Shanghai Boy

by Stevan Eldred-Grigg

  Drinking at a bar downtown with friends. Well, that’s true. You want to know the whole story? Course you do! You want to know how I killed Jay. Okay. Jimmy’s Bar, that’s the bar. I’m sitting on one glass of red wine at the dim red counter while nodding and swapping words with one or two blokes I know. Nothing happens of any note. Afterwards, I get a cab back to the Foreign Experts. I make myself a cup of tea and sit down with a novel, which is what I’ll later tell Inspector Mao. The tea’s Irish Breakfast. The novel’s Brave New World. Not long before midnight, a phone call. Jay on his cellphone.

  ‘I am in the street,’ he says. ‘I wanna fuck.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I’m not too sure I want to be fucked. Hang on, I’ll come down and meet you.’

  ‘I come upstairs to your apartment, okay?’

  ‘Not okay. I’m coming downstairs.’

  Jay proves to be standing under the lamplight at the corner of One and Two Streets. He’s singing to himself quietly. I don’t know the song. The new noodle-house behind him, locked up for the night, looks glassy. The old noodle-house next door has been locked up forever. Trade fell away so badly that the owners went broke. Now chefs in their white hats can no longer be seen sweating over woks. Where are they? Working in some other hellhole in some other part of town? Last week the old noodle-house had its guts ripped out by a team of workmen, thumping and banging, starting to turn the place into something new, something from which someone — not the workmen — will make money.

  ‘I have been looking at textbooks all day,’ says Jay. ‘Sick of the textbooks! I want to see my Manfred. I miss to talk to you. I appreciate your knowledge.’

  ‘Matt’s away in Singapore again, I suppose?’

  ‘Wrong! Matt is in Hong Kong.’

  We talk a bit more, at the corner of One and Two Streets, and it becomes clear that though he’s in the mood for a fuck he’s not gagging for it, not like me, not at all like me, willing to get down on my knees.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ I say grimly.

  ‘Where?’ he says with a shrug. ‘Nowhere to walk — everywhere here the same.’

  ‘Come on.’

  We walk wordlessly for a few blocks down Two Street. We walk for a few more blocks along Four Street. We walk up Seven Street. All streets, on all sides, are walled with dark apartment blocks, row after row, lumpy blocks which stump, symmetrically yet slipshod, as far as the eye can see. Doorways have been chained and bolted with rods of rusty iron. Black bikes, heavy, awkward, have been locked onto the ironwork. Teles can be heard squawking like trapped chickens through the iron rods of windows. A red banner hangs in yellow lamplight. Police and people together keep this neighbourhood safe. Mops lean out of some windows like skinny old women going mad while waiting for their hair to dry.

  Jay’s singing a song, another song I don’t know.

  Coming upon the creek, we begin to follow its stone embankment while bats flitter and wheel above the water. Folk are sleeping on the bridges. Mothers, fathers, kids, scantily clad in cotton, lying limply on mattresses which have been dragged out here from nearby dark warrens of apartments — for these folk aren’t homeless, they’re those who have houses, those who are housed.

  We’re stifled, we can’t breathe in this city.

  You kid yourself, don’t you? You kid yourself while poking about in your own little neighbourhood, among those you know. You kid yourself that you’re living somewhere. Yet you can’t breathe. You’re being buried alive in the midst of some labyrinth in Shanghai or Chicago, or Lagos or Lima or London, or Mumbai or Manhattan. Or maybe you think yourself free of the city, housed as you are amidst fertile fields, green groomed tombs, where closely clipped turf is laid weightily across your windpipe, in Kent or Kyushu or Connecticut. You’re dying, yet you kid yourself that you’re alive, that earth feels your footfall. All around and under and over you, though, there’s nothing, nothing but what’s around me right now, nothing but this appalling unrolling limitless lifeless immensity of concrete brick steel glass mortar, on and on and on, kilometre after kilometre, the stereotyped blocks of municipal apartments from the eighties and the stereotyped blocks of municipal apartments from the nineties, the commercial towers and the government towers, the falsely facaded pseudo follies and domes from the start of last century, the upmarket private apartment towers from the first years of this century. On and on and on. And crawling, creeping, ferreting through the midst of it all, million after million of us little forked folk with our two tiny legs, our eyes smarting from the smog, our sore noggins working in overdrive to make fake sense from the chillingly hierarchical mess, meticulously surveyed and sold.

  ‘I wanna fuck you now,’ says Jay.

  We’ve stopped at a little set of stone steps which let down to the creek, and we’re starting to make our way towards the water.

  ‘Look at the bats!’ I say. ‘So many of them — what do they eat, do you know, Jay?’

  ‘Have many bats in Shanghai. Don’t know what they eat. The bat is lucky.’

  ‘Lucky? Oh, I see — you mean bats are thought to bring good luck?’

  ‘Yes. Manfred, I feel sleepy. You don’t wanna be fuck?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, I back to the dorm now.’

  Little fucker. Yep, those words once more, stabbing my brain. Fucking little fucker.

  ‘You could at least make an effort, couldn’t you? You could try to talk me into changing my mind. You behave like you’ve never had to beg anyone for anything, let alone love.’

  Damn, I meant to say a fuck, not love.

  ‘Are you mad with me because your top guy is so lazy?’

  ‘You’re not my top guy, Jay. You used to beg me, you bastard. Have you forgotten?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he shrugs. ‘I back to dorm now.’

  The boy’s bored by my intensity, by my making a meal out of the pros and cons, the to fuck or not to fuck, that is the question. Callous little prick. I see red. I no longer see where we are. Where we are is this steep and slippery stairway over the swiftly running, stinking creek. Above us are the walls of apartment blocks. A few windows glow. One of the glowing windows opens into the room of a young woman studying Japanese at my university, a young woman not known to me, nor to Jay. A young woman who overhears what we say and one day will speak about what she knows to Inspector Mao.

  ‘Fucking little fucker!’ I scream. ‘I’m killing you, cunt!’

  Skilful streetfighter that I am, I lunge in a ramshackle kind of way, slip on a Coke can and fall heavily against the stone wall. Jay grabs me around the waist. I want him never to let me go. He stares at me worriedly.

  ‘You okay?’ he asks.

  ‘Leave me alone, fucking little prick.’

  Straightening, he no longer looks worried. He looks angry. His mouth sets and his eyes glitter in the lamplight.

  ‘I don’t know what should I say to you!’ he shouts. ‘I think you are the bigger bastard I ever meet!’

  ‘Shut the fuck up! Go and fuck your fucking Yank, fucker!’

  Jay takes his turn at doing the lunge thing, while flailing at me with his fists. Quite clearly he’s as skilled in streetfighting as I am. He thumps my shoulder, my chest. Next he tries to throw me down onto the stony steps of the stairway. I’m fending him off while cursing fiercely. My curses aren’t imaginative — fucker, little fucking fucker!

  ‘Matt agreed to me,’ he mutters. ‘You don’t know what you want.’

  ‘So you talk me over with the fucking Yank, do you, you smart little cunt? Okay, talk over this!’

  Jay has the bad luck to be standing on a lower, wetter step than me. Also, although his limbs are supple he lacks my strength, since I’m the one who does the gym workouts. One hard shove from me. He loses his grip, loses his footing. He falls.

  Splosh!

  I know he’ll be okay, the creek isn’t deep — so I bolt, clear out, run away.

  Now, of course, I know he wasn’t okay. The creek must be deep. Jay’s dead. How did he come to b
e naked? I don’t know. My boy’s been murdered and here’s me sitting on the red sofa wearing shorts and picking at my legs and waiting for a knock on my door, waiting for Inspector Mao. And now —

  Knock knock.

  A light knock, not a strong knock.

  Standing glumly, I slap across the floor in my bare feet, grab the handle, throw open the door and find a soft-spoken, smooth-cheeked lass.

  ‘Sissy, come in.’

  As always, she looks very girly.

  Thank you, Professor. I hope I do not disturb you.’

  My mind isn’t attuned right now to monitoring the mental state of my students, it’s true, but though I want to keep thinking about nothing and nobody but my dead boy, only two glances are wanted to make clear that my monitor feels anything but cheery. I show her to one of the armchairs. She turns down my offer of a seat on the red sofa — maybe because a sofa ranks higher than an armchair and therefore should be kept free for the professor. I pop out to the kitchen to get her some peach juice and, upon stepping back into the sitting room, check her out before she sees me and can slip on a mask.

  ‘Sissy, you’re not happy,’ I say quietly while handing her the juice and at the same time backing myself into the sofa. ‘Want to tell me what’s troubling you?’

  On comes the mask.

  ‘Still so hot these days,’ she says brightly.

  ‘Very hot. Are you worried in any way about your studies?’

  Perkily smiling with her buck teeth, while pushing back her specs, and perkily shaking her little head — shaking so perkily that a ribbon of glitter and gilt tied onto her ponytail seems about to take flight, to flutter away on gaudy wings like some unknown species of nylon butterfly — she says that she has no worries about her studies. A follow-up question she answers by saying that her health is good. The smile gets still perkier, while the little nylon butterfly tries even harder to fly away, when I ask if all’s well with her family. Perky, perkier, perkiest — and now she starts to cry.

  Quietly, I watch her weep, waiting till she can speak.

  ‘I don’t know what should I say, Professor,’ she says after a while, letting out the words slowly, together with small smothered whimpers. ‘My family want that I — that I — my grandfather and my father and my mother want that I —’

  ‘Tell me about it when you’re ready, Sissy.’

  A box of paper tissues proves handy. She spells out, bit by bit, how her family has gone into a huddle with the family of a young man. The two families have made up their minds to work towards a wedding. The young man is in the employ of a finance company, is nearly thirty, and yesterday spent a few hours walking in the neighbourhood park with Sissy. He and she seem to have little in common. The young man likes to talk about cars and clothes and houses and money. Sissy likes to talk about books and dreams. As the afternoon wore on she felt worse and worse. He tried to take her hand but she brushed him away. He tried to kiss her when it was time to say goodbye, but she stepped back.

  ‘How about your thoughts, Professor Manfred?’ she says after a short stop to dab at her tears. ‘Already start think me a bad girl?’

  ‘You’re a fine young woman, Sissy.’

  ‘Today I am not fine very much.’

  Ordinarily the poor lass can muster much better English. Now it seems clear she needs someone who knows the world and can help her talk and think her way through this pickle, but it seems less clear that I’m the someone. Quite apart from my being a murderer, someone about to be slung into the slammer, what do I know about Sissy? I know she’s never had a boyfriend. She told me about it last winter when we were chatting together at the river village. I also know that most of my other young women students have never had a boyfriend — let alone done the deed with a boy. Girl undergraduates are kept corralled inside their dorms, with their noses pressed to their books. Boys are kept corralled in other dorms. Dating between girl and boy students is frowned upon by nearly every university throughout the whole country. A girl student spunky enough to buck the rulebook by looking for a boy will often end up out of luck anyway. Guys don’t like a girl to be too learned. Very few men, whether old or young, can cope with a woman having higher grades or a better degree. Colleagues of mine on campus — women as well as men — tell gifted young women students not to be too ambitious for themselves but to look for a good husband and then, having found him, to commit themselves not to their own goals but to supporting their husband’s career and also to the role of mother. None of my colleagues tells gifted young men students not to be too ambitious for themselves but to commit themselves to supporting their wife’s career and to staying home to look after their son or daughter.

  ‘Your life is your own,’ I try, though I know my words make almost no sense in Shanghai.

  Sissy lets out a sigh.

  ‘My mother is a primary school teacher,’ she says. ‘My father is doing odds and ends, and I am the glory of the family.’

  ‘Hey, maybe you’d find it more helpful to talk to a woman?’

  ‘A woman?’ she says, looking worried.

  ‘I’ve got a friend who comes from Sweden. She teaches in another department of our university. She’s very good hearted. Would you like to meet her? We could have tea here together, the three of us, later in the week. Her name’s Gertrud.’

  ‘I don’t know what should I say. I am grateful to your offer, Professor.’

  ‘So you accept?’

  ‘I am too worthless for so much trouble by two professors.’

  ‘Sissy, do you feel a little awkward at the thought of talking to a stranger about your family?’

  ‘Yes, but I trust you, Professor Manfred.’

  ‘Good.’

  Sissy will be able to learn a lot from the tea party, I reckon. Gertrud has a lover, a woman from Beijing. My hunch is that my gawky young monitor stepped back from being kissed by that guy in the park not out of shyness but from a wish, very likely unknown to herself as yet, to be kissed by a woman.

  As for me, I want to offer a hug to the lass when we stand at the door and say goodbye. Of course it’s not proper. I wave her away.

  Nipping into the bathroom for a pee and afterwards turning on the taps over the basin to wash my hands, I find that the little red worms have gone. Where? Why? Don’t they like living with me any more? I feel almost lonely. Okay, let’s not get quixotic. Padding out of the bathroom and across the corridor, I settle down at my desk. Paperwork. The shuffling of papers. Computer work. The shining of a screen. Swivelling my head on my neck to look out the window, I see the smutted sides of mildewed apartment blocks against a muggy grey sky. Spinning my body back towards my desk, I start to toy with the red steel stapler.

  Knock knock.

  Sissy again? No, the knock is much too firm, too strong. Dad? Hah! The old loser won’t be knocking on any doors any more. Of course it can only be Inspector Mao. My heart thumps.

  Knock knock.

  Yet, while it’s a strong knock, it’s not a hard knock.

  Fuck, it can’t be!

  Can it?

  Leaping to my feet, nearly fainting with fear and hope, I sprint to the door. I fling the door open.

  NOT A SQUAT cop but a slim boy. A handsome lad whose back has been slung with a bright green pack. A tall teen whose long legs slip sleekly down from yellow shorts.

  What the fuck! How can it be?

  ‘Daddy, am I the ghost?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You look like you see the ghost, haha.’

  We’re standing in my doorway on this sweltering afternoon nearly four weeks since I did Jay in. Yet — here he is, here’s Jay!

  ‘What are you —? How come you’re —’

  ‘No doubt that this is a very hard work to believe I am alive,’ he laughs.

  ‘So you’re here, and you’re — you’re okay? You’re okay, are you, Jay?’

  ‘Very okay, Manfred.’

  ‘Come inside, let’s not keep standing here — fuck, this is just — I can�
��t believe —’

  Jay strides inside. Croaking something about being back in a moment, I go straight out the door and up two flights of stairs to the top landing, where I stand in my bare feet on the fake granite and make myself calm down. Jay, not dead. Me, not his murderer. When I get back, the youngster looks at me in a puzzled way. He’s dropped himself down onto the red sofa. I want to drop myself down next to him, next to those yellow shorts, those sleek long legs. I don’t, though. I sit on the hard armchair where not too long ago Sissy sat telling me how she wanted not to be kissed.

  ‘Daddy, I am not the ghost,’ says Jay, gently.

  ‘Indefinite article, not definite article,’ I say. ‘You’re not a ghost.’

  He laughs.

  Questions come crowding thickly out my mouth. My mug must look slack jawed. My eyes must seem witless. Jay! Jay? Okay, questions. I ask where he’s been. Up north, he says. I ask what happened. He asks me what I mean. I say I mean the night I shoved him into the creek. He laughs again, happily. He tells me he made up his mind after getting dunked that night to turn his back, to go away. He wanted to go away so he could think. He set off, he says, straight after climbing out of the creek. I ask whether he was wet and cold. He says he was wet but not cold. The water was as warm as the night. He felt hurt in his heart, he adds, but not his body. Money in his wallet was only a little wet, so he took a train to Wuxi. Did he stay in Wuxi? He stopped there for no more than a few hours before hitchhiking all the way to Xuzhou. What did he do in Xuzhou? Wandered about aimlessly for a few days, he says, before catching a bus to Tai Shan. How long did he stay at Tai Shan? He stayed until yesterday. What did he do at Tai Shan? Visited temples and climbed sacred peaks, he says. Visited and climbed and thought, he adds. He wanted to be a hermit for a few weeks. He’s proud of himself for knowing the word hermit. He says he knew he was behaving badly by not sending any word to the school or his parents but he didn’t want to talk to anyone, only to think over everything.

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything.’