Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book by Maxine Hong Kingston
“Oh, but we have a tradition of shitting and pissing,” said Mrs. Chew. “The reason we have war on earth was because of a fart. Do you know the story of Ngok Fei? You remind me of him. Maybe you know him as Yue Fei? Yue Fei, the Patriot. What in your dialect?”
“Ngok Fei.” Most Americans would say Ngok. “The man with the words cut on his back.” His own old grandmother had received a postcard from a Hong Kong wax museum of a young man on his knees, and a hag with a knife behind him. The young man, fleshy and acquiescent, had made him feel sick. “The words on his back mean something like ‘First—Save the Nation,’ correct?”
“Oh, very good.” Mrs. Chew clapped her hands. “Your name wouldn’t happen to be Gwock Wai or Wai Gwock, would it?”
“Not me. If I had a name like that, I’d change it. I don’t agree that my first duty is to serve a country. Mrs. Chew, I’m running away from the draft. I’m helping my country but. What I’m going to do for the U.S.A.: I’m not going to kill anybody. An American who doesn’t kill—that’s what I want to be. You’re not trying to talk me into joining the Army, are you? You don’t see a war in my future, do you?”
“I’m no hag witch.”
“Tell me about the fart that started a war. Was Ngok Fei a farter?”
“No, no. He was against farting. That’s why you remind me of him. A long time ago, back before Ngok Fei was born, a Buddha was chanting with students in the sky. They were so loud and so lovely that saints—. Do you know what a saint is? A sunseen? A fut? A good person who has lived and died and gone to live Up There. A bunch of those sky beings encircled this Buddha and his students.” She was tripping him out as on drugs—spheres of protons and neutrons resolve into orbiting planets with rings and moons that resolve into the bald heads of monks, Buddhaheads. “And suddenly a girl student farted.” Mrs. Chew did a razzberry right there in the Unemployment Office for dramatic illustrative sound effect. A religious fart. “Well, the Red-bearded Dragon laughed; and the students laughed. You know how students are, always laughing at farts. But Gold Wing did not laugh. With one peck of his scissors-like beak, he stabbed that farting girl student.” These are bodhisattvas, Wittman thought, like in The Dharma Bums. A farting bodhisattva. With Toshiro Mifune as Red Beard. “She fell down dead.” So people in Heaven can die? “And landed in our world as a baby, who grew up to marry a man with a red beard. Red-Beard Dragon reared over everyone’s heads and almost caught Gold Wing in his claws and teeth. The bird-angel flew up, turned, and jabbed out Red Beard’s eye. The dragon thundered, and flashed lightning all through the skies. Gold Wing flew downward, where he tried to hide as a human being. But. He has just killed somebody, don’t forget. For punishment, he could not become human right off. The dragon searched everywhere, flooding burrows in the ground and washing away nests in trees. At last Gold Wing was born as a human baby. Guess which baby he became? I told you a hint already.”
“Ngok Fei. I see, he’s ‘Fei’ because he flies. When he was a boy collecting firewood, he fell lightly out of trees because he was a bird. He and his mother were in a jar floating down the river because the dragon was after him. And years later, when he was a political prisoner, his stay of execution lasted until the rainy season because you-know-who controls the rain.” Wittman loved link-ups. He had just learned the pre-human events behind the boy who learned to read by stealing lessons outside the schoolhouse window and to write by scratching with a stick upon the earth.
“Mrs. Chew Ying May? Mrs. May?” Unemployment was calling. The senior citizen walked through the swinging gate while naming heroes for the young man behind her. “Gold Wing’s cohorts were led by Wong, Cheung, and Hong. You’ve heard of those families, huh?” Yes, common in America. This is the way we would go to the gas chambers or the locomotive furnace in Man’s Fate. They reached the interrogation desk a long way from the finish of the story, Chinese stories having no end, sons and ghosts continuing to fight in the ongoing wars.
Mrs. Chew picked up a G.I. metal war-surplus chair with her prom-gloved hands, and carried it over to the desk for her interpreter, Wittman. He and the Government man both offered to help, but she was too quick. When everyone was seated, the Government man leaned forward across his desk and said in a kind voice, “Now, Mrs. May, can I help you? What’s the problem?”
His sympathy undid her. She pulled off the glove, and said, “Let me show you. To wear this glove hurts. And in the cannery I wear tight, hot rubber gloves.” She has this guy mixed up with a doctor. “Let me show you. See how it’s turned blue here? Like a Santa Rosa plum.”
“That must hurt a lot. It’s hurting you now, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, it does. It hurts bad. Aiya. Oh.” She’s going to get her way by trying to make the Government feel guilty and sorry at the sight of her poor hand.
“Have you been to a doctor? Has she seen a doctor?”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“I have a doctor,” she said, handing over a prescription order she hadn’t had filled. She’s saving money not filling her scrip. She’s proud to keep this documentation that she does have a physician.
The man picked up the phone, and dialed the doctor’s number. He asked whoever answered about Mrs. Chew Ying May. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Shingles, huh? Shingles,” he said, hanging up. “Listen, when your hand gets better, you come back here, all right? You come back here and see me. I hope it gets well soon. Thank you for coming in, Mrs. May.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much.” She tried to carry Wittman’s chair back to where she’d gotten it.
“No, please,” said the man. “That’s all right. Leave it there. I’ll take it back.”
“Thank you. Thank you too much.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You’re welcome too.” Thanking, being thanked, thanking Wittman, thanking the man, she got turned around and out the gate.
“Wittman Ah Sing?” His turn on the docket. The same Government man read through his application form and said, “Laid off, fired, quit, strike, or other?”
Definitely not out on strike, and he’d decided never to answer “other” to anything ever again. Come to think of it, he hadn’t had a confrontation scene where anybody said, “You’re fired.” He hadn’t had his chance to say, “You can’t fire me. I quit.” “Laid off,” he said, which is just the right answer.
“Since you came in on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday,” said the Government man, “you get backdated to Sunday. You get credit for this week as your one-week waiting period.” He was being given good news; if he’d waited to come in on Thursday or Friday, they would’ve started him off the following Sunday. “Wait a minute. I have a file on you.” Sitting on the blotter was a Notification of Changes or Terminations Due to Personnel Action re: Wittman Ah Sing. The store must have hand-delivered it by messenger, they were in such a hurry to unemploy him. “You might be interested in this,” said the Government guy, pointing to Comments: “He seems to hate merchandising, and can benefit from psychiatric counseling.” Wow. Written evidence that the establishment is monitoring our minds. He was to get his head shrunk on the recommendation of a department store. It’s official, he’s not fit for commerce. In this society, retailers define saneness. If you hate the marketplace, and can’t sell, and don’t buy much, you’re crazy. In black and white and carbon copies on file here and at the store and in Sacramento—“He seems to hate merchandising, and can benefit from psychiatric counseling.” Wait until the S.S.S. gets a load of this. Too crazy to fight for capitalism. He giggled. The Government man did not smile in return. Wittman should contain himself, shrink his head, shrink his face, but he let out another baboonish heh heh heh. The Chinese giggle. One of twenty theatrical laffs.
Jauntily, he tossed the Notification of Changes back. “Who is it that doesn’t get the boot now and again?” he said. “One can be too Steady Eddie.” Shut up already. He never said “one,” or “get the boot,” or “now and again,” or “Steady Eddie.” Where does t
“Every young person gets canned a couple of times before he settles down,” said the Unemployment guy. Huh? What you say? “That store has a big turnover. They fire everybody. You’ll find better stores to work for.” Ah, I have brothers around. He thinks I’m funny to get hung up on a job nobody else wants.
To qualify for Unemployment, Wittman had to report within three days to the Employment Office near Chinatown. (Why the Chinatown one? Because of my looks and ghettoization accordingly? Because that’s my address? Or merely because every place in the City is near every place else?) After his waiting period, which he had already begun, he might be eligible for twenty-six weeks of benefits. The penalties they dealt out seemed to be week-long increments of waiting, no hardship really. Think of a string of twenty-six markers at Mike’s Pool Hall; whether you slide them from this end or that end, there are twenty-six of them.
Almost enjoying the dread-laden fall of the afternoon and of the season, he reported to the Employment Office near Chinatown, where he was headed anyway. Why fuck up another day? Waste the rest of this one, which is shot already. You took the best, take the rest. I cannot go on I go on.
The Jobs Office of the Department of Human Resources was better lit than the Unemployment Office, cleaner, fewer people. Two receptionists, men, greeted him, and sent him right through to an Employment Counselor. There wasn’t the deadface waiting; people were reading printouts of jobs. The white collars sat at tables under a sign that said White Collar, and the blue collars were at Blue Collar. A sign also said that only those with an E.S. i.d. card were eligible to use the printouts. Some Hamlet ought to stand up and say, “Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers—if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me—with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?”
The Employment Counselor was a Mexican-American guy about Wittman’s age; you expect right understanding from him. He was dressed extremely Ivy League, argyle sweater with V neck setting off an oxford collar and well-knotted black knit tie. Don’t you look down on him. The token has to excel over everybody of every kind for that one job. He’s overqualified to get this far. Sitting on the desk was one of the c.c.s of the Notification of lunacy. “Let’s see,” said the counselor, Mr. Sanchez, “Mr.” on his nameplate as if it were his given name. “What kind of work are you looking for?”
“Playwriting,” said Wittman. “I’m looking for a playwriting job. I’m a playwright.”
Mr. Sanchez leaned forward, frowned. “What’s the last job you had? And the one prior to that? What company you last work for as a playwright?”
“I’m not a playwright for a corporation. I’m not a corporate playwright.” I’m no playwright who scripts industrial shows and hygiene films for the educational-military-industrial complex.
“Did you write plays at your last job?”
“I wrote plays during my last job, yes.”
“Did you get paid for them? Paid for writing plays?”
“No.” If you don’t make money, it doesn’t count as work.
“What did you get paid for doing?”
“Sales.” But I don’t want another selling job. I never want to sell anything to anybody as long as I live.
“Then that’s what you should write down. The last job you had was retail, and the one before that, retail. So you write down that you are seeking a retail job.”
Actually, the job before this one, he worked for one day at a vet clinic, a pet hospital which was also a dog pound. He unloaded flat cats off this truck into the incinerator. Mounds of fur, some necks with collars. Gassed dogs. Teeth, tails. Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen. He also held pets for the vet to work on. An aged half-dead mangy dog got expensive surgery while a perfectly good dog got put away. Tranked, Rover and Fluffy and Anonymous slid sideways out of consciousness, then out of life. Memorial ashes cost ten dollars a box. There was this one stiff dog that its owner kept weeping over. “What’s wrong with Poochy?” She wouldn’t listen to Wittman’s diagnosis but kept bugging the vet, who had to tell her, “What’s wrong with him is he’s dead.” Wittman only lasted the one day. He didn’t list that job in his vita; a spotty job record is worse than no experience at all. He had stayed until closing time. He did his duty, found out what was going on behind appearances. A liberal-arts education is good for knowing to look at anything from an inquisitive viewpoint, to have thoughts while shoveling shit.
Another job, he hadn’t stayed the day, he was wired up to a dictaphone—earphones in his ears, hearing a boss’s voice that kept saying “Dear” and “Sincerely” and “Truly” and “Yours,” with all manner of repulsive business bullshit in between. Which his fingers typed, and his eyes read, and his foot forwarded, rewound, forwarded. Only his dick had been free.
“I see here that you’ve had management training experience. Take advantage of that. You should go out for management positions. Listen, about this playwriting thing, hombre, I get a lot of college graduates in here who were t.a.s for one semester. They get a taste, you know? To get paid for intellectual discussions and released time to do research, thinking, the writing of a play, whatever. They sign up for college teaching. Universities. They snoot J.C.s. When there’s hardly any openings. Colleges don’t hire through this office. A theatrical producer has never called. You have to be realistic. I’m hip to your side of the street, man. The one thing people like us have to learn after graduating from college is—be realistic. Let’s face it, there is no connection between your major and a job. That’s why they told us that we should work to learn, and not for grades.”
No, you’re not hip to my side of the street, man. Does this look like the hair of a realist? This is poet’s hair. You can see this hair and talk to me like that? If you’re so hip to my side of the street, why don’t you give me some ideas on how to make long hair look short for interviews?
Or is he hinting to me a loophole? Like go ahead and sign up for college teaching. Our office will never bother you with phone calls and leads. You stay home, work on your play. This Sanchez hombre majored in a social science, and he’s trying to apply it on me, counseling my ass.
“I am a realist,” said Wittman. “It’s the business of a playwright to bring thoughts into reality. They come out of my head and into the world, real chairs, solid tables.” He knocked on the desk. “Real people. A playwright is nothing if not realistic.” He offered Mr. Sanchez a cigarette, which he took. They lit up, laying their matches in the clean ashtray. Wittman said, “Confucius, the realist, said, ‘Neither a soldier nor an actor be.’ I have no eyes for either line of work.” (If he can say “hombre,” I can say “Confucius.” Nobody’s going to put anybody into a bag.) The truth was he didn’t want a job of any kind. He was empty of desire for employment.
“You Chinese?” said Mr. Sanchez. “You went to Berkeley? I can tell by the way you talk. You went to Berkeley, didn’t you? I went to Berkeley.”
“Yeah,” said Wittman. “It shows, huh?”
“How were your grades? Your G.P.A.?”
“Not bad. Not too good.”
“Did you get a lot of Cs? You got a lot of Cs, right?”
“Some.”
“I thought so. Those were Chinese Cs.”
“They were what?”
“You haven’t heard of the Chinese C? The professor I t.a.’ed for told me to give guys like you the Chinese C, never mind the poor grammar and broken English. You’re ending up engineers anyway.”
“I wasn’t an engineering major. What do you mean? Do you mean they kept me down to a C no matter how well I was doing?”
“No, they were raising you to a C. They were giving you a break who couldn’t learn the language. They were trying to help out, get the engineering majors through the liberal arts requirements.”
Monkey powers—outrage and jokes—went detumescent at the enormity of the condescension. Too late.
Mr. Sanchez was saying, “I read all my blue books and papers, and wrote comments. It wasn’t like I just read the Chinese name and assigned a C.”
“You ought to put in my file that my Cs are worth more.”
“Actually, I think they’re worth less. Okay, I’ll notify employers that you’re a really unusual Chinese, who was able to graduate in the liberal arts. You’re an idealist. You want to go into a service profession.”
“I know just the service I’m qualified to perform. I’ve invented a job for myself. Let me run it past you up the flagpole.”
Wittman put out his cigarette; he had drawn one of those horse-manure numbers that they slip into a pack now and then. “I want to save the world from the bomb. I have an idea how to do it: We implant the detonator inside a human chest. The only way the President can get at the red button is to tear a man open. He has to reach inside the chest cavity with his own hands, and push the button with his personal fingerprint. That will make him think twice before bombing Cubans or Russians. Look, as a pacifist, I volunteer to be the one holding the detonator. It would be better to put it inside the chest of a little kid, but. I’ll be the fail-safe detonator. Put that down. I’m signing up with you. Fail-safe detonator. That’s what I’ll be.”
“I won’t put that. You can’t put that. You’re volunteering to be a human sacrifice. The Army already has its pool of human sacrifices. We don’t send people on jobs that will never be. And you don’t have the experience or qualifications to do bomb work.”
“Yes, I do. I worked in a science lab. We, these German ladies and I, harvested R.N.A.-D.N.A. It comes from worms, which have a light-sensitive end. That end—ass or face—rears up at the lights overhead, and we nip it. The ladies were hired for the exactness of their touch. I got hired for my touch too because I look like a delicate and precise Japanese. We gave the worms, which were very clean and pink, a pinch, and out squirted raw R.N.A.-D.N.A. life stuff. It shot into a test tube. We wore goggles because we sometimes shot ourselves in the eye. While the physicists were making bombs, I was storing up life. I know where it’s kept. I made friends with the lab tech who had the job of taking the tubes to an underground vault. He showed me the location. Whenever any test-tube washer says to me, ‘Hey, man, you want to see something trippy?’—I go with him. I’ve been to some far-out labs. I’ve seen kitty cats with electrodes sticking out of their heads. I saw a core sample, which is a piece of the center of the earth brought up from as far down into the ocean floor as they can drill. It looks like shit. I’ve been inside the Livermore Rad Lab out in the Altamont. They say they’re studying earthquakes, they mean the earth quakes when they bomb it. I dated a research assistant who took me up to the cyclotron (which is built on top of the Hayward Fault—it may go at any moment). She spun subatomic particles in the cloud chamber and counted them. She let me count some. Because of the Heisenberg miracle, it’s the duty of artists to volunteer to do particle counting. Don’t leave creation up to the accountants. My eyes have influenced the laws of the universe. I spoke over the particles. I laid trips on them. I made faces at them. I played connect-the-dots—constellations of my own—on a strip of film. My girlfriend threw me out of the lab. Scientists are paranoid. The ones that teach won’t tell you the meat of the projects they’re working on. They lock their file cabinets. They lock their refrigerators, where they’re making winter to hatch baby grasshoppers in ‘spring.’ They take their briefcases home. I took Physics for Non-Majors from Dr. Edward Teller, who mostly appeared to us on closed-circuit t.v. He didn’t teach us dick about fathering the A-bomb. I got assigned to do my reports on the dance of the bumblebees and soap bubbles. Dr. Teller had me working on babyshit when he should have been teaching me the bomb. I learned more from research assistants. An r.a. in physics and an r.a. in biology independently told me that they were working on isolating a chronon—a time ion. Like time is a clock. The physicists are looking for it inside the atom, and the biologists are looking in the pituitary gland. Alvarez’s team is looking inside pyramids, which they were getting ready to X-ray with lasers that measure cosmic rays. The models and the blueprints looked like set designs for Aida. But the Sudan crisis came up, and I don’t know what happened next. We are not talking mad scientists here. These are sane scientists.