Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (Vintage International)

by Maxine Hong Kingston

  “Okay okay,” said the old fut.

  “Okay?! Once upon a time, the one hundred and eight outlaws fought against an army that took arrows through their hearts, and got stronger and stronger. There came word or a dream about a weapon that would keep that army down. Tai Chung, the messenger of the outlaws, would go get it. ‘Take me with you,’ said Li Kwai, the Black Whirlwind. Now, some say he’s black because he was bad and his weapon was the ax. He killed anybody, little kids, girls. He didn’t mean it but. He was like a storm. He knuckle-rapped this girl singer’s forehead, and she died. He had wanted her to stop singing while he talked-story. You could get rich taking the adventures of the Black Whirlwind to Hollywood. He was trying to civilize himself, bringing his old mother to the community at the Water Verge. She got eaten by a tiger while he fought the wrong tiger. He made too much trouble for his own side, losing. He might as well go on errand. I say he was Black Li because his skin was black. He was Chinese and black, a black Chinese, many roles in our bock wah for all kinds of us.

  “Tai Chung, the Flying Prince, says, ‘You may come along if you promise not to eat meat on the way. Will you do whatever I tell you to do?’

  “ ‘No problem,’ says Black Li.

  “ ‘Good. We’ll be traveling fast. Don’t lag behind.’ ” Wittman did two voices, me-aying his head back and forth. “They go only three or four miles before Black Li suggests that they stop for wine. Tai says that wine is about as bad as meat. They run until evening. At an inn, Black Li serves Tai vegetables, but doesn’t touch them himself.” Wittman brought the plastic fruit over to the big table. “ ‘Why aren’t you eating with me?’ asks Tai. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  “ ‘I be back,’ says Black Li.

  “Tai tails him to a back room. He’s eating platters of beef and pork.” Wittman pretended to gobble up the plastic fruit. “The next morning, they get up at four a.m., and both eat vegetables for breakfast. Tai says, ‘Yesterday wasn’t fast enough; we have to make three hundred miles today. Pack tight.’ ” Wittman wrapped his tie around his head, and stuck paper—letters and dispatches—into his belt. He knelt at the old fut’s feet, untied his shoes, could’ve tied the laces together. “ ‘I’m giving you leg armor that was hammered from enchanted metal.’ ” He blew and spoke on the shoes, which the old fut was re-lacing. “ ‘There. You’ve eaten your peas and carrots. You’re going to run well. One more magic: You carry our dark banner. Feel the wind pulling at it? I’ll carry everything else.’ ” He put the broom in the old fut’s hand, and picked up the honeybucket, the basket of gifts for negotiating with friends and strangers. “Black Li sails away, his legs moving in long strides without touching the ground.” Wittman grabbed the old fut’s hand, and pulled him around the table. “Run this way, Uncle,” he said, his feet going ahead of him, the rest of his body trying to catch up.

  “Stop,” said the old fut, “stop, you.” He gave a yank, and Wittman fell down, landing on his butt. The old fut laughed. Fall down, make ’em laff.

  Wittman got up, continuing in character as mercuric Tai.

  “ ‘Move those feet. Hear the storms rushing in your ears. See the trees and houses whirl by. You’re passing inns and can’t stop for a drink. Your feet keep moving under you. Swim, Black Li. Fly. All I see of you is a black streak, you’re going so fast. I’m two yellow streaks—my yellow turban and my cummerbund. I catch up to you when the sky is red with sunset. Brother Black Li, why aren’t you stopping to eat?’

  “ ‘Elder Brother Tai,’ you say, ‘save me. I’m dying from hunger and thirst, and I can’t stop running. Help. Food. Please.’

  “Tai holds out a bun. They miss the relay. He eats it himself.

  “Black Li turns around, feet running ahead, hands reaching for the bun far far behind. Tai catches up. ‘Things are very strange today,’ he says, ‘as I can’t seem to control my legs.’

  “ ‘I can’t either,’ says Black Li. ‘My legs won’t obey me. I feel like chopping them off.’

  “ ‘Yes, where’s your ax? We go on like this, we won’t stop until New Year’s Day.’

  “ ‘Please don’t play tricks on me, Elder Brother. If I cut off my legs, how can I go home?’

  “ ‘You must have disobeyed me and eaten meat. I think that’s why strange legs.’

  “ ‘I don’t lie. I ate some meat yesterday. But not much. Only six pounds. When I looked at your vegetables, I just had to have a little meat. What do I do now?’

  “ ‘Stop!’ Tai catches hold of Black Li’s leg, and yanks.” From behind, Wittman scooped the old fut into a chair. “ ‘I see you’re having trouble with gravity. Let’s take off one shoe, and slow you down by half. Walk this way.’ ” He did a banana-peel run, slip-sliding around the room.

  “They rush past wine flags and grog flags, but the waving of a fingery pennon draws them both to a halt. They find themselves at a crossroads where grows a tree that five men holding hands exactly encircle. There’s an inn with a woman leaning out the window. She’s wearing a green see-through coat, a low-cut blouse, and a pink underblouse. The buttons are real gold. In her hair are gold combs and red flowers. She has red-rouge cheeks. ‘Good meat,’ she calls. ‘Good wine. Come refresh yourselves.’ She walks out to meet them. Her skirt is red and short. They follow her through the grape arbor outdoor café to the cedar tables and stools inside. There are no other customers. ‘We have very tasty bow and dim sum.’

  “ ‘Bring forty then,’ says Black Li.

  “ ‘Bring vegetable bow,’ says Tai. ‘Bean filling.’

  “ ‘What are you afraid of?’ The woman laughs. ‘That we use dog meat? These are good times; no need to eat human meat or dog meat. We serve pork and beef.’

  “ ‘I’ve lived through many travels,’ says Tai. ‘I know about inns where they cut up fat men to fill dumplings, and toss thin men into the river. Vegetarianism makes my senses strong, and I’m smelling a strange meat.’

  “ ‘What a way you have of flirting with me. As a vegetarian, you’ve come to the right place. We’re famous for our peas and beans. My husband’s nickname is Vegetable Gardener.’

  “ ‘I’ll test the meat,’ says Black Li. ‘I’ll taste what these bows are made of.’ He takes a mouthful.

  “Tai pulls a long hair out of his bow. ‘Now isn’t this a human hair?’

  “Their hostess giggles and scratches her head with a comb. ‘It’s one of mine. I’m sorry. I do have a profusion of hair, don’t I?’

  “ ‘Sister, why isn’t there a man about?’ asks Tai.

  “ ‘My husband, the Vegetable Gardener, went to visit friends, and is bringing them home for dinner.’

  “ ‘How long has he been gone?’

  “ ‘So you are flirting with me.’

  “ ‘Woman, this wine is weak,’ says Black Li. ‘If you make better wine, let’s have it.’

  “ ‘I have a thick red I’ve been saving for a special drinker.’

  “ ‘Bring it. And two tubs of warm water for our feet.’

  “She goes out and comes back with a dark and dull wine. She’s laughing to herself.

  “ ‘This wine is cold,’ says Tai. ‘Could you warm it please?’

  “ ‘You want it hot, I’ll make it hot for you. I’ll redden that vegetarian body of yours with grog blossoms.’

  “While she’s gone, Tai whispers to Black Li that the wine has been poisoned. They should pretend to drink but pour it out the window.

  “ ‘No waste,’ says Black Li, who downs it. His eyes close, and he falls off his stool. Tai also shuts his eyes, and lays his head on his arms. He hears the woman clap her hands. ‘Ha, I washed my feet in that swill you drank.’ She undoes their belts and pouches, feeling for money, laughing all the while. ‘I’ve caught two big ones. Meat bow for days.’ Her henchmen come out from the kitchen. ‘Carry the meat to the butcher block,’ she orders. They drag Black Li off. Tai lies rigid; they can’t move him. ‘You lazy clowns,’ she scolds the helpers. ‘You eat and drink but can’t work. I�
�ll lift him myself. Why, he’s going to be as tough as water buffalo.’ She takes off her green see-through coat and her red silk skirt. She throws his arms over her shoulder, trying to get him into a fireman’s carry. He clamps her in his legs. She screams. And just then, her husband comes home, banging through the swinging door with his gang of friends. Black Li crashes in from the kitchen, chased by the cooks with butcher knives. Tai tries to hang on to the Night Ogress, for it is she. They have a free-for-all bar-room brawl fracas and melee all over the place. Black Li swings from the rafters and kicks stomachs and jaws and asses. The Vegetable Gardener lassoes the paddleblade fan, and rides it around the room, swiping at Black Li. The mirror behind the bar shatters in a storm of reflections. A cook throws a wok. It carries him off the balcony. The bartender falls out through the swinging doors into a horse trough. Aces, kings, queens, and knaves fly.” Wittman was running all over the Benevolent Association, up and down the stairs, on and off the furniture, the old fut chasing him.

  “They fight to a tie and draw. Tai has his foot on Night Ogress’s neck. ‘Your mother farts like a dog,’ she curses. ‘He’s accusing us of murder,’ she tells her husband. ‘He’s saying we’re cannibals.’

  “ ‘There are body parts in the kitchen,’ says Black Li. Tai lets go of the Night Ogress to have a look.

  “ ‘Oh, no,’ says she. ‘What must you be thinking?’ She flusters around with the featherduster, just a housewife caught behind on her housekeeping. She picks up a hand. ‘You’re thinking that I—that I—cook and serve and eat—? That this is food? Oh, how could you? Why, you’re looking at trophies. These are the pieces of armed and dangerous men with prices on their heads. We don’t have room in the house for their whole bodies. I’m not strong enough to bring back their entire remains. I just clip a part for identification—a scalp, a distinctive patch of tattooed or branded skin. This hand is the hand of Three-Finger Jack.’ Well, there are two fingers missing, all right; the famous trigger finger is still there. ‘And this head is the head of Joaquin Murrieta.’ ” Wittman took hold of the old fut’s head by the chin.

  “Tai and Black Li examine the head with respect. There was the handsome eagle nose, the handlebar moustache, the brown eyes, looking at them even in death. But throughout the Far Out West were many heads of Joaquin Murrieta. Stagecoaches miles apart were held up at the same time by a man who said, ‘It is I, Joaquin.’ Of course, those who were robbed insisted that no lesser Joaquin Murrieta than El Famoso had done it. How do we know this head is the head?

  “ ‘I have the hand from the selfsame body,’ says the Night Ogress a.k.a. Mrs. Chang a.k.a. Mrs. Sun a.k.a. the Goodwife Sheng. ‘This hand of his has the correct finger dedigitated. We got El Famoso, all right. Next time you go to Sacramento, honey, take me and the head and the hand with you. I need to redeem my bounty coupons. We have fifteen thousand dollars coming.’

  “Now that everyone has calmed down, Chang Ch’ing alias the Vegetable Gardener says, ‘My wife and I invite you to dine on chicken and goose al fresco under the grapevines.’ Though Chang fought hard, his black cap is still on his head, and his white coat is clean and neat. ‘Honey, you got carried away again,’ he says to his wife in everyone’s hearing by way of apology.

  “ ‘How did we get so drunk?’ asks Black Li. ‘We didn’t drink much. The wine must have been very good. We’ll have to remember the inn under the great tree at the crossroads, and drop by on our way home.’

  “ ‘Please accept my apology,’ says Tai to Mrs. Chang, ‘for messing up your house.’

  “She accepts, and everyone adopts one another as brothers and sister. Flying Prince Tai invites the couple to start a restaurant-guardpost at the Mountains of the White Tigers and the Two Dragons, Shantung. There the stranger, the weird and the alienated make their own country. And have one hundred and seven brothers and sisters. The one hundred and eight banditos, banished from everywhere else, build a community. Their thousands of stories, multiples of a hundred and eight, branch and weave, intersecting at the Water Verge. An inn at each of the four directions run by four couples, famous for serving their guests generously and sweetly, account for the strange things that happen at city limits.”

  “You give wrong impressions,” said Grand Opening Ah Sing. “We not be cannibals. We not be bad.”

  “But, Uncle, we bad. Chinaman freaks. Illegal aliens. Outlaws. Outcasts of America. But we make our place—this one community house for benevolent living. We make theater, we make community.”

  “But you wreck the restaurants. The tourists will ask, ‘What is this stuff inside the dim sum? What kind of meat you put inside the char sui bow?’ Business goes down, no more Chinatown.”

  “But they ask anyway, huh? Answer once and for all.”

  “Answer what? Cannibal meat.”

  “You’re getting the idea, Uncle. White meat.”

  “Bad advertising. What’s the matter for you, boy? The tourists save money for years, working all their lives until they retire, and they come here to see us. Whyfor you want to hurt them? They want to see the Gold Mountain too.”

  The monkeys which had broken loose, jumping all over the old man and the young man, tickling toes, armpits and groins, keelee keelee, rubbing paw-hands, oh boy, oh boy, stopped their funny business. Wittman said, “I promise: no bad advertising. May I put on a show, okay?”

  “Okay okay.”

  “Okay?!” Wittman grabbed the old fut’s pissy hand and shook it.

  “You come go outside now. Meet again.”

  “Don’t forget you said okay; we shook on it. Thank you, Uncle. Thank you. Lucky meet again.”

  “Meet again,” said the old fut, latching the screen door, and looking at him through it.

  “When?” asked Wittman. “When do we meet again? How about tomorrow everyday nighttime I bring the troupe? And grand-opening night be Tenth Month, thirty-first day. Guai Night. Hawk Guai Night.” Imitation of Ghosts Night. Scare the Ghosts Night. Hallowe’en. “Call a meeting for our play, okay? Take a vote. Okay? Okay.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” said the old fut.

  Wittman hopped the bus back to the laundromat. Yes, he was in luck, laundry all there. He jammed it wet back into the pillowcase, to be hung up to dry on the fire escape. Pea-coat collar up against the foggy dusk, which can break your heart—your true love has left, and you’re lost, when you haven’t even found her—he walked through ambiguities. Poems blow about that nobody has put into words. Old poems partly remembered sniff at your ears. Nah. Lew Welch warned that it isn’t the moon that’s sad, it’s you. The moon is never sad, says the Red Monk.

  North Beach was lit up, jumpy with neon. Chinatown was bright too, paper lanterns over light bulbs, a party neverending. On Stockton Street was the biggest Joang Wah, the Consolidated Benevolent Associations. Majestic stairs going up to the locked gates and locked doors, roof curlicuing above gilt words—it ought to be a theater. Give our little Family Association first crack at a hit play; the Consolidated Benevolent will invite it here, and get revolutionized. Bust the men in suits. They haven’t done useful politics anymore since China Relief. United Farm Workers, when you march on Sacramento at Easter, you are invited to bivouac here and at all the Associations en route from Delano up the Central Valley. I, Wittman Ah Sing, welcome you. And while you’re at it, liberate the twenty-one missions that Junipero Serra built a day’s walk apart—perfectamente for protesters. Then take the Gong Jow temple. Please. They don’t do nothing in there but worship goats. No kidding. GrandMaMa once sent a postcard of a statue of goats climbing a pinnacle. A ram stood on its hind legs; it held wheat shafts in its mouth. She said, “Goats saved Gong Jow.” I come from a people who worship billygoats.

  And, of course, who should Wittman see—find—crossing kittycorner on the green light though it wasn’t a Scramble Walk, just when he was thinking of her—but PoPo. The traffic was jammed up, and she walked slow and old in it. Break, my heart. She has gone out without her cane, to show off her legs. Her hea
d—a mantilla comb was stuck high in the geisha-style coils of her very black hair—baubled among the cars. The light changed; the cars picked up speed, a metal river before her and behind her. She kept on coming. A quick nick and one grandma closer to orphanhood. Wittman went out into the intersection, and took from her her purse and her pink box of pastries. He didn’t rush her, walked slowly with her, let her take her time, let the fucking honkers run over the both of them. (I am Carlos Bulosan’s manong pinoy come home from the city to take the reins of the carabao from the old mother’s brown hands, and plow the wet rice field.) It takes youth and willpower to stop cars—look the drivers in the eyes. He brought GrandMaMa safe through the street and up onto the curb.

  “How did you get to Big City, PoPo? I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “By miracles. I was upstairs at the Gong Jow giving my thank you.”

  “What do you do up there, PoPo? Who do you thank? Goats? What’s upstairs?”

  “Pile up some fruit, stick three incense sticks in the pile. You don’t have to go to temple, you can do it anywhere; the kitchen is okay. Oranges, grapefruit, not lemons but. Then hold your hands together like this, and say something.”

  “Say what?”

  “Whatever you feel like saying. Say it all out.”

  That’s all there is to it.

  He’s going to have to find out if our organizations take upon themselves the reputation as law-abiding, super-patriotic do-nothings so that they can hide illegal aliens, and be a peace sanctuary for fugitives from the next war.