My Longkang

This is the conclusion of Ah San stories. To get the flow it is recommended that you start from the first story - stories category :World War 2:Part 1 - 3, then After the execution 1-3 ). Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense.

Pic courtesy of www.hbp.usm.my/conservation/imagesJPG

Just some kopitiam stories from Bengbeng here. Read only if you have leisure time

Conclusion :

Just one more, another, another. Ah San thought to himself as he nailed clogs to be sold. But his heart wasn’t in it. “How am I going to find the money for marriage?” He knew he had a tough task ahead.

It all started about a year ago. He was sitting at Sri Bahari Road junction when he saw this young lady pushing a bicycle. As far as he knew she looked Chinese but was dressed in Malay style. She wore a kebaya and a sarung slit at the back. He tried to peer nearer without bringing any attention to himself.

To him, she was like an exotic bird. She wore a transparent kebaya but with thick, colourful opaque under garments. The kebaya did not have buttons but was held together by ornaments that slid from the top to the bottom of her blouse. The hair was done in a fashionable manner.

Oh, the chain of her bicycle had come off. He valiently offered to help and she shyly accepted. Obviously she came from a well-to-do family. She spoke Dutch, then English, then Malay and then finally she spoke Hakka which Ah San understood immediately.

From that day onwards, he would comb his hair and wait for her to come back. She would get off her bicycle and he would push it and they would walk home together to her house.

It was a terrace house with intricate doors and windows and an inner courtyard open to the sky, Occasionally she would bring out some fruits or food from inside the house. Ah San was in love. He would do anything for the girl.

At the time Ah San told me the story, he described the house as near an existing florist shop which was at the end of the row of terrace houses. God knows if the florist shop still exists today.

Slowly the story poured out of the girl. She was from Medan, had migrated over to Penang after the second world war when there was some conflict in her ancestral village. She would have to leave for Kuala Lumpur at the end of December which was two weeks away unless ……..

He knew he had nothing to offer the girl. His job wasn’t steady and on some days he would be lucky if he could earn thirty cents.

But as fate would have it, the girl loved Ah San. She wanted to marry him and be the mother of his children. The family objected, threatened and tried persuasion but it was to no avail. Both parties had made up their minds.

In the end, the lady’s family relented. Ah San had got himself a wife. Probably, this decision of his would bug him for the rest of his life. It was also a decision the lady regretted at leisure for the rest of her natural life or her unnatural death.

It was a decision that altered the lives of many down the generations.

Update:

The lady stayed here