Storygram: Mrs Pang Wu Nan

(Photo taken in front of a shop in Ipoh)

No one can correctly guess her age. Old, decrepit, and neglected, the most accurate answer people can come up with is that she had lived for a long time. A very long time. Fault lines plague her face, spotty blotches dotted the walls of skin which hang loose and occasionally peel themselves free from the prison of her body. She is bulky and sturdy, with flesh bulging out from her purple-flowered samfu. She is an anachronism, an ancient relic that-should-no-longer-be, at odds with the new, shiny, technology-clad crowd that clusters around her. Her hair, permed and set in the style made famous in the 1960s, and the traditional jade bracelet that encircles her wrist, only serve to bring this contrast out even more. Yet, despite the state we find her in, she bears with her still the lingering vestiges of a glorious bygone era, with a spirit of quiet dignity, respectability, and perhaps nostalgia of simple and beautiful times.

Mrs Pang is a stalwart presence in Ah Wah’s coffee shop, or as the locals call it, kopitiam, which has stood overlooking the brown Gombak River since 1952. Since the time Mr Pang passed away from lung cancer, she is Ah Wah’s tenant living in the small, dilapidated, leaky room upstairs. Patrons of the place see her as a permanent landmark of the place, and like all permanent landmarks, her presence is rarely - if at all -  registered. Situated at the far corner of the kopitiam, next to the hawker stall selling dim sum and steamed buns, she sits on a plastic green chair, occupying a coffee-stained table. Amidst grey crinkly Sin Chew dailies and with an alley cat slumbering at her feet, she never moves, her looming figure radiating both isolation and familiarity. Her eyes stare straight ahead looking at goodness-knows-what, as empty and vacant like lonely windows of an abandoned building…

Three people sat at the table next to her. After having exhausted the topics of grandchildren, politics, and the appropriate wateriness of half-boiled eggs (“I always tell Ah Wah don’t cook it so long” is Xin’s favourite refrain), they settle into a subject of discussion that intrigues and infuriates them: what were they to do about Mrs Pang?

            “What do you think about her?” Johnny asks his companions.

“I dunno what to think,” Xin starts, but before Johnny could reply to this, Xin continues “she’s okay lah as a person… but she don’t talk a lot, just sit there quietly only. Want to be friends also cannot. One time I ask her ‘Hello, Mrs Pang, how are you today?’ but she just sit there diam-diam.’” Xin huffs. He is quickly balding, but this was overly compensated by the thick, tiger-like eyebrows crowning his forehead. He likes to think he is a self-made man now that he is a successful entrepreneur dealing with big, important contracts.

“Yes, but I think she was just thinking abou-“

“So rude you know. I think because she so used to being rich, don’t know how to treat people.”

“Hmm maybe,” Johnny acquiesces, trying to be polite despite having been interrupted. “But I think she’s grieving over her husband’s death.”

“Wah, I tell you... so rude. Never listen to people,” Xin ploughs on, his eyes fixated on the figure of Mrs Pang.

“Yes, like I said,” says Johnny, starting to get irritated. “She’s grieving for her husband.”

“’Grieving’,” Xin scoffs. “You and your English education. Aiyo. Just say “cry” lah. Always using bombas-teek words. Summore don’t use it correctly half the time.”

Just at that moment, black flip-flops squeak on the brownish-blue tiled floor, signifying Ah Wah’s arrival and subsequent delivery of the kopi-O they ordered. “Nah,” he says to the group. A small pile of one-ringgit notes exchanges hands, and Ah Wah retrieves the change from the fanny-pack secured around his waist before depositing it on the circular table. The group continues staring at Mrs Pang, not realising that they had been short-changed.

Johnny feels the heat creeping up to his cheeks as he mulls over Xin’s previous biting remark. Talking always came hard to him, and it always seems that he was saying the wrong thing. He had been educated in a cluster school in Kuala Lumpur in his youth, but whilst he scrupulously consumed the Oxford Dictionary when he was a child (upon his teacher’s suggestion), he was not fastidious enough about using words accurately. Or perhaps, his anxious disposition and half-cooked ideas made it such that his sentences come out as awkwardly constructed as poorly-planned train projects common in certain quarters in the world.

But he is determined to prove Xin wrong. Feeling the rush of adrenaline swelling within him, a sensation he associates with making grand speeches, he drinks some coffee to calm his nerves. Of course, the process is a rather long one: he first pours a portion of it onto its saucer before swirling it and lifting the saucer to his lips. He is now ready to make his speech, the speech about Mrs Pang that he has built up all morning by painstaking pieces.

“From what I know,” he begins, “well, from what I heard, she’s had a fascinating past. I think she’s lived a hard life… she’s had to live through the Japanese occupation, and I heard from someone, her mother was sent to a concentration camp. Didn’t come back. After the war was over, she went to a teaching college and she met her future-husband there.”

Xin grunts in acknowledgement. Warmed by the fact that it isn’t a total dismissal of his efforts, Johnny continues. “It’s sad though. The school burnt down and there just weren’t enough funds to build it again. They had three children, so you could imagine they had quite a struggle getting the money to pay for everything. So they started a shop selling cloths – you remember how it was back in the day – and managed to get the three of them all through to university.”

The group falls silent. Johnny is caught up in his own narrative now. “They all went abroad, left her and her husband here. In a way, it’s their fault. They were the ones who told them to leave for elsewhere. I mean. It’s not their fault. But, you know what I mean.”

Xin makes no sound. Johnny continues anyway. “So what if she’s old? So what if she doesn’t do anything? She had been great once, wasn’t she? She had helped the nation once. I mean. Maybe she didn’t help in a big way, but she was a teacher, she taught students. I always thought it so sad that she gave up most of her pension for her husband’s operation. She nagged him to death – I mean, not to death, but you know, it’s just a figure of speech – but in some strange way she loved him.”

By now, Johnny is disconcerted by Xin’s unusual silence. “I think… I mean Ah Wah… He should let her stay upstairs… There are nice community homes… put her there, and preserve her… he could send her there… of course the cost of rehabilitation is too high… But it shouldn’t matter… oh but of course, this is only if Ah Wah really doesn’t want her to stay with him… But I think he should…”

“Aiyo, stop it lah, you and your words and your fancy ideas, trying to act like some professor. Are you going to do anything about her?” Xin’s words cuts through Johnny’s monologue, his head tilted backwards in exasperation, his palm looking like it was about to present a slap on Johnny’s face. Johnny keeps silent under the gaze of his friend who is working to demolish the speech had made.

            “All you want to do is just go round and round in circles,” Xin complains. “Go straight to the point! Don’t keep the conversation to yourself. Nah look, Sun Yi didn’t get to say anything also.”

Indeed, Sun Yi had not said a thing. Sun Yi has very plain features, looking like any other ordinary Malaysian, with eyes that suggest knowledge and understanding, but with lips that suggest immobility and silence.  The third friend is listening and watching with the attention of a half-curious spectator, passive and reticent as a ghost.

The other two look at Sun Yi, waiting for a speech that would not come. “Well,” Johnny starts again. “I just think that given Mrs Pang’s history, Ah Wah should just let her continue staying upstairs…”

“Adui,” Xin is bristling. “You know how much is the cost ah? All these things cost money, you know. So why would Ah Wah do it? Not that Ah Wah share history with her, or that she pretty to look at now…”

“The cost of rehabilitation,” Johnny is using words in a strange way again, “is indeed high. But certainly in historical and aesthetic terms,” poor Johnny, not in control of his words, “she proves invaluable. I’d like to think Mrs Pang had a part in shaping his history, giving him tuition lessons all those years. And she’s a bit worn-out now, but she used to be quite the looker in her glory days.”

Ah Wah approaches their table. “You want to order some pau maybe?”

“Eh, sorry boss, not hungry,” Xin jokes in genuine jollity.

 “Eh, come lah, I need money to survive too you know. I’m just trying to serve you.”

“Ah okay lah, okay lah,” Xin says. “Just tapau some kaya pau, I’ll bring some back for my wife and kids.”

“Don’t want to share with me and Sun Yi?” pouts Johnny.

“Bah. You can feed yourself,” Xin shoots back.

Mrs Pang shifted ever so slightly in her seat, almost imperceptibly.

“We’re forgetting one thing in our entire conversation,” Johnny points out.

“Ah Wah is a great fellow,” Xin cuts him off, not even noticing he was doing so. “I’m sure he’s doing the right thing.”

Johnny muses this for a second. “I’m not sure… I don’t quite trust him.”

“If Ah Wah wants her to go, she should just leave. She should just be grateful with what he has given her so far.”

Johnny gets frustrated. “Stop interrupting me! Can you listen? Can you listen to reason for one second?”

“You call me crazy ah?” Xin challenges.

“No, I’m just saying you should think…”

“You calling me stupid now lah!”

“No, no, can you just listen?”

Xin says “Can we stop fighting about this? I don’t want this to come between our friendship. We’ve been friends for fifty-eight years. Let’s stop this.”

There are many things Johnny wants to say. But he just let the words drip on his tongue, slip through his lips, and fall noiselessly down onto the dirty floor.

“I don’t want to fight you. But I want you to listen,” Johnny says instead.

Xin had already made his peace with the first phrase of the sentence, and thus neglected the second part in favour of staring at Mrs Pang again.

“What an eyesore,” Xin says.

“Nah, Xin,” Ah Wah arrives, bringing Xin his kaya buns. He chuckles, hearing what Xin says. “Yeah lor, she’s been getting in the way. I’m thinking of renovating the shop-lot, and I can’t let her stay there lah, she takes up too much space, and she cannot do anything also.”

“Eh, you want to renovate ah?” Xin asks Ah Wah in surprise. “I like your kopitiam like this. It’s like your own small world, you know.”

“Yeah lah, but times are changing mah. I need to be competitive. Sorry ah if my prices go up a little bit. Difficult now lah.”

“Sure, sure,” Xin says mildly, his eyes zeroing in on Mrs Pang again. “I’m happy to help.”

Ah Wah bustles off, needing to draw up bills under the supervision of his wife, Rosie.

“Huh. Whatever you say now,” Xin addresses Johnny, “won’t be any good. Ah Wah will do what he wants, why bother saying anything?”

Johnny reflects on this. “I don’t know. I guess I’m saying. Because I’m scared, one day Mrs Pang would be me.”

It is the only thing Johnny said during the whole conversation that struck through the haze in which Xin has enveloped himself. But Xin was practiced in the art of haze-patching.

“Okay lah, I go first,” says Xin, getting up to leave. “Good talk.”

“Ah yeah okay,” Johnny says. “I think I’ll see you around, Sun Yi.”

Sun Yi nods, and both of them left.

The next time the three meet up, Mrs Pang Wu Nan is gone. Ah Wah says that it had been no use dragging it out, that she had been an interference to his plans to expand his kopitiam. Quietly and firmly, without anyone knowing, he had asked her to leave his shop, indifferent to the shambles and rubble to which he had reduced her life.

There is now a space in Ah Wah’s kopitiam where the great Mrs Pang Wu Nan used to sit. All that remains in her usual seat is the old newspapers and the old alley cat. No more 1960s haircut, no more purple-flowered samfu, no more peeling skin flakes and vacant eye-windows.

Johnny says it is a shame, it’s a shame. The frequent patrons too would shake their heads empathetically, perhaps they would go a step further, cursing Ah Wah for being so cruel. But they wouldn’t do anything. Conversations would remain as that: conversations. At the end of the day, they would still come back to Ah Wah, anaesthetized by the haze arising from their kopi, fresh kaya buns, and forgetfulness.

To read more: The Big Read: Penang - Whose Version of Heritage?