Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

  A buzzard circled, and there was an anvil-shaped cloud.

  You never see them coming. They lurk in the overlooked and undusted places. They grow to huge proportions, and all along you don’t even dream about them, not in their true form. And then one day a chance meeting happens, a glimpse of what you didn’t know you wanted, and a latch is raised …

  Avril tried my beeper. Jesus, I was armed to the teeth with telecommunications devices. Like John Wayne unholstering himself after a hard day slaughtering Hispanic bandits with bad teeth, I unclipped it. I clicked open my briefcase. There was the Mickey Kwan File—whoops—and Huw Llewellyn’s business card. I put in my beeper and cell phone. I stood up, took a big underarm swing, and hurled it into the void. It drew an elegant parabola; I could still hear my beeper, a costly, mewling kitten. The briefcase hit the mountainside running, and spun down the slope in terminal leaps … in big beautiful wheels, fast enough to kill on impact, like Mama Lion, like a tumbler, like a lemming, like Piggy from Lord of the Flies.

  My briefcase hung for a moment in the morning sun, weightless.

  Then it plummeted like a gannet into the sea.

  ————

  It seemed Katy had forgotten to cancel the maid.

  The first week after Katy’s departure I came home one night to find my washing done, the dishes washed up and neatly stacked, the toilet and the bathroom cleaned, and the windows polished. She’d even ironed my shirts, bless her sour-plum little Chinese nipples.

  I certainly wasn’t going to cancel that. Weekdays, I had to plan in my Filofax when I was going to shit. Seriously.

  The maid didn’t take long to work out that Katy had gone.

  She came one Sunday morning. I was lying on the sofa watching Sesame Street. I heard the keys, and she entered as if she owned the place. She was not wearing her apron.

  She locked the door behind her, walked over to me as though I was inanimate, knelt on me, and started massaging my cock with one hand. Big Bird, Ernie, and Bert were singing a song about the magic “E” that makes the “A” say its name. I tried to kiss her but she shoved my face back with her hand, and kept it there, her hand coiling me tighter and tighter. She pulled off my T-shirt, and pushed my trousers down with her foot. Athletic girl. She pinched the skin between my balls, like a ring through the nose of an ox, led me to the bedroom, and laid me down on Katy’s side of the bed. She slid out of her pants and knelt on my rib cage. I started unbuttoning her, but she made a tsu-tsuuuu noise, slapped me, and dug her fingernails into my scrotum until I capitulated. Then she spoke, for the first, and almost the last, time.

  “Say: you want me, you don’t want Katty Bitch.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Say!”

  “I want you, I don’t want her.”

  “Say: Katty Bitch is bitch trash, I am real woman.”

  I can’t say that.

  Still keeping my testicles hostage, she pulled off her top with one hand, and unclipped her bra. I heard her giggling in the other room. Her nipples rose and darkened like something in a tale.

  “She was a bitch. Trash. You are a real woman.”

  “You would give money. You would give her stuff. All of it. A present.”

  “She took a lot back with her.”

  “She left much things. Mine now. Say it.” Her hand slid up my shaft, tighter and tighter. “It’s yours now.”

  She put my hand onto her breast. “Say: You stronger than me.”

  “You are stronger than me.”

  Formalities, rituals, and contract signing over, she lunged down on me. For a fraction of a second I thought about contraception, but the warmth and wetness and rhythm nudged me further and further away.

  Once I tried to get on top, but she bit me and elbowed me and rolled me back over.

  Afterwards the fan droned on our bodies. Nothing left of all that fire but the smell of low tide. I felt … I don’t know what I felt. Maybe I felt nothing. The theme music of Sesame Street played itself out.

  She got up, and sat down at Katy’s dressing table. She opened the drawer, and took out a coral necklace, and fastened it around her neck. Slenderer than Katy’s.

  I wanted her again. This was costing me more than money, so I may as well push for maximum value and damn myself properly. I got up and fucked her from behind, on the dressing table. We broke the mirror.

  Sex with the maid became a drug. Once pricked, I was addicted. I thought about her at work. When I got back in the evening, my erection would start even as I inserted my key. If I could smell Katy’s cologne in the entrance hall, it would mean she was waiting. If not, well, if not, I’d have to make do with whisky. Hugo Hamish and Theo at the office tried to persuade me to go drinking at Mad Dogs a few times, thinking I was cut up about Katy, but the truth is, she didn’t cross my mind that often. She was living in another compartment, and I didn’t have to encounter her unless I went looking for her. The maid was different: she came looking for me.

  When I got home one night and saw Mrs. Feng’s shoes in the entrance I realized trouble had come visiting. Mrs. Feng and Katy were sitting at our dining-room table. They had that speak-of-the-devil look. The final verdict on Neal Brose had just been handed down.

  “Neal,” Katy said in her headmistress voice, which came out when she was nervous as fuck but wanted to seem in control. “Mrs. Feng’s been telling me about our visitor. Sit down.”

  I wanted a beer, I wanted a shower, I wanted steak and chips, I wanted Manchester United versus Liverpool on satellite TV.

  “Listen to Mrs. Feng! Before you do anything.”

  The sooner this was over, the sooner I could get on with my evening.

  Mrs. Feng waited for me to sit down and stop fidgeting. The way she looked at me made me feel a suspect at an identity parade. “You are not alone in this apartment.”

  “We know.”

  “She is hiding now. She is a little girl, and is afraid of me.”

  I could quite see why. Mrs. Feng’s eyes were smoked glass. When she blinked I swear I heard doors hiss.

  “There are three possibilities. For centuries, unwanted childrens were left on Lantau by night, to the mercy of the winter nights and the wild animals. She could be one such ancient. But these rarely reside in modern buildings. A second possibility is, she was one of the undesirables rounded up by the Japanese when they occupied Hong Kong during the war. They were brought to Discovery Bay, ordered to dig their graves, up where Phase 1 was built in the seventies, and shot so they fell back into the holes. Perhaps she had stolen some bauble. The third possibility is that she is a … I don’t know the English word. She is the child of a gwai lo man and a maid. The man would have left, and the maid flung the girl off one of these buildings.”

  “Modern mothercare.”

  “Neal, shut up!”

  “A boy would bring disgrace, but a baby girl, worse than that. It often happens, even when the parents are married and both Chinese, if they are not rich. The dowries can cripple a couple’s married life. I believe that she is one of these.”

  Why were they both looking at me? Was it my fault?

  “There’s something else,” Katy said. “Mrs. Feng says she’s drawn to men. You.”

  “Do you know what you’re sounding like?”

  “Mrs. Feng says she sees me as a rival, and for as long as we’re here, I’ll never be able to have a baby. We’ll have to leave Lantau. It can’t follow you over water.”

  “Dr. Chan forwarded a slightly more plausible reason for the nonappearance of a Brose-Forbes junior, don’t you think?” Fuck, that came out wrongly.

  “So, you’re saying it’s all a figment of my imagination.”

  “No. Occasionally, there is a presence here. But stratospheric rents on Central and Victoria Peak are a rather more concrete reality. The Chinese are the first to forget their sacred fucking feng shui when money’s making the suggestion. Forget it, Katy. We can’t afford to move. And there is no way we’re moving in with the Tri
ad and the Plebs and the Immigrants down in Kowloon. You’d have a baby there and they’d chop it up and desiccate it for medicine.”

  Mrs. Feng watched us. I could swear she was enjoying this.

  “Mrs. Feng,” I said. “You know everything there is to know. What should we do? Call an exorcist?”

  My sarcasm was dead on arrival. Mrs. Feng nodded slightly. “In ordinary circumstances, yes, there are a number of specialist geomancers I could recommend. But this apartment is so very unlucky, I believe it is beyond redemption. You must move.”

  “We’re not moving. We can’t move.”

  Mrs. Feng stood up. “Then you will excuse me.”

  Katy stood and made “won’t you stay and have some more tea” noises, but she was already passing through the doorway. “Beware,” she warned without turning around, “of what is at the other end of the door.”

  While I was trying to work out what the fuck that was supposed to mean, Katy stood up and went into the spare bedroom. I heard her lock it.

  Madness, fucking madness. I got myself a beer, and lay on the sofa, too tired to make myself some food. Thanks, Katy. You’ve had all fucking day to make something. So what if there is a fucking ghost?

  I never knew there were so many fucking locks in this place.

  The boy and the girl in the café last night, I keep seeing them. Katy and me. What happened to Love?

  Well, Love went to bed. It fucked, over and over, until it got sore-knob bored, quite frankly. Then Love looked around for something else to do, and it saw its lovely friends all having lovely babies. So Love decided to do the same, but Love kept having its periods, same as ever, however much it inseminated itself. So Love went to an infertility clinic, and discovered the truth. As far as I know Love’s stiff is there to this very day. And that, boys and girls, is the Story of What Happened to Love.

  I want to go back to the coffee bar and tell them. “Listen to me, both of you, you are ill. You’re not seeing things how they are.”

  Who are you to tell anyone they are ill, Neal?

  Katy had phoned that evening. The maid had left two minutes before. I was just climbing into the shower, still sticky. How do women manage to time these things? She spoke to my answering machine. She was drunk. I let her speak to it, listening in, standing stark bollock naked in the living room, smelling of multiple sex with the maid Katy had hated.

  “Neal, I know you’re there. I can tell. It’s five in the afternoon here, dunno what that makes it there, eleven I suppose.” I didn’t know what the time was either. “I’ve been watching the Brits get slaughtered at Wimbledon.… Wanted to say hello I s’pose, dunno why I’m phoning really, I’m well, thanks, how are you? I’m well. I’m flat-hunting. I should be closing on a little flat in Islington this time next week. The pipes are noisy but at least there aren’t any ghosts. Sorry, that’s not funny. I’m doing a lot of P.A.ing for Cecile’s Temp Agency, just to keep my hand in. Vernwood’s left for Wall Street. Some hotshot fresh from the London School of Economics has been given his desk. I was wondering if you could get the Queen Anne chair shipped back sometime, it’s worth a bob or two, you know. Spoke with your sister last week, bumped into her in Harvey Nic’s funnily enough, quite by chance.… She said you’d just extended your contract by another eighteen months.… Will you be coming back at Christmas? Might be nice to meet up, I just thought, y’know, but then again you’ll probably have people to meet and all that.… And some of my jewelry is still in your apartment. We wouldn’t want that maid getting her hands on it and running back to China, eh? I don’t think I ever got those keys back from her. You’d better change the locks. I’m okay, but I need a holiday. About forty years would do me. Well, if you’re not too tired when you get in give me a call, I’ll be watching the doubles finals for the next couple of hours.… Oh, and your sister said to tell you to call your mother.… Your dad’s pancreatic thingy has come back.… ’Bye then …”

  I never got round to returning that call. What would I say?

  A grave. Its back to the mountain, its face to the sea. The sun was high and pestilent. I took off my tie and hung it on a thorny tree. No point trying to read the name of the grave’s occupant. There are thousands of these Chinese hieroglyphs making up the world’s clonkiest writing system. I knew five: alcohol, mountain, river, love, exit. I sometimes think, these hieroglyphs are the real Chinese, living down through the centuries, hiding their meanings in their similarities to outwit the foreigner, by and large immune to tampering. Mao himself failed to modernize his language.

  I’d followed the path down from the last peak. There’d been a brackish stream, a bush of birds, a butterfly with zebra stripes on wings wide as side-plates. I’d lost the path once or twice, and it had come back to find me once or twice. It reminded me of the Brecon Beacons. I grew up when I realized that everywhere was basically the same, and so were the women.

  This time there was no way on. A false trail. I’d have to back-track, through the maze of thorn bushes and couch grass. I sat down and looked at the view. Another extension to the new airport was being built out there on reclaimed land. Little bulldozers played in the glistening silt flats. Sweat trickled down my wrists, my chest, down the crack between my buttocks. My trousers clung to my thighs. I should be taking my medication about now, but all that was in a briefcase in the bottom of a bay somewhere.

  I wondered if anyone had been sent to come and get me. Ming, probably. Avril was no doubt busy probing deeper into my hard disk, with Theo Fraser at her shoulder. Where might that lead? All those e-mails from Petersburg, all those see-no-evil-hear-no-evil seven- and eight-figure transfers of funds to out-of-the-way places?

  Unless you’ve lived with a ghost, you can’t know the truth of it. You assume that morning, noon, and night, you’re walking around obsessed, fearful, and waiting for the exorcist to call. It’s not really like that. It’s more like living with a very particular cat.

  For the last few months I’ve been living with three women. One was a ghost, who is now a woman. One was a woman, who is now a ghost. One is a ghost, and always will be. But this isn’t a ghost story: the ghost is in the background, where she has to be. If she was in the foreground she’d be a person.

  Katy and I had come back from some stupid Cavendish party. We’d come into the lobby together, I checked our mailbox, putting down my briefcase. There were some letters. We got in the elevator, ripping open the envelopes. Halfway up I realized I’d left my briefcase down in the lobby next to the mailbox. When we got to the fourteenth floor, Katy got out, and I went back down, got my briefcase, and returned to our floor. When the elevator doors opened I saw Katy still outside the apartment, and I knew something was very wrong.

  She was white and trembling. “It’s locked. It’s bolted. From the inside.”

  Burglars. On the fourteenth floor? They must still be in there.

  It’s not burglars, and we both knew it.

  She had come back.

  I don’t know how I knew what to do, but I took out my own keys, and rattled them a few times. Then I tried the door.

  It swung open into the darkness.

  Katy didn’t speak to me, even though I know she was awake for most of the night. Looking back, that was the beginning of the end.

  So I backtracked.

  A bus full of curious people drove past, packed as usual. Fuck, the way that the Chinese will just stare at you! So rude! Have they never seen a sunburning foreigner in a suit out for a midday walk before?

  The sun! The smack of a boxing glove. I was parched. The helicopter came back. The sides of the valley hummed and swished. I should have come here months ago. It was waiting, and I’d done nothing but truck to and fro from the office, on that turbo ferry across the River Styx.

  What kind of place did the maid live in? In Kowloon, or the New Territories somewhere? She’d get a bus or a streetcar from the port, and get off far beyond where the decent shops finished. The same sort of place Ming lives in, I suppose. Down a
backstreet, its walls crowded up to fifteen floors with dirty signs for sweatshops and strip clubs and money changers and restaurants and God knows what. Nothing more than a rafter of mucky sky. The noise, of course, would never stop. The Chinese brain must be equipped with a noise-filtration device, that allows them to only listen to the one band of racket that they want to hear. Taxis, cheap little ghetto blasters, chanting from the temple, satellite TV, sales pitches floating aloft through megaphones. You’d go down an alley, there’d be the smell of grime and piss and dim sum. People would be hanging about in doorways needing new shirts and a shave, selling drugs. Upstairs—the elevators in those kinds of places never work—and into a tiny apartment where a family of seven bicker and watch TV and drink. Strange to think I work in the same city. Strange to think of the little palaces up on Victoria Peak. That’s probably where the Japanese kid is getting over his jet lag now. His girl bringing him lemon tea on a silver tray. Or more likely, her maid bringing in the lemon tea. I wonder how they met. I wonder.

  There are so many cities in every single city.

  When I first came to Hong Kong, before Katy joined me, I was given one day’s holiday to get over jet lag. I felt fine, so I decided to use it exploring the city. I traveled the trams, jolted by the poverty I saw, and walked the overhead walkways, feeling safe only among the business suits and briefcases. I took the cable car up to Victoria Peak, and walked around. Rich wives were strolling in groups, and maids with the children, and teenage couples walking arm-in-arm looking at all the other teenage couples. There were a couple of stalls mounted on wheels, the sort of setup my father used to call market barrows. They sold maps, peanuts in their shells, and the bland salty snack things that Chinese and Indians are so fond of. One of them sold maps in English, and postcards, so I bought a few. Suddenly a pile of cans next to the stall moved and barked something in Chinese. A face caked in grease and creased with age emerged and looked at me with loathing. I jumped out of my skin. The stall-holder laughed, and said, “Don’t worry. He’s harmless.”