The Ghost Bride (17 page)

At length she gave up and lay down next to her porters. They hadn’t flinched when those creatures had swooped down upon us, remaining as inanimate as the basket that lay between them. Chendana had at least snorted once, but she too hadn’t seemed unduly troubled. I reminded myself that my little horse was, after all, not a creature of flesh and blood. It was a sobering thought, but did not prevent me from huddling next to her and falling asleep.

Chapter 21

I
was awoken by the gradual lightening of the sky. Just as the day before, there was no sun, merely a slow change in color as though a screened backdrop was rising upon a stage. A breeze rattled through the dry grasses, and once again I was struck by the utter lifelessness of the plain. Not far away, I could see Fan lying on her side, her eyes open. I wondered whether she had slept at all that night. I was glad, however, of the rest, even as I worried about how my physical body fared, far away in the world of the living. If something should happen to it, would there be any sign to warn me? Or perhaps I would be cut off, wandering forever in this sea of endless grass.

As soon as we were ready, Fan gave the order to her porters to start moving. “We’re almost there,” she called back to me.

I urged Chendana a little forward. “How do you know this?”

“Oh, it’s a feeling that I have near the cities and towns. It’s like a pull.”

“But I don’t see anything ahead.”

Fan laughed. She seemed to be in a much better mood than the previous day. “It doesn’t work like that! The towns appear at their own pace. That’s why I need my servants to find them. And that’s also why the hungry ghosts could never come here, because they have no funeral offerings to guide them.”

Looking back, I could see that we had left the rocky hills where the passageway emerged far behind. Instead of towering in the background, they were now mere bumps on the horizon. I was surprised at how much ground we had covered; in the real world, a journey of six or seven hours could hardly have served to distance ourselves so far. It made me anxious too about how time was passing here.

“There it is!”

Ahead of us was a faint shimmer that became more substantial as we drew nearer. The haze thickened around us until I began to see the outlines of streets and buildings filling in as we went forward, so that the road we were traveling became a broad avenue. There were shops and conjunctions of buildings that looked uncannily familiar. Down a side street I caught a glimpse of what looked like the Stadthuys, and from another, a brief view of a harbor lined with old-fashioned junks and frigates. It was beginning to look like Malacca, but far larger and devoid of the debris that often lined the streets. Some buildings were missing while others were replaced by gaudy monstrosities. The streets were silent and wide; the only people I saw were figures passing at a distance.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“There isn’t a large population,” said Fan. “Ghosts are always leaving when they’re called to the Courts of Hell.” She turned to me. “What do you mean to do now?”

I told her that I had some tasks to do, keeping the details as vague as possible. I was afraid that Fan would insist on accompanying me, but she seemed disinterested, telling me only that she meant to go to her house. “A shack is more like it,” she said. “Can you give me some money now?”

I had prepared myself for a request like this once we had arrived and gave her two strings of cash and some ingots, retaining a little for emergencies. “Is that all?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Oh, well. Thanks, I suppose. Do you need me to show you the way back afterward?”

“Yes. How long will you stay?”

“I think about ten days. I have some housekeeping matters to attend to.”

“If you show me where your house is, I’ll come to you at noon on the tenth day, or else send a message.”

“If you don’t come, I may leave without you. I dare not stay too long here.”

I agreed to this, and in surprisingly short order we arrived at her house. The twisting streets loomed out of the haze, winding haphazardly, making me afraid that I would be unable to find my way back. When I expressed this to Fan, she merely laughed. “That’s why we have servants. The buildings change when inhabitants leave, and new ones come with their own funeral offerings. Your horse will remember the way.” She drew to a halt.

“Well, this is my place,” she said. It wasn’t as bad as she had made it out to be, though dark and shaped like a box. I guessed that it must have originally been a simple paper model. Fan invited me in, but I declined. Somehow I did not like to pass through that narrow door.

“Why don’t you stay with me while you’re here?” she pressed.

In the end, I put her off with some vague words. Fan’s naked agendas gave me an uneasy feeling, and already I regretted the few pieces of information I had let slip.

After leaving Fan, I let Chendana wander through the streets for a while. As we went along I kept looking for familiar markers. Remembering the glimpse I had seen of the Stadthuys, I thought that if I could find it again I would surely have a better sense of where I was. The map that the Dutchman had drawn for me of the town was still impressed upon my mind, although I didn’t know whether that was due to his clarity or some other reason.

At last I saw the Stadthuys but, try as I might, could not approach it. Despite glimpsing it at the end of several streets, as soon as I went down them, it disappeared. Only upon looking back did it reappear like a mirage, around a corner or at the end of an alley. Frustrated, I thought to ask some of the pedestrians I saw at a distance. I drew near an ornate palanquin, but the shutters were drawn and I hesitated, remembering my glimpse of Lim Tian Ching on the street before and how he too had such a conveyance. While I stood there wavering, the shutters twitched and a shriveled face appeared.

“What do you want?” he said. “A young girl going about alone? What is your family thinking?”

I could only stammer before this onslaught, but the old man pried open the door and climbed out. “Recently dead, are you?” he asked. He was a wizened creature, bent with age. At the end of a scrawny neck, his head bobbed like a fishing weight. Yet he was surprisingly agile, circling me with interest. “Good horse,” he said. “They don’t make them like that anymore. Now it’s only cheap paper, not even cardboard!”

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I just wanted to ask for directions.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I was trying to get to the Stadthuys.”

He snorted. “The Stadthuys! It doesn’t exist here.” At the surprise on my face, he burst out into a cackle of laughter. “You can see it because it exists as a collective memory. All of us here who lived and died in Malacca expect to see the Stadthuys and the clock tower, but you can’t visit it because nobody actually burned a funeral copy of it.
Cheh!
I should have told my grandson to burn me one, then I would be the sole proprietor. But you, young lady. What are you doing by yourself without your servants? Who is your family? Where do you live?”

Despite his peculiar behavior, I wondered if he might have some useful information, so I said, “Oh, Grandfather, I was just wondering where everything was. I’m so new here, you see.”

“Ask away! But in return you must tell me something about yourself. It’s only fair that I get some entertainment out of this.”

“So do the areas here correspond to the real Malacca?”

“Of course they do! Or almost nearly. But distances are very deceptive here.” He smiled cunningly. “You can spend days getting to some places and only minutes to reach others. It has to do with how things are connected to one another. Everything is relational here. Your house, your servants, your clothes—they all depend on someone else’s filial devotion to you. Look at me! When I died I had nothing to want for. Some of my descendants even went to the temple to pray that I would have a long and extended time to enjoy all these riches. But you see what happened?”

I jumped as his voice rose, and in the distance I saw several passersby quicken their steps to avoid us. Wondering whether I’d had the misfortune to run into a madman, I took a step back.

“I got stuck here for years!” He let out a howl of indignation. “Can you imagine that even my great-grandsons have died and passed on to the Courts of Hell already?” His eyes snapped back to me. “Now, why do you want to go to the Stadthuys?”

“I was just curious,” I said. “When I was alive I was never allowed out of the house.” He seemed satisfied by this, so I pressed on. “Did you say that the family mansions correspond to the same areas as they did in life?”

“Eh? Yes, by and large. Although there are some who were poor in life but were assiduous about burning funeral offerings, so that they’re now rich in the afterlife. But as soon as someone departs for the courts, then their possessions here vanish as well. Were you planning on visiting someone?”

I couldn’t resist the temptation. “I had a friend who was married to the Pan family and had a young daughter, but she died soon after.”

“
Hm
, an old merchant family. I don’t recall anyone from there recently.” My face fell, and he gave a dry cackle. “Don’t give up hope, the womenfolk are often secluded. She may yet be there. I think they have one or two houses still in the merchant quarter.”

I cast my eyes down to hide the sudden beating of my heart. Was it possible that my mother was still here? A shiver ran over me, rendering me deaf to the old man’s querulous voice.

“I said, how did you die?” he repeated. “I want to know all about you, so young and pretty.” The loose skin on his throat trembled like a turkey’s wattle.

“I fell,” I said hastily. “It was dark and I slipped on the stairs.”

He looked disappointed. “Did anyone push you?”

“Perhaps. My cousin was very jealous of me. We were both interested in the same young man.” I hurried on, describing the horse-faced girl to him and the paroxysms of jealousy we had both suffered over an unnamed beau. That at least was true enough. Partway through I paused. “Are all the old Malacca families represented here?”

“Yes, even some whose line has already died out.” He named a few and I listened carefully, satisfied when I heard him mention Lim. So it would probably be fairly easy to find Lim Tian Ching’s abode.

“Go on, then,” said the old man with a leer. “Tell me about your cousin. Did you fight with her?”

I thought quickly, “Oh yes, we really set to it one day. We rolled around on the bed and tore each other’s clothes to shreds with our teeth. But tell me, now that we are here in the Plains of the Dead, does anyone have special escorts? I heard that you could bribe the border officials.” My voice faltered, fearing I was asking too many questions.

“Nonsense! Nobody can bribe the border officials.” He regarded me with suspicion, so much so that I hastily took my leave. Even then, he pursued me down the length of the street before I managed to shake off the lecherous creature. The old man had appeared harmless, almost mad in fact, but I wondered uneasily whether he had merely been toying with me. Well, there was no use fretting over it. At least I had a good idea where Lim Tian Ching might be found.

After backtracking for a while, I headed toward the merchant quarter. That was where the Lim mansion was and, likely, some semblance of my own ancestral home as well. Almost angrily, I debated with myself. Time was short and I really ought to go to the Lim mansion, yet I hesitated, thinking of my mother’s face, a face that I had dreamed of often but could never recall. She had never had her portrait painted while she was alive. It had been so long since she had left me that I no longer knew whether the memories I had of her were my own or merely conjured from tales told by Amah. I turned Chendana’s head toward my own neighborhood. I would pass by and see what sort of dwelling existed here. It wouldn’t take long, I told myself. Just a few moments, that was all.

T
he streets became increasingly familiar in a strange way. Parts of them looked nothing like what I remembered, yet there was a spatial recognition, some trick of proportion that sang out to me. In some places where there ought to have been buildings, there was nothing but old trees and rocks; in others, there were three or four fine dwellings occupying the same spot. And of course, everything was much farther apart, as though the original streets had been stretched to twice or even thrice their width and length. On one corner, which in the real Malacca held only the shell of a decaying house, there was a grand mansion. From behind the imposing gates came the faint sound of laughter and women’s voices. I shuddered as I passed. Despite the gaiety, I couldn’t help remembering what that house looked like in the living world, with its roof fallen in and the wild grass breaking up the cracked stone floors. There had been tales about that house ever since I was a child. Some said that a plague had killed all the inhabitants. Others that the last master of the house had gone mad and butchered his wives and concubines, laying their bodies out in the courtyard until the stones ran purple with old blood. As a child I had avoided that house, my head full of frightening tales told by Amah. Now, seeing it as it might have been in its days of glory, I felt terrified yet drawn to it. What would happen if I knocked upon those doors? With an effort I pulled myself away. Curiosity was my besetting sin, I told myself.

As we reached the corner before my house, my throat tightened. Something whispered to me that if I wanted to remain among the living, these things were better left unknown. Yet I pressed onward stubbornly. I wanted to see my mother. How wrong could that be? At first glance, the curving wall that surrounded our house looked exactly the same, but when I reached the front I had a surprise. There were three houses on the site. Each house occupied the same space with no overlap. I stared until my head began to swim. It was some trick that I could not fathom, yet no matter how I peered from the corners of my eyes, I still saw three dwellings.

The first was a grand mansion, somewhat in the style of our home in Malacca, but far more imposing. The ponderous front doors were twice the height they should have been and from behind the serried walled courtyards I could see the upper balconies rising like monoliths. It was as though my home had, in some nightmarish manner, grown like a fungus overnight. Despite the size and splendor, there was an air of decay about it, as though it had begun to crumble from within. The second house was a medium-sized abode in far better condition. It was like a child’s drawing of a house, serviceable and sturdy but with no pretensions to grandeur. The third was barely a house. It was very much like Fan’s dwelling: a little box, crudely made and roughly finished with a narrow door and mean dark windows. I hesitated before my choices, then dismounted. The second appeared the most welcoming, so I walked up to its front door. As I did so, the other houses melted away into the periphery of my vision. I knocked, but there was no answer. Just as I tried again, I heard a harsh voice call out from the side.