It's never easy, he said benevolently. It's sometimes difficult. You must do something of your own choice. There is a center for this. There is an organization.
I've been to so many organizations, I told him. I've sung at all the graves. But they never answer.
So, vanity is one of those characters of eastern people, Oriental people. But you must make mistakes.
And she never answers me. Except that sometimes when the wind blows I hear something that almost sounds like words—
The man had sat down by now. He ducked his face backward until his eyeglasses became wells of disaster. He began jigging his knees and snapping his fingers. He said: They are speaking some quite old ancient language which is quite strange to the younger generation of Chinese. To be exact, it is half a language, half a dialect. If you are not well trained you cannot catch a word. So it is like half and half.
And you, sir, aren't you yourself connected with the Highest Authority?
Thank
Then do I have any chance?
I think the situation will remain more or less the same. By more or less, I mean
And if I behave better or become better in my heart?
That is a range of uncertain territory. It is not easy to be realistic. That is not compatible with the status of your life.
There was a little Chinese girl in a white dress and white shoes who was beckoned by a grinning Indian into the place where they awaited the flight to Bombay. I wondered if she had died, too, or if she really somehow belonged in India.
Maybe I could petition them differently—
It is not a complicated process. It is simply a longterm process.
And what if I just went and dragged her back?
In the first place, if there is a conflict, both sides will keep their small islands. That will not affect the Hong Kong area. But we reserve the right of military use.
After that he would not talk to me any further, perhaps regretting that he had divulged so much, so I went through the Hong Kong gate when the loudspeaker called me. Hong Kong was the next world. As soon as I got into the taxi, the driver said: I think you look for girl. You want girl?
Yes, yes! I cried in excitement. Has she come here?
He showed me a binder comprising color glossies of Chinese prostitutes, each woman smiling beside a shiny red car, each glossy professionally mounted onto ivory cardboard. I looked at every page, but my sister was not there.
No, I said.
I big uncle but you only big boy! You want girl? Look girl! Police a colosatopoli! What! What! Police a close a door! What! Please close a door! You wear low face, I no talk you! I hate you, 'cause Negroes make big problem in your country! You want girl? Look! Photo girl! Many, many! She standing by taxi! Good smile! Look, look, big little boy!
On the night that the photographer and I returned from Burma, we went to Soi Cowboy to pick up whores. Long swaying arms, black breastcups, lights slowly pulsing across the mirrored tiles — these things both excited and refreshed me, but only at first. Something bad might happen. I felt this like a cancer's tenderness in my throat, not yet knowing that I felt it. I thought that I was happy. Breasts rose and fell, thrusting in and out. Ladies slowly raised and lowered their legs, smoothing their briefs down out of buttock-cracks. The girls who were not dancing slipped on their terrycloth robes and served drinks. The photographer ordered a beer and I had a soda-water. The two of us were, as I have said, quite satisfied with ourselves. Last week we'd rescued a child-prostitute from a nightmarish brothel in the south (no matter that she didn't like us); and in Rangoon just now we'd made a contact who could take one or two Burmese girls back home if we could break them loose on the Thai side. We figured that since we were heroes we deserved what heroes get.
As always, I picked the first woman who approached me in the bar. I had not even seen her ascend to that platform ringed by cold black railings around which white men grinned, the altar of bikini'd bottoms, bobbing heads, pale oval faces that blossomed with long cigarettes, long legs, and wriggling black triangles between soft brown thighs, and I did not care. I was simply lonely. I wanted a human being that I could touch.
She said she was twenty-six, but looked ten years older. She was plump and brown, with steel earrings and large black eyes. — Sure, I said. I'll buy you out if you want me to. — That made her very happy. Possibly she could see that I was the type who overpaid. I was being a hero again.
When we got to the hotel room I said: If you want to stay, OK. If you want to go, no problem. You stay, you go, I pay you the same, OK?
I want you make love me, she said. Me no man, nobody, very lonely please.
