The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  Such a helpless old man. And stupidly she told him he should name himself Tiger! He must have thought she was mocking his imprisonment.

  There was only one way out. She would do a deal with these awful men. Some Triad had abducted Old Man, and had chosen her – young, poor, an ex-urchin without connections, dispensable – to be the one who carried the message for the ransom money! She knew well how it was done. Didn’t Hong Kong’s newspapers report ransom demands two or three times every single week, sometimes every day? It was the Colony’s horrid game.

  She was a no-name person. Even her name was something Ah Hau, the cripple of the Café of the Singing Birds in the Mologai, made up to call her when she came begging.

  The poor man must be got free. He must not be allowed to suffer. Ghost Grandmother would be proud of her. And if her decision proved disastrous and they killed her, then at least she would be well received. Who knew what help she might get from the Jade Emperor, Lord of All, if she helped the old gentleman to freedom? While it was still safe and nobody was sitting next to her, she slowly opened her handbag and withdrew the remainder of the money.

  She waited until the Evening Star docked and the crowd disembarked. The three followed her up the ramps. She could hear one grumbling, something about the time taken crossing on the Star Ferry, instead of driving. One laughed, the other took no notice. She started to walk towards Princes Building. At the end of the concourse she halted and turned suddenly. The men paused. The traffic lights were twenty paces off.

  “I have money,” she told them. “Take it.”

  She thrust the notes at the one face she recognised, the driver man the others called Tang. He looked startled, stared at the money in his hands.

  “Leave the old gentleman alone. Please let him go. I know he won’t tell if you set him free.”

  “What?” one man said.

  She knew what he was up to. She’d used the surprise trick on tourists from the cruise ships, and once at a furriers in Wanchai. It sometimes worked, but less as she’d become a teenager.

  “Please don’t hurt him. He’s an old man.”

  “Old man?” It was quite a good act, she recorded with a twinge of envy, but they must be trained in this kind of thing.

  “It’s no time for games,” she said, emboldened. “The money the threat-men gave me I’ve spent, like they said. That’s what is left. If you want the clothes back, you can get them from the Peninsula Hotel. I still have my old clothes. Please don’t hurt Old Man. He means no harm.”

  “What?” the man said stupidly. They looked at each other. She lost patience.

  “I can let you have my computer. It’s very expensive. I know where you can sell it. It’s still modern, nearly.”

  “Computer?” The fool Tang kept staring at the money in his hands.

  “You know where I am,” she said evenly. People passing were starting to glance at her, standing talking to three young men who had arrayed themselves in a line before her across the pavement.

  “Where you are?”

  The man was a dolt, she saw, now fully committed. What could they do to her? She knew she wasn’t worth even killing, only forgetting.

  “The Brilliant Miracle Success Investment Company,” she said scornfully. “Princes Building. You know where I mean.”

  “Princes Building,” the idiot repeated. He glanced at the taller of the others, making her wonder if she’d addressed the wrong one, a foki instead of the bahsi. She stepped back to include them all.

  “That’s where I am going now. I can sometimes guess investments. I’ll try to do it for you, if you let Old Man go. Please tell them. Promise?”

  “Promise, Little Sister,” the tallest one said. He must be the leader because he took over. “I promise.”

  “Very well.” She told them the telephone number of HC’s firm, and how she could be got on a direct line if they wanted to ask about investments. “I have nothing else to give you. Please treat him kindly. Do you give him enough to eat?”

  “Yes, Little Sister.”

  The tallest threat-man seemed amused at her attempted belligerence. The other two were still acting bemused. She wasn’t taken in.

  “Are you sure? He is thin.”

  “Yes, we are sure, Little Sister.”

  “Please remember he is old enough to be your great-grandfather.”

  “I shall, Little Sister,” the tall one said gravely.

  “He can stay in my hut, if you let him go, if he has no family to take him. I promise he won’t tell the police, just help me carry the water to other squatters.”

  “Right, Little Sister.”

  “Very well, then.”

  She turned on her heel and left them, making for the side entrance of Princes Building. The computer was cutting the shoulder of the new dress, but she’d made her decision and knew it was the right one. Sure, she would have nothing left. And she might even lose her shack if they made her pay her wages to free Old Man. It was the only time in her life she’d been in any position to help anyone. She felt really proud.

  Saving lives brought terrible responsibility. A person who rescued another was responsible for him for ever. Had to support him against all adversities, in fact, through famines and riot. That was the Chinese way.

  In olden times, desperate people would throw themselves into fast-running rivers like the Yangtse or the Pearl, in hopes of rescue – thus making the rescuer their Rice-Bowl-and-Roof for the rest of their lives. Innocent English, newcomers in olden days to the Shanghai Bund or Canton godowns, were often duped into saving a poor “drowning” soul, only later realising their profound obligation to the supposed victim and having to fund the indolent leech for ever. The Chinese, wiser in traditions and smiling behind their hands, would watch from the passing boat while the man simply drowned, in the absence of some dupe.

  That was the obligation. This, she knew, was a real case of kidnapping for ransom. She almost wept for Old Man. Tiger? More like a lamb. If she rescued him, she could have him as her own private family and keep him for ever. She would transform him into her very own grandfather! She had never done anything like this before, but would try. He could be her family!

  She wondered if he had his own teeth. He looked clean. Maybe she could have him mind two or three of the nearby squatter shacks, perhaps earn water money looking after babies while mothers worked in Kennedy Town Market?

  There was risk in it, she already knew. She once tried to save a puppy’s life by stealing scraps for it, but some lads from the Yau Tong squatter shelters stole the puppy and sold it to be cooked for rich people who needed belly heat, for which puppy stew was best. They’d made a dollar apiece, the five of them. She’d wept. Tragedy was everywhere when living things got stolen, but what could you do?

  The entire office of the Brilliant Miracle Success Investment Company was sombre and quiet. A few telephones rang on low switch. Tony was talking but listlessly as if his Futures scheme was going nowhere. Alice looked up, quickly bent down to concentrate, not even a false greeting this time, though she stared at KwayFay’s clothes and hairdo and shoes.

  KwayFay’s desk was littered with spare notes, scraps of yellow stickers with telephone numbers, Stocks and Shares pages. One or two extinct print-outs from several different FTSE and Dow Jones reports, American most of them with London latests. So much, she thought bitterly, for loyalty. They’d all assumed she was gone, and had used her terminal, console, even her desk drawer, for rubbish.

  Deliberately she took her time. Let HC come sweating and call her in. The SUSPENDED sticker was still there, now curled at the edges. She was past caring. For the first time in her life she felt committed to another living person. Old Man – her Old Man – was hostaged. Her duty was to extricate him. She would preserve him and the learning his early Tai Gik and old age represented.

  The desk rubbish she simply scrapped, screwing up the bits of paper and notelets and discarding them. She accepted a drink of water from Charmian the foki servant, a
nd smiled.

  “You look beautiful, Little Sister!” the foki said admiringly.

  “Thank you.”

  “I missed you, Little Sister.” Then, “No work here.” Charmian covered her face as she helped KwayFay to get rid of the rubbish.

  “Why?”

  “Business Head angry all days.”

  More than likely, KwayFay thought. She sat down to the console. She was heartily sick of tap-screens. You were forever making sure you didn’t split the wretched things, which gave under the push of your finger in the creepiest way. What was wrong with a resolute key? HC again, moving with the times.

  She sipped the water, carefully not letting her lipstick smear the glass. The water was always super-chlorinated, foul to the taste and horrid to the skin, but it was free, and she had a second person to think of. This was how pride felt. Different from a mere job.

  The stupid Cook Bounty Island Pacific currency was now ignored on the main currency exchanges, she saw. None of the major currencies or banks had taken it up, except for five or six who’d got their fingers burned. Serve them right. She almost choked to see that HC, in despair, had finally succumbed and taken out loans using a Bahamian international and some Commerce Bank outfit in Hannover. He’d lost the firm’s monthly take, a gross folly. Considering the warning she’d given him, it could only have been a psychic bid of despair.

  The investments were in a terrific back-log. She got down to clearing them. The office finished in two hours, but by the time the clock jumped on and the buzzers sounded for closure, she was through a good half. People began shutting down and stretching and calling their bits of news, the usual nonsense, all trying to sound as if they’d set up some monumental buy order. She wasn’t deceived.

  Alice called a tentative goodnight as she passed. KwayFay, concentrating on her screen, gave a distant nod. Tony bellowed and did his dance, creating an impression. Franny the new stats girl, a Hong Kong University graduate who claimed to have investments of her own – a fiction, supposed to bring the boys flocking – gave her a guarded smile, but only after checking HC was on the phone. Franny was a plain girl whose uncle was a political man among the godowns in Shek Tong Tsui. She bragged about him on every day except the Double Tenth when the Nationalists put their stupid flags out and talked of moving to Taipei where they could “live in freedom” among the Komintang. The Red Guard factions called Taiwan (still “Formosa” to old English people) The Island of Looters.

  Only Charmian the servant remained, sweeping up and humming a melody from the famous White-Haired Girl opera. HC struck, seeing KwayFay.

  This was it. Resigned, she left her screen.

  “I am a forgiving person,” HC said straight out, standing shaking his keys and twitching his shoulders.

  “Yes, Business Head.”

  “I am keeping you on for a few days, see how you go.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You did not warn me about the Cook Bounty Island Pacific Republican currency.”

  “I did. It is in the records.”

  “Don’t contradict!” he bellowed. “You did not warn me! I lose money!”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “I review your job in three days.”

  He turned then and saw her for the first time in her new clothes. He started, sweat already speckling his forehead. He had lost weight. He regarded her, his eyes travelling up and down, studying her hair as if across a graph of London percentage-earning ratios. He almost shook his head – no, couldn’t be true; wasn’t this a slut from squatter shacks?

  She left when he said nothing more.

  “Say again.”

  Ah Min seated himself to hear. He had previously been standing, impatient to have done with her. Now he had to absorb it slowly. It was after all about money. He had only recently escaped censure by the forgiveness of Tiger Wong. He looked at the fistful of money the man Tang held.

  “Little Sister would not take it all.”

  “She did not spend as instructed?”

  “No, First Born.”

  Ah Min closed his eyes. Yet more impossibilities. Useless to ask “Why not?” as if there were reasons for such irrationality. The girl was bone poor. So whose pay was she in? The sudden hope that she was betraying the Triad because of a better deal rose to comfort him.

  “She gave this money back.”

  “She …” Ah Min dared not open his eyes. Money was food, air, survival in a malevolent world. She discarded money, for death? The room swung.

  “She said to say, First Born …”

  “Say it.” This new phenomenon had to be exterminated before its canker spread and destroyed the universe.

  “She will buy Tiger Wong back, and set him free.”

  This was better. The girl was mad! Ah Min opened his eyes and studied the man awaiting orders. The dolt was starting to guess that his life was forfeit for concocting such a hopeless fantasy. Buy back the head of the Triad? A person who could fund investments, new currencies from newly-independent Pacific republics with barely a thought, and make mints from an afternoon’s whim? Who could call out hundreds of adherents to change destinies of whole industries, even countries? The girl clearly was insane.

  Relief swept through him. He would escape the consequences now quite easily. The gods were with him. Accountability was restored.

  “Tell more.” Comfortable now.

  “She seems to think Business Head is hostage.”

  “And?”

  “She says she will look after him once he is freed.” Tang hesitated then rushed on in a gabble, “She said Tiger Sin-Sang can live with her, and he can carry water from the stand pipes and mind squatter babies.”

  The girl, a street urchin with nothing – with no thing, nothing except some hutch she’d built from fragments of corrugation and cardboard on some hill where she had no thing of her own – was offering to buy the Triad head? Such delusion was more than crazy, it was gigantic in its madness. He beckoned for the wad.

  The threat-man riffled the notes to show nothing was concealed. Ah Min watched his face and saw only simple concentration there. He had not done this before. Ah Min signed again. The man put the money on the table.

  Perhaps he had been too hasty to think of having the man killed?

  “Tell me again what she said.”

  Ashen, eyes staring with effort, the man began to repeat the story. “We followed. She would not take the limousine. She turned as we neared Statue Square…”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Ghost Grandmother was annoyed. KwayFay thought this so unfair. She’d learned everything Ghost commanded. There seemed no plan to Grandmother’s bullying, no system. Ghosts ought to be fair, relatives or not.

  “Did you learn it?”

  “Learn what, Grandmother?”

  “Typical! Just typical!” Ghost screeched like ghosts did, as if being strangled, then instantly reverting to a normal querulous voice. “What of this funeral house you buy? When,” Grandmother said pointedly in scorn, “Ching Ming festival already gone!”

  “I have not been told of a funeral house, Grandmother.”

  “Buy in Kowloon,” Ghost instructed testily. “No Wanchai rubbish. First go to Lion Rock, give green vegetable on noodles and mushrooms for the Old Man’s ancestors.”

  “Which ones, Grandmother?”

  “His male ancestors, stupid girl!” Ghost cackled a derisory laugh. “You think to honour his female ancestors, silly child? That would diminish luck for male ancestors! Only Wuhan idiots do that! And make sure the food is hot.”

  “I have no money for hot food!” KwayFay wailed.

  “Do without your own meal,” Ghost ordered comfortably. “Then you have money. Now tell me. How will you make sure honoured ancestor has finished eating his fill?”

  Miserably, KwayFay gave the right answer; anything to shut Ghost Grandmother up.

  “Toss two coins. If one heads, one tails, then honoured ancestor’s spirit is still eating. When two heads or two
tails, then finished.”

  “Good. You go today to Lion Rock. His great grandfather was very angry man. That trouble over the Hoklo girl wasn’t his fault. She was a bitch, always putting on airs. I shall tell her so, too, the cow, next time I see her.”

  “You didn’t say where at Lion Rock, Grandmother,” KwayFay reminded, but Ghost had gone.

  She got up at the right time and the thin suited man Tang sat beside her on the bus.

  “Little Sister, remember this number.” He leant close and muttered. She nodded. “It is instead of paying. You understand?”

  “Yes. I buy funeral house today.”

  He looked at her, frowning. “Who told you?”

  “I go to Lion Rock. Then funeral house.”

  That seemed to throw him. He shook his head. “I know nothing of Lion Rock, or any funeral house.”

  “Please can I have a lift?”

  She paid with the last of her money for noodles in a foil-covered polystyrene bowl, with fresh vegetables and mushrooms, and held them in her lap in the limousine all the way to Lion Rock. It was the best she could do to keep the food warm. She was hungry but didn’t dare to contravene Ghost Grandmother’s instructions. She felt close to tears, everybody giving her orders, do this, do that, and she not knowing the consequences of any of them.

  The instant they were in sight of Lion Rock near Tsz Wan Shan she had the man stop. She alighted, walked into the new country park until it felt right, then sat on a stone and undid the foil. Nobody was in sight. She placed her chopsticks on the bowl’s rim, balanced the bowl and waited, making a mental apology to Old Man Tiger Wong’s ancestors for the poor meal she had brought.

  Knowing it would be rude to invite Old Man’s ancestor’s spirit to dine, she kept silent. Spirits had rights just like everyone else. It was only fair. The driver man stood some distance off checking the time, but his bosses were no concern of hers. She was doing as she was told.

  Ten full minutes she stayed immobile, then apologetically brought out two coins. She begged the spirit’s pardon, not to give offence, and spun them. One heads, one tails. She said a polite apology and put them away. It was vulgar to ask too often if a spirit had finished his meal, so she waited a similar period before spinning the coins again. Two heads; the spirit had finished. She said her thanks that Honoured Ancestor had accepted the meal, took her chopsticks and walked back to the path.