HAINAN DAO BOOK I
CHAPTER 01
It happened the same year I finished my medical internship. My sister Abby called me up from Hong Kong and told me that my father was finally dying.
He had had a number of heart attacks already. This was probably the Big One, she said to me. I could hear her wiping her nose via long distance.
Getting up from my chair, I wandered over to the window with the receiver still held up to my ear. Outside, it had begun to rain. I turned my gaze upward and frowned and wondered at all the water. Water and more water still, falling from the clouds in the sky.
I told her I'd be out there as soon as possible and hung up the phone.
Turning to face my opened closet, I sagged my shoulders and sighed. I reached in among the clutter. I worried out my dusty suitcase and plopped it down in the bed. With a dampened piece of paper towel, I ran my hand across its surface, soothing away the years, wiping away the memories, and then set my mind down to packing.
My father and I never got along. Well, that's not actually true. You have to know someone before you can say you don't get along with him. What I knew of my father, everyone knew of my father.
It was a common joke within the family that my dad, Mr. Shiying Chan had been a difficult baby to deliver. That was due mostly to the fact that he wouldn't let go of the abacus in his hand as he was being evicted from the womb. He had been brought into the world to do just one thing and one thing only. Business. Making money. Buying and selling. That was his destiny. His gift.
After the Second World War, as China headed toward its great change in colour, my father's gift told him to leave the Island of Hainan where he had been born and raised. It would be bad for business, it told him. Go to Hong Kong. It is your fate.
In time, still guided by the same voice, he had founded and went on to run a series of garment factories and was quite good at it. He was doing well. He was prospering. But the voice wouldn't let him alone. It urged him to plan, and eventually move the lot of us, his wife and children, here to Canada where we had come to finally settle down.
My family isn't very large. There are my two older sisters, Abigail and Courtney, and then there is me and my younger brother, Dylan. I was ten years old when I stepped off the plane and first squinted my eyes against the sterile Canadian sunshine. After getting through customs, I was surprised to find we had friends already there waiting for us. My father's friends. To this day, I still haven't stopped running into varying versions of my father's acquaintances, no matter where I go, though I have stopped being surprised.
Over the next few days, we shopped around for a house and moved in. Within another twenty-four hours, all of us, the children, had been registered into schools and even the shopping had been done. That was quite typical of Hong Kong efficiency, or so the old man had insisted.
The day before I was going to start my first day of school, my father had already booked himself for a flight back to Hong Kong. Had to keep the business going, he said to me.
I remember smiling and waving at him when we saw him to the airport.
In that first year, he flew back to visit us three times, bringing us toys and clothes from the factory. Every one of those trips felt like Christmas.
By the next year, he hadn't come at all. He was busy, he said.
Three years after we landed, my mother died.
Now, another twenty years after that, as I folded up white shirts to fit into my brown suitcase, I was thinking that my father's heart, if not the rest of my father himself, was finally coming to realize just what that meant.
Almost as a half-forgotten side effect of all those intervening years, I had since managed to grow up and graduate from medical school. That happened just last summer. One month ago, I finished off my rotations in family medicine, officially bringing my internship to a close. You see? Even in his dying, my father had remained the organized, calculating opportunist he had always been while living.
It is not difficult to summarize my life in the way I did just now. In truth, I cannot seem to remember much of those early years. Not the years that I struggled through puberty all by myself and certainly not the ones in Hong Kong. My sisters always chided me for not remembering, and therefore not being grateful, whatever that means. (My mother never chided me for anything. She was far too sick most of the time.) They always told me that because of the things that were happening in Hong Kong and China in those days, almost all fathers were doing this-sending their children to North America for the sake of a better education, better health care, better opportunities, a better future. To be honest, I don't remember all that much of what was happening in the Far East in the early '70's, or how badly things were going for the people back there. For that matter, I don't remember how things were all that much better here in Canada. All I remember of my childhood is that I was always trying to catch up on homework that I had no one to ask about, and then picking up on all the manly chores around the house that my sisters wouldn't do, and always, always and always, no matter how many times I looked to check, searching and finding an empty space in the den and the garage where my father should have been.
I called the ticket office and got a flight out to Hong Kong in two days.
My father and I are very different men. I had always been so convinced of this, that somewhere in one of the drawers in my desk, I had maintained a long list of all the ways that he and I had been complete opposites. Then at times, I would tilt my chair back and review this list and wonder if I had been, as my sister Courtney had always hinted to me, adopted after all.
Take traveling, for example. My father had told me that he had always found plane travel to be exhilarating, which of course, blows my mind, even now. Me, I hate flying. And traveling, in general. Having never been picky about what he ate, my father had even found the in-flight meals refreshing. Now, if you ask me, I would have to tell you that I think while most of his organs had been created in this century, the man's taste buds must certainly have been transplants from a specimen found some time before the Cambrian period. We are very different men.
I didn't think about much on the trip. My mind was in a haze when I arrived in Hong Kong, and the same haze accompanied me into the cab that took me straight to the hospital.
Going up to the third floor where my father was staying, I took the first two steps into his room and stopped. The room was packed. Everyone in it had turned around. They gaped at me, all my relatives, some clutching their fists to their chests, expectant looks on their faces, like they were hoping for me to perform some kind of life restoring miracle. Abby was there too, standing over in one corner with Courtney, a piece of tissue in her hand. Dylan was not.
As I stood there, I could hear the machines conspiring in the background, and the whispering of the nurses behind me. I turned my nose up at the Hong Kong hospital smell, the wet one laced with disinfectant, bleach and a good helping of Raid.
I took another two steps forward.
The crowd parted a way for me, showing me a clear path to the bed. I drifted into the gap, sending out ripples across the water, and weighed anchor by the side of the cot. Letting go of the bags I had brought with me, I knelt down beside the man who had given me cause to come into the world.
My father was resting with his eyes closed. He was still alive. Unless he had learned to frown in death. One of the many things that I will always remember about that man was his eyebrows. Thick as ropes. By the outside of the right one was a single grey hair that had reached out three times as long as the other ones.
His eyes eased open a crack. "Furen..."
"I'm here, Ahba."
"Ah..." He reached out and placed his hand on my head. "It really is you..."
"Yes, Ahba."
The early morning sun filtered in through the drab curtains. One of the windows was ajar, but no air seeped in through the opening. As close as the buildings were to one another in Hong Kong, this was nothing unusual.
"There is something..." My father lifted his head. He let his glare wander over the faces in the crowd. The people tried to smile, to seem warm and caring.
"Get out," he said.
The gathered throng began to murmur. They looked among themselves.
My father shut his eyes again, and then let his head fall back onto the pillow.
"Come," someone said. "You heard him."
The rest of the clan, shaking their heads and whispering to one another, ebbed out of the room and were gone.
After they had all left, my father motioned me closer. "My son."
"Yes, Ahba."
His eyelids were fluttering. The cataracts behind them clouded his world so. I don't think he saw me. He reached out his hand. He touched my face.
"Try to rest, Ahba." I smiled. "I am here now. You will be all right."
His frown deepened as he smiled back at me.
His eyes brightened for an instant, as if the cataracts had flaked away suddenly. "My son...!"
I drew closer. "Yes, sir?"
"How is medical school?"
It had been two years since my stroll down the aisle in Convocation Hall. He never did make it to the ceremony. It was the strangest thing, though, that all through medical school, he had always been worried about me getting kicked out. Maybe there was a family curse he never told me about. "It's going well, Ahba."
"They're not going to kick you out, are they?"
I shook my head. "No."
He nodded. "Where is Ahdu?"
That was my brother's nickname. Since babyhood, he had always slept on his stomach with his arms and legs spread out like those of a frog. The words, 'Ah Du', meant 'frog' in Hainan.
"He is not here?" asked my father.
"No, sir."
My father cursed. "He is a problem. Always the problem one..." He coughed a few times and then stopped. He rubbed his chest as he recovered.
"Perhaps you should rest..."
He shook his head. When he opened his eyes to look at me again, he seemed puzzled all of a sudden. He frowned. "Who are you?" He searched around the room. "Have you seen my son? My first-born, Furen? He was here..."
"But, Ahba..."
"You look a little like him, but he is much taller..."
"Ahba..."
He smiled as he waved me to silence. Turning his gaze toward the ceiling, he closed his eyes altogether. "He is such a good boy...that boy of mine...handsome..." His eyes snapped open. "...and educated!" He tried to get up.
"Please, Ahba...!" I jumped off my knees and eased down to sit beside him on the edge of the bed.
"Education is the most important thing in the world!"
With my hands on his shoulders, his burst of strength vanished and he withered and shrank back into his husk once more. "Education...! Yes..." He nodded and smiled. "...and my son! My son...he is educated, he has written two, no...ten books! He can speak English! He will be the greatest healer of all time. Did you not know? He was the one who discovered the cure to cancer...!" He coughed some more. "My son..."
I placed my hand on top of his.
"If you see him, you must tell him."
"I will, sir. I will."
He sighed and shook his head. "Though he is angry with me still. I know it."
I shook my head. "No, sir. He is not."
"I was not there for him." He nodded. "I know that too." He lifted his hand and placed it upon his chest, as if in pain. "Ah, but a man is so strong that he cannot face his son. He can face the entire world but not his own son..." He turned his face to the window, away from me. "...but I could not do it...I didn't know how...I was ashamed."
I frowned. "Ashamed?"
"Do you think he will understand?" He sighed. "I am but a poor merchant. A lowly man who changed money."
"But, Ahba..."
"And I was not there for him. Tell him not to be angry...don't be angry with his old Baba anymore..." He coughed again.
I rubbed his chest a few times.
"...but there was a reason why I could not be there, don't you know? His mother was everything to me, it is true...and yet...and yet the others...!"
"Others?"
"...the others needed me too." He turned his face to me. He gazed up into my eyes. I could not tell if there were tears seeping past the blindness. "Do you think he will forgive me?"
I shook my head as I sighed. I reached in and gripped his hand. "Ahba..."
"I could not tell him. Don't you understand? I could not let him go back...!" I felt his fingers tighten on mine. "He was meant for more than that! He was meant to be a great healer. A great man!" He began to breathe faster. His colour changed. "Has he tasted of the oceans? Have his fingers touched the skies? He will see what man has done, and then do so much more himself. He will help so many more than I...!"
"Ahba...!" I spun my head round to the monitors. One of them had begun to blare. "Ahba, you must stop! Hold still...!" I did my best to hold him down.
A flame appeared in his eyes and he nearly bounded off the bed. "You must not let him go to Hainan! You must not, do you hear me? I know that boy, if he goes, he will never leave again...!" He slipped out of my arms. A few of the wires on his body flew off.
"Ahba!" I took him again by the shoulders and locked them down this time.
"Do not let him see the well! Do not let him read what is on it...I had meant that for the others, not for him!"
I craned my neck round to the door. "Nurse!"
He began to cough again. He could not stop. Spittle ran past the corners of his mouth.
"Nurse!"
Now all the machines were squawking.
The doors behind me burst open. Doctors and relatives rushed through and washed up onto the bed. The medical staff whipped out their stethoscopes and slapped them onto the old man's chest. One of the nurses went and closed the window. Another stepped up to the heart monitor and adjusted the display. As the men and women continued their shouting and their efforts, I found myself pushed back, shouldered off to one side. With wave upon wave of the teeming masses rushing in, I was swept up and laid down again on a far more distant shore.
I peered out over toward my father. I could barely make him out, lost among the shuffling of so many foreign bodies. The edge of the bed was crowded...so crowded.
I saw less and less of the hospital bed, the one with my father somewhere on it. The lone vessel, taking advantage of the high tide, had eased out of the harbour, and now was drifting out to sea, launched on a new and unknown journey somewhere far away. Meanwhile, I stood lost on the pier, swamped by the party seeing him off, all waving and smiling and bidding him farewell, for now, or perhaps for much, much longer.
He lived yet for a few days after that, though he never regained consciousness.
We never spoke again.
***
I didn't cry at the funeral. My sisters did. But then again, they always cried at everything.
When the ceremony was over, I moved to a spot beneath an overhang and stared out toward the grave. I reached up with a handkerchief. I wiped the sweat from my face. It was another scorcher of a day in early June, nearing my birthday when we buried him.
My father had had a choice of being buried in one of two ways. The first way, of course, was by routine burial, which was not an easy thing to accomplish in Hong Kong, given the paucity of land.
Several years before his death, the old man had heard a rumour that in the same cemetery in which my mother was already resting, the Christian Cemetery on Hong Kong Island, three new plots were going to become available once the on-site but outdated administration building was torn down. These spots, naturally, were not going to be open to public bidding. Even my father, with all his connections and years of contributions to the local Baptist Convention, had to pull quite a few strings just so that he could find out what it would cost to get one of these. The answer came back at two million. That's close to four hundred thousand dollars Canadian.
In the end, my father chose solution number two. He had my mother's body exhumed from her spot, cleaned up and placed into an urn. This, when the time came, was set into the crook of his right arm as his body was placed into its coffin. Together like that, they were then lowered into the ground, to be welcomed as one into the bosom of the good Earth herself. From that day on and forever after, the two of them were to be neighbours, sharing the same, tiny plot of land, on a hillside overlooking the sea.
I thought of this and many other things as the men and women stood in silence before my father's grave, row upon row. I thought of death. I thought of parting. I thought about the fact that back in North America, places reserved for the dead were usually so filled with life. Cemeteries were spots where you would find acres of grass, flowers and other tended gardens. I have seen ones where fountains decorated the spotless lawns from one end of the premises to the other. There was always life, everywhere that you looked.
Here, in Hong Kong, I found before me nothing but stone, railing and cement. You would have to drive for a good half an hour before you would even see a bird, I think.
And there we were, trapped in that maze of metal and concrete, a mob of restless mourners numbering at least two hundred strong, all decked out in black and weeping like new born pups. I was dutifully solemn. I found the silence suited me just fine.
For whatever reason, I had often thought of this day, the day of my father's passing. When I had been younger, with more time on my hands, I had even tried to picture the thing happening. On those occasions, I would sit in my room alone, in the middle of the afternoon after I got home from school, thinking, trying to envision what it would be like. I imagined being awakened from a deep sleep, a heavy frown upon my brow, as I reached my arm over to the night table to silence the nagging ringing of the telephone.
"Yes?" I would demand of the receiver, after placing it on my ear. "Yes...yes...I see. Of course. When did it happen? I see...thank-you...yes, thank-you."
I would place the receiver back on the hook, sit up in my bed and stare out the window.
I had even thought of the funeral. And the most burning of all of my questions had always been, would I cry? I never could figure out the answer to that one, though I had tried hard for it. Obviously, there was an answer. A satisfying answer. The one answer that I would have known in my heart of hearts to be the right one. The one answer that I would have recognized on sight. Would I cry? I just didn't know.
The question had first come up, of course, when my mother had passed away. My father had taken her back to Hong Kong during the last days of her illness, in hopes that the memories of that earlier time, when their lives and dreams had finally begun to bear fruit and everything was good and fresh as the morning, might breathe new life back into her tired, weary, disease-ridden bones.
In the end, it did not make any difference. Nothing did.
Back in Canada, when I learned of her death, I remember that I had never shed a tear. I felt so guilty. I was only twelve years old at the time, and the fact that I hadn't cried at the news was, naturally, not held against me. Being that young, no one was ever going to hold me responsible, or call me unfeeling, or callous. However, I had known enough to realize that one day, I would eventually have to return to Hong Kong, and to my mother's grave, to see her again, and to pay my respects. I had worried over it. I was afraid that when the moment came, my tears were going to desert me again and brand me a traitor.
When my turn did come, though, it didn't happen that way. My eyes somehow took over and they bled like taps. I was both embarrassed and relieved. Ever since that day, I began mulling over the time of my father's passing. I thought about it and thought about it, and I kept asking myself, would I cry? I couldn't answer that question. I just didn't know, then. Now I do.
After the ceremony, Abby approached me as we shuffled over to the parking lot. "What did he say to you?"
I frowned and shook my head. "What are you talking about?"
"What did Dad say to you before he died?"
I thought about it for a moment. I shrugged. "He asked me about medical school."
She nodded. "Oh."
***
Two months after my father's funeral, I was back in Toronto, but still not working. I had settled into a routine. I slept until noon, went out and got brunch, and then wandered all over town for the rest of the day, waiting for linner. Or lupper.
It wasn't that I couldn't have started working. Lord knew there were enough positions out there, what with the on-going doctor shortages you were hearing about in the news all the time. But somehow, I couldn't get myself going again, to put my mind to it. There were still so many things to think about.
For one, now that my father was no longer here, the age-old question of whether or not I should even be in medicine had come up again. Neither my dad nor I have ever liked to face the fact that I had gone into medicine mostly for his sake. Ever since I was a little child, he had encouraged me to become a doctor. He was forever telling me all the good things about being a doctor. He even told me that he had always wanted to be one himself. So I became a doctor. Surprise, surprise. However, even so, the old man had preferred to think that I had gone into medicine because I liked it, and enjoyed doing it. For my part, I never came right out and said that it wasn't true. And to be honest, I don't hate being in the profession; I don't. But neither did I love it.
I've thought about it many times over the years, and I still don't know why I had applied for medical school in the first place. The closest I have ever come to an answer for this question was that my guidance counsellor in High School had once told me that it would be a bad idea. My marks had not been that good in Grade 13 and she thought I was probably not going to make the cut. Well, I showed her, didn't I?
Medicine. Well, the medical technology side of it isn't so bad, I have to say, but having to deal with the whining and complaining of so many people day after day after day...! You can understand my minor reluctance just now for not wanting to skydive back into the clinical setting right away.
Then there was the other reason.
What my father had said the very last time we spoke together continued to swirl around inside my head and wouldn't let me alone. What did he mean by all of that? Was it true then that he had been keeping something from me for all this time? For all of my life? After two months of questions like these constantly gnawing away at the back of my brain, it was really starting to irritate me. I didn't know what the answers were, though all the questions seemed to point in one, single direction. And it was obvious. I knew what I had to do. Still, up to that point, I hadn't wanted to come right out and ask my sister Abby about it. I had felt strange and so had avoided discussing it when she had asked me back at the funeral, but now, I wasn't so sure anymore.
I decided then that I would broach the subject the next time we met.
***
One fine morning about two weeks after that, I found that I was finally breaking my brunch, break, linner routine and was heading up to my accountant's office with a sheaf of papers tucked under one arm. There was something important I wanted to ask him.
Mark, my accountant, was small and mouse-like, a ferret of a creature, all trembling whiskers and a bundle of nervous twitches. He was constantly poring over a desk piled high with sheets of numbers and figures all over them. He was a good man, and he had always been kind to me when I was growing up. He never married. Or maybe it was just to his work. I always got the impression that he knew what he was doing, but he could never explain it very well. Every year, after burying himself beneath my receipts and manhandling my taxes for a month, he would drop a twenty-pound stack of papers onto my desk at the end and tell me he had finished. He would go on to try and explain exactly what he had accomplished on my behalf, but it just never seemed to get through somehow. Every year, I understood less than half of what he had to say. Every year I paid the bill he gave me. Every year, I strode out of his office, shaking his hand, smiling and thanking him for a job much appreciated.
My father had liked him very much. He had thought Mark an honest man and trustworthy, which was rare, he had said. When he was alive, old Dad had consulted him for all of his business ventures, including the ones he had going in Hong Kong. What's more, he had also insisted that the entire family should go to Mark with our finances and investments too. Fine with me. Made my life a whole lot easier to manage, since most of what my father had invested here in Canada was done in my name anyway. This way, I never had to bother with it. It was all taken care of for me.
Naturally, all of this changed when my father died. Now, what with the inheritance that he had left me, there were finally a few numbers that I had to get absolutely right, mostly for tax reasons. I had no choice, this time, but to understand it. If I was right about the figures, I was looking at the possibility of retiring much sooner than I had expected. Maybe even this year. After all, ten million dollars US was no chump change.
After struggling over the calculations for the whole night and not getting any further ahead, I had shoved the papers into a folder and decided to come and ask Mark about it.
The receptionist showed me into the waiting area. I picked up the copy of Time from the coffee table and began to read.
Ah, up-to-date magazines. You can tell it wasn't a doctor's office.
A shout.
I could hear voices coming through the door.
"Well, is it fifty? Is it more? One hundred million, then?"
I knew the voice. It belonged to my brother.
I stood up and sidled up to the door. I put my ear to it.
"Now hold on a minute..." said Mark.
"You mean it was more than that?"
Mark said nothing.
"Now you listen to me, you little twerp, I'm going to find out eventually, and when I do, so help me..."
I stepped through the doorway.
The two men inside spun around to face me.
"Jimmy..." My brother took a step back. He frowned.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
Without answering my question, Dylan glared back at Mark one last time before he turned and shoved his way past me.
My eyes followed him as he marched out the door. I turned back to Mark. "What was that all about?"
He let his eyes drop away from mine. He sat down and began to straighten out his desk.
"It was about money, wasn't it?"
Mark laughed. "Is it ever about anything else with that guy?"
"Well, what was the matter? Did he think that his inheritance wasn't large enough?"
"Nothing could have been large enough."
I collapsed into the chair in front of his desk. "Well, I don't see why he should be so sore. It's not as if we could get more out of Dad's estate, even if we wanted to."
Mark swallowed and continued to straighten up his papers.
I frowned. "There's more, isn't there?"
He picked up his coffee cup. He tried to take a sip but it was empty. Putting it back down, he pressed a button on the intercom. "Sally, could you get me another cup of coffee?" He looked up at me. "Would you like something too?"
"There's more money," I said. I locked his eyes with mine and didn't blink.
"No, James. Don't be ridiculous." He smiled. "Are you sure you don't want anything?"
Sally came in with the coffee.
I waited until she was gone again. "So where's this money?"
Mark sighed. He shoulders sagged. "I was specifically instructed by your father never to talk about it."
"Then there is more."
He shook his head. "I never said that."
I stood up. I waltzed around to his side of the table. "Now look, Mark. I am his son. I deserve to know."
He shook his head just once with resolution.
"I only want to know, Mark. I don't even want it. I don't want it for myself. I just want to know for the knowing."
"Please, James. Why would you need to know? It doesn't concern you. All your needs are met. You're doing fantastic!"
"That's not what I meant. I just want to know where he spent it..."
"...he treated you well. You had always been comfortable. You're going to be even more comfortable now. Think of it-ten million dollars...!"
"That's not the point."
"Then what is the point?" He sat back in his chair. He straightened his glasses. "I don't know what you're after, but you're not going to get it. Your father was shrewd. You know that. He had consulted lawyers extensively. If there is something that he had never intended for you to find out, you will never find out. Trust me. If he had intended for you to know about something, then the only way for you to know about it, was if he had told you himself."
I clenched my jaw repeatedly. I went on to say something further, but changed my mind.
By the time I left his office that day, I had forgotten completely to ask him about my taxes.