Citizen One

by Andy Oakes

  “Fuck it. I sail at high tide. I’m away for three months …”

  Draining the glass of Reeb.

  “What’s one death in a family of hundreds?”

  *

  The ‘Celestial Right’ Archaeological Research Vessel.

  Big and Little Yangshan Islands, Hangzhou Bay, 27 kilometres off Shanghai’s southern coast.

  Piao’s head, an internal blackboard. Adding things to his list, changing things, crossing things off. The release of crossing things off. Rising from the bunk and the comforting discomfort of rough blankets to an iron floor shivering with vibration. In the Big Man’s hand a chipped steaming enamel mug of lucha. Refusing it, the Senior Investigator, with a limp wave of the hand. Rising, thinking that fresh air would help up on deck.

  A sky of rain which was reluctant to fall. A chill breeze and clouds the colour of amalgam. But the air not helping. Shivering, sweat across his forehead. Pulling his collar up and sitting on an oil drum, his arms crossed, slumped on rust-blistered rails. His sutured calf, burning like an orange coal. Its pain the only reality in a universe of sea-sickness. Yaobang hauling an oil-stained tarpaulin across the deck, wrapping it around his Boss, Piao nodding his thanks. Looking out to sea across Hangzou Bay, Xiao Yangshan and Da Yangshan Islands, a deeper grey set in grey, biting into the horizon.

  A hand on his shoulder. Bone, thinly veiled with liver-spotted skin.

  “Not a good sailor, young Piao. Like your dear mother.”

  Recognizing the voice. Chieh, Director of the Bureau for the Preservation of Cultural Relics, massaging the Senior Investigator’s shoulder.

  “I took her sailing on the lake, years ago. So many years ago. As sick as a pregnant sow.”

  Laughing.

  “Did I ever tell you, Sun Piao, your mother, the most beautiful girl in Songjiang? How I loved her. But it was not to be.”

  Piao, his head raised just long enough to expel the words, as few as possible.

  “I did not expect you here, Director Chie.”

  “This is my ship, my responsibility. I loan it to you only because I owe you guan-xi for favours that you have performed for my bureau. The return of the ‘Men of Mud’ during your last investigation was much appreciated.”

  A smile illuminating the back of the old man’s eyes. Emperor Jing Di, fifth ruler of the Han Dynasty, the ‘Men of Mud’, his army of terracotta warriors to protect him in the afterlife, always having that effect on all who viewed them.

  “I loaned my bureau’s research vessel to you also because of your dear mother’s friendship.”

  Spreading a handkerchief, then sitting on an oil drum beside the Senior Investigator.

  “And because there is little reason to leave my office nowadays. My work, busy, busy, busy. And, of course, there is my secretary, Miss Lau. Old, but good breasts, firm thighs.”

  Laughing.

  “And there is so much that is new to see, young Piao. You see where the foundations spike? The longest transoceanic bridge in the world will be built there, an eight lane highway spanning these waters. 12 billion yuan creating a thirty-six kilometre long bridge, shortening the journey between the two Yangtze River Delta cities by 120 kilometres. Can you imagine?”

  Pointing toward Big and Little Yangshan Islands.

  “And there, the Yangshan Port Development. The largest port project under construction in the world. Built to deal with our city’s growth rate of 29% a year and to handle the third and fourth generation of cargo ships. It will include a deep water port, where there will be a fifty-two berth container terminal. 18 billion dollars of investment. Amazing. Amazing …”

  Shaking his head.

  “Progress, progress, progress. As long as we do not lose the values of the past. But that is the reason why I exist, Sun Piao. And you. The past …”

  His voice lower.

  “Tell me, young Piao, I have come here to see the sights, but you?”

  Screws reversing. Grey waters blooming with a brown blush. The anchor pinning them firmly to GSP data provided by a sailor for US Dollars that would not even buy the comfort of a decent whore for the night.

  “Why are you here?”

  The Senior Investigator looking up and squinting into the wizened monkey face.

  “Like you, the past. To give honour to that past, Director Chieh, and to give honour to those who lost their future to it.”

  *

  Ritual … of rubber, steel. Rites … of buckles, dials, pipes.

  Dive Marshal’s keen-eyed patrol. Three divers, pre-dive safety checks. The Buoyancy Control Device, weights, releases. Compressed air, 232 Bar. 12 litre tanks at around 25 metres giving around 30 minutes at depth. Air on. Turning the knob all the way, then half a turn back.

  Two divers with a rope attached to a buoy, their forms melting, deeper, bubbles escorting a rope into darkness. 27 metres, securing the rope in place. A small crane swung over the side, its steel cable securing a weighted, holed plastic tray. A live feed video camera in an underwater housing and arc lighting; wires spilling as a loosely coiled spring. Torches, basic tools and rope. The third diver into the water, one hand to the rope, the other to a fiercely beamed torch, following the tray into darkness.

  Piao concentrating on the buoy until there was a shout from the bridge.

  “Live feed’s started.”

  Grey steel bathed in green radar light. Broken monochrome splinters from the small monitor. Oscillations across faces; noses shunted sideways, mouths twisting, untwisting. A face, mask encased. A hand, thumb extended.

  Hongcha laced with Maotai in chipped enamel mugs as Piao watched the divers’ precise ballet. One, in static position, feeding out a rope to a second tethered diver circling around him. Each revolution, a metre fed out in sharp-eyed arc search. The third diver observing, filming. Thirty minutes passing, Piao counting them out. Links in a chain.

  Thirty minutes … nothing. The monitor fading to black, at is centre, a bright star slowly imploding. Piao, limping badly, the first out of the bridge and to the rails as the divers returned for fresh tanks, watching their heads breach waves and their awkward clamber on to the rusted iron. The Dive Marshall replacing tanks, double checking regulators, gauges. Thick bubbled spits onto the insides of face masks.

  By the time that Piao had made it back across the deck and up the ladder to the bridge, the monitor had sparked back into life. Sitting at the back of the bridge closest to the door, his eyes glued to every movement as the minutes ticked by. Nothing.

  Lighting another cigarette, and in its cadmium strike a blur of movement across the monitor.

  “They’ve fucking found something, Boss.”

  The third diver moving forward. The video camera their eyes. Shapes, ill-defined … two divers, rope-tethered. A larger shape looming, beyond that, another. The video camera’s zoom lens following the diver’s pointing finger. The shape filling the lens and the monitor. Chieh, the Captain and some of the crew moving closer, pulling the detail into focus. Something, the briefest shaving of a second, familiar, but unfamiliar, out of context with the bottom of a sea.

  “What was that?”

  Chieh’s spectacles removed, gaze riveted to the Senior Investigator’s eyes. Back to monitor, but the video camera already in swirling freefall. Snatches of stone, flippers, the rippled sea bottom and the diamond diffused sky. A diver’s manic sprint for the surface. Other hands already picking up the camera, following his frantic bubbled flight. The Dive Marshall running for the door, shouting.

  “Call for a helicopter, we need an immediate transfer. There is a Dayang class support and rescue ship in the Port. It has a de-compression chamber.”

  Sliding down the steps, followed by the crew. Running to the rails; a broil of bubbles breaking to the sea’s surface. The diver puncturing the waves like a black leaping dolphin. Life-jacketed bodies in water, hauling him from weightlessness to iron.

  The Captain turning to Piao, his breath, still of hongcha, Maotai laced.

&n
bsp; “The diver, he came up too quickly. He should know better. His lungs could be ruptured. He’ll almost certainly have ‘the bends’.”

  His gaze diverted across the Senior Investigator’s shoulder to the monitor. His irises widening.

  “What is this? Ta ma de, what the fuck is this?”

  Piao already knowing, and not needing to see the eyeless face, the curve of a decomposing cheek, or the black hole of a mouth … a fish emerging from its torn-lipped darkness.

  The Senior Investigator turning away. Only the sound of the sea against their iron oasis and Yaobang’ scorching words on the back of his neck.

  “I think we’ve found what we were fucking looking for, Boss.”

  *

  Only seeing him by the play of cigarette tip’s light, at the bow of the ‘Celestial Right’, black against sea of darkness. Yaobang helping Director Chieh negotiate the deck, the cables, hatchways and tethered cargoes.

  “How are you feeling, Boss?”

  No answer. Piao, eyes to the lost horizon, counting the deep trenched ride of freighters. Only the Director’s bony hand on his shoulder pulling him back to the undulating iron deck.

  “Sun Piao, you should have told us.”

  “How is the diver?”

  The Big Man moving forward, constellations of ships’ running lights, eclipsed. Lighting his cigarette from the Senior Investigator’s.

  “He’s all right, Boss. No permanent damage. Nothing that will get in the way of living a normal life. He was lucky. Maybe just a few nightmares.”

  ‘A normal life, whatever that might be.’

  “Yes, he was very lucky.”

  Director Chieh, moving around to confront him.

  “You should have told us what to expect, Sun Piao. You should have explained the situation when you asked for my support. A diver nearly died and we who have witnessed what is on the bottom of Hangzhou Bay are compromised. You should have been honest with me, Sun Piao. Honesty is the mark of a virtuous man.”

  “Do not talk to me of virtuous men, Director, as yet, beside my Deputy, I have met none.”

  Piao flicking the cigarette butt into the air over the ship’s railing.

  “And as a virtuous man yourself, Director, what would you have done? I would have told my story, given my reasons, talked of those who life no longer possesses, of girls slashed to death and abandoned in the Wusongjiang, murdered and entombed in concrete. Of comrades crucified, tortured …”

  Lighting another cigarette.

  “And you, Director Chieh, you would have apologised. You would have said how busy you were. Your ship, this ship, out of commission, or involved in a major archaeological research project. Our meeting, it would have been erased from your diary. Files, with my contact details, lost in a very deep cabinet. Your secretary briefed, with a water-tight alibi, as to where you were at the time of our supposed meeting.”

  Silence. A deep drag on the China brand.

  “There is no need for embarrassment in this, Director. I, more than anyone, know the game and know how it is to be played. It is a game that we all know and play in this People’s Republic of ours.”

  A hand on the old man’s shoulder.

  “You are a good man, Director Chieh. A good man and a good comrade. But sometimes the two do not go together well. Sometimes they are incompatible. To my personal cost, I know this also to be a truth.”

  “You are right, very right. I am sorry, Sun Piao. We should think of those who life no longer possess. What have we come to? A shadow, and we stay at home peeking out of the corner of our curtains. A stranger looking at us, and we come back to our office and shred documents. What do we do now?”

  Silence. Just the night. Just the sea. No shadows. No strangers.

  “We will play the game that we all play, Director. And we will play it well. Your crew, your divers, they were never here. You will support them in developing solid alibis. You will change all the paperwork relating to this voyage. You have a long arm, Director Chieh, guan-xi will buy the harbour master’s memory. Guan-xi will erase the details that relate to the diver’s transport to the decompression unit and his brief stay in hospital.”

  Piao standing and walking to the rails. The ship’s life flowing in vibration up his legs and centring in his chest.

  “The only copy of the video film that was taken after the diver panicked, you will give it to me. The Global Satellite Positioning data of the bodies in the concrete, you will also give to me.”

  Chieh, following the Senior Investigator, their eyes staring out to the sea and the sky where they met in an invisible weld.

  “You are a magnet that attracts what all other magnets would repel, Sun Piao. What will you do with this information that is as a bullet in a pistol’s chamber aimed at you?”

  Intense pain, achingly hot, firing the sutured wound to his calf. A reminder of life and the living of it, and with it, proof that he still craved its continuance, when at other times he had not.

  “ ‘If you have never done anything evil, you should not be worrying about devils coming to knock on your door’.”

  Refusing to place a hand on the ache in his calf, celebrating its torment.

  “I will knock on their secret doors, Director. And on the doors of those who sponsor them and see how they greet that knock.”

  Chapter 36

  The smell of mooncakes. The smell of night. The smell of nightmares queuing.

  Sitting on the pier. The taste of tea, crow black, and Azuki bean-filling over his tongue. Still night, but a pale lemon rip at the base of the sky, as if the spiked horizon were slowly being gilded.

  “He looked like a ghost, poor bastard. Never thought I’d be fucking sorry for the Wizard, Boss.”

  A silence as long as the night. Just the water’s sluggish lap against pitted stone and wooden pier posts that had no memory of the forests that they had been born to.

  “You asked him?”

  “Sure, Boss. Barely conscious, but I asked him all the same. Made a sort of ‘no’ grunt to each question.”

  “Anything from Qi’s time in England? Data from his time at university there? Officer training school? No. His general life there? Women in his life?”

  The Senior Investigator looking away.

  “Fuck all, Boss. There is nothing else. We have everything that the Wizard could get before, before …”

  “Anything on his life as a Muslim? When he converted, where?”

  “Nothing, Boss, but what the fuck anyway! We have enough to try and stitch together. But nothing makes any sense in this case.”

  The Big Man unzipping his trousers and pissing into the river.

  “I’ve got to get some sleep, Boss. Every night its getting more like trying to catch a flea with a knotted rope.”

  Re-zipping his flies. Walking to the door. A warmth of ovens and the smell of sweat and baking.

  “Shit, nearly forgot …”

  A thick sheath of papers from his inside pocket. Handing them to Piao.

  “Got the telephone records that you wanted. Qi’s mobile and his prefix ‘39’ number. And Boss, do yourself a favour and don’t ask what they fucking cost.”

  *

  Under the light of a torch’s amber beam, Piao reading. Reading until his eyes burned with lack of sleep, his head racing to dates, numbers, names, call durations. Qi’s prefix ‘39’ number, well used, but carefully used. Nothing that snagged or drew recognition. Calls to and from his garrison and from his father, the Senior Colonel, his comrade officers, an aunt in Beijing, and a cousin in Shenyang. Calls to and from his specialist at the People’s Number 1 Hospital.

  Mosaic of data over data. Qi’s mobile telephone records. So many pages of calls, at one point Piao toying with them, and himself; poking them through the gap between the pier’s timbers. A dare in his head. Let them fall … let them drift on the night tide, through the Yellow Sea, to the East China Sea, to Taiwan. Let Taiwan have them.

  And then an urge, sudden and bottomles
s, to sleep. But tossing, turning; finally rising, moving back, out onto the pier. Counting anything countable, to dislodge the traffic jam of data within him. Distant, electric lit office windows, set into Pudong’s spiked towers. Counting distant cars skirting Long Dong Avenue. Counting ships in lazed-lit meander down the Huangpu.

  Walking back into the bakery. His room, a corner of a storage space, his unrolled sleeping bag, bordered by boxes. His life now contained in corrugated cardboard. Without wanting it, at least consciously, her photo still dust covered, in his hand. Why include it in the elements that now made up the time span that was called his life? A finger across sable-fanned hair and the soft curve of cheek bone. Dust grey, into colour. Shaking his head … the very worst bits to be left with, the confusion. Wondering if it had ever happened at all? A life, a wife, a marriage.

  Shaking his head again, but thoughts of her not shaking free. Moving through the door, the oven’s breath upon him. Standing behind the cousins as they baked, sweaty with labour. Standing behind them, their smell of flour, almonds, and honesty. For two hours counting the cakes that they made. Two hours, trying to force her from him. Out of sight, punching a wall. The brickwork, crumbly, embedding itself in his bleeding knuckles. For minutes the freedom that pain brings, but as the blood congealed, the confusion returning and without a pill to blot it or a Tsingtao to drown it.

  Under a work bench, a heavy tool box. Searching through its darkness for something sharp and cutting. A fine bladed knife with a plastic shield and a pair of long nosed pliers. But the blade not to the skin of his wrist. Rolling up his trouser leg. Sitting on a chair, leg braced against the wood of the bench. The knife hovering in shaking fingers above the web sutures binding his flesh in puckered little parcels. A stab of pain, as he cut front, back of the first suture. Slowly, snub-nosed pliers drawing the stitch through the bound flesh. Deeply painful, as if rooted to his heart. Repeating the process, and again. With each sharp snip of catgut, each grudging pull of suture … her face, fading. The sweetness of her last words dissolving. Drawing the last reluctant black spider of suture. A slight tug, blood drop following. Watching as the scarlet followed the stitched valley down his calf. And with it, aware that he was free of her. For a minute? An hour? A year? Could he bear that long without thoughts of her?