TALITHA KOUM
CHAPTER 17
.
The door rustled.
Julie shot to her feet.
Cups and bowls were knocked to the ground. With her eyes darting about the room, she scrambled for a sword, a stick, anything.
A ruffling of canvas and a man glided into the room, just as Julie assumed a boxer’s stance, holding out a banana. The stranger froze, took a gander at her, and then at the offending fruit.
She glanced at it herself. She tossed it aside.
The stranger had been carried in on a litter by four other men. Now, the carriers laid the litter down, as the man whipped out a staff and clambered out of the carriage. He struggled along with a limp, favouring his left side. His dress was like the others, though he had a light coloured mask about his face. Brushing off the rain that clung to his arms, he lifted them up and shook them. Julie observed his every move from beneath her knotted brows.
Her eyes popped wide. “Yes, of course!”
This was the second man she had seen in the circle earlier, the one who had waved and shouted to her.
This newcomer sidled up to Julie and Tom and before they could react, flipped his own mask away with a flourish. “Surprise!” (Supplies)
“Mr. Fong!” They shouted together.
Tom started laughing as he struggled from the couch and into Mr. Fong’s arms, nearly knocking them both to the ground with the impact. “I thought I would never see you again…”
“It’s good to see you, Mr. Fong.” Julie moved in for a group hug.
Tom drew his head back. “I thought they must have killed you!”
“Well…” Mr. Fong shrugged.
Tom’s lips twitched. He wiped away at his eyes. “I’m so sorry…” Tom hugged the man again.
Julie smiled and looked away.
“Oh…” Mr. Fong remained where he was and rolled his eyes. Sighing, he let himself be hugged. He smiled at Julie, as he patted Tom on the back with his hand.
In time, Mr. Fong eased his head back and managed to peel Tom off his shirt like an embarrassing stain. The limping man looked away and sniffed his nose a few times. He cleared his throat. “So, how you like my new clothes? Very nice, huh?” Mr. Fong danced a little jig, wiggling his butt as he showed off his new threads.
He motioned to the men who had come with him. They unslung the packs from their backs and added more food to the table. After that, they moved out of the tent and left the three friends alone.
“I’m sorry I took so long to come.” Mr Fong smiled at the other two. “Lots of confusion. My Mandarin not as good as my English. And the fight took longer than I expected.”
“Yes, but how did you get here?” Tom eased himself down on a cushion nearby. “And what happened to your leg? And why didn’t they kill you?”
“Well, I…”
“And those clothes! Do you know they tried to kill us?! And did you send those horses?”
“Yes…”
“And how did you get here anyway?”
“Well you know if you shut up for one minute, I tell you!”
Tom closed his mouth.
~~~
As it turned out, Mr. Fong’s left leg had indeed been broken during the struggle with the two men who first came to the lab. After the fight, he was thrown over one of the horses and taken away. Once they made the turn in the road, however, his captors stopped and seated him properly on his mount. They tied his hands together in front of him. They also examined his leg with some care but did nothing for it at the time.
~~~
“But how did you…” Tom tried to begin again.
“Dr. Tom. What I say about the ‘shut up’?”
“Sorry.”
~~~
When they had returned to the men’s lair, the camp they were all in now, Mr. Fong was led into a large tent, as large as one for a wedding, but partitioned. His guards set him down on a chair, untied him, and then left the room, leaving Mr. Fong to himself. Inside the tent were various tables, couches and other ornate pieces of furniture that were recognizable and familiar to him. Many of the pieces were adorned with delicate patterns of lotuses and dragons. Some pieces were made of cherry wood and lined with gold paint.
A translucent curtain separated this larger room from the partitioned one next to it. From within this other chamber, came the voice of one mumbling, as if a man was reciting a poem to himself.
Sneaking to his feet, Mr. Fong limped over to the curtain and cupping his hands to his eyes for the glare, peeped out at the shadows of the things on the other side. The shadows were of a very tall man, perched over a desk and writing on a large piece of canvas with a familiar type of pen. Except it wasn’t a pen, really, it was a brush. A Chinese writing brush.
Bending his ear to the drape, Mr. Fong could just make out what the man was muttering to himself.
“Hai xian cu chao,” (Seafood fried noodles, 海鮮粗炒) the man breathed out as his brush stroked along. “Hui guo rou chao nian gao.” (Fried rice cake with twice fried pork, 回鍋肉炒年糕)
Mr. Fong’s jaw dropped.
The voice went on. “Xie rou fen si xiao long…”
“Bao!” Mr. Fong shouted before the other man could finish. “Xie rou fen si xiao long bao!” (Steamed crab dumplings, northern style, 蟹肉粉絲小籠包)
Mr. Fong started laughing. He jumped into the air, and then landing on his broken left leg, tumbled over backwards and knocked over the chair behind him and the table next to it as well. His face was all screwed up and his teeth were clenched, but he was still laughing. As he pulled himself up by another table next to him, he kept repeating at the top of his voice, “Xie rou fen si xiao long bao! Xie rou fen si xiao long bao!”
The curtain between the rooms billowed away. The tall man from the other side emerged.
Mr. Fong took one look at the man’s face and stopped laughing.
By this time, guards had rushed in through the main entrance with their swords drawn. On seeing their leader, they came to attention and saluted.
The man dismissed them with a grunt. The guards left, stepping slowly backwards out of the tent and then closing the door behind them.
Mr. Fong regarded the leader.
The man’s features were Asian, but he was at least six foot three. He stood heads above Mr. Fong. He stayed where he was by the curtain, crossed his arms and glared at Mr. Fong through eyes so sharp they could cut glass. Mr. Fong pulled back a step.
“Xie rou fen si xiao long bao?” The man chewed on his words like food.
“Xie rou fen si xiao long bao…” Mr. Fong nodded.
For the longest time, the two men stood, staring at each other. Mr. Fong’s hand fiddled with the tabletop next to him, fingering the engraving on it. He could hear himself breathing.
The Asian leader smiled. He began to laugh.
Mr. Fong began chuckling too.
As natural as the embrace of brothers, the two men stepped forward as the sound of merriment echoed in the tent and they clasped hands, a gesture of long lost kin.
“Who are you, my friend?” The tall one spoke to Mr. Fong in Chinese. Not Cantonese, the native tongue of Mr. Fong who was originally from Hong Kong, but a strange type of Mandarin. Mr. Fong found it awkward on the tongue, but just manageable.
“My name is Fong. What is this place?”
This place, as it turned out, was the home of the Asian leader, Pang. Pang was originally a merchant from China, who had journeyed here with his father to sell his silk fabrics, a special merchandise from his homeland.
~~~
“Yes.” Tom raised his hand. “But where is ‘here’?”
The three were seated on the floor, on cushions, in a circle. Mr. Fong held a cup of water in his hand. Though Julie and Tom had been sleeping on and off before Mr. Fong came in, it was still only about two in the morning and not the next day yet.
“Here,” answered Mr. Fong, gesturing to Tom with his cup, “is a place very close to a city called Cyprus.”
“Cyprus? Where’s that?” Tom scratched his head.
“It is city we go to already. Remember?”
“The one we went to the other morning?” Julie asked.
“Yes!”
“But where is that?” asked Tom.
“That is in the Middle East.”
“Middle East?”
“Yes! It is very close to Jericho.”
“Jericho?” asked Tom.
“What are you? An echo?” Mr. Fong frowned. “Yes! Jericho. And Jerusalem. Holy Land, Meso-polam…Messy-cotam…” He shook his head and spit once.
Tom’s eyes brightened. “Mesopotamia!”
“Yeah!” Mr. Fong clapped his hands. “Middle of the East, you know?”
“Well.” Julie nodded, tapping her chin. “I never did think this was the Grand Canyon.”
“No kidding.” Mr. Fong rolled his eyes.
“Hold on a second.” Tom scrunched his eyes together. “Let me get this straight.” He moved his hands up to hold his temples. “So, DaNI, in answering my question, whips the three of us all the way from Toronto, Canada to Palestine, just outside of Jerusalem?”
“Yup!” Mr. Fong grinned fatly.
Tom stood up.
“So, it wasn’t just down the street or around the block…” You could see steam starting to come out of Tom’s ears. “…or even just over the face of one continent. This is halfway around the world, all the way to meso-bloody-potamia?!”
“Yes…?” Mr. Fong’s grin slurped off his face. He glanced over at Julie. Julie was shaking her head and looking down.
“Julie!” Tom spun around to face her. “What kind of crazy computer have you made?!”
Julie rose to her feet. “Hey, wait a minute, mister. If you think that…”
“Isn’t that what you told me? Computers can’t do this sort of thing? They can only…”
“…just stop and think…”
“…no physical power…”
Mr. Fong blew a whistle through his fingers.
They stopped. They turned as one and glared at Mr. Fong.
“Kids, I’m not finished.” He waved them to sit down again. “Meso-polam not the best part. Not by a lot…”
“What?”
“…this is the best part. Listen…”