The Daughters of Henry Wong

by Harrison Young

  “I didn’t know pots had qi,” I said.

  “No, qi is energy,” he said, “…as of course you know. But objects have a destiny, which is not unconnected to their quality. You should understand that concept, Wendy.”

  “Yes,” I said, not being sure. “My grandmother’s house in Boston is full of prodigious objects: whale jaws, head-hunters’ spears. A clay mask from New Guinea fell off the wall once and hit her cat. The cat was old, you understand, but it did die within the week.”

  I was partly making up that last bit. The cat survived. I was being facetious because our conversation had made me uncomfortable. Cedric sometimes put a spotlight on one’s own failings, albeit with courteous indirection, and I wasn’t sure where he was headed.

  “Your grandmother is a religious person?” he asked.

  “Um…no. But she has good qi, I think.”

  “So you get your destiny from her,” he said. For a moment, it sounded like he wanted to hear more about her, but he dropped the subject.

  What I had wound up being interested in, having surveyed the exhibition, was a two-chambered teapot. By closing off certain holes on the inside of the handle you could pour from either one. I put in a bid. I didn’t want to go to the actual auction. If I got it, I got it.

  “It must be difficult doing Henry’s job,” said Cedric as we walked to lunch. “I’m not actually doing Henry’s job,” I said. “Not yet.”

  “Henry never rests, you know.”

  It occurred to me, feeling uncomfortable again, that perhaps I was doing too good a job of appearing unconcerned.

  “Of course,” he went on, “you have the inestimable Catherine. She will show you what requires attention.” It was typical of him that he knew Henry’s secretary’s name. I once told Cedric he was the politest man in Hong Kong. “I have the time,” he’d said.

  “You might even move into Henry’s office,” Cedric continued.

  “Phyllis would be unhappy,” I said. “And wouldn’t it be presumptuous of me to move?”

  “It might look presumptuous to outsiders, but Catherine will know otherwise. And it may be time to part with Phyllis Kwong. How did she come to you, by the way?”

  “Someone recommended her to Amanda.”

  “A friend such as Mercury Chao?”

  “I never asked.”

  I wanted to ask Cedric another question but just then we were arriving at the doors of the Club, and as there were men coming out whom Cedric needed to greet, the moment passed.

  The Club building, I reflected as I waited for Cedric, is perhaps the ugliest structure on the island. Its predecessor, erected in 1897, looked exactly as a colonial gentlemen’s club should have – I’d seen the old photographs – but for some reason it was torn down in 1977. The current building is less exuberant than the new architecture of Beijing and Shanghai, but totally graceless. Worst of all its features is the stupid little balcony above the front door – as if the president of the club periodically read proclamations to a crowd around the War Memorial in the square below.

  Beijing had known how to deal with the War Memorial. They didn’t tear it down. They just stopped flying any flags. So now there’s this plinth in the middle of the lawn and no one notices it. Beijing handled the whole “Handover” that way. The coat of arms came off Government House and the Queen came off the coinage, but Tung Chee Hwa, the first “chief executive,” never bothered to move in, and no street names were changed.

  Beijing refused to call it a “handover.” It was “the resumption of the exercise of sovereignty,” indicating that Britain had never really possessed Hong Kong. They’d just occupied it – same as the Japanese did during the war. An unpleasant episode was now over. There’d been a terrific fireworks display in the harbor on July the first, but after that it was business as usual.

  Amanda wasn’t happy with business as usual. She wanted me to fire Song. I’d gone in to see her that morning while she was having breakfast in the enormous bed we no longer shared. She started by complaining about the stream of servants Song was always hiring and letting go. “You know they’ve got to be illegals,” she said. “She’s extorting whatever salary father pays them. I suppose you’re giving her the money for them now. That’s why they leave as soon as they can.

  “And she gives me the creeps,” Amanda went on. “You never hear her coming, in those kung-fu shoes she wears. I think she listens to my phone conversations. I hear clicks on the line.”

  “Has it never occurred to you that Beijing would quite naturally tap our phones?” It had never occurred to me either, before I said it.

  “Because we’re rich?”

  “Because Henry never kowtows.”

  “Oh.” I could see her rehearsing the past week’s indiscretions in her mind and deciding Beijing would not care what she’d said to Orchid about Iris’s ball gown. “Anyway, she’s probably practicing witchcraft down in that room she lives in below the kitchen. I don’t even like to look down those stairs.”

  “Is that why you never go into the kitchen?”

  Amanda had the grace to smile, but went on gamely. “Anyway, she’s a servant. I don’t see why we have to keep her.”

  “What does Henry say about it?”

  “Oh, I could never talk to him about it. He never parts with anything. But he’s dead, Wendy. Mercury explained it all to me that first day. He probably just got knocked overboard, and the boat sailed on out of reach. It’s crazy the way he insisted on going out alone. You should have spoken to him about it years ago. He might have listened to you. He’s never listened to me in my whole life.”

  “I prefer to believe that Henry is alive,” I told her. “I’m not ready to face the alternative, either emotionally or tactically.”

  She waved her hand, as if to dismiss my concerns. “Just get rid of Song.”

  “No.”

  “You’re worse than father. Go away. Get out of my bedroom.”

  As I left, her mention of Mercury echoed softly in my brain. Had he been the one who recommended Phyllis? There wasn’t much I could do about it if she was a spy. And since Henry could see around corners, his antennae would have quivered the moment a spy showed up. Perhaps there was more than one explanation for my undemanding schedule and for the committee papers that sometimes seemed to be out of date. Henry had probably just smiled to himself and fed disinformation back to Mercury. That was probably what I should do about Phyllis myself: move into Henry’s office and ask Catherine to give her some extremely boring work to do that would keep her away from me.

  I comforted myself with the thought that if I had been stupid about my secretary, Mercury was being stupid about his horses. As Cedric had once told me, Mercury had the vanity of many very fortunate people. He thought that because he was lucky he had to be smart. He thought he was a brilliant judge of horseflesh, for example, whereas people in the business were selling him promising colts at reduced prices because they knew he would eventually become chairman of the Jockey Club and they wanted to know him, to be able to smile and joke whenever they ran into each other. “Some day,” Cedric had said, “Mercury will be asked for a favor by someone in a bad suit whom he barely remembers. He will make a face that says, ‘I think not,’ expecting that to be the end of it. ‘Now, Mercury,’ the person will say to him, ‘I sold you Frisky Biscuit for a tenth of what he was worth.’ I’d warn him, but he would never listen.”

  Like much of what Cedric said, it was a warning. That seems clear in retrospect. You and Mercury have a lot in common, he was telling me, including a connection with Amanda. Mercury thinks he is clever because of his social position. You think you are clever because of your brains. He is stupid. You are immature. For you there is at least hope. But I should not have to remind you that he has history with your wife.

  “Inestimable Catherine” kept popping up in our conversation, which was another thing that made me squirm. Early in my tenure as Executive Vice President of Pearl River Bank – ridiculous title – she had been
helpful and friendly. She’d brought in a stack of invitations Henry had received and we’d gone through them to see which functions I might attend on behalf of the Bank. There was one for an official reception in Beijing, the kind Mercury loved to go to, and which Mosquito always reported on.

  “I think not,” I’d said.

  “You will go into China sometimes, though, won’t you?” she’d said.

  “I have and I will,” I said, “but without much enthusiasm. I find the newness quite depressing.”

  “So do I,” she’d said. “It is everywhere now.”

  I was surprised by so personal a revelation. Her words seemed to me to convey a great deal, and in time I discovered that they did. She had an appreciation of Chinese culture that went beyond custom and superstition. She had traveled widely in China, and had seen a lot of buildings and gardens and porcelain. At the risk of being overdramatic, it is fair to say that she had a tragic sensibility, which she knew I shared.

  But I’d spoiled everything within a week. I received a Credit Committee memo that made little sense. I called in the officers who had signed it and subjected them to the sort of grilling I was used to administering – and enduring – in Harvard seminars. Intellectual combat, a bit of sarcasm, Wendy generally coming out of it pretty well. The Bank officers in question had been stoic, apologized, slunk away. Catherine had overheard. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me. She must have said something to Henry, because the next afternoon he made a roundabout speech to the effect that banks want employees with more obedience than imagination. There being such a gulf between our positions – she was only a secretary, but Henry’s secretary, and by reason of her temperament and cultivation my cosmic superior – I didn’t know how to sort the matter out. I imagined various conversations. “I expect you overheard me…” “I know I shouldn’t have…” But in every scenario she just kept looking at me with quiet disgust. So I never spoke to her. Facing Catherine was now part of my job description. Though I didn’t like putting it into words, I needed to grow up. Cedric was delivering that message.

  Song came into my bedroom quite early on the second Monday morning of my tactical retreat to the Castle. She brought a tray with coffee and the Chinese-language newspapers. I did not usually have breakfast in bed, so I assumed there was something in the papers she wanted me to see. I had had a restless night, and had gotten up to shed my sweaty nightshirt. When she came in I was sitting up in bed, watching the day break outside the window.

  Song walked over and put the tray on my lap. We were inches apart and I was naked from the waist up. I was prepared to be embarrassed but she did not seem to be.

  “Want light?” she asked in Mandarin, reaching for the lamp.

  “Yes, please.”

  She clicked the switch and I could see the headline: “Zhang’s Challenge.”

  “You big man,” said Song, studying me.

  “Too big,” I said, thinking of my exercise bicycle and the pounds I should lose.

  “How come you no sleep with Missy?” she said. “You sick?”

  “No, Song. Not sick.”

  “Good,” she said. “Bad time be sick.”

  Song closed the door behind her, leaving me in a cloud or erotic thoughts. If tomorrow morning, when she came in, I happened to be out of bed and naked, would she object? Probably not. Would she do whatever I asked? She probably would. Best not to think about that.

  I picked up one of the papers. It told me what I thought it might. Zhang Hai Ming was going to court to try to get Henry’s proxy revoked. Under normal circumstances it would be several years before Henry was declared dead, but the Julia hadn’t shown up, and the explanation was obvious, Zhang claimed. He wanted control of his shares, at least in the interim, “in case there is a bid for the bank.”

  I wasn’t sure what Song was telling me. “Get your shit together” was part of the message – to use the technical military language I had learned from my grandfather, who had graduated from The Citadel, Charleston’s version of the United States Military Academy, and had been a peacetime lieutenant. But about Zhang? On the surface, Zhang was clearly an opponent registering a vote of no confidence in me. But what was Song saying by handing me the paper, which I would have read on my own within the next hour? Were she and Zhang in league? Or was she telling me I’d need to deal with him and she could help?

  Zhang’s announcement also confronted me once more with the question of what Henry actually was up to. So after Amanda had gone off to yet another lunch, I sent Song on an errand and walked down the hall to Henry’s room. It was at the opposite end of the Castle from the front door. There was no reason for the servant-painters to notice what I did, but I waited until they seemed occupied. I’d made a list on the margin of the newspaper, just to get my brain working: cancer, blackmail, problems at the bank, Henry about to be unmasked as a spy or a scoundrel, and suicide by drowning, provoked by one of the above.

  The room would have been designed to be the master bedroom. It was large and beautifully proportioned, with French doors opening onto a well-maintained terrace. I went out onto it, and looked around. More jungle, a glimpse of the Peak Tram, which ran alongside our property, no steps or ladder to the ground. The room itself was sparsely furnished. A single bed, made up with sheets and blankets, but no spread and only one pillow. A bedside table with a lamp and a glass of flowers on it. I realized Song must be replacing them every day. There was also a chest of drawers, with several of the boys’ drawings on top, leaning against the mirror. A chair suitable for sitting in to put on shoes. Nothing on the walls. No pictures, that is. I realized I was unthinkingly looking for a crucifix. Not that either. Henry made an annual contribution to the Anglican cathedral, St. John’s, but he never went to church. His room was like the cell of a monk, though – a charismatic monk to be sure, but one who returned to simplicity each night.

  I sat down on the bed to think, and immediately wished I hadn’t. Song would notice. I reminded myself that I had good reason to be there. I was in command now. It was appropriate that I take inventory. I opened the drawer of the bedside table, and quickly closed it. Far down the hall I had heard the heavy front door click open and then close. Song would have gone into her kitchen first. I slipped out of the room, got into the library and had a newspaper opened before she appeared.

  “Teapot,” she announced.

  It took me a moment to remember the two-chambered vessel on which I had left a bid. “It’s all right?”

  “Live in pantry,” she said in telegraphic Mandarin.

  And pistol live in Henry’s bedside table, I said to myself.

  “Want lunch?” she said.

  “I will go to the club,” I said. I almost asked if she’d brought back a copy of Mosquito, but stopped myself. I didn’t want Song to know I cared about what it would say. I suppose I still believed she could be deceived.

  Owning a pistol in Hong Kong is illegal, so Henry must have been afraid of someone. Using a pistol is easier than drowning, which tended to rule out suicide.

  “Do you know where Henry has gone, Song?”

  “Maybe visit someone.”

  There had also been, in the drawer of the bedside table, in addition to the pistol, a piece of stiff letter paper with two characters on it in Henry’s bold hand. The Chinese have a reverence for writing that has no equivalent in the West. As recently as a century ago, paper with characters on it was supposed to be burned, rather than thrown away. With Henry’s encouragement, I had become a student of calligraphy, practicing standing up at the table he bought for my office at the bank. Calligraphy is artistry with a brush, but also “soul,” as a jazz musician would say. A man’s whole nature should flow down his arm on to the paper. Splatter can outrank elegance – as it did on the paper in Henry’s drawer. “Su Ling,” the characters proclaimed – the name I had once overheard Zhang Hai Ming pronounce in Henry’s library.

  7

  It was an ugly day. A warm wet wind stung my eyes, bearing just
enough rain to make me hurry and break into a sweat, but not enough to clean the air. I’d signed Sam’s fee letter and followed his advice to look unworried, but staying home was making me jumpy. Whatever he thought I’d accomplish by not coming to the office, I decided I had accomplished it. I’d taken the Peak Tram and walked the remaining eight or ten blocks – past I.M. Pei’s elegant Bank of China building, threading my way through the barricades that everywhere in Hong Kong direct pedestrians around endless roadwork and construction, then down narrow Bank Street between what was once the Bank of China’s Art Deco headquarters and Norman Foster’s ultra-modern Hongkong Bank headquarters, and past “Stephen” and “Stitt,” the bronze lions in front of the open area above which Sir Norman’s inexplicably successful masterpiece squats.

  The lions are named after early chief managers of the Bank, by the way. I accumulate useless facts like that. And I think he’s Lord Foster now.

  Hong Kong is a slow-motion collision of wild green jungle and man-made ugliness. The descent from Wong Castle to Central always reminds me of that. At sea level, and for some way up the slope, there are forests of thirty-story apartment buildings, clad in bathroom tiles. But look up at the fragment of sky above you, and a brown kite will float by, searching for lizards and mice. Above May Road, the vines and trees that hide Wong Castle take over, but man-made watercourses and nullas – drains that are supposed to prevent mudslides – lurk beneath the foliage, channeling the rain so as to prevent mudslides and, not incidentally, permit additional construction as the land is parceled out to voracious developers.

  Beijing governs Hong Kong, as the British governed most of their Empire, through an elite they partially found and partially create. Cedric taught me this, being careful not to imply that he includes himself in this elite. The bureaucratic segment of the elite commits regular aesthetic outrages, in the process enriching the property-owning segment beyond any conceivable need. The general population, or at least the portion of it that writes letters to newspapers and attends protest marches, objects to the destruction of Hong Kong’s heritage, whether natural or simply old. And Hong Kong’s British-trained officials, implacable as a glacier, go on unnecessarily paving paths through country parks, obliterating quiet neighborhoods where old people gossip and cats sun themselves on windowsills, converting shards of history into landfill.