Jade Woman l-12

by Jonathan Gash

  A door slammed open. Lights came on. An uproar of babble sounded, scores of young voices, feet clomping on the big room’s bare boards. I wagged my head to see at an angle. Johny nudged me, mimed silence with a finger. Cheeky sod. Who was the one-man carnival, him or me?

  Leung and Ong led a group of hoodlums into view, looking at the ceiling, scanning floors. One knocked on our panel in passing, frightening me to death, but Johny returned a complicated rap of recognition and we weren’t disturbed. Finally satisfied, the goons strolled offstage and girls poured in, full of chat. They were herded at one end by elderly amahs. It was like a vast school outing. Judging by the racket, the sixty or seventy I could glimpse were outnumbered by others pushing to come in.

  A gong stroked the din away. In the silence light footsteps and a familiar wheezing were clearly audible, as into my restricted view came three women and Fatty. He took a seat, overwhelming its frail structure. The women were exquisite, all different in style and dress. One, fortyish, looked Malaysian, her animated oval face smiling as she told some amusing story. The Cantonese girl who perched next to Fatty was pint-size, sleekly dressed in a bright purple. The last was possibly Eurasian, as delectable but heavily jeweled. They were stunning. A handshake would have been enough to send me delirious for a fortnight. I’d never seen beauty like this outside the world of antiques. I was glued to my keyhole, mesmerized, as Fatty piped some command and a score of amahs clacked forward to parade the girls.

  The penny dropped. A beauty contest, with three women and Fatty judging? The girls were walked in, made to stop in the light, then dismissed. One or two tried arguing, a few wailed loudly, but most went in utter dejection. I only had eyes for the three judges who sat, pictures of elegance in their tatty surroundings, occasionally exchanging a word about the girls under inspection. Once or twice they asked a direct question. More usually they listened to a curt introduction shouted by one of the old pajama ladies.

  Each scrutiny took only a few seconds.

  The parading girls were all ages. Some came poorly dressed, some grubby. One or two were well-nigh toddlers. The majority seemed ten to sixteen. Some girls had gone completely Western, or up-aged themselves in ultramodern dresses and makeup, going so far as expensive hairdos and outfits nicked straight from last week’s Oscar catwalkers. I felt sorry for them, all that effort and summarily discarded with half a glance. Worse, I began to realize how devastating it must be for these hopefuls to do their juvenile utmost and then get looked over by three goddesses who’d stop traffic with an eyelash.

  Three? Four. Ling Ling walked in, ushered by a couple of amahs. Scurry-scurry of helpers and she was seated with the panel. The process went on without interruption, the pace unchanged, the slight irregular thunder of feet continuing as girls filed in, paused, got the elbow. By pressing hard against the panel I discerned a small group of nonrejects, eight or nine, kept back near the exit.

  We’d been watching maybe two long hours when Johny’s watch bleeped. I nearly leapt out of my skin, but he nudged me and clicked the back of our cupboard ajar. We shuffled free through a small lavatory and went, shutting doors behind us, down steps and corridors until we were out in the scalding sun.

  The day had warmed in every way. Traffic grappled, buses and hawkers brawled for every spare inch. All normal.

  “What was that all about, Johny?” I wanted to know. He returned to life once we were out, his motor running as if on a released spring as he swayed and tapped to an inner rhythm. I was beginning to comprehend the extent of the authority that ruled. “And how much did all that cost?”

  “Next, man, no sheet, we’s gwine sailin’, dig?”

  Obediently I dug, but managed to persuade him to pause beside a drinks stall for a few seconds. We had a couple of colas in tins. “Not lahk ree-yull American big A Coke,” he said.

  I shrugged agreement as our unpaid taxi appeared from the melee and paused beside us. “All right, Johny. So I’m not to ask. But just remember I’ve an appointment to keep.

  Okay?”

  “Raat own, Lovejoy man. Next, typhoon shelter.”

  Round One had been odd—well, spy-holing three or four hundred bonny little girls parading from a hidden cupboard wasn’t my idea of the norm. Round Two was at least as eccentric.

  We were dropped near my original typhoon shelter and were taken in a sampan propelled by a water lady, black pajama suit and wicker-weave hat, to bob about in the harbor. That was it.

  As we reached a spot a hundred yards out from the typhoon shelter I honestly expected something to happen—I mean, somebody had gone to infinite trouble to organize this Cook’s tour. The sampan woman seemed to have been waiting for us.

  Without instruction she stern-oared us out of the shelter and then swung the sampan so we pointed to the shore and simply kept us there.

  “Well?” I asked after a few moments, but Johny’s head was clapped between red earphones and he was rapturously undulating in situ, eyes closed. Switched on seems to mean switched off these days. I looked about.

  The sun was oppressive, a physical weight. A sampan—“three-plank” it means, apparently—is a small craft, no shelter or deck, easily propelled by one stern scull. I took off my jacket and put it over my thatch. The woman grinned gold teeth. The pack on her back, I suddenly realized, was a baby. I saw its little head wobble. It goggled at the world. So did I. The woman stood there, attentively adjusting our position by slow thrusts of her oar.

  A typhoon shelter is like a harbor within a harbor, merely an area of water. A long thin stone mole runs out from the shore and stops just short of another mole coming to meet it, near enough at right angles. The gap is the gateway for junks to sail through.

  The rectangle is the shelter, and that’s it. The space was almost crammed with junks moored in lines. So?

  It was quiet—not unbusy, you understand, for ships, ferries, sampans, and a rare pleasure boat were hard at it swishing about, sometimes hooting at each other. But Hong Kong’s milling traffic seemed curiously far away. The longer we stayed there, the more detached we seemed to become. Still nothing happened.

  The harbor’s water was sort of flat and gleamy, not oily but trying to look that way. A certain amount of debris swilled about. Why so many plastic bags and orange skins?

  And no sea gulls! Hooded still, I waited. Unless Captain Nemo’s Nautilus rose from the ocean… A junk detached itself from the lines and maneuvered towards the entrance. It came closer. I glanced at our boat lady, winked at her baby to pass the time.

  The junk’s diesel chugged—they all have diesel engines. It glided forward, towards the entrance outside which we bobbed idly. I glanced up at the lady. She too was looking, still standing reassuringly at the oar. The junk was nearing.

  No problem. Broad sunlight, vessels everywhere, ferries toing and froing. The junk was bigger than our sampan, but it could see us. Of course, in my terrible introduction to destitution Hong Kong-style two or three days ago, I had seen junks knocking about the harbor, same as I’d seen the Star Ferry ships and the P and O liners. But at the time I’d been practically delirious, paid no attention. Now, here was one emerging from the typhoon shelter with a bow wave growing under its nose. And growing.

  And turning towards our sampan. This one. Mine.

  “Watch out, love,” I said. The boat lady too was looking. Unperturbed, she made a slow but skilled correction.

  Growing. Fifty yards off. And growing. Christ, were they all that big? It was a ship, not a mere boat. Three masts, tree trunks stripped bare. Ropes, spars. People. And coming at us. Me.

  I gave a scream. “Look out, you stupid—” The sky darkened. The prow loomed, filled the sky. Its deep slow cough became a boom. Our sampan lifted on the wave. It missed us by a fraction as we rocked aside. I was yelling blasphemy and prayers, clutching on the sides. The air stank of fumes which hung about us. Johny Chen was laughing, bloody fool, still sitting and shuffling.

  The junk’s huge stern stormed past and we
were safe, rocking madly but still afloat.

  The boat woman was calmly slogging at the oar, forcing round our sampan’s bow in a superb demonstration of natural skill. I stared in awe after the receding junk. The stern had railings and a great rudder. Unbelievably, a range of garden boxes ran the width of it. A goat’s head showed for a second. Chickens peered down at us from a crate.

  A galleon. Same size, at least as tall. Like The Golden Hind. It was a floating world. In the typhoon shelter there must be several hundred.

  That was the only event of note for the rest of the hour. I subsided muttering as my panic dwindled to boredom. Johny hadn’t seemed concerned in the least, the nerk. To the boat lady it had seemed a mere incidental. But it cured me of thinking uninformed thoughts about these junks. They were oceangoing craft designed for the China Sea when the Western world was unbelievably primitive. I’d now think twice before taking anything in Hong Kong for granted.

  Which made me stay alert. The harbor between the long flexuous island’s mountain spine and the spreading green fawns of the mainland was still beautiful, but I began to examine it. And I mean watch. And at least one pattern emerged.

  Why did sampans creep out so regularly to only one of the large low-hulled lighters moored near that small island which, not much more than an outcrop, I’d formerly noticed during my starvation period? And why did people climb aboard the lighter and nobody ever disembark? Did local passengers travel on cargo lighters? Never heard of it before. And when a police launch shushed into the typhoon shelter for a quick sprint round, the sampan shuttle trade halted. When the police left, the ferrying resumed. I was becoming interested in this too when Johny’s watch bleeped us back ashore.

  On the move, Johny unplugged his trannie and immediately started talking. We got our taxi and tore around the colony sightseeing while he prattled. The tour was logically planned. Only Johny’s babble was disordered.

  “Next, Hong Kong’s stock exchange,” he said, doing a reggae in Ice House Street near the police station and heeling ahead into the boring building. “Get the image, man?

  Money in and out, dig?” I looked at the mob. Frantic console screens, men hurtling with the glazed eyes of the money-mad.

  “Great, Johny.” Bleep bleep. Polka to the taxi and hurtle to where a cargo ship was loading. “Ship to Kyoto, Keelung, dig?”

  Files of skeletal men hunched under sacks and boxes trotting up gangways into the ship’s belly while forklifters whined about the godowns.

  I looked. “Great, Johny.”

  Bleep, shimmy, and zoom to a bank’s marble halls, gilded pillars, the usual berserk customers. “Dollar delight, yoh dig, Lovejoy?”

  “Great, Johny.”

  Bleep, and hurry to a gold merchant’s with auto-seal doors and a Sikh riding shotgun in the vestibule, tellers weighing and dispensing.

  “Great, Johny.”

  And a long drive to inspect the Sum Chun River by China’s paddy fields. I was surprised to see so many ducks. The high vantage point overlooked a coastal plain backed by Kwantung’s distant mountains. People worked stooping. A couple of bored water buffalo strolled up and down, a real yawn. You’ve seen the pictures.

  “China, Lovejoy. Dig?”

  “Great, Johny.” To me, countryside’s countryside and naught else.

  We also did a whirlwind zip around selected habitations, every one different. Johny was oblivious, hardly looking at where we’d arrived. His trannie was in action.

  “Diamond cutting factory.” And he’d thumb at stacked sheds by Aberdeen’s jammed harbor. “Cameras, import” was a godown alongside Kowloon’s docks. “Antiques an’ all that crap, dig?” was an endless succession of tiny one-room factories in the New Territories—ivory carvings, potteries, furniture, places turning out gilded temple carvings so near to the genuine antique they made me uneasy. “More same” was the retail area along Hollywood Road, while “Same old stuff” summarized fake antique bronzes, coins, calligraphy scrolls, jade carvings, carpets. I reeled, nodded obediently, was suitably impressed. All touristy reproductions, of course, though many were superbly if unimaginatively done. He did not even mention the clothes and material in Wing On Street’s “cloth alley,” just bebopped through, letting me trail behind admiring luscious Thai silk colors and Chinese silks. I saw more phony Gucci and other famous Italian labels along Wong Nei Chung Road than I’d seen all my life, but it’s pleasant to know that modern fashion, like all else, also bends the knee to fakery.

  Johny being Johny, he had his joke in the central market—four stories of ghoulish creatures—chickens, fishes, crabs—awaiting execution. He prompted a fishmonger to slash a live fish open and reveal its throbbing heart squirting blood. Everybody roared laughing when I squealed and shot like hell out of that wet and ghastly place.

  On the way into Kowloon Johny was especially noisy, telling me how he’d won the Indianapolis dragster championship on a souped-up Jaguar super-special XL 8000, been short-listed for the next NASA space shuttle… “Great, Johny,” I said, my feet dangerously close to joining in his trannie beat.

  Trying to deflect him from inanities about Boston, Philly, New Orleans, I asked him where he lived. Mistake. We took a detour round Kowloon Tong to admire a tall apartment block built with all the imagination of a cereal packet. He pointed out a balcony. It was all I could do to avoid getting dragged up to see it. “Over fo’ dozen wall posters, Lovejoy!”

  “America’s got that many counties?” I guessed.

  “You got it!” He was over the moon. “But states, man! ’Nited States, see?”

  We did more locations, including an enormous cinema complex, a football ground, a busy shopping mall, and a sports pavilion filled with Chinese exercising like mad.

  “Great, Johny.” became my stock phrase. Okay, I’d got the message: Hong Kong was a ball of fire in production, commerce, business. I was dulled into stupor. It was that and my weariness that made me increasingly edgy.

  What with Johny’s endless bopping, prattling about America, I was shell-shocked. Every so often we stopped for a drink from a street vendor. I noticed Johny never paid, simply said a few words, lifted three or four Cokes, and on we went. We saw a shop covered in red flowers while firecrackers exploded and a flutey band did its stuff. We saw a gem merchant in Des Voeux Road sorting stones, aquamarines to diamonds, while a trio of Cantonese girls watched and learned. At each stop Johny Chen stood as still as he was able and pointed. I dutifully stared at whatever he was indicating—a cluster of street bars, a cinema advertising six hectic Westerns a day, a sky-scraper building; sometimes a mere street hawker on a pedal bike beside a barrow piled with shirts; one sampan among hundreds, or an oceangoing freighter feverishly unloading at a Kowloon wharf. It was crazy and exhausting. I was beginning to think there was nothing I hadn’t seen when I finally wilted and begged for a rest.

  “No rest, buddy. Jade market. Diggaroo?”

  “Eh?” We were in a crowded narrow street. We’d seen scores like it. A line of street hawkers, trams doing their robot turns in the crowded distance. I could see no market.

  “Diggaroo what exactly?”

  He pointed with an elbow. “Oooooeee, baby,” he crooned, eyes closed. I looked at the two people he’d indicated. The man and woman were only a couple of yards off and stood facing each other in rapt concentration. Both wore traditional long Chinese robes, of the sort I’d seen in the street opera on that terrible day. The sleeves were whitish, trailing absurdly owing to their enormous length and size. I could have climbed into any of the cuffs. But for the first time I felt a twinge of excitement and drew closer. Beside the man’s feet was a lumpy cloth-covered heap. And that still heap was pealing magic signals out into the ether. I swallowed. The woman put out her hand, the man his.

  They gripped hands as if in wordless greeting, then flicked their respective sleeves to cover their grip, and stood motionless. I glanced at Johny for explanation but he was oblivious. When I looked back, the pair’s concealed hands
were wriggling gently. I was fascinated. Like watching mice in a stealthy tryst under a sheet. Then I noticed other Chinese, similarly garbed but with sleeves atrail, standing motionless nearby, beside small covered piles of stuff on the pavement, and it dawned. The pair shaking hands were dealing. By touch. A kind of stealthy communication in open daylight. And under the cloths were pieces of jade. I felt exhilarated, so near to throbbingly vitally genuine ancient jade, when Johny touched my arm and jived off. I followed, narked. The one enthralling event I wanted to watch, the jade dealers, was irrelevant to my dancing minder. I caught him in a few strides and yanked him to a standstill.

  “That does it, Johny. I’m leaving.”

  He was amazed. “Man, Ah calls de hoods iffn yoh done do dis.”

  “No way, man.” It was catching. But I remembered my place and sulkily decided to misbehave instead of rebel. “Right. Tour it is. But you’ve to take me to one place I want.”

  “Okay, man. Can do! Where?”

  “The Mologai.”

  He stopped jigging, even clicked his trannie off. I recognized consternation. Perversely I repeated the name. Steerforth had hated the area. My sticky irritation made me perverse. “The Mologai before anything else, Johny. Or call your goons. The Triad bosses’ll execute you, whatever they do to me.” I still wish I’d not said that, seeing what happened, but everything can’t be my fault all the time.

  Uneasily he took a halfhearted step, then shrugged. “Okay, man, ten-four. Rap on fast, man, okay?”

  “I’ll hurry, promise,” I agreed, and was whisked by our docile taxi to the area where those steep climbing buildings began. There they put me down. Johny said half an hour, and the taxi drove off and left me alone.

  As it happened, it was a whole hour or more before I regained the pavement. Johny said nothing but gave me a casual told-you-so glance as I climbed into the car’s chill, chastened and silent. We resumed our hectic journey through the opulent, plush, impossibly tall commercial palaces of Hong Kong. Next time we passed the spot I too turned to look the other way.