Kerry Young - Pao

‘I wouldn’t do that, mister. That boy, his papa is Uncle Zhang, Chinatown Zhang.’

Panama hesitate for just long enough for me get the strength for a roundhouse kick just like Zhang teach me. Then I punch to the throat with my forearm, and when Panama on the ground I stand back and say, ‘I am not a Chink and these boys are not Niggers. We are Jamaicans. We are brothers.’

When Zhang hear ’bout it him send for me. Him listen to me tell what happen then him say to me, ‘When I was a young boy in China the country was run by warlords. These men made very high demands on the people in terms of taxes and provisions and suchlike. They were unjust and cruel men. One day the warlord came to our village to collect his due but the peasants could not pay him. So he selected a man at random from the crowd and he beheaded him. And then he urinated on the decapitated body. And got on his horse and left. I learned two things from this. The first thing I learned is that the masses have the right to live without the fear of being robbed or exploited or abused, especially by the authorities. The second thing I learned is that one man can do only so much. I could have thrown myself at the warlord and battered him with my child’s fists. Or you can beat one white man in the middle of a Kingston street. But this does not change the way things are. And it will not make him behave any better in the future. To change things the masses must rise up. They must seize their ideal and take back their land. For it is the masses who will shake off the yoke of oppression, not individual men like you and me. That is what your papa died for, the right of the ordinary woman and man to live a decent life free from the tyranny of warlords and the domination of foreigners.’

After they arrest Bustamante for the mayhem up in North Parade they keep him in jail for four days and then them let him go. A month after that him set up a trade union, the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union. And three months after that, in September 1938, his cousin Norman Manley, a barrister educated at Oxford University in England, who represented the strikers, set up the first national political party in Jamaica, the People’s National Party.

Manley was interested in people getting the vote and Jamaican self-government. Bustamante wanted higher wages for workers. But to me, neither of them mean much. Sure enough Manley was a true gentleman and I believe he was right that we should all see Jamaica as our country; and see the life and destiny of Jamaica as being bound to our own lives and our own destiny. But it seem to me like him think freedom was something to debate over rather than something to fight for. So maybe he was too much of a gentleman.

Busta had spirit, I give him that. And he could command a crowd. But there was always something ’bout that man I never did like. He had a kind of smugness about him. A kind of arrogance that come from him believing that he alone control the masses. Maybe it was that same thing Zhang warn me against when him say to me, ‘Don’t think more of yourself than a decent man ought to.’

When war break out in Europe, being a British colony Jamaica get placed under the Defence of the Realm Act, so there was all sorts of regulations and controls over the price of goods and foreign exchange, and censorship of the press, mail and telegraph.

Then in 1940 Britain tell the Americans they can come set up military and naval bases in Jamaica. Next thing we know there was US sailors all over the place, parading up and down Harbour Street and King Street as bold as you like all clean and sharp in them navy whites. It turn out the women like bees to a honey pot, because the honey they could smell was some crisp US dollar bills and that was surely worth the time of day. And they didn’t feel no shame ’bout it neither.

There was girls from Spanish Town and May Pen, Kingston and Linstead, and Bull Bay, all in them favourite colour. Red dress. Red shoes. Red fingernails. Red lips. Red hibiscus in them hair. And there was boys from New York and Baltimore, Washington and Detroit and Milwaukee. All of them laughing and dancing, and smooching and drinking right there in the street. Right there in the doorways of bars that got their ground-floor windows painted white on the inside.

I think to myself what I wouldn’t do to see inside one of them places, but it wasn’t no good me even thinking ’bout it. Zhang would have box my ear if him find out I been in there. But then business is business.

So one evening when I think him open to suggestion I try soften up Zhang with a nice ripe Bombay mango. With any other man you would get him a drink but Zhang never touch no liquor, never seen a drop pass his lips. So when him busy peeling the mango I say, ‘These Yanks sure spend a lot of money on women.’ But him just look at me and carry on with the mango.

Then him say, ‘What we do here?’

‘Look after Chinatown.’

‘That is right. Look after Chinatown. Not look after American sailor want use Chinatown. You see Chinese girls do this? You see Chinese fathers want daughter do this?’

‘In the old days…’

‘In old days emperor have concubine, and rich man have wife number one and number two and number three. And what was that?’

I know the answer he expecting from me so I just say it. ‘That was imperialism, and the exploitation of the peasant and the subjugation of the Chinese woman.’

‘That is right. So now, what you ask me?’

So that then was the end of the conversation and I had to think to myself what else these American sailors could be good for, because Sun Tzu’s first lesson is to use the terrain.

I send Judge Finley on a mission to loiter ’round the bars and places these boys frequent to find out what they into. It was a kind of fishing trip. And within the week Finley come back to me saying him think he catch something but it might be just a sprat. So I say, ‘Never mind. What you got?’

It turn out some sergeant down the naval base approach him to say he have American cigarettes and liquor and suchlike. The suchlike turn out to be navy surplus, which is just about everything Uncle Sam give this man to run his business, this sergeant is willing to sell to us, from cook pots to boots and T-shirts.

Me and Finley go meet him way over Windward Road in a lounge called the Blue Lagoon, a favourite of mine because everybody in there is up to something so you don’t have to worry ’bout anyone reporting them see you in there. The sergeant is called Bill, a stocky, shifty-looking white boy with a little bit of blond fluff on his head. Bill come in civvies, but you would have to be a blind man not to know from a hundred yards away that him just step fresh off of the USS Farmboy . Well even a blind man would have smell him when all that washedness and scrubbedness step through the door.

Finley stand up so Bill can see him, and then Bill come over to the table and sit down opposite me. I order up some Red Stripe and we get started. We talking maybe five minutes before Bill get himself all agitated.

‘Gasoline!’

‘Bill, calm yourself nuh. And keep your voice down, man, this is a public place.’ Bill ease back in the chair half inch but him looking red in the face and worried.

‘Bill, you want me to take your cigarettes and liquor and all them other things and I do that for you. No problem. I not complaining ’bout that. In fact, I happy for the liquor because even though we got so much beautiful rum on the island rich people still pay hefty for that Scotch whisky. But I need things as well, Bill. There is a war on. We got shortages. And what I need you to do for me is rice and gas. After all, I need gas to drive your stuff all over town. And then I will need a little extra. And Chinatown is… well, Chinatown. We need rice. And that is all I am asking you for.’