The Silk Fan

The Silk Fan

All families have secrets in their past. Some are surprising, some are sad, some are so dark and shocking that it would be better if they stayed buried for ever.

Lin Lin is going home for the funeral of her uncle Hock Leong. She has a message for her aunt Ah Kim, a very special message, in the shape of a white silk fan…

There was a very old sign in gold and black outside the shop, placed over the entrance. For as long as she could remember, it carried the name of her uncle, Hock Leong, in large dull gold letters against the black background. Now two narrow pieces of white paper crossed out the name, informing everyone that there had been a death inside the house.

She stood hesitatingly outside the doorway. It seemed that no one had noticed her arrival. The pavement outside the shop and part of the road were covered with tables, and a lot of people sat around, eating and drinking tea. Although they were talking together, it was hard to hear anything except the loud sad music from a small band of five musicians, playing nearby. It was no wonder that, from a distance, as he turned into Chulia Street from Penang Road, her Indian taxi-driver had thought at first that it was a wedding.

But she knew better. Hock Leong had died. She wanted to think that he had ‘passed on’, as they would say in the family. No one would say the word ‘died’ openly. She did not like funerals, but she still had to come.

The silk fan was wrapped in brown paper in her large handbag. The fan was small and round, made of pale white silk, with a handle. It had taken her a long time to find a fan like this, but it was exactly what she wanted.

She had considered every detail of what was about to happen, so many times over the last seven years. She was twenty-one when she started planning, but it had really all started a long, long time ago.

‘You must never forget that Uncle brought you up,’ her mother used to remind her all the time. Her uncle did not have much time for children, but she grew up as part of his family, with his sons. For as long as she could remember, he was always there, replacing the father she had never known.

Just inside the shop, the floor had been cleared to leave space for the coffin and altar, which stood in the centre. Priests dressed in yellow moved around, half speaking, half singing. Joss sticks were burning on the altar. She looked at the end of the coffin, and the large framed photograph of her uncle stared back at her. He was a big, heavy man with a fierce look in his eyes that not even the soft light of the photo could hide. Her mother had been small and pretty and you would not imagine them to be brother and sister, but they were. Her uncle had been very good to her mother. He had taken care of her all her life. He was gentle and soft when he spoke to her. But her mother, Lin Lin remembered, always seemed strangely afraid of her big, strong brother.

‘Uncle, uncle!’ Lin Lin was always calling him, when she was little, wanting him to notice her as often as possible. Now he was gone, and she was left feeling empty, with an uneasy fear of what was going to happen that day.

‘What happened to my father? Did he die? Did he?’

As a child she was always asking whoever would listen to her. Her mother remained silent, and never talked about Lin Lin’s father and why they had to live with her uncle. Lin Lin never knew whether her father was dead or alive. Ah Kim, her uncle’s wife, used to hold her arms painfully tight and shake her hard whenever she asked the question, and Lin Lin used to cry.

‘Tell me about my father,’ she begged her aunt, when she was sixteen and too big to be shaken. Ah Kim looked at her with narrowed eyes and laughed, making a thin empty sound. Her aunt was quite pretty, with a wide fair face, but her eyes were hard and she had thin lips.

‘Your mother is an autumn fan,’ said her aunt. Her mother heard Ah Kim and walked away to the back of the house, to her room. Lin Lin heard her mother crying softly. Later, she found out that ‘an autumn fan’ meant a woman whose husband had left her - like a beautiful silk fan, welcome in the summer heat but of no use in the cold autumn season, and she thought she understood why her mother cried.

Her mother had fallen ill and died. Her unhappy life was wrapped in the past, and somehow that great sadness was too much to live with. Lin Lin was twenty-one and packed her bags to live with friends. She had to leave because it was impossible to live any longer with Ah Kim after her mother’s death.

‘Lin Lin!’ She looked up from her thoughts as someone called out her name. The man coming towards her wore loose-fitting black mourning clothes. He held out his hands and took hers. Beng was her uncle’s eldest son and he looked exactly like his father. Lin Lin and cousin Beng grew up together in this very shophouse, where they had lived upstairs on the first floor.

‘We have been wondering whether we should call you again, because you hadn’t come.’ His welcome sounded sincere, and she gave him a small smile.

She saw that all the family had turned their heads to look at her. She was glad she had remembered to put on a black dress. There seemed to be a pause in the conversation, but this was covered up by the band’s loud music.

She noted that her uncle’s coffin was placed inside the house to show that he had died there. She knew he had not. Why did they pretend? If he died outside the house, the family would have to receive his body wearing non- mourning clothes, and welcome him, pretending he was alive. When his body was inside, they could then recognize it as a dead body, and go into mourning.

She knew her uncle had died in his other house in Kedah, where he lived with a younger mistress, a woman whom all the family called ‘the small wife’. She knew because he no longer lived with Ah Kim. She knew because she had carefully followed her uncle’s life even after she left to live on her own.

For so long now she had planned for this moment. This moment when she would meet her aunt, face to face, after her uncle’s death. Her eyes searched for Ah Kim among the faces of the many people sitting around the coffin.

Ah Kim had grown old, very much older. She was no longer as pretty as Lin Lin remembered her. Her face was lined, but the hard look and thin lips were still there. This was the woman Lin Lin hated for calling her mother an autumn fan.

Ah Kim turned to Lin Lin, her face empty of expression.

‘You have come.’ That was all she said, her voice slow and deep.

Lin Lin did not smile at her. Ah Kim had not cried, of course. She was supposed to cry noisily for her dead husband, but Lin Lin could tell by her cold, stony eyes that she would not cry. This was the face that had appeared so often in her worst dreams, these were the thin lips that said ‘Your mother is an autumn fan’ again and again.

She had never forgotten because these words showed her what she, Lin Lin, was. She was the child of a woman whose husband had left her. She was the unwanted child of an unknown father. Only the thought of her uncle’s goodness to her made her wait patiently all these years. Never in her uncle’s lifetime would she come to her aunt as she was doing now.

‘Are you alone?’ Ah Kim asked and suddenly everybody was asking her questions. Beng pulled out a chair for her, offering her a place at the table with the family.

Lin Lin had nobody, of course. Because she had lived all her life not knowing who her father was, she was afraid to get close to anyone. She carried her uncle’s family name; she knew it was not her father’s. She felt ashamed whenever she was asked her name, and the feeling followed her and prevented her making any friends. Was she alone? Lin Lin looked angrily at her aunt.

‘Why don’t you burn some joss sticks for your uncle, on the altar?’ said one of the family. ‘You are too late to see his face. We covered the coffin this morning.’

Beng had placed a few lighted joss sticks in her hand. The pungent smoke went in her eyes. He pushed her towards the altar, but she would not do it. She gave him back the lighted joss sticks.

‘I have come to see Ah Kim,’ she told her cousin and walked purposefully towards the old woman. Ah Kim was sitting there, looking straight at her with her eyes of cold stone. Had she, too, been waiting for this moment for all these years, expecting what was to happen?

Lin Lin walked over to her, pulling out something flat, wrapped in brown paper, from her handbag. People had stopped talking, whispering, and eating. Only the yellow- dressed priests continued their singing with half-closed eyes, seemingly unaware of what was happening. And the small band played loudly on.

She threw it onto the table in front of her aunt. Ah Kim looked at it, then lifted her eyes to stare at Lin Lin.

‘What is this?’ Ah Kim asked in a hard voice, breaking the silence. And even before Lin Lin answered, she could tell by the look on her aunt’s face that she already knew. Lin Lin pulled off the brown paper and placed the white silk fan in front of her aunt.

‘What is this, Ah Kim?’ she asked. And everyone hurried forward to look at the white silk fan on the table. There were so many people around, all dressed in black and dark colours. She was delighted that she would do what she had to do in front of so many. Her aunt would be deeply, deeply, ashamed.

When the old woman did not reply and sat looking at the fan without moving, Lin Lin moved closer to her. Her face was very near those thin lips that replayed so often in her most frightening dreams.

‘It’s a fan, can’t you see?’ she said. ‘You called my mother an autumn fan, you bad heartless woman. You broke her heart.’ She paused for breath, her own face showing her pain, forgetting that she was at a funeral.

‘Look at this fan, Ah Kim. I bought this for you, to remind you,’ she continued, ‘because it was not my mother who was the autumn fan, it was you!’

There were gasps from the family, followed by some talking. An ugly sound that was laughter was heard, and Lin Lin realized it was coming from herself. ‘My uncle left you for another woman. You’re pretending he died inside the house. You are the autumn fan after all! You should know how it feels!’

But when Lin Lin looked into the face of her aunt, it was not an ashamed or a guilty face that stared back at her. The old woman stood up and took hold of her niece’s arms. Lin Lin could not believe that after so many years, her aunt was shaking her violently, just like when she was a child.

‘Stupid, stupid girl!’ Ah Kim whispered angrily at her. ‘In front of your dead uncle, you do this to me?’ Then she threw back her head and laughed a deep, ugly laugh, her hands still holding Lin Lin’s arms tightly.

‘Stupid, stupid girl!’ she repeated, her voice louder this time. ‘I tried to protect you, to prevent you from finding out, by calling her an autumn fan. The truth is worse than that, you stupid, stupid girl! Now I have to let you know!’

‘What is there to know?’ Lin Lin asked. The uneasy fear she had lived with all her life was giving her a tight feeling in her chest. Ah Kim let her go suddenly, making Lin Lin fall backwards a step or two. The dark eyes looked deep into hers, and the voice became louder and higher.

‘Your uncle was your natural father. Now you know.’

The silence that followed was deafening. Even the priests stopped singing and the funeral band paused in the middle of their playing. The seconds seemed unbelievably long, like all the years of her life rolled into one. Lin Lin felt the darkness rise, wrapping round her as she fell forward, knocking the silk fan off the table.

The silk fan fell noisily, unheard and unnoticed, onto the floor.