The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  “Nobody must pick the comb up, or hatred of street-shouting woman is shifted to you.”

  “All the trouble, and none of the pleasure of hating!” sighed the ghost.

  “The village’s Earth God rules disputes,” KwayFay went on, feeling she was sailing on some drifting river, serene and sleepy. “He needs to be placated with a square of paper —”

  “What colour?” demanded Ghost Grandmother sharply.

  “Yellow,” KwayFay said smugly, remembering easily now with such clarity she could see the very features of the Great-Aunt’s third cousin of nine generations gone. Or maybe ten. “Plus fine gifts of paper clothing, and the Five Demons tokens.”

  “Good, good! She was a terrible bitch,” Ghost said contentedly, “but I quite took to her.”

  “Firecrackers, best got from Gao Lung, the city of the Nine Dragons, namely Kowloon, by where the Walled City stands.”

  “Don’t buy from that evil man in Cameron Road,” Grandmother warned. “He short changes everybody. He cheated my daughter.”

  “Yes, Grandmother. And fresh eggs, to the lucky number, are then broken before the shrine of the Earth God. It must be brick, not wood, with a pointed stone in the middle for fertility.”

  Ghost Grandmother giggled, a weird high pitch that made KwayFay shudder. Some ghosts could laugh kindly; a pity Grandmother’s laugh was so horrid.

  “No good settling arguments if women end up barren, ne?”

  “You are so right, Grandmother,” KwayFay said, hoping praise would make her go away. “Firecrackers are put in the teapot, with the Five Demon emblems also, as the yellow paper is waggled above. Then the firecrackers are lit. The explosions defeat the enemy woman.”

  “You learned well for a change, lazy girl.”

  “Thank you, Grandmother.”

  There was a small silence, then, “I tell you a trick. After all, you are my granddaughter, and have learned well – for once.”

  KwayFay smarted. For once? She did really well every single time Grandmother came with her silly pointless questions and ridiculous stories. Wisely she said none of this.

  “Thank you, Grandmother.”

  “If you argue with Street-Shouting Woman, girl, even if you have settled the quarrel, here is trick to cause her endless grief.”

  “But the quarrel is mended, Grandmother. The ritual has healed it, ne?”

  “Yes, silly girl,” the ghost said patiently. “But is it not pleasurable to cause a rival woman distress, even if you have become friends?”

  KwayFay said nothing.

  “Your enemy woman will do the same to you, so you do it first, d’you hear?”

  Into KwayFay’s silence Ghost Grandmother whispered, “Listen carefully, KwayFay. Here is how to trick your enemy Street-Shouting Woman. Bribe her family to tell you the Eight Characters of her birth time. Write them down. Then write on the same paper a prayer for trouble to come to her – I used to like blindness and belly pains a lot, used them quite often – and throw the paper into an urn where human bones are buried.”

  “What will happen, Grandmother?”

  “She will suffer from yellow jaundice within the week, or go mad. Everybody knows this, but modern people forget, being ignorant like you.”

  “Did you do it, Grandmother?” she asked in awe.

  “Of course! I did it once to a woman who hated me because I was very beautiful and her husband smiled at me when I went to the Feast of the White Tiger, who was general in the Yin Dynasty – you won’t remember him – at the start of the Second Moon. It was to prevent argument, that being the best day for it. Her husband smiled at me because my legs and bottom were exquisite and his wife’s were ugly. She and I did the firecracker ritual to be friends again. But I didn’t trust her, so did the trick of Eight Characters. She went mad, was taken away to a walled building for mad people. I was glad.”

  “Grandmother! That’s absolutely terrible!”

  “Wasn’t it!” Grandmother cackled with pleasure. “I tell it to you for guidance.”

  “Was her husband not sorrowful?”

  “No. He too rejoiced.” Ghost added coyly, “I not tell you who with! No sleep now, dozy girl.”

  Somebody knocked on the door. It was Charmian.

  “Here’s your water, KwayFay.”

  The filing clerk placed the plain glass in her hands, there being nowhere to put the drink down. KwayFay took a random file down from the shelves and rested the glass on it in her lap. She ought to have worn trousers today, slacks perhaps, had she money to buy any. She had the notes, of course, but whose were they? What if she spent some, and the threat-men from Kowloon who killed assassins and were cross when their knife got bloodstained, came back for the money, what then?

  She told Charmian, “Yao sam. You have heart.”

  “Please, KwayFay.” Charmian started to stammer. “If I can help you, I will. For teaching me that time.”

  KwayFay strove to remember the incident, but only had the vaguest memory of once having shown the woman how to clean a computer keyboard, and how to reassemble the wires and terminals if they became accidentally detached. Nothing else. She wondered at the strangeness of life, and concluded it must be the curious phase all Hong Kong was going through. It would all end soon, when the People’s Republic of China came in with its Flower Flag and curiously bland currency notes and sullen street guards and bad manners, as all Hong Kong thought. Or perhaps it would all be sweetness, a permanent honeymoon with decorum everywhere?

  “Not at all, Charmian.”

  She heard HC coming down the corridor. He barged in, almost sending her flying. Charmian fled.

  “You found it yet?” he demanded.

  “What, HC?”

  “The file, the file!”

  “File?” KwayFay removed her glass of water and offered him the file she had taken to serve as a tray.

  HC clasped it to his chest, eyes closed in rapture. “You sure?”

  “That is it,” she said firmly.

  “Thank you, KwayFay. You won’t lose from this!”

  “What do I do now, HC?”

  “Go back to work, KwayFay. Take the last hour off. You have done well.”

  “Thank you,” she said, dazed.

  “Come and explain it to me,” HC said, beckoning with the door open.

  “No,” she said in fright. He stared. She babbled, “It will be unlucky for me. Page forty-seven.”

  “Forty-seven?” he repeated, gaping.

  “That is correct.” What was one fib more?

  “Thank you, KwayFay.”

  “Not at all,” she replied evenly, and went past him to sit at her console. She didn’t even know if the file had a page forty-seven.

  There was a sheaf of faxes and tiers of electronic e-mails but she did not mind. She seemed to have a job still, whatever the late afternoon might bring when HC discovered how meaningless the file actually was.

  Chapter Eleven

  The gambling in Macao’s floating casinos was almost done for the night. Morning was slanting across the beige tables. The Fan Tan girls were sleepy at the East’s most famous game of chance.

  Old Man waited his opportunity out. He saw the baskets descend from the balconies where early – late! – diners sat to inspect the games below. He watched their place bets go in the baskets, to be lowered to the croupiers. Cards, roulette, Fan Tan, dice, they were all on the go, the croupiers slickly professional.

  He liked to see the Fan Tan girls. They had a certain grace. A pile of white counters – pieces of pottery, as for the Japanese game of Go – was simply dumped into a heap. The Fan Tan girl would use her white wand to divide them on the green beige. Gamblers would wait as the girl used her wand to form the pieces into two piles. She would then sweep away – such feminine grace! – one mound off the table into a hanging pocket.

  She might then stroll away to speak idly with other croupiers or maybe the casino boss, before returning to stand unsmiling by her Fan Tan table. No signals, n
o talking with the punters, no signs. Soon she would gracefully divide the mound into two, sweep away one of the heaps.

  The game was this: would there be one piece finally left, or two? Would the last division be equal – two pieces – or one? Bets had to be paid before the end. Gamblers approach – no touching, or the harbour waters would be your only way home – and judge by peering to guess how the girl used her wand. The eternal question for the obsessed Fan Tan player was: did the pile contain an unequal number? Bets were bought and sold as the game progressed. Always the girl would wander, divide her remaining heap and stand gazing across the noisy place, before making her next discard.

  Old Man knew it the most stupid game of all. He had seen fortunes lost on Fan Tan. Once he lost one of his best street men to it, when the fool had tried to bribe a Fan Tan croupier girl. Old Man had played once, and lost. He had never played again.

  The Fan Tan table was surrounded by gamblers, all craning to see the girl move her white wand. A fool’s enjoyment.

  He also watched the dice, so popular since Americans flooded the world. Unlucky people, those Americans, because of their wealth. Money made fools of the moneyed, or so it was said.

  Old Man had a great problem. He had seen it coming all his life. It had no solution.

  He had to change his name, for so it had been foretold by his great-aunt from Fukien, that terrible place of famine, drought, wars, wars, wars. A visiting relative from Kwantung Province had prophesied the same the day he’d been born sixty years before. Had they conspired to guess that this name change would become necessary? No telling whether they had.

  The lovely girls moved about the Floating Casino. One of them had tried for Jade Woman status among Triads in Hong Kong, and only just failed to make it. Still, she was wellnigh perfect. He had used her twice the previous year. She had been excellent.

  Of the two Floating Casinos, he preferred the one in which he had shares. Extorted as percentages, of course, nothing written down for the Portuguese authorities to get their teeth into. Simply a product of combat in the waterfronts of Kennedy Town in Hong Kong Island and the bribery necessary to keep the opium divans off Stonecutters Island in Hong Kong’s harbour.

  His name.

  It had seemed a problem that would never really arrive. Yet soon he would be sixty, and on that day it was ordained he had to change his name. They hadn’t said to what. His sixtieth birthday seemed so far away. Now the new month was dawning over Macao, the sun stretching across the net-strewn harbour.

  He was well known in Hong Kong, by the right people. His identity to others would not be a problem. If he said somebody had to go broke, die, or vanish, that fate simply happened and that was that. If, on the other hand, he decided that someone had to burgeon, succeed in some examination at Middle School, get honours at Hong Kong’s Dai-Hok university, then that too happened. He knew power. Yet this name change bothered him.

  In life, only four reasons ever mattered.

  One was “face”, that elusive quality so valued in Chinese society. Youngsters still killed themselves when failing some examination and so losing face. The usual method was throwing themselves from a high building to splatter the pavement, tiresome to police and wretched for business. It was face. He hated the idea of suicide, but some things were imperative, ne?

  Loss of face was easily dealt with: some things were designed for you. Evasion was out of the question. It had to be because it had to be. Simple! So face would be retained by changing his name. Everyone would understand.

  No problems with face.

  Second reason: money. Actually money always came first, but he worried about old things the older he became. Would he oblige his ancestors properly, now money was easy? Without doubt.

  The new government from China had already passed word round Hong Kong that, the instant the English signed over their Crown Colony to the People’s Republic, no folderol such as mysticism, ghosts or superstitions would be allowed. Communist ideology was imperative. Yet a man of a certain age was bound to be secretly concerned. The Crown bowed quite easily to supernatural powers. When the soldier barracks in Central District, for instance, became haunted, why, the Crown Government – the Governor himself – had simply ordered exorcism. And paid through the nose, in accordance with ancient Chinese tradition. No problem.

  The rituals had taken three whole days. The soldiers had gone elsewhere, waiting to return across the cricket ground, and things went on as normal. Bells sounded, the Taoist priests were paid, squeeze slipped here and there on the sly, the cellars were satisfactorily whitewashed and the ghosts laid for another three years. They would come back in three years, at a newly inflated fee, of course.

  That was the old way, the best way; to compromise, consider what the ghosts wanted, find priests, pay money and get on. Job done, ghosts mollified, end of story. No problem with reason Number Three.

  Except he was now in a dilemma, for whom did you consult now Peking, that whore city where politicians ruled and mad philosophies thrived with no priests, no ghosts, and no spirits at all, sent orders about eliminating the Triads? No wonder the People’s Republic of China was in such a mess. He felt nothing but scorn. Hong Kong had devalued its currency, and like a lapdog the mighty Peoples Republic of China had followed, devaluing penny for penny. Then Hong Kong had thought, here, hang on, we don’t need to devalue our Hong Kong dollar, and had revalued a day later. Meekly, humbly, mighty China had revalued hers, following Hong Kong’s financial gambado as a poodle follows its mistress through a whorehouse. How the whole international financial world had laughed!

  Not only that, but the invincible United States of America had sent her money envoys begging Hong Kong to reduce its manufactures. Old Man felt nothing but contempt for the huge international superpowers. The posturing fools threatened each other and the world – yet who had to beg Hong Kong for handouts?

  Now the world was changing, and with it Hong Kong. Here came Reason Number Four:

  Reason Number Four was time.

  Times were new. He was facing his change of name, foretold so long ago at his birth. But the old mystic ladies with their spells and incantations had failed him in one specific point. They had omitted to say what his name had to be changed to. How could one discover that? No time to linger, ask opinions, reflect. Also, if he started asking at the temples at this late stage, with the People’s Republic of China and the Governor preparing the ceremony of Handover on Hong Kong’s waterfront, what would the incoming Chinese authorities think? They might assume he was a political subversive, and simply vanish him and his Triad. The English had law, that plaything that the Orient could make as mysterious as it liked and get away with anything. But the People’s Republic of China, who knew?

  Reason Four was his problem. Time had run out.

  What was his new name to be?

  In the olden days, you could always blame luck and nobody would dare smirk.

  He thought of the girl KwayFay, increasingly in his mind since that imbecile HC, too weak to control his gambling wife, had tumbled into ruinous debt.

  Linda Ho was in the Floating Casino right now, making the silliest bets. She had a dozen infallible systems. Old Man had been watching her lose.

  He signalled for a drink and was instantly served by the girl stationed nearby.

  “What drink, sir?”

  “Almond water and gin, equal amounts.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  He watched her move away. Such beauty in movement. Women mesmerised him. They always had. He loved women, could not comprehend how Ah Min, his gross lieutenant, could manage without at least one or two women.

  He wished he did not need spectacles. Had he been anywhere else, he might have looked at himself in a mirror, but this was a gambling place. Mirrors brought calamitous luck. Spirits can only move in straight lines, like rays of the sun or shadows, so mirrors have to be avoided at all costs. So every mirror in the Floating Casinos had a trigram on it, assuring everyone that their r
eflection is deflected from a straight course.

  Spectacles had been a matter of shame. He had killed a man – well, had him killed, not quite the same thing, no blame incurred – for having once jeered at him when he first got spectacles. He was sixteen. Now, he only felt irritation at those signifiers of advancing age.

  Of course there were still merits. He could have any girl he wanted, sure, and anything he wanted. He could promote anyone, and influence any event, political or financial, in Hong Kong. And sooner or later he would obtain that marvellous source of salvation the fool HC was guarding in his storeroom. Of course the idiot would not know its importance but it was there, still safe.

  Two birds with one stone? Get KwayFay, check her natural skill of foretelling the future, and use her? He loved challenges. The problems kept him alive. They killed others.

  The Eurasian man arrived and stood in shadow. One of Old Man’s men gave a signal imperceptible to any casual observer. Santiago obediently moved in, a new punter casually coming in, a confident half-smile showing easy familiarity with the place. Old Man knew the sequel: the Eurasian would move on Linda Ho, become her close friend, bed her before long, and the consequences were inevitable.

  He accepted the drink from the girl.

  “Basket,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. You want seat on the balcony?”

  “No. Place my bet in the basket I shall indicate.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Since he was on the ground floor, he obviously did not need to place his bet in a basket. They only rose to the balcony for gamblers who preferred to see the entire gaming rooms, believing in elevation as an attribute of luck.

  “This bet must go in the next basket to descend.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “With your right hand. And when it has come down to your shoulder, no lower.”

  The girl took the bundle of notes and went to stand by the basket used by HC’s wife. Linda was chatting volubly to another woman, her atrocious luck was a source of eternal complaint.