saw every conceivable style of attire, from common dark pants with a tightish white high-neck wraparound blouse thing, to a close-fitting dress in brilliant hues. Stylishness was everywhere. I felt a sweaty slob, struggling on to find that clock tower, my eyes screwed up against the glare.
Besides being in the most fantastic place on earth, something happened. I saw a miracle. And she was alive.
Of course I’d reflexly noticed the Chinese women’s hour-glass figures, the nipped waists, those lovely slender narrows from the breast to hips. You can’t help it. And that high mandarin collar to the cheongsam, the slit hem, the fold-over bodice, that clutch-sleeve effect, the whole thing a marvel of compact form. But I was telling you about this miracle. It happened in a market.
Applause somehow seeped through music blaring in the row. Mechanically I turned into the side street. It was narrow, with stalls and barrows cramming onto an open wharfside, water gleaming beyond. I eeled among the vegetable stalls—I’d never seen most of the produce before. Everybody was peering, grinning, talking. I stepped over fish buckets, avoided a sweating bloke humping two big tins of water on a homemade yoke, and stood on tiptoe to peer over the suddenly still crowd. Most were diminutive women shoppers carrying bags and bundles of greens dangling on finger strings.
And I saw her.
She was in a light-red cheongsam, long-sleeved, and seemed to be doing nothing more spectacular than strolling. Turned away, pausing at a stall, she reached a hand and touched a pear on a heap of pale giant pears, and the entire crowd went
“Waaaaaaah!”The woman strolled on, exquisite. She was a glorious butterfly, an exaltation, so beautiful that words are just all that jazz. I knew how that pear felt. It had got a peerage. The hawker was a dehydrated geezer in a curved straw hat, naked except for billowy gray shorts frayed about his skeletal old knees. He had a baby’s two-tooth grin, looked varnished by countless wizening Chinese summers. With a flourish he wrapped the pear in a colored paper and offered the bundle. Another beautiful woman, one of three following her queenly progress, took it. No money changed hands but the chorus of approval was evident as people crowded round him to congratulate him and buy his fruit. I pushed after, mesmerized by that sublime woman. No shoving among the crowds for her. The way cleared magically. One hawker pulled his stall aside with the help of countless hands so she could stroll through. Oscar Wilde once said ultimate beauty was a kind of genius, and he’s right because it is. Plenty of other Cantonese women standing clapping and admiring were pretty, attractive as they always are. And her three followers were gorgeous enough, God knows. But I swear that this creature actually did shine. I honestly mean it. Luminous. If the sun had gone out you could have read a paper by her radiance. Her luster was a dazzling, tangible thing.
Half a dozen suited men stood about staring at the ogling crowd. The three women followed into a liner-size chauffeured Rolls. To applause, it glided away. The goons leaped into a following limo. I was glad they’d gone. You can always tell mercenaries; they have the anonymity of a waiting computer—programmable but without separate purpose. Well, I thought dispiritedly as the Rolls was engulfed by the traffic, if I had a perfect bird like that, I too would hire an army. The elderly hawker was making a fortune. In all the babble he was demonstrating over and over exactly how he’d taken the pear and wrapped it. I heard a camera-laden American tourist exclaim, “Jee-zzz!
Who was that?” as the mob dispersed, and for the first—but not the last— time in my life heard the words of explanation. An older Chinese chap in long bluish nightgown courteously answered in precise English. “Jade woman,” he said.
My senses returned, reminding me that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. A headache began. The crowds thickened, rushed faster. Heat swamped back with the music, talking, shouts. Hong Kong’s thick aroma came again to clog the nostrils. The buses began honking and revving, and I found I was still among mere mortals. But I’d never be the same. I felt remade, a new model Lovejoy.
Jade woman. I’d look it up when I got a minute, except how do you look something up in Hong Kong? For a while as I pushed through the mobs in search of that clock tower I felt almost myself again, remembering. The heat drained me of course within a hundred yards and I had to halt, breathing hard, my hair dripping sweat.
Failure when it comes is a bully. It grinds you down so the sludge gets in your eyes, up your nostrils. The meaning is an unmistakable eternal law: Failure is intolerable to the successful. Hang on to nine.
I found a fragment of shade near a line of stalls in a side street, stood still and closed my eyes. All I could think of was rest, food, and coolth, but I’d none of those three. I opened my eyes, and saw a European bloke wandering purposefully among the barrows. He was searching among the bits and pieces on a jade stall. The thing that lifted my hopes was his grooming: handmade leather shoes, gold watch, blow-waved hair. And fed. There are two basic attitudes to life. Either you live it, or sit sulking and hope existence will come by the next post. I rose, steadied my giddiness away, and plodded across.
He was one of those affected individuals forever trying to seem young and witty. A veritable Hooray Henry, in fact. I didn’t mind. If I couldn’t con a bite or a groat out of this duck egg, I didn’t deserve to survive. I pretended interest in the vendors’ wares.
They were mostly jade pieces—different colors but mostly grays, an occasional pale green, and the white mutton fat, carved as belt buckles, pendants, and the like. He was after something for a lady, I guessed, as he picked up a jade carving, a flattened mushroom.
“?” He spoke Chinese to the hawker, a stringy little chap looking a century old.
“!” The vendor expostulated at length on his reply, gold teeth grinning behind fag smoke. My mark shook his head, gave back moans and groans. The vendor seemed to drop his price a bit, which called for more argument. I reached out.
“Not that,” I said. “This.”
The jade piece was about two inches long, merely a dark-green flat leaf with an insect on it. The creature was brick red. The carving seemed to hum in my hand like an electronic top. Lovely, lovely. Dilapidated as I was, the ancient loveliness of it was like rescue itself.
“It’s genuine,” I told him. “Ch’ing Dynasty stuff, 1750 maybe. The rest are crappy simulations. Parti-colored jades were a Ch’ing speciality, but watch out for stained fakes.”
He eyed me up and down, fingering me as a scruff on the make. “They’re all real jade.”
“Yes, but modern.” I strove for patience. “This isn’t crummy new jade. Don’t be taken in by crappy Burmese jadeite stuff. This is old, mate. It’s the only genuine antique on his stall. Have a shufti with a magnifying glass if you don’t believe me. You’ll see the pitting which the old jade workers’ treadle power always—”
“!” The hawker was nodding with enthusiasm. Anything for a sale.
The mark took me aside, lowered his voice and said, “Piss off. Hawk your con tricks elsewhere.”
