Fiction / Wayne Mok
:: Oblation ::
I would often dream about John Calvin. That might be a weird thing to dream about, but I had just returned from seminary abroad after finishing a thesis on John Calvin’s Christology. In my dreams, I would see him standing behind the pulpit of the church in Geneva, arms high, nose in the Bible, preaching to a crowded room of people transfixed on him. He wasn’t a tall man, but there was a sense of urgency, almost anxiety, in the tone of his guttural voice. In those dreams, I would be in the front pew looking up, taking in every last word that came out of his mouth like I was sipping on pure water from an ancient spring. Occasionally, the dream would turn into a nightmare. One moment, I’d be sitting in the front pew, but the next, I’d feel out of place, conscious that I didn’t belong—my black hair, yellow skin, flat nose, Asian eyes—and I’d be dragged out of the church by the congregation, thrown out onto the street. Calvin himself would close the church doors, saying something to me in a language he knew I did not understand. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, I couldn’t help but be disturbed by what it might’ve meant.
The thesis on Calvin won the Bavinck Prize that year. The panel praised the piece and especially applauded the application I drew out for the church and social justice. One professor said he would talk to an editor he knew to see if they would be interested in it. The same week the prize was announced, the vicar from my church in Hong Kong called. He heard the news and asked if I was interested in a job. He was planning to retire in a few years and was looking for someone who could replace him then. It seemed like a sign from God and I accepted the position on the spot.
I first encountered the homeless man a few months after I returned to Hong Kong. The Christmas Eve service just ended. I had preached on the birth narrative in the Gospel of Luke and talked about Calvin’s concept of the accommodation of God; it was my best sermon yet. At the end of the service, a member of the congregation came up and said that he saw Jesus descending into the sanctuary as I was preaching.
As a yearly tradition, the church gave out gifts to everyone who attended the service. The box was wrapped with a festive print of baby Jesus in the manger. Inside was a mug with a Bible verse printed on it. On my way out, the vicar handed me one with a sly smirk on his face, “We need to get rid of these—the sexton needs space in the storeroom for the new nativity scene.”
I took it.
“Want another?”
I shook my head, “I don’t know what I’d do with it.”
The night sky was bright, illuminated by the lights of Hong Kong pushing against the darkness long forgotten. A large crowd streamed past the church towards the MTR Station on their way to the festivities that would run late into the night. I straightened my clerical collar and headed towards home.
Halfway across a deserted footbridge on my usual route home, I saw him. A pair of feet with frayed socks stuck out from underneath a flattened cardboard box. A damp T‑shirt was draped over the railing. As I walked closer, I was struck by a sour stench—like that of urine mixed with beer. I covered my nose. An empty takeout box lay open revealing a used pair of chopsticks, some chewed up meat, and a few toothpicks. The man’s head rested on a pair of old shoes.
My initial instinct was to walk past the man, but as he twisted and turned under his cardboard box, trying to find his way into sleep, I felt something. It was difficult to name it at the time, but I deduced it was probably something like compassion, or charity, or maybe even love. It was Christmas after all.
I tip toed over, bent down, and lay the gift next to his feet, careful not to touch him. Just before walking down the steps at the end of the bridge, I looked back. The neatly wrapped gift stood in stark contrast to the filth that covered everything about the man. The Apostle Paul had once said, “A man reap what he sows,” and I couldn’t help but wonder what the man did in the past to deserve his present life. The roar of the street and the chatter of the crowd below was almost deafening. A tram passed by underneath with Christmas carols blasting on its speakers.
That night, I had a nightmare. I was sitting in the church at Geneva in my cassock, manuscript in my hands, ready to preach on the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew. At some point during the first hymn, I looked down at my manuscript and realized that it was all in Latin—I didn’t read Latin. The next moment, the pulpit was empty and the congregation, including Calvin himself were all looking in my direction. I started to panic. An uncomfortable heat rose within my chest and ascended into my neck. My cheeks took on a red flush, my hands started to tremble, and my abdomen tightened. I managed to stand up and proceeded to walk towards the pulpit, but before I arrived, someone was already there. I couldn’t make out his face, but I somehow knew exactly who it was—it was the homeless man. He wore the same damp T‑shirt and pair of old socks that I saw on the bridge.
The man then opened his mouth to preach in Latin, with a voice far deeper and more forceful than that of Calvin’s, “Beati pauperes spiritu quoniam …” As his deafening voice echoed throughout the church, I felt an urge to run. I gathered my strength and ran down the center aisle towards the exit, but just before I could reach the doors, I felt my abdomen and groin give way. I woke up drenched in sweat. I pulled off my blanket and got out of bed, but my pants were so wet it felt like I just got out of the pool. Half-conscious, I stood there trying to figure out what had happened before I caught a whiff of an odor and glanced at my bed—I had peed my pants.
As I was in the shower cleaning myself off, I thought about the dream and what just happened—was God angry that I gave the homeless man a cheap gift? Was there something spiritual going on with the man—demonic possession? Did he need my help? Was God speaking to me? I had no clue, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I needed to visit him again. I needed to find out. I put on a set of freshly ironed clerical clothes and went to see the man, with a hunch that the visit would make things right, somehow.
He was sitting on his cardboard box, cross-legged, sipping on a bottle of beer while eating a steamed pork bun. A Chinese man with a big face, dark skinned with unkempt greasy hair, he was dressed in the same reddish-brown T‑shirt, cargo shorts, with a different pair of socks this time, but the same horrid stench. The mug from the church was at his side, full of cigarette butts emitting a constant stream of smoke like incense in a censer. The Bible verse printed on it felt oddly out of place.
I pointed at the mug, “I left that there for you.”
He turned his head, “What?”
“It was a gift.”
He looked at it, before taking a sip of his beer. “What about it? You want it back?”
“No, but you shouldn’t be using it for cigarettes.”
He shook his head and downed the rest of his beer. In a swift motion, he whacked the mug with the empty beer bottle. The mug skidded on the concrete floor before hitting a metal rail. Upon impact, the mug shattered into pieces, sending cigarette butts flying across the rest of the bridge.
“Get lost,” he yelled.
Stunned by his response, I ran as fast as I could in my cassock to the other side of the bridge and felt a shard of the broken mug crack beneath my foot.
At staff meeting later in the week, I shared about the man. The vicar nodded in approval. “It is our calling as ministers to represent Christ to the poor,” he said, sipping instant coffee from another Christmas mug. Though his comment affirmed my intuition that I did the right thing, the more I thought about the man, the more disgusted I felt—the way the man dressed, the way he spoke, his lack of manners and respect, not just for me, but for God, even his stink. I knew that it was wrong to not help someone in need, but I couldn’t help but think the man didn’t want my help, in which case, there probably wasn’t any reason to visit him again.
In the following weeks, mirages, or perhaps you can call them visions, of the man, began to appear wherever I would go. He would be outside the supermarket begging for loose change. He would be sprawled out on the bottom deck of the tram. He would be smoking in the park, loudly commenting on the play of casual football teams. These visions became more and more frequent, and I kept trying to ignore them, until one day after work as I was leaving the church, I had a vision of him there at the front of the chapel, inebriated, lounging by the altar, burping after taking a swig of wine out of the chalice. God was surely saying something, like he spoke to Samuel in the night. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew that the only way to find out was to see the man again.
The man was there lying on flattened boxes. A blanket was pushed to the side, soaking up runoff from the railings. A broken umbrella faced the street, shielding off the mild rain. Neon signs illuminating the bridge gave the night a reddish-green glow. His stink seemed to be intensified by the humidity, making each breath that much harder to bear.
He sat up and wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt, “What do you want?”
I pointed towards the church, “I’m a minister there. I want to help.”
He ignored me and reached for a pack of cigarettes.
I pulled out a paper bag from my briefcase and put it on the ground in front of him. He took the bag, pulled out a bottle of water, and then a chicken avocado sourdough sandwich I picked up from an expensive sandwich place down the street. He held the sandwich close to his face, and then sniffed it, like an animal.
“I don’t eat gweilo food,” he said, setting it down on the floor.
“Sir,” I said, trying my best to convey respect, “I’m trying to help.”
He shook his head and chuckled, “I know your type; you don’t want to help.” He tossed the sandwich at my feet. “You know what will help? Tsing Tao, cigarettes, fried rice …” he paused for a moment, “and a Mark Six ticket.” He roared with laughter and proceeded to pick up the water bottle, “I’ll take this though.” I walked away, annoyed at the man, and if I was being honest, at God.
That week, the mild rain strengthened into a typhoon. Streets started to flood and there were landslides in rural areas. Schools were closed, work halted, people stayed home. The news reported that it was the strongest typhoon recorded in half a century. Perhaps it was cabin fever, but a week into the storm, my apartment began to smell like the homeless man. That same nasty stink. At first, I thought it was a clogged drain or a plumbing issue caused by the rain. I plumbed the toilets, snaked every drain, checked for leaks, but to no avail. I took out the trash, cleaned out the fridge. I spent the rest of the day cleaning and sanitizing the entire apartment—I vacuumed and mopped, wiped down every surface, cleaned the mold out of the grout in the bathroom, scrubbed the kitchen down along with all the grime from the past year. I even threw out anything remotely close to old into large garbage bags and resealed my windows and doors to ensure nothing could get in. Still, the scent lingered. It was as if his presence infiltrated every corner of the apartment, not wanting to leave.
That night, exhausted from the cleaning, I fell into a deep sleep. It was the same dream. I was sitting in the first row of the chapel as usual, listening to Calvin as he preached, but this time, Theodore Beza, John Knox, and younger theologians like Charles Hodge and Abraham Kuyper were there was well. The greats. Conscious of their presence, I was nervous, but also excited about being there, when the stench hit me. That God-awful stench. I looked around. Other people smelled it too. People pulled out handkerchiefs and covered their faces; others tried to fan the smell away with their hands. The stench continued to intensify. An older member of the church fainted in her seat, and moments later, a young child vomited on a pew. A few people in the back tried to open the doors, but they were locked. No one could get out. The crowd started to rush towards the door, ramming themselves against it, trying to break the lock. The church Fathers stood in horror at what was going on, bewildered at the situation.
I, too, made a run for the door, but stopped when I realized that the stench was coming out of my mouth. Every breath I exhaled emanated a smell so sickening that it triggered my gag reflex. I tried to hold it in, but my abdominal muscles and diaphragm contracted violently, sending a burning sensation up my chest and into my throat. Expecting food or bile to come out, I knelt on the ground and bent over, but instead, all that came out was more of the smell, an endless stream of putrid odor that smelled like skunk mixed with rotten cabbage.
At some point, the chapel cleared out. I was on my knees in the middle of the aisle, alone, when I heard someone walking towards me. I looked up—it was the homeless man. It was him. He was behind all of this, that damned human being. My immediate reaction was to get up and tackle him to the ground, but my body ached so much I couldn’t move. As he moved towards me, the stench strangely began to fade, and instead, there was a faint trace of another scent. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was an alluring scent—not just a scent you appreciated like that of a rose or lily, but an aroma that whetted your appetite and made you hungry. Not before long, he was standing over me. The stench had vanished and the fragrant scent by that point was overwhelming. The nausea was gone and I felt famished—stomach growling, mouth drooling, dying for food with a hunger that people probably only experienced in a famine, and I woke up, starving.
I checked the time, got dressed, and went down to the restaurant downstairs. It was Thursday afternoon. The wind and rain seemed be letting up. Shops had reopened and people returned to the streets just in time for the Easter weekend ahead. I opened the door and entered the fragrance that filled the restaurant—Yangzhou friend rice—the traditional Cantonese type with eggs, peas, bits of char siu, prawn, and scallions. I placed an order. As I waited, I stood at the counter of the restaurant watching as the chef stirred the rice in his wok, I thought about the sermon I was preparing for the weekend on the Parable of the Banquet. I wondered what that feast would be like, and whether it’d be anything like a Chinese banquet. Who would be there? Would I? What about the homeless man? Perhaps it was guilt, or maybe the voice of the Spirit, I placed a second order.
I stepped out onto the street, when the sky began to crack, releasing buckets of water splashing onto the sidewalk. Fallen leaves, branches, and litter were scattered all over. I held onto the bag of food with one hand. With the other, I opened my umbrella, shielding myself from the skies that roared above.
There were two umbrellas this time, both broken, positioned against the rails. The thundering rain, the neon signs, the fragrance from the restaurants, and exhaust from the busses and trucks all seemed to curtain the space around us.
He lifted his head. “You again. What do you want?” he asked, rubbing his eyes with both hands.
“I’m hungry,” I said, “Want to eat?”
Unexpectedly, he sighed, in the way old Chinese men do and said, “Come sit.” He shifted his belongings aside and made space on the cardboard.
I hesitated—reasons not to flooded my mind—but in the moment, it was the only thing that felt right. The cardboard was cold and wet. I took out a box of food and set it in front of him, “What you asked for.” He popped off the lid. The aroma of the rice filled the space between us. He smiled, showing his stained teeth before taking a spoon to dig in. He scooped each portion of rice with a gentle swoop; raising the spoon up to his mouth, he closed his mouth around the spoon, making sure to catch every grain, then chewed.
I opened my box and began to eat, spoon after spoon of fried rice. The aroma of the scallions and heat from the oil filled my nostrils, the bits of barbequed pork and chopped up bits of prawn tickled my tongue. I chewed meticulously after each bite, slowly filling the deep recesses of my stomach. The rain continued to drown out all that was around us. After what felt like a long time, I was stuffed. I thought I had eaten a lot, but there was still food left in the box.
“You want that?” he asked. I shook my head. He took my box, closed its lid, and put it by his bags.
By this point, I was tired. I needed to work on my sermon so I decided to leave. But as I attempted to push myself off the ground, I felt a deep sense of exhaustion as you would after running a marathon. Even the act of trying to get off the ground felt like an impossible task. I leaned back against the railing and tilted my head towards the sky. The rain splattered on my face, stinging my eyes. I opened my mouth, hoping to catch a few drops of rain to alleviate my thirst.
I heard the man crack open a bottle of water. “Drink,” he said, holding out the bottle to me.
I took the bottle. The first sip was bitter, reminding me of the first time I tasted wine at the Eucharist. I spit it out onto the floor. I scraped my tongue against my molars, hoping to get rid of the taste. The bitterness sunk in, burning my tongue and the walls of my mouth. “It’s bitter,” I pointed to the bottle.
“Just drink it.”
“You’re mad,” I set the bottle down on the floor. The bitterness triggered the muscles in my throat, which contracted, and I started to cough violently.
The man picked up the bottle. It had now accumulated a layer of condensation, making the bottle glow as it refracted light from the ceiling passing through it. He gazed into my eyes intently, and holding out the bottle, he repeated, “Drink it.” In that moment, as I was choking on my saliva and regurgitated food, coughing violently to the point where it felt like my lungs would come right out of my mouth, I had a moment of insight: if I didn’t drink this, I was going to die here on this bridge. I took the bottle from the man and began to drink, swallowing large gulps. The liquid tore at every tissue in my mouth and esophagus, clawing like scorpions.
The taste of the water gradually transformed. Each sip seemed less bitter, but also eased the sting. I continued to drink. Three-quarters way through the bottle, the water had not only regained its neutral flavor, but acquired a surprising sweetness to it. I felt my body regain strength, absorbing the water one molecule at a time. I set the empty bottle down, the sweet taste lingering in my mouth.
As I sat there next to the man, silent, watching the last drops of rain waver before finding their way off the edges of the railings, I thought about the gift—what happened to the pieces of the shattered mug? Did they remain there, ignored by pedestrians? Where they cleaned up and discarded? Were they washed away, bit by bit, by the thundering rain? At that point, overcome with a sense of release, I couldn’t help but close my eyes, stretch my arms wide as if I were reaching for the ends of the universe, and yell at the top my lungs.
The rumble of the sky eased into a gentle growl. The veils of rain lifted, revealing rays of light from the buildings, shop signs, and streetlights. A double-decker bus hummed past, its suspension squeaking. The clatter of pedestrians, children, and shopkeepers resonated, accented by clanging dishes and cups, gentle gusts of kitchen exhaust, and the faint clicks of crosswalk signals.
I stood up and looked down at the man. His eyes were closed and his body inclined against the rails. The rise and fall of his chest produced a gentle snort. Every so often, he’d wake himself up with his own snoring, but then he’d catch his breath and fall back into a lull. I noticed the wrinkles that lined his face, the streaks of white in his greasy disheveled hair, the cracked skin on his hands. He seemed older, frailer, more worn out than when I first met him. As I walked down from the bridge into the night, I looked up at the sky. It had cleared up, revealing a vast black canvas glistening with specks of shimmering dust. A thin film of water glazed the street, reflecting the bright sky above.
I never saw the man after that. The next time I crossed the bridge, it was clean as a whistle, no trace that anyone was ever there. Sometimes I’m not even sure what happened—it felt like it was all just a dream. Even to this day, I’m not sure where he came from or who exactly he was. Neither do I know whether there was anything I could’ve done to help him except bring him a box of fried rice. But I do know, now, that he had done for me something that I could’ve never done for myself.
From the writer
:: Account ::
I wrote this story shortly after working for a faith-based homeless service in Hong Kong. During that time, I was exposed to the long-lasting socio-economic remnants of British colonialism, the perpetuation of systemic injustice often through religion, and the imbalance of power between the rich and the poor in the city. At the same time, I saw great wealth in a community of people who did not have much, and beauty as they reclaimed the faith of the gweilo as their own. The experience forced me to consider my own faith and identity, so shaped by my life in the West, yet felt in many ways bankrupt compared to those whom many of us would want nothing to do with—poor, old, foreign, outsiders, neurodivergent. Even though it’s all too easy for many to idealize poverty from a comfortable distance, I think sometimes, it’s that initial gaze that makes us wonder whether what we need is often found in the places we least expect.
Wayne Mok is originally from Hong Kong and now lives in Sydney, Australia.