do you mean, nowhere? Everyone comes from somewhere.’
‘I mean, I don’t know.’
‘OK – where have you just arrived from?’
‘Tanjung Malim.’
‘Before that?’
‘Grik – and before that Kampung Koh, Teluk Anson, Batu Gajah, Taiping.’
‘That’s a lot of places for a kid like you,’ Tiger said. This boy looked perfectly ordinary to him – no distinguishing physical features, nothing unusual in his behaviour. He could have been any one of the young drifters who turned up at the shop from time to time. And yet there was something curious about this particular one, something which, unusually, Tiger could not put his finger on. ‘Tea?’ he said, offering Johnny a chair.
Johnny sat down, his baggy shorts pulling back slightly to reveal hard gnarled knees criss-crossed with scars.
‘Of all the jobs you did,’ continued Tiger, ‘which one did you work at the longest?’
‘Yeo’s plantation.’
‘Near Taiping?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yeo’s pineapple plantation, right? The boss is Big-Eye Chew – that one?’
Johnny nodded.
A small smile wrinkled Tiger’s eyes. ‘Why did you like it?’
‘I liked the other workers,’ Johnny said, looking at his reddened, dust-covered canvas shoes. ‘I liked the way they lived. Together. The bosses too.’
‘I know that camp well.’
‘The workers there were like me. But I couldn’t stay. I had to go.’
‘Why?’
‘I had done bad things, people said.’
‘Sometimes that happens.’
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
