Jade Woman

6

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THE heat emptied from China’s coast as if daylight had suddenly decided to switch off. I emerged from the Ocean Terminal and walked by the Kowloon Public Pier. Hundreds of Chinese had the same idea, so quite a press milled along the waterside.

If you’ve never seen Hong Kong’s harbor, go soon. See for yourself because it’s really no good my going on about the spectacle. You know the pictures: the massive junks trailing a forest of multicolored flags, the huge oceangoing ships, the chugging diesel lighters, that cerulean sky, that long fawn spine of the island rising clear out of the ultramarine harbor, the crustacean-white buildings. They’re on Chinese restaurant wall posters the world over, so you’ve seen plenty. The feel’s different. You need the dynamism, Hong Kong’s loveliness zapping out at you from all sides, the glorious immediacy. And you’ve got to be there to feel that. Daunting yet exhilarating. Too much, when you’re starving.

It’s a physiological truth that if you lie down, you don’t feel as hungry. A doctor told me that, but by then I’d already found it out. How long had I gone hungry now? Two days?

The aroma of the noodle stalls, the wafts of fry-ups no longer raved in my dulled brain.

I was quite light-headed. Ominously my hunger had faded, becoming a lead hollow in my belly. I perched on the railing to stare at the dying sun glare and oily water.

Rubbish floated in a kind of sludge, plastic bottles and other indestructibles. I crouched and dozed fitfully in the cooling air, every so often waking with a start to see the cream-and-honey clock tower still there. Finally I rose and wandered, but never too far for safety as nine o’clock crept closer in the dusk. But safety, I was fast learning, comes rationed by the minute in Hong Kong. Two safe minutes together and you’ve had your share. What I didn’t know was that I’d already had mine, been lucky. I thought I’d been through hell.

Once, I was accused of honesty—a woman who should have known better —but I soon cleared myself by betrayal. (She forgave me, which only goes to show women’s unreliability. Probably comes from having naught to do all day.) That unnerving experience taught me resilience. So, starving and sun-grilled, I racked my experience in the interests of survival.

Back home it’d have been a doddle. I mean, take Vasco Pierce. He was a born incompetent. From reasons of backing knacker’s meat on Derby Day he once got stranded in London. Know what he did? Went up to one of those girls who hand out free advertising at railway stations and offered to do her stint, five thousand pulps.

Delighted, she gave him a couple of quid and offed. Whereup Vasco starts selling commuters these free drosses. Kept it up all day, made enough to buy himself a new suit. God’s truth. But here in sun-sogged Hong Kong nothing was free, except me.

Nothing was vulnerable, except me. And nothing easy, e.m. Fate rubs your nose in it.

You have to stay alert, like old Vasco.

Trying for alertness, I sensed a sudden faint bonging in my chest. Pausing in a small patch of shade long enough to stop sweat waterfalling to sting my eyes, I peered about. I saw a shop front opposite crammed with loads of utter dross—vases, porcelains, ivory, bone statuettes, soapstone cups. Before I could stop myself I’d darted through the traffic, causing an unholy orchestra of horns. There it stood on a glass shelf, the cause of my sudden throb. I literally staggered, looking in. Shaped like a circular cushion made of red lacquer, its surface was carved into scenes of the Eight Immortals feasting and swilling. Even through the thick glass I felt its radiance. No more than a container for a gift of luxury food, its dull appearance dazzled me like a lighthouse. Only about fifteen inches across, it beamed 1560 a.d. at me. Undamaged apart from its aging cracks, dirty, but pristine, Ming period. I’d only seen one before, in the Victoria and Albert’s undeserving museum. True lacquer comes from a Rhus tree species, and is so highly poisonous that the lacquer people all died young. It’s weird stuff. The ancient Chinese built up thin layers on ash and bits of thin cloth, polishing each layer to a lovely sheen. Modern lacquer usually doesn’t have these layers. I leaned and peered. Sure enough, a chipped area on the lid revealed a series of striations.

Maybe 250 layers, applied over two years. I knew without even trying that it would pass the fingernail test: Genuine old can’t be dented, modern rubbish can— but watch out for polyurethane hardeners. Its beauty almost slammed me unconscious, weakened as I was. What cruel accident had cast it among a shoal of pathetic replicas? I knew I could get it for a pittance, only I hadn’t got that much. (I warn you: Genuine ancient lacquer is currently the most underpriced of all antiques.) Tears of frustration ran down my face. I forced myself away. People never want what they have, it seems to me. Like, I mean, Catherine the Great of Russia spurned the immortal Matthew Boulton’s magnificent sidereal clock which he sent her in St.

Petersburg in 1776 (she thought it rather plain). And here were thousands, millions of people who could buy that superb antique, all walking past uncaring. I went and sat by the harbor, feet dangling.

“Lovejoy?”

Somebody was shaking my shoulder. I awoke from a dream, but the jail bars were only the railing and the bottomless sucking pit below the night swirl of Hong Kong’s harbor.

So much for vigilance. Mr. Goodman, though, was there with a Chinese bloke in the waterfront lights. I scrambled up trying to look worth an investment, smiling ingratiatingly. My bottom lip cracked and bled merrily. I gripped Goodman’s hand and wrung it.

“Thanks for coming, sir. You’ll not regret it.”

He gazed at me doubtfully. This boring fellow passenger seemed bigger than I remembered, more vital. Still the same florid bonhomie, only now he was inspecting me with a clear desire to keep his distance. I nodded and beamed at his reluctant companion.

“I know I must look a mess. But if…” Instinct took over. I’d been about to beg for food, plus a few rubles to zip to Macao or phone Janie to cable some gelt. But a beggar is easily ignored. A bum offering a fortune, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish.

That decision kept Algernon out of the reckoning. It also saved my life. “But if you’ll just give me a try, any test, I’ll show you. I’ll divvy for you at that sale you talked of.”

“You can hardly stand up, Lovejoy.”

Shame washed over me. In his voice was the stern admonition the affluent always give to the penniless. Starving to death, old chap? Pull yourself together.

“I told you why. I got dipped.”

“Right. Sim?” His mistrust still showed. People were passing. Another ferry arrived, churned foam, did its slow spin to disgorge passengers. Sim pulled out of his pocket two small cups, porcelain bowls really. Ch’ien Lung teacups, in those blunt Cantonese colors.

His companion spoke, his eyes fixed on me. “One genuine. One not genuine.”

Fit or ill, you have to smile. An attempt had been made to copy the real thing, and believe me, a good fake is worth its weight in gold. The faker had got the glaze right, the scrolled red and green curled right, the design ideal. Lovely work, yes. But modern is always gunge. Only genuine antiques can chime your heart.

“Which, Lovejoy? Right or left?”

I took them from him, turned from Goodman and looked the Chinese bloke in the eye. I tossed both cups over my shoulder. They ploshed faintly in the water below.

“Neither,” I said. “Allow me?”

They stood there. I pointed to the Chinese bloke’s leather case. It was the sort I’d seen people carrying by a wrist loop. He glanced at Goodman, unzipped it and offered me a bundle of purple tissue. Even the blanketing lights couldn’t disguise the little bowl’s beauty. It was painted with a Chinese version of a European garden scene. They’re almost valuable enough to retire on, after the Hervouet sale in Monaco. In a dying flirt with rebellion I made them quiver by pretending, a quick gesture, to chuck that treasure after the duds. “Sorry, chuckie,” I told the eggshell porcelain. “Joke.” And returned it.

The pair looked at each other.

“I can do it again,” I said. “If I live that long.”

“How much do you want to borrow?” Goodman said. His solemn mate muttered a bit in Cantonese.

“Enough for one bellyful and a long-distance phone call. I’ll pay it back.”

Goodman said dryly, “That’s what your sort always says, old chap. What guarantee do we have? The sale’s in three days.”

“Keep me alive and I’ll do the viewing day with you.” Famished as I was, I felt narked.

My lot? For heaven’s sake, I only wanted a bowl of those stringly boiled strips everybody in Kowloon seemed to be eating except me. “Look. I must have a couple of quid, mate, or I’ll die.” To me it seemed such a simple problem: Lend me a fiver and he’d have a trillion-percent return on his loan. “Is starvation such a crime here, for fuck’s sake? I’ll sign anything…” I stood abject, hating myself. Despicable.

“Very well. Come on.”

As I went along, walking quite quickly though having difficulty with a swaying world, I wondered what that expression was on Goodman’s face. His Chinese pal Sim showed only a shrewd understanding, but… ? Disgust. That was it. If I’d had the energy I’d have seethed. In fact I tried it for a millisec, but the concrete rose from underfoot and slammed my left shoulder. I found myself picked up and hauled into a taxi. My coordination had left me, hunger finally doing its job and cutting my feet from under.

Instead of indignant, I felt really quite affable and sat looking out at the glittering shops gliding past outside.

From my experience of later days I realize that we drove along the famous Nathan Road, through Tsim Sha Tsui, and across Jordan Road into Yau Ma Tei, with me smiling quite benignly at the evening crowds, the neon signs kaleidoscoping. The street traders were doing fantastic trade.

We alighted near my old marketplace, now a clutch city of a thousand lights, paraffin lanterns roaring, every square inch occupied. There was a static crowd, I saw. The sudden astonishing din was an opera, right there in the open market. Still smiling and dying, but ever so politely, I stayed put as the taxi battled off. Each of the male characters on the ramshackle stage seemed to be covered in flags, sticks projecting up from their shoulders. You’ve never seen such decorated costume. And the makeup dead white, a foot thick, with rose cheeks. Fantastic. But the noodle stalls were vending away to the hungry. Bags of fruit were being passed—was it free?—among the audience. It was all very festive, steaming, and deafening, with people chatting irrespective of the stage goings-on. I promised myself to pay Chinese opera a proper visit in my next reincarnation.

“Here you are,” Goodman was saying. His scorn showed. He shoved a couple of red notes in my hand. He and his oppo lit cigarettes, gazing at me. Tears started, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I clutched those two notes as if my life depended—well, it did, but you know what I mean. I tottered towards the nearest noodle vendor.

Then the oddest thing.

A couple of mahogany-skinned blokes came up, grinning. Nobody in the crowd took a blind bit of notice as they offered me a bit of brown chewing gum. They wore the frayed shorts, string vests, and sandals of those porters I’d seen laboring all day between vehicles and harbor lighters. One pressed the gum into my hand. I nodded and smiled. Some local custom? Then I tried it and spat it out. It wasn’t chewing gum at all. Politely shaking my head I pushed past their sudden cries of protest and at the nosh vendor.

“A bowl, please.” I offered him a note. He shook his head, grinning. I offered him both notes. Again the headshake. A whole chorus of opinion and discussion started from the crowd. Most were noshing away with chopsticks.

“Please,” I said. “I’m hungry.” I felt like weeping. I’d thought myself safe with money to buy food, and rescue was as elusive as ever. What was the matter with my gelt? It looked genuine Hong Kong stuff. Was it that I wasn’t Chinese? But a small gaggle of American tourists were on the fringe of the opera audience, all merrily eating in fine fettle. So?

Wearily I peered around for Goodman and Sim, but the crowd and the lights and the shadow… My leg was tapped.

“Please,” I said, offering my red notes to someone, anyone.

The scent of the food made my head spin. I seemed to be the center of a small uprising. The hawker was expostulating, enjoying all this attention. Everyone was pressing close, pointing to my money, laughing. I was a sensation; dying in a private famine, but a riot. That tap on my calf, a definite tug.

A stub of a man was by my leg. And I really do mean a stub. No legs, hands almost gnarled into bumps. Age is difficult in Chinese, and in the shadows he could have been anything. He sat on a square of wood. He didn’t look too good, deformed as hell. Even his face was gnarled. A knobbly stub with no real hands.

But he held up a bowl.

It was between his two forearms. He held two chopsticks in his right pudge. I crouched down in the press while the crowd jabbered on round the vendor. The stub nodded at me, the bowl. He was offering me his grub.

“Look, mate,” I said weakly, knowing I was going to take it anyway but doing the conscience bit. “You look as if you’re on your last legs—er, sorry— as if you need it, never mind me.”

He shook his head. No capisco. I offered him my red notes, which puzzled him. I shrugged, took the bowl and stuffed my notes down the little geezer’s singlet.

The next few moments are unclear in my memory. I know I wolfed the grub and that another bowlful came and went. It was hot, oddly tasteless. But I engulfed it, not masticating a single calorie.

Maybe it was the weight of the grub in my belly making me bum-heavy like a budgie’s push toy, but the heat was suddenly oppressively heavy. The stubby bloke took his empty bowl back and, lodging it in a hole cut in his wooden square, went for more. He moved, I noticed, by thrusting at the ground with a stick strapped to each arm, poling himself along. The wood base was mounted on a pair of roller skates. I sat on the ground among everybody’s legs with the opera’s shrilly din and the arguing and the heat and the novelty of grub—and gently fainted.

“You’re not a junkie, Lovejoy,” Goodman said accusingly.

“Me? A dope addict?” I stared at him across the table. The restaurant was too posh, really. They had found some Indian tea, milk, sugar, and I was slowly coming together.

We were across the road from the street opera and its surging mob. I still don’t know how I got there. “You’re off your frigging nut, Del, er, sir.” Sim was enjoying himself debating through the menu with two white-jacketed waiters in voices raised over the hubbub of diners noshing and talking.

“You really were starving back there, weren’t you?” I must have stared because he shrugged apology. “We assumed all sorts.”

It came together. His disgust. And the chewing gum must have been opium or something. My beeline for grub must have seemed inexplicable.

“But why wouldn’t the hawker sell me any grub?”

Del Goodman had the grace to be embarrassed. “Sorry, old fruit. I’d given you two hundred-dollar notes. He hadn’t change. These street hawkers operate on fifty-cent courses.”

“You silly sod.”

“Sorry. I see now we’re in business.”

“Business?”

“The sale. Sim’s my firm’s auction controller. He handles our bids.”

“There is one thing, Mr. Goodman.” I swilled tea round my mouth. “Now I’ve tasted Hong Kong’s version of destitution, I don’t want another dose. So could you, er… ?”

He smiled. “Maybe start afresh, Lovejoy, eh?”

“I gave that little crippled bloke all the money.”

“Yes, well, Lovejoy.” He stirred uneasily in his seat while Sim positively blanched. “It was that which finally convinced us. When we saw you buy the leper’s—”

“Leper?” I closed my eyes, seeing that knobbly face, the tuberose features, the incredible ugliness of that scarring. I thought, Christ, will I start dying again, this time from something else?

“Surely you knew that? Wasn’t it obvious?”

The waiters returned to argue merrily with Sim while other waiters shouted encouraging advice and nearby diners chipped in. I was beginning to get the hang of Hong Kong: whatever’s going on, give it your pleased attention; if it involves money, join in the fracas and express opinion at maximum decibels. Sim marched off towards the bar with waiters in tow, all yakking.

“We’ll give you a health check, Lovejoy,” Goodman was saying.

“Meanwhile, er… ?”

Rather ruefully he passed me a bundle of notes. “That dollop you gave for a few noodles was over the odds, Lovejoy. In future, remember to haggle. It goes against the grain back home, but in Hong Kong nothing has a fixed price. Remember that.”

“Aye,” I promised dryly as Sim returned and the real grub started to arrive. “Except life.

I’ll remember.”

That meal I ate one-handed. I kept the other on the money. I’d learned the hard way.

But not enough, as it happened, for me and my friends.