The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  “Was she definite?” she breathed.

  “Absolutely certain, Linda darling! She described the jockeys’ colours, numbers and everything!”

  “Was it a vision?” Linda was breathless. The girl was a gold-mine. Linda could own the world, buy noble houses in every capital city in the world, purchase firms outright in London, New York, estates in California, mansions in Hollywood.

  “Yes. She actually saw the horses in a string as we came through Happy Valley. We hadn’t passed any! Her second sight. We are in heaven, Linda darling.”

  He went to return the hire car and book a room in the Shangri-La for later that evening. He was sick of Linda and her clinging. It would soon be over.

  Once this was finished he would ask Business Head Tiger Wong’s permission for a night off. He planned to use a bath-house girl he was fond of. She at least knew how to conduct herself in company, unlike Linda, and had a measure of politeness in her. And Linda was proving as sexually enthralling as a plastic doll. He’d had enough of the damned woman.

  He went to report.

  Chapter Thirty

  “She said Dao Nan Tsang?”

  Santiago told Ah Min the name of the book. Ah Min’s hand shook. He signalled for rice wine and sipped it, eyes closed. Santiago watched. Ah Min’s fingers never ceased caressing the leather cover of his ledger. It lay before him on the café table.

  The whole place had been emptied of customers. Outside, traffic in Nullah Road tried to block cars coming down Tung Choi Street. Drivers were out of their vehicles, yelling abuse in a score of Chinese dialects. Ah Min came to, and spoke softly to the Eurasian.

  “You know Dao Nan Tsang?”

  “No, First Born.”

  “Indeed not. He lived centuries ago, Yuan Dynasty. He wrote a book on the mathematics of the abacus.”

  Santiago had the world’s best memory and important facilities with women, but wasn’t the brightest button on the Triad’s quilt.

  “It can’t be, First Born.” He added, as proof, “She remembered him distinctly. Dao Nan Tsang gave her a sweet plum and the old abacus with the cracked beads. She recalled Dao’s little monkey on his writing table. She liked to watch it mix his ink.”

  Ah Min’s headache returned, almost whimpering as it struck his forehead. Ancient scribes in the days of the Emperors truly did train monkeys, it being their conceit to have a pet to mix ink neatly for their writings. They kept them on their desks. The monkeys were highly valued. Ah Min knew that the rarest species of this precious monkey had died out altogether – except that, a few months since, two pairs of these rare primates had been rediscovered in the Chinese interior. Dao Nan Tsang was the second-greatest ever exponent of the flowing style of Chinese calligraphy, the exquisite “grass-character” writing, in 7,000 years of history. Miserably, he acknowledged that Tiger Wong must be told.

  He opened his eyes to see Santiago’s smug face. How could this idiot, with his impossibly narrow understanding of anything, coerce women to do the Triad’s bidding with such success?

  “You must be right. Say nothing of this.” Ah Min signed for fokis to open some windows and let in the traffic din. Noise flooded the place, almost making speech inaudible.

  “Further orders, First Born?”

  “Go racing in Happy Valley. She must lose.”

  Santiago left the café. He looked back for a brief second and saw Ah Min with his head in his hands. Why did so powerful a man, second in the entire Triad, not live in splendour without noise, far from the wretched stew of Hong Kong? And, he thought, mystified, if literally millions in Sterling, American dollars, every known currency under the sun, passed through the man’s hands every week, why did he always hold court in a tacky café in a Kowloon street? It was beyond him. But he had a job on.

  He went racing in Happy Valley.

  KwayFay was disturbed to find her desk had been cannibalised by Tony, who was back to his usual chirpiness about Futures. Alice was hunched and depressed. Jenny Lan had sunk into despondency, was tapping feeble guesses into her terminal. A.K. Sau, a girl of august lineage and impressive figure, who’d taken the name Elise, came over almost in tears and told KwayFay she felt unwell. KwayFay listened, trying to set up her terminal on the pod ledge, now the only free spare place. Elise’s problems involved some youth in the Land Refill Unit. KwayFay’s mind glimpsed him in a brief flash, swaggering in Des Voeux Road West from his job at the Bonham Hotel where he had a wife working in Reception. Bad luck, Elise.

  Francis Moy, the oldest employee at thirty-five, moved across. He was innumerate and lowly, because the firm was natually submerged in numbers. He had prematurely greying hair, and helped out some Christian folly at a church. He spoke Portuguese, a hindrance to anyone, and lived from day to day with dull resignation.

  “HC is weeping, KwayFay,” he said. “I think today we go bust.”

  “No-job day?” KwayFay did not guess ahead. There was a time and place for that.

  “For everyone.”

  He spoke with no satisfaction. It had simply come for him, as he’d known. The others, Moy understood, were younger, could decipher screens filled with integers. KwayFay knew Moy saw the world as an admix of feelings and words, where numbers were simply beyond comprehension. A cripple, but a kind one who normally kept out of the way and did not gossip. She remembered Grandmother’s instruction never to become Christian, for they were incapable of believing in madness.

  She did not feel tired, despite having been frightened by that film-star man, so tall and distinguished yet looking false. He was going to kill Tai-Tai Ho today in some manner, but there was no saving the woman. KwayFay felt slightly put out, for Ghost Grandmother had given no warning of this. Linda Ho wanted to possess the oily Eurasian, but never could for she was drugged on gambling. Just like any opium addict smoking his resin along Hollywood Road or lying stuporose in opium-divans on the lighters floating off Stonecutters Island. Linda Ho would kill to avoid being saved. It was the destiny she craved. She would not risk rescue.

  KwayFay went to see Alice. She seemed morbid, almost haggard. KwayFay prevented a host of images from crowding into her mind. “Alice. Did you block my data access?” Her console would not function.

  “Yes. HC said to.”

  KwayFay looked around. Nobody would meet her eyes, except Elise Sau who only wanted somebody to moan to, about her double-crossing young man.

  “If you’re not using yours, can I?”

  “HC said no.”

  “Mh gan-yiu,” KwayFay said as casually as she could. “Not important.”

  She plugged her laptop anywhere, resting it on two waste baskets, one above the next. She set to. The FTSE was roller-coasting along behind the Dow Jones, the Hang Seng Index was being bothered by some corporate failure in America. Nothing seemed stable. She almost laughed. It would even out by mid-afternoon and everybody would be wondering what the fuss was about. The Almighty Dollar would go off a whole point, Sterling would rise and Europe trail after. She glimpsed a troubling vision of some European men – a bottle-blonde woman drove their Fiat van, wrong side of the road, so it must be Europe – counterfeiting the impending Euro, which made her smile. So far, they were only prototypes, but soon that mischief would rock national economies. The forgers would not be discovered until tomorrow, when Italian police …

  She realised HC Ho was standing before her.

  “What are you doing?”

  His face was so pale it was almost green. She felt his waves of distress. He should never have gambled on the new currency. Stains on his jacket seemed to be food. His shirt was soiled, the cuffs sweat-clinging to his wrists. He spectacles were dotted with grime; this was the man forever polishing his glasses and holding them up to the light. The great thinker.

  “Working, First Born.”

  “Stop now.”

  He went to the water-cooler. It was only ever filled with plain tap water. From here important announcements were made at bonus times. He clapped his hands for attention.
The place stilled. It had come, what they were waiting for. Some stood.

  “We close now,” he said, trying to smile. “Only for today. Maybe a take-over. Or a merger! Work no more today!”

  “We come tomorrow?” somebody asked nervously.

  “Of course! There is always tomorrow!” He gave a hearty laugh, and went round shaking hands. “The Brilliant Miracle Success Investment Company will join an important exchange company.”

  “We shut down?”

  “Temporarily!” HC boomed, reaching for hands to shake. The employees seemed reluctant and drifted to their desks. “Only temporary, until the merger is signed! Definitely.”

  Alice was in tears. Elise looked drawn. Charmian was searching faces for hope, quite lost. She caught KwayFay’s eye but quickly searched on. She’d seen HC speak to her.

  “Now we have rest day!” HC was exclaiming, trying to grab hands, a politician working a vanished constituency.

  Telephones were ringing. No one answered.

  People began to take things from their desks. HC was having a hard time finding hands now. He ignored KwayFay, still seated at her improvised work station.

  “There will be no job losses!” he cried. “I promise! We work better than ever!”

  A few paused, the rest gathered up their drink flasks, always a bad sign.

  The office emptied as HC returned beyond the glass door. KwayFay worked on amid ringing telephones as people left. Charmian, bemused into reflex, got out the vacuum cleaner and began to hoover the carpet as if at the end of a long day. KwayFay closed down her laptop and told Charmian the bahsi had decided to shut the office.

  “What will I do, Little Sister?”

  “I shall try to see you get a job somewhere else.”

  “You have mirror eye, Little Sister. I starve?”

  “No. You will not.”

  The woman put away her cleaning implements. KwayFay watched her leave, hearing the wobbling lifts crash and whine their way down to the ground floor. KwayFay looked round. She heard a door close along the corridor. The next set of rooms was a laboratory, the Health Victory Eternal laboratory, always on the go, wafting gusts of heat onto the staircase, the staff grabbing all the elevators at midday. For a moment she thought of going there to ask for a job but she knew nothing about medicine, and diseases frightened her. She went towards the office. Perhaps HC had some influence with the cruel fat man who had trapped the frail Tiger Wong.

  HC, she saw, was standing by the windows looking out. No jingling of money, no nervy humming or tapping fingers on the glass. She drew breath.

  “Ho Sin-Sang?”

  He did not even turn. “Little Sister. I told you to leave.”

  “The old gentleman. Please can’t you help him?”

  Now he did look round, astonishment making his features almost recover to normal.

  “Me? Help him? You mean …?”

  “Yes.” A sense of disorder took her, images and miniature visions cascading across her mind in a torrent, sights so fleeting she could not find any sense in them. “Please.”

  He barked a laugh, so incongruous she stepped back in alarm. “For all your mirror sight, KwayFay, you are a stupid bitch.”

  “I will see money dreams for the cruel fat man,” she offered. She had nothing else. Even suggesting this she was in the wrong and would catch it from Ghost Grandmother, but what could she do? “I offer to guess his money in …”

  In what? She didn’t know in what, or how to see ahead for somebody else. In fact, she didn’t know how to see ahead for herself, let alone hostage-takers. “In dollar stocks,” she proffered lamely.

  “Go home.” He went back to staring out of the window. “This building is tall, isn’t it?”

  “It is tall,” she answered, wondering.

  Was he going to effect the merger, then bid for rooms on the eighth floor, the luckiest place in Princes Building? It had lucky Fhung Seui, wind and water combined to please the flying dragons who, destined to seek sea water daily, you dared not impede. She hoped so, though he would need monks to exorcise the place before such a move, at a cost of at least HK$ 8,000, doubled if he wanted good priests, because some were unlucky.

  “Go home, KwayFay.”

  “Joy geen, goodbye.” She retreated enveloped in a curious sadness.

  She stopped in the Ladies to wash one last time. It was halfway down the office. She was quiet in there. She heard voices outside. They were already well into abuse when she finally emerged and stood wondering at the feeling of menace.

  The fat man Ah Min’s bulk shadowed HC’s doorway, his back towards her. She moved to see into the room. Two of the threat-men stood by, one of them the tall man she’d given the money. She saw the colour of the room as if newly painted, a kind of horrid magenta and orange combined, sickly and necrotic. She detected a stench. The place seemed to be rotting, worse even than anything in Central Market after the night abattoirs had been working. She wanted to run.

  “…intolerable losses,” the fat man was saying in his beam-sieved whine. “You can repay, a?”

  “It is difficult.” HC had to swallow to get words out.

  “For me, difficult! For you …?”

  “I shall know, when my wife …”

  “Your wife?” the fat man prompted. “She has the money you borrowed?” He chuckled. He already knew.

  “She will win money tonight in Happy Valley. She will bring home a fortune.”

  “What money does she gamble with?”

  “She borrowed on my firm.”

  The fat man did not wait for HC’s answer. “Your wife will win nothing. You repay our money.”

  “No. Tonight …”

  “Tonight nothing.”

  KwayFay could no longer stand the terrible odour and colours. Her senses were overwhelmed. She turned away, frightened lest they punish her too. It was death, the hues and stink of death. She had to leave. She had made promises, so many promises. How now to save Old Man Tiger Wong?

  The whole office was empty. She tiptoed to the lifts. Oddly, the laboratory section outside, beyond the fronded plants and the poinsettias, was also silent. The lights were off, the doors locked. Had everyone gone from here too? Beyond, the two chairs for patients were vacant. She became even more frightened. It was as if the whole building was empty except for HC’s horrid mis-coloured office. Even the lifts had stopped working.

  “Little Sister,” a voice said, so close she almost leapt.

  Old Man was seated there in his cheong saam and leather sandals.

  Outside, she could hear traffic still faintly roaring, the Happy Valley and Shau Kei Wan trams clanging and whirring. Yet it was as if the whole world was more wary than before, complicitors everywhere, while she remained in ignorance. What was coming?

  “Sin-Sang!”

  “The answer, Little Sister?”

  “Answer to what?”

  “Is the one I asked you about to be trusted? Promoted?”

  “For now, yes. But not later.” The words were out before she thought. It did not seem to be her voice.

  Despite the terror he induced, the fat man in there facing HC was to be trusted, but only for a while. His actions were predictable, she meant to say, and would have said more but Old Man raised a hand to stay her words.

  He seemed tired. “Tell me one thing more, KwayFay. Are you she?”

  “She? Who she?” She almost bridled at the question. She was herself. She was KwayFay, nobody else. “I am only KwayFay.”

  “Are you she?”

  “No, First Born.” She measured the distance to the fire exit, the stairwell. “Can you run? We could make it to the street, though the lifts have stopped working. They are arguing with HC.”

  “Run?” He seemed mystified. “Why should I run?”

  “To escape! I could get you to Sai Ying Pun. I have a friend, an old man nearly thirty-seven years old. He has the Café of the Singing Birds. He can hide you. They won’t think of looking!”

  �
��They won’t?” He waited. “Who won’t?”

  “The threat-men!” She ran to him and tried to make him stand up. He stood looking at her. “I could take word to your family.”

  “Why do you know some things yet not others?” He explained, “The lifts, KwayFay. I said they are not to work. The laboratory, three businesses on other floors, I stopped them also.”

  She drew back. “You?” This frail old prisoner did all that?

  “The fat man is the one I ask about. You say he is loyal now but will not be later. He is my man, as are the others.”

  “Others who?” This was shaming. “You mean the hotel?”

  “I use hotels for my purpose.” He sat down. “They do as I say. The money was my gift of thanks. There is already more in your shack, in appreciation for the funeral pyre, choosing the right paper house for my ancestors. When I saw it, I knew you were she.”

  She felt angry with him for deceiving her. “She who? And the Eurasian man who stole me today and asked questions?”

  “Everything, Little Sister. Everyone. They all obey me.”

  She realised she somehow had suddenly far less to fear, though the feelings still would not balance. “I am cross with you, Sin-Sang. I was very frightened. Please ask them not to hurt HC. He is weak. And I apologise.”

  “For what?”

  “I…I offered to buy you, keep you in my shack to carry water.”

  He was amused. “You offered six hundred Hong Kong dollars to buy me – plus of course an out-of-date laptop, and guesses about investments!”

  “I am ashamed.”

  “Do not be. It was everything you had.”

  He went solemn, but she knew he was smiling within. “Are you she?”

  “Who?”

  “The Clear-Eyed One.”

  “No. I am only KwayFay. I was Cockroach Girl, street child in the Mologai. No family, no ancestors. Now I have no job.”

  The Clear-Eyed Girl was famed throughout China’s history, and was one of the puppet-theatre fables. Ming Yen appeared in incarnations down the ages, to advise the Pa Kua, the most powerful of secret societies. Seances ruled by the Girl guided all decisions after her revelations began at the end of the Ming Dynasty.