“You not able to read the price printed on the masthead?” Fong asked.
“That’s the wholesale price. I’m a retailer,” said the boy sticking out his chest with pride. Fong snatched the papers he wanted and barked, “You, my young friend, are a paperboy in a wooden box, not the Shell Oil Company.”
Fong opened the first of the papers and was happy not to see any story on the abortion bombing. The Shanghai paper led with a story about nine men killed in a fireworks explosion, not a new disaster in this part of the world. On the sidebar was a story about China’s trade with Taiwan – US$32 billion in 2001. Fong had no way of knowing if that was above or below expectation. He did assume that once you traded that much with Taiwan it could be hard to make them do as you wished. At the bottom of the page there was a surprise, an article about China sending Buddha’s finger bone to Taiwan for display.
Fong smoothed out the paper on his knees. Deaths in a fireworks accident, trade issues with Taiwan, and Buddha’s finger bone – was it only him who found those things incongruous all on one page.
He put aside the local paper and took the biggest of the Hong Kong dailies. This paper had an even stranger mix. The lead story was about a new design for the black hoods used to hide a suspect’s identity while being transported to and from courtrooms. This was accompanied by a large photo of the hood. Below the picture was an article about a man who was arrested for shouting loudly into a policeman’s ear. If that was not odd enough, the whole bottom of the front page was filled with a by-lined article about a man who successfully sued an attempted suicide victim for damaging his car in his fall from a six-story building. It was only on the second page that a news story actually appeared. The mainland government had agreed to allow visa-free trips to the Pearl River Delta via Hong Kong.
The Taiwanese paper led with a story about the record number of Taiwanese wanting to study on the mainland, followed by an article chronicling a 20-percent rise in AIDS cases on the island. Then an article about Taiwan’s desire to increase trade with Japan and their Premier’s desire for a meeting with Jiang Zemin. “Fat chance,” Fong thought. But it was a small article at the bottom of the page that drew his full attention. The Taiwanese were bragging about their assistance in obtaining the release of a young American who had been caught smuggling Bibles onto the mainland.
Fong quickly grabbed the local Shanghai paper. The article about Buddha’s finger bone and the Taiwanese article about the Bible smuggler were both in the bottom right-hand corner of their respective papers. Fong put them aside and leaned back in his chair. He tried to remember when religious stories began to appear in newspapers. He couldn’t recall. When had faith become central to the news? Why was organized superstition now on the front page?
The director of Othello, Roger, walked out on the stage and asked for quiet in the house. “Mei you fa tze – it’s good luck,” Fong thought. A Chinese rehearsal room was often as loud as it was smoky. And it was always smoky. When a foreign director asked Chinese actors not to smoke they assumed that he meant don’t smoke now. So they’d butt out then light up again within the hour, the half hour – almost immediately. It was pretty much inconceivable to most Chinese actors that there is a way of acting without a cigarette.
Tuan Li entered the stage from prompt side and the house got as quiet as it gets. The Afro-American actor playing Othello quickly joined her. The main set pieces for their bedroom were moved forward.
Fong reached for Fu Tsong’s copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. The actors moved toward the bed. They eyed each other, quite ignoring the director. As Fu Tsong had told him so many times, “No director can help you even half as much as a good acting partner.” Tuan Li sat on the bed and suddenly her Othello thrust his great hand directly at her face, stopping a mere inch from her nose. She gasped but held her ground. Then his long fingers encircled her throat as he said:
“Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,
Made to write ‘whore’ upon? What committed!
Committed! O thou public commoner!
I should make very forges of my cheeks,
That would to cinders burn up modesty,
But I did speak thy deeds.”
Tuan Li didn’t move her elegant head from her Othello’s hand and, as Desdemona, stared straight into his eyes and replied,
“By heaven you do me wrong.”
He returned her stare and bellowed:
“Are you not a strumpet?”
releasing her head with so much force that she stumbled back to the bed, almost falling. But she kept her balance and most impressively her composure.
“No. As I am a Christian.
If I preserve this vessel for my lord
From any other foul unlawful touch
Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.”
Othello was once again quickly upon her.
“What! Not a whore?”
To which she snapped back:
“No, as I shall be sav’d.”
Fong looked down at his text to get the Mandarin translation for the last exchange and noticed Fu Tsong’s note: The Christians have a god that saves them if they are pure. What is there here for us like that? What for me is like being saved for Desdemona?
Fong read Fu Tsong’s note a second time, then a third. How little he had known her. He wondered if she had ever answered her question? Did she think she was going to be saved even as she fell into the pit? Fong had to admit that he didn’t even know if she was religious. He looked up. The Afro-American actor was in full flight:
“I cry you mercy then;
I took you for that cunning whore of Venice
That married with Othello. You, mistress,
That have the office opposite to Saint Peter,
And keep the gate of hell.”
Fong nodded his head. If they believe in a heaven and being saved they no doubt believe in a hell and being damned. He wasn’t sure it was worth the trade and although there was much of Marxist rhetoric that he rejected he didn’t dismiss the claim that religion was nothing more than an opiate for the masses. Fong had seen many things that had struck him as wrong – but evil – evil was different and sat in territory that made him extremely uncomfortable. He found it more than uncomfortable – he found it dangerous. Who gets to say what is evil and what is not? Although not a young man himself, he wasn’t at all pleased with the idea that sapped-out old men with beards could or should dictate to the rest of the species by playing on every person’s innate fear of death. That these old assholes could dictate the rules of behaviour with fairy stories of rewards and punishments struck him as obscene.
He looked at Fu Tsong’s markings at the top of the next page of text. It referred back to an earlier line in the play – Act III, Scene III, line 270. Fong turned to the reference Fu Tsong had sited and read Othello’s lines aloud:
“I had rather be a toad,
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others’ uses.”