We believe that wealth is both our greatest liberator and our greatest oppressor. That money is but a clever dictator and master propagandist, filling our hearts with hope and our minds with fear.
He stomped back to the house—huffing, puffing, and unwashed—and threw open the door. Stefan’s snores rattled the floorboards.
Wang hopped on one foot to the south wall, where a towel hung on a hook. Stefan’s towel. He yanked it down, spit on it, and used it to wipe clean his foot. Let him get conjunctivitis, he thought with a sneer. Look on the bright side! Struggle makes us stronger.
Two more hops and he scoured the bottles lined up on their chopping block, poured some homemade baijiu onto the unsoiled side of the towel, and gave his foot a second, antibacterial rubdown.
Sufficiently sterilized, for now anyway, he rehung the towel on its hook and limped to the corner, to the desk where they stored their shared laptop computer. They didn’t use it much, tried to keep their electricity usage to a minimum, and the Internet was so slow here besides, but this was an emergency.
He drummed his fingers on the desk, waiting for the page to load. Slow, slow, slow. He clicked the X, stopped the browser. Why run a stupid search for how to repair a broken water spigot now? He could do that once Stefan was awake. He glanced down at his shit-foot. What if there were still particles? Could they enter his bloodstream through his skin? Was that science? How long had it been since he’d truly felt clean?
His hands trembled. He took a deep breath, glanced over at Stefan, who slept peacefully—did he sleep any other way?—and satisfied by the steadiness of breath, he typed his own name into the search engine. He pored through the results, pausing every so often to ensure that Stefan remained unconscious. “Hair Tycoon Disappears, Rumored to Have Renounced Riches”… Wang Xilai, once a national superstar entrepreneur and a hero to many… disgraced and disillusioned by a murder charge, which was later dismissed…
The man he used to be was a mystery to him now. Why, after just one lousy nervous breakdown, did he decide to get in a car with a fairy-possessed fairy and uproot his entire life, an entity he’d given pulse to for twenty-some-odd years?
Stefan stirred, the sheets crunching under his body like potato chips. Wang jerked in his seat, exited out of the browser, slapped on his best virtuous face.
Stefan rolled over to face the wall, his eyes shut all the while. He smacked his lips and resumed snoring.
Wang shook his head, sighed, reopened the browser, deleted the history, shut it again, stood up.
We believe that happiness is not a product, manufactured by corporations and advertising agencies, attainable only through purchase. We believe that happiness is for free; that it is a feeling, an action, a choice.
He schlepped outside to the shed. What he needed now was reassurance. One more day, one more day, one more day. He needed to see her. So long as she was still under his control, he was in control. He reached for the padlock.
Rustling. Rattling.
He retracted his key, shoved it into his pocket, spun around. “Who’s there?”
No answer. More rustling.
He stole a glance at the shed’s door, which appeared untouched. Trying to keep his cool, he crept along the shed’s wall, hackles raised, preparing to punch or to be punched.
He rounded the corner. He rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell no,” he muttered.
A man and a woman, naked in the grass next to his shed, giggling, groping, copulating.
He cleared his throat, hoping the hacking would draw their attention, their apologies.
They stopped thrusting and grunting. They fell still. They turned to look up at him with wide eyes. Their sweaty bodies glistened in the sunlight. They didn’t say anything, no sorry, no nothing.
He couldn’t just keep standing there; he had to speak. His voice came out high-pitched, foreign.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Still, they didn’t open their mouths.
He squinted, frozen. He couldn’t bring himself to look away from them, their shimmering skin. He recognized not their faces—perhaps newbies to the community, people who didn’t yet have a firm grasp upon its boundaries and rules—nor the curious emotions those faces housed. Surprise never surrendered to shame. As though they were waiting for him to leave so they could continue their tryst. As though he was the one in the wrong. As though stumbling upon them had been some sort of sin.
He considered his next move. He blinked. They were gone.
He cocked his head; no more rustling—just birds singing, cicadas chirping.
He rubbed his eyes. Still gone. Perhaps some shit-borne illness had indeed entered his bloodstream, leading to hallucination. Perhaps the stress was cracking him up. Perhaps these naked fornicators were just really fast runners.
He blinked again, checked that the coast was clear, and returned to the shed’s entrance. He turned his key in the lock, opened the door, stepped inside.
We believe that the desire to accrue wealth is but a symptom of a greater malaise. That discontent and dissatisfaction breed greed, and that greed breeds discontent and dissatisfaction, and that this is a cycle in which innocent souls can so easily become lost, crushed.
We believe that the best way to cure society of its cancer is to remove its tumors. That we are its tumors.
A lifetime ago.
When love bobbed on the tranquil horizon, when Stefan and Wang’s songs whirled to the sky, when they cruised down bumpy country roads, endless, it seemed, an eternity before them, an eternity to go.
This was a lifetime ago.
When their hearts became too full, they expanded them. When their voices went scratchy, they sang through the pain. When their eyes drooped, they switched spots—driving, riding, it was all the same.
If only life could go on this way forever, if only, if only. This was a song they sang.
At dawn, on a stretch of straight gravel road beside a rubber tree plantation, they stopped to take a leak. Side by side, in silence, they relieved themselves, eyes fixed on the evenly spaced rows of trees.
There was a rattling then too.
Wang shook himself off, zipped up. “Do you hear that?” He paused, craned his head to the car, and then said, though the words tasted ridiculous in his mouth, “Is someone in the trunk?”
Stefan zipped up his trousers. He hacked out a loogie, squared his shoulders, and sauntered around to the driver’s side. The way he was now, it was unlike the sweet self he’d been before, belting out ballads at the top of his lungs. The way he was now was more like the black-clad figure he’d been on the roof: fierce, startling, unsettling.
He continued around to the car’s rear. “Look, I don’t want you to be mad at me, but I think I may have kidnapped someone when I was under that fairy spell. I did, I mean. I know I did. Before I drove out to see you and all of that.”
“What?” Wang wiped his clammy hands on the front of his pants. “Kidnapped someone?”
Stefan shrugged. He spoke, his voice gravelly, half him and half somebody else. “I, um, I started to remember as we were driving. She was watching a DVD in her apartment and I burst in and I just, uh, kidnapped her. Put her in my sports car. Drove. And when I got to your place, I moved her into your trunk.”
“Who?”
Stefan coughed. He fell back into whisper, desperate. “I was trying to avenge you, I guess. Seeing as how she framed you. Seeing as how she sent everything spiraling out of control, saying you paid her to murder her father, driving you mad, ruining your business, devastating this country. I only wanted to help, is what I think, but I wasn’t exactly in control of myself, was I?”
A familiar sentiment, and at once, Wang knew.
“I suppose it’s up to you, what we want to do now.” Stefan sighed, his shaky hands on the trunk. “But this part, at least, is done.”
He popped it. The door sprung up, bounced a little, settled.
Wang stepped over, reluctant, afraid, not ready to accept this new
fate. But what choice did he have? Here it was before him, hog-tied and gagged in the back of that Bentley: none other than the devil herself.
This, we believe.
6.
THE BASHFUL GOOSE DIARIES, SELECTED EXCERPTS, PART 3
TONIGHT, I WALKED AN UNPAVED ROAD. DUST FLEW INTO MY EYES, stinging, burning.
As I made my way, I considered all the damage I’d done in the name of good: death and imprisonment and family feuds; illness and lovelessness and old evils renewed.
Oh, how I tried!
I’d given money to a limbless beggar, who was immediately mugged and beaten by a teenage gang. How was I to know of turf wars, of unseeable borders, of the gangsters’ limitless cruelty?
I’d served tea to some soldiers whose convoy was broken down, and gave them all a bout of E. coli their torn-up guts aren’t ever going to let them forget. How was I to know the water hadn’t been boiled?
Oh, how I tried.
How little I learned in these months of the world and how it works. How little I learned of how to weave kindness into everyday acts. For kindness and goodness, these are not to be given freely anymore. There are rules, mores, accepted practices.
This is civilization, after all.
On that dusty road, I stepped, one, two, and something stuck to my foot. I stopped, looked down, bent over, picked it up. A cellophane wrapper bearing my face, my wing, my name.
Indeed, how could someone like me, someone who’d led such a pampered life, someone whose image is mass-produced and mass-loved, ever know suffering? How could I ever hope to understand the people, much less serve the people?
Perhaps I’d misread my second attempt at life’s purpose. Perhaps the truth was I had no purpose at all; perhaps my rebirth had been a fluke, perhaps my initial birth had been too. What good had I ever done this nation? I’d given the people snack foods, empty calories. I’d given them jingles and songs. I’d given them, in essence, nothing.
A single tear burst from my duct. I hadn’t cried for many months, not since my good-bye to Papa Hui, and I could’ve blamed it on the sand. I could’ve pushed that pathetic tear aside.
But I didn’t. I dropped the wrapper to the breeze, and I walked on.
Ay, but, this tear, and the others like it that welled up in my eyes, they nearly blinded me from seeing something important—a shadow, a long shadow—its object behind me, descending, quickening.
A telephone pole, falling, falling toward me, aiming to fall on me.
This could’ve been my end, the end I deserved.
But ay, to die or not to die? That is truly the question, and one to which most are given no choice.
But I had one.
To allow my legacy to be tarnished, to let my legacy go, or to rise to this new occasion, to this new dawn—to claim a new dynasty of snacks?
The heavens whispered in my ears, whispered of truths and secrets. Perhaps I did not give this nation nothing. I’d given it my sustenance after all, and I’d given it my spirit, and I’d given it my all!
So I lifted my wing to wipe away those tears, lifted my wing into my signature pose, and, holding on to but a glimmer of hope, I cried out, “I am no Lei Feng, and I won’t die like one!” and I sidestepped that black shadow and I ran, ran like hell.
Out in the woods, on the other side of an important moment, if you listen very closely, small footsteps are audible. The sound of twigs bending, but not breaking.
Listen.
Those footsteps, they belong to me. After nights lurking among shadows and trees, I am walking toward this community, this dangerous rebel holding ground. I am approaching the place where many men and women have given up the ghost of greatness.
The land that stretches out before me, somewhere beyond this forest, is a graveyard of dreams. Oh, it sounds melodramatic, but it is true!
Hear me now: greatness resides outside the body. It does not belong to any man or woman. It is something we borrow, something that calls to be shared.
There is no such thing as a self-made millionaire, for instance. This is lore, and one we love to believe: that any one man can rise up and become an icon. But a “self-made” millionaire carries genes from his mother and father and all the ancestors who came before. He uses language, developed by people long since buried in the ground, and language is also evolving, we contribute even now to its evolution. He lives within a society created by others, is governed by laws passed and enforced by others. He spends, and eventually earns, money dirtied and worn by others’ fingerprints and lint from others’ pockets—and that’s not to mention the entire economic system of which money is a part, this great mess of wants and needs and bartering and trading and currencies both monetary and electric. He learns lessons from his parents and teachers and friends, but no need to get hokey here. It is from others that we learn kindness and honesty, sure, but also from others that we learn to exaggerate and to hunger for more and to swindle and to partake in all of those devious, wonderful activities that millionaires and dictators do best.
And society, how it despises wandering ghosts. How it longs for greatness embodied. How it starves for the myth of the millionaire. How the people crave someone to pin their hopes upon, to worship in church or in the supermarket or in Tiananmen goddamn Square.
We want to believe that we can get better, together, alone, whatever. We want to believe that we can become something more than what we are.
But we should know by now: what we are is all we are.
And now I’m veering dangerously off track. Forgive me for my slight swerve onto the scenic route. Let us get back on course. All I mean to say is: self-made my ass!
Greatness is a ghost. But not for long. I’m here to guide these bastards home.
And with that, I will leave you, dear diary, as it is here I take my final step out of the woods, raise my beak to the crescent moon, and release a hearty honk: Hey, fuck your mothers, the bashful goose is back!
7.
THE WANTS AND NEEDS OF WANG XILAI
FOR THE REST OF THEIR DRIVE, THEY DELIBERATED. THERE WAS NO MORE singing. There was no more balance. There were only options.
As far as Wang was concerned, there was no good that could arise from letting her go. She’d tell the world she’d been kidnapped, or worse, she wouldn’t say anything, but return to her life, appear in court, claim her father’s company, and hold this whole kidnapping thing over his and Stefan’s heads, sparking an inexhaustible game of blackmail.
Killing her was also out of the cards. He’d already gotten away with “murder” once. Could the public forgive him again?
The only option then was to keep her around until a better option presented itself. This option became all the more appealing when, upon their arrival in this weird ghost village, Wang was given his expiration date, June 5—yes, he’d subdue her until then, and after that she was somebody else’s problem.
As soon as they found the house they were to settle in, Wang connected to 3G Internet on the laptop they’d brought along in the car. He researched. He recalled a story his grandmother once told him. He found an online shop that sold gus, tiny worms that could be slipped into food and that allowed one person to mentally control another. He lied his way through an e-consultation, told the black magic pharmacist that he needed to maintain control over his daughter as she studied for the university entrance exams, help her keep her head on right. The pharmacist typed that he understood, but for safety’s sake, he could dispense only one gu per patient per month, and asked if that was all right.
“Fine,” Wang typed back, “I’ll need one per month for the next six months then.”
He couldn’t have the worms delivered to his new home—no post office in range, and too risky besides—so he used a convincing fake ID card leftover from his checking-into-love-motels-with-closeted-pop-stars days and a credit card registered to the same ID, and arranged for the package to be delivered to an old man in a village three hours’ walk away.
“Do what you have
to do,” Stefan told him, absolving himself over time of any responsibility, as mere mortals are wont to do. “But from here on out, please keep me out of it.”
Wang held his tongue.
He rendezvoused with the old man at a halfway point, on a narrow path beside a wide, stony creek. It was a pleasant walk through wide fields and rolling hills, made ever the more pleasant by its solitary nature. Once the annoying ex-millionaires arrived, he anticipated the monthly trek even more. Peace and quiet.
The ex-millionaires, however, all viewed it as some sort of a spiritual exercise, their leader’s monthly pilgrimage to grow closer to the mysteries of the universe. As though writing one lousy treatise and living in filth had transformed him into a sage. One morning, a group of them cornered him as he was picking mint leaves in the garden and asked if they could tag along.
“We’ll be quiet,” one said.
“Utterly silent!” said another.
Wang gripped his handheld spade, dropped his gaze, and shook his head in feigned resignation. “I’m sorry, my children, but this is one path I must walk alone.”
It struck him how easily deceit was mistaken for wisdom.
So his walks remained an interlude from his otherwise bleak waiting period. Each month, at the meeting point, he tucked the new package away in his pocket and paid the old man for his compliance, a pittance really, from some money he kept stashed away, buried in a tin can in the shed.
What killed him, what threatened to break him down, what detracted from the journey’s joy was the way the old man clutched the bills, as if they were gold. When he turned and departed the scene of their transaction, there was always a spring in his step, a joy radiating from his bones. Wang learned his lesson quickly, made it a point to turn away first. He couldn’t watch. He couldn’t bear the fallout.
And he couldn’t tell the old man about the date, about the lurking drought. He couldn’t tell him that the orders would stop. That the money would stop. That he’d be back to his old poverty, his old boring life, until he found another way.
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