Mr Wong Goes West Read online

  ‘Winnie,’ Wong barked. ‘What is in my meditation room?’

  ‘Mops and toilet rolls and those things,’ she replied, without looking up from her hands. She was applying miniature representations of Old Masters onto her fingernails.

  ‘I know that. But why?’

  ‘Because I need to use the toilet cupboard for something else. All full up. No room for that stuff.’

  ‘Why do we need two hundred toilet roll?’

  ‘Is not two hundred.’

  ‘Well, how many is it?’

  ‘Five hundred.’

  ‘Why do we need five hundred toilet roll?’

  ‘Special offer. Twenty per cent off for orders of five hundred rolls. Cheaper to buy five hundred than to buy four hundred. Also we get a bonus ten thousand points on our loyalty card.’

  ‘But we don’t need five hundred toilet roll. We don’t need four hundred. In one week, we only need one or two.’

  ‘Well, then, we have enough for a long time.’

  ‘Ten years.’

  ‘Right, ten years.’

  ‘But the lease for this office only has eight month left.’

  ‘We can take them with us to the next office.’

  Wong was speechless, incensed by the image of his having to hire a van and a driver merely to transport several hundred unwanted toilet rolls from one set of premises to another. Then something occurred to him: where was his ancient gold leaf Qidan hair stick? This worry caused the power of speech to return. ‘Where is my totem?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My totem. My hairy totem.’

  ‘You mean ugly toilet brush thing? In the toilet.’

  He opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Sometimes there were no words.

  ‘You always complain, even when I save you money,’ Winnie muttered.

  Wong would not put up with that. ‘You buy five hundred toilet rolls we don’t need and you say you are saving money? You are one crazy woman. You waste all the money.’

  ‘We got ten thousand points on our loyalty card,’ Winnie thundered. ‘That’s not a waste.’

  Wong thought about this for a moment. Ten thousand points might actually be enough to buy something with. What did he need? So many things. For a start, the office clock was not working. It was not just mildly embarrassing, but utterly humiliating that a feng shui master’s office clock had not worked for two years. A standard part of the introductory feng shui speech he gave to clients was an exhortation to make sure the premises contained no stopped clocks, no dark light bulbs, no dripping taps and no dead plants. Yet he had examples of all four in his office. This was not magic, but an important symbolic change that he made his clients go through. It was simple psychology, really: you take control of the tiny, physical things in your life, and you find yourself subliminally sorting out all the big, non-physical things, too.

  ‘Go back to store,’ he barked at Winnie. ‘Use ten thousand points to buy new clock for the office. We need clock. Our clock broken.’

  Winnie looked sideways at him, a guilty, furtive stare. ‘Very busy,’ she said. ‘Too much paperwork today.’ As if realising that her argument was rather weakened by the fact that she was sitting at her desk doing her nails, she gestured vaguely at the pile of papers and envelopes on her desk.

  ‘Open envelopes. Then you go buy clock.’

  ‘Cannot,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Why not?’

  Winnie paused reluctantly from her operations and looked up. She cast her eyes around the room as if she was seeking advice from the wobbly desks and rickety chairs on how to reply. In truth, it was pretty obvious to Wong that she was having trouble deciding just how honest she should be. Eventually she turned to face him with a hardened expression, daring him to object to what she was about to say: ‘Already spent the ten thousand points.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You hear me. Already spent ten thousand points.’

  ‘Buy what?’

  ‘This.’ She gestured at the lamp on her desk. Now that she had pointed it out, Wong noticed that it was unusual—it looked vaguely like a miniature version of a light you might see over your head while you were in a dentist’s chair.

  ‘Lamp?’

  ‘Not a lamp. A Pro-Manicure Set.’

  ‘What is pro-manicure set?’

  ‘This.’

  ‘Why you buy that?’

  ‘This office has no Pro-Manicure Set. So I buy. Besides, special offer on pro-manicure sets this month. Fifteen per cent discount if we buy two.’

  ‘You buy two?’

  ‘Of course. Fifteen per cent is good discount.’

  Wong drew himself up to his full height, which was one point six metres. ‘You go back to shop. Return pro-manicure sets. Buy clock.’

  ‘No exchanges, no refunds,’ she said. ‘But I go out anyway. You in bad temper. I need a break.’

  She blew on her nails, gathered up her handbag and headed out of the door, slamming it hard as she left. He heard the frosted glass crack. One day, very soon, it would fall out. That would be another expense he’d have to deal with. Aiyeeah.

  Well, look on the bright side. Both women were out of the office. At least he’d get a few minutes’ peace.

  He went into the meditation room/sanitation cupboard and decided to rearrange the stacks of toilet rolls into some sort of seat. It took several minutes and a fair bit of exertion—bags of toilet rolls were surprisingly heavy—but he had soon made himself a rather comfortable throne. At his age, he found it easier to sit in a Western-shaped, legs-dangling chair than to squat or sit cross-legged.

  He began to meditate. To start with, he performed triangular breathing.

  You breathe in slowly, counting to six.

  Then you breathe out slowly, counting to six.

  Then you stop breathing, stop thinking, stop existing for a count of six.

  Then you are reborn, you start existing again, and repeat the cycle.

  Breathe in, one, two, three, four, five, six.

  Breathe out, one, two, three, four, five, six.

  Cease to exist, one, two, three, four, five, six.

  After a few minutes of this, he started to regain his composure. Triangular breathing was an easy technique, yet it worked like magic. That six-second gap between breathing out and breathing in again became a satisfying moment of pure, delicious non-existence. In that short period of nothingness, one really did seem to physically vanish. Your body was not breathing, yet for some reason you felt no panic or discomfort or craving.

  He gradually increased the count of each part of the triangular breathing exercise to seven, eight, ten, twelve and then fifteen seconds. And finally he raised it to twenty seconds, with each three-part cycle lasting a full minute. He kept it up at that level for several minutes.

  Now he was calm. His spirit was still. His heart was subdued. His worries had been temporarily discarded.

  The toilet roll throne was surprisingly comfortable. He was relaxed, and his eyes were shut, but he was dimly aware of being in a soft, rather comfortable, all-white atmosphere. It reminded him of something. What was it?

  He thought of the time he had made a snow chair for himself as a child. When was that? Could he return to that moment? He emptied his mind and allowed the memory to fill it. But the first thing that came into his mind was a picture of a grey planked cabin on a snowy mountain.

  He recognised it immediately. It was the home of his great Uncle Rinchang, who lived in the west of China for many years, until his death in 1993. Rinchang had lived in the mountains south of the Takla Makan desert, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. Wong had been sent there in 1963, when he was twelve years old, during a period of political upheaval in the main cities of China. He had not wanted to go to a place that was so cold and remote and lonely, but the year he had spent in the mountains had been a life-transforming experience for him. He had learned from his uncle and the other mountain people that life could be lived to a different rhythm, a much slower,
deeper beat than the shallow, stuttering music of life in the cities.

  Uncle Rinchang was not much of a talker, rarely needing to say anything. The quiet seriousness with which he did his regular tasks—working with yaks, gathering food-stuffs, trading in the markets, spending time with friends, worshipping the mountain gods—had impressed itself on Wong, who had grown hardy and thoughtful in those twelve months.

  He connected his visit to the mountains with the first time he had heard the legends of The Immortals, who were sages and mystics said to have lived in the high hills for centuries. The oldest were reputed to be eight hundred years of age. They lived on diets of rare herbs and secret elixirs, which gave them magical powers.

  There were several experiences he had had with Uncle Rinchang that he would never forget. One was a walk the two of them had taken to a sheer cliff, some two hours’ trek from the cabin. It was one of the most dramatic scenes Wong had ever seen. You walked along a misty, icy plain towards what looked like the far horizon. But as you moved forwards, you became uncomfortably aware that the horizon was actually oddly close, that it was only a short distance in front of you, and you were indeed getting very close to it. The human mind is used to the horizon being a long distance away; the effect of seeing it just a few steps away was highly disturbing. It was as if one had become a giant and had walked to the very edge of the world.

  Despite the bravado of being male and twelve, he had wanted to turn back. But Rinchang had taken his hand and made him walk onwards. They had slowed their steps and come to a halt within a few metres of the edge. To Wong, it really seemed as if they had come to the edge of the planet. Everything seemed to just stop. Existence itself seemed to finish at that point. There was only a great misty nothingness ahead of the packed snow at their feet.

  As they stood there, a wind sprang up. The clouds began to drift to one side and it became clear that it was not the end of the world after all. Across a huge valley there was a distant mountain range, a massive, craggy, fist-shaped outcrop in white, grey and blue.

  Things he had never quite understood became clear to him. The people here worshipped the mountains as if they were gods. They talked about the biggest mountain as the Holy Mother. Wong, who had hardly ever known any sort of mother, now realised why. The mountains did have a divine presence about them: something magical and parental. They seemed to be watching. They seemed to be listening. They seemed to be guiding.

  Also from the mountain people he had heard stories of creation. Heaven was above, Earth was below. The highest mountains of the Earth were sacred pillars that supported Heaven. High peaks were thus quite literally close to the divine realm.

  Another unforgettable experience he had had that year was a walk along a ridge leading to a plateau Uncle Rinchang knew; a cloud-hidden path that ran to a plain some two kilometres long between two of the mountains in the area. The old man called it the Fire Dragon’s Back, but the villagers simply referred to it as Uncle Rinchang’s Walk. There were several narrow points along this snowfield trail where the sojourner could get a full view of the valleys on each side simultaneously—they were so different they seemed to belong to distinct worlds. On the left were the snowy wastes and high mountains of the Tibetan plateau. On the right were green fields and rolling, verdant hills, which eventually become the yellow grey of the plains of the Takla Makan desert. Winter on one side, summer on the other. Cold and heat. Yin and yang.

  ‘We call this the Point of Balance,’ Rinchang said.

  Again, Wong had felt that he had learned something really important, but without really understanding what it was. All he knew at that moment was that the world was a strange and wonderful place, more curious than he had ever imagined in his childhood in the dirt-poor rural village of Baiwan in Guangdong.

  As daylight disappeared, a fierce wind blew across the ridge. It took hours to walk its length and return to their cabin. But they were warm when they reached home. Wong had been intrigued to discover that he could be in one of the coldest places he could imagine, and yet be sweating in bright sunshine under a summer-blue sky. His toes were almost frostbitten and his cheeks sunburned.

  And then there had been the time Rinchang had taken him to the Great Mother of All, visible from the foothills of the Himalayas, a long journey through Tibet towards Nepal. As they approached their destination, Rinchang had pointed ahead of them.

  ‘There. Can you see it? That is the greatest mountain in the world. Qomolangma: the Mother of the mountains.’

  ‘Where? Where?’ The young Wong had scanned the horizon ahead of them but could see nothing but sky and a few low hills. Surely one of those hillocks could not be the tallest thing in the world? He had heard much about the mountain on the borders between Tibet and Nepal. Rinchang had explained that the place was known as Devgiri, ‘Holy Mountain’, to the Indian peoples, and Qomolangma, ‘Mother of the Universe’, to the Chinese and the Tibetans.

  ‘There. Look. Keep looking. There are clouds in the way, but the Mother shines through them.’

  Wong had continued to scan the scene ahead of him, but could still only see gentle hills. And then he looked upward and realised what he was supposed to be looking at. He had been looking at the wrong part of the sky, entirely too low. The Himalayas were high in the air, far higher than anything around them. Indeed, they seemed to belong to the sky, not the earth. They stood as jagged shapes in the upper part of the sky, far above the clouds.

  That was when he realised how the concept of the divine came from the majesty of mountains. Their immensity and power and personality were things that commanded total respect. Now he knew why the local phrase for ‘making a pilgrimage’ was ‘paying your respects to the mountain’.

  More than four decades later, as he sat in a toilet-roll cubby in his office, Wong fell into a deep trance, his old, creaking body lost to him as he became a child, wandering the mountains of the Kunlun Shan. Why had his meditation led him to this place? Could the answer to the quandaries of his life be here?

  His heart started thumping.

  He felt himself shake.

  There was a Presence.

  A booming voice started to groan. It was the voice of God, deep and low. But what was He saying?

  ‘Git on down and shake shake shake. Move your booty and break break break. Sock-it-to-me sock-it-to-me sock-it-to-me, yeh! Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.’

  He opened his eyes. Pounding rock music was playing in his office and shaking the floor of his tissue nest. This could only mean one thing. Joyce McQuinnie was back.

  Aiyeeah. Why did the gods hate him so?

  ‘Oh hi, CF. What were you doing in the toilet roll cupboard?’

  ‘Meditation room. That is the meditation room.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I was meditating.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Hard to meditate with loud music on.’

  ‘What? Oh sorry.’ She turned the volume down. ‘This is the new CD from The Rogerers. It’s called Biscuit Dunked in Death. Cool title, no?’

  Wong was no expert on rock album names and was disinclined to offer an opinion.

  ‘I bought it to celebrate our new assignment.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He pondered for a moment on whether he should try to return to his place of transcendence but he quickly dismissed the thought—it would be futile. Whether her music machine was on or off made little difference; Joyce herself was intrusive in every way—physically, aurally, visually and spiritually. Dressed in shapeless, garishly coloured clothes, and stinking of expensive perfume and bitter coffee, her arrival immediately tainted every centimetre of the office. His vision of a mountain idyll was gone, swept away as if a flood had burst into a valley and pulverised a village made of paper.

  What to do? Life was hard. He owed money. He shared an office with unhelpful people. He had received no high-paying jobs for weeks. He may be knifed to death by the friends of the world’s only Indian Chinese triad in ten days’ time. This was not shap
ing up as one of his better months. He needed distraction. He needed something else on which to focus.

  An idea struck him. From his top drawer, he pulled out his journal, deciding to spend a little time writing some notes on stories he remembered from his days in Kunlun Shan. An hour or two lost in his book might help him regain his composure. Then he noticed Joyce was still staring at him. She was restless about something. She seemed to want his attention.

  ‘Did you hear what I said? I bought the CD to celebrate our new assignment.’

  Wong looked up from his tatty volume with undisguised irritation. ‘What?’

  ‘While. You. Were. Out,’ she said, spacing the words like a nanny speaking to a newborn, ‘on that ship this morning, someone called with an assignment. A majorly nice one. We’re going to make some dosh.’

  ‘Dotch? Dutch?’

  ‘Dosh. Moolah. Greenbacks. Money.’

  ‘Someone call with a job?’

  ‘Yes. Winnie was late this morning, surprise, surprise, so I took down all the details. It was such a nice one that I went out to HMV to celebrate. It’s classified as “urgent” so we can charge the express service surcharge. And the guy giving us the assignment sounded totally swanky. So I think it could be like major bucks. You should be happy. This is a good news day.’

  Wong listened without getting excited. It was too much to hope that easy money should arrive just when he needed a massive injection of cash. The fact that something had got Joyce excited did not fill him with confidence. She sometimes got things so muddled that good news was bad and vice versa. Nevertheless, he might as well hear her out.

  ‘So, this assignment, easy and big bucks, is it?’

  ‘Not only. The guy had been given our number by the British Trade Commission. He wants us to feng shui something for them in Hong Kong on Thursday. They’ll pay the airfares and the hotel and everything—and our fees, of course. They reckon it will take between six and ten days.’

  Wong, despite himself, started to become interested. The British Trade Commission sounded like a proper organisation with proper budgets. And international trips could often be profitable, if one spun out the expenses on top of the fees.