The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (2 page)

‘Mr Wong’s just taking a last look round,’ Cady Tsai-Leibler piped, suddenly fidgety.

Dr Leibler, still facing his wife, said crisply: ‘I think the apartment is fine.’ The clear implication was that this was the only opinion that counted.

‘It’s mostly fine, yes?’ the meek woman said, turning to Wong with a note of pleading in her voice. ‘I mean, maybe there’s just something small-small a bit wrong we can fix. But mostly it’s okay . . . ?’ She trailed off. She appeared to have shrunk several centimetres since her partner had entered the room.

The feng shui master ventured that her husband was unsettled by his presence and the reading should be ended as quickly as possible.

Dr Leibler, a tall, overweight man in his mid-30s, turned to face Wong. ‘I think the apartment’s fine, Mr Feng Shui Man,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

‘Ver’ nice,’ said a suddenly nervous Wong, nodding like a dashboard toy. ‘Clean, bright, quite good.’

‘So we don’t need to change anything.’ The voice was little more than a low rumble.

Was it a question? Wong looked at the expression on the man’s face and realised it was a statement of fact.

‘Mr Wong likes the flat,’ the dental surgeon’s wife fluted. ‘He think it’s fine, most of it.’ She said the last three words almost under her breath.

The feng shui master nodded again. Then his head tilted to one side. ‘Only one thing wrong.’

Dr Leibler’s face muscles dropped slightly, causing his fake, barely-there smile to disappear. ‘And what would that be?’ he asked, his chest expanding.

‘I don’t know,’ said the geomancer, looking around desperately.

The obvious visual demerit of the apartment was the wrought iron bars on the windows, which made the apartment look like a prettified prison. Wong knew that isolated dwellings could be popular targets for cat burglars in Singapore. The previous owner had placed bars on every window, and a steel-grilled outer door at the entrance to the flat. Yet such fittings were extremely common in the security-conscious city-state, and residents failed to find them ugly or objectionable in any way.

Numbers tumbled through the feng shui master’s mind. He had earlier checked the birth dates of Mrs Tsai-Leibler, her husband and her child, comparing them to the construction date of the building. This was an unusually old block by local standards, first built in the 1950s, but substantially rebuilt in 1972 and again in 1991. But there was no clash in the dates that could not be easily fixed with some minor acts of physical mitigation.

Also present in the apartment was a quiet, rather broody-looking young Hong Kong woman named Madeleine, who had been introduced to him as Mrs Tsai-Leibler’s cousin. But he’d been told she was only staying a week. Nevertheless, he had given her birth chart a perfunctory examination, and found no clash with the dates attached to the property.

In short, it was rare to find an apartment that was absolutely perfect for a family, but this one was close.

Yet he remained irritatingly aware there were always two major aspects to any reading of a dwelling place: the technical reading and the non-technical one. The first he did with his
lo pan
, plus books, charts, magnets, and a close study of the floor plan of the house and map of the surrounding area.

The second was simultaneously much easier and much harder. It was done without tools, and consisted of measuring the
settledness
of the dwelling. For this, a feng shui master had no tools but his own spirit. The apartment: Was it still? Was it disturbed? Was it fresh? Was it aged? Was it empty? Was it occupied? Was it ready? Was it going to be comfortable for the person who was going to use it? Dweller and dwelling needed to be in the same key, the same register. Yet most people had little awareness of the signals sent out by their inner selves, let alone any ability to detect anything about the spirit of their homes or offices. It was something he had to do for clients, at high speed during brief visits—never an easy job.

‘Something very small may be wrong, right?’ the still-shrinking Mrs Tsai-Leibler prompted. ‘You don’t like the salmon walls? I can change them. First I thought lime green. Lime green, is it better?’

‘Colour no problem, Mrs Tsai-Leibler,’ said Wong, who had the curious feeling that Mrs Tsai-Leibler was actually becoming transparent.

‘Pink? Beige?’ she offered, pronouncing it ‘beej’ in a Hong Kong accent. She clearly wanted to bring the session to an end.

Wong looked around. What was wrong? Was it the light? It was late afternoon, and a rich but diffuse stream of super-heated tropical sunshine poured in through the french windows in the living room and picture window in the master bedroom. But the angle was steep and the glare did not proceed more than two metres or so into the main seating area. The apartment welcomed the sun without trapping it. The light was not a problem.

Was there something outside he had missed? He scanned the horizon for the twentieth time. Although there was no obvious geological dragon guarding the premises, nor was there anything overtly negative. As well as the old black-and-white house set slightly to the west, there was lush vegetation and some exceptionally fine fruit trees visible straight ahead and to the east. It was a stately view by which the home could only be enriched. The malevolence was not external.

‘Mr Wong noticed that the tap in the kitchen leaks, and the shower head drips,’ Mrs Tsai-Leibler said to break the uncomfortable silence.

Her husband folded his arms. ‘So I suppose that symbolises money or good luck flowing away,’ he rumbled with a sneer in his voice. ‘So do we need to put a goldfish in the bath? What does a feng shui man do when his tap is dripping?’

‘Call a plumber,’ replied Wong, pronouncing the ‘b’.

The dental surgeon stared at the visitor, apparently attempting to work out whether he was being mocked. But the geomancer’s face showed no emotion.

‘There are two dead bulbs in the flat and the door to the second bedroom sticks,’ the woman of the household tentatively added. ‘And one of the wall sockets has no electricity.’

Her husband scowled. ‘You don’t need a feng shui master to point these things out. They’re all common sense stuff.’

‘Well you said you’d check all those things weeks ago and you didn’t do anything about them,’ she snapped, showing a surprising flash of anger.

‘I’ve been busy,’ the large man replied, unrepentant. ‘I would’ve gotten around to it.’

‘It took you six weeks to replace the bulbs in Melly’s old room, and then you got the wrong ones.’

‘I’m a busy man.’

Wong butted in. ‘I can arrange man to fix socket, light bulbs, can get plumber if you want.’

Dr Leibler ignored him, having refocused his hostility at his tiny, cowering wife.

The geomancer prattled on. ‘Many feng shui advice is like common sense. If your environment not functioning, if doors in your house sticking, for example, then doors of opportunity in your life maybe also sticking, you see? Fix dripping taps in house: this makes you change attitude, fix metaphorical dripping taps in your life, get tighter control, understand or not? Partly, feng shui is about attitude. About taking control.

Take control of physical environment. Make you take control of non-physical elements of your life. See or not?’

The dentist turned to stare at the geomancer, evidently surprised at this relatively long utterance from the ethereal, taciturn visitor. The interruption had halted the argument.

‘Let us
yum cha
,’ Mrs Tsai-Leibler said, trying a different tack. ‘Drink some tea. We can all relax. Then we finish.’ She made big eyes at her husband for approval.

Gibson Leibler scowled at the tray of teacups and then walked over to the kitchen, from whence he returned clutching an open bottle of chilled Anchor.

Wong looked down at the pungent, sweet-smelling liquid in the cup she had placed into his hand. It wasn’t what he would have called tea.

His hostess noticed. ‘Sorry. We don’t have
ching cha
. This is herb tea. Popular in America. Mango Kiwi Zinger flavour.

I think you’ll like it.’

The geomancer smelled the tea—and suddenly looked up and smiled. ‘I have it,’ he said.

‘You have Mango Kiwi Zinger tea?’ asked Mrs Tsai-Leibler.

‘I have the answer,’ said the feng shui man, putting down his cup and springing to his feet.

Dr Leibler watched the unwelcome visitor carefully.

Wong smiled. The flat
smelt
wrong. There was a barely detectable odour in the building. And it was a wrong odour, a bad odour, an evil odour, a tiny but uncomfortable smell that disturbed the otherwise perfect tranquility of the spot.

He strode around the living room, flaring his wide, flat nostrils to locate the source of the smell.

‘You worked out what’s wrong with flat?’ Mrs Tsai-Leibler asked, suddenly interested again.

‘Yes,’ said Wong, a broad grin of relief breaking out on his face. Mystery solved—and just in time. He inhaled deeply to confirm his suspicions. He sensed a low but unmistakable mix of smells: the heady tang of something like paraffin, the sharp odor of carbon, and the sour smell of ash.

‘The house is on fire,’ he explained.

‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Tsai-Leibler. The designer teapot fell from her hand and shattered on the floor.

Dr Gibson Leibler leapt to his feet. He sniffed once, and then raced to the door. He threw it open—and had to sharply pull his fingers away from the hot handle. Almost immediately, there were flames crawling up both sides of the door. He let out a lengthy string of expletives in a furious wet splutter.

‘Don’t!’ scolded Cady Tsai-Leibler. ‘Melly can hear.’

Wong stared. Flames were springing from soaked rags that had been laid in a line across the front door of the flat.

The feng shui master watched with horror as a viscous liquid gently rolled across the floor from the front door. Dr Leibler tripped awkwardly backwards on his heavy feet. It was evident that just minutes earlier someone had sloshed the contents of a container of some sort of highly flammable oil under the gap at the front door and then lit rags placed in the small opening.

As they watched, the growing puddle suddenly burst into flame, slowly rolling toward them like lava. The air in the room was instantly scorching.

‘Mummeeee!’ Melody screamed, coming into the room and leaping into her mother’s arms.

Cady Tsai-Leibler squealed even more loudly than her daughter and raced back towards the balcony, awkwardly clutching the tall child with both hands.

Dr Leibler cursed again and stepped backwards, away from the flames. ‘Where’s the fire extinguisher?’ he barked.

‘Not have,’ his wife shouted, reverting back to Chinglish in her panic. ‘Wait. Outside is one.’

There was no way they could get anywhere near the front door, let alone to the corridor outside. ‘Call the fire service,’ her husband shouted. ‘Then go out the back door. I’ll see if I can find a bucket or something.’ He raced into the kitchen and threw open all the cabinet doors.

‘Phone fire service,’ Mrs Tsai-Leibler said to herself, dropping the child at her feet and reaching for the phone on a side table. It didn’t work. Then she was breathlessly scrabbling through her handbag for her mobile. She jabbed at the numbers with frightened fingers and had to clear the tiny screen twice to try again. Eventually getting an answer, she barked out the address. ‘Hurry, hurry!’ she said. ‘We don’t have much time.’

She turned her face, suddenly tear stained, to the feng shui master. ‘
Ho marfan!
I think they can’t come in time. No road through front garden, only small path. We must get out of the window or something. Aiyeeaah!’

But the windows were barred. The only open space was the balcony—but being on the third story, it would be too high to jump from.

Madeline Tsai, the young lodger, wandered in a slightly dazed way into the room. Clearly she had been asleep, despite the fact that it was almost lunchtime.

‘House is on fire,’ Cady shrieked.

Her cousin, who appeared to be in her late teens, seemed oddly unperturbed by the blaze around her. She calmly strolled towards the door, approaching within a metre of the flames, and picked up her shoulder bag.