The Windup Girl Read online

  Hock Seng pries at the tiny panel in the bamboo strut, holding his breath, trying to make no scraping sound. He chose this place for its exposed joists and the tiles overhead in the low dark ceiling. For the nooks and crannies and opportunities. All around him the slum inhabitants wake and groan and complain and light their cigarettes as he sweats with the tension of opening this hiding place. It's foolish to keep so much money here. What if the slum burns? What if the WeatherAll catches fire from some fool's candle overturned? What if the mobs come and attempt to trap him inside?

  Hock Seng pauses, wipes the sweat off his brow. I am crazy. No one is coming for me. The Green Headbands are across the border in Malaya and the Kingdom's armies will keep them well away.

  And even if they do come, I have an archipelago's worth of distance to prepare for their arrival. Days of travel on a kink-spring train, even if the rails aren't blown by the Queen's Army generals. Twenty-four hours at least, even if they use coal for their attack. And otherwise? Weeks of marching. Plenty of time. I am safe.

  The panel comes open completely in his shaking hand, revealing the bamboo's hollow interior. The tube is watertight, perfected by nature. He sends his skinny arm questing into the hole, feeling blind.

  For a moment, he thinks someone has taken it, robbed him while he was gone but then his fingers touch paper, and he fishes up rolls of cash one by one.

  In the next room, Sunan and Mali are discussing her uncle, who wants them to smuggle cibi.11.s.8 pineapples, sneaking them in on a skiff from the farang quarantine island of Koh Angrit. Quick money, if they're willing to take the risk of bringing in banned foodstock from the calorie monopolies.

  Hock Seng listens to them mutter as he stuffs his own cash into an envelope, then tucks it inside his shirt. Diamonds, baht, and jade pit his walls all around, but still, it hurts to take this money now. It goes against his hoarding instinct.

  He presses the bamboo panel closed again. Takes spit and mixes it with the meager sawdust that remains, and presses the compound into the visible cracks. He rocks back on his heels and examines the bamboo pole. It is nearly invisible. If he didn't know to count upwards four joints, he wouldn't know where to look, or what to look for.

  The problem with banks is that they cannot be trusted. The problem with secret caches is that they are hard to protect. The problem with a room in a slum is that anyone can take the money when he is gone. He needs other caches, safe places to hide the opium and jewels and cash he procures. He needs a safe place for everything. For himself as well, and for that, any amount of money is worth spending.

  All things are transient. Buddha says it is so, and Hock Seng, who didn't believe in or care about karma or the truths of the dharma when he was young, has come in his old age to understand his grandmother's religion and its painful truths. Suffering is his lot. Attachment is the source of his suffering. And yet he cannot stop himself from saving and preparing and striving to preserve himself in this life which has turned out so poorly.

  How is it that I sinned to earn this bitter fate? Saw my clan whittled by red machetes? Saw my businesses burned and my clipper ships sunk? He closes his eyes, forcing memories away. Regret is suffering.

  He takes a deep breath and climbs stiffly to his feet, surveys the room to ascertain that nothing is out of place, then turns and shoves his door open, wood scraping on dirt, and slips out in the squeezeway that is the slum's thoroughfare. He secures the door with a bit of leather twine. A knot, and nothing else. The room has been broken into before. It will be broken into again. He plans on it. A big lock would attract the wrong attention, a poor man's bit of leather entices no one.

  The way out of the Yaowarat slum is full of shadows and squatting bodies. The heat of the dry season presses down on him, so intense that it seems no one can breathe, even with the looming presence of the Chao Phraya dikes. There is no escape from the heat. If the seawall gave way, the entire slum would drown in nearly cool water, but until then, Hock Seng sweats and stumbles through the maze of squeezeways, rubbing up against scavenged tin walls.

  He jumps across open gutters of shit. Balances on planks and slips past women sweating over steaming pots of U-Tex glass noodles and reeking sun-dried fish. A few kitchen carts, ones who have bribed either the white shirts or the slum's pi lien, burn small dung fires in public, choking the alleys with thick smoke and frying chile oil.

  He squeezes around triple-locked bicycles, stepping carefully. Clothes and cook pots and garbage spill out from under tarp walls, encroaching on the public space. The walls rustle with the movement of people within: a man coughing through the last stages of lung water; a woman complaining about her son's lao-lao rice wine habit; a little girl threatening to hit her baby brother. Privacy is not something for a tarp slum, but the walls provide polite illusion. And certainly it is better than the Expansion tower internments of the yellow cards. A tarp slum is luxury for him. And with native Thais all around, he has cover. Better protection than he ever enjoyed in Malaya. Here, if he doesn't open his mouth and betray his foreigner's accent, he can be mistaken for a local.

  Still, he misses that place where he and his family were alien and yet had forged a life. He misses the marble-floored halls and red lacquer pillars of his ancestral home, ringing with the calls of his children and grandchildren and servants. He misses Hainan chicken and laksa asam and good sweet kopi and roti canai.

  He misses his clipper fleet and the crews (And isn't it true that he hired even the brown people for his crews? Even had them as captains?) who sailed his Mishimoto clippers to the far side of the world, sailing even as far as Europe, carrying tea strains resistant to genehack weevil and returning with expensive cognacs that had not been seen since the days of the Expansion. And in the evenings, he returned to his wives and ate well and worried only that a son was not diligent or that a daughter would find a good husband.

  How silly and ignorant he had been. He fancied himself a sea trader, and yet understood so little of the turning tides.

  A young girl emerges from under a tarp flap. She smiles at him, too young to know him for a stranger, and too innocent yet to care. She is alive, burning with the limber vitality that an old man can only envy with every aching bone. She smiles at him.

  She could be his daughter.

  * * *

  Malaya's night was black and sticky, a jungle filled with the squawks of night birds and the pulse and whir of insect life. Dark harbor waters lapped before them. He and Fourth Daughter, that useless waif, the only one he could preserve, hid among piers and rocking boats, and when darkness fell completely, he guided her down to the water, to where waves rushed onto the beach in steady surges and the stars overhead were pinpricks of gold in blackness.

  "Look, Ba. Gold," she whispered.

  There were times when he'd told her that every star was a bit of gold that was hers for the taking, because she was Chinese and with hard work and attendance to her ancestors and traditions, she would prosper. And now, here they were under a blanket of gold dust, the Milky Way spread over them like some great shifting blanket, the stars so thick that if he were tall enough he could reach up and squeeze them and have them run down his arms.

  Gold, all around, and all of it untouchable.

  Amid the lapping of fishing boats and little spring craft, he found a rowboat and pulled for deep water, aiming for the bay, following the currents, a black speck on the shifting reflections of the ocean.

  He would have preferred a cloudy night, but at least there was no moon, and so he pulled and pulled, while all around them sea carp surfaced and rolled, showing the fat pale bellies that people of his clan had engineered to feed a starving nation. He pulled on the oars and the carp surrounded them, showing bloated stomachs now thickened on the blood and gristle of their creators.

  And then his little boat was alongside the object of his search, a trimaran anchored in the deep. The place where Hafiz's boat people slept. He climbed aboard and slipped silent among them. Studying them all as the
y slept soundly, protected by their religion. Safe and alive while he had nothing.

  His arms and shoulders and back ached from the strain of rowing. An old man's aches. A soft man's pains.

  He slipped among them, searching, too old for the nonsense survival, and yet unable to give it up. He might still survive. The one daughter mouth might survive. Even if she was a girl child. Even if she would do nothing for her ancestors, at least she was of his clan. A clipping of DNA that still might be saved. Finally he found the body he wanted, leaned down and touched it gently, covered the man's mouth.

  "Old friend," he whispered.

  The man's eyes went wide as he awoke. "Encik Tan?" He nearly saluted, even half-naked and lying on his back. And then, as if recognizing the change in their fortunes, his hand fell back, and he addressed Hock Seng as he had never dared in real life. "Hock Seng? You're still alive?"

  Hock Seng pursed his lips. "This useless daughter mouth and I need to go north. I need your help."

  Hafiz sat up, rubbing his eyes. He glanced furtively at the rest of his sleeping clan. He whispered, "If I turned you in, I would make a fortune. The head of Three Prosperities. I would be rich."

  "You were not poor when you worked with me."

  "Your head is worth more than all the Chinese skulls stacked in the streets of Penang. And I would be safe."

  Hock Seng started to respond angrily but Hafiz put his hand up, indicating silence. He ushered Hock Seng to the edge of the deck, against the rail. He leaned close, his lips nearly touching Hock Seng's ear. "Do you not know the danger you bring on me? Some of my own family wear green headbands now. My own sons! It is not safe here."

  "You think this is something I just learned now?"

  Hafiz had the grace to look away, embarrassed. "I cannot help you."

  Hock Seng grimaced. "Is this what my kindness to you has earned? Did I not attend your wedding? Gift you and Rana well? Fete you for ten days? Did I not pay for Mohammed's admission to college in K.L.?"

  "You did that and more. My debts are to you are great." Hafiz bowed his head. "But we are not the men we were before. The Green Headbands are everywhere among us, and those of us who loved the yellow plague can only suffer. Your head would buy my family security. I'm sorry. It is true. I don't know why I don't strike you now."

  "I have diamonds, jade."

  Hafiz sighed and turned away, showing his broad muscled back. "If I took your jewels, I would just as quickly be tempted to take your life. If we speak of money, then your head must always be the most valuable prize. Best not to discuss the temptations of wealth."

  "So this is how we end?"

  Hafiz turned back to Hock Seng, pleading. "Tomorrow I will give your clipper ship Dawn Star to them and foreswear you utterly. If I were smart I would turn you in as well. All the ones who have aided the yellow plague are suspected now. We who fattened on Chinese industry and thrived under your generosity are the most hated in our new Malaya. The country is not the same as it was. People are hungry. They are angry. They call us all calorie pirates, profiteers, and yellow dogs. There is nothing to quell it. Your blood is already shed, but they have yet to decide what to do with us. I cannot risk my family for you."

  "You could come north with us. Sail together."

  Hafiz sighed. "The Green Headbands already sail the coasts searching for refugees. Their net is wide and deep. And they slaughter those they catch."

  "But we are clever. More clever than they. We could slip past."

  "No, it is impossible."

  "How do you know?"

  Hafiz looked away, embarrassed. "My sons boast to me."

  Hock Seng scowled bitterly, holding his granddaughter's hand. Hafiz said, "I'm sorry. My shame will go with me until I die." He turned abruptly and hurried for the galley. He returned with unspoiled mangoes and papaya. A bag of U-Tex. A PurCal cibi melon. "Here, take these. I'm sorry I can do no more. I'm sorry. I have to think of my own survival as well." And with that he ushered Hock Seng off the boat and out into the waves.

  A month later, Hock Seng crossed the border alone, crawling through leech-infested jungle after being abandoned by the snakeheads who betrayed them.

  Hock Seng has heard that those who helped the yellow people later died in droves, plunging from cliffs into the sea to swim as best they could for the shore's smashing rocks, or shot where they floated. He wonders often if Hafiz was one of those to die, or if his gift of the last of Three Prosperities' unscuttled clippers was enough to save his family. If his Green Headband sons spoke for him, or if they watched coldly as their father suffered for his many, many sins.

  * * *

  "Grandfather? Are you well?"

  The little girl touches Hock Seng gently on the wrist, watching him with wide black eyes. "My mother can get you boiled water if you need to drink."

  Hock Seng starts to speak, then simply nods and turns away. If he speaks to her, she will know him for a refugee. Best that he simply blend in. Best not to reveal that he lives amongst them at the whim of white shirts and the Dung Lord and a few faked stamps on his yellow card. Best to trust no one, even if they seem friendly. A smiling girl one day is a girl with a stone bashing in the brains of a baby the next. This is the only truth. One can think there are such things as loyalty and trust and kindness but they are devil cats. In the end they are only smoke and cannot be grasped.

  Another ten minutes of twisting passages carries him close to the city's seawalls where hovels attach themselves like barnacles to the ramparts of revered King Rama XII's blueprint for the survival of his city. Hock Seng finds Laughing Chan sitting beside a jok cart eating a steaming bowl of U-Tex rice porridge with small bits of unidentifiable meat buried in the paste.

  In his last life, Laughing Chan was a plantation overseer, tapping the trunks of rubber trees to capture latex drippings, a crew of one hundred and fifty under him. In this life, his flair for organization has found a new niche: running laborers to unload megodonts and clipper ships down on the docks and out on the anchor pads when Thais are too lazy or thick, or slow, or he can bribe someone higher up to let his yellow card crew have the rice. And sometimes, he does other work as well. Moves opium and the amphetamine yaba from the river into the Dung Lord's very own towers. Slips AgriGen's SoyPRO in from Koh Angrit, despite the Environment Ministry's blockades.

  He's missing an ear and four teeth but that doesn't stop him from smiling. He sits and grins like a fool, and shows the gaps in his teeth, and all the while his eyes roam over the passing pedestrian traffic. Hock Seng sits and another bowl of steaming jok is set before him, and they eat the U-Tex gruel with coffee that is almost as good as what they used to drink down south, and all the while both of them watch the people all around, their eyes following the woman who serves them from her pot, the men crouched at the other tables in the alley, the commuters squeezing past with their bicycles. The two of them are yellow cards, after all. It is as much in their nature as a cheshire's search for birds.

  "You're ready?" Laughing Chan asks.

  "A little longer, yet. I don't want your men to be seen."

  "Don't worry. We almost walk like Thais, now." He grins and his gaps show. "We're going native."

  "You know Dog Fucker?"

  Laughing Chan nods sharply and his smile disappears. "And Sukrit knows me. I will be below the seawall, village side. Out of sight. I have Ah Ping and Peter Siew to watch close."

  "Good then." Hock Seng finishes his jok and pays for Laughing Chan's food as well. With Laughing Chan and his men nearby, Hock Seng feels a little better. But still, it is a risk. If this thing goes wrong Laughing Chan will be too far away to do much more than effect vengeance. And really, when Hock Seng thinks about it, he isn't sure he has paid enough for that.

  Laughing Chan saunters off, slipping between tarp structures. Hock Seng continues on through the stagnant heat to the steep, rough path that runs up the side of the seawall. He climbs up through the slums, his knee aching with every step. Eventually, he reaches
the high broad embankment of the city's tidal defenses.

  After the sheltered stink of the slums, the sea breeze rushing over him and tugging at his clothes is a relief. The bright blue ocean reflects like a mirror. Others stand on the embankment's promenade, taking the fresh air. In the distance one of King Rama XII's coal pumps squats like a massive toad on the embankment's edge. The symbol for Korakot, the crab, is visible in its metal hide. Steam and smoke gout from its stacks in steady puffs.

  Somewhere, deep underground, organized by the genius of the King, the pumps send their tendrils and suck water from beneath so that the city will not drown. Even in the hot season, seven pumps run steadily, keeping Bangkok from being swallowed. In the rainy season, all twelve of the zodiac signs run as the rain drenches down and everyone poles the thoroughfares of the city in skiffs, skin soaked, grateful that the monsoon hasn't failed and that the seawalls haven't broken.

  He makes his way down the other side and out on a dock. A farmer with a skiff full of coconuts offers him one, slashing open the green top for Hock Seng to drink. Across the waters the drowned buildings of Thonburi poke up through the waves. Skiffs and fishing nets and clipper ships slip back and forth in the water. Hock Seng takes a deep breath, sucking the smell of salt and fish and seaweed deep into his lungs. The life of the ocean.

  A Japanese clipper slides past, palm-oil polymer hull and high white sails like a gull's. The hydrofoil package below it is still hidden, but once it's out in the water, it will use its spring cannon to launch its high sails, and then the ship will leap up from the water like a fish.

  Hock Seng remembers standing on the deck of his own first clipper, its high sails flying, slashing across the ocean like a stone skipped by a child, laughing as they tore over the waves, as spray rushed and blasted him. He had turned to his number one wife and told her that all things were possible, that the future was theirs.