The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

by David Rotenberg

  “You not able to read the price printed on the masthead?” Fong asked.

  “That’s the wholesale price. I’m a retailer,” said the boy sticking out his chest with pride. Fong snatched the papers he wanted and barked, “You, my young friend, are a paperboy in a wooden box, not the Shell Oil Company.”

  Fong opened the first of the papers and was happy not to see any story on the abortion bombing. The Shanghai paper led with a story about nine men killed in a fireworks explosion, not a new disaster in this part of the world. On the sidebar was a story about China’s trade with Taiwan – US$32 billion in 2001. Fong had no way of knowing if that was above or below expectation. He did assume that once you traded that much with Taiwan it could be hard to make them do as you wished. At the bottom of the page there was a surprise, an article about China sending Buddha’s finger bone to Taiwan for display.

  Fong smoothed out the paper on his knees. Deaths in a fireworks accident, trade issues with Taiwan, and Buddha’s finger bone – was it only him who found those things incongruous all on one page.

  He put aside the local paper and took the biggest of the Hong Kong dailies. This paper had an even stranger mix. The lead story was about a new design for the black hoods used to hide a suspect’s identity while being transported to and from courtrooms. This was accompanied by a large photo of the hood. Below the picture was an article about a man who was arrested for shouting loudly into a policeman’s ear. If that was not odd enough, the whole bottom of the front page was filled with a by-lined article about a man who successfully sued an attempted suicide victim for damaging his car in his fall from a six-story building. It was only on the second page that a news story actually appeared. The mainland government had agreed to allow visa-free trips to the Pearl River Delta via Hong Kong.

  The Taiwanese paper led with a story about the record number of Taiwanese wanting to study on the mainland, followed by an article chronicling a 20-percent rise in AIDS cases on the island. Then an article about Taiwan’s desire to increase trade with Japan and their Premier’s desire for a meeting with Jiang Zemin. “Fat chance,” Fong thought. But it was a small article at the bottom of the page that drew his full attention. The Taiwanese were bragging about their assistance in obtaining the release of a young American who had been caught smuggling Bibles onto the mainland.

  Fong quickly grabbed the local Shanghai paper. The article about Buddha’s finger bone and the Taiwanese article about the Bible smuggler were both in the bottom right-hand corner of their respective papers. Fong put them aside and leaned back in his chair. He tried to remember when religious stories began to appear in newspapers. He couldn’t recall. When had faith become central to the news? Why was organized superstition now on the front page?

  The director of Othello, Roger, walked out on the stage and asked for quiet in the house. “Mei you fa tze – it’s good luck,” Fong thought. A Chinese rehearsal room was often as loud as it was smoky. And it was always smoky. When a foreign director asked Chinese actors not to smoke they assumed that he meant don’t smoke now. So they’d butt out then light up again within the hour, the half hour – almost immediately. It was pretty much inconceivable to most Chinese actors that there is a way of acting without a cigarette.

  Tuan Li entered the stage from prompt side and the house got as quiet as it gets. The Afro-American actor playing Othello quickly joined her. The main set pieces for their bedroom were moved forward.

  Fong reached for Fu Tsong’s copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. The actors moved toward the bed. They eyed each other, quite ignoring the director. As Fu Tsong had told him so many times, “No director can help you even half as much as a good acting partner.” Tuan Li sat on the bed and suddenly her Othello thrust his great hand directly at her face, stopping a mere inch from her nose. She gasped but held her ground. Then his long fingers encircled her throat as he said:

  “Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,

  Made to write ‘whore’ upon? What committed!

  Committed! O thou public commoner!

  I should make very forges of my cheeks,

  That would to cinders burn up modesty,

  But I did speak thy deeds.”

  Tuan Li didn’t move her elegant head from her Othello’s hand and, as Desdemona, stared straight into his eyes and replied,

  “By heaven you do me wrong.”

  He returned her stare and bellowed:

  “Are you not a strumpet?”

  releasing her head with so much force that she stumbled back to the bed, almost falling. But she kept her balance and most impressively her composure.

  “No. As I am a Christian.

  If I preserve this vessel for my lord

  From any other foul unlawful touch

  Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.”

  Othello was once again quickly upon her.

  “What! Not a whore?”

  To which she snapped back:

  “No, as I shall be sav’d.”

  Fong looked down at his text to get the Mandarin translation for the last exchange and noticed Fu Tsong’s note: The Christians have a god that saves them if they are pure. What is there here for us like that? What for me is like being saved for Desdemona?

  Fong read Fu Tsong’s note a second time, then a third. How little he had known her. He wondered if she had ever answered her question? Did she think she was going to be saved even as she fell into the pit? Fong had to admit that he didn’t even know if she was religious. He looked up. The Afro-American actor was in full flight:

  “I cry you mercy then;

  I took you for that cunning whore of Venice

  That married with Othello. You, mistress,

  That have the office opposite to Saint Peter,

  And keep the gate of hell.”

  Fong nodded his head. If they believe in a heaven and being saved they no doubt believe in a hell and being damned. He wasn’t sure it was worth the trade and although there was much of Marxist rhetoric that he rejected he didn’t dismiss the claim that religion was nothing more than an opiate for the masses. Fong had seen many things that had struck him as wrong – but evil – evil was different and sat in territory that made him extremely uncomfortable. He found it more than uncomfortable – he found it dangerous. Who gets to say what is evil and what is not? Although not a young man himself, he wasn’t at all pleased with the idea that sapped-out old men with beards could or should dictate to the rest of the species by playing on every person’s innate fear of death. That these old assholes could dictate the rules of behaviour with fairy stories of rewards and punishments struck him as obscene.

  He looked at Fu Tsong’s markings at the top of the next page of text. It referred back to an earlier line in the play – Act III, Scene III, line 270. Fong turned to the reference Fu Tsong had sited and read Othello’s lines aloud:

  “I had rather be a toad,

  And live upon the vapour of a dungeon

  Than keep a corner in the thing I love

  For others’ uses.”

  Fong allowed that to seep into him as Fu Tsong had taught him to do. Then he checked another of her citations at the bottom of the page – Act IV, Scene II, line 60 – Othello says:

  “Where either I must live or bear no life,

  The fountain from the which my current runs

  Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!

  Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads

  To knot and gender in!”

  Fong then looked at Fu Tsong’s comment beside these lines: This guy really has a thing about toads. Toads “gendering” together. He should have this checked by a specialist and soon.

  Fong found his hand touching her words on the page and a profound sadness descended upon him. He had managed to forget that about her. She had been funny. So very funny.

  He flipped the page and was confronted with a long section of Fu Tsong’s writing that seemed to have no reference to particular lines: We all die. Some are taken
by time and care. Others by a murderer’s hands. But are we never the cause of our own demise? Even of our own murder? Can life never get so horrid, the pain of living so great – that death is the better way? That the pain of the here and now is greater than any fear of the hereafter.

  It is my job as an actress to make the most compelling character that I possibly can within the constraints of keeping away from eccentricity. A character that is lost in the darkness is less compelling than one that sits in the light. Let us grant whatever possible knowledge Desdemona could have and work from that point.

  Is it possible that Desdemona is in so much pain that she causes her own death?

  Is it possible that her love for Othello is so profound that there is almost none of herself left when she is with him – that it would be better to die than be so consumed by her love for him? Is it possible that Desdemona is as frightened of her love for Othello as I am of my love for Fong?

  When he looked up he could hardly see. He knew he was crying but he didn’t know when his tears had started. He brushed them aside and was surprised to see Tuan Li standing over him. He didn’t know what to do – so he apologized.

  “For what?” asked Tuan Li. “You are Fu Tsong’s husband, yes?”

  He nodded. She held out a handkerchief. He took it and wiped away his tears then went to hand it back but didn’t know if that was proper. The scent from the handkerchief was on his face.

  “Is that her copy of the play?” she asked tentatively and reached for her handkerchief.

  “One of them,” he said.

  “Did the great Fu Tsong like this play?”

  “She did. Very much, although she had many questions about it, but then again she had many questions about all the plays she acted in.”

  “What troubled her most about Desdemona?”

  “The woman’s belief in being saved. I don’t think she ever found the equivalent in herself to the Christian concept of being saved.”

  “It is very un-Chinese that idea.”

  Fong nodded.

  “Do you understand it?”

  “No,” Fong said.

  Tuan Li smiled sadly at him and said, “Perhaps that is why you are so alone.”

  Fong didn’t follow that and was about to say so when Tuan Li was called back to the stage.

  Fong watched her and her Othello work the entirety of the scene again. This time Tuan Li took volition and defended herself brilliantly against Othello’s attack. But Fong noticed Tuan Li doing something that Fu Tsong had often talked about. He recalled Fu Tsong’s words: “This is not realism, Fong. That’s life. Plays are done in naturalism, that’s art. In realism people deflect anything dangerous that comes at them. It becomes the reason why when I attack you, only later do you think, I should have said this to Fu Tsong or that to Fu Tsong. It is because you weren’t able to stay present during my completely justifiable attacks on your person. You are a civilian after all dear husband. But I am not. I am an artist and I am paid to stay in present tense. Hence I can never deflect anything. Every awful thing you say to me goes in and hurts. That’s how naturalism works. It is the strength of the heart of the actress that allows her to honestly accept the attack, fall, then rise like the phoenix to fight again. Artists exist solely to share their knowledge of the heart – and what an artist does to her heart by forcing it to stay present is as unnatural as what a ballet dancer does to her body.”

  Fong turned to the stage and there he saw Tuan Li’s Desdemona doing precisely what Fu Tsong had told him an artist’s job was – accepting the pain of each sledgehammer blow from her Othello, even allowing the possibility that Othello was speaking truths, then falling, then rising to fight again.

  Fong wondered where this strength came from. He would have been astounded to hear Tuan Li’s answer to that question: “Faith,” she would have said, “Faith, dear Fong.”

  The director stepped forward but before he could open his mouth Tuan Li put a finger to her lips. For the first time in Fong’s memory a Chinese rehearsal room went dead quiet. Tuan Li stared at her Othello and he met her gaze. She was clearly challenging him to find the book upon her features, the pages on which were written the word: Whore. For the barest second Othello faltered beneath the challenge then he turned and spat directly in Tuan Li’s face.

  The men in the audience leapt to their feet but Tuan Li didn’t move. She accepted the insult, fell inside herself, then rose and withdrew a handkerchief from her sleeve.

  It was only then that Fong saw that it was not the handkerchief that Othello had demanded that she produce. The rest of the audience saw it too and realized that they had been drawn into a clever trap that allowed the play to ratchet up the tension to yet a higher level.

  As so often in the presence of art, Fong felt full but humble. He knew he was not capable of fulfilling an artistic endeavour himself but he was grateful, so grateful that there are those who could lead him through the heart’s dark corridors.

  The touch of Lily’s hand on his shoulder shocked him back to the present. He snuck a peak at his wristwatch. He had been in the theatre for more than three hours. “My cell phone didn’t ring,” he said.

  “I’m not here, Fong, because the office called,” Lily said simply.

  After a beat Fong asked, “Why are you here, Lily?”

  “No, Fong. The question is why are you here and not at home?”

  Fong looked at the stage. Iago had just come on from stage right. Othello pecked Tuan Li on the cheek. She openly mouthed “Good luck” in reference to Iago then walked right past the British actor without acknowledging his presence.

  Iago approached Othello with his hand extended. “No hard feelings, I hope.”

  Othello took Iago’s hand and held it tight. “Lie better, Gummer. Lie better and don’t ever let me catch you lying. ’Cause you know this play isn’t about a dumb . . .”

  Iago hesitated and finally completed Othello’s phrase with the words, “ . . . person whose parentage was at one time native to the African continent.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Well, after all, it’s only a paper moon, isn’t it?”

  “Moon looks damn real to me.”

  Iago went to speak but no words came out of his mouth.

  “What’s that all about?” Lily asked.

  “Art,” Fong replied.

  Lily didn’t know what to say to that. She shrugged it off and asked again, “What are you doing here, Fong?”

  “Watching toads gender each other,” he said.

  “Fong!”

  “Lily,” Fong said, turning to her, “I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I know I need to be here. I know it.”

  Lily sat back in her seat surprised by the intensity of his response. Finally she said, “You are married Fong. You are married to me, not to Fu Tsong.”

  Fong heard the hurt in her voice. She had accepted the pain but had not been able to rise to respond. She had answered while still falling. “I know Lily, I do . . . I just need a little more time.”

  “To do what?” Lily demanded.

  “I don’t know, Lily. Honestly, I don’t know.”

  When Fong arrived home two hours later he wasn’t surprised to find the bedroom door locked to him. The baby wasn’t in her crib. She must have been in the bed with Lily.

  Fong stared at the empty crib and then reached in and picked up Xiao Ming’s baby blanket.

  He was surprised, when he was awakened at 4 a.m. by the sharp ring of his telephone, that he was clutching the baby blanket to his chest.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A BODY

  Fong was expecting a call from either the banking people or the cops looking for the American hotel guest with the camcorder but it was from one of the detectives who had been at the very first meeting. Fong had ordered the man to find the head nurse from the abortion clinic at the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital – the one who had left hair and blood but no other remains in the blasted-out surgery. He’d found her �
�� or rather, her body.

  Fong stepped past the detective and entered the small sub-basement room. Like so many other Shanghanese, the head nurse of the abortion clinic of the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital had lived below ground level. The small room was moldy and felt close. It smelt of things burnt – hair, cotton, something else he couldn’t identify. Curtains covered two walls; rugs lay on the floor. “I’ve got some basics from the house warden,” said the young detective handing Fong his notepad. Fong ignored it and approached the body. It lay on its back on the central rug, its arms out, palms up – inside a lightly scorched circle that circumnavigated the body. Fong touched the darkened circle on the carpet. It was cold. Then he saw it – a thin metal thread – phosphorus. He allowed the shiver to go to the base of his spine and spiral there. Phosphorus. Much light but little heat – he had been here. Right here.

  Fong looked at the rest of the room. No signs of struggle. Nothing even a little out of place or toppled over. He eyed the scorched circle again, then looked back at the body. Light scratches on the cheeks and just one deep cut at the base of the throat. A jagged ugly wound. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and picked up her left hand and looked at her nails. They could do scrapings but Fong doubted that there was anything beneath her fingernails. He checked the right hand – the same. He slid his hand under her body – nothing. He put a finger on her chin and pushed gently. The head rocked to one side. The neck clicked. He looked at the scratch marks on either side of her mouth, then he opened her mouth and felt inside. Nothing.

  Fong got to his feet, ordered in a CSU team, and then took the detective to one side.

  “Good work.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Who is assigned to live here?”

  “She is, sir.”

  “What? Didn’t you check here first?”

  “Certainly, but she wasn’t here then and her neighbours said she hadn’t been here for a while.”