The Lake Ching Murders - A Mystery of Fire and Ice

by David Rotenberg

  “From time to time I do.”

  “It’s small, though,” the man said tentatively.

  “Size is seldom an issue.”

  The fisherman smiled then screwed up his face as if what he was about to say would cause him great pain. “What if it’s broken?” There was anxiety in the fisherman’s voice.

  A brightness flashed for a moment across Dr. Roung’s face, then was gone. He took a breath. Then, with his anticipation concealed safely behind his eyes, he asked, “Cracked, you mean?”

  “No, Excellency, broken — as if in half.”

  The archeologist looked away from the fisherman. A few months earlier, he and his team had begun the third phase of the reclamation of the terra-cotta warriors. During the dig he had come across six small half-sculptures. All horses. All the front end — the emperor’s end. “Is it of a horse?” he asked as casually as he could manage.

  The fisherman emitted a hiss.

  “It is of a horse, isn’t it?”

  The fisherman stumbled to his feet. “He thinks I’m a witch,” Dr. Roung thought. “Good.” He took a breath then said, “It’s worthless, old man.” He unlocked a drawer to his desk and took out the six half-horses and put them on the desk. “Worthless,” he repeated.

  But the fisherman was canny. Over his many years he had done much bartering for fish and on occasion for cormorant chicks. “If they were worthless, why keep them under lock and key?” he thought. But he said nothing. Just bent his shoulders and turned toward the door.

  “Show me your find, old man.”

  “Why, Excellency?” The old fisherman locked eyes with the archeologist. “It has no value.”

  “Show it to me.” Dr. Roung allowed a threatening tone into his voice. The fisherman heard it and backed off. Slowly he reached into his pocket and pulled out a dirty rag. Holding it in the palm of his left hand, he unwrapped the tiny thing.

  The archeologist had to control his excitement. The perfect hindquarters were the first he had ever seen. His fingers itched to fit it together with one of the six frontquarters he had. His keen eye quickly eliminated the chance of a match with the first three of his horses. But horses four and six were real possibilities.

  “Are there more where this came from, old man?”

  The man scratched his neck, but didn’t answer.

  “If you know where this came from, and are willing to show me, I’ll pay you handsomely.”

  “How handsomely?” snapped back the old fisherman.

  Dr. Roung stepped past the man and left the office. Moments later, he returned with a packet of kwais. He held out the bulging envelope and said, “More money than you’ll earn in ten years.”

  The fisherman reached for the packet, but the archeologist pulled it away. He extracted ten 100-kwai notes and dangled them from his fingers.

  The fisherman held out the small statuette.

  The exchange was made.

  “Now show me where you found this, old man, and the rest of the money is yours.”

  * * *

  The fisherman guided Dr. Roung to the lake. The archeologist had never been there before. He didn’t even know there was a large lake so close to Xian. The water was clear, and there, just off the side of the fisherman’s tippy boat, not four feet down, was a large mound. Clearly it had been man-made. The formation of the stones was very similar to those he’d unearthed with the terra-cotta warriors. It was possible that the shoal was in fact the tip of another tomb. He took out the hindquarters that the fisherman had given him. Qin period for sure. Could this be the tomb of one of the first emperor’s generals? That was who had the back end of the horses. The emperor Qin Shi Huang had kept control of the movement of troops by having these split horses made. The emperor kept the front half of each. The hindquarters were given to various generals. When a messenger arrived bearing the emperor’s part of the horse that completed theirs, the general supplied troops. Troops were power. Control of power was everything.

  The archeologist saw that the fisherman was clearly uncomfortable. “Ah, he wants his money,” he thought. But he was wrong.

  The obligation of hospitality is real in rural China. Despite not wanting anything to do with the archeologist, the fisherman was duty-bound to offer him a meal. Grudgingly he asked, “Would your Excellency honour my humble home by taking some food?” The archeologist was duty-bound to accept the offer.

  Dr. Roung noted the landmarks to be sure he could find the shoal again, then nodded.

  It was on landing that first time on the Island of the Half-wits that he saw her. Chu Shi — Jiajia’s intended. She was stooping to fill her wooden pails with water from the lake. With square shoulders and weathered skin, she was far from the elegant Han Chinese women that he’d known. Her hands were big and rough. But there was depth in her eyes.

  Then she smiled at him.

  He felt himself falling, somehow the ground beneath him had suddenly shifted and he was plummeting down a great chasm.

  The old fisherman stared at him, a faraway look in his eyes. A knowing, no, an understanding look.

  “Who is she, old lecher?”

  For a moment the old man seemed openly offended and then he softened, “Not one of us. One of the farmers. One of the half-wits. They keep to themselves, Excellency.” His voice was off-centre. He took a step forward and said as casually as he could, “Perhaps Excellency would like to meet . . .”

  “I will double your fee if you arrange it.”

  The fisherman’s face creased with a slow, oddly sad smile that exposed his rotted teeth. “Give her this,” said Dr. Roung, holding out the small statue that he’d just bought from the fisherman.

  * * *

  That’s how it had begun. He requested and received permission from Beijing’s powerful minister of the interior to start excavating the sunken shoal to cover his approaches to the island — to Chu Shi. The fisherman arranged the meetings with Chu Shi but each time he seemed a little sadder, a little more wistful.

  The love between Dr. Roung and Chu Shi had been fast, secret and more important to him than anything that had happened before. With her he seemed to understand things. He felt part of the great flow of the blackhaired people. He felt her connect him to the past and the future. He began to dream of their child — somehow living forever.

  He had kept the ministry in Beijing abreast of his progress at the shoal, which he had intentionally slowed. Then, in the sixth month of his work, he was surprised to receive a personal communication from the minister of the interior herself asking to be kept strictly up-to-date with his work and a request that he find out what he could about . . . the farmers on the island.

  He didn’t know what to make of the request, but he didn’t care. It offered him an official reason to visit the island regularly.

  It was on one of these sanctioned visits that he found himself alone with Chu Shi in her family house.

  “This is my room, but this is my father’s home.” Her eyes twinkled.

  “It could be ours when he passes on.”

  Chu Shi turned away from him, the dim light of the hut somehow making her even more alluring.

  “I meant no offence.”

  “I know,” she said still looking away from him. Then she turned back and smiled.

  “What?”

  “It’s odd to be alone in this place. Usually there are so many others.”

  “Little privacy, huh?”

  “We islanders are not prudish.” Her smile broadened. “You may have noticed that.”

  He smiled. “I have.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now take off your pants — Excellency.” Her voice danced around the final word but her eyes devoured him.

  Their bodies fit together as if they had been made from one piece that had been separated by the Maker.

  Later, lying naked and enwrapped, he ran his fingers along the rise of her hip. “Do you have the gift I first gave you?” She nodded and reached across him. His fingers traced the
strong muscles of her back as she extracted the small statue of the horse’s hindquarters from her clothing on the floor. She lay back and, smiling, placed it on her left breast. Then looked at him.

  He rose from the bed, naked, and crossed to his pants on the far side of the room. He put on his delicate French glasses then knelt and dug into his pockets. She loved to watch him. He was so different from the islanders. So different from Iman’s favourite, Jiajia, to whom she’d been promised, and who constantly sought her attention.

  He returned, knelt over her and repositioned her statue. Then he opened his hand and showed her his matching statue of the horse’s frontquarters.

  She bent her head forward to get a closer look, but he held her still and placed his bronze figure on her right breast.

  She shivered. She’d never seen anyone look at anything the way her lover looked at her now. Finally, after what seemed forever, he gently moved her breasts together. The figures slid toward each other. They touched, then interlocked — perfectly — every plane of one fitted to every plane of the other.

  She was about to giggle when she looked up. He was staring deep into her eyes. “Do you see how they lock together.”

  She nodded, a little lost.

  “I want us to marry. To have children.”

  She moved so quickly that he was lucky to catch the bronze pieces before they crashed to the ground.

  As she shoved a leg into her pants she said, “It’s not possible.”

  “Why?” he demanded.

  She turned to him and held his eyes. “Because, here, on this island, we marry our own.”

  Then she was gone.

  He held the completed bronze horse in his fingers for a longish moment. Then he detached the hindquarters and left them beneath her pillow.

  As he put on his clothing he wondered what he would do next. What life would be like without Chu Shi.

  He did his best to wrap up the excavation of the shoal. It was proving much more difficult than he had originally thought. He faced little resistance from the ministry.

  Then the foreigners arrived. Foreigners from several countries. Elderly men asking questions. Asking about the family backgrounds of the islanders. Not from the fishermen; only from the farmers.

  He dutifully followed the foreigners to the island and then reported their activity to the interior ministry. He was surprised to get an urgent message ordering him to continue excavating the shoal and to go to the island and report back everything that he could find about the interaction between the foreigners and the farmers of the island.

  Despite Chu Shi’s rejection, he obeyed the orders from Beijing and went to the island. He talked to as many of the islanders as he could. On his way back to his boat he saw Chu Shi in the darkness down by the beach. He was about to approach when a young man broke from the nearby thicket and ran into her arms.

  Jiajia, Iman’s chosen. Her betrothed.

  The weather turned suddenly cold as he returned from the island. Early for it. He bundled up as he sat in his room and wrote to the Ministry of the Interior.

  MADAME MINISTER:

  Two weeks ago, the Islanders, after an initial resistance, accepted sizeable sums of money from the foreigners in return for which, Iman, their leader, agreed to give the foreigners the family histories they wanted.

  Why the foreigners would want the islander’s family histories is a mystery to me.

  Now the foreigners want to take blood samples from the islanders. Iman categorically refused and violence was only narrowly avoided as the foreigners had to be escorted off the island by local police.

  Work on the shoal is proving almost impossible. Could I request, with all respect, a return to my work in Xian?

  C.

  Madame Wu received the communiqué just as she was finishing another long day in her office. Her old eyes read the words and sensed their meaning. The man’s love affair was over and now he wanted to go home. He may be exceptionally talented, this one, but he acts just like every other male.

  Madame Wu felt her assistant’s steely eyes on her. Had she spoken aloud? No. Absolutely not. She returned the stare and the man backed off. “Perhaps it’s time to get myself a younger, prettier assistant. It had been a long while since someone young and pretty had been her companion.

  “Madame Minister?”

  “Respond that he is to stay at Lake Ching until I tell him that it is time for him to go. As well, tell him that he is not to presume. That all normal formality shall be used in all his communications.”

  The man quickly left the office.

  Madame Wu turned to the window. Police were already on the island to help the foreigners. So the danger was near. For a moment she thought about her son. Then about her mother.

  So many ghosts these days. But this is an important time. A time of change. They were dangerous times for individuals. The good of the country came first. The future needed to be addressed — no — forged. What could she care for a dead mother and a son who was lost to her.

  Two days later the archeologist was surprised to see the old fisherman approach the shoal. He was wrapped in rags to keep out the cold. “What now, old man?” he yelled.

  “They’re scaring off the fish!” the old man barked.

  “Who is?”

  “The visitors! Don’t you know anything!”

  Dr. Roung was about to rise to the bait when something told him to hold his temper. “Are the foreigners back, old man?” It came out awkwardly — half-question, half-accusation.

  “Worse than that.” What could be worse to this man than foreigners? “Government people. Beijing government people.”

  This was new. “Take me.” He reached into his pocket and threw a few bills at the older man. The fisherman did a good impression of a cabbie who thought his tip was too light.

  Chu Shi wasn’t happy to see him when he entered her hut. “I’m a married woman now.”

  “I know.”

  She started to leave, but he reached for her. At first he thought she was going to scream. Then he thought she was going to hit him, and then, somehow, their clothing lay in piles on the floor and he flowed into her as she sang his name over and over. When they were done, she handed him his clothing and his expensive imported glasses. They dressed slowly staring at each other.

  Then suddenly she was crying.

  He held out his arms to her, but she shook her head.

  “I need answers to a few questions.” A look of shock crossed her face. It was almost comical.

  “You came here to ask me questions?” she blurted out.

  “No. It’s the only way I think I can get to see you again.”

  “Don’t try to see me again.” But her fingers were interlocked with his.

  “Who are the new people on the island?”

  “Government people,” she answered.

  “Police officers?”

  She looked away. When she spoke, her words came out slowly as if their very sounds were dangerous. “No. Different. Government people from Beijing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do they want, Chu Shi?”

  “They threatened Iman that if he doesn’t agree to give blood samples to the foreigners they’ll remove our people from the island. They claim we never had any right to be on the island in the first place.”

  “Will Iman give in to the demands?”

  “He already has.”

  That night in the cold, haunted silence of his room in Ching he wrote again to Madame Minister Wu.

  This missive she received while attending a formal state banquet for the Japanese ambassador and several of that country’s leading industrialists. Toasts were exchanged. History forgotten. A swollen future embraced.

  “Just like before the liberation,” she thought as she raised her glass. “Foreigners everywhere, owning everything.”

  Madame Wu sipped the heated saki. The air conditioning puffed out the silk of the woman’s blouse across th
e table from her.

  Silk!

  Throughout her youth, Madame Wu had been forced to carry silkworm eggs strapped to her body. It kept the eggs warm. Many nights she was awakened by her mother screaming at her not to roll over in her sleep and crush the precious eggs. Other nights she awoke feeling a feathery movement on her skin. One ounce of eggs produced twenty thousand worms. They’d hatch in the night. She hated having to stand naked and still as her mother picked them off her.

  The worms had to increase their weight ten thousand times before they spun their cocoons. Since noise was harmful to their growth, the house was a place of silence. But in the silence was intense anger.

  It was always a relief when the worms finally began to spin their cocoons from the loose stalks of straw that the family had provided. The two or three days needed to spin were the happiest times in the house. But it was short-lived. Once the cocoons were spun, the chrysalis had to be killed.

  Boiled.

  Her mother’s hands, an angry red from fishing the cocoons out of the boiling water and carefully unravelling the still-wet pouches, were the stuff of her childhood nightmares. And it had all been done for a silk factory owned by the very Japanese they were toasting here tonight.

  Traitors.

  The men who run this country are traitors to the people of China — to the memory of her mother.

  But they will not get away with it. Her family will see to that.

  The Japanese ambassador was speaking. Something about business bringing our two great countries together. Madame Wu sipped at her saki again. She grimaced. The taste made her angry. Yet another foreign thing to be swept out of the country. Then she looked at the saki and a slow smile crossed her features.

  Dr. Roung was surprised when the case of wine arrived with the note from the Interior Minister:

  Please present this to the Islanders with my compliments on their new business venture. Enclosed please find a requisition order to cover your expenses for the banquet that should accompany my gift. — M.W.

  He stared at the case of ceremonial wine. Then at the note from Madame Wu. This was definitely her writing style. But something was wrong. Why send a case of wine from Beijing? Although he didn’t drink himself, he was pretty sure this wine was available in Xian. But before he followed this line of inquiry he saw that this presented another opportunity to see Chu Shi — and all reason vanished before the onslaught of desire.