The Foreigner

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The Foreigner Page 21

by Francie Lin


  "So Poison’s idea was to bring in girls from the mainland. He had friends in Fujian who were willing to round up girls from the countryside. Poor as dirt, happy to work for less. Mainland cunts fetch a higher price than local ones anyway. Uncle agreed. He didn’t want to, but the Palace was hurting now. He had to do something.

  "I didn’t understand all of this at the time. My Chinese was still a baby’s, and no one really talked to me anyway." His face flushed, and he made an unconscious fist. "But they made that mistake of assuming I was stupid because I couldn’t speak. That’s why they chose me to take the cutter out to meet the boats in the strait; they thought I wouldn’t understand what I was doing. And you know what? The wangdan were right. I didn’t understand. Not at first."

  He put a hand to his eye, touching it blindly.

  "It was one night," he said, halting. "Near dawn, more like. Done the same run a hundred times now, but I was more nervous this time. The Fujian boat was really late; I could see them steaming toward me through the fog, and I thought… I thought it would be risky to try to get back to shore; I knew the coast guard’s beat. But I didn’t say anything. I just loaded them on and headed back.

  "It was going to be a beautiful day. It’s shitty that I remember thinking that, but it’s true. It was so quiet on the water, and the mist was rising. I look at those Chinese landscape paintings sometimes, the ones with the mist and the mountains and water, and I know exactly what kind of peace they’re trying to show. There isn’t anything like it anywhere else in the world. It was summer. I even remember a seabird coming straight down from the sky.

  "But then I saw the patrol. They were pretty far off. Too far off for them to get a good look, but I could tell they were making a direct line. They were coming right for me. No way I could get back to shore without being intercepted; I’d waited too long. So I panicked. Don’t even remember what I thought. Just—threw them off."

  "The… girls?"

  "I threw them off. I picked them up and threw them overboard. One of them, I remember, was grabbing at me with these warped fingers. But she’d painted them, you know—her nails. They had this sparkly pink polish on them, like she thought she was going to be married or something. Stupid cunt." His voice broke, then smoothed. "They were tied up, their legs and arms. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t swim anyway, they were from inland somewhere, some dirt farm. The way they looked at me—like animals dying. Without understanding a single fucking thing."

  The girl in the back room, with her haunted, feral eyes. A blackness surged up in my chest. But I had not fully understood. "So they… What did they do?"

  He looked at me with contempt, or pity, the rims of his eyes red with the alcohol. "They drowned, you asshole."

  I could not speak. I gripped the ashes hard beneath my arm and was glad for once that my mother had not lived long enough to see Little P again. One side of his mangled face glistened in the weird blue light, but I wasn’t sure if he was crying. I concentrated on his thin white scar, the old one on his cheek; it seemed the only lingering mark of the brother I knew.

  "But why didn’t you just leave Taiwan then? You had no obligations to the Palace."

  "It was… for Uncle’s sake."

  "I don’t believe you," I said flatly. "You really must think I’m some kind of asshole, with a lie like that. You’re no Boy Scout. You have no fucking loyalty. You’d sell your own mother." I waved the will, then slammed it down on the table.

  "I don’t give a shit what you believe," he said, but I caught a look of fear in his face. "It’s the truth."

  "Let’s just say it is, for the sake of argument. You still have no obligation to keep working there."

  "You are an asshole." His sloe eyes blazed, scornful. "These girls earn more in one day than they’d earn in a month in China! They get breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a new outfit every three months. Hot showers, and we let them earn their way back to the mainland after five years. You may not like it," he said, cold. "It doesn’t fit with the rules of the decent little Shangri-la you carry around with you. But that’s how things work. That’s how you get it on."

  "So this is what? A public service?" I shouted, feeling sick. He had reached the point of drunkenness where he was no longer exposing anything true; it was sheer ugliness and twisted logic. "You think you’re some kind of savior?"

  I went on in lowered tones. "You’re not stupid. I know you know what’s what. So what’s the real reason you keep on?"

  He went silent, staring down into his glass. I felt him slipping away, and knew therefore that I had hit upon a truth.

  He propped his head up painfully on his good arm. I was having a hard time breathing.

  "Get out of this, Little P," I said softly.

  "I can’t." He shrugged off my hand.

  "What about the pictures?"

  "What about them?"

  "Don’t make me choose."

  "You’ve already chose," he said. "Haven’t you? You’ve already made up your mind. Nothing I say or do will change that. Am I right?"

  Stiffly, he got to his feet and glanced around the Admiralty with distaste.

  "Well," he said. "See you."

  I didn’t even notice until later that he’d taken the will.

  CHAPTER 22

  UNCONSCIOUSLY, I think, I was counting on Angel, counting on her desire to be loved, but she was not in the end as conveniently smitten as I’d hoped she would be.

  "I was wrong," she said the minute we were through customs.

  She had been silent the entire flight from Hong Kong, eating her crackers and sipping a Coke with unaccustomed pensiveness. I’d watched her, apprehensive, as her jaw began to jut forward like a barometer of thought: a decision was being made. Now she turned to me abruptly in the concourse.

  "I can’t believe I even considered it." Her face had blanched, her lips white and trembling.

  "What are you talking about?"

  She wiped her eyes and gathered up her bags with grim determination. "I’m going to the police."

  "No!" I dogged her, desperate—ashamed too, but I could not do otherwise, whatever she might think. "Please, Angel! Just a week. I’m begging you. A favor."

  Outraged, she turned on me. "A favor? And what have you ever done to deserve it?"

  "I was honest with you."

  "My dentist is honest with me," she said. "But I wouldn’t cover up murder for him." She regarded me in a way that shriveled my soul, as if I were a stranger, and repellent. "So take your honest, pious ass and shove it. You won’t make me an accessory to rape."

  No argument could be made against her; there was no argument except that of blood, and Little P was not her brother. I watched her disappear into the crowd.

  My phone rang insistently.

  "Wei?" I said dully. "Wei?"

  ATTICUS WAS dozing when I arrived at the hospital, head nodding in sleepy assent over a book, his fingers still vaguely pressed to the page, as if he had been in the middle of a discovery when he drifted off. He looked small and gnarled in the clean institutional bed, and I was shocked by the transformation of his face, which was hollow and gray, the features drawn together as if by a taut string. He had collapsed at home a few nights ago; no medical explanation had been proffered, only nerves, exhaustion, overwork. Asleep, he seemed broken. I stood at the window and watched a thin breeze stir up the grit in the gutters.

  When I turned back, Atticus was watching me. He had closed the book and sat with his hands folded across the cover. "So," he said faintly. "You are back from your trip."

  I nodded. Tentatively I came closer to the bed.

  "You don’t need to say," he said. "I see that Xiao P has already said."

  "I offered him a way out," I said, "but he won’t take it. It’s like he’s… joined a cult or something." Atticus stirred beneath his sheet, fingers plucking at one another restlessly. "Those girls. Those poor girls."

  "The girls then, or the girls now?" said Atticus.

  "You knew abou
t the girls he killed?" I was startled—unreasonably so, for of course he would know. Everyone at the Palace had known. But for Atticus to know, and do nothing about it…

  "And you never went to the police."

  He reached for his tea. I put the cup ungently in his hand.

  "I am not a vigilante," he said. "It is not my business to make things in the world fair."

  "They were murdered," I said. It was the first time I had said it aloud. I thought of a body sinking silently down through a dark, shadowed canyon of cold water.

  "I am weak, I have admit to you already," Atticus was saying. "I have warned you many times."

  "Weakness doesn’t even begin to describe it," I said. Tears ran down my face.

  Atticus sighed, winced. "I will tell you something, Xiao Chang," he said quietly, "and you do not need to repeat this to anyone else, haobuhao? A talk between friends."

  I made a noncommittal noise. He looked at me, a note of pleading in his eyes, then went on.

  "I have report on the Palace before."

  "You… When?" I stared.

  "A few years ago, when I have just come back from the States. When I was braver." He was silent; he seemed for a moment transported to darkness. Lines of pain, perhaps of despair or shame, creased his face.

  "And?"

  He looked down at the coverlet. "And. And nothing. And I come home from work one night, and there is a man in the alley who says he is a friend to my sister. And I invite him upstairs, and when I close the door, he attacks me, and break my legs. Both legs. With a pipe."

  His voice shook, regained its poise.

  "And then I do not remember. And he hit me in the head, and I am unconscious. And he drives me out to Tainan, and he leaves me there, in the country. In the field."

  He began to tremble, sweating, and moved his head violently in a gesture of escape. "And there is your ’and,’ Xiao Chang."

  "Atticus." My stomach had clenched into a tight fist, aching. "Why didn’t you ever say so?"

  "I do not wish to recall," he said. "I wish to forget, as much as possible."

  He closed his eyes for a moment, as if swallowing something painful.

  "But then you went back to work there. After they tried to kill you."

  He shook his head. "It will not seem rational, I know. But after my legs heal, after I am out of work for so long, no one else will hire me. I depend on the money. I am an old man; I have spent my life in other countries. In France, in the U.S. So there is no pension. I have built nothing up. And I cannot live without some extravagance. I cannot live without some luxury. The Palace"—he shuddered slightly—"they know this. They know I am safe now. They know I will never talk. They know I am their—the French say larbin. You understand larbin? Their servant, their slave, mais plus vulgaire…"

  "Their bitch."

  "Yes. They know I will not talk. And I am useful to them." He smiled, sickly. "It is the way the business works. The way this country works. Reporting would do no good, duibudui? The problem is deeper. What is needed," he said, "what is needed is a new order. A new world."

  I sat back, all anger dissipated. What good would it do, making a sick old man suffer again the horrors of an event, the horrors of conscience? It wouldn’t change anything about Little P.

  Atticus winced, his face blanching briefly with pain, and I sprang up.

  "No, no." He gestured for me to sit down again. "I am all right."

  He composed himself, lying back tiredly against his pillows. After a moment, he said, "So what will you do?"

  "I don’t know," I said. Something occurred to me. "You told Poison where I lived."

  He grimaced. "I ask for your forgiveness. They have their ways to convince, you know. You will forgive weakness in an old man."

  I shook my head; it was such a small thing now. "It doesn’t matter anymore."

  Then I frowned, preyed upon by a new concern. "If I go to the police," I asked, "will you… be implicated too?"

  He smiled broadly. "Don’t worry about that," he said. "I do not care too much about my well-being anymore. It may not matter, very soon."

  He sounded as if he were consigning himself to death, or predicting it. The clock on the wall ticked louder.

  I put my hand on the bed.

  "It was you, wasn’t it? The shooting at the rally."

  He regarded me impassively, retreating behind his veneer of silent wisdom. It was impossible to know him; there was a barrier beyond which I could not reach.

  "I do not deny," he said at last. "I do not confirm."

  "But why, Atticus? You worked for him. You answered his phones. You drove his campaign truck. He was your candidate."

  His hand plucked the coverlet, agitated. He was silent.

  "I am not admitting anything," he said finally. "But with a gun, one does not always aim to kill." He hesitated. "There was a report, the night before the rally, that the party was threatening voters in Wanhua. Not so unusual, I know. But just because it is common does not mean it is acceptable. The KMT are rotten—all gangsters, you know this, all corrupt. They care nothing for the power we have built, or try to build. But after so many incidents, the KMT still have credibility somehow! You know the president, his wife?"

  "She’s in a wheelchair."

  "Because the KMT ordered a hit on her husband. By mistake they hit his wife instead. They ran her over with a truck."

  "You don’t know that, Atticus." That had never been proved.

  "I know. I know who did it. They can cover up. They can play dirty all they want, but I know." He panted painfully, his skin damp and musty with the odor of age. I had touched again that curious sorrow, the grief that ate him up at the thought of his little island country. It was patriotism at its loyal best—and what had it come to? He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  "So on the day of the rally, I did not think so much. I knew what I had to do. If the KMT is going to be dirty, I am going to be dirty too. I did not tell Li what I am going to do; I do not want him implicated if things go wrong. I thought, If the people see this good man cut down, they will think it is the KMT’s doing."

  "And vote for him instead of Zhang."

  "What is needed," he said again, with bitterness, "is a new order. I am only calling on their sense of right. I am only making it clear to them what the Kuomintang is doing all along. I am reminding them of the KMT’s sins. Is this what they want for their government? For their country? You see this?"

  He shook a page of newsprint that had been folded beneath his book.

  "From this week. It says Taiwan was refused entry into the WHO, for diplomatic reasons. Meaning, for fear of offending China."

  He moved his head restlessly and threw down the paper. "There is no moral fiber in the world. This is the WHO, the World Health Organization. Not the UN. Not a military alliance. Not even an economic treaty. It is about disease, about dying. It should not be about politics. China prefers that we die rather than let us go. Other countries, they prefer that we die rather than risk offending China."

  He fell back, exhausted. "I am only telling the truth."

  "You said you weren’t a vigilante. And Li lost the election anyway."

  "It is the effort to learn the truth that matters, not only the result." His hands shook with rage. "What I failed to do for those girls, I may still do for my country. I may still redeem myself."

  "That’s… They’re not the same thing, Atticus."

  "Sometimes things take too long on their own." He closed his eyes, shook his head. He was growing hazy, confused. "The KMT would have us return to China, eventually."

  "Maybe that’s what people want."

  His eyes flew open. "People want that because they are getting rich off business in Shanghai, in Beijing," he said angrily. "They just want stability to keep on making the money, money, money!" He spat out the word. "It blinds them to what is important."

  "And what’s that?" I asked softly, worried, for he had turned livid and looked feverish. />
  "Pride," he said. "Autonomy. Memory. It didn’t work," he said hopelessly, and tears spilled down his cheeks. He turned his head away. "Everything I did, it was no help."

  He uncurled a hand beseechingly.

  "Maybe people haven’t forgotten them," I said. "Maybe they’ve forgiven the past. Maybe they just want to move on."

  "Never." He clenched his fist and put it beneath the covers. The feverish look had passed; now he seemed only tired and spent. He closed his eyes again and didn’t open them. I thought he was asleep, and I was about to get up and go away quietly when he murmured, "Emerson?"

  "I’m still here."

  He looked at me, a little fuzzy. It was hard to tell what he saw, for though he was looking at me, he was focused on something quite far away.

  "I am getting older," he said. "I am already old. I told you before: I always thought I would see true independence in my lifetime. But it is not so certain now. How long do I have? A year? Two years? Five? Maybe not even so much.

  "I want to tell you a secret," he said. "Sometimes I think it does not matter what happens to this country, as long as there is a resolution: either we are part of China or we are not. It is the uncertainty that will kill us, you know. Never to know where we will be in fifteen years, or ten years, or five. Why should we bother to build a freedom, or love, or business, if it will just be taken away?"

  He passed a hand wearily over his eyes and felt for his tea. I took the mug into the hallway and poured out the cold tea in the drinking fountain. When I came back, Atticus had dropped off; he had taken his painkillers before I’d arrived. I filled the mug with fresh water and placed it next to the bed. He was really asleep this time, not just dozing, and his face was drawn again, no longer animated by the thought of principle.

  A young man came into the room. If he was surprised to see me, he made no sign of it; he was too intent on Atticus to pay me any attention. He removed the book on the coverlet and placed a plastic pitcher of water on the bedside stand, then wiped Atticus’s face with a wet cloth. Atticus muttered; his hand came up unconsciously and clutched the man’s wrist with tenderness. In a little while, he slept.

 

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