This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 15 (Fri., Dec 23)

For some reason, Marv and Bat especially, but also Lon felt guilty about their having taken me over the edge, which, needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed. In traditional Chinese culture, this has been a tactic for millennia known as accepting your role as the weak one, then using the weak position to obtain your desired goal. They felt guilty for having given me what I desired, since they saw it as their having taken advantage of me due to their stronger position. Besides, I liked being pampered all day, regardless of what drove them to do it. This is why I needed to talk to them about wo haai gwaan hai which is a harmonious relationship together. But I wanted to relate it to their business endeavors; everything between us was going just fine as far as I was concerned.

I found Bat and Marv in the office, discussing the big business deal at hand. When I knocked, they looked surprised. "Feeling better?" Bat inquired.

"Yeah." I entered without smiling. "Look, Guys, we have to talk." I could tell that both were immediately uncomfortable. I let them squirm for a little bit, before I came to the point. "And this is what we have to talk about." I let them stew some more. "How to negotiate with Chinese."

They gave each other a what-the-fuck look and Marv said: "I don't follow."

I smiled contemptuously. "I could have told you that. I just came here to tell you two how to behave tonight." My tone was anything but cordial.

"God damn it." Bat was giving me a go-to-Hell glare. "You could be my son, and you think you're going to tell me how to behave?" He crossed his arms and sat on the edge of the desk.

I walked over and gave him a kiss on the forehead to soothe things. "And that's exactly my point." I let my voice go noticeably more congenial. "We'll be dealing with people, who try to avoid interpersonal unpleasantness at all cost." I grinned and kissed him again.

Marv seemed more than just casually interested. "Give us an example."

"I just did." Marv looked at me surprised from where he was sitting; I leaned over to ruffle his thick curly hair. "If I'd come in and asked: 'Hi, Guys, can we talk?' neither of you would have given it a second thought. But the way I said it, made both of you put up your aggressive defense mechanisms."

"So, what you're talking about is," Bat had visibly relaxed and winked at me. "it's not what you say, it's how you say it?"

"That's exactly it." At this very moment, I had to check my own tone as not to sound pedantic. "As a matter of fact, I would go as far as to say that it doesn't make any difference if you can understand the language or not. It all boils down to how you hold your body, your facial expressions, and the pleasantness of your speaking tone."

"Ah, come on, Ben," Marv objected somewhat condescendingly. "you don't mean to tell me--"

"--I do mean to tell you exactly that." I laughed at him, which made the already insecure Marv contemplate the floor. "When you were kids. You're parents spoke Yiddish at home, didn't they?"

Marv nodded, still looking at the floor.

"And I would imagine that yours spoke Mongolian at home?" I looked back at Bat, to see him nod in agreement, but he was concentrating on Marv. "And each couple knew instinctively that the other couple next door didn't care to have anything to do with them." I chuckled and looked at Marv. "I'm fairly sure that neither side ran up to the property line and screamed: 'I hate your fucking guts.' and then threw rotten tomatoes."

That sort of broke the still tense atmosphere. And both men admitted that none of them had been quite that uncouth.

"But neither of you can cope with being made to feel guilty." They gave me the deer-in-the-headlights stare. "Like yesterday." I couldn't help laughing.

"We gave you a pretty hard work out." Bat seemed as if he were on the verge of giggling, but I knew that it was just his way of releasing nervous energy. "The three of us panicked, when you passed out."

"Believe me," I looked at each individually. "it was pleasure overload. Some would say that I'd approached Nirvana."

"Then why didn't you tell us that you were okay?" Marv seemed a little sulky.

""What are you, nuts?" I laughed. "And ruin a perfectly good guilt trip?" I had to laugh again; this time they joined me. "I got more cuddles and cups of hot cocoa out of you guys, than I normally would have, didn't I?"

"But we were worried that we'd done something wrong." Marv pulled at the crotch of his jeans.

"And that's what happens to Westerners, when they negotiate with Orientals who come from traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and stratagems. Westerners always believes that they are the stronger party." I sat down on the typing chair resting my chest on its back. "You'll always lose, because you're short sighted and impatient. And Americans, in particular, have no idea of gwaan hai."

Bat was nodding and Marv looked thoroughly confused but just as interested. "You're gonna have to explain that."

"Roughly translated, gwaan hai means mishpochah, your network of close social contacts, which are, at the same time, also close business contacts. And wo haai gwaan hai means the close network, which co-exists in harmony. Chinese won't allow any big clashes to disrupt their gwaan hai. Everyone knows that in both business and private lives everyone will disagree on something or another, and each little disagreement is worked out as it occurs, so that the ultimate clash doesn't happen."

"What about Alice and your mother, then?" Marv was totally correct to point this out, and it hit a nerve.

"From the point of view of gwaan hai, their behavior is totally inexplicable. Either they have been talking to someone from the fundamentalist Christians, or they've abandoned their roots." I gave myself a little while to think. "Of course, my behavior wasn't exemplary, but I would have apologized, if she hadn't thrown me out." I rested my hand on Bat's thigh and squeezed. "And our Bat, here, did what any sensible father would have done to protect his kids; he isolated the troublemaker."

"So, what do we do tonight?" Bat wanted to know, looking at Marv who was nodding.

"Basically keep a pleasant smile on your face and have fun. It's a social gathering to get to know you. Which makes your posing as my bodyguard impracticable. And," I raised my index finger for emphasis despite the danger of appearing pedantic. "do not talk business."

"So, in other words, I should leave the contract here." Marv appeared a little disappointed.

"As far as they're concerned, it's not worth the paper it's written on. It’s a necessary evil, to be able to buy property in this country." This made both Marv and Bat take notice. "Chinese think that smart people keep officialdom, like police and courts, as far away as possible. They consider anyone who takes someone to court and who is not able to settle the matter amongst themselves to be childish. They regard litigious people as you would a third-grade tattletale."

Marv frowned. "Does that mean that I should stay home?”

"Absolutely not. You're one of the main men of our mini-triad. And they appreciate that the role you play is essential to buying property, especially in Brooklyn." I pushed the corners of my own mouth upwards, to indicate that he should smile. He did, and I winked at him. "But there's also a reason why this is on your Sabbath, and why they will only negotiate in Cantonese."

"You mean that there's a reason, other than being just fucking annoying?" Marv was frowning again, so I gave him the sign to smile. He laughed and looked away.

"How we approach this, will tell them more about who we are than a private investigator could ever find out." This got their attention. "For example, if Bat and this project mean more to you than does your tradition."

"Why is that important?" Marv was skeptical, which is part of Marv's nature, not to mention his job.

"To expose your loyalties." I tapped a finger onto the top of the desk. "It's imperative that we go there as one family. We have to dress similarly, we have to act as a unit. Feel free to speak Yiddish with Bat and me, and I'll let Bat respond and just nod my head. And Bat can talk to us in Mongolian, where I'll give him a yes or no answer, and you can use as much as you remember. That'll keep them on their toes, and prove to them that we are an impenetrably tightly knit group."

Marv thought a second. "If the contract is useless, then why this whole shtick about negotiating only in Cantonese?"

"It's like inviting you out to dinner after sundown on a Friday." I gave him my best reasoning, which I hoped was correct, and that they would be willing to communicate in English, once I was gone. "They know that Bat's family is Mongolian. And tradition has it that the Mongols seriously dislike the Chinese. But they don't know whether Bat's family is from Outer or Inner Mongolia. If they came from Inner Mongolia, which is a part of China, they could easily speak Mandarin, which is the usual language for formal negotiations in all of China. But even if his wife is Cantonese, he probably wouldn't be able to speak it well enough to negotiate this sale. This makes him have to go to a lot of trouble getting someone to translate."

"In other words, they want to know how much this sale means to Marv and me." Bat was finding this amusing.

"Seems like it." I laughed. "You might also give the head honcho a check for say $1,680."

Marv's face lighted up in surprise. "You're talking about bribing the guy?"

Bat and I laughed, and he explained: "It's like you showing up on the Sabbath, or me getting Ben to translate things. It helps to develop good relations. One-six-eight are lucky numbers and their added combinations are also lucky numbers."

"Superstition." was Marv's comment.

"Like everything religious." was my take on things. "But if we can make it pay off, why not?"

***

Everything went exceedingly well at the dinner. As it turned out, the main investor, Dr. Liang, was actually from Hong Kong and not from the States, as we'd assumed. When Bat presented him with the red envelope containing the check, he was surprised and apparently genuinely grateful. He said that he would have it framed rather than cashing it. The gesture was much more important to him than the money. Someone had told him that Americans, even Chinese Americans, were insensitive, money-hungry barbarians, and he was delighted to discover differently.

Dr. Liang, had been looking for a resettlement possibility for his family, which in Chinese terms could mean anywhere upward of two hundred people, because Hong Kong was going to be turned over to the People's Republic in 1997. That would be in only thirty-one years, which again in Chinese terms meant tomorrow. Besides, there were an increasing number of riots against British colonial rule, which could move up that date. And in view of Mao's launch of his Cultural Revolution, he was afraid of what would happen after the handover.

Dr. Liang complemented us on our matching Mongolian sweaters. He was all smiles when I told him that Bat's mother had made them for us. What I didn't tell him was that Bat had a whole closet full. All three cardigans had the same knitted curvilineal pattern, set off by knitted texture rather than by different colors. Mine had bone buttons and was dark red.

Oddly, none of them had any smell. I'd assumed that Yak wool would smell, not unpleasantly, but at least it would smell a little of, well, Yak. Even Dr. Liang sniffed my sleeve when I told him that it was Yak wool. He smiled broadly, but said nothing. Bat told me later that there was no smell due to the fact that pure Yak wool made them extremely soft, resistant to odor and uncommonly durable. Supposedly, not even Yak shit smelled, an assertion I found just a little farfetched.

I was also thankful that Bat's mother had gone to all the trouble to knit these elaborate cardigans; it had been snowing for most of the day, and was starting to build up. The weather had gone totally weird. We had thunder and lightning accompanying the snow storm. Fortunately, we only had to drive from Chinatown across the Manhattan Bridge to south Brooklyn. Both the bridge and Ocean Parkway had been among the first roads to be cleared.

Too bad Currier & Ives were already dead, they would have loved this. Well, at least, all the Christians were going to get their cherished white Christmas.