Kowloon Tong

by Paul Theroux

  "I went to Shum Chun," Mr. Cheung said. "Then to Dongguan. You know Dongguan?"

  "I don't have the foggiest," Bunt said.

  "Beyond Shum Chun. They make toys. Combs. Everything. Very busy place."

  "How did you manage all that?"

  "Train. From here. Kowloon Tong," Mr. Cheung said. "It is on the main line, eh?"

  "If you say so. Nice trip?"

  "Bought a flat."

  "Also today?"

  Mr. Cheung was growing uncomfortable with the questions, but he nodded. Yes, he had bought the flat today.

  "You could have bought one in Hong Kong."

  "Here a flat is millions. In Dongguan a big flat is two hundred thousand."

  Bunt had not lost the habit, acquired from his parents, of translating large sums of Hong Kong dollars into pounds sterling. This was well under twenty thousand. For the price of a mediocre Japanese car, Mr. Cheung had bought a large place to live in across the border.

  "Fancy that," Bunt said, but this time with interest.

  As they went over the orders, Bunt continued to stare at the man who had woken up and taken the train to China and bought a flat and returned to Hong Kong just a few minutes late for work. It seemed extraordinary and went on baffling Bunt even after Cheung returned to the factory floors. Bunt went back to the newspaper, to reread the story of the jealous husband. You must leave, but your face belongs to me ... I will take your face away. Another reason not to get married.

  "Line one," Miss Liu called from her cubicle.

  "Morning, squire"—Monty, his usual telephone greeting—"I need your signature."

  "Again?"

  "You'd better get used to it, squire," Monty said. "There's no end to these papers. It's transfers, see. Be glad it's gone so smoothly."

  "Those Chinese relatives had me rigid."

  "They're back in their box, squire. Not to worry."

  "Where's their box?"

  "Chuck's home village, Zhongshan, south of Canton. Sun Yat-sen came from there. Delightful place."

  "If it's so pleasant, why did we have to beat Chuck's relatives off with a shitty stick?"

  "The lychees you eat? Zhongshan is famous for them. That's where they're grown. And longans. All sorts of fruit."

  Bunt just laughed. His hatred for Chinese food extended to the plants, the fruit, the trees that were native to the country, and the country itself, the whole of it. He had no interest. He felt himself grow hostile when he sensed—as he did now, with Monty on the line—that he was being provoked.

  "If any of those relatives had inherited a share of Imperial Stitching, you wouldn't be laughing," Monty said. "It would be shambolic."

  "Quite right," Bunt said, and after they agreed to meet at the Cricket Club that evening after work, he hung up.

  Another of the management strategies Mr. Chuck had taught him was to walk the length of every floor each day at different times and make a show of scrutinizing the workers. The idea was to remind them you were in charge, to make them self-conscious, to keep them alert. You had to be unpredictable and silent, and you had to keep them insecure, forever guessing. It did not matter whether Bunt paid attention as long as, every day, he showed up in every department. "They must see you," Mr. Chuck had said. It also helped to examine a label or a garment and contrive an incomprehensible sound, a snort, a provisional snicking in the nose, and move on without making eye contact.

  Bunt was uttering noises at a table in the stitching room when Mei-ping approached him and said shyly, "I'm sorry."

  It took a moment for him to understand that she was referring to Mr. Chuck. He had not seen her since the funeral. He hesitated, he smiled, he thought how pretty Mei-ping was.

  His lunch pail in his hand, Bunt walked down the road to the Pussy Cat. He ordered a glass of beer, then sat in a booth eating the cheese and chutney sandwiches—Wang had made them, Bunt knew from the careful way the crusts had been cut off. It was early enough at noon so that only a few girls were in the bar, and no other customers. The barman, Wendell, was watching television with his back turned to the bar, and the music in the room was so loud it drowned out the racing commentary. Wendell did not seem to mind. Though he sometimes spoke to the girls or the mama-san, he seldom returned Bunt's greeting. Usually Wendell watched horseraces, but today he was watching a Chinese woman being interviewed. Bunt recognized the shrill voice as that of Emily Lau, a member of the Legislative Council.

  —The British could give us citizenship, but they refuse. Because we are yellow! Yet they give it to Australians and Canadians!

  The mama-san brought him the bottle of beer and sat with him, holding her cellular phone while he drank and ate. Bunt was so well known in the club that nothing was expected of him—the usual drink for the girls, tips for the bartender, a present for the mama-san. They knew he was fleeing from his office, and they knew about the death of Mr. Chuck; at lunchtime he wanted to be left alone. After work it was another story; they surrounded him and competed for his attention.

  —Yes, there is a lease. But if the lease ends on a flat, you return the flat. You don't return the tenants.

  "Wendell, turn the TV down!" the mama-san shouted. And then she said in a commiserating way, "Too bad about Mr. Chuck."

  How strange it was that he had gotten over it, the factory was his, the grieving had ended. And yet, though the sad matter was apparently settled in the minds of others, he was continually reminded of the dead man.

  Bunt said, "I saw him in here once."

  The mama-san nodded. She was plump, Cantonese, with a pink freckly face and her glasses perched on her head. He felt familiar yet awkward with her; she was the woman who had suggested, with facial expressions alone, that she had slept with his father. Now Bunt did not want to know.

  Her cellular phone rang. She answered it, spoke briefly in a tone of giving an instruction, and then she switched it off.

  "Bad line," she said. "China."

  He remembered Cheung. He said, "I talked with a bloke this morning who just hared up to China and bought a flat."

  "They are cheap," the mama-san said. "It is so easy from here. Just an hour, this train to Shum Chun."

  "That's the place," Bunt said. "So your girls go there?"

  "Even work there," she said. "I send girls to Beijing even. Shanghai, Guangzhou also."

  "Isn't that dangerous?" Bunt said. Because he had never been to China, it seemed to him a place of darkness and ambush.

  "Yes, dangerous, because girl business is illegal in China. But the men are powerful. And the money is good."

  "They're not afraid," Bunt said. "They'll do anything for that."

  He liked speculating on the word "anything." He enjoyed this, eating his cheese and chutney sandwich and his pickle and his paste and his biscuits and his banana in a nice cool girlie bar with a San Miguel in his hand, the pretty girls on stools, their legs crossed, watching while he chitchatted with the mama-san about prostitution.

  "The Japanese are tough, even Chinese too sometimes."

  "Can't be all that tough." He smiled, he tried to look unconvinced, he was eager for her to give him an example.

  "They tie up the girls. They beat them. They treat them badly. For them it is fun, but for the girls"—the mama-san made a face—"horrible."

  "They're not afraid of gweilos, though." He was angling again.

  "Some of the girls watch porno videos and think all gweilos have big penises like they see. They become afraid that the gweilo will hurt them when he puts it inside."

  "Gweilos like me," Bunt said.

  He hated the mama-san for smiling at this. "They know you," she said. "They talk."

  "You send these girls to China?"

  "No. Girls from the mah fu. How you say mah fu —someone who takes care of horses, like a horse trainer?"

  "Groom," Bunt said.

  "Yes. They come to me because they owe money to the snakeheads. The girls want more money, to buy a house, start a business."

  The t
alk of money, of pimps, of snakeheads, of girls wanting to buy houses and businesses, it all killed his ardor and made him want to change the subject.

  "If I went to China, I think they'd kick me out," he said.

  The mama-san stood up and smiled. "I kick you in!" And she left him to finish his lunch.

  Back in his office he replayed the conversation and his ardor returned. He tried to imagine it: a girl from Hong Kong taking the Kowloon Tong train to China to sleep with a Chinese official. He saw the girl getting off the train, he saw the waiting car, the hotel. Then he shook his head, he could not go any further. His imagination failed him. This was a China he did not know.

  He felt a flicker of desire, something like thirst in the way his lips were dry, a lightness in his body, like hunger. His mind slowed, a torpor took over, until he could not think of anything but this simple need. When he was with a woman he seldom had the urge to possess her, he just talked and listened, all the while memorizing her so that afterward, away from her, with time to reflect, he was stimulated. Distance created desire, nearness made him shy. He was not thinking of the mama-san and the girls in the Pussy Cat now. He saw Mei-ping, and he wanted her. Her sorrow, the way she had tried to console him, the sadness making her face frail and pretty, the intimation of weakness as she had bowed slightly—she must have been crying, her eyes were swollen—made him desire her all the more.

  At the close of work, just before Mr. Woo sounded the bell, Bunt found an excuse to be at the exit of the stitching floor. He waited for the bell and then watched the girls gathering their umbrellas and their bags and preparing to leave. Mei-ping looked up at him. He nodded at her.

  She did not approach him. She passed him and said, "Do you want me?"

  Her English was poor. Did she know what she was saying? It aroused him just hearing that. Of course it was a factory question, everyone said it—Miss Liu said it, Mr. Cheung, Mr. Woo, everyone, and it was ambiguous—but from Mei-ping's lips it meant one thing.

  Mei-ping left with the others. He dismissed Mr. Woo. "Just take the flag down. I'll lock up." Bunt sat in his office with the door open so that he could watch the elevator, the way it was summoned and descended, the G lighting up and then all the numbers to 8, where he waited, with the blinds drawn, touching his thinning hair with his fingertips.

  Not a word. While he locked the door Mei-ping went to his office sofa and sat as she always did, hitched forward like someone seated on a bus drawing near her stop, preparing to get off. Bunt went to her and eased her backwards and kissed her. Then he plucked off her blouse—made downstairs, he recognized the label, the cloth, the cut. Soon Mei-ping was kneeling before him while he sat with his mouth open, his head throbbing, his eyes hot. He was panicky but he was caught, and he was afraid, because he was entirely under the spell of this simple young woman. What kept him from blind breathless terror was that she mistook his fear for something else—confidence, perhaps, because he was a man, because he owned the place. Soon he was squawking and snatching at her head.

  He made for the Cricket Club afterward, glad for a place to go, glad for an excuse. He was not ready for Albion Cottage, for his mother, for home, and so the meeting with Monty was welcome. The encounter with Mei-ping had relaxed him and cleared his mind and given him an appetite. The sex had given him a thirst for a beer and a craving for a bacon sandwich.

  Bunt did not play cricket, hardly kept track of the scores. He was a member of the Cricket Club for the bowling and the old buffers, the old-timers, his father's friends. He had few friends of his own. As for the bowling, though he was absent-minded and too easily distracted to be well coordinated, he could be aggressive and intent on the bowling lawn and was regarded as one of the better players in the club.

  Entering the lounge—a dreamy smile on his face, he felt lucky, Mei-ping had made it so easy for him—he saw Monty standing at the bar with a Chinese man. Monty imagined that the smile was for him, and was confused when, calling out "Over here, squire," Bunt suddenly became serious, saying hello. For Bunt, the memory was sometimes better than the moment, and Monty had interrupted his reverie.

  "Neville, I want you to meet one of our new members." Monty's hand was on Bunt's neck. "Mr. Hung, Neville Milliard."

  "Pleased to meet you."

  "The pleasure is mine," the Chinese man said, a bit too explosively.

  Bunt said nothing more. He resented the intrusion of this man, for the image of Mei-ping kneeling in his office was quickly fading from his mind.

  "I'm buying," Monty said. "What's yours, squire?"

  "Pint of brain damage."

  "Right you are." Monty turned to the bartender.

  Mr. Hung said, "You are the owner of the Kowloon Tong Building."

  This was Chinese subtlety. Hello and then this big brick hitting the conversation with a thud.

  "Imperial Stitching," Bunt said. "We used to make all sorts of men's shirts. We do some garments but mostly it's labels. Badges. Name tapes. Fancy stitching. Badges are in demand now. We're reconfiguring them for the Hand-over." Mr. Hung was leaning towards him. "How do you know I own the building?"

  "It is a matter of public record," Mr. Hung said.

  It irritated Bunt that Mr. Hung spoke English well. The fluent English speakers in Hong Kong were always the most slippery. They were the least trustworthy and never meant what they said. They were effusive, insincere, mocking, and their good English meant that they had been educated elsewhere, out of the colony, where they had become contemptuous and superior. The ones with American accents were the worst. Bunt liked the locals and their goofy speech—graduates of Hong Kong schools seldom spoke good English, and as a result it kept the class system intact.

  "I would like to discuss the purchase of your building," Mr. Hung said.

  Bunt laughed out loud at the silliness of it, the way he had just blurted it out. More Chinese finesse!

  Mr. Hung flinched at the loud laughter that had a tinge of anger in it—Bunt was still feeling cross at not being able to linger over his memory of Mei-ping. The Chinese man did not take his eyes off Bunt, as though trying to subdue him with his gaze.

  Then Monty was putting the drinks down and saying "Squire," and Bunt was smiling again.

  "It's not for sale," Bunt said. He could not resist saying it in a teasing tone. "I'll never sell it. Don't even think about it. You'll just make yourself miserable."

  4

  WHEN HE WAS late and his mother stood waiting in the doorway, she always seemed to swell, filling the doorframe, to obstruct and delay him, so that she could bulk against his approaching face and scold him. She did it tonight. She had the pathetic aggression of a wife or a mother—to Bunt there was no difference. And sometimes, reading tabloid stories about men who committed horrific crimes, he realized that most of those homicidal psychopaths had his precise sort of domestic arrangement: middle-aged, soft-spoken, regular in his habits, never married, no friends, sometimes seen leaving strip clubs, lived with his mother, to whom he was devoted. He hated those stories.

  "It's gone eight!" she said. "I haven't been able to do a thing. Wherever have you been, Bunt?"

  Nor did she move from the doorway, and she repeated it. Bunt could not gain entry.

  The question merely bored him. It was not unusual for mother and son to yell at each other. What made him uneasy was the reminder that their lives were synchronized, that they ate and bathed and went to bed and got up at the same time. He liked being punctual and did not mind seeming predictable, but this was confining and dull. You are forty-three and your mother is nearing seventy and she is telling you that she can't eat because you're not also at the table, and she is repeatedly demanding Where were you?

  "Doing the accounts," he said.

  He did not look her in the eye. Meeting her gaze would have undone him, yet how could he tell her the truth?

  "All this Chuck business put me behind. I've been flat-out all day."

  His lie immediately helped, as he suspected it would. His mot
her stepped aside, letting him pass, and she patted his cheek in a sympathetic way. As she lost her anger Bunt felt a jolt of energy, the physical thrill of having kept his secret from her. It was necessary. He knew he was weak, and so any secret made him stronger. Had his mother known how he spent his days, his life would have been unbearable. And his stratagem went deeper than merely concealing it from her. Keeping her in the dark was also a way of not having to face the secret himself.

  They ate in the lounge, Wang waiting on them.

  "I saw Wang jogging today."

  Betty's habit of speaking about Wang as if he were not in the room was her way of making him insecure. She could sense him stiffening now, his chin rising, the almost perceptible contraction of his bum cheeks.

  His usual jogging route was down the Peak footpath to Wellington, then up again. When people asked Bunt whether he exercised, he usually said, "No, my houseboy does it for me."

  Betty said, "He looked very impressive in his combinations."

  "Leave off, Mum," Bunt said. He wanted a bit of peace, his mind was in turmoil.

  Just after Mei-ping had left his office, he had felt pleasantly drowsy, with a sharpened appetite. Sex in the late afternoon made him anxious but left him in such a stupor of fatigue that he could do nothing about it. The act of sex was for him first a stunning relief, sudden as a sneeze, and an instant later it was the opposite, a sense of helpless suffocation. Once, at thé Rainbow Theatre in Tsim Sha Tsui, he had seen a Chinese acrobat balancing his partner on his head—her headstand on his skull—and on each of her upright ankles clusters of gyrating hoops. That had been a thrill for him, because it seemed so dangerous. But when, as he dreaded, the woman faltered and fell, dropping the hoops, Bunt felt it was the same thing with sex. Sex was a balancing act that always ended in failure, a fall, a sense of having slipped and been inattentive, of not knowing how to explain it. You refused to remember it, and when you tried again the failure was repeated.