ANTONIO ROSARIO was born on the thirtieth of January 1916, four days before the Chinese New Year.
Fonso and Maria were delighted that Adam’s second child was a boy. Keeping the Rosario name going was as important to Fonso as it was to the Chinese. But it did not matter so much to Adam and Lucia. Their first, Philippa, with her head of blond curls, was a lovely sweet thing. They would have been just as happy if their second was a girl. A companion for Philippa who was now just a little over a year old.
They had wanted their first to be a boy, the leader of the pack, and had decided just between themselves to name the baby Phillip. It was a little secret game of theirs to refer to the unborn child as Phillip. That was why they agreed to Fonso’s suggestion of Philippa so readily.
It gave rise to an unexpected little problem. Fonso assumed his next suggestion would be accepted in the same spirit. It gave him a sense of family power. After all, he was now the Regidor.
“Now, the best name you can …” he started.
Adam and Lucia looked at each other.
“… give your son and heir would be one of our great family names.”
O God! Lucia thought. He’s not going to saddle the kid with Alfonso, surely …
“My father’s name. Humberto.”
“Pa. That’s a 19th century name! It’s like calling him Abraham.”
“Shush! That’s Jew!” Fonso growled.
Adam and Lucia stuck to their ground and the baby was baptised Antonio by Padre Mendoza. Ma said it was a good name. St Antonio was the patron saint of lost things. Lucia didn’t know what to make of this. Fonso accepted it with good grace.
But six years later when Catarina was born they followed the age-old family tradition of keeping the same first names in the family. Catarina was named after Adam’s younger sister, causing some minor mix-ups later in life.
Mrs Foo of the shop came round to their shack the day after Lucia brought baby Antonio home. A nurse had told Mrs Foo that Lucia was back home when she stopped by the shop to buy something. Mrs Foo had rushed round before when Philippa was born. By then the Foos had a special relationship with the Rosarios in Ramalho. “Because they have investments in us,” Maria had said, and Fonso had told her not to be so bloody prejudiced against the Chinks. Fonso knew that the Foos had played a major part in his struggle for the Regidor’s office, whispering in the right ears.
Mrs Foo’s comments after her congratulations, sipping the sickly sweet rose syrup Lucia served her, were as unpalatable as her comments when Philippa was born.
Mrs Foo’s universe was ordered by Chinese concepts. Of wind and water, which affected man in his physical environment, determining whether houses were oriented properly and furniture arranged in the most auspicious ways. Of animal birth signs that determined one’s character and destiny. Of numbers that drew the good and evil forces of chance in all spheres of human activity, from luck in lotteries, safety of vehicles and peace within households, to suitable dates for weddings and funerals or mutually beneficial sums to reach in bargaining. Of heating and cooling values of food or the weather, which set the state of one’s health and disposition.
When Philippa arrived Mrs Foo had said, rather bluntly, it was so unfortunate that the wretched child, a girl, was born in the year of the tiger. A tiger woman was too strong. Too restless. Too impulsive. A forthright person. One who rebels. Yet secretive. The tiger can bury himself in the study of some stupid subject, Mrs Foo said. And although the tiger is charming and has personal magnetism, a tiger woman very seldom marries. But she consoled them with the significant fact that Philippa was a wood tiger, whatever that meant.
She didn’t give her equally pessimistic view on Antonio to Adam and Lucia, but quietly to Fonso in the verandah.
Mrs Foo had brought some herbal mix which Maria approved of. Her mother and her grandmother and goodness knows who else had drunk the infusion of those herbs when they had had babies and their stomachs, breasts or vaginas, Fonso didn’t know what parts of the body it worked on, were restored to almost virginal prenatal conditions after birth.
“Aiyah,” Mrs Foo sighed, “by four days she missed having a dragon man. If only I knew, the sinsei, the Chinese doctor, could have given her something to delay the birth. Now the poor child is a rabbit.”
“Rabbit no good?” Fonso asked.
“Boleh lah, but not like a dragon.”
Fonso deduced that the dragon was some sort of powerhouse, a man after his own heart.
“Rabbit is clever, but too honest lah. Won’t take risks. Quiet. Won’t fight, lah.”
Mrs Foo ventured a thought, “You know, if only Philippa had been a Phillip, and Antonio an Antoinette, it would be perfect.”
Adam, walking into the verandah at that point, recoiled at the thought that any child of his should have a French name like Antoinette with all the dirty sex and un-Catholic epicurean connotations of the French. He even distrusted French priests and French nuns. There were no French Brothers to distrust. The French Brothers had not come out to Malacca.
Antonio Rosario grew up to be a fine smiling boy, with all the Rosario characteristics of intelligence and discipline, Fonso observed, and the warmth of feelings in his father’s blood with the gentleness of Lucia and the Oliveiras.
Padre Mendoza rammed the fear of God and of the Holy Church of Rome into his pliable little soul, and the De La Salle Brothers moulded him towards a manhood of their Irish ideals. Because Adam sent him to school. Fonso was proud of that. It was befitting for the Regidor to have a grandson in school, he thought.
The kampong was changing. Mrs Foo was now selling coconuts already husked, ready to be split open and scraped at home. There was electricity in the Foos’ place. The towkay on the hill, Tan, the omnipotent, had a self-propelled carriage. A motorcar.
Three Perera boys had gone south, to the fleshpots of Singapura. The Vierias had moved away to the heart of Malacca town. So Adam thought. The da Cunhas’ eldest had moved out to Seremban. Brick buildings with clay tiles imported from China were being erected daily at amazing speed along the road to Malacca town.
But thank God they were getting good prices for their shrimps. Only Lucia complained that rice cost so much these days, and Fatimah’s roti jala was not as good as it used to be.
The postwar world after 1918 was an entirely new scene. It bewildered most of them in the kampong and Adam and his father talked about newfangled ideas and things for hours on end.
Antonio came back from school with new words every day. He played with the young men from the new timber houses and talked to them as fluently as he spoke Portuguese. They were nice people. Arrifin and Zachariah and their friendly wives.
Adam spoke a smattering of Malay, but Antonio could laugh and joke in Malay as though he was one of them. And now he could speak English.
Their wonderful Philippa, whom they also sent to school despite Mrs Foo’s opinions about the education of females, was from Adam and Lucia’s limited and prejudiced viewpoint outstripping every girl in the Convent in every subject.
One day in 1930, when Antonio was only fourteen years old, he startled them in the middle of the night, walking to their room saying, in Malay, “Grandpa is dead.”
Lucia sat up on the mat they slept on, dazed and shocked.
“Anton, what are you saying?” Adam put his hand on her thick back to calm her.
Antonio’s thin frame in his grey sarong was silhouetted in the doorway, the flickering altar flame in the dining room behind him.
“Granpa’s dead,” Antonio repeated in a deadpan voice.
Lucia turned to Adam, “Adam, you heard …”
Adam sat up. “Did someone come?”
Lucia added at once, “Did you dream it, Anton?”
“No, Ma, I know.”
A cold shiver went down Lucia’s spine. It was the way her son said it.
Adam put his arm round her shoulders. He didn’t know what else to say.
“Are you sure, boy?” Lucia asked.
“Yes, Ma.”
Lucia looked at Adam.
“Yes, Ma. Granpa’s dead.”
Then Antonio started crying. Lucia shot up and held him. She knew that there was a special relationship between her children and their powerful grandfather, father of her Adam. Even before they began to talk the old man had come round many an evening to sing to Philippa and Antonio or tell them stories as stupid and crazy as the Malay myths.
Catarina rushed into the house, tripping on the steps in the dark about thirty minutes after Lucia had calmed Antonio and brought him back to his mat.
“Adam, Pa died.”
Alfonso Rosario, the Regidor, passed away peacefully in his sleep on the fourth of April 1930, at the grand old age of sixty. In his sermon at the funeral mass, Padre Mendoza said, among other things, that he was a man who had lived with God in his soul for six decades.
With all the rumpus of the funeral they forgot Antonio’s strange declaration of Fonso’s death. He could have heard sounds from their house, Adam thought to himself. It was very still and the tide was out.
Adam was thankful that, though the eldest son, he did not have to get a loan from the Foos or Kirpal Singh or make the decisions on all the arrangements for the funeral. Ramalho did all that. He had returned in 1924 with more than a degree from Madras. He had also saved enough money by giving private tuition while he was studying to go to England and study something more. No one in the family was clear what use that was to him.
“England, of all places,” Fonso had commented. “So cold there.”
Dr Ramalho Rosario was now working at the Malacca hospital and repaying his loans dutifully. Mr Foo in particular was very pleased how his gamble had paid off. With the free services of a doctor now available, and his sons running the shop, the old man had plenty of time on his hands to think about why he seemed to be coughing more since Sunday, or if that pain was really indigestion as Mrs Foo insisted it was. He went to the telephone at the post office to ask Ramalho to come to the shophouse and give him a checkup at least once a week.
These visits were most enjoyable to Ramalho as there was always a small bottle of brandy to open after the clinical business was done with and Mr Foo’s questions about England were invariably followed by his most interesting comments.
One day they had a particularly long session because the Foos’ sons joined them and there was a general debate on the terrible crash of the price of rubber the previous year.
He decided to call on Adam after that. He tried to buy a quart bottle of whisky from the shop but as usual they wouldn’t let him pay. “How can we take money from our adopted son?” was Mrs Foo’s standard reply. She was the one who received Ramalho’s regular loan repayments, because she said that the old man’s eyes were not as good as they used to be. Ramalho jolly well knew that the old bloke still had near-perfect eyesight.
THEY WERE sitting and talking in the verandah after Lucia had found sufficient leftovers to feed Ramalho, when Adam called out to a figure walking past their house. It was already dark but Adam recognised the young man from his stoop and his gait.
“Hey, Hitam!” Adam shouted.
Hitam, or Blackie, was the man’s nickname. Ramalho was black as the ace of spades, as the family described him, but Adam knew his shout would not have the slightest effect on him.
The dark man came up to the verandah and greeted them. He added, “Oh, good evening, Doctor,” when he recognised Ramalho.
Ramalho grunted a rough reply.
“Casmir was looking for you. Can you play this Saturday?” Adam asked.
“Against who?”
“Kampong Glam.”
“Haiya! Those gangsters …”
Ramalho grunted something or other. Both Adam and Lucia saw he was almost sneering at Hitam, and they did not ask him to join them as they would normally have done. The dark man sensed that the family had something to discuss and left mumbling an adeus. Teenaged Antonio was the first to speak after the man had gone.
“That’s a wicked man, Pa.”
“Chut! How can you say that!” Lucia snapped.
But Ramalho turned with much interest to Antonio, “You know him?”
“Never seen him before.”
“Then how can you say …” Lucia started off, but Ramalho put up his hand and she stopped.
“Why did you say he was a bad man then?” Ramalho asked.
“I dunno why, Uncle. I just know.”
Adam and Lucia looked at each other.
Ramalho leant forward and asked Antonio, “Tell me how it is that you just know. Is it his eyes? His face?”
Antonio shook his head, puzzled, smiled uncomfortably, and replied, “I just know. Suddenly, like that. Like you know how you can feel when our team is going to win or lose?”
“Hey. It’s so late. Bedtime!” Lucia interrupted deliberately.
“Philippa, girl,” Adam said to Philippa, “put them to bed, will you?”
Ramalho said under his breath, as soon as the children had gone, his eyes opened wide, “That boy’s psychic.”
“Huh?”
“I mean he can see things we cannot see. Sense things. Like a bomoh. Or a saint.”
Lucia laughed, “A saint he is not.”
“Yeah, Hitam’s a real loafer,” Adam said.
“Adam, I happen to know that he’s not just a lazy bum or a gangster. De Deus’s son, isn’t he?” Ramalho asked.
“Yah.”
“He’s a real nasty piece of work, he is.”
Lucia interrupted sharply, “If his father was a bum, it doesn’t mean …”
“I know, I know, lah. It’s him I mean.”
“Lucia,” Adam turned and looked straight into her eyes, “Do you remember the night Pa died?”
“Why, yes. Of course.”
They related the story to Ramalho.
Ramalho narrowed his eyes and cleared his throat to say something serious, in his doctor’s voice, when Lucia spoke, “And when I was expecting Catarina …”
“Yeah. Antonio was about six then,” Adam took over. “Lucia said something to him about going to have a little brother, but he shook his head and said quite definitely to her, ‘No, it will be a baby girl.’ We laughed then. And when Catty was born we said that we will have to consult Antonio for the next baby.”
Ramalho cleared his throat again and spoke slowly and clearly.
“There is no doubt in my mind. The boy is clairvoyant. I have something to tell you.”
Adam and Lucia were surprised by the serious tone of his voice.
“There must have been many other little things which you have not noticed. I picked up Antonio’s comment on the de Deus fellow only because I was looking out for signs of a sixth sense in Antonio.”
“You suspected.”
“Yes. It’s an odd story. When I joined the Malacca hospital, six, seven years ago, one of the midwives asked me if I was related to Mrs Adam Rosario. Yes, I said, and explained how. She said she remembered the birth of Mrs Rosario’s son, about seven years earlier. Then I recalled that there was some suspicion of a problem birth and Lucia had Antonio in hospital. Padre Mendoza had written to me about Ma’s objections and all that.”
Ma’s objections. No one in the kampong had babies in hospital. They remembered the relief when Antonio’s birth turned out to be normal and Mrs Delgado’s saying going to hospital was just trying to be modern and uppity.
“The birth of Antonio had stuck in the midwife’s memory because the European doctor had come to the labour ward to check up if everything was O.K. and as the baby’s head came out he had muttered (now, these are her words) ‘Glory be to God, There’s a caul on its face.’”
“Caul?” Lucia asked.
“A thin skin, like a mask covering the whole face. It’s rare. The doctor motioned the midwife aside and with a quick movement of his hand removed the caul. The midwife went to get a basin but before she could return she saw him put the caul in his pocket, wet and messy as it was. She asked him why he did that and he told her in his country a caul was a very, very lucky thing. And anyone born with a caul could see the spirits.”
They were silent when Ramalho finished.
Adam reached out and took Lucia’s hand. It was cold.
Ramalho continued, “I asked her the doctor’s name but only got a garbled Malay version which to me sounded like Ohmarney.”
“See ghosts?” Lucia asked.
“No. I don’t think so. I heard some doctors talking of being born with a caul when I was at Guys …”
“Who’s Guy?”
Ramalho smiled. “A hospital in London. Someone said if you ever get a caul on one of your babies, put it in your pocket and go straight to the races. I think they said it was what the Irish believed. I’m not sure. The Irish are as bad as the Siamese for that sort …” his voice tapered off.
He was treading on familiar soft ground. Most people in the kampong believed in a variety of Malay and Chinese myths and superstitions. All the science he had to digest in his medical course had cleaned that out of him.
“My own version is that whenever people say someone can see the spirits, it really means that person is clairvoyant. You know, kind of psychic.”
He used the English word because he didn’t know the Portuguese for psychic.
Adam seem to understand.
_______
*Yee is ‘two’ in Cantonese