The Far Side of the Night

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  Paul was standing behind her now. “It’s too great a risk. We’ll find another way,” he said quietly.

  Christine turned around angrily. “There’s no other way,” she snapped at him. “Have you forgotten what Zhang wrote in his message? We have to get away from here.”

  She walked after the monk and gave him the jade dragon without saying a word.

  _________

  Barely half an hour later, they were called to a vehicle. It was the same small pick-up truck and the same young driver who had taken them on board the previous night. He greeted them with a friendly but tired smile. He looked exhausted and his eyes were glassy, as though he had a fever and had barely slept in the short night. The four of them squeezed onto the passenger seat next to him. Da Lin sat on Paul’s lap and Christine held David tight on hers. It was hot and crowded. She was sweating and could neither move nor hold on to anything. With every bump in the road, her head bounced against the metal wall behind them. After half an hour she got pins and needles in her right foot. After an hour she could not feel her legs any longer.

  The driver said nothing. He coughed and yawned in turn and he drew breath with a rattling sound. Christine was afraid he would fall asleep any minute.

  “Thank you again for taking us last night.”

  She wasn’t sure if he understood her. Instead of replying, he yawned.

  “Are you a friend of the abbot’s?” she asked, just to say something.

  “No, I sometimes make journeys for the monastery.”

  “Have you ever been to Hongyang?”

  “No.”

  “Will we make it in one day?”

  He shrugged. “How should I know?”

  She stopped short for a moment. “Don’t you know the way?”

  “No.”

  Had they fallen into the hands of a cheat again, who would kick them out and leave them on a deserted country lane after a hundred kilometers? She gazed at the young man’s profile. He looked friendly, almost innocent, but what did that mean anyway? She had lost all sense of whom she could trust or not. All she knew was that she did not want to be threatened with a knife and thrown out of a vehicle again. She and Paul would only be forced out of the truck by violent means and this slightly built man would not be capable of that.

  “The abbot said we should head toward Xian then take the highway to Beijing, and there will be signs at some point to show us the way.”

  “It would be better for us to avoid the highway,” Paul said.

  “I don’t know another way,” the driver said.

  “Do you have a map with you?”

  “No.”

  At some point David grew hungry and needed the toilet. They stopped at a service area, right in front of a large restaurant with many cars, coaches, and a few trucks parked in front of it. There were also two police cars.

  “Drive on,” Paul said immediately.

  “But I need the toilet,” David protested. “Otherwise I’ll pee myself.”

  “We’ll stop by the roadside after this.”

  “And I’m hungry.”

  “Why don’t you want to stop here?” the driver wondered.

  “I’ll go with him,” Christine said. Before Paul could object, she opened the door, got out, and took David in her arms. She wanted to avoid the driver asking more questions and becoming suspicious.

  The restaurant had a large dining hall with windows on one side. Behind the counter, a dozen cooks stood with their woks hissing and steaming over open fires with tongues of flame shooting out. It smelled of garlic and hot oil. Waitresses shouted orders at the cooks and dogs roamed the tables, pouncing on any discarded food that fell on the floor.

  Christine saw a small WC sign at the other end of the hall. She was halfway across the room when she noticed the police officers. Three men and one woman were walking slowly through the rows of tables watching the guests. Clearly looking for something. Or someone.

  She stopped and wondered what to do. One of the policemen was walking directly towards them. Christine was afraid that if she turned on her heel then and left the restaurant, she would attract undue attention.

  David tugged at her arm. “Mama, I need to go,” he said impatiently. “I really need to go.”

  She did not want her son to wet himself. She wanted to set an example for him and be strong, stronger than her fear. Christine gathered her courage and walked towards the policeman as calmly as she could. With every step her heart beat louder. He looked at her carefully.

  “What a cute little boy,” he said with a friendly smile. “What’s your name?”

  “Bao,” David said. “And I need a pee urgently.”

  The policeman laughed out loud and stepped to one side. “Then hurry up.”

  Christine could have screamed with relief in the toilet. Had the Chens given up the search for them? Maybe they were no longer in any danger at all, and didn’t know it. She thought about Zhang’s text messages. He could be wrong.

  When she returned to the dining hall, the police officers were standing together in a corner, discussing something. Two of them were looking around the room and another was making notes. She held David tight in her arms and walked as quickly as she could without running towards the exit. Suddenly she heard one of the police officers shout something. Christine increased her pace.

  Loud cries for her to stop.

  She ran out into the car park and stared at the spot where the pick-up truck had been.

  It was gone.

  She looked around and ran, without thinking, across the car park towards the coaches. One of the doors was open and the driver was slumped across the steering wheel, asleep. Christine boarded the coach.

  “This isn’t our car,” David whispered.

  “I know.”

  “Why . . .”

  “Shhh . . .” she said.

  They crept down to the seats at the back of the coach and looked through the tinted windows at the policemen, who had followed them after a few moments. They looked through the parked cars fleetingly and spoke to people who were just arriving. A young couple pointed hesitantly at first then with eager nods at the motorway. The police officers hurried to their car and drove off in the direction indicated by the passersby.

  Christine’s whole body was shivering.

  “Where is Papa?” David wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. Come on, let’s look for him.”

  They found the pick-up truck not far away, hidden between two trucks laden with pigs grunting and squeaking pitifully. Christine was furious.

  “Are you crazy?” she screamed. “How could you drive off without us?”

  “We didn’t drive off. We parked here instead because people were staring at us so much by the entrance.” Paul’s calm reply made her even angrier.

  “It’s your fault the police almost caught us.” She did not know what to do with her rage. She was on the verge of really lashing out at him.

  “I said right at the beginning that we shouldn’t stop here.”

  “You left us in the lurch.”

  “We did not,” he snapped back at her. “What are you saying? I merely asked the driver . . .”

  “You merely asked the driver,” she interrupted. “Just like you merely left David for a moment in the hotel!”

  That silenced Paul.

  Their son held his hands over his ears. “Don’t fight,” he said quietly. “Please don’t fight.”

  The driver had watched the argument with amazement and confusion. If he wasn’t suspicious before then he certainly is now, Christine thought. It would be an easy matter for him to bring them to the next police station.

  It was Paul’s fault. Everything was Paul’s fault.

  The Ghost Town

  I

  They did not say a word to each other for hours. The confined space in the driver’s cab of the pick-up truck was scarcely bearable. Paul had the feeling that Christine even found the contact with his body unpleasant. He slid as close to t
he door as he could, but their shoulders were still touching. He thought about sitting on the loading area at the back, but it started raining, so he discarded that idea.

  Da Lin grew heavier and heavier as time passed. Paul’s back and legs hurt, but there was no way to distribute his weight differently.

  David had fallen asleep in his mother’s arms. Christine sat motionless, staring straight ahead all the time. She did not reply to the two or three questions he asked her. He tried to imagine what she was thinking, but had to admit to himself that he had no idea what was going on inside her. Her rage at him grew with every passing day. He had never seen an outburst from her like the one in the car park. She was at the end of her tether, and her fear and her doubts were directed increasingly at him. He knew himself well enough to recognize what his reaction would be: retreat.

  He could not respond any other way.

  We are prisoners, for a lifetime.

  _________

  When they arrived in Hongyang the skies had cleared and the low-lying sun was already casting long shadows. The city was in the middle of a wide plain and was much larger than Paul had thought. In the evening sky, rows of high-rise buildings towered in the distance, like the towers of a fortress.

  Paul hoped that the anonymity of a city would give them safety and that Christine would feel calmer. They turned off the ring road into a road with three lanes. The traffic thinned and soon they were the only vehicle around for some distance.

  The first buildings they drove past were the shells of new buildings that stood cold and naked like ruins on half-finished streets. Behind those was a cluster of four-story buildings. They had been finished, but were clearly not inhabited yet. Paul looked up and down the buildings but could not see any lights in the apartments, any curtains in the windows, or plants, chairs, and washing lines on the balconies.

  Christine looked out of the window in disbelief. “Are we in the right place?”

  A sign by the side of the road, ‘Hongyang New Town’, was the answer to her question.

  Paul took the phone from his pocket and read the address out loud. “Beijing Lu, Block 4, building no. 3.”

  “Do you know the way?” the driver asked.

  “No. We’ll have to ask.”

  There was nobody on the street they could ask for directions. They looked for a shop or restaurant, but every place they saw was closed, with its shutters down, or boarded up. Their driver followed the signs to the town center. They did not come across a single other car, and waited several times at empty crossings. The traffic lights and the street lights were working.

  The town center stretched over a few streets, and seemed just as deserted as the other areas. A gray office building with mirrored glass stood among the other buildings, but it was unlit. The windows had not been cleaned, and the panes of glass were covered in a thick layer of sand and dirt. On one side of the building the first letter of a neon advertising sign had been put up. Next to it, loose cables dangled from the wall.

  An unfinished footbridge arched across the road.

  There were piles of construction rubble at certain traffic junctions. A pedestrian precinct had not been completed: there were two wheelbarrows and spades by a pile of sand and stones.

  It looked as though the inhabitants had fled the town overnight. But why?

  Eventually they came to a building site where several workers were sitting by a flickering fire and drinking beer. The driver got out and asked for directions to Beijing Lu. The workers laughed and told him the way, pointing as they did so.

  _________

  Shortly after that, the driver let them out in front of one of the high-rise buildings in which no lights seemed to be on. Christine asked him to wait, but he had barely put their bags down on the pavement before he said a hurried goodbye and drove off.

  On the large panel of doorbells at the entrance to the building, there were only a few names and initials. Most of the slots were empty. Paul found a handwritten name tag by one buzzer: P. K. Lee.

  A short man wearing large glasses opened the door, only by a crack at first. He looked suspiciously at Paul, Christine, and the two children before he let them into the flat. They stood in the hallway facing each other in silence for a long moment. There was a crucifix on the wall. Around it, someone had wound a string of multicolored fairy lights that flickered on and off constantly. Paul could see Da Lin recoiling from the crucifix, disturbed.

  “Who are you?” the pastor asked them in a deep, forbidding voice.

  “My name is Paul Leibovitz. This is my wife and these are our children,” Paul said. “I . . . I thought you knew about us.”

  “I was told that someone who needed help would be arriving. But I was expecting only one person.” He wrinkled his brow as he looked at each of them in turn. “I suppose you need somewhere to sleep.”

  Paul nodded.

  “My flat is too small. I can’t possibly put you all up here. I’m sorry.” He did not sound as though he would be giving much thought to where else they could stay.

  How much? The thought darted into Paul’s mind. The more difficult the situation, the more money he would demand. “We only have a thousand yuan . . .”

  “Five hundred,” Christine interrupted.

  “You think I want money from you?” The pastor snorted in outrage.

  Before Paul could say anything in reply, Lee turned on his heel, disappeared into a room and slammed the door closed behind him.

  They heard him making a phone call and ending it after a brief exchange. Then a second short call. And a third.

  After a few minutes he returned holding a piece of paper with a name and address on it. “This woman is in my church. You can stay the night with her. It’s ten minutes’ walk to her flat from here.”

  It was a long march. Paul carried the luggage and Christine followed him with the two children. Every step was torture. He felt naked and defenseless on the wide pavements and empty streets. There was not a single tree or bush in sight. There were no cars parked on the road, not even a rubbish bin or a bench they could have hidden themselves behind if a policeman had come along. He had hoped for the anonymity of a big city but in deserted Hongyang they were more conspicuous as pedestrians than they had been in the village they had left.

  II

  Qian Gao Gao also lived in a dark high-rise building with no names by the doorbells. Pastor Lee had only written flat 28A on the piece of paper.

  A quick buzz and the door was opened for them.

  They stepped into a two-story foyer with red carpet and white marble walls. A chandelier hung from the ceiling. Below it was an empty reception desk covered with a thick layer of dust.

  Only one of the four lifts was working.

  On the twenty-eighth floor there were neither numbers nor names on the flat doors. Paul walked down the corridor and tried to listen for sounds from any one of them.

  Suddenly a door at the end of the corridor opened and a woman stepped out. “Are you my visitors?” she said. “Why are you creeping around like that?”

  Qian Gao Gao was a stout woman, not much shorter than Paul. She was wearing yellow pajamas or loungewear with pictures of Winnie-the-Pooh on it, along with a red silk dressing gown embroidered with the Chinese character for ‘double happiness’. Her feet were in black and white panda slippers with ears sticking out on top.

  “I didn’t mean to give you a shock,” she said apologetically when she saw their fearful faces. “Come in.”

  From the door the musky smell of men’s cologne wafted towards them. They walked down a long hallway piled with boxes big and small. Some of them were still unopened but crepe paper, Styrofoam balls, and wood shavings spilled out of the others.

  The hallway led to a living room. Paul looked around searching for the man who could be wearing the cologne.

  “You must be hungry?”

  When she got no reply, she leaned down to David, who had been staring at her slippers in fascination all this time. “You must
surely be hungry?”

  “Yes,” David said quietly.

  “I thought so. I am too,” she said, and laughed.

  “Do you like dumplings?”

  He made a sound that she took to mean agreement.

  “Wonderful.” She walked over to the open-plan kitchen consisting of counters, a central island, and three refrigerators side by side. She opened one of the fridges and took out several packets of frozen dumplings.

  “Can I help?” Christine asked.

  “You can set the table. The food won’t take long.” She put chopsticks, bowls, and small plates on the counter. Then she added mugs, a thermos flask and a jug of warm water. Paul noticed her bright red nail polish and her plump hands, with several gold rings set with diamonds and rubies on her fingers. Either her complexion was pale or her make-up was almost white, making the deep red of her lips stand out all the more.

  Christine and Da Lin laid the things on the oval dining table, which had a crucifix and an oil painting of the Virgin Mary with her child hanging above it.

  David pulled his father over to a giraffe figure that was more than two heads taller than him.

  “Is it real?”

  “No. It’s made of cloth. But it’s quite big, isn’t it?”

  David nodded in awe.

  “Giraffes are my favorite animals,” Qian Gao Gao called from the kitchen area.

  “Not mine,” David whispered.

  Soon after, two bowls of steaming dumplings and a bottle of vinegar were on the table. Paul was about to start eating when Gao Gao folded her hands, closed her eyes, lowered her head and started to pray:

  Every good thing

  Everything we have

  comes, O God, from You

  Thanks be to You for all this

  Come, Jesus Christ, be our guest

  and bless what you have given us.

  She paused for a moment, opened her eyes, looked round at them and smiled. “Bon appetit.”

  “I’m going to eat very quickly now,” David announced. “Then I’m going to go to bed very quickly. And tomorrow morning I’ll get up quickly and eat very quickly.”