Death of East

by Michael John Grist

  Within an hour he was on the long bus ride to the city, carrying a Polaroid photo of his courtyard and a jar full of dark water. By the end of the day he had a loan, and his father's dream alive again in his heart.

  In the following weeks he barely slept at all.

  He hacked away the last of the courtyard's concrete and installed in its place deep mud-baths. He re-glazed all the windows and swabbed every surface with fresh white stucco and paint. He swept away the dust, replaced the well with a fountain, and plumbed in a sauna.

  When he did sleep, moments snatched at irregular hours while the paint dried or the stucco set, he dreamed of the mud girl, standing with green eyes blazing, pulling her hand back to cuff him.

  * * *

  Weeks passed, and word spread about his oasis springing up in the dry lower villages, bringing reporters from the big cities, even as far as Peijun. In sun-dizzied moments, half-mad with lack of sleep, he told them of the mud girl, and the hand of mud that rose up to save his life.

  They lapped it up. They came back for more, with equipment, with colleagues from far-off cities he'd never heard of, with film crews that followed him around, asking about gods and the will of the land. One of them, a young 'blog-reporter' as he introduced himself, even made him recite back the name of his 'blog'.

  "If you think of anything, any extra detail, just let me know. The blogosphere loves you. Contact me any time."

  Maokai had no idea what the 'blogosphere' was, but being loved sounded good. He allowed hope to crawl back in.

  Then Shun Foy came.

  * * *

  It was three days before the grand opening, the sky was thick with yellow dust, and the last reporters had long left. Maokai stood thigh-deep in mud, potting miniature lychee trees in the barrier between baths, as the sound of footsteps clacked towards him.

  "Still scrabbling in the muck, I see," came the voice.

  Maokai knew it at once, and an involuntary shudder ran through him. Images shot through him like wisteria geysers, of two boys splashing in the spa's hot-bath, of their father teaching them how to work the spa's pumps, of how Shun Foy wept when the Party men brought their father back broken and stinking of piss.

  He looked up. Shun was dressed in Party blue, with a dark band around his arm naming him a ward politician. His once-round cheeks had hollowed, his forehead was scored with new lines, and his eyes were mud-black nuggets, harder than that last day when he smashed two teeth out of Maokai's mouth.

  Behind him were three men in white lab-coats, holding glass jars and clipboards.

  He hadn't seen his brother for years. "What are you doing here, Shun Foy?" he asked.

  His brother smiled, then spread his arms to encompass the spa. "Dealing with this, Maokai. The god of mud gave you all this, is that right? It looks nice. She's been very generous. I wonder, is she here? Can I meet her?"

  Maokai glared at his brother. He recognized this mocking voice from long years of taunting. For the longest time, he'd welcomed it. He'd played along.

  "She's not here," he said. "I'll tell her you called."

  Shun Foy's smile widened. "Very good. I like that you've still got some spine. But it won't help, Maokai. All those reporters got you a lot of attention. The worst thing, really, because now it's an embarrassment for the Party. It's an embarrassment for me, too. So I'm here to clean it up."

  He turned to the men behind him, and pointed them to various spots around the spa. Maokai watched as they walked over, knelt at the edges of his baths, dipped their jars in the water.

  "What are they doing?"

  "What do you think? Use your imagination, Maokai. They're taking samples to prove your water's stolen."

  Maokai stared for a long moment, running the last words through his mind. "How could it be stolen?"

  Shun Foy shrugged. "You tell me. It's been a puzzle. Perhaps you hacked one of our pipes somewhere? It's either that, or a gift from the gods of mud. If you can show me the mud girl, get her to make a hand out of mud, then I'll believe you. We'll get it on film. I've brought a camera."

  "She was a dream," Maokai said. "I told them all that. But that doesn't mean I stole the water. I haven't hacked any pipes, you can check."

  "We are," said Shun Foy, nodding to the men in white coats. Their jars were now full of dark mud-water. "We'll have an answer soon."

  Maokai stared. "What answer? If there's water in the table, then mine will be the same as the stuff in your pipes. It won't mean anything."

  Shun Foy shrugged. "Technicalities. We'll work it out. Oh, and don't bother contacting your reporter friends. They've been warned off."

  He turned to survey the progress of the three men in white coats. They had all finished, were sealing up their jars.

  "And with that, we're done. Goodbye Maokai. I don't think I'll see you again."

  He turned and started away.

  Maokai watched. He was taking it all away again, just like he'd taken their father. Everything teetered on this.

  He was out of the mud before he knew it, rage coursing through his body. So many years of cruelty, of neglect, and for what, for this? He clapped a hand on Shun Foy's shoulder, whirled the taller man around.

  Shun Foy spun like he was ready for it, and drove a solid punch into Maokai's belly, followed by two ringing slaps across his face, pulling sharp tears from his eyes as he struggled to breathe. Then Shun Foy was guiding him down, gently to the ground, to his knees.

  "I think we know where that path leads, don't we," he said calmly in Maokai's ear. Maokai jawed at the air like a carp, unable to breathe. "Tell me where you hacked the pipe, and I promise I'll keep you out of prison."

  A trickle of air crept down Maokai's throat, and he tugged his elbows out of his brother's grip. He remembered this moment, from the day Shun Foy beat him down in the courtyard. He'd knocked out his teeth, cursed him for a fool, and left him bloody and broken. Just like then, he was on his knees again.

  "Get out," he wheezed, raggedly, as his breath finally trickled back. "Out of my spa."

  Shun Foy smiled, as if that was all he'd been waiting for. He pulled his Party jacket aside to reveal a snub black pistol in a holster at his waist. "I'll be back, brother," he said.

  Maokai listened to the sound of his footsteps, then his car engine rumbling away down the hill, as he struggled to breathe. He remembered a time when he'd loved his brother more than anything else.

  Things changed.

  * * *

  Two days later, the spa was completed. Maokai stood on the roof and looked proudly over his work.

  Everything glistened and shone. White marble walkways lay latticed across the open mud-bath courtyard, lined with the crimson pop of miniature lychee trees. All around was the earthy, fresh smell of mud.

  Surveying the village, tracing the Party's silver pipes across arid rice paddies and winding into nothingness between the dust-shrouded karst mountains, he thought about the mud girl. She was a dream, he knew that, but she was so vivid in his mind. He only had to close his eyes to envisage her burning green eyes, looking deep into him.

  The Yellow River, she'd said. He chuckled, even as a slow sense of nostalgia welled inside him. He'd used to make that trek every day, back when he'd still had hope. It seemed fitting to go again.

  Walking down the village-road, nodding to the ancient faces of his few remaining neighbors at their windows, he thought back to her smell; the earthy loam of the riverbank. It had seemed so real.

  The spa would open tomorrow. Doubtless his brother would come, and who knew what would follow.

  At the rusted bus stop he sat beside a wizened old man munching dried apricots.

  "You're the spa boy," said the old man, peering across at him. "I knew your father. Good man."

  Maokai bowed.

  The old man spat out an apricot seed noisily. "Didn't deserve what they did to him. Poor bastard. Country's run away with itself."

  "Thank you," said Maokai.

  The old man shrugged. "F
or what? It's no burden to tell the truth."

  They sat in silence a time longer, interrupted only by the old man spitting out his seeds.

  "You going to see your girl?" he asked at last, as the dirty grey coach drew near down the winding valley road.

  "What girl?"

  "The one with the lychee eyes."

  Maokai nodded. "You saw me on the news."

  The old man spat seeds, shrugged. "Everyone saw that. Made a big noise, you did. Take it from me, flowers."

  Maokai blinked. "What?"

  The old man winked. "Flowers, young girls love 'em."

  The bus pulled up. A few dusty old farmers were on board, probably come back from appealing something or other in the city. Maokai had done the same thing countless times with his father.

  He boarded, paid his fare. The old man didn't get on, merely stayed sitting by the bus stop, spitting seeds. He waved as the bus pulled away.

  * * *

  The journey was depressing. The bus wound through sun-crusted paddies, between giant browning karsts, all signs of the city's thirst. At the last stop, the Yellow River spread before him, but not as he remembered it. Once he'd come here with his father and brother to fish for carp, when the far bank was dotted only with a few construction sites where factories were pending.

  Now the factories were old and dark with soot, so many it seemed scarcely a patch of green remained.

  He breathed in, out. The air was ripe with poison yellow dust. That was the price of progress, he knew. He'd welcomed the electric lines when they were strung out to the village, was happy that there were jobs for his friends to go to. This is what it came to, though.

  There were a few small fishermen's huts of wood and tin siding clumped by the riverside. Maokai knew the mud girl was a dream, that she didn't really exist, but he wanted to make some effort anyway. He'd come all this way. Mindful of the old man's advice, He meandered down to the bank and scooped up a handful of pale river lilies, wiped away the accreted soot from their petals.

  He knocked at the first shack-door. A bent-over old woman answered.

  "What?"

  "I'm looking for a girl," he said. "She might live near here. She has green eyes."

  "Name?"

  "I don't know."

  The woman frowned, eyed his flowers. "Don't know her name? Stalker, are you?"

  "No! She, ah, she's a friend."

  "She's not here."

  The door slammed in his face.

  He tried the other huts in the clump, but none knew the mud girl. As the grey morning faded to a grey afternoon, he trudged down to the river one last time, laid the flowers on the greasy water. Half of them sank, the other half carried away on the current.

  "Maokai," came a voice from behind.

  He turned. The mud girl was standing there behind him, wearing a simple brown fisherman's smock. Her green eyes bright in the fading light.

  "You," he said. His mind went blank. "You're real."

  Her eyes narrowed. "Of course I'm real. What did you expect?"

  "I thought you were a dream," he began, "I thought, because…" then trailed off. He didn't want to ask her about the hand of mud, about her promise, because what if those things had been dreams too? Instead he shifted uncomfortably under her steady gaze.

  "I asked at those huts for you," he said, pointing stiffly. "None of them knew you."

  The girl looked. "Them? They wouldn't. I don't live there."

  "Then where do you live?"

  She didn't answer. Instead she looked towards the last of the lilies, still bobbing in the river shallows.

  "Were those flowers for me?"

  He nodded.

  "They used to grow all along these banks," she said wistfully, pointing to the row of smoky factories. "Though there's not much to see now. They make trainers and phone parts, for some far away world."

  She fell silent, then looked back at him. "Why did you come, Maokai?"

  She was beautiful. When she wasn't angry or rude, when her eyes weren't blazing and she wasn't calling him a fool, she was beautiful. He cleared his throat. "I wanted to see you," he said. "I hoped."

  She smiled. "You have your mud. I'm glad for you. I'm glad to see you."

  He felt a hot blush rising in his cheeks, making it hard to think.

  "I knew your father, you know," she said.

  The hot blush splashed cold. "What?"

  She nodded slowly. Her dark hair slipped before her eyes, and she smudged it back. The motion seemed at once inexpert and lovely. "I saw what they did to him, in their concrete cells. I tried to help, but I had no power there. I've been sorry for it a long time."

  Maokai opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't think of the right words to say. At last he settled for the obvious, which sounded foolish even to him. "You are a god."

  The sparkling edge faded from the girl's eyes, and for a moment she seemed just a mournful young girl by the riverside. "What is a god that cannot protect her people, Maokai? A noise in the air, a ripple in the water. These things are of a different age."

  "But…" he began, though he could think of no argument that would mean much to her, if it was true. Images flashed through his mind, of Shun Foy with his pistol, of the spa he'd left behind, of so many journalists come to hear his story.

  "Come to the spa," he settled on at last, understanding now why he'd taken the bus out here, though he hadn't allowed himself to even think it until now. "To the opening tomorrow. Let them see you. They'll have to believe, then."

  She gazed back at him, a sad smile on her lips. "You would have me perform for them. Pull mud from the earth as a show, regardless of the cost. You don't know how much it hurts, Maokai. It kills a part of me every time."

  "Then don't perform," he persisted, hungrily now, feeling on the edge of something wonderful and suddenly afraid he might lose it. "Don't perform, only come. You'll be the guest of honor, and we'll open the shrine to the sun."

  Her lips quirked in an involuntary smile. "What wisdom is this, to quote my own words back at me?"

  "Just come. It's my thank you, for saving my life. I don't expect anything more than that, I swear it."

  She seemed unmoved. For a long moment she said nothing, only pierced him through with her gaze. "Be sure of what you swear to me, Maokai."

  "I am."

  She nodded, the strange, amused light back in her eyes. "I believe you. So perhaps I will come." At that she turned, and started to walk away through the thick river rushes.

  "Wait," he called, "I don't even know your name."

  She looked over her shoulder, smiling. "Mud girl will not suffice?"

  "No. Please tell me."

  "Very well, since you have asked so politely. My name is Qor, Maokai. You are the first to know it in a generation."

  "Qor," he repeated, and watched as she walked away into the rushes.

  * * *

  He rode the last bus home through the dark and empty paddies in a warm daze. He had just invited a god to his home, and nothing else seemed to matter. That she was so beautiful didn't hurt.

  Walking back up the hill-road, he wasn't surprised when he saw the crowd waiting outside the spa. It seemed like the seamless continuation of a dream.

  As he drew near they cheered for him. Ancient faces pressed towards him out of the night; neighbors from his village, from surrounding villages, people he hadn't seen since he was a child. They opened ranks to welcome him in.

  "Thank you," he said, as they gathered about him. "Thank you for coming."

  They patted him on the back, shook his hand, and he moved amongst them, sharing memories of good times long-gone, of his father, of the spa in its heyday at the heart of village life. Amongst their ranks he felt warmer and happier than he had since the Party took his father.

  Gradually they ebbed away, with promises to return in the morning.

  He climbed to the roof still in the daze, his mind shuffling with the mud girl, the villagers, even his brother Shun Foy, all seek
ing their places and roles. For the first time in a very long while, everything seemed infused with hope.

  * * *

  He woke early the next morning, and work began. By mid-day all the mud baths were bubbling, fresh-laundered towels filled the changing rooms, every lick of dust had been swept up and every speck of metal polished until it gleamed. Sun broke through the clouds over the courtyard, and the lychee trees blazed crimson and green.

  He stood at the gates with his staff, listening to the buzz of anticipation from outside. He couldn't suppress a grin, as he pushed open the gates.

  People flooded in like a surge in the water table, crested with a tide of reporters who surrounded Maokai at once, cameras flashing, pressing microphones into his face. They asked endless questions about the water, the hand of mud, and most of all the mud girl. He did his best to answer, while gifts of flowers and wine passed through his hands like items on a factory production line. Bouquets heaped in his arms, made piles behind him, all to the sound of the cash registers ringing and the happy splashing of people in the baths.

  Then he saw her. She was standing at a side entrance, wearing an elegant black gown that hugged the curve of her body, cut to reveal slashes of dark midriff, shoulder. Her loam-black hair was worked up in elaborate curls atop her head, and her eyes shone like blooming green shoots.

  He realized his mouth was hanging open. She hardly seemed the same girl. Woman. He strode over to her, though for a moment he didn't know what to say.

  "Here," he said at last, pushing a bouquet of flowers into her hands. He hadn't even known he was holding them until that moment.

  She smiled, lifted the flowers to her nose. "Thank you, Maokai. Amarillias, from one of the Yellow tributaries. They're lovely."

  He looked at her blankly, not sure what to say next. Just standing near her like this was a kind of stupefying drug.

  "You look stunning," he managed.

  She smiled. "As does the spa. You have done amazing work here. Your father would be proud." She extended her arm. "Shall we?"

  He took it, and led her into the crowd of people. It opened before them and closed behind them, filled with friendly faces grinning, winking, nudging him with their elbows while they begged introductions to the beauty on his arm. So he introduced them to the mud girl, Qor, who brought the water and saved his life.