The Fraternity of the Stone (22 page)

Hong Kong, 1962. When he was twelve. His "Uncle" Ray had been distressed because Drew was playing hooky from the private school in which most parents at the embassy enrolled their children. Ray's distress had been even greater when he learned what Drew was doing - roaming with Chinese street kids, hanging around the slums and the docks.

"But why?" Ray asked. "An unattended American boy in some parts of this city - those parts - can get himself killed. One morning, the police'll find you floating dead in the harbor."

"But I'm not alone."

"You mean those kids you hang around with?

They're used to surviving in the streets. And they're Chinese, they fit in."

"That's what I want to learn. To fit in on the streets here, even though I'm American."

"It's a wonder those kids don't just beat you up instead of accepting you."

"No. You see, I give them my allowance, food from home, clothes I've grown out of."

"Good God, why is it so important?" Ray's usually ruddy face had lost its color. "Because of your parents? Because of what happened to them? Even after two years?"

Drew's tortured eyes said everything.

The next time he played hooky, prowling the streets with the Chinese gang, Ray offered a compromise.

"You can't keep doing this. I mean it, Drew. It's too dangerous. What you think you're learning isn't worth the risk. Don't take me wrong. The way you feel about what happened to your parents, that's your business. Who am I to say you're wrong? But at least do it properly."

Drew squinted, intrigued.

"To start with, don't settle for fifth-rate teachers. And for heaven's sake, don't ignore the things you can learn at school. They're just as important. Believe me, someone who doesn't understand history, logic, mathematics, and the arts is just as defenseless as someone who doesn't understand the streets."

Drew's expression changed to puzzlement.

"Oh, I don't expect you to understand what I mean right away. But I think you respect me enough to know that I'm not a fool."

"Fifth-rate teachers?"

"Promise that you won't miss any more school, that your grades won't be less than Bs. In return..." Ray debated with himself.

"In return?"

"I'll arrange for you to have a proper teacher. Someone who really knows the streets, who can give you the discipline that your friends in the gang can't."

"Who?"

"Remember our bargain?"

"But who?"

Thus began one of the most exciting times of Drew's life. After school the next day, Ray escorted him to a restaurant in downtown Hong Kong where the food, though Oriental, was not Chinese. And where the owner - amazingly short, round-faced, always grinning, old but with gleaming black hair - was introduced to him as Tommy Limbu.

"Tommy's a Gurkha," Ray explained. "Of course, he's retired now."

"Gurkha? What's a..."

Tommy and Ray laughed.

"See, you're learning something already. A Gurkha" Ray turned with deference to Tommy, almost bowing "is the finest mercenary soldier in the world. They come from a town by that name in Nepal, a mountainous state north of India. The region's principal business is export. Soldiers. Mostly for the British and Indian armies. When the job's too tough for any other soldier, they send in the Gurkhas. And the job gets done. You see that curved knife in a scabbard mounted on the wall behind the bar?"

Drew nodded.

"It's called a kukri. It's the Gurkhas' trademark. The sight of it will make most otherwise tough men afraid."

Drew glanced with skepticism toward the short, grinning, seemingly ineffectual Nepalese, then back toward the knife. "Can I hold it? Can I touch the blade?"

"You wouldn't like the consequences," Ray said. "The Gurkhas have a rule. If you draw the knife from its sheath, you also have to draw blood. If not your enemy's, then your own."

Drew's mouth hung open.

Tommy laughed, his eyes glinting. "Good gracious me." He surprised Drew not only by his genteel English but by his British accent. "We mustn't scare the boy. My heavens, no. He'll think I'm an awful terror."

"Tommy lives in Hong Kong because many Gurkhas are stationed at the British barracks here," Ray explained. "Off-duty, they like to come here for a meal. And of course, they remember him from when he belonged to the regiment."

"You'll be my teacher?" Drew asked, still skeptical about this eager-to-please, jolly man.

"My, my, no." Tommy's voice was mellifluous, almost as if he were singing. "Dear me, my bones are too old. I'd never have the energy to keep up with a dervish such as yourself. And I have my business to manage."

"Then?"

"Another boy, of course." With gleeful pride, Tommy turned to a child who, unnoticed by Drew, had silently come up beside him. A miniature image of Tommy, even shorter than Drew, though Drew would later learn that the boy was fourteen.

"Ah, there you are," Tommy proclaimed. "My grandson." He chuckled and turned to Drew. "His father belongs to the local battalion and prefers to have the child stay with me instead of in Nepal. They visit when he's on leave, though in truth that seldom happens. At the moment, he's helping to settle an unsavory but no doubt minor altercation in South Africa."

As Drew later learned, Tommy Two's last name was the consequence of the British attempt to deal with the confusing similarity of names among a people who referred to themselves by the tribes they belonged to (hence the elder Tommy's last name, Limbu). Because the bureaucracy couldn't distinguish one Tommy Limbu from the other, at least on paper, Two had been chosen instead of Junior.

But Tommy Two was essentially different from his grandfather. He didn't smile. He didn't even say hello. Drew sensed his disinterest and, overcome with misgivings, couldn't help wondering how they would ever get along - or what this sullen boy could possibly teach him.

His misgivings waned within half an hour. Left alone by the adults, they went out onto the narrow busy street, where Tommy Two informed him in perfect English that Drew was going to be taught to pick pockets.

Drew couldn't restrain his surprise. "But Uncle Ray brought me here because the gang I hung around with was doing that stuff. He doesn't want me..."

"No." Tommy Two held up a finger, like a magician. "Not just any pocket. Mine."

Drew's surprise increased.

"But first" - Tommy Two moved his finger back and forth - "you have to understand how it feels to have someone do it to you."

The sight of this little kid assuming command was startling. "And you're the one who's going to do it?" Drew asked, raising his eyebrows in disbelief.

Tommy Two didn't answer. Instead, he gestured for Drew to follow him. They turned a corner and went out of sight from the restaurant. Less confident now, Drew found himself facing a still narrower street, cluttered with shoppers, bicyclists, pushcard vendors, and awninged stalls. The babble of voices, the mixture of smells, mostly rancid, were awesome.

"Count to ten," Tommy Two announced. "Then walk down this street. By the end of three blocks" - he pointed toward Drew's back pocket - "I'll have your wallet."

Drew's confusion changed to fascination. "Three blocks, huh?" He peered down the chaotic street. Inspired, he removed his wallet from his back pocket and shoved it into a tighter pocket in front, then subdued a smirk. "Okay, you're on. But it doesn't seem fair. I mean, while I'm counting, don't you want me to hide my eyes? To give you a chance to hide?"

"Why bother?" As glum as ever, Tommy Two walked down the street.

Drew mentally counted. One, two... Watched Tommy pass between a moped and a rickshaw. Three, four, five...

All at once, he frowned. Tommy Two had vanished. Drew straightened, staring. How had he done that? Like a stone dropped into water, Tommy Two had become absorbed within the swirling mob. By the time Drew adjusted to the trick he'd just witnessed, he realized that the remaining count of five should long ago have been over.

Trick? Sure, that was all it had been, Drew decided. A trick. Bracing his shoulders, mustering confidence, he started down the street. But as he himself became immersed in the crowd, he realized that this was more complicated than he'd first anticipated. There were too many choices. For one thing, should he walk slow or fast, be cautious or hurry? For another, should he keep glancing around, on guard against Tommy Two, or should he look straight ahead, so he'd be able to avoid -

A bicyclist sped by so close that Drew was forced to jump to the right, jarring an elderly Chinese woman carrying a basket of laundry. She barked what must have been unfriendly things at him in Chinese, which he didn't understand. All the kids in the street gang had been better at his language than he was at theirs. Maybe Uncle Ray was right about school having its advantages. Hearing a shout behind him, Drew turned in reflexive alarm, but never did learn its source. He stumbled on a crack in the cobbled road and banged against a pushcart filled with fruit. The elbow of his shirt came away wet with juice. As the vendor shrilled at him, Drew almost stopped to pay the man, then he realized that if he took out his wallet...

Tommy Two. Drew swung around, suspicious, feeling his stomach flutter, rushing forward through the crowd. The vendor kept yelling at him. But soon the yells were swallowed by inviting cries from hucksters in stalls that flanked the street. The smells worsened -stale cooking oil, charred meat, rotten vegetables. Drew began to feel sick.

Nonetheless, he hurried. He had to keep his mind on his wallet. Pressing his hand against the satisfying bulge in his front pants pocket, he reached the second block. Now he noticed the attention he attracted, a Caucasian among an even denser throng of Orientals. He darted his eyes in every direction before him, searching for a hint of Tommy Two, and entered the final block.

Walking fast, he felt relieved when he saw the end of the swarming gauntlet before him and a prominent sign, harry's hong kong bar and grill. He used the sign as a beacon, dodged a man without legs who pushed himself on a platform equipped with rollers, and swelled in triumph as he noticed Tommy Two lounging against the wall on the corner beneath the sign. With a grin, he crossed the teeming intersection and stopped.

"So what's so hard about it?" Drew shrugged with disdain. "I should have made a bet that I could do it."

"How would you have paid?"

Troubled, Drew reached for the wallet in his front pocket. "With this, of course." But even as he touched the wallet, he knew that something was wrong. Pulling it out, he blushed. The wallet was dirty, made of cloth. His had been brand-new polished leather. And this one, when he looked inside, was empty. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

"Would this be what you're looking for?" Tommy Two pulled a hand from behind his back and held up the trophy. "I agree with you. We should have made a wager." But this round-faced boy with gleaming black hair, three inches shorter than Drew though older, showed no satisfaction in his triumph - no grin, no swagger, no ridicule.

"How did you do it?"

"Distraction is always the key. I kept pace with you, out of sight in the crowd. When you mashed the vendor man's fruit, you were too confused to notice that I'd switched wallets with you. All you cared about was that you still felt something in your pocket."

Drew scowled, angry that he'd been made a fool of. "So that's all there is to it? It's easy. Now that I know what's up, I'd never get caught that way again."

Tommy Two shrugged. "We shall see. You still have thirty minutes remaining in your lesson. Shall we try again?"

Drew was taken aback. Thirty minutes left in the lesson? Briefly he'd assumed that they were playing together. But now he realized that Tommy Two was teaching him for money.

"Try again?" Drew asked, his feelings hurt but responding again to the challenge. "You're darn right."

"And this time, would you care to make a wager?"

Drew almost said yes, but suspicion muted his determination. "Not just yet."

"As you wish." Tommy Two straightened. "I suggest that we use the same three blocks, but this time in the reverse, moving back to our starting point."

Drew's hands were sweaty. Putting his own wallet back into his pocket, he watched Tommy Two again disappear like magic within the crowd.

And two blocks later when, just to be sure, Drew reached inside his pocket, he knew right away that the wallet he carried was not his own. He cursed.

As before, Tommy Two lounged against a wall at the end of the third block, showing Drew his wallet.

The next afternoon after school, Drew tried it again. The results were the same.

The next afternoon. And the next.

But each time, Tommy Two gave Drew an added piece of advice. "To avoid an attack, you must not invite one. You have to become invisible."

"Easy for you to say. You're Oriental. You fit in."

"Not true. To you, an American, no doubt all Orientals seem alike. But to a Chinese, a Nepalese such as myself attracts as much attention as you. Or should.

Drew was bewildered. "Or should. You mean you don't?"

"I move with the rhythm of the street. I don't look at anyone's eyes. I'm never in any spot long enough to be noticed. And I draw myself in."

"Like this?" Drew tried to squeeze his body tighter, assuming such a grotesque position that Tommy Two permitted himself a rare laugh.