Johny being Johny, he had his joke in the central market—four stories of ghoulish creatures—chickens, fishes, crabs—awaiting execution. He prompted a fishmonger to slash a live fish open and reveal its throbbing heart squirting blood. Everybody roared laughing when I squealed and shot like hell out of that wet and ghastly place.
On the way into Kowloon Johny was especially noisy, telling me how he’d won the Indianapolis dragster championship on a souped-up Jaguar super-special XL 8000, been short-listed for the next NASA space shuttle… “Great, Johny,” I said, my feet dangerously close to joining in his trannie beat.
Trying to deflect him from inanities about Boston, Philly, New Orleans, I asked him where he lived. Mistake. We took a detour round Kowloon Tong to admire a tall apartment block built with all the imagination of a cereal packet. He pointed out a balcony. It was all I could do to avoid getting dragged up to see it. “Over fo’ dozen wall posters, Lovejoy!”
“America’s got that many counties?” I guessed.
“You got it!” He was over the moon. “But states, man! ’Nited States, see?”
We did more locations, including an enormous cinema complex, a football ground, a busy shopping mall, and a sports pavilion filled with Chinese exercising like mad.
“Great, Johny.” became my stock phrase. Okay, I’d got the message: Hong Kong was a ball of fire in production, commerce, business. I was dulled into stupor. It was that and my weariness that made me increasingly edgy.
What with Johny’s endless bopping, prattling about America, I was shell-shocked. Every so often we stopped for a drink from a street vendor. I noticed Johny never paid, simply said a few words, lifted three or four Cokes, and on we went. We saw a shop covered in red flowers while firecrackers exploded and a flutey band did its stuff. We saw a gem merchant in Des Voeux Road sorting stones, aquamarines to diamonds, while a trio of Cantonese girls watched and learned. At each stop Johny Chen stood as still as he was able and pointed. I dutifully stared at whatever he was indicating—a cluster of street bars, a cinema advertising six hectic Westerns a day, a sky-scraper building; sometimes a mere street hawker on a pedal bike beside a barrow piled with shirts; one sampan among hundreds, or an oceangoing freighter feverishly unloading at a Kowloon wharf. It was crazy and exhausting. I was beginning to think there was nothing I hadn’t seen when I finally wilted and begged for a rest.
“No rest, buddy. Jade market. Diggaroo?”
“Eh?” We were in a crowded narrow street. We’d seen scores like it. A line of street hawkers, trams doing their robot turns in the crowded distance. I could see no market.
“Diggaroo what exactly?”
He pointed with an elbow. “Oooooeee, baby,” he crooned, eyes closed. I looked at the two people he’d indicated. The man and woman were only a couple of yards off and stood facing each other in rapt concentration. Both wore traditional long Chinese robes, of the sort I’d seen in the street opera on that terrible day. The sleeves were whitish, trailing absurdly owing to their enormous length and size. I could have climbed into any of the cuffs. But for the first time I felt a twinge of excitement and drew closer. Beside the man’s feet was a lumpy cloth- covered heap. And that still heap was pealing magic signals out into the ether. I swallowed. The woman put out her hand, the man his.
They gripped hands as if in wordless greeting, then flicked their respective sleeves to cover their grip, and stood motionless. I glanced at Johny for explanation but he was oblivious. When I looked back, the pair’s concealed hands were wriggling gently. I was fascinated. Like watching mice in a stealthy tryst under a sheet. Then I noticed other Chinese, similarly garbed but with sleeves atrail, standing motionless nearby, beside small covered piles of stuff on the pavement, and it dawned. The pair shaking hands were dealing. By touch. A kind of stealthy communication in open daylight. And under the cloths were pieces of jade. I felt exhilarated, so near to throbbingly vitally genuine ancient jade, when Johny touched my arm and jived off. I followed, narked. The one enthralling event I wanted to watch, the jade dealers, was irrelevant to my dancing minder. I caught him in a few strides and yanked him to a standstill.
“That does it, Johny. I’m leaving.”
He was amazed. “Man, Ah calls de hoods iffn yoh done do dis.”
“No way, man.” It was catching. But I remembered my place and sulkily decided to misbehave instead of rebel. “Right. Tour it is. But you’ve to take me to one place I want.”
“Okay, man. Can do! Where?”
“The Mologai.”
He stopped jigging, even clicked his trannie off. I recognized consternation. Perversely I repeated the name. Steerforth had hated the area. My sticky irritation made me perverse. “The Mologai before anything else, Johny. Or call your goons. The Triad bosses’ll execute you, whatever they do to me.” I still wish I’d not said that, seeing what happened, but everything can’t be my fault all the time.
Uneasily he took a halfhearted step, then shrugged. “Okay, man, ten-four. Rap on fast, man, okay?”
“I’ll hurry, promise,” I agreed, and was whisked by our docile taxi to the area where those steep climbing buildings began. There they put me down. Johny said half an hour, and the taxi drove off and left me alone.
As it happened, it was a whole hour or more before I regained the pavement. Johny said nothing but gave me a casual told-you-so glance as I climbed into the car’s chill, chastened and silent. We resumed our hectic journey through the opulent, plush, impossibly tall commercial palaces of Hong Kong. Next time we passed the spot I too turned to look the other way.
“Man,” Johny said, bopping and finger-snapping as we alighted outside the hotel. “Ah really pities yoh.”
“Pity?” I yelped, alarmed.
He did a sympathetic break dance. “Yoh godda study a load o’ crappy antiques now, man. Fo’ hours! Not one’s American. Only foreign crap. See you roun’.”
Marveling, I watched him boppaloo across the concourse to where the trams did their sleepwalker’s turn towards Des Voeux Road. What he saw as servitude I saw as release.
“You’re late, Lovejoy.” The lovely Shiu-Won, aka Marilyn, was being all impatient beside me. “Five minutes. Don’t let it happen again. The American women have arrived. Do the antiques immediately, reassuring them that all the items are genuine, whether fake or not. You shall be overheard, so please ensure accuracy.”
“Raat own, lady,” I said. “Incidentally, Shiu-Won. Does your Yankee assistant ever shut up?”
