Not My Thing

He thought of his mother who had sat all day in the broiling sun on the edge of the kerb, surrounded by various tins containing Vietnamese food, a tiny brazier burning to heat the food when asked for.

Passing peasants, carrying their heavy loads often stopped to eat her food. Often she had as many as ten old, sweaty men squatting in a circle around her. They gave her a few coins in return for a couple of mouthfuls of her food.

When finally she returned to their one tiny room, she was fortunate if she had earned the equivalent of four US dollars. She always retained the scrapings from her various cans for Ng and herself.

At that time, Ng was thirteen years of age, working desperately hard at his studies, guided by the US priest. In the evenings, he would run to the small office of Dr Chi Wu, an aging acupuncture specialist who once had had a thriving practice, but now, because of his shaky hands, was losing his patients.

Chi Wu was eighty-nine years of age: a tiny, wizened man with a long white beard. Ng kept his office and cupboard-like surgery clean.

Chi Wu was lonely and garrulous, and he liked Ng. He often talked to him about his science and, seeing the boy’s interest, he expanded, showing Ng the various detailed charts of the human body where the veins and the nerve ends were located.

‘There is so much unnecessary bloodshed,’ the old man told him. ‘A man desires to kill another. What does he do? He uses a gun or a knife. If he had my knowledge he would only have to squeeze this vein or that vein and the man would be dead. In the same way, if a man deserves to be punished, if someone pressed this hidden nerve end, he would experience enormous pain.’ He kept pointing to the chart as he talked.

Seeing the polite disbelief on Ng’s face, he went on, ‘Give me your hand.’

Ng did as he was told.

‘Here’s a nerve here,’ Chi Wu said, pointing. ‘Now I will very gently press it… so…’

Ng felt a sharp tingle of pain shoot up his arm and to his brain, bad enough to make him flinch.

‘You see? If I had pressed that nerve end brutally, you would have been in agony.’

Ng was fascinated, and listened every evening, extracting knowledge from the old doctor until he was well versed in the science of death-dealing and inflicting pain. It was not morbid curiosity. Ng had a pressing problem and, from what the old doctor was teaching him, Ng realized that his problem could be solved.

For the past three Saturday nights, he found Won Pu, a powerfully built youth, waiting for him as he left the doctor’s office. He told Ng to hand over his earnings. The old doctor paid Ng two dollars a week for keeping his place clean. Knowing that Won Pu was capable of doing him a serious injury, Ng complied and, returning home, had told his mother that his earnings had been stolen. She had looked at him in despair. Without his two dollars, how could she go to market and restock her pathetic restaurant?

The following Saturday, he found Won Pu, a brutal grin on his face, waiting. With a quick movement, Ng darted away and made for a long, dark alley. With a roar of rage, Won Pu took after him. Knowing he could easily outpace the bully, once Ng was satisfied that he had drawn his enemy into a dark recess, he stopped. Won Pu came up, snarling.

‘Give me the money!’ he shouted. ‘I will then push your fornicating face into the back of your fornicating head!’

In the dim light of the moon, Ng saw the outstretched hand. His fingers closed on the nerve end and Won Pu screamed, going down on his knees. Ng was on him like a tiger cat, his fingers pressing the vital blood vessel. In seconds, Won Pu was dead.

From then on, Ng had no problems about giving his mother the two dollars he had earned, wondering what she would have said if he had told her how he had rid himself of the thief.

He kept this precious secret of death-dealing to himself. This was so precious, it was not to be shared with anyone.

Twice during the next two years, Ng had been forced to resort to murder to protect his mother from two men, lusting after her. It had been very simple. He had followed each man, pounced in a lonely spot and, without trouble, killed them.

When this thickset man had forced his way into the apartment and had told Ng what he intended to do, Ng knew this man had to be killed. It had been so easy to incapacitate the man, but he understood his master’s reluctance to have the man killed in the apartment.

Ng always thought of Kling as his ‘master’. There was nothing in the world that he wouldn’t do for him.

However, he had shot this man because he didn’t want even his master to know of the death-dealing power he had in his fingers.

Having lived with Kling for many months, Ng had come to realize how his master made his money. The fact that his master was a hired killer didn’t disturb Ng. It was a way of life, he told himself.

Well, now his master knew that he too was a killer. Who knows? he thought, his master might find him extra useful.

He turned off the light and went peacefully to sleep.

***