The Celadon Duck

It was her own fault, she knew as she sat on that dusty shelf at the back of the dingy old shop and reminisced about her past life. It was hot, damp and humid. Nothing like the cold winds of Korea where she had been born, straight out of a fiery furnace in an ancient artisan’s kiln.

She once occupied the place of pride on some magnificent mantelpieces draped in colourful brocade, a glint in her glassy eye and an elegant sheen on her glazed jade-green feathers. She had watched as nobles welcomed foreign emissaries to grand pillared halls and merchants discussed international trade under her tapered beak. She had survived a stormy sea journey on a rickety junk, shivering in fear as she lay wrapped beneath layers of cloth while hoping that they reach the shores of China soon. And another journey, wrapped in layers of crinkled brown paper, as the Chinese diplomat’s grandson (who had inherited her from his grandfather; a tall bespectacled man with the family name of Loke who had been given the duck-shaped incense burner as a gift from his Korean counterpart) fled the war-torn city of his birth and headed for the balmy tropics to escape from the advancing enemy forces.

It was initially a rough start in a new land. The diplomat’s grandson, who never had to do menial work in his life, started off as a labourer in the tin mines. She would watch him hungrily wolf down scraps of salted fish with his plain white rice, then fall asleep on a straw mat in exhaustion. A far cry from the luxurious feasts and comfortable beds he used to enjoy back home. Nonetheless he kept her by his threadbare cotton pillow. A reminder of bygone days. He got his first break after scrimping and saving for two years, starting his own textile business selling cheap shirts on the five foot walkway. Then he married the neighbour’s daughter, a sweet but plain-faced girl, and moved into a small kampong house in Brickfields. She was then placed on the side of the family altar, next to a gold-plated statue of a reclining Buddha and the ancestral tablets. She watched as the family grew and the business expanded, following them as they moved from each home to every successively bigger home.

And one day, she saw them. Her ‘real’ counterparts. By then, the Lokes were living in a low white-washed brick bungalow adjacent to the Lake Gardens. A family of Lesser Whistling ducks, who often paraded past the living room on their way to the muddy pond at the foot of the hill on which the house was perched. They would strut past, preening their slick brown feathers with slim black bills and pecking at the sandy ground. She thought of her centuries of being parked on countertops and mantelpieces, and for the first time in her life, she wished for the sunny liberty that the duck family enjoyed. When the lights had been put out for the day, she would stare at the stars twinkling beyond the window frames and dream of frolicking in the cool waters of the pond. And so she tried to escape into the freedom she so sought. Tried, and tried. One fine day, she finally succeeded.

“Aiyah, Brian, why you so careless one? I told you to be careful when you play in the living room. Now you have broken Gong Gong’s favourite porcelain duck that he brought from China! He will be so mad when he finds out, Brian,” the diplomat’s grandson’s wife, now an elderly lady with grey hair and a bent back, scolded her five year old grandson when she saw the shattered light green pieces on the marble floor.

“But, Po Po, it wasn’t me!” the mop-headed lad protested.

“Now, Brian Loke, this is even worse! We have taught you not to lie, haven’t we? You know what is the ‘rotan’? You were the only one in the room till five minutes ago. Seline! Seline, come and clear up this mess,” she called for the Filipino maid and dragged her grandson out by his T-shirt collar.

And so the duck found bits of herself swept up into a dustpan unceremoniously and chucked onto the heap of rubbish just outside the front gate. The reality was nothing like how she had imagined it to be. The sun and rain made her porcelain glaze crack further and left dirt stains on her feathers. A stray dog came in the evenings and pawed through the trash, causing her to tremble in fear that he would fracture her further. Lines of fire ants crawled over her at night, carrying bits of cake and sugary treats. The smell of the decaying rubbish and the stagnant drain water in the ‘longkang’ nauseated her. The duck family, far from embracing her as one of their own, snootily ignored the broken celadon duck which lay helplessly on the wayside.

She met Uncle Chan one day when he was on his evening walk through the neighbourhood.

“Hullo, what’s this?” he stopped and peered at the broken duck. He picked up a piece of her back and dusted off the soil, examining it with a critical eye.

“Interesting,” he murmured to himself. He plucked a huge leaf from a palm that was growing opposite and picked up the broken pieces carefully.

She found herself on a wooden table top in a cluttered workshop. Uncle Chan put on his black-rimmed spectacles and uncapped a bottle of glue. He wiped each piece carefully and arranged the shattered pieces on a sheet of newspaper. Switching on his work lamp, he used a small paintbrush to apply glue onto the jagged edges and slowly assembled her together again.

After a few hours, Uncle Chan wiped his brow and smiled.

“Yes, we are finally done,” he said with a satisfied look on his wrinkled sunburnt face.

But the celadon duck knew that life would never be the same again. No one would want her, with cracks running down her back and on her base. She looked like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Not like a treasured antique any longer. She knew that her fate would be to languish, forgotten, on the dusty shelves of Uncle Chan’s vintage shop forever.

A typical rainy day in Kuala Lumpur. When the late monsoon rains would drench the city in never-ending sheets of fury, drowning the streets in tea-coloured flash floods and causing the traffic to halt to a stand-still. A middle-aged Chinese man darted into the shop, shaking off the raindrops from his wet hair and black umbrella. Uncle Chan looked up from a watch he was repairing.

“How can I help you?” he said.

“Nothing, I mean, this rain… is just so heavy. Phew. Thank you boss, I’ll just browse around and take a look for now,” the stranger huffed as he closed his umbrella. Uncle Chan nodded and returned to his work.

The stranger slowly walked around the shop, looking at the eclectic collection of wares with a keen eye. His umbrella was hooked on his left elbow and he mopped his dripping brow with a square handkerchief. He lingered for a few moments as he bent down and looked at the duck. She looked back at him wordlessly. There was something vaguely familiar about his eyes and nose.

The stranger straightened up and went to Uncle Chan at the counter.

“Yes, what can I do for you? Found anything interesting?” Uncle Chan said.

“Yes. That…that duck. How much for it?”

“Oh, you sure you want it? Never really thought of selling her. Found her while I was having an evening walk one day and fixed her up nicely,” Uncle Chan looked at the stranger and rubbed his chin.

“The duck reminds me of my grandfather’s favourite antique which he brought from China. According to Gong Gong, it was a gift to his grandfather from a Korean friend. But one day, it suddenly broke and my grandma threw it away. Never saw it again,” the stranger mused. He retrieved his leather wallet from his pocket and took out a platinum credit card marked ‘Brian Loke’ in embossed gold lettering.

“I’ll pay you seven thousand for it. My grandfather’s been dead for almost twenty years now but I still want to get the duck back. It was our family heirloom,” Brian said.

Uncle Chan nodded and walked over to the shelf, picking up the celadon duck and packing it into a cardboard box.

“Go ahead, she’s all yours now.”