The Corpse Reader (16 page)

Limping along backstreets, Cí cursed his bad luck and worried about Third. With the Great Pharmacy no longer an option, he had to find a private herbalist, and the medicine would be expensive. He stopped at the first he came upon. The counter was cluttered with dried roots and leaves, mushrooms and seeds, chopped-up vines and stalks, and minerals, but there were no customers. Although the shop was empty, the two owners barely acknowledged Cí. He asked if they had any of the medicine, and the men whispered to each other before telling him—at some length—how scarce that particular root had become recently. It came as no surprise to Cí when they claimed that the price had gone up to 800
qián
for a handful.

He tried bartering. All he had was the 100
qián
from the old professor. He showed them his money.

“I don’t need a whole handful. A quarter’s enough.”

“That will be two hundred, then,” said one of the owners. “And here,” he added, pointing at the coins, “I see only a hundred.”

“It’s all I have.” He looked disdainfully around the run-down shop, as if to suggest business clearly wasn’t very good. “It’s better than nothing!”

They didn’t look impressed.

“And bear in mind I could get it for free at the Great Pharmacy,” said Cí.

“Look,” said one of men as he began to put the medicine away. “Do you honestly think we haven’t heard it all before? If you could’ve got it for less, you would have. It’s two hundred
qián
, or you can go back under whichever rock you crawled out from.”

Cí took off his sandals.

“They’re good leather, you could get at least a hundred
qián
for them. Really, it’s all I have.”

“Do we look in need of footwear? Go on, get out!”

Cí thought about grabbing the medicine and running, but he knew the wound to his leg would make that impossible. Leaving the shop, he wondered how things could possibly get any worse.

It was the same story at the other herbalists he visited. The last, a godforsaken place near one of the city gates, tried to sell him some powdered bamboo. But he’d bought Third’s medicine so many times before that its sticky texture and bitter taste were unmistakable to him; he dipped a finger and knew immediately that the owners were cheating him. He managed to get his money back but then had to flee because the owners, cunningly, tried to accuse him of breaking the sale agreement.

Not knowing what else to do, he spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find work—even though he knew he’d probably be paid only in rice. He went to all the nearby stalls asking for a job, but seeing how worn-out he looked and the way he was limping, no one was even remotely interested. He went to several of the smaller jetties, but they were crowded with people clamoring for jobs.

He asked anyone he could for work, and said he was willing to do anything, but no one listened. All the while, he knew, Third would be deteriorating.

He became so desperate it seemed difficult to breathe. He thought of stealing, or even selling his body down by the canal bridges like other paupers did—but for that, he’d need connections with the gangs.

He sat on the sidewalk and tried to pull himself together. Looking up, he spotted the fortune-teller who had tried to sell Third the candy. He still wore the donkey skin but had swapped his stool for a small stage on which he now stood, offering people a chance to win some money. A small crowd was gathering, and Cí, though extremely skeptical of such displays, drifted over.

The fortune-teller had quite a setup. On a table behind the stage lay a huge assortment of knickknacks and trinkets: old turtle shells used for fortune-telling, badly painted clay Buddhas, cheap paper fans, kites, rings, belts, sandals, incense, old coins, lanterns, spiders, and snake skeletons. It looked to Cí as if someone had spilled a bag of the strangest trash on the table and was trying to sell it off. But he couldn’t imagine the pile of junk was what was attracting the crowd.

As Cí came a little closer, it became clear.

The fortune-teller had set up a cricket race: a table with a maze of concentric marks on it, and six channels, each painted a different color, each ending at the mound of sugar in the center of the table. Bets were being laid on which of the crickets would reach the center first. The citizens of Lin’an loved to bet.

Cí pushed his way to the front just as the fortune-teller was announcing the last chance to bet, egging on the crowd.

“Come on! Money to be won! Your chance to escape your misery and your poverty! Win, imagine it, and you’ll have so much money you can marry the woman of your dreams—or go out whoring instead!”

The mention of flesh prompted a few more bets. The crickets waited in their boxes, each daubed on the back with paint matching the colors of the channels.

“Is that it? No one else has the balls to challenge me? Bunch of cowards! Afraid of my old cricket? Fine…I’m feeling
crazy
today!” The fortune-teller picked up his cricket, which was marked with yellow paint, and pulled off one of its front legs. Then he put the insect down in the labyrinth so everyone could see it stumble around. “What about now?” he cried.

A few people found this to be sufficient proof that the fortune-teller had in fact lost his mind, and they raised their bets. He knew it was a bad idea, but Cí was also seriously considering betting. All he could think about was getting enough money for Third’s medicine.

The bets were about to close when Cí slammed his money down.

“A hundred
qián
! Eight to one.”

And may fortune protect me.

“Betting closed! Stand away!”

The fortune-teller placed the six crickets at their respective gates and checked to make sure the silk netting that prevented the insects from hopping away was secure.

“Ready?” asked the fortune-teller.

“Ready yourself?” echoed one man. “My red cricket’s going to
destroy
yours.”

The fortune-teller struck a gong and lifted the gates. The crickets hurried into their respective channels—all except the yellow one, which tottered feebly forward. Soon the men were roaring with excitement, growing even louder if one of their crickets stopped. The red cricket was doing well, charging ahead of the others, but then, barely a hand’s length from the finishing line, it stopped. The men fell silent. The insect hesitated, as if some invisible obstacle had
sprung up in front of it. Then, in spite of its owner’s cries, it went back the way it had come. At the same time, the fortune-teller’s cricket was miraculously scurrying forward at top speed.

The shouting became deafening again. The yellow cricket caught up, but then also stopped, wavering, as if unsure. And just when the blue cricket, whose owner was a giant of a man and was shouting louder than anybody, looked as though it had taken the lead, the yellow one shot forward, overtaking the blue at the last possible instant.

No one could believe it. It seemed like the devil’s work. They were all rubbing their eyes when the giant turned to the fortune-teller.

“Cheating bastard!” he roared.

But the fortune-teller wasn’t flustered. Moving the silk net aside, he picked up his cricket and held it out for all to see: its front left leg definitely was not there. In a rage, the giant knocked the insect from the fortune-teller’s hand and stomped on it. He spat and, before turning to leave, promised the fortune-teller he’d be back. The rest, grumbling, gathered up their insects and followed the giant away.

Cí went nowhere. He urgently needed that money, and he couldn’t see
how
the fortune-teller had won without some kind of trick. It also struck him as strange that the man didn’t seem to care that the cricket was dead, even though it had just made him all that money.

“You can get out of here as well,” said the fortune-teller.

Cí ignored him and crouched down to examine the squashed remains of the cricket. Using a fingernail, he dislodged some bright plating still attached to the abdomen. It looked like a sliver of iron or a similar metal. And he found traces of glue on the underside. What could it have been for? Wouldn’t it just weigh the creature down and make it go slower?

He was astonished when the dead insect suddenly flew from his palm and attached itself to the knife at his belt. Suddenly it all made sense…

By now the fortune-teller had gathered up his things and wandered off in the direction of a nearby tavern. Cí carefully placed the insect’s remains in a cloth and headed after him.

There was a boy at the door to the Five Pleasures Tavern looking after the fortune-teller’s folded-up betting table. Cí asked him how much he was being paid, and the boy held out two pieces of candy.

“I’ll give you this apple if you let me look at that table.”

The boy thought for a moment.

“OK. But only to look.”

Cí gave him the apple, which one of the men had dropped at the bet, and opened the table.

“I said don’t touch,” said the boy.

“I need to look at the underside.”

“I’ll tell him—”

“Eat your apple and shut up, will you?”

Cí opened and shut the channel gates, sniffed the channels, and looked closely at the underside, pulling out a small sheet of metal about the size of a biscuit, which he hid in his sleeve. Putting the table back as it had been, he nodded to the boy and entered the Five Pleasures Tavern. He had everything he needed to get his money back.

Though Cí didn’t see the fortune-teller when he first walked into the tavern, a couple of prostitutes were whispering excitedly about a man throwing money around. Cí followed their glances to the curtains at the back of the room.

He took a moment to consider his approach. The tavern was a dive like all the others near the gates—thick with greasy smoke and customers eating plates of boiled pig meat, Cantonese sauces, and Zhe fish soups. The smell of the food mingled with the stink and sweat of the fishermen, dockers, and sailors who were celebrating the end of the week as though it were their last day on earth—drinking, swinging, and swaying to the rhythm of flutes and zithers.

On the far side of the bar, on a makeshift stage, a group of “flowers” sang melodies that were barely audible over the din and tried to catch the eye of their next customer. One of them came over to Cí and made a show of concern over his wounded leg before she began rubbing her flabby rump up against his crotch. Cí pushed her away. He marched to the back of the tavern, parted the curtains, and there was the fortune-teller, shaking his pale ass over a young girl. He was clearly surprised to see Cí but seemed unbothered. He smiled foolishly, showing his rotten teeth, and then carried on. Doubtless he was drunk.

“Having fun with my money?” Cí asked. He shoved the old man, and the girl grabbed her clothes and scurried out.

“What on earth?” said the fortune-teller.

Before the old man could get to his feet, Cí grabbed him by the shirt.

“You’re going to pay me back, right down to the last coin! And I mean now!”

He was about to start rummaging through the fortune-teller’s purse when he was picked up, dragged out of the cubicle, and thrown against some tables in the middle of the dining area. The music stopped.

“No bothering the customers!” roared the manager.

The man was as big as a mountain; his arms appeared to be thicker than his legs, and he had the look of an enraged buffalo. Before Cí could respond, the manager punched him in the ribs.

“He’s a cheat!” Cí managed to say. “He swindled me!”

“As long as he pays his way when he’s in here, I don’t care.”

“Leave him. He’s just a kid,” said the fortune-teller, coming out from behind the curtain as he buttoned his pants. He looked down at Cí. “You get out of here before you really get hurt.”

Cí struggled to his feet. The wound in his leg had started to bleed again.

“I’ll go,” he said grimly, “when you’ve given me back my money.”

“Don’t be stupid. Do you really want your head cracked open?”

“I know how you do it. I inspected your maze.”

A flicker of worry crossed the fortune-teller’s face.

“Hee-hee, I see. Come now, have a seat. Tell me what you mean.”