As Michael reached for the check, I said, “Michael, I still owe you money; can you let me pay?”
He held my hand under his. “Please, I hope I’m Buddhist enough not to be too attached to money.” Then he asked me whether I would take him to see more of Hong Kong the next day.
“I’d love to.” The words stumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them.
After leaving the restaurant, we took a short walk on the peak along Harlech Road, then rode down in the tram in silence, absorbing each other’s thoughts and presence.
Later, when we got off at the Cheung Sha Wan subway station, I declined his offer to walk me home.
“It was a wonderful evening, Meng Ning,” Michael said, his face looking pale and dreamlike under the fluorescent light. I felt him squeeze my hand. “And thank you so much for your company.” His hand was large, warm, and comforting. So comforting that it was disturbing. He bent close to scan my face. “May I call you tomorrow morning?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll call around nine then. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I echoed, unwilling to detach from him while not quite knowing what else to do. Then, to my utter surprise-with several teenagers and other people standing around us in the lobby-Michael drew me into his arms and brushed his lips against mine. After that, he smiled at me one more time, turned, and was gone.
10. Decadent Pleasure
Michael invited me out each day for the remaining days of the canceled retreat. We spent time near the Kowloon Star Ferry terminal-going to the art museum to look at Chinese paintings and the Space Theatre to see a film on black holes. I felt pleased yet befuddled. After the fire, my life suddenly seemed to have switched onto a completely different track. It had always been my desire to become a nun-if not, then at least a single career woman. Now not only had the fire burned away this ambition, it had also fired my passion for a man, an American! What would my life turn out to be? And…what did Michael want from me? Did he really like me or was he just having fun?
One evening I took Michael to the night market in Temple Street in Yau Ma Tei. The noisy alleys were crammed with people shopping at open-air street stalls illuminated by the yellow glow of kerosene lamps. Vendors’ and buyers’ heated haggling rose above the strollers’ chatter and laughter. Western pop music blared from boom boxes and competed with raucous live Cantonese operatic singing. We squeezed through the crowd and saw a heavily made-up sixtyish woman singing in a high-pitched falsetto, “Flowers falling from the sky…” She gestured prettily with her embroidered handkerchief as the audience hummed the popular Cantonese opera aria to accompany her.
Michael’s face glowed as he listened intently. Then he whispered into my ears, “Meng Ning, I’d love to see a Chinese opera. Would you take me to see one someday?”
“Sure,” I said. Then I told him this aria is from The Royal Beauty, based on the tragic love between Princess Chang Ping and her fiancé during the Ming dynasty-they committed suicide, refusing to surrender to the new emperor of the foreign Qing dynasty.
After I finished, Michael looked deeply into my eyes. “Meng Ning,” he said, “when you take me to see a Chinese opera, I want something with a happy ending.”
His remark embarrassed, but pleased me. A silence, then we continued to walk and look around. Goods for sale were either spread on top of wooden planks propped on cross-legged tables, or strewn on large blankets on the ground: used books, pornographic magazines, electronic gadgets, leather goods, T-shirts, plastic toys, combs, eating utensils, buckets, stools, flip-flops, chopping boards. Chinese medicines ran the gamut. Michael asked me to translate the package labels: aromatic white flower oil for headache, dog-skin pomade for chill, earthworm and toad for circulation of blood and relaxation of joints, black snake for arthritis and rheumatism, wine-pickled baby sea horse for lumbago and sexual weakness. I passed over tiger’s penis and Golden Gun Never Droop Pills. Grimy stacks of pirated CDs and videos ranged from Cantonese pop to Mozart, Madonna, Michael Jackson.
Used trinkets were labeled as antiques, ranging from dark red yixing teapots to opium pipes, bamboo birdcages, Guan Yin statues, clay figures of Tai Chi masters and Bruce Lee, tin biscuit cans from the fifties with oil paintings (Fragonard’s The Reader, Ingres’s Valpinçon Bather) reproduced on the lids, coins strung together in the shape of a sword to cast away evil spirits. Tables of jewelry held jade, amber, marcasite, coral, crystal, even plastic. But there was always a chance one might acquire something valuable discarded by ignorant heirs and sold by more ignorant vendors.
Michael bought the coin sword.
When I asked him why, he said, “Because it never hurts to keep evil spirits away.”
Food carts emanated tantalizing aromas as Michael and I squeezed forward through the crowd. We saw steaming sticky rice, smoldering sweet potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil, marinated chicken innards, shiny red sausages, grilled barbecue beef impaled on thin bamboo sticks, boiling ruby porridge made with cubes of coagulated chicken blood, smoked duck’s liver, stewed ox tongue, fried pig rind, squid dyed fluorescent orange.
A stray dog appeared around a corner and began to sniff among the tidbits of food underneath the stalls. Michael watched it with tenderness in his eyes. “Poor dog. I used to have a spaniel, really big and beautiful, then he got cancer and suffered so much that I had to put him to sleep. After that, I didn’t want a dog again. I just don’t have the heart.” He turned to me. “You like dogs, Meng Ning?”
“Of course,” I teased, “they’re delicious!”
Just then, a young girl of high school age was walking toward us. The English words on her T-shirt caught my attention: THIS SUMMER I COULDN’T FIND A JOB, SO I HAD TO TAKE THIS BLOW JOB.
I pointed at her T-shirt and asked, “Michael, what kind of job is this?”
He seemed unable to speak. Laughter spilled out.
He wasn’t answering, so I pressed. “Michael, what kind of job-”
“Meng Ning, quiet, please.” Michael was still laughing. “I don’t think this girl understands…I’ll explain it to you later when I…have a chance.”
“But I’m giving you the chance right here and now.”
“No, I’m sorry. I really can’t explain-”
“Michael, you’re a doctor. Is this blow job so hard to explain?”
“Shhhh…Meng Ning, plee-eeze!”
He became boneless with laughter and that ended our conversation.
The night before his departure, Michael suggested we imitate the Chinese literati of the past-discuss and appreciate the four decadent pleasures: wind, flower, snow, moon. Since there’s never any snow in Hong Kong, we decided to go to an outlying island-Cheung Chau-to appreciate the other three. We took the ferry from Central and spent an hour amid boisterous people atop the sapphire sea, before we arrived at the fishing village.
Now at eight o’clock in the evening, the sky turned steel blue with streaks of clouds; behind a chubby one shone the moon. While walking off the ferry, Michael stopped to study the silver disc for a while and then, to my surprise, recited a line from a Chinese poem: “A crescent moon induces melancholy, but a full moon makes one amorous.”
I immediately responded with another. “Under the moon in Chang An, the sound of a thousand clothes beaten on stones; the autumnal wind carries the women’s never-ending love.”
Michael took my hand and I let him. After looking at the moon in silence for a few moments, we resumed walking. It pleased me to see that the small island, although now adorned with modernized buildings and vendors in Western clothes, was clear of cars and retained its ambiance. A few sampans and junks rested contentedly on the shimmering water by the port; others were busy loading or unloading passengers or goods. Thick vegetation, rarely seen in the city, thrived everywhere. A sea breeze wafted onto the shore to ease the heat. In the distance, bits of the turquoise roof tile of the Heavenly Goddess Temple glistened between the laced foliage of ancient trees.