Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha (5 page)

“Thank you,” she said and walked out, glad to relax her own mask that she knew very well concealed resentment, frustration and anger.

But if Mrs. Pollifax left Feng Imports feeling definitely ruffled she in no way conceded defeat; her initial foray might have failed, but this only meant that she must find another way to contact Sheng Ti. The fact that she had no idea of what her next ploy might be only proved to her that a brief period of gestation was needed: she would forget Sheng Ti for the moment and do some sightseeing.

She could not, however, forget either Mr. Feng or Mr. Detwiler, and as she walked in the direction of Queen’s Road Central she sorted out some rather confused impressions. It struck her as extremely odd that Mr. Detwiler had intervened following Mr. Feng’s flat denial of knowing Sheng Ti. She found it interesting to speculate on why Detwiler had bothered at all to intercede, to invite her behind the beaded curtains and proceed to make a liar out of Mr. Feng. She wondered what he’d hoped to gain by this, since for herself the results were the same: she was not to be allowed to see Sheng Ti. It certainly implied a few conflicts at Feng Imports, but since any conflicts they might have were not her assignment she decided that this too had better be put aside.

Or so she had decided until she realized that she was being followed …

At first the streets had been too crowded for this suspicion to dawn on her, but as she turned corners and the crowds thinned, and as she began to stop occasionally to glance into shop windows at rugs and vases, she became increasingly aware that among the people strolling behind her one of them stopped each time that she stopped. It was a matter of peripheral vision and of suspended motion, rather like a child’s game of Statues, where two people froze at a given signal but only one was supposed to do it. When she stopped for the fourth time, deliberately, it was to steal a glance behind her, and she was surprised to recognize her surveillant: it was the young man with the attaché case who had been waiting for Detwiler when she emerged from the beaded curtains.

The realization that Detwiler had put a tail on her pleased and even exhilarated her.
Good
, she thought,
I’ve worried them, they want to be sure that I’m exactly who I say I am, a simple American garden-club tourist made happy by the promise that Sheng Ti can have pen pals
. Her lip curled—as if they’d allow him that—and hard on the heels of this thought she realized what she’d not yet fully acknowledged: Sheng Ti was as much a captive at Feng Imports as if he’d been placed in a prison. He
was
in a prison.

Finding herself at last on Queen’s Road Central Mrs. Pollifax silently vowed that she would return to haunt Feng Imports even if she had to disguise herself as she had done in Turfan: as a Chinese peasant woman, a bandanna around her head, eyes pulled into a slant, sandals flapping on her feet … she smiled at the memory. First of all, however, she must play out her role as Innocent Tourist, and after consulting her map she began walking up Queen’s Road determined to bore and to
exhaust the man behind her as quickly and totally as possible.

Hours later Mrs. Pollifax had succeeded only in exhausting herself. She had done a great deal of walking, all of it without lunch; she had bought Cyrus a silk tie that she might just as well have bought for him at home; she had taken a cab to the Zoological and Botanic Gardens and had thoroughly explored them, paying special attention to the aviary that Cyrus would want to hear about in detail, and making notes for him in her memo pad about drongos, grebes, herons, babblers and kites. Eventually she had found her way to the Peak Tramway where she had been happy to sit in the cable car and watch the city drop slowly away, level by level, as it bore her to the top of Victoria Peak.

Now, at nearly six o’clock in the afternoon, she sat on a bench 1,809 feet above Hong Kong and looked down at the city, its buildings crowded into what looked to be an incredibly narrow strip of land between the Peak and the water. She admired the great expanse of intensely blue harbor with its ferries scooting about like water bugs, and presently she leaned over to remove her shoes and blissfully wriggle her toes. When a playful wind tugged at her hat she removed it, too. Glancing off to her right she saw that the Man with the Attaché Case had also found a bench and she was about to concede victory to him—although not without resentment—when she saw him lean over and remove his shoes, too. Human after all, she thought, and at once both her tired feet and her hunger seemed small sacrifices to have made; she sat and contentedly rested, allowing herself to think ahead to a very good dinner, a long soak in a hot tub, followed by a few Yoga exercises and then
some very concentrated thinking on what to do next about Sheng Ti.

Idly she looked down at the packages she had carried all over Hong Kong: Cyrus’s tie and the ivory Buddha, and on impulse she unwrapped the tie and held it up to the light. Did Cyrus like this particular shade of blue, she wondered now, doubtfully, and then she put it aside to unwrap the Buddha, eager to see its superb carving again.

Drawing it from its string and wrappings she noticed a thin slip of rice paper taped across the Buddha’s right hand and with a frown she tore it loose. She was about to toss it into the wind when she noticed words written in tiny script on the rice paper. Curious, she held it closer and read:

If you want to see Sheng Ti he sleeps at 40 Dragon Alley in shed at back, after 10
P
.
M
.

I
n a state of considerable astonishment Mrs. Pollifax slipped her feet back into her shoes and without exploring the Peak any further, without even venturing into the tower, she boarded the next tram back into the city.

“How …?” she asked herself, and then,
“who …?”
and then, “when …?”

As the cable car descended at what seemed a perpendicular slant, she gazed unseeingly at the tops of green trees and the roofs of villas hugging the sides of the mountain and reconstructed the scene in her mind. Mr. Detwiler had removed the Buddha from her grasp and summoned the girl Lotus; it was not likely the message had come from him after his refusing to produce Sheng Ti. “Have Mr. Feng wrap this,” he’d told the girl, but she could not conceive of Mr. Feng adding the message to the Buddha, either, when he’d not even cared to admit Sheng Ti’s existence.

The tram reached the bottom and Mrs. Pollifax made her exit, crossed the boulevard and limped wearily down Garden Road toward the Hong Kong Hilton. Her reasoning had eliminated all but the girl Lotus, in which case—if it was she who had attached the rice paper to the figurine—she must have been eavesdropping and have heard everything said in the back room.

They all eavesdrop there, she thought crossly. First Mr. Detwiler, then the girl … had Mr. Feng also listened in somehow to her conversation with Detwiler?

The Man with the Attaché Case was still behind her as she reached the Garden Road entrance to the hotel, and she resisted the urge to wave to him and tell him that he could have his dinner now. It seemed a pity to curb such an insouciant gesture, she thought; after all, they had spent the afternoon together sharing a number of interesting experiences, his feet hurt and he must be as hungry as she was, but she reminded herself that he would feel a dreadful failure if he discovered that he’d been noticed. She wondered if he would be waiting for her when she ventured out again at ten o’clock to find Sheng Ti.

He was still behind her when she walked through the entrance and found herself at ground level in a mall of shops filled with all kinds of glamorous objects: cameras, watches, gems, rugs, curios. Hurrying along, eager now to get to her room, she passed a shop featuring objets d’art with a Buddha in its window very similar to her own, and with its price tag conspicuously displayed. Mrs. Pollifax stopped, and rather sheepishly walked over to the window to examine both the Buddha and its price tag. She found the Buddha definitely inferior to her own and yet it bore the price of—here she did hasty calculations in her head and was shocked to discover that in
U.S. money the ivory Buddha in the window cost almost seven hundred dollars.

She thought crossly,
I think I need that very hot bath now because I am receiving too many jolts … Mr. Detwiler—who is suspected by Carstairs of being a traitor—has just presented me with a carved Buddha worth a great deal of money … No one at Feng Imports will tell me a thing about Sheng Ti and yet his address turns up in a package like the message in a fortune cookie … I’m being followed and don’t know why … The gift can be a bribe, the address on the rice paper a trap …

With her surveillant trailing despondently behind her Mrs. Pollifax rode up the escalator to the main lobby where she picked up her key at the desk and entered the elevator. Her last glimpse of The Man with the Attaché Case was of him sinking gratefully into a soft and embracing chair, while in turn she was grateful that he couldn’t follow her into her room to see her, too, sink gratefully into a soft chair.

By nine o’clock, however, Mrs. Pollifax had thoroughly revived. Having treated herself to dinner in her own room, as befitted a person afflicted by jet lag and by conflicting signals from Feng Imports, she was ready for her nocturnal adventure. No garden-of-roses hat tonight: she tied a dark kerchief around her head to match her dark slacks and openneck shirt, and after tucking map and flashlight into her purse she proceeded to plot a zigzag exit from the hotel, taking the elevator to the second floor and then the staircase down to the lobby. Here she made an open dash to the escalator that deposited her in the mall at the lower level, where she browsed through the shops that were still open, spent a
few minutes watching two giggling young women take their blood pressure at a machine placed in the mall for that purpose, was enchanted by all the flashing lights and marveled at such an invention. Certain at last that she wasn’t being followed she walked out into the street, continued walking for several blocks before hailing a taxi and was driven through streets ablaze with gaudy reds, golds and glittering white neon: Hong Kong at night.

It was ten minutes past the hour when she stumbled over the bench on which she’d sat that morning; Dragon Alley was distressingly dark, its windows shuttered and barred for the night. She discreetly shone her flashlight just once, at number 40’s gate, and then opened it to enter the backyard. It was brighter inside here than in the street, for lights as well as music spilled over from what appeared to be the rear of a nightclub in the next building. In the reflected radiance she could see the silhouette of a small hut or shed and a slim figure seated on a bench outside of it. Mrs. Pollifax moved toward the figure cautiously.

“Oh!”
gasped the figure and jumped up. It was the girl Lotus, her white skin gleaming like porcelain in the dim light.

“So it
was
you,” whispered Mrs. Pollifax.

Lotus whispered back, “Follow me—it’s not safe here! Ssh—very quiet please.”

Mrs. Pollifax obediently followed her into the deeper shadows and past the shed to the rear of the nightclub or restaurant that adjoined the yard. A door was opened, she was led into a dark hall and then into a room on the left that was illuminated by a solitary oil lamp on a table. Sitting nervously beside the table, looking ready to bolt at any moment, was Sheng Ti.

“Xiãsnsbeng!”
he cried, springing to his feet. “I could not believe!”

Mrs. Pollifax, laughing, grasped his outstretched hands. “It’s me—I mean it’s I, Sheng Ti. Isn’t this a surprise, isn’t it wonderful?” But even as she greeted him she was shocked by his appearance: he was a young man whose attractive round face was made to be cheerful and lively, but his face was haggard now, the eyes dulled by worry. “Sheng Ti,” she said, “they wouldn’t let me see you, why?”

He burst into a torrent of Chinese until Mrs. Pollifax turned questioningly to Lotus.

The girl placed a steadying hand on Sheng Ti’s arm. “Please—sit down,” she said, indicating three chairs neatly arranged at the table.

It was a little like meeting in a cave, thought Mrs. Pollifax, glancing around the small room. A blanket had been hung over the one small window in the wall and the oil lamp cast flickering shadows over them and turned their faces a dull gold. “Why?” she repeated. “Why didn’t they want me to see you?”

Sheng Ti sucked in his breath with a small hissing sound. “If they know I see you now—”

“Yes?”

“They would
kill
.”

Startled Mrs. Pollifax turned to Lotus. “You believe this?”

“Oh yes,” the girl said simply. “Something is very wrong now at 31 Dragon Alley, you know? It was a small thing at first, just a whisper for me, until I began to speak with Sheng Ti and then we became friends—”

“We love,” put in Sheng Ti.

Lotus blushed and smiled. “Yes, we love each other—this happened and it is very beautiful, this—but
we have to meet secretly, you know? And when I learn what they ask of him”—she shook her head—“something is very wrong.”

“What do they ask of him?” demanded Mrs. Pollifax. “Tell me. Please. It’s important.”

Sheng Ti began haltingly. “At first very okay,” he said. “I come here before Lantern Festival—”

“September,” put in Lotus.

“Yes. And worked in shop, oh
very
okay. But near new year—” He shook his head. “Everything change. Many fights have Mr. Feng and Mr. Detwiler, I hear them behind door. And then they give me new jobs.” Obviously frustrated by his new English he turned and spoke to Lotus in Chinese.

“He says,” continued Lotus for him, “that he did not mind stealing back in Turfan, in mainland China, because it was to keep alive, but as you know he hoped by leaving China he could go to school and learn.”

Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “Yes, and what is his new job?”

“Stealing,” Lotus said. “For two months he was taught by a man named Hoong to pick pockets and now they have put him to work stealing from people’s pockets.”

“They
what?
” gasped Mrs. Pollifax.