Red Oblivion

by Leslie Shimotakahara

  He shakes me off like a spooked horse, then his eyes swing back at me. “My uncle once said something,” he whispers.

  “Yeah, about?”

  “About how my dad had been in a labour camp.”

  “A labour camp?”

  I think of the camp where Keung-Cartwright’s father spent his final days, surrounded by white-haired ghosts. So many once-formidable men reduced to that.

  “What was your old man doing in a labour camp, Eddy? His old political allies sold him out?”

  “How on earth would I know?”

  I’m overcome with that same confusing thrill of excitement that swept over me upon first seeing Eddy and my father up on the rooftop terrace together. How sure I was that he was a thug, here to set my father straight. The startled, fearful sheen in Ba’s eyes that I later convinced myself I’d only imagined. Nope, that fear was real enough. Ba looked like he’d been visited by an intruder, for he associated Eddy with Mr. Chan — an intrusion from the past. But at the same time, it was a visit from an old friend, or an ally of sorts.

  Eddy turned out to be no thug. That wish for violent confrontation was coming not from Eddy, but from me, all along. I can see that now. I am the one quite willing to draw blood, if that’s what it takes to extract the truth.

  “You’re his son, for fuck’s sake. Don’t you know your own father at all?”

  This makes Eddy flinch.

  “Well, what happened? How did your father get out of the fucking camp?”

  “Look, Jill, someone paid a crapload of money, okay? At least, that’s the impression I got from my uncle.” He mops at his forehead, exasperation creeping over his face.

  “My father …?” It surprises me how calmly I say this, barely even making it a question. As if in my heart, I already know.

  “Who else could it have been?”

  How seamlessly Ba arranged for First Cousin to be smuggled into Hong Kong, followed by the rest of our family. That job was a walk in the park compared with what he’d pulled off before.

  “And how did our fathers …?”

  “I don’t pretend to know how things played out exactly, Jill. But like your own father, my father was a resourceful man, always planning for the worst-case scenario. He must’ve known he wasn’t protected from being purged. In fact, his high position would have made him all the more vulnerable. The winds of power change direction very quickly, you know.”

  “So what my father offered was an insurance policy, right?”

  Only a man of Ba’s underhanded skills would be capable of pulling it off. In the worst-case outcome — if he ended up in a labour camp — Chan wanted to know that he had a trusted friend on the outside, who’d stop at nothing to get him out. His lifeboat.

  Keung-Cartwright managed to sneak into her father’s camp without too much difficulty, in the disorder that followed the storm. The camps were not always so well guarded, in the end. Ba must have hired someone to go in, pass along bribes, get Chan out, and smuggle him across the border to Hong Kong. And so, Chan’s freedom was secured, along with a whole new identity, a new life.

  But some furtive thought keeps scurrying across my brain, stealthy as a rat. “Our fathers had a secret deal going. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. The funds that allowed my father to get back on his feet in Hong Kong must have been channelled to him by your father. I get all that. What I don’t understand, though, is how these two men got in bed together in the first place.”

  “Their paths must have somehow crossed in Guangzhou.”

  “Fine. But two guys from opposite sides of the political divide? They seem unlikely allies.”

  A small, wry smile flickers over Eddy’s lips. “My father was never averse to working with his enemies, if you want the truth. In the end, I think he saw these political distinctions as pretty arbitrary. Your father was probably just as practical.”

  “Practical? Is that what you call it?”

  “Well” — he colours at my tone — “I’m just saying, it’s a bit like when you’re a kid in gym class. Who gets to be on which team? The teacher just assigns you by pointing and giving you a number.”

  “And loyalties to your team members don’t last beyond the duration of the game.”

  “Something like that. And then, next time, new teams are assigned. New team captains. What really matters isn’t the game, but rather the game behind the game.”

  The game behind the game.

  Did my father sell out his friends in the Red Flag in order to help Chan consolidate power under the new regime? What acts of sabotage took place behind the scenes to ensure that the Red Flag wouldn’t be a problem any longer? Did Ba play some role? Was this what it took to cement his bond with Chan?

  “In any case, I don’t understand why you’re dredging up all this stuff, Jill. This is ancient history!”

  “Not that ancient.”

  As Eddy tosses me a brittle smile, a surprising wave of something like sympathy — or self-pity — surges over me. He and I are not so different, in the end, much as it pains me to admit. Me and Eddy. Bound by the need to protect our family legacies, our blood money.

  “Everything’s different now, Jill. Our fathers suffered so that we wouldn’t have to. That’s what matters, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we just be grateful for that?”

  Is it really that simple? Maybe for some people, it is. How I envy his ability to ensconce himself in this wilful oblivion, as though his biggest worry is that his wife will be mad because he’s late for dinner.

  He turns away, continuing toward the taxi stand. “See you around, Jill.”

  “See ya, Eddy.”

  “You look worried, Yuk Chu. But I have it all figured out.” Ba edges closer to me by using his feet to move the wheelchair forward.

  “What, Ba?” I put down my chopsticks, no appetite anyway.

  “Don’t worry about the business. We have enough money!” He extracts from the pocket of his dressing gown an old black notebook, the kind he’s used all his life to keep track of numbers, profits, debts. “Don’t you see?” The book falls open to a random place, the page yellowed, ink faded. “It’s been a good quarter — we’ve done well.”

  “You’ve done well, Ba.”

  “And one day soon, Yuk Chu, you’ll take over for me, just like we always talked about … and … after that …”

  “No, Ba.” My elbow jostles the edge of my plate, my chopsticks clattering to the floor.

  “What?”

  It’s too much — I can’t keep up this charade any longer. I need to get away from this man, the crazed hope and expectation illuminating his gaze, as if in looking at me he sees nothing other than his own future. His own immortality.

  “Was it worth it, Ba?”

  “Was what worth it?”

  “What you did. To buy your escape from Guangzhou. You sold your friends out, didn’t you?”

  The light fades from his eyes. But he doesn’t deny it. “You wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t done what I did.”

  I stoop to pick up the chopsticks. Sauce is splattered all over the floor.

  “The next time I’m about to die,” Ba says, “I don’t want you to call an ambulance.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just let me die.”

  I can’t deal with this man’s guilt tactics any longer. Anguish swells in my throat. “You have round-the-clock nursing — the best nursing money can buy. If you’re going into cardiac arrest, of course the nurse will call an ambulance!”

  He shrugs, his shoulders wilting. “Well, maybe I’ll die in my sleep, then.”

  “Yeah, right. That’s like winning the lottery.”

  The cheque to Mr. Ma remains uncashed. At last, I think I understand his point, his perverse symbolism: not everything has a price tag — some mistakes can’t be redressed, for any amount. The satisfaction of delivering this message is worth more to him than a cheque of any magnitude.

  So he’ll spend the rest of his days in th
at crumbling little house in the old neighbourhood, keeping watch from his shadowy perch. He will bear witness to everything that happened; he will keep company with the ghosts of the past.

  “I guess this is it,” Terence says.

  We’re standing in the middle of a dusty construction site, ragged patches of drywall torn off the exposed bricks, one interior wall knocked down completely. But by the end of next month, it’ll be a swanky sake bar.

  Feeling sheepish, I apologize yet again for not sticking around to see the project through. I search Terence’s face for signs of anger and resentment, but all I see is sad acceptance, mixed with an inexorable glimmer of hope, which only makes me feel worse.

  “Next time you’re in town,” he says, “we’ll have a drink here.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “When do you think you might be back?”

  He’s standing very close now, so close that I can feel the warmth of his humid skin, calling out to be touched. Yet I’m leaving, aren’t I? Yes, I need to leave. While I want very much to kiss this mouth — to feel the swish of his tongue against mine, one last time — I remain motionless. The space between our bodies stretches open, like an empty, abandoned field.

  “Dunno.” I laugh lightly.

  “Don’t go …”

  I brush a flurry of white dust from my black shorts. “I’m sorry — I have to …”

  “Then when are you coming back?” he repeats.

  “Maybe never?”

  His eyes flash. Well, perhaps this is what it takes — a streak of meanness — to get my message to stick.

  “Oh, you’ll be back. When your father kicks the bucket, you’ll be back for his money. Don’t kid yourself.”

  So the meanness cuts both ways. I back away from him, winded.

  We stare at each other a moment longer. The tension fades from his face.

  “Sorry, Jill … I didn’t mean to …”

  As I turn away, he puts his hand on my shoulder and I feel my body slackening, melting, knowing it would be the most effortless thing in the world to fall into his arms. But I straighten up, holding on to my resolve. And I find myself wondering, yet again, about what he thinks the deal is between us. Does he view me as a challenge, the ultimate tease? A long-term project? Isn’t he getting tired of going in circles here? Or does he think that one day I’ll be ready for what he has to offer and fall into his arms forever? And who knows? Maybe I will. Stranger things have been known to happen. At least, with Terence, I’d never have to hide my past, because his own past is covered in just as many faded bloodstains. I can be utterly myself with him; I don’t have to pretend to be some person of pristine morals and family background. With him, I’d never have to feign being shocked by things that don’t shock me at all anymore.

  “Looking forward to going home?”

  I don’t know what to say to this. And yet, it’s a simple enough question. “Things are just easier for me back in Toronto.”

  I want to leave it at that, but then tears sting my eyes and burst, and it all starts pouring out — all my suspicions about Ba’s sins. A jumble of accusations and confessions, which I myself can barely comprehend.

  Terence massages the crook of his neck, his gaze drifting away. When he looks back, he doesn’t try to hide his emotions. “It’s not on you — none of it is. Whatever your father did, that’s on him.”

  I rub at my eyes. “You don’t have any guilt about your own family’s money?”

  “Sure, I do.”

  “So … how do you deal?”

  Terence leans back against the wall. “My therapist has this theory,” he says at last.

  “I didn’t know you see a therapist.”

  “Yup. An old-school Freudian psychoanalyst. I’ve been seeing her for about six years.” He gives a self-deprecating smile. “Don’t laugh at me, okay? I wanted somebody who’d stick with me for the long haul. Guess that’s why I chose a Freudian.”

  “And what’s your shrink’s theory?”

  “She thinks that once I’ve figured out what I want to do with my dead father’s money, it’ll cease to be a burden. Instead, the money’ll become a source of freedom, or creativity.”

  “Huh. How very Freudian. But …”

  “What?”

  “Sounds too easy. And I don’t see how it gets around the guilt problem.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t. The guilt’s always going to be there, one way or another. But at least, if I’m going to be dealing with guilt, I might as well get something in exchange.”

  “What you’re getting, quite frankly, is the money.”

  “Money’s just money. It’s what you do with it that matters.”

  I ponder this. My father would most likely disagree. He never did anything with his money except put it to work making more money. For him, money has a kind of intrinsic value; the numbers in his accounts mean everything to him.

  “And what are you going to do with it, Terence?”

  “I dunno. Who says I have all the answers? Right now, I just want to build a cool bar where my friends can hang out.”

  I can’t help but smile at this. Typical Terence. “Is that all you want to do with your life?”

  He shoots me a withering look, as if to say, Well, at least I’m doing something.

  And perhaps this is another source of my guilt, which Terence senses. I can’t help it. On some level, perhaps I do want the money — I want to do something with it. Even if I, too, haven’t yet figured out what.

  I think about my father sitting alone at dinner, night after night, slowly dying.

  During our last meal together, he attempts to act all gruff. As if to say that if he can’t convince me to stay, then fine, I can leave him the hell alone. “I’ll be perfectly fine. The doctor says I have the liver of a man half my age.”

  The smallness of his life — his scuffed slippers, his faded pyjamas, his tiny ceramic dish of soy sauce — weighs heavily on me.

  As he continues to talk, the space heater blasts its suffocating cloud. Yet I notice my father shivering.

  Toward the end of dinner, he lapses into confusion. “I think … I think … your sister’s coming home tonight.”

  “She’s not coming, I hate to tell you.”

  “We’ll all be here together, with plenty to eat. A big fish. Me and my sisters.”

  Past and present blur together in his deranged memory, the fragile idyll somehow kept intact: Ba surrounded by the adoring women in his life, the women he saved.

  NINETEEN

  But as it turns out, I don’t get on my plane the following morning. I awake before dawn to the night nurse’s feral scream.

  I rush into Ba’s room and lean down at his bedside and shake his shoulders, gently at first, then harder. His eyes remain closed, just as if he were asleep. While I fumble at his neck for a pulse, I can feel only rubbery puckers of cool skin. And then my hands are shaking too much to be of use, anyway — as I try to dial 999, the phone slips from my fingers and clatters to the ground.

  A funny thought skitters across my brain. Ba has won the lottery.

  “It’s my father,” I hear myself saying into the phone. “He’s died, I think. Died in his sleep.”

  Ten minutes later, the paramedics arrive and try to revive my father by doing CPR and putting electric paddles to his chest. “You’re too late,” I hear myself say, but a paramedic holds up a hand to indicate I should move back. It appears that, just maybe, Ba still has a flutter of a faint pulse — can it be? As his small, unconscious body is lifted onto a stretcher, I’m trying to answer multiple questions. Although adrenalin is keeping me upright and talking, an unsteady feeling keeps grabbing me around the knees.

  Two police officers stride through the door and they, too, begin firing questions my way. While one of the cops stays behind to interview Rina and the nurse, the other one follows me into the elevator with the paramedics and my father’s supine body. Whenever a 999 call comes in about a death — no matter how unsuspicious —
the police tend to pay a visit, I’ve heard; they do everything very by the book, these days. Still, I can’t believe that they’re actually here, or that any of this is happening.

  In the ambulance, the cop’s all business. A tight little muscle pulses in his jaw as he continues to interrogate me about what happened this morning. It occurs to me that maybe this guy really does view me as a suspect. Does he honestly think that I might have poisoned Ba? Absurd as it is, guilt creeps coldly over my chest; perhaps the cop is right, at some level. If I hadn’t upset my father by insisting on returning to Toronto, if I hadn’t flung so many accusations at him in recent days, maybe he’d still be breathing normally. Am I responsible for Ba’s precarious state, no less than if I’d slipped something toxic into his congee?

  “My father’s ninety-four and he’s been in terrible health ever since his bowels burst earlier this summer.” My tears smart and overflow — I can’t hold it together any longer.

  The cop backs off, though he keeps on watching me. Meanwhile, a paramedic injects my father with something through a long needle.

  The next thing I know, the ambulance comes to an abrupt stop. We’re at the public hospital in Wan Chai. My father is rushed into the ER.

  When I’m allowed to see him again, a thick plastic tube has invaded his throat and his eyes have been taped shut. A chuffing noise fills the curtained-off space, the sound of one of the machines keeping him alive, breathing on his behalf. The monitor beside his bed shows a red line above a blue line, both of them moving in small, sporadic waves. As I watch those two lines doing their thing, I hear a doctor shuffling behind me, a voice telling me that although my father’s heart is beating, ever so slightly, the situation is pretty much hopeless. He’ll never regain consciousness and probably has very little time left.

  A short while later, Ba is moved to a ward on one of the upper floors, beside the Palliative Care Centre. The cop, who must have been in the waiting room all this time, approaches with a stiff wave. He tells me that there’s no need for any further police involvement and he’ll be leaving now.

  Nevertheless, the sensation of guilt stays with me, wrapping around my shivering skin, like a cold, wet towel.