The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  “The incident is regrettable,” Ah Min said in perfect English.

  “Many tourists saw the incident.”

  “I understand.” Ah Min beamed, spreading his hands wide to show his lack of duplicity.

  “Broad daylight, after all.”

  “And so many people saw!” Ah Min added.

  “Two youths, bundling a frightened man out of his carpet warehouse into a taxi, well, I mean to say …”

  What an idiot language! the Triad master thought to himself, watching through the one-way glass. What did the inspector of police “mean to say”? If he meant to say something, why not say it? Yet these English had the whole world talking the same barbaric tongue, a babblement of inferences, hints, evasions, understatements. He thought with bitterness, give me Chinese any time, where the pun was the highest form of slick speech and was always hilarious, instead of this slithery tentative language. What a stroke of luck Americans had never learned nuance!

  “True, true,” Ah Min soothed, his beam intensifying. “Your hands were tied! I can see that.”

  Even then the moronic uniformed man did not recognise the implication, simply kept on nodding, waiting for his bribe.

  “I’ve kept the incident under wraps, but sooner or later I’ll have to move on it.”

  “That is natural, Inspector! Police procedure!”

  “By the end of the day.”

  Ah Min seized the allusion. “All days must come to an end, is that not so?”

  The inspector seemed uncomfortable, for his own days were soon to end. He would return to run a shoe shop for his cousin in Warminster, where his salary would plummet like a shot bird. In England, opportunities for graft and extortion were rare beyond a man’s understanding. No lost cents in England’s inflexible income tax laws.

  Old Man watched the scenario. He shook his head; an impossible world to live in, where greed was detected, suppressed, hunted down. Changes, too many changes.

  “And today’s work is no exception, Inspector.”

  “Correct.”

  “I realise you must make a very awkward decision.”

  “I must follow procedure.”

  “Of course! Without deviation!”

  “To allow any incident to pass without a proper resolution would damage my position.”

  “It would! Damage severely!”

  “There is little I can honestly do.”

  “True!”

  And Ah Min waited. The policeman waited. Old Man watched.

  There was no greater intellectual thrill than seeing money enter an arena. Ah Min might bring money in like a carnival, with trumpets and banners, teams of cutthroats and maidens adorned for feasts. Or he might slip in money as no more than a shifty shadow edging onto sand, stepping daintily across blood-soaked ground. It was theatre, as in those puppet theatres that the lovely KwayFay paused to see down Central Street before surviving her test of a threatening assassin. Such theatre! How interesting this thought was, that Chinese theatre was the exact opposite of English theatre, the former so immediate and frank, the latter full of meanings impossible to excavate.

  He dragged his attention back to the arena visible through the glass.

  The inspector of police cleared his throat. Old Man’s lip curled in contempt. Greed made whores. This man was revealing himself a whore.

  “There might be something, though.”

  “Might there be?”

  Ah Min had a degree in languages. Six of his tongues were Chinese vernaculars, with two English things and one the sort of French the Swiss spoke. See? Foreigners couldn’t even get their own speech uncrossed. Ah Min’s pretence of pidgin-speak was dropped. His beaming smile widened. He was enjoying this, now he had the upper hand over this man from Yinggwok, the “hero country” of barbarian England.

  “I might be able to help you in some way.”

  “Might you?”

  The hero almost went red, this fighter in the arena, now that money was about to enter. A slither, this time, watching Old Man guessed, money creeping along the walls before the tigers noticed and pounced.

  “I could make things easier for you by losing the police records of the incident.”

  “Does that happen?” Ah Min asked innocently.

  “Very rarely. A file goes missing, there is an investigation.”

  “Would that not be a terrible risk, Inspector?”

  “It would. That’s the point.”

  More waiting. Ah Min beamed, relishing the joust. The inspector hesitated, wanting Ah Min to mention payment.

  The policeman sat forward on the edge of his chair, leaning his elbows on the table even though tea had already been poured. See? Barbarian.

  “Er, the point being…?” Ah Min murmured, a frown with his grin this time.

  “I would need some recompense for taking the risk. I want to be friendly, but it should be made worthwhile. You see that.”

  “I do, I do! Yet the incident was a small matter, was it not? Two youths, bundling some man into a taxi. They might have been on their way to a football match at Hong Kong Stadium!”

  “Except the man was found dead. Mutilated.”

  “Do you think, Inspector, that the tourists could prove that the man they saw was the deceased person?”

  The victim’s face had been irreparably changed by knife work on Old Man’s order. At least the idiots, the two new so-clever threat-men, had remembered to do that. He had to think of every little thing these days, not like when he was young. Standards had gone. Old Man blamed the mothers.

  “I’m sure they could. The clothes were the same, and the taxi driver could confirm it too.”

  “The taxi driver,” Ah Min said, deep in thought. Believe that, you’d believe a politician. Taxi drivers’ memories were written on water.

  “We already have his statement.”

  “In the file?”

  “In the same file.”

  “The risk, though, to you would be great.”

  “For enough compensation I might take the risk. For the sake of friendship.”

  “How generous!” Now the frown gone. Money was in the arena!

  “I would expect the money to match the risks I would be taking.”

  “Why shouldn’t that be so?” Ah Min asked, hands out again.

  Old Man could tell Ah Min was seeing himself exactly like a character from ancient Chinese operas, perhaps KwayFay’s favourite, the Flag Cloth Opera, where astonished nobles cast back their gigantic oval-cuff sleeves to show what was about to happen. He smiled. He missed Chinese opera, where the audience noise was so deafening from chattering that actors had difficulty hearing each other. It was totally lacking in reverence, as opera should be. More contrasts to be thought over, with the People’s Republic of China loomed darkening the northern political sky.

  “I would want it to be sufficient compensation.”

  “Indeed you would!”

  The inspector’s begging bowl was out now. Entering the arena as a combatant, powerful and questing, he was now a supplicant, begging the threatening beasts prowling out there for enough time to scrape up the coins thrown by his contemptuous employers.

  “Perhaps sixteen thousand dollars, American?”

  “And the purpose would be …?”

  The Triad master sank back, replete. The game was over. He did not want to watch the conclusion, for endgames were inevitable. It was no longer a joust, nor even a negotiation. It was the sordid transaction of a boss paying off some minion. All serfs were beneath contempt. Why else were they serfs? They loved to grovel, thinking themselves lords. Had the mighty inspector of police shown some spirit, Old Man might have watched events unfold. Were the police inspector Chinese, he would have allowed the police report to go forward to trial, and settled on his “compensation” only when the case entered the Law Courts, Hong Kong side. Old Man might even have had himself driven to Statue Square to observe the final play of withdrawal and resolution, when witnesses appeared only to renege. He loved
the expressions on all the defeated lawyers’ faces.

  Now? Now a Home Counties shoe-shop clerk whined for his pennies. Where was the entertainment in that?

  He signalled and the lights came on. Where was finesse? Life was barren. And he now had the problem of placating his father. That his parent had passed away more than forty years ago was irrelevant. Ancestors had to be addressed.

  To whom could he turn? He thought of KwayFay. It would not be beneath his own dignity to go down Jordan Road and inspect the side alleys full of paper shops, ready for the ceremonial burning of their wares, for everyone still did this while denying they did anything of the kind. It was the Hong Kong way, to pretend conformity while doing the opposite. But would he be thought disrespectful if he was to go alone, or with uncomprehending henchmen? He could send that girl, whose skilled communications with the spirits and the hereafter seemed so sure.

  He pondered, then signalled for attention, and in came the amah.

  Speaking quietly, he couldn’t help examining the amah’s hair and teeth as she stooped to hear his whispered commands. His eyes were definitely going. His inspection was incomplete. He was too tired to tell her to move closer while he had a good look. This was becoming serious, this advancing age. He should decide on some lieutenant who would take over, but who? Who might fit the bill?

  He heard two of his men approaching. They knocked. He told them to come in and stand by the door while he thought about the decision he had just made. The girl?

  Yes. She would arrange the funeral ritual for his dead father.

  Three hours later Old Man sent for Ah Min. He did not invite the Triad’s treasurer to sit down.

  “The past files, Ah Min. Still secure?”

  “Certainly, master! In the storeroom, at the Brilliant Miracle Success Investment. The security system is updated —”

  Old Man gestured for silence.

  “They have been searched, as ordered? HC Ho has had all this time. He must be close to completion, yes?”

  “His search must nearly be done, master.”

  “Check, and report.”

  Old Man watched Ah Min waddle out. Still the beaming face, but a trace of worry in there. It would not do for a precious advantage to be lost. The Triad needed one colossal coup to face the coming political changes. He thought again of KwayFay. Was she the one?

  Chapter Ten

  KwayFay sat on the edge of her truckle cot, wondering.

  Work had been stupid all week, HC behaving stupidly. Nothing in the office had any sense.

  What had he been thinking of, telling her to leave her work station, telling Larry Tan the illegal Canton immigrant to take over her lists when the poor hopeless youth couldn’t even count.

  HC even told her she should go through some old files, even those of customers long since moved to other, more salubrious, firms or even (the shame!) to bank investment counters, always hopeless except for the Hang Seng in Des Voeux Road Central, surely the most odious and repellent bank building.

  On HC’s orders she seated herself before the mounds of dusty files in the storeroom gloaming. The slightest move set her coughing, so much must from the fungus-ridden files. It was a hellhole, a punishment posting, as all the Yankee war films called dangerous work sites.

  Her first three hours were torture. She actually went to knock on HC’s door and ask what she was supposed to be doing in there. He’d lifted his haggard face with an effort. Maybe he had been weeping.

  “Do?” he’d repeated. “I told you. Find the file.”

  “Which file? There are thousands.”

  “You will know.”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know, HC.”

  “What do you want, KwayFay?”

  “I want to know what work I should do in the storeroom, Business Head. Which old file must I examine?”

  “Find it,” he said dully, unseeing eyes looking beyond her. “It’s there somewhere.”

  “What, HC?”

  “How do I know? You’re the one with the…”

  With what? “You gave me no coding, no year, no sign.”

  He said, broken. “Go. Look.”

  So she’d returned to the gloom of the stacked cavern with its tiers of shelves reaching the ceiling, dust everywhere, coughing herself almost to sleep in her anxiety to find…what, exactly?

  She began to sob at the hopeless task. The files went back a score of years. Each unit file contained hundreds of chits, each with a dozen chops – stamped franks of authenticity. These were from times before computers made the written word redundant.

  The one chair in the room was unspeakable. She spent almost a whole hour trying to clean it, and finished up dragging it into the corridor and setting about it with the cleaning woman’s spray polish. The others in the office ignored her, except for whispering about her inescapable bad luck, undoubtedly the prelude to an ignominious sacking.

  Her erstwhile friend Claire Yip came by, swinging her hips, showy in her lace blouse. KwayFay was sure the bitch had had her breasts implanted at a private clinic, hence the inescapable billowing-sails front and canyon cleavage.

  “Do the job properly, KwayFay,” Claire said airily, swishing by for the tenth time, deliberately accentuating her narrow waist. “Impress the boss! You might keep your job.”

  “Thank you, Claire.”

  “Don’t thank me, KwayFay. I would hate you to lose your wage.”

  And had gone on her way, to return a few minutes later, cooing, “Good! It’s beginning to look usable! So soon!”

  It did not matter. Claire would finish her life limping when the North Point tram caught her foot, as would happen next Double Fifth when, on her way to the Dragon Boat Festival that day, she would cross Queensway to collect her car at the Multi-Storey next to Chater Gardens. Serve her right. She would then lose her rich Taipei fiancé. Claire expected the world to come running to help. Check this space, KwayFay thought.

  About eleven o’clock that morning she had come to, blinking at the bare globe of light. She must have dozed among the stacked files. No ghost talk. Stiff, she went out to drink from the water fountain in the main office, conscious the noise abated when she appeared as everyone glanced her way.

  Charmian Sau the foki, the office servant, was the only one who spoke to her. Charmian had borrowed her western name from a song.

  “You want anything, KwayFay?” she asked, as KwayFay turned to go back to staring with blank incomprehension at the stacks of old files.

  “No, thank you, Charmian.”

  “Shall I bring you water later?”

  Such a kindness, to accord status to a demoted girl. From clerk to storeroom was shameful. Or, KwayFay wondered with sudden venom, did the foki perhaps see in KwayFay some ally now lowered to her own level? KwayFay smiled, guessing the innocence of the cleaner.

  “Thank you, Charmian.”

  She returned to her prison. Charmian was forty-two, and destined to lose every cent and stitch next year in her endless pursuit of fortune at the game of Mahjong in her dreadful flat in Lai Chi Kok. KwayFay wished Charmian a better life. Soon would come that terrible time for Cantonese women, when their sudden lovely shape would crumple. It resembled a paper bag losing all its air, to shrink into a wizened mass of wrinkles. It always happened, unless sufficient money was available and surgeons preserved an aging woman’s beauty, as in America where everyone was a millionaire.

  The room seemed to have grown smaller. She sat and stared at the stacked files. The bulb, disturbed by KwayFay’s return, swung slightly. Shadows lengthened, retracted, lengthened.

  She watched them. What was the point of reading any one of the folios? None. She would have no idea of the figures, the names of companies. They were all before her time. Didn’t they cease some twenty years ago? Faded inked-in dates said so.

  Not only that, how could she interpret the figures? They had different accountancy systems back then. Even HC would be hard put to find any sense in the columns and double-accountancy sy
stems she’d only heard of. Times had changed.

  The bulb swung. Shadows danced. She dozed.

  “Sleeping, lazy girl? You think slumber find husband?”

  “No, Grandmother! I am searching in these files, but do not know why, or what for.”

  “Always sleeping! You know what would have happened to me if my grandmother had caught me sleeping?”

  “Yes, Grandmother. You would —”

  “Don’t interrupt Honoured Ancestor, rude girl!”

  The voice quietened into a monologue KwayFay had heard a hundred times.

  “I would have been sent out to feed the chickens of neighbours. Then ducks. And then animals in the Hakka peoples’ little valleys, so they would mend our village path. Made to labour in exchange for a few road stones! The shame!”

  “Yes, Grandmother.”

  “And you sit idle doing nothing!”

  “Yes, Grandmother.”

  “Where was I up to in your education?”

  “How to solve quarrels without screaming in the street, Grandmother.”

  “Did you learn it?”

  “Yes, Grandmother,” KwayFay said miserably, hoping for a chance to wake and get on with staring uselessly at the thousands of old files, to please HC so he might forget to sack her.

  “Tell how, lazy girl?”

  “A Ma Chieh Ti, a shrieking Curse-In-Street woman, tells family secrets and brings dishonour on family.”

  “Truly terrible!” sighed Ghost Grandmother. “I remember one woman, bad temper! We tried poison but she bribed a medium to warn her, so survived all we could do. She was third cousin of your great-aunt, father’s side, nine generations before yours. Or ten? I forget. She still wears yellow jacket, thinks herself so grand! A bitch. Terrible to be street-shouting woman.”

  “I was coming to the breaking of combs, Grandmother.”

  “Get on, get on.”

  “Street-shouting woman breaks a comb in front of the other woman, to show friendship ends.”

  “She – the Ah Pau I was talking of – broke three combs against three different women in five days,” said Grandmother, with admiration despite the shame. Prowess indeed. “She shrieked at them all for a week. Go on, the ritual?”