‘We remember, I think. Do we?’ said Madame Xu.
‘We do,’ said Sinha.
‘Anyway,’ said Joyce. ‘Dani told me some stuff. Here’s the interesting bit. On the Tuesday, Fatso goes into the darkroom to deliver her breakfast. Danita can’t resist boasting about her clever way of getting a message to the like outside world.’
‘She tells him about it?’ Wong asks, suddenly interested.
‘Yep. She’s like, “So did you find a letter on the ground and post it yesterday?” He’s like, “I dunno.” She’s like, “Well, is there a letter on the ground in the revolving door or just outside?” And he’s like, “No.” And she’s like, “Well, you or your assistant must have picked it up and posted it. Which is why your ass will soon be grass. Because it has all sorts of incriminating stuff in it which will cause a friend of mine who works closely with the police to come and rescue me.” Are you following me?’
The Superintendent nodded.
‘Anyway, Dani stupidly tells him that the letter has been posted to Mr Wong of Telok Ayer Street. So he comes around snooping, trying to intercept the letter or take it back. He must have got a good look at us.’
‘Maybe followed you around,’ said Sinha.
‘Yep. Which is why, when I walked into the shop on the Wednesday, with CF walking behind me, he suddenly yelps and runs out the back. So now we know how he knew who we were.’
Wong suddenly sat up straight. ‘Waah!’ he said. ‘Now I know something too.’
‘Know what?’ Joyce asked.
‘Now I know what happen to our air conditioner.’
‘What?’
‘Fat bottom man go upstair. Sneak into our office early morning. Sneak in because Winnie forgot to lock it. Often she forgets. He go looking for letter to recover. He looks on your desk. He leans down in your drawer. His fat bottom hits air conditioner. He is very heavy. Very fat. Metal holding thing—what do you call it?’
‘Er, bracket?’
‘Bracket very old, very . . .’
‘Rusty.’
‘Very trusty. Bracket very trusty. His big bottom push it, airconditioner fall out of window. Make big noise falling on ground. Fat kidnap man very nervous, run away. Letter still on Winnie desk. Also, I think he drop his watch. Something is tipping in our office.’
‘Ticking,’ said Joyce.
‘Ticking, yes. I hope is Rolex.’
‘So he should pay for the new air conditioner.’
‘He should. But I think will not. Maybe we can sell his watch. Anyway, is no problem.’
‘Why do you say that? It’s sweltering in that room. We aren’t going to be able to work without a new air conditioner.’
‘This morning I send invoice to Dr Liew. I phone him to make sure he got it. He will pay no problem. I ask him to pay cash. He is rich. For a little while, we also a little bit rich,’ said the feng shui master, rubbing his hands together.
‘Good,’ said Joyce. ‘Let’s go shopping. I need a new chair.
And the clock in the office doesn’t work. I need to get some name cards designed and ordered, remember? “Personal Assistant”. Sounds good, right? And you need to buy two new mobile phones. One for the office, and one for me.’
‘Study catalogue no need. Want one of these, is it?’ said Gilbert Tan, pulling out a small chunky device in a leather pouch. ‘Combined mobile plus PDA. Latest must-have for true Singapore chuppie. Even can receive and send remote email. Internet, everything got. It’s helluva small and so nice, man.’
Joyce moved to a stool next to the officer to jealously examine the gleaming machine. ‘Wicked. Can I see? How do you do it? Can I check my hotmail account?’
‘Easy.’ Tan chewed his bottom lip as he concentrated on stabbing the tiny buttons with his fat fingers.
Sinha turned to Madame Xu and spoke quietly. ‘Fancy a walk in Fort Canning park tomorrow? We could feed the ducks if it’s a nice day.’
‘Do they have ducks there?’
‘I don’t rightly remember. But if they do, we could.’
‘What do ducks like to eat? I have some
laksa
in the fridge that’s last week’s.’
‘Ducks adore left-over
laksa.
That is, if they have any taste. Stale bread is also good.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t have any stale bread. How does one make stale bread?’
‘Good question. I’ve never really thought about it. I suppose one just gets fresh bread and then waits for a while.’
‘How long?’
‘Hard to say. Many hours, I should think.’
‘We’d better get started.’
Their conversation was interrupted by a gasp from Joyce. She was staring at the tiny screen on Superintendent Tan’s communicator with her palm against her mouth.
‘Bad news?’ asked Tan.
She shook her head, unable to speak for a moment. After slowly exhaling, she looked up at him. ‘It’s nothing. Just an email from—from a friend.’
Joyce turned to the feng shui master. ‘I’ve just got a message from Australia. From a friend at a guest house in Uluru, you know, the big rock?’
‘Ah,’ Wong said. ‘From your cousin? Gone back to work?’
‘No, it’s not from Brett,’ Joyce, her face beaming. ‘It’s from someone else we know in Australia.’
‘Oh.’ He nodded. ‘And how is she?’
‘Okay, I think. Okay!’ She looked shellshocked for a moment. Then she turned back to the police officer. ‘What do I press to reply?’
He took the phone from her and peered at the screen. ‘I think you press this, and then this . . .’
Tan and McQuinnie were soon deep in conversation, as were Xu and Sinha.
Wong, pleased to have a few minutes of peace, turned away and opened his journal. It had been a memorable week, but he had not got as much written as he would have liked. He had hardly written anything at all on Sunday. It wasn’t just exhaustion from the drama of Friday and the long trip on Saturday. He felt oddly guilty. The classic tales he recorded in his journal were always so full of altruism and high morality.
Yet he always felt so much under pressure to earn money, pay rent, cover the bills, make a living. And most ironic of all, he knew that one of the main motivations for his writing a translation of the tales of the sages in English was that he hoped it would sell to a Western publisher and earn him some real cash.
But perhaps this moral dilemma was not something that could be escaped. The sages and the gods gave us tales of high morality as a model for life from heaven. Yet we live on earth and have to deal with the petty needs of our earthly bodies as well. Maybe the job of bringing heaven and earth together was the true work of man during his brief breath of existence?
He was reminded of a tale of one of the sages—one of few female sages—and he picked up his pen and started writing.
A woman in Ta-yeh county led a good life in a city of
evil. She prayed and sacrificed. She was a vegetarian.
Her name was Niang Tzu.
She was rewarded for her goodness with a vision.
A celestial messenger told her that the city would be
destroyed on the day that the stone lions at the great hall
in the centre of town wept tears of blood.
She spent days marching around the town. She told
people about her vision and asked them to change their
ways or face doom.
The people laughed. They said there was no way
statues made of stone could weep tears of blood. But
Niang Tzu said that she trusted the celestial messenger.
One day, the pork butcher in town decided to play
a trick on her. He smeared tears of pig blood under the
eyes of the stone lions.
Niang Tzu was amazed. She fled town and camped
on a desolate hill nearby.
The celestial messenger saw the tears of blood on the
stone lions. That night there was a great earthquake
and a river burst its banks. The city was destroyed in a
flood—all except for the hilltop on which Niang Tzu
sat.
The waters wiped the tears from the faces of the
stone lions.
The gods do a great many things. Some are ordinary.
Some are miraculous. But one thing should always be
recalled, Blade of Grass: they do all things using human
hands, never their own.
From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’
by CF Wong
,
part 352
The author can be contacted at: