The Train to Lo Wu (12 page)

As I walked to the border terminal the clouds were beginning to break up, and the sidewalks glowed in the glaring sun. Twenty minutes later, when the train pulled out of the station on the Hong Kong side, I rested my forehead against the cool glass of the window and closed my eyes. I knew exactly how I wanted to remember her: sitting on the plastic couch, her feet propped up, her hair still wet from the shower, laughing at some inane romantic comedy on the TV. I strained to fix the image in my mind, but already it was difficult to recall the details: what did she do with her hands? How did her voice sound when she spoke my name?

If I disappear, that’s it,
she had said.
China will swallow me up.

Finally I gave up and opened my eyes.

When you take the train south from the border into Hong Kong, after you pass the small town of Sheung Shui, the countryside opens up into a lush valley, a lowland forest dotted with small farms that climb the sides of gently sloping hills. This is the valley of Fanling. In all my trips past this place I had never seen what I was passing: a hundred shades of green so rich and deep that it hurt my eyes to look at them. In the colonial days, I read once, the English governors and magistrates had huge estates in Fanling, and they played a game where they released a fox and then chased after it with horses and a pack of dogs. All the animals had to be imported from England—even the fox! But it was worth it to them, because it was the same game that they played at home in England, and they wanted to forget for a morning that they were here instead of there. I wondered what it would feel like to ride a horse through that incredible landscape, so green that it hurt your eyes to see it, and whether one of those Englishmen might have slowed his horse for a moment, and breathed the air, and felt in that instant that he belonged
here,
on the other side of the world from where he was born. I raised my head from the window, and the faces of the other passengers dissolved, as if I were looking at them from underwater; and I whispered to myself,
peace, peace, peace.

The Ferry

This is what it’s like to be a freak, Marcel thinks. He strides across the empty arrivals hall, thrilled to be standing after a sixteen-hour flight, and the woman in the pale green uniform at the passport desk tilts her head back and stares at him, openmouthed, as if he has just swooped down from the air. Her lips form a single syllable:
Wah.
It’s like a chorus: the stewardesses, the pudgy kids in tracksuits, the old women in embroidered jackets look at him and say it immediately, involuntarily. That’s me, he says to himself, folding back the cover of his brand-new passport, looking around for the signs to the baggage claim. I’m Mr. Wah.

Hello? A hand touches his sleeve; he flinches and turns around. A young Chinese woman with silver spiked hair gives him a nervous half-smile, giggles, and covers her mouth. Excuse me, I wonder if you please sign autograph? She presents him with an open magazine, a picture of a basketball player in midflight over the basket, surrounded by Chinese characters.

But that’s not me.

She looks confused. Sorry? she says. Not you?

No, he says. I’m flattered. That’s Alonzo Mourning.

You basketball player?

No, he says. I mean, sure. I play basketball. But I’m a lawyer.

Oh, she says. OK. But she remains there with the magazine folded, expectant.

So that’s why I can’t sign this, right? You don’t want
my
autograph, do you?

Her eyebrows pucker. Sorry, she says. Don’t understand.

You don’t—for God’s sake, he thinks, make the woman happy. OK, he says. Give me the pen.

Peace,
he signs,
Marcel Thomas.
But he scrunches up the words, and thinks, she’ll never know the difference.

Hong Kong is like no place he has ever imagined. Green hillsides rising out of a steel-colored sea. Rows of identical white apartment blocks that seem to sprout from low-hanging clouds, like mushrooms after rain. When he steps outside the airport terminal the air sticks to his skin, and he feels queasy, his joints rubbery, a bad taste in his mouth. He’d give anything for a shower. Thirteen thousand miles, he thinks, staring at the curving aluminum handrails on the escalator, the green-tinted glass walls of the taxi stand, as if looking for evidence of that fact, some basis for comparison. Thirteen thousand miles from San Francisco. This. And this. And me.

He falls asleep on the long ride into the city, lying across the backseat with his head propped on his garment bag. When the taxi jolts to a stop his eyes open and he sits up carefully. The car is surrounded by people rushing past, bumping up against the window, and he hears a muffled roar: voices, horns honking, music blaring.

What is it? he says. Is it a riot?

Yih ging lai dou ah,
the driver croaks. Causeway Bay. Excelsior Hotel, OK?

When he steps out into the street, he finds himself staring down at a sea of black-haired heads, none higher than his chest. People moving in every direction, weaving, colliding, clutching shopping bags and mobile phones and children; no one looks up at him here. A van turns the corner with brakes squealing, and they scatter out of the way;
like ants,
he thinks,
like cockroaches,
and feels ashamed. He makes his way across the street, holding his bags shoulder-high, as if crossing a river. Without quite knowing why, he holds his breath until the hotel’s revolving doors close behind him, and then releases it with a gasp.

There’s no place like it on earth, Wallace Ford tells him later that evening, on the outdoor patio at the American Club, twenty-two stories above Central. From his seat Marcel can see the shining columns of office buildings crowded close together, and between them, the dark shadow of Victoria Peak. The glow of the city turns the sky dusky orange. There’s an otherworldly quality to it, he thinks, as if Hong Kong were one of those cities in science fiction movies, where everyone lives far above the ground. It wouldn’t surprise him to see a spaceship passing silently among the skyscrapers, or a white robot coming out to serve them drinks.

You take New York, Ford says. San Francisco. L.A. Chicago. Even London and Paris—none of it compares to this. The Chinese were living in cities before anybody else on the planet. They’ve got it figured out. It’s not always pretty—or at least
we
don’t think so. But it works.

He sits back with a grunt of satisfaction and drains his glass. Fifty-three years old, Marcel remembers, and his skin glows like polished copper; he wears a cream seersucker suit, a crisp tailored shirt, and a new pinky ring, a ruby the size of a fish’s eye. Marcel hasn’t seen him in five years, since before he was hired at Peabody Stein Loeffler; it was Ford who gave him his final interview, who motioned him to shut the door to his office and said, confidentially speaking, from one brother to another. Marcel doesn’t remember all of it—a torrent of words, as if Ford had been waiting for years for the right young candidate to appear— but one riff has always stayed with him:
Anticipate the next move.
It’s the key to good law and it’s the key to surviving in this firm. Always be planning. Always listening. Never act until you understand
the whole field; and then strike before anyone notices. Work in the
small hours. Let the others wake up to the bad news.
He remembers sitting on the edge of his chair, trying to keep up, nodding at the appropriate places. A few times he caught himself thinking,
is
this for real?

It wasn’t until his first day on the job that he heard Ford had transferred to Hong Kong, almost overnight, without a farewell party or even so much as a good-bye letter. He was disappointed, momentarily, but then felt a strange surge of relief.
He can’t protect me,
he thought,
but he can’t make me his errand boy, either.
Better not to be anyone’s protégé
.

I think you’re going to like it here, Ford says, catching his glance and holding it for a moment. You like Chinese food?

I grew up on it, Marcel says, remembering the Fortune Kitchen, across the street from his old apartment house in Yonkers. Somehow it seemed there was always a container of sweet-and-sour pork dripping red sauce on the kitchen table, a packet of egg rolls in wax paper in the fridge. Egg foo yung, he says. Shrimp lo mein. All that good stuff.

You can forget about that. Ford leans forward. I’ve got a woman who cooks for me, he says. She makes food you won’t believe. None of that Happy Delight stuff—everything’s fresh, no MSG, no chow mein. She’s got me eating it morning, noon, and night. No more doughnuts in the house, no potato chips. I feel like I did when I was twenty-five. No. Better than that. How long are you staying?

Not long, Marcel says. Cold spreads across the bottom of his stomach. They want me back for a deposition on the seventeenth. Next Monday.

Ford shrugs. Not bad, he says. Not bad for a young comer who wants to make partner. We’ll make it worth your while. There’s some people I definitely want you to meet.

Marcel has to glance away for a second. Another look into those eyes, he thinks, and I’ll be telling the whole story, from beginning to end. The lights inside the club have come on, and through the sliding glass doors he can see the crowd gathered around the bar: young, blond, tanned, thin briefcases, martinis, cigars. A few faces he ought to recognize, from Williams or Choate. Can I ask you an honest question? he says. How can you stand it?

You mean the white boys’ club inside?

I mean being the only one, he says. Sticking out all the time. In the airport I felt like I was in a museum display. Some woman thought I was from the NBA. Wanted my autograph.

I’ll be honest with you, Ford says. Most can’t take it. I’ve had boys making monkey noises at me on the subway. Sometimes babies cry when they see you. Sometimes they’ll pretend not to understand your English. Or make up some excuse:
only Chinese
menu,
or some such thing. I’ve seen lots of brothers come out, and most of them leave after a year or so. And it’s too bad. Because they don’t understand the underlying principle.

And what’s that?

Ford takes a heavy gold pen from his pocket and flattens a cocktail napkin on his palm. I learned this from a friend of mine, he says, drawing carefully. A box with a cross inside it, with a pair of legs underneath, it seems, and a few squiggles attached to the top. This is the Chinese word for foreigner, he says.
Gwai
. It literally means “ghost.” Or “demon.” Now, usually when they say
gwai
they’re thinking of the white man—the white ghost. But actually a ghost is anyone who’s not Chinese. White ghosts, red ghosts, black ghosts. He looks up at Marcel, and from his expression Marcel can tell that his attempt to suppress a look of disbelief has failed. It means you don’t really exist, he says. Sure, you might run into a little trouble once in a while. But fundamentally you don’t matter to them. White people, black people—it’s all the same. You’re not on their radar screen. They’ll make deals with you, sure. They’ll take your money. But otherwise you might as well not be there at all.

It sounds like a lonely way to live, Marcel says. He tilts his head at the crowd in the bar. No wonder they stick to their own. You wouldn’t know it’s not Manhattan.

It can be, Ford says. But that’s not necessarily such a bad thing.

On the way back to the hotel Marcel stops the taxi on Kennedy Road in Wan Chai, intending to walk the rest of the way. The driver gives him a knowing smile, and when he steps out of the car he realizes why: the street is a long line of girlie bars, with neon signs blinking overhead.
Hollywood Club. Midnight Sauna
Massage. La Fleur de Paris
. He remembers, now, his uncle Bill telling a story of how he stayed in Wan Chai on the way home from Vietnam and gambled away a thousand dollars in a single night.

Hey! an old woman shouts at him in a hoarse voice. Michael Jordan! Hey, over here!

He ignores her, and takes the first right turn, walks a block, then left, and finds himself on a bustling market street. Stalls piled with mounds of oranges, cabbages, mushrooms; dried squid hanging like fans from a wire. The air is filled with a sharp, sour smell, of fish and dirt and rotting vegetables; he finds it oddly comforting. In the next block he sees a newsstand tucked into an alleyway, and stops, looking for an English newspaper. Everything in Chinese: fashion magazines, comic books, racing sheets, even
Time
and
Newsweek
. Each character is like a little map, he thinks, like a maze; how can anyone read so many at once, and not get lost? He stares at one magazine after another, and a strange sensation comes over him, prickling the back of his neck.

Déjà vu,
he thinks. It’s been years since he thought about his dyslexia; he was lucky, diagnosed early, and his parents fought the schools for special classes and a private tutor. By high school it was under control, and in college it had all but disappeared. But in law school, during exams, he had a recurring dream of picking up a newspaper, a textbook, and finding the words garbled, illegible. Strange, he thinks, being reminded of that here.

In his room, in a folder marked
Confidential,
is the resignation letter Wallace Ford has to sign, and a stack of papers detailing severance pay, company holdings, disclosure and confidentiality agreements, pension and annuity plans. On the plane, he glanced through them one last time and even now, thinking about it, he has a strange sensation of walking on a balance beam and reaching a foot mistakenly into midair. No one should ever have to fire a partner, he remembers Paul Loeffler saying. It goes against everything we believe in. I’d go myself, but it’s a busy time. And I think that he’ll appreciate it coming from someone he had a close relationship with.

The numbers on the balance sheet were undeniable; the Hong Kong office was hemorrhaging money, billable hours in decline for three quarters in a row.
Wallace Ford is a great lawyer
. He heard that line so many times, in so many different apologetic tones.
But he’s no administrator. He has his enthusiasms, his
pet projects. It sounds to me like he’s gotten in over his head out
there. Bank accounts in Vanuatu? Does he want the SEC after us?

He would have believed it, too, if Wanda Silver hadn’t cornered him in the office kitchen late one Friday afternoon, when everyone else had gone home. Marcel had never known what to make of her: a woman older than his mother, with silver streaks in her curly hair, who wore tie-dyed jumpsuits, batik headbands, and bright bangles on her wrists. There was a rumor that she had spent six months in jail back in the seventies, after chaining herself to the gates of the Livermore Laboratory; yet she had been the firm’s office manager for thirty years, and held the keys to the firm’s safe-deposit boxes, filled out the paychecks, and knew all the passwords to the computer network.

I heard something important, she said, coming in behind him and closing the door with a discreet click. They’re sending you to Hong Kong, Marcel, right?