Free World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) by Richard Mason

looked pretty, if at the moment rather cross. I stepped out of the lift. I passed close to her, glancing to see her better—and stopped dead.
    â€œMee-ling!”
    It was absurd, incredible—and yet there could be no mistake. It was Mee-ling. Mee-ling with her hair loose on her shoulders instead of in a pony tail. Mee-ling in a cheongsam instead of jeans. But unquestionably Mee-ling.
    She seemed not to hear.
    â€œMee-ling!” I repeated.
    The girl glanced round. She looked at me blankly. She seemed to recognize neither me nor her own name. She turned away and entered the lift, saying something to the liftman in Chinese—it sounded like a passing rebuke for his slackness. The sailor entered behind her. And then there was a loud metallic clank as the gate shut them off.
    I stood staring in bewilderment. Well, either that girl is Mee-ling, I thought, or I am going out of my mind. And I turned and went outside.
    I walked slowly along the quay, determined to take it calmly. It was true that it was the second time this had happened—but this time it had been different. I had been only a yard from her. And it had been Mee-ling—I was positive.
    In that case there were two possibilities. Either she had taken to this profession in the last few days, since our meeting on the ferry, or else everything she had told me on the ferry had been invented.
    But no girl who’d been a virgin a week ago would have buzzed so impatiently for the lift—would have been in such a hurry to get upstairs. No, that girl at the lift had known her way around; she could have gone through the routine with her eyes closed. So that ruled out the first possibility.
    Therefore everything she told me on the ferry must have been make-believe: the rich father, the five houses, the uncountable number of cars, the arranged marriage. All invented.
    But no, that was impossible, I thought. There had been too many convincing details—as when she had said that she enjoyed riding in trams. If it had all been a boast, a fantasy, she would have pretended to disdain trams. Such touches were authentic—she couldn’t have been inventing.
    So that ruled out the second possibility—and proved that, after all, the girl could not have been Mee-ling. I had again been mistaken.
    Well, I must watch my step, I thought. No more accosting, or I’ll get a bad reputation. And with this matter settled, I walked up to Hennessy Road and took a tram along to the cinema.
    I walked back after the cinema. It was nearly ten o’clock when I reached the quay, but many of the shops were still open. There was a busy noise of sewing machines coming from the shirt maker’s. Four thin young men in shirt sleeves were working at the back under a naked bulb. In the workshop next door a man was welding: the bright white glare of the welding torch threw shadows among the ceiling-high stacks of metal junk. Farther on a red neon sign glowed over a lighted doorway. There was a great clatter like the noise of a factory that grew deafening as I approached—the most familiar noise of the Hong Kong night, the noise of mah-jongg. I glanced inside at the packed smoky room, where the players sat clicking the white bricks on the hard-topped tables. The clatter faded as I walked on. I passed the naval tailor’s with the glass window and the fat beaming proprietor in the doorway and the blackboard beside him with WELCOME TO ALL MEMBERS OF in white paint at the top, and three numbers chalked below—the numbers of the three American ships in port. There were a few more shops and then the blue neon sign of the Nam Kok. I could see Minnie Ho standing like a stray kitten outside the bar entrance. I knew that as soon as she noticed me she would say, “Oh, Robert! Please will you take me in!” It was a cry I heard several times a day, because the girls were not allowed to enter the bar without an escort: thus could the law be technically satisfied