She said nothing and we sat at the back of the boat, where the windows were fogged with salt.
You’re sick, I thought to myself, and you don’t even know it. You’re in terminal decline.
The crew scowled; the ropes were unlashed and the boat cast off, the motors drowning out the sound of voices. It swung around.
“I’m selfish,” I was saying in a low voice close to her ear, “a pure egotist. I admit it. I know how selfish I am.”
“That’s not it.”
I had no idea how long we had spent together by now. I was surprised to see that the light was dimming even further. Had the afternoon passed? We swept out of the harbor and into the choppy waters beyond. At the end of Hong Kong island the brutal apartment towers rising up against dark green hills, Easter Island idols of vast size, a million windows dropping down sheer to the water. The boat pitching and her face pale. She gripped my knees.
Halfway across, the sea calmed a little and the birds dispersed. It rained violently. Rocky islands rose out of the mist. She admitted finally how bitter she had been that I didn’t call.
“You’re right,” I said miserably. “I should have called.”
“I didn’t expect you to call. I’m just pleased to see you again.”
She took my hand, and there was a reconnection that I didn’t deserve. Or perhaps I did deserve it.
The boat was now moving with more assurance, and ahead the jetties of Lamma could already be seen. Isolated houses perched on top of the island hills, the water shacks buoyed on blue floaters and the glint of bamboo woods sweeping up hillsides. The village of Yung Shue Wan. The primitive so close to the hypercomplexity of Hong Kong.
The ferry pulled into the jetties area and we saw that the closest restaurant had begun to light its red lanterns. She got up a little impatiently and headed for the front of the boat. The rain had driven off any onlookers and the jetties shone like stone. We ran to the safety of the awnings, where the restaurant staff stood in their aprons hustling people in. There was a wide terrace covered by the same awning but open to the sea and riled with wind. The multitude of overhead fans were motionless. A footpath ran between this terrace and the restaurant itself, where tanks of bamboo clams and bread crabs sat under blue lights. The bay glimmered beyond the terraces and above it three vast chimneys from a power plant. A small beach between the restaurants, daunted by the chimneys, and across the bay the forest coming down to the water and hesitating among shacks and rubble.
We went along the path, through other establishments, and then out onto a basketball court overlooking the water. A small Taoist temple with the usual muddled, cozy dark red interior. Beyond the basketball court a path curved around a dried-out canal and we walked along it, running our hands over the blue railings, indifferent to our soaked hair. It led up to the village of Ko Long, the sign for which stood at the bottom of a long flight of cement steps and a banyan tree.
Her house at the top, with a downward view of a swamp of wild bamboo and sugarcane. It was a two-level tile villa that had probably been a vacation cottage, though now it was winterized. The terrace was cluttered with dead leaves and a metal rake, a flat roof and painted gutters, shutters facing the swamp and a modest square garden that she had let go to ruin. From there we could see the line of the jungled hills, and beyond it the huge blades of a wind turbine turning, a single blade visible for a moment, moving clockwise, and then disappearing.
She paused with the key for a moment before inserting it into the door, and I thought it had occurred to her that this was not perhaps the good idea she’d thought it was. Perhaps it had finally occurred to her that I was not the lord she’d hoped I was. That I was merely the hustler and fraud I’d always claimed to be. We went into the front room and I saw the tatami mats and the neat shelves and the lacquered boxes, the pillows and electric fans and the kettle. It was modest and self-contained, a room of her own and nothing more. It was cramped, borderline dingy, but it had those touches. It must have cost a fair amount in that location, and Dao-Ming had clearly renovated it herself to make it conform to her tastes. She lived mostly on the upper floor, from where the floor-to-ceiling sliding windows offered a view that ended with another island. The bamboo blinds were rolled up on strings. There were no images on the walls.
I must have been so exhausted that I fell asleep as soon as I was off my feet. The room filled with cloying steam and she broke the edge of a cake of oolong into a cast-iron pot, the tea bursting into fragrance as she broke it up. She went to the French windows and opened them slightly, enough to admit a finger of air. It wasn’t cold, just sea-damp and breezy. It cut through the steam. I could hear the rain. It looked set to rain for days, for weeks even, and already it had that even tempo that lulls you to sleep. The steady quiet rain of nightmares. I remember thinking, My pockets are empty, what if she searches them and realizes? But she must have already understood everything and that was what astonished me. I could no longer be of any interest to her. A sugar daddy with no sugar isn’t much of a daddy.
I stretched out on the tatami and for some reason it was warm, as if the floor was heated. I felt immensely tired. I lay on my side while she took off my shoes. She removed them very carefully, unrolling the socks and laying them to one side. There was a sponge, and she began sponging my feet with hot water. She took off my wet clothes, folding them and laying them down next to the shoes. The sponge dipped into a bowl of hot water and she sponged the backs of my legs, the small of the back, the arms, the calves, the shoulders.
TEN
When the tea was ready we drank it quietly. “Drink,” she said. “You’re dehydrated.” I slept again. The wind soughed as it swept through a thousand trees. I watched her beetle-shell hair drift over the edge of the cup and then over her forearms, where the sleeves of a Shetland sweater had been pushed back. The watch had been removed, stowed away. She opened a packet of McVities chocolate biscuits and we dipped them into the oolong, then nibbled the soft edges. I noted the TV set standing on a small plaster column and the boxed writing paper sitting on top of it. To whom did she write letters by hand? There was not a single photograph in the place, no trace of family or affections, and there was no sign that other lives were present within hers. There was just the view through the window and a painting of a monastery on a postcard slipped behind the corner of a wall-mounted mirror, a place that might have been familiar to her. It must have been Sando.
Before long I was stretched out on the tatami again, now with a quilt over me, and I was sleeping long and hard, a response in all likelihood to total disintegration, the last remnants of pride and coherence swept away. It was a ragged, formless unconsciousness. Even inside it I could relish the exhaustion. The rustle of the rain and the sound of the wind rolling down the hillside. When I woke it must have been hours later and I sensed that I was alone. It was night. I saw at once a candle lit inside a stone box and a saucer of oil placed on top of it whose aroma had filled the room. She had left it there while I slept and the flame had run low. I saw, too, that the window view had filled with far-off lights, the lamps around the plaza and the string of restaurants, the cement villas with their doors covered with stickers of good-luck cats. I got up and went to the kitchenette, where a note written in English lay on the table suggesting that I was to help myself from the fridge but wait till she got back later that night before making myself something proper to eat. She was going to bring something special from the city. I went out onto the balcony and tried to imagine where I was. I looked down at the muddy road, where dogs stood under a lamp wagging their tails and waiting. The trees writhed, the field of bright green bamboo rippling and seething. The house next door was shuttered down in darkness, the windows sealed with metal blinds. I turned on the heater and wrapped myself in the quilt. An hour went by and I grew restless. I always do. I put on my shoes and went downstairs to the locked door of the lower level that she had asked that I not open. I tried the handle but it wouldn’t yield. I peered through the crack. All I saw was the streetlamp filtering through onto a concrete floor. At that moment, moreover, I heard distant footfalls and I knew that it was her. I crept back upstairs and took off my shoes again, laying them against the door.