A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

Leila set her handbag down on the table, adjusted her brassiere, shifted her solid little bottom firmly in her chair and showed me her beautiful white teeth in a radiant and excited smile.

“I will order,” she said. “First, we will have fried shrimps, then we will have shark’s fin soup, then we will have beggar chicken—it is the speciality here. Then we will see what else there is to eat, but first we commence with fried shrimps.”

She spoke rapidly in Cantonese to the waiter and then when he had gone, she reached across the table and patted my hand.

“I like American gentlemen.” she told me. “They have much vitality. They are very interesting in bed and they also have much money. ‘

“Don’t count on either of those statements,” I said. “You could be disappointed. How long have you been in Hong Kong?”

“Three years I came from Canton. I am a refugee. I only escaped because my cousin owns a junk. He took me to Macau and then I came here “

The waiter brought us Chinese wine. He poured it into two tiny cups It was warm and reasonably strong. When he had gone, I said. “Maybe you know Jo-An Wing Cheung who is also a refugee.”

She looked surprised.

“Yes. I know her very well. How do you know her?”

“I don’t,” I said.

There was a pause as the waiter set before us a bowl of king-size shrimps cooked in a golden batter.

“But you know her name. How do you know her name?” Leila asked, snapping up a shrimp with her chopsticks and dipping it in Soya sauce.

“She was married to a friend of mine who lived in my home town,” I said, dropping a shrimp on the tablecloth. I nipped it up again with my uncertain chopsticks and conveyed it cautiously to my mouth. It tasted very good. “Did you ever meet him? His name’s Herman Jefferson.”

“Oh, yes.” Leila was eating with astonishing speed. Three-quarters of the shrimps were gone before I could spear my third. “Jo-An and I escaped from Canton together. She was lucky to find an American husband even though now he is dead.”

The waiter came with a bowl of fried rice in which was mixed finely-chopped ham, shrimps and scraps of fried egg. Leila filled her bowl and her chopsticks flashed as she whipped the food into her mouth. I lagged behind. To do justice to this meal, you had to have considerably more experience with chopsticks than I had.

“He lived with her at your hotel?” I asked as I dropped rice onto the tablecloth in a vain effort to keep pace with her.

She nodded.

The shrimps had disappeared and more than half the rice. She certainly had the technique of getting the most inside herself in the shortest time.

“He lived with her in a room next to mine for three months after they married, then he went away.”

A large bowl of shark’s fin soup appeared. Leila began to fill her bowl.

“Why did he go away?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“He didn’t need her any more.”

As I could cat the soup with a spoon, I managed to keep pace with her.

“Why didn’t he need her any more?”

Leila paused for a moment to give me a cynical stare, then she went on spooning soup into her small, insatiable mouth.

“He only married her so she could keep him,” she said. “When he began to make money for himself, he didn’t want her.”

“How did she manage to keep him?” I asked, knowing what the answer would be.

“She entertained gentlemen as I do,” Leila said, and looked serenely at me. “We have no other means of making money.”

The waiter came through the screens. He brought with him a strip of matting which he laid ceremoniously on the floor.

Leila turned in her chair, clasping her small hands excitedly. “This is the beggar’s chicken. You must not miss seeing any of this.”

A Chinese boy came in carrying what appeared to be an enormous ostrich egg on a wooden plate. He rolled the egg onto the matting.

“The chicken is first rubbed with many spices and then wrapped in a covering of lotus leaves,” Leila explained, squirming around on her chair with excitement. “It is then covered with clay and put on an open fire and cooked for five hours. You can see the clay has become as hard as stone.”

The boy produced a hammer and cracked the egg open: from it came an aroma that was unbelievably delicious. The waiter and the boy squatted opposite each other. The boy eased the chicken out of the layers of lotus leaves onto the dish held by the waiter. The bird had been so thoroughly cooked the flesh fell from the bones as it unrolled onto the dish.

With skilled and enthusiastic hands, the waiter spooned pieces of the chicken into our bowls.

Leila’s chopsticks began to flash again. I began on my portion. It was quite the most sensational dish I had ever eaten. Leila paused for a brief moment, a shred of chicken held securely in her chopsticks to ask, “You like?”

I grinned at her.

“Sure ... I like.”