by Sam Meekings
‘Hong Youchen? That potbellied greaseball up there is Hong Youchen?’
‘So you do know him? How funny. I mean, really, what are the odds?’
‘Li Yang, listen,’ I said, my mind whirring so fast I thought it might overheat and send smoke billowing out of my ears. ‘Please tell me your business interests don’t include a mine down in Jawbone Hills.’
‘Now you’re looking for business tips, are you? I hope you’re not thinking of setting up in competition with me. I don’t think I’d like that at all.’
‘This isn’t a joke. That landslide on the news last week. That was because of explosives used in an illicit mining operation. I’ve spent the last five days trying to piece it all together. People were fucking killed!’
Li Yang shrugged. ‘It was an accident. No one knew that would happen. But it’s all been sorted out now. And anyway, how do you know so much about it?’
‘My friend was there at the time. Investigating. I’ve been going mad trying to find out what happened to him. I’ve seen bodies, Li Yang. For fuck’s sake. Cold, dirty corpses dragged out of the ground. I’ve even been down the mine myself, looking for something that might explain any of it. What the hell were you thinking?’
He looked at me as if I’d gone mad.
‘If you’re that worked up about it, I’ll tell you. I certainly don’t want you having a heart attack right here in my living room. Do sit down, though, I can’t bear it when you pace around like that.’
‘What could you possibly have hoped to find out there? I know for a fact there’s no gold or diamonds or oil anywhere round there. Just mud and clay. And why on earth was a history professor involved?’
‘The history professor? He was the one that got Hong Youchen fired up in the first place. They’d met at some fancy dinner and got talking about an antique map Youchen had recently acquired. Got him really worked up with all these stories about crows.’
‘Crows? Are you winding me up?’
I felt sick. This wasn’t happening. I thought of Jing Ren’s body, laid out in the cold room. The little black tattoo on his arm. The picture on that scrap of paper. The way I’d been torturing myself the whole week when the answers were all here. I felt sick. This wasn’t happening. Li Yang sat down on the sofa, curling his legs up, and patted a spot beside him. I couldn’t believe he was still smiling, as if it was all just a silly mistake. Reluctantly, I sat.
‘Really, it’s pretty interesting stuff. As soon as Youchen pitched it to me I knew I had to be a part of it. Let me tell you what he told me. You must know that shamans used to divine the future from listening to the calls of crows, right? Now, one of the early emperors was preparing for a war with the horsemen tribes across the border. On the eve of the battle, the emperor was overcome with last-minute nerves, so he asked his chief shaman to do his thing. The shaman retreated to the hillside and listened to the crow tongue. And as always it told him of death, of widows tearing at their dresses, of children crying for their fathers —’
‘Li Yang, cut the bullshit. We’re a bit old for bedtime stories! What does any of this have to do with the mine?’
‘I’m getting to that, ok? Just listen. The shaman went back to the emperor and told him he had nothing to worry about: the crows had foretold that he would inflict death and destruction on his enemy. The emperor was so delighted with the news that he sent his sons out in the front line so that they could experience the glory of victory. The next morning rolled on, and they rode out into battle. The emperor watched his army get butchered, his sons slaughtered and their heads carried away by the enemy tribes as spoils.’
Li Yang was getting carried away again. Once he got started there was little you could do to stop him. I wanted to punch him in the face, to shake him and tell him how serious this whole mess was. But if I did that I might never find out what any of this crap had to do with Wei Shan. I tried to keep a lid on my anger. ‘So let me guess, he took it out on the shaman.’
‘Exactly. The emperor ordered his men to pluck out the shaman’s eyes and leave him in the centre of the desert to wander blind and lost in the scorching heat until it killed him. And so the blinded shaman found himself alone in the sand dunes of the great plains, the burning sun peeling the skin from his body. He fed on sand, walking for days in the direction of the wind. Death came close enough that he could feel its clammy breath. Then he heard that raspy caw; the call of the crows.
‘He followed the sound, crawling through the desert until the birds led him to the corpse of a wild dog. They shared their meal with him, and to survive he ate the raw, bloody flesh. The taste of death made him strong, and he began to follow the crows away from the wilderness. Finally, he came to a town. By then he’d been living with the crows for months, sharing their carrion, and immersing himself in their calls. So as soon as he got to the town, he asked a young boy to take him straight to the house of the local scribe. There he asked for a brush and ink and, despite his blindness, he began to write. He sat there scribbling for four whole days and four nights without moving and, when he got to the end, he collapsed to the floor, never to wake again.’
I couldn’t contain myself any longer. ‘What the fuck?’ I could hear my voice pitching upwards as I rose to my feet. ‘Is that it? Is this stupid story somehow supposed to explain all the shit that I’ve been going through this week?’
‘Don’t be silly, that’s just the beginning. Calm down, will you? You wanted to know about the mining operation, so I’m telling you. Now, the shaman had been writing down what he’d learnt from the desert crows about the future, desperate to set it all down so that it wouldn’t be forgotten. He wrote a book that contained everything.’
Li Yang was almost beaming now. There was nothing he loved more than a captive audience. Was he getting off on this? It took a colossal effort to stop my hands clenching into fists. ‘What do you mean, everything?’
‘I mean, every single thing about the earth. Everything that had happened, everything that was happening, and everything that would happen from then until the world ended, from Qin Shi Huang to Mao Zedong right down to you and me snuggling up together on my brand new bed. Once he fed on death, he saw everything, past and future, just as the crows see. Now, why do you think the shaman wrote all of this down?’
‘I’m not playing some ridiculous guessing game with you, Li Yang. Just get to the point, will you?’ I couldn’t take any more. I pushed past him to the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of baiju. Then another. Half of me wanted to run straight out the door and never come back. But the other half had to know where this was all going. For Wei Shan, I told myself. I took a deep breath and walked slowly back to the living room.
‘Li Yang, please, enough of this lunacy. Can’t you just tell me what the hell you were doing?’
‘Don’t be a spoilsport. I said I’d tell you. So go on, why do you think he wrote it all down?’
‘I don’t know.’ I sat down again at the end of the sofa. I felt defeated. I felt drunk. Li Yang was still smirking away, and I still wanted to hit him, but there was also something about his enthusiasm that was strangely compelling.
‘Go on, have a go.’
‘Ok, ok. Hmm, to prove he really could divine the future, I suppose,’ I said. ‘To make the emperor see the error of his ways? No? All right. Was it some noble bullshit to enlighten mankind, to make people understand their place in the world?’
He clapped his hands together. ‘Not even close. The shaman did it because the emperor’s punishment had left him bitter and consumed with hatred. He did it to torment mankind. The shaman knew that seeing the future, knowing how you would die and what your life would amount to would be enough to drive most people mad. And he was right. The book destroyed every one of its readers’ lives, and those who hadn’t read it fought each other to get their hands on it. And it took a few centuries – maybe more – but people finally realised that the book was a curse, and so one man took it and buried it where it would never bother anyo
ne again.’
‘Come on then, let’s have it, then. What’s this old myth got to do with your dodgy business dealings and my dead friend?’
Li Yang’s eyes lit up. I couldn’t believe it. He was enjoying himself. I’d seen that look before. On the most zealous Red Guards just before they started an interrogation. A look of fire and fervour. He was starting to scare me.
‘Look around you. Ten years ago, everyone was still wearing the old blue jackets and caps. Not any more. People are turning back to the old ways. They’re moving their beds according to feng shui again, they’re going to temples and putting little offerings before the Buddha or Lao Tzu, they’re putting the altar to the Kitchen God in pride of place next to the hearth once more. People are asking monks for horoscopes, they’re casting hexagrams to predict the future with the help of the I Ching. The Cultural Revolution failed, so now people are looking back to the old ways to give them hope, to give them purpose. They’re beginning to believe again. And just as there are always people who believe that eating a potion ground from tiger bones will make you more virile and potent, there will always be people who go looking for this book of prophecy. After talking to that professor, Hong Youchen and I thought that we’d better get in on the act before someone beat us too it. Youchen just needed a little capital to get the venture started. I was happy to help him out. It’s exciting – a little adventure, a little mystery. Don’t tell me you don’t like the idea of finding out what tomorrow might bring.’
‘I don’t understand – you actually believe this stupid book exists? It’s a story, Li Yang! A fucking story. All this money and all this mess for a little adventure? You must have invested millions. Not just digging the mine itself, but on bribes and deals to make sure no one looked too closely at what you were up to. And that history professor – I saw him myself, Li Yang, and he’s fucking dead! And my friend. And the others! They’re dead! People died and you don’t seem to understand or give a shit about any of this!’
My head was spinning and I felt a wave of nausea rush through me. I pushed myself to my feet again. I had to get out of this place. I stumbled towards the bedroom to get my clothes, smashing my foot against a chair.
‘Sit down, please. Just calm down … look, you’re going to hurt yourself. Listen to me, I didn’t know what would happen. It was an accident. And you’ve no idea how much we paid out to make it up to the bereaved – more than you make in a decade! None of those peasants whose houses collapsed are complaining – they’ve all got nice little flats in the city now. What else am I supposed to do? Feel guilty? Come on, you’re being ridiculous and I’m not in the mood for this.’
I made it to the bedroom and began pulling on my clothes. I’d known it all along but I hadn’t admitted it to myself. Now it was blindingly obvious: Li Yang was a fucking child, a spoilt, arrogant little child, completely oblivious to the effects of his actions on the people around him.
‘And now you going to run back to your wife, right?’ he asked, following me into the bedroom. ‘Though of course you won’t bother telling her where you’ve been, or what you’ve been doing all this time, will you? I guess it’s all right for you to have secrets, but when I do something without telling you first you have a hissy fit! Talk about hypocritical.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘I think you’ll find you’ve already done that, darling.’ His mouth was wrung into a sneer, his hair still misty with sweat.
I found my jacket on the sofa and quickly downed my drink. There were a hundred ways I’d hoped the evening would turn out, there were a hundred things I’d wanted to say to Li Yang, to confide in him. But not like this. He obviously didn’t understand anything at all.
‘You’re actually going?’
He had followed me back into the living room. He stood there naked with his hands pressed to his hips.
‘You’re actually going to walk out of that door and leave me like this? What’s your problem? Do you know how much crap I put up with for you? You’re a shitty drunk and a bad lover and you’re going bald. I get offers from better men most nights of the week.’
‘Why don’t you invite them round instead, then?’
‘Ugh!’
For a moment I could see his eyes growing moist, his face beginning to crumple, then he stormed away, leaving me to slam the door on an empty room.
Back in the lift, I checked my jacket and hair, trying to make sure I looked the same as when I had arrived, but the doorman was still engrossed in his paper and barely looked up as I left.
This whole thing was obviously Li Yang’s fault. This wasn’t only about the mine. He just didn’t know when to stop, when to just let things go. I found my car and began the long drive out of this part of town I so clearly didn’t belong in. I realised my whole body was shaking, and I gripped the steering wheel tighter and tighter. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Every time, no matter how much I thought of leaving him, of never visiting him again, I always went back. But not this time.
It started to rain. Fuck Li Yang. Fuck the rain. I passed office workers getting soaked in their best suits. Umbrellas being tugged inside out by the wind. People holding smudged newspapers over their heads. The beams of the streetlamps sliced through the rain. Headlights blinked and dipped through puddles. Clouds were sweeping further down to obscure the hills I’d been driving to and from over the past week.
The hills, the city, the province, its crooked Party man and his bastard son, the whole damn country – had anything really changed at all? For all the talk of revolution and class struggle, was it really that different from hundreds of years ago? We’d stopped foot-binding only for baby girls to be left outside to die in weather like this. We’d got rid of the emperor and the power-crazed eunuchs around him only for Party men to hoard power and influence in exactly the same way. We’d freed the proletariat to rise up and control the means of production only so that men like Hong Youchen and Li Yang could buy their whole lives for a bit of loose change.
I swerved away from a mangy dog limping across the road. Fuck. This was Li Yang’s fault. He’d even got me questioning my country, questioning the Party. This was getting ridiculous. I needed to get both Li Yang and Hong Youchen out of my head. I needed another drink.
I realised I had no idea where I was going. I sure as hell didn’t want to go home and hear about the school’s anniversary celebrations. And there was no way I was going back to Li Yang. He’d blown it.
What do you do when everyone you know wants you to be someone you’re not? Fishlips wanted me to forget about Wei Shan and get on with my work, and I couldn’t. My wife wanted me to be the same man I’d been fifteen years ago, back when we first met and I could happily spend whole evenings just sitting beside her, listening to our brand new radio. Li Yang wanted me to forget the fact one of his idiot schemes had turned my whole life upside down. I just wanted to turn off my brain and get some rest from the whole fucking lot of them.
I was driving in circles, slowing through street after street, trying my best to get lost in a city I knew as intimately as the contours of Li Yang’s body. I felt in my pocket. One last Double Happiness. I took the scrap of paper from the mine out of my pocket and cranked down the window. Then I tossed it out. What use was it now anyway? I watched it in the rear-view mirror for a while as it fluttered behind the car, the wind battling to keep it afloat as the rain battered down on it. Good riddance.
I couldn’t go home now, and I didn’t have anyone to call on except Xiang, but I couldn’t face having to explain everything to him right now. There was nowhere left for me but the Golden Dragon Seafood Palace. I drove past my office and continued past the train station, where even now, marching out into the downpour, was a new swarm of migrants carrying their possessions tied up in old sheets. I pulled up next to the bridge. From there I could see the rain wash the colour from the city, leaving only the fuzzy brightness of the blinking streetlamps and the blurred reflection of my shitty hometown drifting out across the
murky water.
I parked at the back of the restaurant and made my way inside. As always, it was nearly deserted. I sat down at the usual table, though I’d given up hope of Wei Shan striding through the door and joining me. The manager came to my table and asked my name. Against my better judgement, I told him. He nodded and handed me a letter.
‘This came for you this morning. I guess you must be our most important customer – no one’s ever got their post delivered here before!’
‘Very funny. Just get me a bowl of pork noodles and a bottle of the cheap stuff, will you?’
He chuckled as he walked away. I looked at the little brown envelope. Who the hell was writing to me here? I waited for the bottle to arrive and took a deep swig before I ripped the letter open. It was empty. Very fucking funny. An envelope with no letter. I shook it a couple of times to check whether there was anything small hidden inside. Nothing. This day couldn’t get any stranger. I scrunched it up and pushed it across the table.
I felt like shit. So I’d found out why Wei Shan, Jing Ren, Fatty, Spotty and Horseface had died. Did that give their death meaning? Nope. Did it make me feel any better? Not even a little bit. Would the same thing happen again? Yes, in a hundred different cities dotted like scabs across the country, where a million different rich brats do whatever the hell they want as the authorities look away, their pockets that little bit plumper. For every worker crushed, mangled, drowned, burnt, electrocuted, dismembered, asphyxiated, blinded, blown up or buried alive another hundred rush forward, eager to take their place. I took a few more large gulps and closed my eyes.
What the hell was I going to do now? I wasn’t sure. I could drink until all these thoughts evaporated and then drive back home in time to hear about the performances at the school celebration before I collapsed on the sofa. I could forget about the mine and the book and the crows and the corpses and do the same thing everyone else does: just close my eyes to the outside world and worry about myself. I could try to be a better father. I could push on with the cases on my desk and try to get back into Fishlip’s good books. I could even try to make things up with my wife, though that might be pushing things a bit. I could forget Li Yang. Perhaps I could even learn to stay at home a little more. I could slowly teach myself to become someone else.