“Can I come with you?”
For a moment Fong missed the idiom and then he got it. His immediate impulse was to say no but he didn’t. He paused. His world was changing. Everything was in flux. Why not police procedure too? He nodded then looked toward the stage. Geoffrey was talking about addiction again.
Geoffrey was always aware of everything that went on in his rehearsal, be it on the stage or back in the auditorium. So Amanda Pitman’s entrance did not escape his attention. How large she looked in the context of Asian women. How very different from Hao Yong, let alone Fu Tsong. Yet there was something appealing about this big blond American. He was sure that she was an American. As a Canadian who had spent almost fifteen years of his life living in the United States he had no trouble picking an American out of a crowd. Unlike many fellow Canadians, he rather liked Americans. But the total victory of America at the end of the Cold War put America everywhere. Shanghai was loaded down with American images. Everything from the huge Marlboro Man billboard on the Nanjing Road side of People’s Park (Mao must be rolling in his grave) to the endless T-shirts with logos for American sports teams that so many Chinese young people wore. Dammit, Sprite was China’s national drink!
It was really only the language barrier that kept the Americans at bay. Unlike Europe where English is either sharply on the ascendance or already king, in China there were very few English speakers and English and Mandarin were so different that no amount of goodwill could cross the linguistic barrier.
Geoffrey remembered being approached on the Promenade across from the Bund several years back, before he spoke much Mandarin, by a man who began with “I English. You friend, ho-kay?” Geoffrey had been in Shanghai long enough to know that these seemingly innocent approaches were always the beginning of an attempt to sell services, but he didn’t mind.
Geoffrey continued walking but the man kept up with him.
“You tourist?”
“Well, no. In fact, I’m working here at the Shanghai People’s Theatre.”
That clearly was beyond this man’s English, so Geoffrey changed the subject. “What do you do?”
The man smiled and lifted his shoulders. Geoffrey recognized the man’s dilemma, being a formidable smiler and shoulder lifter himself in like circumstances. So he rephrased. “Work? What? You?”
A smile crossed the man’s face. Why didn’t the stupid white man ask that the first time? “Engineer, I.”
“Good,” responded Geoffrey, more than a little surprised that he had gotten through.
“Engineer, I. You?”
“Theatre director, writer, me.” He knew the word for writer although it had taken him several days of practice to get it down, “Zuojia, wo.” A look of utter confusion blossomed on the Chinese man’s face. Geoffrey knew that he had the right word but he could very well have had both the wrong pronunciation and the wrong intonation. Evidently the man believed Geoffrey had said something very peculiar and was going to ignore it. Geoffrey hoped he hadn’t implied something rude.
“American?” he asked.
“Mao (no), Canadian.”
A smile lit the Asian’s face. “Ottawa capital.”
The smile seemed to say that all this man’s hard work had been worth something. “Shide (yes).”
“Married?”
“Shide. You (ni) married?”
“Yes, girl.”
“You have a girl?”
“Shide, just one. Girl one. Government say no more. Ni?” “Two, a boy and a girl.”
Conversations with the Chinese always eventually came around to children. He was always saddened when he admitted that he had two children to their one. It was a moment of embarrassment of riches that he couldn’t defend. Even saying that he had a son while the man he was talking to didn’t, created a moment of real tension. Usually the Chinese person smiled politely, but whatever possibility of communication, of actual contact, however slight, was then at an end. A gulf always yawned at that point. A gulf of culture and reality.
There followed more smiling and shoulder lifting. Eventually the man pulled out a set of stamps and an old coin he had for sale. Geoffrey declined as graciously as he could.
Geoffrey noted that language was clearly not a barrier between Fong and the white woman. Fong’s English was good. Fu Tsong had made sure.
Having just arrived in Shanghai, he had no desire to spend his time in the company of white people, so upon breaking rehearsal, Geoffrey hustled out the side door. Besides, he still had his questions about Fong and the death of Fu Tsong. Questions that he was anxious to ask the investigating officer who had, seemingly out of nowhere, contacted him earlier in the day.
The officer’s name was Wang Jun.
That night, in the safety of his Portman hotel suite, Loa Wei Fen allowed the memory of the kill to come back to him. The African’s heart had wrapped itself around the knife. Its life had surged up the blade and almost thrown Loa Wei Fen back on his haunches. This was a kill that was different from all the others. This was a man with great power. A man whom he was lucky to have surprised so thoroughly. He remembered the tearing sound as the blade cut through gristle and snagged on tendon. He remembered the battle to cut the heart. But most he remembered the pounding of his own heart as for the first time he saw that he was taking a life that was worthy.
He remembered that the black man’s heart tasted of bile and Loa Wei Fen knew it moved him farther from the edge of the roof. Away from the leap that would finally put his life on the path-the tao.
Ngalto Chomi’s half heart received a reception comparable to that of Richard Fallon’s. The hotel differed, the men in the room differed, but their reaction, as mentioned, was the same.
Fong had offered to drive or walk Ms. Pitman back to her hotel but she declined. She just asked him to walk her to the Yan’an gate and point her in the right direction. For a moment Fong thought to follow Geoffrey but then decided that his duty was to help Ms. Pitman.
As they emerged from the dim theatre into the clear night sky a whisper of wind picked Amanda’s perfume off her shoulders and tickled it beneath Fong’s nose. He was startled by its effect. Up his nose and directly into the rhinencephalon part of the brain and bingo-memory clarion clear.
She was holding out her hand and saying something before he realized that he hadn’t been listening.
“Well,” she said, withdrawing her hand, “I’ll see you at what time?”
Feeling more than a wee bit foolish he covered by saying, “No need to start until eleven. I’ll send a car for you.”
“I can find my way, just tell me where I’m going.”
“Fine. I’ll meet you at the entrance to the bird and fish market off Cheng Dou Road.”
She tried to say Cheng Dou several times and couldn’t get it quite right so he spelled it for her. Like so many Europeans, she learned better from the letter than the sound. So unlike Fu Tsong, he thought, who learned English whole, mostly from movies. Movies she watched on the VCR that Geoffrey Hyland had given them. Movies she watched snuggled in close to him, her perfume whispering memories that he stored in the rhinencephalon part of his brain.
All he could think as he watched them from behind the costume shop was that they made a strange couple. The handsome blond woman and the delicate Chinese man. Almost a reversed yin and yang, thought Geoffrey. Almost.
April 21
Dearest Sis,
Yeah, that’s right, it’s your big sister writing you. It must be years since I’ve written a letter, but if you recall, sweet thing, I used to write to you all the time. Shit, I used to write all the time and not just to you. Well, I feel like writing again and you’re the target so read it and enjoy it or give the stamp to that nephew of mine or let little Beth chew it into tiny bite-sized pieces and spit them at her brother. Do with it what you will.