Pyramid Asia. Ian Purdie
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a letter, requesting they be at the Nagqu post office at a specific time so they could take the call. It took a week to arrange.
Ping had a cell phone and took less than five seconds to punch in the numbers Tashi provided.
“Hello?”
“Tashi! Is that you?”
“Hello mother.”
“What’s the matter? Why are you telephoning us?”
“I want to speak with dad.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“No I’m not. Quite the opposite.”
“Somebody else is in trouble? One of your friends?”
“Nobody’s in trouble mum. Can I speak to dad?”
“Not unless you tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong mum. Everything is fine. I just need to talk to dad that’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes of course I’m sure. Is dad there?”
“Wait a minute.”
“Hello Tashi. Is that you?”
“Hello dad.”
“What’s the matter. Your mother said one of your friends is in trouble.”
“Nobody’s in trouble.”
“Well why are you spending money on a long distance telephone call?”
“I need some money.”
“What for?”
“I have to go to Hong Kong.”
“What?”
“I’ve met a girl and I want to go and meet her family.”
“In Hong Kong?”
“That’s right. I need to borrow some money to pay for the airfare.”
“Airfare?”
“Yes. We want to fly.”
“Fly?”
“We don’t have enough time to travel over land.”
“I need to talk to your mother. Wait.”
The rest of the conversation didn’t go so well. When Tashi’s mother re-entered the conversation, all his remaining hope ran for its life.
Money had never been one of the blessings enjoyed by Tashi’s family. Instead they had been blessed with long hours of thankless labor and very little to show for it. They were blessed with each other and they were blessed by the fact that some of the seasons were less harsh than others.
Having their son phone wanting money was less of a blessing than a day with no wind. It was like being blessed by a dying leper.
Anything but money would have been fine. They could have given him a whole sack of turnips, several chickens or even a new born kitten, but money? Money was something other people, rich people had.
Tashi terminated the call.
He was poor.
His parents were poor.
His parent’s parents were poor. It was in their genes. They had been endowed with genetic poverty. There wasn’t much else they could be proud of except their turnips and their neat but threadbare clothes.
Tashi knew he had a deep well of pride inside somewhere, but none of it was of the slightest use to him when Ping took back her cell phone and asked how the call had gone.
Money was something you couldn’t bluff. When the bill arrived you needed to pay. Any other outcome was exactly where he was at, as Ping waited expectantly for his answer.
There is more to life than less. There is also the truth.
“I’m poor,” he said. “I can’t afford to fly to Hong Kong. I can barely afford to walk there. My shoes wouldn’t make it, even if I mailed them.”
Ping laughed.
TWO - WELCOME TO HONG KONG
Ping’s mother stood beside her father, like a delicately scented flower growing beside a gravel pit. Ping’s father looked like he’d had a bad day. Sweat filled the wrinkles on his brow as he contorted his unwelcoming features into something most smiles would be afraid of.
“Welcome to Hong Kong,” he said extending a paw designed to crush walnuts.
“Hello, thank you,” said Tashi, surrendering his small, innocent appendage into the patriarch’s formidable grip.
“So lovely to meet you,” said Ping’s mother after she and Ping had finished hugging and kissing each other. Her smile was warm and she appeared to be teetering unsurely on the verge of another embrace before checking herself and resuming her place beside the gravel pit.
An anonymous little man in a black suit scampered about, silently insistent that he was going to carry their bags. Outside in the car park, a large black Mercedes swallowed them up. The driver piloted the formidable machine through the streets of a city even bigger and busier than Xi’an.
Ping’s happy laughter filled the car as she brought her parents up to date with her scholastic progress and most recent purchases.
The car was ushered through an impressive wrought iron gate by two uniformed impressive wrought iron gate attendants.
The house was enormous. It formed the centre piece of an estate that could have fitted the entire Potala Palace comfortably into one small corner.
Somebody opened the car’s doors and they climbed the front steps of the mansion into an entrance hall as vast and spacious as the lobby of a museum. Marble was its dominant feature, making it seem cold. There were many, no doubt spectacularly expensive vases overflowing with professionally arranged flowers. Modern art hung on white walls. Above it all was an enormous crystal chandelier.
A large staircase drew them upwards.
When they reached its summit they were ushered into another large room filled with furniture that seemed far too precious to sit on. Tashi did his best to make himself less uncomfortable, contributing as much as he could to a stunted conversation gasping for life above the room’s intricately patterned rugs.
Tashi was certain he must be the poorest person ever to be allowed to set an ill-shod foot inside this temple of unbelievable opulence.
Then he noticed it.
On the wall behind his host and hostess perched an ornately framed oil painting. It depicted an object that Tashi recognised; an object he hadn’t seen for many years, since he’d consigned half of it to a box stored in the roof of his parents’ humble peasant dwelling back in the real world.
“What’s that?” he asked, realising too late he’d interrupted Ping’s father in mid-sentence.
Ping’s father stopped speaking and turned to consider the subject of his daughter’s young suitor’s curiosity. An awkward silence, punctuated by the ticking of a large clock, wallowed in the freshly created void.
“It’s a painting by a monk,” Ping’s mother interjected nervously as her mouth attempted to smile.
“That old thing?” asked Ping’s father. “I got it at an auction on the mainland. It used to belong to the Governor of Amdo Province.”
“That’s where I come from. What’s it supposed to be?”
“It’s a pleasing shape,” soothed Ping’s mother.
“I think it’s ugly,” said Ping.
“I don’t know,” answered Ping’s father. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be anything