GRANDMOTHER DIED WHEN I WAS ABOUT 10. I had always been in awe of her, mainly because of the stories I had heard relatives and servants whisper about her atrocities towards the many bondmaids she had bought as infants, and reared to work as seamstresses and needlewomen in her rapidly expanding business of making bridal clothes and furnishings.

Grandmother’s embroidered silk bed curtains and bolster cases, and beaded slippers for bride and groom were famous and fetched good money. The more nimble-fingered of the bondmaids did the sewing and beadwork; the others were assigned the less demanding tasks of cutting, pasting, dyeing, stringing beads, or general housework.

It was rumoured that one bondmaid had died from injuries sustained when grandmother flung a durian at her. The story had never been confirmed, and as a child, my imagination had often dwelt on the terrible scene, giving it a number of interesting variations: grandmother hurled the durian at the bondmaid’s head and it stuck there; the durian was flung at the bondmaid’s stomach, thus disembowelling her; the durian thorns stuck in the bondmaid’s flesh like so many knives and caused her to bleed to death.

Whatever the circumstances surrounding her death, the bondmaid was certainly dead at 15 and quietly buried at night in a remote part of the huge plantation in which stood grandmother’s house.

Grandfather, who had been separated from grandmother for as long as anyone could remember, often said, “Look at her hands. Look at the strength and power in them. The hands of a murderess.” And he would go on to assign the same pernicious quality to each feature of her body: her eyes were cold and glittering, her mouth was thin and cruel, her buttocks which by their flatness deflected all good fortune, so that her husband would always be in want.

I think I unfairly attributed to grandmother all those atrocities which rich elderly ladies of old China committed against their servant girls or their husbands’ minor wives and concubines. Thus I had grandmother tie up the ends of the trousers of a bondmaid close to the ankles, force a struggling, clawing cat clown through the opening at the waist, quickly knot the trousers tightly at the waist to trap the beast inside, and then begin to hit it from the outside with a broom so that it would claw and scratch the more viciously in its panic.

I never saw, in the few visits I remember I paid grandmother, any such monstrosity. The punishments that grandmother regularly meted out were less dramatic: she pinched, hit knuckles with a wooden rod, slapped and occasionally rubbed chilli paste against the lips of a child bondmaid who had been caught telling a lie.

Grandmother did not like children. I think she merely tolerated my cousins and me when we went to stay a few days with her. When in a good mood, she gave us some beads or remnants of silk for which she no longer had any use.

I remember asking her one day why I never saw grandfather with her and why he was staying in another house. Not only did she refrain from answering my question but threw me such an angry glare that from that very day I never mentioned grandfather in her hearing. I concluded that they hated each other with a virulence that did not allow each to hear the name of the other without a look of the most intense scorn or words of abuse, spat out rather than uttered.

Indeed, never have I seen a couple so vigorously opposed to each other, and I still wonder how they could have overcome their revulsions to produce three offspring in a row, for according to grandfather, they had hated each other right from the beginning of their marriage. It was probably a duty which grandmother felt she had to discharge.

“It was an arranged marriage,” said grandfather simply, “and I never saw her till the wedding night.” But he did not speak of the large dowry that grandmother brought with her, for her father was a well-to-do pepper merchant who had businesses in Indonesia. As soon as her parents were dead and she had saved enough money to start a small business on her own, she left grandfather, took up residence in an old house in a plantation that she had shrewdly bought for a pittance, and brought up her three children there. Her two daughters she married off as soon as they reached 16; her son, who turned out to be a wastrel, she left to do as he liked.

She had put her life with grandfather behind her; from that day, he was dead to her, and she pursued her business with single-minded purpose and fervour, getting rich very quickly. She had a canny business sense and invested wisely in rubber and coconut plantations.

Grandfather took up residence with a mistress; he had her for a very long time, almost from the time of his marriage. It was said that she was barren, and he was disappointed for a while, for he wanted sons by her, but his love remained unchanged.

There were other mistresses, but they were merely the objects for grandfather’s insatiable appetite, while this woman, a very genteel-looking, soft-spoken woman whom I remember we all called ‘Grand aunt’, was his chosen life companion. I saw her only once. She was already very old and grey, and I remember she took out a small bottle of pungent-smelling oil from her blouse pocket and rubbed a little under my nose when she saw me cough and sniffle. She died some three years before grandfather (and a year after grandmother).

Grandfather howled in his grief at grand aunt’s funeral, and was inconsolable for months. In all likelihood, he would not have attended grandmother’s funeral even if she had not objected. As it was, she had stipulated, on her death-bed, that on no condition was grandfather to be allowed near her dead body. She was dying from a terrible cancer that, over a year, ate away her body.

“Go, you must go,” urged grand aunt on the day of the funeral, “for in death, all is forgotten.” But grandfather lay in his room smoking his opium pipe and gazing languorously up at the ceiling.

When grand aunt died – quite suddenly, for she was taking the chamber pot up to their room when she slipped, fell down the stairs and died – grandfather was grief-stricken and at one point, even blamed the sudden death on grandmother’s avenging spirit. He became withdrawn and reticent, and sometimes wept with the abandon of a child in the silence of the night.

The change was marked, for grandfather was by nature garrulous and, on occasion, even jovial. He liked to tell stories – especially irreverently obscene tales of monks. In his withdrawn state, all storytelling ceased, except on one occasion when he emerged from his room, to the surprise of the relatives who were sitting around idly chatting after dinner, and offered to tell a tale.

“Once upon a time,” said grandfather, grey eyes misting over and the wispy beard on his thin chin (which he always tied up tightly with a rubber band, much to the amusement of us children) moving up and down with the effort of story-telling.

“A very long time ago, perhaps a thousand years ago, there lived in China a farmer and his wife. He loved her dearly, for she was a gentle, loving woman who would do anything to make him comfortable and happy. They had no children; the woman’s barrenness, which would have compelled any husband to reject her, did not in the least irk him. He worked hard to save for their old age, knowing no sons would be born to look after them, and he and his wife watched with satisfaction the silver coins growing in the old stone jar, which they took care to hide in a hole in the earthen floor.

Now near the farm was a nunnery, and the head nun, a most cruel and mercenary woman who spent all her time thinking of how much in donations she could get out of the simple peasants, began to eye the growing wealth of this farmer and his wife. She knew that they were an extremely frugal couple and surmised that their savings were a goodly sum.

Knowing that the farmer was a shrewd fellow who regarded her with deep suspicion, she waited one morning for him to be out in the fields before paying his wife a visit.

So convincing was she in her promise of heavenly blessings upon those who would donate generously to her nunnery that the farmer’s wife was quite taken in. The foolish woman went to the hiding place in the earthen floor, brought out the stone jar and handed it, with its store of silver coins within, to the head nun. The nun thanked her effusively and left.

When the farmer came back, his wife told him what had happened, in her extreme naivete expecting him to praise her for what she had done. Instead, he picked up his changkul and repeatedly hit her in his rage. When he saw that she was dead, his rage turned into an overpowering pity and he knew he would never be at peace until he had killed the one who had brought about this tragedy.

He ran to the nunnery with his changkul and there struck three hefty blows on the nun’s head until she fell down and died. In his panic, the farmer ran to a tree and hanged himself.

The spirits of the three deceased then appeared before the Almighty, who sat on his heavenly throne in judgment.

‘You have done great wrong,’ he told the farmer, ‘and must therefore be punished.’

‘You,’ turning to the nun. ‘have done greater wrong, for you are a selfish, mercenary, cruel woman. You too will be punished.’

He looked at the farmer’s wife and, whereas his eyes had narrowed in severe censure when they looked upon the farmer and the nun, they now softened upon the gentle, timid woman.

‘You are a good woman,’ said the Almighty, ‘and although you were foolish enough to be taken in by this nun, you will not be punished.’

The Almighty’s plan was simple.

‘I’m sending the three of you back to earth again,’ said the Almighty. ‘You will be born and at the appointed time, you,’ pointing to the farmer, ‘and you,’ pointing to the nun, ‘will be man and wife so that you will be each other’s torment. I can devise no greater punishment for you. Since your sin is less,’ he continued, addressing the farmer, ‘you will be freed of the retribution after a time and will be reunited with this woman, without whom you cannot be happy.’

Then turning to the nun, he told her, ‘You have been guilty of so much cruelty that your punishment will be extended further. While this man and this woman enjoy peace and happiness together, your body will be wracked by the most painful disease, which will, after a long time, carry you to your grave.’

So the three were reborn on earth, and the Almighty’s plans for them came to pass.”

Grandfather finished his story and shuffled back to his room, smoking his opium pipe. He paused, before entering his room, to continue, “The woman, much beloved by the man, was to die soon, and he will shortly follow. For them, there will no longer be the pain of another rebirth.”