Brother Ying threaded his way past a war-torn landscape, relying on familiar silhouettes and shadows cast by fires and the faint light of a crescent moon.  He reached  the burnt ruins of Wong’s restaurant, quicker than expected. His  slippered foot tapped a staccato beat on a fallen wooden signboard.

“Raju? Ming?”

His trembling voice was met with stifling hot silence.   He could not shake off the feeling that something was watching him.

Broad banana leaves rustled behind him, which was odd, because there was no breeze.

A  pale woman with skin the colour of chalk and greasy black hair, bobbled in his mind, like detritus from a dirty drain. She would be behind him,  her cool sulfurous breath gagging him and tickling his skin at the same time. Her vicious  grin would showcase  rotten teeth as sharp as knives which would bite deep into his flesh. Whimpering softly, he slammed his eyes shut, unwilling to see his monstrous tormentor. His two sweaty palms were slapped together in a futile gesture of prayer.

“M-Miss Siti, I know your husband killed you with his parang at this very spot. P-please don’t hurt me. My family needs me.”

Cold fingers playfully tapped his cheek, followed by a high-pitched bone-chilling laughter. Brother Ying screamed like a five year old girl.
 

A hearty voice cried “Hey, it’s me, Raju!”

He stopped screaming, reluctantly turned his head and opened his eyes. Raju was  standing beside Brother Ying – his pearly grin, bright against his dark skin.

“You scared me !” said Brother Ying accusingly. His piggy eyes bore into Raju like a drill.

” I thought we needed to laugh.” Raju shrugged.

“We might not be around to do it again.” rumbled Ming as he moved out of the shadows. He was a bearded man built like a tank, his fierce expression resembling Guan Yu, a famous Chinese general.

The men fell silent. Each man had lost friends and family during the terrible war. The British were retreating and the Japanese advancing through Malaya, the country they now called home.

“Let’s get the rice from the warehouse,” Brother Ying said gruffly.

They journeyed past the jungle and small villages.  Their hearts beat wildly behind behind thick thorny bougainvillea shrubs, as the boots of the Imperial Japanese Army pounded past them. The harsh bark of Japanese soldiers would send them scurrying into pitch black narrow alleys, rank with the smell of rotting garbage.

After five dangerous games of  hide-and-seek with the marauding Japanese and a brief incident where Ming beat a fellow villager, who was trying to rob Brother Ying as he was peeing, they reached the town  at dawn, where the abandoned British warehouse was located.

Standing on top a small hill,  Brother Ying made out a gaping man-sized hole at the side of a nondescript concrete building where men and young boys quickly streamed in and out carrying bags of rice.  Buoyed by the warmth of the rising sun, Brother Ying and his friends rushed towards the warehouse like warriors of the old,  jabbing fiercely at the surging crowd with their elbows and knees. There would be food for their families at last.

The vast stores of rice had all but disappeared, leaving behind a few forlorn sacks scattered all over the cement floor.

“We would have been here sooner if someone didn’t pranked me!” grumbled Brother Ying, his heart  sinking like a stone in a pond.

There were explosions followed by  agonising screams outside the warehouse. The British  war planes had arrived to drop their deadly cargo. Brother Ying pulled Raju away from the wooden and zinc shards raining from the roof. They took shelter behind a fallen wall.

“Ming, you okay?” Brother Ying shouted.

“Ya. I’m behind the wooden crates. Found an unopened bag of rice too,” Ming replied gleefully.

“Lucky bastard!” Raju muttered.

Brother Ying craned his neck. Thorough a haze of smoke, he saw the charred remains of rice sacks  in a shallow crater on the cement floor. He sighed.

“Don’t look so sad man. There’s still hope.”

Raju pointed a skinny finger at an unopened sack of rice leaning against the polished wooden desk of the warehouse supervisor.

“It’s pretty big. You and I can share. “ Raju said reassuringly.

Brother Ying nodded.

Raju took small careful steps to avoid the pointy edges of the torn zinc roofing which had collapsed on the ground. Brother Ying shadowed him from behind, his eyes darting back and forth nervously. His roving eyes rested on the figure of a Chinese lady dressed in turquoise blue qipao surrounded by lush peony flowers. She was part of a cloisonné plate that was lying on the ground. It belonged to the warehouse supervisor, a fat Englishman.  Though the plate was  far from him, his tired eyes could behold  her  delicate features clearly, as if they were face to face. She beckoned him to come closer with her fan.

Utterly bewitched by her mysterious smile, Brother Ying hurried towards the plate unaware of a bomb  above him. It had blasted away a large part of the roof,  flooding his part of the warehouse with sunlight. His friends’ frantic shouts and the buzz of flying shrapnel sounded soft and indistinct, as if his head was wrapped in wool.  Brother Ying lowered his skinny body and stretched out gracefully like a cat.  His grimy fingers  were extended outwards, caressing  its cold surface, like a long lost lover.

When Brother Ying grabbed the plate from the floor, he had rolled away from danger.

He sighed in relief and kissed the plate.

“Thank you for saving me.”

He was jolted to the present moment by  swift kicks to his side. Moaning in pain, he looked up and saw his friends glowering at him.

“You nearly became minced meat just now!” Raju snapped.

“The goddess of the plate saved me! When I picked it up, the shrapnel missed me by a hair’s breath.”

Raju and Ming shared a disdainful look.

“I’m taking her back with me,” Brother Ying said with the petulance of a child.

“You mean that cheap looking plate? Ok. So, you won’t be needing the rice then?” Raju retorted. There was a mischievous glint in his eyes.

An image of Ah Ngan and Ping Ping, his daughter  appeared in his mind. He was filled with shame.

“I’ll help carry the rice  back.” Brother Ying replied quickly.

As they walked along the main street of the town, they silently took in the oily black plumes  rising from burning shops and homes. The flying debris from the bomb blasts had tore  into healthy bodies  and gouged bloody flesh and bone.  The evening wind carried the howls and shrieks of  the injured and dying along with the acrid smell of smoke.

Brother Ying walked past a bawling toddler tugging a lifeless hand attached to a woman with a bloody head. His  eyes were glittering pools of raw pain, forming bright arches on his plump brown cheeks that ended at his chin.

“I wish there was something I could do.” Brother Ying whispered.

“You could feed your family.” said Ming sombrely.

On  moon-lit nights, Brother Ying cradled the plate from Ah Ngan’s dresser  to the back verandah of his hut. He would place one glass of rice wine in front of the plate and pour some for himself, basking  in her companionably  silence. No wifely sarcasm came out from the lady's ruby lips, nor  childish whining. Her painted eyes always kind.

Settling himself comfortably on a creaking wooden stool, he would talk about his dreams (Ping Ping would grow up pretty and snag a  rich husband), hopes (Ah Ngan would stop nagging him about his mah-jong habit and  labourer  job) and aspirations (he wanted to become as rich and respected as Tauke Huat who ate abalone everyday. )

On this particular night, he was troubled. He had borrowed a huge sum of money from Ming to fix his kitchen, which had been damaged by the war, not long ago. The debt was overdue.

“What do I do now? Ming will pound me with his big meaty hands!” Brother Ying moaned.  He washed down his worries with a greedy gulp. Within minutes, he was snoring like a carpenter sawing wood.

As the night wore on, something cold with the sharp odor of rice wine splashed against Brother Ying’s head – sending him spluttering to wakefulness.

“Alright, Ah Ngan,  I’ll go back to bed!” Brother Ying snarled. His head was sore and his eyes still swimming in an alcoholic haze.

Ah Ngan was nowhere to be seen.

“Raju? Is this one of your stupid jokes?” he quavered, eyes wide with fear.

His gaze fell onto the plate. His goddess’s pose had shifted. Instead of holding her fan close to her face, she extended her slender arm, pointing her fan towards the north. Intrigued, Brother Ying picked up the plate and  staggered up a hilly path to his vegetable garden.  The direction of her fan roughly corresponded to the direction of  a three storey shop house occupied by Mr Qing, the antique dealer. He stared at the plate in disbelief  before trudging back to the verandah where he lied down.  The alcohol  had taken the little  energy he had left.

The next morning he was rudely awakened by a forceful knocking  followed by a loud rumbling voice on the front porch. It was Ming.

Ming’s demands, punctuated with swear words from every known Chinese dialect  was followed by the wife of Brother Ying's cries. The cacophony would draw people out of their homes. The villagers loved a good drama, the closer to home, the better.   Wracked with guilt, Brother Ying grabbed the plate and fled via the back gate.

Stopping at an alley to catch his breath, he  examined  the plate. The lady had reverted to her original pose. She stood and held her fan close to her smiling face, like a coquette surrounded by peonies. Had it all been a dream?

Mr Qing’s lone shop house loomed like a giant tomb against the heavy monsoon clouds. Its walls was as white as bone and the dark windows looked like cold dead eyes. A chill wind blew, rustling the dead mango tree leaves, that clogged the  cracked yellow pavement, into ghostly whispers.  He stood in front of heavy doors the colour of dried blood.   A pair of bronze dragons glared balefully at him. Feeling his heart speeding into a run, he knocked with a trembling hand.  The noise of the dry, hollow sounding wood echoed across the sepulchral space within.

With a torturous creak, it slowly swung open onto  a gloomy grey foyer.  Brother Ying walked past elaborate antique furniture and knick knacks half eaten by inky shadows.  Half expecting the door to slam shut and lock, He was spooked now. Only the shame of  returning home to an angry Ah Ngan kept him from running out of this haunted plate, like a mad man. His thudding heart did not slow.  The cloying smell of burning joss sticks jostled with the musty smell of aged things, made his head ache.

A dim silhouette stood at the far end of the hall. The weak milky light that filtered through the dirty windows, revealed an old man dressed in black robes in a style that was popular during the Qing Dynasty. He stared out him with sunken beady eyes that sat on a face, whose  skin stretched out like yellowed parchment over the bones of his narrow cheeks. A dull grey queue hung limply on his left side.  Pointing a gnarled finger, like an evil Taoist sorceror, the old man twisted his shriveled lips into a grotesque smile and said in a wheezy voice, like a crypt door swinging on hinges,

“Mother’s been expecting you.”

He stammered,”E-excuse m-me?”

There was no strength in his legs. His piggy eyes widened, widened and widened until they were like saucers.  A quick glance on his sun-tanned skin revealed goosebumps.

” She told me that a dear friend is bringing her home.”

That papery whisper was followed by a high pitch giggle. Brother Ying shrank back, forcing his rubbery legs to step away from the counter. The old man cleared his throat and pointed at the plate.

“The woman in the plate is Peony Yin, my mother. She was the fourth concubine of  General Duan, a Chinese warlord in Guangxi, China. He had commissioned a local Cloisonné artist to craft a plate for her birthday.”

A glittering wet track appeared from the old man’s  left eye and ended somewhere near his thin lips. He was no longer an terrifying apparition but a tired old man.

“My family thought that this plate was lost forever. I will buy it from you, at any price.”

Brother Ying hesitated. Her sweet smile and kind eyes gave a lowly, lonely labourer courage to voice his thoughts, his fears, no matter how small or silly, they were to the world. Her companionable silence would be dearly missed.

Perhaps it was a trick of light, lady in the plate nodded slightly. Grief gnawed at Brother Ying’s heart. A son’s duty was to look after his mother, his father always said. Brother Ying’s pressing debt to Ming had to be repaid.

“Alright. Give me what it’s worth to you.”

Brother Ying left the shop house  a rich man. The gold ingots in his pocket was more than enough to pay off his debt to Ming and he would keep the rest for Ping Ping’s dowry.

A light breeze ruffled his hair. It carried with the fresh sweet scent of  peony flowers. Brother Ying turned his head towards Ah Qing’s shop, his smile bittersweet.

“Goodbye Peony, my pretty plate goddess.”