A Temple of Forgotten Spirits

The Shade of Lo Man Gong-2

“My name’s cheap; I’ll sign.” I took the pen the guy held out and wrote my name. They were confident they could cure me; most likely, they were testing their cures for side effects, like to see if curing malaria made my feet jettison my toes or something.

I spent the rest of the day getting acquainted with my new surroundings. Outside the rat’s office, Marian led me down another long rectangular room to the far end. The near half was the regular infirmary of twelve beds, where they kept inmates who were contagious but not sick enough for a hospital. It was empty now and the overhead lights were out.

The far half was the research unit. One portion of it was of empty of people, though the beds were full of strange elaborate contraptions made of clear plastic tubes and cubes and swirly shapes. The area against the far wall was lit up.

This section had four beds facing the wall so the occupants could see a small black-and-white TV. Another two beds were placed alongside the TV. To the left stood a desk with an old manual typewriter and a telephone. Marian pointed out my bed, against one of the far walls, and left.

I sat down and looked around. The three other beds in my row were full, and all three guys were asleep. One, however—despite being asleep or maybe delirious—kept rolling around and sitting up. He was in his thirties and glistened with a layer of sweat, like a roasting duck. Every time he rolled my way, he showed a stare that clearly saw nothing this side of dreamland. The guy in the middle was black and lay face down on the mattress, as motionless as the bed itself. The bed next to me held another white guy who seemed to be sleeping normally.

I didn’t have much to do. After a moment, I got up and turned on the TV, and spent the morning watching game shows. Marian came in and gave me a shot as I observed a young blonde housewife decide whether to accept three hundred dollars and go home, or risk it all by continuing to play. As Marian eased any number of tiny malaria bugs into my bloodstream, the contestant won another seventy-five dollars by agreeing to have two live frogs dropped into her halter top. Between the two of us, I suspected she had the better deal.

Marian brought me lunch on one of the metal trays and I watched an old black-and-white horror movie. None of my companions in experimentation woke up.

Marian glanced at the movie on TV as she breezed through to collect my lunch tray. “Looks like the malaria unit, here.”

I watched her go, then looked back at the movie.

On the screen, a German doctor in a long white coat was giving injections to a bunch of people strapped down on narrow cots, all in a row. Except for the straps, they looked very much like my snoozing partners and I did. As I watched, one of them raised his palm and started screaming in horror when he saw fur growing on it.

I looked at my own palm. It was sweaty, but not hirsute.

Yet.

The movie was dull, and my eyes kept closing. So, I had awakened screaming again last night. That kept happening. I didn’t remember my dreams—nightmares, really—but I knew what they were about. After all, what was I doing in jail, anyhow? Then again, it was easier than sweeping grocery stores, a position from which I had no doubt been cashiered.

I drifted off to sleep once again, with the sound of muffled shrieks and whimpers emanating from the little TV. One guy had stolen a straight razor, either to escape or to shave his palms. This room was better than a dormitory full of men talking.

I woke up to the sensation of a cool thermometer sliding between my teeth. I squinted my eyes open and gazed at Marian as she also held my wrist and studied her watch. Painfully bright streaks of sunlight slanted severely through the windows, set high in the walls. Apparently dinner time was approaching. I could feel that I had a fever, but it didn’t seem too bad. Yet.

When Marian began shaking down the mercury, I asked, “What’d it say?”

“I’ll get you some aspirin.”

I tried to make a joke about a talking thermometer, but she turned away too soon.

Marian gave me the aspirin, brought me dinner, and went off duty. A smaller, younger nurse with dirty-blonde hair came on, but I floated back to sleep before I heard her speak.

The dream was a vision:

A hand gripped the sword handle, and hard muscles tensed along the forearm.

I.

I.

I am.

I am.

I am the law.

The law is mine.

I am the law.

The clash of steel in the night, the swirl of robes, and the screaming of horses faded away in spinning moonbeams.

#

I awakened suddenly, comfortably cool in the darkened infirmary. My diseased comrades were all still breathing, from what I could tell. I supposed one or two of them had awakened occasionally when I was sleeping. For their sake, I hoped so. I turned to one side, where the gentle moonlight streaked in through the windows. A heavyset elderly man sat fused with the light, up on the high windowsill of yellow cinder blocks.

Discounting the sight, I closed my eyes to go back to sleep. Though the aspirin had taken my fever down, I was still sick and needed rest. Yet…

I looked again. The strange shape was still there, a kind of shade against the moonlight, translucent but sharply defined. It was an old man, Chinese by race and heritage, wearing a rumpled, baggy black suit and a battered brown felt hat with a broad brim. It might have been a ‘20s snap-brim, back when it still had some firmness.

“You see me, eh, c******n?” His voice was gentle, hoarse, and accented. The outline of his hat and head had changed; he had turned to face me.

Delirious, I thought to myself, and closed my eyes again.

Then again…

I looked once more. He was still there, an old man perched up high, with moonlight glowing through his form.

“Why you here, c******n?”

No one else was awake here. If I talked to a window for a little while, no one else would know.

“Judge gave me a little time.” I cleared my throat, which was hoarse from disuse. “Disturbing the peace, vandalism, assault. I forget exactly what.”

“You do it?”

“No! I mean, I did, but I didn’t do anything wrong. I was trying to help. Only, the owners of this place—this little restaurant—called the cops and had me thrown in jail. Not the guys who were pestering their kid.”

“Why they do that?”

“I…I’m not sure.”

“You don’t know why they do that?”

“I said no.” I answered with anger, but was too tired to project my voice any. Besides, getting mad at a hallucination was silly. I was just sick enough not to care if he was real or not.

“You good boy; that’s good.” He nodded to himself. “Who you?”

“I’m Jack Hong. Who are you?”

He smiled, slowly and wearily. “Nobody care me. You call me, ah, Lo Man Gong. Okay?”

Lo Man Gong, the slang term for the old men of Chinatown in earlier times. A general term he was taking for a name.

“Okay,” I said aloud.

“You like me.”

“Huh? I guess so.”

“No, no. You like me.”

“Sure. I like you.”

He shook his head. “No, I mean, you and me, alla same.”

“Mm—oh. We’re alike?”

“Yah, we alike.” He nodded sharply, his hat exaggerating the movement. “We Tong yun.”

Tong yun, people of Tang. It was an old slang term for people from Guangdong Province, who still spoke the language of the Golden Age of China under the Tang Dynasty. I knew just a little about that sort of thing, stuff I had picked up here and there.

He confirmed it for me. “Tong yun, yah. We are Guangdong yun. Not the effete Song, or the slaves of Yuan, or the hidebound Ming. Not the weaklings under Qing. We are people of Tang, the glory of China, masters of our world.”

I was surprised. In English, he shifted dialects, and used Mandarin names, not the See Yup dialect he used with

Chinese phrases. “I’m no master of anything.”

“Your life is your world, same as anyone else. You Tong yun, you make your own life. Your own laws.”

I shook my head. “I’m no criminal. I’m a law-abiding citizen. We can’t all go making our own laws; then there wouldn’t be any law at all.” I sounded like a schoolmarm.

He lowered his head and shook it. “Not outlaw, not lawless. Your own law. You live by the laws you make. Your principles, your life, your law to live by.”

So I got it, finally. He meant a way of life, and I did need something like that.

“You like me. I was like you. I come over here as teacher, many year ago. Work laundry, gamble some. Work restaurant, sweep floor. Now longtime Californ’, dead many year. Back then, c******n don’t teach much; they don’t allow.” He raised his head slightly. “Nobody teach you, eh?”

“I went to college…”

“Goo’ boy, goo’ boy. You go college, okay. But nobody teach you, eh?”

I didn’t say anything. First, I wasn’t sure what he meant, and second, I wasn’t sure he was there at all. I was sleepy and ill with malaria. With no more than a closing of my eyes, I shut him out and went to sleep.

The malaria really took hold the next day. I slept until the room was bright with sunshine, and awakened only long enough for Marian to give me more aspirin. At some point, she would start giving me the cure, whatever it was. Until then, I would sleep, take aspirin, and feel my fever go up and down. Sometimes, I was just barely aware of shots and thermometers.

The fever broke just before mealtimes, and I ate some lunch and dinner. After each one, I stared unthinking at the black-and-white TV until I eased back to sleep again. I thrashed a lot, trying to avoid the heat I was generating, but if I dreamed again, I never remembered it.

#

Directionless—I had been directionless for years. That dream about the hand on the sword, I recognized that in one of my half-waking fevered states: it was the written character for “I,” the personal pronoun, in Chinese. I.

To become an “I,” I needed my hand on my sword—needed my own laws to live by.

That’s what I had done in the restaurant, of course. Of course.

My fever broke again in the dead of night. This time I really did feel better, and suspected that Marian had been giving me doses of their experimental cure during the previous day. If so, it had worked well. Since they knew I only had two weeks here, they had probably given me the weakest strain of malaria and the most effective cure. Now, they would continue checking my vital signs and skin pigmentation for side effects as my recovery progressed.

The moonlight was still strong, and Lo Man Gong still sat up on the overhead window, where few people and no old men could ever get.

“Feel better, c******n?” He asked mildly.

The night before, my resistance had been low, and his presence had somehow seemed tolerable, if not rational. Now I was more clear-headed…yet he was still here. I didn’t like him as much.

I let my eyes drop closed again. Once I was cured of malaria, I’d be free of him. I had eaten twice today; now, if I slept well, I’d be in sound shape pretty soon.