The Harmony Silk Factory

Johnny cleared his throat. Tiger poured more tea.

‘What are you good at?’

‘Everything,’ Johnny said, ‘except machines.’

Johnny proved to be one of the most diligent employees ever to have worked at the Tiger Brand Trading Company. He began by doing what the other casual workers did – packing, loading, storing, sorting. Back-breaking work. But Johnny was not like the other illiterate workers. He observed and he learned. Soon, he knew the names of all the different textiles he handled, and how they were made. He learned to tell the difference between chintz and cretonne, Chinese silk and Thai silk, serge and gabardine. He especially liked the printed patterns of milkmaids and cowsheds on the imitation French cotton made in Singapore. But more than anything, he loved the batik and the gold-woven songket which were delivered to the shop by the old cataract-eyed Malay women who had made them, here in the valley.

‘Put them on the last shelf, over there,’ Tiger snorted, pointing to a recess in the farthest corner of the shop, every time a new supply was delivered. ‘Low-grade rubbish.’ Compared to the imported foreign material, it was true that the batik was rough. The dyes were uneven and the patterns, traced out by hand, were never consistent. The colours faded quickly even on the best ones, leaving only a ghostly impression of the original shades. But Johnny liked the irregular patterns. He must have, because later in his life, when he could afford to wear anything he wanted, he would always wear batik for special occasions such as Chinese New Year or Ching Ming. They were his lucky shirts too. He would wear them if one of his horses was running in a big race in Ipoh, and sometimes, if he had to put on a jacket and tie, he would wear a lucky batik shirt under his starched white shirt, even though it made him hot and sweaty. He had red ones, blue ones and green ones. The blues were my favourite. From far away, when he wasn’t looking, I used to trace the outlines of the patterns with my eyes. Brown dappled shapes stretched like sinews, swimming in the deep pools of the blue background. On his back these shadows danced and shifted quietly – hiding, folding over, tumbling across one another.

In Tiger’s shop, however, batik was considered second-rate, hardly worth selling. You didn’t go to Tiger Tan if you wanted to buy ordinary material made in broken-down sheds in Machang.

‘Remember,’ Tiger said to his employees, ‘this is a place where little dreams are sold.’

Before long, Johnny was given more important tasks, such as counting stock and then, finally, serving customers. Tiger gave him two new white shirts to wear when serving in the shop, and Johnny kept them clean and neatly pressed at all times. It turned out he was a natural salesman with an easy style all his own. Like Tiger, Johnny was never loud nor overly persuasive. He pushed hard yet never too far. He cajoled but rarely flattered. Although he always tried to sell the most expensive things in the shop, he knew it was better to sell something cheap than nothing at all. He had a sense for what each customer wanted, and he always made a sale.

The incident with the White Woman, for example, became legendary. Like so many other things in Johnny’s life, this incident seemed to happen without the faintest warning or explanation. Why she should have picked him instead of any other person in the shop no one will ever know. Perhaps there was no reason at all, just one small step on the curious path of fate.

The White Woman was a mixed-race widow of great and strange beauty. She stood a full six feet tall and although all who saw her agreed that her features were striking, none could agree on exactly what her features were. Everyone said different things of her face. Was she moon-faced or gaunt? Doe-eyed or cruel? Butter-skinned or powdery-white? She was the mistress of a rubber planter in the valley, a Frenchman named Clouet (‘Kloot’ was how people pronounced it) who drank too much samsu and did not care for his plantation. He had suffered badly in the great crash at the start of the thirties and now all he had left were a few hundred acres of dry rubber trees and a wife who hated the mosquitoes and skin rot of the tropics. He had a woman he loved, but their lives were a forked path. He could not live with her nor be seen in public with her for fear of losing his job. He wasn’t even allowed to take her with him into the Planter’s Club. Every so often, her washing lady would come into town and spread gossip about Clouet taking the White Woman away to France. But everyone knew it would never happen.

A hush crept across the shop when she entered. She stood for a second, casting her gaze from shelf to shelf, inspecting the bales of cloth and the neat piles of folded-up clothing. Three times a year, she came into Tiger’s shop to buy the best of the new merchandise. Usually, she would send a note in advance of her visit to let Tiger know when she would be arriving and what she needed to buy. In addition to all the usual items on a wealthy woman’s list, such as French tablecloths and plain unbleached Indian cotton for the servants’ clothing, she would also include camisoles or nightdresses because she knew that Tiger would prepare discreet little parcels for her, protected from the gaze of the other customers. Tiger would make sure that he was personally on hand to receive her, but on this occasion, no note preceded the visit. The White Woman had unexpectedly passed through Kampar. The recently built bridge at Teluk Anson had been swept away by floods the month before and work on a new one had not yet started. Her diverted journey took her too close to Tiger’s shop for her to resist temptation. Tiger, however, was not there that day, and all who were present in the shop noticed her displeasure. She kept her hat on and picked at the beads on her purse while she looked around the shop, casting her gaze upon the assistants until finally, her scowl came to rest on Johnny.

‘I will assist you if you wish,’ Johnny said. He was the only one of the people in the shop who dared to speak.

‘Where is Mr Tan?’ the White Woman said.

‘He is away today – on business,’ Johnny said. ‘I am in charge today.’

The White Woman approached the counter and laid her purse on the glass cabinets displaying lace handkerchiefs. Johnny noticed the soft black satin of the purse. Across the black surface, little beads were stitched meticulously into the shape of a dragon chasing a flaming pearl across a stormy sea.

‘What would you like, madam?’

‘Show me something beautiful,’ the White Woman said, looking at Johnny. ‘Do you think you can do that?’

Johnny looked her in the eye. ‘I think so,’ he said.

He moved slowly from one end of the shop to the other, touching bales of cloth, feeling their texture before deciding whether to take them or leave them. Sometimes he unfurled a length of fabric against the light and narrowed his eyes. No one in the shop knew exactly what he was looking for – he seemed to be searching for something hidden All this time the White Woman watched him with increasing fascination, her initial irritation beginning to fade. She could not figure out what this curious young man was doing. There seemed to be a mysterious logic to this actions – but what?

‘Here,’ he said at last, ‘these will make you happy.’

‘What’s this one?’ she said, feeling some cloth between her fingers. It was thin and silky with a single cream-coloured flower printed across it.

‘It’s French.’

‘It doesn’t look French to me. The pattern isn’t very rich.’

‘But it is French, madam, the very latest, I am told. You can wear it next to your body, even in the hot months. See how it touches your skin,’ Johnny said, gently sweeping it over her hand.

‘I’d use it for tablecloths.’

‘This,’ said Johnny draping another length of cloth over his shoulder, ‘is very special.’

‘It has no pattern at all.’

‘That is true. But see how the light shines on it, and through it?’

‘Am I to wear that?’

‘Of course not. But your windows – are they big? I thought so. Use this to make curtains.’

‘Curtains? Without a pattern?’

‘I have seen them in the latest American magazines,’ Johnny said, holding up the cloth in front of his face. ‘I can see you but can you see me?’

‘No.’

‘Next, my favourite, something so beautiful it will take your breath away,’ Johnny said, undoing a brown parcel.

‘It’s batik,’ the White Woman said, plainly and somewhat quizzically.

He pushed a plate of pink lotus cakes towards her and refilled her teacup.

‘We are exporting this,’ Johnny said, dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘to Europe. No one knows about this yet. This is specially made for us –’

‘But it looks like ordinary batik.’

‘A batch of the very same material with exactly the same pattern has just been sent to Port Wellesley for shipment to London, Paris, America.’

‘I see.’

The people in the shop were intrigued. This was the first they had ever heard of batik being shipped to Europe. Their minds raced. Was it possible that the same sarongs used by their grandmothers would be used in London? How did Tiger keep this secret?

The order was placed, the notes counted out and the goods dispatched that same day to the White Woman’s home.

‘You sold her batik,’ Tiger said over and over again, reaching for the whisky when he learned what had happened. ‘She will never come back to the shop again.’ His mood lightened, however, when he realised that Johnny had sold the entire stock of unsellable batik which had languished for many months at the back of the stock cupboards. He had also got rid of a large quantity of cheap Chinese gauze at a highly inflated price. The peony-printed satin, an expensive lapse in Tiger’s judgement (he had over-ordered from the new mill in Singapore before he had even seen a sample), was sold without a single cent’s discount.

After a few days a note arrived from the White Woman, thanking the Tiger Brand Trading Company for always keeping beautiful yet practical textiles in stock. The note singled out Johnny for special praise, and Tiger proudly showed it to all his customers. He also began to regard Johnny in a new light.

During the time he worked in the shop, Johnny lived in Tiger’s house along with several other young men and women, all of whom (so Johnny understood) worked in one way or another for the party. Although they were all employed at Tiger’s shop, their paths did not otherwise cross. In the evenings they went their separate ways, disappearing into the night and reappearing before daybreak for their communal breakfasts, always taken at 5.15. Johnny wondered what kind of things they did after they slipped out of the house at night. Attending passionate lectures, plotting attacks on administrative buildings across the valley, spying on VIPs in Ipoh, cleaning machine guns, setting booby traps deep in the jungle. Maybe they were even killing people. The thought made him shiver with excitement. He wanted to be with them.

Johnny himself had not yet experienced life as a true communist. Up to that point he had, of course, worked in many places run by people with communist leanings, but he had never yet been approached to do anything. Someone had given him a leaflet once. The words seemed cold on the thin paper, and did not arouse in him any feelings of duty. He tried reading some of the books on Tiger’s shelves. He reached, first of all, for Karl Marx, though he did not know why. Perhaps he had heard that name before, or perhaps the simple, strong sound of the words as he read them slowly to himself compelled him to take it into his room. Das. Ka-pi-tal. He said it several times in the privacy of his room. His lips felt strange when they spoke, and he felt curiously exhilarated. But he had not understood anything in the book. Even the Chinese version was beyond his comprehension. What the words said was plain enough, but the meaning behind them remained hidden from him. He grew to prefer the English version. Every night he would look at the book, reading a few lines in his poor English, hoping he would suddenly find a trapdoor into that vast world he knew lay beyond the page. Somehow it made him feel more important, more grown-up, as if he was part of a bigger place.

One Friday afternoon when all the shops were closed and the muezzin’s call drifted thinly across town, Johnny came across one of the other men in the garden. He was resting in the shade of a chiku tree, legs apart, sharpening a parang with smooth, strong strokes. His legs and bare torso were flecked with cut grass and his hands rough with dirt.

‘I need to light a bonfire,’ Johnny said, ‘to burn grass and old leaves. When will you be finished?’

‘I’m finished,’ the man (Gun was his name) said.

Johnny started for the far end of the garden beyond the fruit trees where he kept the tools. The steady metallic ring of the sharpening blade cut the hot afternoon air.

‘Hey,’ Gun said, ‘I heard about you.’

‘What about me?’ Johnny said, barely turning around.

‘The Darby mine. Everybody knows.’

‘So what? I can’t even remember that.’

Gun began to laugh – a high-pitched wail, like a wounded animal’s call in the middle of the jungle. ‘Hey, brother, don’t have that hard look on your face. You’re a real big-time hero, don’t you know that? Everyone talks about the guy who chopped that English bastard’s leg off.’

‘I didn’t chop his leg off.’

‘Sure, of course not,’ Gun continued, eyes squeezed shut with laughter. ‘Come, sit down.’

‘Who told you – Tiger?’ Johnny said, watching Gun carefully. The parang was balanced between Gun’s knees, glistening and hot.

‘No, everyone knows. Like I said, you’re famous, brother. Why do you think you’re still alive and healthy? Why do you think you’re always able to find work? Have you thought about that? It’s because we – our people – take care of each other here in the valley. In the whole damn bastard country, in fact. The whole bloody wide world. Do you agree?’

‘I suppose.’

‘OK, look. I’ll explain something to you. Come, sit down I said. You’re still new, fresh, as far as I can tell – even though you’re one goddam murderer already!’ Gun broke into laughter once more, baring his cigarette-stained teeth. ‘You have backsides for brains, you have no idea about the work we do.’

‘I know everything about the shop.’

Gun looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘Not the shop, you goddam idiot, the army. The communist army. M – C – P,’ he said in a slow, under-the-breath voice. ‘Know what that stands for? Malayan Communist Party. That’s who we work for.’

‘I knew that, sure,’ Johnny said, kicking a clump of grass. ‘Where do you work?’

‘You think I’m going to tell you, you bloody dogshit? You’re not one of us. Not yet anyway. Trouble is, Tiger wants you in the shop, not out there doing what the rest of us do.’

‘What do you do?’

Gun lifted the parang and held its blade erect before Johnny’s face. He looked at it with cold black eyes and smiled with his yellow-brown teeth. With a single fluid swipe of his arm he brought the blade down on to the ground before them. It sliced sharply into the earth, clinking against the tiny pebbles in the soil. He smiled at Johnny, the corners of his upper lip curling back hard. ‘That’s what we do.’

Johnny’s face coloured, his blood ran hot. He had felt the rush of air against his cheek as the parang swept past him. He had seen the sun glinting off the blade. At last, he knew he was truly and irreversibly a communist.

‘What I think,’ Gun said, as he prised the parang from the soil and wiped it clean with his fingers, ‘is that anybody who can cut up and kill an English big shot, well, that person might be very useful to us.’

‘Will I fight for the liberation of man’s soul from the chains of bourgeoisie?’ Johnny said.

Gun stared at him blankly.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Johnny said.

Gun laughed. Johnny could not tell if it was in contempt or in friendship. ‘That’s up to Tiger,’ he said.

The only problem with being a communist – for Johnny and for Tiger – was that it interfered with business. It interfered with running the shop and serving customers and deciding which clothes to display in the glass cabinets. For Tiger, the problem was one he had faced for many years now. He had become accustomed to it all – the rotten, ever-present fear of exposure and arrest, the risk of betrayal. Sure, he was among his people; and yes, he knew he had their trust. All the same, he was careful not to make enemies. He never took advantage of suppliers or customers. People are people, he told himself. A single vengeful word whispered in the ear of the District Police Inspector would be sufficient for Tiger to be locked up in Tambun Prison for the rest of his life. For more than a decade, this fine gentleman had coordinated the activities of the Perak guerrillas from the genteel surroundings of his shop. Now, as the 1930s drew to a close, the strain of this duplicity weighed heavily on him. The knowledge that he was sending young men to be shot, maimed or imprisoned for life began to disturb his sleep. He wanted to close his doors to the world, to shut himself in his home with his books and furniture and fruit trees, but no: the call from China was becoming more urgent, more violent. The Japanese were in Manchuria now and Chinese all over the world were being called to arms. These were times for action, the party said, for the enemy was at the gate; but all Tiger longed for was to grow the perfect guava. He felt age in his bones and reluctance in his heart. In his sleepless nights he had the same thought over and over again: he had to stop, he could not go on.

He was glad he had Johnny.

Early one evening when the sun had calmed to a deep amber, an idea came into Tiger’s head which made him shiver gently with happiness. He had spent the day planting papaya seedlings he had grown from the seeds of his own fruit. Though the work was not heavy, it was enough to make a man of his age feel as if he had earned a rest. After dousing himself with cold water he sat in the cane armchair in his library with his supper of cold noodles. When he finished those he poured himself a small glass of cognac. He had not been to the shop at all that day. He thought of Johnny, he thought of the customers; he tried to fill his ears with the noise of the shop, the smooth-sharp sound of heavy scissors cutting through cloth, Johnny’s low mumbling voice, the clink of coins on the glass counter. He wondered how the shop looked without him in it, and the image of the Tigerless place did not trouble him. He knew then that the Tiger Brand Trading Company would survive his death and, more than that, would flourish. His whole world – which he had created – would grow unendingly. The thought was cemented when, at that moment, he saw Johnny running up the stairs at the front of the house, leaping two steps at a time. Elation mixed with relief, that is what Tiger felt. Now he knew there was no more reason for him to continue the struggle.

‘Johnny,’ he called, no longer able to keep his thoughts to himself.

‘What’s the matter, Tiger? Are you all right?’ Johnny’s brow creased with uncertainty.

‘I want you to sit down with me,’ Tiger said.

Johnny sat perched on the edge of a chair facing Tiger. He could feel the frame of the chair pushing through the thin upholstery, cutting into his buttocks.

‘Courvosier?’ Tiger said, holding up the bottle of cognac.

‘No, thank you.’

‘It is said,’ Tiger said, his face glowing and puce-coloured, ‘that tending to your garden is good for your soul. I can certainly testify to that. After a day’s work I feel cleansed. Funny, isn’t it?’ He chuckled gently.

Johnny looked mystified.

‘I don’t know how to explain this feeling to you. It is as if the work I put into looking after my plants makes me a better man. It makes me feel that I am a good person –’

‘You are a good person –’

‘– and for those few hours that I am in the garden, none of the bad things I have done in my life matter very much; they do not exist in my garden.’

‘You have never done any bad things.’

Tiger smiled. ‘Don’t speak. Listen. You know I have worried about the shop. You know I am an old man now. That does not mean I do not care about the future of the shop, the future of everyone who works there, everyone who depends on the shop. I care. But I am old and tired, and soon I will die. I have spent much time in my garden lately, I know, but I feel no harm can come from this. Why? Because I have you, and you are ready for greater things.’

‘Greater things,’ Johnny repeated in his blank monotone.

‘Yes, greater things! Tell me – what would happen to the shop if I was dead?’

‘Do not say that.’

‘But what if? What if? What would you do then?’

‘Nothing. I don’t know.’ Johnny’s face was stubborn and dull.

‘Do you think the shop would survive?’

‘Yes.’ Johnny’s reply was instinctive.

‘Why do you think it will survive?’

Johnny did not answer.

‘Because of you. All that is mine will be yours upon my death.’

Johnny did not protest, but remained expressionless as before.

The following weeks saw a small revolution in the textile business in the valley. Following the example set by the larger companies in KL and Penang, Johnny introduced village-to-village selling. It had always occurred to him that there were many people who might have wanted to visit the shop but, for one reason or another, were not able to. In many parts of the valley, the roads were little more than dirt tracks twisting through the jungle. When the rains came they washed mud on to the roads, and in the hot season the dust was so heavy and the sun so strong that a traveller could barely open his eyes. If these people could not come to the shop, Johnny thought, the shop would go to them.

Every Tuesday Johnny would cycle out into the jungle, taking with him a selection of cloths, heading for small villages beyond the reaches of the single tarred road running between Kampar and Ipoh. Each journey would last two full days and nights, and on the morning of the third day Johnny would reappear at the shop with no merchandise left on his bicycle. He built a little wooden platform on the back of his bicycle, fashioned from an old piece of teak which had once been the seat of a chair, worn smooth through years of use. Johnny lashed this tightly to his bicycle, and then tied the bales of cloth to it so that they stuck out at right angles. He soon became a familiar sight in the smaller villages of the valley – a stern-faced man riding a funny contraption which seemed less like a bicycle than a moving pile of textiles. The children looked forward to hearing the ring of his bell every few weeks, for he always brought with him a large bag of boiled sweets which he would distribute generously.

But sweets were not all Johnny brought. In each of the villages, he would seek out the people known to have communist sympathies. He brought news, from Tiger, of what the party was doing in the rest of the valley. He told them about secret lectures and campaigns to raise funds for the movement in China. He gathered information too, and soon he knew which farmers had sons who wanted to join the party, which villages were not sympathetic to the Cause, which people could be relied upon to provide donations. He knew the villages as he knew people – some were friends, some reluctant allies, others plain enemies. There were beautiful ones, ugly ones, dull ones, naughty ones. Soon he knew everything. More than Tiger himself.

On these trips Johnny began to feel a swelling sense of duty. Not only was he working to cement the future of the shop, he was imparting the word of the party. True, this wasn’t quite the same as hand-to-hand combat in the jungle, but representing the party in his way was surely more noble and demanding. His way required cunning beyond that of a simple soldier. It required charisma and intelligence and, above all, the ability to read and write. In this respect Johnny had became superior to the other men, for he was now armed with literacy. On each journey to the outlying villages he took with him the Communist Manifesto in English, together with a pocket dictionary he had found in Tiger’s library. He also took an exercise book in which he wrote out all the words he did not understand. Fraternity. Absolutism. Antagonistic. Jurisprudence. He wrote these down on one side of the page and on the other he wrote out the meanings of the words in Chinese, simplifying and paraphrasing them to facilitate the memorising process (Proletariat | Me).Then he simply looked at the lists of words, learning them by heart. As he cycled along the uneven tracks, veering to avoid the rocks and the potholes and craters carved out by the floods and the droughts, he spoke the English words aloud, letting the Chinese translations echo silently in his head. At first they seemed strange and fascinating. Sometimes his voice seemed not to belong to him – he did not recognise the person who made these wonderful sounds. But soon he grew to love these noises. He loved feeling the words form at the base of his throat and then well up in his mouth before dancing in the quiet jungle air.