Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

Two larger thugs converged on him and he caught the stink on them. He stood ready to bolt when the moustached man in blue silk took him unexpectedly by the arm and said something in dialect to the thugs and tucked them back into the gloom.

A triad headman? Aldred thought he looked too wimpy for one.

“Do you know who I am?” asked the man in excellent English.

Aldred shook his head and continued allowing his arm to be held.

“My name is Hoo and I have a proposition for you.”

He listened, ready to accept any odds.

“We’ll have a round of fan-tan between you and me,” said Hoo. “No backers. If you win I’ll settle your debts.”

“And if I lose?” Aldred blurted a little too impatiently.

Hoo half-smiled and twitched an eye at his success in securing Aldred’s interest. “If you lose,” he said, lifting his chin, “I’ll still settle your debts, but you’ll have to sign an agreement legally ceding your land to me.”

“A portion of my land,” Aldred counter-offered.

Hoo shook his head wryly. “It’s the best offer a man like you can get. Refuse it and you’ll be ceding your land to them.” He nodded at a bunch of Ghee Hin thugs crouching in an unlit corner like a pack of carrion vultures.

The man was right. For one trapped and sinking in quagmire it would be inconceivably inane to refuse a lifeline. Aldred reasoned he could persist in his convictions and perish, but that was foolish because they would seize his land anyway once they had murdered him for failing to pay his debts.

Hoo did not wait for Aldred to respond; the look on his face must have been all the reply he needed. “After you.” He made a broad, gracious sweep of his arm.

Aldred was offered the first stake, and he had thought hard before betting on odd —a choice that naturally left even to Hoo. They stood side-by-side before the croupier, this time a stumpy man who sported rings of dirt in the folds of his sweating neck, and waited.

The croupier dug his bowl into a sack of buttons and capped it on the table. He then lifted the bowl and began separating them into groups of four. Aldred didn’t have to wait long; by the time they got to the last thirty buttons he already knew the outcome. Hoo, smiling, gestured to an aide and sent him out to fetch something. Aldred, his elbows on the table, ran his hands dejectedly around his stubble as if seeking comfort from it.

In time the aide returned and presented a rolled document with a wax seal already in place. Its script was small, calligraphic and profuse.

“Your debts are paid.” Hoo set it before Aldred. “Now it’s time to honour your end of the deal.”

Someone gave him a steel-nib pen already dipped in ink. Only a scribble stood between him and destitution. He allowed himself to slip into a reverie, and everything froze in the revelation of a great and unpardonable error. Unable to recover from the pangs of his loss he absently scribbled his name.

“A man of your word.” Hoo beamed as he blew at the ink.

As Hoo made his way out with the document Aldred tailed him like a zombie would its voodoo master. He felt ill. The guilt of a broken oath had turned into a blade that took pleasure in lancing itself leisurely into his pounding heart.

Once outside Aldred was surprised to find Hoo conferring with someone wearing a red tunic, sash and the shako cap of an army officer. From his waist hung a sabre adorned with tassels of golden threads. There was silver embroidery on his collars.

Hoo handed the rolled-up document to him. “As agreed, the price still stands.”

Inexplicable to even himself, Aldred flew at them, gnashing and snarling like a wild, rabid creature, his hands clawing at the document which was by then beyond his reach. A host of sweaty arms wrestled him to the ground, and the officer boarded a gharry with Hoo and carted away into the night.

Aldred still thrashed and kicked. Fingers dug savagely into his mouth and pried it open. He felt his tongue being stretched and tasted blood when the cold steel of a blade was brought to it, threatening to sever it if he ventured so much as another twitch. He conceded and the men drove his cheek into the tarmac and held it under a filthy, callused foot. A kick to the ribs had him curling up like a foetus.

After the ordeal Aldred limped over to the steps in front of an old tenement and fell against an old, spalling pillar. He closed his eyes. The noise of the gaming houses was now a distant drone. Their dim interiors threw wan shafts of light onto the fivefoot way.

Then footsteps approached, slow and gritty.

“I am a friend of your father’s and I will offer you my lodging,” said a voice.

Aldred kept his eyes closed. The voice and the sounds around him had a detached, dreamlike quality to them.

“I will offer you my lodging,” the voice repeated. Aldred peeled his eyes open.

The appearance of an exceedingly tall man roused him from the malaise. The man was wearing an enormous black overcoat and a black top hat of fine beaver felt. His smooth, pearly skin shone as if it were made of moonlight and his eyes glittered green and yellow under bony brows that jutted like the crags of a glacier. He stood straight as a cedar, as if allowing Aldred to appreciate the full measure of his immense stature.

“Who are you?” said Aldred.

“My name is Origen,” said the man. His voice, flat and toneless, flowed like a thick, oleaginous substance. “I am a friend of your father’s and I will offer you my lodging.”

“I don’t know my father. He walked out on us a long time ago.”

“Still, I will offer you my lodging.”

Aldred fingered his ribs and winced. “What do you want for it?”

“You will live in it as your home and you will work for me.”

“What kind of work?”

“You will labour in a pineapple factory at Grove Estate. Someone will take you there at six in the morning. You will not see much of me, but your needs will be taken care of.”

“That’s generous of you.”

“I am a friend of your father’s.” Origen’s thick monotone filled Aldred’s head. “You may do well to stay out of trouble.”

They walked over to Church Street where a gharry stood waiting with its canvas top furled back under the lamplight. It was tethered to a black horse that would’ve been invisible in the dark if not for the swishing of its tail. The gharry-wallah was a skinny young Kling who turned his turbaned head at them when they got in and grinned brightly.

They said nothing the entire way. Origen sat beside Aldred and moved little despite the bumps and ruts. He sat rigidly upright and rested his large hands decorously on his lap. His large face, strangely ascetic, was a portrait of Serenity personified.

They passed through unlit groves and plantations that were so dark that the gharry-wallah had to turn up the wick of the kerosene lamps. After driving for almost an hour the gharry halted in front of a modest two-storey house along Grove Road.

It looked empty and its windows stared at them like black eye sockets. A thin mist was taking form near the ground. All around it coconut plantations stretched unendingly into the thick phantasmal gloom beyond.

Origen handed Aldred two bronze keys. “You may enter.”

Aldred hefted them in his palm. “I don’t think I can thank you enough.”

“I am a friend of your father’s.” Origen’s voice rose from the depths. “I knew him well. Live as you have always lived. And you may do well to stay away from trouble.”

“Trouble,” said Aldred. “Yes, I’ll do very well to stay away from trouble.”

Origen gave a half-bow. “Then I shall bid you good-night.”

“Good night, Mister—” Aldred faltered, scorched by the shame of having forgotten the name of his benefactor.