A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

“How was I to know you had a photograph of her?” she said. “Madame said you wouldn’t know what she looked like.”

“Did you know her?”

She leaned her hip against the bedrail.

“Is she all that important? I am prettier than she is. Don’t you want to make love to me?”

“I asked if you knew her.” “No. I didn’t know her.” She moved impatiently. “May I have my present?”

I counted out five ten-dollar bills, folded them and held them so she could feast her eyes on them.

“She married an American. His name was Herman Jefferson,” I said. “Did you know him?” She grimaced.

“I met him.” She looked at Jo-Ann’s photograph again. “Why does she look like this ... she looks as if she’s dead.”

‘That’s what she is.”

She dropped the photograph as if it had bitten her.

“It is bad luck to look at dead people,” she said. “Give me my present. I want to go.”

I took out Herman Jefferson’s photograph and showed it to her.

“Is this her husband?”

She scarcely glanced at the photograph.

“I am mistaken. I have never met her husband. May I have my present?”

“You just said you had met him.”

“I was mistaken.”

We stared at each other. I could see by the expression on her I was wasting time. She didn’t intend to tell me anything. I gave her the bills which she slipped into her handbag.

“There’s more where that came from if you can give me any information about Jefferson,” I said without any hope.

She started towards the door.

“I know nothing about him. Thank you for your present.”

She slid back the bolt and with a jeering wave of her hips, she was gone.

I knew I had been taken for a ride, but as I was spending Jefferson’s money, I was a lot less depressed than I would have been if it had been my own money.

Later, I got tired of lying on the bed and I decided to go somewhere to eat. As I opened the bedroom door, I saw Leila, propping her body up against her door-post across the passage. She had changed into a scarlet and gold Cheongsam which gave her a very festive air. She had put a white cyclamen blossom in her hair.

“She didn’t stay long,” she said. “Why did you bring her here when I’m here?”

“It was strictly business,” I said, closing the door and turning the key. “I just wanted to talk to her.”

“What about?” she asked suspiciously.

“This and that.” I looked her over. She was really a very attractive little thing. “How would you like to have dinner with me?”

Her face brightened.

“That is a very good idea,” she said. She darted into her tiny bedroom, snatched up her handbag and joined me in the passage. “I will take you to a very good restaurant. I am very hungry. We will eat a lot of good food, but it won’t cost you much.” She started off down the passage to the head of the stairs. I followed her. We passed the reception clerk who was doing a complicated calculation with the aid of a bead calculator. His old yellow fingers flicked away at the beads with astonishing speed. He didn’t look up as we went down the stairs.

I followed Leila’s sturdy little back across the road to a taxi station.

“We will have to take a taxi to the Star Ferry,” she said. “The restaurant where we will eat is on the mainland.”

We picked up a taxi and drove to the Star Ferry, then we got on the ferry boat. During the trip over, she told me about a movie she had seen that afternoon. She said she went to the movies every afternoon. The Chinese, she explained, were very interested in the movies and they went as often as they could. From the queues I had seen outside every movie-house I could believe that. Leila said they began to queue at eleven in the morning to get the best seats.

When we reached the mainland, Leila suggested we should walk up Nathan Road. She said the exercise would sharpen her appetite.

It was not possible to walk two abreast and still more impossible to talk to her. At this hour the streets were crammed with people. Walking in the streets of Kowloon turned out to be quite an experience. Everywhere were glaring neon signs. Chinese characters, I decided,

made the best and most interesting of any neon sign. They lost the vulgarity of a sign you can read and became works of art. Cars, rickshaws and bicycles swarmed along the broad street. The sidewalk was packed with a steady flow of humanity : all as active as ants.

We finally came to the restaurant in a side street which was crowded with children playing in the gutters, vegetable vendors packing up their wares for the night, parked cars and the inevitable blaze of neon signs.

“Here we eat very well,” Leila said, and pushing open the swing door she entered the restaurant that emitted a noise like a solid punch on the ear—stunning and deafening.

We could see nothing of the diners. Every table was hidden behind high screens. The rattle of Mah Jongg tiles, the high-pitched excited Chinese voices and the clatter of dishes were overwhelming.

The owner of the restaurant opened two screens, bowing and smiling at Leila, and we were immediately submerged in noise and privacy.