The Catherine Lim Collection (4 page)

“We were standing at the edge of the pond
when Ah Bock saw a fish, tried to catch it and fell in. I yelled for help.
Luckily, Uncle was nearby and pulled him out.”

If he had died that day, it might have been
more merciful. Look at him now – a 30-year-old man-child that’s a burden to an
old woman. This was not said, only thought, and in this Angela and Gek Choo
were one. Both felt sorry for their old mother-in-law. Oh, the burden of it
all.

Michael trembled with agitation. He held
Uncle Bock’s hand. The message was in the big timid eyes: I love you. I’m glad
you didn’t drown in that mud, and I hate that pond and the pond devil.

But the idiot one was not capable of
understanding thoughts. He only understood touch, and when Michael held his
hand, he gurgled with glee and began chattering excitedly.

“It is far better,” said Mark at a school
debate at which his mother was present, “far, far better for a child, if the
doctors know that he is going to be sadly deformed, to be aborted than for him
to grow up and be a burden to his family and society.”

The debate had been televised; Angela had
shown the videotape of it at least a dozen times to her friends.

“Poor Mark,” she said. “He didn’t have the
courage to mention that there is a living example in his own family. Do you see
the strange-looking little metallic cylinder on a red string round the idiot’s
neck? There’s a so-called charm in it, prescribed by the temple medium.”

“You know how much the old one paid for it?
Two hundred dollars. She wouldn’t tell me, but I got the truth from Ah Kum Soh.
These temple mediums are cheats and swindlers. I don’t know what else she’s got
from them for her idiot foster-son. I dare not think. Now you know how she
spends the $400 my poor Boon gives her monthly, and why she keeps stretching
out her palm for more.”

“Uncle Bock laughs one minute and cries the
next,” giggled Michelle.

“He’s not our uncle, don’t call him uncle,”
said Mark sternly.

“It’s true, I tell you! He laughs, then
cries. He can cry nonstop.”

At the old man’s death, the idiot one cried
for a long time.

The old man died
at home,
a week after he was brought home from the
hospital. He asked to be brought home; he was no longer capable of speech, but
by signs, frantic gestures and the tears that flowed each time home was
mentioned, he got across his message. “Oh dear, what about things like
medication and the oxygen tent? How on earth do we manage – ” But a nurse came
in to manage, and Angela sighed in relief.

Only Old Mother, Ah Kum Soh and the idiot
one were with him when he died, but within an hour, the two daughters-in-law,
Angela and Gloria and the three sons were present. Gek Choo stayed away, being
seven months pregnant. (They’re trying again for a son, this Chinaman
brother-in-law of mine desperately wants a son to carry on his Chinaman ways.)

“When I grow old, I’d rather conk off
quickly than be a burden to the children and grandchildren,” Angela had said,
chatting with her friends in the Royale Coffee House, months before the death
took place. The best cheesecake in Singapore was to be found there.

Mee Kin’s sister-in-law’s mother dragged on
for two years on the sick bed. “A real burden,” Mee Kin said. “Everyone in the
family had to take turns in nursing her. She wetted the bed, had to be fed
intravenously, talked in delirium for hours.”

“You couldn’t imagine the strain. My
sister-in-law lost twenty pounds. $90,000,” said Angela. My neighbour’s
father-in-law – he had cancer of the throat, and demanded to be in St Luke’s.
You know the enormous medical fees there, so many thousands for an operation,
another few hundreds for medication, a dollar for a miserable Panadol – at
least four or five hundred dollars a day. But the old man was rich. He owned
many properties. He could afford this kind of thing. My father-in-law is as
poor as a churchmouse. Every cent has to be taken off Boon.”

In Western countries, they have Old Folks’
Homes, said Dorothy who went abroad for a holiday at least once a year. Proper
Old Folks’ Homes; not the nasty, filthy ones we have here that the newspapers
are always criticising. My cousin who’s married to an American has both in-laws
in one of these homes, a really lovely place with plenty of greenery. The old
ones do useful things like crochet and paint. They even have folk dancing.

“There was this article in TIME magazine,”
said Angela, “about a certain organisation that helps old people to leave life
painlessly. It’s called ‘The Right to Die’ or something like that. The old
people in the West – they’re different. They’re less dependent on the young
than the old ones here. Lucy and Hua Liang – they’ve migrated to Idaho – have a
neighbour, a dear rosy-cheeked 80-year-old lady who lives all by herself, keeps
her little house and garden clean and troubles nobody. When these old ones feel
they’re no longer able to take care of themselves and are becoming a burden to
others, they choose to die painlessly and peacefully. Mark told me he saw a TV
programme about this when we were in Australia on holiday a year ago. I’m
keeping my fingers crossed,” Angela confided, and she crossed beautifully
manicured fingers, raised above the cup of coffee and second piece of
cheesecake in the Royale Coffee House.

The old man lingered for five months.

“I was afraid it would be years,” said
Angela, and at that point Gek Choo made one of her rare comments: “This kind of
illness cannot last longer than six months, especially at his age.”

She communicated by phone; heavy with her
coming child, she could not risk contamination in the house of death.

Angela pitied her old mother-in-law in these
dreadful five months.

“Despite what I sometimes complain about
her,” she said to Mee Kin, “I really admire her for her devotion during that
terrible time. She used to call him ‘Old Devil’ and
‘One-accursed-with-short-life’, but she spent sleepless days and nights looking
after him in his illness. The old man was really dreadful. He was always
finding fault with this or that. The pillow was in the wrong position, the hot
water was not hot enough, the medicine was not right. He gave her endless
trouble. Luckily she had Ah Kum Soh to help her. I had to load that mercenary
creature with gifts of food and money to get her away from the mahjong table to
help the old woman. What could we do? We’re working wives. You know what Boon
saw one day? For some reason the old man was very angry; his face was contorted
with rage and he struggled to get hold of his walking stick – the one by his
bed – to hit her with. Luckily, Boon intervened.

One month of mourning blue. That’s
sufficient, I think. In the past, it was a whole year of black, then blue, then
green or yellow and finally red. What am I going to do with all those new
dresses in my wardrobe? And they are mainly pink and red, my favourite
colours.”

Mee Kin offered to lend her some of her
prettier blue or white or beige dresses and pant-suits.

“The children – they don’t need to wear
black at all, not even at the funeral, do they? Only we adults need to wear
black. Those horrid, shapeless, black samfoos! Do you know,” confided Angela,
“I’m almost tempted to wear that Celine pant-suit of mine, the white one with
black piping, but I suppose it will look out of place at that dreadful Chinese
funeral with the sackcloth head-dresses and horrid yellow-robed priests. And
there will be no end of malicious gossip from Chinaman and his wife.”

It was a pathetic sight – the old man laid
on the white-draped bier, shrunk to half his size. Old Mother was weeping
copiously and then she went and stood by the bier and began a strange mournful
sing-song. Angela concluded it was some traditional ritual, probably a widow’s dirge.
Horror of horrors – the idiot one, the source of continual irritation and
embarrassment, now proceeded to howl. He howled like a cow (Why like a ‘cow’?
Why did she use the old one’s strange analogy for loud, copious weeping?); the
tears streamed down the round child-like face, now all blotched and red with
the effort of howling.

“Oh please God, not at such a time,”
murmured Angela, and she saw the look of terror on the face of Gloria, the
youngest daughter-in-law, of a different race arid creed, bewildered by the
clamour of alien customs around her and now affrighted by the sudden howling of
the idiot one whom she could never bear being near to.

Poor Gloria, thought Angela. She saw how
Gloria, looking no more than a timid schoolgirl, had actually hidden behind a
door, stayed near a tree in the compound, fled to the kitchen by the back door,
done everything possible to avoid looking upon the old man’s corpse as it lay
on the white-draped bier in the hall.

“No,” she had said pleadingly to her
husband, Wee Nam, when he reminded her of her duty to pay last respects to her
dead father-in-law. “No, no” – but she still had to go, dressed in black, to
the house of death, and despite her efforts, the wasted, pallid body with the
stiff beard jutting ludicrously from the old chin, forced itself upon her
sight.

And now the idiot one – his howling
penetrated her ears, reminded her of a film she once saw as a child, of a
vampire howling at the moon in a desolate graveyard. Angela felt sorry for her.
She knew she had to do something.

“Ah Bock,” she said gently, “come, I’ll take
you to Ah Moi Cheem’s house.” This was a distant relative, in a village way out
of town. “Here, look, I’ve some money for you, money for you to spend,” opening
her leather handbag. She recollected his ecstatic joy at being given some money
once.

She tried gently to lead him away; he
resisted, she winced. Oh, the burden of it all. A huge, ugly, brutish creature
– and not even a real son.

He went on howling; each sob from Old Mother
drew a loud wail from him. It was intolerable.

“What about coming to my house and playing
with Michael?”

The idiot one stopped howling, considered
the proposition.

“Michael,” he repeated and began to smile,
the tears still on his face. Angela screamed silently.

“All right, Ah Bock. Get into my car now.
I’ll drive you over to my house,” she said, suddenly heavy of heart.

She put through a quick telephone call to
the capable, reliable Mooi Lan.

“The idiot’s coming. I simply have to get
him out of the way here. He wants to play with Michael. But keep an eye. Make
sure he doesn’t do odd things with the boy. Keep them separately occupied if
you can. Load him with plenty of food. Just keep him occupied.”

Oh my God, I’m bound hand and foot, she
thought as she drove off with the idiot. She returned, tired and sad, smack
into one of those hateful money discussions among the brothers. Chinaman had a
calculator – a calculator in a house of death! ‘Uncle Abacus’, ‘Uncle
Calculator’, she must not forget to tell Mark. They were discussing the funeral
preparations and the cost. Old Mother was too distraught to have a part. She
left it to the three sons.

Click, click, click went the tiny pocket
calculator.

Chinaman – Uncle Abacus – Uncle Calculator
was working out the costs, to be shared by the three brothers.

Request no wreaths or scrolls. Cash
donations to be used to reduce expenditure.

“I leave everything to you,” said Wee Boon,
tired and heavy-eyed, longing for the whole thing to be over. The call of
Friday poker, Sunday golf, was as strong as ever; he had missed them in the
last two or three months.

“Yes, you handle everything,” said Wee Nam,
the youngest brother who was already owing his eldest brother a lot of money
and would be owing him his share of the funeral expenses.

Angela saw him whisper something to Boon,
heard her husband say, “Don’t worry.” Her suspicions were confirmed. Parasite.
Parasites all round.

The funeral arrangements went on smoothly
except for an incident. Angela was to narrate it to her friends later with the
flushed excitability of a person who has witnessed incredible things.

It was incredible – the sheer macabreness of
it all.

The coffin from Singapore Casket had duly
arrived, ordered by Wee Tiong; as the men hoisted it from their van into the
house, Old Mother began to rant and rage. The coffin was suspended for a full
five minutes on the shoulders of the two swarthy Indians as they looked on,
open-mouthed, at Old Mother flailing her arms about in her rage.

A proper coffin, raged Old Mother. Not your
improper modern, useless coffin. The kind of coffin that his father was buried
in, that I will be buried in. Cannot you sons and daughters do even this for
your old dead father?

She waved a hand imperiously at the two
Indians, to take away the offensive coffin from her sight.

And the old one then went and stood beside
the corpse and began again the plaintive dirge.

Oh, I can’t bear this; how awful, how
gruesome, thought Angela and she saw Gloria run out to retch. It could have
been an early pregnancy, but more likely the poor girl had reached the end of
her endurance.

Angela envied Gek Choo, safe at home, her
pregnancy a timely excuse to escape the madness.