The White Pearl (5 page)

The wharves were frantic, noisy places, with ingots of tin stacked like a child’s building blocks on one of the quays, waiting
for shipment. The
Sungei Perik
, Silver River, was wide and as brown as a turtle’s back as it flowed west to the Strait of Malacca. Hundreds of sampans dodged
like irritating flies in and out of the shipping lane, always on the lookout for business, gathering together in their bustling
water village beside the wharf. Connie stopped briefly to ask the way of one of the Malays who was wielding a steel-bladed
parang
, a native machete that could split a man’s skull. He was chopping the greenery off a pile of pineapples and humming to himself
in an odd, nasal drone. He pointed with the tip of his blade to a shabby collection of shacks that ran alongside the rail
track.

‘There,’ he said.

‘Thank you.
Terimah kasih.
’

‘Not good,’ he added. ‘Not for lady.’

She wiped sweat from her eyes, narrowed her gaze and with a thumping heart inspected the tumbledown dwellings. They were built
from scraps of corrugated tin and rough lengths of bamboo.

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not good.’

Those words buzzed in Connie’s mind as she ventured into the shanty town, and ducked through layers of washing that hung limp
in the humid air, stretching across the street on drunken wooden poles. She felt like an intruder. She was acutely aware that
she was conspicuous and unwelcome.
And the smell of the place made her stomach heave. White women didn’t come here, didn’t step gingerly in clean white shoes
over the central gulley that ran along the alleyway, holding her breath so that she wouldn’t have to inhale the stench of
excrement and cooking waste that clogged its path. But still she searched.

The jumble of tiny shacks stretched on and on, but only the fortunate ones were raised on bamboo stilts to avoid the inevitable
flooding that must race through here each time the heavens decided to let loose. The dingy huts were perched against the railway
bank, covered in soot from the belching steam engines that roared past at intervals, and made the tin walls shudder with fright.

So this was where Sai-Ru Jumat lived. This was her home. Connie’s heart missed a beat as a sharp pain spiked through her chest.
Was
her home.
Was
her life.
Was
where she woke each morning and dreamed each night. Connie pictured the short figure in the green sarong, squatting on her
front step like these other women who were regarding her with such wide wary eyes. She could hear Sai-Ru’s voice, clear and
sharp.
Listen, white lady.
It whirred in her head.
I curse you.
Connie could feel her nerves jumping and hammering. How was she to bridge the gap between what was and what is?

She found the house. It was leaning against its neighbour, and stood out from the others because of its white garland of flowers,
the mark of death. That’s what she’d been told to look for when she’d asked a woman the way. Now she was here, the horror
of what she’d done to Sai-Ru’s family threatened to suffocate her, and she almost turned and ran back the way she’d come.
No one would know. Except herself, and Sai-Ru.
She
would know.

She stood on the plank of timber that was the front step, and tapped the half-open door that only just clung on with one hinge.
There was no sound from within, and she felt a treacherous ripple of relief. She could leave. But as her eyes adjusted to
the gloom, she made out the figure of a young man sitting cross-legged, alone on the floor in the centre of the room. He was
so still that for a moment she thought he was a statue, but then with a jolt she recognised him. Neat limbs elegantly folded,
dense black hair and smooth skin that glowed like amber. His eyes were fixed on her, unblinking and the expression in them,
even in the dim light inside the shack, shocked her. Hate was too weak a word for what she saw in them. He was Sai-Ru Jumat’s
son.

‘
Selamat pagi.
Good morning,’ she said. ‘My name is Constance Hadley.’

He did not reply. But neither did he remove his gaze.

‘Excuse me,
maaf
,’ she contined awkwardly. ‘I know this must be a bad time for you, but may I come in?’

Still no response. No flicker of movement. She stepped into the room, and stifling heat hit her like a hammer to the chest.
Her lungs fought for air. She became aware of the strong smell of glue and wood cuttings. He was seated on a woven mat surrounded
by small flat wooden cases of various sizes and in different stages of finish. Some had glass fronts and had been polished,
others were still raw and awaiting attention. He must have seen her eyes flick to them, but he made no comment.

‘I’ve come to apologise,’ she said softly, ‘for what I did to your mother, and to offer you help.’ She waited. ‘Talk to me.’

For the first time, those intense black eyes released her and turned away.
Talk to me. You are so young.
She removed her hat, crouched down on her knees on the sawdust that speckled the floor, so that her eyes were on a level
with his.

‘I know you hate me,’ she said evenly, ‘and you have good reason to. But don’t let it stop you accepting some recompense from
me because …’

She noticed he was looking at his hand. On its palm lay a butterfly. Not just one of the small, garish creatures that flitted
through the riot of bougainvillea and frangipani in her garden, but one of the gigantic jungle ones, its wingspan wider than
his whole hand and trailing two long black tails like bootlaces waiting to be tied. It was exquisite. The colours of its wings
filled her eyes with iridescent blues and lilacs and a vivid splash of gold. It must be dead, because it didn’t move, and
it dawned on her that that’s what the cases were for. Already, she realised, two of them were lined with white satin and inside
was pinned an assortment of butterflies. They were like miniature coffins.

Sai-Ru’s son did not take his eyes off the butterfly on his hand, as if its beauty created a refuge from the ugliness he saw
in Connie. She wanted to snatch it from him, to hold it to her heart. To steal its beauty.

‘Do you sell them?’ she asked.

Without looking at her he murmured, ‘White people buy. Dead things. They like.’

Connie thought about the antelope’s head on the wall of her husband’s
study, of the magnificent tiger-skin rug on the floor of her friend Harriet’s drawing room. Of the elephant’s foot that was
a useful stool at the Club.

She blushed. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘They do.’

A silence filled the tiny room. Connie looked around her. In one corner there lay two bedrolls bundled out of the way, but
she noted no sign of mosquito nets. On a shelf there were a few pots and pans, while under it a primitive stove had been built
out of bricks. Surely it was dangerous to light a fire here? She glanced up at the roof and felt sick. A spider the size of
a Bentley was hanging by a thread from a rafter above her head.
Don’t scream.

‘What is your name?’ she asked. She thought he would not reply, but he did.

‘Razak.’ He licked his strong white teeth as he said it, his attention still on the butterfly. If he was aware of the spider,
he was indifferent to it.

‘Well, Razak, as I said, I would like to help you and your sister.’

‘Don’t want. No help. Not you.’

‘Let me.
Tolong.
Please.’

‘
Tidak
. No.’

Nevertheless, she took a manila envelope from her handbag and pushed it towards him, the paper rustling like lizard’s skin
over the matting. ‘This will pay for your mother’s funeral. And a bit more.’

A lot more.

This time he looked at her. A cold, direct stare from black eyes. ‘Go away.’

He was young, she reminded herself, no more than fifteen or sixteen. His hatred had made him arrogant; his rage had hardened
the soft line of his mouth. She had done that to him.

‘I would also like to offer you a job,’ she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Either on my husband’s rubber plantation, the
Hadley Estate, learning skills with the trees, or if you would prefer, in the smoke sheds or the
godowns
here in Palur.’

She watched his face. He half closed his eyes, dipping his thick long lashes to hide himself from her. But his hand must have
tightened because the butterfly suddenly fluttered its great wings and Connie cried out, startled.

‘It’s alive!’ she exclaimed, and saw that the lower half of its body was trapped between two of his fingers.

He lifted his other hand and stroked its furry back.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured.

‘White people want to kill everything.’

Her cheeks were burning, and sweat zigzagged down her neck. ‘If you like, you could work in my garden.’

Again the black stare, then, with the butterfly still between his fingers, he reached behind him and drew the tiny stub of
a candle in front of him and a cardboard book of matches that bore the name of a nightclub: The Purple Pussy. He struck a
match, lit the candle and stood it on the mat, before picking up the envelope and opening it. He extracted a twenty-dollar
note and held it over the flame. It caught quickly, flared between his fingers and curled into black flakes as he dropped
it on the mat. He took another note and another. Each one burned.

Connie said nothing. In silence, he burned ten notes in the hot little room before she leaned forward and snatched the envelope
from the mat.

‘Enough!’ she said. ‘You’ve made your point.’

She rose quickly to her feet, ducking to one side to avoid the blasted spider. ‘I can’t bring her back,’ Connie said quietly
to the sleek head bent over the butterfly, denying her words the anger that flared inside her. ‘But I can give you what your
mother would have wished for you – a better house, a job, even an education. Isn’t that what you want?’

‘
Tidak biak
,’ he said with a strange nasal sound that was more like a dog’s snarl than a human utterance. ‘No good. You no good. You
go. She curse you.’ He spat on the mat.

Connie said no more. She tucked the envelope of money at the back of the shelf, forcing herself to ignore the centipede that
was slithering around inside one of the cooking pots, and walked out of the door. Her throat was tight, her hands shaking.
Sweat ran between her breasts. As she set off up the alleyway, bombarded by the sun’s onslaught, she realised that she had
forgotten her hat. She cursed under her breath and glanced back inside the gloomy interior, but she chose not to return there.
Razak was still sitting, his hands in his lap. He had torn both wings off the butterfly.

The sky ached today, as though it still mourned her mother’s death. Maya Jumat could feel its white pain like cuts in her
dark skin. The air tasted of salt on her tongue and she licked her lips, feeling them tighten with anticipation. Today would
be a good day. The sky knew it, but it didn’t want her to be happy. She shook her head, tossing her glossy black hair around
her shoulders, and showed the sky her sharp, dangerous, white teeth. No one wanted her to be happy. Except Razak, her brother.
She tucked a vivid scarlet flower behind her ear in defiance, gripped the stems of the other blooms in her arms and dodged
between the cars, nimble as a cat.

‘You want buy, lady?’

She thrust her hand clutching a few blossoms through the open window of the purring black car that had stopped at the crossroads
in front of the station, and flashed a wide smile. She wasn’t stupid. The flowers were for the white lady, a weaselly creature
with aimless eyes, but the smile was for the red-faced man behind the wheel.

‘No,’ the woman said flatly. ‘No.’

‘
Plees.
Pretty. For you.’ She dropped the bunch in the woman’s overripe lap. The man revved the engine. Maya stood on the running
board and widened her smile at him, showing him the tip of her pink tongue. ‘A dollar?’

‘For God’s sake, Eunice, give the bloody girl a dollar, will you?’

The lady switched her attention to her man, saw the spark in his eyes as he followed the soft folds of Maya’s sarong draped
over the curve of her young breasts. With undue haste she pushed a dollar into Maya’s hand, but as the car drove off she tossed
the flowers out of the window.
Maya scrambled and scooped them up before the car behind had a chance to drive over them, and she received a loud blare on
the horn in return. She ran between the rickshaws and motorcars, searching again for a good one to target, watching out for
her bare feet. More than once some bastard had rolled a tyre over her toes. She spotted a Rolls slowing down.

‘Flowers? Pretty. You buy.’

‘Get in.’

The rear door of the chauffeur-driven car swung open, and a white man with doughy skin and a ginger moustache as big as a
fox under his nose reached for her wrist. She backed off fast. The Sikh in a turban in the driving seat didn’t even glance
over his shoulder, as though he were used to such moments.

‘I no for sale,’ Maya declared. ‘Just flowers. Two dollar.’

‘Don’t be silly, girl, come for a ride. How much?’

‘Ten dollars. I virgin.’

‘Like hell you are.’

‘Show money.’

The car behind sounded its klaxon.

‘I’m no fool,’ he smiled sourly. ‘I know girls like you.’

‘I not like other girls.’

She darted her head forward as if to kiss him and he preened himself on the leather seat, but instead she snatched the gold
tiepin from his cravat and vanished. Melted into the crowd of brown faces as easily as a fish makes itself invisible as it
slides and shimmers within its shoal.

‘Why man so stupid?’ Maya shrugged, and for the next two hours touted her flowers, hopping from car to car. Yes, today was
a good day, she had been right. She sealed the precious dollars safely in the pouch tied at her waist and kept a sharp, hostile
lookout for others encroaching on her patch. When the sun was at its highest in the sky and the tarmac burned the soles of
her feet, the traffic at last grew thin, so she took a break in the shade at the back of the station’s ticket office.