by Winfred Wong
Son of The Tank Man
A novel
BY WINFRED WONG
Text copyright © 2018 Wong Chun Wing
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Son of The Tank Man
COPYRIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A note from the author
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
My name is Ashton. I am now living in a peaceful and glorious place which is known as the house and has been living here for nearly two months – I know it should've been The House, but according to the words displayed on a pearly gate set before the house, the house should be the official name of it. In this place, we hardly have to worry about anything here and we can do whatever we want freely. There's only one rule. We are strictly forbidden from doing anything that would make other people's freedom shrink. Whoever break this rule will be exiled from this place permanently. But other than this, we can do all sort of things we wish, like getting married in a pond that would compel you to blurt out everything that comes to your mind, playing chess with a talking tiger and actually end up losing, inventing new games and challenging your friend to a ‘duel’, and whatever you can think of.
The only bad thing about this place is that not everyone is allowed to get through the pearly gate as it is so bulky – it's literally the combined size of two aircraft carriers or even bigger – that only a man called Gradius can heave it open. And in order to persuade him to open it for you, you have to answer a question he raises, just one, and it's usually a question that you have asked yourself once. And if you are able to come up with an answer that he finds ‘good’ enough, he will not only open the gate for you, but also he will help you retrieve one thing you love from the human world as a Gift he gives you.
But of course, my story doesn't begin in a place this beautiful. And I can still remember there was a gust of howling wind coming through a window on that morning when my teeth were chattering with cold and when the shivering began to spread down to my toes.
At that time, I was perched comfortably on my second-hand leather sofa, the most costly thing I'd ever bought other than a phone, in my stuffy, gloomy living room, 200 square feet, with a glass of hot water on the arm of it, listening to the speech given by Prince Felix yesterday night.
“President Vincent Hobert, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen. Today is a day of celebration, not sorrow. Today is not only the New Year's Eve, but also the day we finally attain freedom. This important and special ceremony marks the beginning of a new year and a new phase of Port Aroma's history and also a major step forward in the history of mankind. In a few moments, the responsibilities and decision-making power of this government will be passed on to the people of Port Aroma, and the government will thereby be dissolved upon the arrival of the New Year. It's a great change, but at the same time, a very essential step toward freedom.”
It was one of those chilly winter mornings I hated the most because the bitter coldness of the still air made it very difficult for me to wake up. I had to force myself to crawl out of my quilt immediately after I lifted up my eyelids – I would've used two toothpicks to keep my eyelids open so that I wouldn't have a chance to fall back asleep again, but I would do it only if I weren't able to sense pain – despite its willingness to stick close in order to make sure I wouldn't be late for work. It wasn't like I had never been late before, but on that day, I was entrusted with a special task to pick up someone.
“Switch off the radio. It's seven o'clock on the first day of the new year,” my sister, lying on the upper bunk of a bunk bed, which the lower bunk belonged to me, situated to the left of the sofa, whimpered in a lazy but coarse tone of voice, which was quite the exact opposite to her usual lovely voice she'd adopt when she was chatting with some other boys, and it did divert my attention away from the radio for a moment.
Anyone else would have realized her disgruntlement, but it was the last thing on my mind. Perhaps I was too zeroed in on the radio, a habit that was deemed as a little peculiar in that era, which I had copied from my mum when I was little and had never ceased doing after then. My sister and Brian, my colleague and my best friend, had always asked me what was so intriguing about this tiny little box, but I never managed to come up with a decent reply. I guessed maybe I was just keen on listening to people babbling and prattling non-stop.
“It's the firework display!” I said when a sound of explosion drew my attention back to the radio again.
“Turn it off! You idiot!” she protested in a sober tone and heaved out a long sigh, probably because I showed no intention of moving at all. “I am going to come down and hit you in the face, you idiot.”
I bet she hated me as much as I hated the coldness at that time because, if I remember correctly, that was the first time in my life I had ignored her, although I would say that our sister-brother relationship had never been bad; we are just somehow used to and both silently agreed to talking in a way that it would give others who don't know us well enough a wrong impression about our relationship. And to make it worse, it was the first day of a new year, which to her, was supposed to be flawless.
“Wait, let me hear his whole speech.”
“Give me that ten thousand dollars you owe me, or you turn it off!” she shouted. “Turn it off now!”
She sounded like she was on the edge of falling apart, but it didn't concern me.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I should like on behalf of President Vincent Hobert and of everyone who served in the government to express our thanks, admiration, affection and good wishes to all the people of Port Aroma, and to pay tribute to the people of Port Aroma themselves for all that they have achieved in the last century and a half. Without them, the miraculous rapid economic growth over the last few decades would have never been possible. And, at this precise moment, I hereby declare the dissolution of the government. I – ”
I would've been able to see that coming if not for the brain-freezing coldness. But being too concentrated on listening, I didn't even realize she had already climbed down the ladder from the upper bunk and by the time I realized, she had already thumbed off my favorite matchbox radio with two antennas atop, which I had been using ever since we were forced to immigrate to this country, I placed on the dining table in the exact center of the living room, the best position for the best signal.
“What are you doing!? Don't you want to know what happened at the ceremony?”
“What are you doing!? Don't act like you care now. You didn't even cast your vote last year!” she said, as she was striding back to the bunk bed.
“Unsympathetic alcoholic,” I murmured, then retorted. “Don't ask me to pick you up and take you home the next time you are drunk! And just to let you know, I will be leaving this country soon.”
“What? What do you mean? Leaving this country?” she said, on her way up the ladder to her bed, and by a twist of fate, bumped her forehead into the corner of a framed photo hanging on the wall depicting our father standing in front of a line of tanks, which was widely considered as one of the most influential images of all time,
yet I couldn't disagree more for what it had evolved into recently – one of the tokens of freedom greatly honored by a bunch of hypocrites, who called themselves freedom-pursuers and had everything to do with the dissolution of the government.
I was never a freedom-pursuer myself, or more precisely, I was dead against them as described by Brian, yet a part of me always found it awkward for him to say that, probably because he always held up to his principle of being politically neutral himself. Never did I hear him express himself in regard to anything political. But the main point was I really doubted if a politically neutral man could understand why I was against them. It wasn't like I couldn't understand the significance of freedom, but they had gone too far by voting to have the government dissolved just because of that.
“I mean I'm going to leave this country and start a new life at somewhere else, probably dad's home country. I miss the food there badly.”
She twisted her face and resumed going up. “Why would you want to go back to that uncivilized country where dad was shot dead? He sacrificed his life for us and the people. Don't tell me you've already forgotten what he had told us on the phone before he passed away. He told mum to get us out of there because the situation was only going to get a lot worse, which turned out to be true, and it was even worse than what he had predicted. And he warned us never to return to that place. He worried about us even he got a bullet in his stomach.”
“Yeah, very nice of you to remind me of that. I've already forgotten he was the hero, The Tank Man,” I said. “And that's been decades ago. Just get over the past, will you?”
“I don't understand you. Who would want to leave this beautiful country while everyone is looking forward to the big change?” She looked at me and tilted her head right against the wall like what a curious dog would do when she got to her bed.
“Beautiful, hum, beautiful, what a beautiful country,” I repeated and reached out for the radio. “Perhaps I just don't see it that way.”
“Don't you dare touch it!” she barked, and I drew my limb back with pursed lips, not because I thought she was more important than listening to the radio, but because she would definitely continue to yell aloud had I switched it on again.
“But the people there will discriminate you. Racism is entrenched in their society. And I have no doubt about this.” She lowered her anxious voice this time.
“They won't. I was born there.”
“Let me remind you of another fact now because, apparently, you have also forgotten your mother is from Europe, and we were not issued a permanent resident card just because of it.”
“You don't have to remind me of everything. I am well aware of my identity, and I've already got myself a visa. Approved easily.”
Then I remember she rolled her eyes in frustration before speaking again, and there was the tiniest bit of sarcasm in her voice. “Well, it seems nothing can stop you then, Mr. Son of The Tank Man. When are you planning to leave? By the way, are you going to visit the Door of Heavenly Peace?”
“I don't know yet. I don't have a schedule yet. But no. I am not going back there, even though it's a tourist spot now.”
Then she pulled out a dubious face, one that made me think she didn't believe me when I said ‘I don't know yet’, and after a quiet minute of pondering, she said, “Are you still angry at what happened to you? Your vote? Is it the reason why you want to leave?”
I had never felt worse when someone saw through me with something like that, something like a Jedi mind trick. Quietly hissed to give vent to my boiling discontent engendered by the fact she reminded me of the reason why I couldn't go to cast my vote, I had to draw in a deep breath through my nostrils in order to contain it because I knew I cared about it so much, so much that on that night I had wept overnight until my tears had dampened half of my spongy pillow only because of the unenviable outcome of the plebiscite, which was passed in favor of the dissolution of the government by a ratio of 4:1, a landslide victory for the obstinate freedom-pursuers, who didn't have the foresight to envision what would happen when the maintenance of order in the country was broken and the so-called freedom they had been striving for became dominant.
“What would you have voted if you had the chance?” my sister went on, disrupting my thought.
That wasn't the first time she asked me about it, but I just didn't feel like answering her because I knew what she had voted – this magically didn't have any impact on our relationship, I basically just accepted it with a nod when she told me about her decision – and so, I darted a quick sidelong glance at her, stood up, quickly swilled down the glass of warm water like I would do every morning, put the empty glass next to the radio like I would do every morning, grabbed my old-fashioned laptop bag lying horizontally on the sofa like I would do every morning and headed for the door, knowing it's almost about time to go if I wanted to be punctual.
“Hey, talk to me,” she said, her impenetrable blue eyes fixed on me with her head sticking out of the railing of her upper bunk.
And I pulled open the pale yellow door in front of me and said, “You know what, I don't want to talk about it now because I am going to miss the bus, which is very undesirable, if I don't go now, and if I miss it, I will probably lose my job. So, maybe next time, and one more thing, I don't owe you nothing.”
“Hey, I need my ‘fe-fee’ today!”
I could hear her clearly, but I then instantly hopped out into the dingy, narrow corridor that stretched wider to the right, and I walked down it slowly until I skidded to a halt in front of a decrepit elevator door and jabbed the down button. Then I glimpsed at my mechanical watch featuring a navy blue leather strap on my left wrist, which was the ‘fe-fee’ she was talking about; she called it ‘fe-fee’ because when it ticked, it sounded more like it's ‘fe-feeing’ and she loved it, though this morning, when she came home, drunk, she almost smashed it against the corner of the dining table and that's why it was on my wrist now. It wasn't like I didn't want to give it back to her – it was something like a heirloom mum gave her a day before she died of cancer – but I would probably be late for work had I stayed arguing with her.
We lived on the twenty-fourth floor of an apartment with no balcony, one bedroom, and only one porthole-like window, and there was only one elevator for the entire thirty-story high-rise, which was erected straightly in front of an abandoned pier built on the seashore where I had spent most of my childhood running around and having fun with my friends like Brian and Mike, albeit I never found the waiting mundane. To me, the creaky journey downward in the elevator had always been like an express train bound for Shangri-La because the air outside wasn't as stuffy as at home and the outside world was properly governed until that day, but on that day, I felt it was more like a one-way ticket to hell.
My heart thumped, and I froze completely when the elevator door slid open with an absurdly quick speed like an athlete sprinting. There were three people inside, two men, probably friends because they were both champing on a ham sandwich like horses munching on hay in a stable, and a nice-looking young woman dressed formally with a silky, long white dress that unfortunately accentuated her paunch. Seeing that I was as still as a rock after the door was open, they all had their eyebrows drawn down and stared at me in a peculiar way, with disdains sparkling in their eyes, and I could tell they thought I was wasting their valuable time just by their looks.
“Good morning, Ashton,” the woman said, as she tucked away her dissatisfaction behind a forced smile smacked of hypocrisy, though it was as rigid as it could be. “Are you coming in?”
I bet she didn't really care about me going in or not when she asked because her middle finger had never separated from the door close button since the door had begun sliding open, not to mention that she had never actively started a conversation with me before. It was apparent that all she desired was not to miss the bus to go to work, just like everyone else.
And by now, you might have already been wondering why on earth we were all rus
hing to work on the first day of a new year, which was supposed to be a holiday. The answer is simple. There wasn't a thing called holiday back then. The foundation of the rapid economic growth mentioned by the Prince was entirely based on people's perspiration, but that's something I'll need a whole different book in order to explain. Anyway, my point here is that we, the citizens of Port Aroma or simply, workaholics, had always been in a rush all our life and we hated it when someone got in our way.
“No, thanks. I'll just wait for the next elevator,” I replied in the politest tone possible to point out her insincerity when she was repeatedly pushing the door close button like a woodpecker drumming against a metal roof, her smile never faded until the door began closing after a brief delay, and I had just enough time to finish my sentence, yet just before the door closed, I could see there was a frayed yellow ribbon, the most popular token of freedom, tied to her right wrist.
Found myself alone in the corridor again, the raw distress kindled by my intense distrust for the state of anarchy, which defined by the absence of a government, resurfaced because I couldn't even imagine what it would be like walking down a street after the government had dissolved. Would there be armed gangsters randomly beating up innocent people on the street? Would robbery and kidnapping become everyday problems? Would I be able to make it to the office safely? I was afraid, my stomach was churning at the thought of it, and furious at the same time, purely because the freedom-pursuers had voted for destroying this country without even realizing. And I believed ignorance was my biggest enemy at that time.
But soon, when images of the three people in the elevator suddenly flashed through my mind, I figured it would probably be just another day at the office as they were all acting like it was, at least none of them were armed with anything more dangerous than a sandwich, and such thought helped ease my nervousness. So, gingerly, I pressed the down button again, and when the elevator door slid open, I ventured into it. The journey downward was quick, less than fifteen seconds, and to make up for lost time, I dashed out quickly and exited the building through a poorly-lit narrow hallway beautified with a sprinkling of ashes at the exact moment when the door opened.