by Nick Macfie
I shuffled awkwardly in my seat, but Baxter was relaxing a little now, putting his hands behind his head. I knew this phase. If Zeb hadn’t been there, he would have been reaching for the liquor, with that familiar glance around the desk outside to make sure no one was watching. It was a hugely comforting glance.
Baxter kept staring out towards Tsim Sha Tsui, the southern tip of the Chinese mainland, where skyscrapers were springing up fast now that the airport had moved out to far-flung Lantau. There was no longer any flight path to disrupt.
“The thing is, and I know you will keep this to yourself,” Zeb said. “But this gambling story you’re on is totally synching with my life.”
How Zeb knew I would keep it to myself was a mystery, because even I didn’t know I would keep it to myself. If it was anything salacious, there was precious little chance. But, truth be told, again I didn’t understand what he had just said. I didn’t say anything. What was Zeb up to in his free time? The only gambling allowed in Hong Kong is on the horses and the Mark Six lottery.
“To cut a long story short,” he said. “I know of two illegal casinos here in Hong Kong.”
“Great story,” I said.
“Not such a great story.”
“Not such a great story for Zeb,” Baxter added.
“I am afraid I have been a regular customer at one of these casinos,” Zeb said. “I am seriously in debt and am being pursued by four Triad guys.”
“Four?”
“They have tattoos of penises on their ankles.”
A kite was flying high above the harbour, on the look-out for some toxic fish in the brown water below. Tattoos of penises on their ankles. This was several murky fathoms out of my league.
“I see.”
“Do you?” Zeb said. “These guys are tough. For all I know they have tattoos of ankles on their penises.”
So far it was all penis jokes, albeit quite good ones. Even from Zeb.
“I hope you never have to find out,” I said. “Did you borrow money from them?”
“A bunch. Which is why now would be a good time to blow their cover. Before they… My family won’t lift a finger to help, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Zeb hesitated and put his hand to his mouth. The last thing I wanted then was for him to start crying. Unless, of course, it meant Baxter would have to reach into his bottom drawer to console him. To console us all.
“Have they made any threats?” I asked.
“Not in so many words. But that is the story I wanted to tell you. I was in the Carnivale a few days ago. There was just me and a coupla girls behind the bar painting their nails and talking among themselves. No one else. You know the layout. The dingy carpet, the drapes, the sad fucking flashing neon above the dance floor that twirls and twirls. The goddam awful music. It doesn’t get much more depressing.”
“That’s its charm.”
“Anyway, this old Chinese guy came in. Looked like a hobo…” Baxter bent down and pulled a half-full bottle of Castle Stalker out of the metal drawer along with three glasses. At last. He looked out at the desk to see if anyone was watching. “…He had a gunny sack over his shoulder,” Zeb went on. “He walked into the middle of the dance floor. Empty at the time.” Baxter poured out three generous glasses. “He took the sack from his shoulder, undid a knot at the top and turned it over.”
“What was inside?”
“I didn’t have time to count,” Zeb said. “But there must have been about twenty thin, black snakes, which took off very fast in every direction, as did the girls. As did I.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Right. Bloody, as you English say. And the old man just stood there, staring at me. He did this thing with his eyes - pointing at them and then at me.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Like some sort of West Point asshole. Why would I kid about this? This was one scary snake-city-in-the-grass hobo.”
“Short, spiky grey hair? Looks like he’s been electrocuted?”
“That’s him. How do you know?”
“He sounds familiar. The thing with the eyes sounds familiar. But it’s too much of a stretch. What happened next?”
“I ran up the stairs and I was dust. Never been back.”
Baxter turned and looked across the harbour again, dismissing the conversation with a wave of his hand. “Could be anyone, anything,” he said. “Right, Hadley?”
“I’ve heard of the snake trick before. It happened at the Crossroads, a club in Wanchai popular with the U.S. troops back in the day. It usually means the bar is behind on its protection payments. It’s a warning.”
“But what about the thing with the fingers?”
“That is a puzzle. Why would he choose you?”
“Exactly.”
“Had you seen the man before?”
“No.”
“Have you caused any problems in the Carnivale before?”
“Nada.”
“No funny business with the girls?”
“No, pal. I was just sitting at the bar alone.”
“Any funny business with the girls in other bars? Refusing to pay a bill, a bar-fine?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“Tell Hadley about the casinos, Zeb.”
Zeb lifted his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “Life can be so uncool.” He kept staring. “You guys know what I mean? Such bad karma?”
“Tell Hadley about the casinos, Zeb.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I don’t want you guys getting mixed up in my troubles. This is totally my bodhisattva. Have you any idea how I met my wife?”
This time it was Zeb’s turn to swing his chair round and face the harbour. I frowned at Baxter who caught my eye. I mouthed the question “wife?” and he grimaced, meaning more depressing news was on the way. I found myself looking at the creased, inside-out label on the back of Zeb’s cream, polyester, turtle-neck sweater. It said “Poppycock.”
“I don’t know, Zeb.”
There was a long pause. Zeb had crossed his legs and was wiggling his right foot up and down, catching the cord to the complicated louvre blinds that operated automatically throughout the day and night, opening and closing, adjusting the angle to the sun or the moon, swivelling along a vertical axis at the most unexpected times and for no reason at all. They were either solar or lunar-powered modules that ordered the blinds to open in the middle of the night and scared anyone working alone on the overnight shift shitless.
“My wife is a famous gra…” Zeb was about to sneeze. “Gra… gra… phologist.”
“Bless you. A famous…?”
“Graphologist. She can read hand-writing.”
A hypodermic full of a risky, experimental sedative. I could have ended it there and then. Zeb, it occurred to me, was enjoying the attention. It was all self-indulgent bollocks. Bad karma. He turned to face me.
“Don’t look so confused,” Zeb said. “She can read people’s personalities in their hand-writing. She learnt her trade from an awesome graphologist in California who was a roadie for Steely Dan. But I don’t want to dwell on that. Do you mind?”
“I…”
“I’m a sensitive man. The long and the short of it, pal, is that my wife has left me.”
“Zeb. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too, Zeb,” said Baxter. Everyone was sorry.
“Hence, one could say, my erratic behaviour. The gambling. Why do people get married? Surely the only explanation is to have kids. Why else is there any point? We don’t have any children. I am so grateful to Shrubs for looking after me. Like the family we are. I know I have a lot to learn in the trade. I mean no harm. You gotta believe me. I love you guys.”
“When did this happen?” I asked, a vision of a syringe with a fat, four-inch needle, suitable for elephants, in my mind.
“When did what happen?”
“When did your wife leave you?”
“Seven years ago.”
“I don’t understand.”
<
br /> “Only a fool would say that.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s… well, what’s not to understand? But it’s not just the gambling.”
“Ah.” Where was this conversation going? There had to be a clue at some point in one of the sentences. Zeb had to say something straightforward eventually. Surely.
“There’s a girl,” he said.
“Oh dear.”
“To cut a long story short. We’ve fallen in love.”
“Right.”
“Lucky in love. There’s only one sort of luck. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“Of course,” Baxter said. “This is a town with many temptations. Hadley will tell you. Right, Hadley?”
I nodded. Zeb was hurting my head. Someone at the Shrubs office had recently smeared a turd across the wall of one of the men’s cubicles. At the time, when I saw it, I thought: what a sick, fucking loony. Now I suspected Zeb. I thought: I’m riding herd, man. Shotgun, even. I’m totally in the groove.
“Guys, guys, guys.” Zeb stood up and leant against the window with the palms of his hands, fingers splayed. He was staring out over the harbour. “I’m not talking about temptations. I am talking about love. I am talking about being unable to function because every thought, everything you look at, becomes the face of a girl as vital as a jagged streak of lightning.” I thought briefly of Scout. “I don’t want you to ask any more questions about my wife.”
I had asked one question! I had asked it twice, but it was only one question. And he answered it. What was his problem? “My lips are sealed,” I said.
“That’s totally mellow. Now that’s settled, let me tell you about the gambling.”
ZEB SHRUBS, A FRAUD AND EMOTIONAL FUCKWIT, told us about a tiny flat in Stanley, a village on the south of the island, where he had first gone to gamble and where he had seen a couple of English dealers.
“It was like an apartment block with a view over the bay, you know what I mean? It smelt of new construction. In the evening you could watch the fishing junks and hear the explosions of fish bombs. The casino wasn’t in operation all the time, but you’d know when it was open.”
“How?” I asked.
“There would a man busking outside. He plays some ancient Chinese string instrument like a fucking boat.”
“People give him money?”
“Of course. He’s a busker. When he’s there, in the doorway of the apartments, it means the casino is open.”
“So I can just turn up and gamble?”
“There’s a password.”
“What is it?”
“Well, it’s a conversation.”
“Well, it’s a conversation. That’s the password?”
“Hey, you’re not a moron, pal.”
“Hey, you’re not a moron, pal. Is that…?”
“The password takes the form of a conversation.”
This guy was getting stroppy with me. I’d known him less than a day and he was telling me I wasn’t a moron.
“A conversation with whom?”
“With the busker. You ask him if he plays requests.”
“And what does he say?”
“He asks you what you want to hear.”
“And then?”
“You give him a choice. Anything you like. But one of the songs must be ‘She’s a dirty, dirty dancer, dirty, dirty dancer, never ever lonely’. Do you know that song?”
“No.”
“Neither did I. Awful. Shocking. Leaves nothing to the imagination. It ain’t no Bobby Darin.”
“And then he’ll let me in?”
“If he likes the look of you. He may chat a bit more about music. Different genres.”
“Different genres?”
“You’ll see. But you must watch out for yourself, pal. Once you get inside. This is greed on a totally unmellow scale. These are dangerous people.”
In my days at the South China Morning Post, I rode a motorbike home from Quarry Bay on the north of the island over the green hills above Chai Wan and down to Stanley in the south where I lived. It is a narrow road which twists and turns, the temperature dropping noticeably as you rise, the smell of sodden vegetation becoming more distinct. On one right-hand bend, there is a sudden, pungent, sweet smell which hits you for just a few seconds. A Wanchai mama-san told me it was the smell of an illicit bone crushing and boiling factory up a muddy track. Why were they crushing and boiling bones? And whose bones? None of this was explained. At two in the morning, after an easy, relaxed night in Wanchai, I stopped the bike and climbed off unsteadily when I smelt the smell. I looked up. About a hundred feet up, in the middle of all the vegetation, a light shone from the front of a small stone house. A stooped woman looked down at me, arms akimbo, smoking a cigarette. It was a chilling sight. I never took a closer look.
I took the same route now in daylight in the back of an air-conditioned cab and couldn’t smell the vegetation. What I could smell inside the taxi was a mixture of McVitie’s digestives mashed up in warm milk and the escaped wind from someone who has just eaten a packet of McVitie’s digestives mashed up in warm milk.
Stanley, home to a Japanese-run POW camp during the war, was once a small fishing village and market with a scattering of low-rise, expat blocks of flats, British army barracks and crumbling colonial-era buildings, with squatter huts climbing the cliffs on the other side of Stanley Bay. Rich met poor and neither side really took much notice of the other, as has always been the case in Hong Kong. The rich couldn’t give a shit about the poor, and the poor understood and just wanted to be rich. There was no conflict of interest.
Most of the crumbling buildings have gone, replaced by more and higher blocks of flats for the expats. The casino, Zeb said, was on the fourth floor of a thin, cheap block in the centre of the market, with a view over a headland and the bay beyond. It was covered in dirty white ceramic tiles two inches square and hard to miss. He said it would close when the market stall holders arrived for work late in the morning, opening their security grills in a series of metallic crescendos.
I got the taxi to drop me outside the ancient post office and walked down a series of concrete steps, stained black with mould, past a children’s playground and a few tourist shops selling lurid landscape paintings, tee-shirts and other non-essential goods. Pairs of jeans hung from the tile walls. One shop sold polystyrene fish hanging in mobiles, polar bears made out of Coke cans and edible body paint.
I arrived at the block at a T-junction of narrow market lanes. It was just five storeys high, the steel hinges of the aluminium windows jammed solid with rust. The entrance was a long passage with dark red letterboxes down one side, jeans hanging on the other, before a barred gate with a rusted bolt and shiny new padlock. Sure enough, sitting on the floor, was a busker. An ancient Chinese man wearing a dark tweed jacket and a trilby. He was playing a familiar tune on a stringed instrument shaped like a canoe, a maudlin melody which I couldn’t place. He was sitting on a rubberised floor with a flask of tea and a tin box at his side. I looked beyond the bars of the security gate. The corridor went on a few more feet before turning into darkness to the right.
The busker stopped playing, looking straight ahead. I pulled a coin from my pocket and put it in his tin box.
“Nice song,” I said.
“Nice song, nice song. Not my song.” The old man felt for the coin. “Twenty cents. Thank you, sir.”
“No worries. It is nice though. What is it?”
The old man resumed the same plaintive melody as before. “You like song?”
This conversation could go on forever. “It’s quite … enchanting, but also annoying that I can’t place it.”
“You don’t like song?”
“I like song.”
“Okay, okay.” The old man closed his eyes and squinted with passion as he hit a high note. More of a screech than a squeal. It made me shiver. “I like song too. Old song. I tell you name of song, you fuck off, okay?”
“Old song. ‘I Love to Love…” He struggled to get the title exactly right. “…But… My Baby Just Love… to Dance. He Want to Dance, He Loves to Dance, He Got to Dance’.”
“Okay, steady on.” I crouched down to his level and took a long look at the man. “What are you playing that crap for?”
“Only twenty cents of crap.” I felt in my pocket and put five dollars in the can. “Thank you, sir. Come sit. You be my eyes.”
“Are you telling me you’re blind?”
“I blind, I blind. Too much…” He made the gesture of masturbating and burst in raucous laughter, showing two or three usable teeth and a glint of gold.”
Thanks for that, oh wise Shaolin temple master. I stood up. Come sit, my arse. The oldest trick in the book. Who was this old geezer? Hang on, I wasn’t paying attention. What was it Zeb had said?
“Tell me, do you take requests?” I asked.
“Request? You want request? You want young girl?”
“No, no that kind of request.”
“You want old man?”
“I don’t think so, no. I mean a music request. Songs.”
“You request song? You no want sexy?”
“No sexy. Not now, thanks.”
“What you want?”
“Well, I would love to hear something plaintive and Chinese.”
“Ah? What you say?”
“Something soft. Perhaps some Beijing opera with those lovely, lilting women’s voices?”
“Lovely… lilting… women voice?”
“Yes.”
“In Beijing opera?”
“Yes. That would be lovely.”
“You fucking mad?”
“We could talk about different genres, if you like.”
“Ah?” The old man was getting angry now. “You some giant fag?”
He was staring at me with his mouth open, saliva at the corners of his lips, his forehead lined with confusion and fury. I thought of the calm, ancient monk in James Hilton’s ‘Lost Horizon’, the book many westerners point to as being the reason they came to Asia in the first place. If it wasn’t “Lost Horizon”, then it was Conrad; if not Conrad, then Graham Greene; and if not Graham Greene, then “The Expat Guide to Bangkok Totty”. The brain is a remarkably fickle organ.
