

  ‘Wot about married peeps?’ said a tall thing with short spiky hair and dangly earrings. ‘They have to sleep in the same bed. What if the feng shui chart says they have to sleep in different directions?’

  ‘Yeah?’ said someone else.

  ‘Sixty-nine,’ said the one in the undergarments.

  This baffling reply caused the spiky-haired thing to howl with laughter and pretend to fall over clutching its stomach.

  Wong did not know how to give any sort of answer other than a serious one. ‘Usually I tell married people to sleep with their heads to the north. From the north is winter. Also is sexuality.’

  ‘Ooooh,’ giggled several creatures simultaneously at this last word.

  Wong shut his mouth tightly and looked away.

  The queue moved forward again and the group found themselves at the door.

  The bouncer, a large man of Chinese origin wearing a badge that said ‘Commissionaire-In-Chief ’, peered at Wong with puzzlement. ‘Who’s he?’ he barked at Joyce, whom he apparently knew. The geomancer realised that he did not fit the image of the people who normally entered this club. He wondered whether he should retreat before he was humiliatingly refused entry.

  ‘My banker,’ Joyce told him. ‘My ticket. My sugar daddy.

  He’s loaded.’

  The bouncer looked Wong up and down. ‘Loaded?’ he asked, suspiciously.

  ‘C
heck out the clothes,’ said the young creature who had told Wong to watch someone. ‘Would he dress that slack if he wasn’t?’

  The bouncer looked at the feng shui man’s shabby Chinese suit, threadbare shawl and well-worn shoes. He nodded.

  ‘Okay-okay,’ he said. He nodded his head sharply to one side, and barked to a Malay woman with tea-coloured hair at a table on the other side of the curtain: ‘In. Four.’

  As they entered the darkness, Wong turned with amazement to Joyce: ‘You tell him I am your father?’

  ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘Sugar daddy. That’s like a rich old guy who likes to hang out with, er, younger people. We call ’em bankers or tickets.’

  ‘Complete bankers,’ said the small creature.

  ‘When we’re feeling polite,’ interjected spiky head with a laugh.

  ‘Ah,’ said Wong, thinking. ‘You mean—’ ‘Haam-sup lo,’ put in the small creature in the underwear.

  ‘I see,’ said the feng shui master again, shocked at being presented as a dirty old man.

  He opened his mouth to ask a question, but at that moment, they entered the main room of the nightclub and the loudest sounds he had ever heard caused him to clap his hands tightly to his ears as his eyes tried desperately to acclimatise themselves to an eerie, red-tinted darkness.

  They threaded their way through packed, sweaty bodies. Wong desperately grabbed a scarf-like piece of material that swept from Joyce’s shoulders so that he didn’t lose her. His intern was so unrecognisable in her off-duty guise that he knew he would never locate her again in this place, even if he were standing next to her.

  And the noise! How on earth could anyone think of this as a place to meet and chat with friends? ‘Aiyeeaah,’ he said— or thought he said. The music was so loud that he couldn’t hear the sounds coming out of his own mouth, let alone anyone else’s. And surely music at this level would cause immediate and permanent deafness? How could these people stand it?

  The noise momentarily took him back to an occasion when he was a teenager, helping his uncle unload shipments of rice from a tramp steamer at the docks in Guangzhou. He had been balancing precariously on the side of the ship, throwing sacks down to his uncle, when a cousin of his had mischievously sounded the ship’s foghorn. The blast had been so loud that Wong had thought the world had ended. It had thrown him off balance, causing him to fall forwards off the ship. He had landed half on his uncle and half on the pile of sacks beside him. The uncle cursed both young men, having cracked a rib. Wong had hurt his left hand, with which he had broken his fall, but had gone straight back to work to prevent his cousin getting into trouble. But that terrifying sound had been a single, deafening blast. In this bar, the noise was just as loud, yet it was continuous.