My senses returned, reminding me that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. A headache began. The crowds thickened, rushed faster. Heat swamped back with the music, talking, shouts. Hong Kong’s thick aroma came again to clog the nostrils. The buses began honking and revving, and I found I was still among mere mortals. But I’d never be the same. I felt remade, a new model Lovejoy.
Jade woman. I’d look it up when I got a minute, except how do you look something up in Hong Kong? For a while as I pushed through the mobs in search of that clock tower I felt almost myself again, remembering. The heat drained me of course within a hundred yards and I had to halt, breathing hard, my hair dripping sweat.
Failure when it comes is a bully. It grinds you down so the sludge gets in your eyes, up your nostrils. The meaning is an unmistakable eternal law: Failure is intolerable to the successful. Hang on to nine.
I found a fragment of shade near a line of stalls in a side street, stood still and closed my eyes. All I could think of was rest, food, and coolth, but I’d none of those three. I opened my eyes, and saw a European bloke wandering purposefully among the barrows. He was searching among the bits and pieces on a jade stall. The thing that lifted my hopes was his grooming: handmade leather shoes, gold watch, blow-waved hair. And fed. There are two basic attitudes to life. Either you live it, or sit sulking and hope existence will come by the next post. I rose, steadied my giddiness away, and plodded across.
He was one of those affected individuals forever trying to seem young and witty. A veritable Hooray Henry, in fact. I didn’t mind. If I couldn’t con a bite or a groat out of this duck egg, I didn’t deserve to survive. I pretended interest in the vendors’ wares.
They were mostly jade pieces—different colors but mostly grays, an occasional pale green, and the white mutton fat, carved as belt buckles, pendants, and the like. He was after something for a lady, I guessed, as he picked up a jade carving, a flattened mushroom.
“?” He spoke Chinese to the hawker, a stringy little chap looking a century old.
“!” The vendor expostulated at length on his reply, gold teeth grinning behind fag smoke. My mark shook his head, gave back moans and groans. The vendor seemed to drop his price a bit, which called for more argument. I reached out.
“Not that,” I said. “This.”
The jade piece was about two inches long, merely a dark-green flat leaf with an insect on it. The creature was brick red. The carving seemed to hum in my hand like an electronic top. Lovely, lovely. Dilapidated as I was, the ancient loveliness of it was like rescue itself.
“It’s genuine,” I told him. “Ch’ing Dynasty stuff, 1750 maybe. The rest are crappy simulations. Parti-colored jades were a Ch’ing speciality, but watch out for stained fakes.”
He eyed me up and down, fingering me as a scruff on the make. “They’re all real jade.”
“Yes, but modern.” I strove for patience. “This isn’t crummy new jade. Don’t be taken in by crappy Burmese jadeite stuff. This is old, mate. It’s the only genuine antique on his stall. Have a shufti with a magnifying glass if you don’t believe me. You’ll see the pitting which the old jade workers’ treadle power always—”
“!” The hawker was nodding with enthusiasm. Anything for a sale.
The mark took me aside, lowered his voice and said, “Piss off. Hawk your con tricks elsewhere.”
And went back to the barrow leaving me staring. So much for the help you can expect from a compatriot. Almost weeping at parting from the jade, I cut my losses and blundered on.
As an incident it wasn’t much, probably the sort of encounter that happens a trillion times a day in cities everywhere. But it had an effect on me; got me into one mess called murder and another called prostitution. I have this knack, you see.
An eon later I was in the air-conditioned splendor of the Ocean Terminal, a vast shopping arcade of bogglesome affluence. From there I could keep an eye on that vital clock tower, making sure it didn’t escape before nine o’clock when Goodman would arrive and be my salvation.
But all I could think of was that blindingly beautiful jade. And the jade woman. They both stayed in my mind like a siren’s fatal song.
6
« ^ »
THE heat emptied from China’s coast as if daylight had suddenly decided to switch off. I emerged from the Ocean Terminal and walked by the Kowloon Public Pier. Hundreds of Chinese had the same idea, so quite a press milled along the waterside.
If you’ve never seen Hong Kong’s harbor, go soon. See for yourself because it’s really no good my going on about the spectacle. You know the pictures: the massive junks trailing a forest of multicolored flags, the huge oceangoing ships, the chugging diesel lighters, that cerulean sky, that long fawn spine of the island rising clear out of the ultramarine harbor, the crustacean-white buildings. They’re on Chinese restaurant wall posters the world over, so you’ve seen plenty. The feel’s different. You need the dynamism, Hong Kong’s loveliness zapping out at you from all sides, the glorious immediacy. And you’ve got to be there to feel that. Daunting yet exhilarating. Too much, when you’re starving.
It’s a physiological truth that if you lie down, you don’t feel as hungry. A doctor told me that, but by then I’d already found it out. How long had I gone hungry now? Two days?
The aroma of the noodle stalls, the wafts of fry-ups no longer raved in my dulled brain.
I was quite light-headed. Ominously my hunger had faded, becoming a lead hollow in my belly. I perched on the railing to stare at the dying sun glare and oily water.
Rubbish floated in a kind of sludge, plastic bottles and other indestructibles. I crouched and dozed fitfully in the cooling air, every so often waking with a start to see the cream-and-honey clock tower still there. Finally I rose and wandered, but never too far for safety as nine o’clock crept closer in the dusk. But safety, I was fast learning, comes rationed by the minute in Hong Kong. Two safe minutes together and you’ve had your share. What I didn’t know was that I’d already had mine, been lucky. I thought I’d been through hell.
Once, I was accused of honesty—a woman who should have known better —but I soon cleared myself by betrayal. (She forgave me, which only goes to show women’s unreliability. Probably comes from having naught to do all day.) That unnerving experience taught me resilience. So, starving and sun-grilled, I racked my experience in the interests of survival.
Back home it’d have been a doddle. I mean, take Vasco Pierce. He was a born incompetent. From reasons of backing knacker’s meat on Derby Day he once got stranded in London. Know what he did? Went up to one of those girls who hand out free advertising at railway stations and offered to do her stint, five thousand pulps.
Delighted, she gave him a couple of quid and offed. Whereup Vasco starts selling commuters these free drosses. Kept it up all day, made enough to buy himself a new suit. God’s truth. But here in sun-sogged Hong Kong nothing was free, except me.
Nothing was vulnerable, except me. And nothing easy, e.m. Fate rubs your nose in it.
You have to stay alert, like old Vasco.
Trying for alertness, I sensed a sudden faint bonging in my chest. Pausing in a small patch of shade long enough to stop sweat waterfalling to sting my eyes, I peered about. I saw a shop front opposite crammed with loads of utter dross—vases, porcelains, ivory, bone statuettes, soapstone cups. Before I could stop myself I’d darted through the traffic, causing an unholy orchestra of horns. There it stood on a glass shelf, the cause of my sudden throb. I literally staggered, looking in. Shaped like a circular cushion made of red lacquer, its surface was carved into scenes of the Eight Immortals feasting and swilling. Even through the thick glass I felt its radiance. No more than a container for a gift of luxury food, its dull appearance dazzled me like a lighthouse. Only about fifteen inches across, it beamed 1560 a.d. at me. Undamaged apart from its aging cracks, dirty, but pristine, Ming period. I’d only seen one before, in the Victoria and Albert’s undeserving museum. True lacquer comes from a Rhus tree species, and is so highly poisonous that the lacquer people all died young. It’s weird stuff. The ancient Chinese built up thin layers on ash and bits of thin cloth, polishing each layer to a lovely sheen. Modern lacquer usually doesn’t have these layers. I leaned and peered. Sure enough, a chipped area on the lid revealed a series of striations.