Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (Vintage International)

by Maxine Hong Kingston

  “Thanks for warning me,” said Wittman. “Bring your gang and your artillery and your bombs. I’ll fight you single-handedly.” His own only kung fu was acting like a monkey. For defense, he would count on what he had seen Bruce Lee do on a t.v. talk show. A challenger was waving hands and feet at him, and Bruce Lee knocked him out with a good old American right cross to the chin. “Sometimes a black belt is only good for holding up pants,” said Bruce Lee, who showed himself capable of a street-fighting move, an alley-fighting move.

  “By the way, I gave Unemployment your name,” said Wittman.

  “Are we going to let him use our good name, dear?” “We can’t begrudge a man getting on the dole, dear.” “Goddamn it, darling, is our tax money paying for his Welfare?”

  “Not Welfare,” said Wittman. “Unemployment.”

  “Wittman is siphoning off funds from the war machine.” “Oh, come now, Lance, the Pentagon has a separate budget from Welfare. He’s draining the California taxpayer, us.” He should hang up, and let them talk to each other. “I’m disgusted by thieves who call sponging and shoplifting revolutionary activities.” “You’re right. Lifting a steak in one’s bookbag is not a complete political act. You have to distribute it to the poor, then call in a news release to KQED.” Listen to them, showing off for each other. Wittman slowly lowered the receiver hook. He’ll have to tell Taña that he won’t have a marriage that makes friends feel left out.

  Speaking of whom, he called her next. “What’s your phone number, Wittman?” Taña asked. “Where’re you calling from?”

  “I’m at a payphone.”

  “You don’t have a home phone?”

  “Nope.” Nor a home. “At a pay phone, I can dig the street. Do you hear it? There’s a blind guy waving his broken cane at the cars. It’s hanging by a string. Blind guys and magicians use the same kind of collapsible cane. He’s shouting. Can you hear him? ‘The next son of a bitch who runs over my cane is gonna be a dead son of a bitch.’ ” I saw an old man who was blind and shouted. That I saw. Saw.

  She was silent until he finished laughing. “You put me at a disadvantage,” she said. “You have my number; I don’t have yours.”

  “I didn’t mean to put you at a disadvantage. I see what you’re thinking. ‘Don’t call us; we’ll call you.’ I don’t operate like that, Taña. I just don’t have a telephone, that’s all, honest. Do you want me to get one? I’ll get one if you like, and you’ll be the only one I’ll give the number to. You can call me any time of the day or night.”

  “The telephone isn’t the problem. I do want to be married to you, but I don’t want to be the wife. I think it’s very important, Wittman, that we tell each other our ideas about marriage. There’s a certain proposal that I want from a man. He’ll love me and understand me so much, he’ll say, ‘Taña, let me be your wife.’ I got carried away with you, Wittman, and forgot to ask which one of us would be the wife.”

  “You want me to be your wife?!”

  “I hadn’t thought the proposal would come in that tone of voice, Wittman, but, yes, I do.”

  “Wait, wait. We take turns. I want a wife too sometimes, you know.”

  “Now you’ve proposed to me, but I haven’t proposed to you. I don’t want to be a woman who waits for proposals from men. One thing I’ve never done, I’ve never asked anyone to marry me. I want to do that someday. I’ll get down on one knee and offer my hand and a diamond ring. When are we going to see each other again, Wittman? How about tomorrow night?”

  “Tomorrow night I’m gathering a troupe to read-through the play. Will you come? Please come, Taña. We’d see each other and work together every night for months, like marriage.”

  “Say ‘I love you,’ ” said Taña, who was better at loving than Wittman was. She was also tougher at using the phone.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too. Where do I meet you tomorrow night?”

  He gave her the address, and they said good night agreeably.

  Nevertheless, he next called Nanci, who was home alone, as the most beautiful girls are.

  “Nanci? Wittman Ah Sing. Did you have a good time at the party? I saw you dancing.” Did you notice I was with the blonde? Ask why I didn’t ask you to dance with me.

  “Yes. No. It was okay. I don’t like big parties.”

  “Me neither. I don’t think I’ll go to them anymore.” I ought to ask her to go out with me on a real date. Dinner with harp and violin music at the Garden Court of the Sheraton Palace. A gardenia for fifty cents at a flower stand. Dancing around the rain forest at the Tonga Room. Ah, the hell with it, let her see his ordinary self and love him for it. “Say, I didn’t scare you with my poems, did I? I’m sorry if I scared you.”

  “No, you don’t scare me, Wittman.”

  “You haven’t been cast in anything yet, have you?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve found a theater site, and we’re opening on Hallowe’en. Will you read for me? After seeing those improvs? I mean, they were only improvs but.”

  “I liked those scenes, Wittman, and I don’t mean to criticize but.” While she criticized, he watched the street. A showgirl in a sequined cheongsahm yelled after somebody driving off in a white car, “You dumb fuck” or “You dumb cluck.” Then she had to walk in her impossibly high heels.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Nanci.

  “The street is wonderful tonight. You ought to be out in it.” At a street phone, you can’t run out of what to talk about; it comes to you in the on-swirling lifestream. “I get what you’re saying about the play, Nanci. You’re saying: Do better. Will you be in it nevertheless?” … I entreat you, request you and desire you … meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the city, we shall be dogged with company.… I pray you, fail me not. We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect: adieu.

  “I’d love to be in it. Bye-bye.”

  “Bye-bye.”

  With his last dimes, he called the stockroom of his ex-department store. After quite a while, somebody who must be living there picked up the receiver. “Hello?” said Wittman. “Is this the Yale Younger Poet I’m talking to? Is it you?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me, remember?” Not by my looks, and not by my race, nor by my deformities, I will yet identify myself. “I was moving bicycles.”

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  “I got fired. I’m on Unemployment.”

  “That’s too bad. Or, do you mind?”

  “It’s all right. I don’t mind. That play I was telling you about? I found a venue. You said you’d think about it. If you come out of hiding, people wouldn’t know it was you. You could wear make-up or a mask. You’d have a good time. It’s not like poetry.”

  “Heh.” He sounded like an old fut.

  “You’d be helping me out. Do me a big favor. I need to integrate the cast. You have lots of parts to choose from. Let me tell you about them. You have time?”

  “Yeh. That’s what I have. Time.”

  With his last dimes, Wittman gave the ex-poet a catalog of heroes whom he looked like. “Choose: Lee Yoon, the Blue-eyed Tiger (green, blue, Chinese don’t distinguish), is in charge of building a commune for a population of one hundred and eight outlaws, some with families. By architecture and city planning, he arranges space—where who sleeps with whom, communal kitchen, dining commons, outdoor cafés, plazas, no jailhouse—so that anarchists can live together. He fights Black Li, the most unruly commune member, to a draw.

  “And/or you could play Liu Tang, the Red Hairy Barbarian. Excuse me, but we call your type barbarian. He was a big man with dark skin—you can use pancake—a broad face—broad faces are best for the stage—with a red birthmark, and black and yellow hair on his head and feet. We’ll spray you with Streaks ’n Tips. He appears one morning asleep on the altar of a temple. The outlaws take him in to share their food and fate.

  “And/or Tuan Ching Chu, the Gold-haired
Dog, who wins from a Tartar prince a wonder horse named White Jade Lion That Shines in the Night.

  “And/or Doctor Huang Pu Tuan, Uncle Purple Beard, a horse vet and a horse thief, the last outlaw to join the community. He’s got blue-green eyes and blue-red beard and hair. To look like a barbarian does not mean you’re ugly. These were not Caucasians; a Chinese can look like anything. A sign of a person being special—extra smart or brave or lucky or spiritual—was that he had something odd about his looks—eyebrows down to his knees, bumps or horns on his head, very skinny, very fat.” Yes, in our theater, we will have regard for all kinds no matter they’re disregarding us.

  “You get to win the last battle in the play, okay? King Sun Ch’üan, who also had your looks, leads his navy west up the Yangtze, eight warships disguised as merchant ships with thirty thousand men hidden belowdecks. You ride your horse along the shore of that oceanic river, and capture lighthouses. You signal the ships, and you signal Cho Cho, your ally, who is head of a million men. He is sailing east, singing a poem about ravens. You meet at the enemy’s walled capital. ‘We’re merchants, and we bear gifts,’ you say. The gates open. You take the city. Gwan Goong flees. His brothers are missing, probably dead. The locals will not help him when he’s losing. You post a reward of ten thousand gold pieces for his head, then you yourself capture him alive. ‘How strange life is,’ you muse to him. ‘Gwan, my prisoner. I can’t get over it. That we fought against one another, and now it has come to this. Why not be my brother instead? Come over to my side as ally and family.’

  “ ‘My blue-eyed boy,’ says Gwan Goong. ‘My red-whiskered rodent, I have my allies and family. I won’t be brothers with a traitor.’

  “ ‘I could execute you as a traitor,’ you say. ‘I could kill you like any soldier. But I’m offering brotherhood, familyhood, a marriage for your daughter with my son. Our war chests could pay for one munificent wedding celebration.’

  “ ‘My tiger girl will never marry your son, a mongrel dog.’

  “ ‘You’re the barbarian,’ you say, ‘for keeping the war going.’

  “Gwan Goong’s son, Gwan P’ing, interrupts, ‘We don’t surrender.’ He draws his sword. ‘We have not lost. I’ll kill you, and we win.’

  “Gwan Goong stands between his son and you. He has a way of standing so that the reality of his presence disperses illusions. His son lays down his sword. We have lost the war.

  “Gwan Goong at the age of sixty and his son were beheaded in the winter of 220 A.D., our time.”

  Before hanging up, Wittman got Yale Younger to agree to his dropping the script off, such as it was, soon to be completed by improv and workshop.

  Everyone came—friends, and friends’ friends, and family. Not because Wittman had charisma or leadership, and certainly not because of his standing in the community. Nor were they here to feel sorry and give charity, which one human being has to give another anyway if he or she is to stay Chinese. They came because what Boleslavsky said is true: “Acting is the life of the human soul receiving its birth through art.” Everyone really does want to get into the act.

  They were bawling one another out for long-time-no-see. Those who weren’t such talkers riffed the jungs, banjos, erhus, fiddles. Drummers were hitting the wooden whales—knock-knocking, that is, dock-docking truths out of their wide mouths. PoPo and Mr. Fong asked kung fu boys to carry up trunks—lifetimes of wardrobe, which the actors unfurled and unfolded. “Oh, remember? Remember?” Some remembered wearing these costumes, and some remembered seeing them on stage or in a movie. Out of sleeves came lengths of worn and torn ripplingwater inner sleeves like lines of magician’s hankies. Too few pants, but Levis will go with anything. Time, the wardrobe mistress. PoPo shook out an operatic brocade, and here we are again—inside the cedarwood, sandalwood, camphorball, mothball atmosphere. Aunties were crowning one another with headdresses. Peacock feathers and silver eyeballs were waving around looking at one and all. Somebody was growl-speaking from the depths of a dragon head. Beautiful Nanci was tippy-toeing in fake bound-feet shoes. The Goodwife Taña and Auntie Bessie and Auntie Sophie were tappety-tapping “The Sidewalks of New York.” Pop was scuffle-shuffling in raggedy shoes. (Huck’s Pap too had done “play-acting at the palace.”) So word-of-mouth had reached even the bo daddy river, and Zeppelin’s battery was well enough to bring a truck-load of uncles. Mom and Pop together in the same room. Archenemies running into one another. PoPo on the arm of her new old man walked past Pop—and slapped her ass at him, one of her Japanese gestures. She sashayed up to Ruby Long Legs, and said, “We’re cutting you out of our wills. The money will go to Wit Man, and he can build a theater if he wants. Nada for you.” The old fut (who is our president after all, Mr. Grand Opening Ah Sing) brought the rest of the tribal council, who voted okay. And there’s the cannery lady with her prom gloves on. She and fellow workers and fellow unemployed artists were catching up on news of one another’s between-gig gigs. The program notes will be interesting for the bios of caterers, furniture movers, stevedores, housesitters, lifeguards. After laboring all day, they come here to work on the impossible. Our most famous Hollywood movie star and tree trimmer, the one who’s had an Oscar nomination—oh, we’re all available—was telling about his chainsaw that jumped loose and missed his jugular vein by a graze. So close, we might have lost him. Judy Louis was dressed for fiesta, and setting out refreshments. She looked nothing like a boar. Oh, everyone. Yale Younger—with a Barbie from the Mattel Industrial Show! A Miss Chinatown who got too good for Auntie Mabel’s revue was saying to Charles Bogard Shaw, “Yes, that was me on ‘Hawaiian Eye.’ I didn’t tell anyone to watch for me because they made me wear a Suzie Wong dress. So shame.” Most people brought as costumes and props Chinesy things they happened to have around the house, such as nightgown kimono, wedding kimono and obi, dragoned jackets that they sell to G.I.s in Korea, yarmulkes, borlas, a samurai grandfather’s armor and swords that had been buried under the house and dug up to give to a sansei on his twentieth birthday. A backscratcher from a Singapore sling, a paper umbrella from an aloha mai tai, a Buddha bottle with head that unscrews—make something of it. Use it. From these chicken scraps and dog scraps, learn what a Chinese-American is made up of. Yes, the music boat has sailed into San Francisco Bay, and the boatman is reunited with his troupe. Write the play ahead of them to include everyone and everything.

  Wittman pounded a drum for order. Standing in front of the chalkboard, he welcomed the players, and thanked them for embarking tonight on an enormous loud play that will awake our audience, bring it back. For a century, every night somewhere in America, we had had a show. But our theater went dark. Something happened ten years ago, I don’t know what, but. We’ll cook and blast again. We have so much story, if we can’t tell it entirely on the first night, we continue on the second night, the third, a week if we have to. He handed out Xeroxes of the script that had lots of holes for ad lib and actors’ gifts. Gwan Goong, standing on the mantelpiece, was using his powers over illusions to sway the house to theater—

  Crash! Through the door came a grand entrance—Lance and a kung fu gang. “That’s him, there.” Lance was siccing their champion on Wittman. The champ kicked over the jackstraw pile of weapons, and walked at him while rolling up his sleeves. “I hit strong kung fu. My kung fu win.” The force of his voice blew slam-bang at the listener. They don’t “do” kung fu or “play” it. They “hit” it. A tiger was flaming on his forearm, and a dragon was flaring on his other forearm, branded on, according to the movies. At the graduation test, he had lifted a five-hundred-pound red-hot iron cauldron by hugging it to himself. Lick-on tattoos, thought Wittman, body paint. “You’re welcome to a script, Siew Loong,” he said, showing the guy that he can read his jock jacket—the Little Dragon. Me too, born in a year of the dragon, but I don’t advertise Wittman Dragon, nor would I call myself Little. “Your gwoon, help yourselves to scripts too. Do they read? Do they take direction? Don’t I recognize you from parades? You do dragon dan
ce, huh?” Yes, he was the dancer at the head of the dragon, who lifts the head with those branded arms, and dances beneath its beard.

  Siew Loong pushed the script aside, and stuck out his pinky and said, “See this finger? I can kill with this finger. I be careful.” “He’s restraining himself,” explained Lance. “You be careful too, Wittman. He’s got the touch that kills. He knows places on the body that all he has to do is touch, and you die on a specific date years hence. He’ll have an alibi of being nowhere near the death scene. Watch out, he’s getting into position for the vibrating palm. It can wreck the flow of blood and air.”

  “Oh, Jesus, the poor guy,” said Wittman. “You shouldn’t let oppression do that to you, Siew Loong. I understand. You walk around lonely among the tall and racially prejudiced, and you start getting crazy ideas. A foreign-exchange student, lonely on campus, no dates, no money for round-trip tickets during vacations, staying by yourself in the empty dorms, no maid service, nobody to talk to. You start thinking, they better not fuck with me, I’m just keeping myself from touch-killing them with this mighty finger.”

  There was a turn of the hand somehow that Wittman didn’t see what hit him, but suddenly he was coming to. What do you know, you really do see stars. And, oh no, his mother has climbed into the ring, holding his head. “Are you alive, biby?”