The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013

by Laura Furman

  “Listen,” the man continued, “there’s no pressure. If you don’t want it, no problem, okay? Someone will, how do you say, snap it up.” He ran a hand through his copper-colored hair, streaked with lighter strands where it had been bleached by the sun. “Quickly, it will go. Some big guy here will buy it for his son. Or else I will ship it to Shanghai. They do sailing on a lake there—pff—but you know, they want it, I arrange it. Those Mainlanders have a lot of money nowadays.”

  Yanzu looked at the brochure. There was a picture of a yacht—this very yacht—sailing on the open ocean, tilted on its side, its nose slicing through the spray and swell. There was only one person visible on board, a lonely sailor battling the elements. The price was printed discreetly at the bottom of the second page, as if it wasn’t important. Yanzu triple-checked—it was in U.S. dollars: one zero too many.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” Yanzu said, packing the brochure into his briefcase. “I just need some time to think.”

  2.

  He was, of course, seeking consolation for a failed love affair, a woman whom he had known for three brief months earlier that year. Twelve weeks over the course of that summer, which had been especially muggy and close—hardly long enough to count as a relationship, she had pointed out. She was English, as it happened, and loved boats, which is why he was here, negotiating the purchase of a fast yacht he did not know how to sail. Men do the stupidest things when they are in love, she had once told him, laughing high-spiritedly; but he did not agree: men do the stupidest things when they are out of love, because they think they have failed. This was something he realized now—now that she was gone and he was a failure.

  3.

  But Yanzu was a successful man. Is a successful man. From his office in Causeway Bay, he runs a number of thriving business concerns both on the Mainland and in Hong Kong itself—a paper mill in Jiangsu province that sells recycled paper to the U.S., a flour mill in Hebei that produces only organic wheat and rice flour for export to Southeast Asia, and, most recently, a development of eco-homes in Chi Ma Wan, built using the latest Swiss technology, which proved so popular amongst the moneyed, arty thirtysomethings in Hong Kong that Yanzu is now thinking of expanding this model to other countries such as Singapore and Malaysia. He has achieved all this at the age of thirty-nine, and sometimes, in a rare, self-congratulatory moment, he might allow himself to think: this is remarkable, given that I arrived in Hong Kong from Beijing, aged twenty, with no money and no qualifications, having been forced to abandon my studies.

  He had been a timid student; chemistry was his subject. The alchemy of things: it suited him, this intricate study of change. Politics was not his thing, but a casual, almost blithe signing of a circular letter in support of the Students’ Autonomous Movement had made him an “activist,” or so he feared. There had been a girl, a semideclared passion and two or three acts of recklessness to prove his virility and enthusiasm, including his support of the Movement. He had not even spent much time in Tiananmen, except to see the girl he’d liked and to bring her food parcels. With two friends, he fled to Hong Kong that summer, knowing that he would never again see the city he was leaving behind, that if fortune ever brought him back to Beijing, he would be a foreigner, unable to comprehend the people around him, the people he had grown up with, eaten with, laughed with, slept with, and that he would wish that he had not been allowed back home, would regret ever returning.

  He arrived in Hong Kong, a city of buildings and people that dazzled and shone and did not care about him. He could not understand Cantonese and had no English at all. Twenty years old and already a failure.

  He got a job as a cub reporter at the Ming Pao, which he admired because it was sober, unemotional and anti-China. He hated China in that first year in Hong Kong and wanted to write articles that railed against the Party, against its treatment of students and intellectuals; he saw himself several years down the line, a serious, celebrated columnist who would write brilliant essays about the fall of the Communist experiment, tinged with anger but never falling prey to emotion. Instead, he was assigned to cover petty crimes—first at the police station, at the end of the evening shift, then, as his fortunes began to rise, at the courthouse. Bag snatchers, visa overstayers, classy call girls—those were the people he saw and had to write about, week after week, trying to spot something tragic enough to force its way into the three small paragraphs at the bottom of page six of the newspaper. At first he tried to string these stories together to construct a bigger story, something that made him feel like an investigative journalist exploring alarming changes in society:

  Drug Use Among Foreign Backpackers in Chungking Mansions

  Twelve Pakistanis Violate Visa Conditions

  Louis Vuitton Knockoffs Gaining in Popularity

  But even as he typed up these stories he thought they were pointless. There was nothing he could do to make these trivial events untrivial.

  In his spare time he continued to write his brilliant commentaries on the state of society in China, arguing from the position of the exile, someone who knew his subject intimately but viewed it with the objectivity that distance afforded him. He was fair and analytical, he thought, exploring the changes in China and the direction he thought it would take. Once, he dared to submit a piece to the editor in chief, but the article was returned to him some time later, dog-eared and with an ear-shaped tea stain seeping through the top page, scrawled with the comment MESSY—Your argument is.….?? Undeterred, Yanzu continued to work on these little essays in private, half-believing that someday soon, someone would publish them and belatedly celebrate his wisdom, his eerie foresight and scalpel-sharp analysis of a nation in trauma. He worked on those pieces for most of that first year, and possibly most of the second too, immersing himself in their world of controlled bitterness, until one day he realized that he was bored and had nothing more to say. He had exhausted his well of rancor and he no longer cared. The people he wrote about were already beginning to feel unfamiliar, as if he had never really known them. It was strange, he thought: the more he wrote about Beijing, the more distant it seemed. When he looked out of the window of his narrow bed-sit he no longer yearned to see the landscape of his northern past: the fine dust that swept in from the deserts, settling on the rooftops and leaves, bleaching everything of all color; the steam rising from stoves in winter; the wide flat avenues that disappeared into the horizon. He no longer felt the flash of panic or sickly streak of anxiety at the thought of losing those images, no longer wanted to cling onto that scene. It was a still life that belonged to someone else’s history, not his. Instead, he found himself looking quite calmly at the unchanging view, at the washing lines sagging with wrinkled clothes, the lazy whirring fans of air-conditioning units, the families who lived in the next building, so close that he could hear their TVs, watch their young children grow up, day by day; and everything suddenly shrouded by the sheets of rain during the downpours that would last all afternoon in this semitropical city. These were the things that kept him company now.

  He knew he would never write again.

  4.

  He bought a book called How to Be a Millionaire—Fast!, written by a Chinese American who had made a fortune investing in Asian markets and now lived in Monte Carlo. Its numbered chapters had titles that were cheery pieces of encouragement. “Trust Your Instincts: You’re Better Than the Pros!” “Change Your Life: Move to Where the Money Is!” As he stood in the bookshop flicking through the pages of translated text, Yanzu marveled at the optimism of the writing. There was something odd about seeing so many exclamation marks on a page of Chinese characters; the tone was disconcerting, too—unfailingly positive, exhorting the reader to venture forth with courage, to act without hesitation, like a carefree child. Very un-Chinese. There were words that Yanzu had never heard before in Chinese, like investment trust and hedge fund, and occasionally the text would lapse into a phrase in English which Yanzu would not be able to understand. He knew that such energy an
d free-spiritedness could only have been expressed in English, and he wished he could see through the fuzzy screen of translation and appreciate the blitheness of this language in its original form.

  He wanted to reach for the English version to see how many words in it he could understand, but there was a young woman standing in front of the shelf, leafing through the same book. She was about Yanzu’s age, though her dark, fitted jeans and silky businesswoman’s shirt lent her an air of sophistication that made her seem older, cleverer, successful. Yanzu hesitated. He felt embarrassed, as if the mere act of opening the book would betray his lack of English. The woman was carrying a slim briefcase with the name Violet K. M. Lau imprinted in small gold letters on its front flap, just above an oval embossed with an emblem: a racehorse in full flight. She was flicking through the book purposefully, lingering on some pages slightly longer than others: she did not have a problem with English.

  “Sorry, am I in the way?” she said, lowering the book and stepping aside. Yanzu noticed the way the pale gold bracelet of her watch strap clung delicately to her wrist.

  “No, not at all,” Yanzu replied, reaching for a copy of the book. As he opened it and leafed through its pages he felt ashamed of his pretense. The words flickered past him—lines and lines of a language he couldn’t understand. He saw her looking at him; he was certain she knew that he was lost, that he was a fraud.

  “It’s not as good as his last book,” she said.

  “Really? I didn’t read it.”

  “Where are you from? I mean, your accent …”

  “Beijing—originally. But that was a long time ago.”

  “Oh, a Mainlander. I should have guessed. I thought maybe you were an ABC or something. Your Cantonese isn’t very good.”

  They ended up going for a coffee in the French café next door. There was music—old Parisian songs, Violet explained. She had been to Europe many times when she was growing up; her family went on holiday there once a year. But now her parents were old and needed their home comforts, and Violet herself no longer had the energy or passion for traveling long distances as she once did. It was harder now that she had a job and was at an age where, well, one starts to think about settling down.

  After a couple of months of dating Yanzu visited her parents’ home. The furniture was European-style, and there was a piano at one end of the dining room. There were framed photos of Violet and her family: on holiday in a snowy landscape, their faces obscured by woolly hats and sunglasses; Violet as a child, reaching out to touch a killer whale; and at graduation, dressed in black robes with a furry hood, standing on a jewel-green lawn.

  The conversation was polite and unprobing, but the family often lapsed into English—one-line jokes that Yanzu didn’t understand but smiled at nonetheless. Afterwards, over whiskey (which Yanzu found he liked very much), Violet’s father chatted about business and Chinese politics. “At least you seem to have opinions,” he said, refilling Yanzu’s glass, “for someone who isn’t that highly educated.”

  5.

  Their marriage coincided with Yanzu’s first business venture, the purchase of a small light-industrial unit in Wong Tai Sin, run-down to the point of near dereliction. There were pigeons roosting in the iron joists in the roof space, and their droppings were corroding the metal, already half-eaten by rust. He achieved the deal with the help of a generous loan from his new father-in-law, whose expectations Yanzu would later dash when he refused to accept the offer of employment in the family business (a dull affair consisting largely of luxury car franchises). Yanzu bought the place with ambitions of turning it into an independent printing press, something that would not make huge amounts of money but would publish thought-provoking books on the State of the World. But somewhere along the line this plan was modified and then dispensed with altogether. In the end, the block was turned into twenty-eight solid but spartan apartments, each one sold at a handsome profit. It was the mid-nineties: property was the way forward (“Spot a Big Wave Early and Surf It!”).

  6.

  There are certain things that Yanzu is good at, as his first venture proved. Transformation: taking something unpromising, throwing in other elements and turning the original components into something shiny and new. His seamless progression into the new millennium illustrates this: burgeoning investment portfolio, bold, new joint ventures on the Mainland and even further afield, all achieved with just the right balance of bravado and prudence, so that the growth of his wealth is steady, never ostentatious. The chemistry of his work is, it seems, always right.

  Even his look has changed in the last decade and a half. There is the wardrobe of quiet, classic clothes, of course—double-cuffed shirts and handsome brogues; but there is also the way he carries himself, as if he had been born into the island’s long-established entrepreneurial class, the memory of money-making imprinted in his genes. Even he cannot now discern the aspiring young Beijing intellectual, born in the middle of the Cultural Revolution.

  Neither the 1997 financial crisis nor the current downturn has hurt him unduly. His judgment is sound, the balance just right.

  7.

  When the first of the contracts with the American buyers were negotiated, his assistants interpreted for him. He sat at meetings, unable to participate beyond issuing pleasantries: the mute CEO, the stereotype of the smiling Chinese businessman, nodding now and then whenever he knew that he should do so, smiling every time he discerned a joke. His assistants, expensively educated at Western universities, laughed heartily, nodded, muttered asides and summed up huge tracts of conversation for him in a single sentence. He gave instructions and then returned to his smiling silence, his frustration bordering on shame. Sometimes, when the slanting sunlight fell on the large glass windows overlooking the harbor, he would catch sight of his reflection. A man like him should not feel the way he did.

  Violet said, “Maybe we should try speaking only in English at home for a while. You can make as many mistakes as you like in private.”

  They tried this for a week, maybe less. Yanzu could not get through a single sentence without being pulled up for some fault or another. His pronunciation was off. His grammar was nonexistent. His vocabulary was tiny. His lack of progress and Violet’s growing impatience made him anxious; he stumbled over everything he said. He knew that she resented this imposition on her time: she was a busy woman, nearly a partner in her law firm; her hours were long and even outside work she had plenty to think about, such as whether they should have a baby. All her married friends were starting to have babies. She didn’t have time to explain the difference between a and the.

  “Why don’t you get lessons, darling?” she suggested after a while. “If you pay someone to do something for you, there’s never any embarrassment.”

  8.

  Before she arrived, the woman with whom he would fall in love, there had been an earnest Canadian ex-Mountie, an Australian ex-accountant, and an ex-headmistress from the British Council: foreigners who float through Hong Kong for a thousand different reasons, some staying six months, others three years before earning enough money to go south through Vietnam or Laos, or back to their homes in temperate lands. They had TEFL qualifications and taught Yanzu the basics. In his head he would rehearse properly constructed sentences but when it came to saying them aloud he stumbled and failed.

  After some time she came to him through an agency—a cheaper rate, they explained, because she had little experience. Only one previous tutee—but a senior investment banker, mind you, who had given her a glowing testimonial.

  She was not deliberate like the others had been, not methodical or conscientious. Her folders were a mess, dumped on the table in a heap as she laughingly rifled through them for the first day’s lesson. So embarrassing, she said, to be this disorganized on the very first lesson, oh my God, she was sure she was making a very bad impression. But she did not seem very embarrassed, Yanzu thought, as he watched her getting her things together, nor did she seem to be bothered about the im
pression she made.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I mean, that’s fine.”

  She looked at him and squinted like a child figuring something out. “So you do speak English. I was told you had virtually no English. Well, this will go swimmingly, I think!”

  She made him introduce himself to her, however he liked; he was not to worry about proper sentences or anything like that. And she wanted him to speak about anything he wanted, to forget the formal introductions and talk about any aspect of his life—just so that she could get an idea of who he was. For example, her name was Liz, and when she was young her brothers used to call her Lizzie the Lizard, such a childish name, thank God it didn’t stick. She loved the sea, which is why she liked Hong Kong, its proximity to water. Water, water everywhere. Wonderful. She loved boats—sailing. She was forty years old. Yes, very old by, especially by, Chinese standards, and unmarried. Remaindered, that’s what they called women like her in China, ha ha. She was born in Britain, on the south coast. When she was young she could see the sea from her bedroom, sailboats on the water.

  When Yanzu spoke she held his gaze, nodding. She did not correct him, allowed him to stumble, said, “Really? Wow!” a few times, her eyes widening with surprise at the things he told her—things that he can’t now remember, banal things. She had lines at the edges of her eyes that creased when she smiled.

  9.

  They went on outings. It was better to practice your language in real-life situations, she said; language isn’t a dead thing.