Hong Kong Is My Dream, Not Yours!
by
A.C. Koch
June 2000
Mina had gotten up early to make the noodles. She stood
at the sink looking out the window at a slice of alleyway
which could have been any city in China for the sounds and
smells coming from out there. She smoked a long brown
cigarette she had taken from Tsui's coat pocket. He was
sleeping off a hangover in the other room and wouldn't smell
the smoke, nor would he awake if the Chinese army came
rumbling down this alley right now with tanks crushing the
food vendors and troops climbing the fire escapes to gun down
the crowds. She could throw a party for the soldiers
and dance with them here in the tiny kitchen while they ran
their hands all over her body and she pretended to rejoice
that Hong Kong was back where it belonged, and Tsui would
keep on sleeping his drunken sleep, dreaming of a smoky jazz
club in Soho where he was playing an endless improvisation on
a Coltrane theme. He would wake to find her raped dead,
the city in ruins, China all around. And that would
perhaps be better, she reflected, than if he just woke up
like normal, everything the same, and shuffled into the
kitchen to grimly slurp his noodles at the table while she
washed out the pot. She smiled. Even a horrifying
fantasy could be a nice diversion on a grey morning. Because
when it ends, you're right back where you started, only maybe
a little smarter than before. The problem being that
the same thing happened when the fantasies were good: you
ended up right where you started, everything the same, only a
little sadder than before. The thing was to put
yourself in a place that you didn't mind coming back to.
That took some doing.
When the noodles were done she plucked half of them out of
the pot to nest in her bowl and left the remainder cooking.
She sprinkled chopped green onions and peppers onto her
breakfast and sat at the table to eat, shoving aside sheet
music and CD cases and dirty dishes. She had just poked
the first bite into her mouth when someone started pounding
on the front door. She sat a moment, trying to
recognize the knock, remaining silent in case whoever it was
would go away. But they kept knocking. The
Chinese Army perhaps? Finally she moved to answer if
only to keep Tsui from waking up.
"Smells like breakfast," said Harry, leaning
against the wall in the concrete stairwell. She stepped
aside to let him in, holding her finger to her lips.
"He's sleeping."
"Good. I'll eat his breakfast then."
Harry was the drummer in the band. He had named himself
after Harry S Truman, who had bombed the Japanese and who had
worn the same little round glasses that Harry the drummer
did. It was better, he thought, than naming yourself
after Gandhi or John Lennon, the other round glasses guys.
They went into the kitchen and Mina served him the remaining
noodles with onions and peppers. She was a little
ashamed, as she handed him the bowl, that the noodles were
overcooked, but he slurped them down without seeming to
notice. The thing she liked about Harry: he could
sit in silence indefinitely. He didn't need to hear
himself talk. People like that allowed her to spiral
off in her own head without having to worry about what
expression was on her face or whether she was responding with
the right nods and smiles to the conversation. They sat
at the table while the sounds of the alleyway vendors and
bicycle horns and trashtrucks filled the room and they didn't
even look at each other but only slurped the noodles. She
twirled her chopsticks around and watched the glistening
noodles curl over each other like snakes and she concentrated
on the sound they made, a wet shiny sound that took her so
far back she felt like a baby. Harry was idly pushing
around the CD cases, reading the liner notes and splattering
them with broth. A little dollop hung from his chin and
Mina had the urge to reach over with her thumb and wipe it
off. Then she would hold her thumb to his lips so he
could lick it. She surprised herself. A great
smile came over her face which went totally unnoticed. He
had the sparsest stubble on his chin, and one tiny whisker
was magnified in that dollop of broth. She touched her
cheek and imagined the feeling of that stubble grazing her
skin. Suddenly she needed a cigarette very badly.
"Harry, you eat like a drummer. Do you have any
cigarettes?"
He smiled at her, raising his eyebrows. "You smoke
now?"
"I'm working on my voice."
He was holding both hands up to her face across the table to
shelter the lighter flame even though there was no draft to
put it out. She sucked the heat in and blew a streamer
of smoke over the table. "Don't tell him,"
she said, nodding towards the other room where Tsui was
breathing through his mouth. She ashed in her empty
bowl and gave a thought to winking at Harry but he was
lighting up his own cigarette. Right here on the table,
she thought. Before he knows it she could be there, in
front of his face, throwing his cigarette away, licking that
drop off his chin. She could push her tongue into his
mouth and he would come alive in an instant. They're
riding the chair, peeling away only the necessary bits of
clothing, just enough to get it inside and keep it there,
pushing, the way that lasts for an hour. They're on the
floor, she's underneath, faster now. The noodles spill
on top of them and writhe in the space between their bodies.
Slithering. She can see the peeling paint on the
ceiling, the cockroaches skittering along the floorboards,
and the stubble of his chin is scratching her cheek so that
she'll look like she's blushing for the rest of the day.
Finally she closes her eyes and just pushes. Breath and
noodles the only sound.
"What's this?" It's Tsui, standing in the
door to the kitchen, bleary eyed.
"I tried to stop her," said Harry, "but she
insisted."
Mina, blushing, killed the cigarette in her bowl and blew out
the last of the smoke. Harry was smiling to himself,
lifting his bowl to drink the last of the broth while Tsui
wandered over to the stove to see if there were any more
noodles in the pot.
"Harry ate your breakfast," said Mina, "and he
made me smoke his cigarettes."
"She's right," said Harry. "It's all my
fault."
"I'm hungry," was all Tsui said. He turned
and went back into the other room.
"You should come for breakfast more often," she
said quietly.
Harry looked up from the liner notes he was still reading.
"Of course. But, you know, the noodles were a
little overcooked."
*
* *
Mina had perfectly assumed the posture and
attitude of the obeisant girlfriend: sitting forward on
her chair, holding her pocketbook on her knees, staring into
the tabletop and nodding at intervals at whatever Tsui was
talking about. He sat reclined in his chair, legs
crossed, smoking deeply and flicking ashes into the wet
ashtray, periodically swigging from his beer bottle and
talking all the while. He was talking about his uncle,
who refused to sell his sheetmetal shop and insisted on
remaining in Hong Kong after the handover even though it was
certain the new Chinese factories would undercut him, and
despite the possibility that Tsui could get papers for the
whole family. Mina nodded. Tsui knew she wasn't
listening, or else she just didn't care about papers. She
had no ambition, she was just perfectly content to croon her
jazz songs until the flags came down--and then where would
she be? Did she think the Chinese authorities would
have any use for jazz bands playing American music? about
love and romance? and in English!
The cafe
interior was brassy and cluttered, with American rock music
blasting over the speakers loud enough to make them crackle.
Tiny spotlights were beamed on every table, and neon beer
signs buzzed everywhere. Out the window lay a teeming
public plaza where people milled about browsing at handmade
jewelry on blankets, cartloads of plastic toys, sunglasses,
ballcaps, hotdog wagons, ice cream stands and a truckload of
Persian rugs stacked like a cord of wood. Money flew
between hands everywhere you looked and the stream of people
was steady. Mina was watching all this past Tsui's
shoulder. She would pick out one person in the crowd
and follow him or her with her eyes all the way through the
market, straining to catch every detail.
A long-haired
white man with a big backpack moved slowly through the crowd,
observing everything. He spent some time watching an
old woman scoop out cups full of boiled silkworm
Mina had to
cough to suppress her smile. Down below, the man with
the backpack was buying a corndog and fumbling with a handful
of change. He walked off then, disappearing around a
corner where his future, whatever it would be, was rushing
right at him.
*
* *
Why doesn’t Mina fantasize about her
own life? Surely sometimes the things we don't want to
think about are the most interesting of all. Maybe she
just thinks that daydreams are more interesting than where
she's already been. If she were to make a movie of her
own life instead of some stranger's, it would open on a grey
morning like this one, on the banks of a river she hopes
never to see again. Who could blame her?
No one know the fisherman’s name.
Mina and three other girls have already paid him nearly a
year's wage; all the money fit into a coffee can which he
carried into his shack while they waited outside in the rain.
Through the window they could see him sipping tea at his
table, then dressing in layers of sweaters and a rubberized
poncho. Seeing them peering through the glass he
angrily waved them down to the dock. The four girls,
none more than twenty, moved down the muddy embankment to the
sole boat tied to a post in the muddy shallows. Mina
and the others waded out to it and climbed aboard, huddling
on the two facing benches. She had never seen the
others before, and no one spoke. Wait awaited them in
Hong Kong? Were they going to meet family? or only to
find work? One of the girls wore high heels and a long
skirt; was she expecting a cruise on the Star Ferry and a
gala reception at the terminal?
When the
fisherman finally arrived he barked at them to get down out
of view. The girls lay across the bottom of the boat in
a muddy puddle and were covered with a tarp. An
outboard
motor sputtered to life with the tang
of exhaust. Soon they were bobbing on the choppy water.
Mina could see
a sliver of sky through a ringlet in the tarp, but her view
revealed nothing but grey. Her fingers and toes grew
numb, and her head spun with the slapping of the waves.
She could hear the fisherman tinkering with his equipment:
he was actually fishing.
The motor was
killed and they bobbed stagnant in the water for what seemed
a very long time. One of the girls was quietly moaning.
Fish flopped on the tarp over them as catches were reeled in.
Mina tired to sleep, the only way she knew to escape
anything. The next time she peered through the ringlet
she was amazed to find blackness. The fisherman hadn't
turned on his huge night lights, and they were drifting on
the sea in darkness. He began to row.
She thought of
all this the way she thought of her job in the shoe factory:
tremendous boredom, which would inevitably pass. If she
just concentrated she could feel that it was already over.
She knew she would again be on shore, but this time in a
different world, and she would be dry and warm and this boat
ride would be a completed experience in her long day. And
instead of a stack of vinyl shoes with rubber soles to show
for her labors, she would have nothing--but she would be
standing on the soil of England, China would be behind her,
and her new family would be waiting.
Of course the
boat ride did end, but not for many hours. Long enough
for Mina to actually fall asleep and be awakened again and
again by the fisherman hollering at whoever was moaning to be
quiet. The girl couldn't control herself; she sounded
like she was dying. Abruptly, the boat struck land.
The fisherman leapt into the water to drag the boat ashore,
hollering for the girls to get out. When all four were
on shore the fisherman shoved the boat back into the water,
jumped in and began rowing without looking back. Mina
yelled to him, not at all sure what she wanted from him.
Was goodbye too much? He didn't even leave them with the
tarp. She watched him row into the night and, after he
had slipped out of view, heard the outboard motor sputter to
life and carry him away. She had earned this little
ride by sleeping repeatedly with her factory supervisor,
hiking twenty miles over mud flats with no possessions and
giving a year's wage to an angry fisherman. Now here
she was on the muddy shore of a dark island with three
terrified strangers and the sun was coming up.
Out on the sea
lights from the fishing boats and freighters moved slowly
across the horizon. When the sky lightened Mina could
see the grey shapes of dozens of boats inching across the
edge of the world. She sat huddled beside a boulder
listening to the waves lap at the shore, waiting for one of
those shapes to move toward the island.
Cut to montage
of pleasant things, extreme close up: cups of hot tea,
plates of dumplings, a naked body warm and close. Soft
kisses. Superimpose on the grey expanse of the sea, the
distant hills of China at the horizon. Pan over four
girls huddled alone on the naked shore of the island; the one
in the heels and skirt is sprawled out in exhaustion, her
illusions shattered.
It's late in
the day when a small motorboat buzzes the shore, circles back
and idles out in the water. Mina watches to see if it's
police, but there are no markings. The boat trolls to
shore, a man is waving. Farther out, a freighter is
drifting by.
Cut to
freighter interior, a filthy kitchen, the girls swallowing
cookies and water, shivering in blankets. The sailors
speak to them in Russian. Later Mina stands on deck as
the city comes into view through a labyrinth of islands,
misty hilltops hanging in the sky. Hong Kong seems to
be made out of colored glass.
When night
falls again, Mina and two of the girls climb back into the
motorboat with a pilot. The girl in the heels and skirt
has remained on the freighter, no one knows why. The
motorboat takes them noisily across a choppy expanse of sea,
and Mina has the terrifying impression that they're headed
straight back to China.
But they come
ashore on a rocky beach a little ways from a village with
lights burning in every window. Lighted signs stand
over the buildings, and cars race past on a nearby highway.
The girls wade ashore and the motorboat buzzes away. Mina
leans against a tree and pulls her blanket around her
shoulders. Having been carried this far, she can no
longer move on her own. The other two walk down the
beach towards the town.
Perhaps she
sleeps some more. The next thing she notices is a
figure coming along the beach, stepping over the rocks,
cigarette in hand. Mina moves out from the trees, holds
up her arm, waving. The man approaches. He's
wearing a white suit and shiny shoes, his hair slicked back
like a movie star's. He comes toward her. "Mina?"
"This
isn't China," she says, and the man laughs.
"Thank
God," he says. Then she takes his long brown cigarette
and smokes it right down to the filter.
*
* *
Tsui was still
talking. He had another beer now, and a fresh
cigarette. He was talking about Thelonious Monk, how no
one thought he could play when he first hit the scene, how
many still didn't get it. But Tsui got it. He
understood. It was all about the spaces between
the notes. That's what Monk was about. Just like
van Gogh was about the space between you and the picture, not
what was in the frame. It was hard enough for
Westerners to see such things--van Gogh died broke and
insane--but the Chinese? What would happen to artistic
visionaries once the Chinese took over? Tsui ran his
fingers across the tabletop, playing an imaginary riff,
perhaps a Monk-style accompaniment to the Bon Jovi on the
speakers.
Despite herself,
Mina had heard Tsui's speech. She asked herself, What
is Tsui about? Is he about the space between us, this
pseudo-conversation? or is he just about what's inside his
own frame? And what does he have to do with artistic
visionaries?
She couldn't help
but smile a little, placidly stirring her apricot juice with
the straw. Fortunately, Tsui didn't look at her. He was
aloof as a movie star in his white suit and slicked-back
hair, waiting for his part to be called. He reclined in
his chair, elbow thrown rakishly over the back, blowing smoke
into the air and surveying the cafe. Most of the
clientele were ethnic Chinese, like Mina and Tsui, and many
were couples, at various stages of involvement. Here
and there Mina glimpsed an identical dynamic, the passive
girlfriend and the jabbering boyfriend. To be sure,
Tsui was not her boyfriend--at least, she wouldn't call it
that. He was her second cousin and her father, back in
Guangdong, had made him her guardian. That meant that
she was never out of the apartment without Tsui knowing where
she was going, and who with. He could be just as
tyrannical and irrational as her father, but worse, because
he was jealous. He wanted her as his fiancée, and
though she knew her father would one day approve, it wouldn't
happen while they were living together as cousins. It
would happen only if Mina failed to find a more suitable
husband in Hong Kong, and Tsui was doing his best to ensure
that she had no opportunities to escape him. And so she
made a concerted effort to display unwifely behavior: overcooking
his noodles, sleeping in, sneaking drinks between sets, and
never once listening to his rambling conversation. He
was bound to meet someone more appealing, in some bar, and
then he would shed Mina as a lost cause. Then, for a
real man, she would take cooking classes.
How tremendously
bored she was! Everyone thought this place was
romantic, the Western Bar, because there were pool tables and
American beers and trendy movie posters. This was the
only place Tsui ever wanted to come, because, ultimately, he
wanted to go to the West. Who didn't? But he had
no ideas, he just wanted to play in his jazz band--and what a
terrible jazz band! Didn't he know people made fun of
them? But he saw nothing beyond himself. He
couldn't even see her, sitting right before him. She
was glad for that.
Perfectly still,
her eyes roamed about. There was an East Indian
waitress wiping down the tables whom Mina thought to be quite
beautiful. She was lanky, which made her look tall, and
wore a long black skirt, which made her look taller. Her
black hair was in a loose bun and her enormous eyes flashed
out from her dark face like a vision. She was closely
concentrated on wiping down every empty table, carrying trays
of bottles and ashtrays back to the waitstation. She
interacted with no one, and walked quickly with her eyes on
the floor. None of the men seemed to notice her, but
Mina saw that many of the women slyly observed this girl as
she moved about. Who among them wouldn't have died to
have those astonishing eyes?
She was, Mina
decided, completely unaware of her beauty. Her name was
something like Amrit, and in her native Bombay she was
considered among the most beautiful women of her generation.
But she was of low caste, and her future was bleak. That
was why the British sailor in his Navy blues had been
irresistible when he had smiled at her on the market street
by the docks. She couldn't help but look at him, so
clean and pretty he was, and, of course, she had those eyes.
There were a few days of increasingly dangerous rendez-vous,
culminating in his proposal. She was completely
shocked. He asked her to marry him as they were saying
goodbye, fingers enlaced through the chainlink fence that
separated them. The ship was leaving port. She
couldn't respond. She said nothing but for the epic
that her eyes spoke.
Cut to Amrit
arriving at the Hong Kong airport. (How did she manage
to get the money for the flight? How did she leave her
family? Best, perhaps, to leave that part out.) She's
wandering through the airport in her sari, dragging a bulging
sack. Is the sailor supposed to be there to meet her?
Does he even know she's coming? We don't know. But
sadness radiates from her. She's desperate.
Cut to Amrit
dragging her bag along the trashy sidewalk of some neon
sidestreet. She meets other Indians but they are
unsympathetic. This is Hong Kong! Who cares about
anyone else?
She's eating fried chicken in a brightly
lighted fast-food hell, staring into the tabletop.
Later she finds
the British naval base and goes to the gate, requesting to
see Private So-and-so. The soldier in the guardhouse
checks and tells her her sailor isn't stationed here anymore.
He's already been discharged. But she returns again and
again, as if she might catch her sailor lingering by the
gate.
But he's gone.
The soldier in the guardhouse, however, is no fool. He
invites her out for a drink. Who on earth is more
vulnerable than she? And has she ever been anything
but? The camera--for all this surely is a movie in the
making--pans in a dizzying sweep across the cityscape,
galaxies of windows, surging traffic, buzzing neon,
glistening pavement, all superimposed on the great ocean of
Amrit's eye...
Mina forced
herself to stop. She was making herself sad, and she
could cry easily. The busgirl was wiping the table next
to theirs so vigorously that the glass was squeaking against
the wet rag and the girl was staring into it like a mirror.
Tsui was waving his hand to illustrate some point he was
making and Mina watched the smoke trail in streamers from his
cigarette. How, he wanted to know, would he be able to pay
off So-and-so at the Immigration office if his uncle wouldn't
front the cash? Without the cash, how could they get
the papers? Mina was nodding. She was very
interested in papers, certainly, but not to go to London with
Tsui and the band. She had someplace else in mind.
All the framed photos and posters of James Dean and Marilyn
Monroe that crowded the walls practically whispered the word:
Hollywood!
*
* *
A. C. Koch has lived in southern Europe and eastern Asia, and presently resides in central Mexico on the highplains desert, subsisting as a jazz guitarist in the group Clean & Sexy (www.cleanandsexy.com). Koch’s short stories and novel excerpts have appeared in Thieves’ Press, Rocky Mountain Arsenal of the Arts, Nexus and River City, and can be reached at akoch@campus.zac.itesm.mx.
