Nury Vittachi: The Feng Shui Detective

He re-lived the time he had been fast asleep in the spice shop and had rolled under the rice sack, which had tipped over, hitting him with the force of a boulder, and bursting to bury him in an avalanche of hard white grains.

In his dream, he was a boy and ran to find his uncle. But when he opened the door, instead of a Guangzhou night scene, he found bright daylight. He was at the top of the OUB Centre in Singapore and had climbed out onto a roof ledge, sixty-four storeys above the ground.

Now he saw himself as an adult doing a feng shui reading. Mr Pun, director of East Trade Industries, was shouting at him from a window of a neighbouring building. ‘Hurry up, C F, you have to finish before we open to the public in five minutes.’

‘Cannot find my lo pan,’ Wong had replied, balancing precariously on the window ledge and searching frantically in a briefcase. ‘My bag full of rats.’

Then he slipped into the building through another window and found himself in Hong Kong, in an office containing a hanging string of coins, right in the malicious death position of the five yellow curses.

There were four doors to the room, but which one to take? He chose the first one, but it was locked. The second one opened onto a deafening rock concert, and the lead screamer on the stage was Joyce McQuinnie.

He slammed the door shut and opened the third door. It contained a large silver statue of a dragon with a red piece of paper in its mouth. It was dripping red liquid from its mouth into a tien-yuer benefactor den made of pink pottery. What did it mean?

Again he started looking for his lo pan. How could he tell what it meant without knowing what direction it was in? Was it east, in the direction of plum blossom?

Winnie Lim appeared behind him, doing her nails, and she started to laugh. ‘Madam Fu on the phone. She want you to come now-lah,’ she said. Then Mr Pun entered the room, looking impatiently at his watch. He started speaking to Winnie. The geomancer could not hear what they were talking about.

‘No. I can do it. I can do it,’ Wong had said.

The talking grew louder and louder.

He woke up. Blinking at the pale dawn light, he wondered where he was. He didn’t recognise the room. He didn’t know why he was on the ground, or why there was a bed next to him. Had he rolled off? Why were there a dozen faces at the open door? Was this part of his dream?

When he saw the men’s grey robes, his memory returned. His head fell back onto the rolled-up garment he had been using as a pillow. Oh no. He was in the temple. It must be five o’clock in the morning. Time to get up. But why were the brothers looking shocked? He suddenly recalled the presence of his assistant, and raised himself on his elbows. There she was, fast asleep, her dishevelled dress indecently revealing her knees.

‘No, no,’ he said to the men. ‘I can explain you. Truly.’

Master Tran arrived back at the vihara at seven, by which time Wong and McQuinnie had fled to Porntip’s house for a shower and breakfast.

The geomancer, stunned into silence by the humiliating events of the morning, sipped his green tea and cast sidelong glances at his assistant. They were having breakfast on the verandah. He was too angry to speak to her, and thought with pleasure that her term in his office was coming to an end. They would arrive back in Singapore today, a Wednesday, and she would be dismissed from C F Wong & Associates. After that, he would probably never see her again.

Joyce was having a conversation on a mobile phone with a friend. As he listened to her, he mused that the intriguing puzzle of her brand of English was probably the only thing he would miss about her. When she was talking to people of her own age and culture, her language was completely different from the English in his textbooks-probably just what he needed to learn to write good popular books in that language, he thought. Well, mo baan faat. Never mind. Good riddance. He would be quite happy if he never met another Westerner for the rest of his life.

His eyes still narrow with fury, he glanced up at her and tuned in to her conversation, to see just how much of her language he had picked up in the past ten weeks.

‘Synth. In The Exploding Blowfish. Grunge. Grunge meets techno-jungle with a bit of rap really. Anyway, so we’re at Lippy’s, and he’s like, “Yeah?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “Getoutahere.” And I’m like, “Whatever.”’

No, he decided. Individual words could be understood, but put them together and they formed an incomprehensible code. Probably rubbish anyway.

Bin stepped into the scene, and cast his lovesick gaze upon his exotic foreign princess. She waved a greeting but did not consider his arrival worth interrupting her phone conversation for. She’d done her shopping.

The geomancer realised there was something new in the young man’s expression. It was no longer the face of a starry-eyed suitor, but the pained look of a wounded-but-still-loyal lover. Clearly the news of Wong’s apparent indiscretion had reached him. The teenage boy’s lips tightened as looked over at the Chinese man-his evil usurper.

‘Miss Joyce, I am ready to take you to the temple and afterwards to the airport,’ said Bin, and then nodded contemptuously at Wong. ‘And him.’

Porntip then summoned the geomancer to the phone. ‘For you. I think it is your boss.’

Wong hurried inside and stood to attention as he took the phone. But it was Winnie Lim, calling from his office in Wai Wai Mansions, Telok Ayer Street.

‘CF? Is Winnie. Mr Pun on phone this morning. He says he is very happy with you. His frien’ give him plenty big contrack-lah. Scratch his back for him. But you scratch his frien’s back, see? So all work out nicely.’

‘Do not understand. Say again please.’

‘Mr Pun. His frien’. Joyce’s daddy. Gave him a big contrack. Joyce’s daddy gave Mr Pun a big contrack. Mr Queeny very happy because you help his daughter with her school projeck. So now Mr Pun is very happy. He wan’ you to go to America.’

‘What? Me go to-? What for?’

‘Mr Pun got plenty work for you in America. Big property deal with Joyce’s daddy.’

‘I don’t like to go to America.’

‘You never been.’

‘I saw movies. Always police cars exploding in America. Very dangerous.’

‘Big money. Mr Pun is in very good mood. I think you call him now-lah, okay or not? You get good deal, I think.’

‘How big?’

‘You call him.’

‘When I get back. Afternoon.’

At 7.40 a.m., Joyce was sitting on the verandah of Porntip’s house examining and re-examining her purchases of the previous day. She had bought six CDs and eight VCDs. She knew they were pirate copies, but they were being sold at prices she couldn’t resist. She eased her nagging conscience by telling herself that she would play them a few times, see which ones she really liked, and then buy legitimate copies of the best ones.

Some combination of factors-a slight breeze, a distant bird-call, the sound of a car door closing-made her look up. The sight before her over the balcony railings was beautiful: a vista of palm trees, gently swaying as if doing a Mexican wave. The sky had not quite lost its morning pinkness, and there were a thousand tiny, rippled clouds, high in the vault of Heaven: a mackerel sky, her mother would have called it. There was the whining noise of a bus moving up a hill. A dog barked, its voice given a curious resonance by the rising wind. Then she heard a sound behind her.

Porntip’s servant woman brought her a vivid yellow drink. The old maid, whose face seemed to have melted on one side, spoke no English, so Joyce had no idea what it was. She nodded her thanks, and gingerly lifted it to her lips. The woman stayed to watch, so Joyce took a sip. It was oddly sweet yet it tasted thick and savoury at the same time. She smacked her lips, trying to separate the tastes. There was pineapple juice in it, she thought, and salt. A lot of salt. She decided it was disgusting-and then swallowed the rest of the contents of the tumbler. Disgusting in a rather nice way, she thought. The woman almost immediately disappeared into the shadows and re-emerged seconds later to refill it from a none-too-clean-looking jug.