The Catherine Lim Collection Read Online Free PDF

early pregnancy, but more likely the poor girl had reached the end of
her endurance.
    Angela envied Gek Choo, safe at home, her
pregnancy a timely excuse to escape the madness.
    The Western coffin was returned to Singapore
Casket, a Chinese one procured. It came, hoisted by six men, massive curved
bridges of solid planed wood. Angela looked away.
    $3,000 - Wee Tiong could not believe it. The
Western one was a fraction of the cost. $3,000 – the swindlers. It was at this
point that Wee Tiong threw down the calculator in a fit of vexation and said he
was washing his hands off the whole thing. Let Wee Boon or Wee Nam both manage
from now onwards.
    It stood solidly in the hall, the dreadful
massive structure, associated in Angela’s mind with direful superstitions and
terrors.
    “Keep pregnant cats away,” warned Ah Kum
Soh. “A pregnant cat jumping over a coffin would cause the corpse to sit up or
even walk out.” Someone went to tie up a black-and-white female cat that often
came over to rummage in the kitchen bin.
    Please, for God’s sake – thought Angela.
    The matter did not end with the coffin. Old
Mother wanted the priests from the temple to perform the various rites.
    “But why so many priests, such elaborate
rites?” Wee Tiong’s voice rose to a very high pitch when he was exasperated.
“The swindlers. Do you know how much they are charging? $200 a night for all
those prayers and chantings. $200 a night per priest for four nights. Why three
priests? Why four nights?”
    He said again, “I wash my hands off this
business,” but shortly after he relented. He even went to Old Mother and said
to her, ‘Whatever you wish, it is our duty as sons to give you.’
    His wife was going to give birth: Who would
know what might happen? He longed for a son. Would the anger of his dead father
be visited upon him, bringing him the punishment of yet another girl-child, or
worse, a dead child?
    There were forces at work that Wee Tiong
believed in; he could not afford, at such a time, to unleash these forces. He
apologised to his mother.
    Oh, how I long for this whole wretched thing
to be over, thought Angela in distress, and it was not only because she wanted
to be able again to give her full attention to the children, to supervise
Mark’s progress, help Michael with his homework, prepare Michelle for her
training sessions at the pool, go out for lunch with Mee Kin and her other
colleagues, go through the marketing accounts with Mooi Lan, inquire about a
space in the newly opened Singapura Shopping Arcade to set up the boutique that
she and Mee Kin were always talking about.
    She was so tired, so tired of the whole
thing. She must have lost at least five pounds in the last week. Mee Kin had
remarked about the black rings round her eyes. Old Mother’s continuous sobbing
troubled, irritated her. Why call him ‘Old Devil’ and ‘Coffin-face’ while he
was alive and then weep so piteously at his death? But she knew the tears were
not for the old man alone.
    That heartless son, she thought bitterly,
suddenly feeling very sorry for her old mother-in-law. Couldn’t he have come
home at least for the funeral? First it was some stupid examination, and then
some accident that put him in hospital. I bet you they’re all excuses. He fools
his old mother right and left. He’s probably living it up this very minute with
his Australian woman. And the old fool weeps over his letters and messages and
declares that he’s the most filial of the four sons! Boon bears almost the
entire cost of the funeral, but the old one talks only of her Ah Siong, her
precious one. It’s always Ah Siong, Ah Siong. She longs for him to come back,
so that she can stay with him, as if all her other sons are ill-treating her.
    And the most distressing question of all –
but Angela did not dare ask it, would not dare voice it, even after the
funeral, for she could foresee her husband’s reaction, good-natured though he
was. He was sure to be impatient