FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  Molly Ong’s very clever concept of the Singapore Girl, with Mercy B. Lord as the template for others to follow, may well have been discussed with or approved by Long Me, and he might just see his attendance at the awards night as Tourist Promotion Board business.

  There were two other reasons, apart from the explosive mix of guests, for my anxiety at having Long Me Saw present on the big night. The first – bizarre as this may seem to a Westerner – was his concern about being kidnapped. Long Me Saw and his brother Long Long were paranoid about being kidnapped by the Black Society, a branch of the Triads who made kidnapping the very wealthy their criminal raison d’être. Kidnapping the very rich or their loved ones was a highly organised and professional criminal activity and by no means uncommon in Asia. The fear of the Black Society was ever-present in the minds of the Saws and other extremely rich families, and their paranoia was easy to understand. They and members of their families required protection around the clock. A favourite method of the Black Society was to kidnap a loved one and ask for a large sum of money. When this was paid, they’d push the envelope by refusing to release the hostage and would start sending bits and pieces through the mail – a finger, an ear, a nipple, male genitals, a nose, even an eye. Each mailing would up the ante until they were satisfied. If the family had been milked beyond its means or refused to pay up, they would find what was left of their loved one dumped on the front doorstep.

  However, protection against a Triad kidnapping wasn’t simply a matter of having an armed guard, or guards, present at all times, like a president or prime minister in the West. A Black Society Triad gang had to be made to understand that the retaliation would be greater than anything they themselves could engineer. The Saw brothers and their families would have been paying enormous amounts for a kung fu master or two of great standing and respect to discourage Triad gangs. The gangs would be aware that these masters had a huge, totally loyal and absolutely lethal following who wouldn’t hesitate to go to war on their behalf. They, the Triads, would know that, should the master lift a finger, it would herald a slow and very nasty death for each and every member of the Black Society gang involved.

  A kung fu master is not an all-guns-blazing, sudden-death, Hollywood-style terminator. In fact, he wouldn’t use guns at all, and it was this that created the real fear. This particular martial art, while deadly in its own right, often involved a range of vicious hand weapons, the favourite being a meat cleaver, but also including swords, spears, knives and especially the kuan dao – a scimitar-like blade mounted on a long staff, which, when used by a kung fu master, can kill instantly or simply remove bit by bit the parts of an opponent.

  The point I am making is that when either of the Saw brothers moved from home, it would be in the conspicuous presence of an acolyte with skills approaching those of a master, or at particularly vulnerable venues, the kung fu master himself. If any potential kidnappers dared to approach the tai-pans or members of their families, they could expect a swift and very nasty death. I envisaged one such guardian hovering by our table at the awards dinner. It wouldn’t exactly add to the ambience.

  The second and much less serious reason for my anxiety over including Long Me Saw on the guest list was his preoccupation with longevity. Added to the kung fu guard would be an attractive young woman he laughingly referred to as Miss Chew. She stood behind his chair as he ate, her only role being to supervise his mastication, tapping him on the shoulder when he’d reached one hundred chews, whereupon he was entitled to swallow.

  The Saw brothers, both highly intelligent and sophisticated men, nevertheless possessed the Chinese obsession with longevity. What and how they ate was of great importance in ensuring a venerable old age. For instance, they would not eat Western food, but prized all manner of seafood, the rarer the better, cooked in the Chinese manner. Another important part of their diet was a special soup to boost or raise the ch’i by cleaning the blood. It was both medicinal and wholesome and consisted of various meats, particular vegetables in season, and very potent and rare herbs, as well as common herbs prescribed by a physician or from an ancient family recipe. Often, to aid particular organs or systems in the body, bo soup would contain exotic ingredients: cicadas and other insects, dried snake, scorpions, seahorses, fungi, minerals (in the old days pearls and jade would have been used for royalty), bears’ bile and owls’ eyes. Long Me’s food preparation would be supervised by a chef who was a master of Chinese imperial cuisine, whose knowledge would cover all the exotics, some of which, while prized by the Chinese and only available to the very rich, were barely imaginable in the West. While I am not suggesting the Saw brothers ate these exotic dishes, because I would, quite simply, have no way of knowing, dishes that supposedly aided longevity contained such niceties as parts from tigers, swans, larks, bears’ paws, live fish, clean blood and, most unimaginable of all, live monkey brains. This last dish was prepared by placing a live monkey in a tight-fitting box under the table with just the top of its shaven skull protruding through a round hole in the surface of the table. Its cranium was removed, sawn off by a skilled assistant as the monkey screamed, then the living brain was scooped out and eaten at blood temperature using a long-handled silver spoon designed for the purpose.

  While there were doubtlessly other rituals the two brothers underwent to extend their lives, not all of them were bizarre. Special breathing regimens would be followed daily into old age and each mouthful of food chewed one hundred times. The Chinese believe that controlled breathing and reducing the effort required by the body to digest food places less strain on an ageing physique, in particular, the bowels. Sluggish bowels are commonly linked to cancer, and the Chinese believe heart attacks can be caused by the effort to pass solid excrement. Western doctors are well aware that a percentage of heart attacks occur on the toilet, no doubt from the same cause.

  So you can see that, all in all, the awards dinner, fuelled with vintage French champagne and, should Long Me Saw accept, very good brandy, contained all the powder-keg ingredients for a major disaster. On top of this, Elma Kelly had declared that, because Hong Kong was her city, she more or less expected to take charge. I’d never seen Elma in full major-general mode, but I couldn’t imagine her taking a backward step. Naturally, she knew all the directors of the art gallery as well as the main curator of the portrait exhibition. ‘Splendid chappie, great fun, ha ha, shares a certain proclivity with Noël Coward, and I don’t mean singing, playing the piano or writing risqué songs.’

  The day of the press scrum that had begun with Elma’s congratulatory telephone call had left me pretty much emotionally exhausted. I’d undergone twenty face-to-face interviews and I can’t remember how many phone calls. Added to this was the Sidney Wing conniption and Beatrice Fong’s response to my note of apology. I’d taken the last phone call around 5.30 p.m. then rushed home to catch Karlene’s People on the box. Not because I wanted particularly to see the final version of the interview, but with a combination of hope and despair that she’d found Mercy B. Lord.

  I admit I hungered for a glimpse of her and for the sound of her voice. After the desecrated note from the evil Beatrice Fong, I convinced myself that Mercy B. Lord had been prevented from receiving the numerous letters and flowers I’d sent, which had all boomeranged back. If she appeared on Karlene’s People, at the very least I’d know she was safe.

  I knew she’d be much too dignified and poised to appear indignant or upset in public because I hadn’t sought her approval to enter the portrait in the competition. But I felt certain that I’d be able to read the true message, good or bad, in her dark eyes.

  It was immediately obvious that the general tone of the TV program was self-congratulatory: Singapore patting itself on the back for producing a so-called local artist who’d won a major international art prize with a portrait of a Singapore woman of incomparable beauty. Mercy B. Lord would, I knew, sum up the situation in a flash and play her part with modesty in the carnival of self-satisfaction that followed.<
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  So anxious had I become to see my beloved that I barely listened to Karlene Stein’s introduction or even to her interview with me. I all but burst into tears of disappointment when Karlene finally concluded, ‘We have tried, though without success, to find the whereabouts of the beautiful Singapore woman who was the model for Simon Koo’s winning entry. The artist “claims” not to know her immediate whereabouts, nor will he give us her name without her permission.’ Head to one side and with a sad little smile, she added, ‘And so, we are no closer to solving the mystery and discovering the identity of the woman.’ She paused, and raised one carefully outlined eyebrow while looking directly into the camera. ‘Of course, there is always the chance that the winning portrait is a figment of the artist’s imagination,’ another slight hesitation to milk the moment, then Karlene Stein added, ‘in which case it would be interesting to know if Mr Koo is entitled to this prestigious prize.’ She effected a stern look of disapproval in a close-up to camera. ‘If any of our viewers recognises the subject of the portrait —’ The camera cut to my winning portrait, not the newspaper version but actual film, no doubt despatched on the afternoon plane from Hong Kong, ‘and can identify this beautiful young woman, please call the station. I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to the reputation of our island to know that this Singapore girl – or Thursday Girl – actually exists.’ Cut back to Karlene Stein looking serious, with the station phone number supered on the screen. ‘In the meantime, we are all on tenterhooks.’

  Seemingly only moments after the program ended, Chairman Meow called from Hong Kong, adding to what had been one of the most difficult days of my life. I will return to her phone call later. Needless to say, exhausted as I was, I didn’t sleep much that night.

  You may imagine my surprise when, the following morning, the Straits Times ran a small piece on their front page. Well, not so small – it was spread over two columns and was perhaps five inches deep, with a headline that couldn’t be missed:

  MISSING

  SINGAPORE GIRL

  WINNING PORTRAIT

  MAY BE FAKE

  It went on to say that an extensive search by the TV station had failed to establish the identity of the beautiful woman in the Australian artist’s portrait, blah, blah, blah, suggesting that a woman of such exceptional ‘movie-star’ looks, if she were real, would be well known. It seemed that overnight I had lost my status as one of Singapore’s own and as a con artist my Australian nationality had been restored. Karlene Stein had truly set the cat among the pigeons and, of course, Mercy B. Lord – and Beatrice Fong and Sidney Wing – would be certain to see the story.

  It had been months since Mercy B. Lord left and she had disappeared as completely from my life as she apparently had from Singapore, if Karlene Stein was to be believed. I hadn’t had a word from Mercy B. Lord herself, not even a rebuke by phone or a note in her handwriting. There had been only the boomeranging flowers, the apology note with the word ‘Bastard!’ brush-scrawled across it by Beatrice Fong and, of course, the unopened letters returned with ‘Not at this address’ stamped on them.

  Suddenly the smouldering anxiety I had felt for her safety flared. I swallowed my pride and phoned Ronnie to inquire about her welfare, only to be told in a crisply modulated voice, ‘Simon, she’s safe and getting on with her life, and we’d thank you to kindly mind your own business. I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?’ His answer sounded rehearsed, not at all like the usual Ronnie, who was invariably polite, the exception among the Wing brothers. It seemed as if he’d been prepped for my call. I guess after Sidney’s spit-flecked desk-thumping declaration – ‘She’s mine!’ – there was little or no point in pretending they, the Wings, were not involved in Mercy B. Lord’s life.

  To put it mildly, I was up to my eyebrows in excrement. With the awards dinner less than a week away, my febrile imagination immediately identified yet another potential problem. The Fong–Wing alliance could send Mercy B. Lord out of the country for a week to cause me maximum embarrassment. This placed me between a rock and a hard place. I either copped the flak and caused a major ruckus with the Hong Kong Art Gallery people, and might even have to pass up the prize (the entry form had specified that all artists would need to be able to authenticate the identity of their living subject), or by revealing her name and whereabouts without her permission, betray Mercy B. Lord’s trust. I wouldn’t have minded if the Hong Kong people had decided to pull my portrait – there had to be a second placegetter. I was an ad man and knew it would be great publicity for the gallery; I could tell them exactly how to capitalise on the apparent disaster. My concern lay elsewhere. It was inevitable that Mercy B. Lord would eventually be recognised; the paper was right – she turned heads in the street. And when she was, she would be blamed for ruining the career of an up-and-coming artist, robbing him of the prize and future career opportunities. My only hope was that someone whose word could not be doubted would vouch for her authenticity and be able to prove she existed even if she had been hurriedly shipped out of the country.

  I did the only thing I could think of and sent her one of the Hong Kong Art Gallery’s elaborately printed invitations to the awards dinner, this time insisting Louie da Fly personally deliver it into her hands. First thing the next morning at the agency, I phoned Connie Song at Corona Flowers to order a corsage. She suggested a deep purple cymbidium orchid in a beribboned clear plastic box, but pointed out that they were specially flown in from Taiwan and the courier from the airport wouldn’t arrive until mid-morning. She phoned back at ten-thirty to say the cymbidiums had arrived and I sent Louie da Fly to collect the one she’d suggested.

  In retrospect, I realise the orchid was a pretty clumsy gesture but I wanted to indicate to Mercy B. Lord how anxious I was to have her come to the dinner, to have her share the glory, in fact, to be the centre of it all, as a beautiful woman ought to be. There was something wrong about an ugly Chinese-Australian peasant with the build of a tree stump and a face about as interesting as a dinner plate getting all the credit. Carefully duplicating the script used on the invitation, I added the words:

  Airline ticket, black cheongsam, red shoes and single accommodation provided.

  All horribly gauche, I admit, and I still blush to think of it, but I was hopelessly in love and my addled brain wasn’t coping all that well. Besides, all this unnecessary brouhaha had only served to sharpen my sense of personal loss.

  If love is the act of falling, tumbling head over heels, then I had not only fallen in love but was somersaulting into a bottomless abyss where the adage that time heals all wounds didn’t exist. I confess I was rendered stupid by love, even on occasion stupefied by it. I’d wake at 2 a.m. and pace the flat, mumbling tearfully, ‘But I love you, I love you, I love you, I like a congenital idiot. I’d have to be careful not to say or think her name, for if I did, I’d get an almost instant erection, and I could no longer visit Veronica for relief.

  I added the invitation to the boxed and ribboned corsage and handed it back to Louie da Fly, then gave him his taxi fare and two dollars for drink and sustenance at the tea-house across the road from the Beatrice Fong Agency. If he walked or took a rickshaw and spent only fifty cents on his food (the cost of a cheap meal), he would profit by about five dollars.

  ‘Louie da Fly, this time don’t go inside,’ I said to him in Cantonese. ‘Wait in the tea-house across the road until Miss Mercy B. Lord comes out or goes in, then give her the envelope and the flower. You understand, only give it to her, nobody else.’ I hesitated, trying to keep my voice casual. ‘Tell her to please phone me.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ he replied in English. ‘How much this one flower?’

  ‘Ten dollars, and it’s not for sale, you hear? If she’s not there today, you go back tomorrow.’ I pointed to the small glass tube with the rubber bung that contained the orchid stem. ‘This flower will be perfect tomorrow. It can last all week.’

  ‘I go back all week, boss? Maybe Mr Ronnie not so happy I don’
come my work.’

  ‘No, just today and tomorrow morning. Don’t worry about Mr Ronnie. You have my permission to be away. If she doesn’t come, you bring the flower back here to me.’

  ‘I can give my sister, boss. She not dead yet.’

  ‘Louie da Fly, you heard me. Bring the bloody flower back!’

  ‘Yes, boss, ten dollar one flower. Last time twelve dollar twelve flower, maybe you can take it back to dat lady for flower shop and she can give money back? This pretty bad business. Look at stem! Last flower all got long stem, this one got no bloody stem!’ he said, picking up with alacrity my previous use of the vernacular. While Louie da Fly spoke the four local ethnic languages fluently, he’d convinced himself that his pathway to a bright future lay in mastering the English language.

  Since Mercy B. Lord had left me, I’d habitually worked back each night at the agency, dreading the prospect of returning to an empty flat and a bowl of lukewarm take-away noodles. Ronnie no longer asked me to help out with entertaining clients or even invited me to lunch, but Dansford, having left the office at lunchtime, would sometimes call after five, already well lubricated, and suggest meeting him at a girlie bar for a drink. ‘Do you good, Simon. Lift you out of your misery. A few drinks and then get your rocks off. You’ll be a new man, buddy.’ Why is it that most men believe that the damage done to your heart by the loss of a girlfriend can be instantly repaired by getting drunk and getting laid, as Dansford would have put it?