Kowloon Tong

by Paul Theroux

  "In a very real sense," the priest intoned, "Imperial Stitching is the best of British. It is Hong Kong."

  All this while, in the church, surrounded by the Chinese mourners, Bunt was imagining the Filipino girl from last night, who called herself Baby, getting down on all fours, naked, presenting her bottom and looking back at him and saying, "Let we make puppies!"

  And he laughed, remembering that she had pronounced it fuppies.

  "Bunt?"

  He recovered and said, "Poor Mr. Chuck."

  The funeral procession stopped traffic, but at Pok Fu Lam a strange thing happened. Like an apparition rising from between two tenements, twenty hooded figures met the funeral cortege. They were Chinese, but like monks in white cowls—druidical and threatening, pagans ambushing Mr. Chuck's Christian burial. Some carried banners with Chinese characters in gold, some banged gongs, some rang bells. One of the banners displayed a picture of a much younger Mr. Chuck in a black suit and starched collar and slicked-down hair. Children, also in the stiff white robes, carried stacks of fake paper money, like Monopoly money, and small combustible replicas of houses and cars, and wreaths shaped like horseshoes and archery targets.

  "God help us," Betty said.

  Monty spoke to the driver: "Hoot at them! Move along!"

  These were the Chinese relatives. They mourned noisily and attached themselves to the big black cars from the mortician's, howling near the hearse and now ringing bells. At the cemetery they burned the tokens and the paper money. They shot off massive red clusters of firecrackers until Pok Fu Lam, the hillside like an amphitheater, was filled with smoke and the smell of gunpowder and the litter from the shredded tissue of cracker wrappers.

  And then Mr. Chuck's coffin, a Christian cross riveted to the lid, was lowered into the grave, the coffin draped with garlands of flowers and the Chinese paraphernalia fashioned from red and white paper like a mass of broken kites.

  After a week of suspense the will was read in the conference room of Monty's office, Brittain, Kwok, Lum & Levine, in Hutchison House. Betty and Bunt sat at the oval table, the Chinese relatives crowding around, some sitting, some standing, nearly all of them muttering.

  Monty read the will in English and his partner Y. K. Kwok translated it into Cantonese. The terms were clear enough. The relatives were to divide Mr. Chuck's personal possessions—books, home furnishings, his collection of exquisite perfume bottles, his Jaguar Vanden Plas. Mr. Chuck's cash and "instruments" (that was the word) went to various Hong Kong charities. Already the relatives were loudly protesting, but there was more. Mr. Chuck's share in Imperial Stitching went to Bunt, "as a tribute to my late partner." Except for Betty's quarter-share, Bunt was sole owner of Imperial Stitching (Hong Kong) Ltd.

  On the sidewalk outside Hutchison House, Betty smiled at Mr. Chuck's Chinese relatives, most of them silent now, and said, "Look at them, they're choked."

  2

  SEEING BUNT was never simple for his mother. He was two people. Just a year before Bunt was born, Betty and George had lost their newborn son to high fever, chills. The infant Neville they nicknamed Bunt, short for Baby Bunting. She had sung to him,

  Bye, baby bunting,

  Daddy's gone a-hunting,

  Gone to get a rabbit skin,

  To wrap the baby bunting in.

  Little Bunt had weakened and died. Betty wept. She said, "You know you're in a foreign country when they call a runny tummy cholera." She had come home to an empty crib and the accumulated baby clothes in the "nursery," as they had begun to call the box room. This was in Bowen Road, where it is crossed by Borrett, their first flat. The nursery held all the visible signs of her preparation and high hopes, and she knew she was pitiable in her husband's eyes. She felt desperate to have a child—and not just another child but Baby Bunting, she wanted him back. They succeeded within the year, and so for forty-three years she often thought of Bunt as two boys, or else as a second child, another Bunt. She knew she would never let him go.

  Bunt had a clear memory of the day he was told about the brother who had died.

  It was at Happy Valley, a day at the races. He had gone with his mother, the amah's day off—where was Dad? He remembered the day especially because he was happier than he had ever known. He liked the tram ride: sitting on the top deck, he had seen the grandstand at the racecourse, filled with people. His mother gripped his hand and let him hold the coins for the turnstile at the front of the tram. Though he could not formulate his happiness in words, it was an intense feeling—of his mother's attention and effort, her closeness, the warmth of her body; it was love. Later, he watched her call out a horse's name, watched her cheer loudly: she had won. She collected her winnings.

  Over tea in the members' enclosure she said, "Bunt, you have to be two people," and she told him why.

  It was so confusing that the boy had his same name and nickname. As a result, if his mother thought of him as two people, he thought of himself as half a person.

  His father, George—"Geo would have got an M.B.E. at least, if he hadn't of died," Betty said—had never mentioned that first child, never spoke of the loss. It was not because he was indifferent or cold, as many people in Hong Kong believed George Mullard to be, but because he was passionate. Beneath his placid and usually unflappable exterior and his cry of "Mustn't grumble!" was an extremely sensitive and sentimental man. His own mother and father had been. He believed that the English took trouble to mask such emotions so as not to be a burden. Americans cried—American men blubbed all the time. George kept himself in check. He made a point of not disclosing his feelings and revealed his emotional side in only the pettiest matters: the price of postage stamps, a belittling remark about the royal family, or what he took to be wastefulness. "There's not a thing wrong with that banana. The dark spots only mean it's ripe." He opened parcels carefully and smoothed and folded the brown paper; he saved glass beer bottles and returned jingling crates of them to the brewery; he saved string, he was proud of the ball he had made.

  String-saving had led him to Mr. Chuck, for Mr. Chuck also saved string. One day in Victoria Park, rolling a length of string around his hand—the lost tether of someone's kite—George had come face to face with Mr. Chuck, who was rolling the same piece of string from the opposite end. "Snap!" George cried out. Mr. Chuck gave his name as Henry. The two men, one English, the other Chinese, laughed at their predicament and their frugality, and in that moment, seeing themselves as kindred souls, they became friends.

  By then, Wing Commander G.F.S. Mullard had been demobbed and was simply "Geo," a newly married accounts clerk in the shipping department at Jardine's. Mr. Chuck had arrived not long before from China—he described himself frankly as a refugee and was grateful to the colony for allowing him entrance. He was looking for premises to start a textile factory. It was a fantasy of George's to run his own business too, and indulging this fantasy he had made a note of various vacant buildings in Kowloon. George was able to provide many suggestions, and he was fascinated when Mr. Chuck acted on them in such an unusual way. Mr. Chuck hired a Chinese geomancer to examine each site. George had expected a scowling man in bright robes with red eyes and a sorcerer's cap. The geomancer was a little smiling man with spiky hair and a rumpled suit and might have been a tram conductor. His name was Mo. In a well-made wooden box he carried a feng shui compass, and this he used to evaluate the sites.

  With enthusiasm and obvious skill, sketching on the back of an envelope, Mr. Mo explained the spiritual energy of Hong Kong, the way it was channeled and harmonized. It was a lesson in divination, and when he had finished Hong Kong seemed to George a place of marvels. The mountains above Kowloon were nine dragons. Hong Kong itself, detached from the mainland and beautifully shaped, was the dragons' ball.

  "You see long zhu? The ball?" Mr. Mo was making his map.

  They sat in a coffee shop, George and Mr. Chuck and Mr. Mo, in Mong Kok, where Mr. Mo lived.

  "We are Sons of the Dragon," Mr. Mo said, scribbling. "So
ns of the Yellow Emperor."

  "The meaning is that we are Chinese," Mr. Chuck said. "That is all."

  Of all the sites, the one in Kowloon Tong was shown by the geomancer's compass to be right in every way. The feng shui— "wind-water"—was so harmonious that Mr. Mo exclaimed that this spot on Waterloo Road fitted the classical epithet for the perfect Chinese address, "the Belly of the Dragon." It was at the edge of the old tong, the pond where in a fabulous age the Nine Dragons had crouched to drink. The small splintery house standing there, with its dead tree and the buried bones—all dark omens—would of course have to be removed. But if the new building combined the Five Elements, and if it had no triangles in it, and it was built long and narrow, its narrow side facing north-south on the natural channel of Waterloo Road, that was as effective a conveyor of fluid vitality as a river; and if the red doors had prominent arches over them to allow the passage of that same ch'i, the flow of energy through Kowloon, then the structure on this auspicious site would bring good luck and great prosperity. In the raising of the structure, the Five Elements were incorporated into the factory building: Earth was its brick, Fire its electricity and red doors, Wood its paneling and beams, Water its mirrors and the tang beneath it, Metal its sewing machines.

  Imperial Stitching started a year later. Mr. Chuck put up most of the money. Using all his savings as his investment, and the promise of his work, George became Mr. Chuck's partner. It helped that George was British, too, since Imperial Stitching specialized in uniforms—school uniforms, chauffeurs' jackets, concierges' frock coats, matrons' whites, nurses' smocks—the sort of items the colonial government ordered in large numbers when George's bid on a government tender got a favorable response. The factory employed two hundred workers, mostly women, and also made shirts, slacks, simple dresses, and underwear. Mr. Chuck bought some machinery in Japan that did elaborate embroidery—names, designs, monograms, name tapes, labels, insignia for club ties and flags, badges of all sorts—and the company became Imperial Stitching and Labels (Hong Kong) Ltd. It was well known in the colony for fashioning the complex badges for the breast pockets of English club blazers.

  Mr. Chuck had fled China in 1948, a year of military defeats. He never spoke of China, he would not listen to anything about it. George Mullard was grateful for being spared descriptions of disappointment and terror and loss. He hated hearing of events that could not be reversed. The factory was new, the friendship was new, there was no shortage of orders. Mr. Chuck and Mr. Mullard were alike in their unwillingness to look back and, new to Hong Kong, they had a sense of freedom as well as the restless impatience of so many others there in the colony of loose rules and no taxes.

  When, a year after Imperial started, Betty lost the baby, Mr. Chuck said nothing specific, though his sympathy was apparent in everything he did. George silently thanked him for that; he would have found a show of sorrow, or any expression of it, unbearable. He surmised that, like himself, the Chinese man was also too emotional to mention anything so sad as the death of a child. Perhaps Mr. Chuck had known such a bereavement?

  Soon Betty was pregnant again. But that was not enough; she had been pregnant before. The child had to live. Bunt was born—Neville George Mullard—he was healthy, as boisterous as two children. Mr. Chuck sent presents and, later, in various ways indulged the boy. They called him Uncle. They knew nothing of his personal life. Mr. Chuck was apparently unmarried, apparently childless.

  The partnership flourished because of the distance, the politeness, the respectful silences. The two men were inquisitive, but they were discreet and courteous, and so they remained friends. Though there was a world of difference between them—the Chinese man, the English man—and they knew it, they also believed they had a great deal in common, and not just the factory but many principles, much sympathy and—something they felt deeply but a word they never used—heart.

  Looking on in knee socks, wearing a school uniform from his father's factory and carrying a satchel of books, was Bunt. Other children were sent back to England for their education. They talked of going on home leave, of school allowances, of London. But George's business was local. There were no perks, no annual leaves, no passages, no pensions. That was Hong Kong. He was like Mr. Chuck, like so many of the Chinese—he was on his own.

  Bunt was taken by his mother on the bus and the tram from home to school, Queen's, in Causeway Bay. And the lonely woman met him after school; she waited by the great iron gate in Tung Lo Wan Road, near the iced-lolly seller who sat by his barrow. She took him home and watched him have his tea, prepared by his amah, Jia-Jia, served by Jia-Jia's son, Wang.

  It was an embarrassment to Bunt, years later, to hear his mother relate his first words, which were Hokkien. "Nee-nee," he had said, pointing, then clutching with chubby fingers. The word meant "breasts." Jia-Jia taught him many other words. She claimed the child was fluent in Hokkien.

  "Takes after me," Betty said, and roared, and coughed. She was smoking then.

  Bunt's fears and prejudices were all derived from Wang. Wang hated root vegetables, and black hats, and milk in his tea; he left his shoes outside and wore plastic sandals in the house; he regarded ice in his drinks as unhealthy; he had a hatred of bodily hair and pig fat; certain insects made him ill, though he had no fear of rats. Bunt shared all these feelings and more. He choked on corn silk, believing it was human hair. Melted cheese he mistook for white fat cut from pig meat and he was sick. He had Wang's horror of maggots, and any odd-looking rice grain provoked his fear and he was violently ill. He was not always such a sad and fearful boy, but often when he had been young he looked like a little old man.

  When he was very young his father had given him a toy telephone and taught him to dial the emergency number for the police.

  "Now say, 'I want to speak to a gweilo policeman.'"

  "I want to speak to a gweiwo powiceman."

  Meeting him after school one day, Betty did not take Bunt home but to the hospital, where his father lay propped on pillows. His father's face was yellow. He gasped, attempting to speak. His fingers were bony and cold when he took Bunt's hand. That night his father died. The funeral service was gloomy and ponderous and confusing—so many strangers, when all Bunt wanted was to be alone. Mr. Chuck was there, white-faced, looking stunned.

  That same week, a race week, Betty took the boy to Happy Valley. She held betting slips, she watched the horses, but she said nothing. Was she losing?

  Over tea Betty said, "I do wish you would try it with milk, just once," and then, "You're not a little boy anymore."

  A race was being run. Through the seat of his chair Bunt could feel the horses' hooves striking the turf. A plummy English voice, talking very fast, was describing the race: "And coming up on the outside..."

  "Now you have to take Daddy's place," his mother said.

  "...and in the home stretch..."

  "You have to be the daddy now."

  Mr. Chuck, loyal in his actions even though he had never said much, resolutely dealt with the death. "Uncle" was his honorific, but his manner was also avuncular—benign, uncritical, concerned, helpful, practical, loving. He was attentive to Betty in an almost brotherly way, and towards Bunt was like the most tactful stepfather. There was nothing of his Hong Kong manner in his relations with Betty and Bunt. The man was patient, but Betty trusted him with her son as she trusted Wang and Jia-Jia. She saw no inconsistency. She still did not like Chinese people: she laughed at them, said they made her weary, said "We're working for them!" And she never stopped calling them "Chinky-Chonks."

  She could see that Mr. Chuck was bringing the boy along. He called him Neville and served as Bunt's protector. Bunt needed protection. The riots of 1967 were nightmarish, violent, unexpected. Imperial Stitching suffered, orders could not be met, and the workers were threatened. Some were suspected of having sympathy for the demonstrators, but Mr. Chuck, who understood the frenzy, defended them, saying they had been intimidated. The fright passed, though windows had been broke
n in the building, and slogans painted on the walls at ground level. The disruption had been general—the factory was not being singled out. Yet the name Imperial Stitching seemed to excite the anger of some demonstrators, turning them into rioters. The sign above the entrance was pulled down twice, and the flag was torn from its pole and set alight in Waterloo Road.

  On earning his School Certificate in 1969, Bunt began to be trained at the factory by Mr. Chuck. Bunt knew that he was carrying on his father's work, and he did not object. He was used to burdens—there was, after all, his dead brother, whose life he seemed to be living too. Bunt was just sixteen. He was a worried child and then a worried adult, and except for his school friend Corkill he hardly remembered his strange accelerated boyhood.

  Hong Kong was rising—more buildings, more roads, more settlement. Every year Mr. Mo, the geomancer, showed up with his wooden box and took readings with his compass. "Very good," he said, pronouncing the feng shut still in excellent balance. Sometimes Mr. Mo made suggestions for improvements—directions for moving desks and machines and stools. He said, "If you want change in your life, move twenty-seven things in your house." When the viaduct was built, cutting Kowloon in half, Mr. Mo said the factory was saved by its alignment with an overpass. "A lot of old rope," Betty said, but secretly she was pleased, treating Mr. Mo's readings as compliments. Bunt said nothing, because in his heart Bunt believed.

  In time, Mr. Chuck came to work less and less, and depended on Bunt to run the business. It was not difficult for Bunt: the workers were so responsible, so hardworking and thorough, that they needed little supervision. Bunt continued to keep office hours, and he developed yet another life.

  Imperial Stitching was near the train station in Kowloon Tong—on the main line to Lo Wu, to Shum Chun, to China. He had never boarded that train, but its proximity meant there were many bars and blue hotels in the area. Blue hotels were short-time places, one step up from knocking shops. There were massage parlors, there were topless clubs, more recently there were karaoke bars. There were upstairs apartments partitioned into cubicles—you could hear rusty bedsprings oinking in the next stall—called chicken houses, gai dao. Bunt knew the expression, and though he could not read a word of Chinese, he easily learned to recognize the black strokes of the four characters hastily painted on the red banner, sun-dou-bak-mui, which meant "new girl from north," fresh meat. In other places, self-employed tarts worked from home: yet lau, yet feng —one room, one phoenix. It was legal, because no pimp was involved, just a working girl, a phoenix.