I had been sitting in that spot, listening to the musicians (paying particular attention to the erhu player, who was quite good), when the young woman bandit made what I believe my daughter would call “her move.” She had been watching a worried-looking woman who had taken a seat on the customer’s stool of one of the fortunetellers who ring the park. I wondered briefly if the fortuneteller were a member of the bandit gang, but the majority of these women have been telling fortunes here for many years. I recognized most of them, including, once I’d casually strolled to a spot from which I could see her face, this one. Park fortunetelling is trickery of its own, but as I returned to my bench I concluded it was unlikely the bandit gang would risk enlisting a local resident. One of the things that irritated me about this scheme, of course, was that here on Mulberry Street, for them to operate at all should have involved far more risk than, apparently, it did.
The bandit waited until the fortuneteller was through. The worried woman paid her, then stood, appearing only slightly less upset. As she walked away, the young bandit approached her, asking a question. The worried woman, no doubt from an instinct of kindness, interrupted her own anxious fretting to gesture along the street. I could see she was giving directions. Then the bandit, wearing a concerned look, put a hand on the worried woman’s arm. She spoke. The woman responded. The young bandit spoke again. The worried woman wrung her hands, listened, shook her head, spoke, nodded her head, wrung her hands, listened some more. I was beginning to tire of her clumsy worry dance when the young bandit spotted another woman, a chubby, middle-aged one, on the sidewalk. She waved to her, calling. The chubby woman joined the two. The bandit spoke urgently to the chubby woman — also, of course, a bandit — who frowned in alarm. The three conferred, with most of the talking being done by the new arrival. The worried one asked a question. The chubby bandit woman shook her head apologetically, then seemed to relent after an outpouring of words from the worried one. Taking her cell phone from the breast pocket of her jacket, she made a call. Or rather, she pretended to. The phone, I was quite sure, had been on for some time, with the line open. As, most likely, the young woman bandit’s had also been.
After lowering the phone, the chubby woman, now wearing a reassuring smile, spoke to the other two. The three waited, the worried woman doing some more hand-wringing, the others making gestures of reassurance, until the chubby one pointed to another woman at the corner, leaving a taxi. She waved to the new one, who strode without haste up the street. Also middle-aged, this woman was thin, with a look as imperious as that of the rice merchant’s wife in the village where I grew up. She wore discreetly elegant, well-made clothes. I was impressed; this team was clearly willing to spend money to make money. The necessity of this is a lesson I have tried to impress upon my children. Although my sons have learned it, to this point my daughter, at least in the area of her wardrobe, has not.
The new, well-dressed arrival spoke to the chubby woman who had made the call, then turned to the worried one. Expressions of amazement bloomed on the face of the worried one as the well-dressed one spoke. The same expressions must have passed over Lan Li’s face at this point in the trick. I blew out a breath of disgust.
Finally, after more urgent discussion, the elegant woman looked at the sun, squinting her eyes. She nodded, as though satisfied. She drew from her large, costly purse a folded cloth bag with colorful embroidery, though anyone with eyes as sharp as mine could see the work had been done by a machine. She spoke, indicating the bag. The worried one asked a question. After receiving the reply, she looked from the elegant bandit to the chubby one, to the young one, then nodded. Taking a deep breath, she turned to hurry away. She looked back once, to see the young bandit smile encouragingly. The middle-aged one pointed to the street corner they stood on, as if to say they’d be waiting right there. Then she pointed overhead, to the sun. Scuttling along Mulberry Street, the worried woman picked up her pace.
I stood from my bench. As I am able to walk more rapidly than most people my age, or even many younger people, I caught up with the worried woman before she reached Canal Street.
“Excuse me,” I said. “My name is Chin Yong-Yun. Please do not bring those women your money or your jewelry.”
The worried woman jumped as if I had slapped her. “Who are you?”
“I have just told you my name. They, however, have not. Whatever names they gave you are false. Furthermore, their promise to lift whatever curse they’ve told you is on your loved one is also false. As is the curse itself.” I peered at her. Her face had gone white. “I don’t know what is causing you such distress. Or whether it is a problem that can be solved. I have no doubt, however, that putting all your valuables in a bag so that they can be blessed by a sorceress before the sun hits its afternoon midpoint, or whatever nonsense they have told you, will result only in additional problems for you. They will steal your valuables. They have done it before.”
“What are you—”
“Go home. Seek help. Chinatown has many resources that can aid people with their problems. Those women are not among them.”
“My son—”
I lifted my hand. “Please do not tell me the problems of your unmarried son.” I was taking a chance assuming the worried woman’s son was unmarried, but really it was not a big chance. A woman frets most about her children when they are single. After marriage they have wives or husbands to share the burden.
In any case, I seemed to be correct. Eyes wide, the woman put her hand to her mouth. “Are you also a sorceress?”
“I am not. The haughty woman in the lovely jacket waiting on the street corner to rob you isn’t either. All those woman are bandits. They chose you because you were upset, something anyone, such as myself, with an ability to understand others, could see. The first bandit gained your trust by being kind, asking you what was wrong. Then she spotted the second, who I promise you did not just happen to be on the sidewalk. She told you, as she waved the other over, that seeing her was very good luck — that that chubby one’s son had once had a similar problem, which had somehow been solved. Perhaps she could tell you how. The second, when she arrived, listened to your recitation. She agreed that indeed her son had had the same problem as your son, whatever you told them it was. She had consulted a sorceress, who told her this problem was the result of a curse. The sorceress was able, she said, to lift the curse, which solved the problem.” I was relating to her the story as Lan Li had told it to me. It fit perfectly with what I had just observed. “She first told you she doubted the sorceress would come to Chinatown this afternoon, but you begged, so she called. Imagine, the sorceress was willing to come help! Of course, she did not actually call. Both women had cell phones, with the ‘sorceress’ listening on the other end. By the time she arrived she had heard the details of your problem twice. This was why, when she joined your group after being ‘summoned’ by the chubby one, she amazed you by knowing, as if by sorcery, all the details of your son’s difficulty. Which, as I say, I do not want to learn.”
If the worried woman’s eyes grew any larger, I thought, her nose would be forced to relocate to give them room.
“The haughty woman told you to collect all your valuables — cash, jewelry, whatever you have — in a bag,” I went on. “You are to bring them back to where the women wait on the corner. You will place your bag of things in that colorful bag she showed you, which she says has mystical powers. At some perfect moment, which is rapidly approaching so as to not give you time to think about what you are doing, she will bless them. After blessing them she will return them to you in the colorful bag, which will now be your lucky bag, to keep. You are to take it home with your valuables in it. You must put it on the family altar, where you will light incense. In the dark of night, precisely twelve hours from the moment of the blessing, you must remove your valuables from the bag, at which moment the curse will also be removed from your son.”