53 Chin Chew Street. I repeated the address so many times that morning—to the information lady at the bus interchange, to the bus driver, and then to several other people along the way, store proprietors and elderly men and women doing tai chi in a bit of green, open space, who looked like they could navigate the streets of Chinatown blindfolded, that the words started to sound strange, like a noise a baby might make when they are just learning to talk. To make sure I had remembered it correctly, I played the tape of myself saying those words, that name. Another thing I did was to cross my fingers the way Ms. Pereira did sometimes in class when it threatened to rain at the end of the school day. I did it every time I passed a shop that had its doors sealed shut, rust eating away at the metal gates. There were other images that worried me—buildings with their insides out, walls cracked and torn open to reveal wires and pipes, waiting to be plastered and painted over, made into the hotels and restaurants and spas that made the older shops (traditional, Chinese-medicine clinics, one-dollar stores, clan association headquarters with their unlit, smoky interiors, eating joints with just a few tables crammed into a spartan space) look like they had stayed still for centuries.
Here it was, Chin Chew Street. I held my breath as I followed the numbers up the road, exhaling only when I got to 53. Hung above the doorway was a large black signboard with faded gold leaf within the grooves of the Chinese characters. There was a mannequin standing in the entryway, and, next to it, a wide work surface for samples to be rolled out on, examined and cut to the desired length. It was an old shop, one of those that smelled of stale jasmine rice and incense smoke and didn’t seem to have working electricity; the only light seemed to come from the entrance and the picture windows at the back. The tiles on the floor were thumbnail-sized and varied from shades of turquoise to peacock blue, and bales of cloth filled the shelf lengthways, threatening to spill and unfurl onto the floor. An old man was sitting in the back, hunched over a black-and-gold sewing machine. Every now and then, he made it purr, moving a long strip of cloth away from him as he did so. Then, without looking up, he raised his hand to say that he would be right with me and could I wait just a bit.
I stood with my hands hung by my sides. My palms were sweating so I wiped them on the sides of my school shorts. I wondered what to say, what to ask, how to react if this was him.
Even from where I stood, I could tell that he was quite old, in his early eighties, and his back was slightly curved from bending over his sewing machine. I could see him sitting like that for decades and decades and was surprised when he stood up, at how straight his back was, how steady his stride. He stepped out from behind his sewing machine, draped a length of measuring tape around his neck, and peered at me.
“Hello, are you looking for something? Or do you want something made?”
He knows, I thought, he knows.
“Ahem. Erm. This might sound a bit strange and I hope you don’t mind me asking but is your name Chia?”
The old man cocked his head to the side and leaned forward so that I looked straight into his right ear. It was large and the ear lobe dangled fatly. The kind of earlobe that, according to my grandmother, meant you were rich or bound to get rich. “What? Little boy, you have to SPEAK UP!” He shouted these last words as if I was the one hard of hearing, then sighed elaborately before saying, “Some days are good, other days are bad.” He shook his head and cupped a hand behind one ear in anticipation of my speech again.
“YOUR NAME! IS YOUR NAME CHIA?”
“CHIA? NO, MY SURNAME IS TAN.”
“Oh.”
“WHICH CHIA ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?”
I thought about telling him never mind and then leaving to go to the nearest bus stop. I could get on the first bus out of here and forget about all of this. I looked around and saw that a couple was sitting outside a cafe across the street, staring and not even trying to hide it. The old man was still waiting for an answer so I took a deep breath, filling my chest.
“CHIA SOON WEI. HE USED TO LIVE HERE. AT THIS ADDRESS.”
“OH!” he said, his face and eyes bright wide and open now. “CHIA! HE USED TO WORK FOR ME! DELIVERING CLOTH AND PACKAGES TO PEOPLE, DOING SEWING JOBS THAT I GAVE HIM. THAT WAS BEFORE THE WAR.” Then his voice softened, and he slumped a little, as if the effort of remembering tired him.
“They had a child, I remember. I never met his family then but I remember him giving out red eggs during the baby’s full month celebration. But things changed when the war got closer. I had to let him go because the shop wasn’t doing so well. It was a tough decision but I had to do it. To save my business. He moved out of the city and into his parents’ village, I think. He came back after the war, thinner, looking older than he was, needing work and a place to stay. I gave him his old job back and let him stay here for a while—” he pointed at the door leading to the back of the shophouse “—but he moved away after a few years. His wife was in poor health and they wanted to be somewhere quiet.”
“And the boy?”
Fingers pointing skyward, he waved his hand, meaning no more, nowhere, nothing. “We never spoke about it... And to be honest, I was afraid to ask.” A look of regret came over his face before he glanced up in surprise. “How did you know it was a boy?”
“I—When was this? When did they leave?”
“Oh, about forty years. Almost fifty,” he said, closing his eyes. “So many years. Gone so fast.”
Fifty years ago. I had to swallow before I asked him the next question. “Do you know where he is now?”
He shook his head no. I felt my feet getting heavier, sinking into the ground. This was it. A dead end. My mouth opened, as if on its own accord, and I heard a croak rising from my throat.
“Are you okay, boy?”
The old man came closer, stepping over the threshold of his shop and reaching out with his arm, as if he thought I was going to fall over. I shook my head, and put up my hand at the same time. “Yes, yes,” I mouthed.
“Why don’t you come in? You want some water? Or I could make you a cup of tea. Or Milo.”
I thought about the stories my mother had raised me on, stories about bomohs, witch doctors, how they gave children sweets and sugary drinks to reel them in. And strangers who would lure children into vans and then sold them across the border. I remembered her face as she said heaven knows what happened to those disappeared children. Heaven knows, she said, her eyes stretched round. Then I looked at the tailor with his tape measure, and the parting in his hair that shone brightly pink. I thought about the soft-boiled egg that my mother had put out on the table next to the bread and jam, and regretted having left home without eating anything.
The man came back with a glass of water and three chocolate biscuits on a plate, and went away again while I drank and ate. “Here,” he said, setting down a stool so insistently that I felt compelled to sit. He perched across from me, in a chair dragged out from behind his worktable. “I really wish I had asked. It was obvious though, that he had been through something during the war.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know exactly. He never told me but it was easy to guess. Lots of things happened to lots of people during the occupation. Didn’t your grandparents tell you stories?”
A wash of memories, of all the things my grandmother used to talk about, rushed through me. Nothing, not one word. I shook my head, no.
“Most people prefer not to bring it all up again. I was lucky, nothing bad happened to me or my family. Those three years and eight months weren’t so bad for me, in fact. Many Japanese officers came to me regularly to get tailor-made clothing for themselves and dresses for their girlfriends. We lived quite well during the occupation. Despite everything...” He shook his head, looked as if he was about to say more, then changed his mind. “What’s that?” he said, pointing at my left hand.
I looked down to look at what he was pointing at, was surprised myself to see the dull gray machine whirring away. “Oh, this is going to help me remember things when I can’t see so well anymore.” I tapped on my glasses; the thickness of it made a dull tik-tik against my fingernail.
He nodded again before he asked, “Why are you looking for Chia?”
Because he could be my grandfather, I thought. Because finding him could save my father from spiraling down into the dark. “My grandma just passed away and I think they knew each other. Do you think you might have their address? Or telephone number somewhere?”
“My condolences...” he said, bowing a little. “I can ask my wife. She’s the one who manages our address book but she’s not here right now. It’s all so long ago...”
“Oh. Okay.” I blinked and swallowed, not knowing what to say anymore. “I guess I should—”
“This is important to you.” He fixed me with a gaze so direct that I had to look down and pretend to fuss with my hands. “Wait,” he said, before fading away into the depths of his shop. He came back with a notepad and pen. “Write down your name and phone number. If I find something, I’ll give you a call. I can’t promise you anything though.”
I nodded, letting him know that I understood. Forty years ago, fifty. He’s never going to call, I thought, listening to his sewing machine stutter alive as I walked away.
I arrived home in the afternoon shouting, “I’m back—” before remembering that no one was there, not my parents, not my grandmother. It felt strange stepping into the quiet apartment on my own, as if I had just come back from a trip away, much longer than a single morning.
All the rest of the day, I waited by the telephone, jumping up every time it rang. My mother called in the afternoon to make sure I hadn’t set fire to the apartment. Twice, I picked up the phone only to get Albert shouting abuse in my ear (“Chao ah gua! Retard!”). At around six, the phone rang. When I said hello there was a pause, and then the crack and shuffle of the receiver being passed from one ear to another. Albert again, I thought, and was ready to put the phone down when the old man’s voice came over the phone.
“Hello? HELLO? HELLO? I’m looking for Kevin Lim.”
“Yes, I’m Kevin.”
“This is the tailor on Chin Chew Street. You came to my shop today and asked for Chia?” I could hear all sorts of noises in the background. The talk and background music of a drama serial, children squabbling.
“Yes?” I said, barely able to breathe.
“Well, my wife remembers writing his address and telephone number down... Just in case we had to send on their mail, you see. She remembers wanting to tell them that they should come by to pick up a few things they left behind but we couldn’t find the number. We looked in all her address books, I promise, but we couldn’t find anything...”
“Oh. It’s okay. I—It was a small chance. Thank you for trying anyway.”
“Wait, don’t hang up! She tried the big phone book—she’s the practical one in the family—and she found one name. It might not be the person you are looking for, but you can at least call to ask. Do you have a pen with you?”
I replied yes and repeated it after him to make sure I had the correct numbers and everything:
204 Redhill Close.
#06–179
2774658
I thanked him twice before hanging up and smacking my forehead with the heel of my hand. Phone books. The yellow phone directory, volumes of it, was right under the telephone, stacked high enough to function as a side table. They had been there so long that I didn’t even see them anymore. I stared at the address and telephone number that I had written down, picked up the phone. Put it down. Picked up the phone. Put it down again.
Then I held my breath as I dialed, as it rang and rang and rang, only exhaling once I put the receiver back in the cradle. I tried again. No one picked up. Maybe they were out. I thought about the things my grandmother used to do in the afternoon. How she would take a walk around the neighborhood at around five o’clock, just as the ground and air were cooling, before the sun started to set. Maybe they were out, I thought, having dinner earlier than everyone else the way elderly people do. Maybe this wasn’t even the correct Chia Soon Wei and the real one was unlisted. Or didn’t exist anymore. 1946 was a long time ago—anything could have happened to them between then and now. There was only one way to find out.
The story was that there used to be swordfish in the waters around the island, murderous man-eaters that terrorized the villagers who lived by the sea. It was a fishing town and the men often risked their lives to feed their families. After several men had been killed by the swordfish, the village sought help from the sultan and his army but he did nothing. Men went on dying each time they went out to sea on their wooden boats. It was at the funeral of one of these fishermen that a boy from the hilltop came up with the idea to build a barricade along the coast, using the trunks of banana trees that grew abundantly in the area. With little left to lose, the men set about building the barricade. The next day, the people stood behind the ramparts, waiting nervously as the fish swam closer and closer. One by one, the creatures hurtled toward them, only to get their bills wedged in the tree trunks. As the fish lay suffocating at low tide, villagers held the boy aloft and celebrated, calling him their savior. These cries soon reached the ears of the jealous sultan. Paranoid that the boy would usurp his rule once he came of age, he sent his soldiers to the top of the hill to murder him. As the boy died, his blood soaked through the ground and down, down the hill. That was how it came about, the name. This was what I distracted myself with during the train ride to Redhill.
This time, I looked up the address in the street directory, then slid a bookmark between the pages before putting it into my bag. This time, besides my recorder, I remembered to bring a small bottle of water, and a packet of biscuits. A ten-minute walk and I was standing in front of the block of flats, quite low, painted calamine-pink and pale yellow. All the way there, I thought about what I might say. These are the lines I came up with:
Hello, my name is Kevin Lim Wei Han and I found a letter that was written to you in 1945.
Hello, my name is Kevin Lim Wei Han and I think I might be related to you.
Hello, I think my grandmother might have taken my father from you during the war and raised him as her own.
Good morning, I think I might be your long-lost grandson.
I only stopped when I got into the lift, distracted by an overwhelming stench of urine. I clamped a hand over my nose and mouth, held my breath and watched the numbers ping: 1, 4, then 6. When the doors opened at the sixth floor, I lunged out onto the landing, forgetting for a moment what I was there for. When I remembered, I stood and stared into long corridors extending on both sides. Odd unit numbers on the left, even numbers on the right. I turned left. Even though it was still light outside, the corridor was dank, shut in from all sides but the direction I was coming from. The fluorescent tubes overhead helped little, only gave a cold, greenish cast over the graffiti, the dying plants, and newspapers left to curl and yellow in the heat. You could furnish a whole other flat with these things, I thought, looking at the TV consoles and wooden shelves left near someone’s door. I imagined an apartment, much like ours, made up of slightly broken furniture and sunk-in sofa cushions, much too loved.
There was a man dozing in the doorway of one flat. He wore just a plaid lungi wrapped around his lower body, had stretched his legs out into the corridor. It was difficult to figure out how old he was, his skin was grooved and slack along the forehead and cheeks, but his chest looked curiously smooth. The man slept on as I approached, slowly and as soundlessly as I could. The space behind him was badly lit. It was the first time I’d seen a flat smaller than ours and I squinted to see what I could. Two single beds, pushed together at the far end of the apartment. Boxes, all yawning wide, lined up near a dull, floral-clothed sofa. I tried to make out the odds and ends sticking out the top of the boxes, then started when I realized that someone was watching me. A woman, in a housedress of a pattern similar to that of the couch she was on. I felt my face redden, and continued walking until I reached Unit 179. No one seemed to be home. The windows were shuttered, and the metal grills chained up with a heavy lock. There were no sandals or shoes outside the door where they would normally be. Instead, sticks of broken incense lay unlit, as if they’d slid out of the bundle they were sold in and never picked up, never considered.
I hadn’t thought about it. It was only when I got there that it dawned on me that they might not be home. Or they might be home but not want to speak to me, or hear my story, it was so long ago maybe they wanted to forget. Or maybe I was completely wrong. The idea of that, or of them not wanting to see me, made my chest feel tight, as though someone had bound it with rope and was pulling on both ends. Finally, I knocked. Nothing, not even a slight stirring of the air behind the door to hint at the rising up of old bodies, creaky legs, no voice telling me to hold on. I knocked again.
“Are you looking for the Chias?”
I turned. It was the man in the doorway, leaning out now with his upper body. I hesitated, then went to him.
“Yes. Have they gone out?”
He shook his head. “Moved. Just moved out not too long ago.”
“Oh,” I said. When I recovered, I asked him, “Do you know where to?”
The man shrugged, bony shoulders pointing toward his ears. “Don’t know.”
It didn’t seem like he was going to tell me more, he had closed his eyes and it was as if the conversation never happened. I was just about to leave when he said, “I think she moved to one of those old people flats. Not too far from here... Not sure where.”
I turned back to look at him.
“She? What about him? The husband?”
He shook his head and sighed, drew out a tin of tobacco from the waistband of his lungi, and started rolling a cigarette. “Old Chia passed away...two months ago?” He yelled over his shoulder, “Oi, when did old Chia pass away?”
“Two, maybe three months ago.” A woman’s voice, ringing clear from the dark.
I peered into the flat again, but the woman was no longer on the sofa. Then I saw her, standing in the kitchen by the window. Sunlight was streaming in, lighting up her arms as she reached past the window ledge to draw in her laundry, hung out on long bamboo poles. I watched as she balanced the bamboo between sink and dinner table, then flapped out each garment before folding it and laying it on the table. The air filled with dust motes, fell in and out of the rays of evening sun. It was only then that I realized that they had just that one window in the kitchen. That and the ventilation slats near the door, wide enough for cockroaches and lizards to slide through, nothing bigger.
“I—Thanks.”
So he’s dead, I thought. He’s dead.
The woman said, “This Buddhist temple helped her with the funeral. Took care of the costs and everything. We didn’t go but I heard it was all right.”
I heard a faint buzz near my ears, a mosquito, felt its body wing past the side of my face.
“Are you looking for them? What is this about?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. In the space of that silence, I saw him keen forward. They were done giving answers, they wanted to ask questions.
“I’m—I—” I stepped back, then turned and walked to the landing.
I was just stepping into the lift when I heard her starting to say something else. He cut her short, yelled out that the boy was gone. He’d walked away just like that.
“He can’t hear you anymore,” he said, before switching to Tamil. The rest I didn’t get. The lift pinged open. I stepped inside and jabbed hard at the button to close the doors before I could hear them say anything else.
I had one thing left to do and now, now there was nothing. Nothing. I wanted to stay on the train and be driven back and forth across the country. West to East. East to West. I wanted to never get off and go back home to the empty flat. Grandmotherless. One less grandparent, and then two less. Can you lose something that you never found? I was thinking this, half dreaming, as I walked back home. My keys were in my hand when I heard something, a song that sounded like it had come from a long while away, in time and space, all the way from when Ah Ma still slept in her bed, when she would fall asleep to the Chinese opera with the song going right into her chest. One of the neighbors was playing the same song on their stereo or their radio, I thought. But the music got louder and louder as I approached our door and the little invisible hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up straight. I tried not to make any noise as I slid the key into the lock, the better to catch her ghost in the act. The better to ask the questions no one else could answer.
There was a clash of cymbals, the whine of an erhu just as I stepped in. There was no one around. No one. No ghost. The radio blared, making a tinny sound as the melody crested.
“Ah Ma?” I whispered.
“Hmm?”
I turned and saw my father lying down on the sofa in his work clothes, his eyes fluttering open.
“Pa?”
“Where were you? Your mother told me to come home and give you this.” He pointed at a wax-paper packet on the table. “Chicken rice. Were you at school?”
I made a noise that sounded like yes. The takeaway package was still warm and I could feel the grease seeping through. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes, yes.” He gave me a wan smile and pointed at the radio. “Your grandma liked this one. When I was your age she would take me to the getai during the seventh month, when they performed this for free outdoors, even when it rained and they only had the ghosts watching. I didn’t like it much. I only liked the fight scenes and the snacks she would buy for me on those outings. We would sit there until the mosquitoes got too much. Unless this one came on, then she would make me sit there for hours... Maybe we could go, this Hungry Ghost Festival,” he said, getting up and moving toward the door. He smelled of a mixture of chlorine and sweat and sunshine.
“Yes, sure,” I said, nodding and wondering what I had been looking for and why. I should just burn it all, I thought, the letters that I still had, the cutouts, the notices. The tapes with their many different voices contained within.
But I didn’t. What I did was this. I waited until all the lights were out that night before I crawled under my bed and the floor. I got out the shoebox and laid the recorder and the tapes in it. And the scrap of notepaper with the address and phone number of people I thought could matter, but who were really strangers, and put it back where I had found it. I buried it under layers and layers of Ah Ma’s things, already smelling of mothballs now that they hadn’t been worn for a week. Then I shut the drawer and tried to forget.