by Xu, Lei
“Boiling water isn’t going to work,” said Old Tang. “The ice is too cold.” It would only cause the ice to crack, he said, ripping apart the body inside. By the time the ice melted, the ground would be nothing but bloody water. There were too many examples of this during the Korean War. The frozen remains of many volunteer soldiers were dug out of the snowy ground and had to be melted out little by little using heated towels. I had heard about this cracking phenomenon while stationed in the Greater Khingan range. A local villager told me if you pissed on the ice during cold weather, it would split apart.
Pei Qing was forced to abandon his idea, but the factory was far from warm. Who knew how long it would be before the ice melted on its own? He asked me to help push the slab closer to the fire. I had no interest in this, but it seemed impolite to argue. As soon as I pushed, the whole thing rolled over. “Be more careful,” said Pei Qing angrily. He hastily started to turn it back over.
I frowned and felt utterly exasperated. It’s a pity at the time I didn’t give it more thought, but a moment later my attention was drawn to the figure in the ice. The girl was carrying a very large, extremely odd-looking steel backpack. It was circular and half as big as her body. My first thought was it was a metal snail shell. What sort of geological instrument is this? I wondered. Or is it some kind of land mine? I called Old Tang over to take a look.
“It’s not a land mine,” he said. “Land mines have a fuse.” He too had never seen a geological apparatus like it. The thing looked just like an iron shell. I was sure there was something odd about it. It was as if I’d seen it before. That was only a vague feeling, though, and I couldn’t recall in the slightest where or when I might have run into it.
The young soldiers were full of energy and crowded around once more, wanting to see what was going on. Letting them look, I asked to hear their ideas on what it might be. What sort of case is circular, I asked, and what would someone place inside? “Cookies?” said one of the soldiers. The deputy squad leader scolded him at once, but Old Tang turned on the deputy squad leader. “Didn’t Engineer Wu just ask to hear their opinions? If that’s the example you set, who would dare suggest anything?”
Pressed by his superior, the deputy squad leader had nothing to say. Still, he didn’t seem all that pained by it. He’s just too pragmatic, I thought. He was also headstrong and closed-minded about everything, and thus hadn’t moved up in rank. Patting him on the back, I told him not to worry about it and to stop looking at me like I was his officer.
“It resembles a telephone wiring pack,” said Ma Zaihai. “Look at the holes in the middle. Bearings would have been screwed in there. Then you’d wrap the telephone wire around these and you could string it along as you walked. This case is definitely some sort of wiring box.”
“No way,” said another of the soldiers. “A length of machinegun ammo could also be rolled up into that shape. This thing is too big to be a telephone wiring case. The wire would get all tangled.”
I knew Ma Zaihai was right, something was definitely rolled up in there, but I was also sure it wasn’t telephone wire or machinegun ammunition. Both were much too heavy. Since none of the other corpses were carrying anything this big, it had to be fairly light. Otherwise, why give it to the sole woman to carry?
Wang Sichuan clicked his tongue in disapproval. “You pedantic young masters ought to stay in the research institute and do scholarship,” he said as he walked over. “Why are you being so polite to the Japanese devil woman? If you really want to know what it is, let’s smash the thing to pieces and take a look.” He pulled out a hammer.
Pei Qing stepped in front of him. “Wang Sichuan,” he intoned coldly, “have you any discipline left?”
Within the team Pei Qing had always kept fairly aloof, but he was neither overly unsociable nor eccentric. If he had a problem with something, he would say it directly. Wang Sichuan was therefore puzzled to see him behave this way. But Wang Sichuan was also never slow to anger, and Pei Qing’s high-and-mighty tone was the thing he loathed most. Wang Sichuan stared at him, his bullish eyes huge as copper bells. “What is it? Did someone step on your tail? Say it. What rule have I broken?”
Pei Qing didn’t drop his gaze for an instant. “First, you’re profaning the dead. Second, it’s unclear what exactly is frozen in there. Supposing there’s something dangerous inside, are you going to take full responsibility for it?”
For a moment Wang Sichuan was stunned. Then he laughed. “Profaning the dead? Bullshit. Is she your mom or your wife or something? What are you, Japanese?”
Wang Sichuan is known for having a loose tongue, but this was over the top. When we joke, we generally know where to stop. Wang Sichuan was by far the most crass, but he was just as well educated as the rest of us and I’d never heard him say anything too excessive. This insult went beyond the realm of joking. I have no idea how he thought it would be all right.
Sure enough, Pei Qing’s face immediately clouded over. As he leaped forward, he uttered three words: “Fuck your mother.” What came next was his foot, but he was no match for Wang Sichuan. With one slap he was knocked to the ground. He climbed back up, grabbing an iron club used for ice breaking. As soon as I saw this, I ran over and restrained Pei Qing. Old Tang then came between them and began to berate them both.
I pulled Pei Qing over to the side. Gradually he calmed down and tossed the club away. He threw me off and walked deeper into the warehouse. Wang Sichuan’s face had turned even darker than usual, his eyes bloodshot. With a firm voice, Old Tang yelled at him to give it a rest. I looked back at Old Tang. I wanted to say the hell with everyone and everything, but he gave me a glance that meant: “Go keep an eye on Pei Qing. Don’t let him get lost out there.”
I had no choice but to go. I followed him for a long way, until at last I watched him walk in between two rows of supplies and sit down. I wanted to let him cool off for a bit, so I didn’t walk over. Instead, I found a place some distance off where I could keep an eye on him. As I watched, he buried his head between his knees and began to sob, his entire body shaking. Seeing Pei Qing like this gave me goose bumps. Perhaps he had some awful childhood memory of the Japanese. Probably it was also just the oppressive nature of the place. It had surely been affecting our psyches for some time. The pressure had built up and now it had exploded. This wasn’t the time to ask about such things, nor was it appropriate for me to console him. I could only stand there, filled with a deep discomfort at the sight of this grown man crying.
With difficulty he managed to relax. I watched as, expressionlessly, he stood up and walked back to camp. I followed him as he walked into the firelight. The atmosphere turned awkward. Not one of the several people there spoke. Picking up his belongings, Pei Qing moved them to a different part of the camp. He’d originally been sleeping very close to Wang Sichuan. When the other man saw what he was doing, he opened his mouth to shout something, but I gave him a kick. “Leave it,” I said. “While your colleague is around, it would be best to just watch what you say.”
Wang Sichuan swallowed his words, turned around, and went off to bed. In a moment he was snoring soundly, and the tension began to ease at last.
Then I remembered something: Why hadn’t Old Cat come back yet? I recalled the two soldiers who’d returned to tell us the floodwater discharge was over. Turning around, I looked all about for them. I was perplexed. I hadn’t seen anyone leave. Could they have returned for just a moment and then left again to find Old Cat? I pulled each man aside and asked if they’d seen any of Old Cat’s soldiers. They all shook their heads. They’d all been with Old Tang and none could recall having recently run into anyone from Old Cat’s group. Something was wrong here. I shook Wang Sichuan awake and told him what was going on. Rolling over, he scanned the faces of the young soldiers. Could we have made some mistake? All the corpsmen were wearing Japanese uniforms. What if the missing two had actually been Old Tang’s? I asked all those present if any of them had notified us that the dam was no longer rel
easing floodwater. They shook their heads.
“What is it?” Old Tang asked. We related what seemed to have happened. All those present agreed there was something peculiar about it. For us to say two corpsmen had both suddenly appeared and then soundlessly vanished couldn’t help but seem somehow wrong.
“Then let’s go look for them,” said the deputy squad leader. “Maybe when all the commotion started they went back to wherever Old Cat is. With all the people and the noise, it would have been easy to miss them.”
I nodded. “As a matter of fact, we’ve had no news at all from Old Cat. No matter what, he should’ve returned by now. Should we go see what he’s up to?”
Once I put it like that, everyone agreed something wasn’t right. Old Tang nodded at the deputy squad leader and ordered several men to head deeper into the warehouse. The breadth and depth of the warehouse were both considerable, every inch of it piled high with supplies. Looking into the darkness, I felt a stab of apprehension. Soon after he’d walked off, we heard the deputy squad leader yell out Old Cat’s name. He continued to shout it, the sound getting farther and farther away. There was no reply.
We’d all begun to feel a bit nervous. Old Tang gave me one of his Iron Eagles. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Everything bad that could happen already has. There’s not going be anything else. They just walked too far away, that’s all.” Iron Eagle is an old cigarette brand, the first to begin production in the early days of liberation. I took a long look at the pack. Man, I thought to myself, even in these times there are still people who can get their hands on these. I took a puff. The flavor was impure, but invigorating. I turned again to look off into the warehouse. Now even the sound of the deputy squad leader’s voice was gone.
We still didn’t know how big the warehouse was. Thinking back on it now, a simple recitation of its size in square feet would never do justice to its complexity or its odd shape. The ceiling was quite high, with stacks of goods on suspended multilevel walkways and iron tracks for hauling supplies. The floor was covered with towering piles of materials. The devils must have thoroughly researched the form and structure of a dam, then utilized this space to the greatest extent possible.
Ten minutes passed without any communication from the deputy squad leader. Old Tang made us keep waiting. “He’s carrying a gun,” he said. “If something really happened, he would have fired a warning shot.”
I felt rather anxious. Not wanting my mood to affect anyone else, I got up and walked over to look at the corpse. Pei Qing was sitting off to one side of it. He stared, dazed, at the ice block, as if looking to see how much it had melted. I handed him a cigarette, but he refused. I could feel the questions bubbling up inside me. Making sure that none of the corpsmen were paying us any attention, I asked him what was going on. He ignored me. He gave me no more than a quick glance before turning back to the ice. I tried several times to give him a friendly nudge, but he just slapped my hand away.
There was nothing I could do. I walked back over to Wang Sichuan, but he was asleep, or at least pretending to be. Though I pushed him, he didn’t budge. I was at my wit’s end. The old saying is true: The eunuchs are anxious while the emperor is carefree. Attempting to calm my nerves, I told myself that Old Tang was an experienced soldier with a good understanding of the deputy squad leader and the rest of the men he’d sent. If he said there was no problem, then there wasn’t any problem. Anyway, we hadn’t heard the sound of gunfire. Perhaps they’d made some huge discovery and couldn’t come back immediately. That was possible. I wandered back to the fire and lay down. Looking up at the disorder of wires and ropes hanging from the ceiling, I considered our situation. The shadows of the cables trembled ceaselessly in the firelight. In a moment I had fallen asleep. I slept for six hours. When I awoke the deputy squad leader still hadn’t returned. Old Tang was now gone as well. The only people left were Pei Qing, Ma Zaihai, Wang Sichuan, and a few corpsmen I didn’t know. Only Ma Zaihai and the corpsmen were awake.
Where was everyone? I asked Ma Zaihai. He said Old Tang had eventually decided to take a group of men and go after the deputy squad leader. Two hours had passed since then, and there had been no sound of movement. Ma Zaihai also wanted to see what the matter was. He’d just been considering what to do.
Is this warehouse swallowing people or what? I thought to myself. My heart began to thump. After shaking Wang Sichuan awake, I told him and Ma Zaihai to collect their things. There was something we had to do. Wang Sichuan was still dazed when he awoke, but he quickly understood what was happening. Puffing on a cigarette, he said he feared things had already gone to hell. Old Tang was always so capable. If there’d been some delay, he definitely would have sent someone back. It’s certain that something has gone wrong, he said.
“That’s all obvious,” I replied. “The real question is, what do we do now?”
Wang Sichuan scratched his head. “Why not go look for them?” he said. “Or we could just sit here and wait, but that’s a pretty passive way of doing things.”
I didn’t hesitate for an instant. Pei Qing was sleeping some distance away, and there were three corpsmen left in camp. Ma Zaihai was clever and could handle himself, so I told him to follow us. The three of us switched on our flashlights and headed deeper into the warehouse.
I never would have expected the warehouse to be so big. I’d thought that behind the darkness were walls, but I soon came to appreciate the size of the base of the dam and the huge number of things it contained. Holding the iron ice breaker, Wang Sichuan knocked it against the supply piles we passed in hopes the sound would draw the others’ attention. Soon we could no longer see the firelight behind us. The temperature dropped precipitously. Ice crystals had formed across the floor, making it perilously slick. We could see signs on the ground that others had come through here. Then, after turning several corners, we gasped. In front of us was a great concrete wall, some indecipherable slogan painted across it. We’d reached the end.
CHAPTER 47
The End of the Warehouse
Whatever message the slogan was trying to convey was lost on me—probably it was “Safety in Production” or something along those lines. I couldn’t believe the warehouse had actually come to an end. It wasn’t as big as I’d imagined. More importantly, if the warehouse really did end right here, then where had Old Cat and the rest of them disappeared to? There was nowhere else to go. It wouldn’t take ten hours to search something like this. The concrete wall was quite long. We walked along it till we hit another wall. Still there was nothing to find, nor were there traces of any activity. The others seemed to have disappeared.
Ma Zaihai began to worry, but as usual Wang Sichuan refused to give up. He walked back along the wall, saying, “Impossible. These people are alive. They haven’t conjured themselves away or vanished into thin air.”
I was sure that something fishy was going on. Then I spied the tarp-covered piles of goods. Could there be another exit hidden beneath one of these? I wondered. I walked back the way we’d come, looking for any materials that appeared to have been disturbed. Sure enough, a net fixed atop a length of supplies had been pulled apart and the rivets holding down the sheets of tarpaulin underneath loosened. We began turning over the tarps one after another, when suddenly Ma Zaihai cried out. Built into the concrete floor beneath one of them was an iron double door, similar to the one we’d seen back in the cave, though much smaller. This door was not welded down. On it was printed some strange symbol, the color already faded.
Wang Sichuan wanted to open it up, but Ma Zaihai blocked his way. “Engineer Wang, Engineer Wu,” he said, “I should go first. That symbol means high voltage. The whole level is probably filled with power cables. I’d guess the wires for the entire place run through it.” He had us back up and wrapped his hands in the tarp. The door was almost two feet thick. After lifting one of the doors halfway, he nearly collapsed. The two of us hurriedly helped him push the door until it rested on the concrete floor. Opening half the double
door made an opening wide enough for us to enter. We jumped down to the platform below and shined our flashlights inside. The ground was covered in power cables, each with the circumference of a rice bowl. The temperature was extremely low, the cables all encased in a thick shell of ice. A ladder led down. We could see someone had already knocked the ice from its sides.
“They really went down there,” said Ma Zaihai, his eyes wide.
“Where does this place connect to?” I asked.
“A recess like this connects anywhere that needs electricity,” said Ma Zaihai. “It makes maintenance much more convenient. These recesses are generally only found in permanent fortifications where they can be hidden in the base’s structure. If you set one up in some temporary base on the front and someone throws a grenade down the tunnel, there goes all the power. This doesn’t look temporary at all and they obviously took measures to conceal it. When the devils built this dam, they clearly assumed it would be in use for more than twenty years.”
I nodded. The Japanese had never expected the Soviets to be so fierce. Even less could they have anticipated the atomic bomb. Without these two factors the war would have continued for another ten years.
So this was where Old Cat and the others had gone. Wang Sichuan called down several times, but there was only an echo. “What if, down there amid all those power cables, they got lost?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say for sure,” said Ma Zaihai, “but the structure down there shouldn’t be too complex, and the path should be marked fairly clearly.”
“Then let’s go take a look,” said Wang Sichuan as he stepped down onto the ladder.
One after another we climbed down. To avoid getting lost, we smashed the ice along the wall with our hammers. The going was rough. The ceiling was tall enough that we didn’t have to worry about knocking our heads, but the floor was strewn with power cables, each of them dangerously slick. Worst of all was the cold. This place clearly connected to the icehouse. The temperature had dropped below any bearable limit, and from somewhere an exhaust fan blew cold air at us. Shivering uncontrollably, we wrapped our overcoats tightly around ourselves. The wind rushed straight down my collar and into every opening in my clothing.