The Moonlight Palace

  “I suppose you know nothing about this unfortunate affair,” the man said finally, rocking back on his feet.

  “Nothing, I’m afraid,” said Grandfather. “I’ve always liked the young man. I can’t imagine he meant any harm.”

  “He had bombs strapped all over his body,” said the head of Internal Affairs, in a voice as even and pleasant as my grandfather’s. “He will have to be deported.”

  “Oh, of course.” My grandfather nodded. “I suppose there’s no alternative.”

  “Deported!” I exclaimed.

  “The alternative is worse,” said the man.

  “We understand,” said Grandfather. He took my hand in his and held it, as if I were a little child again and not nearly a grown woman. “Did you know Mr. Foyles personally?” he asked the Internal Affairs man.

  “Not personally,” said the man. “But I understand he had an extraordinary collection of signed botanical prints.”

  “Brilliant,” said Grandfather. “I wish I’d seen them.” When I tried to pull my hand away, he merely put his other hand over mine, so that my fingers were trapped between both his hands. Grandfather’s hands were long fingered and strong; they had always seemed to me a bastion of safety. He did not let go until Geoffrey Brown came back into the room. Brown sat down opposite me, tugging down his trouser cuffs when they hiked up. I blush to admit I was studying him rather closely. But honestly, I’d never seen anyone so glamorously handsome who wasn’t in a film.

  “You can visit your friend now if you wish,” he said. “You ought to know there was a bit of a struggle when the police brought him in. You might want to prepare yourself.”

  The British are justly famous for their understatements. Omar Wahlid looked as if he had been beaten with a blunt instrument. His face appeared to have been rearranged. As soon as I saw him, my body began to shiver uncontrollably. Omar seemed to have shrunk into himself, and one eye looked in a slightly different direction than the other. Perhaps it had always been that way and was now just more noticeable. But our Chinese boarder, Wei, sitting slumped beside him on a folding chair, looked worse. This shocked me even more deeply. Had my friend Wei also strapped explosives to his chest? How was it possible for the world to change so violently in just a few hours? Wei’s face was bruised and swollen, and there was blood slowly seeping out of the corner of his mouth. He pressed a handkerchief to the wound, and every few minutes one of the guards brought him a fresh handkerchief and chips of ice. That was the strangest part, I thought—to do this to another human being, and then bring him clean linen and ice. I looked at the guard in amazement, and Wei shrugged. He tried to smile but instead winced and lowered his head, staring at the floor.

  Omar Wahlid said, “Your friend Brown had them clean us up a bit.”

  “What were you thinking?” I demanded of Omar. I practically wailed it.

  “I was thinking of Allah and Paradise,” he said.

  “By blowing up the Masjid Sultan?”

  “Never,” he said. “I went to the mosque to pray for strength. I am a true believer!” he said in a louder voice. A guard looked over, bored. “A true believer,” he repeated, looking at me. “You can have no idea what that means. You are an infidel,” he said, but for the first time ever he smiled at me. It made his round face look almost handsome. “You and your whole family. Aunts, uncles, all the little cousins. But,” he added, “your souls will wither and blow away like dust. No memory will remain of the infidels. —Allah is mighty, Al-Malik. Building the Masjid Sultan was the one worthy thing your great-great-grandfather did in his accursed life.”

  His use of the word accursed, said almost apologetically, made the back of my neck prickle. Realization dawned on me with horror. “You were going to blow up our palace?” I asked. “The Kampong Glam? Istana Gelam?”

  My words hung in the air, unanswered.

  Omar Wahlid did not respond. Wei gazed straight ahead, as if reading something on the wall opposite, but he looked sorry, at least, while Omar Wahlid only looked fiercer.

  “Answer me!” I demanded.

  “Your palace was built with blood money,” he said. His words sounded as if he had been telling himself this same story many times over. “It was bartered for the soul of the Muslim people. The sultan had a holy obligation. He betrayed it when he traded Singapore for a fat salary and a luxurious palace. Nothing could be more obvious.”

  “You were going to blow up our home?” My voice went up two octaves at least. Omar Wahlid had nearly solved all of our problems that night. But then again,—“You might have killed us all,” I said. “Are you completely mad?”

  “I am possessed only by the spirit of Mohammad, praised be the Holy Prophet. Kampong Glam stands for the betrayal of Islam to the British Empire. If you searched all over Singapore, in every corner of the island, you could not find a fitter emblem. Believe me,” he added. “I know. I tried.”

  “Oh, Omar, Omar,” I said. I reached out one hand. Whether I would have comforted him or shoved him off his chair, I’m not sure.

  “Kindly do not touch me with your unclean hands,” he said. “If I had not hesitated so long, I would be in Paradise now. If only your grandfather had left the palace! Why didn’t he go watch the fireworks with the rest?”

  “He’s unwell. He is in the wheelchair,” said Wei. It was the first thing he had said since I arrived.

  “This is the man you must rescue,” said Omar Wahlid, gesturing toward Wei. “They are going to send me back home, to Kuala Lumpur. This for me is a reward. Him they may put to death. They think he’s a Chinese Bolshevik radical. They are more worried about him than me. He was following me, so they suspect him of trying to overthrow the government. A Bolshevik!” he said scornfully. “This—engineer.”

  “They think I am Hailam,” Wei said. “Like the busboy who came close to blowing up the Grosvenor Hotel.”

  “But you’re not,” I said. “—Are you?” I no longer trusted my own senses. To think that our sulky young boarder Omar Wahlid nearly blew up the Kampong Glam Palace—with Grandfather and Sanang still in it! Two old people who had always been so kind to him.

  “I am from Taiwan,” said Wei. “But they consider me Chinese.”

  “The Chinese Protectorate exists not to protect the Chinese but to protect Singapore against the Chinese,” said Omar Wahlid. “Wei’s life is in your hands now.”

  “Wei is not political,” I said.

  “No, not at all,” agreed Wei sadly. “I should have paid more attention. The larger world is a mystery to me.” He held his mouth stiffly, so his words sounded muffled.

  “You had better talk to your friend Brown about it,” said Omar Wahlid. “They will put Wei to death.”

  “Brown is not my friend,” I said.

  “Never mind,” said Omar Wahlid. “You’ll find out, I expect. Just remember, that man is the real danger to us all. He is the true menace.”

  “And not the fellow with bombs strapped across his chest.” I was trembling at the verge of tears. It had been a long, terrible night.

  “No,” said Omar Wahlid. “Believe it or not, that miserable fellow was your friend.”

  When I got back to the little waiting room, I tugged on Grandfather’s hand, as if I were a small child again. He was still talking with the Internal Affairs man about antique books. They had switched from botanical books to volumes of poetry. “Grandfather,” I said, tugging again. “We have to talk!”

  “Please excuse my granddaughter,” Grandfather said to the man. “It’s been a tiring night. She does not intend to be rude. —Speak up, then,” he said.

  “I mean in private,” I said. The room seemed to hush around my words. But what they produced was the opposite of privacy.

  “There is no room for secrets in a situation like this,” Grandfather said calmly. His direct blue eyes seemed to drill into my heart. Could I count on no
one? Had the whole world turned upside down?

  “Your grandfather is a very great man,” said Brown. “He understands that the world is a complicated place.” He had been standing on the opposite side of the room, but now he crossed the floor and joined us. “Perhaps you, too, would like to see Omar Wahlid?” he asked Grandfather.

  For just an instant, my grandfather’s face wavered. I thought I saw fear in his eyes. But it happened so quickly, I could not be sure. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  I turned on Brown. “Both of those young men are bleeding. Both have been badly beaten!” I was torn between my fury at Omar and my fury at Geoffrey Brown. My fists were clenched, and I think I would have actually struck Brown had he come a step closer. “How could you allow this to happen?”

  Geoffrey Brown put up both hands. “No, no,” he said. “I’m only here to help. It’s important that you believe me.”

  “Grandfather, we can’t let anything else happen to Wei. They want to kill him.”

  British Grandfather flinched at my words. I went on doggedly. “He was just acting as a friend to Omar. Wei had no intention of blowing up anything. I know he is completely innocent.”

  “You know this?” Grandfather said.

  I said, “Wei is just an ordinary student. He loves bridges. He is always drawing pictures of bridges. We have to save him. Please.” And there I was again, tugging on his arm and crying like a child. Geoffrey Brown offered me his handkerchief, a crisp linen one, embroidered with his initials in cursive on one corner, GB.

  Grandfather’s eyes locked with mine. “No matter the cost?” he asked.

  “How can you mention cost at a time like this? Omar says they want to put Wei to death. Just because he is Chinese!” I wailed the final word, Chi-neeeeese. People in the room were now making an effort not to pay any attention to me. Only Grandfather stayed calm and focused.

  Grandfather leaned forward and kissed my cheek. He brushed the hair out of my eyes. While he was so close to my ear, he spoke very softly into it. “You can rely on me,” he said.

  I expected Grandfather to stand up and walk away with Brown. I had forgotten that he was confined to that chair. So many facts of our life slipped from my mind that night—our extreme helplessness, our poverty, the impossibility of our whole situation.

  “All right, Agnes,” he said, putting his hand under my chin, and tilting my face to get a better look at me. “It is your future. We have always agreed upon that. Charles will not blame me.”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “Don’t do anything on my account. Do it because it is what’s right and true.”

  “What’s right and true,” he repeated. His mouth twisted a bit. “Of course, it is always for that,” he said.

  British Grandfather was gone a long time, or so it seemed to me. The others made a point of not crossing my corner of the room, and the Internal Affairs man disappeared from view. One of the women offered me a cup of tea, and when I shook my head, she, too, retreated. I turned the pages of magazines listlessly, unable to absorb a word. There were advertisements for Allen automobiles and for the new low-heeled ladies’ shoes. I began reading an article about the American stock market—and when I got to the end, I realized not a single word had sunk in, so I started over again, but did no better the second time around. Geoffrey Brown himself had wheeled Grandfather out of the room, and when he wheeled Grandfather back in, it seemed to me that the two men had come to some sort of agreement. Grandfather caught my eye and nodded. His hands were shaking on the wooden sides of the wheelchair.

  “There is nothing,” he said, “that one man will not do to another.”

  EIGHT

  The Glory of Geoffrey Brown

  British Grandfather barely spoke on the ride home in Geoffrey Brown’s long, sleek automobile. It was the nicest car I had ever seen, a Pierce-Arrow with a bud vase in the side of the door, and a real, live red rose blooming inside the vase. The seats were deep and cushy—more comfortable by far than any of our own furniture at home. But I felt myself at the edge of tears every instant. Grandfather kept patting me on the arm as we drove through the streets of Singapore. They looked unfamiliar at that strange, bleak hour of the night, with dawn still an hour away. It had rained while we were at the Protectorate, so the streets seemed blurry, and when we drove alongside Little India, everything was dark there as well, as if Deepavali had never happened.

  Nei-Nei must have sat by the palace door all night. She scurried out to the Pierce-Arrow and insisted on wheeling Grandfather inside herself, muttering all the while under her breath in Peranakan Chinese. Poor Geoffrey Brown looked completely flummoxed. He kept apologizing and trying to take the wheelchair inside, and she would try to wrestle it back—though she did need his help getting the chair up the thirteen marble steps.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Brown said to British Grandfather. “I apologize for all of this. The trouble has been—unconscionable.”

  “Thank you,” said Grandfather simply.

  Nei-Nei Down peered with her sharp little brown eyes first at Brown, then at her husband. She wheeled Grandfather inside without another word, closing the door on Brown—and on me, as it happened, since I’d lagged a few steps behind. I could not remember a time when I had felt so tired. Images passed through my mind, one after another, as in a picture gallery. But I could not piece them together. There was not a single coherent thought left inside my head.

  As I turned to go inside, Brown said, “A moment,” and ran lightly down the stairs to the long black car. He came back holding the red rose from the bud vase. I accepted it numbly.

  “I hope not to remain a stranger,” he said. “I am not a villain. I hope you will believe that.”

  Before I could answer, British Grandfather called my name—“Aggie!”—his voice uncharacteristically sharp. He opened the door, wheeled himself through it, and raised one hand in farewell to Brown—not waving the hand, not moving it, just holding it up, palm out. I stepped inside the palace.

  “What about Wei?” I asked as the door shut behind us.

  “Wei will be spared,” Grandfather said. He smiled at me, but it was not his usual beaming smile. He, too, had seen horrors that night. “You’ve a good heart, Agnes.”

  “Thank you, Grandfather,” I said. “I inherited it from the best.”

  Nei-Nei Down snorted. But she tapped Grandfather on his shoulder with her little claw of a hand.

  After I had washed up, I tiptoed out to the hall outside Grandfather and Nei-Nei’s room. I heard the low rumble of Grandfather’s voice and caught only a stray phrase here and there. “Inevitable,” he said. “Sooner rather than later . . . If not for Brown . . . It could have been far worse . . . We must be grateful.”

  I was foolishly glad that someone as handsome and charming as Geoffrey Brown had turned out to be our savior. My heart warmed toward him. How glad I was that I had accepted his rose! But then, I also heard a sound I had heard before only a few times in my life—the racking, harsh sound of Nei-Nei Down sobbing as if her heart would break.

  In the days that followed, life began to change with shocking rapidity. It was as if we had been stuck in a photograph that suddenly became a moving picture. Omar Wahlid was deported almost at once to Malaya. We did not see our young boarder again—instead, two policemen came to our house with a border patrol officer to oversee the move. His possessions were thoroughly examined and packed into boxes, occupying only a small corner of the front hall, and then they, too, were on their way. Singapore wasn’t far from Malaya. Many Malayans commuted back and forth by bus, working in Singapore by day and returning to Jahore at night. But culturally and politically, the distance was immense. Omar was never to cross those borders again. He vanished from our lives as effectively as if he had never existed.

  Wei was escorted back to our palace after a few days, considerably improved from the night I’d seen him in the
Protectorate, but still much the worse for wear. Geoffrey Brown drove him to the Kampong Glam in his own car. Instead of regaining his strength as we expected, the young Chinese student continued to deteriorate from day to day. His round, smiling face became thin and expressionless. For one thing, Wei’s injuries simply would not heal. It turned out that Wei had a disease that kept his blood from clotting, so his bruises grew worse—the cut over his eye became infected, and he had to go to hospital. Never was he without a military escort. It was disconcerting, to come downstairs and always find a policeman standing in a corner of the room, sipping a cup of the bitter green tea that Nei-Nei Down provided. She had a special fondness for the red-haired Irish policeman—a fondness I did not share. The Irishman was a great tease. He was especially prone to mocking my friend Bridget—her hair color, her long nose, her gypsy-length skirts. Nothing escaped his notice. And sometimes he played the penny whistle flute—a noisome instrument that Nei-Nei said reminded her of her childhood.

  On the other hand, Nei-Nei Down never forgave Geoffrey Brown for keeping Grandfather out so late that night of Deepavali. She could hold a grudge, my granny. And her dislike for Brown never wavered, no matter how kind and considerate he proved himself to be. Brown visited often. He was personally overseeing the case, Grandfather explained. His courtesy and thoughtfulness knew no bounds. He arranged medical transport for Wei; he spent hours talking alone with Grandfather. Sometimes he brought official-looking documents for Grandfather to sign—a symbol of the never-ending officiousness of the British government and its red tape—but more often he brought cakes for Nei-Nei Down and sweets for me; fresh fruit and flowers for the household. Sanang and Danai were charmed—he always remembered to bring them a little something as well.