by Justin Hill
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, patting Madam Fan’s arm, while his wife supplied her with another handkerchief: ‘I’ll look after this.’
After lunch Fat Pan went for his afternoon nap. He was snoring and his wife was irritatedly trying to not hear him. She let out a long sigh: wondered how she ever ended up with such a lazy husband. She tried to tell herself she couldn’t remember why she’d married him in the first place: but it wasn’t true. He lived in the city and she was desperate to leave her village. She’d married him because she thought he would be a good husband to have. And she supposed he was. It didn’t really matter now anyway, she’d given him a child and he’d given her a bright new flat.
Fat Pan’s wife thought of asking Fat Pan for a new washing machine as she walked through the flat. That letter was still on the table by the sofa. She picked it up and looked at it: he obviously wasn’t very interested. His handwriting had an odd slant to it: his letters were careless, it looked like he’d written it on something soft. She took it back to the kitchen where she meant to leave it so she would remember to ask him what he wanted to do with it, but as she poured herself a cup of tea she spilt water over the front. She tried to dampen the water away, but the ink was smudged and the paper started to tear. Stupid thing! she thought as the tear got wider, then she thought sod it! and screwed it up and put it inside a plastic bag and put it in the bin.
Fat Pan’s wife began to worry he might miss the letter, either that or he might see the bag and suspect something. She picked the bag out of the bin and took it outside to the rubbish chute. The metal shutter was smeared with dried grime, she kicked it open with her foot and threw the stupid bag away with its stupid letter inside.
On the hillside the cold pines were singing in the wind when the rain started. It rang out on the roof tops, slow, irregular droplets: sounded like it was going to be a downpour, but the cloudburst never came: just slow heavy drops and a whistling wind.
Liu Bei walked with Little Dragon through the drizzle. He kept falling behind and eventually she had to pick him up and carry him.
‘I’m cold,’ he complained.
‘Don’t worry,’ she told him, ‘nearly there.’
The evening streets of the old town were dark and unlit. The tightly packed roofs shut out the pale white glow of the clouds. She hurried past the turning for the Post Office and then took the next right, her feet feeling for the steps down and then she walked quickly again, the path taking her up to her mother’s house. A single pale yellow street light shone out, and a few moths flickered in a tireless and fruitless romance.
The door was bolted. Liu Bei banged and her mother opened it. Her mother didn’t speak, Liu Bei pushed inside regardless.
‘I’ve put all his things in here,’ she said in a business-like manner. ‘All his clothes and toys. His shoes are in this bag.’
Little Dragon was sitting on the stool, sleepily watching TV while Liu Bei’s mother stood with her arms folded. Liu Bei looked up and saw her: stopped talking. She ran her hand through her hair and let out a long sigh. ‘And that’s everything, I think.’
Liu Bei’s mother nodded. ‘Have you told him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘I told him that Mother had to go away for a while. And he was going to stay with Granny.’
Liu Bei’s mother turned around and walked to where Little Dragon was sitting. She stood behind him and ruffled his hair. ‘Time for bed!’ she said, and Little Dragon yawned. ‘Come on, say goodnight to Mother!’
Sun An and his sister slept in the same room when it was cold. He’d been silent for days, moving with a slow determined air: as if the whole world was against him. His sister watched him changing for bed: he’d stopped seeing that silly girl at least, she thought. She wasn’t good enough for her brother. He was too honest for her.
‘Night, little sister,’ he said and turned the light out.
‘Night,’ she said.
Sun An’s sister lay in the darkness and thought of which of her friends would make the best wife for her brother. It was a silly game that made her smile: she couldn’t imagine him with any of them. He should marry a nice simple village girl, that’s what he needed.
Sun An dreamt he was a fisherman who kept on catching the same fish. In the dream he kept saying no he didn’t want to eat that fish and putting it back, but every time he put his line into the water the same stupid fish kept biting the food. His sister was dreaming about her school friends when a sudden battering on the front and back doors woke them both up. Sun An sat up in alarm.
‘Who is it?’
‘Police! Open the door!’ came a voice. There was more banging as Sun An jumped out of bed in his vest and underpants and began to feel for his clothes on the floor.
‘What do they want?’ his sister asked. They heard the sound of a body barging the door. The door frame began to creak.
‘I’m coming!’ Sun An said as he pulled his trousers up. The door frame creaked again. ‘I’m coming!’ he shouted. ‘Shit!’ he muttered and hopped on one leg. ‘Coming!’ he shouted as he fastened his belt and pulled the bolts open, and turned the key. They door flew open, and a number of hand torches dazzled him. Bodies came in, five or six, each with a torch shining it in his face.
‘What do you want?’ Sun An asked.
‘Who are you?’ said a voice, a torch shining in his face.
‘Sun An.’
‘You own this place?’
Sun An nodded, trying to move his face so the light wasn’t shining in it. He couldn’t, whichever way he turned was a shining light.
‘You got any papers?’
Sun An nodded, eyes almost closed with tiredness. He reached to a bag on the wall, and rummaged through for his papers.
‘Who’s this?’ A torch shone across the room.
‘She’s my sister.’
‘She got papers?’
He dug hers out and handed them over.
‘What’s your name?’ another voice asked.
He repeated it.
‘Date of birth?’
‘Third day of the fifth month, nineteen seventy-two.’
‘You sure?’
Sun An nodded.
‘I don’t believe you,’ said a soft voice.
Sun An squinted into the light, shrugged with tiredness.
One of the policemen kicked him in the groin, and he grunted in alarm and pain and doubled over. ‘I said I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true!’ he winced.
His sister looked on in alarm, pulling the quilt up to her face, to smother her screams. There was another thud and another grunt, then another.
‘Stop!’ Sun An’s sister screamed. ‘Stop!’
‘I think you ought to come with us,’ one of the policemen said, and pulled Sun An up to his feet.
‘It’s true,’ Sun An said again.
‘What are you doing?’ his sister called out.
‘Shall we take her too?’
‘Yeah,’ another voice said. ‘Why not?’
A hand clamped around her forearm and dragged her out of bed, out into the cold night and into the back of the police van.
Sun An and his sister held each other’s hands as they were driven over the potholed roads. He tried to speak but a torch was shone in his eyes and he was told to shut up.
They had hoods pulled over their heads before the back doors were opened, the cloth was rough and had a mouldy smell to it. Sun An’s hands were handcuffed behind his back and he was led down a corridor and thrown into a cell, his sister brought in a few minutes afterwards.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked him and he shook his head. He didn’t know.
Sun An’s sister sat close to him and he put his arm around her. ‘It’ll be all right. Don’t worry,’ he told her, but his voice sounded unconvincing.
It was late in the night when the men came back. Sun An and his sister were asleep on the bed, her arms wrapped protectively around her brother. The
clang! of the door lock woke them, Sun An sat up and waited as his sister shielded her eyes from the light.
Sun An had never felt so frightened. He closed his eyes and waited for the blows–but they didn’t come. Instead his sister started screaming as they pulled her off the bed and out the door. Sun An stood up and a voice said ‘Sit down,’ and he did. She’d be all right, he told himself. They must be letting her go. She had school tomorrow. He shouldn’t fight, he’d just get beaten up. He had responsibilities. He had a video shop. He had to send his parents money.
They took Sun An’s sister down the corridor to an empty cell where they threw her onto the bed. Two men held her hands down, pressed the metal frame into her flesh, stopped her struggling. Another tore her trousers off. She kicked and they chuckled to themselves.
‘This is to teach your brother not to go round fucking city girls,’ one man said.
‘Tell him to keep his peasant dick to himself!’ another hissed. Sun An’s sister stared at him, saw the stubble on his chin, the snarl on his face as time slowed down and twisted. His hands pulled the front of his trousers open and his penis was smooth and shiny and erect. Sun An’s sister squeezed her eyes shut when they pulled her underwear off; started shouting. There were rough hands on her thighs and private parts. Fingers pushed her top over her breasts, the skin was rough, the fingers strong. When one of them pushed inside her she could feel the hairs on his legs rubbing against the skin on her inside thighs.
‘Please!’ she whimpered, but he pushed inside and she started crying. She opened her eyes. His face was twisted and angry. ‘Please no! Please!’
‘If you talk any more you’ll start singing opera,’ one of the men laughed and she bit her lip but they didn’t stop.
Sun An sat rigid on the bed listening to the screams drifting down the empty corridor. It wasn’t his sister. They’d let her out. He pictured her back at the video shop, in bed. Too worried to sleep, then dozing off like she always did. It was good, he told himself, she’d get some sleep before she had to get up for class. The screams stopped and a door clanged. Sun An stood up, it’s OK, he told himself. It’s OK. She’ll be home now in bed.
When the footsteps came back down the corridor Sun An sat up again on the bed: his eyes were so wide he could make out the dark grey walls and door through the darkness. They’d let her out and now they’d let him out. They’d have checked his details: he had all the necessary documents, his business licence was in order. He would be OK. This was all a mistake. If they wanted money then maybe he could bribe them or something.
The policemen dragged Sun An’s sister back through the door. Their torches dazzled him again, the door slammed shut. Sun An crawled. ‘Sis?’ he said, and his hands touched bare skin. A leg. They felt half way up her leg then stopped.
‘Sis, are you all right?’
Her voice was quiet. ‘Go away,’ she said and pushed his hands away.
‘Little Sister?’
‘Please go away,’ she said, and started to cry.
Liu Bei didn’t sleep that night either. Little Dragon’s head was pillowed on her arm, her other arm was held protectively around him. She cried silently, sniffing only occasionally, and listened to his soft breaths. In the darkness her lower lip trembled, and the tears started flowing again.
There wasn’t much time in the morning to get everything organised. Liu Bei had got up just after five, turned the stove on and started boiling a kettle. Her fingers smelt of kerosene, there was a black oily smear on one of her knuckles. She wiped it on her trousers, feeling the roughness of the fabric, moving the smear to her leg.
Liu Bei stood and waited. The noise of the warming water seemed so loud. She was frightened it might wake them all up. She turned the flame down to the lowest setting, let it boil slowly. She sat as the world outside the house began to wake up. Occasionally someone passed in the street, a hawk as someone cleared their throat and spat; or just the approaching tap-tap of footsteps coming close and fading away.
Liu Bei’s mother grunted something in her sleep, turned over and lay still again. Little Dragon lay like the dead, unmoving. Aunty Tang’s breathing was heavy, she snored then snuffled then snoozed silently. Liu Bei’s train left at seven forty-five. She’d have to leave here at about six thirty to make sure she got there. She checked her watch, it was six twenty.
Liu Bei wanted to sit and watch her son sleep for the rest of her life: he looked so perfect and fragile, just as she wished she still was: not burdened down with memories and guilts, dreams and disappointments. She sniffed and blew her nose into a piece of toilet tissue. She’d promised to wake her mother before she left but now she couldn’t bring herself to say goodbye. She would just sit and watch them and then slip away. They would wake and find she was gone: and it would be better that way.
Liu Bei turned the stove off, it’d still be warm when they got up, then she picked up her bag and put on her coat. She stopped at the door and looked back. Goodbye, she thought. Then stepped out into the waking world.
Liu Bei was so tired not even the motion of the number 204 mini-bus could lull her to sleep. Her eyes ached but they couldn’t close; she stared out of the window, through her own reflection, saw the sun rise over the hills and begin to burn brighter and brighter.
There was a bustle of people at the station: all pushing and shoving and getting nowhere. Liu Bei held her ticket in one hand and her bag in the other, pushed through to the entrance to the waiting room and showed the station attendant her ticket.
The waiting room was lit by naked electric bulbs that gave the room a sepia look. Most people were asleep, or sitting quietly, talking in low voices. 07:21. There was a smell of unwashed socks, a stench of cigarette smoke, the floors were thick with phlegm and grit. Liu Bei sat on the end of one of the benches and waited as the digital-clock display flashed on and off: the last digit changing every sixty seconds. Her eyes couldn’t look away.
07:22
They were so tired. Every six hundred seconds the last two digits changed.
07:30 Liu Bei kept staring; stopped noticing after a while. At 07:35 there was an announcement that the Shanghai train was approaching the station and half the waiting room jumped up and started to push for the exits. Liu Bei joined in the jostling crowd, kept pushing for the exit, through the gate where guards checked everyone had the right ticket, and then out onto the platform.
It was a fight to get onto the train: it was a slow train and over the miles it had filled up with peasants heading for the east. Liu Bei squeezed herself in by the door, struggled to turn around and sit on her bags. It was thirty-six hours to Shanghai: then she could begin again. After so long, thirty-six hours didn’t seem so long to wait.
Guards marched up the train, ordering people to push up inside the train, then forcing the doors shut. Liu Bei peered past the man next to her; out of the window. If this was a film then Da Shan would come running onto the platform now. The thought made her smile. He’d come running onto the platform and she would force the door open and jump out, and then that would be the end, and the names of all the actors would follow. She imagined what the happy ending would be like: something clean and simple. No loose ends to confuse matters. The train started with a jolt that made the man next to her lose his balance for an instant.
Liu Bei stared out as the grey Shaoyang platform began to move across the window. The train picked up speed, the platform and station disappeared altogether. The tower blocks and streets and cars and motorbikes flashed past in the window glass as they rolled through the town; out into the countryside.
Liu Bei stared out of the window: she was too overwhelmed to cry. She was leaving everything behind; even her son.
There was one more week of hot humid weather, then autumn set in for good. It was Da Shan’s favourite time of year: cool, clear days of blue skies and white clouds, a sense of wistfulness that got more intense as the year changed.
One day someone stopped Da Shan and said that there was a letter
for him down at the factory office. It was from Shenzhen, the person said. Da Shan nodded. He took the fried dough sticks back home, ate them with a bowl of soya-bean milk, then walked down to the office, under the trees. The leaves that’d survived the night clung desperately to their branches; the ones that had fallen scuttled hopelessly around looking for a way back up. He kicked them and they rattled.
The letter was from Da Shan’s ex-wife. She said she’d met a man from Singapore and they were going to get married. They would go and live with his family. She was taking their daughter. She thought he ought to know. Yes, Da Shan thought, I guess I ought. He read the letter again, and then put it into his pocket.
It was the kind of letter you’d expect in autumn: it made him feel disconnected, melancholic. Da Shan was walking back up to the blocks of flats when he met his mother hurrying down the road.
‘Have you heard?’ she demanded.
‘No?’
‘They’ve found a body,’ she said. ‘Down at the building site.’
Da Shan remembered the man who’d been killed. ‘A worker?’
‘No, it’s in a coffin.’
Together they walked down to the site of the old New Block; there was a dry putrid smell that kept getting stronger. ‘One of the old women saw it this morning,’ she told him. ‘At first they didn’t know what it was. Then they realised it was a coffin.’
There was a crowd gathered. The trenches were so deep now they had to stand at one end of the building site to see in. Da Shan and his mother pushed to the front and peered in. It was hard to see around the workers who were gathered there having a fag, so Da Shan took his mother’s hand and pulled her out of the crowd.
‘This way,’ he said and ducked under the rope. ‘Cigarette?’ he offered the workers. They smiled and Da Shan passed them his lighter, then jumped down amongst them. Da Shan’s mother was too old to jump, so she went back a bit and let herself down where the trench wasn’t so deep.