The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  A terrified hope lit the victim’s countenance. He tried to focus, but it proved too much.

  “You should not have stolen my money.”

  He moved slowly to the door and paused.

  “Another half hour,” he told the killers. “Then end it.”

  “Yes, First Born.”

  Old Man sighed and left. Two suited threat-men waited outside with his limousine. He stepped into it, pleased by the air conditioning. There was none indoors in that dreadful place, an omission he would have to rectify. He felt quite worn out. Soon it would be time for wine and a little grilled salmon, with possibly a few large Sydney Harbour oysters flown in daily by Cathay Pacific and Quantas.

  He worried about his ancestors. No wonder he had been so furious with HC’s disrespectful cousin. Disrespect was a cancer. No escaping its effects. The taint wasn’t merely a stain; it was contagion setting up malignancies of its own. Now, he felt, that balance was righted. HC would realise. Terror would spread manners, and the criminal world would sail on.

  But what to do about ancestors? He had made his minions interrogate that girl while he’d watched behind his two-way glass. He had actually shied away from asking that girl’s advice. KwayFay had been so frightened she might have said anything, and what good was that? Later, he might summon the fortitude to ask outright, and see what she said. You did not disturb the spirits with impunity.

  Her advice had better be sound, trustworthy, and correct. In short, worthy of his ancestors. He would not like to become annoyed twice in one month. It took it out of him so.

  Oysters, he needed those big Australian oysters.

  That afternoon, all the Australian jockey’s efforts failed to get his mount to the line. He finished a disappointing fifth. He heard the abuse as he went through to the weighing room. The aggro was the usual punters’ suspicion that he’d been bribed. Punters everywhere had the same thoughts: if you won, jealous losers knew you’d bribed the rest to trail on the run-in. Lose or win, you were at risk among Hong Kong’s gamblers.

  Coming from the weighing room, the jockey found his next seven races cancelled. He would lose a fortune in race fees. He swore under his breath as he changed.

  In the car, he found a parcel under his steering wheel. It was adorned with a gold-edged red ribbon. Inside he found a fortune, twice what he would have made had he won all his cancelled races. He had only been in Hong Kong four months, but already he knew when to speak out and when to drive home silently to Chai Wan as if nothing had happened. He did not smile, until he closed the door on his fourth-floor apartment in Cheung Lee Street. It was the only time he’d arrived home not cursing the bastard-awful one-way traffic system.

  HC’s wife Linda was furious. She had shouted the same allegations among the abusive punters. She lost five out of her six wagers, the paltry winner an odds-on filly hardly paying enough to bother with. She considered the numbers: five, out of six. Were numbers trying to tell her something? Perhaps that she ought really to try her hand at blackjack, or even go back to roulette on the second floating casino in Macao? The problem was enough money. If HC wasn’t so wretched a provider she’d have enough money to work a proper gambling system.

  Worse, she just knew that her favourite friend KwanChoi Wah, who’d recently adopted the lucky western name Betty, had won again. She’d doubled her stake, bringing odds of 11-8 against and making it by a neck. If HC wasn’t spineless he’d have his friends (were any left?) creep in at midnight and slash the hamstrings of the horses that had lost his wife serious money. She knew two wives whose husbands had exacted that revenge for their loving wives. The priceless thoroughbreds had suffered, serve them right. What was the alternative, she seethed, reward failure?

  “Madam.” A Eurasian man was standing nearby. He raised his panama. A young, pleasant man, not one of your race-course louts without tie or jacket.

  “Yes?” she said uncertainly.

  “May I stand nearby, while I select my next bet? I can see you will bring a gentleman superb luck!” He sighed. “I need it badly!”

  His Cantonese was perfect. She gave a sideways glance to see if her friend KwanChoi, the successful Betty, was watching. The newcomer’s manners were impeccable, his clothes expensive, his hands manicured. He wore a diamond tiepin. His shoes looked English handmade. How could a man so rich need luck? HC’s wife wondered if he had crossed some fortune god today, and decided she ought to keep her distance.

  “My luck has not been good today,” she confessed.

  She had an alexandrite stone – English sailors favoured them to prevent drowning, and of course it worked, for weren’t they born for the sea? Would her luck be offended because her own cheap blue topaz stone wasn’t costly enough?

  Worry about that later, after this charming man had gone.

  “Impossible! Beauty brings its own good fortune!”

  He must be ten years younger than she. She was flattered. Betty KwanChoi was looking back from the winnings window.

  He stood closer to mark his card.

  He touched his hat to her in thanks and headed for the bet window. She felt slightly breathless. Perhaps he was a good omen? From the way he held his pen it couldn’t have been farther down the call-over than second, third at the lowest.

  “Who on earth …?” KwanChoi asked, returning.

  “Hello, Betty. Nobody you need know!”

  “Come on, Linda. Is he local? New? What’s his name?”

  “What do you fancy for the next?” she asked innocently.

  Linda had already decided to put everything she had left on the second down, hoping it was the same horse on which the handsome young man had probably placed his.

  And lost it all. The animal came second-last. Betty, the bitch, crowing, got another place, third, paying 9-5. The end of a miserable day.

  All the way home she blamed HC. See what happened when you didn’t have enough money to gamble properly! You lost time after time. A few dollars here, a few there, pinching and scraping for the next hundred to put on an each-way, was betting like some worried little housewife.

  It was shaming. HC kept her short of decent gambling money.

  And all the time KwanChoi Wah, Betty, the smarmy winner with her genuine branded clothes and accessories, crowed and collected her winnings. You had to lay out money in gambling to win. Every gambler knew that. It was common sense.

  This was the tenth consecutive time she had been to the races and lost. All down to HC, too damned mean to see the obvious. Lay decent money out to bring decent money in. She needed enough money to win handsomely.

  The young man had been so courteous. She’d glimpsed him, not letting him see her looking of course, at the winners’ window to collect a sickeningly large wad of notes.

  He must have laid a sizeable bet. He had won.

  She had placed trivial money. She had lost.

  There was only one way out of her unspeakable shame. She would take it.

  She must borrow enough to construct an infallible scheme. Then let her best friend Betty smirk, the bitch. Linda would be triumphant.

  Bet enough money, gambling became a certainty. You had the thrill of winning without the dismay of losing. She began to plan: Get more money, for the one great gambling coup of her life.

  Chapter Six

  KwayFay was followed home. She alighted from the Kennedy Town tram, changing direction until she came to the street players. She watched the marionette Chinese opera, smiling in spite of her fears. The Flag Cloth Opera! The story always gripped her. How many times had she seen it here? She saw the poor little girl from Kashgar, played with a silly (so wrong!) Shanghainese accent of unbelievable shrillness, move with slow jerks across the marionette stage being abducted by the great Western-China General.

  She cried out with the street audience standing amid the traffic, as the girl, Siang Fei, Fragrant Consort to the Emperor, was taken to Peking there to languish alone. Emperor Chien Lung was entranced. KwayFay found herself applauding with deli
ght at the wickedness of the Imperial Palace concubines, hating this new rival’s exquisite beauty. They were defeated by Siang Fei’s innocence. Unaware how time was passing, KwayFay wept as the girl, newly promoted to Fragrant Consort, ascended the Dragon Bed.

  Desperately wanting to see the end, KwayFay glanced at somebody’s watch. Almost eight o’clock! No wonder darkness was on the sea, lights stringing out in the bay like so many stars, the junks now puttering with only three lights showing. She might as well find some street stall and have a bowl of hot rice, perhaps with green vegetables. She could make a drink of tea before bed in her squatter shack, and then it would be dawn and the start of another day at HC’s wilting firm. Amazingly, he still had not sacked her. What on earth was in his mind?

  She walked slowly away, her calves aching from so long a day, saddened by the story she had just left. The crowd would all be in tears as the lovely Siang Fei stabbed herself. Marionetteers always used a knife of hugely disproportionate size, its blade glittering with aluminium dust. As a little girl she had climbed this very thoroughfare, Water Street, and gone through the narrow lane into Second Street to see the same puppet displays! Were they the same people running the little theatre? You never saw. Like life.

  Once, thrilled, she had been allowed to sprinkle the precious silver powder onto the wooden knife! She angrily brushed her tears away.

  There was a food stall at the junction with Third Street. She bought a bowl (four HK dollars, a fortune) and seated herself on a trestle stool, eating with a swift shovelling action in the gathering darkness, the mad cars streaming past towards Sheung Wan in a crazy dash down the one-way system.

  For a moment, as the bare rice settled in her stomach and her hunger melted, she wondered why she had stopped off here, then remembered.

  He had not been the same man following her. Not that calm stranger with such a sure tread. The new man was stout, wore trainer shoes boys ran about in to bother pedestrians. Youths pretended they were great runners who had paid the right bribe to Olympic judges at the next Games.

  The new man smoked long cigarettes and wore a hat like a gangster. She was frightened, but the stall was crowded with night people. Cars were still about, but the buses were fewer now and the sea below darker. Had she been foolish to choose this way home?

  She walked to Bonham Road and waited for a bus but none came. She had no money to pay a taxi, though two passed her and beeped their insolent horns, just as if she was a sai-yan, a westerner, maybe English from the University.

  The man suddenly was there in front of her. Nobody was about. A car roared past. For one insane moment she wondered if the motor might be Alice’s brother Seng who fancied her. It swished by.

  He held a knife, so small it almost could have been amusing in other circumstances.

  “Handbag,” he said.

  “I have nothing,” she said, which was true.

  Then she remembered the Rolex watch, that had appeared so mysteriously in her shack, and felt her rice meal try to force itself back up her throat. Bile rose. She had declared her own death, for street thieves hated to be lied to. He would kill her.

  “Give me red, or I take red!”

  It was the street thief’s standard line, red or red. Red hundred dollar notes, or you forfeited your red blood.

  “Hung hung. Red red!”

  He grinned, two gold teeth large and protuberant.

  KwayFay’s heart failed. This demand of street robbers was unknown thirty years go, but now was the most feared confrontation. If you had none of the red $100 Hong Kong note, you would die.

  And she had lied to him. Double bad luck.

  Humbly she held out her handbag. He took it.

  “I am sorry,” she said with humility. “I forgot. There is a new watch inside. My friend’s gift.”

  Where was her friend now that she was about to die? Her unknown admirer, disturber of mirrors and leaver of priceless watches, why did he not save her like an American comic-book hero?

  Desperately she wondered whether to run across the road in front of some passing car. No use. The motorist would assume she was getting rid of some chasing ghost and swerve angrily. It was so common, the gambit of children who, imagining some pursuing spirit, would dash across swift traffic, narrowly escaping with their lives. The ghost, distracted from its prey, would then chase the motor car, and bring bad luck to the motorist instead, for ghosts travelled in straight lines.

  “What friend?”

  The thief rummaged in her handbag. She watched dully. He exclaimed and brought out the watch. A car went by, students shouting rude comments at the sight of a couple standing talking.

  “I do not know.”

  “You Queen’s woman?” he asked.

  That was the old English euphemism for prostitute. European women, though mostly American, over a hundred years before inhabited the area between Graham Street, Wellington Street and Hollywood Road, selling sexual favours for money.

  “No. I am office worker.”

  “Why does a stranger give you expensive watch?”

  “I do not know.”

  “How did he give it you?”

  “He left it in my home.”

  “This watch is genuine.” He grinned at her. “Friend pay well! Good climb volcano, ne?” Climb volcano was Hong Kong’s euphemism among the older generations for sex.

  “It must have been during the night. I saw nothing.”

  “What else did he give?”

  “I woke, and it was there. I was afraid. I might have been accused of theft.”

  “You speak truth?”

  She was about to reply when she noticed the strangest thing. The man shook slightly, as a dog emerging from water shook away moisture. A prominent bulge appeared in his abdomen. He looked down in vague surprise. KwayFay imagined a friend having tapped him on the shoulder.

  Blood seeped onto his clothes, almost black in the falling dusk, him standing with that stupid grin. Then blood spurted, narrowly missing her as she stood watching the weird performance.

  Two young men stepped round him, one muttering in annoyance as he almost stepped into the blood. They watched the man crumple and fall, and stooped to retrieve the watch.

  “You okay, Siu-Jeh?”

  “Thank you,” she said politely, staring at them.

  The speaker kicked the thief. “Die, you pig.”

  “He’ll end soon,” the other said, rubbing the watch with an unfolded handkerchief before politely offering it to KwayFay.

  “That’s not the fucking point,” the kicker said. “It was my knife.”

  The dying thief groaned and gave a great exhalation. They beckoned KwayFay and began strolling up the road. They paused, looking back.

  “Come on, Little Sister. We don’t want the police asking questions, do we?”

  “But he is…”

  What exactly was he? Dying? Dead, with a knife projecting? She saw it in the gloaming, in the fallen man’s spine. Somehow it had been thrust with enormous power through his shoulders, down and forwards so its point came out from his abdomen. And she had seen it all with remote detachment, thinking it a pat from a friend.

  “We must telephone for an ambulance,” she said faintly.

  “I will, soon,” one said, chuckling.

  She felt suddenly dizzy, and was relieved the two men did not let her fall. They took her arm with extraordinary gentleness.

  “Jesus!” one said with feeling. “Don’t let her go. If Business Head finds she’s marked, we’ll get more than a couple of scratches.”

  “I know, I know!”

  She did not recall getting into a car, only finding herself somehow in a Chrysler, the sort becoming so fashionable among young tearaways. It was all leather and walnut dashboarding. She saw the two men clearly and, aware of the appalling risk that glimpse might bring, put her face in her hands to hide their features.

  They laughed.

  “Not necessary, Little Sister! We saved your life, remember?”
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br />   So they had. These two had saved her and restored the watch to her. She wanted to disclaim responsibility for the thief, the encounter, being late, having in her possession a watch she knew nothing about.

  “Please,” she begged, still concealing her face as the car’s acceleration forced her into the plush seat. “I will say nothing.”

  “We know that now, Little Sister,” they assured her. “You did good there.”

  He spoke in fluent English. Did good? That was what footballers cried to each other, TV trendiness.

  “I did?” One was looking back at her from the front passenger seat, the other driving.

  “You said nothing,” the passenger said, nodding. “Good! You saw us plant the watch – incidentally a gift from our boss – during the night, yet you said nothing.”

  “I did not see you.”

  The driver laughed. “Your eyes were open. You watched us.”

  “I did not see a thing.” It was the truth.

  “Keep it up, Little Sister! Our boss will be very pleased.”

  “Even when threatened with death by Ah Tseng, you refused to admit you saw who brought you the gift. So brave.”

  “I …”

  She decided to say nothing more. Truth might condemn her, when ignorance seemed to be saving her life.

  “Yes?”

  “I am grateful that you rescued me.”

  “It’s our job, Little Sister.”

  They spent time laughing, talking in some crooks’ dialect she failed to follow. She noticed with a shock that they were taking her down Mount Davis Road, past Cape Mansions and St Clare’s Girls’ School and Felix Villas. She was deposited at the path to the squatter shacks.

  Politely the man opened the rear door.

  “How did you know his name?” she could not help asking, still frightened.

  “Ah Tseng?” The man hawked up phlegm and spat expertly down wind. “Chiselling bastard owed. Gambling, see?”