Love and Vertigo Read online

  Mei Ling fisted her left hand and thrust it into her mouth, gnawing on the knuckle of her thumb and whimpering fretfully. ‘I don’t want it. Don’t want this damned baby, rubbish child.’

  ‘Talk nonsense! Your child is a gift from the gods. You should thank the goddess for it,’ Madam Tan reminded her sharply. But she felt in her heart that the gods could have bestowed the gift on someone who would have the means to take care of the child. It wasn’t Mei Ling’s fault that their father had married her off to a timid shopkeeper of little stature and less wealth. Madam Tan had been more fortunate. She had been given to a tea merchant as his second wife and her status in her luxurious household was high because she was Mr Tan’s favourite wife. She had done what she could to help her elder sister’s family, but now there was another child on the way. She rinsed the cloth and swabbed Mei Ling’s forehead gently. She could have tried harder to say no, especially during wartime, Madam Tan thought resentfully. And then she remembered.

  Mei Ling hadn’t wanted to get married. She wanted to learn how to read and write like the Chinese girls from middle-class Christian homes who went to church schools. She wanted to become a schoolteacher. On her wedding night she took off her red silk wedding dress, unwound the reeking bandaged stumps of her crushed feet and wrapped herself in her oldest, smelliest clothes. She sat on the celebratory red cotton sheets of her bed, watching the bedroom door. When her diffident, virginal husband crept into the bedroom and got onto the bed, she scrambled off it and crouched down on the floor, watching him with hostile animal eyes. Bewildered, he looked at her. He climbed off the bed and sat down on the floor beside her, his hands reaching out tentatively. She got up and climbed back onto the bed. He followed, and she rolled off the other side of the bed onto the floor. All night he followed her from floor to bed and back to the floor again until, exhausted finally, he gave up and slept on the bed while his wife dozed in the farthest corner of the room.

  The same absurd pantomime occurred on the following night. She huddled in a corner of the room in her smelly rags and glowered at her husband. When he approached her, she scrabbled over the floor to another corner. All night he followed her from corner to corner, bed to floor, until once again he gave up, flopped onto the bed and slept. For nearly a month this nightly routine went on. Finally, he complained timidly to her father.

  The father called the whole family before him. He made his recalcitrant daughter strip off the top of her samfoo and crouch down before his chair, her naked back a footstool for his elegantly slippered feet. He ordered a bond maid to bring a bamboo cane. Then with those black slippers, gorgeously embroidered with brightly coloured butterflies, he kicked his eldest daughter’s breasts and torso. Once, twice, three times. Then he kicked her away and handed the bamboo rod to her husband.

  ‘Now be a man and make your wife obey you,’ he said.

  Appalled, the shopkeeper let fly two tentative flabby whacks and faltered.

  ‘Again,’ the father said.

  Two more red strokes slashed his wife’s back.

  ‘Again. And again. And again. And again.’

  The shopkeeper lashed and struck and slashed until his wife’s back was a map of red latticed lines and she was sobbing and pleading, battered and broken.

  ‘Stop.’ The father took the bamboo cane from the shopkeeper. Holding it disdainfully by the ends, he broke it in half. He turned to the bond maid. ‘Dustbin.’

  She hurried forward with a rattan basket. The father dropped the contaminated splinters of bamboo into it and waved the bond maid away.

  ‘Bring me water and a towel.’

  Another bond maid came forward with a porcelain bowl of scented water and a soft handtowel. With slow, deliberate motions he washed his hands and patted them dry on the towel. The maid took the bowl and towel away.

  The father stood up and looked at the shopkeeper with contempt in his eyes. ‘Next time, break your own wife yourself and teach her to obey you.’

  The first months of my grandmother’s marriage have gone down in the annals of Lim family history, passed on from woman to woman, handed down from mother to daughter, aunt to niece. Nobody was ever quite certain about the point of this story. Was it meant to be an instance of proto-feminist resistance? Or a fable about a Chinese wife’s duty of submission to her husband? Or about the eternal cycle of generations of Lim women struggling against their husbands, only to succumb to the inevitability of disillusionment and defeat? But at any gathering of Lim women this story was told and retold until we women understood that ours was a family conceived in violence and rape, raised in sullen resentment and unspoken grief. By the time my mother was born, Mei Ling had already given birth to five children, three of them girls, all of them unwanted.

  In that tiny courtyard in Singapore, afternoon shaded into evening and unbearable humidity soaked the growing dark and drenched the lengthening shadows. The air stank of sweat and the sharp aroma of that ubiquitous panacea, Tiger Balm, rubbed into Mei Ling’s temples and swollen belly. And then the soupy torpor of twilight was splintered by shrill screams. Women squawked and fluttered in voluble alarm.

  Madam Tan stepped forward authoritatively, bending until her mouth was level with Mei Ling’s ear. Her polished fingernails scraped into her sister’s sweating skin.

  ‘Stop screaming,’ she ordered. ‘Show a little self-control for once.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Mei Ling sobbed. ‘Ai-yah, ai-yah, I’m going to die.’

  ‘It’s coming,’ the midwife said excitedly. ‘I’ve got the head now. It’s coming out. Not long to go.’

  Mei Ling screamed again.

  ‘Shut up!’ Madam Tan hissed viciously, the clawing of her nails drawing blood from Mei Ling’s forearm. But it was too late.

  They heard it then: the drumming of boot steps in the dirty alley outside the walled courtyard, followed by the thundering on the door, as though iron balls were being bowled against it. Flakes of faded paint dislodged from the rotting wood and snowed down onto the dark grey concrete of the yard. The women shrank back in alarm.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Madam Tan said angrily. She grabbed the rag that the women had been using to sponge Mei Ling’s forehead and body, twisted it into a ball and shoved it venomously into her sister’s open, drooling mouth. ‘Shut up, damn you!’

  Her neat head lifted as the door thundered again. ‘Por-Por, go let them in before they break down the door.’

  But the rotted wooden bolt placed through the rusting iron brackets on either side of the door splintered under the barrage of blows. The door exploded open. In an instant the courtyard was swarming with Japanese soldiers, rifles raised in readiness to shoot, stab or strike. The women screamed in terror. A short, squat captain in full dress uniform muscled his way to the stone table, his long ceremonial sword drawn.

  Mei Ling gave out a muffled groan through the sodden rag in her mouth and the midwife called out, ‘I’ve got the child.’

  Excitedly she held up the bloody, shining, slippery mess of a baby. Then she raised her eyes and saw the upraised sword of the Japanese captain pointing at Madam Tan, and she cowered back against the granite table, muttering, ‘Ai-yo, scared me to death.’

  Mei Ling shoved thumb and index finger into her mouth and pulled out the dirty rag. With an effort she raised her head, her eyes red from weeping and her facial muscles slack from exhaustion. She cleared her throat and spat at the ground. Spittle landed on a black boot. A Japanese soldier slapped her. She looked at him, then turned away to look at Madam Tan.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  Madam Tan stepped warily around the Japanese captain and inspected the wrinkled baby. The midwife was tying off the umbilical cord. Madam Tan parted the baby’s limp, putty legs and slid her finger between the mucky thighs.

  ‘Another girl,’ she said, resigned.

  Mei Ling’s head fell back onto the sweat-drenched bolster and she began to laugh. ‘Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, I curse you because you have none. Sky God, I
curse you too. You knew I didn’t want another child. I knocked my belly until my knuckles were red and sore and my guts ached, but you kept it there and now you’ve given me another girl.

  ‘Another fucking useless cunt of a girl,’ she said bitterly as my mother drew breath and began to wail under the sharp shadows of raised rifles and a drawn sword.

  SYONAN, LIGHT OF THE SOUTH

  My mother honestly believed that she was cursed from birth for, that day, disaster struck that tiny terrace household in Singapore—or Syonan, Light of the South, as the Japanese now called the island. All the women gathered there in the courtyard—sisters, second cousins, neighbours and friends—would never congregate in that same group again.

  Mei Ling’s childbirthing screams had attracted the attention of Japanese soldiers looking for kuniangs: ‘comfort women’ they would take away to the Yoshiwara, or red light district, for the duration of the occupation. Even after the war some of those women never returned to their families or friends, so ashamed were they of what they had been forced to do during the war.

  Madam Tan was fortunate. As the wife of a wealthy towkay, she had some protection. All she lost were her pearl earrings, her gold necklaces and rings, and a thick jade bangle. The bones of her left wrist were crushed like twigs when the tight bangle, which she’d worn since she was a child, was dragged over her hand. The loss of her jewellery vexed her until the end of her life, and she never ceased to remind her sister that her screams had brought disaster and loss to the women gathered in the courtyard that day.

  Mei Ling, spent and filthy, looked at the sobbing women being taken away. She glanced at her daughter and hated her for the pain of childbirth and the humiliation of having had her legs spread wide open before the Japanese troops. When the midwife tried to place the baby in her arms, she slapped it away feebly and called to Por-Por.

  ‘Here, take it away,’ she said, pushing the baby towards Por-Por. ‘I don’t want it. Get rid of it.’

  Frightened and bewildered, all the women looked helplessly at Madam Tan. She nursed her broken wrist with her right hand, tears of pain leaking from her eyes. With a huge effort she put aside her own agony and took charge, as she always did. ‘Clean up the child,’ she said to Por-Por.

  ‘No water,’ Por-Por whispered. In mid-February the Japanese had cut off the pipe carrying water into the city. For over a week toilets had been choked with sewage and the stench was overpowering. Each day the women put out large tin pots, pans and buckets in the open courtyard to collect water from the afternoon thunderstorms. It was usually enough to cook with but now there was none left over as the last few days had been dry.

  ‘Then find something else,’ Madam Tan said, annoyed and frustrated that the women all seemed immobilised by fear. Turning to the Japanese captain, she slowly mimed the action of cleaning the baby. He nodded. ‘Go on, Por-Por.’

  The servant sidled past the soldiers warily and stepped into the kitchen, holding the baby in her left arm. She rummaged through the cupboards and found a three-quarter full bottle of rice wine which she emptied into a bowl. She grabbed a tea towel and dipped it into the rice wine, swabbing the baby with it, conscious of the tense silence behind her, the vibrations of terror clashing with barely leashed violence. When she had wiped away the stickiness of blood and amniotic fluid, she gave the baby to Madam Tan to hold in her right arm, then Por-Por began to sponge Mei Ling. Meanwhile, the midwife surreptitiously slipped the afterbirth into a glass jar to keep for medicinal purposes. When Mei Ling was cleaned and clothed in a cotton print dress, Madam Tan once again approached her with the baby. Again she turned her face away.

  ‘Give it to Por-Por. I don’t want that devil child. For nine months she has dragged me down, body and soul. At the moment of birth she brings disaster and shame to this house. Give it to Por-Por. Or throw it in the dustbin. I don’t care.’

  In the end Madam Tan took the child home—the only girl among her two sons. It would be good to have a daughter, she thought. Someone to look after her in her old age, to tend to her ancestral altar when she was dead. But the child was a nuisance, fretful, colicky, often whimpering. Her incessant squalling saw her exiled to the servants’ quarters where she was looked after by bond maids already irritable from overwork. Nobody could make her stop—neither by stern scoldings nor cajoling jiggles in work-wearied arms. Once the cook stuffed torn rags into her mouth to stop her crying. She nearly choked to death before another maid dragged out the rags and slapped her hard to make her breathe again. Throughout this time she never once saw her real mother.

  Mei Ling rarely left the Lim household after the birth of her fourth daughter. Por-Por was sent out each day to the wet and dry markets to buy food. She scuttled along the streets with her head bowed and her eyes cast to the ground. Once, early in the occupation, she had accidentally looked a Japanese soldier in the face. He slapped her and kicked her to the ground. After that she was careful to cross the street whenever she glimpsed soldiers hanging about. Then one day Por-Por didn’t return from the markets. All afternoon and evening the Lims waited anxiously. They ate leftover fried noodles and snacked on peanuts roasted with salt and sugar. They wondered whether one of the boys should go out and look for her, but they didn’t dare to break curfew. When she still had not returned two days later they accepted, fatalistically, that Por-Por was gone. It was better not to make a fuss or ask questions—nobody could help anyway.

  But the Lims’ efforts to keep a low profile were unavailing. They had no wealth with which to ensure their security, no property worth taking except for their bodies. The Japanese soldiers returned one afternoon as Mei Ling was plucking the brown tails off bean sprouts and the younger children were playing in the yard. All the Chinese families along their street were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, allowed to bring with them only whatever food they could carry easily in their hands or pockets. During the Great Roundup the Lim family was separated—the shopkeeper and the two sons were marshalled into football fields and sports stadiums with other Chinese men while Mei Ling and her daughters were herded into nearby terrace houses. In a surreal replay of her wedding night, Mei Ling made her daughters rub dirt over their faces and bodies and comb excrement through their hair. Abject filth earned them contemptuous kicks and globs of spittle but kept them safe. Unless they were teenagers and pretty, the women were largely left unmolested and allowed to care for their children. Other young women were rounded up and taken to the brothels.

  Mei Ling and the remaining women were eventually permitted to return to their ransacked homes after three days. The street had changed, many of the young women were missing. Nobody ever knew how many women were forcibly recruited as prostitutes during this period. Even after the war was over and the perpetrators of war crimes were being prosecuted, parents and relatives were reluctant to testify for fear of harming their daughters’ chances of marriage by revealing what they considered their family’s shame.

  The Chinese men disappeared for days during the Great Roundup. The shopkeeper was forced to sit cross-legged in an orderly row with other men. He craned his neck for a sight of his sons and was kicked for moving. While Japanese soldiers paraded up and down the rows looking for any excuse to abuse, his joints cramped painfully and his flesh became as numb as stone. Bewildered and disorientated, he pissed and shat in his pants and the tears of shame pooled in the corners of his reddening eyes. By the end of the first day he was dehydrated, stinking and suffering from heatstroke. The daily thunderstorm cracked in the afternoon and he sat in the drenching rain throughout the evening, sleeping in the puddles of water during the night. Dawn came and he shivered in the moist air, feeling dampness creep from the sodden earth into his thin bones. By the middle of the second day, he had run out of food, and hunger gnawed at his belly. He thought longingly of the tightly packed rows of biscuit tins, stacks of salted fish and sacks of rice in his little shop, and he yearned for home.

  Eventually the men were divided into two groups. The shopkee
per saw his eldest son singled out into the first group—the young and physically fit—who were then sent away to work for the Japanese. He looked into his son’s eyes as he was marched away, but said nothing. He himself was shoved into the second group of men, who were being given slips of paper with the word ‘examined’ written on them. They queued before the officer handing out the passes, but by the time he stood in front of the table the Japanese officials had run out of paper and the word was being carelessly inscribed onto visible parts of the men’s bodies. He had the word ‘examined’ written on his sallow chest and was then allowed to return home. During the following days he went without a bath in order to preserve the cheap ink imprint. His wife would not come near him but they both came to be thankful that he was physically branded, for other Chinese men attacked each other in the streets to grab those precious slips of paper that would safeguard them against further selection attempts.

  The shopkeeper came home to find his premises had been looted. The Japanese had taken away all the valuable goods and much of the food, Mei Ling told him. They had left the shop in a mess with broken glass, spilled rice and crushed biscuits all over the floor. It had taken her hours to clean it all up. They could not possibly continue their business. What were they to do now? she asked desperately. He did not answer her. Instead, he closed the wooden doors to his shop, locking and barring them carefully. Then he climbed upstairs to spend the rest of the war—and much of the rest of his life—in his bedroom while his wife looked after the remaining children and bartered for food on the black market or begged for it from Madam Tan.

  Years passed until, one evening, the neighbours began to feel a change in the air. They realised that they could no longer hear the sharp clatter of Japanese boots echoing in the alley, nor the reverberation of rifle butts on old wooden doors. There were fewer soldiers in the streets and, eventually, they seemed to disappear altogether from the hawker stalls, the markets, the docks and back alleys. People began to reappear. The eldest son was the first to stagger into the courtyard through the back door one day, emaciated and ill with malaria. Shortly after, Por-Por came home. She had shaved off the black hair that used to fall to her waist when she undid the tight bun from its perch on her head. Her scalp was stubbled with greying hair, but she walked to the market with her head held up once more.