Water Touching Stone is-2

by Eliot Pattison

  Shan looked out through a set of double doors over the long rows of empty plank tables. One of the political classes had convened at the far end of the mess hall. A large Han woman in another brown dress was pacing inside the seated circle of prisoners, her hands clasped behind her. For one brief moment she faced the double door and Shan heard her call out, so loudly that for a chilling moment Shan thought she was addressing him.

  "Who is the great provider of the people?" she asked in a shrill voice.

  "The Party is the great provider of the people," the prisoners responded in chorus. It had a familiar, singsong ring to it. A mantra for the Chairman.

  Shan looked from the hall back to the Tibetan at the sink, who seemed unaware of the activity around him as he offered up his own silent chant. A mantra for the Compassionate Buddha.

  Outside, as Shan accepted another sack off the truck and moved back toward the building, a voice from behind him repeated the slogan the instructor had chanted. But then Shan realized the words were changing each time the man repeated the chant.

  "Who is the great shoemaker of the people?" the man sang. "The Party is the great shoemaker of the people." His voice was soft, but loud enough for the men around him to enjoy his performance. "Who is the great barber of the people? The Party is the great barber of the people." Some of the men laughed. Others looked about nervously to see who else might hear.

  Shan had to pause at the small flight of stairs leading to the door to wait for the older man in front of him, who seemed to be having difficulty carrying the bag up the stairs. He looked back at the man who was mocking the political instruction. A tall, large-boned man with a thick, well-groomed moustache and a sour smile returned Shan's stare. "Who is the great zookeeper of the people?" the man asked, nodding toward Shan. Shan said nothing. The man repeated the question.

  Shan nodded back without shifting his gaze from the man's taunting eyes. "The Party is the great zookeeper of the people," Shan replied quietly.

  The man's smile broadened and Shan saw that he was looking past Shan's shoulder to Jakli, who had appeared at the top of the short flight of stairs. "Allah be praised," he gasped under his breath. Jakli nodded and gestured them toward the shadow on the far side of the truck.

  "So you've met," she said as she joined them.

  "Not exactly," Shan said.

  "Wangtu," Jakli said, touching the man on the arm as she spoke. "This is Shan. He came about Lau and the children."

  But Wangtu seemed to have forgotten Shan. He looked at Jakli's fingers, still resting on his arm. "I thought you were gone," he said, the self-assurance suddenly gone from his voice. "They said the Jade Bitch had it in for you." He glanced at the supply truck. "You're free? You're out?"

  "Mostly," she said and explained why Shan was there.

  Wangtu shrugged. "Don't know about children," he said in an earnest tone, as if children didn't inhabit his world. While he studied Shan he worked his tongue against his cheek, as though searching for something in his mouth. "When boys die, that's for their parents."

  "These had no parents," Jakli threw back in an impatient voice. "Lau's orphans. One lived with Bajys. You know Bajys."

  "I could get you things," Wangtu said to Jakli. "I could come see you. I live in town."

  "You live in Glory Camp right now."

  "This?" Wangtu said with a dismissive wave of his hand toward the barracks. "Vacation. Sing a few songs, see some old friends." With these last words he sobered and gave Jakli a meaningful stare.

  "How did you know Bajys?" Shan asked.

  Wangtu sighed. "He and that boy, they help bring wool to town sometimes. For this clan or that clan. You know, they stay with different clans. A few weeks here, a few there. That was Lau's system. I see people, at different places. When the Brigade doesn't use me for the school, I drive trucks for the wool processing plant. They clean it and bale it and I drive it to the carpet factories in Kotian," he explained, referring to the large city over a hundred miles to the west that had once been a Silk Road trading center.

  Shan looked back at Jakli. "The school is run by the Brigade?"

  "The school, this camp, soon the whole world," Wangtu said in a thin voice.

  "But you told him something," Jakli pressed. "You told Bajys that Lau was in trouble."

  "Your father," Wangtu asked. "Did he ever come back?"

  The question seemed to catch Jakli off guard. She didn't return his gaze but looked to Shan. "Wangtu and I," she explained, "we went to school together."

  Wangtu grinned, as if grateful for the acknowledgment.

  Jakli glanced at the truck, which was being rapidly unloaded. "Quickly, Wangtu. Why did you warn Bajys?"

  The Kazakh studied the compound as if trying to remember. "I didn't, exactly. I just told him Lau was walking with the blue wolf." He cut his eyes toward Jakli as he spoke.

  The announcement brought a hard glare to Jakli's face. "A jinni," she explained to Shan, as she kept her eyes on Wangtu. "A blue wolf is a very bad type of jinni. An evil spirit."

  "For Kazakhs," Wangtu added. "For old Kazakhs, anyway."

  "Tell us," Jakli said impatiently. "Why would you say a blue wolf shadowed her?"

  Wangtu seemed not to be listening. He was looking over her shoulder. "I could get you that," he said with a wistful nod toward the wire.

  Jakli turned and froze. Pleasure flashed across her face. In a rope pen between the inner and outer fences was a magnificent white horse.

  "We used to walk together, Jakli," Wangtu said with an odd melancholy in his voice. "I sang songs at your camp."

  The woman seemed not to have heard. She took a step forward, as though drawn by the graceful animal that pranced about the makeshift pen.

  "I could get white horses for your clan," Wangtu suggested.

  "Why did you say it to Bajys?" Shan pressed. Jakli broke from her trance and stepped behind Shan, as if Wangtu's offer of the white horse somehow scared her.

  Wangtu sighed. "I hear things, okay? I heard a new teacher was coming. I heard Lieutenant Sui in the back one day, telling the head of the school that Lau had been reported by another teacher, who said that at one of her classes Lau read off a list of names from the five twenty-ninth, and later from 1997."

  "Dissidents," Jakli offered quickly to Shan, and glanced at the truck. "But she wasn't arrested. She was murdered."

  Wangtu snorted and opened his mouth as though about to laugh. "Murdered? No. Disappeared, near the river. She could still come back."

  "Disappeared with a bullet in her head," Shan said. "We've seen her body."

  Wangtu looked at Jakli, who confirmed Shan's words with a nod. He grimaced, then studied Shan with suspicion on his face. "Who sent you?" he asked Shan.

  "Priests," Jakli said quickly, as if worried that Shan might speak first. "Priests said he should come."

  "Priests? Priests?" It was Wangtu's turn to be confused. "You mean a mullah?"

  "It doesn't matter," Jakli said, impatience back in her voice. "There are no bad priests."

  "Sure there are. The priests that run this camp." Wangtu's voice was hollow now, and his eyes flared. "What was it the Chairman said? Religion poisons the people. So he got rid of the other religions and sent out his own priests." He looked back at Shan. "All the prosecutor says is that Lau disappeared. She spoke to us, all the ones detained. She said maybe reactionaries did something to Lau, maybe kidnapped her. They do that sometimes, she told us, hoping to trade for one of their own in prison. Maybe one of us would think of something helpful, she said."

  "I saw Lau," Jakli said coolly. "She's dead, Wangtu, but the prosecutor mustn't know. It won't help anyone."

  A low whistle came from between Wangtu's teeth, and he shook his head slowly. "I liked Lau." The Kazakh's eyes drifted toward the old man who had struggled on the steps. He was leaning against the wall by the door, gasping for breath.

  Shan studied the man on the steps. "He's old for a rice camp," he observed. The people's reeducation resourc
es were seldom wasted on those who had little left to contribute to the proletarian effort.

  Wangtu frowned at Shan, as if perhaps Shan, or all Hans, were responsible for the man being there. "He's a teacher. Forty years in a village near Kashgar, then they put him out, told him to go to some rest home built for pensioned teachers. Instead he started unofficial classes among the clans, riding from camp to camp, taking payment in food and a pallet. Got reported for teaching ancient history."

  "Ancient history?" Shan asked.

  "You know, before 1949. The Republic of East Turkistan, the kingdoms of the Silk Road. When this land was independent. I tell him he's got to stop. I tell him he's too old. He's on his third bowl."

  "Third bowl?" Shan asked.

  Wangtu cast a surprised glance at Jakli as he spoke. "Third lao jiao term. Each time you arrive at the camp they give you a tin bowl, for washing, for eating, drinking, everything." His eyes drifted back to the oldman on the step. "After three bowls, it's hard labor if you're picked up again."

  Shan looked back at the old teacher. "He wouldn't last a month in the gulag," Shan said.

  Wangtu's feet shifted, and his eyes slowly surveyed the length of the wire along the side of the compound. A small vehicle, looking like an ancient armored car that might have been used in the original Eighth Route Army, drove slowly along the wire. "He won't last a month at Glory Camp, not this time. Life's cheap here since the Brigade started running the camp." He didn't seem to be speaking to them anymore but to someone else toward the office compound. Shan followed his gaze. He was looking at the cemetery.

  "A Mongol," Wangtu said, "just a teenager, had a magazine with color pictures of horses. Against the rules, but so what? Just horses. Every day he'd look at the pictures and say he was going to have a herd of horses someday. At a class the instructor for his barracks pulled the Mongol's magazine from the back of his pants, where he hid it during the day. This instructor, she said the barracks needed it because the latrine had no more paper. When the Mongol leapt at him the instructor hit him in the head with a shovel. It made a crunching sound, like stepping on a rotten log. The boy sat on the ground with his head in his hands and the instructor circled around him and gave a speech on the evils of hoarding property. When she finished she yelled at the Mongol to apologize to everyone. He wouldn't reply, so she kicked him. He just rolled over. He was paralyzed. He just lies on his bunk now. The instructor took his magazine to the latrine."

  Jakli put her hand to her mouth as if to hold back a sob.

  Wangtu winced, as though reproaching himself for upsetting Jakli.

  "But why would you warn Bajys?" Shan asked. "Why did you suspect trouble would come to Lau? Who was the evil spirit with Lau?"

  "We were friends, Lau and me. She was the only one who ever sat in the front of the car with me. She used to bring me medicines, and she gave me special teas from herbs she found in the mountains." Wangtu pointed for Jakli to look back at the white horse, as if it might comfort her. "Things were happening to her. Fired from the Ag Council. The report to Public Security." Jakli turned away now, looking at the faces of the other prisoners. "That Tibetan," he continued, to her back. "I told her about that Tibetan."

  Jakli spun about.

  "Kaju. I didn't know his name then, but I told her, maybe three months ago, about the Tibetan Director Ko was bringing for the zheli. She didn't know. I told her I heard Ko talking in a car one day, I said to her I guess they think you're leaving."

  Three months ago, Shan remembered, was when Lau had begun explaining where she wanted her body taken. "What did Lau say?" Shan asked.

  "She just smiled at first and patted my arm. Then she said yes I guess they do, and she sighed and said she never should have gone to Urumqi. She always talked with me, but that day she was just quiet until the end of the trip."

  "Gone to Urumqi?" Shan asked. "What did she mean?"

  "I never knew," Wangtu shrugged. "Some trip to the capital."

  "What else did she say?" Jakli asked.

  "When she left that day she said maybe she shouldn't bring me teas anymore, that later people would say we were friends because of it. She said we could still be friends in our hearts but that she wouldn't want me hurt because of it. I said I don't care what they say, and she said you have to care, because this is China." Wangtu looked back at the white horse with a pained expression. "After that she always seemed to be in a hurry, no time to talk. I didn't drive her much afterward. Haven't seen her for a month." He shifted his gaze toward the horizon with a thoughtful expression. "Where she died, who was there?"

  "That's what we want to find out." Jakli said.

  "No. I mean, who did she go see? It's important. Lau, she had only certain people she trusted. She would only stay where one was close. She moved from one to the other, like from one oasis to another. Where she went, you should ask them there."

  Shan and Jakli exchanged a glance. Lau had died in the place in the desert which Jakli seemed unwilling to speak about, the place where Bajys had his nightmare vision of dismembered humans.

  "The prosecutor," Jakli said. "The prosector doesn't know," she reminded him.

  "All I know," Wangtu said with a forced grin, "is that she didn't know how to swim." He cast a hopeful glance toward Jakli. "I wouldn't tell all this to anyone. But I did to you, Jakli."

  Jakli looked at him in obvious discomfort. "I am getting married, Wangtu," she announced quickly, then leaned forward, kissed his cheek, and stepped away toward another prisoner she seemed to have recognized.

  Married. Shan gazed after Jakli, feeling foolish for not having understood before. The hushed, excited conversations at Red Stone camp. The dress being whisked away by the older women. Malik's secret gift for Jakli and someone else, whose name the boy was reluctant to speak. Nikki, the name Akzu had mentioned when parting from her at the garage. Other women would have joyously shared the news. But Jakli's marriage was wrapped in secrecy. Shan understood, for he too had grown up in a world where you said the least about the things that were most important to you, for fear that they would be taken away.

  Wangtu stood, crestfallen, as he watched Jakli begin talking with a short plump Han man. "You have to keep her out," he said, then repeated the words more urgently, as if Shan might not have heard.

  "Out?" Shan asked. Shan looked at her again. What an odd time to be getting married, when the clans were being disbanded, and children were being killed. But Shan had learned years ago how difficult it was to translate the language of another's heart.

  "Out of Glory Camp. Out of prison. Some of the guards hate her because she talks back to them, because she resists. She's not made for a cage. Like the Mongol boy." His disappointment seemed to have turned to worry. His mouth opened again but no words came out. He looked to Shan and then to the ground. "I would have done her time for her if I could," he said quietly. "She belongs in the mountains, on a horse." Then he drifted away, as if he had forgotten Shan stood there.

  "Comrade Hu," Jakli said as she brought the short Han toward Shan. "Chairman of the Educational Committee for the school in Yoktian."

  Hu touched his thick-rimmed glasses and gave a shallow smile. "Former Chairman, I guess," he said.

  "Not necessarily," Jakli said reassuringly. "It's just Prosecutor Xu's way, to intimidate witnesses."

  "I told her," Hu said. "I witnessed nothing. Lau was not on our official staff. We had no official responsibility for her. Once she received a small stipend but that stopped years ago. We just gave her an office, let her know our schedules so she could coordinate. Let her use our drivers sometimes."

  "So you spoke to Xu already?"

  "This morning. She told me to think about it, after I said I knew nothing. Good jobs are hard to find in Yoktian, she reminded me. She looked at my file and reminded me that I have a family. I told her there were no secrets about Lau. She was an open book. Maybe too open. That's all it was, she was too blunt with the wrong person. Some of the herders have tempers, some still have one
foot in the age of the khans, when there were blood feuds." He looked over the prison grounds. "I offered to instruct classes while I was here," he declared, as if he suspected Shan might be a political officer.

  Shan's attention drifted away. Comrade Hu, he had quickly decided, was not the type that Lau would have confided in.

  He sensed that Wangtu was right, that Lau was someone with great intuition about people, who moved from one she trusted to another she trusted. But what did she leave with them? Secrets. Secrets are what you give to those you trust. She had gone to the place in the desert, to the place called Karachuk, not to die but to share a secret.

  He noticed another man, sitting in the shadows against the wall of the mess hall, facing the open yard of the camp but casting occasional glances toward Shan and Jakli. He was nearly bald and had so little flesh on his face that the contours of his skull were unmistakable.

  His eyes made momentary contact with Shan's, and as they did so his eyelids seemed to droop and his fingertips touched the ground, as though the man had grown sleepy.

  "A waste of time," Jakli declared as she followed Shan's gaze. "Go ahead," she said with a shrug, "but you'll make no sense out of what he says."

  Shan cast her a puzzled glance as she continued to speak with Hu.

  "The Xibo," she said in an aside to Shan. "The waterkeeper."

  "What's his name?"

  "I don't know. He's always just the waterkeeper. He just mutters nonsense and drools. He speaks only the tongue of the clans and the old Xibo words."

  Confirming that Jakli remained occupied with Hu, he stepped toward the bald man.

  The waterkeeper gave no acknowledgment when Shan squatted in front of him. He just shuffled sideways, as if Shan had blocked his view. Shan matched his movement, then sat on the ground. The two men said nothing. Shan stared at the waterkeeper. The man stared over Shan's shoulder as if not noticing him, sucking something, perhaps the shell of a nut, or a pebble. A thin line of drool hung from the corner of his mouth.