I’m broke.”
His tone said he had heard all this before. “Look, old sport. I’m in business, not charity.
Sorry, but—”
“Money!” I yelled, terrified lest he hang up. “Money for you! That sale!” I hunted my feeble memory. What the hell had he droned on about? Some ceramics or other?
Furniture? “Hello?”
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“I can finger the genuine for you! Honest to God! You’ll make a killing! Promise!” I’m pathetic. I ask you, begging to be employed by a perfect stranger.
Pause. “What do you know the rest of us don’t, Lovejoy? Only divvies can play that game.”
“I’m a divvy, Mr. Goodman. Honest. Try me out. Anything antique.” Another frightening pause. I babbled incoherently on. “I’ll give you addresses, numbers you can call.
Anybody’ll tell you.” I hated my quavering voice.
Still wary, but a decision. “No harm to meet, I suppose. Come over, Princes Building, Central District—”
“I can’t, Mr. Goodman. I’m over in Kowloon. The map says Princes Building’s on the island. I haven’t the fare.” Best not to say too much.
“I see.” Aye, I thought dryly. Trust an art merchant to spot percentage trouble. “Very well. Kowloon side, then. I’ll come over on the Star Ferry tonight. Nine o’clock okay for you?”
My appointment book was relatively clear. “Where?”
“By the big clock tower, Star Ferry pier.”
Eagerly I repeated the instructions. “Thanks. Honest, Mr. Goodman. It’s really great of you—”
Click, burr. I said a casual thanks to the desk clerk, who was now staring at me as I replaced the receiver, and sauntered out into the heat. Definitely not my usual jauntiness, but at least with better odds on survival. Spirits lifting, I had a drink at the Peninsula Hotel’s fountain pool to fend off dehydration, hoping the water was safe, and stared boldly back at the staff frowning out.
I’d survive to nine o’clock if it killed me. As it was, it killed somebody else.
Whether it was relief or having talked to somebody in the vernacular, I honestly don’t know. But all of a sudden I felt alert, awake. A psychologist’d say that I’d received a fix, a squirt of life along that mental umbilical cord connecting me with antiques—and as everybody knows they’re the font of the entire universe. Whatever, I stepped out of that door and my mind blew. I saw Hong Kong for the first time. I still don’t know if it was a terrible mistake, or the best thing’s ever happened.
First imagine all the colors of the spectrum. Then motion, everything on the kinetic boil, teeming and hurtling on the go. Then noise at such a level of din you simply can’t hear the bloody stuff. Then daylight so blindingly sunny that it pries your eyelids apart to flash searing pain into your poor inexperienced eyes. Add heat so sapping that you feel crushed. Then imagine pandemonium, bedlam, swirling you into bewilderment. Now quadruple all superlatives and the whole thunderous melee is still miles off the real thing. Every visible inch is turmoil, marvelous with life.
The street was, I learned later, a dull off-peak one near Nathan Road in the dozy midafternoon. It seemed like Piccadilly Circus on Derby Day because I was new. I found myself in the whirlwind, now pushing among pavement crowds, now being swept away in sudden surges of the human torrent. Buses, cars streaming, barrows clattering, and all competing against that most constant racket of alclass="underline" speech. For Hong Kong talks. I was amazed, God knows why. But all the time Chinese people laugh, exclaim, are astonished, roar delighted denials and imprecations, hold forth, anything as long as the old vocal chords are on max. At first I thought they were all angry. Within minutes I guessed it must be their Cantonese that happens to need vehemence.
That’s not all. Hong Kong does. On every pavement market there’s action. Not mere activity. It’s sheer pace. Immediacy’s the name of the game. The tiny lad piggybacking his tinier sister is making mileage. Chinese shoppers noisily bargain and rush back to bargain again. All sights, sounds are concentrated around potential customers. I saw every conceivable style of attire, from common dark pants with a tightish white high-neck wraparound blouse thing, to a close-fitting dress in brilliant hues. Stylishness was everywhere. I felt a sweaty slob, struggling on to find that clock tower, my eyes screwed up against the glare.
Besides being in the most fantastic place on earth, something happened. I saw a miracle. And she was alive.
Of course I’d reflexly noticed the Chinese women’s hour-glass figures, the nipped waists, those lovely slender narrows from the breast to hips. You can’t help it. And that high mandarin collar to the cheongsam, the slit hem, the fold-over bodice, that clutch-sleeve effect, the whole thing a marvel of compact form. But I was telling you about this miracle. It happened in a market.
Applause somehow seeped through music blaring in the row. Mechanically I turned into the side street. It was narrow, with stalls and barrows cramming onto an open wharfside, water gleaming beyond. I eeled among the vegetable stalls—I’d never seen most of the produce before. Everybody was peering, grinning, talking. I stepped over fish buckets, avoided a sweating bloke humping two big tins of water on a homemade yoke, and stood on tiptoe to peer over the suddenly still crowd. Most were diminutive women shoppers carrying bags and bundles of greens dangling on finger strings.
And I saw her.
She was in a light-red cheongsam, long-sleeved, and seemed to be doing nothing more spectacular than strolling. Turned away, pausing at a stall, she reached a hand and touched a pear on a heap of pale giant pears, and the entire crowd went
“Waaaaaaah!”The woman strolled on, exquisite. She was a glorious butterfly, an exaltation, so beautiful that words are just all that jazz. I knew how that pear felt. It had got a peerage. The hawker was a dehydrated geezer in a curved straw hat, naked except for billowy gray shorts frayed about his skeletal old knees. He had a baby’s two-tooth grin, looked varnished by countless wizening Chinese summers. With a flourish he wrapped the pear in a colored paper and offered the bundle. Another beautiful woman, one of three following her queenly progress, took it. No money changed hands but the chorus of approval was evident as people crowded round him to congratulate him and buy his fruit. I pushed after, mesmerized by that sublime woman. No shoving among the crowds for her. The way cleared magically. One hawker pulled his stall aside with the help of countless hands so she could stroll through. Oscar Wilde once said ultimate beauty was a kind of genius, and he’s right because it is. Plenty of other Cantonese women standing clapping and admiring were pretty, attractive as they always are. And her three followers were gorgeous enough, God knows. But I swear that this creature actually did shine. I honestly mean it. Luminous. If the sun had gone out you could have read a paper by her radiance. Her luster was a dazzling, tangible thing.
Half a dozen suited men stood about staring at the ogling crowd. The three women followed into a liner-size chauffeured Rolls. To applause, it glided away. The goons leaped into a following limo. I was glad they’d gone. You can always tell mercenaries; they have the anonymity of a waiting computer—programmable but without separate purpose. Well, I thought dispiritedly as the Rolls was engulfed by the traffic, if I had a perfect bird like that, I too would hire an army. The elderly hawker was making a fortune. In all the babble he was demonstrating over and over exactly how he’d taken the pear and wrapped it. I heard a camera-laden American tourist exclaim, “Jee-zzz!
Who was that?” as the mob dispersed, and for the first—but not the last— time in my life heard the words of explanation. An older Chinese chap in long bluish nightgown courteously answered in precise English. “Jade woman,” he said.