The Know

TheKnowledge

'Tdri!' It wasa cold dark night in cent¡alLondon.The ¡ain wx filling heavil¡ The blach cab stopped just in f¡ont of the man in the hat and the blach overcoat, splashing watereverywhere. The drive¡ leanedout of the window. ' ereie you going,mate? Chinarown? OK, get in; it,ll b€ about ten pounds. It'll take about twenty, twenty_Éve minutes.The¡e's lot of t¡aflic because a oftherain. Thr¡ible weatherisnt it? It seemsto have been raining for da¡s. \ü/ell, it's been a bad year for weather altogether D¡eadful! Tlpical English wearhe¡,eh? Still, at least itt good for the farme¡s.Hal Chinatowneh?You know, it a funny thing, but this all reminds me of a Chinesebloke I picked up from here goitg to Chinatown. Must have been November,about this time last year It was raining thentoo, absolutely pouring down. He was a strange guy; itt a suangestory _ the strargest thing that's happenedto me in a1lmy yearsin a c ab... To tell you the t¡uth, I reallyjust wanrec ro go nome. Youknowhow it is. It wasabouthalfpast ten on a Tuesday evening and I was going to call it a da¡ As I said, ir was like this - cold, wet and mise¡able. beenworLing hard for I'd mon¡hs and I feh like I wantedto go home early for a changeand seeMarlene - that was my girlfriend. But then I sawhim, cheChinese bloke, I mea¡. He was
62

in his early thi¡ties, I r¡ppose. Thin, kind of hungrylooking. He wasstándingthere,on GeorgeStreet,where you werejust now, and dripping wet jusclike you. That's why I say it ¡emiflds me. Vell, I thought to myself, "l'll just picl this blokeup, rhenI'll go home" my So Ileaned headout ofthe cabwindow and into the rain- "V&ere areyou going,mate?" "Chinatown"saidthe bloke,and he told me the nameof the street.It was Gerrard St¡eet.Ilell, itd only take me twenty,tweflry-five minutes to get th€r€, I thought. I could be homeby elwen o'dock. Thatt earlyfor me. I tooL a reallygood look at him beforehe got in. He was wea¡ing an old learher jacket and blue jeans. Not...