Chapter 15

The sacred scripts he was trying to prepare for tomorrow’s ceremony had proved too dull and he had dozed off in mid-sentence; now the fallen quill had left a scatter of inkblots over his half-completed prayer-sheet. He cursed using a vulgar expletive from his grandmother’s dialect, something he had remembered how to do since childhood. The horn fired again, through the back wall of the temple, over the empty courtyard, and into his dingy little office through a rattling window. He scrunched the parchment into a closing fist and threw it at a wastepaper basket by the door: it missed, evoking the second of grandma’s expletives from the man. The fallen ball of paper suddenly shot back, swept into the centre of the room by the opening of the door, through which burst a panting woman, in a flurry of blue robes and straggly long black hair, yelping unintelligible words. Her eyes flickered like a broken fluorescent light.

Ma looked up from the floor. ‘Alright, Fei; it’s alright; I’m on my way out to deal with it.’

He got up and pushed his way past the excited woman, trying to ignore her. He stopped a few feet outside the door, cursed, and then turned back into the room. From the ash-coloured surface of his desk he scooped up a cell-phone and a small glass jar of skin-balm, burying them both in a deep pocket under his robes. A key came off a peg on the wall, the string of which he kept twirled around his finger. He left again; this time he didn’t come back. The ghost money had arrived.

When Ma reached the rear gate of the temple, the lorry was already backing through it, its reverse-horn bleating like a wounded animal. The bald driver, with his elbows sticking through the cab window, greeted the Assistant.

Ma replied, ‘Hello . . . eh . . .’ He couldn’t find his name and fumbled into, ‘How are you?’

‘It’s me, Mok,’ the driver reminded him, ‘You ok Mr. Ma?’

Ma didn’t respond but nodded his head as he walked to the back of the truck, past the grinning face of Abbot Fang that had been emblazoned along its side. He scratched at his chest.

Besides Fei, other blue-robed volunteers had heard the horn and were making their excitable way through the buildings to the back of the temple and the ghost-money delivery. They gestured and squawked at each other in anticipation of the task ahead.

A miniature stone pagoda forced the truck to stop twenty yards from the storeroom. Ma quickly covered the distance and unlocked its heavy door; he turned back and snapped off orders, attempting to marshal his undisciplined troops into some kind of concerted effort. He soon gave up.

Seconds later Mok the driver materialised at Ma’s shoulder. He grinned across at the blue-robed ladies, his red-stained teeth, gums, and lips making him look like a ghoul. Ma stopped him with a glare—he didn’t like betel-nut chewers and he hated other men leering at his helpers.

‘Ten denominations,’ Mok announced, ‘as you requested; all denominations in five grades—here take a look.’

Ma took the packet from Mok’s dirty hand and slid out the contents. He flipped through the notes in a cursory manner. They were all there. The lowest grade looked as if it had been made from newspaper pulp, rough and grainy, the pale-red characters stamped out of alignment. The top grade felt like parchment, scarlet and gold words arranged among a delicate filigree of signs and symbols, crisp and shiny.

‘Fine,’ he mumbled to the chewing deliveryman, ‘it’s fine.’

Without warning Ma grimaced and turned away from Mok, ‘I’ll settle up with you when it’s all out and counted,’ he said over his shoulder, keeping his eyes away from the driver’s. He reached into his deep pocket for the glass pot and headed into the shadows of a disused chamber.

The temple volunteers meanwhile had started to offload the money; but by ignoring Ma’s pleas for co-operation, their effort was quickly degenerating into a primordial scrimmage—each using her own way in a desperate attempt to serve the Abbot. The excitement seemed to destabilise them. One young woman, who had scrambled up into the back of the lorry first, had completely lost control of herself and stood there flaying her head from side to side in hysteria, stomping her left slippered foot on the metal floor, in couplets. The others, ignoring her, barged past with arms outstretched for the money. They scrapped with each other, grabbing, snatching, pulling, heaving, and yanking at the bundles, before dropping them into a makeshift sack formed by inelegantly pulling up the front of their robes. Getting down from the lorry, burdened by heavy, awkward loads, was not easy and invariably the pouch would loosen and money would spill—bundles broke apart and notes began to flutter everywhere.

Fei, the woman who had roused Ma from his office, was now trying where he had failed. She stood in the doorway of the storeroom yelling wildly at the rabble for order and co-operation. The first woman to realise what to do with her load knocked Fei out of the doorframe as she bowled through. Fei reeled back into the dark room, managing somehow to keep her footing. When she had staggered to and steadied herself, she lit a match and stepped towards a huge candle on a shrine at the back of the chamber. It flickered with its new flame, illuminating the room with an orange glow. Fei turned and saw the bare earth strewn with ghost money; she cried after the woman as she fled then dropped to her knees to pick up the mess.

Assistant Ma’s silhouetted figure loomed in the doorway before the next woman could push in, his arms stretched from pillar to pillar like Samson holding up the walls. He gave Fei enough time to stack the bundles before turning on the women with incendiary words, like a snapping line of firecrackers. His invective seemed to subdue them; all of them besides the now-delirious woman who was still stomping in the back of the lorry—in couplets. He started to allow them in one by one, under his arms, making sure they stacked their bundles according to Fei’s unintelligible instructions.

As the fifth woman ducked in through Ma’s hanging right sleeve, a buzzing from beneath it gave her a start and she spilled into the gloomy room with a shriek. Ma dropped his arms, grabbed at his pocket, and tore into her with a warning; but her outburst wasn’t contagious and the situation remained orderly enough for him to walk away and leave Fei in charge. He cast his arm inside his orange garment and fished out the mobile-phone from its deep resting place.

‘Hello,’ he snapped into it.

A second later his brows almost met above his nose, pushing deep furrows vertically up to his hairline.

‘Ah, Yes, Mei,’ he said at last, relaxing his busy forehead. ‘How can I help you?’ His voice had lost its barbs.

Mei Hwa was in the pool of temple palm readers, called upon from time to time to lend a hand. But this woman, whimpering down the line, was not asking about the new roster, her schedule, or the bonus system that had been recently worked out to reward successful palmistry. She was instead enquiring about a private meeting with the Abbot and Ma slowly realised his mistake. Mei Li, Mrs Su, the glamorous widow was on the other end.

‘Of course, Mei,’ he said, suddenly making sense of what she had said. ‘You can see him any time you like.’ His free hand came up to the front of his robe and rubbed as he remembered his master’s words concerning the widow: "Give Mrs. Su the royal treatment," the Abbot had said.

‘No, Mei,’ he answered her next question. He held the phone closer to his mouth, dropped his voice, and instinctively looked around him. ‘No, you don’t have to make another donation.’ A pause ‘No, no; it won’t necessarily help in your quest.’ A scratch.

‘What was that, Mei, you think you got close to making contact with your husband at the last session? Yes, well that’s good . . . and you need to try again soon . . . ok . . . I will make another appointment for you with Abbot Fang . . . I . . .’

She abruptly rang off without conclusion to the conversation, leaving Ma with a reinforced impression of a fearful and scatty woman, lost in her confusion with this world and the next. His hand went into his pocket with the phone and came out with the jar of balm. He looked around to see if anyone was watching him.