by Sid Smith
Tom stumbled to the Whitechapel Road, Wei laughing and following in the rain.
‘I’m OK,’ said Tom. ‘I’m fine. Didn’t want to hurt him, that’s all, my future father-in-law.’
‘What?’
‘My wife’s father.’
‘Ah. Good. Congratulations.’
‘What you want?’
‘Bike, please.’
Tom got in the van. ‘Tell Mr Tan that I keep dreaming about May. It means I’m going to marry her.’
‘Yes,’ said Wei, laughing. ‘Yes. Dreams about May. And you tell Mr Tan.’
‘It’s nothing bad, OK.’
‘You tell her father!’
‘Little shit.’
Wei holding the van door, sympathetic for once. ‘Tom, forget this place. Really. Nothing here for you.’
Tom started the engine. ‘How did Mr Tan . . . I mean, who told him about Johnny? Was it somebody called Mac?’
But Wei only shrugged and grinned.
‘Little Chinky shit.’
16
Tom waited in the doss bag in the driver’s seat in a side road near the takeaway, hot with shame. ‘No wonder May dumped me.’
He needed Tan asleep and then he’d climb to May’s room and wait for ever if he had to. ‘Hurry up, you flabby bastard.’
He pictured Mr Tan, his slippers flapping on curly lino or fat-spattered tiles or restless under the table, his bare arms on the playing cards. Tan shuffled to the sink, his fingers spread because they were fat and sweaty, and slid the fake Rolex up his arm on its expanding metal bracelet, which you can only do with bald arms, and rinsed the last pots with his piggy hands.
Midnight. Tom saw him with a clipboard in the stockroom under the stairs, the dog snorting through the tongue-and-groove wall from the shed next door, and he was thinking about the boy who soiled his daughter: ‘You poyfriend? Poyfriend?’
Tan frowned over his glasses. His feet hurt. He’d lost a kilo of rice, because all cooks are thieves.
He imagined long talks with his son, but now it was too late. He thought:
I found your mother on a hot day. First my parents died and then I sold the land for too little to a grinning uncle and came by luck to the wife fair, money in my pocket, the women in their underclothes, and I bought her from curiosity not desire and because it was a day for doing anything.
This was in the mountains near Tibet. She blushed because I was young like her. Her father was drunk. I haggled and was told a price and walked away.
I was eating and looking at the other women, who were older than me. Really I thought they were sexy and older. But she had blushed and shivered so I dropped the food and went to her father again, in a hurry but looking calm. A fat old farmer was arguing. I pushed him away and put money in her father’s hand and he said, ‘This old man will pay more.’
I gave him more money. He said, ‘The old man will pay more still.’ I said, ‘No,’ and told the girl, ‘I’ve bought you.’ She cried and got dressed and we walked straight off the market and down the road, the girl looking back until the road went round a hill.
We sat down, just out of sight. Men were putting wheat on the road. She sat and cried and I watched the men. They were spreading wheat on the tar. I watched for a while because they sometimes ran in front of carts and made them go around the grain. I saw it was because wooden or iron wheels, and the hooves of buffalo, were too hard and turned the grain to dust. But people or rubber tyres were just hard enough, so the wheat was threshed. I’m always interested in things.
We went to the river and got a boat. The bunks were this far apart and there were a hundred people in that boat but I climbed into her bunk when the lights went out. Someone said, ‘There are children,’ but I didn’t care. She cried and this was sexy. I don’t say this because it’s right; just to tell you. She was helpless.
I was angry so I didn’t talk, thinking that I was rich but not free, or that I was rich so any woman would have me without payment. I was young and stupid. But I spilt food on my shirt and she laughed. She said, ‘You’re like my brother, and I always laughed at him.’ I liked her to mock me.
Then she had you two, and I hired a midwife and bought foreign baby clothes and rented a good house and bought a crib that we left when we went downstream.
We always went downstream. We got to the coast and your mother worked in a factory and I built more factories, digging drains. But she never got well. I bought folk cures and was a porter or river coolie or a bodyguard.
Then we heard about the doctors in Hong Kong, so we crept at night through marshes to the English fence, hiding while the little Gurkhas went by, you two drugged, then over with people we never saw again except for the guide who took the last of my money and said, ‘It’s not enough.’
I worked for him for a year, and your mother died. I brought more people over the fence. I slept in fields near the fence. You slept in restaurants, in the pantry. Once you slept on TVs stolen from the docks. Lots of brown boxes in a room with no windows. And once you stayed in a brothel. The mats were very dirty, so I moved you. You had a lot of mothers!
All that time I worked at the fence. I knew that fence! One time a boy hung on the wire by his neck, so we carried him into Hong Kong, his mother calling his soul to come back. Another time . . .
That fence was my life. One day I’ll go back. But maybe it’s different, now the English have gone.
We sent people to London. That was easy: we put them on a boat or a plane. There were other things too, sending people to Japan. And things with money-changing and some of the money stuck to my hands so I bought factory-made shoes.
Yes, I told you before. I was proud of the factory shoes. I said, ‘I’ll never wear handmade shoes again!’
‘Oh, Daddy,’ you said. So English, such an English little boy. And I told you about London, when you were babies and I didn’t know anything and I thought, ‘Can an English phone understand Cantonese?’
Yes, I know: ‘Oh, Daddy.’
So I picked a lucky day and brought you to London. I didn’t tell the snakehead. We were poor. Then I was a debt-collector for the London snakehead. See this scar? A woman threw a dish.
Then I was a cook. Then I came here. I was a cook, but then the manager left because we argued, so I was the manager. I was glad he left. I made him leave.
Then when you were older the snakehead had a tax thing so my name is on the deeds, though really I’m only the manager, so the takeaway isn’t ours.
I did all this for you.
Mr Tan, that flat-footed quacking Cantonese, shuffled to the kitchen, Tom thinking, ‘He has to shuffle to keep the slippers on.’
Tom pictured Wei and Chung at the kitchen table. They were gathering their strength to go: the Tube ride, then a bus, then the long walk to their room over a launderette in Colindale. Tan sat down, a thug Buddha, big arms making them think, ‘He was with the gangs.’
Wei looked at Chung and they put on their coats. They were by the door when Tan said, ‘Where are our ancestors? Did they follow us here?’ He nodded at the little gilt altar in a corner. ‘I bought that in London. So they didn’t come with the altar. How can they find us? Who tends them? Are they tending us?’
They thought, ‘This is about his son and his wife.’
Wei said, ‘They find us in the end, I think.’
Tan didn’t watch them leave. He got up and scraped their plates into a bowl, then checked the knobs on the big stove, because someone kept leaving the gas on. He went to the shed, grunting as he put the bowl on the floor, leftovers of leftovers, the dog trying to snuggle but he pushed it off. He sat on a box and thought of the white boy who was to blame for everything, while the dog whimpered and nuzzled, lonely too.
‘You boyfriend? Boyfriend?’ thought Tan, because in his head his speech was perfect. ‘Beware. I am a burly beer-bellied bully-boy.’
Why was Mr Tan fat?
Raw or rare liver, veal ravioli with olive oil, broiled or boiled or par-bo
iled ribs, rarebit on rye, rabbit pie, raspberry ripple, ripe rhubarb, plump plums, apple puree, pulped pears, bilberry or blueberry roly-poly, bowls of syllabub, lorry-loads of lovely bubbly, barrows of barrels of barley beer, real ale, Perrier and a liberal lollypop allowance, so he was a bulbous blob of bilious bibulous blubber lobbed over a barbed-wire barrier to imperial Albion.
‘Johnny,’ thought Tom. ‘It’s Johnny saying this.’
A bandit attacked Master Tan, who gently held him, saying, ‘You tried to hurt yourself and I stopped you.’
Master Tan was so wise that he grew rich. He put away his loincloth and bought trousers, the first in the village, but was too lazy to button the flies. He bought factory cigarettes and struck poses from the advertising posters. He stared shrewdly through the smoke, and practised many methods for flicking off the ash. He held the cigarette near his ear or casually in his cupped fist. But he was used to the long village pipes so the smoke went up his nose.
Master Tan gave so little impediment to his food that he needn’t wipe his lips or his arse. He gave so little impediment to his drink that he drank without swallowing and pissed without afterwards shaking his dick.
Master Tan said, ‘Contemplate towers not wells. Stand on bridges when boats go under. Buy a caged bird and observe its belly. Tom, if personal circumstances permit, go to fishing villages where boats are onshore. If a boat is raised on stilts to be painted, then this is worth a two-day walk. Consider birds and boats and pretty girls, sustained by a shape.’
Master Tan’s pupil said, ‘I want to be happy.’ The Master replied, ‘I want to live only in the right-hand side of the world.’ All day he leapt to the right but when he was tired his left side was still there. So he lay on his left side, to control it, and this was in a cellar with cold walls.
Master Tan placated the North Dragon, which makes earthquakes. He scheduled the planting of the rice. He made kites and predicted floods. He built an outhouse where the wind turned round and round like a dog and at last slept.
Master Tan’s wife and son died and his daughter loved a foreigner. He sang, ‘The elephant’s foot / Is soft-hard as the wheels of a bus, / His shits as big as boxing gloves. / Still, as she runs between, / The little mouse says: “Me! Me! Me!”’ – but he was still lonely.
In the van, Tom thought:
Maybe there was a one-child policy in those days, so one of the twins would go for adoption. Or perhaps twins were ill-luck, especially boy-girl twins because the girl’s virtue was tainted in the womb. Or maybe the tribe hated twins, because only animals have multiple births, and so one of the children must be killed, just as a child is killed if it’s crippled, or the parents have too many children, or too many children of that sex, or if a sibling is still suckling, or if the parents are ill, as a mother might be ill if she has twins and wonders which should die, twisting in her fingers the leaf she will push down its throat. Or perhaps Mr Tan said, ‘In Hong Kong they have so much food that you shit every day, sometimes twice, although their nasty toilets are indoors.’
Anyway, they left China, crossing the marsh at night, and the babies were first over the barbed wire, then Mr Tan thinking, ‘Certainly, in crossing a fence, a man knows when he passes halfway,’ then his wife thinking, ‘They can see up my skirt,’ dying but she didn’t know, and this was their unknown mother, never discussed, long since lost in China.
What does Mr Tan, brave but bereaved, want for May?
The belle of the ball in Ralph-Lauren-label bridal apparel, pearl earrings, a valuable veil, and something borrowed, something blue, arriving at a bar or club lobby or pub parlour in a Volvo, Rover, or Roller (lily-of-the-valley on the wireless aerial and rear-view mirror), with lobelias available for every reveller’s lapel, while a big brass band plays Ravel’s Bolero, ‘Lilliburlero’, ‘Roll Over, Beethoven’, ‘The Old Bull and Bush’, ‘Bye-bye, Blackbird’, ‘My Love is Like a Red Red Rose’ by Robbie Burns, ‘The Red Red Robin Comes Bob-bob-bobbing Along’, and airs and lays of popular appeal.
In his sleep, Tom thought, ‘Shut up, Johnny.’
Then leaving by private plane with her loyal, reliable, valorous, and very virile beloved (a libel lawyer or airline pilot or Riviera playboy or a billionaire big in railways, breweries, and ball bearings) for Elba, Alba, Bali, Bari, Bora-Bora, Balboa, Bilbao, or the Hôtel Louvre-Rivoli on the Rue de la République, then home to their lovely villa (rented or lent or let; urban, suburban or rural), living the life of Riley in a royal London borough with Larry, Laurie, Louie, Errol, Earl, Eli, Ellery, Oliver, Ivor, Rory, Raoul, Barry, Blair, Burl and Billy-Bob, their lively bilingual baby boys.
‘Enough, Johnny,’ said Tom.
Mr Tan turned off the kitchen light and went upstairs. He didn’t undress any more. He kicked off the slippers and pulled the quilt over him. He wanted to talk to May but she was on nights.
He frowned as he fell asleep. He was trying to understand the river, which flowed here from China. He thought, ‘I’m asleep in the bedroom above the takeaway in the Whitechapel Road,’ but he frowned because the river had run over rapids, under houses on stilts, yet now passed Chelsea and the Isle of Dogs.
Tom thought of Tan thinking of Johnny, who was mist on the river. They saw him muddled by coal smoke, passing dirty concrete docks, through thunderous gorges, under a black cliff, and up and up to the source in the mountains near Tibet.
‘Come home,’ said Tan, willing his son downstream, past the pretty riverside towns, Maidenhead and Qian-jiang.
We are sick of the muscular river – Black as a hen-night stripper; – Puddles in gutters that jump – To hug us like drunks; – Sparrows traffic has – Trampled to pads; – And girls that just – Sharpen their smiles on us.
So, – Through alleys only cabbies know, – Till London’s tarmac scab – Runs out at last – In mud, rubbish in bushes, – Funny-coloured buses, – A ditch in which – Detumescent Durex drift, – We’ll take a wayward English lane – Back to our China home again.
Master Tan adjusted the twelve musical tones so that yin and yang were equal. He redirected rivers so that the earth’s rotation was sustained. And every day he walked through his castle and sniffed the air and said, ‘The balance of happiness and unhappiness is sustained. It is good.’ But in fact Tan’s son was unhappy because every night a bandit climbed to Tan’s daughter and made her happy.
This bandit gathered an army. Master Tan stood at his window and sniffed the air from their camp and said, ‘The balance of hate and love is sustained. They will not attack.’ The bandits attacked, and by as much as they hated Tan’s men, by so much they laid down their lives for their friends.
So Master Tan’s castle was besieged. He sniffed the air and said, ‘The balance of making and breaking is sustained. We are safe.’ But the bandits made ladders and broke his walls. Tan was taken, his son killed himself, and his daughter married the bandit leader. ‘They won’t hurt me,’ said Master Tan, sniffing the prison air. But his parts were cut off while the bandit laughed.
So Master Tan roamed the hills in rags, his arms stretched out, his hands turned out at the wrists because he might just as soon cartwheel. He listened to the twelve tones, counted his fingers, put out his hand for the sky to perch on, and lay in a cellar where drunks piss.
Finally, what does Mr Tan think of Tom?
A low-born low-brow low-life’s by-blow, evil, violent and poor. A villain oblivious to the value of the rule of law. A layabout, vile reprobate, unbearable barbarian, ill-bred labourer, burglar and brawler, and a robber to rival Ali Baba. But above all a lover of the lower bowel and blow-jobs with the bum-boys, not ovaries, labia and vulva.
17
Tom fell onto the road. He knelt in the rain, then leaned on the van to get up.
He stood shivering, because Johnny was in his head. Two a.m. He scooped rain off the van roof and rubbed his face, then wandered through side streets, waking up, searching pavements but the dog-ends had melted. He came briefly onto the Whitechapel Road, which glit
tered like a river, with buildings which might or might not be black cliffs, then back to the van where he took the washing line off the door handles.
‘I really, really don’t fancy this.’
In the alley behind the takeaway he checked the line. It had maybe been tied to the apple tree for years, and wasn’t so strong. One end held the shape of the branch. Still, it hadn’t snapped when he dragged long Frank up the alley. He scratched it and fibres sprang loose.
‘No choice, anyway.’
He tucked the line in the back of his belt and climbed the pipe by Johnny’s window. He tied one end of the line to the pipe and climbed back down, out of breath and scuffed and his scalp itchy, but he couldn’t scratch with his dirty hands. The dog barked once.
He hauled on the line and nothing broke. He tucked the end of the line into his belt and climbed to Mr Tan’s room, noticing halfway up that he was cursing quietly but savagely. He pulled the line tight and grunted as he tied it round the pipe next to Tan’s window, thinking of that fat rat-bastard inside and sniffing hard because maybe he could smell Marlboro.
He slid to the ground for a breather. He put his fingers under the shed door and the dog licked him then growled. Even the bastard dog hates me.
The line stretched across May’s window, held by the pipes. It looked good, but it’d probably snap. He stood among the dustbins, looking up, thinking, ‘I’m always doing this,’ meaning that he saw holes in a plan but still went ahead.
Next to the bins was a black plastic bin bag. He kicked it, then looked inside. ‘Christ.’ Johnny’s clothes. He dithered, then took a sweater, tying it round his head for a helmet.
He climbed the pipe next to Johnny’s window. He ducked between the washing line and the wall, then stepped onto the window ledge, wanting to break in and sleep for a week.
This bit was easy, edging across Johnny’s window ledge, the line behind his shoulders, gripping the window frame although his stitches hurt. But then he came to the blank wall – ten foot down to the concrete yard, and the long stride to May’s window. ‘Madness,’ he thought, then reached a wavering leg across the drop.
