The Fan Tan Players, page 6
’’And why stuff his mouth full of rosaries?’’
‘‘Maybe it a Catholic symbol?’’
‘‘Maybe it means get the fuck out of Macao.’’
‘‘Hey lo baan, we have to be careful, you know, or they maybe kill us too.’’ He raised his eyebrows at Iain. ‘‘But you no worry, before I learn hung kuen!’’ He made a fist. ‘‘And also I know crane kung-fu.’’ Lee stood on one leg and stretched his arms out to form a crucifix.
‘‘I feel reassured already,’’ said Iain. Behind the door came a nauseous, gurgling sucking: the sounds of a hydro-aspirator at work.
‘‘What the hell do you think Koh’s up to now?’’
‘‘I thing he taking fluids out of lungs.’’
‘‘Look, when this is over we’re going to meet up with Costa. The fat man talked with Lazar this afternoon. Let’s see whether he has any additional insights.’’
The seconds passed.
Finally, Koh reappeared with Poon at his elbow.
‘‘What?’’ asked Iain.
‘‘The man died of drowning,’’ said Poon.
‘‘I could have told you as much,’’ said Iain.
‘‘But he didn’t drown in salt water, Mr. Sutherland,’ said Koh. ‘‘The police report said he was discovered floating in the sea, yet we found his lungs were filled with fresh water not salt. Strange that, don’t you think?’’
Later that night, having met with Costa, Iain returned home. He walked along the Rua Central with Lee in tow.
‘‘So you thing the man was drowned in the sewers?’’
‘‘Yes. It would explain how the rats got to him. Costa’s going to ask for permission from the PWD so that we can take a look at the storm drains. There may be something down there.’’
‘‘Did you ever see man drown during the war? I hear in trenches, everywhere was wet mud. Did soldiers get shot and drown in mud?’’
Iain remembered having to leap from corpse to corpse, stepping onto the backs of the dead, otherwise his boots would sink in the quag. ‘‘Lee, what is this bloody fixation you have with the war?’’
‘‘I no have fissation. I love action, I love American gangster films, excitement. That is why I take this job.’’
‘‘So, you’re a fighting man. Is that how you broke your finger?’’
‘‘What this?’’ He held up his crooked left digit. ‘‘Kung-fu! I was in big street fight against rival gang. The man I fight was master of drunken monkey kuen!’’
‘‘Oh, really.’’
‘‘Yes, really.’’ A moment passed. ‘‘No, not really. When I little boy I put string to finger and tie to chicken neck. Chicken was my pet. I like to take for walk. But then came a naughty cat and the chicken run like crazy. Wahh! So strong, almost pull my finger off!’’
Iain laughed.
They stopped in front of a dai pai dong, an open-air street restaurant, and ordered two bowls of wonton noodles. The smell of steamed char siu and roasted lahp cheung wafted from the stoves. They collected their wooden chopsticks from a bamboo receptacle and ate standing up.
‘‘You know, lo baan, I joke about kung-fu and everything, but we must be careful of the Wo Cheung Wo triads.’’
‘‘How so?’’
‘‘They are very dangerous, very well informed, some people say they have even in-few-trated the police. They like to intimidate their enemies. Scare them into submission. Only afterwards they try to kiw you.’’
‘‘I think I can handle it.’’
Lee pleaded, ‘‘Just promise me you keep your eyes open, ok?’’
Iain gave a resigned shake of the head. He fed thick filaments of noodle into his mouth. ‘‘Alright …’’
Satisfied, Lee tilted the bowl to his face, slurped the broth from the noodles. ‘‘I must not eat too much. My Ma-Ma cooking haam-yu-gai-faan tonight. My brudder is joining us. Hey, lo baan, you have brudders or sisters?’’
Iain paid for the noodles and together they crossed the road, approaching Lau Ming Street from the south. The tinny trill of Chinese opera music disturbed the hot night. Pungent incense bundles burned from shophouse shrines; some dedicated to local deities, others to Guan-Yin, Goddess of Compassion.
‘‘Two brothers.’’
‘‘Tell me story about them. Did they fight in war too?’’
Iain sighed and nodded absentmindedly. ‘‘I used to share a bedroom with them. James and Callum. We used to pretend that the scuffed carpet was our battlefield. James’ infantrymen and lancers against Callum’s fusiliers and my dragoons. We had over fifty of them.’’
‘‘Fifty of what?’’
‘‘Soldiers, which we kept in large Colman Mustard tins. James, the oldest, used a hunting knife to carve the figures out of green holly – there were pipers, battery gunners, infantrymen, Royal Scots, King’s Borderers, Bombay Lancers, and a general from the Duke of Connaught’s Own that we’d painted blue. Sometimes James wet the wood or immersed it in water and it was my job to dunk the figure in the tung oil which we got from the old man that ran the tackle shop on Strathnaver Street.
‘‘We played all morning if there wasn’t school. We were not from a wealthy family. There was no land to speak of; just a vegetable patch, which mother took care of, and three chickens that Callum looked after. James was great with his hands. A talented footballer too, an inside-left. He had trials for Aberdeen at seventeen. He died taking a bayonet to the chest in Verdun in 1916.’’
They walked along in silence.
‘‘I’m sorry, lo baan. I should not ask questions if answers are sad for you.’’
They got to the entrance of Iain’s building. ‘‘Do you want to come up for a nightcap? A dram of whisky perhaps?’’
‘‘No, I go home and talk with Ma-Ma. She cooking haam-yu-gai-faan.’’
‘‘See you in the morning.’’
‘‘Hey lo baan,’’ he said, looking up at the first floor window. ‘‘You leave light open in your house this morning?’’
Iain peered upwards and saw that a white pool of light was blazing within. He shrugged. ‘‘Might’ve done. Anyway, see you tomorrow, Lee.’’
He climbed the stairs. Somewhere inside the building a baby was crying. He was advancing towards his door and had started to extend his arm when he got a sense of being watched. He looked to his left, up the banister, along the line of steps to the next level. The fringes of shadow seemed to slide, to swirl very slightly. But beyond the darkness he saw nothing.
He inserted the key into his door and had only a split-second to recognize the shotgun shell in the rat-trap. The door activated the trip wire. He saw the springs trigger, the metal crossbar fall. Iain tried to duck his head. The shotgun shell went off.
8
It was Sunday morning and the Tabacaria was closed for business. Uncle Yugevny was relaxing in the back courtyard. It was a small area, largely taken up by the outdoor privy and the gnarling roots of a tall bauhinia tree which split the blanket of pavestones with diagonal fissures. The calm that pervaded between the walls of the courtyard was broken only by birdsong and cat meows, and Uncle Yugevny enjoyed the stillness, the tranquility, and the rich smells of the ocean that drifted across from the esplanade. He squatted on a low bamboo stool, feeding the stray cats that loitered around the washing lines. When he’d finished with the cats he picked up a letter from the table and held it in his hand.
As he read the opening line, he heard a voice shout, ‘‘I’m going to do it!’’ from within the wet kitchen. He sent his blue eyes shimmering towards the door.
‘‘I’m going to do it!’’ repeated Izabel as she stormed into the courtyard.
‘‘Do what?’’ said Nadia appearing at her elbow.
Izabel drew in a deep breath. ‘‘I’m going to save them.’’ Her bow-shaped lips tightened. ‘‘I’m going to save the abandoned babies.’’
‘‘The ones left at the hospital gates?’’
Izabel nodded. ‘‘I can’t let it go on any longer. A child won’t live a day in this heat. And what if it rains? I’m going to Government House to talk to somebody.’’
‘‘Who?’’
‘‘The Health Minister, the Chief Justice, the Governor. I don’t know who, but I have to do something. It’s ludicrous, I know, but I can’t let it go on. Will you come with me?’’
‘‘You want me to do what?’’ she said laughing at the foolishness of it all.
‘‘Come with me to Government House.’’
A crease appeared between Nadia’s eyes. She hesitated. ‘‘But what do you expect me to do?’’
‘‘I don’t expect you to do anything,’’ Izabel said, ‘‘just stand next to me and give me moral support.’’
Nadia met her friend’s radiant, challenging stare. She shrugged. ‘‘All right,’’ she muttered.
Izabel looked round to see Uncle Yugevny seated beside a lithe, athletic Chinese gentleman whose generously fleshy lips were smiling at her. ‘‘Oh, hello, Yugevny,’’ she exclaimed with surprise. ‘‘I didn’t know you were out here.’’
‘‘Bom dia, Izabel. This is my friend, Ping.’’
Nadia groaned, ‘‘Oh no, not him again.’’
Uncle Yugevny ignored his niece and went back to his reading. Earlier, a letter had arrived off the mail sloop and was delivered by Miguel Soong, the weekend postman who was on his way to church anyhow. Uncle Yugevny recognized the orderly handwriting and double-ring Cyrillic postmark immediately; the letter was from cousin Zossima from Chelyabinsk.
It spoke of the country picnics they enjoyed during the summer holidays whilst growing up in Russia. How, after the last of the August rains, his old housekeeper Marianma would take the children, including his sister Olga, into the woods and lay a thick rug across the grass, never more than a dozen yards from the troika, in the middle of which sat Fyodor, the household stableman. Out of a great wicker basket, Marianma would remove a seductive, mouthwatering array of dishes. Cousin Zossima reminisced about the apples from the Crimea, Kiev sweetmeats, pickled apricots, pears dipped in honey and flash-fried in butter, jars of creamed berries, smoky flavoured cucumbers drizzled with salt, and bottles and bottles of sugared lemon juice. Afterwards, they would take a rowing boat across the vast pond to a summerhouse for tea, collecting coloured fossils and pebbles from the nearby stream, followed by a soak in the bathhouse, submerged in tubs of steaming, aromatic water infused with wormwood, rosemary and horseradish.
The letter also mentioned how hard life currently was under Soviet rule. ‘Sad how we now hardly get any fruit in the summer months. The best we can hope for are potatoes, turnips and more potatoes,’ Zossima wrote. ‘Well, it is time for me to sign off now. You asked in your last letter about Boris. Our beloved son shows no improvement. His illness continues to eat into his mind. Soon there will nothing left of him.’ Uncle Yugevny read the words with a heavy heart. He felt a hand in his hair, gently easing his locks to one side.
‘‘May Ping begin?’’ asked the Chinese man, laying out his tools on the nearby table.
‘‘Da, da,’’ Uncle Yugevny said in Russian, sipping a cup of hot, apricot-scented, Oolong tea. He removed his glasses.
Ping began inspecting his collection of white-tipped, toothpick-thin, wire plungers.
From a few yards away, from within the confines of the wet kitchen, the jarring clang of pots and pans suddenly shattered the semblance of peace.
Both Uncle Yugenvy and the Chinese man looked round.
Nadia, standing by the window, was frowning, giving looks of disapproval. The stench of grain alcohol had grown stronger and Izabel, standing beside Nadia, was peering through the cracks in her fingers, trying not to look. ‘‘Why must you put yourself through this, Uncle,’’ said Nadia.
‘‘Scouring out one’s ears is vital to good living,’’ he replied in Portuguese, ‘‘and at my age you cannot be too careful with hyzhiene.’’
‘‘There’s nothing more unhygienic, if you ask me. Heaven knows who else has been using those tools.’’
‘‘By the eyes of the domovoi,’’ he sighed. ‘‘Must you make such a vaznya. Ping here requires a steady hand.’’
Ping cleaned ears for a living. All that he carried with him was a cylindrical elmwood receptacle full of metal probes, a miniscule feather duster called a shuxeen, a white towel with a huge hole at its centre, a copper tuning fork and a bottle of grain alcohol. He had been cleaning Uncle Yugevny’s ears for seventeen years.
Nadia and Izabel both decided to take a seat in the courtyard. Izabel was in a short skirt, with turned-down hose; there were dabs of powder on her knees. Nadia was wearing a fringed skirt with Peter Pan collars at the waist, and she had on her favourite, low-heeled shoes, what she called her ‘finale-hoppers’.
They talked for a while longer and watched as Ping started delving into Uncle Yugevny’s inner ear.
He began by drawing back Uncle Yugevny’s unruly hair and caressing the skin around his earlobe with a squat, blunt knife. ‘‘Dis will stimulate da acupuncture points,’’ said Ping soothingly. The girls stared, fascinated, as he twirled the shuxeen into the ear tube with a surgeon’s care and precision, removing it seconds later to insert a cotton-tipped copper wire.
Izabel winced, unable to watch any longer, and looking up into the sky, asked Uncle Yugevny how it was that he ended up in Macao.
‘‘My dyedooshka, my grandfather, was in the tobacco business,’’ he said. ‘‘He manufactured cigarettes, what we called papirossi, in small ferkshops in St. Petersburg. When I was old enough to dzhoin the family business there wasn’t much for me to do, so my father suggested that I travel and look for new types of tobacco. So I dzhourneyed east, past the Urals, sampling all sorts of tobacco – Samsun, Izmer, Bursa. I then tried my luck in the Orient. He said there was good smoking tobacco in Siam, in the Philippine archipelago, even in China. Well, I travelled vyeazdye and sent hundreds of samples back to Russia, but I rarely returned home. And then one day I was in Hong Kong, convalescing from a long boat dzhourney from Siam, when I met a young woman called Amelia Lazar. She liffed in Macao.’’ Uncle Yugevny paused and looking as though he was the victim of a great injustice, sighed. ‘‘By the eyes of the domovoi, the rest is history.’’
‘‘And it was you who persuaded Nadia’s mother to come to Macao?’’
Uncle Yugenvy was silent. His head was very still. Ping was scouring his inner ear with a qeezi, a type of copper pipe-cleaner. ‘‘She wasn’t persuaded,’’ he said finally, his tone suddenly austere. The letter from cousin Zossima trembled ever so slightly in his hands. ‘‘Olga made that decision all by herself.’’
There was another long silence. Nadia grew worried. She saw two horizontal lines cut into his forehead. Uncle Yugevny didn’t say another word, but started nodding his head, which made Ping withdraw the qeezi. He nodded and nodded, his face getting redder and redder, the veins on his neck bulging. Nadia took a deep breath, got up from her chair and walked over to the tall bauhinia tree. She started picking up the dead leaves that had accumulated within the splits in the pavestones, wondering anxiously if he was going to have one of his fits. When she had collected a good handful, she shot her uncle a look. His nodding routine was over and she began to think that they’d weathered the storm, but then Uncle Yugevny’s voice barged in. It was a yell verging on the falsetto. ‘‘By the eyes of the domovoi, they were bloody murderers! Oobeetsa!’’ he cried, jerking his arms up and breaking Ping’s hold on him. He hurled the letter to the floor.
‘‘Uncle Yugevny, please calm down.’’
With a violent motion, he replaced the glasses to his face. ‘‘You think they left Russia because they wanted to? They were forced out! The bloody muzhiks were torching estates, burning farmlands. They came and burned down their house.’’
Nadia let the leaves fall back to the ground.
‘‘Burned down the house?’’ said Izabel. ‘‘Why?’’
It was something Nadia asked herself all the time.
Uncle Yugevny wasn’t even listening now. He was looking at his trembling hands. ‘‘It was 1907,’’ he said. ‘‘The crop had failed again. Russia had just lost a war to Yaapawnya and there was anarchy in the countryside and ferker uprisings in the cities.’’ A cool wind rushed across the patio and hurled itself at Nadia’s bare ankles. She got goose-pimples on her arms. She shrank back from her clothes, let herself smile. It was a forced smile, and she hoped that Izabel didn’t see how uncomfortable she’d suddenly become.
‘‘Were people hurt?’’ Izabel continued.
‘‘Hurt?’’ said Uncle Yugevny. ‘‘Kanyeshna, people were hurt.’’ The way he’d answered, Nadia knew right away he was livid. She wanted to step in front of Uncle Yugevny and tell Izabel to keep quiet, to smother her voice. Instead, she took Izabel’s hand and shook her head.
‘‘It was a rabble,’’ said Uncle Yugevny, breathing hard, his face puce, ‘‘fifty strong, armed with pitchforks and hunting daggers, and they stormed the country estates, attacking everyone and everything. Like animals! Like those filthy rats we saw a couple of weeks ago! Filthy bloody rats,’’ he repeated, the rage in his voice beginning to falter to a whisper. Within seconds, his anger dissipated like drops of water over a fire. ‘‘By the eyes of the domovoi … even after all these years, I feel the pain.’’
Nadia felt how hot her own face and neck had become. Once again she saw the mob led by delegates from the Peasant Union, their torches burning the summer sky, grandma and grampapa Petrov being hauled into the garden and beaten, one of the servants howling at her to run. The front end of the house was collapsing. People were scattering in all directions. She remembered Mamuchka screaming her name, over and over, the blaze of bright phosphorous heat, the yellow walls turning black, the dandelion seeds dancing in the thermals, the blur of smoke as she ran from the house through the grounds into the woods. The men with long sticks were charging after them. She didn’t even know who they were.
Eventually, she and Mamuchka took cover under some bushes facing out to the river, blood pounding in their ears. Eyes screwed tight, seeing nothing, mouths stretched wide, wanting so much to scream, they hid for hours on the clay-crusted verge, their faces dark with mud and ash except where the tears ran down. They’d found a place on a ridge, hidden by trees, beside a long border of berry bushes. Mamuchka treated the painful burn on Nadia’s arm with dock leaves and berry juice. She’d been wounded when the banister fell down and the flames ran up her arm. There were also streaks of what looked like strawberry jam on her legs – scratches from the thorns and spines that littered the forest floor. When it grew dark they listened to the wind and the rustling leaves and for the twig-snap of a footstep. Nadia could see the pinkish light coming through the trees too, knowing it was her house that was illuminating the horizon, and then, seconds later, the little thuds of noise, gunshots that sounded like pine pods exploding in the heat. She remembered little bubbles of sounds – voices crashing against the evening sky, becoming one, and then spreading like fire; yelps of grief breaking as if washed ashore, and she remembered waiting for these sounds to go away, the sounds of the villagers to die out, the sounds of birdsong to return. Waiting for whatever was going to happen next.
