"Garry Kilworth - Black Drongo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kilworth Garry)

annoyance or retaliation. I used to sit and watch her being verbally attacked, Steve
imposing his will on her with unbelievable insensitivity, and yet she took it all calmly,
letting it all wash over her, leaving her unmoved. She wasn’t submissive, not in a way
that was visible; she just allowed it to happen while seemingly unimpressed.
“I think it’s for Marcia to decide, not you Steve. I’m not asking you for your
persona, and Marcia is a grown woman. She doesn’t need your permission.”
“Yeah, but she’s my girl, Pete. I got to look after her interests.”
“You don’t need to do anything of the sort. She’s a capable person.”
Steve was typical of many expatriates living in a Far Eastern enclave
consisting mostly of other expats. He was conservative, thoroughly conventional,
and about a hundered years behind the times. His passport said he was an
Amer-european, but in truth we had long since left our original nationalities behind
and had become something else. I’m not sure what. Gwailos I suppose, which is the
Cantonese term for all Caucasians living in their society. Literally it means foreign
devil, but language is dynamic and it has become a quick description of a Western
businessman living on the China coast, out of touch with reality, holding on to
out-of-date values, talking in cliches.
There are Chinese to businessmen like Steve who exploit the local labor, but
they don’t make excuss for the poor pay they offer; they simply do it. Steve thought
the Thatcher-Reagan years of the last century were wonderful, but of course he only
went to Britain and America for business conferences, a few days, nothing more.
“Is that what you think?” said Steve, his tone belligerent. “Well, okay, I’ll
leave the decision to her, but I’m going to come along. I only have her best interests
at heart.”
Marcia was the immovable object who took all he had to throw at her and
remained intact, without reprisal, without going under. She was a small woman, even
for a Filipino, with a gentle smile. She withstood the storms and remained
undaunted. The Filipino maids, fifty thousands of them in Hong Kong, were an
accommodating group. Most of them considered a little abuse worth pursuing the
romantic dream of marrying out of the terrible poverty which was their cultural
heritage. Even if the man be a boorish old fart like Steve, twice her age and with a
body ravaged by too many gins.
“That’s what I think, Steve. . . .”
In the end, I had my way, and Steve evendrove us to the lab in his new
Mercedes, chatting quite amicably on the journey under the forest canopy of neon
branches that grew from buildings either side of the street. The night watchman was
a little surprised to see us, at eleven in the evening, but he let us in, and stood by the
lab door in that guarded manner of the Cantonese security worker dealing with the
unusual, wondering whether he is going to get into trouble for allowing someone to
enter the building after hours, even if that someone was pefectly entitled to be there.
The Cantonese like to live lives of complete order, within a vast sea of chaos.
Marcia went into the scanner cubicle a little nervously, though it is one of the
newer devices produced by Walker and Quntan, in which the subject stands upright,
rather than one of the more common horizontal coffin affairs of Stebling, Inc. Steve
chatted to the night watchman, while I took the reading, then when everything
checked out, proceeded to take a facsimile of Marcia’s persona on disk.
When I had finished with Marcia, I asked Steve to step into the cubicle.
He stuck out his jaw.
“Why? What do you want my personality for? I thought you considered it
pretty shitty?”