The Year of Dangerous Loving. John Davis Gordon
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years ago Mother Teresa herself came here, and said it was her best mission in the world!’
Hargreave was taken aback by her enthusiasm. ‘So you’re really not an atheist?’
‘Yes, I am an atheist, that’s what I was taught at school, but Mother Teresa is wonderful because she is so kind – she won the Nobel Peace Prize! She gives her life to the poor people. Such sacrifice! So good. Here they look after anybody, food, clothes, bed, find a job. I always give money to Mother Teresa, and any old clothes the girls don’t want, even stockings and suspenders! Look.’ She burrowed her hand into her brassière and pulled out a hundred-pataca banknote. She marched through the open gates, up to the door, and slipped it in through the letterbox. ‘See? Even though I don’t believe in gods.’
‘None at all?’ Hargreave grinned.
Olga cupped her hands to her mouth and gave a whisper-shout at Mother Teresa: ‘That’s from both of us this week.’ She giggled and put her arm around him and then led him off down the street. ‘Do you?’ she asked.
‘Yes. One.’
‘The Christian one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not the Buddhist one?’
‘No.’
‘Not at all?’
‘No.’
‘Not the littlest bit? Even the possibility? Such Christian arrogance, darling! So only you are right, all the stupid Orientals are wrong? What about Allah?’
Hargreave smiled: ‘God and Allah are the same god. Just different names given by different prophets.’
‘But only your prophet is right? Poor Mohammed and Buddha, they made a big fat mistake? So you all fight each other, to prove who is right, ever since the Romans. Ever since King Henry VIII chopped the head off his poor wife to make himself the highest priest of England! And now today you are still fighting the Arabs who say you are infidels. Really,’ she squeezed him, ‘you religious people surprise me. Such arrogance, darling!’
‘That’s what they taught you at school?’
‘It’s not true?’
‘So you reject all of it, because of its gruesome history?’
‘Pathetic history, darling! Shameful But …’ She stopped and pointed up at the sky as Chinese thronged past them: ‘See that up there? That is infinity! It goes on for ever. No end. With millions of worlds? With billions of millions of creatures. Who made all that?’ Her eyes widened. ‘It is so amazing to think about it that you must decide that somebody made it. And that is what men call God. Or Allah,’ she added. ‘Or Buddha.’
‘And who made God?’
‘Ah!’ She held up a finger. ‘That is the answer! Nobody made God – He was always there, that’s why He is God.’
Hargreave grinned: ‘But I thought you didn’t believe in God?’
‘Not the God you Christians and Jews and Arabs are always fighting each other about. You are so cruel to each other. Such bullies. How can a sensible Russian girl believe in that? But …’ She held her finger up at the sky again: ‘There is Somebody up there, I think.’ Then she wagged her finger under his nose. ‘So you be nice to Mother Teresa!’
They climbed the wide stone steps leading up to the ruin of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, only the beautiful façade remaining, towering up, with carvings and colonnades. ‘This was also the very first university in Asia,’ Olga informed him. ‘Did you know that? Started by the Jesuit missionaries nearly five hundred years ago.’
Hargreave didn’t know that. ‘I thought it was just a church.’
‘No. The Jesuits were very rich because they taxed all the ships that came to Macao to trade. They wanted money to convert the whole of China to Christianity. But then the Duke of Pombal took power in Portugal and banished all the Jesuits and took all their money, but when the soldiers came to this cathedral they found everything gone, all the gold and silver and silk, even the library. The Jesuits were sent to Goa in chains, but the treasure was never found. So where is it?’ She tapped her toe on the stone steps. ‘Under here. People say there are secret rooms under these steps leading to the harbour, the treasure is buried there. Exciting, huh?’ She added, ‘When China takes over they will probably dig all this up, to look for it. That would be terrible.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I got books from the library. So interesting. There are some nice little museums here, I will take you one day. Have you been to the new University of Macao, on Taipa?’
‘No.’ Hargreave smiled. ‘Should I have?’
‘It is very important because now there will always be Western education in China. Like the University of Hong Kong. That’s good, huh, good for China, good for the rest of the world, it will stop China being so …’ She put her hands to the sides of her eyes, like blinkers. She added: ‘One day I would like to go to a university.’
‘And study what?’
‘There’s so many interesting things to learn.’
Oh, this lovely girl was no prostitute, not in her heart, nor in her head …
They stopped at a Chinese restaurant in the narrow crowded streets of the old quarter, where Portuguese wine was served. It was noisy and pungent with a multitude of cooking smells, all the Chinese talking loudly, young girls circulating with trays of dim sum, small plates of Chinese delicacies, and there were glass tanks of fish and crayfish and crabs with their claws bound. Olga sat with her back to them so she couldn’t ‘see their unhappiness’. She did not know that the restaurant also served snakes, puppies and monkeys – when Hargreave went to the toilet he saw them in their cages in the kitchen, but he didn’t tell her. They drank a bottle of vinho verde while they picked at a selection of dim sum as an aperitif before returning to the Bella Mar for lunch.
Olga said: ‘So you don’t know whether you will continue to work after 1997?’
Hargreave sighed; he was at a loss where to begin. ‘Do you understand what the Rule of Law means?’
She shook her head.
No, there was probably no such thing in Russia either. ‘The Rule of Law means that everybody is equal before the law, and the law always rules, not the politicians. It is the fundamental principle of the English legal system. The courts are not afraid of the politicians. But in China the Communist Party rules, the only law is what the Party wants, and that can change from week to week, day to day. And when China takes over in 1997 it will be the same in Hong Kong – despite the Joint Declaration which says that English law will continue to apply.’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t practise law like that, it’s against everything I believe in.’
‘So are the people in Hong Kong worried?’
‘Oh, the poor old average Chinese worker has no choice but to hope for the best – and pretend to be patriotic when China comes marching in. But thousands upon thousands of middle-class Chinese have emigrated to Canada and Australia and the US. And most of the British civil servants are worried as hell about whether China will pay their pensions, and there are very good reasons to think China will not, no matter what she promises – once they see these vast sums leaving every month to pay capitalist foreign devils who made a career of exploiting the holy soil of China, they’ll put a stop to the outflow, and there’ll be a lot of poor pensioners. Yes, they’re very worried. But the big business houses are staying because all they’re interested in is trade and most of their assets are safely offshore – they don’t care about democracy and the Rule of Law.’ He shook his head. ‘But they should – because Hong Kong is prosperous only because there is British law here to give them justice. Take that away and Hong Kong will be a dangerous place to do business.’
Olga