(Hong Kong, 2014)
I quit my job at the Corporation for the second time in April 2014 during a stay in Hong Kong, six months before cataracts in both eyes, two hernias, a rotten and swollen prostate, a cirrhotic liver, added to the weight of solitude, sadness, sins and regrets killed my Father. He vomited green, pungent bile. He couldn’t reach the toilet seat on time. He convulsed once in a while. He lost cognition of familiar faces as well as the perception of space and time. Purple spider webs of broken blood vessels covered his yellow skin. His body itched. His flesh decayed. He got thinner, each passing day more emaciated. He couldn’t sleep for several days before he died. When he did at last, it was a sleep from which he never woke up.
The first time I took such a radical decision was one September morning three years earlier, six months before the earthquake followed by a tsunami that washed cars, ships and houses, killed thousands of beasts and people and resulted in the nuclear meltdown of several power plants in the region of Fukushima. This combination of catastrophes gravely affected the lifespan of the animal and human population along with the life-sustaining capacity of the lands in the north of Japan, drove many to sacrifice their pets and cattle, hundreds of women to put an end to their eagerly desired pregnancies, thousands into the numbing arms of suicide and millions to leave their homes, forced to settle in temporary shelters for months, in the case of the few fortunate, or years for the ones who weren’t.
So, as I was saying, I quit my job at the Corporation for the second time in April. After some more years of work after my first departure, a new boss (because no matter in what position you are in the Corporation, no matter how high you climb the ladder, you will always have a boss above you) and too many more broken promises, I decided to leave again during a strategic meeting, like all the meetings in the Corporations were said to be, that took place in Hong Kong. The president himself is coming this time! some of my excited colleagues wrote in mails or told me over the phone, as if the man was their leader, their savior, the son of Siddhartha or Jesus Christ himself.
Monday.
The inside of Hong Kong airport with its white ceilings, white walls and white hallways looked like the massive emergency room of a busy hospital. Men and women made of mud by the hands of our creator. A cloud of milk-white moths fluttered liked an omen over the heads of some of the soon-to-be passengers who stood near the entrance to the terminal. A group of children or short men crouching next to the taxi stand were playing with firecrackers. A handful of police officers arrived trotting and circled them. I kept moving, keep moving, as they ordered me to. My eyes vagabonded from one face to another. One must be alert. Airports aren’t the best place to lose the sense of reality. People aren’t often who they declare to be.
The only memory left from the airport to hotel journey was the gas-green mist which seemed to envelop it all and the toy-cargo ships coming and going on the dark waters of the bay as we approached the city. The white van dropped us in front of the five-star harbor-view hotel with Xael, my new German boss, after a five-hour flight from Tokyo and an hour drive from the airport. Xael’s round face, massive body and head full of white hair made him look much like a polar bear. I checked in, paying the deposit with the golden credit card we all got after signing our contracts, took a shower, found out that the rooms with the harbor-view were reserved only for the top directors and that I wasn’t yet one of them.
Tuesday.
The first day of meetings took place in the Jade Convention Room and passed as slowly and painfully as a funeral procession, interrupted only a couple of times by the constant buzz of the helicopters and planes flying low and nearby, the distant but constant noise of what I thought were firecrackers (we were in China after all), ambulance or patrol-car sirens and the chants and screams of people in the streets. Monsieur Lebel took the floor, greeted us all and instructed us to take over the Chinese, Singaporean, Bangladeshi, Malaysian, Indian, Pakistani, Cambodian, Burmese, Filipino, Thai, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indonesian and Japanese markets. All Asia will be ours, he said, it is Do or Die this time. Everyone applauded at the end of his speech and Lebel’s thorax filled with pride like the chest of a pigeon.
During the unappetizing dinner, a table filled with the chopped, raw, pan-fried and steamed corpses of all imaginable sea-creatures, I smiled and pretended to listen, like all the other people around the table, to the gossip one manager of the Corporation had to say about one of his peers sitting one or two tables away from us. One hour into this tortuous situation, I asked the polar bear for a minute of his time.
Sure, he said, Let’s have a cigarette.
I don’t smoke, Xael, I said.
I know, he said as we walked outside of the restaurant, let’s go over there to have a cigarette.
Xael, I will get straight to the point, I told him as he inhaled the puffs of smoke and nicotine with evident pleasure. I need to quit. I am leaving the Corporation.
The signs of elation on his face drained at once. You must be kidding, he said. This is not the time and especially not the place.
I am sorry, Xael, but I do not have a different one.
You cannot do that to us, he said, his face turning from pale to red.
I have made up my mind. It is the best for everyone.
Fine. Whatever you want. I need to talk to management about this. You’ll hear from me soon.
Appreciate it, Xael.
He dropped the cigarette on the floor, stepped on it and said, I don’t, before he left.
As I walked back to my table I saw as a couple of my colleagues, a French and an American, laughed and, cheered by the rest of the patrons, stretched the body of a lobster that a short and bald Hongkongese waiter had just barely boiled alive in a tin cooking pot placed in front of them, the American pulled from the head, the Frenchman from the tail, as if it were the infant about to be cut in halves by the orders of King Solomon. The tail slipped from the Frenchman’s grip, causing the American to lose balance, trip and lose hold of the animal. The lobster fell with a dry thump and crawled beneath the table. Everyone laughed as the waiter got down on hands and knees, crawled as the lobster had before, pulled the frightened animal from the shadows, as a magician pulls a rabbit out of a top hat, presented to the audience smiling yellow teeth, and snapped it in two halves in a rapid movement. The audience went berserk.
I went through two more hours of torture and boredom before we took the ferry back to the hotel. I have seldom seen a night as black as that one. I found a place inside the boat where I didn’t have to talk to anyone, stared out of the window and fancied that, had a leviathan come out of the waters and swallowed the boat, no one would have ever known.
I took another shower to get rid of the day, the filth of the city and the people in it and went to make some black tea. Someone knocked on the door. I went to see who it was and found Xael, enraged, uneasily standing beneath the door frame. His face was flushed a light burgundy tone, as if he were having a stroke, both his fists clenched next to his body. He was puffing.
Xael, Good —
Pack your bags, he said interrupting my greetings. And call my assistant. If she can find you a flight tonight, take it. If not, find one as soon as you can and leave.
How about tomorrow’s meeting? How about the presentation?
You’re no longer part of it. You’re no longer part of anything. Send what you prepared to Julio and copy me in. He will present it. We will take care of it. We don’t need you. We will succeed without you.
Understood, Xael.
And empty your office as soon as you’re back in Tokyo. And don’t go back in.
Hold on, Xael.
I have nothing else to say.
How about my severance?
We’ll respect the law. The Corporation always respects the law. You know that, don’t you?
That’s all I wanted to hear. Many thanks.
You can save them for yourself, he said, and left once again down the hallway.
I felt the boulder I had carried for the past six years catch fire, fragment, turn into ashes and fly through the room in a whirlwind of white and gray and leave whistling through the window. Few times in my life had I experienced a similar euphoria. My hotel was paid for the next three nights, I had no job and I was going to take no plane at that late hour, no matter what Xael had said. I sent a mail to his assistant as he had requested. I sent a mail to Julio, a Mexican short and plump like a toad who used to be one of my good colleagues inside the Corporation, with the information needed for the presentation. He replied thanking me, telling me he had also talked to Xael and asking me to delete his name, number and email from my mobile phone and not to get in touch with him again through any traceable means. He also told me where he was, one of the many sensual massage parlors in Tsim Sha Tsui, and told me to meet him there, it is more discrete, he wrote, I hope you understand.
I didn’t. I called Cyrus Wong instead and asked him to meet me for a drink. I planned to ramble the next day around Hong Kong and, why not, maybe take the ferry to Macao, before I went out to celebrate.
Cyrus, one of the latest recruits of the Corporation, a young Hongkongese finance graduate who had in a period of a few months successfully closed several rounds of mergers and acquisitions which had allowed the Corporation to expand in Asia, feeding as much as he could its infinite appetite for consumption, was waiting for me sitting on one of the ample silver sofas placed around the lobby of the hotel when I came down.
We shook hands and went for a drink at the bar. I had a glass of red wine. He ordered strawberry juice and sparkling water.
I heard what happened today, said Cyrus laughing. I can’t believe they fired you!
They didn’t fire me, Cyrus.
You should sue them, he added, even though the chances of you winning are scarce, not to say inexistent. Just for fun, you know?
It was me who left, Cyrus, I said.
It’s ok. There’s no shame to it, he said. I know you’ll do fine. I wish you the best.
I Thank you.
Did I tell you I just came back from the Himalayas?
No, Cyrus, you didn’t.
I have to show you, he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He flipped through pictures of the crowds in Kathmandu, the terracotta roads and temples of Bhaktapur, magnificent snowcapped mountains, sun rays reflecting pink and orange in the horizon, turquoise lakes and rivers, a rainbow of billowing prayer flags. What’s this? I said pointing at the silhouette of a rider on a black beast that looked like a yak but was too large and too hairy to be one.
That’s a Mamo.
A Mamo?
A demon, he said. I smiled, expecting him to laugh. He didn’t. Even though the place is plagued with them, said Cyrus, it is rare to see one and photographs are scarce. Mamos and other ghosts, angels, and demons constantly move like flickers between this and other dimensions.
I looked at the blurry photograph on the small screen of the telephone trying to unveil the hoax. The animal, who seemed to be at least the size of an Indian elephant, although I had read somewhere that depth and perspective could be manipulated by experienced photographers, had two short yellow horns and thick dark dreads of fur, which made impossible the recognition of any facial feature, hanging down to the icy floor. The rider seemed to be a man given the powerful built of his body. This time not the facial hair but the quality of the picture prevented the viewer from a more accurate perception. The man, let’s say it was a man, had no hair to speak of, wore only pants made of something that resembled brown tanned leather, and either had dark indigo skin or dark indigo face and body makeup. His right arm was raised to the sky and he held in his hand what looked like a curved spear.
The air filled with a deafening, metallic sound, said Cyrus, like the never-ending screech of an eagle, and the smell of rotten meat. While my companion stood frozen in awe and I tried to take the picture, two of the Sherpa who walked by our side drew bows and arrows and shot at the demon. The arrows flew with incredible precision just to be swallowed by the entangled fur of the beast. A third Sherpa stepped up, dragging the only female among our luggage-carrying yaks. We give her or one of you, the Sherpa told me with a stern face. I put my phone down. We either kill or feed our demons, young man. The man took three more steps towards the Mamo, got its face next to our yak’s head, whispered something to her ear, produced a pocket knife from his belt and cut the rope tied to her nose ring. The yak calmly walked toward the Mamo, the screech stopped, and our yak, rider and beast vanished. I also took the photograph of the frozen body of a mountaineer. It’s crazy how many of them are out there, my friend, it’s like an ice graveyard! The sherpa said his name was Irvine and that he had been found ten years after they found another man named Mallory. Mallory was good to us, said the sherpa. We dragged the frozen body to the temple, let the ice melt and fed the carcass to the vultures. He’s back in the sky and earth, back again with the elements. Do you want to see the picture? Asked Cyrus.
I was feeling sick and said, No, and asked him to have another drink with me in town.
You are a free man now, my friend. No job, no wife, no kids. I am, on the other hand, a slave to every one of those things.
Are you a happy man, Cyrus?
Never been happier in my life. So, not tonight, my friend, I’m sorry. My wife is not, but my son is for sure waiting for me to go back home, give him a bath, read him a story and tuck him into bed.
Louise Chen accepted to meet me for a drink before she went to sleep. Louise was kind and short and the flat nose of a toddler. I didn’t mind much any minor physical shortcomings at the time. She was also versed in axioms, game theory, complex systems and probability in general. One could say she was one of the oracle readers of the Corporation. What pleased me about Louise was her clean smell and the locks of bluish hair which always made me think of the time I dreamt I was a hunter in a Siberian forest. An ashen sky, dead or dormant pines, a skull-white sheet of snow in which a blue wolf was my sole companion. We followed the fresh tracks of the moose, the ones with traces of dirt resting inside the foot print, until we reached his resting place and found ourselves face to face with the giant mammal. I pointed my rifle at the spot between his eyes. The moose, his body a bulldozer of fat and muscle, his antlers like the dark outstretched wings of a carrion bird, sniffed the air, huffed clouds of condensation, squinted to confirm the threat and bellowed deeply for assistance. The blue wolf leaped, landed on the moose’s face and sank his fangs and claws in the flesh of the prey’s snout. The moose shook his head in pain and anger and sent the blue wolf flying like a rag doll against the trunk of a black cottonwood. A dry crack told me that my companion’s spine had shattered. He fell and rested broken on the snow. My body was tense and my heart was racing. I was crying and consumed by anger. I pulled the trigger.
Louise and I went for a drink, and then another, filling the time with nonsensical blabber. She asked me to take her photo and one of us together. I tried to kiss her as we were walking through one of the many rundown alleys that form the concrete mesh of Hong Kong. I don’t think we should, she said. The probabilities of us falling in love are low, let alone those of procreating. And even if we did, well, let us simply say that the prospects of us being together for an extended period are not the best. Do not be offended, it’s just a matter of priorities. There’s just too much going on. I agree with you, I said embarrassed. She hailed a red cab, looked at me with something I thought was pity and left me there, standing on the sidewalk. Impromptu musicians and an inebriated barefoot dancer, her hair wet and her turquoise camisole stained with alcohol or sweat, alleviated my embarrassment as I walked back to the hotel.
The night was young and, as Cyrus had wisely said, I was now a free man The half-concealed flight of stairs I took was just meters away from the hotel. The alley at the top of the steps was lined with restaurants and bars on both sides. I ordered a Guinness, my ex-wife’s favorite beer, and sat to think of her, our daughters, my sick father and how glad I was to leave the Corporation as I watched the passersby while taking sips of foam and dark liquid. A solitary young Hongkongese woman in a canary yellow summer dress smiled at me once and then again. She was short and had long, black hair, which pretty much describes every single woman in Hong Kong. My first thought, ingrained through decades of unreasoned prejudice, and given the time and her being alone, was that she was a prostitute. I was celebrating and decided to take my chances. I smiled and asked her to join me. She smiled back, got off her stool and came to my table.
I’m waiting for my friend, she said.
Wait for her with me.
Are you alone?
I am indeed.
Now you’re not, she said smiling. She ordered a San Miguel and started asking the same dull questions, a necessary step to prevent falling prey of scavengers and predators, I am always asked by and often ask myself to strangers. To my astonishment and shame her friend did come and neither of them was a prostitute. Her friend was also short, but had long brown hair and big, soft-looking breasts that were barely covered by her lemon-green camisole. Her legs were also short but beautifully shaped. We went to a club and drank clear drinks and danced, all of them activities I abhor, and when the night was over her friend left and we were once again alone. My breath stank of alcohol.
I’m going to my room, I told her. I also asked if she wanted to come up.
Yes, she said without hesitation. I want to be some more time with you.
She turned on the TV as soon as she got in and lay down on the bed on her belly. I watched the screen and saw a group of protestors wearing alligator masks and chanting for, or so read the English subtitles, for more democracy and less tyrants. Most of them were holding colorful umbrellas while hundreds of police officers, dark helmets and visors obscuring their faces, a golden lion engraved on the chest of their night blue uniforms, gassed and shoved an clubbed them.
She changed the channel. Two towers standing on an island. One of them caught fire, dozens jumped into the void, and the tower burned until it crumbled. When the smoke subsided, men went into the mountain of debris and looted and plundered through the ruins. She changed the channel again.
I got on the mattress, caressed her back with my two hands and kissed her nape. She pushed me back and said, I just want to be with you. I smiled, thinking it a game, and tried to kiss her lips. She pushed me again. I didn’t understand. She watched some more TV, this time upside down, her head resting on a mound of pillows, while I kissed the pale skin of her belly. I went upwards and kissed her chest and sucked one of her leather-dark and chewy nipples. I’d better leave, she said. This isn’t right. I already told you, I just want to be with you. I agreed and, exasperated and annoyed showed her the door and masturbated in a hurry before I went to bed.
