Kowloon Tong Read online

  And in this new setting, aspects of the man were revealed that Bunt had not noticed before. It was obvious here that Hung was a country mouse. So many of them were, the ones from China, and it showed in a comic way when they came to Hong Kong, especially in the bar of a luxury hotel. The man who was just a face in the crowd at Tsim Sha Tsui was lost here. No sooner had he tapped his cigarette on the cellular phone and started to light it than the phone peep-peeped and he lost the call, juggling the instrument and dropping his cigarette. The waiter whisked it back into his hands, which made Mr. Hung look more incompetent, because the waiter had acted with the sort of arrogant poise that looks deferential.

  "I'm sorry, smoking's not allowed in this area," the waiter said, looking pleased as Mr. Hung frowned and stubbed the thing out.

  "Brandy," Mr. Hung said.

  Bunt was glad, alcohol was always toxic to the Chinese system, and he wanted the pleasure of seeing Hung stiffen and turn red and finally croak. Brandy! At six in the evening!

  "Do you have a preference, sir?"

  "The best," Hung said, and that gave it away, the posturing, for only the most ignorant drinker would say that. "The best" was a bumpkin's boast.

  Bunt smiled, feeling superior at last, as Mr. Hung shoved his cuff away from his watch. Just a plastic watch, the sort of economy a Hong Kong Chinese would never make. Unwittingly drawing attention to its cheapness—it was little more than a toy, the sort of thing his mother called a pup—Hung kept looking at it.

  The waiter brought his brandy in a snifter on a tray. Hung seized it and said, "Cheers."

  As though impelled by a sudden thirst, he drained the glass and was almost immediately rendered glassy-eyed. He squinted, his speech slowed, and so, within minutes of arriving at the Regent he was simplified and blunted.

  But the brandy also gave Hung a nastier face, and once again he looked to Bunt like a soldier, no longer an officer but now an enlisted man. Muttering numbers in Chinese, he stabbed at the buttons on his cellular phone and got a busy signal. He cursed and looked around.

  "Are you expecting someone?" Bunt asked.

  Bunt had never seen him look so confused, but of course Hung was out of his element and that made a person impatient and restless. The waiter attempted to speak to him in Cantonese, which Mr. Hung did not understand, then he spoke to him in English, which Mr. Hung misheard, and it made the waiter smile and stare at him as though he were a dog attempting a trick. Mr. Hung would have fared better in a more pretentious place, where, in return for tips, the waiters were more forgiving and eager to please. But like the others who came from China, Mr. Hung had not learned that to get on in Hong Kong you had to hand out generous tips. Left to himself, among hostile or unhelpful waiters, Mr. Hung seemed especially awkward, and in his innocence he did not seem to understand that he was failing.

  "I suggest that we drink up and then go," Bunt said. "I'd like to have an early night."

  Hearing a petitioning tone in his voice, he was annoyed with himself and also uncomfortably aware of his mind rushing forward to his mother in the badly lit lounge in the bungalow, reading tripe and waiting for him in her dressing gown and fuzzy slippers. I was seeing your friend Mr, Hung, thanks very much, Mum.

  Bunt smiled angrily, completely in the dark as to why he was being kept waiting. So Mr. Hung was asserting himself again, or was this just the random behavior of reckless boozing?

  "They'll be here shortly, I expect," Mr. Hung said.

  He spoke slowly because he was drunk, but his drunkenness gave his manner of speaking even more precision. One of the most irritating Hong Kong experiences to Bunt was hearing someone he knew to be a complete bastard—someone he disliked, especially a Chinese businessman—speaking English correctly. He knew that proper English intimidated Americans in Hong Kong, but he had too much pride to attempt a posh accent.

  Bunt had wanted the brandy to turn Mr. Hung into an oik, but it merely made him more pompous and tyrannical. Bunt refused to say anything more—why should he help Mr. Hung hold a conversation? He tried to make himself drunk enough to ignore the situation and tried to think of excuses to leave.

  "Oh, there they are. Jolly good," Mr. Hung said.

  Bunt looked up and saw a waiter guiding Mei-ping and Ah Fu through the lounge.

  "You know each other?" Bunt asked.

  Mei-ping bowed her head shyly. At such times she could look like a kitten: she had a feline face and soft skin, large eyes, no chin. Ah Fu smiled in apprehension. Bunt ruefully shared their nervousness, but for a different reason. His fears had been justified. Mr. Hung was advertising another of his secrets, an important one, making him weaker and Mr. Hung stronger.

  "We just happened to meet by chance," Mr. Hung said.

  "At the factory," Ah Fu said. "Kowloon Tong."

  Ah Fu was pretty in a duck-like way, gabbled like a duck too, with a sort of Cantonese quack in her voice, and she looked around the lounge with her whole head turning on her long neck.

  "Pure coincidence actually," Mr. Hung said.

  Plonker, Bunt said to himself.

  "He say you are his friend," Mei-ping said.

  What was odd and touching was the way in which Hung's fluent English allowed him to lie, while the women's plainer struggle with the language was so truthful.

  "That you his partner," Ah Fu said.

  "In actual fact it's absolutely true, isn't it, Neville?"

  It was the first time Hung had used his name, and it was so cruel the way he trotted it out, as though daring Bunt to deny it. Mei-ping, his lover with whom he had been naked, had never dared utter his name.

  "Could be," Bunt said, angry with Hung for everything now: the deal, the drink, the two women; subverting his mother, setting up his lover. Bunt was baffled by how Hung could possibly have known about Mei-ping. Hung had given her the blue sweater. The business in Jack's Place—Your friend paid— was easy to explain, since Bunt was a fairly regular customer. But Bunt had been careful to keep his relationship with Mei-ping hidden. Yet Hung had found out. So Bunt was cautioned. Inviting Mei-ping and Ah Fu was Hung's way of intimidating him and boasting of his knowledge. How much more did he know?

  "I'll have to be going soon," Bunt said.

  It was an ineffectual excuse. He wanted to escape. He wanted to hide. Yet he could not leave the two unsuspecting women with this man who had already insinuated himself in his life.

  "After we eat," Hung said.

  It was what Bunt had feared most—Hung realizing his power and asserting himself.

  "That's what I mean," Bunt said, because there was nothing else he could say, and he sulked in the taxi all the way to the restaurant, jammed next to Mei-ping. He was aroused by her small, nervous bird bones quivering against his body.

  A Chinese restaurant—and the name Golden Dragon was familiar—yet he had told Mr. Hung more than once that he hated Chinese food, didn't eat it, hadn't touched it for years, because it gave him headaches and kept him awake. So why were they sitting in the Golden Dragon sipping tea while a waitress used tongs to offer them cold towels rolled and cased in plastic like sausages?

  Hung meant to defy him. It was not subtle—they never were, anyway. This was the place Hung had wanted to go when his mother had insisted on Fatty's. And yes, in his ridiculously furnished flat, with its white shag carpets and its silly glass cabinet and absurd clock, Bunt had seen an ashtray labeled Golden Dragon, like the one here on this table. How appropriate that the Chinese businessman had stolen it.

  Mei-ping and Ah Fu sat together, meekly whispering, while Hung held a menu and ordered the food. Bunt resented them now. How could he feel sorry for them? Their showing up was conspiratorial. Here were his trusted employees from Imperial Stitching—one of them his lover, sex partner anyway—helping Hung bully him.

  Still rehearsing excuses, Bunt was imagining being brisk and businesslike with Hung: Talk to my lawyer. Monty will see you right ... It's out of the question ... I am afraid you are very much mistaken, Mr. Hung ..
. Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?

  Mr. Hung said, "You're not paying attention, Neville."

  "Sorry," Bunt said, and loathed himself for uttering the hated word.

  The waiter stood smartly taking down Hung's order on a pad, writing efficiently and, as he did so, repeating what Mr. Hung was saying. After a moment, Bunt realized why Mei-ping and Ah Fu were uneasy. Mr. Hung was addressing the waiter in Mandarin, not Cantonese. Although he could not speak either one, Bunt could distinguish between the two languages: the snarling twang of one, the goose honk of the other, as different as a xylophone is from a lawnmower, and Cantonese was the lawnmower.

  Hung dismissed the waiter abrupdy, then looked at the young women. "Did you understand what I said?"

  Ah Fu giggled. Mei-ping said, "Little bit."

  "Good for you."

  Wanker.

  "And what did I order?"

  Plonker.

  "Feng tsai," Mei-ping said. And to Bunt, "Chicken feet."

  "But feng isn't chicken," Hung said. "Feng is phoenix."

  "I knew that," Bunt said. "Yet lau, yet feng—one room, one phoenix. It's an old tradition here."

  The local expression for a prostitute working on her own in Hong Kong, spoken by Bunt, caused Mei-ping to blush and giggle miserably at Ah Fu.

  "These are chickens," Hung said when the food was brought. Six dishes were placed in the center of the table.

  "Those are chickens too," Bunt said, nodding towards the women. "Gai dao is a chicken house. Knocking shop, we would say."

  Mei-ping covered her face in embarrassment while Ah Fu looked up to see whether anyone else in the restaurant heard what Bunt had said. Hung's merciless eyes were querying Bunt again.

  "I was born here," Bunt said. "I know my way round."

  He knew perhaps a dozen words of Cantonese, which seemed to Bunt more than adequate. He had lived in the colony his entire life. Now he looked back and wondered. Of the many offenses Mr. Hung had committed against him, one of the worst was that he had made Bunt reflect with bitterness on his life.

  "I hope you are hungry," Mr. Hung said.

  He had ordered all the dishes without consulting anyone else at the table, and even Bunt, who denounced'Chinese food and never ate in such restaurants, knew that was bad form. But why should Hung care? For all their beauty, the two women were lowly factory workers, and Bunt was a prisoner.

  "Chicken feet," Mr. Hung said. "Phoenix feet."

  Hearing that, Bunt resolved that he would not eat, nor would he even pretend to. Not eating would be his protest and his rejection of the hospitality. He would defiantly remain sober, too, a condition that Mr. Hung had abandoned. The man was grinning stupidly and almost drooling.

  "What's funny?" Mr. Hung said to the women.

  They giggled on, chattering hard, their eyes fixed in manic fear.

  "Sit near me," Mr. Hung said to Ah Fu. "There, I am sure Mei-ping would be happier sitting with Neville."

  Though he hated the man for suggesting this, Bunt knew that to object would only expose him to greater ridicule.

  "She can have my share," Bunt said, for he saw Mei-ping picking at the cold dishes. What Bunt wanted to say was, I don't think of this as food, and I would not even dream of putting it into my mouth. When Mei-ping offered some to him he drew back, hoping that Mr. Hung would see his expression of shock, and said, "Of course not."

  Brandy was gleaming on Mr. Hung's lips. He looked drunk, his face pinkish and raw, his eyes boiled, and he was smiling in a vicious way as he chewed with his mouth open. Bunt remembered the look of greed, of heedless hunger, he had seen on Hung's face in the lounge of the Regent. It was the face of the desperate peasant who had been wrenched from his village and plunked down in luxury. Hung had not known that Bunt was staring at him: that was Hung's real face.

  Hung said, "These chicken feet are first quality. You appreciate them?"

  He was speaking to Ah Fu as he examined a chicken foot, using his chopsticks like tongs and dangling the yellow foot in front of his watery eyes. Then he dropped the chicken foot on his plate and began to claw at it.

  "I think so," Ah Fu said softly, her voice trailing off.

  "Are you completely bewitched by them?" Hung's lower teeth showed as he set his jaw to tear off a piece of the chicken foot.

  Ah Fu murmured to Mei-ping, who said, "She says you speak English so well."

  Hung was hunched over the drooping foot, scraping at its yellow scales, dragging white tendon strings from its slender shank.

  "In the future, we will teach you," he said, gripping the chicken foot in his teeth.

  Hung meant after the Hand-over, the Chinese take-away, now no more than a year off. Bunt loathed the subject, and when it came up always said, "I don't even want to think about it," and here he was, hating himself and listening to a Chinese man chewing and gloating over it.

  "So many people will come to Hong Kong," Mei-ping said. "Chinese people."

  Hung was still chewing, bits of leg scales on his lips, the chicken foot near his mouth as he gnawed, and still he replied, saying, "Not necessarily."

  "They will take our jobs, we think," Mei-ping said.

  Hung looked at her sternly, like a teacher distracted by a commotion at the back of the class. He held the chicken foot upright in the grip of his chopsticks.

  "That's what people say," Mei-ping said. "Because the Chinese are clever and well trained. They are also tough."

  "But we are rubbish," Ah Fu said, chewing with a downturned mouth.

  Hung did not reply but instead went on cramming the chicken foot into his mouth, finishing it off with his teeth. He spat a knuckle of gristle onto his plate and reached for another chicken foot.

  "Not to worry," he said, and gnawed. His face was so contorted by his chewing that he seemed to have no eyes. "We will teach you."

  Ah Fu had been picking and peeling the mottled skin from her chicken foot. Mr. Hung's gruntings showed her how to work the skin free and she timidly thanked him.

  Seeing her draw away from him, Hung thrust his face at her and said, "I want to eat your foot."

  Bunt was disgustedly drinking a pint of beer, eyeing the table with its dishes of sticky pork and soggy and wilted lettuce, the black vegetables, the gray broth, the purple meat. On one dish of yellow meat was a severed chicken's head, its eyes blinded, its scalloped comb torn like a red rag.

  Hung's elbows were thrust out, his blue tongue showed as he stuck his chopsticks into the dish of yellow meat and used them like pliers to grasp a fragment of chicken breast. Its white flesh was exposed when he left a bite mark on it, then he chewed and gagged and pursed his lips. Again, with a retching noise, he spat garbage onto the table.

  "This is delicious because it has been strung up," he said. "You know how? Some string—tie it." He made deft throttling and knotting gestures with his fingers. "Truss it well and hang it for days. Let it air dry. Just dangle there."

  Bunt watched the man salivate as he spoke.

  "It becomes tender and fragrant."

  Still salivating, Hung looked into the middle distance and apparently beheld the thing with his watery eyes, a suspended creature with a rope around its neck and its head flopped over. The apparition seemed to fill him with lust.

  Bunt was frowning. Yes, the Chinese man had said, I want to eat your foot.

  Bunt drummed his fingers on the table impatiently. He had stopped being bored, he was now furious and wary, listening to the drunken man describe how a chicken should be trussed.

  "Say something."

  It took a moment before Bunt understood that the man was speaking to him.

  "I have nothing to say."

  Plonker, he thought. And, What am I doing here?

  "My partner," Hung said to Ah Fu, and when he touched her she stiffened inside her dress and got smaller. "Here, I have something for you."

  Mr. Hung searched his pockets and found a silk pouch, which he opened. He removed a piece of jade—small, dark green, a
pendant of some sort. He held it before Ah Fu's face.

  "Open your mouth."

  The young woman obeyed, her tongue twitching, and Mr. Hung put it into her mouth. She pressed her lips together and worked it for a moment like a cough drop, then spat it into her hand and thanked him in a fearful voice.

  Hung laughed and said, "Where is the bitter melon?"

  Hearing the insistent question, the waiter hurried over, walking in the jerky way he had all evening—nervousness, perhaps.

  "I gave you instructions," Hung said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Bitter melon," he cried out. "Are you stupid?"

  Bunt was always puzzled when he heard two Chinese people speaking to each other in English, but this was almost too much for him.

  "Do you see any melon on this table?" Saying that, Mr. Hung snatched a knife and added, "Here, or here, or here?" He slashed repeatedly on the table for emphasis, leaving a narrow cut each time in the stained tablecloth.

  "It was not served, sir," the waiter said, examining the order pad with his finger. "Very sorry."

  "If you didn't write it down, that's your problem," Mr. Hung said. "Now stop arguing with me and bring it. I want it now!"

  His mouth gaped open, full of yellow teeth and metal crowns and fragments of food. His tongue was discolored. His eyes were glazed, exhausted, red-veined, almost squeezed shut by the puffy flesh around them. His head was damp, his hair spiky.

  He had perhaps not realized that several full minutes had passed since he had howled at the waiter. He turned his drunken face to Ah Fu and Mei-ping.

  "Chickens," he said, and slavered.

  They were terrified, Bunt could tell. They deserved to be, for being there at all.

  "Where do you think you are going?" Mr. Hung yelled, just as he had spoken to the waiter. But before he could repeat it, Bunt had gone through the gold-painted moongate entrance and was out the door.

  9

  ON THE Star Ferry (the Rover wouldn't start, he had taken the Peak tram, and now he was crossing the harbor) the obscure suspicion that something was wrong nagged badly at Bunt. It was like the leftover derangement of a dream, as when he woke up flustered, in damp pajamas, with a taste of glue in his mouth, troubled by nameless blame. He had stolen something, he had broken something, he had given offense, he was hideously late. Blunders filled all his dreams. From the ferry rail he saw a flimsy plastic bag ballooned and floating just beneath the water's surface with a sodden length of rope attached to it. He wondered if it would snag on the ferry screws. Nearby a shoe bobbed upside down, as though marking a drowning.