Kowloon Tong

by Paul Theroux

  At breakfast his mother had said, "What's wrong?" and that had only made it worse, because he suspected that something was seriously wrong, but he could not say what.

  "See you letter," he heard. It was a child's voice.

  A man and woman sat in chairs by the rail with their small child between them.

  "See you later," the man said.

  "See you letter," the child repeated.

  "And how are you?" the woman pronounced.

  "And how are you?" The child was excited, his voice was shrill.

  "One, two, three, four, five, six," the man said.

  "One, two, fee, fo, fi, sick." The child sang the numbers.

  "See you later."

  "See you letter!"

  Bunt would have been happier hearing them speaking Chinese. This English lesson was a reproach, and under the circumstances it was futile. He walked to the stern, hating the chatter. He could not account for his uneasiness, yet he was sure that today something was distinctly different. He sensed an emptiness, as of something missing. There was this morning a small hole in the world and he had the uncomfortable notion that he had made the hole. It was worse than a hole, it was a leak.

  Hong Kong was not really home because Hong Kong was always strange to him, and so Bunt never spent a day in the colony without feeling that he was partly inhabiting a dream. His dreams were familiar only as foreground and the rest was foreign; his dreams were cloudy, and fuzzy at the edges. He flew in his dreams with his arms out, but he seldom knew what country he was flying over, and he never landed. Often, leaving Kowloon Tong and work, and entering the bungalow at night, seeing his mother, he had the impression that he was just waking to reality after a day of abstraction. The city's bad air and confusion and accusatory noises kept him indoors. I live here. I will not die here, he told himself. It was the only place he had ever lived in, and yet Hong Kong was not home. Home was a larger, warmer word. Perhaps Albion Cottage was his home, but his mother crowded it.

  Just the fact today that his car would not start added to his anxiety. He had an inkling that the truth would be revealed and someone would tell him what was wrong. He hoped his dream, whatever it had been, was misleading and that he was not responsible.

  Approaching the Imperial Stitching Building, he noticed that the Union Jack was not flying on the factory pole. The absence of the flag gave the building a colorless look, even a meekness, as of surrender.

  "Mr. Woo did not come to work today," Miss Liu explained.

  Bunt could not remember a time when Mr. Woo had been absent from work. In fact, since 1984 Mr. Woo had made a point of being punctual in raising the flag, as though making a statement against the Hand-over. Mr. Woo it was who refused to speak the name of the dictator of China—Bunt did not know the man's name, so it made little difference. Mr. Woo had a nickname for the man, and anyone within earshot giggled when Mr. Woo referred to him as "the Turtle's Egg."

  "Is Mr. Woo the only person who knows how to run up the flag?" Bunt said.

  Miss Liu hesitated. Apparently the answer was yes.

  "Isn't it time someone else learned?" Bunt demanded.

  The task, along with the rest of Mr. Woo's custodial duties, was assigned to Winston Luck, in Shipping, until Mr. Woo returned.

  Mr. Woo's absence, like the Rover that wouldn't start, only added to Bunt's sense of disquiet.

  Towards noon, as Bunt was going over the production figures for the previous month—Mr. Chuck would have been pleased, he thought with a pang—Monty Brittain phoned to say that he needed Bunt's signature on some Full Moon documents, and could Bunt meet him for a late lunch at the Hong Kong Club?

  "Done," Bunt said.

  Might this provide the revelation he had been waiting for ever since he left the house? Whatever, he felt rescued by the call. He knew that he had to remain fully awake and watchful. The answer was somewhere out there.

  He was even now vaguely rattled by Monty's having told him that he had renounced his British citizenship and was now an Austrian. That his name was Brittain made the whole business seem peculiar, and Bunt remembered that when Monty had revealed it, whispered the word "Austrian," he'd had a beer stein in his hand and suds on his mustache.

  The image would not fade. It was just a tax-saving ploy, Bunt knew that. Monty had no intention of retiring to a suburb of Vienna. Bunt could not see the Jewish solicitor wearing leather pants and one of those silly trilbies and listening to an oompah band, all farting trumpets and snare drums, with a men's chorus shouting the sort of German folksong that always sounded like "Shtick your finger up your bum!"

  Monty, an Austrian. That was strange, perhaps even stranger than the opinionated American with the African passport who called himself a bottom feeder. Perhaps it was all the result of living in Hong Kong, in a fury of activity in which any sort of transformation seemed possible.

  Still, Bunt set off for lunch in an expectant mood, glad for the chance to talk to someone sympathetic. He was grateful for Monty's call, because Monty knew Hung and would listen to his anxieties. It had been an awful night, all that business with Hung and the chicken feet at the Golden Dragon. After the revolting meal Bunt had gone home, and on entering Albion Cottage he saw his mother in her robe and slippers, waiting up like a wife. Kissing him, she had leaned over and loudly sniffed and made a face. She often did that in the evening, in an abrupt scrutinizing way, like a quality-control inspector wrinkling her nose, saying nothing, yet radiating disapproval.

  Bunt said, "I was with your friend Hung again."

  "I'm sure."

  Trying to be superior and haughty always made her ridiculous. The poor woman had a form-four education. She often joked about it: "Thick as two short planks," she said, and sometimes it was "Well, I'm a graduate of the College of Short Planks." She was never so withering as when she was earthy, repeating the vulgar folk wisdom of her parents. She could say, "He's from the gutter," with the authority of someone who knew the gutter.

  "We were at a Chinese restaurant," Bunt said. "I didn't eat anything. I drank two beers, made my excuses, and left."

  "Of course you did."

  Her sarcasm grated because it was witless, because he deserved better. To have endured such a night was bad enough, but for his mother to dismiss it—sniffing, sneering, frowning in his face as though she had a bad smell in her nose—this was worse.

  "Mum!" he complained.

  "You are humming with Woman," she said. "I smell Tart."

  "Mr. Hung's friends."

  He had taken a dislike to Mei-ping and Ah Fu for accepting the invitation. They should have known better even if Hung had not. Who did they work for? Who paid their salaries? And there was Ah Fu from Stitching, opening up and letting this awful man stick a piece of jade into her mouth. A Chinese custom, perhaps, but he wanted no part of it.

  "I'm sure," his mother said, and went back to her armchair and her newspaper, ostentatiously holding it up and rattling the pages to screen her face from him.

  To be accused of lying when he was telling the truth made him feel violent, because in this instance words were no use—she had stopped listening. He wanted to break something, not to hit her but to smash something and frighten her, just fling one of her ugly duty-free-shop souvenir saucers against the wall.

  But if he had, what would happen? His mother would crumpie and contract in fear. She would cry and she would win—though she shouted like a sailor, she blubbed like a little girl. Wang would emerge from his room and silently, reproachfully sweep up the pieces. And Bunt would spend a week or more being reminded that he had hurt her feelings, and he would be in the wrong.

  "Wang's made you a hot drink."

  "No thank you." That was his protest, that and the snub of going to bed before she did.

  When she referred to it in the morning—wrinkling her nose, making a face, sourly smacking her lips—he realized how she must have done that very thing with his father many mornings when she had suspected him of being with his Chinese mistr
ess, the mama-san. He forgave his mother, for she had suffered the humiliation of her husband's infidelity. How it must have pained her. On reflection, he wondered whether she had driven him to it.

  But what have I done? It seemed so unfair that he should be blamed, that he was not trusted.

  He said, "I hate that man Hung."

  "What does it matter?" she said. "He's doing business with us. If he pays top whack as he promised, I'm not bothered."

  "I think he's a beast."

  The word tumbled out, he had not rehearsed it. He was startled by the accuracy of what he had said. "Beast" summed him up.

  "He's buying the company," his mother said, as though Bunt's statement were irrelevant.

  Perhaps it was irrelevant. If Hung had been a faceless buyer, just a name on a document, he would not have mattered. But he wasn't faceless, he was a beast, and so wasn't that a factor? That awful bottom-feeding Yank had said about the Chinese, They're basically giving you the finger the whole time.

  Bunt said, "I'd like to beat him to jelly."

  "Steady on, Bunt. You'll do nothing of the kind."

  "I wish Mr. Chuck were still alive."

  The old man had been a father figure. Having repudiated China, he had become self-sufficient in Hong Kong with the unvarying consistency of the refugee: sticking to his principles, making sacrifices, working hard, being thankful. Mr. Chuck's contempt for China was undisguised. China was a prison, Chairman Mao was a Turtle's Egg. Mr. Woo, who occasionally served as Mr. Chuck's driver, had learned the insult from him. Bunt missed Mr. Chuck for the hope and stability he had represented. And he had liked him even more when he had glimpsed him in the Pussy Cat.

  "Poor Henners," his mother said. "But if Henry Chuck were still alive, you'd be a lot poorer."

  "None of this would have happened," Bunt said. "Since he died, everything's changed."

  And he went outside and could not start the Rover. It seemed like another aspect of a pattern of uncertainty and loss. Then no Union Jack, no Mr. Woo. With such dread on his mind everything looked like an omen of dwindling possibilities.

  Monty was waiting for him in the Hong Kong Club foyer, under the portrait of the Queen. He unzipped his briefcase as soon as he saw Bunt.

  "Should I have signed you in, squire?"

  "No," Bunt said. I'm still a member. I don't know why. I never use it."

  "I know why. It's because the waitresses aren't topless," Monty said. "Sorry. Bad joke, squire."

  He had quickly apologized because Bunt's face had darkened. But Bunt was ashamed of himself. So that was how he was thought of, as a regular at the chicken houses and karaoke bars and the topless clubs and blue hotels. What made it all the more pathetic was that he lived with his mother.

  "That's me," Bunt said, "another gweilo whore-hopper."

  "Not at all," Monty said, being brisk to cover his embarrassment, pulling a file of papers from his briefcase. He went on, "We'll have to deal with this here. It's forbidden to transact business in the Jackson Room. Club rule, as you no doubt recall."

  Monty seemed pleased to be reminding Bunt of this, the oddity and inconvenience of it. It was something expatriates seemed to relish, and Bunt, who was not an expatriate but Hong Kong born and bred, regarded it as pure foolishness, that worst of English traits, eccentricity for its own sake, making a vice into a virtue, a maddening nuisance into something lovable.

  "Stupid rule," Bunt said as he signed the papers headed Full Moon (Cayman Islands) Ltd. "I reckon that's why I never come here. I mean, you can transact business at Bottoms Up, what?"

  "Very British," Monty said.

  "That's what I mean," Bunt said. In a teasing voice he added, "But aren't you supposed to be German?"

  "Austrian," Monty said. "But do keep your voice down, squire. That's supposed to be hush-hush."

  They went upstairs to the Jackson Room, Monty greeting other members on the stairs.

  "Get out while you can," one man was saying.

  "Nonsense, this is a great time to be here," his partner replied.

  "Quite right," Monty said, genial again.

  After they were shown to a table, Monty leaned over and said, "Austrian passport. It's not quite the same thing as being an Austrian."

  "I must be stupid," Bunt said.

  "Is everyone who carries a British passport British?" Monty asked.

  "I should jolly well hope so," Bunt said. He sulked for a while, wondering what had happened to his mood—he had been looking forward to this lunch. He glanced around the crowded restaurant, at the murmuring diners in their dark suits, nearly all gweilos, and at a waiter trundling a trolley of bleeding beef. Then he said, "Monty, I want to finish this business."

  "Soon, squire, don't you worry. The third company is registered. I've prepared the documents." Monty was sipping a gin and tonic. "Are you sure you don't want a new passport?"

  "I've got a passport."

  "Something a bit more convenient than the standard U.K. issue?"

  "Austrian?"

  "Squire" Monty pleaded and became businesslike again. "Cayman Islands is a good bet. Or you could become an American."

  "Me—a Yank!"

  "Nonresident, squire," Monty said. "It makes all the difference."

  "No bloody fear of that," Bunt said, and muttered, "Yank? I met your Yank friend the other night. Is that an act or is he trying to be colorful, the way they do sometimes?"

  "Hoyt made a million U.S. by getting himself a new passport. You don't have to, but you ought to consider taking a year off. Drop out for a tax year. A spell in Monaco or even Ireland would save you an awful lot of money."

  Bunt put his face forward and said, "Monty, I was thinking I might stay right here in Hong Kong."

  "Under the terms of the conveyancing agreement that is out of the question. You have to leave."

  "Who's to know?"

  Bunt smiled and said no more until he had ordered his lunch and the waiter had moved off.

  Monty said, "I've done some spadework, squire. I know a bit more about our Mr. Hung."

  "I hate him," Bunt said without feeling. "He's awful. He's a spotty bottom. I told him so."

  "It needed to be said." Monty was smiling, as though there were something admirable in Hung's awfulness. "I checked his credentials. They're all in order."

  Falling silent while the salads were set out and the black pepper ground on them, Monty resumed as soon as the waiter was out of earshot. "He's PLA, an army officer. He already has some of his troops installed at Stanley."

  Bunt said, "It really amuses me that the Chinese call their soldiers the People's Liberation Army."

  "Is that sillier than calling them beefeaters?"

  "I don't know," Bunt said. "Austrians call their chaps storm troopers, don't they?"

  "You're thinking of Germans. World of difference," Monty said, looking pained. "I wish I had never told you of my difficult decision."

  Bunt was on the verge of apologizing when he looked across at Monty and thought, Leather trousers, trilby hat, farting trumpets, oompah band, "Shtick your finger..."

  "Your Mr. Hung has an inkling that you are not in total sympathy," Monty said. "Which is why he is stipulating that one of the conditions of the sale of your factory is that you leave Hong Kong for good."

  "What if I don't want to leave?"

  "He is in a position to see that you do—to show you the door, smartish," Monty said. "He may look a fool, but he could prove a formidable opponent."

  Chewing lettuce, crunching it and facing Monty, Bunt said, "I never said he was a fool. I said he was a wanker."

  "A nice distinction," Monty said. "One of the clauses in the document you just signed affirms your agreement to leave Hong Kong in order to collect the proceeds of your sale, and in any case before June 1997, whichever is sooner."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I am telling you now, squire," Monty said. "That's why I asked you here."

  "Knickers," Bunt said.

 
The pork chops were served, the roasted potatoes, the sprouts. Dessert was flan. He felt he was giving himself indigestion. He had thought he might discover something from Monty that would ease his mind, and yet all the lunch had done was make him more disturbed. Hung was not just a beast but a powerful beast, and a wanker, too.

  "You want to be careful, squire," Monty said, and tapped the side of his nose to give his statement significance. "You know about Feetly?"

  Over coffee in the Garden Lounge—Monty was waiting there for his wife, who, being a woman, was not allowed into the Jackson Room—elbows on knees, all confidential, he told Bunt the story of a Hong Kong lawyer named Feetly. Feetly fell in love with a Chinese prostitute he had met in a club in Mong Kok. Bunt listened carefully: he often went to Mong Kok clubs himself.

  Hopelessly infatuated, Feetly had pursued the woman, buying her favors and monopolizing her time, until the gang of snakeheads that ran her shipped her back to Shanghai.

  Feetly followed with a suitcase full of money in an attempt to buy her freedom. With the connivance of the prostitute, Feetly was invited to a meeting to discuss the matter, and he was killed. The money was stolen, of course, but the money was not the issue. Feetly's body, chopped into pieces, was found in a conspicuous steel drum labeled Hazardous Material and left just over the frontier, near a border fence in a cabbage field at Lok Ma Chau. It was a message to anyone else who might be inclined to mistake whoring for courtship, or who doubted the authority of the Chinese.

  "It's a Chinese tragedy," Bunt said.

  Monty said, "I think of it as a Hong Kong love story."

  "I know better than to fiddle with the triads," Bunt said.