The Harmony Silk Factory. Tash Aw
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about who might have killed him. The police? Unlikely. They didn’t have enough evidence about Tiger’s ‘other’ activities. A rival businessman? Never. Tiger had no rivals, and besides, without Tiger there would be no business. A rogue bandit? No – remember he still had his valuables with him. Most likely it was a traitor, a police informant whom Tiger had taken aside to reprimand. The man (or woman) had panicked and shot Tiger. But some people – generally when drunk – began to say things about Tiger, things no one would have dared to say before. They said maybe he deserved it. He had got fat and lazy and he enjoyed his money just a little bit too much. Sure, he’d done a lot for the party, but he’d become a danger. He wasn’t the one cycling from village to village keeping the Cause alive in the valley. He wasn’t the one making money for the shop, money that could buy food and clothes for our boys in the jungle. All Tiger did was to tend to his goddam fruit trees. Sometimes he was even seen picking weeds from the grass in his garden, for God’s sake. What a stupid thing for a man like Tiger to do. They weren’t saying that they were happy he was dead, but they weren’t saying they were sad either.
Johnny still found time to visit the odd village as he had done before, but his old contacts knew that their boy was now a man, and now they would have to travel to him. A few times a year he organised lectures which grew less clandestine and more well attended. At these events there was generous hospitality, free food and drink for everyone. There was less lecturing, more laughing. The people loved him. Like us all, they wanted someone to worship and adore, and so they poured their hopes and fears into this young man who they did not, and never would, truly know.
It was at this point in his life, when he was just becoming a famous man, that Johnny met my mother.
7. Snow
My mother, Snow Soong, was the most beautiful woman in the valley. Indeed, she was one of the most widely admired women in the country, capable of outshining any in Singapore or Penang or Kuala Lumpur. When she was born the midwives were astonished by the quality of her skin, the clarity and delicate translucence of it. They said that she reminded them of the finest Chinese porcelain. This remark was to be repeated many times throughout her too-brief life. People who met her – peasants and dignitaries alike – were struck by what they saw as a luminescent complexion. A visiting Chinese statesman once famously compared her appearance to a wine cup made for the Emperor Chenghua: flawless, unblemished and capable both of capturing and radiating the very essence of light. As if to accentuate the qualities of her skin, her hair was a deep and fathomless black, always brushed carefully and, unusually for her time, allowed to grow long and lustrous.
In company she was said to be at once aloof and engaging. Some people felt she was magisterial and cold, others said that to be bathed in the warm wash of her attention was like being reborn into a new world.
She was magical, compelling and full of love, and I have no memory of her.
She died on the day I was born, her body exhausted by the effort of giving me life. Her death certificate shows that she breathed her last breath a few hours after I breathed my first.
Johnny was not there to witness either of these events.
Her death was recorded simply, with little detail. ‘Internal Haemorrhaging’ is given as the official cause. Hospitals then were not run as they are today. Although many newspapers reported the passing of Snow Soong, wife of Businessman Johnny Lim and daughter of Scholar and Tin Magnate TK Soong, the reports are brief and unaccompanied by fanfare. They state only her age and place of death (‘22, Ipoh General Hospital’) and the birth of an as yet unnamed son. For someone as prominent as she was, this lack of detail is surprising. The only notable story concerning my birth (or Snow’s death) was that a nurse was dismissed on that day merely for not knowing who my father was. As Father was absent at the time, the poor nurse responsible for filling in my birth certificate had the misfortune to ask (quite reasonably, in my opinion) who the child’s father was. The doctor roared with shock and disgust, amazed at the nurse’s ignorance and rudeness. He could not believe that she did not know the story of Johnny Lim and Snow Soong.
Snow’s family was descended, on her father’s side, from a long line of scholars in the Imperial Chinese Court. Her grandfather came to these warm southern lands in the 1880s, not as one of the many would-be coolies but as a traveller, a historian and observer of foreign cultures. He wanted to see for himself the building of these new lands, the establishment of great communities of Chinese peoples away from the Motherland. He wanted to record this phenomenon in his own words. But like his poorer compatriots, he too began to feel drawn to the sultry, fruit-scented heat of the Malayan countryside, and so he stayed, acquiring a house and – more importantly – a wife who was the daughter of one of the richest of the new merchant class of Straits Chinese. This proved to be an inspired move. His new wife was thrilled to be married to a true Chinese gentleman, the only one in the Federated Malay States, it was said. He in turn was fascinated by her, this young nonya. To him she was a delicate and mysterious toy; she wore beautifully coloured clothes, red and pink and black, and adorned her hair with beads and long pins. She spoke with a strange accent, the same words yet a different language altogether. This alliance between ancient scholarship and uneducated money was a great success from the start, especially for Grandfather Soong (as he came to be known), who was rapidly running out of funds.
His talent for finding an appropriate partnership appears to have passed on to his son TK, who proved to be even more astute. While managing to cling on to his father’s scholarly heritage, TK also managed to learn the ways of the new Chinese – the ways of commerce and industry. He did so through his wife, Patti, who was the daughter of no less a person than the kapitan of Melaka’s right-hand man. TK and Patti were a formidable pairing indeed.
TK had always shown exceptional promise, even as a young boy. He passed his examinations in law at the University of Malaya with the highest honours and for a brief spell studied at Harvard before impatience, boredom and cold weather brought him home. For a while, he considered pursuing a career in banking in Singapore, but opted instead to return to the valley, where there were none of the distractions that abounded in Singapore – nightlife, foreign money, women. He was a notable calligrapher and painter, and his home was decorated with many scrolls of Tang poems, written in his own flowing hand. Many of them have been rehung in that old house, the same house which was Snow’s home and, briefly, Johnny’s too. The house is now inhabited by Patti’s relatives – my cousins, I suppose, though I do not know them.
Like me, TK was the only son of a wealthy family in an area where wealthy families were uncommon. People would have known and talked about him simply because of who he was, even before he had done anything of note. It is a difficult thing to live with. When you know that everyone talks about you behind your back, while looking at you with silent eyes, it can sometimes have an effect on you. For although people may admire your standing in life, they may also boil with jealousy and hatred. It makes you think differently from other people, and eventually it distorts your personality. That was the case with TK. A young man like him wearing smart Western clothing and spending his time painting would have aroused much comment. In the end, it was the burden of what other people said that made TK settle down and build a life and a family for himself, just as his father had before him.
First, he changed his appearance. He swapped his Western suits for the traditional Chinese clothes his father once wore, the attire of a Manchu civil servant – long shirts made of the richest brocade, trousers of plain, good silk. This kind of dress was no less conspicuous in rural Malaya, and many people thought it was merely a phase which he would soon leave behind. But he persisted with it to the end of his days; it is how he is dressed in the stiffly posed photographs that survive. He continued reading classical Chinese texts; he wrote and he painted. But his demeanour changed. Whereas before he had been flamboyant and easily excitable, now he was serious and calmly spoken. At last, sighed his parents, he took an interest in business. He benefited from family connections and became involved in large-scale enterprises such as commercial loan-making and the import and export of tin and rubber to Europe. He got married too.
Patti was said to have been a woman of notable beauty, although to my eyes hers must have been a beauty of that