The Year of the Woman (10 page)

“I would want it to be sufficient compensation.”

“Indeed you would!”

The inspector’s begging bowl was out now. Entering the arena as a combatant, powerful and questing, he was now a supplicant, begging the threatening beasts
prowling
out there for enough time to scrape up the coins thrown by his contemptuous employers.

“Perhaps sixteen thousand dollars, American?”

“And the purpose would be …?”

The Triad master sank back, replete. The game was over. He did not want to watch the conclusion, for endgames were inevitable. It was no longer a joust, nor even a negotiation. It was the sordid transaction of a boss paying off some minion. All serfs were beneath contempt. Why else were they serfs? They loved to grovel, thinking themselves lords. Had the mighty
inspector of police shown some spirit, Old Man might have watched events unfold. Were the police inspector Chinese, he would have allowed the police report to go forward to trial, and settled on his “compensation” only when the case entered the Law Courts, Hong Kong side. Old Man might even have had himself driven to Statue Square to observe the final play of withdrawal and
resolution
, when witnesses appeared only to renege. He loved the expressions on all the defeated lawyers’ faces.

Now? Now a Home Counties shoe-shop clerk whined for his pennies. Where was the entertainment in that?

He signalled and the lights came on. Where was finesse? Life was barren. And he now had the problem of placating his father. That his parent had passed away more than forty years ago was irrelevant. Ancestors had to be addressed.

To whom could he turn? He thought of KwayFay. It would not be beneath his own dignity to go down Jordan Road and inspect the side alleys full of paper shops, ready for the ceremonial burning of their wares, for everyone still did this while denying they did
anything
of the kind. It was the Hong Kong way, to pretend conformity while doing the opposite. But would he be thought disrespectful if he was to go alone, or with uncomprehending henchmen? He could send that girl, whose skilled communications with the spirits and the hereafter seemed so sure.

He pondered, then signalled for attention, and in came the amah.

Speaking quietly, he couldn’t help examining the amah’s hair and teeth as she stooped to hear his
whispered commands. His eyes were definitely going. His inspection was incomplete. He was too tired to tell her to move closer while he had a good look. This was becoming serious, this advancing age. He should decide on some lieutenant who would take over, but who? Who might fit the bill?

He heard two of his men approaching. They knocked. He told them to come in and stand by the door while he thought about the decision he had just made. The girl?

Yes. She would arrange the funeral ritual for his dead father.

Three hours later Old Man sent for Ah Min. He did not invite the Triad’s treasurer to sit down.

“The past files, Ah Min. Still secure?”

“Certainly, master! In the storeroom, at the Brilliant Miracle Success Investment. The security system is updated —”

Old Man gestured for silence.

“They have been searched, as ordered? HC Ho has had all this time. He must be close to completion, yes?”

“His search must nearly be done, master.”

“Check, and report.”

Old Man watched Ah Min waddle out. Still the
beaming
face, but a trace of worry in there. It would not do for a precious advantage to be lost. The Triad needed one colossal coup to face the coming political changes. He thought again of KwayFay. Was she the one?

KwayFay sat on the edge of her truckle cot, wondering.

Work had been stupid all week, HC behaving
stupidly
. Nothing in the office had any sense.

What had he been thinking of, telling her to leave her work station, telling Larry Tan the illegal Canton
immigrant
to take over her lists when the poor hopeless youth couldn’t even count.

HC even told her she should go through some old files, even those of customers long since moved to other, more salubrious, firms or even (the shame!) to bank investment counters, always hopeless except for the Hang Seng in Des Voeux Road Central, surely the most odious and repellent bank building.

On HC’s orders she seated herself before the mounds of dusty files in the storeroom gloaming. The slightest move set her coughing, so much must from the
fungus-ridden
files. It was a hellhole, a punishment posting, as all the Yankee war films called dangerous work sites.

Her first three hours were torture. She actually went to knock on HC’s door and ask what she was supposed to be doing in there. He’d lifted his haggard face with an effort. Maybe he had been weeping.

“Do?” he’d repeated. “I told you. Find the file.”

“Which file? There are thousands.”

“You will know.”

She hesitated. “I
don’t
know, HC.”

“What do you want, KwayFay?”

“I want to know what work I should do in the
storeroom
, Business Head. Which old file must I examine?”

“Find it,” he said dully, unseeing eyes looking beyond
her. “It’s there somewhere.”

“What, HC?”

“How do I know? You’re the one with the…”

With what? “You gave me no coding, no year, no sign.”

He said, broken. “Go. Look.”

So she’d returned to the gloom of the stacked cavern with its tiers of shelves reaching the ceiling, dust
everywhere
, coughing herself almost to sleep in her anxiety to find…what, exactly?

She began to sob at the hopeless task. The files went back a score of years. Each unit file contained hundreds of chits, each with a dozen chops – stamped franks of authenticity. These were from times before computers made the written word redundant.

The one chair in the room was unspeakable. She spent almost a whole hour trying to clean it, and finished up dragging it into the corridor and setting about it with the cleaning woman’s spray polish. The others in the office ignored her, except for whispering about her inescapable bad luck, undoubtedly the prelude to an ignominious sacking.

Her erstwhile friend Claire Yip came by, swinging her hips, showy in her lace blouse. KwayFay was sure the bitch had had her breasts implanted at a private clinic, hence the inescapable billowing-sails front and canyon cleavage.

“Do the job properly, KwayFay,” Claire said airily, swishing by for the tenth time, deliberately accentuating her narrow waist. “Impress the boss! You might keep your job.”

“Thank you, Claire.”

“Don’t thank me, KwayFay. I would hate you to lose your wage.”

And had gone on her way, to return a few minutes later, cooing, “Good! It’s beginning to look usable! So soon!”

It did not matter. Claire would finish her life limping when the North Point tram caught her foot, as would happen next Double Fifth when, on her way to the Dragon Boat Festival that day, she would cross Queensway to collect her car at the Multi-Storey next to Chater Gardens. Serve her right. She would then lose her rich Taipei fiancé. Claire expected the world to come running to help. Check this space, KwayFay thought.

About eleven o’clock that morning she had come to, blinking at the bare globe of light. She must have dozed among the stacked files. No ghost talk. Stiff, she went out to drink from the water fountain in the main office, conscious the noise abated when she appeared as
everyone
glanced her way.

Charmian Sau the
foki
, the office servant, was the only one who spoke to her. Charmian had borrowed her western name from a song.

“You want anything, KwayFay?” she asked, as KwayFay turned to go back to staring with blank incomprehension at the stacks of old files.

“No, thank you, Charmian.”

“Shall I bring you water later?”

Such a kindness, to accord status to a demoted girl. From clerk to storeroom was shameful. Or, KwayFay wondered with sudden venom, did the
foki
perhaps see in KwayFay some ally now lowered to her own level? KwayFay smiled, guessing the innocence of the cleaner.

“Thank you, Charmian.”

She returned to her prison. Charmian was forty-two, and destined to lose every cent and stitch next year in her endless pursuit of fortune at the game of Mahjong in her dreadful flat in Lai Chi Kok. KwayFay wished Charmian a better life. Soon would come that terrible time for Cantonese women, when their sudden lovely shape would crumple. It resembled a paper bag losing all its air, to shrink into a wizened mass of wrinkles. It always happened, unless sufficient money was available and surgeons preserved an aging woman’s beauty, as in America where everyone was a millionaire.

The room seemed to have grown smaller. She sat and stared at the stacked files. The bulb, disturbed by KwayFay’s return, swung slightly. Shadows lengthened, retracted, lengthened.

She watched them. What was the point of reading any one of the folios? None. She would have no idea of the figures, the names of companies. They were all before her time. Didn’t they cease some twenty years ago? Faded inked-in dates said so.

Not only that, how could she interpret the figures? They had different accountancy systems back then. Even HC would be hard put to find any sense in the columns and double-accountancy systems she’d only heard of. Times had changed.

The bulb swung. Shadows danced. She dozed.

“Sleeping, lazy girl? You think slumber find husband?”

“No, Grandmother! I am searching in these files, but do not know why, or what for.”

“Always sleeping! You know what would have
happened to me if my grandmother had caught me sleeping?”

“Yes, Grandmother. You would —”

“Don’t interrupt Honoured Ancestor, rude girl!”

The voice quietened into a monologue KwayFay had heard a hundred times.

“I would have been sent out to feed the chickens of neighbours. Then ducks. And then animals in the Hakka peoples’ little valleys, so they would mend our village path. Made to labour in exchange for a few road stones! The shame!”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

“And you sit idle doing nothing!”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

“Where was I up to in your education?”

“How to solve quarrels without screaming in the street, Grandmother.”

“Did you learn it?”

“Yes, Grandmother,” KwayFay said miserably, hoping for a chance to wake and get on with staring uselessly at the thousands of old files, to please HC so he might
forget
to sack her.

“Tell how, lazy girl?”

“A
Ma Chieh Ti,
a shrieking Curse-In-Street woman, tells family secrets and brings dishonour on family.”

“Truly terrible!” sighed Ghost Grandmother. “I remember one woman, bad temper! We tried poison but she bribed a medium to warn her, so survived all we could do. She was third cousin of your great-aunt, father’s side, nine generations before yours. Or ten? I forget. She still wears yellow jacket, thinks herself so grand! A bitch. Terrible to be street-shouting woman.”

“I was coming to the breaking of combs, Grandmother.”

“Get on, get on.”

“Street-shouting woman breaks a comb in front of the other woman, to show friendship ends.”

“She – the
Ah Pau
I was talking of – broke three combs against three different women in five days,” said Grandmother, with admiration despite the shame. Prowess indeed. “She shrieked at them all for a week. Go on, the ritual?”

“Nobody must pick the comb up, or hatred of
street-shouting
woman is shifted to you.”

“All the trouble, and none of the pleasure of hating!” sighed the ghost.

“The village’s Earth God rules disputes,” KwayFay went on, feeling she was sailing on some drifting river, serene and sleepy. “He needs to be placated with a square of paper —”

“What colour?” demanded Ghost Grandmother sharply.

“Yellow,” KwayFay said smugly, remembering easily now with such clarity she could see the very features of the Great-Aunt’s third cousin of nine generations gone. Or maybe ten. “Plus fine gifts of paper clothing, and the Five Demons tokens.”

“Good, good! She was a terrible bitch,” Ghost said contentedly, “but I quite took to her.”

“Firecrackers, best got from Gao Lung, the city of the Nine Dragons, namely Kowloon, by where the Walled City stands.”

“Don’t buy from that evil man in Cameron Road,” Grandmother warned. “He short changes everybody.
He cheated my daughter.”

“Yes, Grandmother. And fresh eggs, to the lucky number, are then broken before the shrine of the Earth God. It must be brick, not wood, with a pointed stone in the middle for fertility.”

Ghost Grandmother giggled, a weird high pitch that made KwayFay shudder. Some ghosts could laugh kindly; a pity Grandmother’s laugh was so horrid.

“No good settling arguments if women end up
barren
,
ne
?”

“You are so right, Grandmother,” KwayFay said,
hoping
praise would make her go away. “Firecrackers are put in the teapot, with the Five Demon emblems also, as the yellow paper is waggled above. Then the firecrackers are lit. The explosions defeat the enemy woman.”

“You learned well for a change, lazy girl.”

“Thank you, Grandmother.”

There was a small silence, then, “I tell you a trick. After all, you are my granddaughter, and have learned well – for once.”

KwayFay smarted. For once? She did really well every single time Grandmother came with her silly pointless questions and ridiculous stories. Wisely she said none of this.

“Thank you, Grandmother.”

“If you argue with Street-Shouting Woman, girl, even if you have settled the quarrel, here is trick to cause her endless grief.”

“But the quarrel is mended, Grandmother. The ritual has healed it,
ne
?”

“Yes, silly girl,” the ghost said patiently. “But is it not pleasurable to cause a rival woman distress, even if you
have become friends?”

KwayFay said nothing.

“Your enemy woman will do the same to you, so you do it first, d’you hear?”

Into KwayFay’s silence Ghost Grandmother
whispered
, “Listen carefully, KwayFay. Here is how to trick your enemy Street-Shouting Woman. Bribe her family to tell you the Eight Characters of her birth time. Write them down. Then write on the same paper a prayer for trouble to come to her – I used to like blindness and belly pains a lot, used them quite often – and throw the paper into an urn where human bones are buried.”

“What will happen, Grandmother?”

“She will suffer from yellow jaundice within the week, or go mad. Everybody knows this, but modern people forget, being ignorant like you.”

“Did you do it, Grandmother?” she asked in awe.

“Of course! I did it once to a woman who hated me because I was very beautiful and her husband smiled at me when I went to the Feast of the White Tiger, who was general in the Yin Dynasty – you won’t remember him – at the start of the Second Moon. It was to prevent argument, that being the best day for it. Her husband smiled at me because my legs and bottom were exquisite and his wife’s were ugly. She and I did the firecracker
ritual
to be friends again. But I didn’t trust her, so did the trick of Eight Characters. She went mad, was taken away to a walled building for mad people. I was glad.”

“Grandmother! That’s absolutely terrible!”

“Wasn’t it!” Grandmother cackled with pleasure. “I tell it to you for guidance.”

“Was her husband not sorrowful?”

“No. He too rejoiced.” Ghost added coyly, “I not tell you who with! No sleep now, dozy girl.”

Somebody knocked on the door. It was Charmian.

“Here’s your water, KwayFay.”

The filing clerk placed the plain glass in her hands, there being nowhere to put the drink down. KwayFay took a random file down from the shelves and rested the glass on it in her lap. She ought to have worn trousers today, slacks perhaps, had she money to buy any. She had the notes, of course, but whose were they? What if she spent some, and the threat-men from Kowloon who killed assassins and were cross when their knife got bloodstained, came back for the money, what then?

She told Charmian, “
Yao sam
. You have heart.”

“Please, KwayFay.” Charmian started to stammer. “If I can help you, I will. For teaching me that time.”

KwayFay strove to remember the incident, but only had the vaguest memory of once having shown the woman how to clean a computer keyboard, and how to reassemble the wires and terminals if they became
accidentally
detached. Nothing else. She wondered at the strangeness of life, and concluded it must be the curious phase all Hong Kong was going through. It would all end soon, when the People’s Republic of China came in with its Flower Flag and curiously bland currency notes and sullen street guards and bad manners, as all Hong Kong thought. Or perhaps it would all be sweetness, a permanent honeymoon with decorum everywhere?

“Not at all, Charmian.”

She heard HC coming down the corridor. He barged in, almost sending her flying. Charmian fled.

“You found it yet?” he demanded.

“What, HC?”

“The file, the file!”

“File?” KwayFay removed her glass of water and offered him the file she had taken to serve as a tray.

HC clasped it to his chest, eyes closed in rapture. “You sure?”

“That is it,” she said firmly.

“Thank you, KwayFay. You won’t lose from this!”

“What do I do now, HC?”

“Go back to work, KwayFay. Take the last hour off. You have done well.”

“Thank you,” she said, dazed.

“Come and explain it to me,” HC said, beckoning with the door open.