The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  “And when you came out of the Ladies, HC had gone. Where to?”

  “I do not know. The races? He once owned something at Happy Valley, somebody told me a share in a horse.” She knew never to volunteer information, but fright made her garrulous. “HC’s wife bets on horses.”

  “Which?” The younger man clarified impatiently, “That day. Which race?”

  “I don’t know!” KwayFay cried desperately.

  Ah Min gestured for silence.

  “You made up a lie?”

  Over and over the same thing, their glances at the big wall-mirror more frequent still.

  “Why lie? Why not the truth? Why didn’t you say you needed the toilet?”

  “People don’t say that.”

  “But they do. In films, cinemas, offices and factories all over Hong Kong. It’s normal.”

  “I just lied. I don’t know. I’m sorry if I did wrong. I needed —”

  “Tell me about choosing employees.”

  This time KwayFay knew exactly and told him everything, how HC had come to believe in her silly old Chinese guessing scheme.

  He listened attentively and this time the younger man had the sense not to interrupt. She didn’t like men’s eyes to be so intent that their gaze never wandered to her legs or her shape. The one called Ah Min was inert to gender. To such a man, events were only affects. Which meant she was in the presence of craziness, like zany old Cantonese films without consequence. She was among madnesses, not knowing where one ended and the next began. Her head swam. She began to feel ill.

  She told of every guess she had ever made to do with investments, employees. Scraping the barrel, she explained schemes she’d coined for HC to ruminate over, suppositions she’d told him as truths, half-truths, near-untruths, fibs to which she’d felt briefly partial and fables she’d dredged up from sheer imagination simply to get her boss HC out of the way while she got on.

  “Get on with what?”

  “Work, Sin-Sang.”

  “What work?”

  “London brokers are terrible people, First Born. They give you no time to do what they’ve rung about. They all use the same words.”

  “What words?” They quivered with excitement.

  “Like when you say the Hang Seng hasn’t come in yet because of GMT and the USA time zones. They say Work round that, as if we can do it before everybody else. It’s an office joke. We say to each other, Don’t shunt it, okay? And we laugh.”

  She paused. They didn’t know humour, despite the fat man’s constant beam. Without gender, without humour. Maybe they knew more about guesses that came right – or went wrong – than anybody in Hong Kong? She felt stifled.

  “Do you speak to ghosts?” Ah Min asked.

  “Me? No! Of course not!” She saw it was a trick, to condemn her. She would die because of this interview, when Communist China came in at the Handover and the English left.

  “How do you know what lies to tell?”

  “I don’t. I just say anything so things are straighter.”

  “Straighter?”

  “Children pretend fairy stories, don’t they? And superstitious folk go up to Amah Rock or burn a red candle in doorways. The usual.”

  “Do you?” they both asked together. The younger man looked abashed for intruding.

  “No. Well,” she embellished quickly because of her fear, “you know the gods. All the time. Anything, about anything.”

  “You do? About anything?”

  “Of course. Everybody does, but pretends they don’t.”

  She was conscious of a rap on her soul, almost a blow that shifted her in her seat. She looked round. Nobody. Yet she distinctly felt a buffet and her momentary recoil was seen by the two men opposite. She rubbed her arm. It hurt. Static electricity, she’d heard, did that.

  “No,” she corrected, retrieving her handbag. She had dropped it. “I’m sorry. I was wrong to say that.” The taipan, for such Ah Min surely was, nodded to forgive. “I know traditions. Perhaps most,” she added daringly.

  “Most what?”

  “Old customs, from the Middle Kingdom, in the Celestial Empire. It is my hobby.”

  “How?”

  “I learn them, though I am not a good student.” She added that, in case it was Ghost Grandmother who had clouted her.

  “Who from?” He leant forward, squeak, creak, knees a-shine. “Hong Kong is changing. Superstition is gone. Traditions have died. Apart from the dai-hok, the university. And they know nothing; I sent to ask them.”

  “My grandmother.” She winced for another clout, but none came.

  They showed keen interest, the taipan looking with meaning at the other man, who readied himself to spring away on a mission.

  “Where is she?”

  “She is dead, and I am very sorry.” That proved safe. “She was very clever, and knows everything.”

  Knew? Does know? KwayFay became flustered by tenses. Ghost Grandmother had struck her several times before now, of course, that being what grandmothers did to granddaughters. Everybody knew that. But she had never before hit her in open company and the taipan had definitely noticed something. Once, when KwayFay had failed in obedience, Grandmother had beat her unmercifully, leaving KwayFay weeping until dawn. It had been for such a small thing. Grandmother had taken umbrage when KwayFay, completely done for after a harrowing day of kaleidoscopic exchange rates and computer glitches, had fallen asleep while Grandmother was teaching her the list of primary festivals. KwayFay had smarted across her shoulders and legs where Ghost had whacked her. In the morning she had woken with sunken eyes and a skin like a rattan mat. All because she had sleepily mumbled that the Double Ninth day of celebration was Chunq-gao instead of what Grandmother wanted to hear, Chunq-yeurng.

  “Knew,” she completed lamely. The huge fat man’s beaming face unnerved her. “Her cleverness is forever in my mind.”

  It was getting harder. The younger man was impatient to be off killing somebody or extracting Hong Kong’s famed squeeze from shopkeepers and hawkers down Nathan Road, anywhere near a ferry. Where water, there water! Cantonese folk muttered the old saying gleefully, the slang word for money being water, that passed through the fingers however carefully you tried to retain it.

  “You go to the temples?” the taipan asked, frowning.

  “Yes,” KwayFay said firmly. She didn’t go regularly, only when she’d made mistakes at work and didn’t want them found until she could get in on Monday.

  “Will it work for me too?”

  She stared. What a question this was! A man could do anything, being male. Females couldn’t, of course, being female. And a taipan could do anything without squaring it with anyone, for he was the business shark.

  “Would what?”

  Ah Min was in difficulties. He gestured dismissal, and the other left with a painstaking lack of noise. Why did he sulk so? Men were a problem, but their business was beyond her, very like HC’s incomprehensible deals that never came off. Not like women, who were enemies to each other whatever their degree of kindred. Sure, you laughed with Apple Woman on Mount Davis because she was Hakka, of the Guest Family People who did all manual labour around the Colony, but that was only because Apple Woman insisted on shoving her wheeled barrow up and down hills when she was secretly rich. She was female so you had to watch her, laugh as long as you like.

  “If somebody wanted somebody prayed to.” He paused. “For. About. Would that work?”

  “By me?” And to his nod she said defiantly, “Yes. In Hell.” She used the English word for the Hereafter – Heaven, Purgatory, Limbo, those places being more or less synonymous. Ghost Grandmother had lengthy explanations for that, all as tiresome as each other.

  “Good.” He seemed reassured. “If I had to choose among several people, could you do it? Or tell if somebody was to be trusted?”

  She was unsure what he was asking.

  “Like you did before, in HC’s shop?”

  Shop? HC would fire any employee who
spoke so derogatorily about his wonky business. She regarded the man with new admiration. One who cared so little about others deserved respect.

  “I will try, if you say.” She knew her place.

  “What do you need?”

  Guesses needed nothing. Guessing was simple. You suddenly opted for something that came into your mind, or you didn’t. Then you, what, asked Ghost Grandmother if the guess was right or not? She forgot how it had worked that time. A random flick of her pen? Her head ached. What if she’d annoyed Ghost and Ghost deliberately told her wrong? But Ghost was her only relative, so on KwayFay’s side.

  “I have to ask.” The best she could do.

  He became almost reverential, nodding that he understood her status in relation to the Powers Out There. She began to hope that she would get back to work safe.

  “How long does it take?”

  He was asking her? In a world where China and Great Britain were doing a deal honouring the Treaty of Nanking and the later Peking Conventions? This strong man, whose motors streaked unimpeded through Tsim Sha Tsui, where even police motorcyclists braked to avoid delaying a taxi he’d hired? To that wisp of hope, she felt something slyly add itself. Was it a little dose of authority? She’d never experienced genuine power. It was fascinating.

  “I never know.”

  “Can you tell me what happens?” he asked humbly.

  “I am sorry.” She tried to work out a formula to tell him no. “I wait until I am told.”

  Told? She wondered why she’d said that. Nobody ever told her what to guess when HC came bumbling in with his stupid questions about what to buy, who to send to Singapore, if so-and-so was to be trusted. She simply…well, guessed, often in a temper, more usually laughingly picking somebody who’d make most trouble for the odious creep. It was luck. Anybody could be lucky. She often wondered if HC bribed some god or other to stay flukey. He’d be bound to do it on the cheap, though, and that would irritate them. You didn’t short-change gods. No, HC was just lucky and asked her the right questions.

  “Do you gamble, Little Sister?”

  “No, First Born.”

  “That is good. I would have to…find someone else.”

  She swallowed, tried to look dependable and no gambler.

  “Little Sister, we want you to make choices for us. Some people who are not yet in Hong Kong. I want to know which ones.”

  “Which what?”

  “We shall send for you.” Ah Min glanced at the mirror and paused. “You will decide which, among several girls. And if a man.”

  “What girls for?” she bleated. “And if a man what?”

  “That is all.”

  “How long do I have?”

  Ah Min’s beam did not change, but his eyes narrowed and she instantly realised her blunder. Wouldn’t ghosts and gods know instantly? Didn’t they fly, like the magic Goddess Tin Hau, over oceans to deflect typhoons away from Hong Kong and send them instead to damage Japan?

  “You ask me what?” he said with quiet intensity.

  “Who is the one who must come for the answer?” she said with quick invention. “What if an imposter asks for the answers instead of you?”

  His brow cleared. She was safe. “We shall send. You tell us directly.”

  “Thank you.” She said, on a whim, “Can I come in a black motor, please?”

  “Yat-ding, certainly. Anything else?”

  He asked it politely, quite as if he’d provided her with afternoon tea, English style, in the Gloucester Tea Rooms over in Central.

  “Thank you, no.”

  He made a signal and the door opened instantly. A strange man slowly entered, one of great age wearing the traditional long black habit she only knew from old photographs. He was skeletal, his parchment skin a varnished integument. His skull was hairless, his features cleft by deep lines and his hands clawed into uselessness. The taipan leapt up, on guard. KwayFay also rose, not knowing what to do. Authority flowed from this old man, yet if he was so thin, attired so anciently, surely he must be some sort of prisoner? She warmed to him immediately.

  “Why black?” the old gentleman whispered. She stared at him, nonplussed. “The motor car. You wanted black.”

  “I do not know, sir.” Her power had flown. She had just been stupid. Her reply was in English. He nodded as if at some implied rebuke.

  “You guessed it?”

  “Yes, First Born.”

  “Do you know all the old festivals, Little Sister?”

  “Imperfectly, sir. I am still learning.”

  He sighed. “I find that sad,” he announced in his whispery voice.

  “First Born,” she asked, her voice tremulous at the risk she was taking by asking. “Which choice must I make first, and which second?” She felt the whole world go silent.

  “Do it, Little Sister. Please.”

  He inclined his head. It was over. She did not know how to curtsey or bow properly. She did neither.

  The annoyed young man was waiting on the soiled landing. He let her out into the street and simply left her there to make her own way back to HC’s office. It took her the best part of an hour.

  Defiantly she didn’t take a taxi, though the time she wasted crossing the harbour on the Star Ferry would make the whole day impossible. She would be lucky to finish half of her work. Tomorrow would be hellishly full of blame.

  HC was waiting, pacing, when she finally walked up from the Star Concourse past the three dozing rickshaws, no tourists eager to photograph the idlers today and serve them right. Her boss saw her return but said nothing. He was useless for the rest of the afternoon, and never even came to ask what had happened.

  She kept wondering about the age of the ancient man. He had spoken with “high-nose” quality, used ancient traditional suffixes fast going out of use in ordinary speech. He would have got along fine with Ghost Grandmother. Poor, poor old man, though. Once in authority, now a mere foki, or a prisoner. If he was their old relative, they ought to see he was properly fed, instead of keeping him so thin. Usually, old grandfathers in Hong Kong looked after grandbabies, but probably Triads didn’t have many. They probably made him work in the kitchen, poor old thing. She’d liked him.

  Trying to catch up, she set to work. Eighteen waiting calls, several from London’s sleepless brokers screaming where the hell, what the hell. None of her friends had done a single thing to help her, not even Lee Sik-King, who doted on her and could normally be counted on to do a hand’s turn. He merely used his university degree – B.Econ. (Hons) – skills to ease his own passage today, thank you very much. She smouldered, quickly settling down in the three hours remaining.

  Just let Lee S-K come grovelling with his postgraduate smile, hoping for her to submit to yet another pointless maul while he shed into her Kleenex in his cousin’s near-derelict 10hp Standard car. Just let him, that’s all. She’d draw him on long enough to get him to pay for a meal, then leave him standing. She almost giggled at the pun but had no time for fun, gave her computer her code word and rushed in.

  Old Man went to sit in his high room. His six lieutenants stood waiting. He sipped almond juice. KwayFay was the name of a Chinese dancer, married a Ming emperor.

  “Let her live,” he said finally. “She must make choices, then I decide. And Ah Min?”

  “Yes, master?”

  “Ask doctors if she is mad.”

  “Yes, master. Which doctors?”

  “The right ones.”

  Ah Min flinched, and retreated clutching his ledger, still frantic, still beaming.

  The lieutenants dispersed. Old Man sighed. His problems seemed insurmountable today.

  Chapter Four

  That evening she avoided Mount Davis Road’s Wall-Building ghost by accepting a lift from Alice’s brother WC Seng. He was married and drove a small Volkswagen that roared even when not moving. It stank of petrol and had no springs to speak of. He chewed flavoured cachous and claimed an extra income but even Alice didn’t know where from.


  He drove her down Belchers Street so she could stop and buy two-day rice, cheap because it was old. He never stopped talking. KwayFay knew he fancied her. Several times he’d asked her out. She refused.

  “I like Pok Fu Lam,” he rabbited on during the drive. “Except Bonham Road past the university’s a pig. And those Middle School kids! Never still. They should be taught traffic. My friend’s kids go to Chiu Sheung Middle School. You know how much the fees are? Go on, guess.”

  “I know,” KwayFay answered, because she looked everything up about money. As a Cockroach Child she used to sit outside the air vents trying to overhear lessons.

  He laughed without pause, a waft of scented cachou unfortunately coinciding with her inhalation. She turned away, her rice on her lap.

  “Is there anything you don’t know?” he laughed.

  He thought he had a gay, cavalier laugh, caught from some sword-and-staircase movie. He never went to Cantonese pictures, thinking them dated.

  “Yes.”

  “There is? What?”

  “HC’s friend was delayed at the races. Nobody talked of it in the office, but they all knew why.” She sighed, to prompt him. “I’m so slow on the uptake.”

  “I know.” He turned to avoid a hawker pedalling his impossibly laden bicycle then had to wait while the market traffic disgorged up Smithfield. “They all park down Smithfield,” Seng laughed bitterly. “If I tried that, I’d get police stickers all over my windscreen. They bribe to get away with it.”

  “I wish I did,” KwayFay sighed, shifting her catty of rice on her lap in a way she knew to be alluring.

  “HC’s friend died.”

  “Died how?”

  Seng laughed his abandoned laugh. “Doesn’t matter if you’re dead, right?”

  Another line from some Yankee film. She looked at him, her eyes as hooded as a Chinese girl could make them. She practised this endlessly, once bribing a hateful friend along Robinson Road to hire an old black-and-white American video for an evening so she could see Gloria Swanson hood her eyes at a man to vamp him. It worked, but only for Gloria Swanson.