Kowloon Tong

by Paul Theroux

"I was going to give him a going-away present," Bunt said.

  "A knuckle sandwich," Betty said.

  Nuckoo samwidge: Bunt laughed at her Balham expression and her Balham voice. He gave her a hug. Wang's departure was unexpected, but it meant that they were now alone. By bolting, Wang had spared them feeling guilty and responsible for abandoning him. He had taken the initiative and abandoned them. They had dreaded telling him the news of their return to England. Would Wang scream? Would he cry, would he sulk? They did not know. The undemonstrative Chinese would occasionally throw fits worthy of Italians. Betty had said, "He might have gone spare." But now the problem was solved.

  They had the satisfaction of being free to despise him for leaving them, instead of feeling awkward about their leaving him. Bunt especially had feared the onset of sentimentality—not just tears but money too, a bonus, severance pay, resettlement allowance. But Wang had jogged off on his own long legs, his skinny face set in its habitual snake-eyed stare.

  "They're all alike," Betty said.

  Bunt was still gazing at the emptiness, seeing Ah Fu's empty room.

  "He's worried about the Chinese, his own people," Betty said. "It makes you think." Then she nodded, and her eyes hardened like Thatcher's as she added, "Good riddance. We'll manage."

  It began to rain, just a scratching on the roof at first, like a mass of hurrying rodents, as Betty made a pot of tea. She sat with Bunt in the lounge drinking it, defying Wang, and the rain came quicker: sky, ceiling, and roof were one. Betty was reminded of the storm the morning she got the news of Mr. Chuck's death, remembered looking at the portrait of the Queen, remembered thinking that something important was ending. It had never entered her mind that it would be so dramatic as their own departure from Hong Kong. Events had moved apace. Mr. Chuck's death was only the beginning. There was so much more that had followed, which she could never have foreseen and had hardly influenced. That was how history happened: someone sneeezed and died and everything tumbled after, and you were part of it, and then you ended up watching and then you went home.

  "Nice cup of tea," Betty said. It was better than Wang's. Why had she put up with his muck all those years? He's a treasure, she had said to Monty and others who had praised him, but she had never believed it. And now he was just a sneak and a hypocrite, and she suspected that he might also be insane.

  Warming his hands on his teacup, Bunt had never felt closer to his mother. Betty switched on the Roberts: music from British Forces Broadcasting, Betty's favorite program, West End Showcase.

  Hearing "Some Day I'll Find You," she said, "I've always loved that song. George used to sing it."

  It was as if, saying that, she had forgiven him.

  "Good day at the races," Bunt said.

  "I'm up a bit," she said. "But the most important thing was, we were together. Have an oatie, Bunt."

  "Won't say no." He chose a crumbling oatie square from the plate and bit into it.

  How odd Wang's oaties tasted now that the man was gone. He had baked them yesterday. They had the faint sour taste of Wang himself. Bunt could not finish his oatie. He put it down and was mildly disgusted by the sight of his teeth marks in it.

  His mother had changed—so much had changed. She was no longer the bitter, suspicious woman of the past. At first the combination of Mr. Chuck's legacy and Mr. Hung's proposition had confused her, and she had acted peculiar. But she was calmer now, mellower, much happier, her old motherly self, even ladylike, indulging herself in picnics and gambling. Bunt had been so thankful that she had listened sympathetically to his fears about Mei-ping. He trusted his mother now, and the simple Englishwoman on this Chinese island was now to him as comfortable as an old sofa.

  He said, "I'm going to call Mei-ping. Just make sure she's all right."

  "Oh, yes. But I don't want you going out. It's a foul night."

  She was old-fashioned in the way she was always guided by the weather in the things she did. Fog and rain kept her indoors. "My chest," she said. Bunt hardly noticed the weather. She always commented when he returned home wet.

  "What shall I tell her?"

  "Anything you like."

  "About our leaving, I mean."

  "It's fixed for Monday."

  "You don't mind if she stops here tomorrow night?"

  Betty thought a moment, seeming to make calculations with her teeth, moving them from side to side like a primitive device for adding sums.

  "She can have Wang's room."

  His mother was old-fashioned in that respect too. Bunt was forty-three years old. Mei-ping was the woman he planned to bring back to the U.K. to marry—what else? Now he had to pretend they were not lovers. But that was a detail. All that mattered now was Mei-ping's safety. When they got to London, what had seemed so urgent in Hong Kong would be forgotten. The question of Wendell being his half-brother was one that would be asked only as long as he was in Hong Kong. It could not be asked over the great distance to Britain. And as for Mr. Chuck's legacy—the factory, Ah Fu, the missing Frank Woo, Mr. Hung, the rest of it—all the Chinese problems would be China's problems.

  Choosing carefully, because it was a refinement of his old schoolboy fantasy, and it included Mei-ping, Bunt told her how he saw them living in a country house set in green meadows in the south of England.

  "Surrey's lovely this time of year." They had gone there on the train from Balham, she said. "Change at East Croydon. We always got off at a station called Westhumble and walked up Box Hill. The chalk slides. The blackberry canes. All that grass. You could see for miles. The best bit was the gravestone."

  When she laughed on the word "gravestone," Bunt put his face in front of hers and said, "Mum?"

  "It was at the top of the hill, in that forest. The grave of a local chap. He was mental, I fancy. His dying wish was to be buried upside down, so that his head was facing China. Mine's the opposite!"

  "Mum!" Bunt said, and then they were both laughing.

  They would watch the Hong Kong Hand-over in that house in Leatherhead or Dorking. "Good riddance," she would say. "Chinese take-away."

  He called his office. Mei-ping did not answer. The answering machine clicked on. He hated his voice uttering the contradiction, This is the executive office of Imperial Stitching. There's no one here at the moment, but your call is very important to us...

  After the beep he said, "It's me—it's me—pick up the phone, May. I hope you can hear me. Please pick—"

  "Yes," Mei-ping said in a small voice.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I am afraid. Mr. Hung want to find me."

  "He can't find you."

  "Someone might tell him."

  "No one knows, only me," he said. "Listen, May, I couldn't get over there today. I had to stay with my mother. I'll come tomorrow."

  "Yes," Mei-ping said.

  "We're leaving Monday for London. Please don't worry."

  This provoked a silence, which alarmed Bunt.

  "Are you there?"

  "Yes."

  "May, I told my mother everything. She knows about us. She's right here."

  Phoning another woman, one he loved, in his mother's presence gave him a confidence he had never felt before. He was at last a man.

  "She's chuffed," he said, and looked across the room at his mother. In the poor light of the room he could not see his mother's face, but he knew she had to be smiling. "She's over the moon. And May?"

  "Yes."

  "No point in calling the police now."

  There was another silence, more worrying than the first one. Bunt spoke her name again.

  "I am here," she said. "I am waiting for you."

  They were the most passionate words he had ever heard, and he thought: My life has just begun. He wanted then to say I love you, but something made him hesitate. Then his mother coughed her full fruity cough—her chest, wet weather—and the spell was broken.

  The next morning, Sunday, Betty was standing at the window saying, "It's trying to rain—it c
an't make up its mind," smiling at the fickle clouds hovering over China, the silly things. Bunt was indifferent, the weather did not matter anymore, they were leaving it behind, another unreliable feature of Hong Kong, like Wang, who had seemed so loyal just before he'd done his bunk.

  "I'll bring Mei-ping back here before dinner," Bunt said.

  He had given up on Hong Kong, abandoned the factory, he was in an England mood. He had his assurances, such as they were, from Monty. He did not want to think about the employees any longer.

  "Change of plans," Betty said, turning away from the window. She faced Bunt as she had faced the clouds, with the same smiling expression, clicking her dentures.

  "What do you mean?" he asked, and he would have been fearful had his mother not kept her smile. But her false teeth made her smile seem less sincere, even false.

  "Hung's giving us lunch," Betty said. She stooped and busied herself, sorting the Sunday South China Morning Post and its several sections. "He rang first thing, while you were having your lie-in."

  Bunt was gabbling, trying to speak.

  "I knew you wouldn't want to be woken up," his mother said.

  As always a sudden change of plans left Bunt in anguish, not merely confused but in pain. He felt naked and unprepared and did not know why. Canceled orders left him disturbed and forgetful, slightly blinded, and so he often lost his balance and stumbled a bit when he got bad news. Miss Liu at the factory might say, "No, sorry, it's over here," and shifting himself abrupdy Bunt would sometimes hit his head. He needed to be prepared, he liked order, he loved the fantasies brought on by anticipation. An unexpected meal, even a great one, never tasted as good as one he had savored in advance. He thought his mother was just like him in this—and she had been, before. There was something slovenly about changing plans. You hesitated and looked a complete plonker.

  "Tell her you'll pick her up afterward," Betty said. She spoke smoothly and it calmed him a little.

  Again he needed to announce himself on the answering machine before Mei-ping picked up the phone.

  "You sound tired," Bunt said.

  "I did not sleep. I was afraid."

  With his mother listening—at any rate, she was in the same room with him—he could not say what he was thinking: that he loved her, that he wanted to hold her, that their lives were beginning.

  "I am coming to pick you up tonight. Everything is going to be fine."

  "I am waiting."

  15

  THE GOLDEN DRAGON again, Betty mumbling "Didn't we tell him we hate this food?" while large Chinese families yakked at big round tables, another glimpse of China. What was it about Hong Kong that allowed all these old habits to flourish, as though it were a hothouse of heirlooms. Here they went on practicing their ancient rituals such as ancestor worship, feasting with their children and grandchildren and squalling babies, giving each other cheesy presents and envelopes of money in incoherent restaurants such as this.

  Boisterous friendship and big families and gluttonous bingeing had continued in Hong Kong long after they had been banned in China as social evils. During the Cultural Revolution the Communists had disemboweled people for smiling or wearing pretty dresses or listening to the wrong radio station. Mr. Chuck had told him about it. The refugees, the aliens, the eye-eyes, all of them agreed that China was a nightmare, and now China was about to swallow them up. Maybe it was just what die Hong Kong Chinese deserved for having sneered at the British, who had not meant them any harm. They don't work for me, George Mullard had been fond of saying. I work for them.

  There were no big families in China now. Children were illegal: you got shot or fined for having one nipper over the quota. But here the families were big and talkative—British Hong Kong allowed it. The busy colony kept them all busy, and they were never livelier than among plates of sticky gleaming food, as they sparred and reached with their chopsticks.

  Passing the noisy tables of Chinese holding blue patterned bowls to their mouths, Bunt saw behind them a demon goddess with a crimson face in a shrine, lit by Christmas bulbs, with the offering on a plate in front of it, the usual orange: pure paganism. Noticing such things, and finding they grated on him, he realized it was time to leave.

  Ahead at a corner table, as if in a remote part of China, Hung sat with Monty Brittain. Monty waved them over—he was active, Hung did not move. And just as Betty and Bunt took their seats, some food was brought and presented by a waiter pushing a trolley.

  "Nothing personal," Betty said, "but we don't touch Chinese food. Never did. All the grease, all the glue. And it's always so wet. Makes me want to spew."

  "You see, it doesn't agree with us," Bunt said.

  Anyway, not eating would make this whole business move more quickly.

  Monty said, "Mr. Hung would like to tell you something."

  Since when had Monty been in charge? London was still in his manner of speaking, though the man had an Austrian passport now and probably something to answer for. Bunt still felt insulted by the way Monty had persisted in asking him to renounce his citizenship and get a fuzzy-wuzzy passport.

  Hung was looking froggy and solemn now that the deal was on the verge of closing. He simply sat there.

  "Please eat something," he said, as though he had not heard Betty describe her revulsion for Chinese food.

  "They don't fancy it," Monty explained.

  At Hung's elbow, Monty seemed more Hung's solicitor than their own. Bunt remembered how Monty had first introduced Hung at the Cricket Club, and later: I proposed him. You've got to move with the times. Monty it was who had warned him of Hung's gangster connection, the Chinese army hoodlums, the horrifying story of the dismembered solicitor. Monty knew so much—he was the sort of man who would stay on, who had no allegiances underneath his banter, or if he had, they were certainly not British.

  "I am happy with this business," Hung said.

  Betty and Bunt were sitting, not eating. Even their tea isn't tea, Betty used to say.

  "But it is not good business if only I am happy. You must be happy also."

  "We're happy," Betty said, and for the first time in the deal, clicking her teeth, did not look happy at all.

  Perhaps sensing Betty's impatience, Hung winced, and then he looked at her with flinty eyes. Fixing his lips in a sneer, he said, "I have been kind and generous."

  Bunt said, "Hang about. It was all a fluke. If Mr. Chuck hadn't of died, this never would have happened."

  Hung liked this. His laughter was a hairy rasping in his nostrils. He said, "Please take a drink."

  "Orange squash," Betty said. "No ice."

  Hung waited until the orange squash was served to Betty, the glass presented on a white saucer. Betty glanced at it but did not drink.

  "Mr. Chuck took his last meal here," Hung said, speaking with deliberate precision, as though each word mattered.

  Bunt looked at Monty, to whom this information did not seem to be news. In any case, Monty had not stopped eating.

  "He was sitting where you are now," Hung said, nodding at Betty. "He seemed to enjoy his food."

  She said, "Rubbish. He was nowhere near here. He died in his flat in Magazine Gap Road."

  "He was found dead in his flat," Hung said.

  "This is true," Monty said, chewing, not looking up.

  Bunt was cross with Monty for not challenging Hung. He faced Hung and said sharply, "Here, did you have something to do with Mr. Chuck?"

  "I am merely saying we served him his last meal," Hung said.

  "Does 'we' mean you are involved in this restaurant?"

  Hung took his time to reply. He had begun to sample bits of the meal, pinching the food with his chopsticks.

  "This restaurant belongs to the Chinese army. Many enterprises belong to the army. We own much of Shenzhen. Soon your factory site will be in our hands."

  At the mention of the Chinese army, Betty seemed to come awake. She said, "What's this all about then?"

  Monty said, "You are dealing with a m
an of considerable influence. Which is why I had no hesitation proposing him for the Cricket Club."

  "I am talking about Mr. Chuck," Betty said. "He was my late husband's partner for years. Never put a foot wrong."

  "He was shortsighted," Hung said, and raised his chopsticks to signal to Betty that he had not finished speaking. "Your Mr. Chuck would never have sold his share in Imperial Stitching to a China company."

  Bunt was listening with his hands clasped on his lap, leaning forward, wondering vaguely why they were still talking about Mr. Chuck. Mostly he had Mei-ping on his mind.

  "I told you," he said. "It was just a fluke."

  "But of course you were in his will," Hung said.

  "So we found out," Bunt said, and stared, waiting for a reaction from Mr. Hung. Seeing there was none, he went on, "Did you know we were named in Mr. Chuck's will? Because if you did—"

  "This is getting us nowhere," Monty said. He was chewing very rapidly, the way hungry animals eat when they know there are other, hungrier animals near them.

  Betty said, "I'm confused, Bunt. What are you saying?"

  "Maybe Mr. Chuck's death wasn't an accident." His eyes were dancing in anger at Mr. Hung, who seemed amused.

  "Old history," Mr. Hung said.

  "Please," Monty was saying, using his chopsticks like a baton. "Mr. Hung has something to tell you."

  "You mean that's not it?" Bunt said.

  Hung turned to Monty and said, "Perhaps they will understand better if you explain."

  "You're leaving today," Monty said to Bunt. "The money's being wired."

  Change of plans, his mother had said that morning, and it had thrown him, confused him and left him breathless. And that was only a meal that she meant, a dinner moved forward to lunch. This was something else, the departure from Hong Kong, and it was the same message, a change of plans. It gave Bunt chest pains and a sensation of vertigo. He wondered a moment whether he might be dying, and if so, it was murder.

  He said, "No, no."

  "But it's Sunday," Betty said, being practical.

  "It's Saturday in Grand Cayman," Monty said. "That's where Full Moon is registered. They're still transacting business. We've already had news of the transfer."