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  The tiger stood up and gave a short, sharp roar. The sound was lower and louder and more terrifying than Wong could ever have imagined.

  Their hearts stopped.

  The creature opened its mouth, revealing thirty off-white teeth, several of which were pitted and scratched. Most were canines and incisors. As its lips retracted, molars were revealed behind the carnassial complex in the upper jaw. The relatively short jaw, lined with thick, powerful muscles, was clearly designed to strip bones clean.

  The tiger straightened itself, stretching its spine.

  It shook its head once, and then took two steps directly towards the mother, its eyes still on the baby in her arms. As the tiger moved, its shoulder blades swung backwards and forwards in wide curves, enabling the beast to take huge strides. It trod elegantly, like a dancer: only the five soft pads of its toes touched the ground, with the rest of the foot raised slightly. Its claws were retracted, but their needle-sharp tips were visible protruding through the white fur.

  It took another step.

  Wong reached one hand out to his left. His fingers snaked around the side of a cabinet, looking for the wall. Stretching further, his fingertips touched cold, sticky, dirty, unwashed tiles. He moved his hand along the surface. He bent slightly and found what he was looking for: a power socket. A three-pin plug—furry and damp with a coating of oily dust—connected one or other of the freezer cabinets to the wall at this point.

  The feng shui master strained his fingers and pulled at the plug. It obviously had not been extracted for a long time, and was stiff. Manipulating it from side to side, he eventually managed to work it loose. As he did so, he saw a yogurt and cheese cabinet behind them start to flicker. There was a crackling, fizzing sound from the wall socket. The cabinet flashed again.

  The tiger stared at the fridge. Discomfort registered in its eyes. Some deep instinct in its brain apparently associated bright, irregular light with fire.

  Wong continued to manipulate the plug, and the neon tubes in the cabinet continued to flicker and buzz. Now there was a slight smell of burning. The tiger took four steps backwards, away from the three humans, its haunches moving into the Staff Only doorway that Tang had said was their only escape route.

  ‘Now,’ whispered the feng shui master. ‘Walk to back. Walk, don’t run.’

  The trio moved smartly to the shelf of canned meats at the back of the store.

  Watched carefully by the unnerved beast, Wong put his fingers around the corner of the tinned meats shelving unit and pulled with all his might. It didn’t budge. He tugged at it again. It shook slightly, but did not move forwards. The geomancer started to sweat. ‘Stuck,’ he groaned. ‘Aiyeeah.’

  The mother put the baby down at her feet. ‘Let me trylah,’ she said. ‘Mothers carry 20-kilo babies around all day only.’

  She pulled at one side of the shelving unit with two hands, while he yanked at the other.

  She screwed her face up, let loose a long string of Chinese curse words and heaved with all her strength. It started to tip forward in slow motion. Cans of Libby’s Corned Beef slid along the top shelf and tumbled into the air, followed by a shower of cans of Hormel Spam Lite from the shelf below.

  They clattered and bounced and the air was filled with the angry sound of crashing tins bouncing and ricocheting off the tiled floor.

  Behind them, they saw the white tiger raise its dark eyebrows, alarm in its blue eyes at the unexpected racket. It retreated further into the staff area.

  The falling shelf wedged itself at an angle in the aisle, revealing an ancient, filthy door in the wall. Wong pushed at it and it opened—but only about 30 centimetres. There was something behind it, preventing it from opening further.

  Still, the gap was big enough for two slim adults. The young mother slipped through first and then Wong handed her baby through the gap. The feng shui master then slipped into the semi-darkness, pushing the door shut behind him.

  They found themselves behind a wall of cardboard boxes marked with the words: Che Foo. Next to it was a pile of boxes marked Great Wall. The original front door of the building evidently led into a temporary structure now used as the storeroom for a wine shop.

  The woman put the baby down on a box of Dynasty Wine and started to move boxes aside. She noticed that one box to her left was already open and peered at the words on its side: YEO’S BRAND GRASS JELLY DRINK. ‘Allah be praised. I need a drink. You want one?’

  Wong took his usual stool at the nightmarket.

  There was nothing obvious to differentiate this table from any of the others. It was a rickety round thing with metal legs and a topping of chipped fake wood. The table was covered by a stained plastic sheet bearing a pink and white gingham design—a cheap, disposable tablecloth that had been used repeatedly for months or years.

  Nor was the table in a position that made it obviously attractive. While the front of the open-air seating area filled up first, Wong’s table was almost the furthest back, and was angled off to one side. Only a feng shui master would immediately see that he had chosen the table in the command position. From his vantage point furthest from the dining area entry point, he could see all the other diners. But more importantly, he could see when Ah-Fat arrived to start cooking his legendary oyster pancakes.

  The part he had just played in the White Tiger Incident (the creature had escaped from an over-authentic launch party for The Bak Fu Theatre Group) had left him drained of energy, and he was happy to just sit in a peaceful, familiar place and allow the world—spinning much too fast—to gradually settle back to its normal rhythm.

  He and Dilip Kenneth Sinha, a tall Indian astrologer dressed in an immaculately-cut black Nehru-collared suit, had arrived at their table during the final minutes of dusk. As the feng shui master watched, night fell as suddenly as if a hand had turned a dimmer switch. The sky over the horizon of watching skyscrapers was navy blue. He looked over at Ah-Fat’s stall—still empty. He glanced up at the sky again and it had turned black.

  The absence of light from above seemed somehow to affect his other senses, too. Sounds became sharper, more vivid. The murmur of conversation took a louder, more party-like tone, with a smattering of laughs and shrieks. Glasses clinked and plates clattered dramatically. A child being bathed could be heard laughing and splashing from a building nearby. A distant, constant hum rose from an overpass carrying lorries to the main road west out of town. And, incongruously in this humid, tropical scene, a music system was adding the melodious overlay of Bing Crosby singing Let It Snow.

  Desperately needing to excise the tiger from the front of his mind, the feng shui master concentrated on the array of comfort food that was about to arrive.

  There were thirty-five stalls in the marketplace, serving a variety of dishes from kapok kapok to fried kway teow. He knew them all. What other place in the world had such a fine array of cuisine? As well as Ah Fat’s Fried Oysters, there were other gems: Ah Lum’s Hokkien Big Prawn Mee, Munch Munch Satay Hoon, Kang Kong Korner, Hong Kee Famous Chicken Rice and Tong Kee Fish Porridge. Tonight he would get a dish from each of them.

  He took a deep sniff with his wide, flat nostrils. The smells also seemed to double in power as night fell. The night breeze carried with it the scents of candlenuts, turmeric, shrimp paste, daun salam, tamarind pulp and jaggery.

  CF Wong was suddenly ravenous.

  Hunger drove the original purpose of the meeting out of his mind. This evening’s nightmarket dinner gathering of the investigative advisory committee of the Singapore Union of Industrial Mystics had been officially called by the feng shui master.

  But if he had something urgent to relate to the other two members who had turned up, Sinha and Madam Xu Chongli, he wasn’t immediately ready to share it.

  Even before fortune-teller Madam Xu had arrived, Wong had already started to eat. This was certainly a faux pas in terms of etiquette, but it happened too often in Singaporean society to excite complaint. Eating was the holiest religious rite and d
iners were above having to follow the conventions of secular society.

  Madam Xu, who was frequently late for appointments, was used to Wong’s rudeness. But even she was taken aback by his cartoon-like blurring into a one-man eating machine, virtually inhaling the dishes before him. Expensively upholstered in silk and linen, she watched his technique with fascination. The geomancer barely chewed each mouthful of food before the pair of chopsticks hovering before his lips shovelled another pile into the breach.

  ‘Goodness me,’ said Madam Xu. ‘Is he practising for one of those chilli-eating contests or something?’

  ‘No,’ said Sinha. ‘He had a shock.’

  ‘What? One of his clients paid a bill?’

  The elderly astrologer smiled at the fortune-teller’s witticism as he picked up a plate of assam pedas and spooned a generous portion of the tamarind brinjal fish onto her plate. ‘A white tiger was being delivered to someone up the road and it decided to do a little shopping.’

  Madam Xu, picking up a popiah pancake with her chopsticks, bit delicately into it, releasing the warm, pungent odours of fried lettuce, prawns, egg and turnip. ‘A real tiger?’

  Sinha nodded. ‘Mee siam?’ he offered, expertly lifting a small portion of vermicelli noodles in sour gravy with his chopsticks. ‘Yes, a real tiger. And unfortunately, Wong decided to do some shopping at the same time and ended up stuck for some minutes discussing the price of rice with the beast.’

  ‘Does sound rather distressing.’

  The tall Indian astrologer stole a dish of chee cheong fun from Wong’s side of the table and scraped the remains onto his companion’s plate. ‘Hungry tigers are not much fun,’ he agreed.

  Madam Xu shook her head. ‘No, it’s not the fact that it was a tiger that is distressing. It was the fact that it was a white tiger. You couldn’t really complain if your friend is eaten by a white tiger. Such a rare beast. It’s rather an honour if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Ah.’

  The astrologer looked to see if Wong would agree that it would be a privilege to be eaten by such a cat, but the feng shui master remained buried in carnal satisfaction, noisily slurping down the last drops from a bowl of black chicken herbal soup.

  Wong placed the cracked bowl down with a thud and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Now is time,’ he said.

  ‘Time to tell us why you called this meeting?’ Sinha asked.

  The geomancer shook his head. ‘No. Time for or luak.

  Ah-Fat is here.’

  Sinha followed Wong’s gaze and spotted the thin figure of Ah-Fat expertly whipping oyster pancakes out of his steaming wok.

  Two minutes later, a large dish of or luak, giving off a powerful smell of singed, eggy seafood, arrived on their table, accompanied by a generous portion of extra-hot chilli dipping sauce.

  Only after the serving platter was as clean as the day it came out of the furnace—which took these three diners less than six minutes—did Wong finally lower his chopsticks. He sat back, sated at last.

  ‘Ahhhh,’ he said, patting his extended belly and picking at his teeth with a bamboo toothpick. ‘Better-better-better, yes.’

  Sinha and Xu looked at the feng shui master expectantly. ‘So?’ said the astrologer.

  Wong extracted the toothpick from his mouth and glared at the morsel of shredded chicken on it. He popped it back into his mouth.

  ‘Have to go away,’ he said. ‘Mr Pun has plenty work for me outside. He call me today. I think I will go next week, maybe week after. Away I think for three-four week.’

  ‘So long?’ Sinha was surprised. ‘Mr Pun must have bought a very big property somewhere.’

  ‘No,’ Wong said. ‘Every year, Mr Pun gives Christmas gift to members of international board.’

  ‘Oh?’ Madam Xu inquired. ‘He wants you to go round and deliver the gifts? You are the delivery boy now?’

  ‘No. I am gift.’

  Sinha chuckled. ‘So he wraps you with a red ribbon and leaves you naked under a Christmas tree somewhere.’

  ‘Unh?’ Wong didn’t get the joke. ‘My service is gift. He offer free feng shui reading to each member of international board of director of East Trade Industries Company Limited. Five-six out of nine members accept the offer already. So Mr Pun paying me to visit their projects.’

  Sinha lowered his chopsticks, scenting paying work for himself. ‘You want us to cover for you?’

  ‘No. Already I ask Mister Sum to cover for me. I want you to come with me for some of the jobs.’

  ‘He’ll cover our expenses too?’

  Wong’s brow wrinkled with irritation. His expression said: Would have I asked you otherwise? ‘Of course. Three board members are in Singapore. I can do that no problem. One in India. I told Mr Pun I need you to come help me with that, Sinha. Do some vaastu, you know?’

  The Indian astrologer nodded. ‘Of course. It would be my pleasure.’

  ‘One in Australia, one in Philippines, one in Thailand, one in Hong Kong, so on—I hope you can help me with Philippines one, Madam Xu. Client there request fortune reading also.’

  Madam Xu elegantly bowed her perfumed, coiffured head. ‘I would be delighted, it goes without saying.’

  Sinha chuckled. ‘He’s dipping deep into his pocket. If the next few weeks are going to be a no-expenses spared junket, I suppose that means Pun expects you to take Joyce with you?’

  Wong plunged instantly into a deeply morose state.

  He nodded gloomily. ‘Aiyeeah,’ he growled, under his breath. ‘Yes. He want me to take Joyce also.’

  Sinha laughed out loud and looked at Madam Xu. ‘Ha. I think he’d prefer the company of the tiger,’ he snorted.

  1 The case

  of the fishy flat

  A scholar sat on the Plain of Jars reading The Book of Changes.

  He wanted to know where the Life Force came from. So he closed his book and made a vow. ‘I will travel on and on and on, never stopping, until I find the primary source of ch’i.’

  He walked across the city. He walked across the county. He walked across the kingdom. He could not find it.

  So he decided to sail around the world.

  He got into a ship and sailed far away. He saw many strange things. He saw in the ocean a great fish. The great fish was also travelling very far.

  But he could not find the source of ch’i.

  The scholar did not give up. He travelled very far, to the other side of the world. He went to the four points of the earth and the four corners of the lo pan.

  Many times his path crossed with the path of the great fish, who also seemed to be seeking something.

  But although he went to a thousand places, he could not find the source of ch’i.

  One day he travelled to the land where people can talk to creatures and creatures can talk to people. He saw the great fish passing his boat.

  He asked the fish: ‘Are you looking for something?’

  The fish said: ‘Yes. Are you looking for something?’

  The scholar said: ‘Yes. I am looking for the source of ch’i.’

  The fish said: ‘What is ch’i?’

  The scholar said: ‘It is prana, it is the life force, it is Tao, it is the way, it is Heaven, it is God. You have travelled far. You have seen it?’

  The fish said: ‘No. I have been everywhere in the whole world. I have not seen the source of ch’i.’

  The scholar was very, very sad. He cried very much.

  After his tears dried, he asked the fish: ‘What are you looking for?’

  The fish said: ‘I am looking for the sea.’

  The scholar said: ‘But you are IN the sea.’

  The fish looked around. He said: ‘How can that be? I cannot see it.’

  The scholar said: ‘You cannot see it because it is every thing you can see.’

  At that moment the scholar found enlightenment.

  Blade of Grass, never forget the words of Confucius:

  ‘Fish forget they live in water and
people forget that they live in the eye of heaven.

  ‘The world is heaven and heaven is the world. This is the beginning of understanding.’

  From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’

  by CF Wong, part 21.

  He lowered his pen, blew on the page to dry it, and carefully shut the book.

  Then, slowly as a golden rain-tree falls over in a paper-mulberry forest, he leaned way back in his creaking red leatherette chair, cupped his hands behind his head and grinned.

  CF Wong was a happy man. He felt like physically expressing it some way. But how? Singing was something he hadn’t done for years. Dancing was something he hadn’t done for even longer—since his previous life or perhaps one or two before that, he reckoned. Maybe he should celebrate by having a lion’s head for lunch. But those devils at Tong Kee Fish Porridge were now charging $4.95 a dish: evil robbers from the fifth layer of hell!

  Yet even as the feng shui master pondered the best way to celebrate, he was aware of a growing realisation that he probably wouldn’t do anything at all. He had never been a demonstrative man. He had seen people expressing their feelings by jumping around and yelling, but had no idea how to do the same.

  No matter. He was happy enough to just sink into his chair and let a smile play on his lips.

  He would take it easy today. Perhaps do a little extra writing in his book of educational Chinese classics. And he might make a token celebratory action. He would order a portion of pan-fried wor tip from the Shanghainese coffee shop around the corner. Yes, that would be perfect.

  The sudden burst of joy could be credited to a plan that had come to Wong as he had dragged his eternally suffering limbs into the office at 7:30 that morning.

  Like all members of humanity, he had his crosses to bear. But this particular week, two particularly heavy weights were pressing down on him.

  The first was a troublesome client. He had many of these, but this one was especially noxious. His assignment for the day was to examine the residential premises of Mr Tik Sincheung, the junior non-executive director on the board of East Trade Industries.