Reflecting the Sky (42 page)
Read Reflecting the Sky Online
Authors: S. J. Rozan
I dropped to my knees next to Franklin Wei. Franklin’s open eyes were blank and glittering. Automatically I felt his neck for a pulse. There was nothing. Blood was seeping from beneath him, flowing along cracks and joints, pooling on the tiles. Two fist-size stains on his chest spread as I watched them, merging into one, surrounding the amulet lying on his shirt like a sea of blood circling an island of jade. Feet pounded, sirens howled, voices called, but I sat unmoving, seeing only the neon skyline of Hong Kong reflected in Franklin Wei’s blood.
Two days later, in the morning under a bright, hot sun, there was a double funeral at the mausoleum on the breezy hilltop in the New Territories town of Sha Tin.
We climbed a broad switchback staircase through lush mountain greenery in the company of chanting Buddhist monks. They rang gongs and tapped bells as the wind cleared the early clouds from the azure sky. At the top, among the gilt-touched crimson columns in front of the wall’s wide sweep, Steven Wei, dressed in mourner’s white, lit sweet, thick incense for his father and his brother. The rest of us did the same. We bowed, sometimes chanted, circling the open altar to stand our incense sticks in the sand of the burner and, at the iron cauldron beside it, to add our paper funeral gifts to the fire.
Li-Ling, heavy with the expected child, held Harry’s hand as he dropped Hell Notes—paper money made to send to the dead—and paper rice bags into the flames. Wei Ang-Ran was next, also sending money, and a paper feast of fish; Natalie Zhu sent books and an image of Tin Hua, which curled and darkened and sprang suddenly into the air before it fell to ashes. Maria Quezon had brought Hell Notes and a set of recipes, in her own hand, for Filipino dishes old Mr. Wei had enjoyed. Mark was there; like Bill, he had brought only money, feeling it presumptuous to offer anything else. I had one gift beyond money. At a funeral supplies store on the shrine-sellers’ street in Mong Kok I had found a paper image of Sun Wu-Kong, the Monkey King: joyful trickster and thief, laughing fighter, courageous companion. I put that in the fire for Franklin Wei.
As the monks, chanting, placed the two urns of ashes in the mausoleum wall, I gazed over the emerald hillside to the white waves and dark boats on the water far below. Old Mr. Wei had asked to be brought from America to be buried in this sunny, breezy place next to his second wife, Steven’s mother. Now his first son was buried here too, their photographs added to the numberless others on the curving wall, forever looking out over the green hills and the sea.
I turned back to watch Steven bowing, to listen to him saying the prescribed prayers. He had been shocked and sickened to hear of Franklin’s crime, his betrayal of his father and family, his death on the Kowloon waterfront. But Franklin was his older brother and there was no question about his funeral. All the proper rites were performed, everything done correctly, as filial loyalty demanded.
Filial loyalty, of course, was what had brought on Franklin’s death. It was
Zhong xiao dao yi
, and Bill had seen it before Mark or I had. Franklin had calmly left the hotel by a side door—the cops had been watching for suspicious people going in, not tourists going out; none of them had Franklin’s description—and walked down to the waterfront, and waited. Announcing that he would provide names and details the next day insured that Strength and Harmony would have to do something about him immediately. Lion Rock, as Bill had said in Franklin’s hotel room, was useless now to L. L. Lee, though Lee himself had not been identified and had nothing to deny. Self-protection had required Franklin’s removal and honor had required revenge. L. L. Lee had gotten both. And the death of Franklin settled his score with the Wei family.
Zhong xiao dao yi
, and Bill had seen it before Mark or I had. Franklin had calmly left the hotel by a side door—the cops had been watching for suspicious people going in, not tourists going out; none of them had Franklin’s description—and walked down to the waterfront, and waited. Announcing that he would provide names and details the next day insured that Strength and Harmony would have to do something about him immediately. Lion Rock, as Bill had said in Franklin’s hotel room, was useless now to L. L. Lee, though Lee himself had not been identified and had nothing to deny. Self-protection had required Franklin’s removal and honor had required revenge. L. L. Lee had gotten both. And the death of Franklin settled his score with the Wei family.
Steven, performing his filial rites, knew nothing about any of this.
I watched him, and watched Wei Ang-Ran, next to him, bowing, placing incense in the burner as sweet-smelling smoke swirled around him. I was afraid Wei Ang-Ran, driven by guilt, would tell Steven the truth. What a shame that would be, what a waste.
And Wei Ang-Ran might have, but for one final, stunning fact.
When the last incense stick was lit and the last gong rung, the monks stayed to tend the fire and the family prepared to leave. The Weis were planning to gather for the traditional postfuneral meal. Mark and Bill and I had been courteously invited, but declined, as we thought right. As the others started back down the hill, Wei Ang-Ran hung behind.
“Please wait,” he said to me in Cantonese. “I have something I must show you.” He included Mark and Bill in his look.
So we waited, letting Wei Ang-Ran draw us to a secluded bend in the curving wall. Once the rest of the family, descending the staircase, was out of sight, Wei Ang-Ran reached his hand under his shirt collar and pulled out a pendant on a slim gold chain.
“What’s that?” I asked.
And he answered, “My brother’s jade.”
The sun beat down and the soft breeze blew and I stood with my mouth open, as speechless and staring as the high wall’s rows of photographs of those who would never be confused again.
Finally coming back to life I said, “You’ve had it all this time?”
“In one sense,” he said. “In another, no.” His voice was barely above a whisper and his eyes were sad.
“What does that mean?”
“The envelope you brought me that I would not open. My brother’s final advice, I thought, his final words to help me. It was my guilt, as you now can understand, as much as my fear for Hao-Han, that kept me from reading it. My brother was kind, a good man; I could not bear the thought that, dying, he had considered me. After what I had done, what I had been doing for so long! After the way I had deceived him!” Wei Ang-Ran gazed out over the hills and the ocean. He turned to us and spoke again. “This morning I opened it. The envelope, as you recall, was thick. We spoke about that: So much advice, so many worthy words, I thought.
“But that was not the case. Protected in many layers of fine rice paper was my brother’s jade. With it, the business card of a Chinatown jeweler. Also, a single proverb, in my brother’s hand.” He smiled a smile full of a lifetime’s regret and quoted the proverb to me: “‘A man’s love for another must extend to the crows on his roof.’”
I knew this one. When I was a child my father had quoted it to me at those times—fairly common—when I had been brought to tears by the scoldings of my aunt, my mother’s older sister who lived with us. He had been telling me that I must love my aunt despite her faults; and he was also, I knew, telling me that my aunt loved me that way too.
And Old Mr. Wei had been telling his brother the same thing.
“Do you see?” Wei Ang-Ran asked me. “Do you see? He knew.”
“Knew?” I managed. “About the smuggling?”
“Yes.” He carefully replaced the jade Buddha under his shirt, out of sight. “I told you,” he said, “I had once, for Strength and Harmony, smuggled three jades similar to my brother’s out of China. They went to New York, to a Chinatown jeweler.”
“The jeweler whose card—?”
“Exactly. My brother must have known when they came in. I can only think now he knew when all the shipments came in. Clearly he knew also where they went He visited the jeweler himself, where he bought one of the three. So many years ago …” He shook off the memory, the amazement. “That was the jade he sent to Hao-Han. His jade he sent to me. To tell me he knew. To tell me he forgave me.”
I looked at the old man’s wrinkled brown face. The breeze had stopped; the hilltop was hot and still and silent.
“Will you tell your nephew?” I asked.
“No.” Wei Ang-Ran’s answer was soft but sure. “My punishment in this life will be to bear this burden alone for my remaining days. What my punishment will be in the next life I do not know.”
He bowed to me, and to Mark, and to Bill. He turned to follow his family down the hill.
Mark and Bill and I had an early lunch at a floating restaurant Mark knew: not one of the huge, garish ones the tourists go to but a place that was nothing more than a dozen picnic tables under bright canvas umbrellas on a barge. The kitchen consisted of a few huge woks and steamers also in the open air, and on this barge they turned out the best shrimp
har gow
and the best steamed crabs in Hong Kong. That was according to Mark. I would have to have done a lot of eating to test this claim, and though I was willing to try, time did not allow it: Bill and I were leaving in the morning.
har gow
and the best steamed crabs in Hong Kong. That was according to Mark. I would have to have done a lot of eating to test this claim, and though I was willing to try, time did not allow it: Bill and I were leaving in the morning.
“That’s what Grandfather Gao meant,” I said, cracking a crab claw as the barge rocked gently. “When he said when I found the answers to my unanswered questions I’d know what to do. But I couldn’t even remember what my unanswered questions were.”
“One was the two jades?” Bill asked.
I nodded, pulling a lump of crab out of the shell. “And the other was what Franklin had really been up to. If I’d thought to ask that—”
“Nothing would be different,” Mark said.
“I don’t know. Maybe we could have stopped him. Grandfather Gao said Franklin was a guy who acted before he thought.”
“Not this time,” Mark said. “He knew when he called that press conference how it would end.”
“And he just stood there. Waiting.”
There was quiet on the barge for a while. I didn’t know what Bill and Mark were thinking. I was wondering whether I would have had the courage to stand there, waiting.
“Now I want to ask you something,” Mark said. “When you found the answers, you’d know what to do about what?”
“Me? About not warning Steven you were planning to pounce on Lion Rock to bring down L. L. Lee.”
“You told Grandfather Gao I asked you to do that?”
“Of course. What’s so funny?”
“So did I.”
“You did? Why?”
“For one thing, in case he didn’t like it, I wanted him to know it was my idea, not yours. For another,” he shrugged, “getting Lee that way—I just wanted to be sure it was right.”
“What did he say?”
“About getting Lee, if I could live with it, that was up to me. About what I asked you, he said, ‘A fast-moving stream will find its own course.’”
“He didn’t.”
“He did.” Mark grinned, and the scar on his lip practically blazed in the sun. “Of course, by now I knew that about you anyway.”
I looked at Bill, beside me; he was grinning too.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I said. I went back to my crab. “Well, I’m sorry you didn’t get Lee, but I’m not sorry Steven and everyone else can go happily on with their lives now. And Lee did lose his smuggling operation.”
A small cloud, carelessly drifting, meandered across the sun. The day went briefly dim. In my mind rose a picture of the scholar’s study on the Peak, its pools of lamplight and its hunter’s carpet. And L. L. Lee motionless in the carved dark chair, his face hard, his voice stony.
Then the cloud, probably shocked to see where it was, scuttled away, and sunlight flooded down again.
I poured myself some tea, steaming and strong. The hell with L. L. Lee. I was sitting in the sunshine on a barge in a crowded harbor, eating a really great lunch with two of my favorite people. I was not going to worry about L. L. Lee.
In the picture in my mind, Lee smiled like ice. The past, I suddenly knew, was a very long time; but the future was even longer.
A waiter brought over another steamer of crabs. Well, then, Lydia, I thought, eat now, because the present is short. I lifted the lid and divided the spoils.
“I didn’t get Lee,” Mark said, pulling on a new cold beer the waiter had also provided. “I didn’t get Tony Siu for Franklin, or Siu or Big John Chou for Iron Fist Chang. But,” he said, “I didn’t get killed by Siu when I chased him, and I didn’t get fired, either. So I guess I came out ahead.”
“And I got a new nose,” said Bill. “So I know I did.”
We had been ferried out to the barge by sampan, and though we ate mightily and lingered over tangerines and tea at the end of the meal, there came a time when the tea was gone, the tangerines nothing but pits and peels, and the sampan had returned.
We didn’t speak much as we crossed the water back to Sha Tin. The day had grown very hot but stayed wonderfully clear. As the sampan rocked gently over larger boats’ wakes I could see the mausoleum far above us on the hilltop. Now we were one of the small dark boats on the water. I wondered if anyone was looking down to the sea from a funeral, and if the sight of other peoples’ daily lives going on made the funeral easier or harder.
At Sha Tin we parted; Mark was going back to work, and Bill and I had decided to spend our last day in Hong Kong out here in a park in the country, walking on the hiking trails above the sea. Mark and Bill shook hands, and, because they were men, had little they could say to each other beyond Bill’s “Thank you,” and Mark’s “Try to stay out of trouble.” They gave each other nods and smiles. Then Bill ambled away down the street, as though he had developed a sudden interest in shop windows.
That left me alone, facing Mark. His eyes briefly followed Bill; then he turned back to me.
“It’s too bad,” he said.
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