On the night before taking the ferry and the bus to Lo Wu border area, Ren played mah-jong with three others on a verandah on the edge of the sea. They knew him as Ting Hao. They thought it funny that he was going back to China, especially Thin Finger and Fat Tony Wu. Thin Finger had brought his daughter, and the third player, Su Ni Su. In a blue and white checked pinafore. Rubbing her arms and patting back her hair in the sea breeze.
It was awkward.
Thankfully, Fat Tony told a story about the old days when his father had been a secretary to an executive meeting of the Kuomintang sitting in Canton. Su Ni Su sat there like a mouse, with a cigarette in a holder and a shandy. Fat Tony explained that a member of the committee complained to Cheng Kai-shek about their ‘thug generals’ in the North.
‘Why do you call them 'thug' generals?’ the Generalissimo had asked.
‘They steal from common people and they treat their men like ants’ came the reply.
The little group washed the tiles with their palms to start a new game. Su Ni Su darted a look up at Ren. He looked at her steadily, but not for long. Setting up his tiles carefully, he offered:
‘The whole point of holding power in China is to act like a bastard’.
‘Pity they are not our bastards anymore!’ blurted Fat Tony to everyone’s agreement.
They had all comforted in the shadow of a thug general at one time or other. There was always someone worse than you when such a man was nearby. They were a perfect cover for every fiddle, perversion and con imaginable.
‘No-one ever thinks good luck is temporary, or that it relies on someone else's suffering. Everyone ended up dead or on the run’ Thin Finger wined, surveying his tiles glumly.
'I walked' said Fat Tony.
‘We used to talk about violence so easily when there was a chance we might win’ said Ren, quietly assembling a four-of-a-kind.
‘We lost our purpose toward the end’ agreed Fat Tony.
'Or did we see our purpose for the first time only in the end?' asked Thin Finger.
'I have always known my purpose' chirped Su Ni Su. 'How about you Brother Ren?' she asked saying out his name like she was playing with a new toy.
Thin Finger stood up, ready to rebuke her. Ren waved him down.
'The higher your purpose, Little Sister', he said, 'The more your means matter'.
'She is spirited' Thin Finger apologised, laughing.
Ren smiled broadly, perhaps for the first time in days.
'I am familiar with that spirit' he said. 'I once had it myself'.
Su Ni Su stared in defiance at Ren but said nothing.
None of them wanted to know why Ren was going to China, but Fat Tony knew that only Old Man Chan could be behind it. After the game ended, Fat Tony took Ren aside.
‘Any generals in touch lately?’ he asked.
‘Memory lane is paved with gold’ Ren replied.
Fat Tony smirked. He gave Ren a small knife in a leather scabbard.
‘Lucky knife. In case you need to chop some vegetables and run for the hills’.
Ren declined it. He worried that if he expected trouble he would be sure to find it. Fat Tony understood. He offered to ask if Little Wu, his daughter, would cross the border with Ren.
'She's a good kid. No trouble. She has to go back to her mother's. You know, I would worry less if you kept an eye on her' he said.
Ren did not know the girl but was touched by Fat Tony's trust in him. A female companion had the makings of a cover story that could make the journey easier. Learning that Su Ni Su was Thin Finger's daughter, but not quite the daughter her father thought, made Ren worry that he was in a spiral of ignorance and that it was only a matter of time before it caught up with him. Nevertheless, he accepted Fat Tony’s offer. Fat Tony insisted that he take the knife. Ren took it. He had entered a trust.
Fat Tony had not always been ‘Fat Tony’. In their Canton days, his traditional society simply called him ‘Doorman’. He made introductions, closed deals, ended lucky runs and shut down competitors. He had a gift for making the recipient accept the fate of their opening or closing, and this he thought made it less anxious for everyone. Until the last days of his general, he really believed that he adjusted destinies according to a code accepted and understood by everyone. Then, when he had to shoot a debtor in front of his children, the victim’s whining began to weigh on him, but not in the sense that he felt sympathy for him at the time or remorse for killing him afterward. Something else, a compelling doubt, began to affect him.
Fat Tony simply no longer believed that making examples of everyone, or the suffering it caused, produced useful history. An education produced by death gave the dead no chance to adjust. He began to think that the tension produced by those allowed to adjust might make their creditors look like abstainers from a life worth living.
Fat Tony’s revelation was not helpful in his role as a thug general’s minder. Resignation due to philosophical differences, or development of a new opportunity, was not widely accepted in the underworld. So Braised Brisket became Thin Finger, and Doorman became Fat Tony. The pair ran, not in the end because of a thwarted desire to be born again as good gangsters, but the diminishing returns caused by communist encirclement. Eventually, Ren joined them in Hong Kong too. He had not become a ‘made man’ in the Canton society but they kept their curiosity about his continuing loyalty firmly in check. Although gangsters have no skills to lead a normal life, they managed to keep their livelihoods clear of the old criminal Pangs flooding into Hong Kong after the civil war.
Ren was in the pair's past, but fully bringing him into their present implied talking about touchy points more easily dealt with by losing mah-jong gracefully, or slotting a cigarette behind his ear. Ren sensed the distance between them but had not given it words. A heart-to-heart about the futility of outdated ways would state the obvious. But it would also give them a corner to turn together and not everyone was ready for that. It was not just Ren as the odd one out now either. Little Miss Blue Pinafore clearly enjoyed being reckless but Ren worried what the truth about her would do to Thin Fingers.
Ren saw Fat Tony's offer of his daughter as a traveling companion as a way to bring them all back together without involving the past or his recent love life. Fat Tony watched Ren disappear down a seaside alleyway in a cloud of steam. He could not resist.
‘Don’t forget how much nostalgia can cost you, Ren!’
Ren walked off thoughtfully. Fat Tony's daughter is a 'good kid' but *has* to go back to her mother?
What had he agreed to?
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