The Howling Silence by Catherine Lim

Author:Catherine Lim [Lim, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789814779852
Google: LLM6DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B076M3LVXG
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

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At the height of his prosperity – he had just opened the tenth Chwee Neo Roast Duck Eating House – Tan Tua Bah wept. At the precise fulfilment of the fortune-teller’s dazzling prediction that he would one day own a house bigger than any that those rich neighbours and relatives who had looked down on his family could ever dream of – he had just acquired a six-million-dollar bungalow in Chester Park, which he was presently renovating to rent to the American ambassador to Singapore – Tan Tua Bah felt a sadness in his heart.

The sadness was on account of his mother who had died more than fifty years ago, at age thirty-four, when he was only a small boy. Hers was the classic story of the courage and endurance of a young widow, with no education or resources other than fierce determination to bring up her children and see them succeed in the world. This, together with a sturdiness of constitution inherited from peasant ancestors way back in China, enabled Chwee Neo to go through those cruel years.

They were years of unremitting toil. She would get up at four every morning – “even before cock-crow,” she used to joke – and worked till midnight, cleaning, cooking, washing, mending at home and going to the town some distance from her small kampung to do, for a pittance, odd jobs such as grating coconut, chopping firewood, slaughtering fowl for wedding or temple celebrations, in order to scrape together enough food to feed her four sons, clothe them and see them through school. Poor Chwee Neo’s overworked body gave way at last. Even when ill with some strange illness that was eating up her liver and other internal organs, according to an old relative, she struggled to keep the family going.

The mere mention of his mother brought tears to Tua Bah’s eyes. The bitterest regret in his life was that she never lived to enjoy the good life that his three brothers and especially himself would have so joyfully given her. He was the most successful of them all, though the least educated, having left school at Primary Three. The thought that one of his brothers, who actually went to college, could never have a fraction of his wealth gave him an immense secret satisfaction. During the Chinese New Year, Uncle Tua Bah’s ang pows were always the biggest, at least one hundred dollars, compared to their ten or five, so that his nephews and nieces never failed to visit him on the first day of the New Year itself.

There had been an article in the Straits Times on those Singaporeans who had been born into stark poverty but made good in a spectacular way. He was one of just a handful identified by the newspaper and had been interviewed at length by the reporter, an enthusiastic young lady named Amanda Goh. In his best shirt, wearing one of his three Rolex watches and an enormous lucky jade ring that he had

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