White Tiger

‘You been in Hong Kong long?’ Rob said.

‘About four years,’ I said. ‘But I never get used to the humidity in the summer.’

‘Are you English?’

‘No, Australian.’

The lift doors opened and the three of us entered the lobby of the eleventh floor. Leo unlocked the gate and opened the front door for us. We went in and removed our shoes at the front entrance, then walked together down the hall towards the bedrooms.

I stopped at my bedroom door. ‘Nice to meet you, Rob. Night, Leo.’

Rob nodded and smiled, and followed Leo to his room. Leo still didn’t say a word.

I went into my room, carefully closed the door, and collapsed onto my bed laughing.

‘Emma?’

I stopped laughing. I’d woken Simone.

I opened the door between our bedrooms a crack. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I woke you up.’

Simone sat up in her bed, her face swollen with sleep and her honey-coloured hair tangled around her head. ‘Oh. Okay. Can you sit with me while I go back to sleep?’

I slipped in and sat next to her on the bed. ‘Did you have a nightmare?’

Simone slid under the covers and rolled onto her side. ‘Leo brought his boyfriend home again,’ she said. ‘He’s funny.’

I rubbed her back under the covers.

‘I’m glad he has someone to love,’ she said, her voice sleepy. ‘It makes him happy.’

‘I’m glad too,’ I said softly.

‘Bad people take away the people you love.’ She curled up into a ball. ‘I hate the bad people.’

‘I’m here,’ I said softly, at a loss. I wondered what had happened to her mother. All I knew was that she had died. I opened my mouth to ask and closed it again.

Simone sighed under the covers. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there were no bad people? If nobody had to be scared of them any more? If Daddy didn’t have to stay here and get hurt all the time to look after me, if he could go back to his Mountain and be happy, like he used to? Before–’ She choked it off, then her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Before the bad people came. We had a lot of fun. He did lots of secret stuff all the time, and we laughed.’

‘What secret stuff?’

‘You have to ask Daddy. I’m not allowed to tell you.’ Her voice filled with her cheeky smile. ‘Both Leo and Daddy said I’m not allowed to tell you, so you have to ask. Ask them about the secret stuff, it’s really fun.’ Then her voice saddened again. ‘I just wish we could have the secret stuff, and all of us together again, and no more bad people…and…’

She sighed and curled up tighter. ‘Ask Daddy. I’ll be okay now, Emma, you go to sleep. I’m sorry I made you come in. Go to sleep, and we’ll have fun tomorrow, you and me. I’m glad you came to look after me. We’ll have fun.’

‘Yes, we will,’ I said, still stroking the covers. ‘I can stay here until you fall asleep.’

‘Ask Daddy,’ she said, almost a whisper, then her breathing softened and deepened into sleep.

A taxi pulled into the lay-by outside the temple the next afternoon and April stepped out holding a large plastic shopping bag. She saw me and waved.

‘What’s in the bag?’ I said.

‘Stuff for the ancestors. So they bless my marriage and make it good. I’ll put it in front of the tablets.’

‘The ancestral tablets?’

She nodded a reply.

I stopped at the front gate to the temple and grinned. The wrought-iron fence and gate had swastikas worked into the metalwork. They were the reverse direction from the Nazi swastika, but still recognisable, picked out in red paint against the black fence.

I pointed at one. ‘In the West, that’s a symbol of Nazi Germany and sort of…’ I searched for the word. ‘Bad.’

April looked at the fence, bewildered. ‘What is?’

I outlined the swastika on the gate with my finger. ‘This symbol.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s just good luck.’

‘Do you know anything about the Nazi regime in Germany? Hitler?’

She hesitated, thinking, then said, ‘Hitler was a great European General, right? He conquered most of Europe.’

I suppressed the laugh. ‘That’s one way of describing him. He tried to kill a whole race of people.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about that. We didn’t do much European history in school.’

‘Didn’t you go to school in Australia?’

‘No, I went to Australia to study IT at university, then got citizenship, then took my parents out there after Tiananmen.’

She pressed the intercom button next to the gate and it unlocked for us. We went inside.

The temple sat on top of the Pokfulam hill, overlooking the steeply terraced cemetery that led down to the sea below us. A few highrises were scattered at the base of the hill, mostly inhabited by expatriates who didn’t care about the bad fung shui of living near the cemetery.

April led me past the main hall and towards the steps down to the tablet rooms.

‘What’s in the main hall?’ I said, pointing towards three huge statues inside.

‘The Three Big Gods,’ April said. ‘You know, the gods in charge of everything.’

‘This is a Taoist temple, right?’

She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Just a temple.’

‘But the Three Big Gods are Taoist?’

‘I don’t know,’ April said. ‘They’re just the big Gods, but they’re different from the Buddha, so I suppose they are.’ She moved closer and whispered, ‘It’s all just old people’s superstition anyway, but it’s important to worship the ancestors, otherwise they get mad at you and you get bad luck. And I want good luck for my marriage.’

We went down the steep steps to the tablet rooms at the back of the temple. Dark green and brown mosaic tiles covered the floor and walls, with a bare painted concrete ceiling. A family sat on grimy vinyl couches to one side, folding squares of gold paper into the shape of ancient gold bars and stuffing them into paper sacks.

‘Funeral,’ April whispered, and passed the people without glancing at them again.

The rest of the offerings were ready for the funeral in the main hall of the tablet rooms. A house stood in the middle of the hall, about two metres high, made of flimsy bamboo bracing and covered with paper. It had three storeys, with tiny air conditioners in the windows and a mah jong table in one room. A male and a female servant and a guard dog stood in the front garden. Next to the house was a Mercedes, with a driver made of paper, and stacked next to the car was a variety of day-to-day necessities, all made out of paper: a portable stereo, a mobile phone, clothes, a television, a tea set with a vacuum flask for the hot water, and more servants. The whole lot was waiting for the main funeral ceremony, when it would be thrown into the furnace in the garden next to the tablet rooms and burned. The essence would travel to heaven for the use of the dead relative.

April moved to the next room. The walls were lined with glass-fronted cabinets, with rows upon rows of ancestral tablets inside, rising all the way to the ceiling. There must have been a thousand of them. One wall had larger tablets for the more wealthy, but April’s ancestors inhabited one side cabinet and were smaller. The tablets were each about ten centimetres high and five wide, made of red plastic. The name of the ancestor was in raised lettering picked out in gold.

A large laminated dining table sat in front of the tablets, with an incense burner holding a stick of incense and a red plastic plate of oranges on it. The room smelled strongly of incense, and the ceiling was black with smoke.

While April fiddled around placing plates of oranges, apples and roast pork and chicken on the table, I wandered around the temple, carefully avoiding the grieving family and their paper-folding.

Another table with a cabinet above it stood next to one of the temple’s peeling mouldy walls, under a heavily barred window. The table and cabinet were packed full of statues of gods, many of them an identical statue of a woman in flowing robes carrying an urn.

A small elderly man, one of the temple attendants, approached me, grinning broadly. They obviously didn’t get many Westerners in this temple, it wasn’t on the main tourist route.

‘Who is this?’ I said, pointing at the goddess statue.

He shook his head, still grinning. No English. I asked in Cantonese, ‘Nidi hai binguo?’ and he nodded. ‘Kwan Yin.’

‘Ah, m’goi,’ I thanked him. Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, a Bodhisattva of the Buddhist faith who had attained Nirvana and then returned to Earth to help others achieve the same goal. The book in my room was good: its picture of Kwan Yin was almost identical to the statue.

The attendant pointed to a fierce-looking, red-faced god holding a halberd, a broadsword blade on the end of a pole. ‘Gwun Gong.’

I nodded, recognising the statue. The God of Justice was worshipped throughout Hong Kong, with altars in shops and restaurants as a protector against demons and bad luck.

Then I saw a statue in the corner whose image resonated with me, making me shiver. It was a small statue of a middle-aged man with long wild hair and black robes. He held a sword in his hand, ready for battle, and his bare feet rested on a snake and a turtle. ‘Nidi binguo?’

The attendant nodded wisely. ‘Pak Tai.’

‘On Cheung Chau?’ I asked, naming the outlying island that had a temple devoted to Pak Tai and was a popular tourist destination.

He nodded, grinning widely.

‘M’goi sai.’

‘M’hai,’ he said, and wandered off.

I studied the statue for a while, wondering why it made me feel a prickle at the back of my neck. It was simply decorated in black, unlike many of the Kwan Yin statues which were awkwardly splashed with a variety of garish colours and picked out in gold. I shrugged. I’d look him up in the book later.

When I returned to April she had finished kneeling on the cushion provided and bowing to her ancestors with the incense in her hands, and was putting the food back into her bag.

‘Do you know anything about Pak Tai?’ I said.

‘He has a temple on Cheung Chau,’ she said.

‘What else?’

She shrugged. ‘I think he has something to do with water, or rain, or something. Not sure. Let’s go to Central for afternoon tea.’

‘Sure.’

As we walked back through the temple’s courtyard I noticed a small concave mirror above the main entrance, with the eight Pa Kua symbols around it in a red octagonal frame. Demons couldn’t stand to see their own reflection, so the mirror was a barrier to them approaching the temple. The large screen just inside the door of the temple was another demon barrier: demons were well known to be unable to turn corners and could only move in straight lines.

‘Kwan Yin is a Buddhist icon. Why’s she in a Taoist temple?’ I asked April as we waited at the taxi rank for a passing cab.

‘She looks after people. If you buy a statue of her and donate it to the temple, you get good luck,’ April said.

‘Old people’s superstition?’ I said playfully, teasing.

She shrugged again. ‘Can’t hurt to get a little extra good luck.’

After dinner, back in my room I checked the Chinese gods compendium for Pak Tai and was referred to H’suantian Shangdi. Pak Tai was his name in Cantonese, the dialect spoken in Hong Kong and Southern China. In Northern China and in the standard Mainland dialect of Putonghua, he was called Xuan Tian Shang Di, the Supreme Emperor of the Dark Northern Heavens. There were a variety of legends about him, many of them conflicting, but he was credited with controlling weather and destroying demons, and he was also the Supreme Warrior and God of Martial Arts.

A fascinating deity. The book described his exploits at length; apparently one of the Chinese classics of literature was his story, how he had lived through more than a hundred incarnations before achieving Nirvana and being promoted to Heavenly Emperor.

I could see why he resonated with me now. The similarities between him and Mr Chen were obvious. Both in black, both with long hair, both involved with martial arts. Mr Chen probably took Xuan Tian as a role model to the point of making his appearance similar. I wondered if I should be concerned about this obvious piece of eccentricity, but Mr Chen was too delightful a person to let it worry me too much. He was as generous and caring as his daughter, and both of them were great fun to be with.

Simone squealed and water splashed in her bathroom next to my room. I closed the book. I hadn’t even heard them come back. I wanted to go in and see them, maybe help with Simone’s bath and putting her to bed. They were in there together, father and daughter, both of them adorable.

Then I shook my head. Keep it professional, Emma, and besides, it’s Sunday, the only day they can have some private time together without the rest of us hanging around.

I opened the book again to find out more about Xuan Tian Shang Di. Maybe there was information about him on the net as well.

CHAPTER FOUR

Simone was still sleeping when I headed to the kitchen for breakfast on Monday morning. Monica was busily frying eggs for Leo as he sat at the small kitchen table nursing his coffee. He didn’t look up from his coffee as I walked in, but the expression on his face was priceless.

I found a mug in the cupboard and poured myself a cup of tea from the urn on the kitchen bench. ‘Can I make you anything, Miss Donahoe?’ Monica said. ‘Just Emma, Monica, and I can make my own toast, thanks. Does Mr Chen have peanut butter?’

‘Yeah, in the pantry,’ Leo mumbled into his coffee. ‘But no bread, nobody eats bread here. Monica will have to buy it for you.’

‘I’ll buy you bread, Emma,’ Monica said. ‘Milk bread?’

‘No, wholemeal if you can get it, please.’

Monica nodded. ‘I’ll see if I can find it in the Western supermarket when I buy food for Leo.’

‘Yeah, Leo has exotic tastes,’ I said, then sat at the table next to him and grinned. He looked as if he’d like to climb into his coffee cup. ‘Does Mr Chen know about your nocturnal activities?’ I asked.

He studied his coffee carefully. ‘He’s caught me too.’

‘And he’s okay with it?’ Sometimes Chinese tradition wasn’t very accepting.

‘Yeah, he’s okay.’ He smiled up at me. ‘Actually, he’s great.’

‘Does Rob have a brother?’

Leo shoved me playfully. Then he became more serious. ‘He’s okay with you bringing people home, but you have to check with me first. Call me on my cell phone and I’ll clear them before they come in.’

I stared at him.

‘I have to, you know?’

I shrugged. ‘Yeah, okay. But the way my social life is right now, I’d be lucky to bring home a stray dog.’

‘That is way too much information.’

I leaned over the table. ‘So tell me, what’s the big secret?’

He looked piercingly at me for a moment, then down at his coffee again. ‘Can we wait a while before we talk about it? Until you’ve decided that you really want to stay?’

‘Okay. So what does Mr Chen do for a living?’

He turned the coffee cup in his hands, then nodded thanks to Monica as she put a huge plate of greasy eggs and ham in front of him. ‘That’s part of the “later” thing too.’

‘What’s the thing he has with Xuan Tian Shang Di?’

Monica dropped the frying pan into the sink and froze completely.

Leo looked sharply at me and opened his mouth to say something, then relaxed when Simone came in. She was still in her little Hello Kitty pink nightshirt, her hair mussed from sleep. She hugged Leo and kissed him on the cheek, and he wrapped one huge arm around her and kissed her back.

She came to me and kissed me too. ‘Good morning, Emma.’

‘Good morning, sweetheart.’

‘What are we going to do today?’

‘Well, yesterday I bought some paints and paper and scissors and glue and stuff, so I thought we might make things today.’

Simone lit up as she pulled herself onto her chair. ‘Really? We can make things? And paint?’

I nodded. ‘And then if Leo doesn’t have to go anywhere, we’re going to teach him how to play snap.’

Simone squealed with delight. ‘Are you going anywhere today, Leo?’

‘I’m taking Monica to the market this morning, but after that I can play while Mr Chen goes out to a meeting,’ Leo said, his deep voice warm with pleasure.

‘Mr Chen’s going to a meeting?’ I said.

Leo nodded. ‘He’ll be back after that and he’ll spend the afternoon in the training room.’

‘Guarding his energy?’ Simone said.

Leo frowned and shook his head.

Simone’s little face fell. ‘Sorry.’

Leo took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Yes. Then he’ll teach you at three o’clock, and Emma can take a break.’

Simone lit up again, and turned to me with a broad smile. ‘It’s going to be so fun having you here, Emma.’

‘I think so too, sweetheart,’ I said.

‘Gin,’ Simone said triumphantly and laid her cards on the table.

Leo threw his cards down. ‘Not fair, you keep beating me.’

‘Leo.’ Simone bent forward, her little face intense. ‘Please stop letting me win, it’s not fair. It’s not fair on you and it’s not fair on me. I don’t want to win all the time, and it makes you sad when you lose.’

Leo grinned broadly. ‘You know what, Simone?’

‘What?’

He bent to look mischievously at her. ‘I’m not letting you win at all.’

Her little eyes unfocused for a second, then went wide. ‘You’re telling the truth!’

He leaned back, still grinning. ‘That’s right. You’re winning fair and square.’

Simone giggled and patted his arm. ‘Then I have to let you win sometimes, silly Leo.’

I gathered the cards together. ‘Didn’t you just say that it’s not fair to let someone win, Simone?’

Simone’s eyes unfocused again for a moment. ‘Miss Lee is here.’

I checked my watch. ‘No, she isn’t due for another ten minutes or so.’

Monica tapped on the door and opened it. ‘Piano teacher’s here, Emma. She’s in the music room waiting for Simone.’

Simone sighed. ‘I’d rather play with you and Leo.’

I looked at her. ‘Remember what I said, Simone. If you ever want to give up piano or violin because it’s not fun any more, you just say so. Your dad doesn’t want you doing anything you don’t enjoy.’

Simone pulled herself to her feet. ‘No, I like playing the piano, it’s fun. It’s just that the practice gets a bit boring sometimes.’

‘I have a session with Mr Chen in the training room,’ Leo said, and rose to tower above me.

Simone’s eyes unfocused again. ‘Yep, he’s waiting for you, doing katas.’

‘Wait.’ I raised one hand. ‘You know where your dad is without looking, Simone? And you knew Miss Lee had arrived?’

‘I have to go to piano lesson, Emma,’ Simone said cheekily. ‘Ask Leo.’

Leo moved to the doorway. ‘Ask me about it later, Emma.’

I snorted with exasperation. ‘When later?’

‘Oh…’ He waved one hand airily. ‘In about three weeks?’ He turned and went out, still grinning.

I slapped my forehead with the deck of cards and put them back into the box.

After I’d tidied the rest of Simone’s toys I went up the hall to the kitchen to get a cup of tea.

The door to the training room was ajar and I stopped to peer in without being seen. Leo and Mr Chen were there together. Only glimpses of them were visible as they moved around the room, but their reflections appeared in the mirrored wall as well.

Leo had a sword, and he fiercely attacked Mr Chen with it. Mr Chen was unarmed and I felt a jolt of concern for him, then saw with relief after a couple of minutes that he had no difficulty at all evading Leo’s attacks; he even managed to strike Leo a few times.

Leo moved with the grace of a cat. He was extremely fast and flexible for such a big guy.

But Mr Chen would have made a cat look clumsy. He was magnificent. He moved so fast he was a blur. His long hair flew behind him as he spun and kicked Leo in the abdomen, knocking him flat and spinning the sword out of his hand.

Leo pulled himself to his feet. ‘What level would that have been equivalent to?’

‘Forty,’ Mr Chen said.

‘Damn.’ Leo retrieved the sword. ‘I need to be able to take at least up to sixty. What if a Mother comes after her?’

‘You are human, Leo,’ Mr Chen said. ‘You have human limitations.’ He saw me watching through the gap in the doorway and his face went rigid. He came to the door and closed it with a click.

I wandered back towards my room, deep in thought. Leo was human?

About two weeks later, two teenagers turned up to learn from Mr Chen. They were about sixteen years old, a Chinese boy and a European girl. I didn’t see them arrive; it was as if they’d always been there. I couldn’t get a single word out of either of them when I tried to talk to them; they both pointedly ignored me.

After they’d been there a couple of days, sharing meals with us and still not talking to me, Leo pulled me aside. ‘Stop talking to them.’

‘I was just being friendly.’

He grimaced. ‘They’ve given up a lot to learn off Mr Chen. It’s the most important thing in the world for them. And they’ve been told that if they talk to you, they’re out.’

‘What?’

‘They’re here to learn, Emma. Leave them alone. If either of them says a single word to you, they’ll lose it all.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘That’s the way it is. Stop trying to talk to them; you’ll only get them into trouble. Okay?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s very fair, but okay, if that’s what everybody wants.’

‘It is.’

‘Going to tell me how they fit into the big secret?’

‘Nope,’ he said, and gestured down the hallway. ‘Simone’s waiting for you to bath her and read her a story.’

I poked him in the chest with my finger. ‘You will tell me what’s going on here, Mr Alexander.’

‘Yes, I will, Miss Donahoe, but not right now.’

I snorted with exasperation and stomped off to Simone’s room.

‘Can you tell me anything at all about what your dad does, Simone?’ I said as I tucked her in and pulled out her favourite storybook. ‘When he’s at home, he’s either locked in the training room or in his office. I hardly see him to ask him. And Leo won’t tell me.’

‘I promised them I wouldn’t,’ Simone said, snuggling further under the quilt. ‘You have to ask them.’

I sighed. ‘I want to know what’s going on.’

‘I want you to know too. None of the aunties and uncles can come over ’cause you don’t know about them. I miss Uncle Bai. We can’t do any of the special fun stuff. Daddy even had a big argument with Leo about getting the students in ’cause Leo said they’d do something special and you’d see it.’

‘What sort of special stuff can they do?’

She shook her head with a small smile. ‘I promised.’

When Simone was sleeping I went up the hallway to the kitchen and stopped. The door to the training room was glowing; a golden light leaked around it.

Mr Chen charged out of the dining room, threw open the door of the training room and slammed it shut behind him.

The light blinked off and I heard excited voices inside, but couldn’t understand what they were saying.

Mr Chen came back out, and stopped when he saw me. ‘Is Simone all right, Miss Donahoe?’

‘I just put her to bed. I was going to the kitchen for a cup of tea.’

He nodded and continued up the hall towards the dining room.

The two teenagers came out of the training room. The girl was helping the boy; he was leaning heavily on her. His face was ashen. They moved away from me, not noticing my presence behind them.

‘Go and rest,’ she said.

‘I can’t believe I did it,’ he said. ‘After trying for so long. Finally.’

‘You must recentre it.’ She helped him to the end of the hall. ‘Don’t want to kill yourself now that you’ve finally gained the skill.’

‘Did you hear what the Dark Lord said?’

‘Which part?’ She was obviously amused. ‘The part about trying it alone again and he’ll throw you out, or the part about being one of the best energy students he’s had in a while?’