His arms and shoulders and back ached from the strain of rowing. An old man’s aches. A soft man’s pains.
He slipped among them, searching, too old for the nonsense of survival, and yet unable to give it up. He might still survive. The one daughter mouth might survive. Even if she was a girl child. Even if she would do nothing for her ancestors, at least she was of his clan. A clipping of DNA that still might be saved. Finally he found the body he wanted, leaned down and touched it gently, covered the man’s mouth.
“Old friend,” he whispered.
The man’s eyes went wide as he awoke. “Encik Tan?” He nearly saluted, even half-naked and lying on his back. And then, as if recognizing the change in their fortunes, his hand fell back, and he addressed Hock Seng as he had never dared in real life. “Hock Seng? You’re still alive?”
Hock Seng pursed his lips. “This useless daughter mouth and I need to go north. I need your help.”
Hafiz sat up, rubbing his eyes. He glanced furtively at the rest of his sleeping clan. He whispered, “If I turned you in, I would make a fortune. The head of Three Prosperities. I would be rich.”
“You were not poor when you worked with me.”
“Your head is worth more than all the Chinese skulls stacked in the streets of Penang. And I would be safe.”
Hock Seng started to respond angrily but Hafiz put his hand up, indicating silence. He ushered Hock Seng to the edge of the deck, against the rail. He leaned close, his lips nearly touching Hock Seng’s ear. “Do you not know the danger you bring on me? Some of my own family wear green headbands now. My own sons! It is not safe here.”
“You think this is something I just learned now?”
Hafiz had the grace to look away, embarrassed. “I cannot help you.”
Hock Seng grimaced. “Is this what my kindness to you has earned? Did I not attend your wedding? Gift you and Rana well? Fete you for ten days? Did I not pay for Mohammed’s admission to college in K. L.?”
“You did that and more. My debts to you are great.” Hafiz bowed his head. “But we are not the men we were before. The Green Headbands are everywhere among us, and those of us who loved the yellow plague can only suffer. Your head would buy my family security. I’m sorry. It is true. I don’t know why I don’t strike you now.”
“I have diamonds, jade.”
Hafiz sighed and turned away, showing his broad muscled back. “If I took your jewels, I would just as quickly be tempted to take your life. If we speak of money, then your head must always be the most valuable prize. Best not to discuss the temptations of wealth.”
“So this is how we end?”
Hafiz turned back to Hock Seng, pleading. “Tomorrow I will give your clipper ship Dawn Star to them and foreswear you utterly. If I were smart I would turn you in as well. All the ones who have aided the yellow plague are suspected now. We who fattened on Chinese industry and thrived under your generosity are the most hated in our new Malaya. The country is not the same as it was. People are hungry. They are angry. They call us all calorie pirates, profiteers, and yellow dogs. There is nothing to quell it. Your blood is already shed, but they have yet to decide what to do with us. I cannot risk my family for you.”
“You could come north with us. Sail together.”
Hafiz sighed. “The Green Headbands already sail the coasts searching for refugees. Their net is wide and deep. And they slaughter those they catch.”
“But we are clever. More clever than they. We could slip past.”
“No, it is impossible.”
“How do you know?”
Hafiz looked away, embarrassed. “My sons boast to me.”
Hock Seng scowled bitterly, holding his daughter’s hand. Hafiz said, “I’m sorry. My shame will go with me until I die.” He turned abruptly and hurried for the galley. He returned with unspoiled mangoes and papaya.
A bag of U-Tex. A PurCal cibi melon. “Here, take these. I’m sorry I can do no more. I’m sorry. I have to think of my own survival as well.” And with that he ushered Hock Seng off the boat and out into the waves.
A month later, Hock Seng crossed the border alone, crawling through leech-infested jungle after being abandoned by the snakeheads who betrayed them.
Hock Seng has heard that those who helped the yellow people later died in droves, plunging from cliffs into the sea to swim as best they could for the shore’s smashing rocks, or shot where they floated. He wonders often if Hafiz was one of those to die, or if his gift of the last of Three Prosperities’ unscuttled clippers was enough to save his family.
If his Green Headband sons spoke for him, or if they watched coldly as their father suffered for his many, many sins.
“Grandfather? Are you well?”
The little girl touches Hock Seng gently on the wrist, watching him with wide black eyes. “My mother can get you boiled water if you need to drink.”
Hock Seng starts to speak, then simply nods and turns away. If he speaks to her, she will know him for a refugee. Best that he simply blend in. Best not to reveal that he lives amongst them at the whim of white shirts and the Dung Lord and a few faked stamps on his yellow card. Best to trust no one, even if they seem friendly. A smiling girl one day is a girl with a stone bashing in the brains of a baby the next. This is the only truth. One can think there are such things as loyalty and trust and kindness but they are devil cats. In the end they are only smoke and cannot be grasped.
Another ten minutes of twisting passages carries him close to the city’s seawalls where hovels attach themselves like barnacles to the ramparts of revered King Rama XII’s blueprint for the survival of his city. Hock Seng finds Laughing Chan sitting beside a jok cart eating a steaming bowl of U-Tex rice porridge with small bits of unidentifiable meat buried in the paste.
In his last life, Laughing Chan was a plantation overseer, tapping the trunks of rubber trees to capture latex drippings, a crew of one hundred and fifty under him. In this life, his flair for organization has found a new niche: running laborers to unload megodonts and clipper ships down on the docks and out on the anchor pads when Thais are too lazy or thick, or slow, or he can bribe someone higher up to let his yellow card crew have the rice. And sometimes, he does other work as well. Moves opium and the amphetamine yaba from the river into the Dung Lord’s very own towers. Slips AgriGen’s SoyPRO in from Koh Angrit, despite the Environment Ministry’s blockades.
He’s missing an ear and four teeth but that doesn’t stop him from smiling. He sits and grins like a fool, and shows the gaps in his teeth, and all the while his eyes roam over the passing pedestrian traffic. Hock Seng sits and another bowl of steaming jok is set before him, and they eat the U-Tex gruel with coffee that is almost as good as what they used to drink down south, and all the while both of them watch the people all around, their eyes following the woman who serves them from her pot, the men crouched at the other tables in the alley, the commuters squeezing past with their bicycles. The two of them are yellow cards, after all. It is as much in their nature as a cheshire’s search for birds.
“You’re ready?” Laughing Chan asks.
“A little longer, yet. I don’t want your men to be seen.”
“Don’t worry. We almost walk like Thais, now.” He grins and his gaps show. “We’re going native.”
“You know Dog Fucker?”
Laughing Chan nods sharply and his smile disappears. “And Sukrit knows me. I will be below the seawall, village side. Out of sight. I have Ah Ping and Peter Siew to watch close.”
“Good then.” Hock Seng finishes his jok and pays for Laughing Chan’s food as well. With Laughing Chan and his men nearby, Hock Seng feels a little better. But still, it is a risk. If this thing goes wrong Laughing Chan will be too far away to do much more than effect vengeance. And really, when Hock Seng thinks about it, he isn’t sure he has paid enough for that.
Laughing Chan saunters off, slipping between tarp structures. Hock Seng continues on through the stagnant heat to the steep, rough path that
runs up the side of the seawall. He climbs up through the slums, his knee aching with every step. Eventually, he reaches the high broad embankment of the city’s tidal defenses.
After the sheltered stink of the slums, the sea breeze rushing over him and tugging at his clothes is a relief. The bright blue ocean reflects like a mirror. Others stand on the embankment’s promenade, taking the fresh air. In the distance one of King Rama XII’s coal pumps squats like a massive toad on the embankment’s edge. The symbol for Korakot, the crab, is visible in its metal hide. Steam and smoke gout from its stacks in steady puffs.
Somewhere, deep underground, organized by the genius of the King, the pumps send their tendrils and suck water from beneath so that the city will not drown. Even in the hot season, seven pumps run steadily, keeping Bangkok from being swallowed. In the rainy season, all twelve of the zodiac signs run as the rain drenches down and everyone poles the thoroughfares of the city in skiffs, skin soaked, grateful that the monsoon hasn’t failed and that the seawalls haven’t broken.
He makes his way down the other side and out on a dock. A farmer with a skiff full of coconuts offers him one, slashing open the green top for Hock Seng to drink. Across the waters the drowned buildings of Thonburi poke up through the waves. Skiffs and fishing nets and clipper ships slip back and forth in the water. Hock Seng takes a deep breath, sucking the smell of salt and fish and seaweed deep into his lungs. The life of the ocean.
A Japanese clipper slides past, palm-oil polymer hull and high white sails like a gull’s. The hydrofoil package below it is still hidden, but once it’s out in the water it will use its spring cannon to launch its high sails, and then the ship will leap up from the water like a fish.
Hock Seng remembers standing on the deck of his own first clipper, its high sails flying, slashing across the ocean like a stone skipped by a child, laughing as they tore over the waves, as spray rushed and blasted him. He had turned to his number one wife and told her that all things were possible, that the future was theirs.
He settles himself on the shoreline and drinks the rest of the green coconut water while a beggar boy watches. Hock Seng beckons. This one is smart enough, he supposes. He likes to reward the smart ones, the ones who are patient enough to linger and see what he will do with a coconut husk. He hands it to the boy. The boy takes it with a wai and goes to smash it on the mortared stones at the top of the seawall. Then he squats and uses a scrap of oyster shell to scrape the slimy tender meat from the interior, starving.
Eventually, Dog Fucker arrives. His real name is Sukrit Kamsing, but Hock Seng seldom hears the man’s true name on the lips of yellow cards. There is too much bile and history built up. Instead, it’s always Dog Fucker, and the words drip with hate and fear. He’s a squat man, full of calories and muscle. As perfect for his work as a megodont is for converting calories into joules. The scars on his hands and arms show pale. The slits where his nose once stood stare at Hock Seng, two dark vertical nostril slashes that give him a porcine appearance.
There is some argument among yellow cards about whether Dog Fucker let fa’ gan run too long, allowing its cauliflower growths to send enough tendrils deep into his flesh that doctors were forced to chop the whole thing off to save his life, or if the Dung Lord simply took his nose to teach him a lesson.
Dog Fucker squats beside Hock Seng. Hard black eyes. “Your Doctor Chan came to me. With a letter.”
Hock Seng nods. “I want to meet with your patron.”
Dog Fucker laughs slightly. “I broke her fingers and fucked her dead for interrupting my nap.”
Hock Seng keeps his face impassive. Maybe Dog Fucker is lying. Maybe he is telling the truth. It is impossible to know. Regardless, it is a tease. To see if Hock Seng will flinch. To see if he will bargain. Perhaps Doctor Chan is gone. Another name to weigh him down when he finally reincarnates. Hock Seng says, “Your patron will look favorably on the offer, I think.”
Dog Fucker scratches absently at the slit of a nostril. “Why not meet me at my office, instead?”
“I like open places.”
“You have people around here? More yellow cards? You think they’ll make you safe?”
Hock Seng shrugs. He looks out at the ships and their sails. At the wide world beckoning. “I want to offer you and your patron a deal. A mountain of profit.”
“Tell me what it is.”
Hock Seng shakes his head. “No. I must speak with him in person. Him only.”
“He doesn’t talk to yellow cards. Maybe I’ll just feed you to the red-fin plaa out there. Just like the Green Headbands did with your kind down south.”
“You know who I am.”
“I know who your letter says you were.” Dog Fucker rubs at the edges of his nose slits, studying Hock Seng. “Here, you’re just another yellow card.”
Hock Seng doesn’t say anything. He hands the hemp sack of money across to Dog Fucker. Dog Fucker eyes it suspiciously, doesn’t take it. “What is it?”
“A gift. Look and see.”
Dog Fucker is curious. But also cautious. It’s a good thing to know. He isn’t the sort to put his hand in a bag and come up with a scorpion. Instead, he loosens the sack and dumps it. Bundles of cash spill out, roll in the shells and dirt of low tide. Dog Fucker’s eyes widen. Hock Seng keeps himself from smiling.
“Tell the Dung Lord that Tan Hock Seng, head of the Three Prosperities Trading Company has a business proposal. Deliver my note to him and you will also profit greatly.”
Dog Fucker smiles. “I think perhaps that I’ll simply take this money, and my men will beat you until you tell me where you hide all your paranoid yellow card cash.”
Hock Seng doesn’t say anything. Keeps his face impassive.
Dog Fucker says, “I know all about Laughing Chan’s people here. He owes me for his disrespect.”
Hock Seng is surprised that he feels no fear. He lives in fear of all things, but thuggish pi lien like Dog Fucker are not what fill his nights with terror. In the end, Dog Fucker is a businessman. He is not a white shirt, puffed on national pride or hungry for a little more respect. Dog Fucker works for money. Acts for money. He and Hock Seng are different parts of the economic organism, but underneath everything, they are brothers. Hock Seng smiles slightly as confidence builds.
“This is just a gift, for your trouble. What I propose will provide much more. For all of us.” He takes out the last two items. One, a letter. “Give it to your master, sealed.” The other, he hands across: a small box with its familiar universal spindle and braces, a palm-oil polymer casing in a dull shade of yellow.
Dog Fucker takes the object, turns it over. “A kink-spring?” He makes a face. “What’s the point of this?”
Hock Seng smiles. “He’ll know when he reads the letter.” He stands and turns away, without even waiting for Dog Fucker to respond, feeling stronger and more assured than any time since the Green Headbands came and his warehouses went up in smoke and his clipper ships went sliding down into the ocean depths. In this moment, Hock Seng feels like a man. He walks straighter, his limp forgotten.
It’s impossible to know if Dog Fucker’s people will follow him and so he walks slowly, knowing that both Dog Fucker’s and Laughing Chan’s men surround him, a floating ring of surveillance as he works his way down the alleys and cuts into deeper slums, until, at last, Laughing Chan is there, waiting for him, smiling.
“They let you go,” he says.
Hock Seng pulls out more money. “You did well. He knows it was your men, though.” He gives Laughing Chan an extra roll of baht. “Pay him off with this.”
Laughing Chan smiles at the pile of money. “This is twice what I need for that. Even Dog Fucker likes to use us when he doesn’t want to risk smuggling SoyPRO over from Koh Angrit.”
“Take it anyway.”
Laughing Chan shrugs and pockets it. “It’s very kind of you. With the anchor pads shut down, we can use the extra baht.”
Hock Seng is turning away, but at Laughing Ch
an’s words he turns back.
“What did you say about the anchor pads?”
“They’re shut down. The white shirts raided them last night. Everything’s locked tight.”
“What happened?”
Laughing Chan shrugs. “I heard they burned everything. Sent it all up in smoke.”
Hock Seng doesn’t pause to ask any more. He turns and runs, as fast as his old bones will carry him. Cursing himself all the way. Cursing that he was a fool and didn’t put his nose to the wind, that he let himself be distracted from bare survival by the urgent wish to do something more, to reach ahead.
Every time he makes plans for his future, he seems to fail. Every time he reaches forward, the world leans against him, pressing him down.
On Thanon Sukhumvit, in the sweat of the sun, he finds a news vendor. He fumbles through newspapers and the hand-cranked whisper sheets of rumor, through luck pages advertising good numbers for gambling and the names of predicted muay thai champions.
He tears them open, one after another, more frantic with every copy.
All of them show the smiling face of Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, the incorruptible Tiger of Bangkok.
7
“Look! I’m famous!”
Jaidee holds the whisper sheet picture up beside his own face, grinning at Kanya. When she doesn’t smile, he puts it back in its rack, along with all the rest of his pictures.
“Eh, you’re right. It’s not really a good likeness. They must have bribed it out of our records department.” He sighs wistfully. “But I was young then.”
Still, Kanya doesn’t respond, just stares morosely at the water of the khlong. They’ve spent the day hunting for skiffs smuggling PurCal and AgriGen crops up the river, sailing back and forth across the river mouth, and Jaidee still thrums with a certain exhilaration.
The prize of the day was a clipper ship anchored just off the docks. Ostensibly an Indian trading vessel sailed north from Bali, it turned out to be brimming with cibiscosis-resistant pineapples. It was satisfying to see the harbormaster and the ship’s captain both stammering excuses while Jaidee’s white shirts poured lye over the entire shipment, crate after crate rendered sterile and inedible. All that smuggling profit gone.
Windup Girl Page 11
