By J. Keith Haney
Kilworth, Garry. Tales from the Fragrant Harbour. PS Publishing Ltd.: September 2010. 306 pages. $31.00 USD. £20.00. ISBN 978-1-848630-77-2.
Prior to reading this collection, all I knew about Hong Kong came from what little history I had read and Hong Kong action films of the 1990s. History tells me that the Fragrant Harbour (which is the literal translation of “Hong Kong” from the Cantonese) was seized by the British in 1841 during the First Opium War (the takeover cemented by the Treaty of Nanking at that war’s end), only to become the final crown jewel of the British
Empire to return to native control on July 1, 1997. Cinema plugged in a few more holes on the architecture and ambience of Hong Kong in the late-20th Century, but that’s like learning about America through the latest Hollywood blockbusters. However many kernels of truth you might scoop out of the movies, there will always be a striking contrast between the silver-screen fantasy and the flesh-and-blood reality. Therefore, reading Garry Kilworth’s introduction to Tales of the Fragrant Harbour reassures the reader that you will be getting a true feel for Hong Kong by someone who has actually been there. Mr. Kilworth lived in Hong Kong between 1988 and 1992, as well as Singapore and Malaysia during the 1950s and 1960s. Each of the short stories he has written for this collection is set in one of these three locales.
The collection is divided into two sections: “Once-Told Tales”, which consists of fiction that may or may not have actually happened (as Kilworth coyly notes, “Why spoil a good story with the truth?”) and “Twice-Told Tales” (a nod to Nathanial Hawthorne), which deals with the supernatural and ghosts that are a living, breathing part of Hong Kong’s cultural heritage. The stories are told from the perspectives of both the natives and the expatriates, colonials, and gweilos (a Cantonese term that, interestingly, translates as “ghost”), who are just trying to make it through their lives. One needless frustration is that two of the tales (“Mr. Ho” and “Memories of the Flying Ball Bike Shop”) are completely unlisted in the table of contents, something I hope will be corrected. Another is the seeming misplacement of some of the stories. “Children of the Volcano”, a Singapore backpacking trip with overtones that echo the original Twilight Zone episode, “Kick the Can”, is way too supernatural to be a Once-Told Tale, yet there it is. “Snake Dreams”, which recounts the struggles of a critically-ill engineer in Malaysia through his disease-fueled delirium, is way too rooted in the real world to be a Twice-Told Tale, but it is placed there, nonetheless. There is also a small number of grammatical errors sprinkled throughout the text that could stand correction.
Now, having said that, several of the Once-Told Tales deal with conflict, be it the straight-up confrontation between a butcher and a gweilo businessman, who is harassing the butcher’s daughter in “Face”, or a face-off between a British bridezilla and a monsoon that threatens her wedding day (not to mention the lives of the entire wedding party) in “Typhoon”. But others deal with the tragic consequences of friendship (“Blood Orange”, an expat’s recounting of his time in Changri Prison during WWII), lessons learned too late (“Walking Caged Birds”, a soon-to-be-divorced gweilo finding out why his marriage is ending through a caged bird he buys), and the shattering of illusions about how the world is (“Shootout in the New Territories”, which deals with a hard-nosed policeman coping with the aftermath of his first shootout, and “Triads”, which has a young Hong Kong gangster finding out where he belongs when he falls in love). There are a couple of misfires in this section. The lead-off piece, “Chandler’s Coffin”, is actually a very good story recounting a death-fearing Hong Kong gweilo accepting what he fears is a coffin from a carpenter. What kills it is way too much detail about 1980s Hong Kong that has no relevance to the story whatsoever. The story could have been told in half the page count. “Moon Day” is a recounting of a field trip from Hong Kong to mainland China (with the bureaucratic red-tape headaches that go with it) to celebrate a new-born baby. The story does end on a single, disconcerting note, but it is hardly enough to justify the boredom of getting to that point.
The Twice-Told Tales section is when the collection kicks into high gear, producing some of the finest tales in the volume. The opening piece, “Inside the Walled City”, pits a search party against the soon-to-be-demolished Kowloon slums, which is intent on taking a few more victims with it before its own demise. “Memories of the Flying Ball Bike Shop” finds a gweilo reporter at odds with his Chinese boss. His method of revenge produces the unexpected effect of understanding between both men. “The Dragon Slayer” chronicles a would-be modern St. George against dragons…only to find out that there is a hefty price tag to fame.
But more personal horrors lurk here, as well. “Island with the Stink of Ghosts” deals with a British Coastal Service officer wrestling with his guilt over the death of his brother during a thirteen-day assignment on Sargasso, a reputed isle of unclean dead. In a sense, he never leaves. “Love Child” finds a 1950s British colonel dealing with the fallout of an affair with a Malay girl. What starts out as a problematic pregnancy turns into the birth of a monster, with a surprising resolution that recalls Clive Barker’s Books of Blood. “Mirrors” finds a lost businessman in an Asian city (he’s never sure which one, as it is the result of an emergency de-planing) paying $400 to have a one-of-a-kind erotic fantasy. It is a night he is never going to forget…no matter how much he might want to.
But the best piece in this collection is, hands down, “The Cave Painting”. It follows an English couple through the atypical setting (for this collection) of the Australian Outback. They’ve hit a mutual rough patch, which becomes completely insignificant when they encounter a cave with a powerfully-suggestive painting. The man makes a mistake worthy of the most erudite Lovecraftian scholar, which leads to the best ending lines in the collection: “All I know is that as soon as we saw them we knew the truth, because sometimes that kind of truth can stop your heart dead in the middle of a beat, and you’re out of it all for good. Then again, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes your heart races on through, survives that initial, mindnumbing shock, and leaves you still alive and aware – and that’s even worse.”
For that ending alone, this collection is worth a look…provided you’re willing to overlook a few rough patches.
Tales from the Fragrant Harbour is available from PS Publishing.