The phone rang. It’s 4 o’clock. The ID on the call-in display somewhat worried me. I picked up the phone.
“Hi Joanna.”
“Would you please come to my office if you have a minute?” Joanna asked.
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
Putting the phone back to its cradle, I started to regret having answered the phone. I should have continued to eat my black sesame paste instead.
“I’m off. Have a great wee…” Eileen stopped mid-sentence. “What in the world are you eating?”
“Oh, it’s sesame and walnut paste. It tastes good and it contains everything, a lot of calcium, iron, vitamins.”
“It looks nutritious.”
“Yes, it is. I grew up on it, that’s why I’m so ugly.”
“Lord.” Eileen burst with laughing.
“I, I, I can’t talk to you ’cause Joanna just called me and she is waiting for me in her office now.”
“Joanna asked you to go to her office at 4 o’clock Friday afternoon? For what? Hope you don’t feel it ominous.”
“I don’t know what’s going on. Well, is she divorced?”
“No.”
“Is she experiencing a marriage breakdown?”
“No, as far as I know, she’s not.”
I stood up. “Then I’m safe. I can go there now.”
Behind was laughter Eileen rocked with.
The door was left ajar.
Knuck, knuck, knuck.
“Come on in.” The door was answered.
As I pushed the door open further and stepped in, Eileen’s laughter faded.
Sitting opposite to Joanna would allow me to face east and capture a view of hundreds of yards of King Street West.
“So, how’s everything going?” asked Joanna.
“Not bad, not at all bad. Thanks. How are you?”
“I’m good, I’m good. So it’s 3 past 4 now. Just have a personal talk with you, and it won’t take long, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly not.”
“Great. So let me be straight. Well, actually, I’ve been watching you for long time and thank God, I have a good memory, maybe, not as good as yours though. The thing is, whenever and wherever you talk, I keep my ears and my eyes wide open. If I were you, I would pay more attention to the words and the way I talk to David Solomon and Abudulah Syed, and the things I joke with them on. They both work as hard as you. And they are very traditional. You wanna learn foreign languages from them, fine. But please make sure you use the right language to the right person. Like, L’Chaim is for Dave and Fisehatak is for Syed. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Well, both of them are my buddies. But yes, I know what you mean. Sometimes, I just mix things up because basically, I’m a dummy.”
“You mix those up? You? So what are you trying to tell me? A, our department is made up of a whole bunch of dummies; or B, any dummy as you can easily get in my department. Which one?”
“Neither. But I feel everyone out-smart me here. Accordingly, HR people did a good job. Seriously, I am a dumb. I guess I was only lucky to squeeze myself in.”
“So, fooling me around is quite fun to you, eh?”
“Right, no! No, no, no, not at all. I never tried to, never had such intention in my mind.”
“Better not. Last week, when Tracy Lee told you she was pregnant, what did you say to her?”
“What did I say?”
“You know Tracy and her husband had been waiting for this all these years, and it’s not easy for Tracy, actually, to get pregnant is not easy just for her, but also for many people nowadays.”
“I know that.”
“But what did you say to Tracy at that moment?”
“What could I say then? Simply extended congratulations to her, didn’t I?”
“Well, I was just talking to Tracy’s husband right beside. And you were like, ‘What? You are pregnant? Oh my God! We made it! We finally made it!’ So, who did you mean by that ‘we’?”
“Oh no, I meant...”
“Did you notice how embarrassed the couple were?”
“But obviously, the word ‘we’ didn’t mean ‘we’, I was merely as too excited as everyone else. And I didn’t know the visitor you were talking to was Tracy’s husband.”
“Still that afternoon, when I was going to the meeting room with Mike Bale and passing by Leo’s cubical, I overheard something.”
“What words from Leo did you overhear?”
“He was saying to someone in his cubical, ‘VP Compliance is visiting our department here today.’”
“Did this interest you?”
“No, I was interested in someone else’ words after Leo’s, and someone was like, ‘We have too many VP’s already, and what the heck is VP Compliance anyway?’”
“I can’t remember if I said that at Leo’s desk.”
“Mike didn’t say anything, but shot me a wow-people-are-great-under-your-leadership look. Thank you very much indeed for embarrassing me by embarrassing the vice president.”
“No, it’s just a tongue slip. I didn’t mean that.”
“You didn’t mean that?”
“You know, my words sometimes don’t mean what they normally mean, and my words don’t mean what they sound.”
“What in the world do all those words truly mean then?”
“I merely tried to make noise. Nothing more than that.”
“Sherlan used to greet you every morning. When she goes, ‘morning, what’s up’, people would go, ‘not much’ or ‘nothing much as of yet’ or whatever is up. What did you say to her?”
“Not ‘not much’?”
“If that, do you think I would still question this then? Every time she greeted you, you went, ‘oh, I just flooded the washroom’. Honestly, I was surprised and even took your words seriously for the first two times. Then later, it seemed you flooded the men’s washroom ritually every day. Good job, eh? Could you come up with anything new other than flooding the washroom?”
“I never flooded any washroom since I was born. I just didn’t know what to say to Sherlan. She’s a very nice girl, and very cute, and I only tried to impress her.”
“Impress her with those words? Well, you made it. She couldn’t be impressed any better.”
“I only, well, I guess, I only needed help with that.”
“Oh here, I need help too.” Joanna started to look for something in the drawer, saying, “do you remember John Mensen? He left here a year ago.”
“Certainly yes, he once asked me to think a Chinese name for him, right before he was transferred to work in Waterloo. I remember he planned a vacation to travel in China then.”
“Yes, that’s after he got all settled in Waterloo. I know that because he is my relative, indirect relative.”
Joanna pulled a sticky note from the drawer and passed it over to me. “This is the name you gave to John. It’s your writing, right?”
“Yes.”
“How do you read it? What does it mean?”
On the note were three Chinese characters that read 蒋门神.
“Uh, you know, in the past years, I tried everything I could to forget my first language to improve my second, and surprisingly, it worked well. I found once you ruin your first tongue, your second gets much improved.”
Joanna frowned disapproval as I looked on her.
“And?”
“And, I look much younger than I actually am, I feel I’m getting senile. I hate to say I can’t help, but I can’t help.”
“All right. Very well, my brother in law Raymond is from Hong Kong. On one family party at my house last year, both John and Raymond came. I was beside when John was very glad to show Raymond what he’d got from you. Raymond read a lot. He speaks quite a few dialects. To quote Raymond, there’s a classical novel in China called Water Margin or Outlaws of the Marsh or All Men Are Brothers and that,” Joanna pointed to the sticky note, “John Mensen, sorry, Jiang Menshen,
is a figure in the book, and, he’s a notorious bastard and henchman. Nice try, eh?”
“No, I didn’t mean anything. Serious.”
“But Raymond also told me your handwriting’s very well. Next quarter, Waterloo office will need three people from us. And I will personally make sure your name would be on the top of the list so that John Mensen could excitedly and tearfully arrange a very special welcome that you will never ever forget.”
“Oh no, please no. Just, don’t take me wrong. I know I don’t seem to be understood sometimes because of the color of the culture I carry.”
“What culture are you talking about?”
“The culture of the city I’m from.”
“Which city are you from?”
“Xi’an.” I murmured.
“Pardon me? So how do you spell it?” Joanna was searching to grab a pen from around as her pc was already power off.
“S-e-n-t-a-i.”
“Sentai?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm, I didn’t hear ‘tai’ just now. But anyway, my cousin works in the immigration department. I will ask her to keep her eyes wide open on any immigration applicants from that city.”
“People from that city seldom come here. They have their own life there.”
“Then why did you come?”
“I came here to make sure Canadian people have a chance to get quality bak choy.”
“My grandfather used to tell my father, ‘son, you shall always try making your mouth the same size as it looks, not as a hippo’s’. And my father told my brothers and myself the same words. So would you please do me a favour and do yourself a favour? Try stay not too noisy in our department. Or maybe you can’t wait for John Mensen’s welcome?”
“I know what to do. Thanks.”
“Thank you. All right, have a wonderful weekend!”
“You too.” I stood up and walked toward the door.
“By the way,” Joanna’s voice sounded from behind. I stopped my pace and turned. “Do you know the whole floor is circulating a story?”
“No, I don’t. What story is that?” I started to feel nervous.
“Most likely, I was the last one knowing it. Someone talked to our people on the way back to the office from Tim Hortons and he was like, ‘hey, tell you guys a secret. Joanna is very excited whole day today’, when Leo asked why, then the guy was like, ‘because in the elevator this morning, I accidentally stepped on her foot.’”
“Oh no, don’t listen to Leo.”
“Leo didn’t tell me this.”
“Then don’t listen to Giovanni.”
“He didn’t tell me anything either.”
“Just don’t listen to any one.”
“Well, actually, you are right about one thing. You really excited me, that’s exactly why you are here. Now, look who’s behind you.”
I turned around. A man standing akimbo at the door was glaring at me.
“Dad?”
Notes:
01. 蒋门神 - Jiang Menshen, AKA Jiang Zhong, an infamous bastard and henchman in the novel Water Margin. 又名蒋忠，《水浒》中臭名昭著的恶棍和打手
02. Water Margin - AKA Outlaws of the Marsh or All Men Are Brothers, one of the Four Great Classcial Novels of Chinese literature. 《水浒》
03. Sentai - Japanese city. 仙台，日本城市
04. bak choy - Chinese cabbage or Brassica rapa chinensis. Nowadays, bak choy is the spelling of Cantonese pronunciation and has become a borrowed word in English. 小白菜或小青菜
