Do I go back further?
How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn’t want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying ‘No dogs or Chinese’, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behaviour, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early 21st century and forcing the White House to legalise heroin. And saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we’re at it, okay? Thanks very much.’ Hong Kong became the trading hub of the biggest, most populated continent in the world. This led to one big burping appetite for bent financial lawyers.
Or is it not a question of cause and effect, but a question of wholeness?
I’m this person, I’m this person, I’m that person, I’m that person too.
No wonder it’s all such a fucking mess. I divided up my possible futures, put them into separate accounts, and now they’re all spent.
Big thoughts for a bent little lawyer.
My forehead kissed the tarmac, soft as a sleeping daughter. I keeled over into foetal position. A lurching tide of voices sloshed the hull of my hearing. What the fuck is going on?
Now I understand what this insane fucking day has been about!
Hilarious!
I am fucking dying!
No doubt about it. Now it’s happening again it’s all coming back to me.
Thirty-one years old, and I am fucking dying!
Avril’s going to be so fucked off with me. And when D.C. hears, well, I think I can safely kiss my six-figure bonus goodbye. How will Katy take it? That’s the clincher. Dad?
Hilarious...
She comes through the wall of legs and torsos. She looks down at me, and she smiles. She has my eyes, and the maid’s body, in miniature. She gives me her hand, and we pick our way through the crowd of gawpers, the shocked, the titillated, and the gum-chewing. What can have happened to fascinate them so on such an afternoon?
Hand in hand we walk up the steps of the Big Bright Buddha, brighter and brighter, into a snowstorm of silent light.
Holy Mountain
Up, up, and up, and down, maybe.
The Holy Mountain has no other directions. Your left and right, your south, north, west, east, leave them at the Village. You won’t be needing them. You have ten thousand steps to go before you reach the summit.
There is a road, now. I saw it. Buses and trucks go up and down. Fat people from Chengdu and further drive up in their own cars. I watched them. Fumes, beeps, noise, oil. Or they drive up in taxis, sitting in the back like Lady Muck Duck. They deserve all the fleecing they get. Engine-powered pilgrimages? Even Lord Buddha doesn’t give a shovelful of chickenshit for engine-powered pilgrimages. How do I know? He told me Himself.
On the Holy Mountain, all the yesterdays and tomorrows spin around again sooner or later. The world has long forgotten, but we mountain-dwellers live on the prayer wheel of time.
I am a girl. I was hanging out the washing on a line I had suspended from the upstairs-room window-ledge and the Tree. The height of our Tea Shack above the path, it was safe from thieves, and the Tree tells the monkeys not to steal our things. I was singing to myself. It was spring and the mist was thick and warm. Upbound, a strange procession marched out of the whiteness.
The procession was ten men long. The first carried a pennant, the second, a kind of lute I’d never seen, the third, a rifle. The fourth was a footman. The fifth was dressed in silken robes the colour of sunset. The sixth was an older man in a khaki uniform. Seven to ten were baggage carriers.
I ran to get my father, who was planting sweet potatoes behind our house. The chickens fussed like my old aunts in the Village. When my father and I got around to the front, the strangers had reached our Tea Shack.
My father’s eyes popped open. He hurled himself onto the ground, and yanked me down into the dirt with him. ‘Silly little bitch,’ he hissed. ‘It’s the Warlord’s Son. Kowtow!’ We knelt, pressing our foreheads into the ground, until one of the men clapped.
We looked up. Which one was the Warlord’s Son?
The man in silk was looking at me, smiling from the corner of his mouth.
Footman spoke. ‘Sire, is it your wish to rest awhile?’
The Warlord’s Son nodded, not taking his eyes off me.
Footman barked at my father. ‘Tea! The best you have in your pit of roaches, or the crows will dine on your eyeballs tonight!’
My father leapt to his feet and pulled me with him behind the table. My father told me to polish the best tea bowls, while he loaded fresh charcoal onto the brazier. I had never seen a Warlord’s Son before. ‘But which one is he?’ I asked.
My father slapped me with the back of his hand. ‘It’s none of your concern.’ He glanced over his shoulder nervously at the men, who were laughing at me. My ear began to throb. ‘The striking gentleman, in the beautiful robes,’ muttered my father, loud enough to be overheard.
The Warlord’s Son — I guessed he was twenty — removed his hat and sleeked back his hair. Footman took one look at our best bowls and rolled his eyeballs. ‘How dare you even think it?’ A baggage carrier unpacked some silver bowls, decorated with golden dragons with emerald scales and ruby eyes. Another servant unfolded a table. A third spread a perfectly white cloth. I thought I was dreaming.
‘The girl may serve the tea,’ said the Warlord’s Son.
I felt his eyes touch my body as I poured the tea. Nobody spoke. I didn’t spill a drop.
I looked to my father for approval, or at least for reassurance. He was too busy worrying about his own skin. I didn’t understand.
The men spoke in crisp, shiny Mandarin. Their magnificent, strange words paraded past. Words about somebody called Sun Yatsen, somebody called Russia, somebody else called Europe. Firepower, taxes, appointments. What world had these men come from?
My father took my shawl off and told me to tie back my hair and wash my face. He made me serve some more tea. He was picking his teeth with a splintered chopstick, and watching the men carefully from the shadows.
Silence thickened the air. The mist had closed in. The mountainside was dark with white. The afternoon became so sluggish that it stopped altogether.
The Warlord’s Son stretched his legs and arched his back. He picked at his teeth with a bejewelled toothpick. ‘After drinking tea as bitter as that, I want sherbet. You, rat-in-the-shadows, you may serve me a bowl of lemon sherbet.’
My father fell to his knees and spoke to the dirt. ‘We have no such sherbet, Lord.’
He looked round at his men. ‘How tiresome! Then tangerine sherbet will have to suffice.’
‘We have no sherbet at all, Lord. I’m very sorry.’
‘Sorry? I can’t eat your “sorry”. You wreck my palate with your brew of nettles and foxshit: What kind of stomach do you think I have? A cow’s?’
His look told his entourage to laugh, which they did.
‘Oh well. There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to eat your daughter for dessert.’
A poison thorn slid in, bent, and snapped.
My father looked up. The Khaki Man coughed.
‘What’s that cough supposed to mean? My father told me to come on this accursed pilgrimage. He didn’t say I couldn’t have any fun.’