by Dawson, Mark
When had it been transformed from a possibility to a certainty?
From an abstract prospect to an inevitability?
It didn’t matter. Beatrix became aware of the decision as she rode the train south again. The train was leaving Zhengzhou. The city itself was a modern glass-and-blinking-neon fantasy, like most of the new Chinese conurbations, but its ugly flanks were still defiled by smokestacks and vast factories. These were fast disappearing behind the train, their lights winking out amid the thick soup of pollution.
She had found the little packet of opium in her bag. She wasn’t even aware that she had brought it with her, and her first thought was to chide herself for doing something so stupid. Bringing it across the border was asking for trouble. If she had been arrested, it would have been the work of a moment for Control to locate her and then that would, unquestionably, have been that. Her second thought was that she must dispose of it. That would have been the sensible thing to do. But, even as she accepted that was true, she had known that she would be unable to do it.
A dealer in Wan Chai had given the little envelope to her as a sample when she had purchased marijuana from him. At first, she had dismissed his offer. Opium was not for her. But the voice in her head had whispered its sweet insinuations, had told her that she was wrong, that it was for her, it was perfect for her. It told her that it was just what she needed to help her forget about Isabella. That same tiny voice, impossible to silence, had continued on at her on the long journey north, the day she had spent in Beijing, and now the return trip back to Hong Kong. Did she want to forget about Grace and what had happened to her? Did she want to forget the blankness in the girl’s eyes?
Smoking was not permitted in the carriages, but you could smoke in the vestibules. She wasn’t sure what the rules were for a sleeper berth, but there were no smoke alarms and, to be safe, she yanked the stiff window until it was halfway open and the wind was rustling the curtains.
She collected her bag from the opposite bunk and took out the packet. She pulled out the opium and rubbed it between her fingers. It was tough and fibrous. She pinched off a small piece, rolled it into a ball, dropped it into the bowl of the cheap metal spoon she had taken from the dining carriage and, using her lighter, set it on fire. It smelt unusual, like fresh plant sap. She blew it out at once, lowered her head over the smoke and inhaled deeply through her nose.
The fumes hit her like a sledgehammer.
She slumped back against the wall of the bunk.
Her thoughts evaporated like mist.
She concentrated on the smoke, the ebb and flow as it entered her lungs and then her veins. She felt herself falling into space. The compartment, the train, the monotony of the endless landscape, all were obliterated as dreams that were not really dreams, but visitations filled her mind. She heard the clack of the rails and then fragments of conversations. She saw absent friends. She saw Grace. She saw her husband, Lucas, and her dear Isabella. They formed part of a raucous procession behind her closed eyelids.
Then she heard another voice. It shook her awake, and she realised it was her own murmuring, her conversation with someone who wasn’t really there.
She might have been slumped there for five minutes or five hours. She had no idea. She came around again to the sound of an angry voice. Harsh, guttural Mandarin, and a fist crashing against the door.
She forced open her eyes and, still light-headed and woozy, slapped herself on the cheek.
She stood on unsteady legs and slid the bolt in the lock. The guard was standing outside. He spat out a stream of quick-fire Mandarin that she couldn’t understand. And, seeing her confusion, he turned and pointed out of the open door. The train had pulled into a platform, and a sign—translated into English—read Shenzhen Station. She heard the music. The long-haul expresses always broadcast a triumphal or sentimental song when they arrived at their destinations. She recognised the saccharine “Fishing Junks at Sunset.”
They had arrived.
Hours had passed.
Beatrix suddenly felt nauseous and, pushing by the guard, she bent double and vomited out of the open door and onto the platform. The man watched, perplexed, as she was sick again and again, eventually heaving on an empty stomach. She went back into the compartment and collected her bag, making sure that the rest of the opium was safely inside, and fled out into the night.
CHAPTER NINE
HONG KONG was the kind of place where you could get whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted it. There was no night and no day, but only the light of the sun and the light of the neon. It had been a simple enough thing to find what she needed. The man who had sold her the opium had smiled a knowing smile as she returned and asked for more. He told her that she would enjoy it more if she experienced it properly. He had told her to return that same evening and, when she did, he had taken her to a fetid alley that lurked behind the high wharves of the Kowloon harbour. Beatrix tried to remember the winding lefts and rights and knew that she would struggle to find it again on her own. The entrance was found at the end of the flight of steps that led down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave. She passed down the steps, worn smooth in the centre by the ceaseless tread of feet. There was a single flickering bulb above the door. The man knocked. An eye appeared in the peephole, and then the locks were turned and the door opened to them. The man said nothing, just stepped aside and ushered her inside.
Beatrix did as she was instructed. She climbed the stairs to a long low room, thick and heavy with brown opium smoke.
They called them Hua-yan jian: flower-smoke rooms. It was a romantic vision and did not accord with the reality. It was dark and difficult to make anything out. She saw bodies stretched out in strange poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back, and chins pointing upward. Those who were awake and cognisant turned to look at her with glassy, hostile eyes. Out of the black shadows there glimmered little red circles of light, alternating between bright and faint, as the burning opium waxed or waned in the bowls of the metal pipes that were held to the lips of the smokers. The majority of the men and women here were quiet, lying in idle repose, but some kept up low conversation with themselves or with others. There were mumbled imprecations, sighs of torpor, and snores from those who had lapsed into addled sleep. Beatrix saw the small brazier of burning charcoal at the other end of the room. One of the wizened old men paid by the triads to administer the den was crouched before it, his elbows resting on his bent knees and his jaw resting upon his two fists, staring into the fire.
She paid for a ‘premium’ space. For an extra ten dollars she was guaranteed a place on the floor, as well as the privilege of having her pipe prepared for her by the ex-patriot Indian who ran the den. It was late and, although she did have a spot to lie down, all the best places had been taken. These were against the wall, where you could lean back without falling over. There was also what the Indian called the VIP section, an exclusive end of the floor near the brazier that had a mattress wedged up against the corner by a window. This cost twenty dollars, and was also taken.
She didn’t care. She would make do.
“Ya-p’iàn,” the Indian said in a hushed and reverent tone.
Opium.
#
TIME PASSED.
Beatrix returned to the den again and again. She lost track of the days. She wasn’t really sure how long she had been smoking. A week? Two weeks? Everything was smoothed out. Worries disappeared. Concerns were forgotten. Time became an abstract concept. She closed her eyes and let her thoughts drift, buffeted along by the warmth and the dizzying caress of the opium. It obliterated her memories. She forgot about Grace. She forgot about Ying. She even forgot about Isabella. She forgot about the hopelessness of it all. Each new breath of the sweet-smelling smoke rubbed away a little more detail until all that was left of her recollections was a mess of scenes, pictures and images that made little sense.
“Hey.”
She dived deeper and deeper, leaving her worries and regret
s above her where they couldn’t trouble her any longer.
“Hey.”
She felt the hand on her shoulder and a shaking, gentle at first and then harder. She reached up for it, dug her fingers into the soft flesh beneath the wrist, applied the pressure that would send pain coruscating around the owner’s body.
“Get off me!”
She opened her eyes and blinked until she could see again.
It was a middle-aged Chinese man. He was wincing in agony.
“What?” she mumbled.
“Get off my wrist!” he gabbled through the pain in harshly accented English.
“What do you want?”
“Your phone. Your phone. It ringing.”
She heard it now. She let go of him and reached into her pocket. Before she could think of just cancelling the call, switching the phone off and returning to her pipe, she had answered it and pressed it to her ear.
“What?”
“Where are you?”
It was Chau.
“What do you mean?”
“You said you wanted to meet. The money?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. You called me.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
Had she? She didn’t remember.
“You said three o’clock on the ferry. It is four. Where are you?”
Had she said that? Really? It was possible. She thought about it some more and remembered that she had wanted to see him. The money. He had money for her. She wanted the rest of what she was owed. There was a lot and she was going to need all of it. She had called him. He was right. She had.
“Where are you?”
“Kowloon. Where you said. Where are you?”
“Sheung Wan.”
“You want to come to me?”
She paused, trying to clear the fumes from her brain. “No, come to me. Sun Yat Sen Park in an hour.”
#
CHAU WAS WAITING next to a small Buddhist shrine that was strewn with the flowers of the locals’ frequent offerings. The street was full of kerbside vendors, doing a brisk evening trade. There were clouds of pungent smoke and the sizzle of hot oil and a wide variety of morsels: fried grasshoppers, fried grubs, fried beetles, all served hot from bubbling oil in parcels of white grease paper. There were roast-blackened baby sparrows, roast-blackened chicken feet, straight from the grill on skewers of splintered wood.
Chau was sitting at a wooden picnic table. He was picking at an open paper bag of fried grasshoppers. She went over to him and sat down. There was a bag at his feet.
He indicated the insects. “You want?”
“No, thanks.”
They watched as a local hooker approached the shrine and deposited an offering amid the detritus that had already been left there.
“She ask for busy night with pleasant customers,” he suggested.
They watched the girl as she made her prayer, turned and walked away to rejoin the busy street.
“The girl?” Chau asked. “Grace?”
“Safe.”
“Where?”
“She’s safe, Chau. Leave it at that.”
“What about us?”
“What about us?”
“What are we going to do? Ying is looking for us.”
“Do what you want. Move away. Stay here. I don’t care.”
“He will kill us if he finds us.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said, I don’t care.”
He looked at her with concern. “What is the matter, Beatrix?”
“I’m done with all of it, Chau. Ying, the triads. All of it.”
“What about me?”
“You’re a big boy.”
He looked at her as if she had slapped his face.
“I’m sorry, Chau. It’s just…I’m tired. I’m tired of all of it. We took care of Donnie Qi and now we’ve got Ying. The triad…” She shook her head. “It’s like a hydra. You chop off one head and two more grow back. We can’t keep fighting. Look. You’ve got money now. We made a lot, right? Use it. Go away somewhere. Never come back.”
“You’re giving up?”
“You can call it that if you like.”
His eyes went narrow as he regarded her. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“You are high. You are on drugs!”
She waved it off.
“No,” he persisted. “You are. Your eyes. I know signs. You are high.”
She stood. She felt a blast of shame. She didn’t want to admit what she had been doing, and that all she could think about was going back to do it again.
“You are leaving?”
“My money?”
“Here.” He nodded to the bag at his feet.
She reached down and took it. She didn’t bother to check it was all there.
“Thank you, Chau.”
“For what?”
“For this. And for helping me with Grace. I appreciate that. You didn’t have to do it.”
“You can’t just leave me!” he protested pitifully. “Ying will kill me.”
“Then go,” she repeated. “Go to China. Go anywhere but here.” She put out her hand and, after a moment of hesitation, he took it. “Goodbye, Chau.”
She turned her back on him and walked away.
CHAPTER TEN
TIME PASSED. Beatrix visited the Hua-yan jian every evening. Sometimes she would stay for an hour and other times she would stay all night.
Each pipe removed her from her worries and anxieties. But when she awoke, they were all there again as if they had never been away. They developed. Like cancers, they mutated and spread. Her memories, far from being erased, became malignant reminders of her failures.
She found that, as she cared less and less about herself, she cared more about what had happened to Grace. She was unable to forget what had happened to the girl. The look in her eyes, when she had taken her from the brothel, haunted her dreams. Even the depth of her narcotic slumber was unable to cloak it from her. She remembered Grace’s tears as she had left her outside her aunt’s house. She remembered her thought, fully realised now, that the girl had been robbed of her childhood. Beatrix’s anger, never completely extinguished, had flickered back into life. She could control the flame with each new pipe. But as soon as she revived, it was like a gust of pure oxygen had been directed onto the restive embers and it flared again.
And then, one day, she found that she had diverted from her usual path to the den so that she was in Wan Chai, on Lockhart Road, opposite the Nine Dragons. It was incredibly foolish of her—she had no weapon, for a start—but she had been drawn there, and was unable to resist. She bought a ball cap and a pair of sunglasses and put them on. There was a karaoke bar opposite the club. The place had an open façade and she had taken a seat there, nursing a drink for thirty minutes as she watched the comings and goings on the other side of the street.
The idiocy of what she was doing finally dawned on her, and she had just scattered enough change on the table to cover the check when a car drew up alongside the club and Fang Chun Ying stepped out. She angled her head away and watched through the big mirror that was fixed on the wall behind the bar. He was with two of his lieutenants, a broad smile on his face as if he was without a care.
She waited until he had descended the stairs into the club, collected her bag and left the bar.
She took out her phone, opened a browser window and navigated to the Facebook page that she and Chau used to communicate with one another.
She stopped so that she could type.
—MEET ME. SAME PLACE AS LAST TIME. 9PM.
#
CHAU WAS waiting at the same picnic table in Sun Yat Sen Park, wearing the same ridiculously garish Hawaiian shirt that he had been wearing before. He was looking in the other direction, out into the harbour, and she took a moment to stop at one of the street vendors so that she could buy him a packet of fried grasshoppers. She paid the vendor and took the food t
o the table.
“Chau,” she said.
He started with alarm. “Beatrix, I did not see you.”
“Because you always have your eyes closed,” she said.
“I did not think we would meet again.”
“I’ve had a change of heart. Here. Peace offering.”
She gave him the fried grasshoppers.
“Thank you,” he said, but he left them untouched. “What is it, Beatrix? I am confused.”
“You didn’t leave.”
“I think about it, but I do not know where to go. But I know you are right. I cannot stay.”
He was nervous, too, she thought, but that was not out of character for him. He was a nervous man by disposition. And, she reminded herself, there was no reason why he would have expected to hear from her again. He would have anticipated bad news, perhaps something that would have repercussions for him.
“Maybe you can.”
“Stay?”
“Maybe.” She indicated the bag of insects. “You’re not going to eat those?”
He pushed them to the middle of the table. “I am sorry. I have lost my appetite. What are you talking about?”
“Ying. I saw him yesterday.”
“What? Where?”
“The Nine Dragons.”
“Why would you go there?” he said, his eyes bulging with panic.
“I don’t know. I had an itch. Needed to scratch it.”
“Did he see you?”
“What do you think, Chau?” she chided. “Of course not.”
“So?”
“So I’ve changed my mind. I can’t let a man who has done the things that he has done—the things that he is still doing—breathe the same air as my daughter. He needs to go, Chau. Do you understand what I mean by that?”
“Of course. How?”
“That’s why we’re talking. I need you to help me, Chau.”
He shook his head violently. “No, Beatrix—”
“Relax, Chau. You have to do very little.”
He started to stand. “I have to do nothing.”
“Sit down.” Her eyes were full of cold fire. She knew that his fear of her was all she needed to control him.