Disappearing Moon Cafe

by Sky Lee

  Did he fall in love with her? There was no way for him not to be obsessed with her and all she represented. If that were so, did he come to hate her? Yes . . . well, that was more the essential question, wasn’t it? A white woman would remind him of his alienation, her nearness exposing the raw intensity of his desperation. In the dehumanized structure of his life, murder might even have made sense. A youthful smile flung carelessly across the chasm of racial mistrust could have confused either one, perhaps harassed either one. But to the point of killing? Easy to see that there was no happy ending here, but why did it have to end in death?

  ALL CONSUMING at the time; now it was trivia, dusty details. Gwei Chang used to think that his part in this drama had been vital to the outcome. It turned out that he was only masking the truth, and then wearing the mask even when it stifled. And to think that he had given up a son, even lost long-time friends, over this silly affair.

  Whenever Gwei Chang thought of the dead, blonde demoness, he used to remember that August Moon Festival story about the spinner and the cowherder. The old chinamen loved to recite this story because it was evocative of their loneliness. Except Gwei Chang changed their professions to be the nursemaid and the houseboy.

  The nursemaid was from heaven, and the houseboy a mere earth-bound mortal. Then, they met and fell deeply in love.

  The gods or the powers above were very displeased with this liaison between unequals. Worse still, the young lovers’ pining after each other adversely affected their work. So, the powers-that-be split them apart and created a racial chasm between them, as impossible to cross as the heavens themselves.

  By August Moon Festival of 1924, Foon Sing had already sung his way through the first of what turned out to be endless hearings and trials. He was still the most obvious suspect, but nobody had charged him, so the elders bided their time and watched. For the first time, chinamen had to keep an eye on white people. Before, the old ones were too embittered by the injustice and saw only what they wanted to see. They were surprised to find how much alike chinamen and white people were.

  In the white daily tabloids, strange rumours about spiritualists began to fly about. Theories that the girl was murdered during a wild party full of rich people started to divert attention away from Foon Sing. The idea of a rich playboy as the murderer seemed to entertain the whites much more than a dumb chinaman.

  Gwei Chang and his clique were pleased with this unexpected change of events. With whites pointing fingers at each other, the chinamen thought they could breathe a little easier. In fact, they even began to enjoy the theories. Over their coffee and cigarettes, people in Chinatown discussed the possibilities. And they were endless. Poems were inspired by this one.

  Of course, Chinatown wasn’t off the hook yet. Before long, another attack, this one on another front. The whites were coming at Chinatown not with clubs and stones this time but with the way they’d gotten them every time. It was dubbed the “Janet Smith” bill at the legislature.

  Already, the law forbade chinese men from certain kinds of employment if it meant that white women would have to work in close proximity to them. The Janet Smith bill was proposed as an extension of this law. At this critical time, such a proposal not only blatantly implied that Wong Foon Sing had murdered the girl but made criminal suspects of all chinese men.

  “We can’t let them get away with this persecution.” Wong Loong spoke at the table. “We called this meeting to discuss how to fight back. If we don’t protest loud and clear, we’ll lose a lot more than face. We . . . some of the younger guys have already discussed this, and we feel that we may need to go to drastic measures, maybe as far as a . . . boycott! That is why we have come to you . . .”

  Gwei Chang sat at that meeting. He looked around the table and saw a lot of new faces—younger faces that had just joined up, conscientious faces full of self-importance. But he also saw resistance from some of the elders who thought that these young fools needed a bawling out for letting their emotions fly at a moment’s notice.

  “Boycott! Boycott means our people starve!” someone roared. The swear words took their usual places at the table.

  “Boycott, that cracked-brain! Wow his mother’s cunt! Go eat shit!”

  “If this bill is passed, we won’t be allowed to earn any kind of living at all. Look around you! All the chinese who are unemployed. More of us will starve!” Wong Loong yelled over the din.

  Surprisingly, Ting An came to his rescue. Ting An spoke so rarely that many people were shocked into rethinking the situation.

  “It’s obvious that with this law they will be able to hang Wong Foon Sing first and the rest of Chinatown later,” he said.

  “So, how come the Wong boy hasn’t been arrested and strung up? No need to ask questions of a chinaman!” said Lee Chong.

  Old Chu snorted in agreement. “We shouldn’t do anything until they arrest him.”

  “Are we afraid to stand up for ourselves?” Another young hothead fanned the flames. “Look at them. They certainly think enough of themselves to clamour for justice at all costs, even over one girl.”

  “Pah, that’s them! Who would have thought that one dead female could stir up such a fiasco?” An old hothead. “No white one ever blinked an eye for the countless dead chinamen ‘murdered accidentally,’ but one of their own catches it, and they all go crazy.”

  “Exactly,” Wong Loong burst in. “How come they stand up so well for themselves? How come we don’t stand up for ourselves?”

  “You little upstart!” Lee Chong slapped his hands on the table for attention. “What do you know about what it was like in the old days? Sure, you think you know a bit of their devil tongue, and you start to think like them. You younger ones have no idea of the odds against us. If we hadn’t stood up for ourselves, do you think you’d be here chattering your silly little heads off now?”

  “We want to speak up for our rights to jobs. That’s all,” said a young one. “No work, no eat. Plain and simple. What are you getting so steamed up about?”

  “Why?” roared Lee Chong. “You cracked-brain young ones want to venture outside of Tang People’s Street, to work, you claim, and this is exactly the kind of shame you bring back with you. Maybe those ghosts are on the right track. Maybe you aren’t fit to wipe their asses.”

  Nothing like a common cause to bring men together, Gwei Chang thought, as he watched the younger cliques wind up for an equally foul-mouthed rebuttal. As expected, the point of the meeting was totally knocked off the table, to the farthest corner of the room. In the end, it wasn’t the white hysteria that frightened him as much as what chinamen had allowed themselves to become in the face of it—pitiful men, with no end for their self-pity in sight. All the more pitiful because they once had divine authority, if only over their downtrodden women. Even when they all had to go into their desperate little hovels alone every night, they would still cling onto the precious little they had had.

  Gwei Chang could have kept his loyalties. The old ones were wrong in this case, but year after year, right or wrong, they had always been loyal to each other. How many lonely, softhearted nights, respectfully attentive to the would-be heroics of laundrymen and gardeners, they had all played surrogate wives to each other. The biggest boasts from the lowliest kitchen helper came to life for few precious moments.

  He looked over to Lee Chong, whose lips still snarled like a dog over a bone, and thought: he is my oldest friend, the one I talked into risking his life flying over river rapids with a load of human bones over thirty years ago. He’s the one who brought me the news of Chen Gwok Fai’s death. We go back that far.

  What if Gwei Chang had kept silent? The elders would have kept their power (or their powerlessness), and the outcome might or might not have stayed the same—what did he care? But he would have been able to keep friendships intact, and the secret of their eternal cowardice. Maybe that was more important. However, when young and old turned to him, they all seemed to challenge him.

  “Hey,
you’re the big-shot! Transform the moment!”

  Well, Gwei Chang played the big-shot, all right, and he transformed the moment: “The community will stay together at all costs, even through a boycott.”

  He threw the entire weight of the patriarch behind those choice words. Lee Chong’s mouth fell open; the old ones could hardly believe their ears. Old Chu, Duck Toy—their eyes clouded in shame, thinking that their lifetime brotherhood had been betrayed.

  “Whites wear collar and tie now,” Gwei Chang declared. “They don’t like to dirty their hands, so they use their laws against us. Tomorrow, Wong Loong will make arrangements to visit the chinese consulate. You young ones say that you aren’t afraid to open your mouths, like us old ones. O.K., this is your chance to prove yourselves then.”

  Lee Chong never forgave Gwei Chang that. Their friendship changed. Gwei Chang hurt himself the most, because he lost a lifelong friend, a brotherhood, an entire way of life. He asked himself if it was worth the trouble. Were mere words worth such pride? Yet, with words, he swept away the coolie generals, himself included. The back tables were given over to waiters who sat and smoked and gossiped while folding napkins.

  By the time the houseboy was kidnapped again and finally charged with murder, a whole new set of China-town leaders had stepped in. They were statesmen, smooth liars in good english. The white press loved their boldness. They wrote letters, said the correct phrases. Even the new chinese consul worked better with them. The Janet Smith bill flopped and became Chinatown’s first real success story.

  This murder case blew up into a scandal beyond everyone’s wildest dreams. Big-shot whites took pot shots at each other. That was how Foon Sing got away. There were libel charges, and kidnap charges; police commissioners arrested. Flying accusations from government department to government department landed on the attorney general’s face, like so many cream pies. Scotland Yard got involved, even Peking. All very mind-boggling to a loitering chinaman on Pender Street, with toothpick in mouth, who would always wonder why they didn’t just lynch the houseboy. Easier, and who would have given a damn, back then!

  GWEI CHANG

  1939

  When Lee Chong heard about Gwei Chang being laid up, he made a special trip to visit and reminisce, perhaps to apologize in his own way. And Gwei Chang as well, in his own way, because who can say who was right and who was wrong.

  “And how ’bout that theory of the mad-dog son of the lieutenant-governor raping and murdering her?” Lee Chong offered.

  “Yeah, that was my favourite one.” Gwei Chang was grateful. Lee Chong’s visit meant a lot to him. More than Lee Chong knew. More than he himself knew.

  “What a crazy waste of time!” Lee Chong allowed himself to relax a little more.

  “Yep, a crazy waste of energy.”

  “And money!”

  “And money,” Gwei Chang chuckled. They were self-conscious with each other. They had drifted apart, but somehow, thankfully, they had never lacked an excuse to come calling on each other once in a long while. Lee Chong still lived alone in Chinatown. One tiny room, kitchen and toilets at the end of a long, narrow hall. That was the way he lived. He wasn’t a destitute man, but business setbacks ten years ago had widened the gap between them even further. Gwei Chang realized how difficult it was for a rough old Chinatown bachelor like Lee Chong to manoeuvre around wife and daughter-in-law prodding him with the necessary teacups. One grandchild after another to “he, he, he” at before he finally reached his old friend’s bedside.

  Lee Chong kept slipping off the horsehair armchair. Finally, he propped himself up on wide-set feet and looked anxiously at all the foreign things around him. Doilies behind him, plants with enormous, speckled leaves dangling over him, carpet at his feet; it would have been easier if Lee Chong had been a houseboy. But he never had been.

  “You got enough to live on, Elder Brother?” Gwei Chang asked him, since they were on the topic of money. Gwei Chang asked him that whenever they saw each other, like people nowadays would say, “How are you?”

  “Fine. I’m getting along fine. And you. You got enough?” Lee Chong laughed at the silliness of this fine old ritual, then added, “You have more mouths to feed. As for me—well, old men don’t need too much to eat.” A breathless pause, then he asked what he had come to ask.

  “You very sick?”

  “Yeah,” Gwei Chang answered very quietly, watching Lee Chong’s old fingers slide over the rim of his hat.

  Lee Chong had been shocked by Gwei Chang’s appearance when he came into the room. But Lee Chong was a proud man. He probably wasn’t going to accept Gwei Chang’s dying without a fight.

  “Your strength has always been a brittle kind of strength. No endurance. You should have realized that and taken better care of yourself,” Lee Chong scolded, clucking his tongue against the dry roof of his mouth.

  “Here I always thought you were the brittle one,” Gwei Chang teased.

  “Nope, I was the stubborn fool. Fifteen years is too long to hold a grudge, especially between brothers.”

  “Not long enough, if you knew you were in the right.” Gwei Chang’s mouth always full of niceties.

  “I was wrong. You were always right,” Lee Chong grunted back.

  “What does it matter, old friend?”

  “Matter? No matter . . . you,” his edgy reply, “because you always hated wasting time and energy.”

  “And you hated wasting money . . .” They laughed at how easy it was. They laughed until they both wheezed and coughed.

  “Ah, A Chang, you knew!” said Lee Chong, with a sigh. “What were we but ignorant labourers? Couldn’t hardly read or write in our own tang language, never mind theirs. It wouldn’t have done us any good if they got slick, and we didn’t. You were right. You always could see way ahead of any of us. That’s why you’re a rich man.” Lee Chong’s eyes glanced around the sun-drenched room. By now, the grandchildren had slithered in, prowling around the tea things. They were accustomed to such liberties. Their play helped their grandfather pass many a weary hour.

  “After all these years, what if I told you the truth?” Gwei Chang offered up. “I got too tired, too lazy to play their silly games. And why did we have to anyway, with all those young hardnecks all panting to jump into the scuffle? Was it so important to you to keep a hand in it?”

  “Not now,” Lee Chong admitted, eyeing the grandchildren, elbows on knees spread wide apart, probably thinking about lighting up a cigar, but not daring to in front of a sick man.

  Gwei Chang was getting tired, couldn’t keep his eyes open. Fong Mei came in to arrange a pillow or two. He fell back with a heavy thud. The children shooed away. She was always very kind to him, chattering as she opened one window and closed another. Gwei Chang noticed Lee Chong staring at Fong Mei a little more than was necessary. She noticed as well. It was true she had come a long way from a village bride. Glossy and perfumed, she was a rich woman now.

  “I should go. You need to rest and get better.” Lee Chong started to get up after she left.

  “No,” Gwei Chang almost gasped. “No, stay! I sleep all day long. Tell me some news.” For some strange reason, he almost felt like crying. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut to lock his fears in. After a while, Gwei Chang heard those old bones of Lee Chong’s creaking towards him; an old hand crept over to Gwei Chang’s shoulder and hung onto his neck. Lee Chong sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “You’re younger than me,” he said tenderly, “you’re bigger, smarter, richer; you can be stronger.” His hands pressured, and Gwei Chang glanced up at Lee Chong’s doleful eyes trying so hard. Gwei Chang managed a small smile for his old friend, and for their old and uncomplicated friendship. Lee Chong understood Gwei Chang only so far, but that was enough. Only words separated them.

  “Tell me news about Ting An. He still won’t come to see me, you know.” The pain of that statement made Gwei Chang’s head fall back, his heart aching.

  Lee Chong scratched his head and spoke
plainly. “Ting An drinks too much, I hear. I also hear he has trouble with that ghost wife of his. But that’s to be expected, right? His warehouse isn’t doing too well. Let’s face it, Ting An’s heart isn’t in it like the old days, leastways not like Choy Fuk or your daughter-in-law now.”

  Gwei Chang sensed the omission then. He looked up at Lee Chong, whose face strained with indecision. When their eyes met, Lee Chong smiled a bit too widely, too quickly. There was a conspiracy in that smile.

  Gwei Chang said, “Tell me what you know, Elder Brother!” The power in his voice surprisingly sharp.

  Lee Chong’s face fell; his jaw slackened. “Who knows? It could all be stories. People delight in maliciousness . . .”

  Dying was a privileged situation to be in; Lee Chong would not hold out on his old friend. Gwei Chang listened without a word.

  After Lee Chong left, Gwei Chang slept. After he slept, he thought. He thought back seven years, to the last time he had had words with Ting An. Did Ting An hate him that much? Gwei Chang tried to think, his mind circling and circling with endless thoughts—thoughts to the end.

  TING AN

  1932

  What is the price one should pay for being a do-gooder, a blind old fool? Blind to his own flesh and blood! Hardened against the people he loved! What possible excuse could he have had?

  Gwei Chang pleaded, “What do you want me to pay, A Ting? Tell me how much? Your own warehouse, Son? I could set you up in your own business. Tell me!” He was begging for the first time in his life, his hands kept reaching to hold Ting An. Ting An knocked them aside, again and again. He was in agony.

  “Don’t touch me!” he screamed. “I have to go. I have to get out of this dead town.”

  “No, no, you don’t have to go anywhere. No one’ll bother you. I promise you, I won’t bother you. Marry her, go ahead! Keep her! I’ll give you all the money you need.” Gwei Chang could not let him go away. Another blonde demoness—this one not dead enough.

  “Keep your damned money.” Ting An would not be bought. So Gwei Chang shoved the money at her instead. She was nameless and penniless enough to make the perfect target for him. She had no idea what the stakes were, so he bought her cheap—a nice house, car, a prosperous husband.