by Rob Mclean
Dressed in a traditional long silk dress, with her hair up and long earrings dangling, she left her room and headed to the Captain’s private quarters.
In her mind, she had switched from the hard-faced prison survivor to her ‘escort’ persona. Like the special clothes she wore, she mentally put on the persona for the occasion, temporarily masking her own, but she was good at this and had been doing it for almost as long as she could remember. She felt that she had spent so much of her life wearing outwardly different personas that she hoped that her true one had not been lost.
It galled her that her room was not closer to the Captain’s, and that she was made to parade through the hallways and corridors like a painted doll. She knew what was expected of her in this role and although she had played the game hundreds of times before, not just for the Captain, but for many others, the persona that had once given her money, power and escape, now made her feel more trapped than ever.
Her footsteps reverberated along the corridor as memories echoed in her mind. She stepped outside, to cut across the courtyard, but her thoughts followed.
Ever ambitious, she partly blamed herself for her current predicament. It was a long forgotten, well-to-do friend at business school at the time, who had introduced her to the idea of working evenings as a supplement to her meagre income.
That plan had been working fine. She had been balancing her week day studies with her weekend escort work, and had accumulated healthy savings to start her own legitimate business once she graduated.
The study was hard, as she was not as naturally gifted as others in her class, but she applied herself, working diligently at her studies. The time spent with wealthy men gave her valuable insights into how business was really done in the real world, as opposed to what she learned at school.
The evenings spent at expensive nightclubs, casinos and parties were exciting and made a welcome change from dull book work. She enjoyed that part of her job, but when the time came for her to honour her end of the deal, she performed her work from behind the same persona she wore now. What they did with her body didn’t touch her behind her mask. She made the right noises and moves, but it was from a detached perspective, as if it were happening to someone else.
That however, had changed one terrible night. A drunken client had blamed her for his inability to perform. He was vain, old and far too drunk, but he had caught her foolishly grinning at his discomfort and had struck out at her. He beat her until her cries brought help and she was dragged away. As the owner of the hotel soothed the old drunk and summoned another, more attentive girl, Ling was hustled away, out of his sight.
Downstairs, in the back of the kitchens, amid the worried glances of kitchen-hands and waitresses, she tried to wash the blood from her face and ripped dress. It had been foolish on her behalf, but, at the time, she didn’t know what else she was supposed to do.
The owner had found her a little later, by the service entrance, holding ice to her bruised cheek. As he strode towards her, she caught a glimpse of his wide, bulging eyes and clenched jaw. Before she could explain herself, he struck her a hard, stinging back-hand that sent the ice skittering across the floor.
“You don’t talk,” he had said when she tried again to apologise. “You are nothing.”
He grabbed her by her hair and dragged her out the back door and threw her onto the piles of stinking plastic garbage bags, stacked about an overflowing skip-bin.
She tried to get up and to plead for her job, but he drew a gun from under his jacket. He clicked the safety off and pushed the nozzle into her forehead. “You are nothing,” he repeated.
She expected to die then, amid the stench of ruptured garbage bags and with tears streaming down her bruised face.
‘I can’t die like this,’ she thought as the cold gun metal pressed into her forehead. ‘I can’t do anything to stop it though.’ Her thoughts tore frantically through her doomed mind.
‘I am powerless.’ She saw that her first lesson in power had come far too late to be of any use. She collapsed to the stained paving stones of the laneway with an anguished cry.
“I am nothing,” she sobbed, reinforcing her new understanding.
She heard a click from the gun and when she found that her brains hadn’t been sprayed across the alleyway, she looked up to see him slide the gun back under his jacket.
“Not even worth a bullet,” he sneered. “Now get up and clean yourself up.”
Ling watched him as he straightened his suit, briefly preening invisible imperfections before he went back inside without another word.
She understood that she now belonged to this man. Him and the people he worked with. He had paid her for her services, and she had naively thought that it had been an equal business arrangement, but now she saw how wrong she had been.
Her tears flowed uncontrollably and a thin wail mourned the life she had lost, the dreams and ambitions that had been taken away. “I am nothing,” she whispered, but she vowed that would change. She promised herself that someday, she would be someone, someone important.
She didn’t know if she felt like crying or laughing at how far short of that promise she had fallen, but her self-recriminations were interrupted by the low sounds of hushed voices. To her hardened prison persona, these voices shouted their secretive natures to her.
From across the courtyard, Ling saw the source of the conspiring whispers. A trio of prisoners sat facing each other in a closed triangle in the corner against the courtyard walls. While the walls might give them some visual protection, the walls acted to magnify their voices and project them across the empty spaces.
As Ling moved closer, she saw that it was the American girl’s friends, Horseface, Moonface and Broken Glasses. They were deep in earnest conversation and didn’t notice her as she glided closer.
“She brought it on herself,” Moonface said. Her emphatic words matched her frown. Ling had to agree. The stubborn American girl would get herself killed if she didn’t learn to play by the rules.
“She was only doing what was asked of her. We all were,” Broken Glasses nasal voice sounded like she was trying to soothe things and she had a point.
They were supposed to be teaching English, which they were doing very successfully. Ling had to admit to herself that the lessons were popular amongst the inmates, far better than the rote learning and mindless repetition they had before. She had actually enjoyed being a teacher. It was a role that, she now saw, had brought her some degree of fulfilment, far more than her current role. If only that stupid pinyin hadn’t overstepped the mark by encouraging debate. Didn’t she understand that such concepts were dangerous?
“There’s nothing we can do for her,” Horseface said by way of agreement. Her morose voice made her sound even more horsey.
“Except to pray,” said Moonface, her round face broadened with a smile.
Ling watched in silent disbelief as the women joined hands and bowed their heads. Her astonishment was compounded when they started to murmur in low voices, ‘The Lord’s Prayer.’ She recognised it from her brief time as a Christian and, for her the words still carried a solemn power.
“What sort of insanity is this?” Ling demanded. Her voice was hushed, but urgent. She glanced about the courtyard, expecting to see guards descending upon then at any moment.
The trio of friends stammered, speechless at being discovered. The look of shock told Ling that they actually thought they were cleverly hidden and safe.
“The walls,” Ling hissed, waving wildly at the two concrete walls that flanked the women. “They trumpet your stupid voices for all to hear.”
The three women craned their necks like newborn birds in a nest as they took in this information. “Oh,” was all one of them said.
“We couldn’t think of anywhere else we could go,” Horseface added. Her big round eyes pleaded, but to Ling, it just made her look bewildered and clueless.
“Try the laundry room or the boiler room, or even one of the storeroom
s.” Ling stopped and let out an exasperated growl. “Or just don’t do it at all. Do you all want to join your American friend in solitary?” She glared at each of them in turn. “Do you miss her that much?”
“No,” Moonface implored, “we just want to help her.”
Ling nodded in agreement as she remembered the Captain’s instructions. She had wanted Ling to become friends with the American girl, supposedly so she could learn more about her. “So you think praying for her would do any good, eh?”
“Yes,” Broken Glasses and Moonface said in unison.
“It’s the only thing we can do,” Horseface added.
Ling was about to tell them how useless prayer had been for her, but she stopped herself. She knew how it felt to be so powerless that praying to an uncaring God was all there was left.
“Just don’t do it out aloud.” She snapped. “Don’t you think your all-seeing, all-knowing God can hear your thoughts?”
The three women exchanged guilty looks. “Sorry,” Horseface said from behind her overgrown fringe, “you’re right.”
“Of course I am. How stupid can you lot be?”
“Do you want to join us?” Broken Glasses squinted as she pushed her glasses higher up her flattened nose.
“No,” Ling almost shouted.
“You said you wanted to be her friend, didn’t you?” Moonface gave her a nearly toothless grin.
“I should report you all,” Ling waved her long, bony finger with its curving, brightly painted, fake fingernail at each of them in turn. She drew satisfaction with the small power she still possessed as she saw their faces fall.
“Please don’t.” Horseface reached up to put her hand on Ling’s arm.
Ling shook it off. “Get yourselves out of here. If you have to pray, do it silently in the common hall. In amongst everyone else, you’re hidden in plain sight.”
“Are you coming to join us then?” Moonface persisted.
“No,” Ling gave them a mocking, apologetic smile. “I have other things to do.”
“Yes,” said Broken Glasses, looking Ling up and down with a nasal sneer. “We can see that. Enjoy yourself.”
Ling stepped in closer, her knuckles clenched white. The grin fell from Broken Glasses’ face as she tried to scuttle away. “You have no idea.” Ling let a malicious grin spread across her face. It grew as she saw the effect it had. “None at all.”
*
When Ling arrived at the guards outside the Captain’s quarters, she briefly considered telling them about the trio in the courtyard. If those fools were stupid enough not to take her advice, then they deserved all the trouble they would get. On the other hand, she would earn a lot of trust with them if she didn’t.
Ling put her hands up against the wall and spread her feet apart. It was the routine she had become accustomed to before being allowed admittance to the Captain’s private quarters. It was all totally unnecessary, both she and the guards knew it, but it was all part of the humiliations she was made to suffer, and it served to remind Ling of her rightful place, in the Captain’s and the guard’s eyes. ‘I am nothing,’ she reminded herself.
The guard’s hands snatched and pecked at what little remained of her dignity. She ignored it from the safety of her mental strong room. She didn’t want to give the guards any satisfaction, but her occasional grunts of discomfort brought audible guffaws from the guards. Her list of the many people needing retribution grew.
With a knowing, smarmy nod from one of the guards, Ling was allowed to go in. She took a moment, making the guards wait, while she adjusted her silk dress and checked that her hair was in place, before she pointedly ignored them and went inside.
The Captain’s private quarters were spacious, more so than anything Ling had ever known, and particularly when compared to the cramped, overcrowded dormitories most of the prison population knew. At least Ling’s special relationship with the Captain had earned her the luxury of a small room of her own.
By comparison, the Captain’s quarters were more like an up-market apartment. Indoor palms were interspersed about the living area, dining and kitchen, making an easy transition to the leafy courtyard with the lily pond that Ling knew lay outside.
Inside, an entire wall was taken with bookshelves, filled with confiscated and imported books and DVDs. A huge flat screen television dominated another wall, worshipped by a semi-circle of leather sofas and recliners. The official state news service, Xinhua, was on the screen. This evening, it was the only illumination in the apartment.
Ling wondered if the Captain was waiting for her in the bedroom beyond. She knew the room well, with the queen-sized bed and its abundance of lace cushions and ridiculous stuffed animals. It was a sad attempt, in her opinion, by the Captain, to cultivate her almost non-existent softer, feminine side.
Ling ventured towards the bedroom, calling out, “bao bei?”
A figure stirred on the lounge. “Oh, are you here already?” the Captain asked. A change of scene on the television cast a brighter light and Ling suddenly saw that the Captain was not sitting on the sofa alone.
Next to her was the American girl. She was dressed in her orange prison overalls, with her wrists handcuffed and chained to another set of cuffs around her ankles. Her mouth was bound and gagged with cloth. As she turned to Ling, her eyes glittered briefly with hostility before glaring down at the hand that the Captain had on her thigh. Ling’s immediate thought was that the girl wanted the Captain for herself and was angry at Ling’s intrusion.
“We were just watching the referendum results.” To Ling’s experienced ear, the Captain’s words were slightly slurred, and she patted the girl’s thigh, fawning and fumbling enough that Ling wondered how long they had been sitting on the sofa drinking.
The American girl threw Ling an imploring look.
‘No,’ Ling thought, ‘maybe, the girl was sober and wanted help.’
“Isn’t she supposed to be in solitary?” Ling tried to work out what was going on. Had the Captain changed her mind and decided to make this gweilo share their bed?
“Yes, but there aren’t any televisions down there.” The Captain reached down besides the sofa for her glass and found it empty. She took it with her as she got up and fetched another glass. The Captain poured both and passed one glass of scotch on ice to Ling. Ling took the fact that the Captain hadn’t offered the American girl a drink as a sign that she was still not one of her privileged pets. She gave the Captain a kiss on the cheek as she took the offered drink, more for a show of ownership than from any affection.
Scotch was the Captain’s favourite, and Ling welcomed the familiar, astringent wash that warmed her throat and belly.
She put her own anger away, forcing herself to smile. She then sat herself in the spot that the Captain had just vacated.
“So, how is my new friend going?” She studied the American girl for a clue to the Captain’s intentions, but under the soft, flickering glow of the television screen, was only met with a look of frightened confusion.
“She’s not very talkative.” The Captain chuckled at her own joke.
“Are we enjoying the referendum?” Ling waved her drink at the screen. As the Captain’s head turned to the screen, Ling gave the American girl’s hand a quick, reassuring squeeze. Although she felt some stirrings of pity for the girl, she was more worried about being replaced and wanted to get the girl away. In response, she felt the tension leave the girl’s rigid body.
“Yes, in fact, I… rather we,” she smiled broadly at the American girl. “Were so engrossed that the time really got away.” She turned on a lamp as she spoke, banishing the darkness to the corners of the room.
“Are we winning?” Ling turned her attention to the screen. The polling had closed a few days ago, but the counting process had been a slow process.
She didn’t really care what the outcome was. She couldn’t see how it would change her situation. It was really only being held in the western, democratic countries. The Chinese govern
ment had already declared its allegiance on behalf of all of its citizens, as had many other state controlled countries.
The theocratic countries, such as those of the Middle East, from Pakistan through to Morocco, including Israel, had also stated their position earlier and so, had not called for a referendum.
“Looks like we might lose Turkey and most of Italy,” the Captain said as she swayed in front of the screen. “Russia is too early to say, but from the early counting, it seems the north is with us, but the southern regions are still stubbornly superstitious.”
Ling tried to imagine the new power blocs that were developing. The world was being split along theological lines. If she was still a Christian, she could see herself believing it was all part of their ‘End Times’ prophecies coming true.
“India is interesting,” the Captain continued. “They were expected to vote against the proposal, and so far, it looks like that’s how it will go. That’s a worry. That many nuclear armed religious fanatics will be sitting on our border causes concern.”
Ling knew there were also Pakistan, Iran and Israel firmly in that camp too. And who ends up with all the Russian and American nukes was the unspoken biggest concern. The Chinese government had thrown their lot in with the alien, but their own arsenal was small compared to the combined American and Russian stockpiles. If those were to fall into the hands of the fervently religious in those countries, then, Ling thought, there would be cause for real worry.
A map of Russia appeared on the screen and the province of Vologda expanded to fill the screen. A bar graph was superimposed, showing a large majority to the ‘yes’ vote.
“Russia would be interesting too,” Ling said, brushing the American girl’s hair behind her ear. “But I think our guest is more concerned with her own country.”
The Captain sat herself down heavily on a recliner and watched Ling with a detached curiosity.