Chasing the Dragon: a story of love, redemption and the Chinese triads (Opium Book 2)

by Colin Falconer

  She passed a sign with Wo Che Estate written in large red Chinese characters. Another block of flats going up. As a child she remembered riding her uncle's water buffalo bare back through here, when it was just a muddy swamp. Now here she was driving a German sports car. She flicked a switch to retract the hood, let everyone know it was little Ruby-ah, even though most of the people in the village were strangers now.

  We are gods, Eddie said. But sometimes even the gods have bad luck. Like the millions of dollar that she had lost when Martin Fong blew himself up, that stupid lump of steaming leper turd! Her knuckles turned white on the wheel. She still owed money to Peter Man, five hundred thousand Hong Kong. Eddie would pay but she would lose face and Vincent would never let her forget. If he made her pay him back what would be left for Ruby-ah? Just three hundred thousand sticking dollar. Hong Kong dollar!

  Well her problems must wait now until after Ching Ming.

  Ching Ming, the Clear and Bright Festival. A time to tend the graves of your ancestors, a time to go home, a time to pay respect.

  Ruby's great great grandfather was a Hakka from Po On in Kwangtung province, he had arrived in Hong Kong in 1880, had bought the little plot of land which his children and grandchildren and great grandchildren had tended. Ruby, her brother and her big sister had been the first to leave.

  She threaded her way through the melee of traffic on the Tolo Highway. The roads were choked with traffic for the holiday; trains, buses, cars heading out of the city to the Territories and the new towns.

  ***

  Her parents and two of her brothers still worked their market garden like peasants. Once it had been nearly two miles from the center of the village, but now the new estates were creeping towards them and huge electricity pylons marched through the fields.

  It was colder up here, and grey. The mountains were a metallic green, pocked with the scars left by quarries, even the dragons were not safe from the entrepreneurs of Hong Kong. She passed a duck farm, thousands of birds squawking under their awnings of reed thatch, another giant apartment block under construction right next door.

  She turned off the main road and changed down through the gears to bump over an unsealed road that wound up into the hills. She could see her parent's house now, through wisps of evening mist. It was a crumbling stone cottage, had been a mandarin's yamen once. The glazed blue tiles were dulled by moss. It was surrounded by a crumbling bamboo fence and one section was falling into a nullah, a creek. There was a field of yams and taros, and a little plot of peach trees for New Year markets.

  The BMW coughed as she changed down to second gear. Two children, naked except for short black smocks, stared at her as she drove past.

  She stopped outside the house and turned off the engine.

  A pig rolled on its back in the front yard.

  Ruby got out and picked her way through the mud. Dew neh loh moh! Her Gucci sandals were getting ruined. The smell was worse than she remembered, cabbage and the ammonia stink of urine.

  Pitiful the way they live out here, Ruby thought. What shame that these people are my family. I have to stay here tonight, eat here. Might as well sleep with the pigs. But tonight I will be a good daughter, just this one day, I can do that.

  ***

  An old woman came out of the house. She was wearing samfu, the traditional black cotton pajamas and a wide-brimmed straw hat with black tassels. There was a baby in a sling around her neck. Ruby did not recognize her straight away. Wait no, she did not know her! It was Ah Zheng, her sister. Her younger sister.

  They stared at each other.

  “Ruby-ah,” she said.

  Ruby tried to smile. What do they do with the money I send? she thought. Not throw it all away on clothes, heya. The pig came up behind her and sniffed and she yelped in surprise. There was a time when she would not have been afraid of a pig.

  “Younger Sister,” she managed.

  A year to the day since she had been back. Ah Zheng had just been pregnant then, married to some buck-toothed coolie with mud between his toes. Father didn't even find her someone from the town. A crowded fifteenth-floor apartment in Shatin would have been better than this. Poor Ah Zheng. Her pretty little sister looked defeated and fat. In a moment she'll whip out a tit and feed the baby like any other Hakka peasant, Ruby thought.

  She heard a cry and her mother rushed out of the house. The black veil on her straw hat flapped as she ran. She almost knocked Ruby off her feet as she threw her arms around her and started crying and yelling. Her hands had mud on them and her tears and the dirt were on her frock. Now Ah Zheng was crying too.

  Ruby caught a fragment of all this reflected in the little mirror that hung outside the door to deflect evil spirits. Pretty business-type girl standing in the mud with a pig's snout up her Chanel frock and two coolie women pawing and snotting all over her. What if Eddie could see me now?

  “So long since you write, sui leung,” her mother said, using her childhood pet name for her, 'little dragon'. Ruby noticed that she had lost another tooth. “So long since you come to see us! Look at these big time Charlie clothes! Come inside, pay respect to your father. He is inside. Come, come!”

  Yes, she must kow tow to her father now. Why did she always do this to herself? Why did she always come back? Too late, she was here now.

  Chapter 22

  Her father sat in a hard-backed chair in the dark front room of the house where the family ate their food and received visitors on festival days. He looked like just any peasant in his white vest and baggy blue shorts but sat in his chair stiff and formal like an emperor.

  He waited for her to kow tow.

  Not going to do it, Ruby thought. Nobody kow tow now for half a century, maybe one good thing the communists do, they ban the kow tow. Stupid old man.

  “Father,” she said.

  “You look like a prostitute.”

  Make this effort, Ruby thought. For what, okay? To hear insults from an old peasant man. “A rich prostitute,” she said.

  A muscle worked in his jaw. “Do you have a husband yet?”

  “Do not have time for a husband.”

  “A woman is nothing until she has a husband.”

  “And then she is even less than nothing. That is why I do not get married, heya.”

  She looked around. What does he do with all the money I send him? There was little furniture, just an ancient mahogany table and four hard backed chairs. There were two threadbare silk carpets on the floor and an antique black and white television in a wooden cabinet in the corner.

  And the family altar, of course, the only thing he cared about. It was illuminated by a red light bulb and some sticks of incense smoldered under a blurred black and white photograph of Ruby's grandfather and grandmother, and an ancient sepia image of her great grandfather. Below their likenesses were three bright-painted porcelain figures, the gods of health, wealth and happiness, as well as a little clay earth god; they were surrounded by offerings of rice and a Johnnie Walker miniature that she had given him.

  “Look at my daughter,” her father said. “See how she looks, how she dresses. I don't know what sort of marriage I can make for her when she dresses like this.”

  Her mother was staring at her with a look of both scorn and admiration, as she had done all her life. Ah Zheng's baby started to cry. The pig urinated loudly in the doorway, the water splashing onto the stone porch in a thick yellow stream. Steam rose from the puddle.

  “Don't need a husband. Got my own life.”

  This blasphemy left him speechless. He rocked in his chair like a demented child. Her mother took her arm and led her into the kitchen.

  ***

  Ruby had brought presents; daypacks stuffed with toys for the children, a Rolex watch for her brother and her father, a pearl bracelet for her mother and for Ah Zheng. Her father watched the present-giving ceremony in stony silence. The gifts would not be opened in Ruby's presence. It was Chinese tradition; the recipient might appear disappointed, and the g
iver would lose face.

  Even my father will not be disappointed with a Rolex, never mind, Ruby thought.

  That evening the four men of the family - her father, two of her brothers and Ah Zheng's new husband - ate their dinner at the table, using the only four chairs. The women and children squatted on the floor. Ruby was not getting pig shit on her Chanel frock. She was hungry but the slop they were eating - pig's brains stewed in Chinese wine, with rice so glutinous they could have plugged the draughts in the walls with it - made her feel ill. She went outside and smoked a cigarette and tried to calm her nerves.

  The tonk-tonk of bullfrogs echoed across the flooded field.

  Cool up here at night. She got into her car, wound up all the windows. Soon her breath had fogged the glass. She heard the pig rooting in the soft earth behind the fence. Just drive away now, she said to herself. Leave this smelly awful place. Fill up the hot tub in the apartment and get these peasant smells off your skin. She wanted badly to fuck someone, anyone. Especially Eddie.

  They were talking about her in there, her father and her brothers and Kei-feng, Little Sister's husband. She didn't like him, didn't like the way he looked at her from under his dark eyebrows, as if he was peering at her from under a drain cover. She knew what he wanted. Perhaps she would torment him a little tonight, get a little revenge.

  ***

  When she went back inside they were all crowded around the television, watching a soap opera, The Feud Between Two Brothers. She knew one of the actors, had been to bed with him. Like to tell them all about that, about his little thing, then they are really shocked, she thought.

  The four men had the only chairs, her mother and her sister and all the children were still squatted on the floor. Ruby perched on the edge of the table and crossed her legs. The dress rode up her thigh. Kei-feng licked his lips and fidgeted in his chair.

  Cannot believe I come from this place, she thought, and if not for Eddie maybe I will still be here. Eddie showed me what to do to get money, taught me how to speak English, how to drive a car, how to deal white powder. Still be just a stupid peasant if not for Eddie.

  When the soap opera was finished her father stood up and announced that he was going to bed. Ruby glanced at her watch. Nine o'clock. She never went to bed before three.

  But no good but everyone must go to bed as well. There were eleven of them living in the house now, and only two bedrooms. Ruby was told she must sleep in the parlor with Little Sister, Kei-feng and their baby. One of her younger brothers shared the room also. Her mother and father slept in one bedroom, and her older brother, Ah Sung, slept in the other with his wife and three young children.

  Ah Zheng went to the old mahogany dresser in the corner and pulled out four bamboo sleeping mats and unrolled them on the floor. Kei-feng leered at her.

  Ruby went outside to sleep in the car. At least it was clean and Kei-feng could not try to grope her out there.

  Chapter 23

  It was a two mile walk to the cemetery, a long trek up the mountainside. Ruby's father went ahead alone, his thin sinewy legs carrying him faster than the others. He approached the festival as he had approached everything in his life, as part of a dour struggle. Ah Sung was behind, his three children dressed in their school uniform, white shirts and blue shorts. Ruby was last, she had changed out of her dress but her Calvin Klein jeans chafed and slowed her down.

  Little Sister hung back too, deliberately, the baby asleep in the sling around her neck. Several times Ruby looked around and caught her staring at her. Ruby knew there was something on her mind, and wondered when she was going to spit it out.

  Ruby stopped to catch her breath; in Hong Kong she never walked anywhere. Her side was hurting. She looked back the way they had come. Below her, Shatin looked grey and drab in the overcast. They were not alone on the road. The whole population of Shatin was out, making the same pilgrimage up the hillside.

  Ah Zheng squatted down by the side of the road to feed the baby. Ruby could not imagine feeding a baby like this, disgusting! Too selfish, Ruby-ah! she said to herself. You will have a wet nurse and an amah.

  “You ever get letters from Elder Sister?” Ah Zheng asked her suddenly.

  Elder Sister had been born twelve years before Ruby, a tiger just like her. She had gone to England with her husband years ago, and had never come back. “Got one letter,” Ruby said. “Very rich lady now. Husband has big shop. Live in a big house, got nice car. Got a lot of face.”

  Ah Zheng seemed dismayed to hear this good news. She stroked her baby's head.

  “You happy, Little Sister?” Ruby asked her.

  “Don't have time to think about happy.”

  “Kei-feng a good husband?”

  “Woman cannot live without husband,” Ah Zheng said, and Ruby heard her father's voice from yesterday.

  “This one can.” Ruby lit a cigarette. Should have been the daughter of a big businessman, she thought. Should have gone to fancy school in England, so I learned how to talk good English and not have all this peasant superstition in my life.

  “Maybe you go to England when the gwailos leave?” Ah Zheng asked her.

  “Maybe.”

  “You were always the little dragon. Not afraid, not like me.” She had her head down, squeezing milk from her breast. The baby was wriggling and restless. “You rich, Ruby-ah?”

  Ruby bent over to whisper to her. “You know that man who plays the mandarin on The Feud Between Two Brothers?”

  Ah Zheng's eyes went wide. “You know him?” she said.

  Ruby smiled and made the universal sign for coupling, circling the thumb and forefinger of one hand, and moving the index finger of the other rapidly in and out. She laughed.

  Ah Zheng stared at her, her face pale. “You always double lucky, Ruby-ah.”

  For a moment Ah Zheng let down her guard. There she sat, in the dirt at the side of the road, her baby sucking her dry, and she looked up at Ruby and for a moment it was obvious to Ruby what she was really thinking.

  My little sister hates me, for being everything she dreams about. She is wishing I was dead.

  ***

  Crowds swarmed around the flower stalls outside the porcelain gates. The cemetery faced the water, the pleasing aspect of Tolo Harbor, good feng-shui. Because of this, the contented dead in heaven would continue to promote the fortunes of their still-living descendants on earth.

  The half-moon graves had been cut into the hillside in steep terraces, adorned with black and white photographs of the deceased, tall earthenware jars contained the family bones.

  Ching Ming was one of the most important festivals of the year. If the dead did not receive proper care and attention they could bring a lot of bad luck to their children and grandchildren. So whole families flocked to cemeteries all over the Territories to tend the family graves

  Her father led the way around the hillside to grandfather's grave. It had been neatly tended during the year, her father paid cumshaw to the groundsmen to make sure it was done. Old grandfather should be double happy, Ruby thought, the surrounding graves were all clogged with weeds. Ah Sung's two oldest boys produced trowels from the day packs Ruby had bought them and began to pick at any weeds that had escaped the groundsmen's attention.

  Her father dug a little hole in the middle of the grave with his fingers, sweeping the earth to the side and reached into the canvas bag on his shoulder. Inside was the paper burial money he would light as a sacrifice to his father's spirit.

  They all squatted around the grave as he pushed the money into a little pile and lit a match. He touched the flame to the paper and the banknotes began to crinkle black and burn.

  Ruby felt the blood drain out of her face.

  The money was not the cheap stuff you could buy in the shops, fifty million dollar notes drawn on the Bank of Hell. It was real Hong Kong dollars, thick rolls of twenty and fifty dollar and red hundred dollar notes.

  Now she knew where her remittances had gone.

  Her father
looked up at her, gloating. She watched little ripples of heat rise into the air as her dollars crumbled into white ash. “I send some of the money to your sister in England,” he went on, 'the rest I give to your ancestors and ask them to forgive you for what you have done.”

  So this is what I get for coming home, she thought, he takes away my face in front of my whole family, even in front of my ancestors. But she kept her blackjack face. Not give you the satisfaction old man, she thought, will not cry.

  Her mother took out a little kerosene stove and cooked some rice and fatty pork dumplings on the grave, and they ate the picnic in silence. Around them, other families chattered and shouted and laughed while they shared a meal with their ancestors. Not us, Ruby Wen thought. Grandfather double lucky he is dead and not have to listen to us bicker and fight with each other no more.

  Afterwards they left a little rice wine and a pork dumpling for the spirit of her grandfather.

  “The dogs will eat it,” Ruby said to her father.

  He ignored her.

  Her mother picked up the burial urn. When they got home she would take out the bones and wash them and polish them and then leave them to dry in the sun. Father went back down the hillside, the rest of the family trudged after him. Only Ruby's mother stayed behind, pasting long strips of red paper to the grave to show the proper ceremony had been performed.

  She spared a glance at her daughter. When she spoke her voice was not unkind. “I know you like your new life, Ruby-ah, but you must not forget the past. When history dies, the future has no children.”

  Ruby watched the others disappear among the crowds on the mountainside. She knew she would not follow them. She scooped up a little pile of ash from the grave and threw it into the wind.