by Andy Oakes
But not wanting to sleep, another reason for a self-enforced insomnia … for in sleep’s darkest back pocket surely there would be the old vagrant comrade’s honest eyes?
Danwei files: cradle to the grave files, each examined and re-examined. Similarities, but nothing that bound them to each other in life or in death, except for death itself.
Neighbourhood street committee files, Party files, personal files.
The back of his hand over his weary eyes hunting for the ordinary, which would point to the extraordinary. Last files, inconsequential files, files not about the young women at all, files on blood line, parents, details, dates. Four reports. In turn viewing them all, one after the other. Knowing that it would be there, the thing that they have in common.
Spilling the tea as he bent to pick up Lan Li’s parents’ file, different from the others who had been killed, but not only in that she still possessed life, while they did not. Lan Li, a girl, ‘spilt water’, given up by her rich and well connected parents who desired a son … ‘ten thousand ounces of gold’. Lan Li, now a mei ming, a ‘no name’. Handed over to the Shanghai No.2 Welfare Institute on Chongming Island, a conveyor belt leading straight to death or to the whorehouse. While the other three, also from politically good stock and relatively privileged lifestyles, had led cosseted, demure lives, all that Lan Li had known had been rejection and abuse. To never see your parents again – for them to never see you again. Piao shaking his head. A cup that he had drunk from.
Exhausted, all of his attention just to focus his vision. Father’s name. Date of birth. Age. Lineage. Education. Profession … profession. Cup to floor. Cigarette stubbed out. Eyes frantically seeking files. Fingers racing, hunting through pages for one detail within the twenty thousand that he had read. Re-read. Knowing that it would be there. Knowing.
The three girls who life no longer possessed. Their fathers, each of their fathers, a scientist. Lan Li, her birth father, long lost, but now reminded of blood’s bind, also a scientist.
Piao, eyes closed, weighing-up actions, leading to consequences and other actions.
The tai zi surely using the daughters to manipulate their fathers. And not to yield, while the crop of your seed is scythed down long before it has reached harvest time. To be the one who has brought death to her side. You. The taste of death now present in everything that you do. Ingrained even at a genetic level. Haunting your very shadow. And was it worth it, such service to save face, such service to your masters, to state, to Party … worth your daughter?
*
“Don’t y-you ever s-stop eating?”
Dough stick, being chewn vigorously in one side of the Big Man’s mouth. His words skewed and disengaged from each other.
“My mama says I’m still growing.”
Ow-Yang, the pathologist of things that had no moving parts, that had chips for hearts and programs helixing as DNA, poured the boiling water. Steam across half-glasses, a musty perfume of dead roses.
“Your m-m-mama, is s-she a big woman. A voluptuous w-woman, Deputy Investigator?”
Yaobang, his face wrinkled in thought.
“Voluptuous? Can twenty-one stone be considered to be voluptuous?”
“Yes, Deputy Investigator. I c-can safely s-s-say that twenty-one stone can be said to b-be voluptuous.”
“We are all big boned in our family. It’s in our genes.”
Yaobang moving to the computer that the old man was bent over.
“Watch your cr-crumbs! Watch your cr-crumbs! This is d-delicate equipment. Have a c-c-care.”
“Okay, old papa. Keep your fucking trousers on.”
Ow-Yang, wagging a nicotine-stained finger.
“Less of the ‘old p-papa’, you f-flea on a bald man’s head. Have s-some r-respect for your elders.”
“What are you doing?”
No reaction. Yaobang lifting the headphones from the old papa’s ear.
“I said, what are you fucking doing?”
Ow-Yang flapping the Big Man’s hand away. Removing the headphones. Clicking a button on the keyboard. A representation of a loud speaker. Instantly the basement filled with sound. Adjusting the volume.
“Your boss, he g-gave it to m-me. It’s the r-recording from a cassette tape. The interrogation of a PLA tai zi.”
“Qi?”
“Yes. That’s the PLA sh-sh-shit. The PLA, he s-said something as he w-w-was l-leaving. Your boss, he w-wants to know w-what.”
“And you can do that?”
“Yes, but it is d-delicate work. What the PLA tai zi said w-was at the v-very limits of the recording m-microphone’s sensitivity. I have to b-boost some channels, filter others, amplify h-here, reduce n-n-noise there. Delicate, t-time consuming w-work.”
Nothing for him in this virtual conversation, Yaobang starting to walk away.
“Old papa, something tells me you don’t like the PLA?”
Ow-Yang turning, looking over the rim of his half-lensed spectacles, his eyes sparking with a secret life that lay beyond the fen-chu’s boundaries.
“The PLA murdered my w-w-wife and placed m-me in lao jiao. The PLA reduced my r-rank from Comrade Chief Officer, to th-th-this. Enough r-r-reasons for me to h-h-hate the PLA? Anything else that y-you would like to know?”
The Big Man wiping his nose on his cuff.
“Yes, old papa. I don’t suppose you’d consider joining the PLA as a good fucking career move then?”
*
Picking his nose. Making tea, more tea. Just as Yaobang was sharpening a supply of pencils, the old papa, Ow-Yang, calling him.
“This is the b-best that I c-c-c-an d-do. But I d-don’t understand what the PLA b-bastard is s-s-saying.”
Adjusting a knob. Another.
“It sounds l-l-like a s-song, what d-do you think, Deputy Investigator?”
Ear to speaker.
“Shit, you’re right, old papa. It’s a song. The PLA’s singing a song.”
“It c-can’t be. The PLA n-n-never sing. They g-get us singing their s-songs for them.”
“I tell you, old papa, it’s a song, a chant.”
Yaobang listening, writing.
“Play it again.”
Frantic scribblings, to the paper balanced on his knee.
“Again. Okay. Got it. Fucking got it.”
The Big Man spreading the paper, with greasy fingers, out upon the desktop. Only now taking in what he had written.
“Shit.”
“So wh-what is it that the PLA s-sings?”
The Big Man’s reading out aloud.
“ ‘We will inflict upon them the torture of Hell’s fire. Each time their skin will be torched, burnt totally, we will replace it with a new one, to make them taste still more the torture …’ ”
For several seconds no sound.
“This PLA, he h-h-has a way with w-words, yes, Deputy Investigator?”
Yaobang moving to the telephone, dialling the number as he spoke. The number that would draw Senior Investigator Sun Piao from whatever he was doing.
“Yes, old papa, the PLA has a way with words. Except that they are not the PLA tai zi’s words. I’ve heard them before. They are from the Koran. Our PLA Colonel, Comrade Zhong Qi, is a Muslim, old papa. An angry fucking Muslim.”
Chapter 23
Two funerals.
‘May all beings be filled with joy and peace …’
Mud and rain. White mourners over scarred ground, following the monk’s sandalled footfall. Half of his words falling to heavy hearts, half stolen by the driving wind.
Near the summit of the round hill, the plot. Feng shui demanding such, as long as the yuan will stretch, or guan-xi barter. Mourners huddling behind the barriers of buffeted umbrellas. Tearful faces turned away as the coffin was lowered into the grave. Bad fortune to follow if not.
Spade by spade, the mourners filling the grave with earth. Only the sound of mud falling onto wood, and prayers, and meditative supplications. Noses would run, clothes would be drenched through,
before the monks’ chants, from black and gold toothed mouth, would ever dry up. At the back of the group, under a black brooding cloud of an umbrella, a gaunt man and a plump woman, the parents of the girl now known by the mortuary tag tied to her toe, as 35774341.
“Forgive me, Comrade. I am Senior Investigator Sun Piao, and this is my Deputy. We are from the Homicide Squad and we are working on your daughter Xia’s case.”
Water across Piao’s cheeks, lips, in a chatteringly cold baptism. He and the Big Man beyond the saving grace of the umbrella’s span. Nothing changing in the relationship between cadre and peasant. Through the millennia, nothing ever changing.
“We have come to pay our respects. We have also come to ask you some questions.”
Looks of astonishment. The mother’s hand moving to her face. Tears pushing from her eyes and falling silently down thickly applied make-up.
“Now? You wish to ask your questions now, while our daughter is being laid to rest?”
“I appreciate that this is unusual, but so was the nature of her death, Comrade.”
The word death bringing a sob from the mother. Yaobang pulling a surprisingly clean handkerchief from his trouser pocket and offering it to her. A plump-handed rejection.
“Come mama …”
The Big Man’s arm around her waist, guiding her and the umbrella toward an oasis of other umbrellas.
“Let the big boys talk for a while. I am a good listener, tell me of how beautiful your daughter, Xia, was as a baby. Yes, mama?”
The husband watching his wife’s waddle through the mud towards the graveside. Thinking of the coldness of tombs. Thinking of how slim his wife had been when he had first married her.
“Do I have a choice about answering your questions, Senior Investigator?”
“There are always choices, Comrade Scientist. Even the prisoner in lao gai has the choice of being beaten either by the stick or with the leather strap. Is that not an example of good communist principles in action?”
Already wary as all are when they see the shining brass buttons of the PSB tunic, and aware that the investigator had called him Comrade Scientist.
“What is it exactly that you want, Senior Investigator?”
“Exactly. An excellent word. That is what I like about comrades who have undergone the rigours of a science degree at university. Exactness. But let me be exact with you, Comrade Scientist. At least as exact as I can be, in a case where we are like frogs at the bottom of the well looking up at the sky. Four daughters of scientist fathers, attacked, mutilated. Three whom life no longer possesses. Scientist fathers whose files are full of data, crammed with detail, except about the project that they are currently working on. What was required of you, or from you, Comrade Scientist?”
Silence. Only the rain and the monk’s chants.
“Threats were made to you by a tai zi, a PLA princeling. His name, Qi. Your daughter would be harmed. Such a beautiful daughter. You go to your superior, he makes assurances to you. He tells you firmly, you are to do nothing, say nothing. Do not fear, he reassures you. Your daughter will be safe. She will be protected. But in the innermost chamber of your heart, you did not believe him, did you, Comrade Scientist? You were right not to believe. Your daughter, she was not protected. This tai zi, I have his words on tape. You know how he described your daughter’s callous murder? He called her ‘a casualty of war’.”
Silence, words spent, mourners moving from the graveside, following the monk down the hill. A questioning glance from his wife’s black eyes to her husband.
“She does not know, does she? Comrade Scientist, your wife, she does not know that your daughter died because you would not give this princeling what he wanted, does she?”
“No, she does not know.”
“A heavy cost, Comrade. A heavy secret to bear. But I can lighten this burden for you. These men, the princeling, the tai zi, they will not escape justice. By the ancestors, I promise this.”
The comrade turned, his wife’s lingering glance cut adrift.
“The service that you have given to your profession and our masters in the Ministry of Security, the secrets that you have honoured, and the high cost that you have paid in doing so, I cannot promise you that it will ever be recognised. But it will be avenged.”
Silence.
“But for this to come to fruition, you must aid me. I must know what it is that was worth the life of your daughter. I must know what it is that was worth the lives of three other young women. What can be so important? Comrade, we are standing at the side of your only daughter’s grave. She was an innocent. Please help me. You must help me.”
Silence.
“I am here to help you.”
“That is what he said, my tong zhi superior. And now I am no more than a guang guan.”
“Comrade, ‘bare branches’ do not have the information at their disposal to hurt men such as these PLA. Tell me the secret that you and your Comrade Scientists hold, and I will be your fist in an iron glove.”
Silence. Only the rain and its cyclic journey. The Senior Investigator unbuttoning his coat, rifling through the deep inner pockets, pulling out a small diary.
“This number. Do you know this number?”
Silence. Nervous, the Comrade Scientist’s eyes. Seeking escape. Everything about him balancing on a precipice.
“One of our comrade officers may have died because of this number.”
“I cannot speak of this.”
“You know this number. The fact that you cannot speak of it tells me that you know what it is, Comrade Scientist.”
The Comrade Scientist already moving aside. The pull of the hill drawing his feet back to the older area of the graveyard. Headstone banked against headstone, as dominoes about to tumble. Names now eroded. Pulling him back to the lithe country girl that he had courted; thirty years passed and now a plump wife with expensive tastes.
Piao, soaked through and blinded by the rain, shaking his head. One last appeal shouted against the wind’s rage.
“For the memory of your daughter, give me something. Anything. Anything Comrade.”
Turning from his plump wife’s darkly questioning gaze, the Comrade Scientist. Looking back through rain, through tears, his lips moving. His words, in the strong wind, a breath within a roar.
“Mao Zedong. Southern Kiangsi. 20th August 1933.”
*
Two funerals.
The Gui Ji Li Bai Tang, the Shanghai Community Church, sat on the Henshang Road. A splinter of Christianity, into the soft thigh of foreign gods and their eastern prophets.
A difficult thing to enter a church, for a faithful member of the Party that describes itself as, ‘more important than God’. Almost an impossibility. The rule still on the Party’s statute books, that citizens who have a religious belief are not permitted to join the Party. Red star of the People’s Republic eclipsing all.
*
A small ante-room, tucked away in the bowels of the church. A small, nervous congregation. Eyes turning as they entered. An instant smell of incense, covered tracks and secret Gods. The priest’s words faltering, stalling. Eyes falling on the stars burning on epaulettes and the brass-buttoned tunic. Piao sitting, nodding, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, continuing. Words veined with unease across a makeshift altar; a white embroidered cloth covering the splintered table.
“This isn’t right, Boss.”
“Try to reshape your foot to fit into a new shoe. It is religion, nothing more than religion.”
A woman dressed completely in black at the very front of the congregation leaving her seat. A hurried walk toward the rear of the room, toward the Senior Investigator and the Big Man. Only raising her face as she was almost upon them; the features of a bird caught up in an almost invisible net. A recognition in each other’s eyes, need and duty, drawing them as opposite poles of magnets. Automatically Piao opening the door. The woman passing between them. Her smell of dried tears and mothballs. Following her. Waiting, the woman, un
til the doors had swung fully closed before she spat. From the back of her throat with heart and soul. Hot, bitter spittle, across the Senior Investigator’s face in ginger and garlic venom. Yaobang thrusting himself forward between them. Paw of a hand on the woman’s shoulder, breaching the bounds of familiarity. All now possible.
“Enough.”
The Senior Investigator stepping forward, cuff across warm spit, across his face.
“She does not spit at me. She does not know me. She spits at the uniform, the Party, the star of the People’s Republic. She spits at the murderer of her daughter. And these things deserve to be spat at. Is that not so, Madam? You and your husband, the Comrade Scientist, you have been ill-treated, forgotten. No messages of sympathy, no support. Your daughter’s death and now your husband’s ill-health, an embarrassment to those in authority.”
Tears down her wasted cheeks.
“No explanation of why life no longer possesses your beloved daughter. Twenty-one years of caring for her, loving her. It is a lifetime, a lifetime. No explanation of why your husband, the Comrade Scientist, was not protected from the threats that he received regarding your daughter’s wellbeing. And now he also falters, struck down by loss and ill-health.”
The woman, once a mother, falling forward, hands on each of Piao’s shoulders.
“A letter of condolence from his superior officer. But nothing about finding her murderer.”
Her eyes looking up to Piao’s, tears and questions brimming.
“A mother, a wife, she needs to know such things. My husband, he fulfilled his duty and now we have no daughter.”
Her hot tears through his shirt to his skin. So many tears, so many sadnesses. How many more before they diluted him completely?
“A Mass for my daughter. Prayers for my poor, ill husband. Can this be right?”
“No mama, this is not right. But we are here to investigate her death. To avenge her.”
“No, no.”