In the Lap of the Gods

by Li Miao Lovett

  Liu had no regrets about giving up the scavenging life. He had been a puppet in the hands of Fang, a man who gambled with the lives of abandoned children. Rose was spared only through Liu’s intervention. Fang had sent him, gullible as he was and desperate for money, into the netherworld of old Fengdu. Surely the old broker could not have set him up for prison, but Liu began to think that Fang was capable of anything, any act that robbed the common man of his dignity. It rankled him that Fang had incited the sudden departure of his in-laws at the wedding banquet.

  For Liu, this day marked a milestone along the path to rebuilding the crumbled foundations of his life. Perhaps there was little to salvage from his former life, and if so, Liu walked forth with a sense of purpose stronger than anything he had felt since Fei Fei’s death, except for the rescue of an abandoned baby girl on a foggy summer’s day.

  At last, Liu reached a quiet stretch of the waterfront. He descended down the sloped embankment to the water’s edge, where Mr. Wu’s skiff was moored.

  “Liu Renfu? I’ve been waiting for you. Climb in.” The narrow interior of the skiff echoed with Liu’s halting footsteps. The boat was pod-shaped, with a steel hull painted white. Inside the cabin, two planks for seating ran along each side, and an assortment of ropes and puffed-up vests lay in the recesses. “What are those for?” Liu pointed at the orange vinyl heap.

  “They’re life jackets for the passengers. Not that anything could happen on this calm lake. But foreign tourists can be so squeamish, you know. ’Course there won’t be passengers today. It’s still the slow season.”

  Liu was surprised, and somewhat relieved, to hear that they would be transporting cargo rather than passengers today. Their first stop was a village where peasants had formed a collective to grow and sell chestnuts. Liu and his new boss climbed a short distance up the hill to fetch the goods. He hoisted a crate on his shoulders and nimbly skirted his way down the steep, pebbly path. Sweat trickled down his back, but his muscles held firm. He relished the pulse of energy that carried him back and forth between the boat and the waiting cargo.

  When the cabin of the boat was filled to the brim, Mr.Wu fired up the engine and headed back to Wushan. Passing through the deep canyons of Misty Gorge, Liu gazed out languidly at the passenger ferries and barges laden with coal that sputtered past, creating feathery ripples in their wake. A sliver of sun appeared behind the clouds, casting a trail of sparkling emeralds on the vast ribbon of water.

  The cliffs loomed like ancient terra-cotta warriors along this stretch, their slopes so steep that no traces of cultivated crops or human disturbance were visible. The motor hummed noisily, and Mr. Wu scooped up a pan of river water to cool off the engine every so often. “You think this is an easy life? Wasn’t always this way.” The boatman stared at Liu, who was leaning against the cabin wall, lulled into drowsiness by the rhythmic slapping of waves against the boat.

  “When I first got into this business, the water had not yet risen, and in places the river was no deeper than that thing.” Mr. Wu pointed to a bamboo pole, perhaps six feet long. “You could see the pebbles in the water, and rocks so sharp they could slit a man’s throat.”

  Mr. Wu got to his feet, grabbed the pole and began to demonstrate. Liu watched the display with torpid interest. “I hired a couple of men back then to push against the swift current going upriver. The waves would sweep the bow of the boat upwards, and I’d holler to the passengers, ‘No tip boat—over here!’ and sometimes if they didn’t move quickly enough, the propeller would scrape against rock on the bottom. I keep this pole around to show my passengers how tough it used to be.

  “Now don’t think I’m paying you to sit around like this all the time. It’s the slow season. You’ll need to help me drum up some business.”

  The next morning, Liu met up with Mr. Wu at the main wharf. A steady crowd stampeded down the floating dock, whose rickety joints creaked under the weight of passengers lugging burlesque suitcases and enormous burlap sacks.

  Mr.Wu handed a stack of small flyers to Liu, each about the size of his palm, and instructed him to hand them out to tourists. “Are these tickets?” Liu asked.

  “No, fool, it’s advertising. I learned this trick from an American who runs a shop in the red-light district.”

  “How do I know who the tourists are?”

  “They’re the ones dressed better than you, and they shuffle along looking lost and confused.”

  “I’m not a good judge of people,” said Liu.

  “Just hand ’em out to the passengers with luggage. By noon, I want you to come back empty-handed, okay?”

  When a crowd of passengers arrived on the fast boat from Wanzhou, Liu wedged himself against the railing and croaked in a raspy voice, “Day trip—Little Three Gorges.”

  The human wave broke for shore, and all he got in response were some suspicious glances. A pretty woman hesitated, then hurried past as the leaden contents of her shopping bag jostled Liu in the thigh. He watched the bang-bang men, the porters who lurched toward passengers with their bamboo poles, cajoling and pleading with them to carry their bags. It intrigued him when an able-bodied passenger relinquished his suitcase to the stranger. Perhaps that’s what I need to do, Liu thought.

  Summoning a courage he had not known he possessed, Liu darted through the crowd that morning, hot on the heels of prospective passengers. By and large, the hurried masses responded with indifference and disdain. Perhaps a dozen people took his leaflet, now crumpled in his sweaty palms. “Get out of my way,” a man grumbled. “Got a cigarette?” another asked. One fellow, with a wormy scar beneath his shaggy beard, stuck out his hand at Liu for a flyer.The man held it up to his chin, and hawked a green cesspool into the square of paper. “Police’ve been trying to arrest me for spitting,” he said, tossing the pulpy mass into the river.

  Mr. Wu berated Liu for returning with most of the flyers that afternoon, and told him to fix up his appearance. The next day, Liu hovered at the edge of the dock again, this time in a black jacket over his linen shirt, the one he had bought to impress Mei Ling. By mid-morning, Liu had given away a thumb’s length of flyers. Pleased with himself, he folded up the rest like paper bills, stuck them in his pocket, and headed toward the roadside stand for a pack of cigarettes. A pack of boys bicycled past, setting a swirl of dust into the vaporous air, and as Liu turned to avoid them, a flurry of fists scratched and pummeled the side of his jacket. He reached into his pocket; the flyers were gone, along with a small cloth bag where he had kept 15 yuan. Liu shook his head in disbelief. The misfits chose to pick his poor man’s pockets, but a rich man dressed in rags would have been left alone. He sucked on his cigarette for the rest of the morning, tamping down sparks of ash into the cracked earth.

  He told Mei Ling about the incident that night, but allowed Mr. Wu to think that his efforts had paid off, as business was indeed picking up with the change of the seasons. As the chill of winter gave way to mild southerly breezes, Liu settled into his role as helper, bag schlepper, soother of frayed nerves and screaming children. Most of the time, the tourists were busy snapping pictures of the sheer cliffs of Dragon Gate Gorge and Misty Gorge. But Liu developed a keen sense that responded to, and even anticipated, a shift in the winds, the small dramas that played out in the confines of the forty-five foot skiff.

  Once, in the stupor and exhaustion of late afternoon, a curious tot wandered toward the stern of the boat when the mother wasn’t watching. The boy’s cigar-shaped body dipped toward the water, and started to teeter over the edge. Liu jumped up, caught the child mid-yelp, and delivered him safely back to his mother’s arms. She was so grateful that she tipped Liu 200 yuan on the sly, more than a week and a half’s worth of wages. The deed made a favorable impression on Mr. Wu, who allowed Liu to take the helm once in a while, schooling him in the ways of seamanship.

  Mr. Wu deviated little from his standard tourist trap lingo. He addressed Chinese tourists in the lilt of the local dialect, telling him how his father was a
boatman who plied the Yangtze, fishing with cormorants. The man had six rangy birds strung out from his boat, their necks arched like jug handles, with a ring around each. The fish they caught sailed down as far as the pinch of the throat, until Ol’Wu pried the catch from the cormorant’s bloated beak. Of course, the birds got their just reward at the end of the trip: small fish that passed through the copper rings of their leash.

  Nothing was further from the truth. Mr. Wu spun these stories from ancient lore and the river life that streamed past their old village, where they grew rice and vegetables. When Liu asked about his fib, thinking lies were meant only for awkward and life-threatening situations, Mr. Liu told him that it brought in business. “Even the foreigners. They hear my broken English, and to them it’s quaint, it’s the strange life of a Chinaman, so primitive and fascinating.” And that story, too, was a long stretch from reality. Mr. Wu’s new house, a four-room structure of brick and white tile, was supplied with electricity and running water. The kitchen had a newfangled electric stove because he could afford one now. The children watched television channeled in by satellite, and spun CDs like whirling tops when they weren’t playing Hong Kong pop on the stereo.

  In the evenings, when Liu returned from work, he stayed at home more often while Mei Ling worked at the restaurant. The drone of the television lulled him to sleep shortly after supper, with Rose curled up on his lap.

  Throughout the spring and summer months, not much rocked the calm waters of their marriage. And yet, a silent rift was pushing the couple toward opposite banks, as each became absorbed in his or her own concerns and unseemly desires.

  An introvert by nature, Liu enjoyed those quiet hours when the chatter of strangers’ voices became a faint echo in his mind. As Liu gained more skill in managing the skiff and its daily cast of characters—the squeamish ones and the thrill seekers, the overbearing spouses and bosses—he dreamt that one day he would be the lao ban. Not even a da lao ban, a big boss with hired help to chase after tots and purses tumbling overboard, but simply an independent one.

  Mei Ling began to spend more time with girlfriends, and wrote often to her old roommate. Once, Liu had gotten home early and spied the crinkled parchment of her letter on the table. When Mei Ling emerged from the bathroom, she bolted toward the table, snatching at the letter as if it were intended for a secret lover. Liu backed away, apologized, and wished for once that he had the power to decipher those cryptic characters, and beyond that, to understand the passions of his wife, who professed an unquestioning love for the strange gods of the West, but seemed rather lukewarm to the intimacies of the flesh.

  Yet Liu was too spent after a day of battling wind, water, and the storm of human activity to express much zeal himself, and the milestones of Rose’s development slipped by unnoticed. Around the anniversary of her rescue, she began to walk unsupported, and Liu had only a moment to marvel at the waddling of her ungainly legs before his worries about money and Mei Ling took over. By summer, she had cut a new set of canine teeth. He was dimly aware that she clung to the comforts of what was hers: the tattered tails of her blanket, the thumb that soothed frayed nerves, the puppet monkey made from an old sock. While still curious and alert, she had begun to distrust the motives of strangers.

  Rose uttered colorful words with the glee of the innocent—pi dan, naughty egg; sa gwa, silly melon; san ba, tattletale. These she must have picked up from Mei Ling. And when the girl finally uttered the softer syllables ma ma, recognizing Mei Ling as her mother, Liu was too exhausted at the end of a day’s labor to notice.

  22

  FANG APPROACHED HIS MEETING WITH THE VILLAGE CHIEF of Lanping with his usual swaggering confidence. The chief lived a stone’s throw away from Chu Longshan, in a cluster of houses clinging to the hillside, where the chickens and ducks and snot-nosed children ambled and played in close quarters. In Sha Tong’s living room, the customary portrait of Mao Zedong graced the walls, but a scroll of equal size hung next to it, a poem in calligraphy extolling the virtues of hard work and patience. The chief wore a humble coat the color of wheat. Its spare cut and butterfly clasps harked back to an era when blue Mao jackets were worn all over the land, in the cities as well as the countryside.

  As they shook hands, Fang cringed at the rough texture of the peasant’s palm. Sha Tong turned toward an elderly woman with a sweet face, wrinkled like dried tofu skin.

  “This is my mother,” he said. “She is 79, sharp for her age. Wouldn’t you say, Ma?” The elderly Mrs. Sha parted her lips, a mere crack in the masonry, revealing a few teeth that had survived famine, misfortune, and poor hygiene.

  “So, Mr. Fang, how is it that you can help us? We are but poor villagers, it’s true, and I do not expect those in better circumstances like yourself to take pity on us.”

  “I am a business dealer, although I’m not here to make a profit off your misfortune. I’m doing this more as a favor, for a friend.”

  The village chief shot a skeptical look at Fang. “Do you know that this involves more than our humble little village? This scheme, the Gaoshanlu Dam, will flood thousands of hectares, and in seven townships the residents are grumbling about how the officials are treating us.”

  “I’m told they’re offering 5000 yuan a person.”

  “A miserly amount, for taking away our land. Well, I suppose it’s not our land, but my great-grandfather, and his father before him, farmed along the Songdu River. We’re asking for 8000. Even this isn’t anywhere near enough.”

  Fang stared at Sha Tong, whose shrewish eyes read of hardship, a life of squinting into the harsh sun. “So who’s calling the shots? Whom should I talk to?”

  Sha Tong shook his head. “You don’t understand, sir. This is a difficult situation, and many officials are involved. Each time a different one shows up in a slick suit. They are all cut out of the same fabric, but no one takes full responsibility for this thing.”

  “Yes, but if you toss carrion to a pack of hungry wolves, the leader’s going to stick his muzzle out first. Give me the name of the development company and I’ll go from there.”

  Sha Tong’s mother, who had remained silent, flashed a toothless grin at Fang. “This young man is a fighter, after my own heart. The ancestors of Sha will watch over you.”

  Fang extended a hand toward her with a flourishing gesture of respect. “And I will not disappoint them, madam.”

  When he thought about her words afterwards, the shadows of his old life flickered before him. He remembered his old college friend, who had died a needless death in a needless revolution more than three decades earlier. He did want to help Chu Longshan in his fight, not just for his sister’s sake. But I’m no revolutionary, he thought. And yet, Fang knew he was a match for any bastard who boasted of wealth and power.

  Over the next three weeks, the scent trail led Fang from the Dalong Power Company, the Big Dragon with ambitious plans for the Yangtze, to various officials, petty and self-important, to the chairman of the Provincial Development Planning Committee in the capital of Chengdu.

  His office was grander than anything that Fang had seen inhabited by a public official; even Inspector Mah’s office at the Urban Development Bureau back home was a hovel compared to the palatial suite where Chairman Jiang reigned.

  A secretary ushered Fang into the office, and Chairman Jiang waved him in with an imperious hand. His eyes darted like a rodent’s. Fang felt a little uneasy.

  “I am Fang Shuping, a skilled facilitator of numerous business developments, here to address some unresolved aspects of the Gaoshanlu project.”

  “Sit down. No need to give me your card. I can’t keep track of all you peddlers. What about Gaoshanlu do you want to know?”

  Fang leaned forward. “I understand that this is an important project, as it will generate billions of kilowatts of power for Sichuan province.”

  “Yes, 12.6 billion, to be precise.” The chairman’s steely gaze seemed to stifle further discussion, but Fang continued in his most professional
voice.

  “The good people of Lanping village, in one of the townships nearby, will need to relocate far away to the north of Chengdu. As you can see, this involves a huge economic loss; the land they farm now may be steep, but yields of rice and sweet potato are quite high there.”

  “And what does this have to do with you? You look too smart to be one of the poor peasantry. Do you wipe the asses of big government officials? Are you a lawyer? We make sure they’re castrated before they come deal with me.” Chairman Jiang snorted, and his fat knees rattled against the frame of the mahogany desk.

  “No.” Fang cleared his throat, and then continued. “I am a broker. I make deals.”

  “Tell me,” said Jiang, “what do you think you can do as a third wheel in this project? The company’s starting construction next month; the people have been promised their money.What more do you want?”

  “That you request 8000 yuan per person for the relocation funds, including—of course—overhead and extra fees for your office. The villagers can’t move otherwise.”

  “Nope, can’t do it. Compensation’s been set at 5000 yuan.”

  “Ah, but I can help bring in some extra money. Listen, I’ll hook up your partners at Dalong Power with my industry friends, and they’ll be guaranteed more than a few investors.” Fang knew he had seized on the soft underbelly of this scheme, as Dalong was a high roller, pulling off a speculative enterprise with many promissory notes.