The Catherine Lim Collection (34 page)

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 quietly 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. 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 power 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.

K. C. suddenly went abroad for some months.
He wanted to see the shrines of Nepal and Bhutan, and he just packed up and
left. He did ask if I wished to come along. Deeply gratified that he did not
consider the presence of an inept, absent-minded and unpredictable female a
hindrance, I sorrowfully declined for I had work that would occupy me for at
least six months at a stretch.

K. C. returned, much thinner. The onslaught
of the cancer that was to destroy him had already begun, but characteristically
he told no one.

He lived in a modest rented flat, although
his parents were always pestering him to return to their big house, and his
mother was always trying to get him to at least come home for a meal with the
family.