Lizard's Tale Read online

  ‘I’m very good, yes,’ said the hawker.

  As Lizard sat down at a wooden stool in front of the curry-puff cart, he thought about Georgina Whitford Jones and what she had said about him sounding like her. He certainly didn’t sound like her when he was speaking to anyone in Tanjong Pagar Road.

  ‘Here comes tailor Missy for her weekly curry puffs,’ said the hawker.

  Lizard looked up with a mouth full of pastry and saw his best friend, Lili, walking towards him. Lili’s father Mr Mak had the tailor shop above which Lizard lived.

  ‘Wei, Lili, deem ah?’ he greeted her in Cantonese and drew the back of his hand across his mouth to wipe off the pastry flakes.

  ‘Aiyoh, Lizard,’ she replied. ‘You know my teacher told me to practise English. Speak dialect at home only.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Lizard. ‘I don’t have a home.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Lili, perching herself on a stool next to Lizard. ‘We live in the same place.’

  Lizard thought about the bunk-sized cubicle he rented above Lili’s father’s shop. All his few belongings were crammed in his tiny space, which was separated from those on either side of him by thin partitions. Sixteen other people lived on the same floor, including a family of five in the front room.

  Lili lived downstairs with her family, which had only six people, plus a servant girl. She used to have a little brother, but he’d died of cholera when he was two. Lili’s family had three proper bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, an open air light well and a back courtyard. Her father’s tailor’s shop at the front was the only part Lizard had seen.

  ‘No, we don’t live in the same place at all,’ said Lizard with a grin. ‘Watch out, your brother is coming. Don’t talk to me or he’ll tell your father.’

  Lili quickly stood up and turned her back to Lizard.

  ‘Twenty curry puffs please, uncle,’ she said to the grinning hawker. ‘Hello, Dai Goh,’ she said to her brother.

  ‘Father says hurry up with the curry puffs,’ said her elder brother as he walked past. He lifted his chin at Lizard in acknowledgment and carried on down the road.

  Lili watched him walk away before sitting down again. They had never discussed it, but Lizard knew that Lili’s whole family would disapprove of her friendship with him. Lili was fully Chinese; Lizard wasn’t. Lili had a family; Lizard didn’t. Lili wasn’t dirt poor; Lizard was.

  ‘What have you got in your dirty old bag?’ she asked Lizard.

  ‘Nothing!’ he said. All in a rush, he remembered his errand and jumped off the stool, clutching the satchel tight. ‘I have to go. Bye!’

  Lili watched him hurry off as the hawker handed her the curry puffs. She wanted to ask where he was going, but she was careful never to question him too closely. After all, she had secrets of her own to keep.

  Lizard arrived at the Singapore Railway Station in Keppel Road at 9pm. He was to meet Boss Man Beng under the station clock at exactly 10pm, so he had an hour to kill.

  He had followed all of Boss Man Beng’s instructions from yesterday afternoon, and now the only thing left was to hand the teak box over to him and collect his ninety dollars, since he had got the first ten before the job. Ten dollars was already more money than Lizard had ever had at one time.

  Boss Man Beng had said not to be late, not even one minute. Lizard squatted against the wall under the station clock, the satchel pulled in close. People hurried past: the women in saris, samfoos, dresses or hijabs; the men in singlets, suits, sarongs or turbans. Lizard yawned and thought about the Chinatown boys gambling in Smith Street, as they did every night. It was going to be a boring hour, squatting here. He stood up. It wasn’t far to Smith Street, and he could be back by 10 o’clock, no problem.

  Lizard hurried off to find the boys.

  There they were, scrawny lads in singlets and cotton shorts crowded around a rickety table, with a lantern strung up above them. Raucous jokes and happy insults were traded in a mash of Chinese dialects with smatterings of Malay and Indian words. On the table was a little wooden box and some dice. The boys put out piles of coins and placed bets.

  Ah Ling and Ah Keung greeted Lizard with cheerful punches on his upper arm and made a space for him at the table.

  There were three or four older lads Lizard didn’t recognise. He hoped there wouldn’t be trouble. One of the big boys was taller than the others and his hair was slicked back with Brylcreem. You could see the grooves a comb had tracked though his gleaming hair. He lounged against a concrete pillar, looked down into Lizard’s face and gave a slow, mean grin.

  There was going to be trouble.

  ‘Half-half boy,’ drawled the Brylcreem lad in Hokkien. Lizard glanced up and around, noting the overhang of the five-foot way, the concrete posts on either side, the wooden crates lying nearby and, as always, the uncovered monsoon drain at the roadside.

  Ah Ling and Ah Keung were his friends, but they grinned too and moved back. They wanted to see some fun. The other boys grabbed their money, the little box and the dice off the table and also backed up.

  ‘What you doing here, half-half boy?’ asked another big lad, following the leader. This one had buck teeth. ‘This place is for Chinese boys only.’

  ‘Maybe you some part Chinese, ah?’ said Brylcreem. ‘Tell you what, boy, your Chinese part can stay. The rest, get lost.’ He guffawed and elbowed Buck Tooth in the ribs.

  That was a new one, Lizard had to admit. He couldn’t afford any trouble, not tonight. Boss Man Beng’s sweaty face warning him not to be late flashed in front of his eyes.

  ‘Hey, no problem, I’ll go, I’ll go,’ Lizard said in Hokkien. He put his hand on his satchel to make sure the box was safely there.

  Brylcreem wasn’t stupid. His cunning eyes darted to the cotton bag. ‘What you got there, huh? A present for me?’

  Lizard took a step back. He couldn’t lose the box, and he couldn’t be late to meet Boss Man Beng. It was stupid to have come here. How much time had passed? Lizard couldn’t be sure.

  Brylcreem advanced and made a grab for the bag. He yanked it hard, and Lizard cannoned into him, his head whacking Brylcreem in the eye.

  ‘Ow!’ Brylcreem yelled. He clapped a hand to his right eye. Hokkien swear words peppered the humid night air. He punched Lizard hard in the mouth.

  The punch took Lizard by surprise, and he tasted the metal tang of blood.

  ‘Alamak!’ Lizard put all his frustration into the Malay exclamation, then he leapt up, pushed himself against a concrete post and grabbed the overhang of the five-foot way. He hung there for a moment, his satchel still safely around his neck. Buck Tooth lurched out to hit him, but Lizard bent his knees up to his chest and Buck Tooth missed. Then Lizard dropped his feet and thumped his heels into Buck Tooth’s back, pushing him into the rickety table, which tipped over with a clatter.

  Around them, the younger boys congratulated each other on their wisdom in taking their stuff off that table.

  Brylcreem staggered towards Lizard, swearing furiously, and, with careful aim, Lizard swung his legs and propelled him into the open drain at the side of the road. The other boys leapt back to avoid the foul splash.

  Lizard hoisted himself up to the first floor. Boss Man’s words rang in his ears: Don’t be late, not even one minute. He shinnied down the post and hit the street running, clutching the satchel. He didn’t need to look back to know that the younger boys would have set up the table again and placed their bets before he reached the end of the road.

  Lizard kept running until he could see the railway station clock. He was not one but ten minutes late for his meeting with Boss Man Beng.

  There was a commotion outside the station. He couldn’t see Boss Man Beng. A dense crowd pushed and shouted right under the station clock. Lizard frowned; how was he going to find the Boss in that uproar?

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked a boy at the edge of the crowd.

  The boy spun round to face him. ‘Somebody got stabbed there, just now! Stabbed!’r />
  ‘What?’ said Lizard, with a jolt of shock. ‘Who? How?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘Some man, don’t know who.’

  Lizard shoved and squeezed his way through the crowd, dread growing in his belly. Finally, he broke through to the centre and found himself staring into the contorted face of Boss Man Beng. He was lying on his back. A knife was stuck in his chest and blood welled out, soaking his shirt and pooling on the ground.

  ‘Boss!’ Lizard cried, dropping to his knees.

  Boss Man Beng’s bulging eyes looked at him. His lips were moving, and his hand clawed at Lizard’s.

  Lizard grabbed Boss Man’s hand and leaned forward to listen, but he couldn’t hear anything over the pandemonium around him. When Boss Man’s lips stopped moving, Lizard gazed desperately at his face, but the man’s stare became fixed and unseeing. And when the grip of his hand went slack, Lizard knew that he was dead, and that he would never know what the Boss had been trying to tell him.

  Lizard knelt in the pool of blood holding Boss Man’s hand, wishing he could wake up from this ghastly, freakish nightmare.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Box of Bad Luck

  This couldn’t be possible. Any second now, Boss Man Beng would get up and laugh at him. Lizard blinked to wake himself up. Then, as it sank in that the Boss really was dead, his heart galloped so loud that he couldn’t hear anything else, and he breathed so fast that he felt lightheaded.

  Lizard was familiar with death. Chinatown people were hardy, until they weren’t. Typhoid, cholera, dysentery and accidents were sudden; tuberculosis was slower, with more coughing. Sago Lane, near where Lizard lived, was famous for its death houses. Death happened, but it had never happened like this—right in front of him—to someone he knew.

  When his brain started working again, his first thought was, ‘But I didn’t tell anyone!’

  His second thought was, ‘And I’m not dead!’

  His third thought was, ‘Yet.’

  Boss Man had said that the box was dangerous and if things went wrong they could both die. Things had definitely gone wrong—Boss Man was dead and Lizard would be next.

  Lizard turned and shoved his way blindly back through the crowd of yelling, ogling people. As he emerged, he heard a policeman’s whistle in the distance. There was nothing he could do for Boss Man Beng now, but he could do his best to keep himself alive. Terror squirted through his arteries with every heartbeat.

  His instinct was to run, but he slowed his steps. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He missed Uncle Archie more than ever. Uncle Archie would have known what to do.

  Lizard’s mother had sent him to live in a stilt house by the sea in Changi with Uncle Archie, his dead father’s brother, when he was four years old. He remembered his mother kissing him goodbye, and then the amah taking him on a long bus ride that night. The next morning he’d woken up in a strange bed, and a surprised-looking man with a pointy nose and blue-grey eyes was hovering over him. Lizard had never seen eyes that colour before—his mother was Cantonese and everybody in his world up until then had been Chinese or Malay or Indian. He thought everyone but him had brown eyes.

  Uncle Archie had sat next to him, opened a blue envelope and taken a long time to read the letter. After that, he’d seemed to accept that he had to take care of Lizard, just because Lizard was his nephew, even though he’d never met Lizard before and had needed lots of help to look after him. After all, what did an unmarried thirty-year-old British man know about four-year-old children?

  When Lizard asked when he was returning to his mother, Uncle Archie would clear his throat and say she had to go away and he didn’t know when she would be back. As the years went by, Lizard had stopped asking, though the hurt of being given away like a bundle of rags had never fully gone away.

  Pak Tuah, the headman of the Malay fishing village west of their stilt house, had helped Uncle Archie look after Lizard, and Lizard had grown up fishing and swimming and playing with the kids in the Malay village. Pak Tuah’s children, Zikri and Aminah, had given him the nickname of Lizard, because his initials were LZD and he climbed trees like a lizard.

  He learned Chinese and mathematics from Teacher Foon in the Chinese village nearby, and Uncle Archie taught him English, history and geography in a haphazard fashion. There was also a scouting manual that Lizard and his uncle both loved. Lizard remembered afternoons on the verandah where Uncle Archie would toss his sun-lightened hair out of his eyes and show Lizard how to tie the ‘knot of the week’.

  Uncle Archie told everyone he was a writer, but Lizard never saw much writing being done. He wondered what Uncle Archie did all day, so he followed him once. His uncle had grabbed his dark blue trilby from the selection of hats by the door and gone out. Lizard tailed him all the way to the Changi Military Base, but he couldn’t go in without being seen. He knew Uncle Archie had been in the British Navy so he figured he was visiting old friends.

  Sometimes, Uncle Archie had to go away for days—‘to the city’—or even for weeks—‘hunting’—and Lizard would stay with Pak Tuah’s family.

  Lizard was ten years old when he last saw his uncle. He never forgot the last words Uncle Archie had said to him, before he vanished. ‘Lizard, old chap, I’ve got to go to the city today, but I’ll be back this evening. What do you say to Chinatown curry puffs for supper?’

  Of course, Lizard had agreed—he loved curry puffs. He hadn’t even hugged his uncle goodbye as he dashed out the door, scared to be late for strict Teacher Foon. But Uncle Archie hadn’t come back that evening. Lizard had taken the dark blue trilby to bed and slept with it on as the rain clattered all night long on the tin roof.

  He’d stayed at Pak Tuah’s, and Pak Tuah tried to find Uncle Archie, but there was no trace. One day, Lizard had gone back to the stilt house and found it ransacked—table overturned, books and dishes on the floor, cupboard doors open. He wandered around in shock. Something had happened to Uncle Archie, he knew it, and Pak Tuah wasn’t going to find him. Lizard picked up a photo of Uncle Archie off the floor and tucked it into his pocket.

  He would have to find Uncle Archie himself. Not here and not in any Changi village. Uncle Archie had gone to the city—that’s where Lizard would have to look for him. Pak Tuah would never let Lizard go to the city and it would be rude to disobey him. It would be better to just go without asking. As he left, Lizard grabbed his uncle’s trilby and put it on his head.

  He took the mosquito bus to the city and looked everywhere for Uncle Archie, but hadn’t found him. No one would help him. He’d ended up in Chinatown where the local boys doled out jeers and knocks because he was new, odd looking and had no clan to belong to. He stayed alive on the erratic kindness of the shopkeepers and by running errands.

  Always in his heart was the hope of finding Uncle Archie, and always in his mind was the expectation that Uncle Archie would come home with curry puffs to share.

  Life had been a struggle until he had met Lili.

  As he walked back to the home Lili had organised for him, Lizard kept saying to himself: ‘Walk slow. Be calm. Be safe.’ Policemen in khaki uniforms ran past and Lizard kept his head down, making sure not to look.

  Boss Man Beng was so very dead now, and Lizard wished he could ask Uncle Archie what to do. As if he’d called him up through sheer desperation, Uncle Archie’s voice sounded in his ears, a verse Lizard had often heard him recite: ‘Always remember, Lizard, when things start going down the drain, think once, think twice, then think again.’

  Lizard took a deep breath and forced himself to think. He was sure that Boss Man Beng had been killed because of the teak box from Raffles Hotel. That must mean somebody badly wanted the box. If they knew that he, Lizard, had it, then he would be dead too. So whoever killed Boss Man Beng didn’t know that Lizard had the box. As long as he kept calm and didn’t give himself away, he would be safe.

  Lizard went to rub his eyes and noticed that his hand was clenched. He was holding something—some so
rt of cloth, scrunched up. Boss Man Beng must have had it in his hand when he grabbed Lizard’s. Lizard shuddered as he saw that there was blood on it, and he shoved it into his satchel.

  When Lizard arrived at Mak’s Tailor Shop, he nearly cried with relief. The building hadn’t ever felt like home before, but it felt that way now. It was even better when he saw Lili sitting on a small stool outside the shop. She was reading by the light of an oil lamp on a crate beside her. The metal lattice security grills of the shop had been pulled nearly closed, and the lights in the shop had been dimmed. Lizard walked up to her, making sure to stand where he couldn’t be seen by Mr Mak, in case he looked out.

  Lili gasped when she saw him. She jumped up and stared at his face. ‘Lizard!’ she exclaimed. ‘What happened to you?’

  Lizard didn’t know where to start, or even whether he should start. All he could do was look at Lili’s comforting, familiar, heart-shaped face.

  She put out a hand and touched his jaw with gentle fingers and clicked her tongue. ‘Did you fight again?’ she asked.

  He opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded. Only then did he feel the throbbing pain of his swollen, split lip.

  ‘Did they call you names again?’

  He shrugged.

  Lili sighed. She pulled her small stool further from the shop’s doorway and motioned for him to sit down. ‘Wait here,’ she said, and she ducked inside.

  Lizard sat down, then he moved himself and the stool even further into the shadows. Metal security grills clashed shut across shopfronts up and down the road. All around him, the inhabitants of Tanjong Pagar Road were settling into their night-time routines. The familiarity was soothing, and he felt himself relax.

  The Sikh nightwatchman for the tobacco factory two doors down was climbing into the string bed he put across the entrance every night. Lizard heard him spit the last paan juice of the day into the drain nearby. Weary hawkers plodded past, pushing their carts home.