Spirits Abroad, page 32
You should have had a long life. You should have been able to choose when you wanted to go.
Ah Ma was the one who told Ma to put her in the ground. She went because she felt life had lost its luster. The old house was still good, the family could have lived in her for at least another few years. But when Ma protested, Ah Ma said, “Aiyah, living is not fun for me already. Your father passed away, my sons have all gone. I am old. What else can I do for you all?”
When she was buried Ma was sad, of course, but it was a happy time as well. We held a banquet for everybody in the neighborhood, and sang songs as the new house sprouted. When we set fire to the old house the whole family stood outside and held hands around the fire so no bad spirits would disturb the house’s passage to heaven.
Ko Ko was only a little boy then. Ma says when he saw the spirit go up from the flames, he thought it was our grandmother. He shouted, “Ah Ma, don’t go away!” It made everyone laugh and cry at the same time. Ma explained that Ah Ma was still with us. The bones of our new home were her bones. She would stay and look after us for a long time.
It’s not Ah Ma’s fault she went bad. In an old house the wood begins to warp. The spirit, restless, dreams of escape. Its dreams make the floorboards buckle and the damp creep up the walls. Fuzz grows in the dim corners of rooms. The house’s breath becomes unhealthy, full of spores, so that the air is not good for humans to breathe.
We stood it as long as we could, Liyana. We started wearing slippers inside the house because otherwise the floor drove splinters into our feet. We had always been busy, but we worked even harder, because the house needed so much cleaning. We left the doors and windows open all the time, to clear the air.
But the guests stopped coming. Who wants to lodge in a bad house?
It used to be that we didn’t have to take lodgers. When Pa was around we could live on his salary. Ma used to take washing and make clothes for people in the neighborhood, and we sold our pineapples, but that was just for fun—so we could have new clothes, buy treats for the family.
After Pa passed away, we began to struggle. Losing our first nüguo made it even worse. Before, we used to be like other people: all our uncles and aunties lived in the house with us. It’s a big house, but it was a tight fit then, because Ah Ma had five children and they were all married and they all had children.
But when the first little sister came and went, the uncles and aunties said it was because Ah Ma was unhappy with us. Losing a nüguo is such bad luck. The uncles and aunties left the house, running from the bad luck, but Ma stayed. She was Ah Ma’s eldest daughter. What would be left for Ah Ma if we all went away? What would happen when the house went bad and Ah Ma needed somebody to help her?
Sacrifice creates obligations. Remember that, Liyana. You have rights.
Without the lodgers we could not manage. We killed most of our chickens. We stripped our gardens bare. The rooms stood empty: the air smelled of rot, and any light you lit in the house went out almost at once.
One day early in the morning I came out into the sun. Ma and I were getting very dark because we spent all our time outdoors, away from the house. You were standing in the garden, eating the sunshine with your face to the sky. Ma was watching you, and she had tears in her eyes.
“She’s so painful,” she said.
I looked at you, but you seemed happy. You didn’t notice what was happening to the house. You were still small, and different from humans.
“Not Liyana,” said Ma. “Your Ah Ma. She also deserves to be considered. She gave us her whole life and death, and what are we giving her? We are being selfish.”
There was a bitter taste in my mouth. “But Liyana is so small.”
“We’re wrong already,” said Ma. “There should have been a nüguo in my generation. Someone my age . . . she would be old enough to decide herself. Maybe she’ll even be tired of life, ready to go, like Ah Ma.” She put her arms around herself. “Must be I did something bad in my past life. Maybe it’s the mistakes I made with your brother.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“Whether it’s my fault or not, I’m not the one suffering the consequence,” said Ma. She wiped her eyes, but her face was stern. “We owe Ah Ma everything. We must be fair.”
So we took you to the garden, Liyana; we didn’t have a choice. We kissed your prickly face and we laid you in the ground. It was night-time and you were sleeping, and the earth is familiar to you, a kinder mother than any human could be. You didn’t wake when we started to cover you with soil.
We did it gently, as if we were folding a blanket over your little body. It was only towards the end that you opened your eyes, gluey with sleep, and said, in a faraway voice, “What’s happening, Mama?”
“We’re saying goodbye to Ah Ma,” said Ma. She didn’t cry then or later. I was crying silently. I could hardly breathe; the snot was running down my face. I didn’t blow my nose, because I was scared of waking you.
“Don’t worry, darling,” said Ma. “Go back to sleep.”
You closed your eyes and you didn’t stir even when we began to pat the soil down over your face.
“It’s natural for her,” said Ma. “When we buried Ah Ma she was awake. She just folded her hands like that and lay there while we threw in the soil. She was looking out at us until the end.”
The new house sprouted fast, because you were so young. After a day and a night we could see the new green shoot where we had buried you.
The house will be green at first, Ma said, as green as your eyes were. When it matures it turns brown and hardens. It will last us many long years, as long as you would have lived as a woman.
To push a house beyond that lifespan is not kind or fair. When we had seen the new green shoot we prepared the bonfire. That night we set fire to the old house.
There were not enough people to form a ring around the house—not like the old days when the family all lived together. Ma and I stood in front of the fire and shouted and banged pans to frighten away the bad spirits.
I was watching out for Ah Ma, but my eyes were dazzled by the flames and stung by the smoke. I would have missed her if Ma hadn’t said: “Nah—there!”
She gestured at a silver wisp of smoke. It could have been Ah Ma’s spirit, or just the smoke from the fire—I wasn’t sure how Ma knew it was her. The spiral shivered and vanished. The old house groaned, and the roof came crashing down.
We’ll sleep outdoors for now. Luckily it’s not the rainy season, but we won’t have to do it for long. Already you’ve put out green creepers over the ruins of the old house.
In a week, maybe two, you’ll develop a network of roots, spread over the ground. Up will spring sturdy floors, strong pillars, thick walls. You’ll bud rooms and a flexible roof. We’ll have to tile the roof ourselves, to protect you from the wind and rain and sunshine. The doors and windows we’ll have to carve out of the walls. They will be made of good, young, supple wood, as sound as our daughters always are.
I’ll stay with you now, Liyana. Because we’re taking your death, you’ll have my life. I can’t promise to protect you anymore, but when the time comes, I’ll set fire to you and let you go. You’ll soar up into the dark night sky with a sigh, unshackled from obligation, restored to yourself.
As I sleep under your roof, I’ll remember you as you were—when you had a face, when you had eyes, when I could hold your warm prickly skinned body within the compass of my arms and tell you the story of how I found you. When Ma has passed on, I’ll still be here, and my daughters after me. As long as you need us, until you can be free again.
The Terra-cotta Bride
Even the housekeeper knew about the terra-cotta bride before Siew Tsin did. Siew Tsin only found out when she ran down the stairs one day, a day like any other, and saw the girl coming in through the main doors in full bridal gear, her ornamented headdress tinkling.
Siew Tsin crouched on the stairs in her old samfu and felt the winds of change raise the hairs on the back of her neck. She had ten seconds before anyone looked at her, ten seconds to rearrange her face so that nobody would know what she felt.
Their husband, Junsheng, took the terra-cotta bride by the hand and presented her to Siew Tsin with an ironic tilt of the head.
“The whole family has come out to greet you,” he said to the girl. To Siew Tsin he said:
“This is my new wife. Please look after her.”
The girl shone out from her extravagant silk robes like a pearl nestled in a red velvet box. She was beautiful, with skin as smooth as jade and hair like a lacquered black bowl.
Her eyes were black commas, no whites in them. She was not human. She had never been alive.
“You must be like sisters to one another,” said their husband.
“What is her name?” said Siew Tsin.
“She can answer questions herself,” said Junsheng. “She has a working brain. She is as intelligent as you and me. What is your name, my wife?”
“You haven’t given me one,” said the terra-cotta bride. Her voice was throaty and surprisingly deep. She spoke without affect.
Junsheng seemed to like this answer. “Precious, we’ll have to think of a good name for you,” he said. The last time Siew Tsin had seen him so pleased was when he’d been burnt a new car.
Siew Tsin had not given much thought to what happened in the afterlife until the afterlife happened to her. She was young when she died, and it had been sudden. While running across the road, she had been hit by a motorcar and dashed against the curb. One moment she was brimming with life, possessed of ambitions, interests, an affectionate family—the next she was dead.
Hell came as something of a shock. What education Siew Tsin had had was from the blue-eyed nuns at her convent school, with their soft voices and implacable religion. Their lectures, given in warm classrooms on sunny, dozy afternoons, had given her a fluffy idea of the afterlife—all clouds and angels and loving Fathers.
They had not prepared her for the reality. This was strangely like life. Hell was hot and full of unkind people in a hurry, there was far too much red tape, and the bureaucrats were all shockingly corrupt.
It had been a relief to Siew Tsin when she had been scooped up by a long-dead great-uncle. Fourth Great-Uncle had seemed kind enough, though he was preoccupied by his children’s lack of filial feeling.
“Why don’t they burn me more money? Why don’t I hear their prayers?” he said. “Are children’s memories so short now? Are they too poor to afford the hell paper, or too miserly?”
Siew Tsin mumbled, “I don’t know Auntie and Uncle very well. They live up in Alor Setar. We don’t see them often.”
She was too embarrassed to explain that they were Christians and did not believe in the rites anymore. They probably thought he was safe in the Christian heaven, kitted out with his own harp and in no need of cash.
She might as well not have tried so hard to save his feelings, because the faithless old man went on to sell her. Again, the procession of events was so fast and illogical that she did not know what was happening until it had happened. One day she was scuttling across the black volcanic floors of hell, trying her best to understand the rules of this new world; the next day she was married off to the richest man in the tenth court of hell.
The marriage worked out well for Fourth Great-Uncle. He got enough money from it to buy himself a house in the tenth court and bribe the officials to turn a blind eye to his continued presence.
The tenth court was the most desirable postcode in hell. The other courts were taken up by spirits busy in the expiation of their sins, and the hell officials who facilitated their moral rehabilitation, using whatever tools were available to them—fire, chains, whips, spears, and hammers for choice. Such work made demons short-tempered and violent in their integrity. What it did to the spirits did not bear thinking about.
The tenth court was for souls who had worked off all their sins, or who had not had sins worth speaking of, or who’d simply had a grand enough funeral—and hence, sufficient hell money—to buy their way out of the torments. It was a waiting room, where spirits waited for their new lives to be prepared for them. This meant that it was a considerably more tranquil place to be dead than every other court of hell. The demons, grown soft from lack of exercise, were as pleasure seeking and corrupt as any human official.
Peace and stability meant the development of a society. The tenth court was where souls could enjoy the hard-earned fruits of their deaths: the mansions their descendants had burnt for them, the incense that floated down from the living world straight into their grateful nostrils. If a spirit was rich, or powerful, or simply intelligent, he could manage it so he went on residing in the tenth court for a long time, avoiding the invitation to tea with Lady Meng that heralded the change to the next life.
Junsheng had been a rich man in life. He had left many children and grandchildren to tend his grave and burn him gifts year after year, so that the condition had persisted after death. When Siew Tsin met him he had been dead for twenty years. This was a long time to have evaded the loss of self entailed by reincarnation, even taking into account the inefficiency of hellish bureaucracy.
Fourth Great-Uncle must have meant well. He must have thought that Junsheng would look after his great niece, give her a better death than she could otherwise expect. After all, Fourth Great-Uncle had been dead for a long while when Siew Tsin came to the underworld. In his lifetime women had had lower expectations. His sister, Siew Tsin’s grandmother, had been named Chiu Dai: come, little brother.
Siew Tsin had lived in a more modern time. Her parents had wanted her to be happy as well as docile. Resignation to unhappiness didn’t come naturally—she had to learn it.
Three months after her wedding, Siew Tsin had run away from Junsheng. She had still had the loved child’s belief that it would not be allowed for anything too bad to happen to her. Her plan had been that she would tell a god or kindly functionary what had happened to her and they would somehow restore her to her parents. Perhaps they could arrange for her parents to be blessed with a child in their old age, like Elizabeth in the Bible. The child would of course be their dead daughter, come to them again.
She was not a hundred paces from Junsheng’s house when she found the functionary she had been looking for. A fairy from heaven in shining silk robes, standing discontentedly by the entrance of a grand house. A fragrance of sunshine and fresh air billowed from her, cutting through the smell of sulphur and stone. The crowd of spirits and demons that filled the streets left a wide space around her.
A visitation from the Heavenly Court was so unusual that it could be nothing but a good omen. Siew Tsin plunged through the crowd towards the fairy.
When Siew Tsin had explained her situation, she said:
“Can you help me, elder sister? My mother and father live in Klang. Perhaps it is not on your way to heaven.”
The fairy had looked on her with compassion.
“It is not, but that is of no account,” she said. “I will see that you are looked after.”
Half an hour later Siew Tsin was bundled into a sedan chair by four stern hell officials and whisked back to Junsheng’s. It appeared the fairy’s understanding of what it meant to be looked after was the same as Fourth Great-Uncle’s.
Junsheng had not been unkind. He had been extremely definite.
“I am too old and indolent to lecture you,” he said. “But you should remember that I have every right to do so, if I wish. Considering the unusual circumstances of our marriage, I cannot be said merely to be your husband. I am your mother and father as well—I have their authority over you, and you have the same obligation to me as you would have had to your parents in life.
“I will treat you as well as they themselves could wish for. In return, you must honour me as you would honour your mother and father. You are young, and I will forgive this mistake. I will say nothing of the inconvenience and embarrassment you have occasioned me. If I had beaten you and thrown you out on the street, or indeed if I had killed you, everyone would have agreed that I was perfectly within my rights. But I am too old, and too fond of my comfort, for this kind of violence. Out of consideration for my feelings, Siew Tsin, you must be a good girl from now on. I cannot countenance any more silliness.”
To be fair to Junsheng, he never cast it up to her again. But then again, there was nothing to cast up. Siew Tsin was a fast learner.
“Does elder sister know?” Siew Tsin said to the housekeeper one evening when the terra-cotta bride had gone to bed. The terra-cotta woman did not sleep, but Junsheng preferred her to keep up the pretence of being like the rest of them.
Siew Tsin wondered what she did all night: whether she turned herself off like a wireless, or whether she simply lay unmoving on the bed, her black eyes fixed on the ceiling, until it was morning and she was allowed to get up.
“Mistress Ling’en has not been told,” said the housekeeper.
“What will she think of it?” Siew Tsin said.
The housekeeper did not say, She will not be as angry as she was when he married you. But there was no need to say it. Even Siew Tsin knew that.
The problem was that Ling’en and Junsheng had once been in love. This was a long time ago, when they were still alive. Junsheng had taken concubines in life, of course, but they had not mattered. It was known that he consulted his wife in everything—in the old days. It had gone sour long before his second wife had arrived on the scene. Ling’en had been living on her own for years when Junsheng married Siew Tsin.
