Crimson China

by Betsy Tobin

  They do not need to work, apparently. So they must be rich, Wen concludes. I love to go shopping by the pier, says the woman. Wen practically chokes on these words. Would he ever use them? He hits the power button, silencing the woman, and thinks of the English he has learned since he first arrived in Dover last year. Though he can barely hold a conversation, he has built up a highly specialised vocabulary during his time here. He compiles a mental list, dividing the words into neat categories of experience. Words relating to fishing: cockle, tide, quicksand. Those having to do with money: wage, tax, fee, bribe. Words of anger learned from locals: bastard, fuck off, chink. Words relating to his status: illegal, police, deport. And since the accident, a new string of words: death, drown, survivor. Each day he understands a little more of what Angie says, though her conversation bears little resemblance to the dialogue on the CD. Especially after she’s been drinking.

  Still, he must try. He wishes he could jump forward in time: if he worked hard, a year from now he could be fluent. To speak English easily and correctly: to be able to joke, debate and flatter. What entitlements would this bring? he wonders. Would he feel as if he belonged? He would still be illegal. And he would still owe money to the snakeheads that brought him out of China. And he would still look Chinese. So the answer is no. It is not just English he must wrestle with. There is much more about his life here that doesn’t fit.

  But inside this house – with her – he has achieved a sort of harmony. Even with the barrier of language, he no longer feels out of kilter. He and Angie exist in a sort of bubble, free from the constraints of either culture. How has this happened so quickly? he wonders. Is it the fact that they lie entwined each night, skin to skin, and taste each other’s fluids? Or is it something that goes beyond nakedness? A place of doubt that each has glimpsed inside the other. In truth, he doesn’t know. But if he can achieve this here, with her, surely it must be possible in the outside world. If that is what he wants – right now he doesn’t know.

  Something else is happening. His own culture is receding, like an outgoing tide. He feels increasingly estranged from his people, a process that started long before the accident. From the moment he left China, he sensed that he was different from other illegal Chinese. His reasons for leaving set him apart. It wasn’t desperation that drove him abroad. Nor would he have called it opportunity. It was more akin to hope. He was searching for something that lay outside the boundaries of his experience. In another time, perhaps he would have been an explorer, or a wanderer. Or possibly a sage. But such avenues were not open to him, so he took the only route that was. He made a giant leap into the unknown, a leap that nearly took him to the bottom of the sea.

  When he first made contact with Old Fu, the snakehead recruiter who organised his passage to the UK, the old man sat him down in the courtyard of a small tea house, lit a cigarette and scrutinised him from head to toe. Wen remembers how his heart raced as the snakehead looked him over. He had not anticipated any difficulty: was this not a straightforward business arrangement? But in retrospect he realised it was the first of many tests.

  After a minute, Old Fu hawked loudly, spat onto the ground and asked him a series of questions. Was he prepared to work hard and to suffer? To endure privation for months on end during the long journey overland? Was he strong, both in body and in mind? Would he break easily under pressure? Old Fu weighed his answers carefully, as if he were interviewing him for a job. After all, Old Fu explained, spreading his hands, he was making an investment. As with any investment, he needed to gauge the level of risk.

  Old Fu was in his late fifties. He had nicotine-stained teeth, a pot belly, and wore a brown plaid jacket with a foreign cut that had nevertheless seen better days. His steel-grey hair was like a coarse brush, and his eyes were ringed with tiredness. As he lit a second foreign cigarette, he leaned back in his chair and relaxed, and Wen understood that he had cleared the first hurdle. Old Fu explained that he had been in business many years, describing himself as something of an economic pioneer. He had started out trading textiles in the late eighties to Czechoslovakia, but after a decade of exporting handbags, he had graduated to human cargo. The risks were higher, he explained, but so were the profits. At one point, the old man leaned forward and tapped his lighter on the wooden table for emphasis. He was like a Wall Street broker, he said: he traded in human futures. And in all his years transporting people, he added proudly, he had yet to lose one.

  The price was 35,000 US dollars. “Take it or leave it,” Old Fu declared. “There are plenty more like you,” he added with a shrug. Wen asked about the method of payment. Five thousand must be paid up front, said Old Fu, the balance by his relatives once he had arrived safely in England. Wen stared down at the bloated tea leaves nestled in the bottom of his cup, pondering his response.

  “I can get the five thousand,” he said finally. “But the rest is a problem.”

  “Borrow it.”

  “From who?”

  Old Fu shrugged. “Whoever. Family. Friends.”

  “My friends are labourers. They have nothing. Less than nothing.”

  “Your family then.”

  “I have no family.”

  Old Fu leaned back in his chair and narrowed his gaze in disbelief. “No family at all?”

  “We were orphaned in the earthquake.”

  “We?”

  Wen hesitated, his heart sinking. “My sister and I.”

  “Ah. So you have a sister.”

  “Yes. But she has no money to speak of.”

  “Is she married?”

  “No.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  Old Fu raised an eyebrow. “And single? Why? Is something wrong with her?”

  “My sister is fine,” Wen said testily. “She’s particular, that’s all.”

  “If the water is too clear, the fish will not thrive,” replied Old Fu elliptically.

  “What’s your meaning?”

  Old Fu shrugged. “That your sister may need to be less choosy in future.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s not the sort of collateral we’re used to. But in the absence of anything else, she’ll have to do.”

  “You can’t use my sister as collateral!”

  “Then borrow the money. Go to a moneylender.”

  “And pay treble the interest? Why can’t I work off my debt in Britain?”

  “That’s not the way we do things.”

  Wen stared at him, frustrated. He had not expected the old man to be so hard-nosed. But these were snakeheads, he reminded himself. The only thing they understood was money.

  “I’m honest. And a good worker. I’ll work harder than the others,” he offered.

  “Why should I make an exception for you? I’ve got a dozen other people waiting for transport.”

  “Because I’m good for it.”

  “Then you’ve no cause for concern, have you?” said Old Fu. He leaned forward and stubbed out his cigarette. “No collateral. No loan,” he said firmly.

  Wen hesitated, his thoughts spinning. In his mind he was already bound for Britain. He would have to find a way.

  “Her name is Mei Ling,” he said finally. “Zhang Mei Ling. She’s a schoolteacher.”

  “Where?”

  “Tangshan No. 35 Middle School.” Wen lied without hesitation, giving Old Fu the first thing that popped into his mind: the name of his old school.

  “Fine.”

  “But if you lay a hand on her I’ll kill you,” he said.

  “Honour your debt and we won’t have to,” said Old Fu.

  As they rose to leave, the old man leaned forward and placed both hands on the table. “Don’t think for a moment that you can evade us once you get to Britain,” he said intently. “Our organisation is like the long tail of a dragon. No matter where you go, we will find you.”

  Over the ensuing weeks, throughout his negotiations, Wen was careful not to give them any information that might lea
d to Lili. She would be shocked to learn of his plans to go abroad; she would be even more appalled if she knew he had involved her in his dealings. Most importantly, he needed to protect her. Though he had every intention of making good on his bond, he did not want to put Lili at risk, however remotely. She was young, attractive and unmarried: a valuable commodity in today’s China, where men outnumbered women by far, and kidnappings were not unheard of. Though Old Fu seemed reasonable, snakeheads were little better than gangsters. He knew they could be vicious in their dealings if they chose.

  He had a few years’ of savings to put towards the deposit, and borrowed the remainder from an old classmate, promising a twenty-percent return as soon as he had cleared his bond. Up until the time of the accident, he had made his payments to the snakeheads faithfully each month, setting aside a portion of his wages for himself and turning over the rest to his contact in the UK, a young Fujienese who went by the nickname Little Dog. Little Dog was something of a mystery to Wen: he was small and slight but nonetheless menacing in a way Wen could not quite pinpoint. He tracked down Wen on the first of each month, regardless of the day, and was always accompanied by a couple of thugs, who lurked behind and let him do the talking. Wen had heard a rumour that Little Dog was the wayward son of a Fujienese tycoon, but didn’t know if it was true. What he did know was that Little Dog was clever, well-spoken and seemed to anticipate his every move. Even Chen, his gangmaster at Morecambe Bay, seemed intimidated by Little Dog, warning Wen not to underestimate his power and reach.

  To date, Wen had worked off a third of his bond. But he had another two years to go before it would be clear. What this meant now, he didn’t know. In the eyes of the world he was dead. He fervently hoped that Old Fu and Little Dog would swallow their loss. But if they were resourceful and chose to dig deeply, sooner or later they might find their way to Lili. This was his biggest fear.

  None of this did he disclose to Angie. It was not just the limitations of his English that prevented him from doing so: he did not wish to disturb the fragile balance of their existence. He and Angie lived solely in the present. She did not ask questions, nor did she give answers. He understood a handful of truths about her: she needed silence in the mornings, could sidestep problems with ease if she chose to, used a grim humour when she felt uncomfortable, and drank to subdue her fears. She was fiercely private and self-reliant to the point of stubbornness. She was also damaged, though he did not understand how or why. And the fact of this made her oddly compassionate towards others.

  Apart from this, he knew no details of her life. Her work, her family, even her age remained shrouded in mystery. And she had asked him nothing about his own. That they each had a past was understood; but it remained closed, like the lid of a coffin. It was as if the events that night on the bay had robbed them of their histories. Perhaps, he decided, this was for the best.

  So now he was a man without a country, a language or a name. Sooner or later, he would have to confront the question of his lost identity. He’d been stripped of his passport by the snakeheads during the long journey overland, and been told his papers would be returned once his bond was paid. He had a small sum of money stashed in a bank account in London in Jin’s name. She had agreed to this when he left London: it was not safe to keep the money he earned with him, and neither did he wish to send it home, like most of those he worked alongside. So he had made periodic deposits into Jin’s account, whenever he could manage. The sum he’d saved was not enormous, though it might be enough to buy a new passport on the black market. But to gain access to the money he would have to make contact with Jin, and the prospect of this unnerves him.

  He finds it difficult to think of Angie and Jin in the same moment, as if the presence of one somehow erases that of the other. His affair with Jin had been deeply physical at first. After months of privation during the long journey overland, his need for a woman was all-consuming, and he indulged himself greedily. She too had seemed inexhaustible in her desires, and he wondered at the time if she would have behaved the same way at home. Perhaps, he had thought, coming to England had set her free from the constraints of their culture, a culture that still prized virtue and modesty for unmarried females.

  But after a few months, the flame that had consumed them gradually burned low, and for Wen at least, extinguished itself. He sensed that it was the same with her, though she refused to admit it. Those last few weeks, her lovemaking developed an angry edge. One morning shortly before he left, he woke to find that she had bitten him the night before: he lay in silence next to her and examined her toothmarks on his arm. It seemed to him the marks were not emblematic of her love, but of her bitterness. He was slipping away from her, even while she lay in his arms, and she knew it.

  The day he told her he was leaving, she had been strangely calm. She sat at the small metal table in her room and smoked a cigarette while he spoke, exhaling through her nose. But when she leaned forward to tap the ash into a chipped mug in front of her, he saw her hand tremble ever so slightly. By then he had already begun to store his savings in her account, and she agreed to allow him to continue. That he trusted her completely with his money was implicit, and she lived up to his belief in her, keeping meticulous accounts of their respective savings over the ensuing months. He sent her emails whenever he made a deposit in her name, and he always received a polite, but brief, acknowledgement. He called her only twice after leaving London, both times within the first month. After that he sent only the occasional email, mostly to let her know he was moving on.

  Now he looks over at the phone on Angie’s counter. He pictures himself dialling, and tries to imagine the sound of Jin’s voice on the other end of the line, but he cannot. How could a simple piece of plastic reach across the two halves of his life, from the past into the present, from death by drowning to life in Angie’s house? Instead, he goes and finds his coat and shoes, takes some change from a bowl in the kitchen, finds a spare set of keys, and for the first time since the accident, ventures out alone.

  He walks towards the coast, knowing instinctively which direction to turn, for one thing cockling has taught him is how to smell the ocean. Though he grew up some eighty kilometres from the Bohai Sea, he had not set eyes upon it until he was ten, when he stowed aboard a lorry bound for the port city of Tanghai. The lorry was driven by an old school friend of his stepfather’s, who had stopped by on his way through town. The two men had sat reminiscing for an hour in the front room, and Wen had been sent out to buy a large bottle of beer and a bag of sunflower seeds from a nearby stall. Later, Wen overheard the man say he was bound for the coast, so he crept out to the lorry and hid beneath a pile of burlap sacking. Two hours later, when the red-faced driver found him stowed away, the man swore and clouted him so hard about the ear that it did not stop ringing for the entire journey home. Upon his return, Wen’s stepfather had given him a second beating. But later that night, his stepmother had quietly placed a bowl of dumpling soup in front of him in reconciliation. She sat down opposite him with a troubled look.

  “Were you running away?” she asked.

  Wen shook his head. “I wanted to see the ocean,” he explained.

  She sighed then and he could sense her relief. “And did you?” she asked.

  “No. At least, I don’t think so. We stopped at the municipal docks. I saw only buildings, and grey water.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I wanted to get to Beidaihe. To the place where Chairman Mao had his villa by the sea.”

  “Ah. Beidaihe is further north.”

  “They say the beaches there are made of golden sand. And the rocks along the shore are shaped like crouching tigers.”

  “That is what they say,” she mused.

  “Have you been?”

  “No. I haven’t had that pleasure.”

  “I’m sorry if I disgraced you.”

  “To long to see the ocean is no disgrace.” She smiled at him, as if she knew that he was destined to go, as if her hold on
him was only brief. “Perhaps you saw more than you realised,” she added. She patted his hand then and stood, carrying his empty bowl to the sink. At the time he was uncertain of her meaning, but the words stayed with him long after.

  •

  Now Wen carries on walking towards the coast, where he knows there will be a high street and shops, and hopefully an internet café. Angie has no computer at home, a fact which surprised him at first, as he’d assumed every English household would have one. But he has come to understand that Angie defies normality in more ways than one, and now nothing about her would faze him.

  It takes him longer than he expected to reach the sea. When the vast grey waters of the bay finally appear, he stops dead. The stench of briny air is overwhelming, clogging his lungs. He stands motionless, his eyes fixed on the white caps in the distance, the memories of that night flooding back. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come, he thinks. Perhaps he will never be able to face the sea and its ghosts again.

  He does not know how long he remains there, standing on the pavement. An old man walks by, his back hunched with age, but does not appear to notice him. It is only when the purple light of dusk begins to settle on the bay that Wen turns and heads north along the coast road, heading for the high street. He walks for several blocks without success, until he eventually decides to enter an empty shop selling flowers to enquire. He rehearses the words in advance but still panics when he utters them. The shopkeeper, a barrel-shaped woman in her late fifties, frowns with incomprehension. But after three tries her eyebrows lift knowingly, and she directs him further into town.

  Fifteen minutes later, he finally reaches the internet café. The neighbourhood looks familiar, and the idea that he may stumble upon his former co-workers, or even worse, his gangmaster, preys upon him. He has worn the red woolly hat as a kind of protection, but however much he wishes, it will not make him invisible.