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Roy Glashan's Library
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Short Stories, 10 Dec 1942 "Honorable Ancestor"
Sam Lee Was as American as a Pale Yellow Ten Dollar Gold
Piece—and It Was Given to Him to See the Fall of Singapore.
LIH SAM SUE was hideously trapped in Singapore. The more so because, of the half million-odd Chinese who lived there, he was probably the only one who was not there voluntarily. He loathed the place. It and its people and all its ways. Even before the Jap hordes came.
His upbringing, his education, his whole philosophy of life rebelled against its conditions of swarming yellow and brown men who lived in their appalling Oriental squalor under the domination of the handful of lordly white men who lived in their aloof colonial magnificence.
He didn't even call himself by that absurd name, Lih Sam Sue. Plain Sam Lee, he gave his name on his passport. Born on a California truck farm, educated in Santa Clare High, and working his way through a post graduate in Frisco Medical. As American as a pale yellow ten dollar, piece. He came to Singapore only because his grandfather had urgently written, designating him as his heir to a reputed half million or so of haiqwan taels, and Sam had lived hard enough to know the American slogan. Money talks. He told his principal, "I suppose I'd better go and collect; and then I could devote myself to this research work." And his principal had heartily agreed.
So here he was in Singapore—and learned his disillusion.
Old man Lih Sin lived in no mansion—Sam had envisioned something like the fabulous palace of Boon Par, the "Tiger Balm" patent medicine king. He came, instead, to a dingy house jammed between thousands of other dingy houses on the South Side, overlooking the dingy, garbage-infested river. That river jolted Sam into his proper place in Singapore. South of the bridge he was not Mister Lee of medical school; he was, "Hi yah, Chink," just one of a subject race, yellow, thin-eyed, slender, exactly like all the rest, to live where and how they pleased under white man freedom.
Sam swore an oath to himself in good American. "Lemme get my hands on as much as passage money and I'll get outa this stinking coolie trap before I revert to type."
It was on the river's North Side that was Singapore's magnificence. Its row of waterfront "godowns," storage sheds for the teeming business of the world's gateway between East and West—it seemed to Sam that that dirty river was the dividing line between East and West—and then the palaces of the unbelievably rich white-man city. The pride of the Orient—and its prize; with its tall spire of the Episcopal Cathedral flaunting its Christian charity to brother man. Sam looked at it sourly sideways, though he had been raised Christian in America.
Grandfather Lih's house on the South Side was exactly like all the swarming rest. Outside plastered with pink paper charms against devils covered with huge letters in a weird brush script that Sam couldn't even read, inside full of musty, unventilated smells—and Grandfather Lih.
As old and as frail and as yellow as a carved ivory figure in a Chinatown curio shop back home—and as rigidly exact in the formalities of speech and manner for every occasion as prescribed by five thousand years of tradition.
In that musty old house all of Sam's American-bred exuberance was smothered by the crushing realization that what he had been in the West and what he was here in the East were separated by those thousands of years that had never changed, to which he was heir. He helplessly hated all of it. Yet he could not, as the days went on with the rumble of invasion coming relentlessly nearer, help respecting the old man's unswerving faith in the rightness of the ancient rules of conduct, admiring his courage, his exquisite antique courtesy. Even when the old man disillusioned him about the inheritance that had lured him to this damned place.
GRANDFATHER LIH dressed up for the occasion, all in the rich embroidered robes of ceremonial. He said, "My son"—He never called Sam anything but son; his own son was lost to him, dead, even buried, in a foreign land without any of the proper rites, and it was an added sorrow that he had to speak to his grandson in English.
"My son, today the gods have favored me with eighty years. My time will not be long before I join the venerable ancestors. Let us then respectfully repair to the room of shrines, and I will tell you of your inheritance."
For a moment Sam's eyes lit up wide and expectant. Then they closed down thin again. He bowed to the old man and followed respectfully. Sam was learning.
The room of the shrines was a sort of holy-of-holies that Sam seldom entered and very little understood. But Grandfather Lih used to spend long hours in it, meditating and muttering. Its walls were mellow with olden golden brocades and dragon-blood red with lacquered cabinets before which the old man Would place symbolic offerings of hand-lettered paper strips and grains of colored rice and things; and it always smelled of non-ventilation and mouldy spiced fabrics.
"Prepare now to listen, my son; and, yeew t'eng ngoh kong." Grandfather Lih was always saying that to everybody, as his age in a Chinese community gave him the right. Sam had learned that it meant, "Attend carefully to what I say."
Solemnly then the old man said, "The Rat people will capture Singapore." The appellation was one of the most contemptuous in Chinese thought.
Sam remained confident. "The white men in the town say that is impossible."
The old man bowed elaborately in deference to the weighed thought of others. But, "'Desire is a cloud upon wisdom'," he quoted. "K'ung Fu-Tse has said it. 'Where much wealth is, comes complacence.' For sixty of my eighty years I have watched their confidence and their carelessness—as the Rat people have also watched; and from rats nothing is hidden. Nay yeew t'eng. They will take Singapore. They will take also the road by which that great people amongst whom you were born have furnished our people with the means to fight for the ancient principles of right. Therefore, my son—observe carefully, I command you. I have withdrawn all my wealth and have quietly exchanged it against weapons for the day of need."
"Ah!" said Sam.
"Yes, I have bought guns. A great store of guns and ammunition. That is why we live in this poor house. They, my son, are your inheritance. For the time will come when guns will be of priceless value to our country."
Sam's pulse pounded to the wily intrigue of the thing. But, "Ah!" he contrived to say as impersonally almost as the old man. He made obeisance—he was learning how to behave; even though he still wore American clothes. "I bow before your wisdom, my father." He said, "How high do you think the value should rise?"
The old man sat back with his two hands on his knees, his head high and his eyes the thinnest of slits, smiling like a very old and benevolent Buddha.
"In money, I do not know, my son. Our country will have but little money. But their value to those who fight will be priceless."
"Yes indeed!" Sam agreed. That was the kind of shrewd foresight that had enabled the old man to make his pile. And then the old man exploded it.
"They will be our gift, my son! Yours, and mine, to our country. And thereby merit will accrue to you in value above gold, and much honor to my memory." The old man's smile became fixed, as in beatification.
"Oh!" Sam said. His voice was as cold as his skin. But he had inherited this much from the thousands of years, that his face remained as blank as the revered portrait of Sun Yat Sen on the wall. Even though he fully understood the inflexibility of the tradition that demanded a proper honor to the departed soul. The old man's son buried in a foreign land, his grandson a convert to a religion that recognized nothing of the need for ancestor worship, the honor must be vicarious through the prayers of strangers.
THE old man put his grief into words, his thin old voice like a chant: "And as many of the Rat People as these guns may kill, they will be slaves to our venerable ancestors."
Sam said nothing. He felt only the movement of his throat swallowing down half formed thoughts.
The old man beamed upon the loyal acquiescence implied in his silence. "The time of need has now come, my son. We shall therefore remove the munitions from their hiding and ship them quietly to those who fight for our people's freedom."
"Ah!" said Sam. "Hidden, eh?"
The old man chuckled. "So well that even the Rat People do not know the place; though their spies have paid me much attention. The place is known only to myself and to our lone servant, and,now I will disclose it to you, my son, whose dutifulness an old man has learned to love."
Still chuckling, he led Sam to the window and pointed across the river. "Beneath the floor of the rice godown of my friend Quong Fa who has now gone to his sacred ancestors. That one with the purple tiles and the many junks loading rice. See? And when the rice is all gone there will be nothing; for the floor has been cemented over."
"Oh!" said Sam. "Cemented over. Smart."
"And look, my son." The old man was as pleased as a boy at his own astuteness. "Within this shrine, the one reserved for my own memory, beneath this silken panel here is this electric switch. If the gods should forget us and all plans go wrong, this switch, my son, will utterly destroy all the store of weapons that all my wealth has bought. Thus may they not fall into the wrong hands and be a detriment to our country and a dishonor to the memory of our name. But the need for that precaution is past. We shall remove the wealth of weapons quickly before the Rat People come."
BUT old Lih Sin had lived in "impregnable" Singapore long enough to have absorbed a little of the white men's confidence. He, no more than anybody else, believed the unthinkable speed of the Japanese advance or the frightful precision with which the horde overran everything.
Sam lived through those mad ten days, bewildered with the confusion and astounded at his own safety. He saw the hopelessly outnumbered dog-fights above the city; saw the pride of empire dissolve under the bombs; saw the frenzy of last minute evacuation.
That was another reminder of just who he was in Singapore. For evacuation did not mean any ability to move the teeming swarms of "natives," it meant a mad rush to save a pitiful few of the civilian white population.
Sam watched the belated flurry and the bungling and the helpless bravery of all of it and marveled still at his own immunity—until he suddenly understood why. Understood that the Japanese, too, were exercising a fine discrimination. For they were carefully not bombing native Singapore!
Onto the purlieus of South Bridge Road they were, instead, raining pamphlets. They had no war against their Asiatic brothers, the pamphlets said; they were, rather, delivering them from their white overlords who had exploited their underpaid industry for so long; they were offering, in place of subjection, partnership in the great new commonwealth of Asiatic peoples. Let the yellow and the brown and the near-black brothers be tranquil. And—Sam noted it with a grim cynicism—the brothers were just that. Of their swarming thousands only a paltry few hundred ran screaming to the defense.
And then it was all over. A swift nightmare run to its end. Unconditional surrender. White-man pride of the long centuries humbled as never yet in history. Sam saw it all. White men in their thousands suddenly herded, like coolies, and driven into pens by little yellow men. Haughty white women, hysterical under jostling, reviling their yellow herders, getting their faces slapped; their enraged men folk leaping to their help, getting coolly, ruthlessly bayoneted.
And himself free to come and go, in spite of his white-man clothes. His face, his passport. Only that there was a guard on Elgin Bridge and grinning little Japanese soldiers replaced the tall, stern Sikh policemen in the street corners.
That was all. Life in the native town went on.
Sam came home one day to find a visitor, a man in the uniform of a Japanese officer who looked curiously familiar. The man said familiarly, "Hiya, Lee" and then Sam recognized him as the obsequious apparently Chinese clerk in the Hongkong and Shanghai bank where Grandfather Lih kept a small account.
The officer jabbered at unintelligible length to Grandfather Lih. The old man sat like an idol, his eyes so thin that they seemed almost closed. The officer seemed to be arguing, persuading, then threatening. Grandfather Lih replied in laconic monosyllables. Finally he said:
"My son. Escort our honorable guest to the door."
Outside of the door the officer turned furiously to Sam. He spoke a perfect A.B. Mission English. He said:
"Look, Sam Lee. You're modern. You can understand what we are doing for the East and you haven't any of the antiquated notions of that old fool. Maybe we can deal with you."
Sam's face went blank. "Deal?" he said.
"That's what. We know well enough he's been bringing in the stuff; we don't know exactly how much or where it's hidden. It could be worth some money for us to know." He grinned at Sam confidentially. "And then you could go back to your medical research."
"Oh!" said Sam. "So you know about me?"
The officer shrugged impatience. "Of course we know. Rich old munition-importing Lih Sin's American relative. D'you think we've been sitting here as silly as these British all these years? We know your studies and your life ambition."
Sam's eyes became as thin as Grandfather Lih's. "How much—money?"
"Depending. Maybe ten thousand dollars; maybe much more; depending on how much munitions, what potential damage to our side, a lot of things."
"Aa-ah! Well, you must know too, that I am a newcomer in my grandfather's affairs."
THE officer looked at Sam sharply. "So? Bargaining, eh? As shrewd as the old man." Then the little teeth showed close-bitten together. He seemed to be a man of strong temper long suppressed under a mask of humility, now arrogantly rampant. "Look here, you. We're being lenient here; but you can't fool with us. If you really don't know you can find out. Or you tell that stubborn old fool we've made strong men talk secrets before now."
Sam's eyes, too, were so thin that they seemed to be closed. The officer scowled at him. He said, "I don't get you—quite. Since you're not a fool, I think you must be bargaining. Very well, I will communicate with my superior Chief of Intelligence. You will report to me within three days. And remember—" the little teeth snarled out—"we're not fooling."
"Where?" Sam's voice was as thin as his eyes. "In case, just in case—your superiors may authorize you to make a business proposition that might interest—my grandfather?"
"The rear rooms, second floor, in Qwang Hsi's opium house. Three days, I'm giving you, my smart business-like student. No more; or something unpleasant may happen. We never take chances with a thing like this—or anything. That's how we're here."
The intelligence officer swaggered off, jaunty in his assured authority. Sam watched him go; he knew that the man would be as ruthless as the acme of efficiency always demands. Three days. A desperately short time in which to do anything.
Sam went back to his grandfather. The old man sat as carven still as an idol, his eyes closed, his hands palms upwards in his lap, thumbs pressed to mid-finger tip. Sam recognized the "attitude of meditation" of the big ts'ut hay Buddha in the Meeoo-kum temple. A slow, regretful wave of sympathy swept over him for the old man's unshakable faith in the ancient beliefs that were so out of place in the grim realities of today.
Grandfather Lih came as out of a trance. He said:
"My son," I have debated the matter of the electric switch and total destruction of the munitions."
Sam's breath held poised.
"But," the old man pronounced his decision. "I have decided against it. Their value is too great."
Sam's eyes suddenly opened wide to study the placid old face, whether the business instincts of a lifetime might be proving stronger than sacrifice.
"Even now, my son, patriot young men of our people are secretly organizing the p'ung yow t'ong yum, the Friends of Chinese Freedom Society. The munitions will be of priceless value to them when the time is ripe to drive out the Rat people."
"They will never be driven out," said Sam. "I have been out and have seen their work. They are here and, being now the masters, one must recognize the fact and deal accordingly."
"They will be driven out," said the old man. "It will take time; but they will be driven. Let the gods give us a little time to organize, and we shall remove the weapons. K'ung Fu Tse has said, 'Patience is made of a gold that is stronger than iron.'"
You couldn't argue with a faith like that. Sam went out and saw more of the victors' works. Saw the white men, those few technicians who were still necessary for the city's functioning, sullenly attend to their jobs under laughing yellow men's bayonets. Saw how quickly the yellow men learned to take over, how thoroughly they searched, like ants, every last building and cellar and sampan in the harbor and gleefully kicked the few remaining fugitives to the concentration pens. Saw how like swarming ants they were already busily at work rebuilding their captured prize with never a remotest thought that they would ever have to let go.
Very thoughtfully and not fully understanding why, Sam went to the Hindoo bazaar by the Sri Mariamman temple and bought a cheap Belgian pistol.
In the days of British domination it was strictly forbidden for a "native" to own any kind of a gun. Now they were suddenly appearing, rusty and with gummed works, at open counters. The Japanese sentries at the bazaar corners chattered and laughed carelessly at them; they themselves stood beside machine-guns. Sam wondered whether Grandfather Lih's astuteness had included machine-guns in his hidden hoard, and, if he had, what use they would be against fleets of fast tanks? They had not availed much in the hands of those white men who had so futilely bravely defended Malaya. Sam saw some of them too, working under heavy guard, the supreme Japanese gesture of superiority; for they worked at coolie labor, clearing litter. The devastating fact was patent that these white men were not as good as coolies at that sort of work; but few of the yellow and brown and near-black "natives" would have the intelligence to reflect that this might possibly be because of the efficiently simple formula of "no work, no eat."
Yes, Sam was convinced, the conquerors certainly entertained no fear that there would ever be any white man retribution.
Three days. Sam went to the opium house. Business was as usual; only that the lavishly-luxurious upper floor with its exquisitely-decorated cubicles had been taken over by officers as victors who boasted their appreciation of art
Burly, wrestler-built men with coldly callous faces lounged about the entrances in expectant do-nothing. Sam knew them to be ronins, the strong arm squad of the Nipponese gestapo; their motto was that they could, and would, do anything and they knew how to make anybody else do it too:
The intelligence officer was in a room tastefully done in pale lavender, cunningly designed to promote dreamy relaxation. His clever face showed neither. Things apparently had not been going well this morning and his temper was close to the surface. He said:
"Ha! I knew you would see sense. My chief raises his offer five thousand. Now talk."
Sam's lips smiled. He said, "I need more time to persuade my grandfather."
The officer's little even teeth snarled out, his words clipped hard between them. "You fool. You can't haggle with us. There's our limit and with that money you can go back to where they don't treat you as coolie class and live up to your fat American scale of living—" and then he laughed, "as long as that lasts."
"My grandfather," said Sam, "is a secretive man. I must have more time."
The officer scowled at him speculatively. "If I thought you knew, my brash bargainer, I'd turn you over to the squad and see how long you'd hold out for time. Time, you damned fool! Why d'you think we offer money? Only because it's the efficient way to save time; the time it would take to make that old fanatic talk without killing him."
"You would never," said Sam, and there was a curious pride in his voice, "make my grandfather talk. He is a patriot of the old school."
The officer scowled moodily on. "It's the only reason why we've offered to do business with you."
"And nobody else knows," said Sam softly. "You know how secretively he has lived, with no friends, no confidantes, only one faithful old servant."
"Only one—Oya-undoshi!" ^The officer clapped his hand to his forehead, pushed his chair scraping behind him and started to his feet. "Dammit if I haven't been as much a fool as you! The servant, of course. Only for this silliness of dealing with his heir." He called. Almost before his voice ceased to vibrate from the laquered panels three of the ronins were at the door. He chattered at them. With leisurely confidence they ranged themselves alongside of Sam. The officer grinned at him.
"When you have been here many more years, my bright student lad, as you now will be, you will know that nothing is hidden from a Chinese servant—" He added the sting to his derision. "And to a Chinaman a hundred dollars is a lifetime fortune." And he rubbed it callously in. "And if it isn't to this faithful hound, he isn't so old that he can't be questioned without dropping dead."
He hurried from the room. Sam could hear the clatter of several pairs of feet running down the stairs. The ronins looked at him heavy-faced, dispassionately, with about as much expression as dogs not yet sicked on to any interesting hunt
Sam moved to the silk embroidered yeen-shik couch and let his limbs tremble down onto it. There was no careful control of his thoughts. It didn't matter anyhow. The ronins were not interested in his thoughts any more than were gorillas. Sam didn't know himself what his thoughts were; they were a racing confusion of pictures of the dingy old house, of the inflexibly dignified old man, of the silently shuffling old servant; wondering whether the latter knew, and if he did, how much he would—could be made to—tell.
SAM had the oriental faculty of shutting the outside out of his mind, holding it a blank that conserved thought and energy for such time as they would be needed. He sat on the sickly-scented couch, his eyes closed to the light his breath in half suspension, a stiff oriental image, incongruous in his American clothes. For an hour; two hours; he didn't know; it didn't matter.
Clatter on the steps restored animation. The officer stepped briskly through the door. He was grinning like a yellow moon. He chattered to the three guards. They grinned, went out. The officer stood spraddle-legged, enjoying Sam there on the couch. He said, "You have been a nice smart fool. Now you get nothing—unless perhaps I tell the boys to beat you up a bit just as a lesson nobody can fool with us. Only," he debated the matter, "the afternoon's work has left me in a good mood."
Sam said only, "My grandfather?"
The officer shrugged. "Oh! The old fool was—difficult. But the servant knew, of course, and he talked. Though it took the boys two hours."
Sam was standing up now. His reanimation was tingling away from his extremities, leaving his whole being cold. In a chilled voice he said again, "And my grandfather?"
The officer shrugged again, hissed deprecatingly through the even little teeth. Quite impersonally he said, "It is a great mistake, as you and a lot of other people will learn, to interfere with our people's destiny of expansion."
THE embroidered couch was near the door, the door fitted with an inside bolt. Sam pushed the bolt as he passed it with his elbow. The officer still grinned at him, contemptuously confident in the flush of his triumph. Sam's voice, tonelessly frozen, told him.
"You are perhaps the first of your people in Singapore to learn what a great mistake you are making about your destiny."
He stepped round the pearl-inlaid sandalwood table toward the officer. The officer's eyes opened in incredulity. His lips drew away in the authoritative snarl. Sam very deliberately told him:
"I am not a practised shot; so—" He pressed his cheap pistol close to the officer's body and kept pulling the trigger till no more bullets came. Stare and snarl both opened wider on the officer's face as he hugged his hands to his stomach and bent lower and lower. It looked as though he were bowing before Sam.
Knuckles were knocking on the door. Voices calling—asking—their tone inquiring rather than alarmed.
Tonelessly Sam commented, "Damned gorillas think it's the other way round." Then he climbed out of the window onto the yellow porcelain tiles of an overhang, scuttled along to its end, dropped into an alley, ankle deep in the opium palace's garbage.
He ran all the way home. The door was neatly closed. People went their way along the street. Life went on as usual.
Within the house everything was neatly in order. Only the hot smell of the kitchen charcoal brazier more than usually pervaded the usual mustiness. The old servant was gone. Grandfather Lih was neatly laid out on the couch in his room of shrines. Only a little blood made a bright smudge on the front of his black silk jacket. His old, ivory face was set in his inflexible conviction of having done right.
Sam slowly knelt by the couch. Slowly his head bent till it rested on the thick-slippered feet. His iciness of the past hours slowly melted from him, slowly overflowed from his eyes. He knew that he had loved the old man. In spite of all his quaint antique notions, his queer insistence upon filial respect—perhaps because of them—there had been a calm certitude of the right principles about Grandfather Lih that made everybody love him.
Sam knelt crouched at the old man's feet till a far clamor from across the river filtered through the window. He knew subconsciously that that was what he had been waiting for. He stood up and looked across to the rice godown with the purple tiles.
A bustle of activity was growing around it. Little yellow men in steel helmets stacked rifles and swarmed into it with picks and shovels. Some dead bodies were thrown out of it as callously as sacks of dirt. Other men with fixed bayonets formed a close cordon. Officers went in, obsequiously making way for a much bemedalled superior.
Sam wondered whether that might be the victorious general himself; wondered just how important the unfortunate old servant had confessed this munition hoard to be. He went to the red lacquer shrine, the one reserved for Grandfather Lih's memory. He could still see the swarming activity around the warehouse. He stood a long time. Then slowly he reached his hand to the silken panel and pressed down the electric switch.
"Slaves, my grandfather," Sam Lee said. "To the venerable ancestors."
It took just that time for the sound of the roar to reach him. A thunderous roar of explosive and falling masonry; and the glass of the little window fell in with a tinkling crash. And then came the rising roar of screaming, cursing men. Just as he had seen it when the bombs had fallen. Only more so.
Sam stood and watched. Then he went and washed his hands in the old rose china basin on the antique washstand. Washed carefully and with finality. Then he walked out of the musty smelling house and locked the rickety old door behind him. He said to himself reflectively, "The Sz koh T'ong will bury him with the proper ceremonies for a soul well attended. I'd be of no use there." He dry-washed his hands. "So now to join up with that p'ung yow Friends of Freedom Society."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.