A Hong Kong Story - Vienna (ii)

From Part I Getting Lost of my serialized novel that accompanies the Truth in Fiction season of The Matterhorn podcast

Photo by Aaron VanPoole on Unsplash

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 —

Table of Contents

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?

Vienna

(continued)

It was a couple of hours after their early dinner. Pings began to alarm her from her phone. Ivy felt grateful not to have a beat at work that forced her to be constantly aware of the news all over the world in different time zones. But still, like most people, she couldn’t turn off the notifications from a few key news sources. Not knowing meant a certain type of cultural isolation. After millennia of carefully constructed information, immediacy now seemed necessary.

‘Did you see this, Georg? Paris…’

Terrorist attacks in Paris. Her place of solace, of poetry and beauty and freedom.

This was also why it was a target. This was also why it felt so sad despite the countless terror attacks all over the world, the many deadly ones in Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt…

She took a journalistic scourge on Twitter. They were still counting the dead, still looking for a gunman. There was no point in watching the Tweets slowly form the story. She could wait.

Instead of winding down for sleep, Ivy felt like getting out. She threw on something to run in and grabbed her keys, leaving a cap behind so she could feel the rain splatter across her face, trying to recreate that feeling of freedom in the Viennese winter. Georg glanced up from the screen to wave.

At the door, Mr. Chau was practically asleep, uninterested in warning her of the danger outside. She went on a normal route, five minutes to the promenade, short twists and turns in alleyways before the straight waterside passage made from recent reclaimed land. Even on the wooden planks, the water beaded up so quickly that she splashed through like a kindergartner in puddles. In her plane of existence, she only felt forward motion rather than gravitational forces. The waves crashed over the barricade of the typhoon shelter.

She reached her turnaround point and paused, even as thunder and lightning began in the distance. She had turned around here dozens of times since moving to Quarry Bay. It was always just the right amount. But today, she went beyond it, wondering what was on the other side. After a small detour around a building, another promenade appeared before her, and the storm became more dangerous. It seemed to threaten her directly. Thunder greeted the crashing waves and lightning was all around. Gliding over bricks, the water was inches deep around her shoes. There was no cover nor safety. A couple of others wanting to understand what emotion or nature really is continued on the path, too.

She got to the end of the bricks and only then did she get scared. Running in water…lightning could strike anywhere and murder her. She had no choice but to continue.

She kept on running. Her mind loosened itself free from that tension in the apartment.

It gravitated where it needed to go.

She had known she was pregnant for about a month. But it hadn't felt real. Maybe it never does, especially the first time. It was so outside of the realm of prior knowledge no matter how ubiquitous and natural it was. But her emotions had been high. She had been excited.

Somewhat. Hadn’t she?

What had held her back was that he hadn’t seemed to give a shit. How can you not care about something like that? How can you act so blasé? But why had she let her feelings depend on his?

That disappointment of loss had been coming a long time; it didn’t feel like such a shock as she thought about it now. She had never fully accepted the thing growing inside her because her husband wouldn’t allow it. ‘Just wait until the three months are over to be sure,’ he had said, ‘Don’t tell anybody yet.’ Denying her the feelings of change within her body. Denying her the presence of life. Denying love to the being they had created together.

It was fated to die.

But looking back, she should have seen the signs even earlier than this, much before the positive test. He never offered to pay to find out about her fertility when they had trouble at the start, and never offered to check out his own. He did not care that they barely ever had sex, and so she had to beg for it like a desperate creature on her fertile days. He thought they should just let it happen naturally. But without sex, it would never happen. This seemed obvious to her. It seemed to her the only reason they had had any sex for the last year.

So she should have known that he wouldn’t care about the miscarriage either.

I gazed at that baby I could have had, I did have -- for a short while. And then the only thing to do was to flush her down the pipes.

She had come out the door to flat emotionless pity. He had given her a little hug. She was bleeding and bleeding into thick pads and crying and crying into endless tissues.

She went over the scene again and again. She started to wonder if her memory of the event had changed. But she had started capturing the memory from its start, so she doubted the imprint could be wrong.

A noise suddenly so loud that she thought it must have been her brain exploding for a moment shocked her feet into high gear. Lightning had hit a nearby building. Stupid, stupid, you will die out here. You don’t really want to die, do you? As her legs moved faster and faster, she lost her consciousness to the world around her. Only sensations kept her going impulsively away from danger, toward home.

Finally, the rain slowed and peace took over.

He wouldn’t ever be sad. Never. And she knew she could never go through this again with him. She could never go through an emotional celebration or pitfall with him by her side. She felt condescended by him. Abandoned.

⬩

She had planned it all. She knew what to say. But the leap into saying it all was like jumping off the three-metre diving board when she was ten; she knew it was possible but the feeling wouldn’t be good.

She felt so alone.

It was nearly December. She knew she was going to do it some night before Christmas. She couldn't stand the thought of going to Vienna with him this year, feeling fake and detached. She would do it soon.

⬩

Sometime during the continuous rain in the next few days, she came home and he was there. He was the same. She tried to allow him the chance to show her care several times more; she tried to show him love and tried to love differently. She tried to forgive them both.

Maybe he was simply a reminder of her grief.

After eating, with still an hour left in the film they were watching (though she wasn’t really watching), she tried to rest her feet on his legs. It was a final attempt to get close to him, to see if there was something salvageable and the rest of it had all been in her head. He gave her a condescending look with a smile and swiftly removed the feet. Still, she tried. She repositioned herself so she could lean on his shoulder.

‘Baby,’ he said in his sing-song condescension. She expected him to say something more, but it was is if he knew that she knew what he wanted to say, because this was the action he had started to repeat everyday: separation. Isolation. A lack of physical touch. This was clearly what he wanted, and he did not even feel the need to communicate about it. He laughed and got up to clear and clean the last dishes from the tea while she silently began to cry. He came back and didn’t notice her tears as he started the film again. So she grabbed the remote to press pause, then with more conviction pressed stop.

So, she told him how bad it was for her, clear from all the times it had spiralled through her head by this point. She didn’t tell him it was over; she hoped he would have some response, some way of making things work, that he would fight for her.

But it didn’t and wouldn’t change, and she finally saw that.

He just let her go.

‘Ok, if that’s how you feel.' He looked disturbed but not exactly upset. Unusually awkward. Rather than stay and talk about it or storm out, he quietly said he would go get a beer by himself.

And like that, he was gone.

⬩

She spent the whole night in her room awake and crying softly. She watched funny videos in an effort of distraction, but it only made it worse. Finally, she tried listening to music. Music of pain and love came to her like waves running through her body. Maybe it was the beginning of healing, changing the molecules at her core. You can't change someone else, she now knew this for sure, but you could use your experiences to change yourself.

She turned on the light and wrote in her journal. She wrote exactly what happened like a witness but not what she wanted. This desire was elusive. Where could her love go…where would her life go? Had she ever really decided what she wanted in the first place?

The crying was for fear. Fear of what was next both for her and for him. She was disappointed. In him, in herself and her choices, and mostly in life's promises. But she tried to resolve herself to be stronger. ‘When will my strength come back?’ she wondered aloud. She tried to have faith.

⬩

After that first awful sleepless night, she knew she had to do something, to get away from the apartment. His apartment. Her continuous loop of anguish was stuck in this space.

She called Julie. Nobody in Hong Kong had an extra room; some even allowed their maids and nannies to sleep on mats in the kitchens because the flats were so tiny. And any decent hotel would get too expensive after a week, even on her good salary. Julie had a pull-out couch and that she was someone with whom Ivy could be herself. She could lose her shit, laugh in distraction, or cry in nostalgia or melancholia or fear or mourning. Or, most importantly, she could get on with her life without judgment.

Even before telling anyone about what had happened, she could feel the judgment of divorce. Such a public separation. The taboo failure. She predicted the people who would tell her about marriage counselling, who would ask if she had thought carefully before getting married, who would determine she was selfish and didn't want the burden of a family.  

On the phone, Julie responded predictably with the grace and generosity Ivy knew she would receive: 'Oh, Ivy, I'm so sorry. Come right over.'

Instead, Ivy said she would pack a small bag and come after work. Work gave her joy. She tried to throw herself into it but found herself rather diligently planning out exactly what she would want to come back and take from the flat. She didn’t want to forget what was there.

Besides her clothes and a small shelf of the books she didn’t keep in her office, the list was very specific. First the kitchen items: wooden cooking utensils from a trip on the Maine coast with her mom, several colourful mugs received as gifts from various friends, a coffee tray with a scene of Parisian streets, an apron from the Hong Kong brand G.O.D. with iconic apartment buildings printed on the fabric. From the shelves: several framed photographs of her family and friends, a green glass covered vase that leaked but reminded her of a friend now in New Zealand, the heavy candle holder she liked to bring to the edge of the bath, a wooden Buddha head from a trip to Thailand, a Chinese jewellery box from the markets and the contents inside, several tiny painted figurines she carried around with her that her parents’ friends had given her from their travels to Africa and South America when she was young. And the walls: a black and white photograph from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain, a pastiche of a Chuck Close painting she had done in college, a painting of the back streets of Mong Kok she had bought from an artist at a market, and an abstract photograph of herself, taken by someone who had been a friend during her time in Dublin.

But no furniture. No shared items that might create a need for negotiation. Nothing big that would need anything more than a taxi to retrieve.

She sent Georg a text that she had cleared out and they would talk later about getting her things. His reply was an 'OK' with a smiley face. Did he even give a fuck? Or perhaps she was ungrateful for his graciousness. In the never-ending silences, had she created a narrative that wasn’t true?

⬩

When she arrived at Julie’s, the reality of her actions suddenly sank in in long silly tears that her friend helped her through. They each arrived at the threshold, before even saying hello or thank you. They crumbled down to the enveloping couch and talked, cried, laughed through the evening.

Her friend was surprisingly unsurprised. Ivy spilled it all, starting with the positive test and the miscarriage, but then going back and forth in time in her realisation of what her life had been. Georg had been an idea of something, not a fleshly manifestation of love. Did he love her? Did it matter?

'Well, we’ll never know about Georg. But I do know this: I didn't like where my Ivy was going! You were fading away, somehow. I thought for a little while maybe it was us. But recently I noticed this thing with Georg or the way you talked about him.'

'This sucks.'

'I know. But you're strong. I'm not worried about you.' She smiled and they hugged and then they drank a bottle of wine while watching Amy Schumer's TV show. They ordered Indian delivery. The hot chili of the vindaloo and sweetness of the korma reached that core where the music had been reshaping her.

You are exactly where you are supposed to be. She heard her yoga teacher's voice come through her head.

'Don't worry, I'll start looking for a new apartment soon,' she suddenly remembered to say to Julie.

'Stay as long as you like! It's fun.'

They made up her bed together and each of them fell asleep quickly.

⬩

You tell me not to worry, but the tears are flushing out your voice. I push you away. This is the only moment I cannot hear your thoughts and your hopes. But I still listen to your music as I walk the ocean road and up and down toward jungled streets and stony pathways. My slumber is tumultuous but purposeful.

I’m finding my way to you.

⬩

She would stay in this apartment until Christmas time.  Since she had planned to go to Vienna, there was no reason to even let her family in Maine know what was going on. She didn't want to worry them. Didn't want them to see her failure.

Some nights were easy, others felt strange and mean. Thoughts circled in her head. She could only blame herself.

What had she done?

A failure to herself, and to everyone. Shame formed cobwebs in her soul. So many people had sent gifts for their marriage; so many had shown her love, but she had never felt it in that home. It was empty.

⬩

She received an email from Georg one day at work about a week later, after she had already come to collect her possessions. She had half a mind not to open it, but she had to. It was impossible to ignore and do anything else. So, she went into a bathroom stall and read it.

I’ve had mixed thoughts about all this, Ivy. However, I now feel comfortable with the separation.

Good luck with your life.

- Georg.

And just like that, she was alone. Really alone.

We make our lives into narratives, so we have a choice of its filters and perspectives. We decide how we handle things.

She tried to believe she was exactly where she was supposed to be. Tried to allow herself to feel freedom. Chances. Freshness. Tried to let go of the pain.

Instead, she felt the emptiness before her in the vast expanse of the cityscape that was anonymous and suddenly foreign again. Made by hands for colonisation and with many phallic symbols of power. Thousands or denizens sometimes in a single block when, if evacuated, could not stand shoulder to shoulder on the surrounding streets. There was evermore solitude in her density.

A part of her had still thought it wasn’t over yet. He would change; he would fight for her. But he was proud. And maybe he also didn’t love her. Maybe she couldn’t change enough for him, even if she had tried. His silence was a weapon designed to keep her guessing forever.

She felt deeply alone, more alone than when she had been single in the past. She felt the distance of her family on the other side of the world. She felt the anonymity of the city. She felt the piercing glances of her co-workers moving through her soul and seeing its emptiness. Empty of love.

She felt she had no love to give. She was a tissue paper of nothingness and as her tears leapt out into the toilet paper in her hand, she realised that the tissue she had become would die in an instant with her tears.

So she pulled herself together.

She didn’t text or call anyone. Not Julie nor Olivia. Not Bob. Not her mom. She didn’t forward the message.

She slapped her cheeks and told herself to toughen up and get the fuck out there and face the day.

It was just before lunch, so she snuck out to eat early, letting another editor know. She took the elevator down and saw her red cheeks in the mirror. Ashamed, she turned away and pulled up her coat lapels despite the warm autumn day. Then she walked out of the office into the anonymous urbanity, walking away hard and fast. She walked so fast she didn’t realise how much she started to sweat as she moved down into the heart of Causeway Bay. She wanted people to be around her, jabbering and eating and blocking her way so she could dance around them. They didn’t disappoint. Her sweat started to collect and then whiz off due to her speed. She attempted to sweat out any feelings of allegiance or guilt that might be left. She walked and walked and walked until she found her favourite little Thai spot, 40HKD for a lunch of Pad Thai or Vegetable Green Curry with a drink. There were other choices, but those were the ones she always got. Today, it was the curry, ‘Extra hot, please, and a hot lemon-honey water.’ The ticket in Chinese writing, her little stool and plastic table in the alleyway filled with similar tiny restaurants and people eating outside or huddling by the AC inside.

Only then did she notice her dress was completely soaked with sweat. But she felt better. She pulled at the sticky cotton, kept her phone in her bag, and looked around while waiting for her food.

She walked back to work more slowly and let the breeze from the harbour cool her down, taking the last part of the journey through air-conditioned shopping mall pathways that continued high up across the streets.

When she arrived back at the SCMP building, she buzzed herself in anonymously and entered a solo elevator, pushing the close-doors button to keep anyone from riding with her. She went all the way to the top, then down the stairs back to her office on the forty-fifth floor. The whole way up, she closed her eyes and let her forehead stick against the mirror.

On her way out in the evening, the security guard asked her if she was alright. ‘Sure, why?’ she replied.

‘Oh, I just noticed you seem a little sad. But happy to hear, you take care, take care.’ And she knew he meant it.

All those invisible doormen from her old flat were gone to her forever. The neighbourhood, too, would no longer be her own. All the familiar people and colours would be blended into her memories. If she were to return, she would be a foreigner again and the way she would walk and weave through the crowds and the alleyways would change.

In fact, she realised, she may never dare to return.

⬩

Just a couple days later, word of the Alibaba buyout came through. The SCMP was now Chinese run. Her start at the paper had nothing to do with a free Hong Kong; it was just an exciting place to work and a paper with a good reputation. But she started to see how intertwined the identity of the paper was with a free Hong Kong and vice versa. Because it was in English, it was also an international paper, read by audiences in London, Cape Town, or New York. This made it different from the local Apple Daily.

They were told it was just a business deal, that it didn’t have anything to do with the daily running of the paper. But the talk started right away about fear of censorship or even more dangerous subtle biased guidance of headlines, images, interviews…ways to control an image of a place and ways to perform subtle control.

Bob told everyone on their team to have confidence and get on with their good work, to let him deal with the difficult conversations. In private though, he let Ivy know he had fear. He didn’t want to fully name the fear and allowed it to be a vague feeling that would keep him more alert to the politics of journalism.

She was empathetic for Bob, for the papers’ readers -- but didn’t have room for the fear herself. There was sadness, added to that which she already had, but she did her best to compartmentalise the anxieties for the future. She didn’t feel like she could do anything to change it, so she just carried on.

⬩

Ivy began trying to work on her thoughts through her journal at cafes. There, at least, she would have some distractions and some camaraderie in the solitariness of existence.

After yoga about ten days before Christmas, she went to the cafe just next door to the studio and sat in the window with her flat white and her black journal open to a fresh page. She had started to go to class more often without Olivia. She began freewriting about family, about her love for them and her need to talk to them. But not yet, she determined. She needed more time to figure how to tell her parents and make sure they understood she really had a reason to go. It was that fear of disappointment. Of disappointing them even more than herself.

The music track was jumping between Indie alternative stuff that kept her energy facing forward and Christmas songs that helped her reminisce. The Pogues came on. Her mom loved that song. Suddenly, pure loneliness took over her soul. Her mom and her dad had always told her they were proud of her, supported her choice to live in first Dublin then Paris and finally Hong Kong, her brother's to live in Chicago. But she wondered then, how much did they miss them back in Maine? Her brother would be there in a few days. Did they spend most of their time missing them or did the happiness of their children keep them satisfied?  

The once promise of her own child had changed the way she thought about her parents.

Were her expectations too high? Was her mind schizophrenic? Constantly unsettled? Was she unable of making happiness from what she had?

But hadn't she done this with the city of Hong Kong that first had offered nothing but claustrophobia and cement and now was a layered homeplace…her labyrinth.

Even if she were willing to wait on Georg, too, he was done with her. The chance was gone.

In the hopes that place could help her change her way of thinking, this endless spiral, she booked a trip to Bali over Christmas. It might be lonely, she thought, but perhaps this was the correct punishment for her actions.

Or it could be joyful.

Or at least transitionary.

She remembered Olivia telling her about it once. The open roads, the flowing rice paddy fields, the wild ocean: these spaces offered her rebirth or at least self awareness. Even if no answers came of this, she had to be away from families and expectations; reminders of Christmas past; plans for Christmas future.

---

[to be continued…]

Join me Tuesday for a podcast about layering fiction with negative space and gaps (nothingness and silences) and a Spaces & Places focus on harbours. Thanks for reading!