Demon Box

“Oh, no, not anymore! For whatever misery he caused, Papa Mao’s reforms have practically doubled the lifetime of the Chinese citizen. So Doc Fung could still be around somewhere, still waffling, still trying to reconcile the undeniable logic of Marxist dialecticables with the un-pin-able-downness of the free spirit.”

“Still in Dutch in China?”

“Almost certainly still in Dutch in China. By now he’d probably be branded a booklicking toady by the new gang, see?”

“I see,” I said, beginning to get yet a clearer picture of this old oriental fox. “Yeah, it is intriguing, but I don’t see how I could work it into my sportswriting trip. Where’s the pertinence? What’s the meaning? The moral?”

“Hey, I don’t know,” the minister answered from inside the black turtleneck he was pulling over his head. His face emerged from the frayed collar shadowed by that look of weariness and defeat again. He heaved a heavy sigh. “Maybe it means that He Who Waffles East and West Waffles Best. Maybe that’s the moral. But, shit, shipmate, I don’t know what it all means. That’s why I want you to find old Fung. Then you can ask him. Answering questions like that is what he’s trained at.”

He headed for the door, his face down.

“C’mon, let’s hit the streets. I need a beer. And I know a couple bibliophiles around the Telegraph scene that might have information more recent than mine.”

Trying to cheer him out of his downcast mood, I complimented his pretty new church as we passed. He wouldn’t even turn to look at it.

“I hate the prissy pile of shit,” he said. “It looks like some kind of chapel boutique. No spirit, no spirit at all. The woolen mill maybe didn’t have a fancy fucking spire but it did have some spirit. Remember? We used to get some fierce stuff spinning in that old mill. Marches. Sit-ins. But no more. No more.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked faster. “I liked it the way it was—funky but fierce.”

“Why’d you get it refurbished then?”

“I didn’t! It was my bosses, the California Ecumenical Council and so forth! Did you happen to see a couple years ago when I got awarded the Presidential Commendation? For our Runaway Ranger Program? That’s what started it. The AP ran a shot of our kids on the back porch. When the diocese daddies saw what an eyesore they had representing their faith in Berkeley, they all shit bricks. I think they used some of those very bricks on that facade back there. If my backhouse hadn’t been hid by all those morning glories they’d have shit another pile and bricked it over too. It’s all part of the city council’s integrated policy for the beautification of Berkeley—brick those eyesores over. It might not heal the sore but at least it hides the pus, is the policy. You’ll see what I mean.”

I did, as soon as we reached Telegraph district. There were as many patch-pantsed street people as ever, but the pants were cleaner, and the patches seemed more a product of fashion than necessity. Coffeehouses that once seethed with protest songs as black and bitter as their espresso now offered sweet herbal teas and classical guitar. I saw panhandlers buying Perrier water and Hari Krishnas wearing pantsuits and wigs to aid them in their pitch for donations. Nondescript doorways where spectral dealers with hooded eyes once hissed secret questions—“Assid? Sspeed? Hashisssh?”—now were openly decorated with displays of every kind of absurd apparatus, and the dealers sung out their wares like carny barkers: “Bongs bongs bongs! Freebase without fuss when you buy from us! Our paraphernalia will never fail ya!”

Even those pitchy clots of young bloods you used to see playing bongos back in alleyways had been cleared up. Now the clots coursed right along with everybody else in the mainstream, carrying big chrome-trimmed ghetto blasters that played tapes of bongos, I had to shake my head.

“I see what you mean, yep.”

The minister gave me a wry grin. “Fruits and berries, brutes and fairies,” he sang in a sad voice. “Hot and hysterical and hopin’ for a miracle. Did you hear that Cleaver is Born Again? Did you hear that they are trying to change the name of Earth People’s Park to Gay People’s Gardens? Oh, what has become of our Brave New Berserkeley of Yesterday, comrade?”

I couldn’t even guess; and the Telegraph bibliophiles had no more information about what had become of Fung the Philosopher than I had about Berkeley the Brave. And these citizens here in Beijing have been just as little help. Since landing in China more than a week ago I have hit on every English speaker I could collar, but the name hasn’t struck the slightest spark. Our smiling guide, the very faithful and conscientious and ominous Mr. Mude, even denied having ever heard of any Chinese citizen with such a ridiculous name.