The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  “You know everything,” she said, unsmiling.

  “Traffic accident!” Seng laughed sincerely this time, as was customary in Hong Kong at any disaster.

  Her heart constricted. “Really dead? It must have been in the papers and I missed it,” she said.

  She never bought a newspaper. She had a natty little radio powered by two Duracell batteries. She’d been so proud of her plastic radio, having bought it from a street hawker – haggling for two days – until she discovered that it came given free with subscriptions of Time. Teachers’ common rooms sold them to fokis down Connaught Road.

  Sometimes she left it on all night, very low volume, to deter marauders who robbed shacks in the dark hours. Squatters were reluctant to raise the alarm and attract attention to their illicit presence among the mountain nullahs.

  “He was run over in Mong Kok, Kowloon side.” Seng hawked up phlegm and sniffed. Scented cachous never stopped his constant bubbling litany. It made her feel ill. He told her that he’d installed air-conditioning in his motor but it wasn’t true. Why did men boast about things obviously unattained? A woman never would. “A lorry backed over him from Argyle Street. Seen the traffic there? Worse than Hong Kong side.”

  “Here will do,” KwayFay said, sooner than she should have.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, startled. “Walk uphill, from here?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” She started to open the door so he had to pull in by the bus stop. Behind, the curving road overlooking the Sulphur Channel was already dark. “My friend will be waiting at the flower stall.”

  There was no friend. The flower stall shack showed a bare electric bulb, opaque plastic covering signifying it had closed.

  “Look, KwayFay,” he laughed. “How about I drive you to Jardine’s Lookout, maybe a meal at the Peak one day? Just us, eh?”

  “I’ll think about it.” She hesitated. That would not be enough of a rejection for this persistent goono for whom she’d hooded her eyes, giving him the free benefit of so much study. “I’m busy lately. Good night.”

  He racked the window up and drove off with a cheery wave. She heard his roguish laugh even over the guttural roar of the engine, and with relief started up the slope – Victoria Road was so steep, climbing out of town. She needed to think.

  No doubts now: her boss’s friend had been killed. Okay, she told herself grimly, accidents happened. But HC’s fear had all but paralysed him. After the news, he’d crumpled. Had this friend been involved in some financial scheme that displeased the Hongs, the great Triads who ruled where even police could not go?

  The important question was, had HC delivered KwayFay to the Triads in part payment for something she didn’t yet know? Or had he remembered one of her offhand excuses and represented it as a magical recommendation?

  It was evil. She almost stopped walking at the terrible thought. The heat was sapping, making rivulets of sweat down her back and sticking her collar to her hair. HC had made her responsible for his fiddles. She had no illusions about the man. He would see a way out and take it, congratulating himself on a brilliant escape even though it landed her in trouble.

  She would make fewer offhand remarks in future, then he’d have no way out. Serve him right. Her immediate hope was to save herself. She could drop HC in it later, find a way. How many pardons did Triads give before making some lorry reverse over you in Sham Shui Po? She’d once seen a lorry crash in Nelson Street, not far from Argyle, and a woman had been knocked unconscious against a parked motor, to bleed profusely while throngs had assembled to chat admiringly at the carnage. It gave her nightmares for months.

  Mount Davis Path was steeper than Victoria Road. She had to take her time, her thighs aching and shoes beginning to hurt. The rice proved a problem, causing her to walk aslant. She stumbled in runnels as the path wound up in impossible turns. When she finally reached her hut she saw her water had been stolen, the can completely dry. Someone must have taken it as soon as she’d gone to work. Two bare-bottom urchins were playing chai-mui, the children’s guessing game, played with the fingers opened or held up. How often she had played like that!

  “No cat walked in today,” she sighed, “so no luck.” A cat straying into your home brought luck. If only.

  Wearily she replaced her shoes with the worn sandals that she’d left carefully by the god at her door, the red cord tied to the god’s base to prevent theft. She suspected Ah Fee, a woman who worked in the Chinese Legation houses on Mount Davis, very grand dwellings so old that they were made by the first English who’d come on their warships before anybody could remember. Ah Fee was a thief, despite having three sons who worked in the godowns and imported opium. So why was their mother a scivvy and a thief, dwelling in a squatter shack on a hillside? A family thing, she thought with sorrow, something she would never know.

  KwayFay got her can and carried it to the stand pipe, a hundred yards down the path she’d just climbed. Luckily the queue was only fifteen people, mostly ancient grandfathers and little children, each with a tin or a plastic bucket, waiting in turn to get water from the one tap. People hardly talked, except mentioning the likelihood of a dai-fung, a typhoon from the Philippines. She found her laptop burdensome, slung forever over her shoulder. And her plastic shopping bag of clothes she had to carry as well, because in the dusk any one could steal and be away up among the shacks or down to Kennedy Town before she even saw him go, or maybe reach Heung-Gong-Jai, that “Little Hong Kong” the world’s tourists knew as Aberdeen Harbour.

  She struggled back up the slope, lifted aside the tin sheet and went inside. She took out her radio and set it there, struck a match and lit her oil lamp, almost in tears at its suspiciously light weight. Sly fingers had leeched out half her paraffin while she’d been at work. Third time in four days. She wondered whether to see Safe Oil Man, who came past Victoria Road. They said he was Hakka really, though he spoke like a native Hong Kong Cantonese. He supplied oil to save you having to carry it home from Kennedy Town. It cost extra but his oil never got stolen, because he paid squeeze to Triad knives. They knew who stole what, and took revenge.

  It was a question of payment, as in life. Could she afford extra to Safe Oil Man? If she didn’t pay, it would mean forever hauling heavy cans of paraffin oil up from Kennedy Town. They didn’t like people carrying great tins on the buses. The 5B drivers wouldn’t allow her, especially the ones marked Felix Villas. Another dilemma, when she already had too many to cope with.

  She got her pan from its twisted wire just above the house god. The god’s battery was failing, depending for reflected red light upon a crumpled piece of tinsel. She wanted a real red lamp with its electric light showing true devotion, so rendering all her belongings sacrosanct, but who could afford that? Ah Fee could, for one, KwayFay thought bitterly. She dropped enough two-day rice in the pan for her evening meal.

  The way you cooked it, as everybody except non-Chinese knew, was to pour out the rice. Wash it four times until the white stopped coming out, then give it a quick final rinse. Put in just enough new water to reach the second joint of your finger. Heat it on your dismally slow lamp’s tepid flame. Taste the rice grains between your incisors. When soft, it is cooked. Simple! Yet even in Hong Kong people got it wrong and served hard rice. Unbelievable. Ghost Grandmother was always on about it.

  She took down her chopsticks from their string on the shack roof, and brought out a twist of green cabbage and a sliver of fish (one Hong Kong dollar extra on the price) and placed it on a level stone above the rice pan in a piece of foil the fish man had thrown in free, though tomorrow he would charge for both. He did this day and day about.

  The rice water she would use as a drink later, and then be set for the evening. She would think her way through the impossible hazards HC had placed her in. It would then be time for bed and sleep.

  To pick the best of girls…for what? Who? She must simply guess two answers, and be right. Was it to do with money? Bets on an English horse race, that drove the young
Hong Kong men crazy with dreams of wealth so they stared at TV screens in Causeway Bay all night long? She was so tired. Hers was not much of a life.

  Dully she sat in her shack and watched the rice pan. Her mind was empty except for wraiths, each as amorphous as mists that faded from the East Lamma Channel before the dawn sun became hot. She was so tired. She thought of Seng, Alice’s brother. He might possibly lend her some money to escape to Taiwan. Except the Triads knew everything. They would stop her at the airport. She could go down to the Taiwan ship and try to slip aboard, but the Taipei authorities recorded everyone from Hong Kong, being in the grip of the Kuomintang. You might be a suspicious right-wing political Koumintang character, or communist from China mainland.

  Her chopsticks were easily cleaned of ghekko dust. She did this in a little hot water from the rice dipped out on her spoon, and felt her food. Ready.

  Wearily she ate, wondering what to do. Barely ten o’clock yet she decided to go to bed. It would not do to be late tomorrow, with this problem hanging over her head. She needed to see what HC was going to do, ask, reveal, beg. Her ghekko chuckled and scurried up the shack wall.

  It didn’t remind her of Seng, because he did nothing useful. At least the ghekko caught flies.

  “Wake up, lazy girl!”

  “I am awake, Grandmother.”

  “Awake?” Ghost Grandmother shrieked in her grating voice. “They hear you snoring in Hay Ling Chau!”

  KwayFay shivered, trying to pull up her one blanket over her at the sudden mention of the Isle of Happy Healing, so beloved now of western tourists. They didn’t know the place was the colony’s original leper island, shunned even by the Japanese during the War, though its festivals had now returned, to please tourists for money.

  “Tonight, snoring girl, I am restful.” Silence, then accusingly, “Your water stolen today!”

  “Yes, Grandmother.”

  “No cat walked to your door today, then!”

  “I said that to myself when I realised,” KwayFay said miserably.

  “Or a hen sat on your roof. That brings bad luck.”

  “What must I tell you tonight, Grandmother?” Get it over with, and sleep.

  “Why do you go in the cheh, the car of that fool man?”

  Which KwayFay thought a bit much, for Alice’s brother after all found KwayFay very desirable. Better not argue.

  “I do not like to come down Mount Davis Road, Grandmother.”

  “Why not?”

  KwayFay was sure Ghost Grandmother was laughing. She didn’t dare become petulant.

  Now she truly was laughing. KwayFay could hear her wheezing.

  “The Wall-Building Ghost is there.”

  “Old Cantonese name, as is proper?”

  To the scathing rebuke KwayFay muttered, “Kuei Tang Chiang, Grandmother, but – this one doesn’t build only at night. It’s there at dusk, sometimes even in broad daylight!”

  KwayFay heard Ghost’s sharp intake of breath. “How sly! That is unfair and cunning! You did well to see that trick.”

  “Thank you, Grandmother.” KwayFay thought proudly, see? Grandmothers don’t know everything.

  “Tell me how you escape, timid girl.”

  KwayFay carefully marshalled her thoughts, because ghosts have fantastic hearing, among other things.

  “When walking along a road, you know a Wall-Building Ghost is suddenly with you. Usually,” she added pointedly, “at night, but not always.”

  “How?” Ghost Grandmother cried, serious now.

  “The suspicion that he is there means that he is, Grandmother.”

  “True! It is the only time he plays fair.”

  “You must stop. Sit right down. Even if he has only just begun building his wall round you, you must stay absolutely motionless. Even if,” she couldn’t resist needling Ghost Grandmother, “it is dark.”

  “That will do, bad girl!”

  “He will then realise that you have seen his trickery, and leave from boredom.”

  “Good! What then?”

  “Put your face in your hands for a count of your lucky number. The ghost and its wall, will be gone. You are free!”

  “Excellent! And the danger of the Wall-Building Ghost?”

  “He may build the wall so it grows taller than you.”

  “And then?”

  “Then he lives inside with you for ever. You may choose to do a thing – go to the pictures, eat, make love, change your job – but you will never know if he is controlling you.”

  “For how long?” Ghost Grandmother cooed sweetly. It was a trick.

  “For life, Grandmother.”

  “That is true,” Ghost said, losing interest because KwayFay was right to the last detail. “Do you know anybody who has fallen prey to Wall-Builder? I never did.”

  “Yes, Grandmother. A policeman. He wears red collar tags to show he is fluent in English, and white gloves, in the point-duty pagoda at Queens Road West – you know where it goes up to Belchers Road? – who is in a wall made by Wall-Building Ghost. The policeman knows, which is why he is so sad.”

  “Waaaiii! Any more?”

  “One of the teachers in Tsuen Wan, Grandmother.”

  “So Wall-Building Ghost has snared a teacher, has he?” Ghost chuckled, coughed once and came to. “I like that! You do well, Granddaughter.”

  “Thank you, Grandmother.”

  “Next, learn the Bun Festival of Cheung Chau, the Moon Festival, New Year customs, and the God of Wealth.”

  “All those?” KwayFay wailed.

  “All,” Ghost Grandmother said firmly. “How else will you learn, lazy girl?”

  “Please, Grandmother!” KwayFay called, suddenly not wanting the lesson to end, for she was in trouble. “Can I ask about choosing?”

  “The Water Mirror is for choosing. Have you forgotten so soon?”

  “No! No!”

  “Then what?”

  KwayFay knew Ghost was just prolonging her agony from devilment.

  “I am in serious trouble.”

  “What have you done, bad girl?”

  “I am compelled to make choices for powerful men.”

  “What choice?” Ghost asked with relish, for ghosts love choices even though they don’t often get to do the choosing.

  “Among girls, and one yes-no for a man.”

  “How many? Apples, lemons, pears? What?”

  “The men did not say.”

  “Then there is only one course, KwayFay. You must ask.”

  “Ask what? Who?”

  “Ask questions, and pay no heed to any of the answers. You will then say right choice. You understand?”

  “No, Grandmother,” KwayFay bleated.

  Ghost Grandmother had gone, and KwayFay slept.

  When she woke it was already daylight. She had to scurry to find her clothes and go to the toilet – a hole in the ground, like in mainland China, the refuse dribbling down into a night-soil pit that stank. She had enough water to wash with, and this time made it go all over, armpits, breasts, waist, crutch and finally feet, before dressing in her go-to-work clothes. She had got nothing ready for the morning like a stupid girl, and she felt worn out. She thought of doing her make-up at the 5B bus stop but instead managed a hasty patch job. She started to pull her piece of corrugated iron across the gap, then paused.

  She noticed something strange.

  Beside the door was the fragment of mirror she always kept by her ramshackle bed. It was near her Kitchen God and was tilted as if placed there for her to notice. She was careful about glass, for a cut meant you might be late and suffer one of HC’s punitive fines. Last time she’d been really late – no fault of her own; a Typhoon Signal Three hoisted at Little Green Island stemming traffic in Kennedy Town – he’d fined her half a day’s wage. She’d had to give Chao from Ice House Street, who was no more than a messenger, a maul the following Monday so he would pay her squeeze to the Shack Money Collectors who came of a Wednesday and buy her rice parcel for the first
three weekdays. If she hadn’t groped Chao the Odious she’d not have eaten, and might have had her shack disappeared or sold when she got home that Monday. Life was that precarious.

  The chip of mirror was no more than an inch oblong. It was her standby piece.

  Picking it up, she paused to think. She hadn’t yet been out of the shack. She hadn’t moved from where she’d performed her ablutions. She had not seen anybody make to enter. People had rushed past, heading downhill from other squatter shacks. Any variation in morning noises alerted her instantly.

  Therefore?

  Therefore somebody had been inside. During the night, he must have been watching her. She felt numb with shock and rather sick. Queasy, like a bad meal from Szechuan or, much worse, from too-oily Shanghai.

  She stepped outside and looked about. Nothing extraordinary. She looked back inside to check again. Nothing odd. Then, amazingly, she saw a watch, large as life, its second hand going on in jerks. A watch? There, on the earth floor.

  What kind of robber enters, then leaves a donation? A ghost? She thought wildly, surely Ghost Grandmother would have had something to say about that? She wondered suddenly: Had he listened? Did she in fact speak her conversations with Ghost Grandmother aloud, or just think them? There was no way of knowing if the intruder heard her.

  Did Ghost Grandmother simply scan thoughts as KwayFay formed them inside her head, speech being superfluous?

  She was badly frightened. She picked up the watch. It said Rolex, a fame-name denoting enormous cost. Fakes were available in Kowloon from hawkers and street men. Anywhere down Carnarvon Road they’d sell you lookalikes, ten dollars Hong Kong one piece. It might in fact be a cheap replica. She examined it, realised the time suddenly, caught up her things and fled down the ankle-breaking path to the main road below and caught the bus.

  The watch went in her bag. She’d been awake over an hour and not done a stroke so far. Ghost Grandmother had told her absolutely nothing that might help. Ask questions then paying no heed at all? What sort of advice was that? She cautioned herself and erased that critical thought. Ghost might be listening in. No wonder she was in a mess.