by Andy Oakes
“Shit, and are these yuan, Boss?”
A nod.
“That many yuan, it’s got to be drugs, Boss. Only drugs would generate such income. That’s what our tai zi’s up to. Some war with another drugs’ cartel. What do you think, Boss?”
“Perhaps. Such a PLA would have access to a network that covered the whole of the People’s Republic. Transport. Distribution.”
Tapping the monitor screen with his nail.
“This also …”
The only other complete name. The only other junction where substantial amounts of yuan were being absorbed. Page after virtual page, the same name repeating. Drawing the eye, as the needle to the spittle-spiked end of the thread.
“Kanatjan Pasechnik. A Russian comrade, I would imagine.”
“Perhaps he likes the particular cocaine that our PLA is fucking providing, Boss?”
Piao, tapping the monitor screen.
“Citizen One and this Russian comrade, I want to know them as intimately as you know the inside of one of Mama Lau’s dumplings.”
“Sure, Boss.”
“This file, it is important. I think that this is a bridge that Colonel Qi has failed to dismantle shortly after crossing it. We cannot afford a mistake. Ring Ow-Yang, he will talk me through it.”
“Anything else, Boss?”
“Yes, I want you to get me lists. Lists of everyone of the highest cadre who make up the following bodies: foreign legations, the Central Political Bureau, the Central Secretariat, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. I want lists of all the most powerful committees in the Republic. Like the bastards that telexed for our comrade PLA’s release from the fen-chu.”
Writing notes on the meat of his palm, the Big Man. Tucking the biro into the pocket of his stained shirt.
“Don’t tell me, Boss, a hunch. It’s going to fucking cost.”
“I know. ‘At least two bottles of Teacher’s whisky. Maybe even a few packs of Marlboro thrown in.’ And then, somehow, we are going to dismantle this equipment and tomorrow set it up in the hospital. In the Wizard’s room.”
“Shit, Boss. We’re really going to take this computer all apart and put it fucking back together again …”
A nod.
“And then you can help me pack a box.”
“Why a box?”
“We need to become invisible from the tai zi, and from his PLA thugs.”
“Sure, Boss. You know I’m working on it.”
“You said that your cousins would provide transport for us? And a place for us to operate from and to sleep?”
“Sure, Boss. Next week.”
“Can they be persuaded to bring this forward?”
“Probably, Boss. But why?”
“I have noticed that my cut-throat razor has gone missing. I believe that this was what was used on the Wizard. When you go to the fen-chu submit a report about it being missing, so that it is on the record.”
The Senior Investigator’s eyes drifting to the sodden dull brown carpet at his feet.
“Your cousins, I would like to go there tonight, late. This flat has suddenly lost its affection in my heart.”
*
Late. Too late to sleep. Too early not to sleep.
Piao walking from the bathroom, drips of cold water with every footfall. Pulling on a fresh, clean shirt, identical to the last. Noticing that the inside of the cuffs and his shirt collar were still grey. No matter how he scrubbed them, they were never clean. As if his soul, soiled, was bleeding dirt through the pores of his skin in an attempt to purge itself.
Picking up a cardboard box. On its scuffed, stained sides, huge yellow inked Spanish suns blazing over green inked hills, trees bent with orange inked Satsumas. A pang, no name to it, just the constant sense of being on the outside, looking in, of being on the inside looking out. But never quite with anybody else present, as if life was going on in sweet parade, but without him.
Packing the box, and something about the slow parade of this process honing his thoughts, sharpening his perceptions about his life. Clothes, precisely folding them and placing them into the box still smelling of Satsumas. Still smelling of Spain. Sparse toiletries. A razor. A book, the Shijing, ‘The Book of Songs’. But only half full, the box, like his life. On top of these, a spare pistol, an old Soviet Makarov PM. Two clips and a worn holster. His documents of authority. A diary. A pen. But still only half full the box. Finally placing the carefully wrapped frame in amongst the fold of his clothes; a press of grey crescent-collared and cuffed shirts. Within the frame, a photograph. A woman, sable fan of fine hair. A wife lost in time, a lover lost in a cold cadre’s embrace.
For a while, longer than he imagined, standing at the window viewing the lives that others lead. From the long, through the gap between window and worn frame, steam carrying the aroma of noodles, anointed with garlic and ginger … a marriage arranged in heaven. Only pulled from his trance by a tired footfall from the kitchen.
“Ready to go, Boss. The cousins will be waiting.”
Sealing the box quickly, feeling pain that his life was so meagre, that it could be sealed in a small box that had once held Satsumas from Spain.
“Yes. I am ready.”
Piao picked up the box and walked out of the room without looking back, toward the stairs to the long, where others lived out their lives.
Chapter 32
THE HAPPY SMILE BAKERY, LONGHUALU.
From the river, warehouse skirted, the scars of commerce. A million ships that had berthed, delivering cargoes, loading cargoes: pork bellies, spices, iron, herbs, silk, the products from ten thousand factories. But the warehouses now empty. Where dockers once laboured, now an internet café and a cluster of chromed ‘birds of a feather’ retail outlets. Where the People’s Republic’s wealth hung on the crane’s jib, the pallet’s load … now a Coffee Republic; fifty different versions of the frothy brew. On their pastel walls, mezzotints and sepia prints, of what work once looked like and how lives were once lived in this place.
And behind the cracked brick walls and windows too dirty to see through, where the river lapped exhausted and stinking, the Happy Smile Bakery. Day and night, the aroma of mooncakes baking, cutting through the smell of Latin beans roasting and the Cologned dabs of western dreams. 15,000 mooncakes.
*
A tour and a chipped mug full of Dukang. Fire and flour, brown sugared lips. Moving through the process of a mooncake’s conception, birth and life.
Brown sacks of flour, white sacks of sugar and salt. On a stainless steel bench close by, so many eggs, so much lard. Two industrial mixers, one churning the ingredients to form the smooth water-shortening dough, the other, the flaky dough. Their contents flushed out onto separate floured tables. A fist of flaky dough, wrapped into a fist of water-shortening dough. A cousin at each end of a huge rolling pin, rolling. Flour floating through air, onto faces and muscled arms. The continents of dough folded three times, before being rolled out again. Flour in a cloud over high strung dim bulbs. Panels of dough slipped from one bench to the next. A cousin at each end of a hoist. A hundred 3´´ cutters lowering, pressing through three layered dough blanks. Re-hoisted. Remnant dough, in strung equilateral triangles, pulled aside. A hundred snowed disks slid onto the next bench. Beside it against the walls, puffing, panting … peanuts roasting. Chestnuts boiling until tender. Almonds blanching. Sesame seeds roasting, popping. Red Azuki beans, soaked for two hours, now boiled, shedding their coats. Strained in cheesecloth, cooked in sugar, oil. Aromas cloying in toffeed sugar. Your clothes and skin, smelling of almonds, sesame, apricot, sugar as brown as river mud. A disk of dough in floured fingers, pushed deeply into mooncake moulds. A handful of filling into the heart of each: perhaps blood red Azuki bean, apricot, walnut, sultana, poppy seed, roast sesame and brown sugar. Edges wet, another disk of dough pushed in place as a lid. Each mould knocked on the side of the stainless steel bench. Inverted. The mould slipping away. A stamp, a traditional chrysanthemum design, dipped into a r
ed wash of colour. Stamped deeply into the dough. Bleeding to its edges. Beaten egg and sesame oil anointed. Baking sheets of a hundred mooncakes moving down the benches, like little children going to school. A sweat on the filled dough as the oven doors are opened. Mouth hell hot. Ovens that had not been turned off, except for urgent maintenance, for over twenty-two years. 350 degrees for twenty minutes. Until golden, golden brown. 15,000 mooncakes.
*
The same hybrid dream for three nights. Each dream, a little clearer, night by night.
In one of the main wards of Ankang, a horseshoe of parchment pale faces. Rolled, marble white eyes and dribbled-down shirt fronts. A doctor and a nurse also standing in the space; beside them, a large electrical appliance with switches, a numbered dial, and heavy wires in umbilical snakings across the floor. Beside them a stainless steel cot, strapped to its quicksilver framework, a patient with a paper-white face. Fine acupuncture needles removed from delicate paper sheathes and carefully affixed to rubber holders at the ends of the wires. Applied with deep twists into the patient’s temples, the taiyang points. The doctor, wire rim spectacled, black rubber gloved, between rubber forefinger and thumb, the heavily engraved knob; twisting it to its first point, until it met resistance. A hum of electricity, and even in REM’s grip, a taste, a smell of burning. Instantly, a place beyond pain. Bucking with the electricity’s razored jolt, the patient. His spine arching, legs kicking, arms bracing beyond limits, and a scream, as a scream was never heard before. As sharp, as seamless as an oxy-acetylene torch’s flame. The doctor turning, and shouting at the inmates. Slapping his hands at them. Pointing at them. The other hand, the knob, twisting … past the first level of resistance. And the patient screaming, and the inmates backing away, some crying, others throwing up.
And in the darkness of a place that he didn’t know, Piao waking, the torture within him. The ‘Electric Ant’s’ crawl across him. Screaming with the victim; into a perfumed night, until sleep claimed him once more.
*
Cold the early hours of the morning. Colder than Piao had known for a long time. A sleeping bag with a half-full sack of rice flour as a pillow. Only the distant ovens, with their whispers of hot breath, keeping him from freezing.
Finally rising, dream’s residue still in the corners of his eyes, still haunting his memory. Taking a crisp report from the cardboard box of his belongings. A report printed from the CD-Rom that the Wizard had handed to him before.
Moving through the rear door of the bakery and onto the pier. A mooncake in his other hand. The sun struggling to rise through cracked windows, to a sky still regretting that night had slipped its mooring. Sitting on the pier’s very edge with the unzipped sleeping bag wrapped around him. The smells: shit and mooncakes. The sounds: water lazed lappings and distant traffic. An aged tug groaning its heavy laden tanker into a deep water berth down river. Against the backdrop of the sable chiselled river, the shock of the report’s pristine papered whiteness.
PEKING UNIVERSITY … Central Offices
Medical report – No. 634437893
Student Name – Zhong Qi
Page one and two, general details. Family blood line, family medical details, record of inoculations. Childhood, details of height, weight progression, illnesses. Only on page three, references to his birth deformity. Cleft palate, harelip. Page four, detailed hospital notes from his birth to the present. As the years progressed, the notes becoming more frequent, more alarming.
‘The patient is suffering from a form of Sleep Apnea. An Apnea index in excess of 100 events an hour has been recorded, and it is strongly recommended that the child be monitored throughout the entire night. The child must be considered to be at severe risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Oxygen in the bloodstream has fallen to critical levels due to prolonged periods of not breathing during sleeping hours. Pulse oximetry has shown readings at these times of only 55% oxygen saturation. This has led to irregular heartbeats and heart failure. On four occasions to date, the child has needed to be manually resuscitated.’
A letter from the People’s Number 1 Hospital, after years of study, medicines, countless doctor’s appointments and specialist consultations.
‘A diagnosis of Sleep Apnea has been arrived at. Whether this is central or obstructive Sleep Apnea remains a mystery. However, corrective surgery must be seen as the best way forward. Uvuolpalatopharyngoplasty is suggested. Excess tissue will be removed from the back of the throat. Tonsils and adenoids will also be removed.’
The operation, a failure, more extreme surgery considered.
‘The patient, a healthy young comrade in every other regard, continues to suffer in excess of 100 events every hour, which must be considered to be an extreme form of Apnea. This is causing major desaturations, and cardiac arrhythmias. Surgery to both nose and throat must be regarded to have failed. It is now suggested, with reluctance, that a more extreme surgical procedure be considered to counter this life threatening problem.’
Diagrams of what the surgeon’s hands would perform.
‘Anxiety of family members and hospital staff personnel, and threat to the patient’s life, can be eliminated through a tracheostomy. A tube, temporary at first, to be inserted through an opening in the trachea. It is recommended that the tube be closed, plugged, during waking hours, and only open during sleep so that air bypasses the throat and flows directly into the lungs.’
A letter from the specialist, two months later, in response to one from Qi’s father, the Senior Colonel.
‘Comrade, I regret your decision to veto the proposed surgical procedure planned for your son, Zhong. I understand your concerns, but feel that it is my duty to stress, in the strongest terms possible, the risk to him in not allowing this surgery. He has severe Sleep Apnea. This is not a condition that will correct itself. Indeed, Comrade Senior Colonel Qi, the risk to him might well increase with age. I must emphasise that his is the most critical case that I and my colleagues have ever recorded.’
A distant moan from a tug struggling against the turn of the tide. A mournful sound as that of a father for a desperately ill son. Piao pulling the sleeping bag around himself. Last words read. A shiver running through him.
‘The patient, your son, must be considered to be at such risk that if he sleeps for two hours or more un-monitored, death will surely follow. I pray to the ancestors, Comrade Senior Colonel, that you have made the correct decision.’
Walking back into the bakery, the Senior Investigator, exhaustion, a heavy yoke upon him. Pulling his bed against the oven wall, zipping the sleeping bag around himself. An hour’s sleep might drive the chill of the night from him, still harboured in the marrow of his bones. An hour’s sleep might drive the sound of a still remembered scream from his inner ear.
An hour’s sleep, but it would not still the alarm that he remembered shrieking from the large watch permanently strapped to the tai zi, Zhong Qi’s wrist. Every two hours, its voice calling …
‘Awaken Comrade, your life waits – awaken, or it will pass you by.’
*
“What do you think, Boss?”
Half a dozen wrenches of the key to resuscitate the Liberation truck into half-life. Pulling out of the depot of the Happy Smile Bakery amidst a pall of silver-grey smoke. A half-cousin of the Big Man heaving the gate open. A smile of broken teeth that would make any dentist weep. Traffic horn blaring as the truck forced itself into Longhualu, skirting the pagoda and shaving the swerve of the Huangpu.
“Thought we could do with a little anonymity, Boss.”
“And this is anonymous, a truck with ‘The Happy Smile Bakery’ scrawled across its sides? Anonymous is a battered Shanghai Sedan which we already had. It might have been better just changing the Sedan’s plates.”
Moving onto the junction with Zhongshannanlu and Ruijinglu, travelling north. Braking, accelerating, clutch slipping, a yelp of gears not meshing, the Liberation truck jolting violently. Wrestling with the stick, the Big Man. Pumping the gas. The sou
nd of wooden trays jostling for position in the back. Piao lighting a Panda Brand, staring over his shoulder into the gloom of the Liberation truck’s interior.
“What is in all the pallets and trays in the rear?”
“Cakes, of course.”
“Cakes?”
The Big Man stretching behind him, pushing the cotton sheeting aside and reaching into one of the wooden trays.
“Fucking mooncakes. Best in the old French Concession. The cousins make 15,000 a night.”
“Yes, I did notice.”
Tossing one onto the Senior Investigator’s lap. Biting into another. A hole in the moon.
“But what are they doing in the back of a truck that we are using as our only transport?”
A bite across Clavius, another bite transecting Copernicus.
“That’s the deal, Boss. We get the truck for the job. My half-cousin gets his cakes delivered. Everybody fucking wins.”
Piao nibbling around the moon.
“Yes, everybody wins.”
Watching the traffic scrape into Shimenlu. Through gaps in the metal river, glimpses of the People’s Square. Soldiers in precise marches readying themselves for the Festival of the People’s Army of Liberation. Waves of olive green, breaking on a stone shore.
“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one.”
*
Cobblestones, web ripped shadows, buildings frayed with age and neglect, as if this desolate part of the city was no longer possessed of life and was fading away by the second. Along with it, its history and those who had sweated it into existence.
Neon tainting mist up ahead. A fluorescent sign buzzing with the fury of a wasp imprisoned in a bottle.
“This is it.”
SPARKICE.
Parking out of view on a wharf dock cracked by ten thousand cargo loads. In mist, lighting cigarettes, Yaobang pushing open the scraped and dented doors, and the music’s blunted decibels, hitting them mid-chest and seeming to reverberate through their bodies. Aware only of the raw rock music, of black leather, lank hair over the eyes of rows of emaciated youthful bodies in sway to indecipherable lyrics, strapped to a machine riff.