by Kevin Kwan
“Wait a minute, just wait a minute—I’m the captain of this ship. I’m the one who decides whether we call for medical evacuations. Who’s the doctor below? Let me go see the patient,” the captain gruffly demanded.
“Captain, with all due respect, we don’t have a moment to waste. You can come look at him all you want, but right now, I just need the coordinates from you.”
“But who are you speaking to? Macau Coast Guard? This is highly irregular protocol. Let me talk to them,” the captain sputtered in confusion.
Nick put on his most condescendingly posh accent—honed from all his years at Balliol—and glowered at the captain. “Do you have any idea who my friend is? He’s Colin Khoo, heir to one of the biggest fortunes on the planet.”
“Don’t get snooty with me, young chap!” the captain bellowed. “I don’t care who your friend is, there are maritime emergency protocols I MUST FOLLOW, AND—”
“AND RIGHT NOW, my friend is below deck on your ship, quite possibly hemorrhaging to death, because you won’t let me call for an emergency evacuation!” Nick interrupted, raising his voice to match the captain’s. “Do you want to take the blame for this? Because you will, I can guarantee that. I’m Nicholas Young, and my family controls one of the world’s largest shipping conglomerates. Please just give me the fucking coordinates now, or I promise you I’ll personally see to it that you won’t even be able to captain a piece of Styrofoam after today!”
Twenty minutes later, as Bernard sat in the diamond-shaped Jacuzzi on the uppermost deck while a half-Portuguese girl tried to swallow both of his testicles under the bubbly water jets, a white Sikorsky helicopter appeared out of the sky and began to descend onto the yacht’s helipad. At first he thought he was hallucinating from all the booze. Then he saw Nick, Mehmet, and Alistair emerge onto the helipad, holding a stretcher on which lay Colin, tightly bundled up in one of the yacht’s silk Etro blankets. “What the fuck is happening?” he said, getting out of the water, pulling on his Vilebrequin trunks and rushing up the steps toward the helipad.
He ran into Lionel in the corridor. “I was just coming to tell you—Colin is feeling horribly sick. He’s been doubled over in pain for the past hour and throwing up uncontrollably. We think it’s alcohol poisoning, from all of his boozing over the past two days. We’re getting him off the boat and straight to the hospital.”
They ran to the helicopter, and Bernard looked in at Colin, who was groaning softly, his face locked in a grimace. Alistair sat beside him, mopping his forehead with a damp towel.
“But, but, why the hell didn’t anyone tell me sooner? I had no idea Colin was feeling this sick. Kan ni na! Now your family is going to blame me. And then it’s going to get into all the gossip columns, all the papers,” Bernard complained, suddenly becoming alarmed.
“Nothing’s going to leak. No gossip, no newspapers,” Lionel said solemnly. “Colin doesn’t want you to get any blame, which is why you have to listen to me now—we’re going to take him to the hospital, and we won’t tell anyone in the family what’s happening. I’ve had alcohol poisoning before—Colin just needs to get detoxed and rehydrated. He’ll be fine in a few days. You and the other guys need to keep pretending that nothing’s wrong and keep partying, okay? Don’t call the family, don’t say a word to anyone, and we’ll see you back in Singapore.”
“Okay, okay,” Bernard nodded rapidly, feeling relieved. Now he could get back to his blow job without feeling guilty.
As the helicopter lifted off from the yacht, Nick and Alistair began laughing uncontrollably at the figure of Bernard, his baggy swimming trunks whipping around his pale damp thighs, staring up at them in bewilderment.
“I don’t think it even occurred to him that this isn’t a medical helicopter but a chartered one.” Mehmet chuckled.
“Where are we going?” Colin asked excitedly, throwing off the purple-and-gold paisley blanket.
“Mehmet and I have chartered a Cessna Citation X. It’s all fueled up and waiting for us in Hong Kong. From there, it’s a surprise,” Nick said.
“The Citation X. Isn’t that the plane that flies at six hundred miles per hour?” Alistair asked.
“It’s even faster when we’re just five people with no luggage.” Nick grinned.
A mere six hours later, Nick, Colin, Alistair, Mehmet, and Lionel found themselves sitting on canvas chairs in the middle of the Australian desert, taking in the spectacular view of the glowing rock.
“I’ve always wanted to come to Ayers Rock. Or Uluru, or whatever they call it now,” Colin said.
“It’s so quiet,” Mehmet said softly. “This is a very spiritual place, isn’t it? I can really feel its energy, even from this distance.”
“It’s considered to be the most sacred site for the Aboriginal tribes,” Nick answered. “My father brought me here years ago. Back in those days, we were still allowed to climb the rock. They stopped letting you do that a few years ago.”
“Guys, I can’t thank you enough. This was the perfect escape from a very misguided bachelor party. I’m sorry I put all of you through Bernard’s bullshit. This is really all I ever hoped for—to be someplace amazing with my best friends.”
A man in a white polo shirt and khaki shorts approached with a large tray from the luxury eco-resort nearby. “Well, Colin, Alistair—I thought that the only way to get you coffee snobs to stop bitching and moaning was to get you a decent flat white, one hundred percent made in Australia,” Nick said, as the waiter put the tray down on the reddish earth.
Alistair brought the cup to his nose and inhaled the rich aroma deeply. “Nick, if you weren’t my cousin, I’d kiss you right now,” he joked.
Colin took a long sip of his coffee, its perfect velvety foam leaving a white frothy mustache on his upper lip. “This has got to be the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. Guys, I’ll never forget this.”
It was just past sunset, and the sky was shifting rapidly from shades of burnt orange into a deep violet blue. The men sat in awed silence, as the world’s largest monolith glowed and shimmered a thousand indescribable shades of crimson.
16
Dr. Gu
SINGAPORE
Wye Mun sat at his desk, studying the piece of paper his daughter had just handed him. The ornate desk was a replica of the one Napoleon used at the Tuileries, with a satinwood veneer and ormolu legs of lions’ heads and torsos that descended into elaborate claws. Wye Mun loved to sit in his burgundy velvet Empire chair and rub his socked feet against the bulbous golden claws, a habit his wife constantly scolded him for. Today, it was Peik Lin who substituted for her mother. “Dad, you’re going to rub off all the gold if you don’t stop doing that!”
Wye Mun ignored her and kept scratching his toes compulsively. He stared at the names Peik Lin had written down during her phone conversation a few days ago with Rachel: James Young, Rosemary T’sien, Oliver T’sien, Jacqueline Ling. Who were these people behind that mysterious old gate on Tyersall Road? Not recognizing any of these names bothered him more than he was willing to admit. Wye Mun couldn’t help but remember what his father always said: “Never forget we are Hainanese, son. We are the descendants of servants and seamen. We always have to work harder to prove our worth.”
Even from a young age, Wye Mun had been made aware that being the Chinese-educated son of a Hainanese immigrant put him at a disadvantage to the aristocratic Straits Chinese landowners or the Hokkiens that dominated the banking industry. His father had come to Singapore as a fourteen-year-old laborer and built a construction business out of sheer sweat and tenacity, and as their family business blossomed over the decades into a far-flung empire, Wye Mun thought that he had leveled the playing field. Singapore was a meritocracy, and whoever performed well was invited into the winner’s circle. But those people—those people behind the gates were a sudden reminder that this was not entirely the case.
With his children all grown up now, it was time for the next generation to keep conquering new territory. His eldest
son, Peik Wing, had done well by marrying the daughter of a junior MP, a Cantonese girl who was brought up a Christian, no less. P.T. was still fooling around and enjoying his playboy ways, so the focus now was on Peik Lin. Out of his three children, Peik Lin took after him the most. She was his smartest, most ambitious, and—dare he admit it—most attractive child. She was the one he felt confident would surpass all of them and make a truly brilliant match, linking the Gohs with one of Singapore’s blue-blooded families. He could sense from the way his daughter spoke that she was onto something, and he was determined to help her dig deeper. “I think it’s time we paid a visit to Dr. Gu,” he said to his daughter.
Dr. Gu was a retired doctor in his late eighties, an eccentric who lived alone in a small, dilapidated house at the bottom of Dunearn Road. He was born in Xian to a family of scholars, but moved to Singapore in his youth for schooling. In the natural order of how Singapore society worked, Wye Mun and Dr. Gu might never have crossed paths had it not been for Dr. Gu’s maddening stubbornness some thirty-odd years ago.
Goh Developments had been building a new complex of semidetached houses along Dunearn Road, and Dr. Gu’s little plot of land was the sole obstruction to the project getting under way. His neighbors had been bought out under extremely favorable terms, but Dr. Gu refused to budge. After all of his lawyers had failed in their negotiations, Wye Mun drove to the house himself, armed with his checkbook and determined to talk some sense into the old fart. Instead, the brilliant old curmudgeon convinced him to alter his entire scheme, and the revised development turned out to be even more of a success because of his recommendations. Wye Mun now found himself visiting his new friend to offer him a job. Dr. Gu refused, but Wye Mun would keep coming back, enthralled by Dr. Gu’s encyclopedic knowledge of Singapore history, his acute analysis of the financial markets, and his wonderful Longjing tea.
Wye Mun and Peik Lin drove over to Dr. Gu’s house, parking Wye Mun’s shiny new Maserati Quattroporte just outside the rust-corroded metal gate.
“I can’t believe he still lives here,” Peik Lin said, as they walked down the cracked cement driveway. “Shouldn’t he be in a retirement home by now?”
“I think he manages okay. He has a maid, and also two daughters, you know,” Wye Mun said.
“He was smart not to sell out to you thirty years ago. This little piece of land is worth even more of a fortune now. It’s the last undeveloped plot on Dunearn Road, we can probably even build a very sleek, narrow apartment tower here,” Peik Lin commented.
“I tell you lah, he intends to die in this shack. Did I tell you what I heard from my stockbroker Mr. Oei many years ago? Dr. Gu is sitting on one million shares of HSBC.”
“What?” Peik Lin turned to her father in amazed shock. “One million shares? That’s more than fifty million in today’s dollars!”
“He started buying HSBC shares in the forties. I heard this tidbit twenty years ago, and the stock has split how many times since then? I tell you, old Dr. Gu is worth hundreds of millions by now.”
Peik Lin stared with renewed wonder as the man with a shock of unruly white hair came hobbling out onto his porch in a brown polyester short-sleeve shirt that looked like it had been tailored in pre-Castro Havana and a pair of dark green pajama bottoms. “Goh Wye Mun! Still wasting money on expensive cars, I see,” he bellowed, his voice surprisingly robust for a man of his age.
“Greetings, Dr. Gu! Do you remember my daughter, Peik Lin?” Wye Mun said, patting the old man on the back.
“Aiyah, is this your daughter? I thought this pretty girl must surely be your latest mistress. I know how all you property tycoons are.”
Peik Lin laughed. “Hello, Dr. Gu. My father wouldn’t be standing here if I was his mistress. My mum would castrate him!”
“Oh, but I thought she did that a long time ago already.” Everyone laughed, as Dr. Gu led them to a few wooden chairs arranged in his small front garden. Peik Lin noticed that the grass was meticulously mowed and edged. The fence that fronted Dunearn Road was covered in thick intertwining vines of morning glories, screening the bucolic little patch from the traffic along the busy thoroughfare. There isn’t a single place like this left along this entire stretch, Peik Lin thought.
An elderly Chinese servant came out of the house with a large round wooden tray. On it was a ceramic teapot, an old copper kettle, three clay teacups, and three smaller snifter cups. Dr. Gu held the well-burnished kettle high above the teapot and began pouring. “I love watching Dr. Gu do his tea ritual,” Wye Mun said to his daughter quietly. “See how he pours the water from high up. This is known as xuan hu gao chong—‘rinsing from an elevated pot.’ ” Then, Dr. Gu began to pour the tea into each of the three cups, but instead of offering it to his guests, he flung the light caramel-colored tea dramatically from each cup onto the grass behind him, much to Peik Lin’s surprise. He then refilled the teapot with a fresh batch of hot water.
“See, Peik Lin, that was the first rinse of the leaves, known as hang yun liu shui—‘a row of clouds, running water.’ This second pouring from a lower height is called zai zhu qing xuan—‘direct again the pure spring,’ ” Wye Mun continued.
“Wye Mun, she could probably care less about these old proverbs,” Dr. Gu said, before launching into a clinically precise explanation. “The first pouring was done from a height so that the force of water rinses the Longjing leaves. The hot water also helps to acclimate the temperature of the teapot and the cups. Then you do a second pouring, this time slowly and near the mouth of the pot, to gently coax the flavor out of the leaves. Now we let it steep for a while.”
The sound of screeching truck brakes just beyond the fence interrupted the serenity of Dr. Gu’s tea ritual. “Doesn’t all this noise bother you?” Peik Lin asked.
“Not at all. It reminds me that I am still alive, and that my hearing is not deteriorating as quickly as I had planned,” Dr. Gu replied. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to hear all the nonsense that comes out of politicians’ mouths!”
“Come on, lah, Dr. Gu, if it weren’t for our politicians, do you think you would be able to enjoy this nice garden of yours? Think of how they’ve transformed this place from a backward island to one of the most prosperous countries in the world,” Wye Mun argued, always on the defensive whenever anyone criticized the government.
“What rubbish! Prosperity is nothing but an illusion. Do you know what my children are doing with all this prosperity? My eldest daughter started a dolphin research institute. She is determined to rescue the white dolphins of the Yangtze River from extinction. Do you know how polluted that river is? This bloody mammal is already extinct! Scientists haven’t been able to locate a single one of these creatures for years now, but she is determined to find them. And my other daughter? She buys old castles in Scotland. Not even the Scottish want those crumbling old pits, but my daughter does. She spends millions restoring them, and then no one comes to visit her. Her wastrel son, my only grandson and namesake, is thirty-six years old. Do you want to know what he does?”
“No … I mean, yes,” Peik Lin said, trying not to giggle.
“He has a rock-and-roll band in London. Not even like those Beatles, who at least made money. This one has long oily hair, wears black eyeliner, and makes horrible noises with home appliances.”
“Well, at least they are being creative,” Peik Lin offered politely.
“Creatively wasting all my hard-earned money! I’m telling you, this so-called ‘prosperity’ is going to be the downfall of Asia. Each new generation becomes lazier than the next. They think they can make overnight fortunes just by flipping properties and getting hot tips in the stock market. Ha! Nothing lasts forever, and when this boom ends, these youngsters won’t know what hit them.”
“This is why I force my kids to work for a living—they are not going to get a single cent out of me until I am six feet underground,” Wye Mun said, winking at his daughter.
Dr. Gu peeked into the teapot, finally satisfied with
the brew. He poured the tea into the snifter cups. “Now this is called long feng cheng xiang, which means ‘the dragon and phoenix foretells good fortune,’ ” he said, placing a teacup over the smaller snifter cup and inverting the cups deftly, releasing the tea into the drinking cup. He presented the first cup to Wye Mun, and the second cup to Peik Lin. She thanked him and took her first sip. The tea was bracingly bitter, and she tried not to make a face while swallowing it.
“So, Wye Mun, what really brings you here today? Surely you didn’t come to hear an old man rant.” Dr. Gu eyed Peik Lin. “Your father is very cunning, you know. He only comes calling when he needs to get something out of me.”
“Dr. Gu, your roots go deep in Singapore. Tell me, have you ever heard of James Young?” Wye Mun asked, cutting to the chase.
Dr. Gu looked up from pouring his own tea with a start. “James Young! I haven’t heard anyone utter that name in decades.”
“Do you know him, then? I met his grandson recently. He’s dating a good friend of mine,” Peik Lin explained. She took another sip of the tea, finding herself appreciating its silky bitterness more and more with each sip.
“Who are the Youngs?” Wye Mun asked eagerly.
“Why are you suddenly so interested in these people?” Dr. Gu queried.
Wye Mun considered the question carefully before he answered. “We are trying to help my daughter’s friend, since she is quite serious about the boy. I’m not familiar with the family.”
“Of course you wouldn’t know them, Wye Mun. Hardly anybody does these days. I have to admit that my own knowledge is very outdated.”
“Well, what can you tell us?” Wye Mun pressed on.
Dr. Gu took a long sip of his tea and leaned into a more comfortable position. “The Youngs are descended, I believe, from a long line of royal court physicians, going all the way back to the Tang dynasty. James Young—Sir James Young, actually—was the first Western-educated neurologist in Singapore, trained at Oxford.”