The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  Musty, as with all old Hong Kong documents. Some of the Chinese characters were definitely not Cantonese colloquial. Was it Gwokyu Mandarin, the common speech of China? This seemed a double translation, first Mandarin, then Cantonese, virtually the same, in a scripted scrolled hand of great ornateness, so many flourishes he couldn’t follow.

  Then a small map. Again the traffic island. He recognised it. Once, that odd shape had held the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. It was called Kellett Island. He remembered it well, yachts and ocean-going pleasure boats there all through the Seventies, near the typhoon shelter where the junks waited in staid rows until storms abated. Then had come the enormous excavations of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, driving everyone mad for months. Now the tunnel was finished the cars came churning from the mess called Kowloon, ruining the ambience of Hong Kong Island.

  The trouble was, little Kellett Island was no more. It was now nothing more than a traffic island in the middle of a slow traffic jam. He stared, went back over the flimsies, the old photograph.

  Surely there must be something more than this? He had ordered her to pick out the one that mattered. Hadn’t he said that? The one that mattered, alone among the gunge in the storeroom. He’d told the stupid girl. She had betrayed him. She was a fraud.

  He lay back in his chair, head resting on the wood and his eyes closed. No fortune, no king’s ransom? She would have to be punished. He must sack her, show she had defaulted. Would that count with the Triads? He felt sweat trickle down his chin and itch under his arms. He might get away with it. By inflicting punishment on her, he could show the Triad he’d done as they commanded, sorted through all those thousands of incomprehensible documents. She had been ordered to bring out the one they wanted, the file filled with old shares now worth millions. Money with which they could bribe the incoming Chinese mainlanders, uncouth roughs whose politics masked nothing but avarice.

  Sweat-drenched in his armchair, he imagining the horrendous consequences for himself. He would have to tell the Triad people when they sent their collectors for money. His debts moved like a creeping barrage across his mental landscape.

  The amahs knocked. It was wide open. He stared at them in complete incomprehension.

  “See-Tau,” one said nervously. “Tai-Tai send message.”

  “What?”

  “She get good luck from Kowloon.”

  Luck? Was there such a thing any longer? He’d never had any, not since that woman had become his wife. Perhaps there was a way of getting rid of her, clearing away all his bad luck in one brave blow?

  “Ring Missie on mobile phone.”

  “Ho-wer,” he said, wholly false. “Good, good.”

  They withdrew chatting quietly. He knew what they were saying: Something very wrong. Only he knew how wrong it was.

  When he’d been given this investment company to run, a blunt message had come: protect the old files. Destroy none. Preserve. And go through them. Take your time. Select the most worthy, because the Triad needs it before the great Handover when the People’s Republic of China takes over. He’d been so confident. Going through those files would be easy. Somewhere in there was rumoured to be a gold mine, something left by old people. It was his only interview with Triad people in Kowloon, to whom he had bragged about the rumour. Investments, money, possibly gold mines in Australia, South Africa shares in diamonds, some great companies who floated bonds at impossible Victorian rates, anything. But it was there. Triad people had chosen HC’s company because it would never be suspected as their repository. They were stacked to the ceiling.

  Find it, HC. It was in there. They did not know which. Six years, they’d told him as he took over in his grand new office, you have six years before the People’s Republic of China marches in. Find the file, examine all in great detail, and explain to us what it means. Just do it.

  Could it be six years ago? HC had worked the problem out. The number of files he’d need to check each day, to finish before the British ships sailed over the Kellett Bank and away, leaving Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China, was easy. Six thousand files meant 1,000 a year for six years. About 6,000, some with stuttering printing on tractor paper as the first computers had come in, others hand-written in admirable ancient calligraphy and so old they were frayed and yellowed. But somewhere among them was the treasure the Triads wanted. And that file was HC’s rescue.

  Rescue? The idle ignorant bitch KwayFay had ruined everything.

  He sat up. Could it be that she was not in touch with spirits at all? That everything she’d done was nothing more than a trick, to save her useless job? Any girl could outdo KwayFay at computer work. He already knew that. They even made fun of her slowness and her endless day dreaming.

  What if she was cheating him?

  It was his way out! He wiped his face on the antimacassar, indispensable in the high humidity. This was salvation. Prove to the Triad’s loan collectors she was a sham, that she had constructed an elaborate hoax. She’d simply pretended she was a necromancer. He would tell them he’d searched night and day, been through every single file. He’d tell them none made sense, even though he’d laboriously translated and burned the midnight oil and found nothing.

  The first few days years ago when he’d assumed control of his company, swaggering about Princes Buildings, he’d worked hard. Maybe for two weeks, something like that. Then he’d thrown parties, gone with Linda to the races, lazed in the bath houses, used a girl or two on the side.

  And postponed things.

  After about a month, he’d reasoned that maybe eight files a day would do it. Reading, say, six files before noon, then do others in the afternoon when Threadneedle Street was going demented. That would do it. If he’d calculated correctly, there were 6,000 files with 15,000 subsidiary documents, wallets, folders, boxes. Menthol was the predominating scent, for first of every calendar month he’d had a foki replace the menthol balls against moths and insects.

  Nine files a day would see it done.

  He had imagined all sorts. He would savour that precious file, time and again, savour the delicious achievement. Then he would airily make a call, when he was alone in the office, and say in a commanding voice, “Tell the bahsi I’ve done as ordered. I’ve found the file. Okay?” And without waiting for an answer he would ring off and be there, swinging idly in his captain’s chair when they came bursting excitedly into his office, full of praise for his brilliance.

  They would reward him with millions, say a tenth, a third even? Not too much to ask for six long years of laborious perusing of documents he’d guarded with his life?

  It had seemed so definite. Hadn’t he a university degree in the bastard investment systems of Hong Kong? All he had to do was read through each of the files one by one. The one the Triads wanted would be so obvious it would seem lit up like a Boundary Street bar. He would send the staff away for a day, scatter old files round the office and bask in the Triad’s praise.

  He hadn’t done any of it.

  All those years ago he’d thought, why the hurry?

  Then suddenly six months had passed, and he realised with a cold shock he’d done nothing. He couldn’t even tell where he’d placed the first dozen or so files he’d looked at. He could only remember how boring they’d been, old rentals, leasehold deeds, development buildings in Mong Kok, none of importance. Back then he’d thought, well, for God’s sake, I’ve years yet. Why not do, say, eleven a day? He’d easily make up the lost time.

  Then, another six months had suddenly passed and he’d only five years remaining. He’d planned on tackling twelve, then thirteen a day. It would even out.

  As time passed, he’d then begun to feel the first twinges of alarm. No, not alarm, for that was close to fear, and he was not afraid of a few old files. Yet it had definitely felt as if time was somehow running away. He begun to ignore the problem completely, for peace of mind. In fact, he’d stopped even going into the storeroom, preferring to send some clerks in for rubber bands or a box of pen
cils.

  He forgot the problem.

  Then KwayFay had come, when he was over five years in deficit. He became seriously frightened.

  He needed KwayFay to go in there and divine which file was the one; which file was the miracle fortune file the Triad needed. With amazement, then utter joy, he had recognised KwayFay’s extraordinarily strange moments of clairvoyance. Impossible to search through the files on his own. But her mystic powers would do it in a single flash of spiritual insight. And save his life and make him a millionaire.

  Now she’d given him a file about a traffic island. The only way to save himself was accuse her of betrayal. He’d be in the clear, buy time that way, and promise the Triad he’d hire some economics graduates – his own expense – who would work under HC’s close observation and discover the file. Solution and rescue combined! Naturally, he would offer to pay for the search, promise them a superb job.

  KwayFay would die, or whatever they did to those who betrayed them. He, HC, would be thanked – who knew how? – for having identified the traitor and solved the problem KwayFay had caused. He knew he had found a safe way through the minefields. Speak to them sensibly, that was the way. For one crazy moment he thought of dashing back to the office and making a desperate lone search. But the People’s Republic’s army was already massing on the banks of the Shum Chun, with the terrible patience of certain seizure of the Colony. He’d no time left.

  No, he would have to sacrifice the wretched girl, and that way save his skin. Well, she’d brought this on herself, betraying him with a worthless file.

  He could see what she’d done. She’d been too idle, dozing about the place. Worthless cow.

  Deciding against making a last desperate search, he poured himself a drink. Hopeless at this stage. He wondered what Linda was up to. Some trivial bet, he shouldn’t wonder, on something worthless. She’d once phoned him in Macao when she’d won seventeen dollars at roulette. Was that the behaviour of a true supportive loo-poh, old woman who stood by her husband?

  No, he’d already seen his salvation. He almost threw the wretched file aside. Better to keep it as evidence, show the Triad bosses what a stupid bitch KwayFay was to pass off rubbish to somebody with his brains. Proof.

  The worse she looked to them, the better he would seem. The worse her fate, the safer he’d be. It was life.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Never be Christian,” Ghost Grandmother told Kway.

  “Why, Grandmother?”

  “Christians believe in love. They don’t believe in madness. It limits them. Don’t believe wrong things.”

  Where has this come from? KwayFay thought. Everything Ghost Grandmother told her lately was grievance or quibbles, like this Christian thing. Why not, when the Christians were western, and western owned every system in the world?

  “They do not.” Grandmother was angry at KwayFay’s rebellious thought. “They think they own, but do not own.”

  “They have computers, administration systems,” KwayFay said directly. If Grandmother heard her thoughts, she might as well come out with it.

  “Death today, lazy girl,” Grandmother said contentedly. She’d dealt with love.

  KwayFay almost shrieked, “Death? Whose? Is it mine?”

  “You no death today,” Ghost said with contempt, as if death might be a performance beyond KwayFay’s capabilities. “You in Singing Bird Café. Bet on smallest sing bird or I cross, ignorant girl.”

  KwayFay protested, “I do everything you tell me!” KwayFay cried in her sleep, weeping in fury.

  “You disobedient granddaughter! Be silent to elder!”

  “I must ask who, when you say death comes!”

  “Mind own business!” Ghost cried sharply. “I tell-tell you!”

  KwayFay had her own grievance, seeing she would have no job to go to. She had no money for bribery. Perhaps it would be different when the People’s Republic of China came marching in with those drab suits and bicycles. Let the Chinese army try cycling up Nei Chung Gap, they’d soon see how useful their stupid bicycles were going to be, serve them right.

  “They won’t bring bicycles,” Ghost said, still slyly eavesdropping.

  “I won’t ever get a job.” KwayFay kept at it. “I soon starve.”

  “Job tomorrow, death today.” Ghost cackled at the joke. “One piece space open after one piece space dead, a?”

  “Yes, Grandmother.”

  “And don’t be Christian.”

  “I won’t, Grandmother.”

  “Remember: believe in madness.”

  “Yes, Grandmother.”

  That was the stupidest thing of all, KwayFay thought, covering her shoulders to keep warm. (How was it that shoulders always were coldest in bed in the morning, when feet were coldest in the evening?) And why did Ghost Grandmother talk sometimes in pidgin English, then ancient Cantonese straight from the fourteenth century or somewhere long ago, and other times in vernacular they’d pick up instantly in Kennedy Town or maybe even Stanley by the horrid Taoist temple where they still paraded some little girl on a great ornate palanquin? Mercifully, KwayFay could always understand whatever form of speech Ghost used.

  Did Ghost mean a job for her, somewhere beyond the reach of HC’s venom? Ghost did not often make predictions.

  The other question was death. Whose death?

  “Tomorrow learn Moon Cakes.”

  “You haven’t taught me Moon Cakes!” KwayFay cried in alarm.

  “You not listen!” Ghost shouted, grievances flying about the tiny shack so KwayFay couldn’t even think straight.

  Had she been given a lecture on Moon Cakes and forgotten, or was it one of Ghost’s first talks when first she’d appeared to her?

  “Grandmother!” KwayFay bleated in tears. “I good granddaughter!”

  “Moon important women business. Then Amah Rock.”

  KwayFay knew Ghost had gone when she heard herself emit a faint snoring sound. She felt warm again. Whose death? Whose job? Maybe neither would be anything to do with her. She could sleep. No use getting up as if she had to go to work.

  Worst thing an unemployed person – a girl, so she was worthless anyway – could do would be to lie abed, signifying to the world her uselessness for the foreseeable future, a maggot-in-rice female. Hong Kong people laughed at unemployed girls. They could not even become criminals, as the saying went.

  The man seated inside the door of KwayFay’s shack was desperate to smoke. He had a small gold cigarette case, but smoking would wake the sleeping girl whose twitchings and moanings were almost sexual. She was being tormented by some ghost. He knew that. He made a mental bow to her small house god, with its red tinsel reflecting the feeble red glow. His gold case was made twenty years before, somebody said, in a shop in London where princesses went for rings and bangles. The trouble was, it clicked when he opened it for a Chesterfield, made in America where the best tobacco came from. The click would sound like a thunderclap in this confined space. The girl would wake up, maybe talk to Tiger Wong, as he was to be known from last week. Tiger Wong did not tell why his name changed. That meant some ghost had ruled it should be so. On account of this, the old man, Business Head of the great Triad, had ordered that this girl be protected from harm.

  It would have been enough, the watching man thought, had new-name Tiger Wong ruled that one man must visit Mount Davis and tell the squatter camp to protect KwayFay. Then life would be easy: any harm to her, multiply by however much rage Tiger Wong felt if injury, harm, or bad luck befell her. Easy way, hard way. He shrugged mentally, watching KwayFay become more peaceable. The troubling ghost must have gone to wherever ghosts went for a rest.

  He felt no animosity towards Tiger Wong, for the Triad master was there to give orders. Explanations were frivolous and not to be thought about. Easy way, hard way. They were all the same in the end, bearing no relationship to consequences. If the outcome of a given rule was success, good. If failure, then payment was due from whoever had been ordered to carry
it out at the time of failure.

  Easy way, hard way.

  The watcher’s name was Tang. He came from the harbour at Tai Po, over beyond Kowloon at Tolo Harbour. He almost chuckled at the memory of how as a boy he’d played the game of Giant Striding Earth in the market there. How they used to laugh! Giant Strides is what Tai Po’s original name meant in the old language, folk said, so naturally it was right to stride with enormous steps, which is the proper way to avoid snakes and tigers who then can’t keep up with you because they’re easily tricked. They always think you’re moving fast, when in fact you’re not. Dumb fucking snakes, dumber fucking tigers. There must have been lots of wild animals about Tai Po back then before the trees were chopped down.

  Not that his boss, now to be known as Tiger Wong, was simple, no. Tiger Wong could never be tricked. He said this girl was immediately to spend much of the money she had been given. And she had not yet spent a cent. Failure loomed ahead for somebody. Sanction would follow. He wondered nervously if it would be his.

  This girl was a puzzle, or would have been if he had allowed his mind to wander into puzzlement, something he dared not do. She had a load of money, the exact amount specified by the boss, and hadn’t even bought food for herself. She was hungry. Tang knew she’d had barely a mouthful the previous day, drinking water to allay the pangs the way everybody used to. If you were starving you ate grass back in Tai Po, until the amahs came out cutting grass for the horses before they raced. Here in Hong Kong Island, no chance of that. In any case, the spirit of some hillside might think, hey, what’s that fucking thief doing stealing my fucking grass? Then you’d be for it.

  He checked the money was still in her handbag. How stupid women were, thinking because there’s a clip by the zip, it would be hard for a thief to steal the contents. Beyond belief. It wasn’t stupidity, it was an invitation. He’d done his first robbery when four, bribing a cousin to run away from the tourist bus as if she had stolen the money and not he. Easy way, hard way. His cousin had gone like the wind, while he’d knuckled his eyes in his little plastic sandals in Tai Po Market where the tourist buses always pulled in by the old folks’ home nobody was to admit was there because Chinese families didn’t leave their old folks to rot. Tourists had said what a dreadful shame, that little girl stole money right from under the seats of the tourist bus. She’d been using her little friend to distract attention. Tang got the sense of the words though not understanding a single one. He’d cried and the tourist women had given him two American dollars, a lot back then before he’d earned enough to get a woman, and decide how to be treated.