House of Kwa Read online

  And she is right. With no doubt of her worthiness of first place in the heart of her husband and in his household, Happy Shadow takes to the town with her own campaign. ‘Why does her husband need a second wife if the first is so good?’ she whispers to a fishmonger as she collects her order. ‘Would you not rather look upon me than her?’ Happy Shadow asks in a teashop, as she reaches to select Ying Kam’s leaves of choice, seductively revealing a slim ankle as she gently sweeps her cape aside.

  The village does love gossip.

  ‘It’s true, Second Wife is younger and prettier than First Wife.’

  ‘Perhaps she is also a stronger type than First Wife.’

  Stories spread like silken sheets on a freshly made bed and loyalties shift like bitter beans in a bowl of fragrant rice. According to who is speaking and with whom, villagers make sweet and sour alliances; like golden pheasants they watch and wait for more gossip on the Kwas. In between Hong Kong expeditions, honourable husband Ying Kam visits Happy Shadow in her bed. The low lantern and smell of musk and wild honey is more inviting than the worn-out mattress and dull clove odour of First Wife, and Ying Kam has grown weary of her constant insecure posturing. Besides, her body has borne so many progeny for him, it is beginning to sag and lacks the lustre of his nubile new wife’s form.

  ‘All Lotus Flower does is nag and complain.’ Happy Shadow self-assuredly assesses her appearance in a long mirror framed with phoenix tail wood. ‘I will be all my husband needs from now on.’

  She blesses House of Kwa with one child, and then another, determined her birthrate will surpass that of Lotus Flower, and that she will hang on to her figure.

  ‘That will teach First Wife,’ the villagers whisper.’ She should not have fixed her glance behind but rather looked in front.’ They are right: Lotus Flower’s jealousy evokes the slow unravelling of her silken belts like snakes uncoiling and slithering towards her throat.

  On his next trip away Ying Kam opens a shop at number 16 Pedder Street, a thoroughfare on the North Shore of Hong Kong Island, and calls it Swatow Lace. His half-brother Eng Lee, first son of Great-Grandfather’s replacement Number Four Wife is already living in Hong Kong and, during Ying Kam’s frequent visits to the territory, the two have reunited over yuenyeung yinyeung, a mixture of three parts coffee and seven parts milk tea, overlooking the harbour. Eng Lee brings to the business his advanced accounting and bookkeeping know-how. He’s a Kwa on the ground, eyes and ears for Ying Kam.

  With the population burgeoning under the one Kwa roof, in Swatow, it becomes apparent that adopted first son, Tak Wai, has served his purpose.

  ‘Tak Wai is not Kwa blood,’ says Reputable Wu Master, after claiming to have received a sign from the gods. ‘Tak Wai must leave the family. His job is done.’

  Immediately Tak Wai is demoted from Number One ranking and, not daring to challenge the will of the gods, he follows his beloved father Ying Kam’s order, ‘You must go.’

  His adopted family bids a tearful farewell, and Tak Wai, his silk pockets lined with silver, and his heart painted in shame, returns to his peasant mother.

  ‘He would have married soon,’ Ying Kam reflects, turning his back on Tak Wai’s departing rickshaw. The sandals of the driver and wooden carriage wheels sluice dust from cobblestones to form puffs of grey cloud behind them. ‘But his children would not have been true Kwa.’

  The vehicle turns a corner and disappears and Tak Wai is erased from the Kwa family portrait.

  Happy Shadow has aged past thirty when, in the lucky year of the Fire Dragon 1916, another child bride appears with bound feet. Ying Kam is tired of nicknames and calls her by her birth name, plain and simple, Ng Yuk. She speaks only Cantonese. She is steely, no-nonsense, and positively terrified by the knowledge her job as Third Wife will be ‘utterly impossible’, ‘probably undoable’ and ‘the lowest honour of all’, almost everyone has told her. And yet it’s an honour her family can hardly refuse, given their poor circumstances.

  She wanders on painfully folded feet to the marketplace down the hill from her new home. The fish barrels whisper, ‘Always better to be first,’ while the fruit carts moan, ‘She’s more like concubine than wife.’

  Ying Kam is handsome and quite capable of kindness. But you qi fu, bi you qi zi, like father like son, he is prone to dragon outbursts and his temper has him reaching for his stick. He isn’t himself when he gets like this, the dreamer boy travelling on dragon hide to become the dragon itself. Sometimes he doesn’t know who he is. Servants cower, and wives use their wiles, but no matter their status or number all meet with blows from time to time.

  The villagers regard Ying Kam with reverence for his many wives, children and accomplishments. The three women are famous in Swatow for their rivalry, and Ying Kam for his temper; stories of the Kwas are passed down as cautionary tales.

  A musician plucks and strokes erhu strings on a street corner and the folk song ‘Paoma Liuliude Shanshang’ drenches the stiff air within the Kwa compound walls as the town vocalist paces the cobblestones outside, a dizi flautist trailing behind. The song is about being unable to resist loving all the beautiful girls in the world, and the fierce male competition for their hands because even the moon and stars woo maiden beauty.

  Ng Yuk births her first son in the year of the Earth Goat. Babies continue to come forth from the wombs of first and second wives too, sometimes two at a time or dead on arrival – stillborn and cursed or making it through the night to die the next day, cursed too. This is the Chinese condition. But, despite sinister celestial forces bent on preventing their healthy passage, many Kwa infants cling successfully to life. The compound brims with children’s laughter – the peels of Ng Yuk’s firstborn among them.

  Twenty-third generation Kwa is firmly rooted in Swatow, Japan has seized pockets once belonging to Germany, along China’s coast, and the Emperor has sent 140,000 labourers to help the British and French WWII effort. There has been a series of battles with Japan during the past few decades, and Ying Kam is only too aware of their effects on trade, but until now silk routes have been good to him. He counts his gold, imagining it is molten lava circling a giant dragon nest, hardening into a brilliant glow, and protecting the eggs inside. Kwa children line up to collect their weekly allowance, jostling and laughing.

  The next morning, an unforgivingly cold January wind sets in and Ying Kam rushes past a dormant flame tree, on his way to an appointment with a long-time customer. When he arrives he warms his hands against a smouldering plate of hot stones in a paved entrance hall to wait for his contact. Moments later, the flame tree watches him hike determinedly past again. Bad news weighs on his handsome features.

  England’s agreement to stop sending opium to China is affecting Kwa trade. The India–China trafficking heyday is over. ‘And now’ – Ying Kam twists and pulls a silk belt agressively in his hands as he faces Storm Boy – ‘now there are no British profits from selling opium to buy my silk.’

  The gods close the tap and the Kwa rush of gold slows to a trickle. A molten bar of the precious metal slips from Ying Kam’s grasp, smashes to dust and disappears in a breath of wind whispering, ‘Hong Kong!’ Week by week, year by year, the pocket money dwindles, until there is none. The Japanese military seem always to be posturing towards China’s north east. ‘The Japanese are coming, run,’ the wind whispers again. ‘Hong Kong.’ Children jostling gives way to solemn foot shuffling, laughter to lip biting.

  After his key man Storm Boy defects, Ying Kam’s syndicate of traders is undercut by competitors. He has spent sixteen years cultivating business relationships in his father’s shadow, and now they crumble into an abyss. Formerly loyal staff go unpaid and resign in favour of greener pastures.

  Rumours circulate in Swatow. With so many Kwa mouths to feed and so much face to save, Ying Kam walks his compound corridors in a dense shroud of unhappiness. For Lotus Flower, Happy Shadow and Ng Yuk, a bitterness wends its way over their tiny feet and up their legs, green tendons wrapping around
their bodies until they feel they will suffocate.

  For years, ever since they reunited in brotherhood and business, Eng Lee has been encouranging Ying Kam to contact their father. It’s the last thing Ying Kam imagined himself doing, but Kwa blood is thick so he forms beseeching character strokes on calf-skin parchment. But Ying Kam’s words fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. Undeterred by the silence, he sends information to assist his father’s merchant activities, and finally the two find cooperation. ‘Nuren he shagua yong bu yuanliang. Women and fools never forgive.’ Great-Grandfather is far from the fool, appreciating the benefit of another set of eyes and ears in the sea port of Hong Kong. ‘Buyao jiang ni de haizi xianzhi zai ziji de xuexi zhong. Tamen chusheng zai ling yige nian dai. Do not confine your children to your own learning. They were born in another time.’ Great-Grandfather writes back to his son, wishing him well and agreeing to work with him. Ying Kam is pleased yet cautious and, refraining from asking his father for money, he writes to his brother instead.

  Circumstances plummet to the point Ying Kam takes up work as a rickshaw driver, cycling day and night to keep the household, while he waits on his brother’s help. He chauffeurs former peers and friends, who look upon his sweat-soaked back with a mixture of pity and fear, thinking, That could be me next.

  The wives quarrel over fish in the market. The villagers are accustomed to the Kwa women fighting, but now it is over scraps. The prestigious knife fish of the Yangtze River is no longer within their means; instead the Kwas eat local cyprinidae, full of mud.

  Still, villagers relish this fodder for idle gossip. ‘Jia jia you ben nan nian de jing. There is a skeleton in every house. Every family has a problem it cannot solve.’ They speculate over the fall of the House of Kwa. ‘Fu bu guo san dai. Wealth does not sustain beyond three generations.’

  Three wives stick close together. Three wives exist far apart. With three heads held high, denying three hearts scorched with shame, three stride towards survival, though their tiny feet can barely hold them up.

  ‘Meiyou renhe sunshi de ren shi fuyou de. He who has nothing to lose is rich.’ The enviable life of Kwa has vanished. There is no way Ying Kam and his wives can disguise this financial distress by dressing it in silk and calling it success – no, they must bear witness to its exposed skeleton. If a penny goes unaccounted for, servants, wives and children are beaten. Squandered food? Same penalty applies. Ying Kam runs a tight ship, Houseboat of Kwa, buffeted by a threatening tide of destitution; tossed by a storm of merchants, peddlers and thieves. He scans the horizon, searching for a life raft to save his family.

  One floats into view. Ying Kam’s brother replies to his letter with the promise of money to relocate.

  Ying Kam calls in his wives. To Happy Shadow and Ng Yuk, he says, ‘Pack all belongings and unwedded children.’ He turns the parchment over in his hands and is grateful to his brother. ‘Number One Wife, you will stay. Today we move to Hong Kong.’

  ‘How can honourable husband Ying Kam leave me?’ Lotus Flower asks. ‘I am Number One. I’m the only one responsible enough to look after the family – the only one to be trusted.’ Although bitterness has marred the sheen of her silks for years, she is struggling to make sense of her abandonment.

  ‘It is simply too far and too expensive for you to join the family in Hong Kong,’ Ying Kam reasons. ‘You will be safe and looked after here.’ But not by him: Lotus Flower’s children are obliged to support her into old age. They are already adults, married with children themselves.

  She looks at Ying Kam, whom she has served by bearing him offspring he believed he would never have, and by absconding from her lowly fourth wife post with his father and pledging her life to him. Ying Kam exiled Tak Wai after he had served his purpose, and now as Lotus Flower looks at her useless feet, she realises she has served her purpose too.

  Ying Kam is by no means without a heavy heart but chooses to follow his head. ‘Kongzhi ni de qingxu, fouze tamen hui kong zhi ni. Control your emotions or they will control you.’ Happy Shadow, Ng Yuk and a dozen children make the pilgrimage with him to Hong Kong. Most of these children are too young to fend for themselves, while others are old enough to work but too young to leave the nest. ‘They will help support the family,’ says Ying Kam.

  BABIES AND DRAGON

  HOUSE OF KWA IS SMOKE FROM AN OPIUM PIPE, GENTLY coiling around a cherry tree. As the smoke envelops the tree, a baby dragon soars into view. He curls up at the base of the tree and watches vibrant blossoms open. Some thrive while others lose their hue and shape, wilting and floating to the ground. The young dragon falls sound asleep, awaiting his own birth as a blossom on the tree.

  That’s my dad, the sleeping dragon. Sometimes the days preceding our time on earth say more about us than the days we are here, and although he is not yet born, his constellation has glowed for centuries.

  The baby dragon stirs. His snores gently shake the family tree. A cherry blossom tumbles, leaving space for a fresh bud to appear.

  With the help of Great-Grandfather’s money, as promised in his letter to Ying Kam, the Kwas take up residence at 183 Wu Hu Street, Hung Hom, Hong Kong. To expats ‘Wu Hu’ sounds like a party; a lot of Chinese names seem funny to the mainly British foreigners living in the city. The Kwas’ new home is inland at one end of Wu Hu Street. At the tip of the other end, on the west coast of Kowloon Bay, is Whampoa Dock, one of the biggest dockyards in all of Asia. Ying Kam and his brother are in the perfect place to reinvigorate their business in textiles: Swatow Lace. Very soon, their sewing rooms filled with women bent over machines multiply into factory floors that become entire factory buildings. Ying Kam can afford to ride in rickshaws again. He and his brother work hard to rebuild a Kwa Empire, and now as well as a head office in Hong Kong, there are branches in Peiping, Shanghai and Swatow.

  Happy Shadow readies her children for life in Hong Kong. She lives on the second floor of the Kwa building, the only concrete two-storey complex on the entire street, in the industrial district near Hung Hom Bay and Whampoa Dock. Relieved by the return to House of Kwa trappings, she returns to competitive wifely traditions and scolds Ng Yuk, who has taken up residence downstairs, with more vigour than before. Then Happy Shadow promotes herself to First Wife status – what Lotus Flower doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

  Ng Yuk has grown thinner with worry this past year. She has had a string of miscarriages, and she smokes more and more to cope with each loss. When she becomes pregnant again, Ying Kam calls upon a local fortune-teller to find out if this baby will survive. He is told it will and celebrates the news with long black tea and opium.

  Two months too soon, Ng Yuk is rushed to hospital when she begins to contract. Preferring a homebirth, the old way, she protested but was dragged here anyway, into an alien world of linoleum and beeping machines, strange nurses and doctors.

  She is giving birth to triplets, a blessing the fortune-teller did not predict. The searing pain of not one but three babies entering the world in close succession is almost too much for her tiny frame. In her terror and delirium, she tries to imagine this is just a bad dream. A milk nurse on hand becomes a blurred apparition that Ng Yuk tries desperately to bring into focus, but she’s struck back down, eyes to the sky, to push again.

  As the medical staff fight to keep the three boys alive, a Buddhist and a shaman are called in, along with, for good measure, a Catholic priest. Ying Kam does not care which god saves his sons, but it seems the gods are preoccupied playing mahjong somewhere in the clouds.

  Ng Yuk shakes, her blood loss left unattended as the newborns take priority over their mother, being boys after all. They are tiny and thin with distended bellies and amidst the frantic grasps at the infants’ lives, their three small souls leave their tiny bodies to lie lifeless and exposed. The first turns out to be stillborn, the second holds on for an hour, and the third and last hope struggles and is gone by sunrise. ‘The brain damage will be terrible,’ the doctors say, lowering their instruments. ‘It is best not to
fight anymore.’ Nurses wrap the brothers in cotton swaddling to hide their yellow skin as it begins to turn grey.

  Still neglected and bloodied, Ng Yuk is weeping and smoking when Ying Kam comes to the door. ‘You have cursed the family.’ He lurches towards her. ‘My three sons.’ His eyes are red with the immeasurable pain of lost progeny.

  A doctor follows Ying Kam out of the cold, stale room, whispering deliberately loud enough for Ng Yuk to hear. ‘Such shame.’

  A proverb springs to Ng Yuk’s mind as she draws deeply on her cigarette: ‘Yige bu hao de gongzuo zhe zhize ta de gongju. A bad workman blames his tools.’ Splinters of bitterness embed in Ng Yuk’s heart. The blood between her thighs has dried, and scorn and grief pour out of her, filling the room.

  Back in the House of Kwa, her emotions course over the floors, down corridors and stairs, across beds and tables. For days, despair laps at the concrete walls.

  Before long, though, Ng Yuk is with child again, this time, as before, only one heartbeat is detected and she hopes that this time there really is only one baby. Her grit restored, she lights a cigarette and settles in for gestation, even managing a smile that her purpose in life has not ended. She slaps a maid and yells for supper, just like her old self again. A sigh of relief can be heard in rafters and rugs, bone china and ivory, crystal and lace. ‘Third Wife is back,’ mahogany chairs and Persian tapestries cry. However, Ng Yuk latches on to bottomless dissatisfaction, constant complaining and endless criticism, addictive like the cigarettes she is seldom seen without. Her madness deepens as the Kwa children watch on.

  The shame of the curse of lost male triplets plagues Ying Kam’s thoughts for some time, but he finds solace enough in prayer – since converting to Christianity, another layer to the family’s history of Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian beliefs – and work, providing for his family through Swatow Lace, and getting life back on track. Second Wife Happy Shadow immerses herself in embroidery work and painting, and unlike Ng Yuk, she doesn’t smoke to pass the time, nor does she have pregnancy or babies to occupy her these days. Ying Kam bursts through the door of the upstairs apartment to call her to the latest birth below, to sit by Ng Yuk while the girl servants and midwives attend to her. It’s an Earth Dragon Boy, destined, predicts the fortune-teller, to be lucky, warm-hearted and full of blazing energy.