The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics

by Nury Vittachi

  ‘Shut up, Park,’ Tonyboy said, defeated. ‘You made your point. But I still think—’ ‘I thought you said we nominated chicken?’ interrupted Girlie Villanueva.

  Her husband lapsed into guilty silence.

  ‘Tonyboy, did you nominate—?’

  ‘Yes, but I think better we keep quiet about it. Eating eggs will probably seem less upsetting to these people than, than— the other thing.’

  ‘What was the other thing?’

  There was a long silence during which Tonyboy looked the other way. ‘I nominated balut with pinikpikan,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Mother of God, bless us.’ Girlie covered her head with a pashmina scarf.

  ‘What is pinikpikan?’ Park asked.

  ‘It’s a Filipino chicken thing, what we call an Igorot dish.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s roast chicken.’

  Park refused to let him get away with this. ‘Come on. This is a live food restaurant. Roast chicken is not just roast chicken. Talk, Tonyboy, talk.’

  The Filipino businessman sighed. ‘Okay. You might as well know. With pinikpikan, you hold the chicken down by its head and then you beat it all over. When its whole body is bruised, it starts to swell up—the blood creates haematomas under the skin. Then you pluck it and roast it. It gets big like a melon, swollen because of the beating. The meat is more juicy and tender that way.’

  ‘That’s bad news for you guys,’ Park said.

  ‘What about us?’ said a new voice. In a cage at the back was an Indian couple in their fifties. ‘We nominated the Shanghai hairy crabs. If they are going to steam us to death, then I cannot think of a more painful way to go,’ said Vishwa Mathew Roy. His wife burst into tears.

  Park let out a long slow breath. ‘Death by steaming.

  That’s—’ He was interrupted by the click of the door at the back of the stage opening.

  Vega re-entered the room and walked over to the judge’s bench. ‘’aving a nice little conference, are we, chums? Well, sorry to interrupt the sweet little nuffins you animal-murderers are swapping, but it’s time for the next ’earing, okay, folks?’

  Everyone tensed.

  The double doors on the other side of the stage opened and six masked men entered, several of them carrying guns. Three walked to the cage containing the Chens, while others went to the cage Park occupied with his dazed, silent wife Yon.

  ‘It’s all a mistake,’ Fangyin pleaded. ‘I don’t even like oysters. I just pretend to eat them. Really I don’t eat anything at all. I’m a Venusian, just like you people. I’m always on a diet. Ask my husband. I don’t eat anything.

  ’ Ignoring her pleas, the guards lifted the two cages onto a wheeled pallet and trundled them to the area to the left of Vega’s court. All four of them were talking at once.

  ‘Please, this is all a mistake—’

  ‘Mr Vega, if you would just let me—’

  ‘I could make you rich. Just say—’

  ‘Please don’t—’

  Vega held up his hand. ‘SILENCE,’ he yelled. ‘What a bloody awfoo racket.’ He took a pair of airline-style earplugs out of his pocket and twiddled them into his ears. ‘Much better.’ He looked at the papers in front of him. ‘You four ’ave been accused of—blah, blah, blah, blah. I really can’t be bovvered with all this stuff.’ He tossed the papers aside and looked over at his victims, terrified in their cages. ‘Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we? You guys have been found GUILTY of being extremely unpleasant little shits, why not leave it at that?’

  The four people in the cages started pleading for their lives again. Chen Shaiming dropped to his knees, and Fangyin followed suit. ‘Please, please, Mr Vega,’ he said. ‘I am a multimillionaire. We can pay you—’ ‘THIS is the Court of Poetic Justice. We’ve gone to a whole HEAP of trouble to make sure the punishments suit the crimes. I’m very proud of these next devices we’ve prepared specially for you. Bring ’em on, mates, bring ’em on. Let ’em rip.’

  Two staff appeared with large plastic canisters which appeared to be topped with some sort of spraying device. They looked like equipment a farmer might use to blast pesticides at crops.

  By this time, three of the victims were pleading on their knees and the fourth, Park’s wife Yon, was curled up in a ball on the floor.

  The guards aimed the chemical blasters at the cages and pulled the triggers. Gobbets of vivid red gunk flew at the victims, who screamed and writhed and started frantically clawing at their skin to get it off.

  ‘Lovely jubbly,’ Vega said.

  He let them scream and scratch at themselves for a full minute before making a dismissive gesture with his hand. The guards wheeled the cages out of the room. ‘Put them in the basement wiv the bears,’ Vega said. ‘I don’t normally approve of any sentient bein’ eatin’ meat, but we might make an exception this time. That Korean bird looks a bit tasty, knowwotimean? Ha ha.’ He glanced at his watch and then rose to his feet.

  The guards moved over to the cages where the remaining prisoners sat, almost all of them with their eyes shut, and many of them with fingers crammed in their ears. The Children of Vega used their gun barrels to make the prisoners who remained conscious stand up.

  ‘I do apologise that these ’earings may be a little GORY for family viewin’. Especially since I notice that some of you businessmen have rahver young trophy wives, naughty, naughty. But just REMEMBER one fing: all this is yer own bloody faults.’

  Joyce turned a tear-stained face to Wong. ‘I guess he thinks I’m your wife. What was the dish you nominated?’

  ‘Prawns,’ said the feng shui master, his face filled with dread.

  ‘Just prawns? What sort of prawns?’

  ‘Drunken prawns,’ he said. ‘Drunken prawns flambé.’

  Joyce closed her eyes. This was going to be bad.

  ‘Oh bother,’ she said, and fainted.

  ‘Those brave enough to kill will be killed. Those brave enough to not kill will live.’

  Lao-zi, 6th century BC, quoted in ‘Some Gleanings

  of Oriental Wisdom’ by CF Wong.

  Thirteen minutes later, the doors burst open again. Most of the prisoners looked up. Others preferred to remain curled up in denial. But this time, it wasn’t Vega who stepped into the room. Wong peered at the newcomer. It was a smaller figure, with red hair tied severely in a tight ponytail, sticking out from Vega’s theatrical judge’s wig.

  ‘Please be upstanding for the deputy chief judge,’ said an armed young woman accompanying her. The guard had something Japanese about the lower half of her face, which was all that was visible.

  A few people wearily rose to their feet, exhausted by the horror they had seen, while most remained incapacitated by anticipation of what might come next.

  The new judge, overlooking the fact that many of her audience ignored her, took her position in Vega’s seat. She read from the papers in front of her in a much more formal manner than her predecessor in the hot seat: ‘I hereby declare by the powers vested in me as a voluntary representative of sentient beings that the Court of Poetic Justice is in session. In the ongoing trial of the Children of Vega versus the This Is Living Dining Club, the next defendants—’

  ‘Where is he?’ Wong called out in English.

  ‘Silence,’ she replied angrily, in a strict, schoolmarmish tone. ‘Vega is working on another major assignment. I will be presiding over this hearing, as he has to attend to important business elsewhere. And in future, you will not speak unless I ask you to, is that understood?’

  Wong was intrigued to note that although the redheaded woman had a stern, unyielding edge to her voice, she lacked the note of vicious gleefulness that Vega had displayed. He hoped she would find it harder to torment people.

  ‘As I was saying, the next defendants are—’ She checked the pages in front of her. ‘Mr and Mrs Wong.’

  The guards went to the feng shui master’s cage and stuck their guns through the bars.

  ‘Excuse me,’ sa
id Wong, pointing to the comatose figure on the floor of the cage. ‘She has fainted. Also, she is not Mrs Wong.’

  But the guards were not listening. Red Hair leaned forward to look at the papers in front of her. ‘If you can’t move, you can listen to the evidence from there. Mr and Mrs Wong, you are accused of ordering the painful torture and death by chemical poisoning and burning of more than two dozen live creatures in a dish called Drunken Prawns Flambé. How do you plead? Be warned: if you plead not guilty and are found guilty, the court will add the charge of perjury to your sentence, and your punishment will be correspondingly heavier.’

  How could a death penalty be made heavier? ‘Not guilty,’ he said, anxious to stall for time while looking for ways to escape.

  ‘You plead not guilty. Very well.’ She started to leaf through the paperwork in front of her. ‘Okay. Here’s the stuff. We have the menu, which clearly lists a particular dish for the meal last night, and specifies that it was—I quote—“nominated by Mr CF Wong”. It then names the dish as Drunken Prawns Flambé and describes the dish thus: “Live prawns marinated alive in ginger and onion soup to which a generous portion of Martell XO cognac is added before the whole dish is flambéed”.’ She looked up. ‘I think that’s admirably clear. So this court finds you guilty of the charges as laid, plus the additional charge of perjury for pleading not guilty.’ She gave an elegant tap on the tabletop with the hammer.

  Wong scrunched up his nose. That had not gone well. Now what? ‘I am not CF Wong,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not listening. Okay, here’s the sentence. You two will be securely tied up and then dropped into a bath of hot soup. We’ll turn the heat up, add something flammable to the mixture and then set it on fire. That should be fitting. Can you bring back that big bowl thing with the burner? Is it ready?’ These last comments were directed at a stocky Chinese woman who seemed to be taking the role of stage manager.

  Wong, unable to think of anything to do, desperately scanned the tiny cage to see if there was any tool he could use to defend himself. There appeared to be absolutely nothing. He put his hands in his pockets, but they were empty except for some sheets of paper and the packet of money he had been paid—surely not enough to buy his freedom, not after the tycoons’ offers of cash had been ignored. And then there was his lo pan. But it seemed unwise to pull that out. All that would achieve would be to confirm that he was, indeed, CF Wong the feng shui man.

  He slipped his hands into Joyce’s jacket pockets to see if she had a penknife or anything similar. Certainly, she used to carry one as a key-ring. He found nothing but crumpled tissues in most of her pockets. In one, he discovered her sandwich.

  He pulled it out and stared at it. Was there any way he could break out of a metal cage using a vegetable sandwich? Could he overpower the guards with it? Threaten to smear it on their nice clean black clothes? No obvious answer sprang to mind. Had it been some sort of hard snack—a watermelon or something—he could have thumped someone with it. But a soggy, day-old sandwich? There was no hope. Unable to think of anything else to do, he absently started to unwrap it.

  An alarm went off—a ringing sound triggered by someone watching from the stage. ‘Meat alert, meat alert,’ said the Japanese girl, who appeared to be the security chief of the outfit. She raced up to Wong’s cage, the click of her steel-reinforced heels echoing from the hard walls. ‘No dead flesh is allowed in these premises.’

  ‘Except dead people,’ Wong said. He continued to unravel the greaseproof paper to reveal a tortilla wrap. He pried it open and noted that there were red, yellow and purplish-green things inside.

  ‘No meat is allowed in these premises,’ the young woman barked. ‘Prisoner Wong, you are ordered to throw the sandwich outside the cage immediately.’

  He ignored the commands and continued to poke around inside the roll, pleased to be unnerving the guards.

  She marched right up to the edge of the cage and pointed the barrel of her gun directly at his temple. ‘Put that thing down, now.’ And then her eyes suddenly widened. ‘What—?’

  The fury in her face changed to shock, and then puzzlement. ‘Is—is that a hyper-vegan?’

  Wong had no idea what she was talking about, but quickly replied: ‘Yes. Yes it is.’

  The woman was confused. She dropped to her knees and peered closely at the tortilla. Wong picked up a slice of something slimy and held it up to her: It was unmistakably a limp piece of grilled, peeled yellow capsicum. Next he held up a slice of seared eggplant. ‘Fried qiezi, very nice,’ he said. ‘My favourite.’

  ‘You are CF Wong, the feng shui master?’

  ‘No. My name is Eric Wong, and I am a chef. A vegetables-only chef. I kept trying to tell you. I make these things.’

  ‘And are you—are you a hyper-vegan?’

  ‘Yes.’ He spoke firmly. ‘A big one.’

  The guard stood in silence for ten seconds, and then jogged back to the judge. She spoke quietly but Wong could just about make out what she was saying. ‘Chief? I think there might be some sort of mix-up here. We may have got the wrong guy or something.’

  ‘Not a chance of that,’ Red Hair replied. ‘That guy’s the restaurant feng shui guy. And one of the diners. Vega identified him before he left. He was there, in the TIL group, eating live animals.’

  ‘Can’t be. This guy’s a vegan. A hyper-vegan. Look at the food he’s carrying with him. He says his name is Eric Wong. He’s carrying the same sort of hyper-vegan wrap that we had last night from the veggie café. There must be some mix-up. Maybe this was one of the kitchen staff or something.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Red Hair reached for her hammer. ‘The court is adjourned.’

  Five minutes later, Wong and McQuinnie were in a white room off a dark corridor outside the theatre being interviewed by Red Hair and Japan Girl. The Children of Vega kept asking questions that Wong could not answer, so he stalled by pretending he was concerned for Joyce’s health. ‘My assistant needs help. Is there anything we can do?’

  Joyce had been poked and prodded until she had woken up and been made to stagger out of the cage at gunpoint, but had slumped back into unconsciousness as soon as she’d sat down in the interview room. Her body was in a chair, but her head was against the wall and she was snoring.

  ‘Drugs?’ Red Hair asked Wong, pointing to Joyce with her eyes.

  ‘Drink,’ Wong said. ‘Tsing Tao and your gas stuff don’t mix too good. Also, she is young, can’t take it, all this trauma. Is hard for vegetable-eaters like us.’

  Red Hair’s lips became a thin line, almost invisible. It was evident that she was quietly furious. No doubt she been thrilled that Vega had left her in charge, and was upset that a problem appeared to be emerging on her watch. Had a mistake been made—a serious error? No: this had to be CF Wong, and he had to be the prawn-murderer. But the hard evidence of the grilled vegetable sandwich sat on the table glowing like a 100-kilowatt football stadium floodlight. It had been dissected and found to be distinctively vegan. Perhaps it wasn’t his. ‘I don’t believe you, Mr Wong. I think you stole that sandwich, and this whole thing is a trick to help you escape your fate as a murderer.’

  ‘They probably found the sandwich somewhere,’ Japan Girl added.

  Red Hair slammed her pen down on the desk. ‘Okay. We don’t have time for this. We have to bring this session to a close. Answer this question exactly right and we may just take you seriously. Get it wrong and you are in the soup— literally.’

  She glanced up at the lightbulb to think. Then she lowered her piercing pale blue eyes to stare at Wong. ‘Got it. Who were the founders of veganism and what year did they do it? Answer correctly or die.’

  The feng shui master swallowed hard. His mind raced, but no possible answer presented itself.

  ‘Elsie Shrigley and Donald Watson founded the first vegan society in the UK in 1944. They were disgusted with the number of vegetarians eating eggs,’ Joyce said in a sleepy mumble, having just woken up. ‘Where are we?�
��

  ‘Hello, Joyce,’ said Wong, with a degree of bonhomie that she had never heard him use before. ‘How are you? I was worrying so much. You fainted, you know, after you see what happen to those poor meat-eaters.’

  ‘Oh cheese, yes,’ Joyce said, rubbing her temples. ‘Dear God. Dear, dear God.’

  ‘But I have explained to these people that they should not do the same to us, because we are, er, hop, er, hippo, hypo, the same things as they are. After all, why should they hurt someone like me, a vegetable-only eater called Eric Wong?’

  Before the women could analyse Wong’s unconvincing statement, Joyce ripped into them. ‘Yeah, I can’t believe you are doing what you are doing. You’re crazy. How can you kill people? What are you doing? I mean, what are you doing? Vegans are supposed to love and respect sentient life. That’s what it’s all about. You can’t just boil people alive. That poor— You can’t—’ She burst into tears.

  ‘Name six famous vegetarians,’ said Red Hair, who was still suspicious, her lips shutting so tightly that they disappeared once more.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Name six famous vegetarians. If you are really a vegetarian, you should be able to do that.’

  Joyce took a moment to compose herself, and then said, sniffing: ‘Er, Einstein, Elvis Costello, Mahatma Gandhi, Reese Witherspoon, Bob Dylan, Michael J Fox, Natalie Portman, Alicia Silverstone is a vegan, so is Moby, and Shania Twain. In fact, most geniuses were veggies, like, er, Isaac Newton—and did I say Einstein?—and Steve Martin, Damon Albarn from Blur, and—’

  ‘Paula McCarthy,’ put in Wong. ‘And Eleanor Rugby.’

  The two women in black looked at each other. Japan Girl sighed. They were veggies. This was a bloody awful mess.

  Joyce was still angry and glared critically at their captors. ‘There’s too much death around. More birds and mammals are raised and slaughtered in a single year in the United States alone than the entire human population of Earth. We need to cut the number of deaths in the—’ Red Hair turned on her: ‘Listen here, bitch. I am in charge around here, and no one tells me what to do. If you are very, very lucky, I may allow you to escape with your lives. But I haven’t decided yet, so I would advise you to SHUT UP. Got it?’