“And you.”
“I was wondering if I could drop by today and have a chat about government business? Could you give me an hour or so?”
“Come at lunch and I’ll buy.”
“About twelve?”
“See you then.”
When Sue Lin heard her brother, Wu, come in, she went downstairs to his room and knocked. He immediately opened the door. He was here to change clothes, which was about all he ever did at this house.
“We need to talk,” she said softly in English, worried as always that the domestics would overhear.
Only two years older than Sue Lin, Wu had always awed her, ever since she could remember. Never had she met a man with his inner calm, a man whose strength radiated like heat from a fire. He was, she thought, the most masculine of men, a man so strong emotionally and spiritually that nothing on this earth could shake him.
Of course he attracted people, men and women, like a magnet attracts iron filings. In a reflective moment Rip had compared Wu to Christ. “If he was preaching a new religion he could convert the world,” Rip said, and Sue Lin thought Rip was probably right.
As Wu looked at her his face softened. “Of course,” he said, nodding gently. “May I continue to change, or would you like to go upstairs?”
“Go on,” she said, motioning toward the closet, and told him about Rip being arrested and the newspaper closed.
“I have heard,” Wu said. “I am sorry for Rip.”
“Albert Cheung will get him out, but the paper… the governor will probably keep it closed.”
She sat in the only chair in the small room. “The day has almost arrived, hasn’t it?”
“Its coming was inevitable,” Wu replied calmly. Sue Lin had never seen him excited — she didn’t think anything could disturb his inner peace.
“Rip is worried. If the authorities finally learn that you are my brother, Lin Pe’s son, Rip thinks they will take their frustrations out on us.”
“Rip is probably correct,” Wu said softly. He rarely raised his voice. “His understanding of the scope of the official mind seems quite complete.”
“He wants us to leave Hong Kong now.”
“Sister of mine, I advise you to obey your husband.”
“Mother will not leave.”
“Her destiny is not yours.”
“Wu, for God’s sake, you must tell Mother to leave! She will listen to you! She ignores my pleas.”
Wu sat on the bed and took his sister’s hand. “Leaving China would cost Lin Pe her life. This is who she is. On the other hand, you have your husband, your life together, which you can live anyplace on the planet. Lin Pe does not have that.”
“Are you saying that Rip and I should leave you two here?”
“This country, these people, they are my life also.”
Sue Lin Buckingham jerked her hand from his grasp. “I think the new maid is suspicious of you. She watches you from the window, pretends she knows no English when it is obvious she understands some of it. She may be a police spy.”
“What would you have me do?”
At that Sue Lin threw up her hands and left the room.
Albert Cheung drove Rip to the building that housed the newspaper. It was raining again, a steady drizzle. Albert wanted to take him home but Rip insisted on going to the office.
There were two policemen with shotguns standing under an overhang outside the building.
Albert pulled his Mercedes into the alley that led to the parking area in back. “Thanks, Albert,” Rip said and released his seat belt.
As Rip reached for the door handle, Albert put a hand on his arm and said, “Wait a minute, Rip. I want to give you some advice, if you’ll listen.”
“I’ll listen. I won’t pay for your advice, but I’ll listen.”
“It’s time for you to go. Take your wife, go back to Australia. That is your place. That is where you belong.”
Rip growled and reached for the door handle.
“Listen to me,” Albert said sharply. “The British are gone. For one hundred and fifty years this city was a part of Britain. It was as English as tea and toast. No more. Those days are over. And everyone has to adjust to the new reality.”
“I’ve adjusted. I just don’t like it.”
“Like it or not, Hong Kong is now part of China, and China is an absolute dictatorship. The British ways — free speech, democracy, open, honest government, a tolerant, pluralist society, the rule of law, open debate about the public’s business, fair play — all that is dying or dead. People here must jettison the old ways and adopt the new. They have no choice—they have to do it! I’ve been reading your paper: You rail against the incoming tide.”
Rip tried to rebut Albert Cheung. “I have tried to fairly—”
“ ‘Fairly’? Don’t be ridiculous. Fair is a British concept, not Chinese. There is nothing you can do.”
“This is my home, too,” Rip said savagely.
“Stop playing the fool. Get on a plane.”
Rip sat for a moment listening to the slap of the windshield wipers. “Why don’t you leave?” he asked the lawyer.
“I happen to be Chinese, you may have noticed. And there is money to be made here.”
“There are six million people in Hong Kong without anyplace else to go.”
“You’re wasting your breath trying to save the world, Rip. You won’t get a halo. You won’t even get a thank-you.”
“Don’t charge me for this advice, Albert.” Rip got out of the car, shut the door firmly behind him.
Albert Cheung sped away without another look at Rip.
Maybe the cops would have let him in the building, maybe not; Rip didn’t try. He went around back and unlocked his motorcycle, an old Harley-Davidson he had imported from Australia.
Motorcycles were popular in Hong Kong — mainly Japanese bikes, fast and fuel-efficient — but not as ubiquitous as they were in Singapore or Bangkok. The British always discouraged motor vehicles for private use by making it expensive to register one or get a driver’s license. The Communists continued that policy. Still, a lot of people today had the money or political connections, so there were more and more motorcycles. Those who couldn’t afford to go first-class rode Chinese iron. With no demand for forty-year-old Harleys, thieves weren’t interested, or so the theory went. Rip always locked his anyway.
He turned on the fuel cock, adjusted the choke, and started kicking. The engine caught on the third kick.
He was warming the engine when the woman who ran a small newsstand across the street came looking for him.
“Rip, why have the police closed the building?” Originally from Hunan Province, she had lived in Hong Kong at least twenty years. Rip had deduced that one time by questioning her closely about Hong Kong news stories she could remember.
“The governor has ordered the paper closed, Mrs. Guo,” Rip told her. “He didn’t like what he read.”
“You did not go to jail? I heard they arrested you.”
“I went to jail.” He gave her a brief summary, then said good-bye. “My wife is waiting for me. She worries.”
“Yes, yes. Go home to her.” Mrs. Guo went back along the alley with her head down, as if she were walking against a storm. Hard times…
The Chinese are used to hard times, Rip reflected. They’ve never known anything else.
He put the motorcycle in motion.
The streets were still crowded. Traffic sprayed water on Rip, who had to concentrate to keep his motorcycle under control.
Rip had first seen Hong Kong as a teenager in the mid-eighties, when there were still vestigial traces of the nineteenth-century city, and large swatches remained unchanged from the days of World War II. Back then many people could talk for hours about the Japanese occupation from their personal experience. Not many of those old people were left, of course, and few people now asked about the old days. Nobody cared anymore.