The Question
The man came in the middle of the afternoon, when the heat pressed the town flat and even the dogs slept.
Mei was behind the half-closed door that separated the back of the shophouse from the front — the door she had learned to stand near when her father had visitors, close enough to hear, invisible enough to be forgotten. She was mending a tear in one of her mother's sarongs, a task that required no thought and gave her an excuse to be still.
The man's voice reached her first. Soft. Polite. The kind of politeness that did not bend.
"Mr. Lim. I hope the afternoon finds you well."
Her father's chair scraped. She heard the rustle of greeting — her father standing, offering a seat. "Please. Tea?"
"You are kind."
Through the gap in the door, Mei saw him. He was in his thirties, slim, dressed simply in a dark cotton shirt and trousers. Nothing about him looked dangerous. He sat straight-backed, hands resting on his knees. Her father poured tea and the man accepted the cup with both hands and a small nod.
"I am making a few inquiries," the man said. "On behalf of the brotherhood. A small matter — a worker from the Kathu camps has not been accounted for. He left some weeks ago without settling his contract."
Her father sipped his tea. "These things happen. Men wander."
"They do." The man — Brother Kheng, she would learn his name later — turned the teacup in his hands. "We simply want to make sure he is safe. He is young. The jungle is not kind to young men alone."
"Of course."
"Have you noticed any unfamiliar faces in the neighbourhood? A young man, perhaps, Hokkien-speaking, looking for work or shelter?"
Her father shook his head. "I haven't. But I'm at the trading house most days. I don't notice much on this street anymore."
"Of course." Brother Kheng turned the teacup another quarter-turn. "In any case, boys like that usually turn up at the harbour. Carrying sacks for the junks, pulling a rickshaw. A face can disappear into day-labour for some weeks before we find it." A small, professional smile. "But we do find them."
Behind the door, Mei's hands stopped. The needle was still in the cloth. Ah Seng was at the docks. Right now. This afternoon.
Brother Kheng set the cup down. "We become blind to what is closest." He stood. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Lim. If you hear anything — a name, a sighting — please send word to the Ghee Hin hall on Phang Nga Road."
"Of course," her father said again, and walked him to the door.
Mei did not move. She held the needle steady in the cloth. Through the gap she watched Brother Kheng step into the five-foot way and disappear into the afternoon glare. Her father returned to his chair, picked up his account book, and continued where he had left off. He had already forgotten the conversation.
Mei had not.
She waited up for him.
He came in through the alley after dusk with the sea-grit on his arms. He saw her face before she said anything.
"What."
"A man. Ghee Hin. He came to the front of the shop today. He sat with my father and drank tea and asked about runaways." She paused. "He said they look at the harbour first."
Ah Seng was quiet for a moment. He sat down on the rice sacks and took off his hat.
"How calm was he?"
"Very."
"Then he doesn't know yet. They are calm before they know. They are something else after."
She did not ask how he knew this.
"You can't go back to the docks," she said.
"No."
"Until he stops coming."
"He won't stop coming." Ah Seng untied the knot at his belt. He counted the day's coins onto the floor between them. Six. He scooped them back into the cloth and retied the knot, tighter. "I'll keep what I have. For when I go."
"Go where?"
He did not answer.
He came back two days later. This time Mei was in the front room, helping her father sort a stack of shipping receipts. She heard the knock and looked up and there he was in the doorway, dressed the same, the same mild expression.
"Mr. Lim. I apologise for troubling you again."
"No trouble." Her father waved him in. "Mei, bring tea."
She went to the kitchen and poured the water. She steadied the tray against the edge of the counter, breathed once, and carried the tea out with a face she had arranged into nothing.
Brother Kheng accepted the cup. He asked her father the same questions in slightly different words — had he heard any talk in the trading house, had any of the shopkeepers on the street mentioned a stranger, had his servants noticed anything. Her father answered patiently, a man helping with someone else's business, already thinking about tin prices.
Then Brother Kheng looked at Mei. Directly. His eyes were calm and dark and very still.
"And you, Miss Lim? You are young — young people notice things their parents do not. Have you seen anything unusual?"
The room was quiet. The incense from the ancestor shrine curled between them. She could hear, very faintly, a creak from the back of the house.
"No," she said. "Nothing unusual."
She felt the word leave her mouth and sit in the air between them. Brother Kheng looked at her a moment longer, then smiled — a small, professional smile — and turned back to her father.
"Well. The brotherhood appreciates your time. These are difficult situations — a young man alone, debts unpaid. We worry."
He left. Her father returned to his receipts. Mei sat very still and wondered how long it would hold.
She went to Ah Seng that night, after the house was dark. She brought rice and a piece of dried fish and sat on the floor outside the storage room door while he ate.
"He came back."
Ah Seng did not stop eating at first. He chewed, swallowed, set the bowl down. "Today?"
"Today. In the front room. He drank tea with my father and asked the same questions in different words. Then he looked at me." She paused. "He is not asking because he doesn't know. He is asking because he wants to see who flinches. You need to be ready to move. I don't know when. But it will need to happen."
Ah Seng was quiet for a long time. The oil lamp flickered against the wall, throwing his shadow large and then small. When he spoke, his voice was flat and careful.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"This. Hiding me. Feeding me. Lying to a man from the Ghee Hin." He set the bowl down. "Your family profits from the mines. Your father trades tin. The men who own my debt are the men your father does business with."
She opened her mouth and closed it again.
"I'm not saying it as an accusation," he said. "I'm asking. Why?"
She did not have a good answer. She thought of Lau on the mat. She thought of the new arrivals on the pier, blinking in the light. She could not say she had nothing to do with the system he had fled. She ate from it every night at her father's table.
"I don't know," she said. "I just know I can't send you back."
He looked at her. Then he picked up the bowl and finished his rice, and neither of them said anything else.
Two nights later, Kwek and Beng Huat came. The soft knock at the back door, the quick shuffle into the storage room, the four of them pressed between the rice sacks with the lamp turned low. Kwek was in a good mood — he had won a handful of coins in a dice game in the barracks and was spending them already in his mind.
"New sandals," he said, counting on his fingers. "A letter home. And something sweet — do you know if there's anywhere in town that sells those sesame balls? The ones with red bean inside?"
"You haven't sent the letter yet and you're already eating your money," Ah Seng said.
"I'm a man of vision."
Beng Huat sat in his usual spot against the wall, his hands wrapped around a cup of water. He said nothing for a while. Then, in the gap between two of Kwek's stories, he said: "There are rumours in the barracks. About a British company."
Mei felt her stomach tighten.
"They say someone has been sent to survey the mines," Beng Huat continued. "An engineer. The men are frightened. They say machines are coming. Machines that don't need men."
Kwek stopped talking. The room was very still.
"Where did you hear this?" Ah Seng asked.
"Everywhere. The overseers talk. The towkays talk. It travels down." Beng Huat looked at Mei. His gaze rested on her face for a moment, steady and unreadable. "Do you know anything about it?"
"Only what I hear," Mei said. Her voice sounded wrong to her — too even, too careful. She picked at a thread on her sarong to give her hands something to do.
Beng Huat watched her a moment longer. Then he looked away.
They left an hour later, slipping out the back into the darkness. Mei locked the door and stood in the kitchen, her forehead pressed against the wood. She could still feel Beng Huat's eyes.
The next morning, her father set down his teacup at breakfast and said: "Next week, you will come with me to Kathu. Mr. Aldridge has had his equipment sent up and assembled. He wants to demonstrate it for the investors."
Mei looked at him. The kitchen was bright with morning light. Her mother was at the stove. Ah-Ma was at the shrine, the incense curling. An ordinary morning.
"A demonstration," she said.
"The hydraulic monitor." Her father smiled. "The machine he has been telling us about. He says it is ready." He sipped his tea. "The mine towkay will be there. It will be a good experience for you."
Something cold settled in her stomach and did not leave.