Jasmine

by Noboru Tsujihara

  “Yili is a valley north of Tianshan. I’m a Uyghur, but my blood is half Kazakh, through my mother. Long ago, to escape Turkish oppression, the Kazakhs came from the west with their livestock and settled in the Yili valley. The original meaning of ‘Kazakh’ is free spirit or rebel. A good description of me, wouldn’t you say?” He then laughed dryly.

  “Russian Cossacks,” he went on, “are of the same stock as the Kazakhs. ‘Cossack’ means much the same thing – ‘freeman.’ In the old days, they were skilled horsemen.”

  Aki pictured the snowcapped mountains of Tianshan behind a young version of Cai Fang, galloping through the grasslands in the valley.

  “Kazakhs are good at singing. They have an instrument called the dombra, like a balalaika, and they dance and sing to it. Uyghur folk dancing, as you probably know – Li Xing is good at it – is called dolan, the circle dance. The dancers whirl and turn. Kazakhs do it like this,” he said, demonstrating by shaking his large shoulders quite gracefully back and forth.

  “Thirty minutes to Linfen,” announced the conductor’s voice.

  Cai turned towards Aki and said quietly, “I won’t be getting off at Linfen.”

  Aki’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “You get off alone. A young man named Feng will be at the station to meet you, and he’ll take you to your father. Don’t worry. You can trust him.”

  “But what about you?”

  “I’ll disappear.” Cai seemed to shrink into his large shell with contrition. “Forgive me. I’d have liked a little more time, but this will have to do. It’s cutting it close. You provided the perfect camouflage. If you hadn’t come, the game would have been up. It wasn’t only Zhang’s report. I’ll keep changing trains until I make it to Hong Kong. It’s a long haul, but this is the most unobtrusive way of doing it. I sent my wife and daughter on ahead yesterday. But it’s also true that I wanted to see you again. This has been a good trip.”

  Aki took a thick envelope out of his breast pocket.

  “Feng doesn’t know the first thing about me,” Cai went on. “Keep that in mind. As far as he knows, you’re the friend of a friend of Professor Meng at Shanxi University, here to call on an acquaintance. Supposedly it’s someone who did your father a big favour, and you’ve come to deliver a thank you in person. That’s the story he’s been given. He speaks no Japanese. He’s a student in one of Professor Meng’s seminars, home for the holiday. Here’s the professor’s name card. This is all you need. Simple lies are the best. Give Feng a hundred yuan – it’s a good part-time job for him. No need to treat him to dinner or anything like that.”

  “I understand,” said Aki. “Thank you very much.” He reached out to shake Cai’s hand and, after doing so, slipped the envelope into his palm. “I meant to give this to you in Linfen, but if I don’t do it now, there’ll be no chance. It’s from Xu Liping and me.”

  Guessing the contents, Cai tucked it away in his breast pocket and said, “This will help a lot.” In the envelope was exactly twice the amount of money Aki had given Liu Hong to aid in his escape. Aki and Xu had each contributed half.

  The train pulled into Linfen. Aki shook hands again with Cai and left the compartment. On the platform, Feng was waiting with a boyish grin on his face.

  Aki checked into the Linfen Hotel, which looked out on the town’s central intersection. In postliberation China, every provincial city of any consequence had its clean but hastily erected hotel for foreigners – blunt structures made of reinforced concrete blocks like tall, thin dominoes.

  From his window on the twelfth of fourteen floors, the view was of an expanse of towering smokestacks. A murky haze cut off visibility in the distance. According to a guidebook on the table, Linfen had a population of around 280,000; it was noted for its coal mining and coal chemical industry; and among its chief agricultural products were walnuts and dates.

  Gingerly, he turned the shower handle. There was a hollow rumble as if the entire building were experiencing hunger pains, and the bare pipes shook. Just as he was telling himself it was no use, a vigorous jet of hot water spurted out.

  After he had freshened up and changed his clothes, his stomach actually did growl with hunger, so he had a bowl of noodles in the second-floor restaurant, then went back to his room to put on some warmer clothing before going down to the lobby. Feng was waiting with a big map of Linfen spread out on a table in front of him, and had already circled Zhaonanhe in red. It was in the mountains about twenty-five kilometres from the city centre. The snow wasn’t too deep, apparently, but since the mountain roads weren’t paved, they would have to allow a couple of hours for the trip each way. It was not a particularly risky or dangerous route.

  On Feng’s advice, Aki gave some thought to how and when he was going to return to Beijing. What would be the fastest and safest way to go? It was essential to get this right, since he had to be back in Japan before Zhang reached Beijing. If the authorities came after him this time, a prison term would be unavoidable. In addition to aiding a political offender to flee the country, a charge of espionage could easily be tacked on for good measure – and with Cai gone there’d be no chance of an acquittal.

  In the morning, he could take the 7:36 local from Linfen, arriving in Taiyuan at 12:09; from there, if he went straight to the airport and boarded a plane, he’d be back in Beijing before the day was over.

  They set off for Zhaonanhe by taxi, a red Charade. Rays of sunlight poked through breaks in the clouds, and since there was little wind, for a change it didn’t feel particularly cold. The temperature that morning was twenty-four degrees below freezing, said Feng. With the sun out, it might rise to twenty below by afternoon.

  Aki found this hard to believe. Had his body gradually adjusted to the cold on the overnight trip? In Tokyo, his fingers got numb when the temperature dropped to freezing, yet this far greater cold didn’t seem to bother him.

  Though the road was a frozen mixture of snow and mud, the taxi tires had no chains. The loess continued high into the mountains. There were scarcely any trees. The ground was cultivated in terraced fields all the way to the top of the hillsides. The main crops were wheat, buckwheat, sorghum, and corn, and at this time of year, it was wheat. Even the deepest hollows worn by wind and rain were planted densely with rows of grain. An uneven patchwork of reddish-brown soil, white snow, and the light green of newly sprouted wheat extended in waves as far as the eye could see. Most of the mountainsides behind the wheat fields contained yaodong: caves dug into the slopes, with arched entranceways decorated with red brick. Each cave had a large wooden door with a latticed window on either side, many of which were filled in with newspaper. Why would anyone want to live so far from the road, wondered Aki, but Feng explained that access to water was what mattered most.

  Along the way, they passed many yaodong hamlets, each one busy with preparations for the Lunar New Year. At stands beside the muddy road, peddlers from town were selling an array of seasonal items: bananas and tangerines from the far south; canned goods, hams, and sausages; holiday attire, firecrackers, and red decorations for the front door. Farming families made the rounds of all the stalls, teasing the peddlers. The taxi was sometimes forced to a halt, surrounded by the eddying crowd as it moved along at an unhurried pace. The driver would honk his horn ineffectually.

  Before long they arrived in Zhaonanhe, a small village at the bottom of a valley well away from the road.

  “From here we’d better leave the car and go on foot,” said Feng. “We don’t want to attract attention.”

  There was a scattering of caves in the narrow-cut cliffs on either side. Some were abandoned, the loess caving in, doors and lattices askew. Passing by, Aki had the sensation of being stared at by empty eye sockets. Along the road, a line of new, low concrete telephone poles marched past until they disappeared over the ridge of mountains far ahead. The region had finally gotten electricity recently, Feng explained.

  In one yard, Aki noticed a tall wooden pole with some kind of anten
na on top. He asked what it was and was told “TV” – the word spoken in a tone of disbelief, as if to say, “You don’t know what that is?” After that, Aki saw that an antenna pole stood in the yard of every dwelling.

  Beside the road, three boys were teasing a half-grown pig, patting its soft belly for the fun of it. Sensing the visitors’ approach, all three turned their heads at the same time. Aki raised his hand slightly and called out “Ni hao,” at which their hands jumped away from the pig’s belly. They grinned shyly at him.

  The two visitors walked on another fifty meters.

  “There it is,” said Feng, pointing to a grove of spindly poplars with a winding, snowy track leading into it. Aki’s heart beat faster. At the same time as his excitement grew, he felt like backing off, beating a retreat.

  A good six years had elapsed since word first reached him that his father might be alive. The years had not been spent in a constant search, and yet acknowledging to himself that it had taken all this time to reach this point filled him with deep emotion. Coming to the end of a long novel is sad. In Aki’s case, the prospect of meeting his father was intimidating. He would have liked to stretch out the interim as long as possible.

  Though he had yet to lay eyes on the man living beyond this grove, he felt a growing conviction that it was, without question, his father. Time that had elapsed separately for father and son was converging, here and now. He had a feeling that there was little to choose anymore between an encounter with a flesh-and-blood person and an encounter with a ghost.

  Step by step he advanced, the heels of his trekking boots pressed firmly on the ground. The snow had turned to needles of ice that crackled underfoot. Inside the grove, the track forked. “It’s to the right,” called Feng from behind; for some reason, he was staying back at the edge of the trees. As instructed, Aki took the right-hand path. Overhead, a bird flew by with a shrill cry.

  The path ended at some cliffs, where three caves were arranged in a semicircle. There was a small communal yard with a walnut tree and a TV antenna.

  All at once, the way in front of him was blocked by the shadow of a large moving creature. It was a horned red ox, tied to the trunk of a poplar.

  Soft sunlight gone astray in the maze of branches was shaken by the breeze and scattered. The ox moved its jaws, munching.

  Aki was drawn up short by the sight of two figures in a corner of the yard. Seated in a roughhewn wooden chair was an old man, and bending over him was an old woman with bobbed white hair.

  Something gleamed in her right hand. It was a razor. Instead of using soap or cream, she was spitting on the man’s face to moisten his whiskers as she shaved him. He had a heavy, padded coat slung around his shoulders, and was sitting with his mouth slightly pursed, face upturned, eyes shut in apparent pleasure.

  Aki went closer. The woman saw him first, and the hand holding the razor froze in midair.

  “Shei a? Who is it?”

  Aki stepped yet closer, without replying. The old man opened his eyes, drew in his chin, and looked at him.

  “Shei?” he said irritably, getting up out of the chair. His back was straight, his physique to all appearances sound. To Aki, who had imagined a shrivelled old man wasted away from years of confinement in a hostile place, this was unexpected.

  “Are you Han Langen?” he said in Mandarin.

  “Before you ask someone his name, it’s customary to give your own name first,” the old man barked. His voice was firm and steady.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve come from Japan. My name is Waki. Waki Akihiko. And you are Han Langen?”

  The man’s face was as expressionless as hardened glue, with no sign of softening.

  Aki felt the ground tilt beneath his feet. He groped automatically for a tree or something to lean against, but the poplar and the walnut tree were out of reach.

  “I am, but why a Japanese visitor should come to see me, I have no idea.”

  “It’s because you are Japanese.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Your real name is Waki Tanehiko. And I am your son.” Aki’s voice came out high-pitched and weak.

  The woman folded up the razor and slowly crossed the yard without looking back, then disappeared inside the cave.

  Left alone, the old man and this intruder half his age stood facing each other three meters apart. Aki could find nothing to say, search as he might. He felt lost and harried. What had happened to all the things he’d stored up over the decades, all the questions he’d meant to ask? Where had they gone in this instant?

  “There are some funny people in this world,” said the old man peevishly. “Crackpots, who come to bother you in your old age. I was born and raised right here: drawing water, turning over the soil, sowing wheat and picking cotton, raising goats and sheep. Like my father and my grandfather before me.” He clamped his mouth shut, turned around, and motioned behind his back for Aki to go away. “Go on, get the hell out of here.”

  Aki stood there, stunned. This last sentence had been spoken in Japanese!

  The old man stiffened and the back of his sunburned neck seemed to flinch. The hand that had made the shooing gesture remained at his waist. A sudden memory of having swung from his father’s arm came back to Aki. That arm was right here in front of his eyes – of that there could be no mistake. But now it belonged to an old farmer, a farmer who belonged to this land, who had turned his back on him.

  Seen from behind, his father’s figure looked wilted, the starch in his bearing gone. Was it the altered perspective?

  Abruptly, his father turned around and, with glazed eyes, body swaying, began to yammer in rapid-fire Mandarin. The words were a jumble, incomprehensible, but after a moment Aki was content just to listen to the sound of his voice. The voice steadied and then rang out: “Wang le.” Then, with still greater conviction: “Dou wang le.” I have forgotten everything.

  In his father’s eyes Aki saw an emptiness like that of an abandoned cave. His father’s past was buried in that emptiness. He knew that it was beyond his power to reach. Nor could his father dredge up anything from it to show to him.

  I want him to remain here on this soil, this loess. This thought formed in Aki’s mind. That, surely, was what his father wanted, too.

  The old man offered a sort of nod, then slowly turned his back on Aki again. Step by careful step, as if testing the firmness of the ground, he walked off in his black cloth shoes.

  Aki called out to him, in Japanese: “Zhou Enlai is dead.”

  The old man took another few steps.

  Aki again: “The Emperor Showa is dead.”

  Bending his head, the old man ducked under the walnut branches.

  Aki: “Kobe’s been levelled by an earthquake.”

  For a second this seemed to give the old man pause, but then he continued on his way.

  She’ll take care of him, she’ll be with him when he dies, Aki thought, as he tried to recover something of himself.

  I’m going home to Kobe! Where Xingxing is. Like father, like son.

  He watched the old man’s figure dwindle in size.

  His ashes will remain here, in this earth.

  Then Aki turned away himself, to find the red ox so close to him that he jumped.

  He heard his father call towards the cave: “Zheng! Zheng Pinru!”

  With a smile, Aki began to walk slowly away from the man he’d come to see. He hunched his shoulders, feeling suddenly chilled to the bone. It was as if the cold had been holding back till now.