by Tanith Lee
I implore my readers to avoid this show and the merchandising that surrounds it like a thunder cloud at all costs. Boycott the upcoming animated film, television show, and soundtrack album. Do not purchase the Cthulhu action figure with spring-loaded facial tentacles. Shun the stuffed animals, dolls, board games, T-shirts, commemorative plates, breakfast cereals, collector’s programs, and candy bars that have sprung forth from this monstrosity like spores. Every dollar spent on merchandise only encourages them. If you heed but one of my critical warnings, follow this one.
Much more may be at stake than two wasted Broadway tickets.
ROACH PHOBIA, by Nick Ozment
I have a fear, a fear to tread
barefoot on a roach’s head
Each cocky roach that I espy
has fifty mates who are more shy.
Beneath the sink they thrive and play.
Despite my Raids, they’re here to stay.
In damp dark holes they procreate
and scurry up when it gets late . . .
They’re stowaways who crossed the sea,
wee pilgrims to a country free —
free pantries full of flakes and flour
and other things they can devour.
The worst of life’s malignant shocks —
to find one in my Wheaties box.
And when I brush, the thought I dread:
Did roaches lick my toothbrush head?
Our underworld they’ve made their nest.
They bide their time to take the rest.
THE CAT, THE LADDER, AND THE MAN MO SHRINE, by Tony Richards
The Ladder isn’t a ladder really, it’s a flight of stairs. And the Cat, well, maybe it is called that because it was a red-light district once. And maybe not.
And that ‘maybe’ is all you’ll ever need to know — or rather, not know — about Hong Kong. I had been here ten months now, and while my body had found its way around most of the narrow maze of streets, my mind was feeling increasingly lost. I sensed that I was learning less about the place, not more.
Enjoying the experience, though. My home town is Melbourne, and if you say that you know somewhere like the back of your own hand, well, just how interesting a feature is that?
It was a Wednesday in March, warm enough but overcast, the upper outlines of Victoria Peak made blurry by the murk. I’d finished early at the overseas investment outfit which had brought me here from Australia. And spent almost an hour wandering round the alleyway markets off Des Voeux Road before heading up along Cleverly to Ladder Street.
The steps were steep and concrete — they couldn’t have always been the latter. And, some third of the way up, Cat Street peeled off to the right. Upper Lascar Row, officially. No one but officials call it by that name.
Shop after shop of — what? Junk, pretty much, save for the plusher, multi-storied Cat Street Galleries, halfway along. Windows filled with old banknotes and coins, second-hand watches, cheap jade, broken TVs, bric-a-brac. A framed portrait of Chairman Mao stared out at me from one. A giant plastic Coca-Cola bottle from another. It’s all the same to the people who run these stores. Just commerce. Chinese rule’s changed almost nothing here.
I’ve occasionally found something interesting for my apartment on Kowloon Tong here in Cat Street, however. So I wandered idly past all the frontages, keeping my eyes open.
The egg? It wasn’t in a window. It was right at the dim back of one tiny establishment, behind the counter, in a metal cage. It seemed incredible to me that I had spotted it at all, although it makes sense now.
The egg. About the size of an ostrich’s egg, and it wasn’t just the brilliantly painted surface that first drew my eyes to it. It was…the sheen, the lustre of it. The thing almost seemed to glow.
I went into the gloom. A middle-aged man in his shirtsleeves appeared from the back. I pointed, staring at it. It had a painting of a hairy, almost naked giant on it, holding up the sky. And, down one side of that, a row of characters.
“Cheung mun, gay dor chin?”
He shook his head briskly, came back with a phrase I didn’t recognise. But, from its context, I took it to mean, ‘It’s not for sale.’ Which took me aback a little, since I’d never had that answer in Hong Kong before.
Maybe he was just trying to increase his bargaining power. I produced a wallet full of credit cards, mostly gold, and asked again how much the egg was.
And got the same answer, far more sternly this time. Then he pointed to the door.
My learning curve, since arriving here, had just taken another, very sudden, downward turn. Baffledly, I went back out onto the street and retraced my route to the steps. Maybe the thing was a family heirloom. Or maybe a lucky charm. Or…who knew?
There was just no way of telling.
* * * *
And okay, by now you’re probably all thinking this is one of those ‘little shopkeeper’ stories. But it isn’t. The owner of that dingy, cramped hole-in-the-wall — Mr. Lam, I later found out — doesn’t play much part.
I was about to meet the man who did, a bare few minutes later.
Halfway up Ladder Street, as it ascends towards Caine, you find Hollywood Road, as in ‘hooray for.’ And on Hollywood Road is my favourite Daoist temple in the entire province. You can keep big, gaudy, priest-filled palaces like the Wong Tai Sin, so beloved of tourists. Make mine the Man Mo, known locally as the ‘poor people’s temple.’
It’s old, and it’s small, and rather shabby on the outside. You have to fight your way in past some dozen beggar-ladies who are permanently parked there, and some of whom know me. ‘Give coin now please, Messinger-Mister.’ One’s sleeves are tugged. A few quarters are handed out. And then it’s into the darkness, and the incense smoke attacks your eyes.
What they at last clear to, though. The subfusc heart of Chinese mysticism. In the semi-dark, with smoke billowing round them, you have never seen gods look so fearsome, so foreboding. Though mostly, they’re not supposed to be.
There is Kwan Ti, the God of War, with his great green sword, admittedly. But he has mostly a protective role, looking over policemen and pawn shops amongst others. Then there’s red-robed Man Cheonq, God of Literature; Pao Kung, God of Justice; and Shing Wong, who protects this neighbourhood. All of them are popular. People in cheap clothes were kneeling before them, their statues were surrounded by offerings. The place was full of candles and incense sticks.
There was something new here, however, since I’d last visited. It took me aback completely.
How he’d found a vacant space at all in this deity-crammed interior remains a mystery…but, the new priest had done so, and had set on the floor there, against a wall, what looked like nothing so much as a giant egg-cup. It seemed to be made out of gold. Was covered with engraved script.
That didn’t surprise me so much as the appearance of the man himself.
He was kneeling in front of the cup, his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes tightly closed. Which gave me the opportunity to walk around him, studying him, though from the most respectful distance I could manage at these quarters. And…you come across plenty of priests in Hong Kong, with their shaven scalps and flowing robes. But nothing quite like this.
He was dressed exactly like a Daoist priest from some two hundred years ago.
He had long black hair, plaited, almost greasy-looking, running down his back. The same with his beard, which reached down almost to his navel. His narrow moustaches were so elongated that you could have tied them into bows. His face was aesthetic and pinched. No eyebrows. And his dress? A long white robe, with huge Dao symbols — the black and white fish-shapes of the yin and yang — embroidered front and back. Bare soles showed beneath the hem.
And on his head? One of those black hats — similarly embroidered on the front, some two-and-a-half feet tall — that no Chinese priest had worn in decades.
So archaic was his appearance, I was sure at first he had to be an actor from one of the local chop-saki fl
ick studios. Just off the set of Priest with the Drunken-Donkey Fist, or some such. Except, everybody else in here was showing him the greatest of respect that they could manage — which meant they didn’t bother him, didn’t come close, kept their eyes averted from him at all times.
And then I noticed something really odd.
The three Dao symbols on his clothing, they were purely white and purely black. No counterbalancing small dots. No circle of light in the darkness. No negative in the positive.
I had never seen that, ever before. And what did it indicate? Some form of absolutism? It was something I’d thought was non-existent in — if you’ll pardon the little pun here — Daoist circles.
After another while, without his moving, even opening his eyes…I realised he knew he was being watched. So when his browless eyelids finally slid open, I was not surprised. His head turned, very slowly. And he stared at me.
I tried not to flinch at his appearance. His irises had almost no colour at all.
I’m Australian, for Pete’s sake, and not in the least superstitious. So I simply forced a smile back at him, gave him a polite nod. He did not acknowledge that, just looked away from me. Then, very smoothly, got up to his feet.
He was almost as tall as I was.
I watched him for a short while, as he made his way towards the door. Thought, what the heck. I was intrigued. And decided to follow, at a distance.
The beggar ladies didn’t bother him as he went through their ranks, although they descended upon me in their usual fashion, conveniently forgetting that I’d paid them coming in. And all along Hollywood Road, people gave him a wide berth. Their gazes went elsewhere.
He was heading for the steps of Ladder Street. As I said, I’m not superstitious. Except we all are really, right down to the most pragmatic of us. We believe in chance at least. How else would I know, the moment he turned off onto Cat Street, where he was heading? Thinking about it now, the golden egg-cup made it pretty obvious.
If I was ahead of the man, though, I didn’t seem to be the only one. The owner of the little shop was standing at his doorway as the priest approached, barring it. His arms were folded. There was a grim, hard expression on his face. And as the priest got nearer, he began shouting in a machine-gun staccato, his voice growing higher pitched the angrier he became.
The Daoist remained perfectly calm. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he appeared to be remonstrating gently with the shop-keeper. And, when that did not work, he did something which amazed me even further. He pulled from one sleeve of his robe a great wad of money. American dollars, I could make out. Hundred bills.
He had to have some eight, ten thousand dollars there. All the shop-keeper did was shake his head. Shout out what was certainly a curse. Then slam the door and lock it.
The priest’s head dropped defeatedly.
And, when he turned away from the shop? I could see that he was crying.
* * * *
I related the whole story to my colleague, Billy Cheung, the next morning. And Billy’s as hip and modern as they come, but his background is traditional, from a family on Lamma Island, and he understands the old ways well. He seemed to think that I was pulling his leg as I described the Daoist priest.
“Some nut-case, maybe?”
I told him about the painted giant on the egg. He looked amused by that as well, though in a different way.
“Intriguing,” he told me.
“How so?”
“It’s Pan Gu.” Which drew a blank from me. “The oldest of all the gods. The one who created the universe.”
He leaned back in his swivel chair and adjusted his glasses. “In some ways, our creation myth is no different to yours. See, in the beginning, there was just darkness and confusion, in the shape of a great egg. And in that egg, Pan Gu slept and grew for eighteen thousand years. One day, he woke, saw the dark and turmoil around him, and was enraged by it. He took hold of an axe — where that came from, don’t ask — and smashed the egg open. New light filtered through. The universe was born.”
He gave me a broad, rather cynical grin, now. “Painting him on an actual egg, it’s an interesting concept. Though I’m not entirely sure propitious.”
And propitious is a very big word in Daoist culture, though you could spend a hundred years trying to figure the guidelines of it out. I didn’t have a chance to make my way back to the Sheung Wan district for the rest of the week.
As I ascended Ladder Street that bustling Saturday, it was with the casual air of someone looking forward to a long vacation, which I was. I’d been working Hong Kong hours, and with the expected local fervour, for almost all of the ten months that I’d been living here.
On Monday, I’d be going home for five weeks, for a well-earned break. I was looking forward to seeing friends and family again. Maybe even Melbourne would look different, after all this time.
My languor was broken by the sound of yelling, as I approached Cat Street. It was the shop-keeper again. I went faster up the steps, to see him confronting the Daoist priest exactly like the first time. Except he seemed even more enraged, on this occasion. His face was scarlet, and his arms were shaking. His shoulders were bunched around his ears, his fists held out in front of him, and I was pretty sure that he was going to hit the taller man.
No one else around me took the slightest notice. I was the only person watching the strange scene.
Just what could be making him so angry? I’d seen enough bar-fights, in my time, to understand there were only two reasons for a show of fury like that. Either the fellow had been insulted to his deepest core. Or he was very scared.
The matter resolved itself the same way as it had done during the week. Slammed door. Clacking locks. And then the odd-looking priest turning away, crying for his unfilled golden egg-cup.
I tried to forget about the matter, but it stayed with me all evening, as I packed.
You might have been impressed by my grasp of Cantonese near the beginning of this tale, but that’s illusory. Cheung mun, gay dor chin just means ‘how much is it?’ and is the first thing that a tourist with an eye to shopping here will learn. I can order a meal, answer the phone, give directions to a taxi driver. But I cannot keep up my end of a conversation.
I thought of rounding up Billy and employing his services, but he was visiting relatives in Fo Tan tomorrow. So I went back, on the Sunday, armed with the best phrase book I could find.
To find — propitious or what? — that it wasn’t necessary. Standing next to the shop-keeper, this far quieter day, was a smartly-dressed young woman in her early twenties. Who spoke perfect English with a sharp American spike in her accent. She was Mr. Lam’s daughter, Tai-Li — she informed me — and had been living in Seattle for the past five years.
They had been waiting for me.
What?
“My father had a dream about you last night,” she said, ignoring the fact that I was staring at her oddly. “You are going home tomorrow, yes?”
How had they known that? I slowly nodded.
“By boat?”
“Yes.” I felt sure that my voice had taken on a dream-like quality. “By boat.”
I had thought that it would be a nicer way of doing things, and had planned to take in Manila and Papua New Guinea on the way.
The iron cage behind the counter was now empty. Tai-Li’s father abruptly produced a taped-down cardboard box, slightly larger than egg-sized, thrusting it towards me.
“It is weighed down with stones,” his daughter explained. “When you reach the deepest part of the ocean, drop it overboard. Please do this.”
Peering harder at them, I could see fear glimmering, deep down in their eyes. I felt numb.
“What is it?”
“Please, just do this.”
“How did you come by it?” I asked.
Tai-Li’s head gave a twitchy shake. “It just…appeared one day, inside the shop. My father put it in the cage.”
“And the priest —?�
�
“Please, Mr. Messinger!” And how did she…had her father dreamt my name? “Please just do as we ask! It is a very simple matter, and you will come to no harm!”
She suddenly snatched the package from her father’s hands. Came round the counter. Shoved it into mine. And then — taking me totally by surprise — shoved me straight out of the shop.
The door slammed yet again. Blinds were pulled down. I was left standing on Cat Street feeling as though it were April Fool’s Day, and the fact that it was only March just made the whole thing worse.
* * * *
I couldn’t resist it. Would you? As soon as I was home, I got a knife out of the kitchen. Cut the package open, pulled away the straw, and inspected the egg. It was as beautiful and decorative as I’d first thought it. Caught the light with an astonishing opal sheen, when I held it up. And I thought, I wanted this in the first place. Was prepared to pay good hard cash for it. Now, I had it for free. Why not keep it?
Just what was it though?
By ten, Billy Cheung was back from the New Territories and, since he lives just two blocks from me, he was looking at the egg himself in another ten minutes time.
“Excellent!” he breathed.
And then he squinted, looking at the script along the hairy giant’s side.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“Weird.” He ran a finger down the characters. “These are his name, Pan Gu. But this character, this is extra. It means — new.”
“And what does that signify?”
Billy’s head shook, and he took a step back. “Not a clue, dude. Maybe ask that priest of yours.”
Except that I was leaving, early tomorrow morning. I supposed it could wait till I got back.
* * * *
I shook it when I got back home, making sure there wasn’t a man with a little axe inside. Then, satisfied, I gave it pride of place on my mantel piece, amongst my quality jade and fine porcelain dragons. Turned in. I had a big day, tomorrow.