Coolies employed by the H.M.O. pushed handcarts carrying anti-malaria-oil; they entered the bus hubs and recreation areas and pumped the air with spray-clouds. The mosquito-men squeezed into storm drains, into hard-to-reach places, and directed their squirt-gun nozzles into nooks and crannies.
Not far away from the ktts-ktts-ktts of the spray cannons, Lu See clambered up a wooden step-ladder with an armload of Eagle Brand condensed milk. She shunted the tins indiscriminately on to the top shelf and looked down. Three pairs of eyes pored over the front page of the Malay Advocate. Mother, Dungeonboy and Pietro grappled with the lead article, almost falling over one another to digest the news.
For weeks now, since Singapore’s merger with the Federation of Malaya in September 1963 the talk had been of the rising tide of ethnic disharmony and the deep mistrust amongst the races; fear and frustration threatened to boil over.
‘‘And who exactly are the LPM nowadays?’’ Mother inquired with casual disdain.
‘‘Look, I insist you stand on my left,’’ said Pietro. ‘‘I’ve gone a bit quiet on this side.’’
Mother shuffled around. ‘‘I know they call themselves the Labour Party of Malaya, but surely they’re communists through and through. All they do is promote Chinese heritage and education and spread anti-Malay sentiment.’’
‘‘They’re all as bad as the other, fuelling racial and religious hatred to win votes,’’ Pietro said, dreamily.
Mother tilted forward on her elbows. ‘‘I read in the papers that one of the LPM members was shot by the police a few days ago resisting arrest.’’
‘‘Only after a rival politician was hacked to death in Penang by Chinese radicals,’’ Pietro conceded with a fainting sound.
‘‘Is true?’’ asked Dungeonboy.
‘‘Cross my heart and hope to see your Jap’s eye.’’
The phone rang. Fishlips Foo picked up the receiver. ‘‘Wai-eeeee!’’
He slammed it back down and scratched his ankles, muttering, ‘‘Sons of the soil these Malays call themselves! Hum gaa chaan! More like sons of night soil.’’ He eyed the next table. Uncle Big Jowl, necklaced with perspiration, was launching into a bowl of vegetable soup.
Lu See climbed from the stepladder and stretched her arms over her head to ease the ache in her stomach. The phone rang once more.
‘‘Hum gaa chaan!’’
Lu See snatched the receiver out of the old man’s hand. She heard a hissing on the line like the sizzle of palm oil on a hot wok, followed by voices and the click-clack of typewriters. ‘‘Yes? Who is this?’’ she said.
‘‘This is P.K. Au from the Malay Advocate.’’
‘‘Yes?’’ Lu See fumbled with the telephone cord as she spoke. From across the room Pietro stuck his tongue out and flicked a piece of bread at her. She turned her back on him. ‘‘And how might I assist you, Mr Au?’’
A tiny square of bread struck her back.
‘‘I’d like to write a piece on your restaurant, Il Porco. Perhaps we can discuss the details face to face. I would like to interview you, come and see the restaurant, perhaps take some photographs.’’
‘‘And sample the food of course,’’ she added.
‘‘Huh?’’
‘‘I assume you will want to review the food for your article.’’
‘‘… yes … er, yes …’’
Lu See exhaled down the phone. ‘‘Mr Au, what exactly do you intend to write about?’’
She heard him hesitate. ‘‘We are running a story on racial provocation leading up to the election. Can you confirm you deliberately try to bait your Muslim neighbours by serving pork? Is it true that you–?’’
She banged the receiver down hard.
‘‘Who was that?’’ asked Mother, scratching her palms.
‘‘A reporter. Those bloody vultures love stirring up trouble.’’ She marched into the kitchen and returned with a bowl of vegetable broth for Fishlips Foo.
Fishlips tipped his liver-spotted tortoise head towards his soup and took a sip. He grunted in disgust. ‘‘This soup is lousy.’’ His spoon clinked against the bowl. ‘‘All watered down. No taste!’’
‘‘Uncle Big Jowl likes the soup,’’ said Lu See.
‘‘Look how fat he is. He eats anything.’’
‘‘You’ve been ordering the same soup every day for the last ten years, Mr Foo.’’
‘‘And every time, no flavour. Also how come my portion so much less than his portion? Always you try to cheat me.’’
‘‘I’ll fetch you another bowl if you want more,’’ Lu See said.
‘‘Why you think I want more? Soup has no taste.’’
Uncle Big Jowl mopped up the cracker crumbs on the table with his middle finger.
‘‘What word from within the walls of Troy?’’ asked Pietro.
Lu See had no idea what he was on about.
‘‘Oh, you are a howling monkey,’’ he roared with a gleam of teeth. ‘‘Tibet? Sum Sum?’’
Lu See shrugged. She’d tried. She’d really tried. But no one was prepared to tell her anything. The radio and press reported conflicting news. Only last week a regular customer sat down for a plate of pork and announced that China was at war with Tibet. Lu See spread her hands in a plea. ‘‘I call the Chinese Embassy continually and keep getting brushed aside. I called them three times yesterday but they were deliberately vague, denying all knowledge of a ‘crackdown’ in Tibet.’’ Her mother grunted. Lu See recognized Mother’s look. It meant she thought Lu See was wasting her time trying to track down Sum Sum. ‘‘So I went to the Chinese Embassy in person, again,’’ she continued. ‘‘An awful woman with flat feet made me wait, then I was herded into a small room with nothing but a bare desk, three chairs and a couple of men in Mao suits. They asked me more questions than I asked them. And what did I get out of them? Nothing.’’
Pietro paused in the middle of sucking on his long cigarette holder. ‘‘Typical diplomats.’’
‘‘I even spoke to someone in the Red Cross and telephoned the Indian High Commission – nobody was willing to say anything about the Dalai Lama or the situation in Lhasa.’’
‘‘Oh, Archimedes’ screw! Poor old sausage. She’s a survivor, is our precious Sum Sum. Let’s hope she follows the Dalai Lama’s lead and fiddles a ride over the border to Dharamsala.’’ Pietro, sipping tea, opened his diplomatic pouch, as was his habit, and sifted through the low-priority mail. He opened a seemingly incongruous-looking letter with a nail file and then, without warning, sprang to his feet, pressed his fedora to his head and bolted out the door.
‘‘What happened to him?’’ asked Mother. ‘‘He late for a hair appointment, is it?’’ Just then she spotted Lu See lifting a red $10 note from the till and sticking it into an envelope. Mother inhaled audibly. ‘‘What you doing?’’
‘‘What does it look like I’m doing?’’
‘‘Are you stealing?’’ She emphasized the last word.
‘‘It’s none of your business, Mother.’’
‘‘Are you gambling, is that it?’’
‘‘I don’t gamble.’’
‘‘Drinking! You take the money and hide it, then use it for your drinking!’’
‘‘Look, it’s my restaurant, I can do what I want with the proceeds.’’
Mother glared at her, more curious than stunned. ‘‘Your uncle and I are silent partners. We own 10 per cent. Maybe you conveniently forgotten.’’ Lu See felt her cheeks grow warm and hid her embarrassment by showing Dungeonboy a chipped teacup.
The telephone rang once more. This time Lu See was quickest off the mark. After a moment she replaced it on its cradle. ‘‘That was James. He says there are several thousand people taking part in a march. He told us to close up the restaurant.’’
‘‘Close up? Why?’’ asked Uncle Big Jowl.
Lu See wasn’t sure. ‘‘All he said was that they were chanting Maoist slogans and provoking the Malays with slit-throat gestures.’’
Everyone, including Fishlips Foo, scratched their heads. Unfazed, Lu See stacked a clean plate in Dungeonboy’s outstretched arms, then another. As soon as he had shelved them, he slammed the shutters and returned to wash more dishes. A minute later they heard something. Dungeonboy, at the basin, up to his elbows in soap suds, urged everyone to be quiet. He strained his neck to one side, wiping the soap residue from his arms with a dishcloth.
A noise approached, throbbing and subterranean, thrumming through from the ground itself like the rumbling sound of heavy rain pulsing in the distance.
Lu See, Mother, Uncle Big Jowl, Dungeonboy and Fishlips Foo crept toward the restaurant’s bright orange shutter windows and peeped out, spellbound.
One by one the legion materialized like ants spilling from a blazing anthill.
Howls of voices whipped the air, echoing back and forth between the shophouses. Throngs chanted ‘Malai Sai! Kill the Malays! Malai Sai! Kill the Malays!’
Swarm after swarm of Chinese demonstrators filled the maze of streets, jamming the five-foot ways, tumbling in like a downward rush of water from a broken dam. The East is Red! The Communist Party is like the sun! Wherever it shines our doctrine will spread!
It was like the roar of approaching rapids.
Lu See clapped a hand to her mouth. She recognized the scene; she’d seen it before: 1936, London. The mob behaved like an out-of-control funeral procession baying for the blood of the dead. ‘‘Malai Sai! Malai Sai!’’
Mother’s hand went to her throat. ‘‘You hear what they’re saying about the Malays? They say they’re going to kill them. Shall we call the police?’’
‘‘I can’t believe this is happening,’’ said Lu See.
Huge posters of Chairman Mao waved high in the air, peering down from the heavens, levitating over the multitude like a godhead.
Chairman Mao is the red sun in our souls!
Arm in arm, they marched, many in flip-flops and wearing only shorts and singlets, brandishing little red books, each one carrying either a picket, a parang, a cudgel or a flaming torch. They yelled at the Malays to crawl back to the jungle and tore down the tin tinkerer’s sign, stomping on it as if it was a mangrove snake.
‘‘Where are they heading?’’ Lu See wondered, clutching the fabric of her kebaya.
‘‘Why must they come through here, don’t they realize this is a Muslim area?’’ cried Mother.
‘‘That’s precisely why they’ve taken this route, to provoke the Malays.’’ Lu See poked her head out into the sea of migrating bodies, raising herself onto her toes. She paused there. The clingy smell of sweaty bodies filled her nostrils, and then, much more worryingly, the oily stink of rag torches being lit.
Already dimples of destruction were visible: carts overturned here; lamplights and window glass shattered there. Most bystanders had fled in fear, but a few stood transfixed. Some of the local street vendors huddled into a traffic podium at the end of the road like a frightened flock of sheep, staring with bewildered gelatinous eyes. As the crowd thickened they packed themselves ever tighter.
That was when Lu See saw Pietro. The throng pulled him from his car and jostled him to and fro. She also spotted her Muslim neighbour, Abdul bin Kassim, being manhandled. With the wall of noise still ringing in her ears, Lu See lifted the iron grille and dashed outside. She snatched a burning torch from somebody’s hand and waved it to thin the rabble in her path. ‘‘Don’t you dare touch him!’’ she screamed.
A Chinese man had his fist around Abdul bin Kassim’s tightly rolled beard; another was tearing his songkok in two.
‘‘What do you think you are doing?’’ she spat.
The scrum hesitated. ‘‘We are teaching these Malays a lesson.’’
‘‘This man is my friend and neighbour. He lives next door to my shophouse restaurant.’’
‘‘Shophouse restaurant?’’ One of the men flicked his eyes about. He was thirtyish with stick-thin legs. She indicated Il Porco with an arm. ‘‘That is your restaurant?’’ He teetered with surprise.
‘‘Please. Look at all the damage you’ve done.’’
‘‘But they were asking for it,’’ replied a man with a pimple on his nose.
‘‘The only people asking for it are the politicians. They are the ones responsible for drafting these concessions.’’ She pressed herself forward. ‘‘If you have a problem with my friend Abdul bin Kassim, you better think twice. All the years I have been here, not once has he complained about my pork restaurant, not once has he petitioned me to move away.’’ The heat of the torch coloured her face. ‘‘What the hell are you people trying to do? Cause a race riot?’’
‘‘We want the government to hear our plight. The Malays are getting all these privileges – ’’
‘‘So you decide to burn their businesses down. That’s just stupid,’’ she cried. ‘‘Put your parangs away. If you want to be heard, demonstrate outside the parliament buildings. Leave us alone. On this street we are all Malayans. We are all equal.’’
The man with the pimple lowered his eyes and frowned at his bony feet.
Lu See’s eyes blazed. ‘‘Who is in charge of this lamebrain rabble? This is just wanton destruction. You’re acting like animals. Soon you’ll be tearing into people with your bare teeth. You,’’ she addressed the man with the stick-thin legs, ‘‘What do you do?’’
‘‘I’m an electrician.’’
‘‘Is this a reflection of how you live?’’
‘‘How I live? I live a very civilized life, I’ll have you know,’’ he said, taking offence.
‘‘Who do you live with? Your ma, your wife, children?’’
‘‘My wife and I have two daughters.’’
‘‘What would they say if they could see you now? Attacking poor, innocent people.’’ The man frowned at his feet too. ‘‘I’m sure they would be very sad. A nice, intelligent man like you …’’ Lu See glared at him for several moments.
‘‘Sorry,’’ he told his feet. A number of men stared at him unsure what to do next.
A minute later, Stan Farrell’s Ford Anglia came into view with winking lights and the bee-boo-bee-boo of sirens.
Abdul bin Kassim dusted himself down and retreated to his house, just as Lu See saw Pietro push his way towards her. ‘‘Let me through, you horny-thumbed brutes,’’ he yelled.
Gradually, the group moved off. They made almost no noise as they went their separate ways.
Wanting to avoid Stan at all costs, Lu See took Pietro by the arm and led him back to the restaurant, through the tidemarks of vandalism.
As soon as she sat down, Dungeonboy pressed a cup of teh tarik into her hands.
Reversing buttocks-first on to a sturdy wooden stool, Uncle Big Jowl sank down with a thump like a wobbly sack of spuds. ‘‘You lucky, aahh. Mob like that can go damn-powerful crazy, lah. They act without head or tail.’’
‘‘Ten years ago I would have come out there with you,’’ said Fishlips. ‘‘Hum gaa chaan!’’
Mother, too, fussed over her. ‘‘Chee! When did you get so bossy, ordering grown men around, hnn? Who did you learn from?’’
‘‘I wonder,’’ she replied, squeezing Mother’s arm. Lu See turned to Pietro. ‘‘You left here very hurriedly earlier.’’
‘‘Yes, I received a letter. A rather disturbing letter, actually.’’
‘‘I could tell. From?’’
‘‘The abbess from Sum Sum’s nunnery.’’
Lu See straightened up quickly, as if jabbed by an electric cattle prod. ‘‘The abbess? From Sum Sum’s nunnery? I don’t understand. How? Why has she been writing to you? Oh God, has something happened to Sum Sum?’’
‘‘She’s all right.’’ He looked sheepish now. ‘‘Sum Sum’s been writing to me for some time now. The clever moo tracked me down by getting in touch with my old Cambridge college; urged them to forward all post to me.’’
Lu See felt a tinge of jealousy. ‘‘What does she write about?’’
He looked at her levelly. ‘‘Up until recently, not much. Bits and pieces about wanting to smack Chinese communists over the head with chestnut pans and whatnot. But the last two letters have been most disturbing. Pleas for help, no less. I think she might have been worried about Chinese censors so it was a bit cryptic and cloak and daggerish. A bit like unravelling Rapunzel’s tangled tuchis, but I’ve managed to piece it all together: she’s going to follow the Dalai Lama to India.’’
‘‘What? Alone? Across the Himalayas?’’
‘‘According to the abbess’s letter, it would seem so, yes, and across to Dharamsala.’’
Lu See felt a low panic in her gut. ‘‘But I read in LIFE that the Dalai Lama went with horses and … and Sherpas. Going alone would be suicide.’’
‘‘What’s wrong?’’ asked Mabel. She was preparing for her night shift at the hospital when she spotted her mother from the corridor.
‘‘Nothing,’’ Lu See replied, tossing woollen socks and thick winter clothes she hadn’t worn in years into her eel skin trunk.
They were in Lu See’s bedroom above the restaurant. Mabel pushed aside some cushions and sat at the end of her mother’s bed. ‘‘It’s something awful, isn’t it? You’re going away to die. You’ve decided to end it all in some secluded place, like a wasteland or an underground grotto. Old elephants do the same thing when they think they’re about to die. They go to an elephants’ graveyard – some dark cave in the wilderness.’’
Lu See folded a scarf and placed it neatly on a woollen cardigan.
‘‘That’s it, isn’t it?’’
‘‘No,’’ Lu See said. ‘‘I’m not going in search of some cave in the wilderness.’’
‘‘What then? Tell me! It’s bad news. I can tell it is bad news.’’
‘‘I wouldn’t call it bad news. Actually it’s all quite exhilarating.’’
‘‘Exhilarating?’’
‘‘Yes.’’ Lu See reached across her suitcase and pulled out a folding map.
‘‘What’s this?’’ asked Mabel.
‘‘It’s a map of India.’’
‘‘For heaven’s sake, I can see it’s a map of India. But what’s that got to do with you? Is that where you’re planning on going?’’
‘‘Not just me. You are too.’’ Lu See turned to Mabel. She was beaming.
‘‘Oh God! I’ve seen that look on your face before. It’s your crazy look. What is it?’’
‘‘I’ll tell you later. Go pack your bags. Bring a thick jacket and winter clothes.’’
Mabel did not budge from the end of her mother’s bed. Instead she kept eyeing her nervously. ‘‘What the hell is going on?’’
‘‘If the doctors here can’t help me, then I’m going to go and find it myself.’’
‘‘Find what? What on earth are you talking about?’’
‘‘I’m talking about a cure, Mabel. I’m going to go find a bloody cure.’’
That evening the restaurant was quiet.
Lu See and Pietro were chatting over a pot of tea when they heard a rap on the iron grille. Stan Farrell stepped gingerly across the threshold with his police cap tucked between arm and ribcage. ‘‘Sorry to interrupt. Just wanted to say all is calm again. Most of the demonstrators have gone home.’’
Lu See blew the froth from her tea. ‘‘I thought I told you never to step foot in here again.’’
‘‘Yes, quite right. I’ll be off then.’’
‘‘No, sit down,’’ ordered Lu See.
Stan did as he was told. Hunched over, he pressed his hands tightly between his knees.
She glared at him. ‘‘I haven’t forgiven you.’’
‘‘I know you haven’t.’’
‘‘And I never will. You’re a weasel.’’
Pietro smoothed his eyebrows with a thumb. ‘‘Careful, dahling, little boys love being insulted by little girls; it makes them feel loved.’’
‘‘You’re a weasel and a snake.’’
‘‘Fair enough,’’ said Stan. ‘‘But I need you to understand that I was set up, just as you were. I never knew about the bomb. I never set out to hurt you or Mabel.’’
She raised a warning finger. Her eyes raked his face. ‘‘Whatever you say isn’t going to change things between us. You realize that, don’t you?’’
Stan drew his lips uneasily over his sticking-out teeth.
‘‘And you, Pietro, I saved you from a beating earlier on. That mob would have really roughed you up.’’
Pietro set his delicate jaw. ‘‘Oh, dahling, you can be such a melodramatic Mary.’’
‘‘Shut up!’’
Both men jumped in their seats.
Lu See kept her finger raised like a weapon. ‘‘And because you both owe me, you’re both going to do something for me.’’
‘‘I am?’’ whinnied Pietro.
‘‘We are?’’ said Stan.
‘‘You are.’’
‘‘What?’’ they asked, swallowing.
‘‘Pietro and I are going on an adventure.’’
‘‘An adventure?’’ cried Pietro. ‘‘Where on earth to?’’
‘‘You are going to accompany me to Dharamsala, India.’’
Pietro blanched. ‘‘Bronte’s withering tights! India? What, with all those beggars you can smell at twenty paces?’’
‘‘Yes, Pietro, I’ll need all your diplomatic weight behind me. And, Stan, you spent a year in Bombay, you have your contacts. You can find out for me how we get from Madras to Himachal Pradesh.’’
‘‘When’re you going?’’ asked Stan.
‘‘Next week,’’ said Lu See.
‘‘Oh, Edesia’s enema! How am I going to cope with all that curry?’’ yelped Pietro. ‘‘What about my wind?’’
‘‘Put a cork in it,’’ said Stan.
‘‘Oh, brah-haaa, very droll, slippery Stanley, very droll indeed.’’
‘‘But what do you hope to achieve, Lu See?’’ demanded Stan.
‘‘What I’ve been trying to achieve for the last twenty bloody years: find Sum Sum.’’
‘‘How do you know she’s at Dharamsala?’’
‘‘It’s the home of the Dalai Lama’s exiled government. If she’s anywhere that’s where she’ll be, at the Geden Choezom sanctuary for exiled nuns.’’ Lu See went to the telephone and picked up the receiver. ‘‘But there’s one last thing I must do before we leave. I have to take Mabel back to Juru. There’s something I need her to see.’’
Mother, who had been eavesdropping, suddenly piped up. ‘‘Juru? Why on earth are you going back there? Cha! That place now attracts a lower class of people if you ask me.’’
‘‘Let’s just say I have some unfinished business to look after.’’ Lu See dialled the number for the hospital and asked to speak with Mabel’s superior, the handsome surgeon. She informed him that her daughter was taking the following day off. And he wasn’t to protest.