by Chen Qiufan
“That’s in the Luo clan’s territory,” Chen Xianyun added in a low whisper. Then he asked, “Why were they after you? Did you steal something?”
“No!” Mimi exploded in anger. “I’ve done nothing! But today was the festival, so I wanted to come out … and take a peek at all this excitement. They were after me the whole way, and so I kept on running, until I got here—”
“Those mad dogs from the Luo clan have gotten more and more brazen.” Since Xianyun couldn’t detect any signs of lying in her account, he sighed and gave the order to his men, “Take her back to her village. But be careful not to let anyone from the Luo clan see her.”
“No!” Kaizong stood up. He was amazed by his own intensity. “Taking her back would be like sending a lamb back to the tiger.”
“She’s a waste worker who belongs to the Luo clan—” Xianyun looked away, unable to meet the heated gaze of his nephew.
“The waste people who work for the Luo clan are still people! Uncle, this, of all days, is not a day on which we can do something we’ll regret. They’re all watching.” Kaizong pointed upward. He knew that the men of his uncle’s generation believed in ghosts, spirits, karma, and fate. It was more effective to talk about retribution in the next life than to give a lecture on moral philosophy.
Xianyun pondered the dilemma. After a while, he finally ordered his men to accompany Mimi back to her place, pick up some necessities, and then to bring her back and settle her in one of the Chen clan workshops. “I hope that Knifeboy was only claiming to be following Luo Jincheng’s orders while indulging in his own brand of craziness. Otherwise…”
Seeing the anxiety on his uncle’s face, Kaizong realized that the matter was far from over. He began to understand the complexities behind the earlier discussion about “a sense of security.” The clans were like independent fiefdoms who made the rules within their own territories. For the Luo clan, a waste girl wasn’t a person, but more akin to a sheep, a farming implement, a bag of seeds. If a waste person belonging to the Luo clan were settled within the Chen clan’s territories as a result of intervention by a Chen, then the Luos would consider the act an insult and betrayal. And Kaizong, who was responsible for Mimi’s betrayal, would be viewed as a thief who was deliberately provoking a fight.
Meanwhile, Mimi was completely baffled by the conversation that mixed Mandarin with the local topolect. It took Kaizong some time to explain to her what they had discussed and decided. Once she understood, she managed to squeeze out a “thank you” with difficulty.
It was getting late. The square in front of the Chen clan shrine was in a state of disarray: the altar, half disassembled, stood in the setting sun like a skeleton; the statue of the Ghost King, a hard plastic shell, lay on the ground with an enigmatic smile on his face; the offering table had already been taken away, but some votive candles and joss sticks remained on the ground, along with a scattering of ghost money mixed with trampled vegetables and fruits; the dragon flags fluttered in the purple breeze; the lonely spirits and hungry ghosts had all eaten their fill and left; vendors counted their money and gave away whatever food they couldn’t sell to the chipped dogs, who ate with total concentration, wagging their tails rapidly and mechanically.
Everything would be repeated the same time next year.
“Do you really think that the lives of the waste people are worth less than the lives of the natives?” Kaizong asked his uncle. Mimi’s face flashed in front of his eyes like an afterimage. Something in that face had pierced his retina and inscribed itself indelibly into his memory.
Chen Xianyun’s shadow was stretched long by the sun. It crossed the square—now bathed in a coppery light and inlaid with glittering golden flickers from the trash left behind. He did not answer his nephew.
Kaizong recalled another alumnus of Boston University, a doctor of systematic theology who had graduated in 1955, who had once spoken of a dream that moved everyone.
That dream remained unfulfilled.
3
In Silicon Isle, even the trash wasn’t as simple as people thought. After the boxes full of trash were opened but before processing, those objects that were still in good shape were supposed to be picked out, repaired, and then sold on the secondhand-goods market, but a few pieces always escaped notice. Sharp-eyed waste people spotted them and secreted them away like treasures. Mimi once saw Brother Wen—all the girls called him that because he acted like everyone’s elder brother—cut out a silicone component from a junked Japanese adult doll and furtively hide it under his clothes; the square wound he left behind between the legs of the artificial woman revealed a mess of wires and elaborate, fine tubes, as though the body had been abandoned on the sere lawn after a failed operation, and the surgeons didn’t even bother to suture up the incision.
Mimi didn’t ask why Brother Wen had done that; she was eighteen and understood the facts of life. She listened to her mother and kept her hair cut to a safe length and endeavored to wear loose-fitting clothing that disguised the curves of her body—she had no wish to one day find herself abandoned on the lawn like that doll.
Brother Wen, who was also from her part of the country, had come here a year before her. He didn’t appear to work at all, but he earned more than anyone else. Even the natives of Silicon Isle seemed to respect him. He didn’t strut around and get into fights like the local hooligans; instead, he acted just like his name—wen was the character for “gentle.” Though he might appear delicate and mild-mannered, all he had to do was to say the word, and hundreds of waste people from home villages across the country would rally around him.
Half a year earlier, he had successfully organized several riots to fight for better working conditions and benefits for the workers. Of course, the bosses were used to firing unruly workers en masse and replacing them with new hires, but Brother Wen cleverly organized his protests on the eve of government inspections. The overseers, terrified of getting in trouble with the officials, had to give in to his demands.
Brother Wen’s reputation soared as a result of these exploits, but rumors began to spread that the bosses were plotting to get rid of him. Just as everyone was getting concerned about his safety, he went to see Director Lin Yiyu voluntarily, and somehow convinced Lin to invite him as well as the heads of the three clans of Silicon Isle to sit down together for dim sum. After that, the rumors of hit men being hired against Brother Wen ceased. Indeed, Wen seemed to transform into a union representative of sorts for the waste people. Whenever the workers were dissatisfied or needed something, they asked him to negotiate with the bosses, and usually he managed to emerge with a solution that made both sides happy. Still, he continued to live in his run-down shack and spent his days picking strange and unusual components out of the trash, adding them to the collection in front of his shack, and tinkering with them as though he were some kind of folk inventor living on a garbage heap.
Brother Wen was a mystery to Mimi. Although they spoke the same topolect, Mimi always felt that he didn’t truly say what was on his mind.
“You remind me of Ah Hui, my little sister,” Brother Wen would tell her, patting her gently on her head, but when Mimi asked about her, he always changed the topic while his eyes looked elsewhere, adding to his sense of mystery.
Starting at an early age, Mimi had been used to doing everything by herself, but she envied other children who had older siblings to take care of them. Brother Wen’s solicitousness seemed to make a part of her wish come true, but there was a voice inside her that warned her, There’s an inexplicable sense of danger about this man. Stay vigilant!
* * *
About a month ago, Brother Wen had shown a bizarre device to Mimi.
At the time, Mimi and a few other young women were goofing around, chasing each other with prosthetic limbs. When they saw Brother Wen approach, the laughter ceased and they stood still respectfully. Wen called a few of the women over and compared whatever he was holding in his hand with their heads, and then shook his head.
“Brother Wen, what are you holding?” Lanlan, who was from Hunan and slept in the same shack as Mimi, asked.
Wen shook his head. “I don’t know either.”
“Then give it to us!” The young women giggled and shoved each other playfully. “We’ll wear it.”
Wen grinned. “Maybe your heads are too big and it won’t fit!” He tossed the helmetlike object to the women. They oohed and ahhed over it, as though admiring an intricate crown.
“Brother Wen, I’m not sure that’s meant for human heads,” Mimi said. The “crown” was bowl-shaped and could probably cover the back of the head like a helmet, but there was a prominent ridge down the middle with a corresponding depression on the inside, making it impossible for the object to fit neatly onto any head. The inside bore signs of damage from some part having been forcefully removed, and there were yellow stains from some unknown liquid.
Wen patted his own head. “Mimi, you really are just like my real sister. Got a good head on your shoulders.”
“Not only is she clever, she’s also the most elegant of us. I bet the crown will fit her.” The joking women suddenly reached a consensus and the helmet was placed on Mimi’s head.
Her head was still too big for the device, and there was a big gap between her skull and the curved inner surface. Before Brother Wen could stop the joke from going too far, one of the women pushed down hard. With a loud crack, Mimi felt something cold and sharp pierce the skin right under her occipital bone.
She screamed, removed the “crown,” and tossed it on the ground.
“What have you done!?” Brother Wen yelled. The women, scared at the accident they had caused, scattered.
“I’m bleeding!” Mimi felt the sticky, oozing wound on the back of her neck.
“Thank goodness it’s not a big wound.” Brother Wen took a disinfectant wipe out of his pocket and pressed it against her wound. The bleeding was stanched shortly.
Mimi sat on a garbage heap and fiddled with a broken prosthesis. As Brother Wen looked at her, his gaze full of worry, a thought abruptly crossed her mind: perhaps everything Brother Wen did was only superficially for the benefit of the waste people; in reality, all he cared about was satisfying some secret craving. She was surprised that she had come up with such an idea: it was as though she had only seen shadows and reflections of people but never thought about the kinds of souls that lay hidden beneath their faces.
Souls. Mimi pondered the word. She had only heard it in clichéd song lyrics, but had no direct experience with it: a formless, invisible thing that nonetheless existed for certain. If she could see souls, what would they look like? Like shells scattered on a beach? Like the clouds in the sky? Surely different people possessed souls of different colors, shapes, and textures.
Entranced by her own thoughts, Mimi didn’t realize that not too far away, a 35 mm Leica lens had captured her image.
“Hey, kid, what are you doing?” Brother Wen yelled.
The boy was a native dressed in a school uniform. The children of the waste people could not afford the tuition of real schools and could only attend the mobile schools organized by volunteers. They had to share textbooks, and school uniforms existed only in dreams. The camera appeared comically large in the boy’s small hands. He knew he didn’t belong here and remained rooted in place, terrified and mute.
“Do you think you can just take pictures around here as you please? I hope you’re prepared to pay.”
“I don’t … don’t have any money. My dad…”
“I know your daddy is rich. When he finds out you snuck your way in here, he’s going to give you such a spanking.” Wen walked over with his helmet and forced a kind-seeming smile onto his face. “I’ll make a deal with you. If you help me by putting this helmet on, I’ll call it even between us. Does that sound good?”
“Brother Wen!” Mimi wanted to say more but Wen turned around and gestured for her to shush.
The boy looked at the helmet and thought for a while, then nodded.
Mimi turned away until she heard the familiar crack, followed by the scream and loud sobs. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, counted to three, then opened her eyes and walked to the boy. She helped him remove the helmet and cleaned his wound. The skin below his occipital bone was punctured by a pin-sized hole, and blood was oozing out.
“It’s all right. It’s okay.” She strained to not look at Wen, because she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to keep the fury out of her eyes. “You’re a good boy. Get home as soon as you can.”
Mimi gave the boy a kiss on his forehead. When she was little, her mother did this whenever she fell or tripped, as though the gesture would help relieve the pain—and it worked. She gave the boy another kiss. The child lifted his head, and his eyes gazed at her gratefully out of a muddy and tearstained face. Then he dashed away as though running for his life, and his tiny figure vanished beyond the edge of the dusty road.
“What’s the big deal? He’s just some native brat.” Brother Wen raised his voice. “Have you forgotten how they treat us? Or how they treat our children? I’m doing this for you. What if that helmet—”
“But none of that is his fault,” Mimi muttered, and then headed for her shack.
“A day of reckoning is coming, remember.” Brother Wen’s voice followed her for a long time. “It’s coming.”
* * *
The day before the Ghost Festival, a month after the incident with the helmet and the boy, in the Luo territory—
The face of the lohsingpua6—a local witch of Silicon Isle—appeared especially hideous in the light of the green-glowing film applied to her forehead: her eyes seemed to be two bottomless dry wells under the shadow cast by her brow bone, and no light reflected from her irises. Accompanied by an electronic prayer machine, she muttered an incomprehensible incantation in the slow rhythm of some ancient chant like a blind beast. As she chanted, she sprinkled a medicinal potion made from a dozen herbs mixed with safflower oil—including Japanese bloodgrass, siêngcao grass,7 peach leaves, and Chinese fir—at all corners of the room with a pomegranate branch.
Drops of the holy oil meant to exorcise evil spirits also fell on the unconscious body lying in the middle of the room. Crystal globules covered the boy’s pale face like teardrops that hadn’t been wiped away.
Luo Jincheng watched the scene uneasily, but he had run out of better choices. The specialists had diagnosed his young son, Luo Zixin, with a rare form of viral meningitis, and the virus isolated from the cerebrospinal fluid could not be identified. Although the boy’s intracranial pressure was stable for the moment, he remained in a deep coma, and his electroencephalogram was diffuse and slow. The doctors explained that the boy’s brain was like a computer in sleep mode—although the status indicators showed no abnormalities, cortical activity was being suppressed, as though his brain-computer was waiting for some command to wake up.
When a problem can’t be resolved by the methods of this world, the elders used to say, it’s best to hand it over to gods and spirits.
The lohsingpua had said that little Zixin had come in contact with something unclean. If the boy had clashed with some ghost, then the boy’s soul could be lost due to fright. To recover, a ceremony to “collect the soul” had to be held.
Luo Jincheng listened to the witch’s hypnotic chant and seemed to return to the scene of the exorcism he had witnessed as a child. Viewed in retrospect, the ritual had resembled the mediation of some economic dispute that crossed the border between the worlds of the living and the dead. Like in the mundane world of men, most problems could be solved with money. After the medium named the price demanded by the ghosts, the relatives of the afflicted collected the paper ghost money and deputized the clan elders to bring it in front of the afflicted, where they knelt, lowered their heads, and presented the fee. They had to kneel as many times as the age of the afflicted, and afterward the ghost money was scattered in the alleyways and outside the village in a ritual called “the delivery.”
Back then, the government hadn’t yet restricted logging, so paper was cheap, and the ghosts didn’t seem to demand too much.
If the condition of the afflicted was very serious, then the ritual of “road sacrifice” had to be performed, which required a feast being held at a street intersection. To show piety, the cooking had to be done with purified hands and the cooks couldn’t taste the food for flavor. It was taboo for passersby to show surprise or fear, and they had to walk by the scene without another glance, especially without ever looking backward—otherwise the condition suffered by the afflicted would be transferred to them. The natives knew to never touch the food offered to the ghosts in the feast, but now that Silicon Isle was filled with impious, ignorant waste people, it was no longer rare to hear of incidents where men and ghosts fought over the same food. Unable to prevent the offerings from being defiled, the natives had gradually abandoned the ritual.
Luo Jincheng had never imagined that one day he would play the leading role in such a ritual. He was a devout Buddhist, and there was a shrine set up in his own house. At major festivals, he donated large sums of money for incense and offerings to pray for good fortune—although some joked that since Boss Luo had business dealings across the globe, perhaps even the Buddha found it hard to watch over all his affairs. He understood that he was no different from most Chinese: it wasn’t so much that he had faith in the Buddha; rather, he worshiped pragmatism. Putting his heart at ease was the greatest practical benefit of his faith.
Is this karma? Luo Jincheng shuddered as though a pair of cold eyes stared at him out of the void, measuring his soul. Rumor had it that the cargo ship from New Jersey, Long Prosperity, had caused someone to die while entering Hong Kong. Since the other clan bosses thought the ship unlucky and refused to accept the cargo, he had bought the ship’s entire load at a low price. Boldness had always been the foundation of his success as he built the Luo clan’s empire, and his son had inherited that trait from him.