Jade Woman l-12 Page 3

Suddenly I was drenched and ill; Christ, how ill. No money. No checks, passport, driver’s license, checkbook. Everything gone. Everything. I still had a hankie in my left trouser pocket, my comb, and nothing else.

  My mind spun. I don’t know if it has ever happened to you. It’s the most sickening feeling on earth. I felt so nauseated I almost fainted. I’d been cleaned out as I slept.

  Blindly hating, I stood glowering at the throngs. Maybe they hadn’t got far… But who were the thieves among this massive congress? Worse than any football crowd. And in which direction? My mind interrupted with Surely it couldn’t have happened, Lovejoy?

  You’re the scourge of the Western world, never the victim. Simply stay calm, reason it out. Search again. Hot and cold in waves, I hunted the linings. Make sure of every cranny, all the pockets. Above all, think. Had Algernon come, seen you exhausted, taken your belongings into safe custody? Was he in fact waiting in the bar restaurant…

  ? I was fooling myself. I’d been robbed, done over.

  Of course I’ve been burgled before now, and a right rotten sickening experience it is.

  It’s rape, destruction of the only self-image the world lets you have. The hands of malevolent strangers had delved through my clothes, filching, thieving… I almost vomited, had another frantic wash of panicky searching in case I’d overlooked some nook.

  Cool, Lovejoy. Slowly as you can. It’s happened. Okay, it’s terrible, but all is not lost. I stood forlorn as the mobs coursed past, all laughing in that astonishingly vigorous Chinese. I tried lecturing myself. You can phone Janie to cable more money, throw yourself on the mercy of the airline, find the police. Or the Embassy? Explain to those superb civil servants… but did a Crown Colony have an ambassador? What was it, a governor? Get a lift to Macao. The landward route was probably out, but I mean boats must be going there all the time, right?

  After a ten-minute struggle I got to the airline’s information desk and was greeted by a smiling lass. God, I was glad to see her. Efficiency. Above all, help for the wanderer. I loved the unwavy dark hair, the oval eyes, pretty features. My spirits rose.

  “YescanIhelp you?” she said, staccato but all in one.

  “Er, please. I’ve had my money stolen. I was—”

  Her face ponded over. Her gaze unfocused. “MayIseeyourticketplease?”

  “That’s the trouble, miss. They took my ticket too. But I did travel on your airline.”

  Her gaze was ice. A policeman appeared at her shoulder. He was smart, crisp. Khaki drill, belt, red tabs. He didn’t go through the smiling phase at all. He had a miniature squawk-box on his Sam Browne.

  “Passport, please,” he said.

  I explained. “They took everything.”

  “Where it happen?” asked the cop. His eyes never left me.

  “Over there.” I indicated. “I was sitting on the floor, asleep, when they—”

  “Sleep on floor? You on floor?”

  Sweat seeped around my middle. It wasn’t heat. It was fear.

  “Why you sleep on floor?”

  “Well, I was tired, waiting for my friend.”

  “When you come?”

  “From London. This morning.”

  The eyes were flint now. “No flight from London today.” He said a couple of barkish words to his intercom and two more policemen materialized, one each side of me.

  Crisply clean, khaki shorts, belts. And holsters. Some Chinese travelers stopped, smiling with pleased interest, crowding around. They discussed me briefly in that up-and-down language. I wilted with dejection. This was a bigger mess than I’d escaped from. I was giddy with hunger, thirst, confused out of all reason.

  “Who your friend? Where your identity card?”

  “Algernon. He’s in Macao,” I said desperately. “Racing cars, in a big race.”

  “Macao? You Macao?” The tension eased fractionally. Instantly I recognized the signs of cops in search of a problem-disposal system.

  “Macao.” I nodded eagerly to help it along. All I wanted now was to get away. “Today.

  Portuguese Macao.”

  The first policeman wanted to be sure. “You go to Macao?”

  “Yes,” I agreed in despair. “For car racing. Me mechanic.” I almost said I’d flown in on the big white bird, but caught myself. These cops looked shrewd, knowing. And back in East Anglia maybe the tax bailiffs were already hunting me for faking antiques with malice aforethought. No, helpful police were the last people I wanted. The only way out was to transform myself into a trouble-free bona fide passenger. “I’m looking for the Macao, er, ship, er, ferry. Could you tell me how I get there, please?”

  “Taxi,” they told me firmly. “Ten minutes Macao ferry.”

  “Good, good!” I beamed them one of my special sincerities. “Thank you very much for your help. I’d better get going!” I said good-bye and marched off into the throng.

  The loos were sign-posted. I went in to wash, and drank myself full more to ablate my growing hunger than to quench thirst. Ten minutes and I was out of the building.

  The heat blammed me. White-hot air enveloped me so, I actually caught my breath.

  The aerodrome concourse must have been air-conditioned to Hong Kong’s version of coolth. Uneasily I viewed the traffic swarms, the acres of parked cars, the distant fawn hills hazed and shimmering, that incredibly blank blue sky. I’m not good in heat. In this oven I knew I’d be terrible. I almost turned back, but two policemen were looking out at me through the glass. I gave them a confident smile and briskly stepped out.

  Ten yards, fine. I like walking.

  A hundred yards, not so fine. My clothes were sweat-drenched. My face dripped. Cars were roaring and squealing. I actually glanced around. Surely this nasty sun’s pressure couldn’t keep on all frigging day? Two hundred yards and I was exhausted. Instinctively I turned left and down towards the maximum density of habitation.

  Three hundred yards and I had to stop, gasping, under the shade of a tree. It too seemed to be having a hard time of it, managing somehow without real roots and clinging to a vertical roadside of sand-colored rocks. Saloons, taxis, lorries topped with green canvas, passenger coaches, the lot fumed past in dust clouds. For the first time I really began to feel a bit frightened. It’s unusual in me—no, honestly it is, because I can scratch survival anywhere, make do with practically nothing. Here, I was literally evaporating in an alien world. Already I felt light-headed. Thirst thickened my throat. I waited for two lorries loaded with vegetables to clatter by and resumed my plod. The terrible sun stood heavily on my crown as soon as I ran out of shade.

  The road appeared hewn from the mountain. Closer, it was nothing but dry sandy stuff interspersed with giant granite slabs. Here and there a greenish scumble of vegetation hung on for grim death. Small water grooves showed where trickles had cut. At least that meant they sometimes had rain, thank God. I trudged on.

  Ahead traffic columns, slower now, obscured any view to my left, but up ahead I could see tall off-white tower blocks of flats. Soon I was among them. I’d never seen so many. I began to pass small side roads leading in. And, oddly, came across a team of road menders laboring fast and hard at a subsistence. Odd because they all were women, attired in loose black pajama suits with black-fronded cartwheel hats made of wicker. They all grinned and called. I grinned back and said hello. They were slogging against time, straw baskets of rubble on their shoulders and trot-walking in plastic sandals to discharge the burden down a worn wooden chute. I’d never seen so many gold teeth. There was an important lesson for me in all this, if I hadn’t been too bemused to spot it. Trudge.

  Gradually the occasional bus began to emerge. I was thankful only for some different color than fawn and white. Among the high-rise apartment blocks I saw a patch of pale green, gardeners stooped over bushes, but the scene only made me feel homesick and I piked on under that oppressive sun. I’d had the sense to knot my hankie as a hat—did no real good—and to pause in every bit of shade I could find, but could
still feel myself petering out. Once, a curve in the road cast a thin shadow and I halted there, semi-collapsed, honestly wondering whether to go back to Kai Tak and start explanations all over again to the police, the reception-desk girl, continue waiting for Idiot Algernon. At least there’d been drinking water and a place to sit down. But the hostile police… I began to remember tales of Hong Kong’s drug problems, smuggling, gangsterism, its secret societies—they must have suspected all sorts. No. Soldier on. Before long I should begin to acclimatize. This dreadful exhaustion would dwindle, and maybe by then I’d have reached Macao.

  Nape dripping, seeping soggily at every pore, I wended through the cacophony and dust under that bloody-awful sun. The few European faces that stared at me from passing saloons showed a mild curiosity—was I letting the side down?—and taxis slowed hopefully. By then I was too defeated to think. It’s a dangerous condition, perhaps the worst plight of all. You can hardly see, let alone work out opportunities, chances, dredge up some scam. It’s the way cattle must feel on their last truck. Except, being human, I suppose, a kernel of fury was germinating within at my abject condition. Somewhere in me as I hoofed towards Kowloon, rage started seething.

  Somebody was going to pay for this. All right, so now I had and was nothing. Wholly negligible. But destitution’s not just poverty; it’s humiliation. I wasn’t going to stay on zero.

  Besides the heat there were Hong Kong’s planes. God, but they flew low. I found myself ducking as roaring engines came strafing in. Look up, you see the aircraft’s vast underbelly slide across over the street. It’s in my mind yet. How the Chinese in those narrow Kowloon alleys manage, God alone knows. It’s madness. Their pot plants tremble on the balconies. I even saw the washing wafted on their projecting bamboo poles, pennants in some berserk secret charge. And beneath that frightening howl Hong Kong gets on with things without a glance. Noise has no market.

  As the streets and pavement shops of Kowloon began to crowd in, I felt that I’d kill to climb out of the gutter. I wish I hadn’t told myself that, not now, but honestly the deaths weren’t my fault, and in any case what else could I have done? Life’s nobody’s fault either.

  So it came to pass, gentle reader, that, murderously vowing hatred against persons known and unknown, desiccated as a coconut, delirious from the heat, penniless and weary, I limped into Hong Kong proper, Pearl of the Orient and the brilliant Fragrant Harbor of the legendary China Coast. Okay, it didn’t need me. It hadn’t even noticed me. But it had got me for better or, as I found, worse.

  In the next twenty-four hours Hong Kong noticed me all right. To this day I wish it hadn’t.

  5

  « ^ »

  SIX o’clock that evening I was sitting giddily on a wall beside the harbor. The sun was finally sinking, thank God. It had nearly done for me. I never wanted to see the bloody thing again.

  Later I was to learn that I was in Kowloon, more precisely, looking out towards Stonecutters Island. A crowded street market adjoined the harbor where I sat. Farther along a mass of huge junks was crammed into the embrace of a mole. Between me and Hong Kong Island itself lay a massive white liner with slender twin funnels in primrose yellow—hope for survival? Desultorily I tried to feel cool as the hawkers slopped about running their barrows homeward, clack-clack-clack in plastic sandals. A few pai dogs were scavenging in the lessening light. They looked as furtive as I felt. I’d settle for a grubby cabbage leaf; the dogs could have the bits of raw gristle in the puddles. I’d never seen open drains before. I’d decided to wait when I saw the crowded vegetable stalls thinning, the fruit barrows pulling out. Nothing leaves rubbish—edible if grotty—

  like a market. At least I’d be able to wash the grime from any wholesome bits. There was a water standpipe twenty yards off; hawkers had been using it. And I had my eye on a scatter of overripe oranges strewn about. I felt weird, practically off my head. My worst fear was that I was dulled, too stupefied to be worried.

  Then an even worse thing happened.

  As those small green-canvassed lorries loaded up and the iron-rimmed hand barrows wheeled off, other people appeared.

  “No,” I groaned, aghast.

  Before my horrified eyes they moved deliberately into the space, collected the rubbish and set up house. I stared, appalled. In less than a minute, practically before my stupid brain could take it in, the street was a mobile town and empty of calories. Packing cases were tilted end-on. Strips of canvas and a stick became a dwelling for crouching people. An old woman crawled into a tent made of two box lids and a cardboard door.

  Some brought lanterns, transforming the hectic thoroughfare into a Caravaggio scene of golden light and shadows. It happened all in a few moments, and I was still starving.

  Enviously but mystified I watched a skeletal man in shorts and singlet begin scraping the kiklings from discarded oranges into a can and carefully spreading the peel on the pavement. Little children ran to queue noisily at the standpipe. They carried yokes from which battered tins dangled, and nattered laughingly as they filled their containers.

  Hong Kong’s water carriers, average age about six.

  Even now I don’t know if I was hallucinating, but I saw one of the most sordid events of my life. Threadbare children grouped round a gutter. Dully I watched. They dipped a string in a filthy syrup tin and lowered the string through the grid. They lay in the gutter, peering down and calling excitedly. Then they pulled the string up slowly. It was coated with dangling cockroaches. They scraped them off into a jar. Four or five repeats and the jar was heaving, full. They took it away in triumph. I hate to think what… I turned away, nauseous. Poverty kills civilization even faster than it kills love.

  Dejected and weary, I rose to scavenge elsewhere. Strangers, it seemed, got no change out of Hong Kong.

  When I’d finally tottered into Kowloon, that vibrant nucleus of the densest aggregation of mankind on this earth, I’d been down but not quite out. The spectacle was exhilarating. Even in my worn condition I had felt the excitement that Hong Kong has.

  It is hilly, color, brilliance, hectic.

  It’s an irregular peninsula sticking out southwards from China’s Kwangtung Province, with Kowloon at the tip and a number of islands scattered offshore. The main island, but not the biggest, is Hong Kong proper, the nearerness of which creates the most magnificent deep-water harbor. Victoria —which everybody calls Central District—holds Hong Kong Island’s main population, but townships abound. The areas away from Kowloon and the island are the New Territories. At first I’d no idea of direction and roamed the pavements, desperate simply to stay alive among cavalry-charge traffic maddening itself by incessant hooters.

  The tall close buildings cast a little shade, the sun closing perilously on the meridian. I noticed a Chinese habit, elderly thin gentlemen robed in long blackish priestly garments walking with small leather note-cases held to shield their bald heads. But such casual pedestrians were rare. It was a shambles of haste: thinlegged porters in shorts and singlets hurrying past in their indefatigable trotwalk carrying boxes five times too heavy, heat and more heat from that head-splitting sunshine, bright noise, shouts, lots of laughter, and all adazzle. Imagine a zillion cars, lorries, handcarts, markets seemingly rioting in a fast-forward scrum, fumes from screaming engines, a world at maximum revs in crowded streets lined by shops whose very adverts climbed in vertical slabs up to a transparent heaven. Above, balconies hung with signs, washing, straggly green fronds. Here below, hawkers were everywhere. In ten yards you could have bought watches, any leather item you’d ever heard of, crockery, a complete outfit, cameras, from pavement sellers crammed along the curb. Sun-scrawny individuals rivaled giant multiple stores by selling from bicycles. The shops were open, counters unglassed and no doors. I’d never seen so many different sorts of vegetables, fruits, spices, jewelry, clothes. I found I couldn’t even tell what some shops were selling, so tangled and scrunged their arrangements. And they went up onto the next floor, and the next afte
r that, business hurtling skyward.

  My natural wit returned sluggishly when I began to notice grand hotels. I decided to raise my game and remembered good old garrulous Goodman’s card, which I found in my top pocket. His office (“General & Art Import/ Export”) was in Princes Building, wherever that was. I tried it on at the Peninsula Hotel but got rebuffed at the three-glass double doors by an army of pale-blue liveried bellboys, and left between the two giant Dogs of Fo which gape forever at the fountains. The Shangrila was as bad, though if I’d been resident I’d have been delighted to know they gave the elbow to scruffs like me, if you follow. I got as far as glimpsing the Carrara-marble staircase of the Regent and scented the living orchids before I was out wandering in that oven sun. Hopeless.

  By afternoon I was dead on my feet. I’d seen a small hotel in Nathan Road calling itself the Golden Shamrock. I badly needed a telephone, but I’d no money. If only I could con a call out of some desk clerk to Del Goodman, I might be able to… what? I didn’t know. All I knew was that Macao now seemed farther off than ever. By then I’d blundered into a shopping arcade where I drank in the cooled air for an hour among the glittering counters. It was there that a vast illuminated wall display mapped the entire colony for me. I used its computerized cursor to highlight Princes Building, then, heart sunk, the Macao Ferry Terminus. Both were across the harbor, on Hong Kong Island itself. They might as well be on the moon.

  Giving my sweat-drenched thatch a quick comb, I marched smiling into the Golden Shamrock. A laid-back youth watched me come.

  “Hello,” I said. No air-conditioning in this titchy place. The carpet and decor were definitely grubby. A fan flapped lazily overhead. “Has Mr. Goodman arrived yet, please?”

  He wasn’t really interested. A few keys hung behind him on a board.

  “He works in Princes Building. We’re meeting here.” A dusty restaurant sign pointed at the stairs. “For supper,” I added wistfully.

  “No Goodman,” he said while I peered irritably at the visiting card.