A Different Sky (7 page)

Raj began tidying the newspapers and old bags kept on the counter for wrapping purchases, and stared out of the open front of Manikam's shop on to Serangoon Road. The light was fading fast and the clunk of milk churns being washed was heard from a nearby dairy; dogs barked, cows mooed, goats bleated and babies cried. Stewed all day beneath the sun, the stench of animal excrement, rotting vegetables and fish bones enveloped the road as always. As evening approached the aroma of frying onions and spices thickened the air. When Raj first arrived on this road the proximity of these familiar smells had comforted him, as did the dark skins of people like himself.

Across the road from Manikam's, Subramanium the parrot astrologer still sat at his stall beneath the shady colonnade called the five-foot way, chopping chillies for his birds. As Raj watched he opened a rusted tobacco tin to retrieve a few swatted flies for his parrots, adding them to the chillies he fed the birds to improve their intelligence. He was a tall man with a thin neck and a stained white
dhoti
, strands of grey hair pushed through the holes in his vest. In the cages his parrots scratched for seeds and grumbled.

‘These are good parrots. Not all parrots are good for fortune telling,' Subramanium always said. When a customer stopped, Subrimanium at once picked up a pack of dog-eared cards depicting Indian deities and opened the cage for a parrot to emerge. Strutting about in an ungainly dance the creature cocked its head flirtatiously whenever a fortune had to be told. Subramanium fanned out the cards on the tabletop and the bird dipped its head to choose one, picking it up in its beak.

Subramanium had been the first person Raj met on Serangoon Road and he still retained the aura of a mentor. When the long sea journey from India was over and Raj set foot again on firm land, the enormity of what lay ahead had come down upon him for the first time. Not only his village but also the whole great land of India was lost to him over the momentous swell of the sea. He had lived his life in a village, a group of mud-walled huts about a well; a few hundred
yards this way or that and the place ended. There was nothing then but the land, stretching dry and brown and endless to the horizon. Everything had been all right until the fever came and killed his mother and his brother. Within a year the fever returned to take his father, leaving Raj, his seven-year-old sister Leila, and their grandmother. A neighbour bought his father's dry goods stall. Raj accepted the money he was given, knowing no way to bargain for more.

He was old enough to work but there was nothing for him in the village. The scouts who sometimes came to recruit labour for the faraway places said he was too young for their kind of work. They came on a decorated cart beating a drum as if on their way to a festival. They gave a fistful of silver to the families of men who went with them. One of the scouts, sympathetic to Raj's plight, explained how he could go to the faraway places by himself, and return to his village a rich man. He described the large towns of Penang and Ipoh and Singapore, and how men had only to arrive there for wealth to fall into their hands; they returned to their villages with enough money to build a temple and acquire a bride.

The man helped Raj buy a ticket to Calcutta with the money from the sale of his father's stall and also a passage on a boat. Raj had never seen a train before. So great was his excitement on the long journey to Calcutta that he hardly noticed the discomfort of the crowded carriage, or the engine soot that blew in through the window to blacken his face. He struggled to comprehend the great vistas of land continuously sucked away behind him, and then to understand the conglomeration of humanity and buildings that was Calcutta, the first large town he had ever seen.

As with the train ride, the ocean journey was lightened for Raj by the wonders that surrounded him. The way was strewn with miracles; the size of the ocean and its moods, one moment reflective as glass, the next seething with rage. He stared for hours into the foamy wake of the ship; sometimes, a fish leapt from the depths or dolphins appeared and kept pace with the vessel. And always the sunset came down in a magnificent way, dissolving him, just as the world was dissolved on that strange cusp of the day. It was only the night he dreaded, for in the dark the ship heaved and shuddered. He was twelve years old and fear of the future lay like a stone in his belly.

He remembered a man called Dinesh, recruited to work on rubber
or pineapple plantations in Malaya, who had taken him under his wing when he boarded the ship. He told Raj to spread his mat alongside his own and when the urine of a nearby baby trickled over the deck, Dinesh shouted at the mother to cover its bottom or hold it out over a rag. He and his friends shared their food with him, and Raj carried drinking and shaving water to the men. Raj learned to play cards and learned about women as he sat listening to them on the burning deck each day. But at last they arrived, and the island that had existed for so long in his mind was beneath his feet.

On the quay he had sat upon his bundle of belongings and tried to stifle his panic, not knowing where to go. At last, a kindly Tamil had given him a ride on a bullock cart filled with bales of cotton. When their ways diverged Raj tried not to show his apprehension as he clambered off the cart.

‘Go to Serangoon Road, all Indians live there. Find Subramanium, the parrot astrologer,' the driver advised.

Raj had picked up his bundle and taken his first steps in the direction the man pointed out. Ramshackle buildings lined narrow roads overflowing with people, carts and rickshaws. At last he had come into wider streets where imposing buildings of graceful architecture dwarfed a man. For the first time Raj had seen large wheeled motor cars and trams. These sights had taken his breath away.

On that first day Subramanium received him brusquely. ‘I have no work for you. I am not a charity. Ask around for work like everyone else. Nowadays young people are lazy,' he barked. His stall was pushed up against the wall of a shophouse under the shade of the five-foot way.

Already dusk was descending. It had been a long walk from where the bullock cart dropped him. Raj had stopped only once to rest beneath a banyan tree, eating the remains of some rice rolled in a piece of paper. He looked up at the darkening sky; his legs ached, his head ached and his stomach was empty. Thoughts of his grandmother and his sister Leila, so far away from him now, overwhelmed him. On Serangoon Road oil lamps were lit as the dusk tumbled into night. Raj lay down, exhausted, stretching out on the pavement. He awoke the next morning to Subramanium's bare toe in a filthy sandal prodding his ribs. The man had bought him some breakfast wrapped in a banana leaf and when, after days of trying, no proper work materialised, had
persuaded Manikam of Manikam's Cloth Shop to employ Raj as an assistant.

Later that evening, Raj made his way along Serangoon Road towards Sri Perumal temple to make a delivery of several muslin
dhoti
to the chief priest there. There were no communists on Serangoon Road and the place, like Manikam himself, had little interest in the riots at Kreta Ayer and indeed had not heard of Sun Yat-sen. Raj knew the name only because his friend Krishna, the letter writer, was interested in revolutionaries and had once briefly and dangerously lived such a life himself.

Once he had made the delivery, Raj did not immediately return to Manikam's but walked towards the premises of a garland maker beside the temple. Most evenings Krishna was to be found here beneath the temple's colourful pagoda of gods, taking dictation from the illiterate, writing letters to their families in India. Sitting as he did outside the garland maker's shop with flowers heaped around him, the sweet perfume of jasmine filling the air and the gods looking down upon him, Krishna had acquired the reputation of unworldly status. His work as a schoolmaster at the Ramakrishna Mission further added to his aura as did his tall, lean frame and deep faraway eyes. People came to him not only for the writing of letters but to consult about marriages, horoscopes and ailments, or for mediation in family quarrels.

When Manikam had finally realised his dependence upon Raj, he had agreed to him taking English and Mathematics lessons from Krishna for a nominal fee. Manikam himself was a literate man, and he viewed the education of Raj as a business investment from which he expected to reap a good profit. Raj had proved an avid pupil, quickly building on the rudimentary education he had received in his village schoolroom. He carried his books with him throughout the day, poring over them at every opportunity behind the counter of Manikam's Cloth Shop and by an oil lamp late into the night. Krishna could not resist such a willing pupil and soon would take nothing for these lessons, much to Manikam's satisfaction.

‘My reward will be to see him thrive,' Krishna told Raj and Manikam. A friendship developed between them, Krishna treating Raj like a younger brother, and even when Raj no longer had need of Krishna's lessons, they continued to meet.

Now, as Krishna was still busy Raj waited, sitting on a low wall beside a trinket stall piled with gaudy glass bangles. Watching Krishna scratch away with his pen, head bent to his board, listening to the dictation of the men crouched at his feet, Raj remembered the days when he too had waited for Krishna to write a letter for him to his sister Leila. In the darkness the booths and small shops of Serangoon Road were lit by a blaze of oil lamps. The fake diamonds and gaudy gold chains of the trinket stall gleamed seductively. Once, this had been largely a road of men who left their families in India, but times were changing and people had prospered. Those who could afford it were now bringing their wives from India to live on the road, and jewellery appeared to be the first thing they needed. Beside the rows of new shophouses that had sprung up, attap-roofed dwellings, dairies or wheat-grinding sheds still stood next to enclosures for animals servicing the dairies and the slaughterhouse near the mosque. Behind Serangoon Road lay the racecourse, and horses were kept in the road's many stables; bleating goats and wandering cows continually obstructed the thoroughfare. Eventually Krishna was free of his clients and Raj hurried towards him to blurt out his news.

‘Communist demonstration at Kreta Ayer. Police shooting guns and some Chinese killed.' Raj beamed, proud to be the bearer of news he knew would be of importance to Krishna.

‘Communists? A demonstration?' Krishna stopped, a bottle of ink in his hand, and stared excitedly at Raj over wire-rimmed spectacles. Only those who knew him closely were aware that Krishna, in spite of his scholarly reputation, was a secret revolutionary. He was well schooled in the writings of Marx and Lenin, and while still in India had been deeply influenced by the fiery rhetoric of the young revolutionary Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose had spoken at a student conference and his words had so inspired Krishna that he had turned to anti-British activities with a local revolutionary cell.

‘Demonstration was big, many hundreds of men, all shouting and ready to kill. These communists are dangerous people,' Raj replied. Krishna shook his head dismissively as he thrust a cork into the bottle of ink and placed it in a basket along with his pens.

‘Just like us Indians, the communists also struggle for freedom from colonial rule,' Krishna answered; his hair stood up in a curly halo about his head and he had an intense, owlish appearance. Picking up
his stool and writing board, he strode forward in the direction of the garland maker's shop where he rented storage space amongst dripping buckets of flowers. He had been forced to leave India when a plot he was involved in, to blow up a British government official, was foiled. Krishna's family were educated people and had found the means to smuggle him out of India as the police came after him.

‘Communists are killers,' Raj decided. He tried to understand Krishna's view of the communists but found he could not agree. Watching the garland maker's goat nibble some crumpled paper at Krishna's feet, he recalled the unbridled violence of the day, the bloodied hats that had punctuated his afternoon and their wounded owners, the Chief Inspector and Mr Ho, and knew he was not wrong.

T
HE MEMORY OF HER
visit to Ah Siew's
kongsi fong
continued to absorb Mei Lan. On their return to Lim Villa, Ah Siew put her straight to bed after a light meal of rice porridge. The next morning Mei Lan struggled to surface from sleep. Frightening dreams had buffeted her about all night and she awoke still tired and fractious. As she opened her eyes to the day the strange and jumbled images of her dreams dissolved, and she saw with relief that Ah Siew had already drawn the curtains at the window and the sun streamed in. A pair of golden orioles perched in the branches of the tree outside; a blue dragonfly hovered against a blue sky.

Mei Lan pushed back the covers and stretched. Ah Siew was already laying out her clothes and directing her to the bathroom. It was Tuesday, Ah Siew reminded her, and they would spend the afternoon with Second Grandmother. Tuesday was Second Grandmother's foot day. She liked Ah Siew to bathe her feet and bind them up in fresh bandages. This was not Ah Siew's work for she was exclusively Mei Lan's
amah
. Mei Lan's mother, Ei Ling, grumbled at the hijacking of her servant but Second Grandmother's word was law. Second Grandmother owned three slave girls who were at her service day and night, but she said only Ah Siew's gentle hands could soothe the pain of unbinding her broken feet. Mei Lan accompanied Ah Siew to Second Grandmother's quarters on Tuesday if her mother was out dancing or dining or playing mah-jong; now she was in Hong Kong and her protest could not be heard.

After lunch Ah Siew took hold of Mei Lan's hand for the journey through Lim Villa to Second Grandmother's quarters. Stairs must be climbed, corridors travelled and the great ballroom crossed. The large reception rooms lived in permanent gloom, curtains drawn against a sun that faded upholstery from Paris and carpets from China. On rainy days Mei Lan played in these dim rooms with her elder brother JJ, their rubber ball bouncing amongst Ming porcelain, bronze
ornaments and nude nymphets of Italian marble. The place filled Mei Lan with melancholy. She hated the fusty smell of damp upholstery and the rotting wheat and onion pellets strewn about to deter the cockroaches.