Citizen One (44 page)

The day is dying, and so are you. You witness it in the sickness that surrounds your heart, the fever that holds your brain in its grasp. You witness it in the fact that you cannot recall a life beyond where you now labour, that you cannot now remember the
long
that you lived in for fifteen years, just the bright wired perimeters of this hell. And the loosely-linked chains of prisoners, beaten from the fields to the pot-holed tarmac road, still sticky from the sun’s hot breath.

Every inch of this place, now tattooed within you, and in the welt’s stings across your shoulders. The names that you have given to each accommodation block. Mao, Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai. Corrugated roofed. Burning, grilling you in midday’s onslaught. Chilling, freezing you in midnight’s open-handed slap.

Each mark on every brick of your cell. The beetle, black silk-backed, that manoeuvres across the floor and into your waiting hand every night. The footprint of a labourer’s boot who built this place, in the concrete cold floor … your fingers tracing each free run of its ridged sole. Each as intimately known as a lover’s lips. Every inch of this place known, except for the low building separated from the rest of the complex. The furthest building always in shadow, from which without even being told, eyes are always averted.

*

“Old man. Old man …”

Asleep. The old papa’s mouth open, as a cave. His few teeth like stalactites. Asleep, but Piao,
lao gai
number F8932976886, asking anyway. Perhaps because a part of him not wanting an answer.

“The building. The low building. What is it ?”

And no answer coming. The black silky-back beetle crawling to freedom from the bars of his fingers as sleep ensnares.

Freedom …

*

A morning as all others. Woken to a beating, the bamboo cane across the soles of your feet. Scrapings of rice from the bottom of the pot. Water the colour and taste of rust.

A morning as all others. A wash, naked under the stand-pipes, as the guards mock your body and your manhood.

“Your women, better off without such small cocks.”

Trying to cover yourself, but all that you are and have ever been, open to their scrutiny and jibes.

Duty rotas read aloud. Prisoners falling, beaten into line. Marching through dust to the paddy beyond the low building. A smile from the old man. Paddy water will have grasses growing beside it that can be eaten, and carp within its mud-clouded waters, common and mirror carp. Silver shrug as rough hands reach out to grab it, snag it from its world. Almost tasting its flesh. Piao smiling back.

A morning as all others. Hours bent, until unable to straighten yourself. The sun’s merciless ride across your shoulders until sweat running from the tip of your nose and into greater body of the paddy water, until there was none left to drip.

And from a distant billet a chain of prisoners with no energy to run or to escape. No will, just marching, dead-eyed. All with the same shirt sleeve rolled up past the elbow. From the low building in sickly shadow, double doors opening. Inside, just visible, pristine, white-coated personnel, spectacles glinting in the white sun. The chain of prisoners lost to sight. Double doors pulled shut. Locked. Red dust falling back to red dust.

From the corner of cracked, dry lips.

“What is this place, old man? What is it?”

Looking away, the papa, a life spent watching for shadows. Fearing the hand on the shoulder, the knock on midnight’s door.

“It is our shame.”

“But what shame? Our People’s Republic, it has many.”

Paddy water falling to olive, with the eclipsing shadows of the
lao gai
guards. And through the corner of his lips, a whisper.

“Tonight, tonight we eat carp.”

Smiling as he pointed to his open shirt. Mirror-scaled fish-tail of a carp slipping inside the front of his trousers.

“And tonight, I tell you of our greatest shame.”

*

The candle was hidden behind a hollowed out half-brick in the wall. Matches slipped between the flaking concrete of the sleeping plinth and its steel foundations. A strip of rusty steel mesh, under a loose floor tile. Dull-eyed stare … the carp gutted with teeth and bare fingers. What could not be eaten, let loose from the barred window. By morning the lean rats would leave no evidence.

Linen jacket wedged into the gap between floor and cell door would mask the smells of cooking. Smells to remind you of a home that you once had and of a life once lived. The old man pulling small slivers of anaemic carp flesh from the ivory bone and placing the pieces on the steel mesh over the burning candle. Across the carp fine shoots of river grass. Placed precisely, gently, as if stroking a young girl’s hair.

“The art is in cooking the flesh completely through. A dirty fish the carp. It feeds on slime, shit.”

Gently prodding the fish.

“But not to cook it too much.”

Gently manoeuvring the candle.

“Things have a way of telling you that they are ready. Like a woman. “See?”

Curling, the grass.

“It beckons to you.”

Pulling Piao closer.

“And it speaks to you. Hear?”

A fine sizzle and an aroma bringing tears to his eyes.

“Hear? Of course you hear. Eat me, it’s saying. Eat me.”

Brown juice and a sliver of carp across the tip of the old papa’s finger and onto Piao’s tongue.

“Good, eh? Of course good. The best you have ever tasted.”

Eyes closed. A taste, as if never tasted before, as if life, and the countryside that fed it, had all come together in that instant. And within it, a fingerprint of the old man’s sweat … the old man’s life.

“Yes. The best that I have ever tasted.”

Smiling, the papa. Carp to his fingers, to his lips and to his tongue. Smiling again.

“Eat. We might not be on the paddy field rota for weeks, months.”

Piao, his fingers teasing the carp from the steel. Flesh, branded in mesh diamonds. For many minutes just eating. The thought of words, a violation. Their mouthing, a sacrilege. Only when the old papa burped, wiping his chin of the carp’s juices, did Piao feel that he had been given licence to talk.

“Tell me of the shame, old man? Tell me of our greatest shame?”

“They come for you. Take you, four at a time. Always four.”

Moving the fish around on the mesh.

“You always know it will be you, that’s the worst of it. He comes a day, two days before. He takes your measurements. Height. Weight. Callipers, checking your fat levels. Fat levels. More flesh on this carp than on any of us. Blood tests also. Rarely he rejects you. Rarely. I have been lucky so far. Thank the ancestors.”

Spitting to the floor. Coughing.

“Too old for him. Too ill. Too near meeting the ancestors, I suppose.”

Piao, taking carp from the mesh and feeding it to the old papa.

“That place, it is not a hospital. A hospital releases those that it cures. But no one that walks through those doors ever returns, do they, Comrade? No one is ever cured.”

His eyes meeting Piao’s.

“Cured?”

Laughing with the gums of a baby.

“Perhaps they are cured, Young Comrade. Death after a life such as this could be seen as a cure.”

Blowing out the candle, the old man. The light, fading from his eyes.

“Such shame in that place. Our greatest shame.”

“What is this greatest shame, old papa? That it is a place in which to die?”

One by one, licking his fingers the daddy, until they glistened.

“You have much to learn, Young Comrade.”

The rough blanket pulled over his emaciated shoulders.

“Did you not know? There are worse things in life than death.”

*

They came for the old papa at night, a day later. Still in their mouths, the taste of carp and young river grass.

Piao, moving forward, but beaten back. Forward again. The bamboo cane’s kiss across his cheek. A welt from the corner of his eye crossing his mouth to his chin, in a raw red warning of silence. With all of his might, pushing against the guard’s strength. Too weak to help. Watching as they pulled the old papa from the cell, his eyes wide with fear. Toes dragged over concrete and dust. Watching his tears fall silently. The old man’s lips in a soundless chatter. In the corridor more guards, and moving from the shadow into the light, a tall figure. His smell of complex things, of medical things and dead things, but flooded in an overpowering odour of red roses. Soap of red, red roses. The old papa, resigned; no energy, no will to fight the callipers’ pinch, the measuring, the weighing. The list of medical questions, answers demanded and given in a faltering voice. The tall man, his Chinese clumsy. A nod, and last words.

“Bring him, and the others.”

Piao, face to bars, watching them move down the corridor, and only as they were almost lost to the night, Piao able to find the words, baptised in blood as sweet as Shaoxing rice wine. Shouting, its echo rebounding.

“Pasechnik. Kanatjan Pasechnik.”

The Russian turning, moving back down the corridor with a steady footfall. Eyes to eyes with Piao, through the rusted bars of the cell door. Then the Russian smiling. His finger pointing.

“You. I have been told about you, Senior Investigator.”

Moving from the bars with purpose and back down the corridor toward the night.

“Do not fret, Senior Investigator. I shall return for you in precisely seven days, and you shall be my guest. My very special guest, I promise. And I never break a promise.”

And at that moment, a decision made. Not to struggle in futile resistance, but like a video camera, to record all. To label each scream, number each beating, catalogue each abuse, until one day those who perpetrated these acts stood bound in justice’s harsh dock.

‘Communism is not love.

Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy’.

The Great Helmsman

And on the seventh day
…

Sour, medicated air. A room, harshly white. Pegs on one wall, hanging from them like anorexic bodies, full length visored suits, strung with the piping and gauges for their own independent breathing units.

A room leading from that room. The walls and floor tiled. Large shower cubicles, heavily rubber curtained. A collection of large scrubbing brushes and disinfectants in prime colours. On another wall, behind bright glass cabinets, sharp and shiny medical instruments, beside them a large refrigerator set into steel. Also set into steel, a large rubber sealed door with a triple glazed window and bordered by complex gauges and a CCTV monitor screens. Grey, protective-suited figures moving around grey iron beds encased in thick plastic tents.

Piao, his fevered brow against the window’s cold glass in a smearing of perspiration.

“What is this place?”

Pasechnik, the Russian, beyond the broad khaki shoulders of the guards, beyond the shadows of their rifles.

“I think that you already know, but let me demonstrate. We are after all, world leaders in this area of research.”

Pale fingers to a control panel set in the wall. Above a distant bed, a CCTV camera slowly arching into position. A stuttered panning over the leadened monitor screen. Stopping, zooming in, focusing. In the anonymity of a middle bed, polythene sheathed, in its sweating shroud, the old papa. Shackled to the steel bedstead. Across his sunken naked body, a pestilence raging. The Senior Investigator, with difficulty, remembering his vow to bear witness, at all costs.

“I have brought you here because I thought that you would like to see the progress that your friend is making.”

A smile, stalking slowly across his features, as a shadow across a wall.

“Days one to three, the pre-eruption phase. A period of flu-like symptoms, punctuated by high fever. Days four to five, the first appearance of papules, ‘elevated bumps’. The first appearance of pustules, ‘bumps containing liquid’.”

The Russian’s voice calm.

“Day six to ten, the papules and pustules phase. The eruptions covering the whole of the body area. Bursting, weeping. The infected patient now highly contagious.”

Then almost with pride.

“There is no known antidote. One in three patients dying of generalized toxaemia, or skin sloughing, or lack of immunity to further infections. This unique strain of smallpox runs its course within two weeks.”

The old papa, his heavy eyelids swollen by pustules, for an instant opening. The fingers of a tethered wrist lightly against the inside of the oxygen tent, in a faint fanning. And then his energy dissipated. Fingers slithering down the inside of the oxygen tent, falling back to the discoloured sheet. His eyes rolling in upon themselves to a secret universe, known to only himself.

“Why?”

“You are an intelligent comrade, Senior Investigator. You already know why. Do you not?”

Piao, knowing that even to say the words was somehow to share the guilt. Yet not to say them was a blasphemous denial.

“Zhong Ma.”

“Very perceptive, Comrade Investigator. But in a few days from now, once I have obtained the necessary authorisation, you to will complete the tour of this facility and will take those words to your maker …”

Smiling, the Russian.

“An authorisation that I very much look forward to receiving.”

Inarticulate grunts from an empty mouth, over
Dukang
glistening lips. Spinning in the Wizard’s fingers, a silver disc. A deep breath. Pushing the CD-Rom deeply into the drive. A series of clicks. Back door manoeuvres. Hacking protocols. Qi’s PC, its files open, accessible.

The Wizard sucking the straw deeply, warm
Dukang
swimming to his throat. Tongue-less words swimming out and gagged words aimed at the monitor’s scroll. A constant grunting commentary. But in his own head sparkling words, cool and beautiful words. Perfectly formed and delivered.

Gagged words of regret as he highlighted whole tracts of data, technical commentaries, field test reports. His finger hovering over the delete button. A mistake, he was sure, but the Big Man had been adamant. A shake of the head. A push of the button. All references to Golden Rice banished.