Noon at Five O'Clock: The Short Stories of Arthur Yap

The Effect of a Good Dinner

32 The Effect of a Good Dinner 1978 Custom and tradition are the easiest things to kill; even if they are not killed, they are easily jolted into a haemorrhage. Sometimes, they appear comical or ludicrous, or they are grim. When you cease to believe in them, you would seem to have come a long way. Sometimes, you may ask yourself: a long way from what? Then you may want to assert that, now, you do not have to tip-toe or kneel your way to where the angels and your ancestors were told to tread.14 This story is about my grand-uncle and my grand-aunt. They were not very loving. In fact, they did not seem to bother very much about each other and, in its way, it was a good thing. She was always busy with something: washing cups, babies, or stitching and sewing. He, too, was always busy; after all (he always said) a man has to work to keep his family very fully alive. By this, it is meant that a person sometimes has to buy his eldest son a bicycle, his eldest daughter a portable radio (to sew by), his wife a jade bangle, and himself a car. Seen in a coolly detached manner, my grand-uncle’s family was not very interesting: every now and again, someone failed or passed an examination, one of the younger children fell off the bicycle, the battery went flat in the radio. Life was complacent and there was neither domestic tragedy nor sublimation. They carried on without having to insert coins into slot-machines or, on the other hand, to labour in the fields. Year by year, something gives and fizzles out. New Year doesn’t come half as exciting as did the previous. The Moon Festival15 seems more insipid. The children no longer bother to rise very early to bathe and put on their new clothes.16 Besides such little things, the custom of marriage, in my grand-uncle’s household at least, had also changed.Marriageinthosedayswasbytheprocessofmatch-making. There were, and are, a horde of such professional match-makers who 33 t h e e f f e c t o f a g o o d d i n n e r set themselves into everybody’s confidence and, finally, help these people to sort out their sons and daughters for marriage. The two persons to be married need not know each other, but after a quietly nervous meeting, they should. This aspect of marriage becomes less and less comprehensible to people today. Match-making has nothing much to commend it. Though divorces are never heard of, this does not lend evidence to the belief that these married people are happy and contented. More often than not, the husbands ‘acquire’ new wives. My grand-uncle’s children do not count in this. They were not, or were not going to be, match-made. If there was an ugly girl or an idiotic boy in the family, then things might have been slightly different. But usually, by a family’s own standards, there are simply no such things. So the people who have any interest for me are my grand-uncle and my grand-aunt. It is never unfashionable for a person to have a concubine. Also, it is never the policy for the wife to forbid her husband this little whim as long as he doesn’t squeeze her allowance to ricepowder . My grand-uncle certainly had the means and my grand-aunt the understanding. In most cases, a wife accepted it as a matter of course. Her only misgiving might be that she might not feel amiable towards the new wife but, in such a case, it would only be a slight misgiving on her part. The greater and silent misgiving would be that the new wife might not be amiably disposed towards her, and what with her fresher appeal, her comparative youth and his new allegiance, the woman usually stood in mortal dread of a domestic turmoil. Her consolation would be that life itself, like some table game, would still have built-in surprises. Their background is uncomplicated.17 They came over from China at a very early age with their parents. My grand-aunt stayed in the house at all times and grew up; my grand-uncle attended the early part of school and also grew up. One day, they were married. The match-maker received the customary “red-packet”,18...