A Hong Kong Story - Causeway Bay (ii)
From Part I Getting Lost of my serialized novel that accompanies the Truth in Fiction season of The Matterhorn podcast
A Hong Kong Story is a work of fiction. If you’re just joining me now, you can catch up with the rest of the novel here —
A juxtaposition of Ivy’s solitary navigation with Hong Kong's journey in the 2010's. A story about divergence, culture, and love. What do you do when the future’s suddenly unclear?
Causeway Bay
(continued)
On that first week back at work, she successfully avoided any further personal conversations. But at the end of the week, Olivia, her only true friend at work, decided to penetrate the silence.
The text had read: Grab coffee at 10? But coffee really meant talking. Olivia was on the finance side of things, but she wasn’t finance obsessed. It was a job; she had a life outside of it and had left HSBC for that reason. She was single and happy, a few years younger, with plenty of stories of dating in this crazy city, but just as many stories of life that had naught to do with seeking-romance. They had met at company yoga, decided it was shit, and went in search of nicer smelling studios and more of a workout. Instead, they found the philosophy of yoga beyond exercise and they found friendship in the coffees or glasses of wine, depending on the time and mood of the class, that followed.
‘What’s going on, Ivy? You had the flu? Something’s up, you didn’t text me.’
‘Ha, you know me too well.’
As always with Olivia, she bared all. Only she hadn’t said she was pregnant because of Georg’s denial. Now, she spoke of it all briefly and dismissively over coffee in a corner of the cafeteria. The pregnancy, the miscarriage, all in a few sentences. She knew how to economize her language. But she also didn’t feel it was worthy of much discussion. After all, the father hadn’t given it much thought. She must be overreacting and self-indulgent.
Olivia looked concerned but didn’t probe. She just let her be and took her hand. It was pure and it was kind.
‘Thank you for telling me. What about Georg? Is he upset?’ Ivy stared blankly and didn’t know how to respond. ‘Ok, it’s ok. You just need to heal. Promise me you’ll come to yoga with me next week?’
Ivy promised, and they went back to work.
⬩
When she got home on this first Friday home in the aftermath, he wasn’t there. Her relief surprised her.
She put on some music, loud enough to hear with a closed bathroom door, and took a long shower. The steam made her invisible. She put on her white bathrobe over granny underwear and another big pad and went to lay on the sofa with the AC blasting; purifying the air seemed to deepen her mood. She closed her eyes after setting an alarm to wake up in an hour and do something — maybe make food or go out — Georg hadn’t suggested anything but she did have an invitation to a birthday party in Soho. Maybe it would take her mind off things.
He came back just ten minutes later as she was lost in a non-sleep meditative sort of state. He spoke loudly to her, a feigned good mood, but talking about all the annoying people in his day. She felt her body tense up, but she tried to be there for him. Isn’t this what marriage is? Someone has trouble so you help them out? What the fuck is wrong with me?
She attempted to listen and give calm comfort but she couldn’t.
‘Can you stop, please?’
He went quiet, looking shocked.
‘Sorry, sorry, I’m just tired.’
But he was silently angry; he left her in a quiet flurry and went to make food in the kitchen. She could no longer relax, so she got up and called through the kitchen fire door that she would go to that birthday party. While looking for an outfit, everything seemed wrong. She changed several times and settled on a navy Korean dress.
He didn’t ask about her day. He didn’t ask about the bleeding.
He didn’t ask what she was doing or where she was going or whom it was with or what time she would be back.
He ate pasta and turned on the television. ‘You want some?’ She accepted, feeling even more guilty. She must have been overthinking. Loads of babies are miscarried just nine weeks in. Of course he would be nonchalant. She was ungrateful.
But after a few spoonfuls while he stared at the German television show, laughing at times she didn’t realize were funny, never asking her any questions, she felt a bit like she would gag, losing her normally ever-present hunger, and went instead to throw on some makeup quickly.
Then she left, looking back over her shoulder as she opened the door: ‘I might be back late.’
He yelled out ‘OK’ between laughs and continued to look at the screen.
⬩
She took a beer for the MTR ride into town. The birthday girl was a friend of a friend, someone in the design world. She didn’t remember anything meaningful that was talked about that night, instead mainly asking questions and listening about the dating and daily life of others before the music welcomingly blocked it all out. She got drunk easily and danced.
⬩
In the morning, she went to the office before Georg was up.
On Sunday, he did the same.
She survived the next week by being busy. Busy working, busy going out mindlessly. She dove into the idea of busy-ness she had once shunned. On the commutes in, when she would normally read or write to a friend, she was numb with swirling thoughts about life that made her into a conscious zombie. But in the crowded commutes home, all the feelings came out again, sometimes in tears that she hid as perspiration.
Then she did it again the following week. And again.
Still, that void was there and there was nothing to grasp. It was both inside of her and she was inside of it. After nights out, her husband would always be asleep by the time she got home, sometimes in front of the TV. He would ask her in the morning whom she had seen, where they had been. Basic facts, as if he were writing the lede to an article. No desire to accompany her. No desire to take her out instead. But he made her next meal and did not challenge her independence, so she felt guilty. She often thought during this time, he must be a good husband.
Somehow despite that comfort she thought she should have in the decent home, the pressure was weighing down like a lead blanket. When she would lay down after work, often while he was out with clients or co-workers, it was like an X-Ray room; someone would put that heavy material on her, holding her down. But the difference was that no one was trying to see through her. No one was looking deeper and wondering why she wasn’t herself. No one was lifting the blanket and holding her up.
⬩
During these weeks that followed, her only interactions were at work or with drunk people in Soho. She had a few friends at work besides Olivia but really hated the company wide happy hours. All that showboating and nonsense. All the flirting and machismo and fake-weak-femininity from intelligent and independent women. For many of them, it just fuelled their alcoholism. Their avoidance of life, whatever it was. Returning to a family they felt they had nothing in common with; perhaps a white man with a local woman and kids who spoke a language he would never understand. Or, a family one had brought over from France, the wife, not able to find work though she was a successful marketing agent in Paris, is part of the French lycée community and finds charities and ways to spend her time that he never asks about because it bores him. Others were having affairs because they didn’t know what they were missing, but they were seeking something. The interns drank beer together, probably sometimes took drugs. The old bachelors joined them. They surrounded themselves with noise in crowded places where they could hide their misery rotting in the core of their souls.
She realised she was talking about her own life as well. That maybe what she really disliked was the mirror of her own life in alien forms. She just preferred not to mix her escape routes with colleagues. Finding Georg four years ago had also been escape.
They had met soon after their independent arrivals in Hong Kong. His banking life hadn’t fully become a hypnotic state of expatriatic blitzing (this group included locals, well-versed in English and western culture). He was still grounded in his Austrian and Swiss roots. Private friendships and showing complete control in public places were maintained.
The quiet mystery of Georg’s initial hesitancy had enticed her, had made him seem more multi-dimensional. Each had been serious about finding a partner for the purpose of stability. Each had liked going out for delicious food and attending events. Each had been happy in their careers. Each had been presentable to the other’s family and friends. Things had seemed…easy.
It wasn’t until they had been married that he let himself join in the debauchery. What was he trying to escape? He had asked her to marry him and she had thought it would make them closer. She admired everything about him. She thought that marriage would help her crack his mystery.
But at some point, he had stopped making an effort.
He was still a good husband, often making her dinner and never flaring a temper.
What were the home relationships like of all those people she knew only at surface from happy hour? After a few weeks back, she felt it was time, that she could handle it. And that maybe they were all in it together.
⬩
After finding herself a glass of wine, she wandered to a few other women who worked in her area. But she quickly regretted it, and it was too late to make a swift turn. Martha was talking about her recently announced pregnancy. Complaining about sickness and fatigue. Complaining that it had happened so quickly, the first try, faster than they had been ready for.
‘Ugh, the first couple months are so hard, you’ll see.’ She proceeded to dive into unbidden details and advice to all of them who feigned naivety.
Ivy wanted to stop her on impulse, simultaneously wondering how many of the one-third of women who have had a miscarriage and one-third of women who have had abortions have sustained this conversation silently, silently suffering and thinking even if they hadn’t had this painful experience, the advice and details were just noise, different for each person.
But Ivy didn’t quite have the confidence. She acknowledged, too, this woman could be suffering. Ivy was questioning her every thought, finding selfishness and self loathing in the process. Instead, she unknowingly clenched her fists until several noticed.
In response to the wondering eyes, Ivy quickly replied that she ‘had been pregnant.’ And before Martha’s shock could turn into questions or sympathy, she continued by saying, ‘I wish you all the best with your child,’ and walked away. She knew it meant that she wasn’t comfortable with her loss; would she ever be?
That walking away could have been seen as jealousy, and maybe some of it was.
She walked straight into another trap.
‘Oh, Margaret, you don’t understand because you don’t have kids, yet.’
‘You’ll see how great it is…and how much work it is!’ Fran and Susie laughed the laugh of an inside joke and clinked glasses.
Then Susie asked: ‘Don’t you guys want to have kids? How old are you anyway?’
Margaret and Ivy just looked at each other blankly.
She had started to wish she had never gotten married, but realised these expectations embedded in queries started much before that. Those childhood games — using soda can tops or flower petals to determine the first initial of your spouse, how many times around the merry go round to predict how many children you would have — and she started to wish she were a man. Would it be easier? Would it be nicer to be that cold, controlling insomniac she was married to? These words to describe Georg had only risen from her subconscious at that moment.
She got another glass of wine and went in search of Bob or Olivia but found instead some easy-going interns. They welcomed her in, asking her for advice or information on people in the company in a casual way. They were quick with the drinks and the funny stories. They talked about easy things. Their problems were simple. Their responsibilities small. Maybe she could go back to feelings like this. Maybe she could unlearn the world she had created.
⬩
After a few too many, she got a cab home, but asked the driver to let her out at the Quarry Bay promenade. She was too sad to go home. Finding a bench, she opened her peanut M&Ms from 7-11, then looked out across the harbour at Kowloon’s busy skyline, down at the turbulent water, and up at the grey sky where only the brightest stars were visible in the polluted sky.
Words of the Hong Kong poet came to her, drifting into other ghosts in the harbour’s wind –
The suns of our good old songs go out, one by one.
Up close to the body of the sea
Her rainbows were oilslicks.
The images of the skyscrapers
Were staggering giants on the waves.1
⬩
You spell out a vision in the evening light that I cannot yet understand. You tell me to hold on. You tell me you are there waiting for me at the end. I nearly fall asleep to the waves and your distant voice through letters in the sky, but before succumbing, I walk on. I walk down the wooden planks that bounce and tell me I’m alive. Then through the gate and onto cement. The hard surface propels me forward.
I walk home and creep into the bedroom, hoping for the dream of you to return.
[to be continued next week - Sheung Wan]
Join me Tuesday for a podcast about layering fiction with discourse about income gaps in fiction and a Spaces & Places focus on the MTR and metros. Thanks for reading!
Leung Ping Kwan, “At the North Point Car Ferry”
Heart aching for Ivy. I have this horrible premonition that if and when Georg and she talk about what's happened, and the state of their marriage, that we're going to see some world class "poor me" crap coming out of his mouth...
Such melancholy, another great character piece, Kate. Indifferent George, we can't feel sorry for him.