We are all students and we are all teachers. In my experience, this is the actual adhesive which binds society together. It is, in my opinion, also the raison d'être for our existence. The process is constant, dynamic and tailor-made by the Great Spirit. The trick is in recognizing each other and figuring out when the class is over. Nothing is free and it is always wise to pay as you go.
At the time of this telling, I was one year into a two year divorce proceeding. A house that I had previously struggled to pay a mortgage for had been liquidated as a result. As a letter-carrier for Canada Post, I was delivering mail to a neighbourhood in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant. From the current real estate flyers I could see that house prices had somehow become quietly hitched to a Saturn V rocket and were steadily climbing out of the reach of any formerly normal working man or woman.
After much soul-searching and once again sure that I had found a proper match for my elusive dream of happily married life, I was already seeking a new house in which to raise my brood. There was a palpable undercurrent of necessity for speed in these transactions, which was alien to Vancouver prior to the Eighties.
Looking back, I can see that the first signs of pirates were already evident to those with eyes to see. Vancouver had somehow been chosen as a haven and the boarding parties of international investors were swarming the ratlines. People’s reactions to this activity were from the same playbook that hadn't changed since Manhattan was traded by Squanto for a box of soap. Everyone just made do, each according to their ability and resilience. Many contorted themselves to fit the circumstances, rather than attempting to change the circumstances to suit themselves.
My own financial, psychological and emotional mojo had suffered so many direct hits, that it lay in tatters. I spied a humble property on my delivery route that was perfect for my foreseeable future needs and I inquired as to the price. It was a corner property and had a basement. After some calculations, I reckoned that it would be possible to manage a down payment with my part of the divorce proceeds, which were being held in escrow, if those funds were added to some other small savings of mine.
I went to my bank, (one that I used to work for as a manager trainee) and attempted to secure a personal loan for the needed sum, using the paper proof of my future proceeds, my good reputation and my steady job as collateral. I mentioned my previous employment with the bank and the fact that I had also been a customer of that august institution since I was twenty years old. I mathematically proved that I could pay back the sum required within a single year. In return, the bank would have the title to the house to secure their risk.
The banker looked at me with folded hands and cocker spaniel eyes. He reiterated that bank policy was to limit personal lending to fifty percent of the secured collateral. Surely I knew that as an ex-banker, he added. I pointed out to him that after decades of bank policy requiring customers to pay thirty percent down to obtain mortgages, plus calculating recommended safe ratios of available cash for other obligations and the adoption of several other protective measures for both the borrower and the lender; now banks were throwing mortgages at people who put nothing down and couldn't possibly keep within safe ratios. I explained that banks were now obviously willing to include previously nebulous assets as factors in the calculations for mortgages, such as the new phenomena of rich Asian foreign student renters.
The bank manager smiled and looked at his appointment book. He said in effect, that he would be happy to give me a big mortgage for a suicidal down payment. He was not willing to “risk” a personal loan for the thirty percent down payment, that I could prove was forthcoming in only a few months. I smelled a big rat and so, I retreated. It wasn't to be my day. The little house sold within a few weeks and then was flipped so often that I lost track.
As the mailman, I never saw a happy family at that address when I delivered the mail each day. I saw a succession of drawn worried faces and a new subspecies of wide-eyed, fear-driven greed. In time, I came to realize that it was no longer a house. It was but a unit of currency. When there is a war being waged, a chocolate bar can get you anything you want.
Diagonally across from that house was a corner store. The old fashioned wood-frame sort with the living quarters upstairs. The proprietor was an old Chinese gentleman. He lived alone and had sold candy, cigarettes and magazines to at least two generations of his neighbours. He had a large adjoining room behind his cash register desk. There, after passing through an old curtain, the old man could cook, eat and do Chinese painting and calligraphy.
One afternoon, as I gave him his mail, he showed me around his entire premises. When we were touring his small garage warehouse, he showed me an incredible array of mouse traps that he had built. He explained that he had been plagued by mice and was firmly determined to catch them all. At the point of his telling me about this, only one diabolically clever mouse had eluded every trap and still remained at large.
I cannot remember what other topics we discussed that day, but afterwards, Bing Lam and I held short conversations each time I called in with the mail. I began buying my tobacco and snacks from him. My previous experience of getting to know my second father-in-law, a Chinese Canadian immigrant, had taught me that there were few people on this earth made to be as prejudicial as old Chinese men in Canada due to their initial treatment. He also made me recognize some of the formidable, universally praiseworthy traits and high standards possessed by those Asian gentlemen.
One cold rainy day, Bing invited me into his commercial sanctum for a bowl of hot, healthy soup. I had tasted lots of tong and his was a good recipe. It was made with slow-boiled pork bone broth, winter melon, green onions and home-made wonton. While I slurped soup, Bing busily showed me his ink wash paintings. He had a large table set up for this creative purpose and had evidently progressed far in his self tutelage of the art form.
His kindness of offering hot soup was repeated several times, to the eventual end that it became expected that I sit for tea with him on a daily basis. He placed an old chair on the store-side of his curtain and it became my chair. The third time I took tea, Bing brought me a large, old and very expensive book of erotic art from a variety of dynastic periods of the Middle Kingdom.
Bing stood clasping his hands in front of his chest as I carefully turned the pages. He was beaming with pride for of the cultural achievement of his people or so I thought at the time. When I turned a page depicting lovers engaged in coitus bestride galloping horses, Bing clapped his hands repeatedly as if to say, “Top that, Texas boy!”
I was subsequently and ceremoniously handed that old book over several days at tea until I had reviewed each drawing. I assumed that my host was planning to try his own hand at the erotic art genre. I was admonished by Bing to keep a sharp eye whenever I was in used book stores, for any similar old volumes which dealt with ancient Japanese, Indian or Korean erotic art. The book went back behind Bing’s curtain but hot tea was still offered to me on a daily basis.
We discussed many things and it was a welcome place to take my brief break each day on the delivery trail. I always asked Bing if he'd caught that one elusive mouse yet. He always said no but would then show me the very latest version of his home-made traps. I would then be briefed on the strategy employed by and incorporated within each newly customized device. We became like two generals discussing an important military campaign. At least it was important to merchant Bing. It had, in fact, become an obsession that gnawed at him from the inside out.
One day, Bing was very animated when I arrived at his store and he proudly ushered me into the back room. There, on the big art table was an ink wash painting he had been working on for several weeks. Handing me a felt-tip marker, he demanded that I write an English translation of the Chinese verse that accompanied the picture. I did as I was told. He said he had made it for my son, of whom I spoke often. It was one of the nicest gifts I've ever received. I still see that picture of shrimp, crabs and frogs in my mind's eye. Bing told me that the shrimp were the most technically challenging to draw.
One day when I brought his Property Tax Notice with his daily mail, Bing gave me a cup of tea and solemnly looked over the notice. He cleared his throat and asked me if I would do him a little favour. I said that I certainly would. He rummaged under his counter and retrieved a pen. He scribbled a phone number on a scrap of paper. He picked up his rotary phone and placed it in my lap.
“Myko, yoo caw tak-see man. Yoo esk wai tak-see too much-ee. Yoo esk wai ev-lee yea tak-see go up! Too much-ee! Mai biw-ding too ode! Tak-see too hai. I got mao-see, still tak-see go up. No gut.”
Before I realized what I was supposed to say, I was on the phone with a representative of the Municipal Tax Authority. I told him that I was phoning on behalf of a good friend whose command of English was somewhat limited. I asked the man to explain the justification of raising his property tax, in light of the fact that there had been no changes in the structure nor improvements to the services over the last period.
I was dealt with in the usual time honoured bureaucratic method. In effect, bureaucrats answer not the questions you ask, they answer the questions they would rather you had asked. If you pay careful attention, you will see that all shysters and politicians are trained to do this very technique.
I hung up the phone and repeated verbatim the circumventing bullshit that I had been told. Bing narrowed his eyes and poured more tea. I lit a smoke and said I was sorry for the hike in his taxes. Bing handed me an ashtray.
“Myko, yoo tlai akin. Yoo too ni-cee. Dis tai, yoo no tok-ee soff. Yoo no tok-ee nai. Yoo make ass-see-ho tew yoo wai tak-see go up.”
Taken aback by his critique of my telephone phone manners, I attempted a second call. This time I did not let the ferret who answered circumvent my questions. When firmly pinned to his wall of words, the representative admitted that it was indeed a form of robbery and then snickered that there wasn't a great deal that my friend could realistically do about it. I put the rotary phone receiver down in its cradle, a bit hard this time.
“Bay-tah, Myko. Yoo tlai in-udder tai. Wan mo tai. Yoo kin lawn hao, OK. No tok-ee soff to ass-see-hos, OK. Nao yoo can see dat tak-see man, he bikkist ass-see-ho in dis woor.”
I now thought of the bank manager whom I had unsuccessfully asked to loan me the down payment for the house across from Bing's shop. There would be other times, I knew. Feeling embarrassed that my weak social and negotiation skills were so visible to Bing, I also felt gratitude for his willingness to help me practice them. I also began to subconsciously wonder why this particular, peculiar old man was bothering with me in the first place.
The most animated I ever saw Bing was on the day he announced that he had caught the last renegade mouse the night before. I was taken straight away to his warehouse and shown the very latest trap and given a detailed debriefing on the strategy employed which had proven successful. It was fairly ingenious, somewhat complex and tailor-made to the habits and traits of that particular individual rodent. Physically, the trap was constructed in such a way that the animal could see no bars nor impediments to its free travel in any direction. But they were definitely there, inherent in its design.
I could clearly see that it was a live capture trap. I inquired as to the size, shape, age, sex, colour, nourishment and eventual fate of the vanquished culprit. I had imagined that I'd be shown its dead body in the garbage bin. Instead, I was excitedly ushered upstairs into the living quarters of Bing’s house and led to a bathroom at the end of a dingy yellow wall-papered hallway.
There, in an old four-footer bath-tub, which stood half-full of ice cold water, floated a plastic sour cream container. With two little paws delicately perched on the lip of the container, a wee brown mouse surveyed the watery expanse. Its body was rigid and its eyes were dilated in terror. It knew that the smallest movement would send it into the reservoir and that the lip of the slippery bathtub was far out of jumping range from such an unstable platform. A swim was out of the question, due to the temperature of the water and the smooth wall of white porcelain which would still need to be scaled. The beastie was well and truly fooked, as the Irish say.
The little mammal stood like a condemned monk in a coracle adrift in the North Atlantic, surrounded by Viking ships. I looked at Bing and asked why he didn't kill the mouse after he'd caught it. Bing clapped his hands several times and smiled.
“Myko, I kiw mao-see may-bee too-mo-low. Rye nao, I wan mao-see to think a-bow wut hee dun. So manee hetaik hee mai-kee fo mee. He nee to think a-bow, for lon-tie.”
“Bing, you’re wrong. Kill him or let him go. I’m sorry, pang yao, but this way is no good!”
With my utterance, I felt the distance between us expand exponentially, as I am certain that Bing also did. He left the naked light-bulb on for the mouse and quickly ushered me back downstairs to the store. After that day and for the remaining years in which I held that postal route, Bing never looked up from his counter to my face when I dropped his daily mail and I purchased my tobacco elsewhere. Class was now over in that school. I reckoned that we both had learned a few useful things.
fin