Kowloon Tong

by Paul Theroux

  The last time he had been this way was with Baby on a Saturday night two years before, goatishly snorting with anticipation on the run over. He had bought her a new dress and red shoes for the occasion. She sat with her knees together, smoothing the dress, as he pinched her like a monkey. She encouraged him by giggling and telling him insincerely to stop it. Heading for a hotel called the Pagoda, they passed a photo studio and she said she wanted a photograph taken showing them together. It was developed while they waited, and Bunt felt they looked such a ridiculous couple that his ardor ebbed.

  But the room at the Pagoda was so viciously dirty and so dimly lit that he was aroused again. Baby knew it. She got down on her hands and knees and said "Woof! Woof!" and laughed as he mounted her, clutching her smooth waist. But when it was over, minutes later, he wanted to go back to Hong Kong. He felt bruised and miserable, and he lay like a fish, inventing excuses. He canceled the rest of the stay, the overnight. Baby did not seem to mind, and he was relieved to have her permission to go back to his mother, thankful to Baby for releasing him. When she said, "I need some money," he gladly handed it over. And there was the disastrous night with Rosa Rabbit, the hairy Coelho woman.

  This was different, this was headlong and desperate. A man sitting next to Mei-ping in the jetfoil was wolfing down a paper cup of soupy noodles. Bunt could see nothing through the portholes except the rusty hulls of ships in the Hong Kong harbor roads and, in the channel, the dim shadows of coasts—Lantau must have been one, Cheung Chau another. Far off, the ambiguous stripe formed by the gray sea meeting the gray sky might have been China. But what did it matter? In the monotony of all this Bunt felt such joy in being with Mei-ping that he imagined that this was how gamblers must feel when they wagered their whole fortune on a single number on the turn of a card and won.

  This is what winning is like, he thought. The jetfoil was full of gamblers—it had to be on a Friday night. He was delighted to be one of them. The jackpot was already his. He was going to Macao not to gamble but to collect his winnings.

  Night fell as the growling vessel lost power and settled into the water and moved slowly towards the pier at Macao. The lights of the city dotting the slopes of a hill lay reflected in bright misshapen puddles in the harbor. Mei-ping had not spoken; she did not speak now; she was anxious and moved stiffly, as though thinking of something else.

  She did not respond when Bunt touched her, and so he left her alone but stayed near her, like a houseboy or a husband—or like a son, for that was how he handled his mother, keeping out of her way but remaining alert. He liked the role of helper, and though Mei-ping did not understand what he was doing now, she would eventually realize how useful he was, that he might be indispensable.

  For part of the way in the jetfoil, Bunt had imagined arriving in London with Mei-ping: having her on his arm, buying her meals, showing her the sights. So engrossed was he that he could not see himself in London without her. Loving her, having her, meant that he would be able to go back. In the country house that somewhat resembled the country house of his and Corkill's fantasy he stood at the window with Mei-ping, and perhaps she was wearing a diaphanous dress and high heels, and cows were grazing in a nearby meadow. "Holsteins," he heard himself saying. "And that is the bull—watch what he does."

  There were long lines at Macao immigration, and the signs in Portuguese made him think of Europe in a way that English signs in Hong Kong never did. The passengers shuffled between stanchions and fences towards the desks of immigration officials. Bunt and Mei-ping were divided by the signs HONG KONG CITIZENS and OTHER COUNTRIES. They met on the far side of the barrier, still saying nothing, and then were in another taxi.

  What Bunt could see of Macao from the taxi window was the same hill he had seen from the pier, and another escarpment of winking lights, casinos on cliffs, casinos on boulevards, casinos bulking all over the promenade. That was the twilit city, yet night had already cast its shadow over the distant hills, and that shadow was Chinese.

  They had no luggage. Bunt considered this: no clothes, no sponge bags, no cases. But that act of sudden flight, dropping everything and catching the jetfoil, pleased him. He had never taken such a gamble. He had never won so much. Speeding on the smooth road around the harbor's curve, the taxi tipped Mei-ping's slender body against him with such pressure he could sense the heat through her dress.

  "The Bela Vista," he said to the driver.

  "Yes, yes."

  He repeated the name, because surely the man spoke Portuguese and little English, and Bunt wanted to be sure. It was the only good hotel he knew. He did not want to go near the Pagoda, with its memories of "Woof! Woof!" and the red shoes and "I need some money."

  It was not hard for him to imagine Baby being just as happy with another man, for she seemed to see men as interchangeable. But Bunt could not picture himself with anyone except Mei-ping, for there was no one like her and, when he was with her, there was no one like him.

  "First time in Macao?" the driver asked.

  "Who wants to know?" Bunt said.

  Mei-ping was sitting at an unrestful angle on the car seat, still tipped against him.

  "After Bela Vista you want to visit casino?"

  Bunt said, "We'll see," and out the window saw a brilliant floodlit fortress wall and several pedestals.

  "They take the statues, they send them to Portugal so they don't get broken by the Chinese people," the driver said. Then he spoke in Cantonese to Mei-ping, probably saying the same thing, but she did not reply.

  The story that the statues, the treasures, and the church relics had been famously bundled up and sent away was told all over Hong Kong as an example of the way in which the Portuguese colony was lying down and letting China have its wicked way with her—and that takeover was a few years off yet. Hong Kong sneered at Macao, but Hong Kong had surrendered without a fight. Now, on the verge of leaving, Bunt wondered why the Hong Kong statues had not been sent back—Queen Victoria, Sir Thomas Jackson, Napier, and all the rest, including the Noon-Day Gun.

  They went up a steep street, took a series of sharp turns, now on cobblestones, passing garden walls and painted mansions with a view of the harbor and a narrow bridge. It was as though they had traveled from a Chinese port to a suburb of Lisbon.

  The hotel was a large white villa at the edge of a cliff, and it was brightly lit, with gleaming floors and paintings in gilt frames, but it was empty. A woman in a dark jacket approached them.

  "Checking in?"

  "Two for dinner," Bunt said, and stole a look at the embroidered badge on her jacket, hoping that it was one from Imperial Stitching. He could not tell.

  "This way, please."

  Mei-ping followed flat-footed like a captive, looking fearful again. Perhaps it was the strange surroundings—there was no hotel like this in Hong Kong; perhaps the wooden floors looked unsafe to her.

  Bunt ordered roast beef and vegetables and a bottle of claret from the large menu with dangling tassels. Mei-ping did not even glance at the menu.

  "And madam?"

  "Soup," she said.

  When the waiter had gone, Bunt said, "That badge," and tapped his chest. "Is it ours?"

  "Number seven. Special order. Four color, with gold highlight," Mei-ping said in a funereal voice, reminded again of the factory and Ah Fu.

  The wine was uncorked and poured. Bunt toasted, "To us." But Mei-ping still looked sad.

  Bunt said, "I will look after you."

  "How he got into my room?" Mei-ping said.

  "Never mind," Bunt said.

  He drank and was happy. He knew that he had the means to protect her. Mei-ping sat round-shouldered, with the soft face of a sad kitten, poking her spoon into her soup. Bunt could tell that this was not her idea of soup. That dense stew of dumplings and sodden greens and fish balls at the Golden Dragon, served up by Hung—that was her idea of soup, and she had paid for it. Bunt tore his meat apart and watched its watery blood run out when he cut it, and he chewed it and swal
lowed the beef-colored wine and wiped his lips.

  "Please don't worry," Bunt said.

  They had their coffee on the verandah, sheltered from the wind by the shutters. Macao lay below and beyond—the harbor, the casinos, the clubs; small bright lights and the shadows of rooftops, the outlines of slopes. It seemed a place that had already been abandoned by the Portuguese colonialists and had not yet been occupied by the Chinese.

  "I am sorry," Mei-ping said at last.

  It was what Bunt wanted to hear. She recognized that she was a problem, that she had a dilemma, and he was looking after her, he had the answer.

  Still holding the last of a glass of wine he would not waste, he said, "You can trust me. I will always look after you."

  His sincerity seemed to win her confidence—and why not? He had never said such a thing to any woman. The beauty of being with bar girls was that you never told them the truth, because they did not care what you said. Yet it surprised him to think that he was happy saying the truth to her, that he took pleasure in this. He desired her, but he could be patient. There was no hurry. What mattered most was that she felt safe with him, and it did seem that she was more relaxed right now.

  Another swig of wine: in that mouthful he could taste the word "love" on his tongue. He swallowed it and sipped again and the word was in his mouth again. He wanted to tell her this good news. It was an appropriate moment, the lights playing on the creamy columns of the hotel verandah, all of Macao spread out in the distance, the palm fronds rattling just beneath them. The air was mild and delicately perfumed by some flowers he could not see.

  Macao was poor and submissive and strange and spare, quieter than Hong Kong, with a sadness about it. That was welcome now. This hotel was where they belonged. Bunt had always believed that Hong Kong was his home, but no: he was a visitor and so was Mei-ping, and it was time to leave. And the truth was—he saw it tonight—if you loved someone you could live anywhere, because that person was your life, no matter where you were.

  Bunt said, "I want to get a room here. Please don't worry."

  Mei-ping simply stared at him, her hands in her lap, her straight black hair framing her pale face. Once she had told him, "When my hair is too short I look like man." She was wrong. When she cut it she looked like a boy, and that made Bunt even more amorous.

  Still staring, she was a thin boy on the edge of her chair. She had not moved her hands. Bunt took the position of her hands to mean yes.

  They were checked in by the clerk at Reception, who wore the blazer and the Imperial Stitching badge. She attempted to read his poor handwriting.

  "Neville Mullard," he said.

  "And that's a double," the woman said.

  When had they stopped using the word "wife"?

  "Our bags are being sent on," Bunt said.

  "I will tell Ollie to watch for them."

  Near a potted palm and an old framed map, Ollie stood at attention and saluted. He too had a blazer badge from Imperial.

  Their room faced the sea. Bunt opened the curtains wide and saw that Mei-ping was seated in an armchair looking out. He turned off the bedside light and was soothed by the way the room was illuminated by the colored lights of Macao. Bunt stood behind Mei-ping's chair with his hands resting on her shoulders. He meant to reassure her. After a few moments he made a suggestion using the pressure of his hand, and helped her up. He led her to the part of the bed that was in shadow.

  Mei-ping lay clothed on the coverlet, her small hands folded on her chest, staring at the veils of light that flickered on the high ceiling. Bunt did the same. Parallel, silent, stretched out, they were like marble effigies of a knight and his lady on a tomb he had seen once on a visit to England, in a church not far from Uncle Ron's house in Worthing. He had been so small he'd had to get inside the chapel enclosure and stand on tiptoes to see them properly. He had always remembered that they were clothed, that they wore headgear—the man a helmet, the woman a bonnet. He had been impressed by the position of their feet, the toes turned upright. It remained for him a marble image not of death but of marriage, sliding through life side by side, and until now he had never believed he would know such horizontal harmony and happiness.

  The only noise tonight was the tooting of ships' horns, and then a motorbike bumping along on the Portuguese paving stones, and his own breathing. No sound came from Mei-ping. There they lay, and the lights that shifted on the ceiling also lit the two of them. Mei-ping's thin dress clung to the flat planes of her body and showed her pretty bones. Bunt sensed again that she was warm: though their bodies were not touching, the heat reached him.

  "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said. It meant everything.

  The trance took over, and he could still taste the wine with the word "love" in it, as though the wine were a rare form of ink from which beautiful words were written on his flesh. Blood was another sort of ink: different words. Yes, he thought, I am drunk.

  "I am so happy."

  He seemed to be sitting outside the passage of time, unaffected by it, in a zone without clocks. He knew he was changed for good. His posture was a vow—flat on his back, hands held as if in prayer, face and toes upturned. Hers too. She missed her friend, but she would be happy when she allowed him to do as he wished. He saw himself with her again in the English house, a rainy day, looking out at the dripping trees. Mei-ping was not saying anything but she was happy. There were no other people in the house, there was no one in the garden, no one in the hills. Big logs were alight in the fireplace.

  "Say something."

  "I was sad on the boat, because I saw something," she said.

  "What did you see?"

  "Lantau Island. The village of Gou Chou Chew," she said. "I was there."

  "Living there?"

  "Just stopping," she said. "My family is from Huizhou, on a river, something like fifty miles from Shenzhen. Cannot go into Shenzhen without a pass. Instead we go to Nantou, the port. West of Shenzhen."

  The names meant nothing to Bunt. He said, "How old were you?"

  "Ten years ago," Mei-ping said.

  Fifteen years old. He saw her clearly, skinny and small, in loose cotton clothes, wearing slippers, a kerchief tied around her head, a plastic satchel, the kind they all had.

  "My auntie took me to a house in the village. She found a snakehead and paid him some money—almost a thousand—for a fisherman's permit. Then, we waited. There are PLA guards in the daytime but not at night. We looked for a boat."

  A foghorn sounded in the harbor of Macao, and it was so distinct it seemed to come from a ship tucked under the hotel.

  "We found a fisherman who said he would take me. Anyone can travel on a fishing boat with a permit, but only the snakeheads sell them. There were other women on board, many of them were pregnant. They wanted to go to Hong Kong for a better chance."

  Mei-ping's face was so smooth and so beautifully lighted it seemed to be carved from ivory. Even if she had not been speaking, Bunt could have gone on looking at her, marveling at the fineness of her features.

  "I was with the fisherman. He was steering the boat, and it was very rough. Wind and waves. The mouth of the Pearl River is like the ocean. The boat was moving side to side and I could see nothing in the darkness. I was afraid we would be stopped. The captain said, 'What is wrong with you?' and I told him I was afraid. He said, 'I will tell them you're my daughter.' He laughed and came near me and touched me."

  She stopped speaking for a moment, as though trying to gain courage to continue. Soon she resumed.

  "No one had ever touched me before that."

  Bunt said, "Did you scream?"

  Shaking her head, more in sadness than to indicate no, she said, "I asked him, 'Do you have a daughter?' He said nothing, so I knew the answer was yes. I asked him, 'Would you want a man to do this to her?'"

  The purity of what she said moved Bunt. He could see it, the two figures contending in the wheelhouse of the fishing boat.

  "He wa
s so ashamed," Mei-ping said. "In the early morning we came near some land. We jumped into the water—it wasn't deep. We were met by a snakehead. He took the rest of my money. I was so sad to have no money. Then I met Ah Fu. She had come on the same boat, but she was with the pregnant women. We helped each other. That was on Lantau Island, near Gou Chou Chew village. I was so sad when I saw it today."

  That was as much as he could bear. He did not want to know more, not tonight. It upset him to hear her mention the fisherman making a pass, and the dignity in her reply.

  Bunt raised himself up on one elbow and looked beyond Mei-ping to the window. Just past the shadow of the bluff below the hotel were the lights of the casinos. In this light he checked his watch. It was not yet eleven. An hour or more they had lain here, yet it was enough: now he knew he loved her.

  "Let's have a flutter," Bunt said.

  She said yes, though she probably did not know the word. In the taxi he placed his hand on hers. He could feel the pressure of her fingers responding to his, and he was delighted.

  Five or six tall blond women in black leather jackets were standing near the row of taxis at the Lisboa Hotel, where Bunt and Mei-ping got out. The taxi driver took an interest He smiled. He had some gold among his teeth. He said, "Russians!" The women were fox-faced and pale. They simply stood while the smaller Chinese people bustled around them. They had gray eyes and sword-like bones showing in their legs and high-heeled shoes. So single-minded were the Chinese passing among them, intent on entering the casino to gamble, that hardly anyone seemed to notice them.

  "I feel sorry for them," Mei-ping said in a whisper. "They are not happy."

  Bunt did not want to know why. He steered Mei-ping inside the Lisboa and watched her face fall as she entered the inner lobby of the casino.

  The gamblers were grubby punters, and few were Hong Kong people—probably not from Macao either. They were mostly hard-faced Chinese, with dirty hands and spiky hair, from over the border—Zhuhai people, Cantonese stall holders and hawkers, butchers, factory hands, hustlers, even farmers. Many of them looked as if they had just chucked a hoe or a pitchfork aside, let go of a wheelbarrow, walked out of a cabbage field. Even their clothes were dirty and torn. They smoked heavily.