Yet, even at their worst, Shireenbai’s superstitions and observances had never before amounted to much more than a source of distraction: they had certainly never posed a serious obstacle to Bahram’s ventures – not until this year, when she had done everything in her power to prevent him from leaving. Don’t go, she had beseeched him. Tame na jao… don’t go, don’t go this year. Everyone says there’s going to be trouble.
What exactly do they say? Bahram responded.
There’s been so much talk, she said. Especially about that British Admiral who was here with those warships.
Do you mean Admiral Maitland?
Yes, she said. That’s the one. Jhagro thase… they say there may be fighting in China.
It so happened that Bahram was well aware of Admiral Maitland and his mission: he was one of the few Bombay merchants who had been invited to a reception on his flagship, the Algerine, and he knew very well that the fleet under Maitland’s command was being sent to China only as a show of force.
Listen, Shireenbai, he said. There is no need for you to worry about these things. It’s my job to stay abreast of these developments.
But I’m only telling you what my brothers are saying, Shireenbai protested. They are saying China will stop imports of opium and that it may even lead to fighting. They are saying you should not go now: the risk is too great.
This had made Bahram bristle: Arre, Shireenbai, what do your brothers know about this? They should do their work and leave me to mine. If they had been doing business with China as long as I have they would know that there’s been talk of war many times before and nothing has ever come of it – no more than it will now. If your father were alive today he would have supported me – but it’s as they say, ‘when the wise one goes, things fall apart…’
After her first line of argument proved ineffective, Shireenbai confessed to the other reasons for her concern: one of her astrologers had declared that the stars were aligned in such a way as to signal danger to all travellers; a diviner had seen portents of war and unrest; a trusted pir had warned of upheavals on the high seas. Persuaded of her husband’s peril, Shireenbai enlisted their two daughters – both of whom were married by now, and blessed with several children – to add their entreaties to hers, begging him not to go. As a concession he twice agreed to postpone his departure in order that some propitious portents might be found. But after a fortnight of waiting none such were discovered, and at last, fearing that he would miss the start of the Canton trading season, he had had set a date, declaring that he could wait no longer.
When the appointed morning arrived, everything had gone wrong: an owl was heard at daybreak, a dire augury; and then his turban was found on the floor, having fallen down at night. Worse still, while dressing to accompany Bahram to the docks, Shireenbai had broken her red marriage bangle. Bursting into tears, she had again implored him not to go: Tame na jao. You know what it means for a wife to break her bangle, don’t you? Even if you care nothing for me: what about the family? Do you care nothing for your daughters and their children? Jara bhi parvah nathi? Do you care nothing at all…?
There was something in her voice that made it impossible for Bahram to answer her in his usual indulgent way: in her pleas there was an urgency and despair which he had never heard before. It was as if she had at last accepted him as something more than a substitute for the husband she should have had; it was as if, after forty years of performing her marital duties with apathetic punctiliousness, her feelings for him had suddenly ripened into something else.
That it should happen now, that he should have to confront an emotion that was so raw, so naked, after a lifetime of coping with her disappointed, dutiful indifference, seemed profoundly unjust – had it happened even the day before, he might have told her about Chi-mei and Freddy, but with the ship waiting to weigh anchor it was impossible to speak of it now. Instead, he put his arm around Shireenbai as she sat doubled over on the edge of their bed, clutching her broken bangle. Her thin, angular form was draped from head to toe in pale, brocaded China silk; her sari was a relatively plain one, as it happened, yet the sheen of the fabric filled the room with a milky glow: she was wearing no jewellery other than her bangles and the only points of colour on her body came from the scarlet Jinliang slippers she wore on her feet – he had bought them for her in Canton, many years ago.
Slowly unfurling her fingers, Bahram removed the broken glass hoop from her hand. Listen Shireenbai, he said; let me go this one last time, and when I come back I will tell you everything. You will understand then why it was so necessary.
When you come back? But what if…? She looked away, unable to finish the sentence.
Shireenbai, said Bahram, my mother used to say ‘a wife’s prayers will never be wasted’. You can be sure that yours will not.
*
Who were they to be?
The question weighed not just on Ah Fatt and Neel but on everyone who visited the weekly clothes market in the Chulia kampung, where many of Singapore’s lightermen, coolies and petty tradespeople lived. This was one of the poorest quarters of the makeshift new frontier town, a mushrooming bustee of bamboo-walled shanties and pile-raised shacks, squeezed between dense jungle on one side and marshy swamplands on the other.
The market was held in an open field, adjoining one of the tributary creeks of the Singapore River. The road that led there was not much more than a muddy pathway, and most of the bazar’s visitors came by boat. From the Malay and Chinese parts of town people came in perahus and hired twakow rivercraft, while sailors and lascars usually came directly from their ships, in brightly painted tongkang lighters, bearing the wares they hoped to sell or barter: sweaters knitted on ‘make-and-mend’ days; tunics of stitched selvagee and wadmarel; oilskins and pea-jackets recovered from the fernan bags of drowned shipmates.
Neel and Ah Fatt were among the few to come on foot and the bustle of the marketplace took them by surprise: after a long trudge along an unfrequented path, there it was, all of a sudden, a noisy melee of a mela, on the banks of a mangrove-edged creek. In appearance and atmosphere, the bazar was not unlike the weekly markets and fairs that gather around villages everywhere: it had its share of itinerant pedlars and hawkers, entertainers and snack-sellers, meat-hawkers and muff-mongers – but the clothes-stalls were the main attraction, and it was to those that most of the visitors went.
Amongst sailors and lascars the bazar was known as the ‘Wordy-Market’ which suggested that it had once been a market for vardis, or soldiers’ uniforms. Many garments of that description were still to be found there: certainly there were few other places in the world where a grenadier’s mitre could be exchanged for a Mongol wind-bonnet, or an infantryman’s shell-jacket for a pair of Zouave pyjamas. But these regimental items were not the market’s only wares: over the two decades of its existence the Wordy-Market had gained an unusual kind of renown, not just within Singapore, but far beyond. In the surrounding peninsulas, islands and headlands it was spoken of simply as the ‘Pakaian Pasar’ – the ‘Clothes-Market’ – and was known to be a place where every kind of garment could be bought and sold – from Papuan penis sheaths to Sulu skirts, from Bengal saris to Bagobo trousers. Well-heeled visitors to the island might prefer to do their shopping in the European and Chinese stores around Commercial Square, but for those of slender means and pinched purses – or those with no coins at all, but only fish and fowl to barter – this market, listed on no map and unknown to any municipality, was the place to go: for where else could a woman exchange a Khmer sampot for a Bilaan jacket? Where else could a fisherman trade a sarong for a coattee, or a conical rain-hat for a Balinese cap? Where else could a man go, clothed in nothing but a loincloth, and walk away in a whalebone corset and silk slippers?