“Tell me a little about yourself, Boris,” Tomakita said, without offering his own given name for the Captain to use.
“There’s not so much to tell. Poor Filipino grows up with a dream to not be poor, the skills to make it happen, and gathers the connections to open doors along the way,” Boris said, adding a shoulder shrug as a period to the statement.
“This is quite a boat you have, Boris. Who’s your partner?” Tomakita asked.
“I have no partner and my boat is my first mate,” Boris answered with a smile. “In truth, this is my third real boat, not counting the outriggers I continue to have for running around the islands. I’ve had some significant political allies, but never a partner.”
“It’s good to have friends, but better to have people that owe you or who are dependent upon you,” Tomakita said. Then he laughed and added, “Although I must admit that getting older does give one a more persistent desire for friends.”
“You may be correct, sir,” Boris answered, with a slight bow.
“Enough tea and conversation now, Boris. Tell me how you have chosen what I requested to purchase from you,” Tomakita said.
“Thank you. Yes, sir, let’s see, where to begin…,” Boris said, taking a minute to prepare his thoughts. He continued by restating what Tomakita had originally requested. “You asked me to find a young liver, without trauma. One from a male that was both highly religious, as well as athletic. It needed to be from a youth not exposed to the dangers of sexual activity, nor the damaging habits of smoking or drinking. And of course, there were a few medical tests that needed to be guaranteed.”
Tomakita just listened and continued to sip his tea.
“I met a man by the name of Amihan in the country to the north in the Philippines. His name could be interpreted as abundance, and when I met him he assured me he could come up with an abundance of what it was I needed, for the right finder’s fee. He runs a religious school for youth with little chance in society based on their personal situation…you know, orphans, destitute, parents or relatives who can’t, or simply don’t, care. He chooses those with strong attributes in other areas…such as the ones you are interested in…say primarily intelligence, strength, physical good looks, those things,” Boris explained, stopping to take a sip of his own tea.
“Well, I would not send a child of mine to this school, but I tend to be pessimistic when it comes to the world. That’s part of the reason I don’t have my own child to send…anyplace. Anyway, when I told Amihan I would visit his school to do some scouting for my current and future opportunities, he immediately invited me, and although it is very much off the beaten path, I found myself there two days later, observing several classes and scouting a couple of sporting activities, to pick out a handful of kids I might put through the series of screenings you requested,” he continued.
When Tomakita just continued to listen intently, Boris brought the story to its conclusion. “Long story short, I chose three candidates. One decided to remove himself from contention early in the trip; the other two are here for your review.”
“Very good. May I see these two candidates?” Tomakita asked.
Boris took him to review the two. “They’ve both passed every test you’ve asked for, as you can confirm for yourself. You’re welcome to have your doctor examine them as soon as you like, but I thought you might like to take a look for yourself, as I know you are a very good judge of…character.”
Boris made sure both the boys were drugged during their dinner that evening. An extra special one it had been, to assure that they ate it fast enough not to notice any idiosyncrasies with the flavor. When the two of them passed out, they were put in their room, stripped naked, and lotion applied to their skin until it was smooth and healthy-looking. Their bodies were brown, well-fed, and soft.
Opening the door for Tomakita, Boris said, “I’ve made sure that they are both very fast asleep. I need to step out to talk to my first mate for just a minute. When you’ve made your decision, simply come back out and the guard at the end of the hall will call me.”
Tomakita looked in on the naked bodies, initially feeling arousal, but then that sensation was taken over by a more complicated set of feelings. His life, up until Benjiro, had been one of accumulation of wealth and power. He remembered often taking boys of sixteen and older, some willingly but many not, using them to accumulate power. The act always brought adrenaline, excitement, most often ejaculation, but it never brought joy. Benjiro was the first to bring him joy. In that sense, Tomakita had now been broken of the need for power. Now what he needed was life, to continue to feel the joy he’d so recently learned to feel.
I would have bet anything this guy was a fag, Boris thought, watching him through the captive’s room monitoring system. I wonder why he doesn’t make a move. The guy’s lost in thought, like looking at them can really help him tell which one has a better liver or whatever. He even thought he might have to find some other way to force himself into Tomakita’s operation. Turning around, he headed back out to meet his high-paying guest.
“Have you decided?” Boris asked as Tomakita exited the sleeping candidates’ room.
“I have decided that you’ve done well. I will have my doctor come to make the final choice,” Tomakita answered Boris. “Take me back to the hotel,” he told his servant, seating himself back into the waiting wheelchair.
#
That operation had gone well, according to his Indian doctor, and according to what his body told him also. He was on all the anti-rejection drugs and integration medications prescribed, but he had weaned himself off most of the pain medications as early as possible, wanting to listen to the feedback of his own chi. He felt it would tell him, in no uncertain terms, if this path was going to work. In other words, if he would not only heal and be granted a life extension, but might actually thrive and have his youth be rejuvenated.
He recalled Benjiro preaching that a mind riddled with guilt, conscious or subconscious, would impede the open flow of chi. Only a mind fully at peace would be able to achieve free, healing flow. Tomakita assured himself he felt no guilt. He knew what he was doing was right with the universe, otherwise his own chi would not be bringing him the positive message it was. His doctor had cautioned against using only a portion of the donor liver, saying that guaranteed success was not to be had by the weak of spirit. “One must use all the resources at one’s disposal if maximum benefit was to be achieved,” he said.
Looking at his reflection in the mirror, growing more robust and healthy by the day, Tomakita remembered the ship captain, Zimmerman, asking if there was anything else Tomakita needed, in addition to the donor himself. He’d told him no, but Tomakita has secretly had his servant conduct an intense interview with the candidate once the doctor made his choice.
Intelligence tests, strength, agility, endurance…even hearing and eye exams had been administered in the days before the final appointment. They were not all totally scientific in nature, but the servant did the best with the time and equipment available. The final screening had been an interview with Tomakita, where he used mental and emotional techniques not unlike those he’d learned fifty years ago. The donor was rough, mostly unschooled, at least from a higher education standpoint, but he was quick-witted and smart.
The only mark against him was his apparent lack of instinct when it came to self-preservation.
Now the second donor was being groomed for the pancreas transplant. Tomakita couldn’t hold the smile back, thinking, If this one does half as good as the first, I’ll want to see about taking that captain into my operation. It had been a while since he’d seen someone as independent and capable. He certainly had the drive and the instinct. Maybe he just needed direction from someone with more experience.
Association
“We need to bring something to Cho’s place in return for the invitation, but I have no idea what will soften Cho Uncle’s heart toward my questions,” Steven said out loud. He’d been mulling the thoug
ht over for some time, trying to figure out what the key might be. “I never saw him take a drink of anything stronger than tea when I was with him. He certainly loved his cigarettes when I visited, but I’m guessing that’s out now.”
“What about his daughter?” Benjiro asked.
“Yes, I suppose we should bring her something too, since she’ll be doing most of the work for the evening,” Steven answered.
“No, I mean, what means more to an old man than his family? In Cho’s case, his daughter,” Benjiro said. “Don’t you see? Please his daughter, please him. Maybe it’s as easy as that?”
“Yes, well, what can I get that will please an independent, intelligent, engineer daughter?” Steven returned. “I know less about what she might like than I do her father.” And he slumped into the one chair in the hotel room.
“Really, you’ve been with Bettina for how long now and you don’t know what probably brings Ms. Cho the most joy in her life?” Benjiro asked, looking more than a bit frustrated with him.
Steven looked up at Benjiro and then over at Konnor, lying on his stomach watching TV, easily oblivious to the discussion going on in the room. Of course. That was it. The key to the old man was through his daughter, and the key to his daughter was through her son. Maybe the key to her son was through his own son.
“So Konnor, what do you want to do today before we head to Cho’s place?” Steven asked.
“I don’t know,” came the answer after half a minute.
Steven got up and stood in front of the TV. “Come on, there must be something you’re interested in?”
Konnor tried to look around him. “I’m interested in this show…” he answered.
“You and Boon Tee talk about anything fun yesterday?” Benjiro asked.
“Not so much,” Konnor replied, leaning over to see the TV. “Oh, maybe one thing; he’s been trying to get his Mom to take him to a go cart track, but she doesn’t have time. It sounds really cool.” Now he made eye contact with his dad. “Maybe you could take us, Poppa!”
Benjiro and Steven glanced at each other. “Maybe I could take the two of you while your dad has his boring talk with Cho Uncle?” Benjiro said, looking at Steven.
Konnor’s eyes swung around to his dad and his uncle. “Wow, really? Cool, that’d be great, and Boon Tee will be thrilled! Can I call him?”
“Sure. We need to figure out where this place is and if it’s open. Boon Tee probably knows that information. Maybe I should start with asking his mother, though,” Steven answered, while Konnor bounced on the bed with excitement.
Interrogation
Ms. Cho had been more than happy to have Benjiro take the two boys to the go-cart track. Her son had been begging to go for weeks, and she really had no interest. Besides, with her job, son, and near invalid father, she didn’t have a lot of spare time. They were, by no stretch of the imagination, wealthy, but Ms. Cho did work for an international company that had just opened a new plant in an industrial park set on top of a former village and its surrounding rice fields. The plant made reflective sheeting, and she had a leading role in the chemistry department, assuring the slurry mixtures met the rigid foreign specifications she’d helped to translate.
She greeted her guests at the door and the two boys ran off to make plans for the track after Konnor greeted his host and stepped out of his shoes. “These are for you,” he said, presenting the two satchels of tea leaves his father had given him, instructing him on how to hand them off. The presentation was a bit quicker and less formal than they’d practiced at the hotel, but Steven just rolled his eyes and smiled at Ms. Cho, hoping she’d understand.
Ms. Cho ushered the other two inside after they, too, removed their shoes and brought them to the chair Cho Uncle occupied. “Hmm, hmm.” Clearing her throat to bring her father’s eyes open, she presented the guests and waited while Steven gave him the small package tucked under his arm. It was a little paperback thriller series of fictionalized crime short stories, published locally every month, his daughter had hinted to Steven her father picked up whenever he had a chance.
“The perps are always European or American and the Chinese block cops always get their man,” Cho Uncle said, smiling at the present. “Just as I remember it.” He winked.
It would just be the three of them for the actual dinner, because Benjiro agreed to take the boys for pizza after the go-carts. An indulgent treat he was fond of once in a while himself. After an hour of eating, drinking and polite talk, Steven was relieved when Ms. Cho shooed the two men back to the corner that held Cho Uncle’s chair and said she would wrap things up in the kitchen.
“I appreciate what your friend and your son did, taking my grandson to the go-cart track,” Cho Uncle said. “It is something I would do myself, if my breath wasn’t gone with a simple walk in the park. I’m very happy my daughter is back with me. I’ve thought many times of you and your father’s loss years ago.”
“And I appreciate your saying that, Cho Uncle. The years have been difficult for me, and even more so for our father. Not knowing the truth is so difficult for anyone, a parent even more so, though,” Steven said. “It has always been my hope to remove the layers of cloudiness and discover the truth about Julia’s death.”
“Ah, so is this the reason you have returned to Shanghai?”
“Not totally, Cho Uncle. I was being truthful when I said that I wanted Konnor to grow up knowing more about his aunt Julia than the rumors of how she died. I wanted him to know the places she sang in, the city she loved almost as much as her home, and the people that drew her here. I also want him to grow up with a desire to explore, see the world, and meet other people. I’m afraid it would be easy to take the lesson of Julia and turn it inward, make it about safety, security, staying with the things one knows best and not taking any risks.”
“I understand, Steven. At least some of what you say. Myself, I was always happy to live and die in my block. I loved order, stability, sameness…until I realized there really is none of that anyplace. The universe is chaos,” Cho Uncle said, staring into the doorway that led to the kitchen area. “Do you know anything about exponential functions, Steven?”
Steven laughed and answered, “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Boon Tee does. I believe he gets his mathematical ability from his mother…who probably got it from her mother,” Cho Uncle replied and smiled. “Anyway, he was explaining exponential functions to me the other day. Basically, he said that if whatever you have grows faster the more you have, relative to what there is, it’s an exponential function. I’m not much of a traveler, I’m more of a historian, and China’s got a lot of history. Now if I study China’s history between three thousand years ago and two thousand years ago, I figure that’s about the same amount of history as between today and maybe one hundred years ago. In other words, it seems to me that the more history we have, the faster we create new history.”
Steven didn’t know where Cho Uncle was going with this, but he was willing to play along, for a time anyway. “Okay, I think I understand. Things change, and the more change there are, the faster things change?”
“Yes. When I was in charge of the block police, we had a system. We all used pocket notebooks. We catalogued each one, logged it in the department notebook, filed the department notebooks and the pocket notebooks in cabinets, which also had a system.” Cho Uncle stopped to have a coughing fit and Ms. Cho came out with hot green tea for both of them, returning to whatever she was doing in the other room when her father quit coughing and shooed her gently away.
“Then some smart guy invented something called the electronic chip. Integrated circuit, my daughter tells me. Now they’ve got a computer in the station. My colleagues tell me they must type all their notes into the computer and it saves them…somewhere…I don’t remember. Truthfully I never understood so I guess I didn’t forget. But my crime magazines are full of computers. And phones…that send messages, written messages, through the air…and…well anyway, you get t
he idea. Some tiny change like an electronic chip, and boom, no more notebooks, and boom again, phones that also send written notes and send them all over. The world’s changing faster and faster. No one can stand in one place anymore. They’ll get run over.”
Cho Uncle drank more tea, staring off for another minute. “I saw a lot in the forty-five years I was in the block police. I was around ten years before Chiang Kai-shek and more than thirty-five years after he left China. There was a lot of change during that time. But nothing like the last ten years. By the time Boon Tee graduates from college, which he certainly will do, things will be moving even faster. No one can stand still anymore. If they do, I tell you again, they will get run over.”
Steven was beginning to worry that Cho Uncle either was trying to stymie him or had truly lost his direction. He took a shot at getting things back to his sister’s death. “Julia would not let anyone run her over. She knew what she wanted to do today, tomorrow and the next day. She did today, had commitments for tomorrow and continually planned for the next day.”
“Yes, I know she did, Steven,” Cho Uncle said, moistening his throat. “Be a friend to an old man and refill my cup with hot water from the tea kettle,” he asked, handing the cup to Steven.
Steven went to the kitchen, frustration building as he thought, This old man isn’t going to tell me anything. My trip is wasted…other than spending time with my son. Taking a deep breath, he started preparing himself for disappointment, telling himself that no matter what came of it, this had been the most interesting trip he could remember. It brought Konnor and him together in ways that could not have happened otherwise, and opened up new doors for them as father and son…as long as Bettina didn’t kill him when she heard about everything that had taken place.
Coming back into the little family room area, he stopped short when he saw a bag of cassette tapes open on Cho Uncle’s lap, the old man digging through them to choose a specific one before placing it into the tape player sitting on the side table next to him.
One Fish, Two Fish, Big Fish, Little Fish_Silver Dawn Page 11