They found a restaurant, a dimly lit place hidden down a nondescript alley – a tip from a local acquaintance, Sixth Uncle said, guaranteed to be the best food in the area. Out of the cold, the warmth of the small room felt delicious, the air humid and wood-scented. They ordered too much food, as was the custom of their family, and Sixth Uncle had a bottle of sake that seemed too big for one person.
‘What a great holiday this is,’ Sixth Uncle said as he refilled the tiny cup; he misjudged the size of it, and the sake spilled onto the smooth lacquered surface of the table. ‘Thank goodness you’re around, though, otherwise it would just be your shit-boring parents.’
Justin smiled; Sixth Uncle was the only person he knew who spoke of his parents in this way – irreverently, whatever respect he had for Justin’s father well hidden under layers of coarse humour.
‘How on earth did such boring parents bring up a happy, strong boy like you? If you were just a couple of years older I’d let you drink some sake while no one’s looking. Hey – maybe I could slip it into your teacup? No, no, that would be too bad of me. Not even I would do that to my favourite nephew – though you’ve always been very grown-up for your age, so I wouldn’t give a shit about getting you drunk. Only thing I’d worry about is your dragon-tongued mother. Oh my God, speaking of getting drunk, I think I’m already pretty wasted.’
Justin toyed with a piece of lamb that was drying out on the helmet-shaped griddle in front of him, slowly sizzling to a crisp alongside a charred piece of corn. Sixth Uncle had told him that the dish was called ‘Genghis Khan’ because the grill was modelled on the exact form of an ancient Mongol armoured helmet, but Justin had not believed him – Sixth Uncle was full of amazing, unbelievable stories. Often Justin had thought that they were Sixth Uncle’s way of livening the heavy atmosphere at the dinner table, for he was the only one who would ever say anything amusing (and Justin would be the only one to laugh); but recently Justin had begun to realise that Sixth Uncle’s anecdotes were aimed at him. He had sensed a growing connivance, Sixth Uncle reaching out to him tentatively, for reasons he was not able to fathom. He was glad of the jovial company, but troubled by the lack of clarity; in spite of Sixth Uncle’s almost comic façade, he too operated within the family’s unspoken language, in which one was somehow expected to understand all that was not articulated.
‘Do you know what I’m going to do when I retire?’ Sixth Uncle continued. ‘I’m going to buy a stinking huge farm in Tasmania and never come back. People tell me property is dirt cheap down there. I can get a massive ranch with sheep and cows and live happily ever after.’
‘But Sixth Uncle, you don’t know anything about sheep or cows.’
‘How difficult can it be?’ Sixth Uncle poured another overfilled cup of sake and looked at the clear beads of liquid on the table. ‘Must be easier than dealing in property.’
There followed a silence that made Justin anxious: one of those moments just before someone said something important. In his family’s unsaid-said ways, he understood that this was a preparation for an announcement of some kind, the delivery of news that would mark a turning point – perhaps something relatively minor, but a shift nonetheless.
‘Do you know what people in the business call me? “The Fixer”. Sometimes they call me “The Enforcer”, but I don’t really like to hear that. “The Fixer” sounds better. Even the family calls me that sometimes.’
Justin nodded. He had heard his father refer to Sixth Uncle’s pragmatic, no-nonsense approach to problem-solving, the way he could always untangle a sticky situation.
‘In every generation of our family there needs to be a Fixer. Before me there was my Third Uncle, who you never knew. Without him the family business would have gone bust several times over – your grandfather was a clever man, but he wasn’t streetwise at all. The family needed someone to look after the more practical side of things so the glamorous stuff could happen. The minor details are important too, that’s what Third Uncle told me. I learnt everything from him. And after me it’ll be your turn.’
The small window next to their table offered a view of the narrow alley; above the doorways, lamps had come on. Justin could not see the sky, but he guessed that the snow had made the evening draw in. A flag sign fluttered above an entranceway; amidst the Japanese characters he recognised the Chinese name for Hokkaido: North Sea Island, a place marooned in the cold north.
‘Your father says it’s not normal for the eldest son to do the work I do. He wants you to sit in a fancy office the way he does, or look after the money in Singapore. What a shit-boring job that is! But what choice do we have? Look at your brother – he’s a sweet kid, but already you can see that he’s too weak, spoilt rotten, he’ll never have what it takes to deal with the harsher things in life. At his age you were already much more mature, you were different. Remember a few years ago? When you fractured your ankle or leg or whatever and for a few days you were hobbling around? Your father got mad because he thought you were pretending. And then you just forced yourself to walk normally, and no one knew anything for months, until the doctor said, My God, I think he’s fractured his leg. I thought, wow, this kid is tough! No one said so, but everyone was so impressed by your bravery. And I guess it’s because of – OK, let’s just say it – your background.’
Justin nodded. He tried to read the signs above the doorways in the alleyway outside; some of them were written in traditional Chinese script, and it was fun trying to make out the names. White Birch Mountain Village. Brilliant Plum Teahouse.
‘But you know, you’ve been raised as the eldest son, you’ve never been treated as anything other than the Number One Brother, so whose blood you are exactly is not important. We’re not so old-fashioned that we care about these things. It’s just – like I said, it explains why you are different from your brother. And better than him, frankly. Yes, we should just say it! He’s going to become a lawyer or an accountant; maybe he’ll look after some small part of the business, like the tea or rubber plantations. Or maybe he’ll do what your dad does now – sit in the office and watch the money coming in and sometimes play with the accounts before going off to play golf. That’s for pussies. You’re different. You’re stronger. That’s why you’ll have to carry more responsibility.’
That he was different was undeniable, as was the fact that he was the eldest son. At times he wondered how someone who was not born of the family could be treated to its privileges – and now its responsibilities – but his family did not question it, and neither, therefore, did he. They had been clear about the situation from the start, had not lied or sought to protect him from the truth: they had taken him in, the infant son of a distant relative, a poor girl from the provinces who had been abandoned by her husband and could not cope with a baby. She was so tenuously related that she might not even have been part of the extended clan, though in the old Chinese way she was referred to as ‘cousin’, and in today’s terms, in a family more modern than his, the process by which he came to live in his new home would be called ‘adoption’ rather than just ‘taking in’. His birth mother had emigrated to Canada, and had he wanted to, Justin could easily have asked about her, perhaps even asked to see her. But he felt no filial curiosity; his bloodline offered no lure. His family had raised him as their own, and not just as their own but as the highest of the male cousins – the Eldest Son of the Eldest Son – a position not usurped even when his younger brother came along. His place within the family had always been indisputable, despite his provenance. And for that he would always be grateful. He would always obey the family and fight for them and never fail them; he did not need Sixth Uncle to tell him to do so.
‘You need to start hanging out with me, I’ll teach you a thing or two. Your dad wants you to start learning the business soon. With property, you have to begin with the basics. See that chef over there, slicing the fish as if he’s creating some fucking work of art? Well, he started life as a kitchen porter, collecting scraps of garbage and dumping them outside for the rats to eat. Our work is like that too. You want to build apartment blocks all over Vancouver and Melbourne? Want to reclaim a bit of Hong