Noble House

Going down, he suddenly beamed, delighted with himself. The check he had given her was for one month's rent only. She had forgotten he had agreed the month before to increase the amount by $500 a month. Eeeee, Little Marvelous Mouth, he chortled, the yang outsmarted the yin after all! Oh what a good drubbing I gave you tonight, and oh that Clouds and the Rain! Tonight it was truly the Small Death and the Great Birth and certainly cheap at twice one month's rent even with the increase!
Venus Poon finished brushing her teeth and began to repair her makeup. She spotted her amah in the bathroom mirror. "Ah Poo," she called shrilly, "fetch my raincoat, the old black one, and phone for a taxi . . . and hurry or I'll pinch both your cheeks!"
The old woman scurried to obey, delighted that her mistress was out of her foul mood. "I've already phoned for a taxi," she wheezed. "He'll be downstairs, waiting at the side entrance as soon as Mother gets there but you'd better give Father a few minutes in case he suspects something!"
. "Huh, that old Turtle Top's good for nothing now! All he has strength for is to fall into the back of his car and be driven to his club!"
Venus Poon put the finishing touches to her lips and smiled at herself in the mirror, admiring herself greatly. Now for the diamond, she thought excitedly.
"When see again, Paw'll?" Lily Su asked.
"Soon. Next week." Havergill finished dressing and reluctantly picked up his raincoat. The room they were in was small but clean and pleasant, and had a bathroom with hot and cold running water that the hotel management had had installed privately, at great cost, with the clandestine help of some experts in the water board. "I'll call you, as usual."
"Why sad, Paw'll?"
He turned and looked at her. He had not told her that soon he would be leaving Hong Kong. From the bed, she watched him back, her skin shiny and youth-filled. She had been his friend for almost four months now, not his exclusive friend since he did not pay her rent or other expenses. She was a hostess in the Happy Hostess Dance Hall that was his favorite nighttime meeting place, Kowloon side. The owner there, One Eye Pok, was an old and valued client of the bank over many years, and the mama-sa« a clever woman who appreciated his custom. He had had many Happy Hostess friends over the years, most for a few hours, some for a month, very few for longer, and only one bad experience in fifteen years—a girl had tried blackmail. At once he had seen the mama-saw. The girl had left that very night. Neither she nor her triad pimp was ever seen again.
"Why sad, heya?"
Because I'm leaving Hong Kong soon, he wanted to tell her. Because I want an exclusivity I can't have, mustn't have, dare not have—and have never wanted with any before. Dear God in Heaven how I want you.
"Not sad, Lily. Just tired," he said instead, the bank troubles adding to the weight upon him.
"Everything be all good," she said reassuringly. "Call soon, heya?"
"Yes. Yes I will." His arrangement with her was simple: a phone call. If he could not reach her directly he would call the mama-san and that night he would come to the dance hall, alone or with friends, and he and Lily would dance a few dances for face and drink some drinks and then she would leave. After half an hour he would pay his bill and come here—everything paid for in advance. They did not walk together to this private and exclusive meeting place because she did not wish to be seen on the streets or by neighbors with a foreign devil. It would be disastrous for a girl's reputation to be seen alone with a barbarian. In public. Outside of her place of work. Any girl of beddable age would at once be presumed to be the lowest type of harlot, a foreign devil's harlot and despised as such, sneered at openly, and her value diminished.
Havergill knew this. It did not bother him. In Hong Kong it was a fact of life. "Doh jeh, " he said, thank you—loving her, wanting to stay, or to take her with him. "Doh jeh, " he just said and left. Once alone she allowed the yawn that had almost possessed her many times this evening to overwhelm her and she lay back on the bed and stretched luxuriously. The bed was rumpled but a thousand times better than the cot in the room she rented in Tai-ping Shan. A soft knock. "Honored Lady?" "Ah Chun?"
"Yes." The door opened and the old woman padded in. She brought clean towels. "How long will you be here?"
Lily Su hesitated. By custom the client in this place of assignation paid for the room for the whole night. Also by custom, if the room was vacated early, the management returned part of the fee to the girl. "All night," she said wanting to enjoy the luxury, not knowing when she would have the opportunity again. Perhaps this client will have lost his bank and everything by next week. "Joss," she said, then. "Please put on the bath." Grumbling the old woman did as she was told then went away. Again Lily Su yawned, happily listening to the water gurgling. She was tired too. The day had been exhausting. And tonight her client had talked more than usual as she had rested against him, trying to sleep, not listening, understanding only a word here and there but quite content for him to talk. She knew from long experience that this was a form of release, particularly for an old barbarian. Very odd, she thought, all that work and noise and tears and money to achieve nothing but more pain, more talk and more tears. "Never mind if the yang is weak or if they talk or mumble or mutter their foul-sounding language or weep in your arms. Barbarians do that," her mama-san had explained. "Close your ears. And close your nostrils to the foreign devil smell and the old man smell and help this one enjoy a moment of pleasure. He's Hong Kong yan, an old friend, also he pays well, promptly, he's getting you quickly out of debt, and it's good face to have such a pillow patron. So be enthusiastic, pretend that he's virile and give value for his money." Lily Su knew she gave value for money received. Yes, my joss is very good and oh so much better than my poor sister and her patron. Poor Fragrant Flower and Noble House Chen Number One Son. What tragedy! What cruelty!
She shivered. Oh those terrible Werewolves! Terrible to cut off his ear, terrible to murder him and threaten all Hong Kong, terrible for my poor elder sister to be crushed to death by those smelly rotten dogmeat fishermen at Aberdeen. Oh what joss!
It was only this morning that she had seen a newspaper that had printed a copy of John Chen's love letter, recognizing it at once. For weeks they had laughed over it, she and Fragrant Flower, that and the other two letters that Fragrant Flower had left with her for safekeeping. "Such a funny man, with almost no yang at all and almost never even a little upstanding," her elder sister had told her. "He pays me just to lie there for him to kiss, sometimes to dance without clothes, and always promise to tell others how strong he is! Eeeee, he gives me money like water! For eleven weeks I have been his 'own true love'! If this continues for another eleven weeks . . . perhaps an apartment bought and paid for!"
This afternoon, fearfully, she had gone with her father to East Aberdeen Police Station to identify the body. They said nothing about knowing who the patron was. Wisely her father had said to keep that secret. "Noble House Chen will surely prefer that secret. His face is involved too—and the face of the new heir, what's his name, the young one with the foreign devil name. In a day or two I'll phone Noble House Chen and sound him out. We must wait a little. After today's news of what the Werewolves've done to Number One Son, no father'd want to negotiate."
Yes, Father's smart, she thought. It isn't for nothing that his fellow workers call him Nine Carat Chu. Thank all gods I have those other two letters.
After they had identified her sister's body, they had filled out forms with their real names and real family name Chu to claim her money, 4,360 HK in the name of Wisteria Su, 3,000 HK under Fragrant Flower Tak, all money earned outside the Good Luck Dance Hall. But the police sergeant had been inflexible. "Sorry, but now that we know her real name we have to announce it so that all her debtors can claim against her estate." Even a very generous offer of 25 percent of the money for immediate possession could not get through his rough manner. So they had left.
The rotten dogmeat foreign devil slave, she thought disgustedly.
Nothing will be left after the dance hall collects their debts. Nothing. Ayeeyah!
But never mind, she told herself as she lay down in the bath with glorious contentment. Never mind, the secret of the letters will be worth a fortune to Noble House Chen.
And Noble House Chen has more red notes than a cat has hairs.
Casey was curled up in the window of her bedroom, the lights out except for a small reading lamp over the bed. She was staring gloomily down at the street five stories below. Even this late, almost 1:30 A.M., the street was still snarled with traffic. The sky was low and misty, no moon, making the lights from the huge neon signs and columns of Chinese characters more dazzling, reds and blues and greens that reflected in the puddles and turned ugliness into fairyland. The window was open, the air cool and she could see couples darting between buses and trucks and taxis. Many of the couples were heading for the foyer of the new Royal Netherlands Hotel and a late-night snack at the European coffee shop where she had had a nightcap coffee with Captain Jannelli, their pilot.
Everyone eats so much here, she thought idly. Jesus, and so many people here, so much work to provide, so few jobs, so few at the top, one at the top of each, pile, always a man, everyone struggling to get there, to stay there . . . but for what? The new car the new house the new ensemble the new refrigerator the new gimmick or whatever.
Life's one long bill. Never enough of the green stuff to cope with the everyday bills let alone a private yacht or private condo on the shores of Acapulco or the Cote d'Azur, and the means to get there —even tourist.
I hate going tourist. First's worth it, worth it to me. Private jet's better, much better but I won't think about Line. . . .
She had taken Seymour Steigler to dinner upstairs and they had settled all the business problems, most of them legal problems he kept bringing up.
"We gotta make it watertight. Can't be too cautious with foreigners, Casey," he kept on saying. "They don't play the game according to good old Yankee rules."
As soon as dinner was finished she had feigned a load of work and left him. Her work was all done so she curled up in a chair and began to read, speed-read. Fortune, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal and several specialized business magazines. Then she had studied another Cantonese lesson, leaving the book till last. The book was Peter Marlowe's novel, Changi. She had found the dog-eared paperback in one of the dozens of street bookstalls in an alley just north of the hotel yesterday morning. It had given her great pleasure bargaining for it. The first asking price was 22 HK. Casey had bargained her down to 7.55 HK, barely $1.50 U.S. Delighted with herself and with her find she had continued window-shopping. Nearby was a modern bookshop, the windows stuffed with picture books on Hong Kong and China. Inside on a rack were three more paperbacks of Changi. New, they cost 5.75 HK.
At once Casey had cursed the old woman street seller for cheating her. But then the old hag wasn't cheating you at all, she had reminded herself. She outtraded you. After all, only a moment ago you were chortling because you'd trimmed her profit to nothing and God knows these people need profit.
Casey watched the street and the traffic on Nathan Road below. This morning she had walked up Nathan Road to Boundary Road, a mile and a half or so. It was on her list of things to see. It was a road like any other, snarled, busy, gaudy with street signs, except that everything north of Boundary Road to the border would revert to China in 1997. Everything. In 1898 the British had taken a ninety-nine-year lease on the land that extended from Boundary Road to the Sham Chun River where the new border was to be, along with a number of nearby islands. "Wasn't that stupid, Peter?" she had asked Marlowe, meeting him by chance in the hotel foyer at teatime.
"Now it is," he said thoughtfully. "Then? Well, who knows? It must have been sensible then or they wouldn't have done it."
"Yes, but God, Peter, ninety-nine years is so short. What possessed them to make it so short? Their heads must've been . . . must've been elsewhere!"
"Yes. You'd think so. Now. But in those days when all the British prime minister had to do was belch to send a shock wave around the world? World power makes the difference. In those days the British Lion was still the Lion. What's a small piece of land to the owners of a quarter of the earth?" She remembered how he had smiled. "Even so, in the New Territories there was armed opposition from the locals. Of course it fizzled. The then governor, Sir Henry Blake, took care of it. He didn't war on them, just talked to them. Eventually the village elders agreed to turn the other cheek, providing their laws and customs remained in effect, providing they could be tried under Chinese law if they wished and that Kowloon City remained Chinese."
"The locals here are still tried under Chinese law?"
"Yes, historic law—not PRC law—so you have to have British magistrates skilled in Confucian law. It's really quite different. For instance, Chinese law presumes that all witnesses will naturally lie, that it's their duty to lie and cover up, and it's up to the magistrate to find out the truth. He has to be a sort of legal Charlie Chan. Civilized people don't go in for swearing to tell the truth, all that sort of barbarism—they consider us mad to do that, and I'm not sure they're wrong. They've all kinds of crazy or sensible customs, depending how you look at it. Did you know it's quite legal here, throughout the Colony, to have more than one wife—if you're Chinese."
"Bully for them!"
"Having more than one wife really does have certain advantages."
"Now listen, Peter," she had begun hotly, then realized he was merely teasing her. "You don't need more than one. You've got Fleur. How are you both doing? How's the research? Would she like lunch tomorrow if you're busy?"
"Sorry to say but she's in the hospital."
"Oh God, what's the matter?"
He had told her about this morning and Doc Tooley. "I've just seen her. She's . . . she's not too good."
"Oh I am sorry. Is there anything I can do?"
"No thanks. I don't think so."
"Just ask if there is. Okay?"
"Thanks."
"Line was right to jump into the water with her, Peter. Honestly."
"Oh of course, Casey. Please don't think for a moment. . . Line did what I… he did it better than I could. You too. And I think you both saved that other girl from lots of trouble. Orlanda, Or-landa Ramos."
"Yes."
"She should thank you forever. Both of you. She was panicked