Ning Yan saw, in Mrs Langfield’s words, a subtle intent to repay the humiliation. “Why certainly, Mrs Langfield.” She roused Vivian from her sleep and whispered something into her ear.
Drowsily Vivian greeted them with a dimpled smile and recited a phrase.
Damnant quod non intellegunt.
Mrs Langfield lifted her chin thoughtfully. “That sounded very good,” she said, despite a cautionary grunt from her husband. “Would you care to elucidate its meaning?”
“They condemn what they do not understand,” said Ning Yan, rising from her chair and taking Vivian’s hand. “It has been a most wonderful luncheon, Mrs Langfield, Chairman. But we must impose on you no more.”
At the portico Ning Yan hailed an empty hackney carriage that waited nearby. Vivian willingly entered the carriage because she knew her mother was splurging on account of her birthday. So it was only appropriate that she reciprocated the generosity with gratitude. “You were very brave back there, Mama,” she said, gathering her skirt through the door.
“Was I?” Ning Yan lifted her brows and touched her chest, miming surprise. “I was scared to death.”
Vivian giggled and looked outside the curtained window as the carriage, drawn by a single white horse, began rattling down the path and back towards Tanglin Road.
“I feel like a queen in this,” said Vivian.
Ning Yan pulled her close. “You already are, my dear.”
Along the way they passed an emaciated Kling who, by the side of the road, was conducting a tumbril drawn by buffaloes. The tumbril was heaped with fresh, pungent manure, and the buffaloes’ legs were cased in mud.
From somewhere up the hillocks they caught a faint roar of boisterous laughter. Ning Yan could almost hear the clink of champagne glasses that so often went with it.
After shedding their dresses, Vivian and her Mama were tremendously relieved to slip back into their cotton blouses with the Mandarin fabric buttons and huge, airy sleeves. That evening they settled down to a spread of greens and roasted pork—a feast compared to their regular staple of rice gruel and pickles.
It was customary for the Chinese to consume a bowl of longevity noodles on their birthdays. Supposedly the noodle strands were stretched unbroken from a single slab of dough and cooked in its full length. Vivian had a bowl to herself—a delightful microcosm of sweet broth, chives and a smooth, glistening boiled egg.
By the illumination of two kerosene lamps and huddled in a partitioned room at the upper level of a mouldering shophouse, Ning Yan and her foster daughter dined like royalty. They made fun of the ang mohs whose arrogance they thought would be the cause of their eventual decline, whenever that might be. They made animal caricatures of them: blonde gibbons and auburn orang utans, and tittered till their tummies hurt.
After dinner Vivian read by lamplight into the hour before drowsiness took hold. And with an embrace Ning Yan tucked her into bed. She lingered beside her daughter, watching her lovely, dimpled cheeks.
“Aren’t you going to bed?” asked Vivian.
“In a short while.” Ning Yan stroked her daughter across the forehead. “Happy fifteenth birthday, darling.”
Vivian returned a sleepy smile and Ning Yan leaned over to kiss her between the eyes.
“It feels nice,” said Vivian.
“Really?” Ning Yan’s lower lip trembled. She was choking back on tears with immense effort. “I could kiss you again.”
And kissed Vivian she did, for the last time.
Vivian slipped away just before the first teardrop fell upon her arm. Ning Yan reeled off the bed weeping bitterly; though behind thin walls she could afford only whimpers. She made it count and expended as much sorrow as she could by clasping both hands tightly over her mouth. Tears gushed like a deluge from a broken dam. Fits of violent sobbing racked her shoulders and drained all strength from her limbs.
When it all finally ebbed Ning Yan returned to her daughter to find her asleep with an angelic visage. She touched her hand and felt an unsettling chill. She passed a quivering hand over her face and felt no breath. Trembling she pressed her cheek upon her daughter’s chest and listened to a dark, eternal stillness.
Ning Yan fell over and expelled her dinner all over the floor. Her sorrow might have been assuaged if only she’d smashed the kerosene lamp and its burning fuel on herself. But she didn’t. Her heart went cold, and in a state of stoic calm she began gathering up Vivian’s papers and documents and shoving them into a lacquered box that chimed to a melody when opened. She had given it to Vivian on her last birthday, and it made her weep anew. She retrieved the omnicron from a hidden compartment behind the wardrobe, threw on a cloak and left the tenement.
It was standard protocol. Someone else would soon arrive to get rid of the corpse and no one would ask questions because CODEX ran Straits Welfare. For orphans it was a haven, but for Chronomorph-operatives like her it was simply a farm.
Whoever dreamed up this policy had to be a genius or a tinkering fool. Ning Yan indulged in the macabre thoughts thinking they would ossify any softness that remained inside her.
Damn that bastard to hell. Damn him to the deepest hell.
She roamed the night like a wraith, her strides full of malaise, her eyes unseeing. The residents on this island probably numbered no more than fifty thousand and the streets were deathly silent. But the silence was comforting. In the stillness of night, and in a voice tremulous and raspy, she started singing:
Someone had taught her this song when she was on a galleon off to somewhere in a distant past; when Chinese like herself spoke Latin and the Spanish flag flew and silver was traded in copious amounts. Men did things to her in the ship’s hold, and when they had finished someone cuddled her and sang her this song.
She remembered the voice. It was a motherly voice.
From putrid drains came the squeaks of unseen rats. Ning Yan turned a corner and entered a narrow alley. Her frayed nerves bade her to sit on a small flight of steps that led to the backdoor of a shophouse. From her purse she slid out a small bundle and peeled away the folds of a silk kerchief to reveal a pocket percussion revolver. She bent it open to make sure the caps were in place, snapped it back and held it to her chin. Her mind was set, and the misery made it easy for her to squeeze the trigger.
Instead of a blast her vision vanished in a whiteout and her limbs locked painfully in place. She gagged and foamed. She fell to her side and juddered. Her muscles locked up so excruciatingly that her senses stalled. In that single, agonising moment she prayed for death.
A face filled her sights, a hard and greasy one. The braids of a pigtail ran across his crown. An apelike upper lip hung over a pair of large incisors. Genuine concern seemed to be pouring out of the face. She felt him shaking her by the shoulders, the touch of a callused hand across her forehead. Her eyes rolled and her vision blurred. Then she felt the same hand groping her and she was helpless against it.
The man vanished in a shuffling of feet and a series of sickly thuds that could only be made by the impact of fists against flesh. Her heart jolted at a sting at the side of her neck. The spasms eased, and the cramps in her muscles gradually dissolved. But on the ground she remained, heaving, her cheek pressing into the grit.