The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  “No wash amahs, either,” she said, clutching her handbag.

  “Very well,” Miss Brody said faintly. More imperious hand-clapping and terse instructions. No more doubts, though, and a good thing too.

  They were all waiting. Slowly, before their eyes, she entered the bathroom, twice checking the lock to ensure she, and not they who watched in tableau, would have control. There was a con trick on businessmen, quite good, with an excellent financial return, that depended on locked bathrooms. Japanese and Indonesians responded best, understanding abduction as an art and even having official ransom rates payable, almost as if they were South Americans like in Columbia where the ransom rates were given in local newspapers before any kidnapping ever happened.

  With a stare to show she was conscious of duplicity everywhere, KwayFay slowly closed the bathroom door.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  KwayFay soaked. The bath was so warm it seemed as if her skin was sucking sweetness from the pale blue water. All those bubbles! She tried to sing, because she’d once seen a movie in a Causeway Bay cinema where a pretty girl sang in her bath against a back-drop of mountains and snow. KwayFay’s price ticket had been earned by giving an American sailor a quick grope, plus a clumsy maul of her breasts. The cinema’s air-conditioning had saved her life, almost; she’d been so dehydrated she’d fainted all over Wanchai. Lucky, though, that discarded cartons from orange drinks were never quite finished. In the Ladies she drank the dregs of several cartons, and so kept going. Hydrated, she’d left the American sailor stranded and gone on her way.

  Now, the pale pink of the bathroom ceiling lulled her. She felt so happy. Her handbag was safely within reach hanging on a gold tap. She started to doze, not really wanting to because of all the people out there who were going to charge her a mint for this luxury. She hoped she would get the money right. Old Man Tiger Wong depended on the hidden message getting through. Who among all these hotel people was his friend? Miss Brody didn’t look quite up to it.

  “Why?” Ghost Grandmother snapped, in a temper.

  Just my luck, KwayFay would have thought if she hadn’t been on her guard.

  “Why what, Grandmother?”

  “Why you deserve bath in gold water fountain? Are you Empress, greedy girl?”

  “No, Grandmother.”

  “You sack from See-Tau Ho! Always smile and say nice thing when sack from work. You listen?”

  “Listening! I am to smile and say something pleasant.”

  “No-Pay Girl, you!” Ghost Grandmother said, yet with a hint of fondness that lifted KwayFay’s hopes. Could this be a pleasant visit? Except, a No-Pay girl meant prostitute.

  “I pay, Grandmother! With money from my handbag. A Triad gives it. They say I did well.”

  “Did well what?”

  “I don’t know,” KwayFay confessed. “They sent me here in a fo-cheh.”

  “Big motor, a?” Grandmother laughed with scorn. KwayFay could have sworn Ghost Grandmother actually simpered as she said, “I once was a Mui Chai. You won’t remember.”

  KwayFay was shocked. “Mui Chai? You, Grandmother?”

  “Yes.” Ghost chuckled. For once KwayFay did not groan at a coming harangue crammed full of useless old tales.

  “Really?”

  “I tell truth, disrespectful girl!” Ghost’s silence extended. KwayFay put in a score of profound apologies for the incautious remark. This time, she wanted to hear Grandmother’s tale. Ghost Grandmother, a sold slave sex-girl?

  “I was bought by a Pocket-Mother from Chao-Chou in Kwantung Province. She was of course a Hoklo, spoke that dreadful dialect, worse even than the other Hoklos from the coast of Fukien. Nobody likes it. They talked Chang-Chou dialect, which is ugly.”

  “How old were you?”

  “When sold to be Mui Chai? Eight, lucky age for buying slave girl.”

  “Slave!” KwayFay wailed. In English it sounded so much worse than in Cantonese.

  “Don’t feel bad, lazy girl,” Ghost said comfortably. “I did really well. In Mandarin, they call us Pei Nu. Treated us vilely. I was sold with a cousin, MayTay, taller but ankles not pretty like mine. She’d be your …” Ghost gave up working it out. “She died of a thrashing for breaking a bowl. I still see her about, very little changed but with her hair quite pale. I told her only the other day I hate it. She never listens.”

  “Was it hard, Grandmother?” How had Grandmother survived terrible slavery in order to become her Grandmother two centuries ago?

  “Hard-hard, Granddaughter.” Oh, KwayFay thought, I’m granddaughter now am I? Not just lazy girl, or No-Pay Girl? “I worked every waking hour. Until I fourteen. Then I ousted First Wife and took her place!”

  “You took First Wife’s place?” KwayFay squeaked in awe. “How?”

  “Bad question!” Ghost cried angrily. “No ask bad question!”

  KwayFay fell silent. Ghost calmed and went on, “I could have been sold into prostitution by the Hoklo woman. She was district regular Pocket-Mother, bought children each month to sell to Flower Boats on Pearl River and in Canton godowns. Did I tell you my cousin MayTay was also sold and died of a thrashing?”

  “Yes, Grandmother.”

  “You no Mui Chai, hear me?”

  “Yes, Grandmother.”

  “Speak to Old Man, Tiger Wong Sin-Sang. Tell him, Ghost say no. Save endless trouble.”

  “Ghost say no,” KwayFay repeated carefully, anxious to get it right word for word.

  “He from Sha-Tin. His family farmed in valley below Lion Rock. His ancestors not happy. Hong Kong change name of their land. Very cross people!”

  “Not happy?” KwayFay stirred in alarm. Unhappy ghosts could do anything, change to spirits nobody even knew about. There was no telling with discontented ghosts. She shivered in her warm bubbles.

  “I not write or read, Granddaughter,” Grandmother said with the oblique pride of the handicapped. “His ancestors can. Old China people say Lion Rock is truly Tiger Head Hill, Hu-T’ou-Shan. Very bad to change name of mountain. What are dragons to do with Fhung Seui spoiled? They cross.”

  “Cross!” KwayFay moaned. “Fhung Seui spoiled!” Wind-water orientation, that westerners called Feng Shui, could never be overstated.

  “That’s why I told you, tell him change name!”

  “Is that enough?” she wailed, not wanting Grandmother to leave her with half a tale.

  “No, stupid Granddaughter!”

  “Sorry, Grandmother.”

  Ghost’s voice grew dreamy. “It was beautiful long house, the Hakka families at Sha-Tin. Tseng Family house, with round end gables. Whoever heard of such a thing …”

  Ghost rambled on about strange buildings, ponds, special green vegetables she used to like, the strange habits of the English who ate hard yellow slabs they made from cow milk by churning it in barrels, which was odd and unknown in old Hong Kong. She told of everyday things as if they were amazing, and amazements as if they were mundanities: “You remember seeing those two men flayed for their skins at the Execution Gate, near where …?” until KwayFay’s mind gave up.

  She came to. Grandmother was still talking, about how she’d almost been sold for a prostitute in Canton when she was bought by the Pocket Mother. She escaped this fate, though it would have been lucrative by pretending she could tell the future.

  “Of course I could do no such thing! No such thing as good news!” Ghost cackled her sudden laugh. “I was kept, washing and cleaning all day long. They gave gifts, hoping I would promise good fortune! I just kept them guessing. With the money I bought myself free. I was eighteen, went home. All Mui Chai girls wanted to do same. That was when the man, official for Provincial Governor, took me back as Number One wife …”

  Somebody knocked on the bathroom door, calling KwayFay.

  “Can I go now, Grandmother?”

  KwayFay couldn’t help boasting a little. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could do to a ghost, but this was her own grandmother; surely that must count?
She took the risk. “I have never slept in a bath before, Grandmother, in a real bathroom. I want to remember it. I’ll never have another chance.”

  A real bath was once-in-a-lifetime for a street girl. Even labouring Hakka women, in their black fronded wicker hats and black pantaloons and jackets, digging and shovelling roads, called Cantonese street urchins Cockroach Children, fond but disrespectful. See how she had got on!

  “No sleeping when hair done,” Ghost reminded. “Bad hairdressers take hair and use it to make spells.”

  “Am I to let them do my hair?” she asked in alarm. “They want to sell me clothes and jewels, and say I need not pay. It will lead to scandal.”

  “You no-account girl. How can no-account girl create scandal?” Grandmother spoke more peaceably, a sure sign a ghost was getting tired. “Tonight, lazy girl, I test you on three ceremonies and four rituals. I pick which, you tell which.”

  “I’m so tired. Too many new things …”

  KwayFay came to some time later, the water cooling and people still knocking on the bathroom door calling was she all right because they heard voices.

  Ghost had gone.

  She stepped from the bath, careful not to slip, and stood for a moment regarding herself in the enormous gold-rimmed rococo mirror. For the first time, other than night reflections in Whiteway’s waterfront windows, she had the chance to see herself in full.

  The look she exchanged with her reflection, she realised with a start, was one of deadly complicity. Whatever opportunity was here had to be used, otherwise why had it come?

  She covered herself with a large towel.

  “I was merely singing,” she called out as if irritated. “I am ready now.”

  The old woman from the gambling emporium in Kwun Tong was waiting for Old Man as he alighted at the Benevolence Bath House. He did not need to be told his slow progress across the pavement was safe. The fact he was not warned off by his threat-men was assurance enough.

  Girls brought him to an upholstered gilt chair in the foyer.

  “Tell.”

  “Little Sister bathe,” the old woman said quietly. When young she had been a medium, but now had lost her gift. Useful still, but only for interpretation of what was overheard. “She does not want to buy clothes, jewels, food. She say it give scandal.”

  “Scandal?”

  Old Man was startled. What was the matter with the girl? Something to do with prayers, maybe? Hong Kong’s local Taoism was famously adaptable and could bend round any moral corner.

  “Chau-man,” the old woman confirmed. “Scandal. She said it. She asked the ghost about it. It speaks,” she added, working things out, “Cantonese. It told about Lion Rock. The girl was puzzled by its new name.”

  “Good.” So he had been right to change his name. “No more?”

  “In bath, she spoke of your honoured ancestors by Lion Rock.”

  He thought for some time about this, then gestured for the old woman to continue.

  “No more, First Born.”

  “See the girl spends money.” He raised a finger slowly, to the terror of the bath girls, the old woman, and the four indoor guard-men watching his every move.

  “Yes, First Born.”

  “And tell me every item.”

  The old woman faded. Tiger Wong nodded, and allowed himself to be taken into the bath house and undressed. He would have wanted to use one of the girls, but they lacked the enormous breasts he especially admired. Such decisions were unspeakably taxing. He felt drained.

  The girls asked if they could. He told them yes. They flipped him naked onto the slab and slopped warm water over him. He hated this stage but it was the essential prelude to the flailing with hot towels he particularly liked so had to be endured.

  “Different girls,” he ordered irritably. He was peeved by the strange beliefs of Little Sister. Starving herself, and in virtual tatters? He was becoming annoyed. The two bath-house girls fled. Two others instantly took their places.

  Worried about scandal, as if she was a great society lady instead of Cockroach Girl from the gutter? It was not right. She should exploit his generosity, take what she could grab. That he could understand. It was logical. It was what people did.

  Yet she had delivered the strange old documents in the untraceable file about Kellett Island. You couldn’t argue with that. It was a new and disturbing experience, to be in a quandary with no resolution. Also, and just as wrong, was the fact that she was a girl, not a man. If she’d been male, then even with strange powers he would have understood.

  But a girl?

  “Slow,” he grumbled. “And no talk.”

  Wearily he submitted to their ministrations and the first heavy soapings. He was a martyr to everybody, including all these hangers-on he gave jobs, homes, food, protection, pensions, money, careers, while he suffered like a slave.

  “No good,” he groused, sulking. “Different girls.”

  They were replaced by two more. It was one thing after another, tribulations always heaped upon the Business Head, never on servants. Hard life for the master, easy for the hirelings. It was always so, hence the old Cantonese saying: A father’s problems never end.

  He sighed, filled with self-pity.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “The importance, Ah Min?”

  “You own Kellett Island, First Born.”

  The old man considered this. Kellett Island was no longer an island. Once, it had been a small rocky, granite dot in Hong Kong’s main harbour. A causeway ran to it, forming one arm of the mooring place. A typhoon shelter was there, where junks and all kinds of pleasure craft skulked when great dai-fungs came out of the South China Sea. The English made these safe places, but had committed the uttermost foolishness when they reclaimed land to engulf Kellett Island. No more Hong Kong Royal Yacht Club, just a small traffic island amid swirling screeching traffic. Now, cars wrecked the peace of the early morning Tai Gik people, who did the ancient ritual exercises in the parks and on high places. Where was serenity? It wasn’t good enough. Kellett Island was the pearl in the mouths of Kowloon’s Nine Dragons, the Gao Lung of Kowloon’s name.

  “I still do Tai Gik,” he grumbled.

  “Indeed, First Born.”

  “My new name!” the old man commanded sharply.

  “Indeed, Tiger First Born.”

  “The English don’t,” Tiger Wong said, still in a sulk though the last pair of bath-house girls had given him rapturous sex. He should have been at ease, but could not rest.

  He liked to do his early Tai Gik on the sports field, which he always had cleared to perform alone, in case enemies caught him by pretending to be exercise people. Lately, he’d had to hire a place in the Harbour Hotel or some such dump, as if he was a common tourist. Shameful, shameful. For a traffic island?

  “Significance,” he grumbled.

  “A claim could be lodged.”

  About money, Ah Min always went word by word, unable to string a whole sentence together. An amah entered on a signal from Ah Min, placed a tray of tea and almond juice on the low wooden table. The old man liked her. She was beautiful, no black hairs on her chin, eyes downcast, shapely, not more than nineteen, good teeth. He felt inclined to use her, though she would be hard put to rouse him. Old age did not come alone, Chinese saying. Except one of these new amahs had been married aged sixteen; her husband had died in an accident. Another Chinese saying: Never fuck widow; horse thrown rider! He would make Ah Min check if she was a widow.

  “The girl found the file, Tiger Sin-Sang. Kellett Island is yours. The deeds are yours.”

  “More. In full.” He would never get to the next bath-house. He still felt dissatisfied, so the girls couldn’t have done their sex work correctly, no matter how rapturous they had made him feel. They would have to go back to harlotry in the street. He felt hard done by.

  “Kellett Island is yours. It never did belong to the Royal Yacht Club. They did not know this.”

  “It is mine?”

 
“It is yours. In perpetuity.”

  “This means I have a traffic island,” Old Man Tiger Wong said drily. “The girl is fraudulent after all, ne?”

  “Wong First Born,” Ah Min said guardedly, choosing phrases with care as he sensed his master’s testy mood. “The place is small, yes. But the existence of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel from beside Tsim Sha Tsui East Ferry Pier, underneath Salisbury Road, emerges in Hong Kong Island beside the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter is there, with the Hong Kong Police Officers’ Club beside it.”

  “I wait.”

  “Business Head, you own access to all those places because you own Kellett Island. They never paid rent. They never bought it. English law confirmed Chinese Imperial law in the 1840s. The English conquerors said so. Sixteen decades.”

  The old man smoothed his cheong saam. His joints swelled these days. The last time he had used a lone bed-girl his knees became so painful he could hardly walk. His ankles were no better. Doctors were useless. He should have some traditional Chinese herbs. He deserved something, after all the years of dedicated service he had given to the Colony. His was dedication, total and generous. That was the duty of a father of business, ne? To give constantly, and receive nothing but ingratitude. He was not given enough respect. Only the mad girl KwayFay, who had once given him her last ounce of old rice wrapped in cooking foil, showed him respect. She was the granddaughter he lacked.

  “What means this decades?”

  “One-piece ten years, master. English law insists on Chinese rights,” Ah Min went on, heart shaking at the excitement of the revelation he was about to make. “First Born will remember the Plover Cove Reclamation Scheme? Drought in the late Nineteen Sixties? The Colony decapitated mountains in the New Territories, on the Governor’s command, and flooded the reservoir so created with clean water.”

  “I remember. I should have received millions in compensation, but Government paid the villagers instead. We only managed to milk a few paltry million pounds Sterling from that. A disgrace.”