A Different Sky (8 page)

Beyond the ballroom was the door to Grandfather's jade museum, housed in a part of Lim Villa that had been built especially for this purpose. Glass cases lined the room displaying the precious stone carvings. Sometimes, Mei Lan crept unseen into the museum to gaze at its extraordinary contents. In the shuttered half-light the smooth green stone exuded a strange opalescence. Mei Lan's mother wore a small jade pendant as a protective amulet; it had been taken from amongst the bones of her grandmother during the cleaning of her grave, long after her flesh was rotted and gone. Jade was a stone of magical properties prized above all else, Grandfather Lim Hock An had told Mei Lan. He had bought his first piece decades before with the initial profit he earned from his tin mine.

Lim Hock An had been a tall, muscular man when he arrived in Malaya from China at the turn of the century, to work as a coolie in a tin mine near Ipoh. His intelligence was apparent to everyone; he rose quickly to the position of coolie supervisor and eventually began to prospect for tin on his own. As he hacked his way through the jungle with little relief from heat or the throttling vegetation, his slender resources were soon exhausted; he was ready to give up when he struck his first deposit. After that he had the luck to strike it again and again. Soon he was the owner of several large tin mines and employed coolies of his own. When his parents died he brought his wife Chwee Gek from China to join him. She handled the money, paid the coolies and did the accounts for she had some slender education. An American missionary couple in her home village had opened a school for girls; Chwee Gek had been allowed to go for a while to learn about numbers and letters. In later years, Lim Hock An got himself teachers and more education than his wife. He had a zeal for education that only the uneducated know. Although he never learned to read or write fluently, he sent his son to study in England and built schools that bore his name in China. He belonged to a generation that left their homeland in order to survive, but wherever they landed and lived, always looked back to China. Singapore was never more than a temporary place to acquire wealth before returning home. Now, trailing after Ah Siew,
Mei Lan passed the closed door of the Jade Museum and thought of the green magic pulsating within.

Lim Villa appeared pinned to the ground by its four octagonal turrets. In the upper rooms of these towers the Lim family had their separate quarters. Lim Hock An occupied one tower and Second Grandmother another; Mei Lan with her family lived in a third. Although the fourth turret lay empty for the use of guests, it was said that Lim Hock An was merely biding his time and soon this area would house a new wife. Such gossip was not mentioned before Second Grandmother – any thought of an additional wife in the house drove her to shout dementedly and claw at her slave girls until their blood ran.

Second Grandmother's rooms exuded a powerful smell of heady French perfume, the medicated lineament rubbed on to her arthritic limbs and the opium she regularly smoked. One by one Mei Lan liked each of these smells, but together they combined to make her head ache. When at last Mei Lan and Ah Siew entered her quarters, Second Grandmother was waiting for them seated on a black lacquer chair, regal in embroidered silk. At the sight of Mei Lan her face creased in a smile, revealing her many gold teeth. Mei Lan approached for the kiss Second Grandmother expected, and was forced to examine her at close range. Tobacco discoloured her remaining teeth and her breath was soured by opium. Mei Lan concentrated on the smell of the perfume that was always strongest about her ears. As Second Grandmother held her close and whispered words of affection, Mei Lan tried to remember the impossible name of her perfume.
Schiaparelli.
Sometimes she managed to remember the whole name, and sometimes there was no more in her head than a
Schia
. . . and nothing could get her beyond it. A forest of embroidered pink peonies covered Grandmother's long
sam
and matching trousers; jade earrings green as spinach and lit with diamonds hung from her ears. Jade covered her wrists and more diamonds her fingers; pins of silver filigree speared her upswept hair. Second Grandmother appeared encrusted all over by workmanship. Even the black lacquer chair she sat upon was thickly inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

‘So late.
Aiiyah
, my feet are aching. Waiting so long.' While she embraced Mei Lan, Second Grandmother rebuked Ah Siew.

At once Ah Siew hurried to check that the towels and bandages, the water boiled with monkey bones and the soft red sleeping slippers
placed side by side, were ready. Then, two of Second Grandmother's young
mui sai
gently levered her up from the chair to begin the journey across the room, their mistress swaying painfully between them upon her tiny feet. Sometimes, Second Grandmother's feet were too painful to bear her weight and she demanded to be carried. At these times she mounted a slave girl's back to be taken to the garden or the dining room; she rarely went out of the house. Only women with big feet went out of the house, she always said in disapproval. Once she was installed again in a chair Second Grandmother called for Mei Lan to sit near her. Mei Lan noticed that tonight only the
mui sai,
Gold and Silver, attended Second Grandmother and that Little Sparrow was absent.

‘Where is Little Sparrow?' Mei Lan asked. Little Sparrow was Second Grandmother's prettiest slave girl. Behind her Gold and Silver giggled, Ah Siew turned to look sharply at the girls, who bit their lips and fell silent. Ah Siew tested the temperature of the water, adding spoonfuls of ground almonds, mulberry root, frankincense and white balsam; her hand disappeared into the milky water, mixing in the oil and herbs.

‘Little Sparrow has gone to the nunnery; she was getting too fat. When she is thin she can come back,' Second Grandmother answered tartly. At the mention of the word ‘nunnery', Mei Lan's interest was alerted.

‘I never heard of going to a nunnery for being fat,' Mei Lan replied in surprise. She had thought a nunnery was a place of praying women, a refuge for the sick or homeless or unmarried girls like Ah Siew's sisters.

‘Ssh, Little Goose. It is rude to ask questions,' Ah Siew whispered.

‘A nunnery serves many purposes,' Second Grandmother added more kindly. Behind her Gold and Silver smothered another giggle and Grandmother turned to glare at them.

The girls were dressed identically in floral
samfoo
. Their hair, plaited in pigtails, hung over their breasts and a thick fringe covered most of their brow. Little Sparrow had always been similarly attired and Mei Lan had not noticed that she was fat, only that her eyes were bright, her lips a soft red and that when she smiled dimples pricked her cheeks. Now, with the knowledge she had gained from Ah Siew and her friends, Mei Lan appraised the girls anew. Gold and Silver and Little Sparrow must all have been sold by their parents for a bag of rice or a few coins
when they were seven or eight years old, just like Ah Siew's sisters. Now, Little Sparrow was already fifteen and Gold and Silver thirteen years old. Sorrow for the girls and horror at their plight blew hot and cold inside Mei Lan. What would
she
feel, what would
she
do if her parents decided to sell her? Worse than this was the realisation that it was her own grandfather who had bought the girls as a present for Second Grandmother. That one person could be bought as a gift for another filled her anew with distress.

Mei Lan looked down at the opaque broth of long-boiled monkey bones awaiting the immersion of Second Grandmother's feet. Whenever she was given chicken soup she remembered this bowl of perfumed broth, and was unable to eat. Ah Siew stirred more scented oil into the water and an astringent smell drifted up. Second Grandmother's feet were the ideal three inches in length that society had once demanded, and were small enough to rest in Ah Siew's palm. The
amah
slipped off the tiny embroidered shoe and began to unwind the bandages. Second Grandmother groaned and stared grimly at the unbound feet of her slave girls.

‘How lucky you modern girls are; no need to bind your feet. In my day a man looked only at your feet. If you had a tiny foot and an ugly face you could make a better marriage than if you had a big foot and a beautiful face. Nowadays, men judge beauty only from a face. Everyone has gone mad.' She spoke through clenched teeth and then roared at Ah Siew.

‘
Aiiyah,
don't tear at the bindings like that.'

The bandages criss-crossed Grandmother's feet in a figure of eight, pulling her heel towards her toes, pushing up the arch, which had finally snapped allowing both ends of a foot to meet. Mei Lan took a deep breath and held it for, as the bandages were unwound, an unbearable stench was released. Ah Siew unravelled the bindings, until the tiny hoof-like protuberances that were Grandmother's feet were at last revealed. Second Grandmother was now breathing hard for the pain of release seemed almost to equal the pain of confinement.

‘My feet were bound at the age of five.
Aiiyah
, I remember it still. Nowadays Government has stopped foot binding, but I have heard there are men who still want women with lotus feet,' Second Grandmother announced, proudly surveying the crushed stumps as the final bandage was removed.

‘Didn't your mother know how much it hurt you?' Mei Lan asked. She could not imagine her own mother putting her through such torture.

‘My mother was far away, but had she been there she too would have done what every mother did for a daughter to find a good husband.' Second Grandmother's silk trousers were pushed up high and she scratched her bare knee with a long painted nail. The soft calves of her legs were wasted, but her thighs were muscular beneath the silk from the peculiar gait she was forced to adopt to walk on her tiny feet.

‘The Master married me for my feet. Feet as small as mine can drive a man crazy. Look at my beautiful little red dumplings, my golden lilies, my lotus buds.' Second Grandmother stuck out her legs and crooned to her mangled feet.

‘If your mother was so far away, who bound your feet and took care of you?' Mei Lan insisted.

‘Oh, an aunty.' Second Grandmother always swept aside questions about her family. She had no stories to tell of her village in China like Ah Siew, and never mentioned brothers or sisters. Everyone, even Gold and Silver and Little Sparrow, had memories of a former life to root them in the world. Only Second Grandmother's past appeared hermetically sealed. It was as if she had sprung from nowhere into marriage with Lim Hock An. The only thing that Mei Lan knew was that, before she became Second Grandmother, her name had been Lustrous Pearl.

‘Why an aunty? Was your mother dead? Did you live in the aunty's house, in the aunty's village?' Mei Lan was full of questions.

‘Ssh, Little Goose. Learn some manners, it is rude to question an elder,' Ah Siew said, turning sternly upon Mei Lan.

‘Where did you meet Grandfather?' Mei Lan ignored the
amah
's admonishment and tried another line of attack.

‘I was just fourteen when the Master saw me. He said he had never seen feet like my little lotuses. Once he drank wine from my shoe.' Second Grandmother smiled a secret smile as Ah Siew steered her ‘red dumplings' into the bowl of scented water, then sighed in relief as the
amah
massaged almond oil into her callused skin and the crevice between heel and toes.

‘You married Grandfather when you were fourteen?' Mei Lan asked, wondering how anyone could drink wine from a shoe, let alone a shoe that held such a stinking mutilated foot.

‘The Master preferred me above all the others,' Second Grandmother replied softly.

‘What others?' Mei Lan frowned, petulant with frustration. ‘If you were fourteen then you were younger than Little Sparrow is now.'

Second Grandmother's expression was suddenly so fierce that Mei Lan retreated into silence. Grandmother's past was shrouded in silence and not even Ah Siew would explain it to her. It seemed all of life's real knowledge must be gathered piecemeal from adults, like parts of a jigsaw that she must later assemble. The knowledge about the sale of girls, picked up so inadvertently in the
kongsi fong
, she had already slipped into its rightful place to illuminate many new things.

Gold cleared away the dirty bandages and Second Grandmother gave a sigh of contentment as the warmth of the oily water relieved her aching feet. Silver sprayed a little of Second Grandmother's precious
Schiaparelli
perfume into the room to freshen the air, holding up the crystal bottle and pressing the rubber bulb held in a tasselled yellow net. It must be dreadful, Mei Lan thought, taking her first deep breath of the evening, not to be able to wriggle your toes but to have them lying in five flat strips almost under your heel.

On these Tuesday afternoons it was Mei Lan's duty to help prepare Second Grandmother's pipe. Grandfather's opium was of the very best quality, and was kept buried in the garden beneath a tall tree where it aged in the earth as wine aged in a dark cellar. Mei Lan ran to where Silver crouched over a small bowl of muddy opiate, preparing to heat the
chandu
on a long needle over a flame.

Mei Lan took the needle from her, rolling a pellet of the sticky black tar between her fingers and fixing it expertly on to the needle. She knew just what to do, and was already as deft as Gold or Silver at roasting the needle's precious cargo until it smoked and spluttered. Soon, bubbles covered the pellet and a pungency dense as velvet, cloying as molasses, filled Mei Lan's nose and lit the very centre of her. Afterwards, Mei Lan scrubbed her hands so that no clue remained of her work in Second Grandmother's quarters. Her mother did not approve of the opium habit and knew nothing of her daughter's willing assistance.

Soon Grandmother, now changed into her pale silk nightclothes, was carried to the smoking couch upon Gold's back, her freshly bandaged feet in red satin bed slippers sticking out each side of the
mui sai
's hips.
Second Grandmother was considerably larger than tiny Gold and the slave girl bent low beneath her weight. Silver hurried forward and together they lowered their mistress on to the bed of cushions.