Rare Earth

by Paul Mason

  Brough squinted over the edge. He could see the metallic green silhouettes of the platoon in the distance and the pale blue background of the Mao portrait above them, but nothing else.

  “Oh my god,” Chun-li whispered, and grabbed Brough’s hand.

  “What?”

  “Look!” she cried.

  “At what?”

  “The problem is,” said Big Wu’s voice - Brough had lost sight of him now-”you’re not going with the flow. Try a bit of wu-wei, the action of non-action.”

  “Just let your mind relax and breathe quietly,” Chun-li whispered, unable to pull her eyes away from the square. He could feel his mind obstinately flailing and his heart pounding in his throat.

  “I don’t get it...” Brough heard himself say, but in the middle of the sentence he caught a movement at the edge of his eye.

  Down in the square, right next to the obelisk in the middle, he spotted a clump of people who were not alive having an earnest discussion. One gave him a wave.

  “See-that’s Frank and the architecture students from ‘89. They’ve been having a right old reunion,” said Big Wu.

  As Brough let his brainwaves go long and deep, the undead crowd came into focus. There were knots of students dressed in the summer fashion of 1989: white shirttails hanging out of drainpipe trousers; men in khaki shorts worn with socks and moccasins; young women in baggy military pants; pale kids in doctors’ coats; white headbands.

  At the far corner of the square Brough could make out a delegation of murdered workers. Scruffier and at the same time more genial, they loitered in a tight group, almost clutching each other.

  “That’s my lot. Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation. Got separated on the day,” Big Wu gave a puzzled sigh, drifting back into vision. “Incredibly well-read now! Much more politically astute. Access to everything this side - nothing’s banned. It’s like friggin’ university - Gramsci, Foucault, Saul Alinsky...”

  “What will they do?”

  “We’re not sure - all a bit spontaneous. The students are still demanding to lead the demo. But that’s tending to get lost in the arguments between the massacre victims and the rest.”

  “The rest?”

  “Well there’s the soldiers. We beat about fifty of them to death on the day itself, you know. Dragged them out of ambulances. But they were victims too, is my argument. And on top of that there’s everybody else...”

  Across the concrete, hundreds of metres wide, tens of thousands of unquiet spirits had begun to march. There were tortured drug dealers, kidnapped prostitutes dressed in twenty years’ worth of cheap fashion; disgraced officials in the fluorescent bibs they’d worn on the morning of their execution. A small army of coalminers, lamps dangling from their necks, faces with that blinking stare of innocence all miners give when they’re in the natural light. The dead, scraped up off the floors of unlit factories; the victims of firing squads; workers whose lives had been shortened by cancer and poisoning. A whole delegation of brick-kiln kids, their childhoods stolen by work and physical abuse, skipping along in formation, waving the national flag. Brough watched the coalminers turn their faces skyward and wave, as a bunch of recently killed mates flew in from a mine disaster in Shenyang.

  The image of everything living-the trees, the soldiers and the flag-seemed blurred, over-inked, like a smudged gravure plate; the imprint of the ghosts was a shade too light but crisper for it.

  The soldiers stood to attention as their officer unfurled the flag. The trumpet fanfare of the national anthem clanged out of a speaker. A male TV reporter stood ready to deliver a hushed commentary through a fluffy microphone.

  Suddenly a crowd of ethereal students rushed towards the flagpole, forming a circle. The martyred workers stumbled after them, bowed their heads and raised their fists. The dead soldiers of 1989 held hands and made a semicircle facing the flag, throwing nervous glances at the rest. The endless crowd of victims pressed in behind them, filling Tiananmen Square to its southern gate, clambering over the monuments, cracking jokes and waving to long-lost friends.

  “Got to go,” said Big Wu.

  “Thanks for sorting out that SD card,” Brough said.

  “That wasn’t us, it was him,” said Big Wu, gesturing to Grandfather Li, who had just materialised and was hovering in the lotus position next to General Guo.

  “Apparently he had some karmic deficit with you: he had to use two decades of accumulated good behaviour to help you out. He’s stuck here now, like us. Anyway, see you later...”

  Big Wu made a Batman-style dive off the National Museum, swooping over the heads of the crowd to join his delegation.

  When the last notes of the national anthem died Brough could hear a quiet chant rolling across the crowd.

  “Do not fear tyranny!” Chun-li translated.

  It was not an angry chant, more desultory; more like the last words you would shout in some hopeless moment of parting with somebody you would never see again. It unfurled, echoed and died away and the spirit crowd vanished.

  In the silence Brough could hear only the flag slapping against the flagpole in the dawn breeze:

  Brough pointed a finger at Grandfather Li: “How did you know what my Dad sounds like? And who are you anyway?”

  Grandfather Li stared beyond him, contemptuous.

  “Have you,” a wave of remembered grief surged over him, “met my father?”

  Grandfather Li stood silent.

  “Can you give him a message?”

  “You must be joking!” General Guo intervened, twangy and bright eyed, struggling to break the pall of sadness that had engulfed them: “The unquiet dead are a strictly Chinese phenomenon!”

  “China, North Korea and Myanmar.” sniggered Grandfather Li.

  “How come?” said Brough.

  “Nobody knows for certain,” said General Guo, “but we think it’s probably because of the absence of historical memory. Where history is suppressed, and for generations-suppressed so thoroughly that there are no facts to remember-that’s where you get the unquiet dead.”

  “No facts and then no mental tools to unearth the facts with, or analyse them!” said Grandfather Li: “These maniacs have abolished the past. They’ve abolished logic. Lies and truth can’t challenge each other. They’ve re-created the iron box.”

  “The iron box?” Brough’s brow furrowed.

  “Our intelligentsia compared the dying Qing dynasty to an iron box,” said General Guo. “Sealed up, with no means of escape. Inside, people are quietly suffocating. It is cruel to wake them: that was the argument the intelligentsia put to the founders of the Communist Party.”

  “Communist Party said - better to die in agony trying to escape!” Grandfather Li shook his ethereal fist.

  “What everyone forgot,” said General Guo, gesturing to the square below, “is that even suffocating people can dream.”

  “Yes, and when they wake up dead, and find out the truth,” Grandfather Li exploded, “they think - excuse me Miss - they think: ‘Fuck!’ and become very, very angry!”

  ~ * ~

  14

  The sunset over the Helan Shan had turned the streets of Tang Lu orange; the green of the mosque walls had turned to shimmering black; the gold leaf on the dragon statues sizzled as if on fire.

  The muezzin’s call to prayer wandered lazily across the rooftops, competing with the clatter of teapots and taped announcements blaring out of various mobile phone emporia.

  At Tang Lu Public Sauna Number One, Chief Superintendent Xiao let the massage girl’s fingers walk stiffly across his cranium. On the stage, a monologue artist was playing the rick-racks and reciting a cheeky tongue twister. It was Friday, late June, Xiao’s first night back in town.

  “Your suntan is orange: probably the effect of radiation,” Editor Sheng clucked from the next couch. He was having a lymph-node drainage rub by a pretty girl.

  “Yeah, the South China Sea is full of nuclear waste,” said Commerce Secretary Zhou, giggling, hol
ding his mobile phone up to Xiao’s bare leg. “Hey, Bones, Spock’s been fatally exposed!”

  “This is jealousy speaking!” Xiao sulked.

  Despite the suntan, he was not feeling well. During the whole two weeks at a police veterans’ holiday resort in Guangdong he’d been getting nightly visitations from Oktyabr Khünbish: waking up in a slick of sweat, staring into the space one metre above his nose where he had just seen the hoodlum’s contorted grimace melt into the air.

  “Jealous? What I still...” Sheng began, and then stopped short: “Hey! That’s enough. My lymphs are drained!”

  He shooed the masseuse away with a hand-flap before leaning furtively to Xiao’s ear.

  “What I still don’t know is how you managed to fix that kid. I mean, he was planning to blow the lid completely off Tang Lu Nickel Metal Hydride. Zheng’s people found all kinds of unauthorised searches on his computer; documents gone astray...”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Xiao growled. “Hey fuwuyuen! Foo-woo-yuen!”-singing the word obsequiously, like Olive Oyl sings the name of Popeye: “Stop massaging my cranium and get the teapot over here! And fast, before I box your ears!”

  He hauled his stiff body into a sitting position and his two friends gazed at him with a newfound respect.

  “If Superintendent Xiao goes on a mission, it must succeed...” he began, putting on an ancient storytelling voice.

  “If Superintendent Xiao signs out a large, ah, asset from the inventory of the Public Security Police, it must be accounted for.”

  “You bribe that kid?” Zhou whispered.

  Xiao scowled at Zhou, poker-faced, letting the Zhongncmhai droop from his bottom lip.

  “Assets have to be signed out. Assets have to be used for the express purpose for which they were signed out. Transactions have to be witnessed.”

  “But the English journalist refused...” Sheng rasped.

  Xiao wagged a sage-like index finger:

  “Now it happened that the Kubuqi Desert Propaganda Department also signed out certain large monetary assets for specific use. These also had to be accounted for and witnessed.”

  “Ho, ho, ho!” Zhou rocked back with glee, slapped his leg, exposing his groin as his robe slipped open.

  “What?” says Sheng, “I don’t get it!”

  “You did a switch? That’s genius, Spock!” Zhou hissed.

  “Hey, not so loud,” said Xiao.

  They paused while a waitress poured three bowls of green tea and took their order for Chairman Mao’s red-braised pork.

  “So the Kubuqi Desert moron signs for your money and you sign for his.” Sheng had finally caught up. “Who witnesses the transactions?”

  Xiao curled his bottom lip: “A girl.”

  “That witch from Beijing?”

  Xiao shook his head.

  “An upstanding citizen of Tang Lu, who just happened to be on hand. Formerly an agricultural worker from Zhejiang Province, later a diligent trainee in the business of manicure and pedicure. Through her assiduous work and saving she has now amassed the capital to start an online portal campaigning for harsh sanctions against Japan over its breach of the International Whaling Treaty.”

  Zhou whistled. Sheng furrowed his brow.

  “How much did she take?”

  “Half-of both assets!” Xiao was still capable of being startled every time he thought about it.

  “Those Zhejiang mountain folk are wily,” Sheng shook his head in disbelief. “And the kid went along with it? What happened to his principles?”

  “His penis is now determining his stance on corruption,” Xiao sniggered. “They’re in Beijing and good riddance! His new job is to coach some students who’ll go to a spontaneous town-hall meeting when Obama visits.”

  “And Chief Superintendent Xiao will soon retire on his life savings?” said Zhou.

  “Not likely! My wife’s collared the lot: wants to use it for a new apartment!” Xiao shrugged. “What do I care? She’s the boss.”

  The drag act had come onstage and was into his second song by now, wearing a viridian Qing gown and relentlessly taking the piss out of a bald comedian dressed as an imperial eunuch.

  Xiao, Sheng and Zhou tugged their towelling robes around their waists, hooked sandals over their toes and padded over to the escalator, Xiao acknowledging waves and tasteless jokes from his buddies in the Tang Lu business fraternity, old and new.

  As they stood together on the escalator, each cradling a cigarette and wearing a contented smile, Sheng remembered:

  “And the reporter?”

  “Gone to Xinjiang!”

  “They allowed a Western journalist into Xinjiang?” Sheng looked stunned. “At a time like this?”

  Everybody on the Party’s rumour network knew there was ethnic tension in Xinjiang following a pogrom against Uighur migrants in Guangdong.

  Xiao put on a dirty smile:

  “He’s gone with a Chinese minder.”

  “Ho, ho, ho!” said Zhou.

  “Female?” said Sheng.

  Xiao nodded. The waitresses made a fuss of Xiao as they ushered the men to their usual, chipped formica table. A cast-iron pot of Chairman Mao’s Red Braised Pork appeared, steaming; three warm Xingtao beers were delivered in filmy glasses.

  Sheng leaned into a halo of smoke and pork-fat breath:

  “Maybe that Western reporter will unearth an Al Qaeda plot. Or maybe he will be on hand to witness unspeakable crimes by Uighur separatists. This guy is a specialist in wars caused by Muslims, correct?”

  Sheng and Zhou shared a knowing glance.

  “Maybe he gets his Chinese scoop after all,” said Sheng.

  “And his penis sucked by a Chinese lady,” sniggered Zhou. “Without paying.”

  Sheng and Zhou played a game of excited eyebrows with each other.

  “What is it?” Xiao shouted.

  “Straight out of the textbook-Chapter 20!” said Sheng, and the two sniggered.

  But Xiao was despondent.

  “What’s the matter?” Sheng poked him in the arm. “The reporter’s gone. The factory’s been cleaned up. Key witnesses are dead. That Li kid’s back in Beijing and he’s destroyed his secret recording of your bribery attempt-and you are a decorated local hero with three pips!”

  “But what if that,” Xiao spluttered, “what if that snipe-nosed little foreign bastard goes back to England and turns it all into a novel! Then everybody will laugh at Tang Lu...”

  His companions guffawed uncontrollably. Sheng’s eyes began to stream with tears and Zhou had to spit a whole lump of pork onto the table to avoid choking. Holding his sides and rocking so hard he nearly fell off his chair Sheng gurgled:

  “Nobody will read it! My wife’s in a book club. Believe me-she knows: English people will only read novels containing crazy sex or supernatural themes!”

  “And anyway,” Zhou’s eyes had become slits as he struggled for air; “suppose they do laugh at Tang Lu? They’ll be laughing at themselves.”

  ~ * ~

  CUTTINGS

  HEADLINE: VILLAGE TOLD TO CHANGE NAME OR

  IT WON’T EXIST.

  SOURCE: CHINA DAILY, 27 JUNE 2009

  STARTS: A village had to change its name because it includes two rarely used Chinese characters that can’t be found in a new police computer system.

  The characters for “Tang” and “Lu” have been used for decades, but Tang Lu residents who tried to get a marriage certificate had trouble last week since the computers didn’t recognise their hometown marked on their ID cards. The system also became a problem for those seeking employment, travellers and those doing real-estate transactions.

  Some villagers said changing the village’s name is damaging to their culture and customs but a police spokesman said it would be too expensive to change the new computer program.

  ENDS

  ~ * ~

  TAGLINE: URGENT: XINJIANG-RIOT - FIRST PIX SOURCE: EUROVISION NEWS, 5 JULY 2009, 1400 GMT

  STARTS: War
ning: footage contains graphic violence, moment-of-death, bodies. No re-broadcast in People’s Republic of China. DOPESHEET: 0000: Mass demonstration of UIGHUR (pron WEE-GURR) seen progressing through URUMQI (pron OO-RUM-CHI). 0215: Shop torched by rioters. Bus overturned, on fire. 0322: Burned bodies of women, children believed Han (pron HANN) Chinese. 0400: Riot police clash demonstrators. 0417: Sound of high velocity rifle fire. 0425: Tight shot: u/i rioter, lies dead. Blood. DURATION: 0435. CREDIT: David Brough. NOTE: David Brough (pron BRUFF), freelance, on scene, available phono interviews hourly. Please route all requests via Channel Ninety-Nine bureau chief, Georgina Wyndham, New York City, USA.