The Windup Girl

But if a bank cannot be trusted, what can? A flimsy lock on a door? The ticking of a mattress, carefully unstuffed? The ravaged tiles of a rooftop lifted up and wrapped in banana leaves? A cutaway in the bamboo beams of a slum shack, cleverly sliced open and hollowed to hold the fat rolls of bills that he shoves into them?

Hock Seng digs into bamboo.

The man who rented him the room called it a flat, and in a way, it is. It has four walls, not just a tenting of coconut polymer tarps. It has a tiny courtyard behind, where the outhouse lies and which he shares-along with the walls-with six other huts. For a yellow card refugee, this is not a flat but a mansion. And yet all around he hears the groaning complaining mass of humanity.

The WeatherAll wooden walls are frankly an extravagance even if they don't quite touch the ground, even if the jute sandals of his neighbors peek underneath, and even if they reek with the embedded oils that keep them from rotting in the humidity of the tropics. But they are necessary, if only to provide places to store his money other than in the bottom of his rain barrel wrapped in three layers of dog hide that he prays may still be waterproof after six months of immersion.

Hock Seng pauses in his labors, listening.

Rustling comes from the next room but nothing indicates that anyone eavesdrops on his mouselike burrowing. He returns to the process of loosening a disguised bamboo panel at its joint, carefully saving the sawdust for later.

Nothing is certain-that is the first lesson. The yang guizi foreign devils learned this in the Contraction when their loss of oil sent them scuttling back to their home shores. He himself finally learned it in Malacca. Nothing is certain, nothing is secure. A rich man becomes a poor man. A noisy Chinese clan, fat and happy during Spring Festival, fed well on pork strips, nasi goreng and Hainan-style chicken becomes a single emaciated yellow card. Nothing is eternal. The Buddhists understand this much, at least.

Hock Seng grins mirthlessly and continues his quiet burrowing, following a line across the top of the panel, digging out more packed sawdust. He now lives in the height of luxury, with his patched mosquito net and his little burner that can ignite green methane twice a day, if he's willing to pay the local pi lien elder brother for an illegal tap into the city lamppost delivery pipes. He has his own set of clay rain urns sitting in the tiny courtyard, an astounding luxury in itself, protected by the honor and uprightness of his neighbors, the desperately poor, who know that there must be limits to anything, that every squalor and debauch has limits, and so he has rain barrels full of green slime mosquito eggs that he can assure himself will never be stolen from, even if he may be murdered outside his door, or the neighbor wife may be raped by any nak leng who takes a fancy to her.

Hock Seng pries at the tiny panel in the bamboo strut, holding his breath, trying to make no scraping sound. He chose this place for its exposed joists and the tiles overhead in the low dark ceiling. For the nooks and crannies and opportunities. All around him the slum inhabitants wake and groan and complain and light their cigarettes as he sweats with the tension of opening this hiding place. It's foolish to keep so much money here. What if the slum burns? What if the WeatherAll catches fire from some fool's candle overturned? What if the mobs come and attempt to trap him inside?

Hock Seng pauses, wipes the sweat off his brow. I am crazy. No one is coming for me. The Green Headbands are across the border in Malaya and the Kingdom's armies will keep them well away.

And even if they do come, I have an archipelago's worth of distance to prepare for their arrival. Days of travel on a kink-spring train, even if the rails aren't blown by the Queen's Army generals. Twenty-four hours at least, even if they use coal for their attack. And otherwise? Weeks of marching. Plenty of time. I am safe.

The panel comes open completely in his shaking hand, revealing the bamboo's hollow interior. The tube is watertight, perfected by nature. He sends his skinny arm questing into the hole, feeling blind.

For a moment, he thinks someone has taken it, robbed him while he was gone but then his fingers touch paper, and he fishes up rolls of cash one by one.

In the next room, Sunan and Mali are discussing her uncle, who wants them to smuggle cibi.11.s.8 pineapples, sneaking them in on a skiff from the farang quarantine island of Koh Angrit. Quick money, if they're willing to take the risk of bringing in banned foodstock from the calorie monopolies.

Hock Seng listens to them mutter as he stuffs his own cash into an envelope, then tucks it inside his shirt. Diamonds, baht, and jade pit his walls all around, but still, it hurts to take this money now. It goes against his hoarding instinct.