Citizen One (21 page)

Gently setting the severed head in the bath. Smoothing down the wild tumble of hair. Windows to the soul, his fingers across the old papa’s eyes. Slipping to the floor, Piao. But his gaze never away from the old vagrant’s face. The forensic team would be on their way. Latex and powder, self-sealing evidence bags and professional detachment. On their way, but at least thirty minutes to sit, wait, watch.

His fist, twice in violent concussion with the bath’s rolled cast-iron top.

“Fuck. Fuck.”

Pain, the purge of righteous pain, partly assuaging the guilt of realizing that he was not mourning the death of a good comrade, but regretting the loss of a witness, the only witness. Fuck the life that his job had foisted upon him. Always the job. He would have cried, cried for the old comrade, cried for himself. But he wasn’t sure how to. The job, a robber of even his tears.

Crows everywhere are equally black
.

Do not leave your daughter alone. Out of your sight. Out of your reach. Out of your influence. Even though a girl might be ‘spilt water’, she has her value.

Dusk to dawn, work her hard in the rock strewn fields. And then there is the housework to finish. And laundry, always laundry.

Your daughter, she could bring a dowry. Perhaps become a concubine of a Party official if she is pretty enough. Gifts, perhaps a car, a small apartment, even if he should smell and show you disrespect, you think of the family and your part in providing for it.

Or perhaps a
yeh-ji
? There are many tourists, much money in their perfumed pockets. Dollars, yen, euros. Again, so much for so little. You do as you are told. You close your eyes, if you should need to. You belong to men for that hour, they own you. For the hours beyond that, you are the property of the family. Yes, a ‘wild pheasant’. Such a daughter could bring you money: crumpled and torn
yuan
by the bucket load.

Do not leave your daughter alone. As you can see a daughter can have much value. Watch her, guard her, or a shadow might peel from a shadow, and steal your daughter into the night.

*

The ‘four olds’. Habits, ideas, customs, beliefs. Mao Zedong wanted to forge a new national Chinese identity, free from the past constraints of the ‘four olds’. His Red Guards eradicating other ‘olds’: prostitution, concubinage, bride selling, slavery. All abolished. But time passes. Not only in the movement of hands around a clock face, but also in the hearts, the minds of the people. Time passes. Now two Chinese schoolchildren in every four have never even heard of Mao. Show his face on a mug, a badge, a grainy monochrome print, and they blink at you.

‘From the Red East rises the sun,

There appears Mao Zedong.’

Time passes. A blink. New economic incentives arrive. New laws come into being.

Go to the poor areas, not the spikes of hotels looking over the Bund. Not the chrome, the neon and Aramis smelling bars around the riverfronts. Go to Guizhou province. Thirty-seven million souls trying to scratch a living. The Miao, Dong, Bai, Shui, Yi, Bouyei. The patches of soil between the craggy high karst formations, dirt between toes, being worked to provide for so many ‘stomachs with two hands attached’. Go to the poor areas. The ‘four olds’ are the ‘four news’. Having cash, and one less ‘stomach with two hands attached’ is a tempting inducement to sell one’s daughter as a bride, as a prostitute, as a slave.

Go to the poor areas. Not a street or
long
in them that does not know of a girl being stolen. Taken as she made her way to the market, to the next town or to the house of a grandparent. Transported beyond the mountains that seem to obstruct every exit from Guizhou. Taken to be a bride for 8,000
yuan
, a slave for 10,000
yuan
. A prostitute, now that comes a little more expensive. She will work long and hard for you. And when the tourists have gone home in their silver jets, back to their prune-mouthed wives. And when the migrant workers have no
yuan
… she will bring you cigarettes. A half a pack for a hand-job. A full pack for a suck-off. No shortage of takers. Never a shortage of takers. You shall live well with such a daughter, with such a whore as this to work for you.

*

In one year alone 110,000 women found by the authorities and returned home. In the small town of Zunyi, where Mao established his vice-like grip on the Communist Party in the 1930s, 84 women freed from a gang that had abducted them. The gang leaders executed. How many, you think, would have known the Great Helmsman’s words about the equality of women on the new shining path of the People’s Republic?

‘Women hold up half the sky …’

In one year alone, 1999, 1,800 stolen children returned to their families.

In one year alone, 2003, 13,000 rescued children, and this, from a central government reluctant to even acknowledge the problem. The poverty stricken province of Guizhou, never known for exporting anything of note, now known as the centre of the kidnapping industry.

Do not leave your daughter alone. ‘Spilt water’, hard to find once they are in the hostess bars of Hong Kong, the brothels of Shanghai. Hard to find. One whore looks like another. Ask any PSB Chief. They will be unanimous in what they say and how they say it.

‘Crows everywhere are equally black’.

Four reports. One tape
…

Xunhuacha
, rose petal tea, tasting of plums fallen to ground and late afternoon rains. Another cup, then another. Spread out before him, four reports, four young women, three dead, one still living. But all mapped by the
tai zi’s
cut-throat glide.

Piao looking for what things have in common. Sometimes small things, but big in consequence.

One prostitute, Lan Li, and three other girls anything but. Expensive, private educations. Good students, good girls with nothing in their lives of the alley’s shadow. Nothing that should have drawn the attention of the PLA
tai zis
to them.

Dates and places of birth, different. No shared schools, neighbourhoods, friends or colleagues. No shared interests or political history. All had been members of the Party’s Youth League, but in different cities or neighbourhoods. All good communist girls who would have made Mao’s red lips smile.

Shaking his head.

Another cup of
xunhuacha
, another China Brand. Reading until his eyes bled with the need of sleep. But not wanting to sleep. Knowing that there would be something here that would hint of links. Something here that had drawn a
tai zi’s
blade to their soft skin.

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.”

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.