The Ghost Bride (18 page)

“What do you want? She’s gone, and good riddance too!”

Chapter 22

I
peered at the door and windows, but the voice called out to me again. “Here! On the other side!” Obediently, I retreated until the trio of houses appeared again and then I saw her. Leaning out of the narrow doorway of the smallest house was a frowsy, elderly woman. Like Fan, she too wore funeral attire, though her clothes were faded and worn. Her cheeks, once plump, had fallen into hanging pouches and two lines were etched disagreeably from the corners of her nose to her mouth. Her eyes, however, were sharp, stabbing into me like embroidery needles.

“Are you talking to me, Auntie?” I said politely.

“Whom else would I be talking to? If you’re looking for her, she’s long gone.”

“Who lives in this house?”

“You don’t know and yet you go knocking on doors?”

“I was seeking a friend. Someone said she might be living in this quarter.”

The woman looked at me contemptuously. “I don’t believe you.”

My face burned. “If you don’t wish to help me, I’ll bid you good day, then.” I began to retrace my steps, fuming at her rude behavior. Why did ghosts behave like this in the Plains of the Dead? They seemed to have forgotten every civility, the genteel codes of respect that bound our society.

“Huffy, aren’t you? I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you. Just that I don’t believe you.”

“What don’t you believe?”

“That you’re looking for a friend. A friend! When you’re the spitting image of her!”

I turned in surprise. “Who are you referring to?”

“Why that hussy. That whore!”

The woman disengaged herself from the doorway and took a few steps toward me. Her frame, once large and heavy, now sagged as though it had been stuffed unevenly with lumps of hard cotton. “Surprised?” she asked. “You never would have guessed from the way she looked. Daughter-in-law of the Pan family, indeed!”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out. The woman ignored me, her words spilling from her as though they had been pent up for decades as, indeed, they might have been. “Coming here to look for your precious mother, is that right? I’m sure your father told you nothing but good things about her. He was always a weak, foolish boy.” I flinched as though she had slapped me. How quickly she had penetrated my anonymity!

“I know all about you,” she said, a thin smile stretching her lips. “Even when you were in her womb. I’m your grandfather’s third concubine. You should be addressing me as ‘Grandmother,’ or haven’t you any manners?” She drew closer and I stepped back. “It wasn’t easy, being the third concubine, you know! The other women in the household were so jealous of me when he brought me in. Not his wife. She’d given up by then, but the first and second concubines made my life miserable. But all I had to do was get a son by him. His other sons had died except for your father, and I knew what he was—weak!” She stopped for a moment, regarding me with a triumphant air.

I blurted out, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you.”

It was quite possibly the worst thing I could have said. If she had been irritable before, she was absolutely enraged now. What did I mean, I had never heard of her? How dare I disrespect my ancestors? I retreated down the path, beaten back by her vitriol, but seeing that I was about to leave, she mastered herself into some semblance of reason.

“Oh, but I have so much to tell you,” she said. “Don’t you want to know more about your mother?” At this I stopped, hating myself at the same time for falling for her tricks. “At least you should have the courtesy to stop a moment instead of running off with no manners.”

The problem with the dead was that they all wanted someone to listen to them. Each ghost I had encountered had a story that it was only too ready to share. Maybe it got lonely in the afterlife. Or perhaps those who lingered longest were the ones who could not bear to give up. Something told me that I might regret listening to this woman, but I couldn’t help myself. “What is it you want to tell me?”

“Changed your mind, then?” She smiled unpleasantly. “Well, some company is better than none, I suppose! Your family has neglected me shamefully. I still get a little stipend now and then when they burn incense for the ancestors, but it’s not very much, is it?” She gestured at the mean little house behind her. “And your grandfather promised to bury me in the family lot. But I showed him. I got my revenge even from beyond the grave.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been waiting for years for someone else from your family to come along. The last person was your mother. But then she wouldn’t talk to me afterward.” She darted a swift glance at me.

“I came to see my mother,” I said. “If she’s gone, there’s no reason for me to stay.”

“Oh, but she’s not gone far. Don’t you want to find her?” I had assumed my mother had passed on to the Courts of Hell, but the woman was smiling again. “Sit down,” she said. “I want to tell you a story.

“You have to understand that I wasn’t always so unpleasant to look at. Once I was a fresh young girl like you. Pretty enough for your grandfather to choose as a concubine, though I was just a servant at the time in his friend’s house. Your grandfather didn’t know that I already had a secret lover, the second son of the house. When I became pregnant, I thought my lover would surely marry me or take me as a concubine. But he abandoned me. He wanted someone better. Oh, I was filled with grief and jealousy! Who was it, this woman who had stolen him from me? A young lady, he said. Daughter of the Lee family, not a servant like me.”

I winced, recognizing my mother’s maiden name, and the old woman laughed. “I see you understand where this is going. My lover made me get rid of the baby. He said that
she
would never marry him if he had a bastard. Do you know what it’s like to have a child torn from your body? I screamed so much that I couldn’t speak for days. After it was over, my lover arranged for me to become your grandfather’s concubine. The old man was besotted enough not to notice I wasn’t a virgin. I didn’t want him, but I had no choice. But my lover didn’t get what he wanted either. Your mother turned him down. She wouldn’t marry him—oh no! He was only the second son after all, so he married her cousin instead.

“By that time I had other troubles. All I needed was a son to secure my position, but I couldn’t get pregnant again. I thought maybe your grandfather was too old, so I decided to get a child by some other means. Your father was a handsome young man then, but no matter what I did, he ignored me. Finally I cornered him, but the fool only stammered and wept. He was in love with someone else. Of course, it was your mother.

“How do you think I felt then? That woman took everyone from me, one after the other.” The old concubine’s face was raw with emotion. Shame burned my cheeks. I didn’t want to hear any more but I was frozen. “She married him—why not? He was the only son of a rich family. That snake pretended she knew nothing of what had happened, but I wasn’t fooled. And I still couldn’t get a child. I wanted a baby—my baby that I had lost to the abortionist. I couldn’t bear it!”

Her voice rose in a howl, so painful that I cringed, but she hissed at me. “One day I brushed past her on the upper landing. She put her hand over her belly and I knew. Your father was behind her and he said with a foolish smile, ‘We’re having a baby.’ I couldn’t control myself. I flew at her and we struggled on the stairs. In that instant, your father lunged forward and grabbed her. She was safe. I fell all the way down and broke my neck at the foot of the main staircase.

“Oh, you needn’t look so horrified! I’m sure nobody in your household ever mentioned this to you. They said it was an accident. But if your father hadn’t brushed past me to snatch her back, maybe I wouldn’t have fallen. They made a hasty funeral for me. Your grandfather burned some grave goods, but after a year or so he simply stopped. So you see, I had plenty of reasons to be angry with your family.

“The first few years after I died, I spent all my time spying on the world of the living. I passed through the house so often that in the end they exorcised me. There was a cook who could see ghosts. He was the one who went to the master and said that my unquiet spirit was in the house. So I had to come back here, to this hovel in the Plains of the Dead. And I waited. I was young when my life ended. Only twenty-one, the same age as your mother. I know, I don’t look like it anymore. That’s because I traded it. There are ways to get around everything. I found a demon who ate the essence out of my spirit body. And in return he sent the smallpox to your house.

“Your mother and grandfather succumbed quickly, though your father survived. Can you imagine the looks on their faces when they arrived here and found me waiting? But they didn’t stay. No, they didn’t. Your grandfather was only here a few years and then he was called on to the courts for judgment. And your mother? Well, she’s still around but can’t bear to live in the house your father burned for her. Never accepts her spirit offerings, or anything like that. She’s gone to be a whore in someone else’s house. Anything to get away from me.”

T
here was a dull pain in my chest, a squeezing breathlessness. My head rang with the echoes of her story. I wished I’d never gone to look for my mother. All I had found was a monstrous tale of old sins and deep bitterness. With difficulty, I controlled my voice.

“Why didn’t you send the smallpox to your lover, who made you lose your child in the first place?”

She lifted her brows. “It’s none of your business what I chose to do. In the end, everyone who’s ever crossed me will pay for it. You’re upset about your precious mother. Well, let me tell you just where she went and what a good, kind person she is.”

Instinctively I shrank back.

“That’s right,” she said. “When I told her what I’d done, she went straight off to the household of my lover. Oh, he’s not dead yet. In fact, he’s still in the world of the living. She probably thought I deserved whatever I had suffered at his hands and went to live with his family, no doubt to plot some revenge against me. That’s where she is—a kept woman in the Lim family mansion!”

I had thought that nothing she said could shock me more than her earlier revelations, but I was wrong. “The Lim family?”

“That was your mother’s revenge on me. Stupid woman! As though I care what she does with herself.” She opened her mouth as though to unleash another tirade, and for the second time that day I fled.

The Lim family. All paths led back to their door. Our destinies seemed darkly tangled, and for the first time I considered the burden of the Buddhist Wheel of reincarnation. Groaning beneath its weight, individual lives were forced to play out a farce time and time again. The image of the Anglican church in Malacca rose before my eyes together with its green and quiet graveyard. When I died, I thought, I would rather rest there undisturbed than continue like that old concubine, eaten up by her schemes of vengeance from beyond the grave. But what did I really know about anything? My world had been turned upside down.

Chapter
23

F
or some
time I let Chendana wander at will, not caring what path she chose. I clung to
her back, hugging my thin pajama top and wondering how this dead version of
Malacca had become so cold. A breeze blew unceasingly, at first barely
noticeable but over time wearing down my defenses until I shivered
uncontrollably. Little things began to fall into place. I remembered Madam Lim
telling me in her soft voice, when I first went to her house, that she and my
mother were cousins of some sort. The general air of gloom in our family, which
I had attributed solely to my mother’s death, must have held lingering echoes of
the death of the Third Concubine, Old Wong and Amah’s dislike of our main
staircase, and everyone’s reluctance to speak of the past. I remembered the
pitying glances of other amahs when Amah took me out as a child. Now it occurred
to me that they might have seen me as an unlucky creature, born of a household
plagued by ill fortune. As for the Third Concubine’s lover, I had little doubt
as to who that might be. Lim Teck Kiong, father of my tormentor Lim Tian Ching
and false friend to my father. It seemed that he had never ceased meddling in
our affairs.

Tears streamed from my eyes and dried in the wind.
I didn’t know what I felt sorrier for—my father’s years of grief, the unmasking
of my childish fancies, or even the Third Concubine’s wasted life and her wicked
schemes. All I could fix upon now was to go to the Lim family mansion in this
ghostly world. There, I must surely find some of the answers to my questions.
And I might see my mother, although I had begun to dread that meeting. The kind,
gentle mother that Amah had fostered in my blurred memories might turn out to be
another virago.

My visit to the Third Concubine had consumed almost
all the daylight, and the drop in temperature seemed to correspond with the
number of figures of the dead that I glimpsed, hurrying here and there on the
gloomy streets. These bleak emanations might have stemmed from the ghosts
themselves, for there had been little evidence of such a chill upon the
grasslands the night before. It was as though with the dimming of the light, the
icy breath of the grave grew stronger.

I now had a good sense of where the Lim mansion
might be and Chendana set off at a brisk trot. We passed through endless streets
and wide boulevards, far more than the real Malacca ever possessed. The distance
was interminable, the rows of darkened houses eerily expectant. At last we drew
up in front of an imposing gate. If I had thought that any of the homes in my
family’s ghostly neighborhood were grand, this put them all to shame. A great
wall, almost ten feet high, surrounded it. The doors alone were massive, yawing
upward into dark shadows that were barely pierced by a pair of gate lanterns.
This was no mansion. It was an estate. For long moments I hesitated, struck by
the sudden fear that the gates would be manned by more ox-headed demons, but
then I remembered that Fan said they rarely came here, and I plucked up my
courage. At worst, it might be no more than one of those silent automatons. I
slid off Chendana’s back and let the great iron door knocker fall with a
clatter.

There was a long silence as the echoes died away,
then slowly, the great gates opened. A pale face peered out. It was a
manservant, dressed in old-fashioned livery. I was surprised to see that he was
a human ghost and not one of those puppetlike servants. His eyes swiveled around
the empty street, then rested upon me.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I—I’m looking for . . .  ” I
stammered. Fool that I was, I had been so intent on the revelations of the day
and the pressing need to get to the Lim mansion that I had completely forgotten
to think of some pretext for entry.

“For work?” he barked. “You’re late. Didn’t they
tell you to go to the side entrance, not the main door?” Then he paused. “Or
perhaps you mean the other kind of work.” Leaning forward, he brought a lantern
up to my face and examined it closely.

“I heard you needed a kitchen maid,” I said
quickly.

He gave me a long leer. “If you ask me, you’d be
wasted there. The master’s been looking for new concubines. They don’t need you
in the kitchen with so many puppet servants.”

“You mean, those manikins burned as funeral
offerings?”

“Hush your mouth! We don’t talk about funerals
here. Nobody wants to be reminded about his death. We call them puppet-men. And
to the master, don’t refer to them at all. He doesn’t like them. Any pauper can
have a puppet servant or two. Even I have one! That’s why at the great houses
they hire human ghosts as staff.”

“If you have your own servant, why are you working
here?” I asked.

“Same reason as you, sweetheart. Not enough funeral
money burned for me. But why waste yourself in the kitchen?” His eyes fastened
on me greedily and I began to feel afraid. “I could use a wife myself.”

I shrank back, glancing into the shadows where I
had left Chendana out of sight. If I had to, I would rather pretend to be a
candidate for Lim Tian Ching’s harem than be accosted by this gatekeeper. At
least I would stand a better chance of getting farther into the house. But
another voice rang out from within.

“Who’s there? Why have you left the gate open?”

The gatekeeper turned sullenly to face another
retainer who had appeared at the entrance. “I was just giving her directions.
She wanted to go to the kitchen.”

“The wrong door, eh?” The second man, older and
more heavyset, turned to me. “Now then, who are you?”

I cast my eyes down, mumbling that I had heard
there was an opening for a kitchen maid.

“You can do better than that,” he said. “In fact,
the master will be pleased to see one like you.”

I began a tale about having pledged true love to my
fiancé, but he sighed and cut me off. “Never mind. I’ve heard this kind of thing
before. I’m sure you’ll change your mind after twenty years in the kitchen. If
you have a change of heart, let me know. I’m the steward here. Make sure to
address me politely when you see me.”

I trailed after him, avoiding the baleful glare of
the gatekeeper. “Sir, I have a few possessions still outside.”

He barely turned his head. “I’m sure you do. Some
grave goods and such. You can collect them later.” And so, thankful that I had
told Chendana to hide until I came back for her, I crossed the threshold of the
Lim mansion.

W
e
walked a long way, down endless corridors and through countless courtyards. I
glimpsed echoing expanses of silent banquet halls and felt a shiver course down
my spine. I had been here before in my dreams, those suffocating nightmares when
I had been forced to wander these halls night after night and admire Lim Tian
Ching’s wealth. Though puppet servants still stood blankly at attention, there
were also a number of human ghosts. Some were dressed as servants, but others
appeared to be guests or residents of the house. They wore the same kind of
stiff, gaudy attire that I had seen Lim Tian Ching wear, which gave the whole
scene an antique air. Feeling like a complete nonentity, I scurried behind the
steward with a lowered head.

After a while, the surroundings became more
utilitarian. “Don’t expect to come in through the main gate again,” the steward
said curtly without breaking his stride. “You’re lucky I happened to pass by
when I did.”

We were now rapidly approaching an outbuilding from
which the clang of pots and sounds of shouted orders became discernible. It was
a homely cacophony, so unexpectedly like the world of the living that I was
surprised to find a lump in my throat. It had been only two days since I had
passed into the realm of the dead, but already I longed for the noise and
clatter, the living air of my own Malacca. The kitchen was a vast hall filled
with servants and steam. Rows of dishes were laid out, many arranged elaborately
like spirit offerings. There were a number of puppet servants, all busy
chopping, frying, and steaming this bounty. If this had been a real kitchen, the
smell of oil heating, garlic and ginger being pounded, and fish frying would
have assailed my nostrils, but the smells here were muted. I had to sniff hard
to tease them out. The steward spoke to a large, paunchy human ghost who was in
charge. After a brief conversation, he beckoned me over.

“This is the new girl.”

“Too dainty. I can’t use her. Send her
upstairs.”

“She doesn’t want to do that kind of work,” said
the steward significantly.

“I don’t need another kitchen maid.”

“If you please, sir,” I ventured. “I can also serve
and wait.”

“There you go,” said the steward. “Use her as
waitstaff. They can always do with more humans on show.”

The cook looked at me skeptically. “I have enough
puppet waiters. At least they don’t spill soup on people. I can’t afford another
mistake like that again.”

The steward rolled his eyes. “Do as you will. If
you can’t use her, send her to housekeeping, then.”

When he had left, the cook regarded me with a
raised brow. He had small cunning eyes above a broad, squashed nose with flaring
nostrils. It was unfortunate that he was so fat. His corpulence only served to
accentuate his resemblance to a pig, especially when he sank his jowly chin into
his neck to regard me.

“All right,” he said after an awkward silence.
“I’ll give you a trial. But don’t come crying to me if it doesn’t work out. You
shouldn’t be here at all and you know it.”

I blanched, wondering if my covert mission was so
easily discerned. But he went on to say, “The steward talks tough but has a soft
heart for young girls like you. He left a daughter behind, about your age, I
think. Otherwise you really should be auditioning for the master’s bedchamber.”
He laughed coarsely and I shrank even further into myself. “Nah, don’t worry. I
said you can have a trial here. But if you don’t suit, then it’s off with you.
Plenty of ghosts wanting work nowadays, especially since this household is doing
so well.”

I bobbed my head, thinking of an alias. “Thank you.
My name is—”

He cut me off with a dismissive gesture. “Don’t
bother. We don’t use names here.” Seeing my eyes widen, he shook his head. “You
must have just died. Listen, all of us here came because we had descendants or
some family member who bothered to burn offerings to us. We’re technically the
privileged ones, who can spend some time enjoying the fruits of filial piety
before going on to judgment at the courts. But some of us end up working as
servants out of boredom or necessity. Still, we don’t use our true names,
understand? My grandchildren want to think that I’m enjoying an afterlife of
leisure here and I want to preserve that illusion. So no names.”

“But how would they know what you were doing here
anyway?”

“
Cheh!
Of course they
don’t know, but we don’t like to think about them getting wind of it through
some spiritualist or medium. You never know what sort of information leaks out.
Anyway, for our own pride, we don’t mention it.”

I nodded obediently, wondering again at this ghost
world, which seemed to have so many of the vices and failings of life.

“So you can be girl number six.”

“Number six?”

“Yes, there were five before you. Don’t ask me what
happened to them. Now, go over there and start preparing that fish. I want to
see you clean and steam it Teochew-style. Understand?”

He gestured to a shining pile of pomfret, their
silvery bellies slick and plump. I often helped Old Wong in the kitchen, though
I was mostly relegated to menial tasks like pinching the roots off bean sprouts
and cleaning squid. Occasionally, however, he let me prepare dishes. Now I
carefully slit a fish open to remove the guts. To my surprise, however, there
was nothing inside at all—only a hollow space. Setting the knife down, I
examined it thoroughly. It looked like a fish, and felt like one, right down to
the slippery flesh, but when I brought it to my nose there was no smell at all,
not even the clean salt tang of the ocean. Over my shoulder I heard a burst of
laughter.

“Never seen a fish like this before, have you?”
said the cook. “They’re pretend fish, just like all this food isn’t real food
either. There’s very little taste, so that’s why the kitchen is so important. We
have to do our best to make it palatable.”

“But I thought that offerings had flavor,” I
said.

“Oh, they taste fine when they’re fresh and
received when you’re in the world of the living,” said the cook. “But when you
cross over into the plains they seem to lose all savor. That’s why a lot of the
dead like to go visit their old haunts from time to time. Ah, it’s been a long
time since I had some freshly made
pie tee
, or a
bowl of
assam laksa.
” He stared off into the
distance for a moment. “The
pie tee
my mother made
was so delicious. The outside was crisp and the turnip-and-prawn filling sweet
yet toothsome. She used to arrange them on a plate so that they looked just like
tiny, crunchy top hats. And the chili sauce! My mother was famous for her chili
sauce, which she pounded every morning and mixed with vinegar, garlic, and
sugar.”

Listening to him reminisce made my mouth water. I
had to close it to prevent myself from drooling, and for the first time since I
had arrived in the Plains of the Dead, I became aware of a dull hunger. This was
not good. Er Lang had specifically warned me against eating spirit food. I bent
over the fish and rinsed it in a clean bowl of water. Then I selected a shallow
metal pan from a large stack of pans while the cook watched me expressionlessly
with his small piggy eyes. I broke off a knob of ginger, peeled, sliced, and
arranged it on the dish. After placing the cleaned pomfret on top, I added
sliced tomatoes, then looked around.