Jade Woman l-12

by Jonathan Gash

  “Look,” I said, tut-tutting. “Could I use your phone, please? Only, I’m short of change…”

  To my amazement he nudged the desk phone to me and went back to watching a video screen running an ancient Western. My spirits soared at this evidence that I’d not lost my old touch, stupidly not yet realizing that in Hong Kong local phone calls are free. I dialed and got through first go. You can understand my astonishment at such efficiency, used as I was to the feeble intermittency of East Anglia’s phony phones.

  “Goodman here.”

  I nearly fainted with relief. “Mr. Goodman? Hello! Hello! Er, this is Lovejoy.”

  “Lovejoy?” A pause. “Yes?” He’d forgotten me. I could tell. But he was my lifeline and I wasn’t going to let go.

  “Er, we met on the plane.”

  “Oh, yes. The antiques artist. What can I do for you, Lovejoy?”

  “Well, I’m actually in a spot, Mr. Goodman.” From shame I turned my back to the counter, though the desk clerk seemed oblivious. “I had my pockets picked at Kai Tak.

  I’m broke.”

  His tone said he had heard all this before. “Look, old sport. I’m in business, not charity.

  Sorry, but—”

  “Money!” I yelled, terrified lest he hang up. “Money for you! That sale!” I hunted my feeble memory. What the hell had he droned on about? Some ceramics or other?

  Furniture? “Hello?”

  “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “I can finger the genuine for you! Honest to God! You’ll make a killing! Promise!” I’m pathetic. I ask you, begging to be employed by a perfect stranger.

  Pause. “What do you know the rest of us don’t, Lovejoy? Only divvies can play that game.”

  “I’m a divvy, Mr. Goodman. Honest. Try me out. Anything antique.” Another frightening pause. I babbled incoherently on. “I’ll give you addresses, numbers you can call.

  Anybody’ll tell you.” I hated my quavering voice.

  Still wary, but a decision. “No harm to meet, I suppose. Come over, Princes Building, Central District—”

  “I can’t, Mr. Goodman. I’m over in Kowloon. The map says Princes Building’s on the island. I haven’t the fare.” Best not to say too much.

  “I see.” Aye, I thought dryly. Trust an art merchant to spot percentage trouble. “Very well. Kowloon side, then. I’ll come over on the Star Ferry tonight. Nine o’clock okay for you?”

  My appointment book was relatively clear. “Where?”

  “By the big clock tower, Star Ferry pier.”

  Eagerly I repeated the instructions. “Thanks. Honest, Mr. Goodman. It’s really great of you—”

  Click, burr. I said a casual thanks to the desk clerk, who was now staring at me as I replaced the receiver, and sauntered out into the heat. Definitely not my usual jauntiness, but at least with better odds on survival. Spirits lifting, I had a drink at the Peninsula Hotel’s fountain pool to fend off dehydration, hoping the water was safe, and stared boldly back at the staff frowning out.

  I’d survive to nine o’clock if it killed me. As it was, it killed somebody else.

  Whether it was relief or having talked to somebody in the vernacular, I honestly don’t know. But all of a sudden I felt alert, awake. A psychologist’d say that I’d received a fix, a squirt of life along that mental umbilical cord connecting me with antiques—and as everybody knows they’re the font of the entire universe. Whatever, I stepped out of that door and my mind blew. I saw Hong Kong for the first time. I still don’t know if it was a terrible mistake, or the best thing’s ever happened.

  First imagine all the colors of the spectrum. Then motion, everything on the kinetic boil, teeming and hurtling on the go. Then noise at such a level of din you simply can’t hear the bloody stuff. Then daylight so blindingly sunny that it pries your eyelids apart to flash searing pain into your poor inexperienced eyes. Add heat so sapping that you feel crushed. Then imagine pandemonium, bedlam, swirling you into bewilderment. Now quadruple all superlatives and the whole thunderous melee is still miles off the real thing. Every visible inch is turmoil, marvelous with life.

  The street was, I learned later, a dull off-peak one near Nathan Road in the dozy midafternoon. It seemed like Piccadilly Circus on Derby Day because I was new. I found myself in the whirlwind, now pushing among pavement crowds, now being swept away in sudden surges of the human torrent. Buses, cars streaming, barrows clattering, and all competing against that most constant racket of all: speech. For Hong Kong talks. I was amazed, God knows why. But all the time Chinese people laugh, exclaim, are astonished, roar delighted denials and imprecations, hold forth, anything as long as the old vocal chords are on max. At first I thought they were all angry. Within minutes I guessed it must be their Cantonese that happens to need vehemence.

  That’s not all. Hong Kong does. On every pavement market there’s action. Not mere activity. It’s sheer pace. Immediacy’s the name of the game. The tiny lad piggybacking his tinier sister is making mileage. Chinese shoppers noisily bargain and rush back to bargain again. All sights, sounds are concentrated around potential customers. I saw every conceivable style of attire, from common dark pants with a tightish white high-neck wraparound blouse thing, to a close-fitting dress in brilliant hues. Stylishness was everywhere. I felt a sweaty slob, struggling on to find that clock tower, my eyes screwed up against the glare.

  Besides being in the most fantastic place on earth, something happened. I saw a miracle. And she was alive.

  Of course I’d reflexly noticed the Chinese women’s hour-glass figures, the nipped waists, those lovely slender narrows from the breast to hips. You can’t help it. And that high mandarin collar to the cheongsam, the slit hem, the fold-over bodice, that clutch-sleeve effect, the whole thing a marvel of compact form. But I was telling you about this miracle. It happened in a market.

  Applause somehow seeped through music blaring in the row. Mechanically I turned into the side street. It was narrow, with stalls and barrows cramming onto an open wharfside, water gleaming beyond. I eeled among the vegetable stalls—I’d never seen most of the produce before. Everybody was peering, grinning, talking. I stepped over fish buckets, avoided a sweating bloke humping two big tins of water on a homemade yoke, and stood on tiptoe to peer over the suddenly still crowd. Most were diminutive women shoppers carrying bags and bundles of greens dangling on finger strings.

  And I saw her.

  She was in a light-red cheongsam, long-sleeved, and seemed to be doing nothing more spectacular than strolling. Turned away, pausing at a stall, she reached a hand and touched a pear on a heap of pale giant pears, and the entire crowd went

  “Waaaaaaah!”The woman strolled on, exquisite. She was a glorious butterfly, an exaltation, so beautiful that words are just all that jazz. I knew how that pear felt. It had got a peerage. The hawker was a dehydrated geezer in a curved straw hat, naked except for billowy gray shorts frayed about his skeletal old knees. He had a baby’s two-tooth grin, looked varnished by countless wizening Chinese summers. With a flourish he wrapped the pear in a colored paper and offered the bundle. Another beautiful woman, one of three following her queenly progress, took it. No money changed hands but the chorus of approval was evident as people crowded round him to congratulate him and buy his fruit. I pushed after, mesmerized by that sublime woman. No shoving among the crowds for her. The way cleared magically. One hawker pulled his stall aside with the help of countless hands so she could stroll through. Oscar Wilde once said ultimate beauty was a kind of genius, and he’s right because it is. Plenty of other Cantonese women standing clapping and admiring were pretty, attractive as they always are. And her three followers were gorgeous enough, God knows. But I swear that this creature actually did shine. I honestly mean it. Luminous. If the sun had gone out you could have read a paper by her radiance. Her luster was a dazzling, tangible thing.

  Half a dozen suited men stood about staring at the ogling crowd. The three women followed into a liner-size chauff
eured Rolls. To applause, it glided away. The goons leaped into a following limo. I was glad they’d gone. You can always tell mercenaries; they have the anonymity of a waiting computer—programmable but without separate purpose. Well, I thought dispiritedly as the Rolls was engulfed by the traffic, if I had a perfect bird like that, I too would hire an army. The elderly hawker was making a fortune. In all the babble he was demonstrating over and over exactly how he’d taken the pear and wrapped it. I heard a camera-laden American tourist exclaim, “Jee-zzz!

  Who was that?” as the mob dispersed, and for the first—but not the last— time in my life heard the words of explanation. An older Chinese chap in long bluish nightgown courteously answered in precise English. “Jade woman,” he said.

  My senses returned, reminding me that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. A headache began. The crowds thickened, rushed faster. Heat swamped back with the music, talking, shouts. Hong Kong’s thick aroma came again to clog the nostrils. The buses began honking and revving, and I found I was still among mere mortals. But I’d never be the same. I felt remade, a new model Lovejoy.

  Jade woman. I’d look it up when I got a minute, except how do you look something up in Hong Kong? For a while as I pushed through the mobs in search of that clock tower I felt almost myself again, remembering. The heat drained me of course within a hundred yards and I had to halt, breathing hard, my hair dripping sweat.

  Failure when it comes is a bully. It grinds you down so the sludge gets in your eyes, up your nostrils. The meaning is an unmistakable eternal law: Failure is intolerable to the successful. Hang on to nine.

  I found a fragment of shade near a line of stalls in a side street, stood still and closed my eyes. All I could think of was rest, food, and coolth, but I’d none of those three. I opened my eyes, and saw a European bloke wandering purposefully among the barrows. He was searching among the bits and pieces on a jade stall. The thing that lifted my hopes was his grooming: handmade leather shoes, gold watch, blow-waved hair. And fed. There are two basic attitudes to life. Either you live it, or sit sulking and hope existence will come by the next post. I rose, steadied my giddiness away, and plodded across.

  He was one of those affected individuals forever trying to seem young and witty. A veritable Hooray Henry, in fact. I didn’t mind. If I couldn’t con a bite or a groat out of this duck egg, I didn’t deserve to survive. I pretended interest in the vendors’ wares.

  They were mostly jade pieces—different colors but mostly grays, an occasional pale green, and the white mutton fat, carved as belt buckles, pendants, and the like. He was after something for a lady, I guessed, as he picked up a jade carving, a flattened mushroom.

  “?” He spoke Chinese to the hawker, a stringy little chap looking a century old.

  “!” The vendor expostulated at length on his reply, gold teeth grinning behind fag smoke. My mark shook his head, gave back moans and groans. The vendor seemed to drop his price a bit, which called for more argument. I reached out.

  “Not that,” I said. “This.”

  The jade piece was about two inches long, merely a dark-green flat leaf with an insect on it. The creature was brick red. The carving seemed to hum in my hand like an electronic top. Lovely, lovely. Dilapidated as I was, the ancient loveliness of it was like rescue itself.

  “It’s genuine,” I told him. “Ch’ing Dynasty stuff, 1750 maybe. The rest are crappy simulations. Parti-colored jades were a Ch’ing speciality, but watch out for stained fakes.”

  He eyed me up and down, fingering me as a scruff on the make. “They’re all real jade.”

  “Yes, but modern.” I strove for patience. “This isn’t crummy new jade. Don’t be taken in by crappy Burmese jadeite stuff. This is old, mate. It’s the only genuine antique on his stall. Have a shufti with a magnifying glass if you don’t believe me. You’ll see the pitting which the old jade workers’ treadle power always—”

  “!” The hawker was nodding with enthusiasm. Anything for a sale.

  The mark took me aside, lowered his voice and said, “Piss off. Hawk your con tricks elsewhere.”

  And went back to the barrow leaving me staring. So much for the help you can expect from a compatriot. Almost weeping at parting from the jade, I cut my losses and blundered on.

  As an incident it wasn’t much, probably the sort of encounter that happens a trillion times a day in cities everywhere. But it had an effect on me; got me into one mess called murder and another called prostitution. I have this knack, you see.

  An eon later I was in the air-conditioned splendor of the Ocean Terminal, a vast shopping arcade of bogglesome affluence. From there I could keep an eye on that vital clock tower, making sure it didn’t escape before nine o’clock when Goodman would arrive and be my salvation.

  But all I could think of was that blindingly beautiful jade. And the jade woman. They both stayed in my mind like a siren’s fatal song.

  6

  « ^ »

  THE heat emptied from China’s coast as if daylight had suddenly decided to switch off. I emerged from the Ocean Terminal and walked by the Kowloon Public Pier. Hundreds of Chinese had the same idea, so quite a press milled along the waterside.

  If you’ve never seen Hong Kong’s harbor, go soon. See for yourself because it’s really no good my going on about the spectacle. You know the pictures: the massive junks trailing a forest of multicolored flags, the huge oceangoing ships, the chugging diesel lighters, that cerulean sky, that long fawn spine of the island rising clear out of the ultramarine harbor, the crustacean-white buildings. They’re on Chinese restaurant wall posters the world over, so you’ve seen plenty. The feel’s different. You need the dynamism, Hong Kong’s loveliness zapping out at you from all sides, the glorious immediacy. And you’ve got to be there to feel that. Daunting yet exhilarating. Too much, when you’re starving.

  It’s a physiological truth that if you lie down, you don’t feel as hungry. A doctor told me that, but by then I’d already found it out. How long had I gone hungry now? Two days?

  The aroma of the noodle stalls, the wafts of fry-ups no longer raved in my dulled brain.

  I was quite light-headed. Ominously my hunger had faded, becoming a lead hollow in my belly. I perched on the railing to stare at the dying sun glare and oily water.

  Rubbish floated in a kind of sludge, plastic bottles and other indestructibles. I crouched and dozed fitfully in the cooling air, every so often waking with a start to see the cream-and-honey clock tower still there. Finally I rose and wandered, but never too far for safety as nine o’clock crept closer in the dusk. But safety, I was fast learning, comes rationed by the minute in Hong Kong. Two safe minutes together and you’ve had your share. What I didn’t know was that I’d already had mine, been lucky. I thought I’d been through hell.

  Once, I was accused of honesty—a woman who should have known better —but I soon cleared myself by betrayal. (She forgave me, which only goes to show women’s unreliability. Probably comes from having naught to do all day.) That unnerving experience taught me resilience. So, starving and sun-grilled, I racked my experience in the interests of survival.

  Back home it’d have been a doddle. I mean, take Vasco Pierce. He was a born incompetent. From reasons of backing knacker’s meat on Derby Day he once got stranded in London. Know what he did? Went up to one of those girls who hand out free advertising at railway stations and offered to do her stint, five thousand pulps.

  Delighted, she gave him a couple of quid and offed. Whereup Vasco starts selling commuters these free drosses. Kept it up all day, made enough to buy himself a new suit. God’s truth. But here in sun-sogged Hong Kong nothing was free, except me.

  Nothing was vulnerable, except me. And nothing easy, e.m. Fate rubs your nose in it.

  You have to stay alert, like old Vasco.

  Trying for alertness, I sensed a sudden faint bonging in my chest. Pausing in a small patch of shade long enough to stop sweat waterfalling to sting my eyes, I peered about. I sa
w a shop front opposite crammed with loads of utter dross—vases, porcelains, ivory, bone statuettes, soapstone cups. Before I could stop myself I’d darted through the traffic, causing an unholy orchestra of horns. There it stood on a glass shelf, the cause of my sudden throb. I literally staggered, looking in. Shaped like a circular cushion made of red lacquer, its surface was carved into scenes of the Eight Immortals feasting and swilling. Even through the thick glass I felt its radiance. No more than a container for a gift of luxury food, its dull appearance dazzled me like a lighthouse. Only about fifteen inches across, it beamed 1560 a.d. at me. Undamaged apart from its aging cracks, dirty, but pristine, Ming period. I’d only seen one before, in the Victoria and Albert’s undeserving museum. True lacquer comes from a Rhus tree species, and is so highly poisonous that the lacquer people all died young. It’s weird stuff. The ancient Chinese built up thin layers on ash and bits of thin cloth, polishing each layer to a lovely sheen. Modern lacquer usually doesn’t have these layers. I leaned and peered. Sure enough, a chipped area on the lid revealed a series of striations.

  Maybe 250 layers, applied over two years. I knew without even trying that it would pass the fingernail test: Genuine old can’t be dented, modern rubbish can— but watch out for polyurethane hardeners. Its beauty almost slammed me unconscious, weakened as I was. What cruel accident had cast it among a shoal of pathetic replicas? I knew I could get it for a pittance, only I hadn’t got that much. (I warn you: Genuine ancient lacquer is currently the most underpriced of all antiques.) Tears of frustration ran down my face. I forced myself away. People never want what they have, it seems to me. Like, I mean, Catherine the Great of Russia spurned the immortal Matthew Boulton’s magnificent sidereal clock which he sent her in St.

  Petersburg in 1776 (she thought it rather plain). And here were thousands, millions of people who could buy that superb antique, all walking past uncaring. I went and sat by the harbor, feet dangling.