5. Dinner at Wu's

The note - a thick yellowish cream card with maroon letters - stated simply "Eight o'clock. Pell Str. Wu".

Although I’d been introduced to Wu, as man of multiple wonders, years before at a club opening Victor J. hosted, we were not acquainted and the most we’ve ever exchanged was a few “how-do-you-do” nods or the occasional hand wave in acknowledgement of our mutual presence – either at fashion venues, vernissages in SoHo or whatever other crowded glitzy event we attended. It was therefore a surprise to receive an invitation from him to have dinner at what I suspected was his house.

There was no number to the house in Pell Street, but I somehow knew I’d be found before I had the time to enquire on the whereabouts of Mr. Wu’s residence. As it was early, I decided to take a cab to Prince Street and walk my way to Chinatown, stopping by some shops in SoHo to buy me something to wear; the nervousness of meeting Wu making me feel spendthrift on clothing.

At 7.45 I arrived at the corner of Mulberry with Bayard where I saw the two twin turbaned priests in their black cassocks heading west. I immediately assumed they’d be going to Wu’s too and thus decided to follow them; assumption that was further confirmed as they turned right on Mott Street and then left on Pell. They stood before an undistinguishable dark wooden door (where, before, I thought, was the place of a dim sum restaurant), as if waiting for someone – as if waiting for me.

And, sure enough, as soon as I joined them, one of the twins knocked on the door, two times, three times. As soon as the door opened, however, both of them left, leaving me momentarily jaw-dropped and speechless before the Asian man at the door.

This was not Wu, but Wu’s manservant, a sort of butler and, I later found out, his sommelier. He showed me in without uttering a word and I had to guess from his ethnical appearance only that he must’ve been Malay or Filipino (not that it mattered much; not that I could really tell a Thai from a Filipino or a Malay from a Javanese), scarcely over 5 ft tall, shaved head, fully dressed in black crêpe, with a black apron on and barefoot.

He led me through a wooden panelled hallway, lacquered black, and a black‑and‑white chequered marble floor, past a velvet – also black – curtain, and ushered me into the dining hall. Candles were lit and the whole atmosphere, dark and redundantly sombre, was fitting for a reception of the devil himself. Too much so, in fact: Wu was not the devil; he was simply a Chinese with a flair for the flamboyantly dramatic.

According to rumours, his vast and apparently inexhaustible fortune, was made in Hong Kong; some said in trafficking illegal immigrants, others in gambling operations in Macau, others still claimed his wealth had more prosaic origins – banking and dealings in bonds, stocks, blue chips and what‑have‑you of that sort, in China and the South Asian market. None of this (as well as any other rumour in this respect, more or less exaggerated, more or less far‑fetched, improbable or inventive) was ever substantiated.

His own claim was far more interesting. Despite never revealing his age (he looked fifty-something), his version of how he amassed the stupendous wealth he led to believe he possessed, implied that he must’ve passed well the age of 100. This blatant unlikelihood only added interest to the story he told. And he told it, with all its inconsistencies, with such a casual debonair, that it lent a sympathetic side to him. At least, that’s what prevented me from seeing him as another Chinese import‑export dealer trying by all possible means and artifices to climb the social ladder normally blocked to slant-eyed people. With, perhaps, the exception of doctors, architects and some lawyers in the Upper East Side. And, even so!

According to Wu, he started off by being a letter‑writer: he had a small office in Canton where he wrote letters dictated to him by illiterates. Once, so his story goes, he had to write a coded letter that he, intrigued and piqued by his entrepreneurial curiosity, later deciphered, revealing him of an important deal in spices and rare oils in Burma. He then took all his savings and sailed to Burma (the details on whether he expedited the letter or not he always omitted) to have his chance at that deal. It turned out the deal was not on spices or oils, but rubies. Having heard of a rich American collector of the precious red stone, he seized the opportunity and his connections with the Chinese excise authorities (connections he made, so Wu says, after all those years writing and mailing letters and parcels into and out of China) to secure the deal and start his fortune.

For this reason alone – for the man’s romantic inventiveness, I should precise – Wu was tolerable to me and not just another tacky Asian bore. But, as things were by now, I needed a drink.

I asked the Filipino for a whisky; on the rocks because it was hot in the room. Swiftly, as if he’d read my mind, he handed me a large tumbler with whisky and three ice cubes and showed me to my place at the table. Wu was not in yet, I suspected waiting for me, his last guest, to be seated.

I said “good evening” and introduced myself. To my right was the strange girl I saw in Central Park with the suitcase; her name was Lyubova and seemed more distant than ever. Next to her a man (South African to my best guess, but this may have been induced by a subconscious link between South African diamonds, Burmese rubies and shady deals in precious stones and alike) by the name of Klipspringer, who was already quite drunk and seemed at home like no‑one else. To his right a woman called Anna, pale and oblivious to the South African. A third woman, Asian, small, black-haired with a haughty laughter, was standing. She greeted me with a wide smile, “I’m Mrs. Wu. You must be Nick. Welcome!” “Actually, my name is Geoff, but that doesn’t really matter, I can go by any other name”, I answered trying to be funny in a polite sort of way.

The Filipino made himself disappear in the shadows and, in his place, a woman appeared, clad in the same black attire and also barefoot. She served hors d’oeuvres and drinks (me, a second whisky, champagne in designer flutes for the rest) and, all the while, Wu showed up, suddenly and, I have to admit, as graciously as a magician’s pass.

“Welcome all!” Wu had a beaming smile, unnervingly fake as the smile of a circus showman. “Let dinner begin!” And, in the same theatrical attitude, he turned to the woman who’d finished serving the hors d’oeuvres. “Dahlia, if you please.”