I twisted my hair up in a chop and took a deep breath. It wasn’t that bad. I could fix this.
Horse Racing
I found my way over to the shop as Li was putting a fresh clear plastic cover over a small square table. The dusty little shop with little on the shelves opened out onto a courtyard where cement buckled from the roots of a ficus tree. The sun had already set and the giant sphingid moths were hurling themselves at the lights in the shop. And even with the smell of DEET in the air, nothing could keep the mosquitoes at bay. The merciless creatures had already penetrated the repellent between my fingers.
Li set out seven bowls and chopsticks and then saw me standing in the doorway. “Tea?” he asked as he filled a tall narrow glass with a pale-yellow liquid from a large thermos and handed it to me.
“Thank you.” I took a sip of warm tea with flecks of tea leaves at the bottom as I scanned some dusty electronics on the shelf behind the counter.
He followed my eyes along the shelves. “Are you looking for something in particular?”
“My cellphone was stolen.”
There was a TV mounted high on the far wall, and through the static, I could see that Li was keeping an eye on the horse racing. “This is all I have in stock,” he said as he handed me a very cheap-looking phone.
I held the box. “I’ll take it.”
I opened up the box and had a look at the dark blue Nokia phone with the tiny screen and number pad. I had had one of these phones in the early two thousands. It would have to serve its purpose. “Do you have SIM cards?”
Li was one step ahead of me and laid a SIM card down on the counter. “Last one.”
I smiled appreciatively. “Guess I’m pretty lucky.”
“I get new stock in next week.”
I nodded, but judging from the age of all the stock in the store, I doubted new inventory was on the way. “My purse was stolen this evening. Can I put this on credit?”
“Of course.” He placed a fifty-dollar credit on the counter. “Here’s some minutes.”
“Thanks.” I started opening the packaging and he motioned me over to sit at the table while I assembled my new phone. I needed to send Craig a text to explain the long silence.
“So, what brings you to Hong Kong?”
“I’m doing a study on the ivory trade.”
Li sat down next to me. “With the new economy, the ivory market is on the rise again.”
“Do you know much about it?”
“Not really. Used to, though. Back when carving was still considered an acceptable tradition.”
“Acceptable?” I asked.
“Well, the status keeps changing, of course. It’s now acceptable again.”
“Ling-Ru tells me that your father used to be a carver?”
“Yes, twenty years ago he was renowned for his craftsmanship. Top artist at the Da Xin Ivory Carving Factory.” He made a slight gesture toward a prostrate body tucked around the corner of the shop whose vital signs were betrayed by an intermittent hacking cough. “Now he just bets on horses.”
“Oh, I see.” I inserted the SIM card and configured my new phone. I typed out a very rudimentary text to Craig: On Lantau. Lost Nigel.
“He had a stroke ten years ago. He’s been paralyzed ever since.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.”
The family poured in and I was introduced to Li’s wife, Hui-Fong, and three daughters as well as the Balinese maid and cook, Smara, before we all sat down to eat. I perched between Ling-Ru and Li, his wife and daughters crowding around the little remaining table space.
Smara brought five dishes to the table. There was a whole fish swimming in a red stew, dented soggy eyes staring out from a tomato bath. Shrimp and unidentifiable multicolored chunks and egg bits peppered a fried-rice dish. Then a custard dish arrived with a pungent odor, a pan of oily fried sweet potatoes, and a bowl of fresh stir-fried snap peas. Given my GI condition, the snap peas seemed the only safe option from the humble feast.
A sulfurous plume rose in the dense air in a moment of silence before the storm broke, both outside and in. The sudden, explosive, torrential downpour roared behind my back, dampening the volume inside the small three-walled shop as chopsticks plucked like storks at the different entrees, and then shoveled at high speed like crab claws, scooping from raised bowl to mouth, remarkably disturbing noises emanating from each bowl.
Even though I knew it was customary to make slurping noises while eating—polite, even—dining etiquette in China was something I was having a hard time adapting to, having grown up with Western table manners. But even more disconcerting was the manner in which fish bones were discarded. They were spat into piles, directly from mouth to plastic tablecloth. I couldn’t bear to watch, nor hear the intermittent ffffthshsh sounds that were made to expel the fish bones from the mouth. I was relieved that I had been given a plate for this purpose.
The horse racing was barely audible in the background, but I tried to train my ears on the droning of the announcer’s voice to escape the unpalatable noise of dining in the foreground. Since I was Ling-Ru’s guest, I was considered family, and my hosts seemed relieved not to have to dabble in polite pleasantries translated into English when there was so much yelling to be done in Cantonese.
While the family was engaged in what seemed to be a very heated discussion, I dodged the multicolored unidentifiable plates and served myself a healthy portion of peas. But it seemed I wasn’t going to be able to get away with my plan to stick with the snap peas. Plates kept arriving in front of me, offered by polite but insistent hands that clearly meant for me to try all of the dishes. I placed a tiny sampling of each dish on my plate to satisfy my hosts.
I looked around the room while the others conversed. Having learned that the man lying in the other room was Li’s father, I felt obliged to address him somehow. But there was no way to do that from where I was sitting. And he couldn’t move from his position, tucked under a blanket with his feet sticking out the end of the bed beyond his striped flannel pajamas.
My gaze fell on his toes and I suddenly felt that I had intruded on some awful, intimate secret. I stared at two sets of terrible gnarled black tusks wrapped clear around a set of human toes like something out of a horror movie. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could walk on such long toenails and remembered that, of course, he was paralyzed and couldn’t walk.
As much as I wanted to stare further, I quickly turned my head away to avoid another GI bout from the sudden strong smell of rotten eggs emanating from a custard dish being offered before me. I clutched the edges of the table and waited for my chicken skin to subside.
“You okay?” Ling-Ru leaned toward me.
“I’m fine.” I quickly dug my chopsticks into my pile of peas. “Love these peas. Are they snap peas?”
“Fresh from the garden,” Li proudly announced, seeming to notice that the conversation went too long without addressing their guest.
Ling-Ru explained that Hui-Fong was complaining about the bus-fare increase to Hong Kong, which was a two-hour ride each way. In the past, she and the children lived in Hong Kong proper with her sister so that the kids could go to school and Li could tend to the shop and take care of his father.
After a while, the youngest daughter had asked why it was that they stayed in Hong Kong and their father stayed on Lantau, while all of their friends got to live with their whole families. The daughter promised not to complain about the commute, so they moved back to Lantau to be together.
I tried to keep up with the family drama, but throughout the meal I found my eyes strangely drawn to the cracked and ridged yellowing black curly toenails, despite my efforts. I shifted awkwardly to get a look at the man’s face below a shock of white hair. I could see that his vacant eyes were fixed on the TV screen. After the horses were out of the gate, he then lifted his head as Smara brought him a chicken breast that she cut up with scissors and fed to him.
Li’s father hacked convulsively while eating his su
pper. Judging from the lack of response from the family, these alarming sounds were not unusual. What sounded to me like a tuberculosis cough had apparently become part of the background noise along with the horse racing and Hong Kong news.
“Which horse is it tonight?”
“Lucky Seven.”
“Is he any good?”
Li smiled mischievously. “Who, the horse or my father?”
I laughed. “I guess I meant your father.”
Li nodded and leaned his head toward me and whispered, “I don’t know how he does it.”
I raised a brow. “That good?”
“The Hong Kong triad doesn’t like it,” he added also in a whisper, while his wife and daughters chattered on, creating enough white noise to allow us to converse within earshot of his father.
“Why not?”
“The SHU controls the track. I think they’re convinced that he’s cheating. He was never very good with numbers. But these days, he does well.”
“How does he place his bets?”
“He has a friend who lives nearby. Jin Jin goes and places the bet for him.”
“What does he do with the money?”
“I am not sure, but I am worried,” Li whispered.
“Why are you worried?” I asked, also in a whisper.
“He is up to something.”
“What could he get up to in his condition?”
He shrugged. “He started giving me money to help support the family. But I know it isn’t all of it. I’m hoping he hasn’t gotten into anything bad again just to support me.”
Ling-Ru joined the conversation. “Back in the day, he got involved in the ivory smuggling that was going on at the factory. But after he had a stroke, he stopped all that.”
“That’s when the betting started,” Li added. “And then one day, an old friend came to visit. It made a deep impression on him,” he remembered. “It’s funny, my dad was never one for birds, but this friend brought him a nightingale and it seemed to perk him up. He’s never been the same since.”
I looked around the shop for a birdcage. “Does he still have the nightingale?”
Li shook his head. “No.” He looked like he was about to say something more and then stopped himself.
I thought about the heated exchange between Nigel and the old woman. “How much does a nightingale cost?”
“Depends on the quality of the song. Why?”
“Are they illegal?”
“No.”
“What price range are we talking? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe forty bucks for a really nice one?”
“That’s all? Forty bucks?”
“Why?”
“I saw someone on Bird Street haggling with an old woman over a nightingale.”
“Really?”
“She didn’t seem to want to sell it.”
“That’s odd.” Li stirred his food with his chopstick, distractedly.
The family conversation slipped back into Cantonese as one of their clients entered the shop. As far as I could tell, the discussion seemed to be about the current client and his drinking habits.
When there was a lull in the conversation, I interjected, “How popular has ivory been recently, since your father was a carver?”
“The factory all but closed until 2008,” Li explained. “They had kept a few workers on as part of a government agreement to keep certain industry positions open. And there had been special orders here and there. But after 2008, business was booming like the old days and the ivory carving factories reopened.”
“For a local market?”
“Yes, ivory couldn’t be exported, but there was a growing local market for ivory, now that people had money. It started with chopsticks for wedding presents, things like that. But now the bigger carvings are selling. It wasn’t until recently that the Chinese could afford things made of ivory. It was all made for the foreign market. Particularly the Japanese market. They bought the most ivory until the economic boom in China. Now China is the biggest. And occasionally there’s a shipment of pre-Convention ivory. Very valuable.”
“Is that why dealers are trying to make ivory look older?” I asked, thinking back to ivory I was shown by Nigel’s distributor in Beijing.
Li nodded.
“What is pre-Convention ivory?” Ling-Ru asked.
“The United States only allows sales from ivory purchased before the ban in 1989. There was a large volume of raw ivory purchased before the ban, and that’s what was used to carve for the local market. Now it has value for the international market,” Li explained.
“New York and New Jersey have shut this down,” I interjected. “California and Hawaii recently agreed to shut it down as well. Other states are trying to do the same, as are some countries in Europe. Hong Kong and Beijing are talking about it, too. What do you think about that?”
“Personally?”
“Yes, in your experience, what do you think?”
“I don’t think China can handle the administration of legal ivory. It’s too hard to police,” Li explained. “After the sale in 2008, the government had to get stricter about what qualified for such a sale. But there are still many dealers that don’t have the right documentation. And there is plenty of poached ivory in China. People don’t understand. They think that elephant teeth fall out naturally and that’s how it’s collected. They don’t understand that elephants are often killed for their tusks.”
“It’s a travesty,” I said, shaking my head. As politely as I could, I dodged sampling the riskier entrees and tried to find a moment to excuse myself. I wanted to turn in despite having anxiety about what torture the sweltering night would bring. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I wanted to be inside my own head for a while.
I lost my window to leave when a boy stepped in clutching an electronic game. The girls immediately averted their big almond eyes away from his eager gaze. One of them bit her lip and ran off holding her mouth.
Ling-Ru whispered, “He lives in the next apartment. I think Fong was hoping to play a game with the girls, but they don’t like him.”
Li’s wife leaned toward me and whispered something in Cantonese.
I looked at Ling-Ru expectantly, waiting for a translation.
“He’s nasty,” Ling-Ru translated for Li’s wife. “His father beats him and his mother goes off to Hong Kong every day to play mahjong.”
Li’s wife got more animated and spoke more quickly as Ling-Ru translated. “His father, Yuan, drinks all day and yells a lot. The girls don’t understand why he yells so much.”
“It must be hard to distance yourself if he is a neighbor.”
Li nodded. “It’s very hard because Yuan is my father’s best friend’s son. And that was his grandson, Fong. There are two. Fong and Ying Ying.” He turned to Ling-Ru. “You know Jin Jin, right?”
Ling-Ru nodded. “We’ve tried to catch him at the border a few times, if that’s what you mean.”
“Jin Jin was supposed to come over for mahjong last night but didn’t show up.”
“Maybe one of my colleagues finally caught him transporting something illegal,” Ling-Ru scoffed.
Li shook his head. “The thing is, my father asked him to do him a favor a few days ago, a big favor. And he gave Jin Jin the nightingale. I couldn’t understand why.”
“You think something happened to him?”
“It’s not like him to miss mahjong.” Li nodded toward his father. “He’s worried.”
Ling-Ru sensed Li’s concern. “Maybe Catherine and I will take a walk over the ridge tomorrow. Check out his place. Been meaning to get over there since we caught him with some python skins awhile back.”
“I’d appreciate that. I promised the girls we’d go clamming tomorrow. And I don’t want them following me to that place.”
Ling-Ru smiled. “Understood.”
“Even though I believe that those skins were planted on him.”
“To what en
d?” Ling-Ru asked.
Li shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
Li’s wife leaned forward and whispered something more. Ling-Ru translated for her again. “It upsets the girls to see a parent behaving so dishonorably,” Ling-Ru added in explanation, while Li’s wife pretended to smash her plate on the ground and made the noise of a plate breaking.
Everyone laughed and Li agreed. “Yes, sometimes he gets a little crazy.”
Feeling extremely exhausted, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and leaned over to Ling-Ru. “Is it okay if I leave?” I whispered.
“Are you all right?”
“I really don’t feel well. And I’m exhausted.”
“Of course. I’ll be over soon.”
I stood up. “Thank you for the delicious meal. It’s been a long day and I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
Li stood up. “Shall I walk you over to your apartment?”
“Oh, no, please don’t get up. I’ll be fine.”
I exited through the back door and headed over to the apartment. I tried to text Craig again since I hadn’t heard back from him. But as I got further from the shop and the router, there was no longer any reception. “Damn it!”
I got into bed and tried to distract myself. As much as I didn’t want to think about Jon’s letter, I couldn’t help myself. I’d been so looking forward to hearing from him and to reading his words. But it occurred to me that his letter might also contain information about our ongoing investigation. Now I worried about the loss of the letter for a different reason.
The noise of mosquitoes hummed around my head and fingers as I tried to text Craig one last time, to no avail. I dropped my phone and scratched my mosquito-bitten knuckles in frustration. The mosquito coils weren’t working.
I wished I had brought a mosquito net along as I hated to put DEET on my skin but I had no choice. I resprayed myself, coughed on the fumes, and then covered myself in Ling-Ru’s sarong.
White Gold Page 6
