[9/24/2011] Perelman Tonight: On the town in Hong Kong -- Part 3 of "Mama Don't Want No Rice" (Chapter 4 of "The Swiss Family Perelman") (continued)

Mr. Haw's Tiger Balm Gardens, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong

"Mr. Haw has presented to various hospitals and deserving charities an amount in excess of eighteen million Hong Kong dollars," replied the spokesman. "He is a beloved figure, asking nothing for himself but the right to serve his fellow man." . . .

"Has Mr. Haw given any inkling yet as to who will inherit his moola? If not, I should like to include my name among the legatees."

-- from the conclusion of "Mama Don't Want No Rice"

The Swiss Family Perelman
Chapter 4, "Mama Don't Want No Rice,"
Part 3 of 3

"Now exactly what do you wish to know?" the interpreter began. Feeling that some preamble was required, I teed off with salutations from several American mandarins of comparable importance -- Eugene S. Grace, Lee Shubert, and the chairman of the New York State Boxing Commission.

"In a few badly chosen words, how would you sum up the theme of the Tiger Balm Gardens?" I inquired.

"Mr. Haw has presented to various hospitals and deserving charities an amount in excess of eighteen million Hong Kong dollars," replied the spokesman. "He is a beloved figure, asking nothing for himself but the right to serve his fellow man."

"He exudes an aura of goodness," I agreed courteously, cracking a sunflower seed between my mandibles, "but to return to the meaning of the Gardens. I sensed a definite surrealist influence, as though Max Ernst and the St. Louis Cardinals had collaborated on their design."

"The purely material is no longer of any consequence to Mr. Haw," the interpreter explained. "Spiritual salvation alone can save mankind from the abyss, as he points out in today's editorial in his three Chinese-language newspapers."

"I am hastening home to read it," I assured him. "But before I do, may I be allowed to put one more query?"

"What is that?"

"Has Mr. Haw given any inkling yet as to who will inherit his moola? If not, I should like to include my name among the legatees."

"I am afraid there is a fundamental cleavage between the East and the West," apologized the subordinate. "This way to your rickshaw, please." Nevertheless, as I bowled back to the Repulse Bay Hotel, gently flicking the coolie with a switch to ward off the flies, the audience did not seem wholly without benefit. It had given me an insight into the complexities of the Oriental mind such as one never gets from the sixty-five-cent luncheon at Chin Lee's and it had enabled the family in my absence to dream up a brand-new batch of complaints.

The most grievous, predictably, came from the missy, who was loud in her accusations that I had withheld her from the night life of Hong Kong. "What did I pack my evening dresses for, to wear in a Malay prahu?" she blubbered. "If I were Alexis Smith you'd be in a cummerbund fast enough." She contemptuously brushed aside my protest that Catteraugus, New York, was more diverting by far; she knew all about the evil waterfront haunts, the swarthy lascars, and the Eurasian adventuresses from the novels of Achmed Abdullah.

The upshot was that at midnight we found ourselves in a titanic, murky cabaret almost devoid of heat and customers, watching the only untalented Negro in the world execute a cakewalk to the music of a Filipino fife and drum corps. At its conclusion, as though my hair was not sufficiently streaked with silver, he broke into "Mammy's Little Coal Black Rose." I pushed away the plate of stone-cold spaghetti and signaled to the waiter.

"Bring me a check and a steel-blue automatic," I directed. My wife plucked at my sleeve, but I ignored her. "Also, please ask that minstrel to wait for me in his dressing room."

"Listen," she said insistently, "some people in that corner are waving at you." The arrivals proved to be an old college classmate now in the consular service and two extremely decorative chickadees, from Canton and Outer Mongolia respectively. A coalition was quickly arranged, half a dozen bottles of Polish vodka burgeoned from the tablecloth, and in a trice we were yoked in close harmony, warbling "Brunonia, Mother of Men" in pidgin. Before long a pair of laughing almond eyes cajoled me to the dance floor, where my 1922-vintage toddle excited wide admiration, especially from those who had never seen a man dancing with a pair of laughing almond eyes.

I had just consented after considerable suasion to call on the fair Tartar some afternoon and inspect a rare old sheepskin which had been in her family since the reign of Kublai Khan when my wife was stricken with one of her infrequent migraine headaches. There was no possible remedy but to frog-march me into a cab, drive to the hotel, and bind my hands to the bedpost with a sheet. This relieved her suffering somewhat, and soon the only sound in the corridor was her uneven breathing, interspersed with maledictions I had not dreamt she possessed.

Three days later, in a freezing wind that turned our noses blue with cold, we swayed up the accommodation ladder of the Kochleffel, buffeted by coolies groaning under our trunks. The harbor traffic flowed on briskly around the ship, oblivious of the importance of the occasion; toplofty little steamers bound for Macao rocked up-river, Kowloon-side ferries scraped past the bows, and quaint junks wallowed by, laden with Parker pens, self-winding Rolexes, and other imports vital to China's existence.

Free of her buoy at last, the vessel moved at half speed past the bare brown hills; the last cluster of government buildings dropped astern, and we were at sea. Already the bar had begun to echo with guttural commands of "Jonges! Bring me here a Bols!" and toasts to Wilhelmina. Knocking the embers from my pipe into a lifeboat to prevent their scattering, I descended to our cabins. My three companions sat in the quickening gloom amid jumbled suitcases. It was obvious that their moral barometer was falling fast.

"Chin up, friends!" I adjured them jovially. "Before you know it, you'll be in Java."

"And that's practically home," added my wife in a lifeless voice. She rose and stared thoughtfully out the porthole. "Did I ever tell you," she went on, "that in order to marry you, I jilted an explorer?"

"Honestly?" I asked. "What did you tell him?"

"I wish I could remember," she murmured. "It sure would come in handy."

* * *

AND WITH THIS GRIM TABLEAU WE ONCE AGAIN
BID THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN "BON VOYAGE"


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