The River’s Song

Chapter 3

3A loud cheer rose when Ah-ku came on stage. The cheering was the loudest in the history of the teahouse, people said. That night, after the incident of the bamboo and the flea, the teahouse had standing room only. All the seats and tables were taken by early evening.

“My friends, thank you for your support, thank you. What would you like me to sing tonight?” she asked, looking slim and alluring in a pink qipao with high-cut slits at the side that gave the men at the front tables teasing glimpses of her fair thighs.

“Sing us a song about the flea in a dog’s backside!” shouted a man, his gold front teeth glinting in the lamplight.

“Ah, ah,” she wagged a finger at him. “Naughty, naughty, Towkay Tan. You know that story already. Shall I sing you a new ballad instead?”

“Yes, yes!” the other patrons shouted.

“Thank you, and so I will. Please drink a cup of wine and sip a cup of tea if my song pleases thee,” she began, making up the words as she went along, stringing them together to fit a popular Cantonese folksong. This was her gift. She could make up songs and get her audience to sing along, and the men loved it. “Shall I sing you a song of a young man and a pretty maid?”

“Yes! Go on!”

She struck the pipa’s soundboard, and her audience of mostly men listened in rapt attention.

“Listen, my friends, and listen well. One fine morning when the willows were green, and the swallows were young, a handsome lad saw a pretty maid. But alas for him, she was on the opposite bank of the raging waters of the Si Choon River. Struck by her beauty, the young man raised his voice above the rushing waters. Hey, hey, hey! Pretty as a blossom, what’s your name? Hey, hey, hey, won’t you tell me your name?

Washing clothes on the other side, the girl ignored him. The young man went on singing. Hey, hey, hey! Pray tell me your name. Day after day, the young man came to the river to woo the maid. Come. Sing with me, all of you.”

“Hey, hey, hey! Pray tell me your name!” the men roared.

“One more time!”

“Hey, hey, hey! Pray tell me your name!”

“The poor young man sang his heart out louder and louder till he fell into the swirling waters. The girl jumped in and saved him. Her heart was smitten when she pulled him to the bank. Now standing on the same side of the Si Choon River, they sang to each other. And the young man was pleased. The maid could sing better than him. Will you marry me? He asked her. No, she will not! The girl’s father roared. Penniless singer! What can you offer my daughter? Before the sun rose the next day, the young maid had fled the Si Choon River. She met the young man, and they boarded a ship and sailed away from the shores of China. Braving the storms and winds, they reached this beautiful island, where the streets are paved with hope and gold. Paved with hope and gold! Sing with me!”

“Where the streets are paved with hope and gold! Hope and gold!”

Her audience sang lustily, not knowing that this was the ‘in memoriam ballad’ to her mother. She never went beyond this point. Never told her audience how the young man turned bitter and violent, how he drank and beat his pretty wife for singing better than him, how he forced himself on her each night so that burdened with child, she could not go on stage to sing, and how in despair after their tenth child, his wife drank poison and killed herself.

“Encore! Encore!”

Her strumming grew louder and faster. She sang song after song. Boat owners, coolies and lightermen alike, they loved her songs about the river and the folk in their villages back home in China.

Night after night, the story of her bamboo and the flea drew large crowds to the teahouses, gaming houses, and the Majestic Theatre whenever she performed. So popular was she that there were nights when she had several engagements, and her trishaw man, Ah Chek, had to pedal at breakneck speed to take her from one teahouse to the next. The men’s clubs clamoured for her. The mahjong clubs on the riverfront were her favourite patrons for they paid well. The boat owners were the most demanding, but they celebrated her songs about the river and the twakows. Where did you learn these songs, they asked. Nowhere. They come into my head like sunlight into a room. They loved her coquettish laughter. When they pressed her for an answer, she brushed them off with a song about her birth on the river, and how the river gods had given her songs. The boatmen lapped this up and cheered. But she didn’t tell them that the river was her mother’s deathbed, and her father’s grave. His body was found under an old bumboat the year the Japanese surrendered.

“One more song! Encore! Encore!”

She shook her head. Towkay Ong and his friends were waiting. The first table in the front row of the Majestic Theatre Teahouse was her patron’s table, a sign of his status as the Majestic’s premier customer.

“To our queen of the Singapore River! Yum seng!” Towkay Ong and his friends drained their wine cups.

“To our pipa queen of Chinatown! Yum seng!” the men at the next table immediately raised their cups.

“To the queen of the river!” Towkay Ong shouted.

“Born on this river! One of our own!” his friends added.

“But she lives in Chinatown now! Chinatown is where the pipa queen reigns!”

The men at the next table laughed, shaking their heads at the bumboat men.

“It doesn’t matter where she was born. It’s where she lives now!” they laughed.

“Why, these lily-livered accountants! Who do they think they’re shaking their heads at?” Towkay Ong fumed. “Here! To our queen!”

“Born on the river! Queen of the river!” the boatmen bellowed, “Huat-ah! Long may she prosper!”

“Living in Chinatown. The pipa queen of Chinatown! Long may she reign!” the traders countered to great laughter in the teahouse.

With each round of drinks to the queen, their toasting and rivalry escalated. Neither side would stop. Their voices rose higher. Their hands kept drumming the tables, their faces grew red and their voices grew more insistent. The moment the wine cups were filled, they were drained. She had to skip from one table to the next trying to calm down these arrogant airheads. First, she drank with Towkay Ong and the bumboat owners. Next, she drank with the accountants and traders. Cooing and murmuring, she soothed their ego and silly male pride. From table to table, she drank, laughing and flattering her patrons to make sure that the men at the other tables did not feel neglected. At each table, they pressed her to drink two to three cups of sweet rice wine. It was a matter of face and pride to see which table could get the beautiful Pipa Queen to down one cup more than the previous table.

“One more toast, my Beautiful! One more! One more!”

Head reeling, she was floating with her pipa, tottering on her heels. “No more, gentlemen, no more.”

But they were merciless, these men. She had to drink if she wanted them to return night after night. And so it was way past midnight when she tottered out of the teahouse and climbed into Ah Chek’s trishaw. The river was heaving before her eyes. Bursts of light and clusters of dancing stars made her giddy. The shouts of coolies unloading the boats were deafening. Three ships had dropped anchor near the river mouth, Ah Chek told her. If she held her head still, she could see the bumboats and twakows swarming around the ships, their lamps bobbing like fireflies on the water. Ah Chek’s trishaw sped past the mahjong clubs and restaurants, spitting out their gamblers, hustlers, entertainers and women of the night. She lurched forward and threw up the contents of her stomach.

“Ahhh, so sorry,” she groaned.

“You’ve had too much to drink. Everyone is talking about your bamboo pole and the flea in a dog’s backside. People said you played extra well tonight.”

“Those swine!” she swore and threw up again, wiping the spit with the back of her hand. “I was serenading fools and buffoons tonight.”

“They call you the pipa queen. You’re their heroine! That flea is an inspector in the hawkers’ department. Did you know? He acts big. Talks big. Makes your life a misery if you need a hawking licence from him. All down the riverfront, the hawkers cheer you. You’ve rubbed that bugger’s nose into the dirt. And serve him right! He took away Ah Teck’s licence. How to sell noodles now? Seven children to feed. Last week he waited one whole day for the flea’s signature. And what was he doing? Sipping coffee in the canteen! Got to grease his palm under the table. If not, no licence! The insect! He used to work for the gwailo English in City Hall. Speaks their language. That’s why he can act big. Fatty Ong who sells pork down by the river had no coffee money. So that louse declared Fatty’s pork illegal and unfit for eating. A public danger, he said. Look, Fatty Ong yelled. My family ate the pork. My ma’s alive! My pa’s alive. My whole family’s alive. Every single one of them not gone to hell yet! But the flea ignored him. What could Fatty do? He can’t sell pork now. Good that Miss Yoke Lan ripped off his face, Fatty said to me.”

“Aiyah! I’ve no idea that I was doing the hawkers such a great service.”

She wiped the drip from her nose.

“Even the women say, tell Miss Yoke Lan, we thank her.”

“Are they calling me Miss Yoke Lan?”

“They not only call you Miss, they also call you Queen. And hear this. The aunties at the market even said you deserve a husband.”

“Aiyoyoh! Did they really say that? Did they?”

Her pipa trilled like a young girl in a new dress all set to welcome the Gods of Good Fortune and Prosperity. Her fingers skipped and galloped, plucking laughter from her pipa strings. Like birds pecking rice grains on a bronze drum, her notes fell from the rafters of the teahouse. Then they flew upwards like swallows weaving in and out of the audience singing with gusto. Her songs had men tapping their feet and clapping their hands. That New Year, the Majestic Theatre and the teahouses by the river, the men’s clubs in Club Street, China Street and Keong Saik Street resounded with her pipa’s music and songs. The mahjong clubs and gaming houses fought for her pipa each night, and raised her fee for a night’s entertainment.

Towkay Ong, the owner of several bumboats and twakows, was her most ardent fan. The big-boned man with a face that told of hours in the sun trailed her from teahouse to teahouse, bringing with him other loud speaking, hard-drinking boat owners and their men. They waited for her, and took her out to the restaurants near the river where Towkay Ong nibbled her ear, resting his paw on her thigh.

One night a silver-haired trader came to the Majestic Theatre teahouse. He had a soft voice and refined ways. His dressing and manners made the twakow and bumboat owners looked like country bumpkins. People addressed him as ‘Millionaire Towkay’. His friends were the traders who worked in the remittance houses and shops in the city. They fingered their abacuses all day, counting the beads and keeping huge sums in their heads while their brushes inked in hundreds of thousands in a neat script into the accounts books. One of them approached her. The silver-haired gentleman would like to take her under his wing. She understood at once what the old man wanted, for that was how such arrangements were phrased. She asked for time to consider the proposal and how she should thank Millionaire Towkay properly.

Back in the tenement shophouse, she called Molek Ee and Mrs Lee into her windowless bedroom, and the three of them sat on her bed.

“What’s there to consider?” Mrs Lee was flabbergasted. “You can’t say no. You might never get another proposal like this again.”

“I know, Mrs Lee, I know. I did think of that.”

“Did you tell him about the girl?” Molek Ee asked.

“I told him that Sum Koo, my foster mother, was the one who adopted Rat’s Shit.”

“And what did he say?”

“Nothing. Just that she could live with me.”

“So there! What’re you waiting for?” her two friends screeched.

She looked at them, and sighed, “He’s as old as my grandpa if he were alive.”

“Aiyah, Yoke Lan. Do you want to hawk the pipa all your life?” Molek Ee was exasperated with her.

“I know, I know. But all my life, I’ve prayed and dreamed of living in a house with a garden and a mango tree. And a husband who comes home every evening.”

“Wa-ah! Such a big dream you have.”

“Don’t you dream big, Mrs Lee?”

“No, I dream small dreams. Like a small flat tummy.”

A fit of giggles seized them. Mrs Lee’s belly was big as a barrel. The three women lay on their backs on her bed, gazing at the yellow globe hanging above them.

Mrs Lee sighed. “What for I dream big? I don’t want big, I tell the gods. Not big. Not big with child. But the great Goddess of Mercy, does she hear me?”

“Ack! The Goddess of Mercy is deaf. Better depend on myself than the gods,” Molek Ee sat up. “I hold my fate in my hand. Our fate is written in the left hand. The life we make is written on the right. My advice to you is this, my girl. Land your big fish now. He might be old as your grandpa, but all the same, marry him.”

Yoke Lan closed her eyes and sank deeper into the lumpy mattress.

“What now?” Molek Ee poked her ribs.

“How can you call it marry, Molek?”

“Ack, why not? If he looks after you and accepts the girl, it’s marrying you, isn’t it?”

“Listen.” Mrs Lee sat up. “My man and I were married according to tradition. I served tea to his parents. I kowtowed to his ancestors at the altar. What good did that do? Where’s my man now? I’m left with four dustbins to feed. I tell you, Yoke Lan, between money and ceremony, choose money.”