Ms. Ming's Guide to Civilization

by Jan Alexander

  She heard a howling, followed by high-pitched yips. The peasants also claimed wolf-dogs came out when the full moon shone, lone beasts from the litter of a dog who had bred with a wolf. The shaggy animals mated with their close relations when the moon was full, then stalked off on their own to give birth to deranged loner pups. Two howls sounded, then six, from hilltops and caverns. They sounded like they were preparing for a feast.

  Her limbs called out for rest, finally, and she turned away from the window and crawled into bed. A cloudy sunrise was pouring through the room when the phone range.

  “Zuo Yi, help me!” Jing Yin cried.

  “Where are you?”

  “Papa did it! The police station… Oh, I pray to God! Please hurry!”

  Zoe heard voices in the background, Jing Yin screaming “No!” and the sound of hanging up. She shook Jeff awake and scrambled into her boots and poncho.

  Together they sloshed through the rain to the neighborhood car park. Starting the ignition with just her thumb print, Zoe sped to the police station.

  On most days the Sunshine Village Police Station hummed with the pallorous sounds of files being shuffled, computer keyboards clicking, and bureaucrat staffers conversing about movies and sports. Now, though, an unruly spectacle greeted Zoe and Jeff. Police officers, their jackets askew, and teenagers with pierced noses and lips swarmed about. Zoe spotted the Kwans’ former neighbors and several members of the Sunshine Group staff. Jing Yin, in bloodstained clothes, twisted about in a big wooden chair, her face streaming with tears.

  At the sight of Zoe, the girl began to shriek, “He did it! I didn’t kill her. My papa did…I swear I didn’t kill her.”

  A policewoman directed Zoe and Jeff to the evidence room, where she showed them photographs of the crime scene. Yu Li’s body sprawled on the bamboo floor in a thick pool of blood, one clouded eye open, her throat a ragged wound as if a wolf-dog had tried to gnaw her voice out.

  “We know a man broke into the shelter, sprayed the police guard and the woman on duty with chloroform, and threatened the women with his knife until he found Yu Li’s room,” the policewoman said. “We’ve got a posse of police out looking for him.”

  “Bradley Kwan?”

  The policewoman nodded.

  “So why are you holding Jing Yin?”

  “We just want to ask her some questions. We’re trying to understand how Yu Li escaped from the family’s house. It seems likely she had help, and we need to know who that was.”

  “Can I use your phone?” Zoe asked, trying to suppress a shiver.

  She left a voice message on William’s house phone.

  By the time the policewoman let them back out into the front office, a television news crew had arrived. And so had William. Zoe plunked herself into a chair beside him.

  “What’s going to happen to Jing Yin now?” a peasant woman in the crowd wondered aloud. A reporter within earshot caught up the refrain.

  “Jing Yin, where are you going to live now?” the reporter shouted, holding the microphone out to catch the girl’s response.

  “She can stay with me, if she likes,” Zoe spoke up, without thinking.

  “Zoe’s apartment is small,” William announced, rising to his feet. “Jing Yin is welcome at my house until she works things out.”

  Once the police were willing to relinquish Jing Yin, William and Zoe bundled her into a car. In William’s house, Zoe gave the exhausted girl sleeping tea from the local chamomile flowers. Jing Yin obediently took a bath, put on a pair of William’s too-big-for-her pajamas, and knelt at the side of the bed to pray.

  “Now I lay me down to sleep…” she intoned in Mandarin. “Do you know it?”

  “I pray the lord my soul to keep…” Zoe said, almost in a whisper.

  “Are you a Christian?” Jing Yin’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Not a good one.”

  “Jesus will save you if you let him.”

  Once the girl had fallen asleep, Zoe found William in the library. He shook his head with disapproval when she came in. “The peasant girl is beyond your help. She needs a psychiatrist and meds.”

  “She’s my business. You can ask her to leave any time you want.”

  He shook his head again, then rose. “Before you make any decisions, I have something important to show you. Down below.” They went down the steep flight and the incline. At the door to the bunker, William put his hands over her eyes. “No peeking,” he whispered. She felt the hot brush of his breath against her ear and the leap of sparks between them.

  When they entered the bunker, William removed his hands. A man stood in front of the computer screens.

  The man’s demeanor was familiar, somehow. While he bore a vague resemblance to William, he was taller and carried more weight on his frame. His face was round and serene, like the face the giant Buddha might have had if the sculptor had finished it. He had ohm-chanting eyes, clear as spring water, that surveyed her body as if lust were an involuntary reflex; eyes that looked as if he had subsisted all his life on spirit-searching and sex. Neither cosmetic surgery nor magic could change a person’s eyes.

  “This,” said William, “is a man I call my cousin. I’ve named him Simon Sun. He attended Oxford but was expelled for partying, as well as a little sex scandal we don’t talk about in the family. What do you think?”

  “She’s speechless,” the not-quite identical copy, Simon Sun, cheered. “You see, Master? She still loves you. The master decided to make me before he saves the world, Zoe. He did it for you—I’m a gift. I can even undertake a few limited transformations of my own.” In an instant, Simon Sun’s complexion became ruddy, his features European; then darker, so that he resembled a man of Indian descent.

  “And just so you know, I would never chase young girls. I’m chronologically about thirty-three in this life, wouldn’t you say, and to tell the truth I think mature women, older than I am, are really, really hot.”

  Simon Sun spent the afternoon lounging at the Nirvana Café, spinning tales about enlightenment to three young, British women who’d arrived just before the storm. They were happy to have him distract them from the gruesome murder everyone in town was talking about.

  Below ground, the two re-ignited lovers let themselves forget both the madman and his sleeping daughter for a little while. William presented Zoe with a small silk box. Inside, she found a chiseled stone that cast a million rainbow prisms against the walls. Sichuan mines produced opals both ordinary and extraordinary; this one, affixed to a ring, was absolutely celestial.

  “Will you marry me?” William asked, dropping to one knee.

  He slid the ring on to her finger. The stone was heavy on her hand, massive enough to skim the borders of vulgarity. “Yes…but it’s…so big!”

  “Just think of the new consumer society we live in. If everything is so affordable, maybe we can re-think being blingy.” When he expounded that way, she knew he wasn’t telling her everything.

  “All right,” he admitted. “It’s not just an engagement ring. Don’t take it off. Ever. Think of yourself as the guardian of our future, just in case the opposition wins.”

  “Does it contain a camera? A recording device?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  Before they could leap back into bed, however, someone knocked at the door. Simon Sun entered the bunker. “News flash. Bradley Kwan has been found, floating face down in the river,” he said.

  “Stay down here,” William instructed the man he called his cousin. “And keep an eye on the screens.” Number 2099 had been blinking again. “We should make some rounds,” he said to Zoe.

  They found Jing Yin in a trance-like sleep under the quilt, then went to the police station. The captain was closing the file on Yu Li’s death, calling it murder and confirming the murderer’s death. The villagers had seen Bradley Kwan swimming through the rapids,
until he reached the thousand-foot drop-off known as Suicide Falls. The captain said his body was probably shredded to pieces throughout the rocks.

  When they emerged from the police station, the rain had stopped.

  The newly engaged couple spent many hours in a café where champagne flowed and patrons toasted to the fitting end to a crime and the future for the engaged couple. Only later, as they strolled home, did William tell his fiancée that something was on his mind. “Maybe Bradley Kwan knows how to survive the rapids. People have forgotten how the skies over this town grow dark when a villager dies. There’s no darkness.”

  

  Around that same time, Jing Yin awoke, yet still heard voices from the land of dreams. She rose up and walked out the door, wading barefoot in rolled-up pajamas through the storm-soaked grasses that led to the cliffs, following a bloated moon on its first night of waning. From the forest she heard the long, baying cry of a wolf-dog. She looked at the moon and it seemed to drip with the same blood she’d seen on her mother’s savaged throat. A voice told her where to go, and she made her way to the yawning mouth of the cave on the riverbank, venturing behind the stalagmites that resembled magic mushrooms. There, seated on the cool ground, Jing Yin began to inhale until she heard the voice of God himself, a voice that bellowed in a strange and foreign tongue. She would listen and listen until she understood, she resolved. Inhale the heavenly, the mushrooms told her, forget the language you left behind, make room for the new…

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rains were still bombarding the city of Chengdu, northeast of Sunshine Village, where Ming spent four days in a hotel room, mostly in bed with Tom. Dear Tom. Ming dared to imagine he was the man who would bring comfort. They spent many hours watching the news. The politically progressive channel—one that Ming had labeled anti-Tiger News—depicted cities and villages shimmying under water. Agitated news commenters described houses washed away by floods and scores of people drowned.

  Breaking news interrupted the weather reports. “Anti-New China talk show host Bradley Kwan, fled his home in Sunshine Village this morning after an incident that left his wife dead,” the anchorwoman spelled out. “Mr. Kwan, whose body was last seen in the Tuo River rapids, is presumed dead.”

  Ming burst out of bed.

  “Bradley fucking Kwan?” Tom exclaimed. “I saw him on TV and kept thinking, ‘Why does he want to send us all back to our lives of greed?’”

  “When my mother was a girl, before the revolution, they used to say that if the summer rains didn’t arrive on time you had to split a stone with an axe, which would bring the rains. The peasants still believe that if one bad thing happens, it’s a portent of something else looming. It is a sign, you see, that whoever’s in charge has lost the mandate of heaven.”

  “Huh? Who’s in charge of what?”

  “I’m in charge of New China.” She said it with gravity in her voice.

  Tom wrinkled his face and looked lost, as if she’d just said something vicious in a language he didn’t speak. So much for permanent comfort. Tom was no Professor, just a nicely padded lug.

  She stood up and paced, watched the ceaseless lightning outside. Would they never get out of here? Tom was not the answer, she realized. She was getting tired of the earnest way he stared at the TV, as if the news from New China were a lecture on something as indecipherable as how to plant rice on planet Jupiter. And the room had grown stagnant with the smell of flesh and beer.

  They made love again, just to have something to do.

  “I’m going to lose my mind,” Ming said afterward.

  He nodded in agreement.

  But on the fourth day, she watched Tom stride, naked with his flabby stomach, and open the window at last. The scent of fresh-washed air poured in.

  “A blue sky,” Tom said, smiling. “I’ll phone the airport.”

  He arranged for his plane to be ready in a few hours, which gave them time to order breakfast. She watched Tom overload his rice porridge with peanuts, scallions, pork, bamboo shoots, sliced wheat glutens, and a fried egg on top. He ate, then put his hands on the table.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” he announced. “I’m moving to Beijing. I’ve been offered a route starting in September, flying to Hong Kong. I should have told you before, but you know…didn’t seem like the right time.”

  “Have you met someone else?”

  “You’ll always be special to me.” He put his arm around her as if he expected her to cry.

  Ming had a window seat on Tom’s Cessna. The plane was full; tourists had been waiting for the flights to start up again. Two passengers behind her were talking about their plans to experience the poetry of laboring in the fields alongside the peasants of Sunshine Village. Just after one o’clock, the plane began to descend over the forest, and Ming could see the banks of the Tuo River through a familiar scrim of clouds. This was the time of year when the yellow rapeseed would be rearing up and the path through the orchards would be lined with squishy black plums. Soon, the hard green apples would appear and old peasant men would play mournful tunes on their lutes. Civilizations would come and go, but the ghost-clouds and rapeseed would be steadfast.

  When they landed, Ming bid Tom a hurried goodbye and ran off, so that she wouldn’t beg him to stay with her and make a fool of herself. You’d be bored with him anyway, a voice chided, but she’d never felt so alone before.

  Her old apartment was hushed and cool inside. A parade of tourists had rented it out in her absence, yet her big jade plant still thrived, sprouting a woody trunk and six new branches. The tourists had read the instructions she’d left and watered it; a couple had even left notes saying so.

  When she went out, though, the air was full of voices, and from the hill she could already see a crowd swarming the village square at Market Street.

  “This village is decadent!” a man standing on an overturned box thundered. “There are homosexuals who call themselves married, despoiling the sacred union…”

  Ming, blending in, found villagers shouting all around her.

  “Bradley Kwan was a good man. Demons made him kill his wife!”

  “Or those foreign spies who watch us from the pagoda!”

  “Or the devil himself!”

  “Mrs. Kirschenbaum, I presume?” She turned to find none other than Jeff standing behind her. A transformed Jeff, in fine Italian shoes, a crisp linen shirt, and trendy rectangular glasses, his face sporting the glow of a man who hiked the hills and breakfasted on brown rice.

  “Jeff, I’m so glad you’re still here!” She threw her arms about him and had a sudden urge to laugh with him again.

  He disentangled himself and gestured toward the mob. “I saw this town change overnight and not for the better. But I stay because, unlike some people, I can’t abandon my friends. Zoe is sick as a dog. Didn’t you bring your sugar daddy professor with you?”

  “I have a lot to explain. Can we have a drink tonight?”

  “Not tonight. I’m kind of spoken for.” Then he said something about being on his way somewhere, and left her alone in the crowd.

  But, of course, Ming had places of her own to go. At the offices of Sunshine Finance, a new assistant occupied the front desk.

  “I’m Ming Cheng. I work here—in that office. Is Zoe here?”

  “In a meeting.”

  “Can you buzz her, please? Tell her Ming is here.”

  The assistant led her to the conference room as if she were sure Ming didn’t know her way around. William, rumpled and unshaven, sat at a round table with the two young women who used to sit in the front office, each with a stack of proposals. Zoe was halfway to the door as Ming entered.

  “You made it!” Zoe gave her a fierce hug, and in that proximity Ming saw crusty redness around her nose.

  “We’ll finish this later,” Zoe directed the assistants and gestured
for Ming to sit down in their place. That was when Ming noticed Zoe’s hand. Horrors, a giant Sichuan opal.

  “We’re engaged!” William announced.

  “We found Jing Yin, did you hear?” Zoe asked, her voice stuffy and almost baritone. “She’s hiding in the cave. A psychiatrist keeps going and trying to talk to her but she just screams gibberish.”

  “Everything’s crazy here,” William said, and even the fire in his eyes looked overworked. “We’ve got people begging me to run for mayor and others who insist I’ve been embezzling money into offshore bank accounts.”

  Later, Zoe agreed to go home and rest, and William took Ming down to the bunker. “The thing we have to keep secret,” he confided, “is that Zoe and I, with the help of a little magic, got Mrs. Kwan out of the house. That family has been her curse. I understand that Zoe’s mother and unknown mortal father are a part of the family I’m marrying into, but I draw the line at the mad girl in the cave.”

  He seemed to have something else on his mind. “I don’t think Bradley Kwan is dead.”

  “I saw his picture on television and I thought something was missing. I didn’t feel any darkness,” she agreed.

  “They never found the body, you know. If we accept Jing Yin into our family, Bradley Kwan will come gunning for us someday. Zoe doesn’t believe me, but you and I, we have a sense of what death in Sunshine Village feels like. Welcome home, Ming.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  There are reasons to go back to where you come from, Ming decided. Ideally, you sit on a sun-warmed rock and speak to the ghosts of your childhood. But with a business to run, and a country to save, she had little time for communing with phantoms.

  What Ming found readily visible were amoebic life forms flailing about in stagnant puddles as the rains dwindled. She toyed with an end to the Mimi novella in which Mimi was elected president, but overnight a resistance faction sprang up, a faction of men who heard a rumor that she planned to take away their jobs and replace them with women.