“Who your friend? Where your identity card?”
“Algernon. He’s in Macao,” I said desperately. “Racing cars, in a big race.”
“Macao? You Macao?” The tension eased fractionally. Instantly I recognized the signs of cops in search of a problem-disposal system.
“Macao.” I nodded eagerly to help it along. All I wanted now was to get away. “Today.
Portuguese Macao.”
The first policeman wanted to be sure. “You go to Macao?”
“Yes,” I agreed in despair. “For car racing. Me mechanic.” I almost said I’d flown in on the big white bird, but caught myself. These cops looked shrewd, knowing. And back in East Anglia maybe the tax bailiffs were already hunting me for faking antiques with malice aforethought. No, helpful police were the last people I wanted. The only way out was to transform myself into a trouble-free bona fide passenger. “I’m looking for the Macao, er, ship, er, ferry. Could you tell me how I get there, please?”
“Taxi,” they told me firmly. “Ten minutes Macao ferry.”
“Good, good!” I beamed them one of my special sincerities. “Thank you very much for your help. I’d better get going!” I said good-bye and marched off into the throng.
The loos were sign-posted. I went in to wash, and drank myself full more to ablate my growing hunger than to quench thirst. Ten minutes and I was out of the building.
The heat blammed me. White-hot air enveloped me so, I actually caught my breath.
The aerodrome concourse must have been air-conditioned to Hong Kong’s version of coolth. Uneasily I viewed the traffic swarms, the acres of parked cars, the distant fawn hills hazed and shimmering, that incredibly blank blue sky. I’m not good in heat. In this oven I knew I’d be terrible. I almost turned back, but two policemen were looking out at me through the glass. I gave them a confident smile and briskly stepped out.
Ten yards, fine. I like walking.
A hundred yards, not so fine. My clothes were sweat-drenched. My face dripped. Cars were roaring and squealing. I actually glanced around. Surely this nasty sun’s pressure couldn’t keep on all frigging day? Two hundred yards and I was exhausted. Instinctively I turned left and down towards the maximum density of habitation.
Three hundred yards and I had to stop, gasping, under the shade of a tree. It too seemed to be having a hard time of it, managing somehow without real roots and clinging to a vertical roadside of sand-colored rocks. Saloons, taxis, lorries topped with green canvas, passenger coaches, the lot fumed past in dust clouds. For the first time I really began to feel a bit frightened. It’s unusual in me—no, honestly it is, because I can scratch survival anywhere, make do with practically nothing. Here, I was literally evaporating in an alien world. Already I felt light-headed. Thirst thickened my throat. I waited for two lorries loaded with vegetables to clatter by and resumed my plod. The terrible sun stood heavily on my crown as soon as I ran out of shade.
The road appeared hewn from the mountain. Closer, it was nothing but dry sandy stuff interspersed with giant granite slabs. Here and there a greenish scumble of vegetation hung on for grim death. Small water grooves showed where trickles had cut. At least that meant they sometimes had rain, thank God. I trudged on.
Ahead traffic columns, slower now, obscured any view to my left, but up ahead I could see tall off-white tower blocks of flats. Soon I was among them. I’d never seen so many. I began to pass small side roads leading in. And, oddly, came across a team of road menders laboring fast and hard at a subsistence. Odd because they all were women, attired in loose black pajama suits with black-fronded cartwheel hats made of wicker. They all grinned and called. I grinned back and said hello. They were slogging against time, straw baskets of rubble on their shoulders and trot-walking in plastic sandals to discharge the burden down a worn wooden chute. I’d never seen so many gold teeth. There was an important lesson for me in all this, if I hadn’t been too bemused to spot it. Trudge.
Gradually the occasional bus began to emerge. I was thankful only for some different color than fawn and white. Among the high-rise apartment blocks I saw a patch of pale green, gardeners stooped over bushes, but the scene only made me feel homesick and I piked on under that oppressive sun. I’d had the sense to knot my hankie as a hat—did no real good—and to pause in every bit of shade I could find, but could still feel myself petering out. Once, a curve in the road cast a thin shadow and I halted there, semi-collapsed, honestly wondering whether to go back to Kai Tak and start explanations all over again to the police, the reception-desk girl, continue waiting for Idiot Algernon. At least there’d been drinking water and a place to sit down. But the hostile police… I began to remember tales of Hong Kong’s drug problems, smuggling, gangsterism, its secret societies—they must have suspected all sorts. No. Soldier on. Before long I should begin to acclimatize. This dreadful exhaustion would dwindle, and maybe by then I’d have reached Macao.
Nape dripping, seeping soggily at every pore, I wended through the cacophony and dust under that bloody-awful sun. The few European faces that stared at me from passing saloons showed a mild curiosity—was I letting the side down?—and taxis slowed hopefully. By then I was too defeated to think. It’s a dangerous condition, perhaps the worst plight of all. You can hardly see, let alone work out opportunities, chances, dredge up some scam. It’s the way cattle must feel on their last truck. Except, being human, I suppose, a kernel of fury was germinating within at my abject condition. Somewhere in me as I hoofed towards Kowloon, rage started seething.
Somebody was going to pay for this. All right, so now I had and was nothing. Wholly negligible. But destitution’s not just poverty; it’s humiliation. I wasn’t going to stay on zero.
Besides the heat there were Hong Kong’s planes. God, but they flew low. I found myself ducking as roaring engines came strafing in. Look up, you see the aircraft’s vast underbelly slide across over the street. It’s in my mind yet. How the Chinese in those narrow Kowloon alleys manage, God alone knows. It’s madness. Their pot plants tremble on the balconies. I even saw the washing wafted on their projecting bamboo poles, pennants in some berserk secret charge. And beneath that frightening howl Hong Kong gets on with things without a glance. Noise has no market.
As the streets and pavement shops of Kowloon began to crowd in, I felt that I’d kill to climb out of the gutter. I wish I hadn’t told myself that, not now, but honestly the deaths weren’t my fault, and in any case what else could I have done? Life’s nobody’s fault either.
So it came to pass, gentle reader, that, murderously vowing hatred against persons known and unknown, desiccated as a coconut, delirious from the heat, penniless and weary, I limped into Hong Kong proper, Pearl of the Orient and the brilliant Fragrant Harbor of the legendary China Coast. Okay, it didn’t need me. It hadn’t even noticed me. But it had got me for better or, as I found, worse.
In the next twenty-four hours Hong Kong noticed me all right. To this day I wish it hadn’t.
5
« ^ »
SIX o’clock that evening I was sitting giddily on a wall beside the harbor. The sun was finally sinking, thank God. It had nearly done for me. I never wanted to see the bloody thing again.
Later I was to learn that I was in Kowloon, more precisely, looking out towards Stonecutters Island. A crowded street market adjoined the harbor where I sat. Farther along a mass of huge junks was crammed into the embrace of a mole. Between me and Hong Kong Island itself lay a massive white liner with slender twin funnels in primrose yellow—hope for survival? Desultorily I tried to feel cool as the hawkers slopped about running their barrows homeward, clack-clack-clack in plastic sandals. A few pai dogs were scavenging in the lessening light. They looked as furtive as I felt. I’d settle for a grubby cabbage leaf; the dogs could have the bits of raw gristle in the puddles. I’d never seen open drains before. I’d decided to wait when I saw the crowded vegetable stalls thinning, the fruit barrows pulling out. Nothing leaves rubbish—edible if grotty—