Windup Stories

  Tranh grimaces. “You came at a more fortuitous time.” He rallies, emboldened by a full belly and the liquor warming his face and limbs. “Anyway, you shouldn’t be too proud. You still stink of mother’s milk as far as I’m concerned, living in the Dung Lord’s tower. You’re only the Lord of Yellow Cards. And what is that, really? You haven’t climbed as high as my ankles, yet, Mr. Big Name.”

  Ma’s eyes widen. He laughs. “No. Of course not. Someday, maybe. But I am trying to learn from you.” He smiles slightly and nods at Tranh’s decrepit state. “Everything except this postscript.”

  “Is it true there are crank fans on the top floors? That it’s cool up there?”

  Ma glances up at the looming highrise. “Yes. Of course. And men with the calories to wind them as well. And they haul water up for us, and men act as ballast on the elevator—up and down all day—doing favors for the Dung Lord.” He laughs and pours more whiskey, motions Tranh to drink. “You’re right though. It’s nothing, really. A poor palace, truly.

  “But it doesn’t matter now. My family moves tomorrow. We have our residence permits. Tomorrow when I get paid again, we’re moving out. No more yellow card for us. No more payoffs to the Dung Lord’s lackeys. No more problems with the white shirts. It’s all set with the Environment Ministry. We turn in our yellow cards and become Thai. We’re going to be immigrants. Not just some invasive species, anymore.” He raises his glass. “It’s why I’m celebrating.”

  Tranh scowls. “You must be pleased.” He finishes his drink, sets the tumbler down with a thud. “Just don’t forget that the nail that stands up also gets pounded down.”

  Ma shakes his head and grins, his eyes whiskey bright. “Bangkok isn’t Malacca.”

  “And Malacca wasn’t Bali. And then they came with their machetes and their spring guns and they stacked our heads in the gutters and sent our bodies and blood down the river to Singapore.”

  Ma shrugs. “It’s in the past.” He waves to the man at the wok, calling for more food. “We have to make a home here, now.”

  “You think you can? You think some white shirt won’t nail your hide to his door? You can’t make them like us. Our luck’s against us, here.”

  “Luck? When did Mr. Three Prosperities get so superstitious?”

  Ma’s dish arrives, tiny crabs crisp-fried, salted and hot with oil for Ma and Tranh to pick at with chopsticks and crunch between their teeth, each one no bigger than the tip of Tranh’s pinkie. Ma plucks one out and crunches it down. “When did Mr. Three Prosperities get so weak? When you fired me, you said I made my own luck. And now you tell me you don’t have any?” He spits on sidewalk. “I’ve seen windups with more will to survive than you.”

  “Fang pi.”

  “No! It’s true! There’s a Japanese windup girl in the bars where my boss goes.” Ma leans forward. “She looks like a real woman. And she does disgusting things.” He grins. “Makes your cock hard. But you don’t hear her complaining about luck. Every white shirt in the city would pay to dump her in the methane composters and she’s still up in her highrise, dancing every night, in front of everyone. Her whole soulless body on display.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  Ma shrugs. “Say so if you like. But I’ve seen her. And she isn’t starving. She takes whatever spit and money come her way, and she survives. It doesn’t matter about the white shirts or the Kingdom edicts or the Japan-haters or the religious fanatics; she’s been dancing for months.”

  “How can she survive?”

  “Bribes? Maybe some ugly farang who wallows in her filth? Who knows? No real girl would do what she does. It makes your heart stop. You forget she’s a windup, when she does those things.” He laughs, then glances at Tranh. “Don’t talk to me about luck. There’s not enough luck in the entire Kingdom to keep her alive this long. And we know it’s not karma that keeps her alive. She has none.”

  Tranh shrugs noncommittally and shovels more crabs into his mouth.

  Ma grins. “You know I’m right.” He drains his whiskey glass and slams it down on the table. “We make our own luck! Our own fate. There’s a windup in a public bar and I have a job with a rich farang who can’t find his ass without my help! Of course I’m right!” He pours more whiskey. “Get over your self-pity, and climb out of your hole. The foreign devils don’t worry about luck or fate, and look how they return to us, like a newly engineered virus! Even the Contraction didn’t stop them. They’re like another invasion of devil cats. But they make their own luck. I’m not even sure if karma exists for them. And if fools like these farang can succeed, than we Chinese can’t be kept down for long. Men make their own luck, that’s what you told me when you fired me. You said I’d made my own bad luck and only had myself to blame.”

  Tranh looks up at Ma. “Maybe I could work at your company.” He grins, trying not to look desperate. “I could make money for your lazy boss.”

  Ma’s eyes become hooded. “Ah. That’s difficult. Difficult to say.”

  Tranh knows that he should take the polite rejection, that he should shut up. But even as a part of him cringes, his mouth opens again, pressing, pleading. “Maybe you need an assistant? To keep the books? I speak their devil language. I taught it to myself when I traded with them. I could be useful.”

  “There is little enough work for me.”

  “But if he is as stupid as you say—,”

  “Stupid, yes. But not such a stupid melon that he wouldn’t notice another body in his office. Our desks are just so far apart.” He makes a motion with his hands. “You think he would not notice some stick coolie man squatting beside his computer treadle?”

  “In his factory, then?”

  But Ma is already shaking his head. “I would help you if I could. But the megodont unions control the power, and the line inspector unions are closed to farang, no offense, and no one will accept that you are a materials scientist.” He shakes his head. “No. There is no way.”

  “Any job. As a dung shoveler, even.”

  But Ma is shaking his head more vigorously now, and Tranh finally manages to control his tongue, to plug this diarrhea of begging. “Never mind. Never mind.” He forces a grin. “I’m sure some work will turn up. I’m not worried.” He takes the bottle of Mekong whiskey and refills Ma’s glass, upending the bottle and finishing the whiskey despite Ma’s protests.

  Tranh raises his half-empty glass and toasts the young man who has bested him in all ways, before throwing back the last of the alcohol in one swift swallow. Under the table, nearly invisible devil cats brush against his bony legs, waiting for him to leave, hoping that he will be foolish enough to leave scraps.

  Morning dawns. Tranh wanders the streets, hunting for a breakfast he cannot afford. He threads through market alleys redolent with fish and lank green coriander and bright flares of lemongrass. Durians lie in reeking piles, their spiky skins covered with red blister rust boils. He wonders if he can steal one. Their yellow surfaces are blotched and stained, but their guts are nutritious. He wonders how much blister rust a man can consume before falling into a coma.

  “You want? Special deal. Five for five baht. Good, yes?”

  The woman who screeches at him has no teeth, she smiles with her gums and repeats herself. “Five for five baht.” She speaks Mandarin to him, recognizing him for their common heritage though she had the luck to be born in the Kingdom and he had the misfortune to be set down in Malaya. Chiu Chow Chinese, blessedly protected by her clan and King. Tranh suppresses envy.

  “More like four for four.” He makes a pun of the homonyms. Sz for sz. Four for death. “They’ve got blister rust.”

  She waves a hand sourly. “Five for five. They’re still good. Better than good. Picked just before.” She wields a gleaming machete and chops the durian in half, revealing the clean yellow slime of its interior with its fat gleaming pits. The sickly sweet scent of fresh durian boils up and envelopes them. “See! Inside good. Picked just in time. Still safe.”

  “I might
buy one.” He can’t afford any. But he can’t help replying. It feels too good to be seen as a buyer. It is his suit, he realizes. The Hwang Brothers have raised him in this woman’s eyes. She wouldn’t have spoken if not for the suit. Wouldn’t have even started the conversation.

  “Buy more! The more you buy, the more you save.”

  He forces a grin, wondering how to get away from the bargaining he should never have started. “I’m only one old man. I don’t need so much.”

  “One skinny old man. Eat more. Get fat!”

  She says this and they both laugh. He searches for a response, something to keep their comradely interaction alive, but his tongue fails him. She sees the helplessness in his eyes. She shakes her head. “Ah, grandfather. It is hard times for everyone. Too many of you all at once. No one thought it would get so bad down there.”

  Tranh ducks his head, embarrassed. “I’ve troubled you. I should go.”

  “Wait. Here.” She offers him the durian half. “Take it.”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  She makes an impatient gesture. “Take it. It’s lucky for me to help someone from the old country.” She grins. “And the blister rust looks too bad to sell to anyone else.”

  “You’re kind. Buddha smile on you.” But as he takes her gift he again notices the great durian pile behind her. All neatly stacked with their blotches and their bloody weals of blister rust. Just like stacked Chinese heads in Malacca: his wife and daughter mouths staring out at him, accusatory. He drops the durian and kicks it away, frantically scraping his hands on his jacket, trying to get the blood off his palms.

  “Ai! You’ll waste it!”

  Tranh barely hears the woman’s cry. He staggers back from the fallen durian, staring at its ragged surface. Its gut-spilled interior. He looks around wildly. He has to get out of the crowds. Has to get away from the jostling bodies and the durian reek that’s all around, thick in his throat, gagging him. He puts a hand to his mouth and runs, clawing at the other shoppers, fighting through their press.

  “Where you go? Come back! Huilai!” But the woman’s words are quickly drowned. Tranh shoves through the throng, pushing aside women with shopping baskets full of white lotus root and purple eggplants, dodging farmers and their clattering bamboo hand carts, twisting past tubs of squid and serpent head fish. He pelts down the market alley like a thief identified, scrambling and dodging, running without thought or knowledge of where he is going, but running anyway, desperate to escape the stacked heads of his family and countrymen.

  He runs and runs.

  And bursts into the open thoroughfare of Charoen Krung Road. Powdered dung dust and hot sunlight wash over him. Cycle rickshaws clatter past. Palms and squat banana trees shimmer green in the bright open air.

  As quickly as it seized him, Tranh’s panic fades. He stops short, hands on his knees, catching his breath and cursing himself. Fool. Fool. If you don’t eat, you die. He straightens and tries to turn back but the stacked durians flash in his mind and he stumbles away from the alley, gagging again. He can’t go back. Can’t face those bloody piles. He doubles over and his stomach heaves but his empty guts bring up nothing but strings of drool.

  Finally he wipes his mouth on a Hwang Brothers sleeve and forces himself to straighten and confront the foreign faces all around. The sea of foreigners that he must learn to swim amongst, and who all call him farang. It repels him to think of it. And to think that in Malacca, with twenty generations of family and clan well-rooted in that city, he was just as much an interloper. That his clan’s esteemed history is nothing but a footnote for a Chinese expansion that has proven as transient as nighttime cool. That his people were nothing but an accidental spillage of rice on a map, now wiped up much more carefully than they were scattered down.

  Tranh unloads U-Tex Brand RedSilks deep into the night, offerings to Potato God. A lucky job. A lucky moment, even if his knees have become loose and wobbly and feel as if they must soon give way. A lucky job, even if his arms are shaking from catching the heavy sacks as they come down off the megodonts. Tonight, he reaps not just pay but also the opportunity to steal from the harvest. Even if the RedSilk potatoes are small and harvested early to avoid a new sweep of scabis mold—the fourth genetic variation this year—they are still good. And their small size means their enhanced nutrition falls easily into his pockets.

  Hu crouches above him, lowering down the potatoes. As the massive elephantine megodonts shuffle and grunt, waiting for their great wagons to be unloaded, Tranh catches Hu’s offerings with his hand hooks and lowers the sacks the last step to the ground. Hook, catch, swing, and lower. Again and again and again.

  He is not alone in his work. Women from the tower slums crowd around his ladder. They reach up and caress each sack as he lowers it to the ground. Their fingers quest along hemp and burlap, testing for holes, for slight tears, for lucky gifts. A thousand times they stroke his burdens, reverently following the seams, only drawing away when coolie men shove between them to heft the sacks and haul them to Potato God.

  After the first hour of his work, Tranh’s arms are shaking. After three, he can barely stand. He teeters on his creaking ladder as he lowers each new sack, and gasps and shakes his head to clear sweat from his eyes as he waits for the next one to come down.

  Hu peers down from above. “Are you all right?”

  Tranh glances warily over his shoulder. Potato God is watching, counting the sacks as they are carried into the warehouse. His eyes occasionally flick up to the wagons and trace across Tranh. Beyond him, fifty unlucky men watch silently from the shadows, any one of them far more observant than Potato God can ever be. Tranh straightens and reaches up to accept the next sack, trying not to think about the watching eyes. How politely they wait. How silent. How hungry. “I’m fine. Just fine.”

  Hu shrugs and pushes the next burlap load over the wagon’s lip. Hu has the better place, but Tranh cannot resent it. One or the other must suffer. And Hu found the job. Hu has the right to the best place. To rest a moment before the next sack moves. After all, Hu collected Tranh for the job when he should have starved tonight. It is fair.

  Tranh takes the sack and lowers it into the forest of waiting women’s hands, releases his hooks with a twist, and drops the bag to the ground. His joints feel loose and rubbery, as if femur and tibia will skid apart at any moment. He is dizzy with heat, but he dares not ask to slow the pace.

  Another potato sack comes down. Women’s hands rise up like tangling strands of seaweed, touching, prodding, hungering. He cannot force them back. Even if he shouts at them they return. They are like devil cats; they cannot help themselves. He drops the sack the last few feet to the ground and reaches up for another as it comes over the wagon’s lip.

  As he hooks the sack, his ladder creaks and suddenly slides. It chatters down the side of the wagon, then catches abruptly. Tranh sways, juggling the potato sack, trying to regain his center of gravity. Hands are all around him, tugging at the bag, pulling, prodding. “Watch out—”

  The ladder skids again. He drops like a stone. Women scatter as he plunges. He hits the ground and pain explodes in his knee. The potato sack bursts. For a moment he worries what Potato God will say but then he hears screams all around him. He rolls onto his back. Above him, the wagon is swaying, shuddering. People are shouting and fleeing. The megodont lunges forward and the wagon heaves. Bamboo ladders fall like rain, slapping the pavement with bright firecracker retorts. The beast reverses itself and the wagon skids past Tranh, grinding the ladders to splinters. It is impossibly fast, even with wagon’s weight still hampering it. The megodont’s great maw opens and suddenly it is screaming, a sound as high and panicked as a human’s.

  All around them, other megodonts respond in a chorus. Their cacophony swamps the street. The megodont surges onto its hind legs, an explosion of muscle and velocity that breaks the wagon’s traces and flips it like a toy. Men cartwheel from it, blossoms shaken from a cherry tree. Maddened, the beast rears again an
d kicks the wagon. Sends it skidding sidewise. It slams past Tranh, missing him by inches.

  Tranh tries to rise but his leg won’t work. The wagon smashes into a wall. Bamboo and teak crackle and explode, the wagon disintegrating as the megodont drags and kicks it, trying to win free completely. Tranh drags himself away from the flying wagon, hand over hand, hauling his useless leg behind him. All around, men are shouting instructions, trying to control the beast, but he doesn’t look back. He focuses on the cobbles ahead, on getting out of reach. His leg won’t work. It refuses him. It seems to hate him.

  Finally he makes it into the shelter of a protective wall. He hauls himself upright. “I’m fine,” he tells himself. “Fine.” Gingerly he tests his leg, setting weight on it. It’s wobbly, but he feels no real pain, not now. “Mei wenti. Mei wenti,” he whispers. “Not a problem. Just cracked it. Not a problem.”

  The men are still shouting and the megodont is still screaming, but all he can see is his brittle old knee. He lets go of the wall. Takes a step, testing his weight, and collapses like a shadow puppet with strings gone slack.

  Gritting his teeth, he again hauls himself up off the cobbles. He props himself against the wall, massaging his knee and watching the bedlam. Men are throwing ropes over the back of the struggling megodont, pulling it down, immobilizing it, finally. More than a score of men are working to hobble it.

  The wagon’s frame has shattered completely and potatoes are spilled everywhere. A thick mash coats the ground. Women scramble on their knees, clawing through the mess, fighting with one another to hoard pulped tubers. They scrape it up from the street. Some of their scavenge is stained red, but no one seems to care. Their squabbling continues. The red bloom spreads. At the blossom’s center, a man’s trousers protrude from the muck

  Tranh frowns. He drags himself upright again and hops on his one good leg toward the broken wagon. He catches up against its shattered frame, staring. Hu’s body is a savage ruin, awash in megodont dung and potato mash. And now that Tranh is close, he can see that the struggling megodont’s great gray feet are gory with his friend. Someone is calling for a doctor but it is half-hearted, a habit from a time when they were not yellow cards.