A Long Stay in a Distant Land Read online

  A long pause.

  "So you were visiting your father's friend?" Louis asked.

  "Yes," Ah-Kai said. He put the robot on the floor. Its head reached his stomach. "He gave this to me, no charge. I'm going to sell it to someone in Australia."

  "That's a good investment," Louis said.

  "What do you want from us?" Ah-Kai asked.

  "Ah-Kai." Fei frowned at him, then looked at Louis. "He's very direct. Too much so."

  "I'm looking for my uncle Bo."

  "He was my uncle, too," Ah-Kai said.

  "Let's go put the toy away," Wai said, and put a hand on AhKai's shoulder.

  "What happened to him?" Louis asked.

  "Wait," Fei said.

  Wai squeezed his son's shoulders, but couldn't stop the words from coming out.

  "He died," Ah-Kai said.

  Polyethylene Dreams

  (2002)

  Louis had expected Fei to tell him his uncle was in another part of Hong Kong. He had not expected to hear that Uncle Bo had fallen off a ferry into the harbor six months ago. He had not expected to hear that Uncle Bo had been fished out of the water bloated and blue. He deserved more from the man.

  "Why didn't you tell my grandmother the truth?" Louis asked.

  "She's already had two heart surgeries," Fei said. "I thought the news might kill her. She's had a hard life, raising Bo herself after your grandfather died in the war."

  Grandma didn't tell him she'd lied to Fei. Grandma was in perfect health, healthier than the rest of the living Lums. "Yes, she's in bad shape," he said. "Where's my uncle?"

  Per Uncle Bo's will, Fei had had him cremated and placed his ashes near Aunt Julie's in a memorial center in Mong Kok. Aunt Julie had picked this location because she'd wanted convenience for Uncle Bo. She'd wanted to be somewhere on the way between his work and the Lum's home. She hadn't wanted her ashes to be placed in Hong Kong Island, for example, because then he'd have to cross the harbor to see her. He'd have to pay a ferry or subway fare each time and the cost would have built up over the years.

  "I want to see him," Louis said.

  "We can get lunch first," Ah-Kai said.

  "Good idea," Wai said.

  Ah-Kai invited Louis to see his room, and Fei and Wai went to their room at the other end of the hall to discuss a location for lunch. They closed their door. Ah-Kai seemed fine with the knowledge of Uncle Bo's death, as much as Louis was disturbed by it. He looked at Getter Dragun, the battered red robot Ah-Kai was planning to sell to a man in Australia.

  "Who collects those things?" Louis asked. The toy was two feet tall and made of the same tough plastic as shampoo bottles.

  Back in the seventies, Ah-Kai explained, a Japanese toy company began making Jumbo Machinders. Because these robots were so big, most of them got thrown out by parents. The ones that survived became collectible and (mostly) men from countries including Italy, France, the Philippines, and the United States were paying over four figures (U.S. dollars) for rare pieces in mint condition.

  Getter Dragun was a relatively common Jumbo, and this one was in poor shape.

  Ah-Kai had spent the last two years acquainting himself with his father's friends, schoolmates, and business associates, and anyone else who might have kept from childhood a Jumbo or two. He also visited antique toy stores nestled in alleyways and the top floors of multistory shopping plazas. Most of the Jumbos he'd sold had damaged or missing parts. Only a couple had been in near-mint condition. When he acquired a piece, he'd post sales ads on Japanese toy BBS's or auction it online.

  "Your father never kept his?" Louis asked.

  "He had one and I sold it a year ago," Ah-Kai said. "When I'm thirty I don't think I'll spend thousands on old toys."

  "You might miss things you grew up with. You might want them back."

  "Not toys."

  Fei and Wai were still in their room, speaking in hushed voices. Louis stepped into the hall, but he couldn't make out their words from Ah-Kai's doorway. He walked back inside. "Your parents always take this long to discuss lunch?"

  Ah-Kai shrugged.

  "You don't collect anything?" Louis asked.

  "Money," Ah-Kai said.

  "What for?"

  "Tuition." Ah-Kai planned to attend Hong Kong University, the best university in the territory. Even though his parents had offered to subsidize his education, he insisted on "tying his own shoelaces." He was already using his robot fund to pay for weekend cram classes and a tutor to ensure high marks in school.

  "What do you want to study in college?" Louis asked.

  "Business."

  "What do you want to do after college?"

  "Mergers and acquisitions."

  "Neat," Louis said.

  "What do you do?" Ah-Kai asked.

  "I work at a magazine."

  "You plan to work there for a long time?"

  "I don't know," Louis said.

  "You don't have any plans for the future?"

  "To stay alive."

  "Oh," Ah-Kai said.

  Fei and Wai finished their conversation and came into AhKai's room. Forty-five minutes had passed. "You two ready to go?" Fei asked.

  Lunch was rice and three plates of stir-fried vegetables at a restaurant across the street from Fei's flat. They ate quickly and quietly, finishing in far less time than Fei and Wai had taken to figure out where to eat. Louis wondered what they'd been discussing about him.

  Wai paid the bill and they got up to leave.

  "Are you angry at him?" Fei asked.

  Louis said nothing.

  "Are you angry at me?" she asked.

  "No," Louis said.

  "Please don't be angry at your uncle."

  Outside Wai hailed a taxi that took them to Mong Kok. The driver dropped them off in front of the memorial center.

  Ah-Kai spotted an ice cream parlor across the street and asked to go. "We'll wait for you outside," Wai said to Fei, and crossed the street with his son.

  "We told Ah-Kai where Bo's remains are, but he hasn't visited," Fei said.

  "Does he want to?" Louis asked.

  "No," she said. "I asked him about Bo and he said he doesn't feel as sad as he did six months ago. School and his toy business take up a lot of time. He'll probably start forgetting about Bo in another year." She sounded happy.

  "Do drownings happen often in the harbor?"

  "Not often," Fei said. "It was an unlikely accident."

  "Unlikely things happen to my family."

  "I know you're disappointed about him."

  "I'm not disappointed," Louis said. "I'm angry."

  "Why?"

  "I wrote him a letter. He never wrote back."

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  The HappyLand Memorial Center was a gray stone building. Inside, life-sized statues of Mickey and Minnie Mouse flanked the front desk. Fei signed the pink guest list and led Louis deeper inside. There were colorful urns in the shapes of cartoon characters ranging from Japanese classics like Astro Boy and Doraemon to American standards like Woody Woodpecker and Snow White.

  Fei led Louis through several aisles and past hundreds of urns before stopping in front of a bust of Green Lantern.

  "I always liked Green Lantern," Fei said. "He has that really powerful ring."

  Affixed to Green Lantern's chest was a bronze plaque on which Uncle Bo's name had been written in Chinese. Louis understood the character for Lum, but not the others.

  "I never knew Uncle Bo's Chinese name." Louis touched the side of the urn with his fingers. Cold ceramic. "Where's Aunt Julie?"

  Fei led him to another aisle. She pointed up at Hello Kitty.

  Aunt Julie had wanted Uncle Bo to smile when he visited her.

  She'd thought that Hello Kitty was a character who, even in the form of an urn, would make him smile.

  Louis wanted to have a quiet moment of solemnity, a moment in which to say something like I'm sorry you're dead, Uncle Bo.

  Children were running through the aisles
, pointing and shouting, "Look. Pluto! Bugs!"

  "Let's get out of here," Louis said.

  Outside Wai and Ah-Kai were waiting for them. They walked along the street and Wai talked proudly of Fei's popularity and her talent, which Louis didn't doubt, having seen her colorful work on the walls of their home. Fei was the writer and artist of the comic book Rose-Colored Fist, in which martial arts superhero Cloud Bird traveled across fifteenth-century China attempting to master his qi, his fighting and life energy.

  Fei walked up ahead and hailed a cab.

  "Thanks for taking me to see him," Louis said. "My hotel's not far from here. I can walk back."

  "Have dinner with us," Fei said.

  "You've already shown me a lot of hospitality."

  By the time Louis said, "No. Really. Thanks," Fei had pulled him into the backseat. Wai sat up front and Louis was stuck between Ah-Kai and Fei.

  "We're much closer to my home than to Tsim Sha Tsui," Fei said. "You can spend the night with us. We'll take you back to your hotel tomorrow morning." She looked at him, but seemed to be thinking of something else. It was the way she'd looked at him all day, the absentiminded way his mother used to look at magazines, as if she was picturing herself driving the Mercedes down a country road instead of noticing the advertisement itself.

  "You can sleep on Ah-Kai's floor," Fei said.

  "Fine with me," Ah-Kai said.

  Louis wondered how he'd break the news to Grandma Esther. He thought about it the rest of the afternoon, through dinner, and while Fei placed a sheet and blanket on the floor next to AhKai's bed. "You still look upset," she said.

  "My uncle was a very irresponsible man," Louis said.

  Fei looked disappointed.

  "He was," Louis said.

  He couldn't sleep. It was dark and he wasn't used to lying on the floor. He stared at the ceiling. He felt hot and kicked off his blanket. His chest and armpits were moist with sweat. His heart was pounding.

  He was furious. The man should have left a note, should have called to say good-bye before he decided to give up his family and adopt another, before he drowned. It was about manners. Decency. Doing Things The Right Way.

  "You're awake," Ah-Kai said.

  "Sorry."

  "Do you want to read something?" Ah-Kai got out of bed and turned on the lamp. "You think that'll help?"

  "I'd like to see your mother's work," Louis said.

  "Sure." There was a small bookshelf at the foot of Ah-Kai's bed. He pulled from it an issue of Rose-Colored Fist and handed it to Louis.

  Ah-Kai translated as Louis turned the pages. They went through several issues. Almost every story involved Cloud Bird meeting strangers and challenging them to match his fighting technique, which they never could.

  He'd beat them down with techniques that included the Rolling Rock Fist and the Boisterous Thunder Kick. After their defeats, the opponents would say, "Much respect, Cloud. Your qi is strong," before hobbling away on crutches.

  Louis's eyes were getting tired and he felt ready to try sleeping again. "I'm done." He handed the issue he was looking at back to Ah-Kai and lay down on his blanket.

  Ah-Kai looked around the room, then picked up the battered Getter Dragun robot he'd just received earlier that day and handed it to Louis. "Try sniffing it. The smell's interesting. It might help." Then he turned out the lights again.

  The plastic used for shampoo bottles was polyethylene. Louis pulled the toy close and sniffed its neck. Decades ago, someone had cradled this thing with affection, had thrown it off rooftops and set it on fire, had brought it home cracked and broken, had kept it for the memories it held, had given it away. It smelled like Super Glue and gasoline.

  He felt himself passing out, passing into a dream, that dream with the tasty turnip cakes, the Lums melting into molecules. Steam was rising from the turnip cakes. The entire family was there. Everyone was talking and suddenly the room began shaking. No burning light. No melting skin. An earthquake instead. Louis thought they'd all die this time. He looked forward to not being left alone with Grandma asking, as she always did, what happened. But the earth wasn't quaking. His body was and the epicenter was in his right forearm. He grabbed it, squeezed it to stop it from shaking.

  He woke and saw a hand around his wrist. He looked up and saw Fei. She put a finger to her lips.

  The lights in Ah-Kai's room were still out and he was snoring softly. Louis followed her to the living room, then out the front door. The night air was warm and smelled of car exhaust.

  "I called a taxi," she said. "It'll take you to your uncle."

  "He's alive?"

  Uncle Bo's phone number was all Fei had of his contact information. He'd given it to her with the understanding that she wouldn't call him. She'd called to say there was an emergency. He'd asked what the emergency was. She'd said Louis had arrived.

  "He wouldn't have agreed to meet me so easily," Louis said.

  "I spent an hour begging him to see you," she said. "I told him your grandmother had just had another open-heart surgery.

  I said she didn't have much time left and you were carrying a note from her."

  They passed the iron gate and stopped in front of a waiting taxi. "Give us a few minutes," she said to the driver. She turned to Louis. "Before he left, your uncle spent a lot of time caring for Ah-Kai. He was a great help to us through those early years, changing diapers and feeding him, watching him so Wai and I could go out to dinner or a movie. He helped raise our son. So when he asked us not to give out contact information to his family, we honored his request. We felt we owed him."

  "You make him sound like he's part of your family. You didn't have the right to withhold information from mine."

  "We decided not to rent out his room again after he left," she said. "He was part of our family. I didn't want to lie to you at first, but when Ah-Kai told you he was dead, Wai and I had a long talk about whether or not to let you believe it.

  "We thought if you believed he was dead, the knowledge would bring you peace like it did Ah-Kai. But when you held the urn, you looked so angry. I didn't want you to leave here hating Bo."

  "The names on those urns?" Louis asked.

  "Different Lums. No relation. We found them in case Ah-Kai decided to visit Bo."

  The driver honked his horn. Fei ignored him. "After he married Julie, Bo moved out and found a place not far from ours. After Julie died, he asked us to leave him alone. For a year he wouldn't answer his phone or door. Then Ah-Kai was born and he moved back in with us. For a while the baby made him happier. When he told us he was leaving again, he said it would be permanent this time. We said Ah-Kai would be upset if he just disappeared. He said saying good-bye would make it harder on the boy."

  "You lied to him," Louis said.

  "We didn't want him to feel rejected by Bo. Ah-Kai won't have to wonder why he left, why he doesn't want to stay in touch. He'll know. Bo drowned in the harbor."

  The driver honked again.

  Fei turned to shout at him, but Louis stopped her. "I should go." He opened the taxi door.

  "I hope he explains why he never wrote you back," she said.

  Louis got in and shut the door.

  "You finally done talking?" the driver asked.

  Louis glared at him. "Get going."

  The Genealogy of Bo

  (1281-2002)

  *=According to Bo, Lum Sung Sung's life was "indisputable fact." According to Louis, Lum Sung Sung was "indisputably a work of fiction."

  **=Dates are approximate.

  An Ideal Room

  (2002)

  Seated next to a window and lit by golden arches, Uncle Bo was playing with his fries. He was thinning, the hairs having begun a migration from the top and front of his head down to the sides, where they were slicked back. He wore a short-sleeved, button-down shirt and jeans.

  The McDonald's near Fei's home was Uncle Bo's pick. He hadn't given Fei his address and probably wouldn't give it to Louis. He stared intently at his f
ries, using a thin hard one to prod the others softened by grease. Louis approached slowly, feeling both nervous and angry.

  "Hi."

  Uncle Bo's head shot up. After a moment, he stood and approached Louis, and patted his shoulders as if to verify their solidity. He was thin and tanned to the shade of a paper grocery bag. "Wow."

  "You shouldn't be alive, Uncle Bo."

  His uncle took a step back. "What?"

  "Fei said you were dead."

  "I see." His uncle smiled and motioned at the table. "You want some fries?"

  "Not hungry," Louis said, and sat down across from his uncle. Despite the length of Uncle Bo's stay in Hong Kong, he still spoke with a clear American accent. He looked worried.

  "Grandma's never had heart surgery," Louis said. "She's in perfect health."

  "She's not sick?"

  "She'll probably outlive me."

  Uncle Bo laughed, and when he noticed Louis's expression, stopped. "You're not carrying a note from her?"

  "No," Louis said.

  "Fei's a convincing liar," Uncle Bo said. "A very practical woman."

  "You admire her lying?"

  "Practical thinking is a necessity in life. You've met Ah-Kai, right? When he was a baby, he used to get a kick out of it when I'd raise him over my head. Up and down, up and down like a free-fall ride at an amusement park. He'd laugh and clap. The second I put him back on the ground, he'd start crying."

  "And you'd pick him up again?"

  "For the first year and a half, I'd hold him for hours at a stretch. Wai and Fei would be out on errands and I'd carry him around the flat to keep him quiet. I learned to cook and eat with one hand. Later I learned to let him cry. I'd put him back on the floor after playing with him. He'd scream and wail. His face would turn red. Big drops of tears would roll down his cheeks. I felt guilty, like I was traumatizing him. But he had to learn to stop crying."

  "Did he?" Louis asked.

  "I learned to stop playing with him."

  "He believes you're dead."

  "That's the best thing for him to believe."

  "Why didn't you answer my letters?" Louis asked.

  "Well."

  Louis thought the well would preface an explanation and an apology, which would preface his forgiveness ("Even though you blew me off, I'll forgive you") that would then preface a conversation about what he'd been up to all these years, but Uncle Bo wiped his fingers with a napkin, leaned back in his chair, and seemed content with saying nothing else.