by Paul Mason
“Howya doin’ good buddy,” Brough always talked like this to Allegro Harp.
“Ohmygod is Beijing a fuckin’ nightmare? Bodysearched me at the airport; reception guys at this hotel treatin’ me like I’m a disease.”
“Maybe they’re not used to, er…”
“You gotta be kidding. This place is queer Shangri-la! I even had some already!” Allegro dropped his voice. “Problem is the other thing, y’know, the toothpowder...”
“So, yes, situation is,” Georgina’s voice tart as lemon juice; “we’re on our way now to finish off the filming. We’ve got the foreign affairs department with us and a lovely news crew from the local television filming us as we film...”
“Thing is,” Brough whispered to Allegro, “I’ve got these amazing rushes on a flash drive, but Jimmy’s laptop can’t read it. It’s a bog-standard SD card far as I can tell so I just want you to work your funky magic on it.”
“Yeah right,” Allegro chimed, “but it’s a tight edit. That stuff you shot in the village is er, well, draggin’ it down off the server right now, but Jimmy needs to have a look at his camera - white balance is totally fucked.”
“Hey Jimmy,” Brough nudged Carstairs, “Allegro says your white balance is shit.”
Carstairs grabbed Brough’s mobile phone.
“What’s the problem, dickbrain?”
Chun-li nudged Brough’s arm: “Miss Deng say she very impressed with your calmness and focusing, working already through twenty sheets of scripting paper.”
Brough turned to smile at Miss Deng, who was still in mid-chatter on the phone, and noticed the Chinese cameraman pulling a sneaky shot of the whole van full of cacophony.
“Yes we have the name of the factory: Tang Lu Nickel Metal Hydride.” As Georgina started to spell it out over the phone, Chun-li, breaking off from her own tirade of abuse at the airline agent, grabbed Georgina’s arm:
“Better not to give name of company to boss-lady in Shanghai!”
“Why not? Excuse me one second, can you ask the driver to turn this effing music off because I can’t hear myself - thank you.” Georgina cupped her hand over her phone to prevent Twyla hearing, “Why not? We have to put the allegations to the Central Committee guy when he comes on the program; they need to be able to...”
“Oh my God,” Chun-li said quietly, her face falling.
Hyacinth Deng broke off her conversation to ask Chun-li what the problem was. When Chun-li explained it, both Hyacinth and Rupert let out a simultaneous sigh of dismay.
“Going into a tunnel,” Georgina lied. “Call you ba-ack! What’s the problem now?’’
“Chinese media never put allegations to authorities in live interviews.”
“What do you mean?” Georgina pinned Chun-li with a cryogenic stare. “Listen. Chun-li. Just let me explain. I’ve got seven minutes of airtime to fill and I’ve got half a story about - will you just tell that man to stop filming me for a minute - half a story about air pollution and the Channel’s extremely jumpy about upsetting the authorities over one small incident that might not be representative - so we have to check it out. We have to say to them: what’s going on at so-and-so factory in Tang Lu? In fact didn’t I ask you to make that call yesterday?”
“Yes. I make that call to the propaganda department in Tang Lu. Confirmed by email official response: No Comment.” Chun-li tapped her phone and held the email, in Chinese, in front of Georgina’s face.
“But our program goes out internationally. What we’ve got to do is give the Chinese government right of reply.”
“Problem is, if Channel Ninety-Nine boss-lady tells Central Committee liaison person about Tang Lu pollution, probably two outcomes: first outcome, maybe the Central Committee guy withdraws from interview. Second outcome, Central Committee uses party apparatus to make Tang Lu pollution problem go away before program goes on air.”
Something suddenly seemed to lay heavy on Chun-li, like a bereavement.
“You mean a cover-up?” Georgina frowned.
“More like...” Chun-li’s nails clacked against her translating machine for a moment; “Make-over.”
~ * ~
4
While Xiao lay paralysed in the street, his urine drying in the morning sun, a crew of paramedics encased the two corpses in body bags of pastel blue, placed them in the ambulance and sped away. Next, two street cleaners arrived in a hi-tech electric float, which steam-cleaned the pavement and sprayed the air with peach-blossom scent, its loudspeaker tweeting and bleeping with a synthesised Shanbei folk song. A solitary motorcycle cop stayed to observe it all through his Raybans; glancing now and then at Xiao.
Eventually Xiao managed to crawl into the gutter and sit there, his palms quivering like raw pork-belly. He watched the street-cleaning team finish up, leap into their van, kill the music and drive off. He saw the cop kick his stabiliser back and rev the motorcycle, executing a text-book clean, slow, fascist glide away from the scene, flicking a visor down over his sunglasses without a further look at Xiao.
“Hey old fella.”
It was a man and a stupid youth. The man - one of those chubby, effeminate guys with a smile so gleeful that his eyes disappeared into his cheeks - held a bottle of mineral water in front of Xiao’s face. Xiao took it, wiped the rim and drank.
“Bit particular this one,” the gormless youth sang, “don’t like to drink from the common ladle.”
“Hey Grandad, what you doing here on the ground? You got nowhere else to go?” said the smiling fat man.
Xiao’s hands checked things: his wallet, the money taped to his lower back in a security pouch; the handle of the holdall still wrapped around his hand; one hard, vital object still in there among the dirty clothing. Nothing missing. His breathing slowed.
“Hotel...”
Xiao’s brain was on tape-loop, as if every time he tried to focus his thoughts something hit him in the face and jolted him back to pain and panic. He needed to find somewhere to wash his face, dry his trousers and drink green tea.
“We know a hotel nearby. Come over there and get cleaned up,” Smiling Fat Man offered.
“Yeah, very cozy,” Stupid Boy giggled.
Xiao ignored them, struggling to his feet, but immediately lost his balance and retched the water straight back up. He heard the handbrake of a taxi and soon his shaking legs and arms were being helped into the back seat. The taxi smelled of rancid sweat, tobacco, unwashed hair - but most of all it smelled of the fresh urine on Xiao’s pants. The man and boy jumped into the taxi, either side of him, and it jolted off.
Xiao’s muscles, which had clenched hard as a rifle-butt during the taser attack, were now flaccid. He let his head loll onto the seat and concentrated on getting his mind back into order.
“One more asshole in Ordos is going to wish he’d never lived,” Xiao managed to think.
But the effort of getting angry tired him. He watched the streets of slanting light go past; raised flower beds full of fake foliage, the soil on the roadsides painted green to resemble grass; knots of migrant workers smoking, sullen; their crushed and embittered faces.
He needed a hire-car and a driver. He couldn’t tail the news crew now-too late. He could meet them “accidentally” out at the theme park. Plenty of time.
The cab pulled up to an iron gate. They were at the edge of the city now: a compound with high walls, dust-black windows and rusty razor-wire that made Xiao homesick for Tang Lu. Inside there were dogs barking: two mangy ridgebacks, a metre high, who’d developed the habit of trying to snap their own necks off against the iron chains that bound them to the wall. Xiao watched them lunge and snarl at the cab, the white-eyed shock on their faces every time the chain halted their momentum.
An eight-year old kid with a dirty face and florid cheeks ran up to the dogs with an iron bar, slamming it into the floor right in front of their noses until they cowered back, whimpering into their metal hut. The gate swung shut behind the cab and another, in front, swung open.
/> He pushed himself out of the taxi. It was a courtyard with uneven brickwork for a floor. There were a few tin buckets with withered geranium plants. The courtyard was edged with single-story hovels: they could have been built in the 1960s or the 1860s. There were the pink remnants of Spring Festival banners around their doorways, some chalked messages.
A few of the inhabitants came out into the sunlight, squinting. Xiao noticed they were mostly old, wearing the washed-out colour-scheme of poverty Those who were not old were cripples. One young lad with stumps for legs, pushing himself on a skateboard, shouted:
“Hey, mate, run for it. This is a black jail.”
“Shut-up you legless turnip!” It was a plump girl, her hair in a towel and her breasts dangling half out of her kimono. She wobbled gracefully up to Xiao:
“Ignore him, mister. This is a good place. They give you cheap food and they look after you. The rent’s decent too.”
“Your rent is your cunt!” the legless youth shouted.
The plump girl tried to burn him with her cigarette, but he scooted away.
“That girl was raped three weeks ago by one of the security guards,” an old woman muttered at Xiao’s elbow. “We all saw it. Raped, in the night. Never said a thing and then the next minute he’s bringing her dumplings of a morning. Now she’s part of the bloody management as far as I’m concerned,” and the old woman scurried away on bowed legs, patting her filthy grey hair.
Xiao turned to the Smiling Fat Man and the Stupid Boy.
“Black jails do not exist in China,” Xiao presented it as half a statement, half a question.
“Of course not.”
“Then I am free to go once I’ve cleaned up?”
“Actually, the district management office did ask us to look after you for a bit. You may need to stay here for an hour just while we check you are OK. Have you got your ID?”
Xiao sighed, warily, and fished the false ID card from his wallet.
“We just need to make a photocopy. I’ll give it you back in a minute,” Smiling Fat Man chuckled.
Xiao handed the card over but refused the offer of having his trousers taken away to be dry-cleaned.
“I’ll bring you some green tea,” said Stupid Boy.
“Hey fuckwit. Say goodbye to that ID card and get used to cabbage soup!” The legless cripple hissed at him from somewhere in a dark pool of shade.
Xiao marched over and kicked the skateboard out from under him, venting the frustration of the last hour:
“There is no such thing as a black jail in China!”
“Okay, okay!” the cripple was wincing and laughing at the same time, rolling around on his stumps to pull the skateboard back beneath him. There were flies buzzing around an open toilet in the corner of the yard. Xiao felt the hot breath of the sun on the back of his neck. A few pallid faces peered at the commotion out of the doors of shacks.
“Call it a grey hotel if you want,” said the cripple, scooting out of Xiao’s way; “Grey hotel!”
~ * ~
5
“I am an undercover cop, Superintendent rank, from Ningxia Province,” Xiao was seated on an upturned bucket in the dark of an empty hovel. His audience was three ancient men, two old ladies, the skateboard cripple and a mentally ill tramp. He was using the slow, didactic speech the Party had taught him, long ago, not just as a means of communication, but as a kind of unwritten guarantee of authenticity:
“When I get out of this black jail I will report it to the authorities immediately,” Xiao continued. “It is an outrage that you are being held here without charge.”
“Yes brother Xiao,” said one old man, eyes rheumy in the dim light. “What’s the penalty of Administrative Detention for, if not to lock people up without a trial? Why do they need to go and do it outside the law as well?”
“Tell me what you have done to be sent here?” Xiao’s face was a study in sympathy. He’d pulled a small notebook out of his suitcase and licked his pencil, ready to make notes. He was in his underpants, his trousers still drying on the stones outside.
One old man had seen his son killed in a car accident by a rich kid in a Mercedes, doing handbrake turns in the parking lot at Ikea. He had travelled to Beijing to seek justice; drifted from one department to another; and finally taken to intercepting people with a placard outside the Mercedes showroom on Wangfujing Street.
Another old man’s daughter had been asphyxiated due to faulty gas pipes in an apartment block, together with her children; he had made an emotional outburst at the acquittal of the gas contractor.
The third, Xiao was a little daunted to discover, was a rightist from 1956 who’d been petitioning for rehabilitation. The old man’s shaky fingers presented him with a tiny photograph full of white cracks: a young sergeant with an ecstatic smile, in a PLA uniform from donkey’s years ago. “After that”, said the old rightist, “nobody took my picture for 15 years”.
The two women had formed a kind of petitioning tag-team; both had lost sons to industrial accidents and wanted compensation. They would rush up to dignitaries in the City Hall car park shouting: “There is no justice in China!” When they had done it to the wrong dignitary they had ended up here.
The cripple had lost both legs in a skateboard factory in Shenzhen, made his way to Beijing for the Olympic Games to seek legal redress and, well, now he was for some unknown reason in Ordos. The mentally ill tramp was, as far as Xiao could make out, just mentally ill.
Until the Olympics they’d all lived the enervating lifestyle of the urban ghost, on the pavement edges of big cities. Now they’d been swept up.
“The courtyard is clean but the outside toilet smells and attracts flies,” said the car-crash oldster. “That’s my biggest complaint.”
“That and the fact that you are imprisoned, fool!” the skateboard cripple yelled.
“You make me laugh,” said the rightist, his voice as fragile as calligraphy paper, “This jail is not bad. In my camp we starved and had to work. People were shot for insolence. Here there is food and idleness. You don’t know you are born, son...”
But the cripple was retreating from the door, breathless, in a clatter of skateboard wheels:
“Plump Girl, Plump Girl - and the boss is with her!”
Xiao spotted Smiling Fat Man and the plump girl marching towards the hovel, both armed with that sense of routine outrage and annoyance that comes with having to run an institution whose inmates do not want to be there.
“Where’s Xiao?” the jail boss made a shabby silhouette in the doorway and the plump girl pushed her head around the doorframe blocking the light some more.
“Here,” Xiao stood up, embarrassed that the legs protruding out of his boxer shorts were hairless.
“You are in big trouble. Your dotcom empire has ruined thousands of investors. Now you’ve been caught red handed!”
“Ha!” said the rightist, “I knew he was never a cop!”
“What’s he been telling you?” the plump girl entered the room and poked the two women with her finger. “And what have you been telling him?”
“Everybody out into the courtyard now,” Smiling Fat Man commanded; he spoke as if somebody was ordering him-as if somebody else’s rules demanded it. They all shuffled out, blinking, and stood in a line. Xiao joined it.
“Congratulations comrades, we have apprehended a master crook,” Smiling Fat Man chuckled; “Xiao Yi-ming, dotcom millionaire, where are your riches now? You were disgraced and fled to Taiwan. Maybe you should have stayed there instead of returning to the People’s Republic of China.”
“My name is Xiao Lushan!” Xiao bellowed, leaning like a falling building into the face of the prison boss. “That ID is a fake!”
“Oh so you are an ID faker as well!” the plump girl looked pleased with herself.
“Comes in with wee on his trousers! What a stupid disguise. Spotted this one a mile off, I did.”
“Is this some kind of reality TV show?” the old Mercedes petitioner
muttered to Xiao; “Is there a hidden camera? Will we get a prize?”
“Why don’t you bribe them to keep quiet and let you go, if you really are a millionaire?” one of the old ladies muttered.
“I have another question,” the rightist’s parchment voice interjected. Everyone fell silent out of veneration:
“What I want to know is, now that we’ve denounced him, do we get extra rations? Do we get anything extra or not,” his voice quavered indignantly, “is what I want to know!”