Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online

horses, like a horse trainer?"
    "Groom," Bunt said.
    "Yes. They come to me because they owe money to the snakeheads. The girls want more money, to buy a house, start a business."
    The talk of money, of pimps, of snakeheads, of girls wanting to buy houses and businesses, it all killed his ardor and made him want to change the subject.
    "If I went to China, I think they'd kick me out," he said.
    The mama-san stood up and smiled. "I kick you in!" And she left him to finish his lunch.
    Back in his office he replayed the conversation and his ardor returned. He tried to imagine it: a girl from Hong Kong taking the Kowloon Tong train to China to sleep with a Chinese official. He saw the girl getting off the train, he saw the waiting car, the hotel. Then he shook his head, he could not go any further. His imagination failed him. This was a China he did not know.
    He felt a flicker of desire, something like thirst in the way his lips were dry, a lightness in his body, like hunger. His mind slowed, a torpor took over, until he could not think of anything but this simple need. When he was with a woman he seldom had the urge to possess her, he just talked and listened, all the while memorizing her so that afterward, away from her, with time to reflect, he was stimulated. Distance created desire, nearness made him shy. He was not thinking of the mama-san and the girls in the Pussy Cat now. He saw Mei-ping, and he wanted her. Her sorrow, the way she had tried to console him, the sadness making her face frail and pretty, the intimation of weakness as she had bowed slightly—she must have been crying, her eyes were swollen—made him desire her all the more.
    At the close of work, just before Mr. Woo sounded the bell, Bunt found an excuse to be at the exit of the stitching floor. He waited for the bell and then watched the girls gathering their umbrellas and their bags and preparing to leave. Mei-ping looked up at him. He nodded at her.
    She did not approach him. She passed him and said, "Do you want me?"
    Her English was poor. Did she know what she was saying? It aroused him just hearing that. Of course it was a factory question, everyone said it—Miss Liu said it, Mr. Cheung, Mr. Woo, everyone, and it was ambiguous—but from Mei-ping's lips it meant one thing.
    Mei-ping left with the others. He dismissed Mr. Woo. "Just take the flag down. I'll lock up." Bunt sat in his office with the door open so that he could watch the elevator, the way it was
summoned and descended, the
G
lighting up and then all the numbers to
8,
where he waited, with the blinds drawn, touching his thinning hair with his fingertips.
    Not a word. While he locked the door Mei-ping went to his office sofa and sat as she always did, hitched forward like someone seated on a bus drawing near her stop, preparing to get off. Bunt went to her and eased her backwards and kissed her. Then he plucked off her blouse—made downstairs, he recognized the label, the cloth, the cut. Soon Mei-ping was kneeling before him while he sat with his mouth open, his head throbbing, his eyes hot. He was panicky but he was caught, and he was afraid, because he was entirely under the spell of this simple young woman. What kept him from blind breathless terror was that she mistook his fear for something else—confidence, perhaps, because he was a man, because he owned the place. Soon he was squawking and snatching at her head.

    He made for the Cricket Club afterward, glad for a place to go, glad for an excuse. He was not ready for Albion Cottage, for his mother, for home, and so the meeting with Monty was welcome. The encounter with Mei-ping had relaxed him and cleared his mind and given him an appetite. The sex had given him a thirst for a beer and a craving for a bacon sandwich.
    Bunt did not play cricket, hardly kept track of the scores. He was a member of the Cricket Club for the bowling and the old buffers, the old-timers, his father's friends. He had few friends of his