House of Trembling Leaves, The (41 page)

They pulled a woman from her long-haired yak; her scream was as shrill as a false note on a violin.

A skillet-faced officer, full of false bravado, spoke in his guttural northern tongue, jabbing the air with aggression. He slapped a hand against his rifle; his eyes were like a pig slaughterer's.

When he spat a bullet of phlegm by his feet, leaving a dull green smear, Sum Sum knew the festivities were over.

 

As soon as they returned to the nunnery Sum Sum and Tormam were confronted by prayer hall manager Jampa. ‘‘Ay-yi! They have stolen our country,'' the old lady said as soon as she heard their news. ‘‘Do you know how they stole it? Under threats of death. A Tibetan delegation to Peking was forced to sign a 17-point plan handing control to China. When ministers in Lhasa complained to Peking claiming the treaty was not legal because it was signed under duress and because there were no official Lhasa seals to certify it, the Chinese said they don't care.''

‘‘But it is wrong,'' said Sum Sum, as prickly as a Himalayan porcupine. Tormam could not speak: she was stunned. They walked through a narrow corridor into a candle-lit room adorned with frescoes of bodhisattva Tara. Several nuns sat in meditation; in the dim light their heads, brown and pitted and hairless, looked like overgrown potatoes.

Jampa, lowering her voice, continued, ‘‘Then Lhasa says that under some rule called Vienna Convention, treaty is null and void. So what do Chinese do? They send in military.'' She reached into a leather satchel concealed in her sleeve, pinched off a thumb of snuff. ‘‘All this happened a few years ago. But now there is unrest in Kham and Amdo so Chinese shut the door to the Land of Snow. They clamping down on all festivals and on monks.''

‘‘What will happen to us?'' asked Tormam.

The yak butter candles guttered. Juniper and written prayers burned in censers. Jampa took another hit of snuff and rubbed the skin between her eyes. ‘‘Things will get worse for all of us. The abbess says the Communist invaders will suppress and mutilate our culture.''

‘‘Do you really believe that?'' questioned Sum Sum. She couldn't believe this was the same communism that Adrian had advocated in Cambridge.

‘‘When you have lived as long as I have, you believe everything about the Chinese. Their arrogance has no limits.''

Sum Sum stamped her foot. ‘‘I wish I had a chestnut pan to hit all Communist invaders' heads!''

‘‘There is open fighting on streets in eastern parts of the country.'' Jampa leaned in close, collusively. ‘‘Some people even gossip-talk that the Chinese invaders want to kidnap our young God-king.''

The girls sucked in their breath, shocked to hear such words spoken aloud. Their fingers stiffened with imaginary cold. ‘‘
Ndug're
. Come,'' said Jampa. ‘‘Let us engage in meditation.'' Jampa closed her eyes and made her face appear calm and at peace. When Sum Sum shut her eyes too all she saw were the red posters plastered on the walls of the town – posters showing the face of the one they called the devil-man, Mao Tse-tung.

Folding into each other, they held on as tight as they could. Just to feel her daughter's touch made Lu See want to cry. They pressed foreheads together.

She could not believe how skinny Mabel was, how gaunt her face had become. She touched her all over as if checking she was still intact. With her matted hair full of bugs and muddied skin she could have been a vagabond. Eventually Lu See heard a high voice from the basement. ‘‘Missie, is you? Is ok to come upstair?''

‘‘Yes, yes, Ah Fung. It's my daughter, Mabel,'' she said wiping away her tears. ‘‘Look at me, bawling like a watering-can.''

Dungeonboy climbed up to the top of the basement steps. His look was full of bewilderment.

‘‘Please heat up this evening's pork stew and boil some fresh rice,'' she instructed. Like any mother, Lu See's first instinct was to feed her daughter; perhaps if she could succeed in nourishing her child, all was not lost. ‘‘Also fetch some clean bath towels and soap. Hurry, hurry! Then I want you to make the bed for her. My daughter is home to stay.''

He flipped his thumbs skywards. ‘‘Of coss, no problem, Missie.''

 

Mabel was home. Yet as the days went by Lu See began to panic. What about the authorities? Should Mabel go into hiding? Was she on a ‘wanted' list?

Taking the initiative, Lu See went to the nearest police station and told them that her daughter had returned voluntarily from the jungle weeks before but had been ill with dengue fever. ‘‘
Ai-yahhh!
'' exclaimed the duty sergeant. ‘‘Dengue terrible thing to catch, meh? My brother had it last year. They call it bone-breaking disease. Your daughter better now?''

‘‘Yes, she is.''

‘‘Here, I fill out this report and send to Special Branch for you. When did you say she come back?''

‘‘Five weeks ago.'' She lied, naming a day. He filled in the date with a pencil.

‘‘And she returned home voluntarily?''

‘‘Yes. Will she have to go to a rehabilitation camp?''

The duty sergeant made a face. ‘‘I don't think so. Only senior officers of the guerrillas are forced to. But she will have to come in for interview and remain on probation. Give me your telephone number. I will call you.''

‘‘Will she be all right?''

‘‘
Ai-yahh
! Don't worry, lah. Emergency is over. This country has other things to worry about now.''

 

Mabel went for the interview a week later and was given the red ‘all clear' chop on her papers. She didn't tell them she was close to Bong Foo. And even if they knew, there was no way she was going to voluntarily incriminate herself. Rather, she said she didn't really understand the Communist cause, that she was cajoled into it through peer pressure, that she felt shame for disgracing her family. She also claimed that she had wanted to surrender months before, but her superiors had threatened to have her shot. ‘‘I was the medic, you see. Without me, they would have succumbed to all sorts of infections. I helped injured enemy soldiers too, so I suppose I was saving lives on both sides. I never raised a gun against a Commonwealth soldier.''

She also told them she was terrified of her mother. ‘‘I knew she would raise maximum bloody hell when I came home, so I kept delaying my return.'' The interviewers, all men, said they understood that Chinese mothers could be very strict. They laughed when she told them how often she was smacked on the bottom with a wooden ruler. When they stopped laughing their faces turned serious.

‘‘You have shown suitable remorse,'' the chief-interrogator said. ‘‘However, it is our recommendation that you return to this station every week for the next twelve months and check in with our duty officer. Just to ensure that you do not relapse.''

With the ordeal over, Mabel returned home.

She tried to fit back in. But having been away for so long, she found it hard adjusting to life in the city. For one thing, her civilian clothes, left behind in her previous existence, felt awkward. And when she looked at herself naked in the full-length mirror, she saw a stranger – her ribs jutted out and her arms were like reeds. There were damp blisters on her feet. She touched the scars on her shoulder, red weals like wrinkling red chillis. Her arm was fully healed from the python bite, but as she stroked her thighs and her pubis she wondered if her periods would recommence once more; the weeks of eating jungle food had put a stop to her monthlies.

Everywhere she went she walked silently, the way she'd been trained; it felt strange walking on dry land and not pulling her feet out of sticky mud. She found it odd, too, not having to lug a pack around all day. And she felt defenceless without her gun. I'm not the same person I was, she told herself.

She still couldn't understand how she had survived when everyone else had been killed. Why am I standing here scarred but alive, when all those others are lying dead in the forest?

She felt disconnected from the people around her, and the more she tried the harder it was to regain her sense of self. It took a while, but then one afternoon she stood at the entrance to the restaurant and saw her mother at the cashier's till, her grandmother scratching her palms and Old Fishlips complaining about his soup. It was a scene she'd witnessed a thousand times and yet she suddenly saw it in all its splendour and complexity. She saw her family, and this family was a symbol of all that was valuable in the universe.

That same afternoon she told her mother and Old Fishlips about the explosion; how, to her despair and confusion, her entire platoon had been killed, how it took her weeks to find a way out of the jungle.

‘‘So, Bong is dead,'' prompted Fishlips.

Mabel gave a tiny nod. She sat with her hands in her lap, heavy as an infant. She could still feel his thick hair under her fingers.

Lu See went to make everybody a cup of tea. On her return she said, ‘‘I am so sorry, Mr Foo.''

‘‘I suspected as much but waited for you to tell me. I raised him up. He was a good boy.''

Mabel stared at her hands nestled in her lap and nodded again.

‘‘How did he die?'' asked the old man, his eyes now honeycombed with blood vessels.

When Mabel mentioned the radio and the strange noise it emitted, Lu See demanded to be told more: where had the radio come from, what sort of noise had it made? Mabel looked at her, blinking; she searched her memory; it was like looking for needles in the hay, but eventually she came across a splinter of shining metal. She went quiet for a moment and then said, ‘‘The radio. Now that I think about it, it must have been a trap. They wanted us all to die.'' Those twenty words turned Lu See's blood cold.

The following afternoon Stan Farrell paid Mabel a visit at the restaurant and asked her to identify certain faces in a selection of mugshots.

Lu See strode up to him and slapped him hard across the face. Stan cupped his hands in front of him and repeated over and over that ‘it wasn't meant to happen like that.' Mabel heard the words ‘radio set' and ‘betrayal' and ‘the Black-headed sheep' but didn't understand. She didn't want to understand. What's done is done, she said to herself. Nothing now can bring Bong back. Instead, she went to her room to get away from Lu See's screaming and flopped face down on her bed.

Later, Lu See told her never to speak to Stan Farrell again.

Mabel didn't ask why; rather she concentrated on getting her life back on track. But it was hard. Losing Bong was hard.

The night sounds were different. She missed the thrumming drone of insects that drowned out all thought. The air smelled thinner. Gone was the close scent of wet earth and heavy rain, the smell of wood rot and decay. She noticed too that the people in the neighbourhood behaved differently; they kept their distance, rarely offering a hello when she strolled up and down Macao Street, never once volunteering a smile. In fact they regarded her with suspicion.
Is it because I used to be a rebel?
She couldn't tell. Mabel was reminded of the crocodiles in the Tengi River; cruising the yellow waters with only their thick globular eyes visible. She felt as though she was being watched all the time.

After all that had happened to the country, it just wasn't possible to say
selamat pagi
or exchange
jo-suns
any more if people suspected you had a Communist past. They may have supported her secretly, but now with the Emergency lifted she was shunned.

‘‘You must eat.'' Lu See said over the pork stew, ‘‘Look at you, all gristle and bone. We have to fatten you up.''

When she said this, Mabel felt like a pig being plumped for slaughter. But this was a Chinese mother's way of expressing affection; feeding the ones you loved. Earlier, whilst listening to
Malay Woman's Hour
on the Zenith radio, Mabel heard Dr Chow and Mrs Gangooly discuss the differences in parenting cultures. ‘
Because we Chinese find it hard to convey tenderness in a Western, physical way, through hugs and kisses, we spoil our children instead. And punish the hell out of them if they do something wrong!'
That was when Mabel thought of the old Cantonese saying:
Da see tung, ma see ngoi – Hitting is caring. Scolding is love.

‘‘Please eat more.'' Lu See poked one of Mabel's ribs for emphasis. ‘‘Look how thin you are.''

But Mabel's stomach wasn't accustomed to so much food; it had shrivelled and needed time to adjust. ‘‘I'm used to eating only tiny morsels … off plates made of leaves,'' she told Lu See. ‘‘It's been a while …'' She flinched. A thin
pop
sounded in her head.

‘‘And why are you so jumpy?''

Mabel kept quiet.
Pop-pop-pop!
The vague noise resembled distant gun shots.
Like machinegun fire. Crackling inside my head.
It immediately brought back memories: Corporal Johnny Evans with black ants swarming over his stomach; Bong with his chest blown apart; corpses with hideous staring eyes. She had to guard against thinking of their faces.

 

One night Lu See awoke to Mabel's nightmares. She stood outside her daughter's room with the hall lamp on and listened to the whimpering, the yelps of panic, the kicking and squirming, waiting for the inevitable scream to come. The feeling of helplessness engulfed her.

Later, sitting by her side, with Mabel bent double as if with stomach cramps, Lu See helped her dry her eyes on the edge of a pajama sleeve. ‘‘I'm sorry,'' sobbed Mabel.

Lu See told her daughter there was no need to apologize. In the dim light of the hall lamp, she took her hand and stroked the skin toughened by a thousand mosquito bites, inspecting the scars made by rattan vines, the red weals on her shoulder caused by Stan Farrell's bomb. ‘‘All you need is time to heal,'' she said, calming her fears. If she was broken, Lu See would help pick up the pieces. She watched her daughter fall back into sleep, careful not to disturb her, watching her face, listening to the creaks of the bed as she dreamed of men roasting in their own skin.