The Book of Crows

by Sam Meekings

  It’s no fun eating on your own. You’re left alone with your thoughts. And the drink goes down too quick. But what else was I going to do? I only had one other real friend – Xiang, over at the newspaper office – but I didn’t want to have to tell him about my day. That would only make me feel worse. All my calls to Li Yang’s flat went unanswered. And I couldn’t face going home and arguing with the wife. I didn’t have the energy.

  I soon found myself thinking about the night I met Li Yang. I was in the top floor of a restaurant, attending a big cadre’s retirement party. There were skinny girls in tight silks handing out drinks. All my colleagues from the office were there with their wives. Big grins fixed on their faces as the same old jokes got trotted out again and again.

  It wasn’t love at first sight or anything like that. More like a feeling we’d met before, though I couldn’t put my finger on when or where. We didn’t talk that night. Not a single word. I was standing with my wife anyway, so what was I going to do? But our eyes met. For a second. Maybe two. Time stops. And when it stops you know you’re doomed, because whatever happens, when it starts back up nothing is going to be the same. That’s what it was like when I first met Li Yang. And that’s what it was like when I saw the news about the landslide on TV.

  The big bottle we always shared was almost finished – as if a ghost had been taking sips with me each time I raised my glass. I drained the dregs and instantly regretted it, only just managing to stumble out the front door before I spewed onto the road, narrowly missing my shoes. You get an interesting perspective on life bent double on the street. The wonky paving stones blurring and unbuckling before your eyes. The whole meal you’ve just forked out for replayed in reverse. And shoes. My scuffed, snub-toed work shoes looking pretty damn woeful. There was a time my wife would have polished them for me before work each morning. Or at least commented on their appearance. I had to buy some new shoes before I met up with Li Yang. Or else risk looking like some pathetic hick.

  An old lady tottering down the street tutted at me, so I pulled myself up straight and told her to mind her own fucking business. Old people, they think they own the world. I wiped my mouth with the bottom of my sleeve then made my way back inside and ordered a beer to wash the rank taste of puke from my mouth. Leaning back in my chair, I let the restaurant whirr around me.

  Why did I keep coming back here? There were insect stains on the walls, greasy puddles on the floor. More surprisingly, there were actually a few customers in tonight. All men, sitting hunched over their bowls as if to make sure that not a single reel of steam escaped them. Some were smoking, others staring at their hands. All of them were stealing time they didn’t have, time they’d have to pay back somehow. Trust me, that’s how it always works.

  By the time another morning rolled to its close and I’d spent another four hours staring at Wei Shan’s empty desk, I was getting fidgety. Fishlips was doing his best to stay so far away from me that anyone would have thought I reeked of raw sewage. But that could have meant anything. I couldn’t stop my mind from plodding back to the landslide. Wei Shan was a drunk and a bore, but if he didn’t turn up soon I worried I might end up talking to myself. Or, even worse, I might be forced to make conversation with some of the cretins and jerks here in the office. Things were getting desperate. I tried phoning Xiang, only to be told he was out on assignment. Then I tried Li Yang, but once again there was no answer. I remember Wei Shan once complaining that there wasn’t much point having a mistress if you couldn’t pop round and see her whenever you wanted. I knew how he felt.

  So it was either spend lunchtime stewing in the Golden Dragon – on my own, again – and fritter the afternoon away until it was time to go home, or do something about this whole mess. I chose option number two – after all, if I didn’t find him, who on earth was going to lie to my wife about where I was next time I met up with Li Yang?

  And anyway, I refused to accept that he was dead. Not until I knew for sure. The odds were certainly against him strolling back into work without a scratch. But you can’t take anything at face value these days. Take Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, for example – sounds like a con, doesn’t it? Like a get-out clause. A poorly thought-out excuse for abandoning close to thirty years of ardent communist struggle and deciding to follow the capitalist road instead. But that’s just what we want them to think. This is where some sap usually starts up, telling us the revolution has therefore failed. But, you see, this is just the next phase. It’s low-key, sure. Low-key enough to fool the foreigners, to get the Americans pouring all their money in and setting up their factories here. But once everything improves, that will be the time when the socialist paradise springs to life. How can you expect a hundred people to share one bowl of rice? That was the first mistake. But we’ve learnt from it. Once we’ve got all the rice we need, all the engines, the reactors, the turbines, the jets, the bullion, the rockets, the satellites, the factories, the investments and the stocks, once we’ve built the flats and the tower blocks and the schools and the hospitals, then we’ll be able to start up the real revolution. And believe me, I can’t wait. Sure, things might be a bit up in the air right now, and I’m sorry that any poor fellow can’t wander into a hospital like before and see a doctor without bribes or name-dropping or special handshakes, but it’s just for the short term. We have to put up with the mess now, but when the time comes and the means of production and all its juicy perks get shared out again, well, we’re damn sure going to be the greatest nation this planet has ever seen.

  As soon as the clock in the office hit twelve I was out the door. But not for long. I grabbed a little pick-me-up from the kiosk on the corner before turning around and heading right back inside. But I wasn’t going to the same floor. You see, half the local government departments are stacked up in the same building. Us up on the fourth. Immigration and Traffic Control on the third. Department for Social Order and Re-education on the second. Then the police right at the bottom. I knew from experience that it wasn’t worth phoning down. They either tell you to piss off or else some dopey phone operator shunts your call between different desks. I know, because we do much the same thing at the Public Safety Office when interfering busybodies try to wheedle information out of us. But hopefully if I flashed my ID around enough, it shouldn’t be that hard to get taken to the police officer I’d spoken with at the top of the hill. Wuya, his partner had called him. Officer Wuya. If I was really lucky, he might even remember me from the other night.

  After bullshitting the police receptionist for a few minutes with a half-arsed story about seeing Officer Wuya with regards to a new governmental initiative for interdepartmental co-operation, I followed the corridor down to the far end of the building.

  There were cops everywhere. Cops jostling scruffy men in handcuffs. Cops spitting. Cops yakking. Cops smoking. Cops picking their noses. Cops sleeping at their desks. Cops playing with their phones. Cops playing with their balls. Cops pretending to read newspapers. Cops staring out of windows. Not sure I saw any of them actually doing any work.

  Some people are pretty easy to dupe. The key is in your walk. Stalk around nervously and you’ll get kicked out before you can even open your mouth. Stroll regally down the halls like you own the place, however, and no one will think to question your presence. It didn’t take me long to spot Wuya – first bit of good luck in a week. He was sitting at a messy desk in his own cramped workspace halfway down the office, twirling a pair of silver worry balls in his palm. His whole appearance could be summed up in two words: fat and greasy. I cleared my throat while waiting for him to look up and spot me.

  ‘Yeah? Do you want something?’

  ‘I’m from the Public Safety Office upstairs. We met the other night. At Jawbone Hills.’

  He sat up in his chair and set his worry balls in the little velvet box in front of him.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about the investigation into the landslide. Maybe I could see the report?’r />
  ‘Huh. What makes you think you’ve got the authority to do that? Just because you work for the Public Safety Office? You guys are a joke. Public safety? All you lot do is examine bridges, mines, building sites. That’s not public safety. It’s the guys in here who guarantee public safety. They’re the ones out there solving the crimes, getting attacked by criminal gangs and venturing into the depths of the earth all for just a fraction of what you get paid for sitting in a comfy office up there and looking at blueprints. You really think you can just wander in here and demand to see the private files? Piss off.’

  ‘Hey, I’m just doing my job. My colleague was investigating up there when the landslide happened.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I remember. But what do you want me to say? I didn’t get there till long after the slope had collapsed.’

  ‘You could at least tell me what happened. Come on, if one of the guys in here got killed in the line of duty, you’d want to make sure you found out what had gone down.’

  His brow furrowed and he shook his head. ‘You were there. You saw what happened. Half a fucking mountain fell down. What bit of that sentence doesn’t make sense to you?’

  ‘I also saw diggers, trucks, tractors. That was almost forty-eight hours ago. And it’s twenty-odd hours since the rain stopped. How much digging do you lot need to do before you find the bodies and inform the families?’

  He shifted in his chair. ‘As soon as we identify a body, we inform the next of kin. But it’s not that simple. You do know there’s a river at the bottom of that valley, don’t you? It’s impossible to say whether any bodies might have got carried away.’

  ‘So you think you might never find my colleague – or any of the relatives of those people you were holding back the other night?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. And you needn’t worry about those pathetic saps in the countryside – almost every one of their relatives turned up safe and sound in the end.’

  I stared at him. ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Nope. I’m deadly serious. All a lot of crying over nothing.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Suit yourself. But it’s true. Maybe your colleague will turn up too. But till he does, there’s nothing more I can do for you. So if you don’t mind, I’ve got another thirteen minutes of my lunch break left before I have to hit the streets, and I’d rather not spend it having to deal with all your pedantic questions. I’m sorry, but shit happens. If you want to blame someone, blame the damn rain.’

  ‘The rain? So the landslide had nothing whatsoever to do with the mine there?’

  He sat up straight. ‘There’s no mine there.’

  ‘One of the peasant women mistook me for someone who worked in a mine. You even asked me about it yourself. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘I remember those sly peasants saying any old crap they could think of to try to get past the barrier. You didn’t believe anything they said, did you?’

  ‘Fuck you. You can’t fob me off that easily.’

  His lips twitched into a sneer. ‘Insulting a police officer. That’s nice. Really professional. I’d be careful about what you say next, though, because if you look around you might notice that you’re in a room full of cops who don’t much like being slagged off by petty bureaucrats.’

  I wanted to smack him in the jaw. The pompous prick. Lying bastard. I clenched my fists so hard my fingers began to ache. Then I turned around and marched right out of there, ignoring the sound of sniggers behind my back. I mean, what else was I going to do?

  If you tell a lie long enough you begin to believe it. If you look back far enough you’ll see even the shittiest times are reworked by the sickly haze of nostalgia. What I’m trying to say is that you can’t trust your senses. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that something wasn’t right. In fact, it was seriously fucked up.

  My lunch hour was almost over, but I was still slumped in a tiny noodle restaurant across the road, trying to shake off my rage. The last bubbly dregs of a nasty local beer fizzed in the cup in front of me. Either I’d now been told the same lie twice – which must mean people thought I was a gullible, simple-minded cretin – or else I really was losing it and my memory had been pickled by too much of the good stuff. In that case, another one couldn’t hurt.

  Could they have said something else? Did I mishear them? I pushed my little finger deep into my ear, trying to dig out some of the wax. Of course, everyone knows that people who live in the countryside and choose to work on farms must be mentally deficient in some way. Most of them are inbred too. It goes without saying that they’re therefore likely to spout a loud of crap whenever they open their pinched mouths and expose their rotten brown teeth. But why would they bother to concoct a story about something that wasn’t there? I finished my drink and waved for the waiter. And odder still, how could a landslide that accumulated so much debris have created so few casualties? There must have been at least thirty peasants there that evening, each one shrieking about houses or relatives on the side of the hill – did every single one of their family members really turn up unharmed? If so, where on earth had they been hiding that night? I’d seen the jagged rocks jutting out into nothingness – surely no one could have climbed back out of that?

  In short, I was stumped. I looked at my watch. The afternoon shift had just begun. I leant back in my chair. Fuck it. I ordered another drink. There wasn’t much point going in now. All I’d end up doing was watching the mess of files that I couldn’t be bothered to check pile up higher. Or else see Fishlips bumbling about in his office, no doubt already arranging interviews to get someone to take over Wei Shan’s empty desk. His desk. Shit! The little scrap of notepaper that had told me where Wei Shan was going that afternoon. What had it said? Jawbone Hills – of course. That was a no-brainer. And something about a foreman – Jing Ren? Yes, that was it. But if there wasn’t a mine or a building site or a construction centre there, then why the hell would there be a foreman?

  I left the restaurant and dashed across the road to a payphone at a newspaper kiosk. I knew the number to Xiang’s office by heart. Luckily, he picked up.

  ‘Lanzhou Daily newsdesk.’

  ‘Xiang, it’s me. I need a favour.’

  ‘I’ll try to sound surprised, shall I? Is there ever any other reason you call?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Look, I need you to find an address. You see, I’ve got this complicated problem and —’

  ‘All right, all right. I don’t need the grisly details. Go on, just give me the name.’

  ‘Jing Ren. From the nature of his job, I’d guess he’d probably be between thirty and fifty, if that narrows the search down. And odds are he lives west of the city, maybe somewhere along Highway 312.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘I owe you one. Dinner tonight?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll meet you at that little dump you love. Silver Dinosaur Fish Castle, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very funny. I’ll see you at seven-ish. By the way, can you call me back when you find the address?’ I gave him the number of the payphone. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘No problem.’

  I paid the guy in the kiosk, giving him a little extra and telling him to wave over at me when his phone started ringing, then made my way back across the street to the restaurant. My second bottle had arrived, and, feeling pleased with myself, I ordered some boiled nuts and spicy cucumber to go with it. I’d barely had time to touch any of these, though, when I saw the man across the road waving frantically. I dashed over and listened as Xiang relayed the address.

  Thank the mighty Politburo! At last, I thought, as I put down the receiver and started jogging back towards the car. At last, someone who could explain this whole sorry mess.

  Even as I drove out towards Jing Ren’s flat, I was feeling somehow freer, buoyed by the knowledge that soon the whole thing would be cleared up. I couldn’t wait, especially since I knew that I’d continue to feel restless and uneasy until it all made sense. After all, I had to t
ell Wei Shan’s wife something. And his son. Maybe even his mistress too. I owed him that much. Problem is, sometimes the truth is too much to ask.

  It didn’t take me long to find the address Xiang had given me. I was surprised that it was nowhere near as close to the outskirts as I’d assumed – in fact, Jing Ren appeared to live in a nicer area than me. On his road were a couple of restaurants, a laundry and a new fast-food place. Lucky bastard. How much were they paying him? And how did he get out to Jawbone Hills every day? That was some commute. I had so many questions to ask him that I didn’t know where to begin. Once I’d parked the car and wandered into the building, some absurd impulse led me to sprint up the stairwell, two or three steps in each bound, so by the time I reached the fourth floor I was a wreck of wheezes and coughs, with my heart going crazy in my chest. I had to lean against the wall for a minute before the corridor stopped spinning. Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to stock up on Double Happiness. I lit one up and waited till the light stopped dancing in front of my eyes and the walls grew still. Then I made my way down the hall – nice, plush blue carpet with only a handful of cigarette burns and scuffs – till I found 406.

  I spent a good few minutes pounding on it – if he worked in a mine, there was a good chance his hearing was pretty messed up from all the deafening drilling and digging. But no one answered. It was only then that I thought about trying the handle. It’s not something I usually do. But if you’re dumb enough to leave your door unlocked, then in my opinion you get what you deserve. And it turns out that Jing Ren was either pretty naïve or pretty forgetful, because his front door opened – with a gentle shove – on the first try.