Whispering Shadows Read online

  To stop the memories from being extinguished, he wanted to protect himself from everything new, as far as that was possible. Forgetting would be betrayal. That was why he had moved to Lamma shortly after his divorce and that was why he rarely left the island, and then only very unwillingly. Lamma was quiet. There were no cars, fewer people than anywhere else in Hong Kong, and hardly anyone that he knew. His house was in Tai Peng, a settlement on a hill above Yung Shue Wan, ten minutes from the ferry terminal. It was hidden behind a formidable wall of green bushes and a thick bamboo grove at the end of a narrow path.

  He had set himself a daily routine. He woke at dawn, drank exactly one pot of jasmine tea under the parasol on the terrace—never more, never less—practiced tai chi on the roof for an hour, went into the village to make his purchases, and ate at the same harborside restaurant—always the same mixture of vegetable and shrimp dim sum with two steamed Chinese buns stuffed with pork. Then he carried his shopping home, after which he went on a walk lasting three to four hours. Every day, this took him past the small plots of land in which old men and women were weeding, breaking up clumps of earth, or spraying their greens and tomato plants with insecticide. They greeted him with a nod and he answered with a nod. He was safe with them. They would never think of speaking to him, let alone of engaging him in conversation. He carried on walking to Pak Kok by the sea, took a wide arc back to Yung Shue Wan, and then went halfway across the island to Lo So Shing Beach, which was almost always empty, apart from on a few weekends in summer. Paul went swimming for exactly twenty minutes. Then he sat in the shade for half an hour, sometimes longer in good weather, and looked at the sea, always relieved by the familiarity of the scene. Or he closed his eyes and meditated. There was nothing unexpected to fear here.

  The walk back took him over the long ridge of a hill from which he could see the narrow East Lamma Channel that separated the island from Hong Kong. Only seldom did he linger on this path, gaze at the huge container ships with their full loads, and ask himself what their cargo might be and where they might be going. His only companions were stray dogs or the odd homeless cat. He spent the rest of the day in the garden or on the roof terrace looking after his plants and cooking or cleaning the house.

  He did not read a newspaper and had no television; he only listened to the BBC World Service on the radio from seven to seven-thirty in the morning. A day on which he did not exchange a single word with anyone was a good day. A week like any other in which nothing happened to leave traces on his memory was a good week.

  He knew today would be more difficult. It was the third anniversary of Justin’s death and Paul planned to travel to Hong Kong Island as he did every year and to climb the Peak.

  It was not a good day for a hike. The second of September in Hong Kong was never a good day for a walk. The thermometer by the door showed a temperature of ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit and humidity of 98 percent. The city was sweating. It was groaning in the heat. Everyone who could do so was hiding in air-conditioned rooms during this time.

  Paul fetched a third bottle of water from the fridge for good measure and packed it in his backpack. He was wearing gray shorts and a light short-sleeved shirt. To prevent sweat from running down his face and stinging his eyes, he had tied a bandanna around his forehead. His long, muscular legs were evidence of his daily walks, and he had the flat, toned stomach of a young man. Even so, the climb would require all his strength in weather like this. He picked up his trekking pole and walked down the hill to the village at a leisurely pace. He was sweating even before he got to the ferry.

  It was the memory of a lie he had told of necessity that drove him to visit the city and climb the Peak twice a year: on the birthday and on the death anniversary of his son. It was a ritual that he could not even explain to himself; adherence to it had become a kind of compulsion. As if he had to make up for something.

  Not long before his death, Justin had asked him if he thought that they would climb the Peak together again one day. The highest mountain on Hong Kong Island had been one of their favorite outings; the walk around the summit, which commanded views over the city, the harbor, and the South China Sea, had made a great impression on Justin even when he was only two. To Paul, it seemed that the Peak was a place in which his son felt safe. It was a kind of lookout over the world that Justin insisted they visit in every season: in summer, when, thanks to its height, it offered a little relief from the oppressive heat and humidity of the city; in winter, when the wind blew so cold that Justin wore a woolen hat and gloves and they were almost the only people walking around up there; yes, even in spring, when on many days the clouds covered the summit and you saw nothing but mist before you. They had often sat on a bench up there eating and Paul had explained to his son how airplanes flew and ships floated, why the big double-decker buses suddenly looked as small as toy cars, and why stars were called stars and not suns, even though they also emitted light.

  Would they make it there together again?

  “Yes, of course,” Paul had replied and his son had lifted his head a little, smiled at him, looked into his eyes, and asked, “Really?” Paul had looked into his son’s tired eyes and not known what to say. Did Justin want to know the truth? Did he want to hear no, Justin, no, I don’t think so, you’re too weak for it and I can’t carry you two thousand six hundred feet uphill. There is no hope anymore. We will never stand together on the Peak again and count airplanes, and ships, and dream about gliding through the air like birds and leaving droppings on people’s heads. Of course he didn’t want to hear that. Of course no one in his right mind could have brought himself to tell an eight-year-old that. Why should he? But then what could he do?

  “No cheating, Daddy. Tell the truth,” Justin had said in a warning tone shortly after the diagnosis, as Paul, in his helplessness, had tried to play down his son’s condition and babbled away about a bad case of the flu. No telling lies. The truth. He, Meredith, and the doctor had stuck to it, in as far as a child could understand the kind of destructive force raging in his small body. But this? Will we climb the Peak again? This was not about leukocytes and plastocytes, not about hemoglobin counts and the next blood transfusion. It was a simple question that expected a simple answer: yes or no? Justin looked at his father, his eyes demanding the truth.

  “Yes, of course,” Paul said reassuringly, for the second time, nodding. Justin gave a quick smile and sank back into his pillow. It was a little white lie, the right reply—who would worry about it? But Paul could not forgive himself for it. Even today, exactly three years after Justin’s death, he felt the sting of it. He had betrayed his son. He had left him to cradle an illusion, a stupid, ludicrous, completely ridiculous hope, rather than tell him the truth, to share it and make it more bearable that way. A feeling of shame had crept over him, and it had not diminished, no matter how often he had turned his lie over in his mind and justified it to himself. The feeling of despair remained, and with it, the feeling that he had been a coward at a critical moment.

  II

  Paul was the last passenger to get off the ferry, and a hellish scene greeted him: two jackhammers pounded at a stretch of asphalt, and, next to them, growling buses expelled black clouds of exhaust. From behind a construction site barrier came clanking and crashing so loud and shrill that he winced at the shock of it, his ears hurting. All around him were crowds of people rushing here and there in a great hurry, constantly passing right in front of him and jostling him as soon as he stood still. He fled into a taxi and took it to the terminus of the Peak Tram; a pedestrian path up to the summit started there. The altitude difference was about sixteen hundred feet; it was a distance that he had covered without any problems before; on some days he had even done it with Justin on his back.

  He took a big gulp from his water bottle, picked up his backpack, and started walking. The narrow road passed May Tower 1, May Tower 2, and Mayfair, incredibly expensive residential developments that looked li
ke faceless satellite towns but in which an apartment cost many millions of Hong Kong dollars. He and Meredith had owned two large apartments in Mayfair, which they had sold at more than three times the original prices at the peak of the property boom in 1997. He had used part of the profit to buy the house on Lamma and he lived off the interest on the rest of it.

  Paul turned into Chatham Path, which led away from the road into thick tropical vegetation. It was a steep ascent and Paul felt the strain in his calves and feet, his thighs and knees, how they hefted his one hundred and fifty pounds or so upward. A thick blanket of cloud, gray like ash, had hung over the city for weeks. It had cleared somewhat in the morning and now the sun even broke through occasionally, turning the climb into a hike through a hot steam room. The trees were so thick here that Paul found himself looking through a solid green wall; all that remained of the traffic was a dull roar in the distance; instead of cars he heard birds and grasshoppers. He stopped to rest, finished the first one-liter bottle of water, and tried to empty his mind.

  He made it in just under two hours. The final thousand feet along Findlay Road were easy for him, and he reached his goal with slow but rhythmic, almost feather-light, steps. Before he circled the summit on Lugard Road he wanted to have a coffee on the Peak and have a piece of lemon cake, a ritual that Justin had introduced. It was terribly cold in the café. He hated the effects of the icy air conditioner; it was as if someone had shoved him into a cold storage room. It always took a few minutes for the body to get used to the new temperature.

  The café was unusually empty. A couple huddled in one corner: a young man with headphones and a girl on the telephone. An older man was reading the South China Morning Post, and a woman was poring over a map of the city, sitting just behind the table by the window that he and Justin had sat at almost every time. Paul got himself a cup of coffee and a slice of cake and sat down at the place that had so many memories for him. From up here, the view of the city had something surreal about it. Sometimes he had a passing thought that the voracious city below was only a figment of his imagination. These honeycomb apartment blocks built so boldly on the steep slopes, the skyscrapers in the Central and Causeway Bay districts, the harbor with its hundreds of vessels, scuttling back and forth assiduously like ants. To be sure of their existence, he had to trust in his eyes completely. The thick glass in the window turned the view into a spectacle free of noise and smell; the cars, the ships, the helicopters, and the planes moved as if in a silent movie. Paul remembered his arrival here thirty years ago. At the time, he had been certain that the Crown colony was only a stopping point on his way to the People’s Republic of China. He had wanted to stay one or two years at most. Beijing was his actual destination; as soon as the political situation calmed down after the Cultural Revolution, he would move there. Paul had stayed on in Hong Kong, at first because the political struggles in China had lasted much longer than he had expected, then because he had been won over. Without him really realizing it, Hong Kong had become his home, the only one that he had ever known. He liked this city, built by refugees for refugees. The busyness of people who had been driven from their homelands set the tone of the days and nights here; the anxiety of the homeless, the fear of the persecuted. Before he had withdrawn to Lamma, the nonstop hustle and bustle and the lack of peace and quiet had not put him off; on the contrary, they had reflected his own restlessness in part and gave him, on good days, the feeling that he belonged, was part of a whole; a feeling that he had never known before in his life.

  ———

  “Do you live here?”

  Paul didn’t know where the voice was coming from at first. He was so startled he nearly dropped the lemon cake from his fork.

  “Or are you here on business?”

  It was the woman at the table next to his. She must be American, Paul thought. No one else would start a conversation with a stranger in a public place just like that. How often he had had to defend himself against the hello-where-do-you-come-from? chattiness of an American passenger sitting next to him on an airplane.

  “No, I live here,” Paul replied.

  “Oh, how interesting. May I ask if you’ve lived here long?”

  “Thirty years,” he answered briefly. He did not want anything he said to give the impression that he was interested in having a conversation.

  “Thirty years! My God, how can you stand this number of people?” Paul looked over at the woman. Judging by her slight but unmistakable accent, she was probably from the Midwest. She was slim, a sporty type, wearing a light-brown trouser suit, white shirt, and a string of pearls. Her hands trembled as she lifted her cup of coffee. They were delicate, refined hands, with long fingers wearing gold rings, one of which was set with small diamonds, but even the precious stones glittering in the light could not detract from the fact that the hands were shaking. Paul was unable to guess her age. Her face looked much younger than her hands; it was smooth and disconcertingly free of wrinkles, but small pockets of skin hung from her neck as they did in an older woman. She could just as easily be in her midforties as in her early sixties. She had one of those very smooth faces that strove to give away as little as possible, that was practiced in concealing hurts and worries, the tracks that life left behind. She was wearing sneakers, but her trousers, blouse, and, most of all, her jacket, were much too warm for the season. She was clearly used to air-conditioning. She had probably taken a taxi straight from her hotel to the Peak, and not even noticed how hot and humid it was yet. He said nothing, in the hope that his silence would end their conversation.

  “Don’t the crowds bother you? Or do you get used to it with time?”

  He took a deep breath and replied, in order not to seem impolite. “I live on Lamma, a small island. It’s quieter there.”

  She nodded, as though that explained everything.

  “You must travel a great deal in China, mustn’t you?”

  “I used to, yes. But not so much now. And you?” He regretted the question immediately. What on earth was he doing? How could he have been so stupid as to ask her such an open question? That was the opening she had probably been waiting for. Now she would tell him all about her trips to China or about her friend’s or her husband’s travels, about the unusual table manners, about the burping and the farting and the noisy eating at mealtimes. About the toddlers who did not wear diapers but simply shit on the street through the slit in their trousers. Or about the skyscrapers in Shanghai and the expensive Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs on the streets, which she had not expected from a Communist country. And at the end, thought Paul, she would ask if the Chinese really smashed open the skulls of monkeys while they were still alive and sucked the brains out with relish. But instead of holding forth with the torrent of speech that Paul feared, the woman stayed silent and looked him straight in the face for the first time. He shrank. Did they know each other? He felt as if he had seen her before somewhere. In fact, he was quite sure of it. Her big blue eyes. That penetrating gaze. The restlessness in that look. The nerviness. The trembling. The fear. She was so familiar to him that it seemed like he had last seen her yesterday. They had met before. But where?

  “Do we know each other?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You look familiar to me. Do you work in a bank? Maybe you know my ex-wife, Meredith Leibovitz?”

  “No.”

  Paul thought for a moment. Perhaps she had lived in the city before, and they had met at Justin’s school?

  “Do you have children?”

  “Yes, a son.” She looked away and stood up. Her strength seemed to desert her midmovement; she held her breath for a moment and dropped back onto her chair. She tried again, holding on to the table, swayed, and sank back into her seat.

  “Are you unwell?”

  “Just a bit dizzy,” she said in weak voice. “My circulation. I can’t cope too well with this climate.”

  “Can
I help? Would you like some water?”

  “Water would be good. Thank you.”

  Paul stood up and walked over to the serving counter. Suddenly, he heard the sound of chairs scraping and a dull thud from behind. When he turned around, the woman had disappeared. It was only when he looked again that he saw her lying on the ground between the two tables.

  Although the ambulance from Matilda Hospital took only a few minutes to arrive, Elizabeth Owen was conscious by the time the ambulance staff arrived. Deathly pale, she was sitting up against a wall and drinking some water. Paul was kneeling next to her. She did not want to go to the hospital. Under no circumstances. She wanted to go back to her hotel. Her husband was waiting there. She had low blood pressure, had had it for years, and had simply forgotten to take her pills this morning. The heat and the high humidity had taken their toll on her. She would feel better as soon as she took her pills. No reason to put her under the care of a hospital. The ambulance crew packed up their equipment and Paul hailed one of the taxis that were waiting in long lines on the Peak for customers.

  ———

  Elizabeth Owen was staying with her husband at the InterContinental Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon side of the harbor. The taxi ride seemed to take forever. They were stuck in a jam on Peak Road because of roadwork; traffic crawled through the narrow road at a walking pace down to Central. The approach to Cross-Harbour Tunnel was congested, as it was almost every day. They barely exchanged a word. Elizabeth Owen kept her eyes closed most of the time. The odd tear ran down her cheeks, but Paul did not hear her sobbing or crying. He wondered if he should ask her what she was sad about, and if he could be of any help, but discarded the thought immediately as a reflex from another life. Why should he get involved? What did this woman matter to him? He would take her back to her hotel and make sure that someone there took care of her and that they called her husband. And he would leave her his telephone number in case she needed it. That would have to be enough. He didn’t have the strength to do more, even if he had wanted to. Paul felt that the last hour had taken a lot out of him. He had spoken more than he normally did in an entire week. He wanted to go back to Lamma. Back to his house. Back to his memories.