The Year of the Woman Read online

  Things changed when she got to work.

  HC’s wife’s cousin, David YeePak Huang, was in charge. He insisted on being called Mister David by the twelve fokis he – repeat, he alone – employed. He hired, he fired. In the Giant Super Designer Emperor Carpet Emporium Co.’s confines in Tit Hong Lane, off Jubilee Street, Mr David’s word was law. He set the prices, planned MegaGalactic Super Sales (SPECIAL DISCOUNTS A SPECIALITY), and ruled.

  And he did one other small thing. Late Thursdays, he filched nineteen per cent – never more, never less – of the gross for himself. The tenth he was supposed to use paying off his cousin Linda’s husband’s debts to some loan shark from Mong Kok were overdue because of this, but what was a manager for?

  He was a shopsoiled man, stout for his relatively young age, only twenty-seven but with definite prospects now he had the money thing licked. He already had his eye on an apartment in the Mid Levels, halfway up the Peak beyond earshot of those noisy little brats at the English children’s school in Glenealy. He would rent it to gullible tourists and make more even than the money he stole from the carpet centre.

  These financial affairs had to be handled firmly, not allowed to slide into inactivity. Money brought responsibilities, and that meant doing something, as opposed to idling along in neutral like HC, his cousin Linda’s fool of a husband. A Jaguar motor wasn’t built to remain still, right? Leave it to HC the entire syndicate would run into the sand in a twelvemonth.

  And Linda was no better. A penny gambler. Fine, she took herself off to Macao now and again. Who didn’t? There, she gambled about the same as his own weekly income, which wasn’t much. She also borrowed a little more now and again from Mong Kok money lenders, but they were no big deal. He, Mr David, could handle them. These people needed putting in their place. He was master of the Emporium, and guarantor of the cash they lent Linda for her horse-racing flutters down Happy Valley and the new track at Sha-Tin Heights. Borrow a dollar you owed the lender. Borrow a million you owned the lender!

  Let them never forget that.

  He’d actually said that to the money collector: “Don’t ever forget that.” He’d said it straight out last week when the man came. Mr David was astonished it was so much. He demanded a written statement of all Linda’s transactions.

  “You mean for the whole twenty-three months?” the man had asked, so calm.

  “Every cent.” Mr David lit a cigar, Cuban of course, none of your Yuhan dross, which were probably nothing but banana leaves.

  “In writing?”

  “Written down.” Mr David had fixed the money collector with an eagle eye.

  “You joking?” Calm? The guy was soporific! He knew he was face-to-face with a real business mogul.

  “No joke. Write it down. I don’t trust this sudden jump in the debt. Get it?”

  It came out like an American gangster: Geddit? The money collector had actually paled, like one of those children you now saw about South-East Asia, cross between a negroidal person – American Forces, doubtless from Vietnam days – and an ethnic Chinese from the China coast, say Malaysia, Singapore, or somewhere in the Philippines. Local Hong Kong people called them “green children” because of their peculiar colour. White teachers believed such offspring were specially gifted in painting, drawing, and textiles. Nonsense people, the English. He often quoted the Chinese saying: “Three thousand years ago, what was England?”

  Idle today, he went to the door of the Emporium and spat into the gutter. Odd that so few customers had come today. The staff seemed on edge. Maybe his imperious manner had made them all apprehensive? But was a manager to befriend every labourer who moved a broom?

  He noticed two young men, both in suits and wearing dark sunglasses, standing looking into his picture window at the Afghan and Tientsin carpets. New this month. Exploited children wove them, but so what, if profit was the result? Labour earned money, and so the world spun.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “You Mr David YeePak Huang, the manager?”

  David glanced back into the interior of his Emporium. None of his staff was about. He felt suddenly uncomfortable. These did not resemble customers wanting carpets.

  “Yes.”

  They rushed him, pinning him against the door. One took out a knife, piercing David’s jacket so he actually felt the sharp point.

  “Get a taxi,” the knife man said. The other flagged down a yellow cab just crossing the end of Tit Hong Lane, heading along Jubilee Street by Central Market. It came with a bumping rush, its wheels spattering discarded offal from the gutter. A tourist lady shrieked as the wet chilled her legs and stained her skirt.

  The two youths bundled David into the cab. It bumped away.

  “Y’see that?” the American tourist cried.

  Other tourists took up the call, demanding what was the police number in Hong Kong for God’s sakes, why wasn’t it 911 like in New York, and struggling with their tourist booklets.

  “It’ll be under China Town,” one suggested. “Where’s China Town?”

  “See that? He had a goddam knife!”

  One entered the Emporium and shouted, “Hello? Anybody here? Only, somebody’s just been kidnapped…”

  There was no answer. The place was vacated. The police were there within minutes, but it was too late.

  Chapter Five

  Work began slowly, Alice smiling across and the others not quite knowing how to say jo-san, good morning, without looking harassed. It was KwayFay’s nature to suspect that everybody knew the worst of her, including the terrible knowledge that she was so poor. This made her furtive.

  For an hour she laboured at impossible new currencies. Some neophyte nation (inevitably another Indian Ocean titch sandbank with the acreage of Stonecutters Island but without even that miserable snake-infected mound’s elevation) had invented an independent currency, hoping their grubby bits of paper would rival the Almighty American Dollar, so providing free wealth for a camarilla of seedy officials. HC of course was in a lather, whimpering that his information clerk KwayFay was useless.

  Cheapskate, that was HC. He came in doing his wriggle that told of unbelievable compromise on his part, and beckoned her. She took fifteen minutes leaving her pod to follow the incompetent cheat.

  Here it came, she thought. He was going to shunt her somewhere for a week then sack her by a notice pinned to the office notice-board. Come Monday, he’d strut and tell how he’d finished KwayFay for idling, or some other contrived myth, and feel important.

  She already had clues. One was her friend’s sudden check on her greeting, usually “Okay! In a minute!” Alice Seng merely said, “In a minute!”

  Omitting the okay.

  Uk-kay meant home. Said quickly in Cantonese it sounded a little like “Okay!”, that everyone knew derived from Gold Coast’s “Waw kyehh!” (while being polite to the Yanks who pretended it was their own because they had the Almighty Dollar). Homophones were an endless source of mirth in Hong Kong, but also of peril. What greater risk than mentioning home, when redundancies were whispered in the early morning tea break, gatherings that KwayFay could never afford to join?

  “KwayFay! Sit down.”

  Churlish to decline, but she was already sticky from the heat. No wonder western peoples had so much energy on arrival in the Colony. Only later did they develop the economical gait, the listlessness for which their women were famed when, sapped of vitality, they knew sunshine for the skin-ageing malignancy it truly was. She sat on the plastic chair, determined not to cry when he gave her the sailor’s elbow.

  HC smiled, sweat on his brow.

  “KwayFay, you have a rise! Not,” he put in at speed, “permanent, for your wages already bleed me to the bone.”

  He brought out a red envelope with gold lettering and passed it across his desk. His smile was that of the hopeful courtier, puzzling and dangerous. She left it lying there. What, did he want her to pinch her left sleeve in the fingers of her right hand and move her hands up and
down, as she’d seen old women do in Cheung Chau? For what? She suspected this was a cruel joke, dismissal couched in pretence.

  The last of the Manchu Emperors was so learned that Republicans published his divine poems anonymously, in shame at having no poets of their own. Ghost Grandmother called Republicans deceiving scoundrels, with worse and much coarser invective on a bad night, even speaking badly of the great Doctor Sun Yat Sen, the First Republican, who surely must be only round the corner from wherever Ghost Grandmother lived now, across the Heavenly Bridge. Well, KwayFay would make HC, chief deceiving scoundrel, say it outright, not hide behind tricks so banal they wouldn’t deceive a Hainanese.

  “I don’t understand.” She didn’t know if she spoke the words or merely thought them. She sat still.

  “It’s a present, KwayFay! Money!”

  More sweat, with a real distress now? Traffic roared, shouts rising from below. Some motor had stolen space from another. Trams pinged and crashed, accelerating in that slow musical crescendo that ended in a whine as they took the curve to the Pacific Place shopping mall.

  “Why?” she asked, conscious of incongruity.

  He stared. There was no why in money. It was simply there, like weather and politics.

  He shoved the red envelope forward in small jerks, as a fledgling bird made hesitant starts on the edge of its nest. One-handed, she noted with scorn. What a boor! You passed even the smallest gift with two hands, proper Cantonese style, not one. Sloven; she worked for a sloven. The shame of it! Ghost Grandmother would go on about him tonight. She’d say, “What a tortoise! Forgetting the Eight Laws of Politeness! What is he, a Japanese?” and cackle at her offensive wit. Little sleep tonight, then. KwayFay hated him.

  “Is it rebate?” Definitely her own voice now and without a quaver.

  “Rebate?” His smile became a ghastly rictus.

  Over time, HC imposed fines on the staff. She was especially at risk. Smarting over some domestic reversal with Linda his gambling-mad wife, he’d say, “KwayFay! You are bated five per cent! Work faster, understand? More encouragement for clients to invest!”

  And one-twentieth of her wage would be missing. Or one-tenth, on a bad day. Mostly for his wife’s gambling, or sheer spite caused by poor trading figures. She understood. His theft was therapy, as a doctor gave tranquillisers to see a patient through some horror. At her expense, of course. She and her friend Alice never discussed this except by nudges and looks.

  “Rebate?”

  HC tried to make it an imperious demand, but failed. Astonished, KwayFay recognised supplication, like the expression he wore when attempting a maul. She might have felt compassion but detestation proved more satisfying.

  “Of the fines.”

  “The fines!”

  He attempted a laugh. It strengthened her. She felt as if she had burned joss sticks at the little Tai Wong Temple on Ap Lei Chau island where the god Hung Shing was worshipped; or, more aptly, pausing for a discreet mental worship when she passed by 22, Tin Hau Temple Road, where, decades ago there once stood the Fung Sin Ku Temple. Uplifted, perhaps. A temple, however poor, had a right to memory just as if it were a person. Ignore that kind of responsibility and you would find yourself in trouble. Righteousness overcame ignorance at every level. Perhaps she might tell Ghost Grandmother that tonight, it being quite clever, able to boast a little, at the thought. But was it clever to refuse money?

  “Yes, the fines.”

  “Who takes notice of those!” he boomed. “Flea bites, KwayFay! A captain has his hand on the tiller, so a boss has to control his business by discipline!”

  She rose slowly. The heat had stuck her bottom to the chair. How slovenly to skim office spending on proper chairs! Those Triad men had the grace to think ahead in this; why not a businessman?

  “I must get back to work.”

  Sack me for that, she thought with belligerence. The red and gold envelope seemed to wince: I am money, left ignored?

  “KwayFay. Please.”

  “I have problems,” she invented, to escape. “Bounty Cook Island Republic. The Hang Seng Bank will refuse to set a currency exchange rate at three o’clock.”

  “Will they?” he shrieked in a frantic gusher of sweat. She observed him with open contempt. “For sure?”

  She was surprised. She’d simply assumed that’s what would happen. The Hang Seng gave the cheapest rates of exchange for tourist money, as everybody knew except tourists. Why would a sound bank do otherwise with a dud currency?

  “Sure.” Let him do what he would with her guesses. Today was awry, things in it beyond her control.

  “Then we mustn’t touch it!” he gasped out, clutching his chest.

  “I’ve already refused it twice.”

  No thought that she might have guessed wrong. What if Australia or some place, New Zealand even, maybe Fiji if things went disastrously wrong, decided to support the new money for political reasons?

  “Tell all the other staff.”

  “No, First Born.” And explained, cold, “You docked my salary last month for doing that.”

  “No!” He wiped his brow, looking about as if for escaped logic. “Yes! No, KwayFay! I’ll see to it!”

  His bravado, truculence in the face of adversity, such as a brave man might feel, was as convincing as a cardboard cut-out.

  She marched out, pleased. She walked down the corridor, reached her pod and sat. She closed her eyes for a second. The office still felt the same; her screen still glowed, saving its pixels by a writhing coloured shape. Yet she felt as if she’d suddenly been promoted. The money she’d left on HC’s desk would serve as a reproach. He would be devastated. Let him give it to his grasping failed-gambler wife. (As fail she would, KwayFay felt with delight, in the third race this afternoon at Happy Valley when her miserable beast, straining every nerve under the wild flogging from its Australian jockey in scarlet and white, yellow starred cap, would come in a sorry fifth.) Serve the bitch right.

  “All well?” Alice put her head round. “What were you saying about some horse?”

  Oh, dear. “Just thinking aloud. Has anybody cited that new money?”

  “The Indian Ocean thing? They say America will, before Ice House closes this afternoon.” Alice paused. “Did you hear YeePak’s missing?”

  KwayFay looked up. “HC’s cousin?”

  “Him.” Alice’s whisper intensified. “HC was full of him a month back. Remember, the Carpet Emporium?”

  KwayFay went cold. The office was quiet, people looking her way. Did they know she once advised HC against hiring him?

  “Since last night. The police came round.”

  “Some woman, is it?” KwayFay tapped the computer mouse but she felt sickened. People didn’t disappear. If a man vanished over some woman, all Hong Kong knew within minutes exactly where and why.

  She tapped in another refusal for Bounty Cook Island Republic’s new currency. Whatever office rumour said, no thank you, get lost. Guides, all hedging like crazy, were shoaling in from Central Office, but let them whistle. She’d given her delirious guess, HC could fight it out and set his own rate if he was stupid enough. He’d maybe make another fortune for his wife to squander.

  What respect could she feel for an oaf who hadn’t even the decency to put a small god in there? The CID, head of Hong Kong police, had a diminutive shrine to Kuan Kung, the Ruling Essence of Heaven and Earth, with a red votive light burning before it. The practice originated in Yaumati Police Station long ago, but so? It explained why Hong Kong police were so successful. Obeisance now and again pleased a god, especially one feeling neglected for lack of attention. Stood to reason. Meanwhile, HC feared the derision of chance clients.

  She rejected three other client demands for quotations on the new currency, sweetly ablating their e-mails. Let HC joke all he wanted. He would probably sack her at the day’s end anyway. Maybe the gaunt elderly man, Old Man, who strangely felt such concern even about her asking, on a whim, for a black motor car, had felt li
ke this when those Triad threat-men had taken him prisoner? Poor, poor thing.

  She didn’t trust hope. It was a myth, being without numbers, unlike money.

  “You know the place above Kennedy Town?” Old Man said. He was smoking. He only allowed this in special circumstances, as now.

  “Many places there, master.”

  The young suit was guarded. Old Man stood watching as the killers cut away the bound man’s kneecaps and dropped them into the dish. The floor was well sanded with cement mixed well in, according to old traditions. Lime would be sprinkled on the sand-blood mess afterwards, making everything decent.

  The victim had done screaming, given up. His mouth was stuffed with rags, and small bamboo shoots stuffed up his nostrils, green so they would bend into his throat to provide an airway. He could not choke while the pain was inflicted.

  “You must know it. Broad steps go up, those small shops all the way up.” Old Man waited.

  “Green Lotus Terrace!” the suited threat-man said with relief. “The stair steps are Precious Dragon Terrace. Trees along the wall, with a school?”

  “That’s it.” Old Man nodded at the torturers’ quick glance. They resumed cutting wide flaps from the victim’s abdominal wall and bent it over his scrotum. The man screwed his eyes tight shut in agony, stayed silent. “Why is it not on Government lists?”

  “The temple belongs to the Guild of Builders and Contractors, First Born.”

  “I thought so. Whom do they pay?”

  The suited man grew uncomfortable, found wanting. “Not known.”

  “Look into them.”

  Mister David, the victim, slumped, his eyes protuberances of horror. The two killers waited for instructions, facing each other awaiting new orders, quick or slow. Old Man dusted his long black garb and smiled at his assistant.

  “You are unhappy at my remark?”

  “No, First Born. Whatever you decide.”

  The gaunt man did not smile. “You are wiser than your years.” He turned to the victim and inspected his plight with detachment. He said in a quiet voice, “You caused me a deal of trouble, and took my valuable time. You now know what you ought to have known long ago.”