The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Sixth Annual Collection

MEMORIES OF THE FLYING BALL BIKE SHOP Garry Kilworth

The old Chinese gentleman was sitting cross-legged in the shadow of an alley. He was smoking a long bamboo pipe, which he cradled in the crook of his elbow. I had noticed him as we climbed the temple steps, and the image stayed with me as we wandered through the Buddhist-Tao shrine to Wong Tai Sin, a shepherd boy who had seen visions.

It was so hot the flagstones pulsed beneath our feet, but despite that David was impressed with the temple. We waded through the red-and-gold litter which covered the forecourt, the dead joss sticks cracking underfoot. Cantonese worshippers were present in their hundreds, murmuring orisons, rattling their cans of fortune sticks. Wong Tai Sin is no showcase for tourists, but a working temple in the middle of a high rise public housing estate. Bamboo poles covered in freshly washed clothes overhung the ornate roof, and dripped upon its emerald tiles.

The air was heavy with incense, dense enough to drug the crickets into silence. We ambled up and down stone staircases, admiring carvings the significance of which was lost in generations of western nescience, and gazed self-consciously at the worshippers on their knees as they shook their fortune sticks and prayed for lucky numbers to fall to the flagstones.

We left the temple with our ignorance almost intact.

The old man was still there, incongruous amongst the other clean-shaven Hong Kong men, with their carefully acquired sophistication, hurrying by his squatting form.

He had a wispy Manchu beard, long grey locks, and dark eyes set in a pomelo-skin face. A sleeveless vest hung from bony shoulders, and canvas trousers covered legs that terminated in an enormous pair of bare feet. The bamboo pipe he was smoking was about fifty centimeters long, three centimeters in diameter, with a large watercooled bowl at one end, and a stem the size of a drinking straw at the other. He had the stem in his lipless mouth, inhaling the smoke.

There was a fruit stall owner, a man I had spoken to on occasion, on the pavement nearby. I told David to wait by the taxi stand and went over to the vendor. We usually spoke to each other in a mixture of Cantonese and English, neither of us being fluent in the foreign language. He was fascinated by my red hair, inherited from my Scottish Highland ancestors.

“Jo san,” I said, greeting him, “leung goh ping gwoh, m’goi.”

I had to shout to make myself heard above the incredibly loud clattering coming from behind him, where sat three thin men and a stout lady, slamming down mah jong tiles as if trying to drive them through the formica table top.

He nodded, wrapped two apples in a piece of newspaper, and asked me for two dollars.

Paying him, I said, “That man, smoking. Opium?”

He looked where I was pointing, smiled, and shook his head vigorously.

“Not smoke opium. No, no. Sik yin enemy.”

I stared at the old gentleman, puffing earnestly away, seeming to suck down the shadows of the alley along with the smoke.

“Sik yin dik yan-aa?” I said, wanting to make sure I had heard him properly. “Smoke enemy?”

“Hai. Magic smoke-pipe,” he grinned. “Magic, you know? Very old sik yin-pipe.”

Gradually I learned that the aged smoker had written down the name of a man he hated, on “dragon” paper, had torn it to shreds, and was inhaling it with his tobacco. Once he had smoked the name of his enemy, had the hated foe inside him, he would come to know the man.

The idea was of course, that when you knew the hated enemy—and by know, the Chinese mean to understand completely—you could predict any moves he might make against you. You would have a psychological advantage over him, be able to forestall his attacks, form countermoves against him. His strategy, his tactics, would be yours to thwart. He would be able to do nothing which you would not foresee.

“I think . . . ” I began to say, but David interrupted me with a shout of, “I’ve got a taxi, come on!”, so I bid the stall owner a hasty good-bye, and ran for the waiting vehicle. We leapt out into the fierce flow of Hong Kong traffic, and I put the incident aside until I had more time to think about it.

That evening, over dinner at the Great Shanghai Restaurant in Tsimshatsui, I complained bitterly to David about John Chang.

“He’s making my life here a misery,” I said. “I find myself battling with a man who seems to despise me.”

David was a photographer who had worked with me on my old Birmingham paper. He had since moved into the big time, with one of the nationals in London, while I had run away to a Hong Kong English language newspaper, after an affaire had suffered a greenstick fracture which was obviously never going to heal.

David fiddled with his chopsticks, holding them too low down the shafts to get any sort of control over them. He chased an elusive peppered prawn around the dish. It could have still been alive, the way it evaded the pincers.

“You always get people like that, on any paper, Sean—you know that. Politicians, roughriders, ambitious bastards, you can’t escape them just by coming east. Some people get their kicks out of stomping on their subordinates. What is he, anyway? Senior Editor?”

David finally speared the prawn with a single chopstick and looked around him defiantly at the Cantonese diners before popping it into his mouth.

“He’s got a lot of power. He could get me thrown out, just like that.”

“Well, suck up to the bastard. They like that sort of thing, don’t they? The Chinese? Especially from European gwailos like you. Take him out to lunch, tell him he’s a great guy and you’re proud to be working with him—no, for him. Tell him the Far East is wonderful, you love Hong Kong, you want to make good here, make your home here. Tell the bastard anything, if it gets him off your back. Forget all that shit about crawling. That’s for school kids who think that there’s some kind of virtue in swimming against the tide. You’ve got to make a go of it, and this bloke, what’s his name? Chang? If he’s making your life hell, then neutralize the sod. Not many people can resist flattery, even when they recognize what it is—hookers use it all the time—‘you big strong man, you make fantastic lovey, I never have man like you before. ’ Codswallop. You know it, they know it, but it still makes you feel good, doesn’t it? Speaking of hookers, when are you going to take me down the Wanch . . . ?”

He was talking about Wan Chai, the red light district, which I knew I would have to point him towards one evening of his holiday. David liked his sex casual and stringless, despite all the evil drums in such a lifestyle these days. I needed emotion with my lovemaking, not cheap scent and garlic breath.

I lay in bed that night, thinking about what David had said. Maybe the fault did lie with me? Maybe I was putting out the wrong signals and John Chang thought I did not like him, had not liked him from our first meeting? Some men had sensitive antennae, picked up these vibrations before the signaller knew himself what messages he intended to transmit.

No, I was sure that wasn’t it. I had gone out of my way to be friendly with John Chang. I had arrived in Hong Kong, eager to get to know the local people, and had seen John Chang as a person to whom I would have liked to get close. But from the beginning he had come down hard on me, on my work, on everything I did. I had been singled out for victimization, and he piled adverse criticism on my head whenever he got the chance.

However, I was willing to admit that I was not the easiest of employees to get along with, from a social point of view.

John Chang had a happy marriage. I had never met his wife, but she phoned him at the office quite often, and the tone and manner of the conversation indicated a strong loving relationship. This caused me to be envious of him. I once dreamed of having such a relationship with Nickie, and had failed to make it work. I still loved her, of course, and on days I missed her most I was testy and irritable with everyone, including John Chang.

I fell asleep thinking that perhaps I was more than partly to blame for John Chang’s attitude toward me. I vowed to try to improve things, once my vacation was over and I was back at work.

There was a cricket making insistent noises, somewhere in the bedroom. It took several sleep-drugged minutes for me to realize that it was the phone chirruping. David? Had he gone down the Wanch and got himself into trouble?

“Hello, Sean Fraser ...”

“Fraser?” John Chang’s clipped accent. “Get down to the office. We need you on a story.”

I sat up in bed.

“I’m on vacation. I’ve got a guest here, dammit!”

“Sorry, can’t help that. Tim Lee’s gone sick. He was covering the Governor’s annual speech. You’ll have to do it.”

The line went dead. He had replaced the receiver.

I slammed the phone down and seethed for a few minutes, before getting out of bed to have a shower and get dressed. David was still asleep on the living room couch when I went through to the kitchen. I woke him and told him what had happened, apologized, and said I would see him that evening.

“Don’t worry about me, mate. I can sort myself out. It’s that bastard of a boss you want to sort out. ”

Once I had covered the usual bland yearly speech presented by the British Governor of Hong Kong—written by a committee into a meaningless string of words—John Chang wanted me to visit a fireman who lived in the Lok Fu district. The man had been partially blinded six weeks previously while fighting a fire in Chung King Mansions, a notorious giant slum where holidaying backpackers found relatively cheap accommodation in an impossibly expensive city.

“It's five o’clock,” I protested to Chang, “and I have a guest to look after.”

He regarded me stonefaced.

“You’re a reporter. You don’t work office hours.”

“I’m on bloody holiday.”

“That’s tough. You cover this, then you’re on vacation—unless I need you again. If you want to work for someone else, that’s fine too. Understand me?” He stared hard at me, probably hoping I would throw his job in his face. I was not about to do that.

I said coldly, “I understand.”

I rang David and said I would be home about nine o’clock. I advised him to go out and eat, because I was going to grab some fast food on my way to Lok Fu. He seemed happy enough, and told me not to worry, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I was close to strangling John Chang with my bare hands.

I saw the young fireman. He seemed philosophical about his accident, though to me his disability pension seemed incredibly small. His wife was working as a bank clerk and now he could look after their two infants, instead of sending them to the grandparents for the weekdays. He could still see a little, and as he pointed out, government apartments, like most private apartments in Hong Kong, were so small it had only taken him a short while to get a mental picture of his home.

During the interview the fireman pressed brandies upon me, as is the custom amongst the Hong Kong Chinese. By the time I left him, I was quietly drunk. I caught a taxi. The driver took me through Wong Tai Sin, and I passed the temple David and I had visited the previous evening. On impulse I told the driver to stop and paid him off.

The old man was still there, at the opening to the alley. He was sitting on a small stool, staring dispassionately at passersby with his rheumy eyes. The pipe was lying on a piece of dirty newspaper, just behind him. I stumbled over to him, trying to hide my state of inebriation.

I pointed to the pipe.

“Ngoh, sik yin-aa?” I said, asking to smoke it.

Cantonese is a tonal language, the same words meaning many different things, and by the way he looked at me I knew I had got my tones wrong. I had probably said something like “Me fat brickhead” or something even more incomprehensible.

“M’maai,” he said emphatically in Cantonese, thinking I wanted to buy the pipe and informing me that it was not for sale.

I persisted, and by degrees, got him to understand that I only wanted to smoke it. 1 told him I had an enemy, a man I hated. I said I wished “to know” this man, and would pay him for the use of his magic pipe. He smiled at me, his face a tight mass of contour lines.

“Yi sap man" he agreed, asking me for twenty dollars. It was a very small sum for gaining power over the man that was making my life a misery.

I tore off a margin piece of newspaper and wrote JOHN CHANG on it, but the old man brushed this aside. He produced a thin strip of red-and-gold paper covered on one side with Chinese characters and indicated that I should write the name on the back of it. When I had done so, he tore it into tiny pieces. I could see the muscles working in wrists as thin as broom handles, as his long-nailed fingers worked first at this, then at tamping down the paper shreds and tobacco in the pipe bowl.

He handed the musty-smelling instrument to me and I hesitated. It looked filthy. Did I really want that thing in my mouth? I had visions of the stem crawling with tuberculosis bacilli from the spittle of a thousand previous smokers. But then there was a flame at the bowl, and I was sucking away, finding the tobacco surprisingly smooth.

I could see the dark smoke rising from the rubbish burning cauldrons of Wong Tai Sin Temple, and as I puffed away on the ancient bamboo pipe, an intense feeling of well-being crept over me. I began to suspect the tobacco. Was it indeed free of opium? Had I been conned, by the fruit seller and the old man both? Maybe the old man was the fruit stall owner’s father? It didn’t seem to matter. I liked the pair of them. They were wonderful people. Even John Chang seemed a nice man, at that moment in time.

When the holiday was over, David left Hong Kong, and I returned to work. John Chang was in a foul mood the morning I arrived, and was screaming at a young girl for spilling a few drops of coffee on the floor. A woman reporter caught my eyes and made a face which said, “Stay out of his way if you can.”

The warning came too late.

“You,” snapped John Chang, as I passed him. “That fireman story was bloody useless. You didn’t capture the personal side at all."

“I thought I did,” I said stiffly.

“What you think is of no interest to me. I asked you to concentrate on the man and his family, and you bring in all that rubbish about government pensions. ”

“I thought it needed saying.”

He gave me a look of disgust and waved me away as if I were some coolie who was irritating, but not worth chastising further. I felt my blood rise and I took a step toward him, but Sally, the woman reporter, grabbed my arm. She held me there until John Chang had left the room.

I turned, the fury dissipating, and said, “Thanks.”

She gave me a little smile.

“You would only be giving him the excuse he needs,” she said in her soft Asiatic accent. Peter Smith, another reporter, said, “Too bloody right, mate. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”

“He looked as if he could have killed that girl,” I said to Sally, a little later. “All over a few spots of coffee.”

“It was her perfume. For some reason that brand drives him crazy. I used to wear it myself, but not any more. Not since I realized what it does to his temper . . .”

Understand the one you hate.

I had to admit my temporary drunken hopes for a magical insight into John Chang had failed. There was no magic on the modern streets of Hong Kong. An antique pipe, nicotined a dirty yellow, stained black with tobacco juice, dottle clinging to the bowl, was nothing more than what it was—a lump of wood. Had I really believed it would help me?

I guess a desperate man will believe anything, even that he will some day manage to forget a woman he loves: will wake up one morning free of her image, the sound of her voice in his head gone, her smell removed from his olfactory memory. Memory sometimes works to its own secret rules and is not always subject to the will of its owner.

Memories can be cruel servants.

I began to have strange dreams, even while awake, of a woman I did not know. She was small, slim and dark, with a familiar voice. We were very intimate with one another. I pictured her in a kitchen, her hands flying around a wok, producing aromas that drove my gastric juices crazy. I saw her brown eyes, peering into mine from behind candles like white bars, over a dining-room table made of Chinese rosewood. There was love in those eyes. We drank a wine which was familiar to my brain but not to my tongue. She chattered to me, pleasantly, in Cantonese. I understood every word she said.

These pictures, images, dreams, began to frighten me a little, not because they were unpleasant, but because they felt comfortable. They worried me with their coziness. I wondered whether they were some kind of replacement for the memories that I was attempting to unload: the result of a compensatory mental illness. Perhaps I was trying to fill emotional gaps with strange fantasies of a Chinese woman.

I began to look for her in the street.

There were other, more disconcerting thoughts, which meant very little to me. Scenes, cameos, flashes of familiar happenings that meant nothing to me emotionally. I pictured myself going into stores and shops I did not recognize, for articles I had never even considered buying. There was an ambivalence to my feelings during these scenes. I saw myself buying an antique porcelain bowl, the design of which I instinctively and intensely disliked. Yet I purchased it with loving care and a knowledge of ceramics I had not previously been aware of possessing. In another scene, I went into a bakery and bought some Chinese moon cakes, a highly sweetened, dense foodstuff which most gwailos avoid, and I was no exception.

I was sure I was going quite mad.

John Chang kept me busy, hating him. He did not let up on me for one moment during the sweltering summer months, when the wealthy fled to cooler climes and school teachers blessed the long vacations they got during the season when Hell relocated to the Hong Kong streets.

During this humid period the Chinese lady with the loving eyes continued to haunt me. I would languish at my desk after work, reluctant to leave the air conditioned building, picturing myself making love with this woman in a bed with satin sheets, surrounded by unfamiliar furniture. It seemed right. Everything about it seemed right, except when I questioned it with some other part of my mind, the part firmly based in the logic that said you do not know this woman. It was true. I had never met anyone like her, yet she looked at me as if I were hers, and some unquestioning area of my mind, less concerned with what I knew, and content to be satisfied with what I felt, told me yes, this had happened, this was a proper interpretation of my experiences.

I began to read about schizophrenia, wondering whether I was one of those people who have more than one personality, but the books that I read did not seem to match what was happening to me. I balked when it came to seeing a therapist. I was afraid there was something quite seriously wrong with me.

In October, some people organized a junk trip to Lamma Island, the waterfront of which is lined with excellent fish restaurants. Sally asked me if I was going and I said I might as well. Most of the newspaper’s employees would be there, and a few of the employers as well. The weather had turned pleasantly hot, had left the dehumanizing summer humidity behind in September. It promised to be a good evening.

There were rumors that John Chang would be going, but that did not deter me. I wondered if I could get drunk enough to tell him what I thought of him.

I was one of the last to jump aboard the junk, which then pulled out into the busy harbor. I stared at the millions of lights off to port: Causeway Bay, Wan Chai and Central, resplendent during the dark hours. A beer was thrust into my hand. I drank it from the can and looked around me. Sally was there. She waved. Peter Smith stood in animated conversation with another of our colleagues, his legs astride to combat the rolling motion of the craft in the choppy harbor waters. Then I noticed John Chang, sour-faced, standing by the rail.

Beside him was a lady I had never seen before, not in the flesh, but a woman with whom I had made love, in my head, a thousand times. My heart began to race and I felt myself going hot and cold, alternately, wondering whether I should try to hide somewhere until the evening was over. If she sees me, I thought, she’s bound to recognize me as the one . . .

Then I pulled myself up short. One what? What had I done to her? Nothing. Not a blessed thing. So where did these pictures come from that had invaded my head? The best way to find out was to talk to her. I tried to catch her eyes, hoping she would come over to me without bringing John Chang.

Eventually I captured her attention and she looked startled. Did she know me after all? Was I indeed living some kind of Jekyll and Hyde existence? It was only after a few minutes that I understood she was not staring into my face at all: it was my red hair that had her attention. Then she realized she was being rude and averted her gaze, but Chang had caught us looking at each other and motioned for her to cross the deck with him. Before I could turn away, he was standing in front of me, gesturing towards the woman at his side.

“I don’t believe you’ve met my wife, have you Fraser?”

She spoke in a gentle tone, admonishing him.

“John, Mr. Fraser must have a first name?”

He looked a little disconcerted.

“Yes, of course,” he said stiffly. “Sean. Sean Fraser. Scottish I think.”

“My ancestors were,” I blurted, “but we’ve lived south of the border for two generations. The red hair, you know, is proof of my Celtic origins. I’m still a Scot, in spirit.”

I shook her hand, acutely embarrassed by the fact that I knew what she looked like naked, lying on the bed, waiting for me to press myself against her. John Chang’s wife. There were two small brown moles under her left breast. There were stretch marks around her abdomen.

I felt the silkiness of her palm, knowing that soft touch. I remembered the time she had whispered urgent nonsense into my ear, the first time our orgasms had coincided exactly, a miracle of biology which had left us breathless for several minutes afterwards, when we had both laughed with the utter joy of the occasion.

Staring into her eyes, I knew that if there was a memory of such happenings, they did not include me. What I saw there was a terrible sadness, held in check by a great strength. Alice Chang was one of those splendid people who find a natural balance within themselves. When a negative aspect of life causes them to lose equilibrium, a positive one rises from within their spirit, to meet it, cancel it out.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Alice,” I said.

“Oh, you know my name.” She laughed. “I thought John tried to keep me a secret. Do you know this is the first time he has allowed me to meet his colleagues?”

I looked quickly at John Chang, and then said, “I’m afraid I’ve heard him speaking to you on the phone. The office has good acoustics. I don’t eavesdrop intentionally. ”

“I’m sure you don’t,” she said, and then he steered her away, towards one of the directors, leaving me sweating, holding onto the rail for support. Not because of the rocking motion of the boat, but because my legs felt weak.

The following weekend I took a boat trip to Lantau Island and sat at a beach restaurant, staring at the sea and sand. I needed a peaceful place to think. Hong Kong’s national anthem, the music of road drills, pile drivers, traffic, buzz saws, metal grinders et al. was not conducive to reflective thought.

There were evergreens along the shoreline of Silvermine Bay, decorated with hundreds of tattered kites. The children used the beach to fly their toys, which eventually got caught in the branches of the large conifers, and remained there. The brightly-colored paper diamonds gave the firs the appearance of Christmas trees. Around the trunks of the kite-snatchers were dozens of bicycles, chained to each other for security, left there by adolescents now sprawled on the sands.

I had managed to engineer one more chat with Alice Chang, before the end of that evening on Lamma, and spoke about the antique porcelain bowl, describing it. I had to lie to her, telling her that John had spoken to me about it, seemed proud to be its owner.

“Oh, yes. He loves ceramics, you know. It’s his one expensive hobby.”

I knew now I was experiencing John Chang’s memories.

It was nothing to do with me. I had not made love to Alice Chang, but I carried John Chang’s memories of such occasions, those that he wished to recall, and some he did not. It was a disturbing ordeal. There was a grim recollection of being hit a glancing blow by a truck, when he was small, and another when he was falsely accused of stealing from his school friends. I was gradually getting “to know” my Chinese boss and there were some dark areas in there which terrified me. I woke up at night, sweating, wondering where the fear was coming from, what was causing the desire to scream.

The night after the junk trip, I had spoken to Sally.

“How many kids has John Chang got?” I asked her casually.

She shook her head.

“None, so far as I know. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason. I met his wife, last night. I thought she mentioned something about a child, but I couldn’t be sure. I suppose I must have been mistaken.”

Sally said, “I’m positive you are.”

I drank steadily, as I tried to puzzle through my jumbled memories of his early marriage, and my eyes kept being drawn towards the bicycles, chained to the tree trunks. I struggled with a black beast of a memory, which was utterly reluctant to emerge from a hole it had dug itself.

A bicycle.

This was the key, but something prevented me from opening the lock. There was the idea that a bicycle was a detested thing, a deadly, ugly machine that should be outlawed, banned from use. People who sell bicycles should be prosecuted, imprisoned, hung by the neck . . .

That was very strong, very strong.

One of the kids from the beach came and unlocked her bike, climbed into the saddle, and rode away along the path. I experienced a forceful desire to scream at her, tell her to get off, return the machine to the salesman.

Where?

A shop sign popped into my head, which read: THE FLYING BALL CYCLE CO.

Then that dark cloud extended itself from the back of my brain, blacking out anything that might have followed.

Back at the flat I received a surprise telephone call from England. From Nickie. She asked me how I was. Did I like the Far East? Yes, she was fine. She was seeing one or two people (she didn’t call them men) and things were absolutely fine.

Her voice was recognizably thin and tight, even over the phone. There was great anger there, pressing against her desire to sound casual. I noticed that it was 3 o’clock in the morning, her time, and I guessed she had been unable to sleep, obsessed with relentlessly reviewing the bitter times, furious with herself for failing to retaliate strongly, when something hurtful had been said, wishing she could raise the subject again, but this time be the one to wield the knife, cut the deepest.

I knew how she felt, having gone through the same cycle, many nights. We had both fired words, intended to wound, but we both remembered only being hit.

I told her 1 was having some trouble with one of my bosses. She sympathized coldly, but what she had really called about was the fact that I still had two of her favorite poetry books. She would like them back again, please, the Hughes and the Rilke.

Oh, those, yes, but three o’clock in the morning?—she really must want them badly, I said. I told her I remembered seeing them, just before leaving England for Hong Kong, but could not put my hand on them at this time. Could she call again later, when I had done some more unpacking?

No, she couldn’t. I had been in Hong Kong for nearly a year. Hadn’t I unpacked my things yet?

Her words became more shrill as the anger seeped through like a gas, altering the pitch of her voice.

When I did manage to unpack, could I please post them back to her? Yes, she was aware they were only paperbacks and could be replaced, but she didn’t see why she should buy new copies when she already owned some—good-bye.

The emptiness that filled the room, after she had put down the phone, would have held galaxies.

I tried not to hate her, but I couldn’t help it. She was there, I was here. Thousands of miles apart.

I picked up the Rilke, from the bedside table, open at Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes. It was pencil marked in the margins, with her comments on the text. It was her handwriting I had been reading, not Rilke’s poem. The flourishes were part of her, of the woman I had loved, and I had been sentimentalizing, as well as studying them for some small insight into her soul. I wanted to understand her, the secret of her self, in order to discover why. Why had it gone wrong?

The terrible ache in me could not be filled by love, so I filled it with hate instead. I wanted to kill her, for leaving me, for causing me so much emotional agony. I wanted to love her. I wanted her to love me. I hated her.

On Monday afternoon, I cornered Peter Smith. I recalled that he used to cover cycling stories for the paper. At one time his speech had been full of jargon— accushift drivetrains, Dia-Compe XCU brakes, oversized headsets, Shimano derailleurs. The language of the initiated, for the enthusiasts.

“You’re a bike fanatic,” I said. “You cycle in New Territories, don’t you?”

“Not so much now,” he patted a growing paunch, “but I used to. Why, you looking for a sport to keep you fit?”

“No, I came across this guy who kept raving about the Flying Ball Bike Shop. Know it?”

Smith laughed.

“My boy, that shop is a legend amongst cyclists. You can write to the owner of the Flying Ball from any corner of the earth, and he’ll airmail the part you need and tell you to pay him when you eventually pass through Hong Kong. ”

“Why Flying Ball? Is that some kind of cog or wheel bearing invented specifically for push bikes?”

Smith shook his head.

“I asked the owner once. He told me the shop had been named by his grandfather, and he forgot to ask the old man what it meant. The secret’s gone with grandpa’s polished bones to a hillside grave overlooking water. Part of the legend now. ”

“Where is it? The shop, I mean.”

“Tung Choi Street, in the heart of Mong Kok,” he said, “now buzz off, I’ve got a column to write.”

I went back to my desk. A few moments later I experienced a sharp memory pang and looked up to see the office girl placing a polystyrene cup of steaming brown liquid on my desk top. She smiled and nodded, moving on to Sally’s desk. I could smell her perfume. It was the same one she had been wearing the day John Chang had bawled at her.

It was twilight when I reached Tung Choi Street. Mong Kok is in the Guinness Book of Records as the most densely populated area on the face of the earth. It is teeming with life, overspilling, like an ants’ nest in a time of danger. It is rundown, sleazy, but energetic, effervescent. Decaying tenements with weed-ridden walls overhang garage-sized factory-shops where men in dirty T-shirts hammer out metal parts for everything and anything: stove pipes, watering cans, kitchen utensils, car exhausts, rat cages, butter pats, fish tanks, containers, and so on. What you can’t buy ready-made to fit, you can have knocked up within minutes.

Over the course of the day, the factory-shops vomit their wares slowly out across the greasy pavement, into the road. The vendors of fruit and iced drinks fill in the spaces between. Through this jungle of metal, wood, and plastic plough the taxis and trucks, while the pedestrians manage as best they can to hop over, climb, circumnavigate. Business is conducted to a cacophony caused by hammers, drills, saws, car horns. It can have a rhythm if you have a broad musical tolerance and allow it flexibility.

THE FLYING BALL CYCLE CO.

I found the shop after two minutes’ walking.

I stood on the opposite side of the road, the two-way flow of life between me and this unimposing little bike shop, and I remembered. It hit me with a force that almost had me reeling backwards, into the arms of the shopkeeper amongst whose goods I was standing. The dark area lifted from my brain, and the tragedy was like an awful light, shining through to my consciousness. The emotional pain revealed by this brightness, so long covered and now unveiled, was appalling.

And this was not my agony, but his.

I turned and stumbled away from the scene, making for the nearest telephone. When I found one, I dialed John Chang’s home number. It had all come together the moment I laid eyes on the Flying Ball: the hate John Chang bore towards me; the unexplained stretch marks on Alice Chang’s abdomen; the blankness in his eyes, the sadness in hers.

“Mrs. Chang? This is Sean Fraser. We met on the junk—yes, the other night.

I wonder if you could ask John to meet me, in the coffee shop by Star Ferry? Yes, that’s the one. Can you say it’s very important. It’s about your son, Michael . . . Yes, I know, I know, but I have to talk to him just the same. Thanks."

I put down the receiver and hailed a taxi.

I was on my second cup of coffee when he arrived. He looked ashen and for once his fagadc of grim self-assurance was missing. I ordered him a cup of coffee and when it arrived, put some brandy in it from a half-bottle I had bought on the way. He stared at the drink, his lean face grey, his lips colorless.

“What’s all this about?” he said. The words were delivered belligerently, but there was an underlying anxiousness to the tone. “Why did you ask me to come here, Fraser?”

He hadn’t touched his coffee, and I pushed it towards him.

“I know about Michael,” I said.

His eyes registered some pain.

“I know how he died.”

“What business is it of yours?” he said in a low voice. “How dare you? You’re interfering in my family affairs. You leave my family alone.”

“I’m not interested in your family. I’m interested in the way you treat me. Since I’ve been in Hong Kong, you’ve made my life hell. I didn’t bring your family into the office, you did. You’re punishing me for something you won’t even allow yourself to think about. You’ve blocked it out and the guilt you feel is causing you to hurt other people, especially redheaded gwailos.

“I’ve been the target for your suppressed anger, your bottled grief, for as long as I can stand. It’s got to stop, John. I’m not responsible for Michael’s death, and you know it, really. I just happen to be a European with red hair. I wasn’t even in Hong Kong when that driver took your son’s life ...”

“Shut up!” he shouted, causing heads to turn and look, then turn back again quickly. His face was blotched now with fury, and he was gripping the cup of coffee as if he intended to hurl it into my face.

“This is what happened, John,” I said quietly, ignoring his outburst. “It was Christmas, and, being a Christian, you celebrated the birth of Christ in the way that gwailo Christians do. You bought presents for your wife and twelve-year-old son. You gave your wife some perfume, a brand you won’t allow her to use now because it reminds you of that terrible time, and you asked your son what he would like most in the world ...”

There were tears coming down John Chang’s face now, and he stumbled to his feet and went through the door. I left ten dollars on the table and followed him.

He was standing against the harbor wall, looking down into the water, still crying. 1 moved up next to him.

“He said he wanted a bicycle, didn’t he, John? One of those new mountain bikes, with eighteen, twenty gears. You took Michael down to Mong Kok, to the Flying Ball Bike Shop, and you bought him what he wanted because you were a loving father, and you wanted to please him. He then begged to be allowed to ride it home, but you were concerned, you said no, repeatedly, until he burst into tears—and finally, you relented.

“You said he could ride it home, if he was very, very careful, and you followed behind him in the car.”

I paused for a moment and put my arm around his shoulders.

“The car that overtook you, halfway home, was driven by a red-haired foreigner, a gwailo, and he hit Michael as he swerved in front of you to avoid an oncoming truck. The bike itself was run over. It crumpled, like paper, and lay obscenely twisted beside your son’s body. You stopped, but the other driver didn’t. He sped away while you cradled Michael’s limp body in your arms, screaming for an ambulance, a doctor.

“They never caught the hit-and-run driver, and you’ve never forgiven yourself. You still want him, don’t you, that murdering red-headed gwailo, the man who killed your son? You want to punish him, desperately, and maybe some of that terrible guilt you feel might go away. ”

He turned his tear-streaked face toward me, looked into my eyes, seeking a comfort I couldn’t really give him.

I said gently, “That wasn’t me, John. You know it wasn’t me.”

“I know,” he said. “I know, I know. I’m so sorry.”

He fell forward, into my arms, and we hugged each other, for a brief while. Then we became embarrassed simultaneously, and let go. He went back to leaning on the wall, but though the pain was still evident, his sobbing had ceased.

Finally he turned, asked the obvious question: how did I know so much detail about Michael’s death? It had happened many years ago.

Rather than go into the business with the pipe, I told him I had been to Wong Tai Sin, to a clairvoyant, and the man had looked into John’s past for me.

“It cost me a lot of money,” I said, to make it sound more authentic. If there’s one thing that Hong Kongers believe in, it’s the authority money has to make the impossible possible. John Chang did not laugh at this explanation or call me a liar. A little brush with the West does not wipe out five thousand years of Chinese belief in the supernatural.

Then he went home, to his wife, leaving me to stare at the waters of the fragrant harbor and think about my own feelings of love and hate. Understand the man you hate. How can you hate a man you understand? I began to realize what the old man with his magic pipe was selling. Not power over one’s enemy. Love. That’s what he had for sale. His was a place where you could look at hate, understand it enough to be able to turn it into love.

I knew something else. Now that I had confronted John, now that we understood one another, the memories of his past would cease to bother me. The pipe had done its work.

The following week, one evening when a rain as fine as Irish drizzle had come and gone, leaving a fresh scent to the air, I took a taxi to Wong Tai Sin Temple. The old man was still there, sitting at the entrance to the alley, his pipe by his side.

I went up to him and gave him twenty dollars, and he smiled and silently handed me the pipe and a piece of red-and-gold paper decorated with Chinese characters.

On the back of the paper I wrote the name of a person I loved and hated—NICHOLA BLACKWOOD—and tore it into tiny pieces, hoping that distance was no barrier to magic.