Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux

people the Chinese want. They'll boot out the rest. In business we'll all need work permits—a chit to do business. All these can be revoked."
    "If a person looks a little hinky, they'll send him away," Hoyt said.
    "That includes you," Bunt said, "and all the other Americans."
    Monty said, "Hoyt's not American."
    As though reciting a rhyme, for he had clearly said it before, Hoyt explained, "I am American. I am not
an
American."
    "What does that mean?" Bunt asked.
    "I renounced my citizenship."
    "How'd you manage that?"
    "Not too hard. Went to the U.S. consulate. Signed a statement. Went home. Next day went back again, signed an Oath of
Renunciation. Handed over my passport." Hoyt hooked his thumbs into his belt. "That's how I got rich."
    "I'll never turn my back on the U.K.," Bunt said.
    Monty said, "Take the partners in my firm. Kwok's a Canadian. Lum's a Tongan Protected Person. Levine's a Cayman Islander. From where I am sitting in this club I can see Cape Verdeans, Belizeans, and Panamanians."
    All this was news to Bunt, who saw only Englishmen, most of whom he knew.
    "I've got a Guinea-Bissau passport," Hoyt said.
    "Where the hell is that?"
    "Not too far from Cape Verde," Hoyt said. "So I'm told."
    "One of the fuzzy-wuzzy countries. That makes you a nig-nog."
    "Watch it," Hoyt said.
    "And you're an Israeli, I suppose," Bunt said to Monty, because he knew him to be Jewish.
    "Austrian," Monty said. He was sipping at the foam on his stein of beer. "It was the Austrian consul here who proposed it. He came to me. He knew a bit of my family background." He licked at the froth on his upper lip. He said with seriousness, "I saw it as an act of atonement on their part."
    "Monty, you're a Kraut?"
    "Austrians aren't Krauts," Monty said. "You're thinking of Germans."
    "Isn't it the same place?"
    Bunt was shocked, because Monty had always spoken fondly of his father's medical practice in Whitechapel, his devotion to
his patients, Monty's own education at the London School of Economics and his office in Chancery Lane. A real Londoner, with a bowler hat and a tightly rolled umbrella, that was how he thought of Monty, while he himself was a colonial, with just a public school education at Queen's College in Hong Kong.
    "Not at all," Monty said, raising his beer stein again. "I'm from a long line of Viennese intellectuals."
    Bunt did not blame him, he blamed Hong Kong, the way it cut off people's roots and made them selfish and sneering and greedy and spineless, even his own mother. He made no reply. He looked around the Cricket Club and realized that these people would bolt at the first sign of trouble.
    Monty said, "If your friend wants to do business, tell him to get in touch with me."
    "Or me," Hoyt said.
    Bunt was on the verge of saying "Which friend?" Then he remembered.

    His mother had set out a fruit basket that night when he returned to Albion Cottage. Why was she so happy? A basket of fruit was a basket of fruit. At his office the next day, Mei-ping brought a basket of fruit to his office. Another one. This one had loquats, longans, mangosteens, and kiwi fruit. She held it in her pretty hands.
    "The man give this to you."
    "Which man?" He opened the note taped to the basket.
Please call.
    "From China I think. I don't know him."
    "But he knows you?"
    "Maybe."
    Bunt hated that equivocal "maybe," which meant that he would have to obey the suggestion in the note.
    Watching Mei-ping leave his office, he was attracted to her again. There was such innocence in the way she and most women left a room, always looking a little helpless and uncertain and awkward. Most men walked swaggeringly away, as though at any moment they might turn around and snarl, but women always seemed to be retreating. Bunt often felt like seizing their skinny shoulders and dragging them down, and he hated himself for his demented rapist's fantasies.
    When he rang Mr. Hung later that morning the man answered at once, snatched up the receiver—must have