Monkey Games
By Vince Coyner
Chapter 8. The journey begins
When Laura woke just before dawn Jonathan was already gone. He left because she had been so adamant that Jack and Sebring not know about them. He didn’t understand her concerns but he respected them. (Although Jonathan knew that nothing escaped Sebring on the island.) Besides, he knew it was going to be a very exciting day and nothing allowed him to calm down and think like swimming. He went out and swam as hard as he could remember swimming. He could tell however that he was not moving nearly as fast as the burn in his arms would have suggested. He had exhausted a great deal of his energy over the last 24 hours and as a result, even though he felt like he was pushing harder than usual, in reality he was essentially moving at his normal pace. Nonetheless, it was a fatigue that he very much liked and he couldn’t wait for again. He wasn’t sure when or where or how, but he knew he wanted them to be together again. Soon. He thought to himself, despite Laura’s concern about anyone knowing, he knew it was a matter of when they would be together again, not if.
After a morning spent talking with Sebring and Jonathan about everything from where the lab was going to be set up to what were the tastiest fruits on the island, the storm had finally cleared over La Playa Arena and it was time to leave. As she was walking to the plane Laura looked up and Jonathan was standing on the plane’s bottom step. Jack was already onboard. He turned on the engine and a startled Jonathan jumped from where he had been standing, pretending to be a conquering hero standing on his prize. Suddenly he didn’t feel so much like a hero, conquering or otherwise. He knew he had been on a plane once before, when he was brought to the island as a baby, but that did not seem to provide a great deal of comfort eighteen years later when the only transportation he could remember was walking. Sebring hugged him and said that everything would be OK. “You’ll be just fine and I’ll see you on Tuesday.” Both men’s eyes were beginning to glisten, and neither would have dared to wipe away a tear so both were glad that no tears actually formed. Shaking Laura’s hand with a knowing smile, he said “Take care of him Laura.” “I will. I promise.” she said as she leaned over and kissed Sebring on the cheek. He blushed. She then turned and followed Jonathan into the plane and pulled the door closed behind her. Suddenly the cockpit door opened and Jack walked out. “Are we ready here?” he asked. “Just about, I think” Laura said as she pointed to the seat on the left near the window. “Jonathan, you sit there.” “I’ll sit right next to you.” “Jonathan, don’t worry, I’ll get you there safely” Jack said. “There is nothing to be afraid of, I’ve made this trip probably a hundred times since they brought you here” he added, smiling at Jonathan. Jonathan, who was more nervous than he thought he would be, gave a half smile in return. “I know you will Jack, thanks” he said as Jack went back into the cockpit and closed the door behind him. “We lift off in two minutes,” he said before he closed the door. Laura grasped Jonathan’s hand and told him that it was fine and led him to his seat. He leaned over and peered out the window at Sebring and waved. As he sat down, he picked up the pieces of the seat belt and had no idea what they were. “Here” she said, “that’s the seat belt and it goes together like this” as she snapped it into place, making sure it was loose enough so that it would not be too unsettling. She reminded him that flying was one of the safest forms of transportation in the world and told him that she had been on hundreds or perhaps even thousands of flights herself. She also reminded him that he had knew a great deal about the laws of aerodynamics and that the principles of the science were sound. He took a breath and smiled. He knew everything she said was true, and he had to admit it calmed him down somewhat. He didn’t particularly like the smallness of the plane, but he knew that it was the only way to his future and he needed to do this. He looked at her as she clasped his hand. Laura turned to make sure that the cockpit door was closed and she leaned over and kissed him on the lips. He closed his eyes and was enveloped in her momentary sanctuary. It was all too fleeting as the plane started to move.
At first Jonathan felt as if he was going to be swallowed into the seat as the plane picked up speed and began to lift off from the airstrip. For a moment he felt immobilized, unable to move from his seat. As the plane ascended he found himself leaning forward, looking out the window to follow the shoreline of Aislado as it at first rushed by then simply began to vanish in the distance. He was amazed by the compound he lived in his whole life. He had spent his almost his entire life there and could walk the entire thing from one side to the other with his eyes closed. Nonetheless, he found it fascinating that he had never realized what its actual shape was. From above he could tell that it was a letter H. The H no doubt stood for Houte. Ameil Houte. The California oil baron who had built the compound some time in the 1930s. “Ameil Houte?” Jonathan said to himself. Why did he know that name? It had never been in any book he had read, and he was sure that he had never seen a picture of him. Then suddenly he remembered a conversation he had with Sebring when he was about 14 years old. Now that he looked back on it he remembers it was one of the most enlightening conversations of his life. He and Sebring had been walking on the beach one evening as they so often did. Jonathan would typically pepper Sebring with questions about places he’d been or people he’d known or things he had done. Jonathan was always rapt with attention. Sebring’s words could paint a picture more evocative than any book he’d ever read. His stories of women, wine and gambling in Hong Kong always brought a smile to Jonathan’s face. Sebring had grown up the youngest son of a Chinese family who built their fortune as trade brokers on the Portuguese island of Macau the early part of the 20th century. As a young man Sebring Loi was certain he had done and experienced just about everything one could experience in this world. By the time he was 23 his family’s fortune was gone, his father having backed the wrong horse in the battle for mainland China. After being taken from the highest economic rung in society to the lowest, Sebring was at a loss to find his way. Unfortunately it was a false bottom. Things would get worse. Three months after Mao Tse Sung succeeded in causing Chang Kai Shek’s forces to retreat to Taiwan, Sebring’s father and mother and his two brothers were captured by the Red Army in the harbor town of Gaungzaou where the family had owned an estate. Living as they were at the time on Macau, they had bribed an entrepreneurial sergeant from the Red Army to escort them to their estate so they could gather some belongings and then guide them back to the still Portuguese controlled island. After removing as many items as their wagon could hold they were ready to leave. As the family waited for their escort, a company of Red Army soldiers approached from an intersection ahead. They had been deployed to stop the looting of formally capitalist property that had now been rightfully returned to the state. As Sebring’s father looked around nervously for the sergeant he had bribed, he was nowhere to be found. He was actually back in the house, which in reality resembled a palace, gulping down what was left in a bottle of French brandy and stuffing his pockets with Cuban cigars. Just before he opened the door to rejoin the Loi family, he heard a commotion. He realized he was supposed to be outside but he stopped to peer out the window. As he approached the door and looked out its small diamond shaped windows, he knew he was too late. Sebring’s father kept telling the captain they were merely working for a sergeant who had orders to bring these goods to the home of the local party secretary, but the explanation was in vain. “Go ahead, look in the house” Sebring’s father told the young captain who could not have been more than 20 years old. “He’s in there right now making sure there is nothing else the secretary would like.” They had worked out a plan that if they were caught the sergeant would simply say that they were transporting goods to the home of the local party secretary. While the idea of property that formerly filled the homes of the capitalist exploiters being brought to the home of a Communist party leader might have sounded disingenuous and ludicrous, in reality, many party chief’s homes were filled with furniture, jewelry and art that had formerly adorned the homes of the hated capitalists. In what must have been the ultimate irony, the homes themselves were often taken over and became residences of those who spent their days spewing invective against the very people who built them.
The sergeant, realizing that his breath smelled of brandy and his pockets were filled with contraband cigars, became frightened. He was certain that the captain would not believe him and he knew that the penalty for helping any of the profiteers who had savaged the country under Chang Kai Shek was execution. Inconspicuously peering out the window he saw the soldiers coming toward the door. He looked at Sebring’s parents and could see the anxiousness on their face. For a brief moment he thought he might be able to convince the captain, but the thought was fleeting and gone in a split second. Knowing that he could not pull it off, he decided to run. He turned and ran through the formal dining room, which led out to a large patio in the back. Beyond the patio was a small sloping meadow that stretched out to a line of trees. Almost crashing through a glass door he didn’t see, the sergeant quickly opened the door and rushed out, quietly closing it behind him. Running with all the might he could muster he covered the 200 meters in what he was sure would have been a record in any Olympics. Reaching the treeline he quickly ducked behind one of the trees. Slowly he gathered up the courage to look. He peered around the tree and could see the two soldiers standing on the patio looking about. He had reached the treeline just before they entered the dining room and had they actually been looking out the window when they entered the doorway they would have seen him leaping for cover. As it was, they were too fascinated by the giant mirrors and the gold cornices to notice. When they finally did examine the treeline there was nothing to see. As they walked out on the patio the younger of the two stopped, thinking he might have seen something in the grass beyond. He approached the end of the patio and the flash of light seemed to disappear. He stared for a moment and then decided it was nothing. In reality the nothing he saw was the reflection of the setting sun off of the gold label on one of the cigars the sergeant had dropped as he was running. Because of the angle of the sun the frightened sergeant could clearly see that he had dropped at least half a dozen of the cigars, but most of them were hidden in the unkempt grass. Holding his breath as the soldier stared out towards the treeline, the sergeant finally exhaled as the soldier stopped and the pair of them walked back into the house. Sweating, with his heart beating faster than he had ever known, he leaned back against the tree and slid to the ground. As he sat there he began to sob uncontrollably, knowing that he had just sentenced the Loi family to death. Shortly after the soldiers reported finding no one in the house Sebring’s parents and brothers were ordered to stand with their hands behind their backs and face the gate at the front of the estate they had been preparing to move into for much of the last two years. As she was standing there Mrs. Loi could only think of her son Sebring who had not made the trip. He had been picked up the night before in a Hong Kong brothel and would be spending the next six months in jail, having been accused by the son of a prominent publisher of cheating at cards. Although it became apparent in less than a week that Sebring was innocent when his accuser was killed in the same brothel with five aces in his hand, his paperwork was somehow misplaced and it took him almost half a year to secure his own release when no help seemed to be forthcoming from outside. Upon returning home and finding no one there, Sebring could think nothing but the worst. He searched everywhere he could imagine in both Macau and Hong Kong and surreptitiously returned to his family’s estate in Gaungzaou six months later. The homes were now occupied by party officials and no one had seen anything, or if they had they were not saying. Knowing that the family had planned to return to Gaungzaou the day after he was arrested, he was certain he knew what had happened. If not the details, certainly the outcome. He left with no more answers than he had when he embarked on his dangerous journey.
It was not until two years later that Sebring would know for certain what happened. A woman who had been a maid at a house down the road from his family’s estate had escaped to Macau. She knocked on his door one Saturday afternoon. “Yes, can I help you” he said. “Are you Sebring Loi?” she asked. “I am” he responded as she stared into his eyes. As soon as he responded her eyes closed and her hands fell to her sides as her head dropped and she began to cry. Sebring stood there watching this woman he had never laid eyes on before then stepped towards her. “Ma’am” he started, unsure of what to do “Is everything OK?” As soon as he heard the words escape his lips he felt like an idiot, as it was obvious that things could not be OK. “Is there something I can do for you?” She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. She slowly reached out for his hand. “No, it is what I can do for you. I promised your mother I would give this to you” she said as she held out a small onyx locket his grandmother had handed down to his mother. Staggered, Sebring leaned against the doorway with one hand and grasped the woman’s hand with the other. “Where is she? Is she OK?” Now the woman began to sob even louder and shook her head as she looked down. “No, I’m afraid she is not.” Although he had long imagined something terrible had occurred, he had always hoped against hope that he was wrong. Now there was going to be no escaping the reality of it as he stared at his mother’s locket. As he steeled himself against the emotions that were rushing through him, Sebring asked the woman how she had come into possession of the locket. She told him that she had been cleaning the kitchen in a house down the street from his family’s house in Gaungzaou when she heard the shots. There were four in all. After they fired the weapons the soldiers had simply walked away, knowing that locals would bury the bodies so that packs of scavenging dogs would not rip them to shreds. After the soldiers left, the woman was the first to the gate where the four bodies lay. All four had been shot in the back of the head. As she pondered the scene before her, the old woman shook her head and cried. How could they be so brutal? The Red Army’s brutality was well understood, but it was one thing to imagine it on a battlefield or somewhere out of sight, and here looking at this it became sickening in a way she had never imagined. Although a clean shot to the back of the head almost universally meant instant death, as occurred with his father and two brothers, Sebring’s mother survived for some time. Standing beside the bodies the old woman noticed that the woman on the ground was staring up at her nervously, with tears streaming down her face, mingling with the blood from the wound from the back of her head. Her mouth was moving, as if she was trying to say something. The old woman knelt down beside Sebring’s mother. “Please...” she said as she stared up. “My... necklace... please take it.” The old woman looked down at the golden necklace that had been hidden under Sebring’s mother’s shirt but now was sitting above the collar. “Please take it to my son, Sebring Loi.” Her words were nothing over a whisper and the old woman could tell that there would not be many more. “Where?” asked the old woman. “Ma... Ma... Macau, Front Street” the dying woman said. “Please tell him what has happened...” As the life of Sebring’s mother faded away, her eyes stared straight at the old woman kneeling next to her. Crying, the old woman reached down and closed Mr.s Loi’s eyes and gently removed the necklace from around her neck. She placed the necklace and attached locket in her pocket. Later that afternoon a party from the neighborhood did exactly as the soldiers knew they would and buried the four behind the estate for which they had such grand dreams and in which they had spent so little time. The woman committed the name to memory, Sebring Loi. There were no doubt thousands of Lois in Macau, but probably not many with a European first name on Front Street. It took her almost two years before she was able to escape from the yoke of the Communist regime. Her son secured passage into Macau by bribing a merchant ship captain to allow them to hide in empty containers that had been used to ship fertilizer into China’s southern provinces from Portugal through Macau. They spent three days in the container as it sat on a dock in Macau before the captain sent someone by to release them. After reuniting with family who lived on the island, it took her only a week to find the Loi house where she now stood before Sebring.
Sebring held the locket in his hand and stood looking at the old woman. As his hands were shaking she grasped them and said “I’m so sorry.” “Thank you” he replied. “Thank you so very much, I’m not sure how many people would have kept that promise.” Pulling himself together he asked the old woman “Is there anything I can give you for your trouble? I would be honored if you would allow me to give you something.” “No, no” she replied “It was my honor to carry out your mother’s request. Thank you nonetheless.” With that the old woman turned and left and Sebring never saw her again. Finally he knew for certain that which he felt he had known since he was sent to jail. Now, as the brutal reality of what had occurred to his family set upon him, Sebring found himself suffused with feelings of guilt. If he had only been there. While in his head he knew that the only difference between the events as they occurred and how they might have been had he been there was that there would have been five corpses instead of four, it didn’t assuage his feelings of guilt in having survived due in large part to his licentious behavior. Never having been much of a spiritual man, something seemed to come over him, which he could not explain. At that moment it became clear to him that he had been saved for a purpose. He had no idea what it was, but he knew there was something he was meant to do. Although he had nominally been a Buddhist his entire life, he now became a devout re-convert. After spending four years living on alms in a monastery on Macau’s northern coast he decided his calling was not to be found on the island. He traveled to the Shaolin Temple in the Mainland’s Honan Province; one of the wells from which both modern Buddhism and Chinese martial arts had sprung. Spending 25 years there he found both inner peace and physical discipline. On his fifty-fifth birthday he decided that the time had come for him to leave. There was something out there waiting for him and today was the day to go looking. He simply awoke one morning and left, saying nothing to anyone and leaving no notes. He traveled across China along the Silk Road, into India and Nepal where Buddha found enlightenment and on to the Mediterranean. Once there he traveled to Nazareth where some believe Christ returned after having traveled to India and met Buddha. After spending six months traveling throughout the Holy Lands, Sebring found himself in Beirut, which was at one time known as the Pearl of the Middle East, but now more closely resembled Eastern Europe in 1945. It was here that Sebring met the man who would change his life. That man’s name was Albert...
A bit of turbulence jarred Jonathan back to the present. He quickly grabbed Laura’s hand and looked over at her. She smiled and put her other hand on his. “Don’t worry, it’s just a bit of turbulence. It’ll only last a few seconds” she said. He smiled and looked back at the brilliant blue horizon spread out below them. His mind started to return to his conversation with Sebring but they began their descent and he once again found himself drawn back to the present.
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