Everyday movement, p.11
Everyday Movement, page 11
Ning On told herself, she was only in it for the sex like an ultimate modern woman. But from time to time, she thought about the half-healed wound on his left calf. It looked like a terrain mapped on human flesh.
* * *
—
After they checked out of the hotel, Little Professor asked if she wanted to see a movie. Sometimes it happened this way: after, before, or in between sex, they grabbed a meal, wandered the streets, or watched a film. It was usually his idea, like he was her guide showing her the world.
She had shown him part of her world once. At her insistence, he had visited her shop for a skin-care treatment. Maybe it was because of her profession, but she couldn’t stand being intimate with someone who didn’t take good care of his skin. It made things less pleasurable for her. She would never admit it. Perhaps her insistence to offer him a facial also had something to do with that ragged wound on his calf. She didn’t know the story behind it, and he wouldn’t let her find out. She suspected it must have hurt like hell.
As soon as Little Professor settled into the spa treatment, steam wafted over his face. As if on cue, he began telling her that the concept of beauty was a capitalist tool used to exploit and oppress women. But even he couldn’t deny that it felt so good to pamper his face, especially after having trapped it for so long beneath protective gear against chemical irritants.
His skin was dry, dotted with clusters of blemishes. Ning On extracted them one by one with the tip of a needlelike tool. Now, for once, he was quiet. As she squeezed, lanced, and drained the tiny pimples on his nose, forehead, and cheeks, his eyes watered from the pinches, his face contorted into a pitiful expression. Slightly amused by it, Ning On slowed down and savored this wicked thrill. She wouldn’t mind prolonging this moment and keep him lying quietly on this little treatment bed.
Sometimes she replayed that pimple-clearing session in her mind when he talked too much. She did it again that day. After watching the movie, Little Professor went on and on about the novel it was based on and took her to an independent bookstore nearby to show her the title. Being in a bright, crowded place with him made her wonder, what did they look like to others? Siblings? Friends? Colleagues? The more time they spent together in public, the more paranoid she became. She feared running into a client, or one of her daughter’s classmates. She wouldn’t know how to introduce him. Or, if they ran into someone he knew, how would he introduce her?
Ning On didn’t want to know. But perhaps this implied that she already knew the answer but wasn’t willing to face it.
In the bookstore, there was a poster promoting a protest concert, set to take place in an open lot across from a district police station. Local indie bands and singers were slated to perform, and the concert title was unapologetically dry. It directly borrowed the name of a pro-democracy anthem: “Democracy Will Triumph and Return.”
Little Professor sneered at it. “Thirty years ago, during the Tiananmen protests, people sang democracy anthems for China—where did that get them?” he asked. “Some people are so ridiculous. They still buy into that ‘Brothers climb mountains together, and they each have different things to offer’ crap. It’s the same bunch of armchair generals, most of them hippies, leftards, and cynics, blabbing empty slogans with zero action for the last thirty years. They’ve been dragging us backward. That’s how we ended up here.” He was irrepressible and went on. “You know what else? Some young intellectuals just started a reading group, proclaiming that books can save their country—what a joke. If they ever come out of their dens and show up at the front line, they’ll see if books can stop bullets.”
She noticed that Little Professor distanced himself from “the young intellectuals.” She had learned of this emerging cultural collective from a TV segment. She thought this tirade was even more cynical than his usual self-righteous posturing, but Ning On had come to know his feelings better. She had seen his anger, his jealousy, his humiliation, and his helplessness. These emotions ran wild, but Ning On learned they were like the patches of flare-ups on his skin. She had seen that behind each of them, there was an untreated injury eating at him. She wanted to reach out and stroke his freshly washed hair. It was like the fur of a pet.
* * *
—
In the beginning, they met once a week at a fixed time. They always had dinner first before checking into a hotel. Ning On liked it that way. It made it easier to plan around her work. Her days were often a whirlwind of scheduled sessions as well as client bookings and cancellations. She was old-fashioned and still used a thick notebook-style planner to track everything. Its pages were covered in cross-outs, scribbles, and smudged ink. Only she could decipher the notes. It was according to her own sense of order, something she’d built and insisted on, like a private sanctuary. It was not for anyone else to understand or interfere with.
But during the final weekend of August, Little Professor messaged her out of the blue. He asked her to meet, refusing to take no for an answer. She checked the address. It was a hotel in a conflict zone. She looked up the route: public transport had shut down, police had cordoned off the streets. At a time like this, she knew, cab drivers were likely unwilling to take passengers that way. Ning Yuet was out late again and hadn’t responded to her messages. Ning On hated this collapse of order. She hated all these factors beyond her control. She was about to turn him down when he sent a flurry of messages saying he needed her to come and that he was going to wait until she showed up. It seemed that he had no one else to turn to. He had pleaded so softly, pitiful as a child, like when Ning Yuet used to ask if she could sleep beside her. Ning On could never resist such requests and cradled her daughter’s head against her chest, comforting her with the warmth of her body.
Ning On lost the strength to say no. After she arrived, he curled into her embrace and whimpered softly as he gently suckled her breast, begging her to kiss him, to wrap her arms around his neck. She ran her fingers through his hair. He was much taller than her, but he felt so small, so delicate. His eyes were misted and his palms were trembling. He asked her to hold his hands tight and not to let go. They clung to each other tightly, as if nothing remained on Earth except the two of them. They were both desperate and only anchored to this life by each other’s warm bodies.
When he finally fell asleep, he was visited by nightmares. Clearly terrified, he was drenched in sweat. He shouted, “Run! Run!” It woke Ning On up. She tried to soothe him. “It’s okay, it’s okay now. Shh, you’re safe. It’s all right.” He drifted back to sleep, his brows furrowed tightly, the corners of his eyes damp. He clutched her hand again. Ning On had trouble going back to sleep. She propped herself up and watched him. Gently, she let her fingertips glide over the broad, solid surface of his skin like a tiny boat surfing an ocean.
When it came to imperfections on the skin, Ning On thought she understood them better than anyone: she used a needlelike tool to extract blackheads; lasers to treat spots and marks and for overall brightening. Her clients came to her, lay on her tiny treatment bed to endure various tortures. In those intimate rooms, men and women alike teared up, eyes red, crying out in pain, begging for mercy, as if stripped of their dignity. These days, she knew, outside her salon, outside the little mall they were in, on streets all over the city, men and women had watery eyes too. They were subjected to a different kind of pain. When white smoke filled the streets, tears welled up in their red, irritated eyes.
And then, there was the laser machine. When it was switched on, it made pop pop sounds like an electrical bug killer. For a facial treatment, she usually moved the device in sweeping motions, back and forth along the chin, jawline, and all the way up to the forehead. Sometimes she focused on spots, zapping pigmentation, blemishes, and pores. From time to time, she felt she could smell scorched skin.
Maybe she’d use it on Little Professor one day. She looked at his perfectly toned and tanned left calf. There were several jagged dark brown scabs. Some of them were curved like a hook or a stroke. Others were merely a dot. They all clustered together in a tight little group. One was particularly large, in an irregular arc shape. Its purple-black center was surrounded by blotches of varying shades and textures, raised or sunken at places. Tiny beads of blood had seeped out and dried into tiny specks. Along the edges, fresh pink flesh had begun to grow, forming a dull white border where it met the scab. They appeared like a dried-up patch of terrain stitched onto his body, ghastly to look at. The largest among them had stiffened as if it were an unyielding, parched island. She and her laser machine couldn’t touch this territory until the scabs were fully healed and had become scars.
She tucked the blanket around him. She knew, in the morning, he would be spilling sarcasm and indignation once more. If his preaching got on her nerves again, she imagined, she would abruptly and unceremoniously reach up and ruffle his hair. Caught off guard, Little Professor might be stunned into peaceful calmness. He might lower his head slightly, letting her caress his hair. She would once again confirm its pleasing texture.
This reminded her. Perhaps on her way home she would pick up a new hair product for her daughter.
Part Two
Panda
The sky hung dark as if shrouded in dense smoke.
Ah Lei couldn’t tell where this fogginess came from. Perhaps it was the misty air of summer giving way to fall? Or, was it the remnants of tear gas fired on this street the other day? She imagined the exhaust trapped between buildings on either side with no crevice to escape.
And what was this itchy sting on her neck? Was it a reaction to the chemicals in the tear gas? Or was it from the coarse strap of her heavy bag? It had dug into the flesh of her neck and shoulders day in and day out. A rash was spreading in patches.
Panda never wasted time pondering useless things like the various probable causes of a fog or an itch. She would have told Ah Lei, “Of course it’s because of the tear gas!” Lately, Panda traced many things to tear gas. Just a few days ago, she told Ah Lei that tear gas had killed a cat. It was true, she said. She had seen it in a YouTube video. One night, the tear gas smoke was so thick outside, a Hong Kong woman in her sixties who lived in a street-facing apartment shut all the windows and blasted the AC. The next morning, she found her ten-year-old cat dying on the floor near her bed. She rushed it to the vet’s office, but it was too late. “The vet didn’t dare say it was the gas. He just said the cat was too old. Natural causes! Who are they trying to fool? Definitely the tear gas,” Panda said.
In the last few hours, Ah Lei kept herself busy cleaning up Ah Mak’s room. She searched for flyers, books, protest gear—anything that was evidence of what he had been up to. As she did so, she cursed the fog, scratched the itch, and tried not to think about the eyewitness photo of Ah Mak getting handcuffed.
This afternoon, Ah Mak and Ah Lei went to a protest in Kowloon. On their way there, they chatted about plans for the Mid-Autumn Festival, which was just a few days away. Strictly speaking, this kind of outing couldn’t really be considered a date, but in the few weeks since they started going out, they spent a lot of time in the street.
The couple had developed a protocol. Since Ah Mak always ended up at the front of the crowd, every half hour, they met up at a designated spot so they could check in on each other and decide whether to stay or leave. In the late afternoon that day, however, things turned chaotic. The cops caught everyone off guard by advancing on them without prior warning. The demonstrators scattered in a panic.
Ah Lei called and texted Ah Mak. He didn’t respond. Not sure what to do, she went to Ah Mak’s apartment with the faint hope that maybe he had gone home and was waiting for her there.
He was not.
She opened Telegram and frantically searched large groups for “Kowloon District, 6:30 p.m.” for updates. She sent Panda a direct message: “I lost contact with Ah Mak at the protest.” For months, people she knew had frantically and discreetly looked for their friends or family who disappeared while attending protests. Today, she became one of these frantic people. Only now did she realize how lucky they were to skate by unscathed in the last three months.
Then, in a Telegram group where eyewitnesses submitted photos from the site of the arrests, she saw the photo of Ah Mak. Her fear was confirmed. She messaged a few more well-connected friends, and some of these volunteer groups and lawyers. Through a string of referrals, a woman working in arrest support called her. She introduced herself as Sister Ka and was an alumna of Ah Lei’s university. She instructed Ah Lei to hurry and clear out anything linked to the movement in Ah Mak’s apartment. She promised to get on the case right away and call Ah Lei as soon as she managed to locate Ah Mak.
Ah Lei collected every piece of potentially incriminating evidence she could find: tools, pamphlets, books. All these things that had been closest to their bodies, closest to their hearts this summer were now hot potatoes to be off-loaded. She spread them to different dumpsters in the area. As soon as she got back, Sister Ka called. “Ah Mak has been moved a few times. Most likely he was sent to Sham Shui Po Police Station,” she said.
It was after eleven, but Ah Lei had to go there. However, she needed to call Panda first. She looked for “Panda” in the contact list on her phone but couldn’t find the entry. The roommates barely talked on the phone. They were either in the dorm together or kept in touch via direct messages.
Then she remembered: It wasn’t saved under “Panda,” but under her real name, “Hung Yi.” Hung Yi had been “Panda” since junior high. For reasons unknown to Ah Lei, her classmates teased Hung Yi, calling her “Endangered Species” and “National Treasure,” joking that she should celebrate her birthday at Ocean Park, laughing about sending her off to Sichuan with Ying Ying to learn how to mate.
Back then, Ying Ying and Le Le were household celebrities and especially popular among schoolchildren. They were two pandas gifted by the Chinese government to Ocean Park in 2007. This generous gesture was to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the return of Hong Kong—or, as Hung Yi no doubt would roll her eyes and mutter, “the transfer of sovereignty.” The pair of precious beasts lived in Hong Kong for years without producing any offspring, causing concerns for zookeepers in Hong Kong and up north. The public felt invested too. It was as if they were hoping for a neighbor’s middle-aged daughter to receive a marriage proposal, or a long-unemployed nephew to finally land a job. The enthused citizens waited and cheered on two animals entirely unrelated to them, willing them to bring new life into the world. To blossom and bear fruit. To birth noble heirs. To carry on the family line. What a joy it would be!
For this reason, Ying Ying had been sent back to Sichuan—the homestead of pandas—for fertility experiments. Nevertheless, for a local teenager named Hung Yi, the nickname “Panda” stuck.
The memory brought a brief smile to Ah Lei’s face. She dialed Panda’s number.
* * *
—
One evening in August 2008, when the phone rang, Hung Yi’s family was in front of the TV. Their eyes were glued to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. The domestic helper picked up the phone. She bent over and addressed Mom in a hushed voice: “Ma’am, there has been an incident with your sister.”
An hour later, Mom and twelve-year-old Hung Yi arrived at the Sham Shu Po Police Station to pick up Auntie Lan and Ah Mak. Hung Yi took a good look at the police station on her way out. The building spanned the junction of Yen Chow Street and Lai Chi Kok Road. It was low, wide, and long, more like a battleship than a police station, she thought.
Having grown up in one of the new towns, she’d always imagined government buildings as modern, towering skyscrapers, but wasn’t this building in front of her just like one of those old European museums she’d seen on travel shows? A columned portico with half-moon-shaped arcades. Low, closely spaced railings were installed just outside the windows. If this was in the afternoon, and you put a few tables and chairs there, it would be a perfect setting for a leisurely snack of French toast, soaking in the sun.
Mom tapped her head and shot her a look. Taking the cue, Hung Yi fished out two squashed buns from her pocket and offered them to her aunt and cousin. Auntie Lan and Mom were born from the same womb, so naturally, they were equally well-versed in the ways of the world. Auntie Lan accepted the bun with a smile. “Ah Mui is so thoughtful,” she praised Hung Yi. She thanked her profusely and apologized for the trouble. Mom cut in, feigning annoyance. “What’re you talking about? Don’t be so formal with us.”
Ah Mak leaned against a column. He was only three years older, but Hung Yi had always found him a little intimidating. When she offered him the other bun, he rejected it. “I’m not hungry,” he said. She held the squashed bun in midair, frozen in an awkward pose, unsure whether to keep insisting out of politeness or take the hint and pull back. Around her cousin Ah Mak, her usual sharp tongue never quite worked.
Every Sunday, Mom took her to visit Auntie Lan. The sisters usually retreated into a tiny room, sliding the folding door shut. They gossiped in their native Hakka, unintelligible to the kids. At such times, Ah Mak always cleared off the cluttered sofa, brushing away questionable dust and crumbs before gesturing for her to sit down. Their weekly ritual was to watch a TV program called Sunday Theatre. All afternoon, the cousins sat in solemn silence, as though they were attending a church service.
