by Sky Lee
The patriarch asked, “The japanese fellow hurt?”
“Oh no, just shaken—I suppose!” Mr. Niu peeked around the crowded booth, looking for an appreciative response from his peers.
“Wow your mother’s cunt!” they muttered and spat.
“Savages! Waiting for an excuse to cut hunks of flesh off us!” they cursed and hawked up. The little mounds of ashes, cigar butts and burnt-out matches grew and grew. The spittoon slowly brimmed.
“Uh umph, there’s more!” offered up Mr. Niu again. The cigarettes drooped.
“A white friend of Ting An’s has in fact confirmed some wild rumours that the murdered girl’s body will be exhumed.” This time the cigarettes dropped.
“But they just buried her. You mean, Uncle Niu, they’re going to dig up their dead before its time?” asked one.
“But they don’t like that. They consider it desecrating their own graves!” exclaimed another.
“Well, you see,” replied Mr. Niu, “they’ll probably autopsy it again.”
“Au-top-see? What’s that?”
“They chop it up to examine it so they can find out how she was killed.”
“Examine it, diddle your mother’s stinking vagina!” they exclaimed in disbelief. “And after they made so much fuss about our exhumations of bones. Remember, Uncles? We were ‘ghouls’ this, and ‘heathens’ that in Victoria that year!” The old men’s speech chafed with indignation. “As though our chinese customs were the ones that were barbaric, when all we wanted was to make sure that the ancestors got back home.”
“Hah. Mutilating their own dead will only bring the wrath of their own Jesus-ghost down onto their heads,” someone commented.
Again, Niu interrupted. “And there’s supposed to be pressure for a second inquest. Lots of powerful whites out for blood from . . . from . . . well, from us, I guess!”
This bit of news was too frightening; there was total silence around the table.
Wong Gwei Chang quietly stepped in. “Has the felon’s rope caught up with the Wong boy?” he asked.
“No, not yet,” answered Mr. Niu, “but it won’t be long.”
“Then there’s no time to waste. Elder Uncles, if you will give me permission, we must conduct our own investigation into this matter.” He spoke matter of factly, leaving no room for doubt.
Immediately, the community leaders burst into a flurry of activity around the table.
“Is that wise, Uncle Wong?” demanded one participant. “How could we have any contact with this thing without casting suspicion on all of Chinatown? You know yourself, they’re only looking for the slightest excuse to bring disaster down onto all our heads.”
“No, Gwei Chang is right,” countered another, “we must get to the bottom of this gruesome matter.”
“Yes, when we tang people have to wrangle with such people, we cannot leave anything to trust!”
The final decision that the accused man’s uncle, who was also a domestic, should be summoned in all haste, was an easy one to make, since patriarch Wong was also the head of the Wong Clan Association. He told the association’s secretary, Wong Loong, to send word out to the white suburbs that the uncle responsible for the young upstart was required to make a statement on his behalf to the Chinese Benevolent Association.
Before the end of the week, both Wong Foon Sing and his uncle, Wong Sai Jack, were perched on the edges of two of the dragon-chairs that lined the entire wall of the second-floor meeting hall in the newly built Chinese Benevolent Association building. They didn’t sit together, but three chairs apart. Under the high ceiling, both their faces shone like pale, moist moons in the gloomy hall. Around them, the heavy chinese furniture formally and coldly arranged; tall, rigid scrolls of calligraphy barked out messages of loyalty, filial duty, benevolence and righteousness.
The elder Wong kept shifting in his chair, nervously fingering his hat. But the younger Foon Sing, twenty-six years old, appeared very calm, almost elegant and scholarly. His face smooth and supple as he awaited his fate. Only a string of perspiration beads across his upper lip betrayed any inner distress.
Suddenly, a heavy heap of old-men footsteps thundered on the bottom stairs. The two guests listened intently as they knew it had to be patriarch Wong Gwei Chang and his followers climbing the wooden steps, shaking up the dust. They heard when he paused at the stairwell of the cheater floor, so-called because from outside appearances, this floor was hidden to evade taxes. This extra floor housed or rather rough-housed a perpetual party of gamblers and socializers. No one could ascend to or descend from the pious sanctity of the meeting hall upstairs without the notice of all the unofficial caretakers of this floor. Today, it was especially crowded, noisy with shouting and swearing and the clatter of mah-jong. The air filled with excitement, as if they all shared in the pursuit of a great sport.
When the two disgraced ones had climbed past earlier, the tables had hushed—all the men seemingly intent on their cards, tiles and dominoes. Uncle and nephew did not dare stop at this doorway, but they sensed that their every footstep was being carefully studied until they settled into their lonely posts of abeyance upstairs.
Then the clamour had resumed, until Gwei Chang arrived outside the gamblers’ door. He made a magnificent entrance, raising a cigar-yielding hand like a returning hero, to the sound of males greeting males. Chairs pushed back as they rose in respect. Then the room hushed.
“Elder Uncle Wong. Off work today, are you?” The real caretaker of the building was of course the first to the door, the first to address him, talking just like a little dog grateful for a job during times like these.
“A Lo Soong ah . . . hai . . . ah . . . ah,” he greeted one, then nodded at everyone else. “Wow your mother! Hot, eh! Tiger heat, this!” To emphasize his point, he dragged out a crumpled white handkerchief and mopped his brow. Gwei Chang looked uncomfortable, although all the men who clung onto his every word hardly noticed. He was conscious of his bright white starched shirt shining like a single light bulb in a dingy tenement. His new suspenders and tie stood out from the mended and fraying cotton garb that humbly surrounded him.
These men seemed to want him to say something, but beneath it all, Gwei Chang was a modest man. He was sometimes awkward with his role as so-called patriarch, given to him when he became one of the privileged few who could hire his fellow chinese. Also, he was the generous type, who paid as much wages as he could and gave out as much food and shelter as he could. His business thrived, and he was able to hire more and more. As a result, in Chinatown, Gwei Chang was both well respected as a fair and honest boss to toil under, and very much admired for being a ten-parts smart and reliable businessman.
Gwei Chang fidgeted some more, nodding and stammering agreeably, then he turned and continued up the long, narrow stairs, his entourage much expanded.
Upstairs, Wong Foon Sing’s uncle automatically rose out of his chair, ready to face his inquisitors. Wong Foon Sing followed suit as if in a dream.
“THAT SONOVABITCH Wong Foon Sing isn’t going to tell us a thing! We’ve been up here frying him for four hours. He hasn’t let us in on a thing!” Lee Chong, the treasurer of the Lee Association, bawled loudly, his spittle flying at Foon Sing, whose appearance had drastically deteriorated since he had first walked through the doors of the association building. Men hovered around him, some sitting on the couches, some leaning against the walls. The front doors and windows leading out to the balcony were tightly shut despite the soaring temperature.
The young man shrugged his shoulders; perspiration drizzled down his face and along his black hairline. He tried to wipe some of it out of his eyes with his sleeve. Somehow, the boy’s seemingly nonchalant shrug infuriated the official sent from the Lee clan all the more. Lee Chong suddenly wound up and slapped maliciously at the side of the boy’s head.
Foon Sing covered his ears and fell to the floor, crying in desperation, “I don’t know . . . I mean, I don’t remember . . . I don’t know anything.” He cr
awled back onto the chair.
“You dead snake! You don’t even know right from wrong. You’re just a troublemaker! What can you be thinking of? Buying women’s intimate underwear for a white girl for a present! And then she gets a bullet hole in her stupid head! What do you think people will think of that? A no-good chinaboy sniffing after white women’s asses.” After sneering to his heart’s content at Foon Sing, Lee turned and snorted at the others, “A rotten fish matched with a stinky shrimp!”
“Who’d ever think that he’d be that stupid?” someone commented from the side of the room.
“He’s like a caught pig. They’ll hang him for sure!” said Chuck Him, the butcher, another spiteful bald-head with a deadly mouth. He raised his voice shrilly, to imitate a woman: “Buy me this, chinaman! Give me that!” Then, his voice fell like a cleaver, “And he falls for it!”
“Maybe . . .” another voice slithered out from the farthest corner of the room, Duck Toy, a baker who owned the Jing Ming Bakery Shop. “Maybe Cousin Foon Sing is actually being a smart boy. He looks like a beautiful boy. Women like beautiful boys. Maybe there’s a lot more going on that he’s not telling us about, eh? Eh, A Wong boy, what do you say?” As he urged, his captive listened with an air of dumb helplessness.
“You must have had a pretty cozy situation up there in a big empty house. Working all day long, so close to a nice young girl, eh? Maybe it was too much of a good thing for a pumpkin-head like you to bear.”
All of Wong’s interrogators pressed forward, fixing their eyes on him, anxiously waiting for some telltale twitches or skulking around the mouth. “Tell us, Cousin! Was it enough to drive a man crazy? Crazy enough to want to . . .”
“Enough!” a clear powerful voice suddenly commanded, “I’m sick of this kind of talk! Makes me want to vomit!”
Wong Gwei Chang hadn’t moved from his vantage point directly behind Foon Sing, yet he held the roomful of irritable men spellbound. They muffled their growls, retracted their claws and crouched back into their corners.
From where he sat, the patriarch couldn’t see the young man’s face at all. Not that he was particularly interested in what he had to say any more. But the interview had taken a nasty turn; it left a vile taste in the back of his mouth. There was a fierce mood of choked violence in the room, full of rancour and hatred which made him sick. He wanted to hawk up and spit out the sour. He looked around the dim room, knowing that the men were staring and waiting. They were afraid, and rightfully so. If there was misconduct on the part of the Wong boy, then the whole community faced repercussions. Still, he hesitated, wondering if the situation was as simple as trying to make a young man tell the truth. A menace loomed bigger out there—he wasn’t sure what it was, but it felt even bigger than the pent-up fury of the men in this room.
There was a time when Gwei Chang would have felt the same as the other men, when he would have wanted to reach out to tear out a handful of hair too, where he could. He too was once a hungry worker who sold his body for wages, who swallowed the bitterness of being cheated every day. These overseas chinese were like derelicts, neither here nor there, not tolerated anywhere; an outlaw band of men united by common bonds of helpless rage. Fuming and foaming, talking just as malevolently, wanting to inflame as if that could appease their own pain! Aah, but he was an old man now—very old in spirit, if not in years. And he had learned that anger only splatters pain, like hot oil onto shrinking skin. Nothing assuages pain, except maybe time. Even then, pain only tempers into a hard, glinty edge which cuts without warning. He had been cut enough times, so he knew.
“Fuck! What’s the good in such lewd, dirty-minded talk?” he barked loudly. “Take a good look at yourselves! You’re all like mangy dogs sniffing after the stink of a dirty she-bag! So cut out the high notes and listen to what I have to say! We’re here to conduct business!” Patriarch Wong stood up and glowered around the room, ready to flush out any would-be dissenters lurking in his presence. There were none.
With a stout cigar clipped under his forefinger, he stuck both his thumbs into the leather loops of his suspenders and leaned slightly towards Foon Sing. But with the same subtle motion, he seemed to recoil as if he didn’t want anything to do with him.
“Aah!” he sighed heavily on the clichés. “It’s true, you who are young in years simply don’t have the sense to know the colour of fire!”
The room was hot, and sweat dripped down his face as fast as his handkerchief could mop. Gwei Chang longed for a breath of fresh air, but he couldn’t see an end to this difficult situation.
“Throw open those doors!” he ordered. The fresh, cool air, which immediately flooded in and basked the room with its soothing sweetness, surprised him. He breathed in deeply; the silken breeze touched his face and neck, and slipped in under his soaked shirt. For a precious instant, he remembered another smooth caress. One he once cherished. For a brief moment, he remembered a time when he had soared beyond all human reach. But the feeling passed as it always did, and he was again left behind, always disappointed, always dazed. He couldn’t bring himself to face what his life had come to. A locked roomful of anxious men.
Pushed by his need to be outside of this, he stepped right up to the window’s edge. There, as if searching, he stared up at the cloudless, brilliant sky, feeling an old tug on his heavy spirit. Away in the distance, he followed the movements of what might have been a pair of hawks or eagles circling in the sky. Maybe they were just crows, but he suddenly remembered a love poem:
When a pair of magpies fly together
They do not envy the pair of phoenixes.
Gwei Chang turned listlessly back to the matter at hand, but he hardly knew where to begin. Eyeing the boy with cold anger, he decided that he had no choice except to condemn him first.
“Very well, you claim to be innocent. That may or may not be true,” he said, “but this we already know. We know that you know a lot more than you’re telling us. O.K. If you don’t want to tell, then you’re on your own! I guess you’re a real tough guy, aren’t you? You don’t want the help of the associations? Then you’re alone! You know as well as anybody what kind of treatment you can expect from those whites. But maybe, just maybe, you’ve forgotten about what we do to traitors who make trouble for us . . .”
Wong Foon Sing muttered, “What can Tang People’s Street do for me? You don’t have any say in police matters.”
“You dead boy-bitch!” Lee Chong muscled in with a loud screech. “You can’t even guess how much we know, never mind how much we can manoeuvre in tricky situations like this. We know your bossman Bay-Kah is a drug trafficker. How clean is your reputation? We know you’ve been chasing after a no-good she-ghost . . .”
“Lo Lee, shut up!” Mr. Niu yelled in a panicky voice.
Gwei Chang shook his head. That many-mouthed Lee Chong had really bungled things now, revealing details that should have been kept secret until the appointed moment. But this meeting had been out of control since the beginning. He should have ensured that only a few trustworthy elders would interview the Wong boy and his uncle, and barred entry to these useless loafers with big ears who hung around to spread gossip later.
And how could he blame Lee Chong? He was an old confidant, a loyal if simple-minded sort who had sweated blood in a laundry for years before he hit on his San Francisco Noodle Company. After all, he’d just got hot under the collar and blown off his mouth. Lee Chong, like many others, couldn’t understand the complexities of this matter. He assumed that all chinese were his compatriots, and that it was all right to mouth off since everyone within hearing range was chinese.
Wong Gwei Chang knew differently. He realized that the old ways in Chinatown were fast disappearing. He played a so-called prominent role in the associations now, because the old-timers had agreed to give him big face. In the old days, they’d had to band together to survive. Share a little more during good times, share a little less during bad. Years ago, the game had been deadlier; protection was sought. Everybod
y needed to play by the rules, abide by a leader. But Chinatown had grown. He had no real say in this motley social order anymore. More and more, the patriarch came face to face with young, hostile loners like Wong Foon Sing, who’d just as soon tell you to go die! Fart in your face! They had no respect. Why should they follow you? As soon as they got off the boat, they were all out for a good time and easy money. Like wild beasts, they’d eat their own kind for it too. However, if they found themselves in trouble, they’d surely come back then, trailing police-devils behind to ransack Chinatown. They didn’t care that the devils would gladly wipe out the whole fellowship for the folly of one individual.
Gwei Chang decided to try a different tactic. The boy he must deal with in private, later. First, he had to clear the room tactfully, without rousing the citizens’ ire and suspicions. The gossip would expand and shrink all over Chinatown, as if it had a life of its own. In an hour, everyone would have their own version of what had transpired in this room.
“A white woman has been killed! And you don’t know anything, and you don’t care!” he pretended to speak directly to the culprit. “And we’re not supposed to care either! But who gets blamed by those white hoodlums? You alone? All of us! You tell me, boy! Why should we suffer for what you have done?” he asked. But he could tell by Foon Sing’s apathetic slouch that the boy would remain unreachable. Gwei Chang paused, then he shrugged his shoulders like a seasoned politician.
“Uncles,” he spoke eloquently, “how can I face you if I let this mangy dog bring retribution down on Tang People’s Street! Already, the situation is a very tense one, and we must work hard to avert a crisis. However, one and all, please rest assured that the damage he has done . . .” he paused again to give his words more clout, “will be cleaned up without a trace! That this falls directly under the jurisdiction of this association is without question.”
There followed a murmur of consensus from around the room.