Bad Traffic (6 page)

With the migrants buoyed up by their brief connection with home, the atmosphere in the back grew lively – it was like a work unit outing. Following the sighting of a black and white bird and some black and white animal dead at the side of the road, Ding Ming observed that although this nation seemed advanced in many things their animals had yet to make the move into colour. It worked better in his head than out in the open. The migrants looked baffled and when he explained that he meant an analogy with television it rather seemed to drain the observation of its humour.

He curled up and wished his wife’s body lay next to him. He recalled the smell of her hair and the feel of it against his face. If she were next to him, her lips would be just here – he put a finger to the spot, then traced the remembered line of her jaw. He let his hand slide down over her neck and
collarbone
, and he dropped the real hand and an imaginary one followed the rise of her breast, circling a nipple. The hand swooped and stroked and now he could hear her noises of delight, feel skin give beneath his fingers, feel her fingers running through his hair, feel—

The van pulled up. Kevin snapped his fingers. ‘Out.’ They were parked before a grand two-storey house. Kevin unlocked a door and hurried them in, snapping and pointing.

Ding Ming worried that Mister Kevin’s promise to provide a phone number for his wife’s work supervisor ‘as soon as they got there’ had slipped the man’s mind. Reminding him
did not seem an issue to be entered into lightly, as the big man appeared to have the unpredictable nature of a child, being mild and petulant by turns. He would have to pick his time carefully. He began to form his inquiry in his head, hauling the heavy English words around, groping for
politeness
and concision. Excuse, please, do you have a phone number for to call my wife?

Kevin was leading them down a corridor. Ding Ming admired the carpet, which seemed a luxurious touch even though it was stained and pocked with cigarette burns, and the floral designs on the wallpaper. He peeked into a room and saw bunk beds lining the wall and mattresses on the floor. There was enough space between the mattresses to walk one foot in front of the other, and this space was
cluttered
with clothes and packaging. The window was boarded and nailed shut and the room stank of men. He wondered where they all were, who did the cooking and cleaning, whether there were rotas and responsibilities. He supposed it would be like the teacher training college again.

Kevin led them past a shabby bathroom with no door and pointed at a Western toilet, an outlandish porcelain lily.

‘English speaker. You tell them, this is a toilet. Pissing and shitting only. Don’t go washing in it. You wash with this.’

He gestured at a sink. One tap was marked with a red dot, so Ding Ming asked, ‘Is there here hot water?’

‘Don’t be funny with me, son. Be glad you’ve got a roof over your head.’

Ding Ming felt awkward. He did not know how to deal with this man at all. Now it would be even harder to ask about the number. Excuse me, please, would it be possible for you to give me a number for to call my wife?

They trooped into a kitchen. Ding Ming was impressed that there was a refrigerator, not something he associated
with kitchens. Back home fridges were kept on display in living rooms.

On a table sat a TV with attached video recorder and a pile of videos labelled in Chinese. One video had a picture of a naked lady on the label and Ding Ming looked with guilty
fascination
at enormous breasts, long legs and an expression of invitation. It reminded him that men without women were animals. He mentally promised his wife that he would not be watching any of those yellow films, and filled his mind with images of her to take away the after-glare of those legs and lips. Her nose was little like a mouse’s, her eyes strikingly far apart and big like a squirrel’s. He supposed she was now in similar surroundings and he hoped she was getting on alright and not missing him too much.

Kevin said, ‘Bucket of rice there, bowls in there. Fill up.’

‘Excuse me, please…’

But the man was striding out.

Ding Ming caught up with him on the front step. It was nerve-wracking to be outside, the street was deserted but anyone might walk past, he felt dangerously exposed. All his careful thought, and it came out in a garbled rush.

‘Very sorry. I want to ask a thing. You know my wife go to where number, please?’

‘What? Oh yeah.’

Kevin looked Ding Ming up and down.

‘What’s your name?’

Aware that English speakers could not pronounce or remember Chinese names, he used the title he’d chosen at the college.

My English name is William.’

‘William, come into my office.’

Kevin clambered awkwardly into the back of the van, and indicated the seat next to his.

Ding Ming resisted an impulse to squat on his haunches on the floor, which would put Kevin above him and accord with their social rank, and daringly he did as Kevin instructed, and sat next to him. It put him and Kevin at the same level, as if they were equals, and encouraged him to be bold.

‘You have got a way me speak at wife?’

He sensed that he had made mistakes there, and worried that with each effort he was only wandering further from the correct construction. It was incredibly hard to talk English to a native speaker, because whenever he got it wrong he felt he was losing face, and grew flustered, and even more
incapable
of getting it right.

‘How old are you, William?’

‘Nineteen years.’

What a strange thing, to be sitting on a double seat with a boss, so close that he could feel Kevin’s thigh touching his own. He could see hairs sprouting from the man’s ears. The disconcerting sight diverted him so much that he did not hear Kevin’s next statement at all, so he said ‘yes’, but that seemed to be a satisfactory answer.

The man was offering him a cigarette. He knew he should feel grateful for this honour, but he regarded the packet with dismay. To decline would be rude, and might destroy any rapport that had built up. There was no choice, then, but to accept. But that itself had dangers, he didn’t know how to smoke. He would have to bluff it as best he could. He would not breathe in.

He took it, and Kevin leaned across and flipped a lighter with a fleshy thumb. The flame spotlit his face. His chin was covered with stubble, every follicle discernible, and not just around the chin, but all over his jaw. It made his face
two-tone
, pasty above and grey below. To Ding Ming’s eyes, used to flatter Asian faces, his nose was enormous.

Ding Ming sucked the filter and breathed out again
immediately
. The effect was much worse than he’d imagined. The smoke tasted stale and tickled his throat. He clamped his mouth shut, and felt his face redden.

‘Do you very much want to see your lady wife?’

Focused on stifling his throat’s rebellion, Ding Ming was powerless to reply.

‘I’ve got a phone number here for her manager, so you can ring and arrange a little chat.’

He took a diary out of the inside pocket of his coat, a bulky parka. ‘And I’ll even let you use my phone to call.’ Kevin opened the black book. Metal binders held a sheaf of loose-leaf pages. He displayed a list of addresses and phone numbers.

Ding Ming’s cheeks bulged and his neck muscles tensed and his shoulders drew back and his head seemed to swell. There was no stopping it. A throaty cough exploded. He bent over, racked with convulsions of coughing, and Kevin slapped him on the back.

Breathing heavily, Ding Ming waited for the red sparkles to fade from his vision. He felt like such a fool. Anyway, he would soon talk to his wife – he’d understood that much. He might have made a bit of an idiot of himself with the
cigarette
but it didn’t matter. The weight of worry was leaving his body.

He grinned, not out of social awkwardness for once, but joy. He brought up his hand to cover his rudely exposed teeth and saw that the cigarette still burned between his
fingers
. He thought about giving it another go.

‘Which number is it?’

But Kevin put the book back in his coat. His hand now lay around Ding Ming’s shoulders. Their heads were so close they almost touched. Ding Ming could smell the man, a
musty, cloying odour, quite frightening for being so
unfamiliar
. When he spoke, his mouth stank of smoke.

‘What I want to know is, what can you do for me? Heh?’

Nausea rose from Ding Ming’s stomach and made him dizzy. He shifted, worried that he was going to puke. It was that cigarette, it had gone straight to his stomach. He did not feel right at all.

Kevin pondered his own question, tapping his bottom lip with two fingers.

‘How about this,’ he said, pointing a finger up as if
suddenly
inspired. ‘My balls are feeling heavy and I think I need some help with that.’

Ding Ming did not understand what Kevin was saying but he understood the meaning of the gleam in the eye and the
sudden
intensity of the man who was almost embracing him.

It seemed very quiet now in the van as Ding Ming fought his queasiness. The silence was broken by the twanging of an elasticated waistband as Kevin slipped his tracksuit bottoms down with his free hand. Grey underpants bulged.

‘Will you do this small thing for me?’ whispered Kevin. ‘Will you put it in your mouth and suck it?’ Kevin opened his mouth wide, and Ding Ming looked into a murky chasm framed by a flakey tongue and yellow teeth. Kevin made a hollow fist of his free hand and pumped it up and down before the open maw, miming what he would like Ding Ming to do.

A picture of the task formed slowly in his mind, and his eyes widened and his mouth fell open with dismay. Ding Ming had no experience of that kind of thing, had never met anyone who’d admitted to those practices. Back home he’d heard whispers of a particular public toilet where the comrades, as they were called, those men who bafflingly and perversely liked the bodies of other men, gathered after dark. Fearing AIDS, he had avoided it, even in the daytime.

The forgotten cigarette burned his fingers. The searing blast of pain jerked him up, and he carried on moving, shrugging free of Kevin’s embrace, and found the handle of the van and fumbled it open and fell out.

He stood and, feeling terribly ashamed, he said, ‘Please, sorry,’ before a mist of panic wrapped him.

He hardly knew what he was doing as he ran into the house and through it to the kitchen. His eyes found the back door, but it was boarded up and so were the windows. But, of course, he could not run away anyway: running away was stupid. He should not have run this far. He told himself to run straight back again, but his legs would not obey. He turned circles of distress and confusion.

The other migrants watched him. They were holding bowls to their faces and shovelling rice into their mouths with chopsticks. One explained how they’d put some rice aside, though of course there hadn’t been much to begin with. Ding Ming looked dumbly at the bucket. He could not think about food. He opened his mouth to explain, but what could he say? He closed it again. These people would not help him. He was on his own.

Considered in one way Kevin’s demand seemed a very small thing. It would not change him physically in any way, it would not hurt, it would only take a few minutes, and no one need ever know. Looked at another way, though, it seemed an enormity, bigger than the sky.

Someone was coming. He tensed, already familiar with that clunky footfall. He supposed Kevin would ask him to come outside, perhaps beckoning with a curled finger, and the obscene act would begin. He summoned the image of his wife – nose like a mouse, eyes like a squirrel – and
determined
to face his fate squarely. Chewing his lip, he turned.

Mister Kevin was in the doorway. But he did not look at Ding Ming and it was as if nothing had happened. He clapped his hands and called, ‘Right, let’s get you to work. Chop chop, monkeys.’

Jian killed his ninth cigarette and lined the butt against the shop door behind him. He didn’t want a scattering over the pavement to give away his position.

Not much had happened in the last couple of hours. The odd drunk had meandered past, a few couples, and an old lady’s dog had sniffed at him before being tugged away on its leash. The only interesting event had been the arrival of a dirty white van, driven by some fat guy. The hoodlum called Black Fort had come out of the Floating Lotus and sat inside. Some twenty minutes later he’d returned to the restaurant and the van had driven away. Pinched Asian faces had been briefly visible in the back.

Jian had plenty of time to think and would rather he didn’t. Speculating or worrying wasn’t going to bring his daughter back and he didn’t have enough evidence to start making any useful conjectures. All he had was a bunch of suspicious characters who knew more than they were letting on. He itched to get his hands on one and start demanding answers.

He rubbed aching knees. He wished he had a car to observe from, and steamed buns and a flask of tea would be most welcome. As would a fistful of painkillers. He lit cigarette ten, took a drag, and winced at the pain in his ribs.

The restaurant door opened and Jian tensed. Four
hoodlums
staggered out. Two had arms around each other, and found their inability to walk straight hilarious. They were the men who had followed him earlier, he was sure of it. Yes, there was the leather coat flapping. A third man strutted into
the road and put his palm out with drunken self-importance and a car slowed to let them cross.

Black Fort walked quickly with his arms thrust into his pockets. He was the leader, certainly – his air of assurance was striking. He did not appear as drunk as his hatchetmen.

It was good that they were drunk, and even better that the owner had stayed inside. But as they made a diagonal across the road Jian noted with disquiet that they were coming straight towards him. This position offered as little cover as comfort. If they saw him there would be trouble: even drunk he couldn’t out-fight them and he was trapped in a dead end. He pressed himself back against the door.

As they neared he heard the thump of their footsteps. He held his breath and narrowed his eyes and stood
completely
still, and he could feel his heart beat. In his pocket, he slipped his house keys between his fingers and balled his hand into a fist.

The trick was to think yourself away and not look anyone in the eye. The first pair came into view and lurched towards him. The man in the overcoat was dressed all in black,
exhibiting
a taste for the dramatic. His skinny companion wore jeans and a T-shirt with a ponytail projecting from under a baseball cap. Their cheeks were red, their mouths hung open and their eyes were bleary.

Another step and they would blunder straight into the porch. The overcoat squeaked as its owner put his hand against the wall to steady himself. Jian saw four gold rings on chubby fingers and on his wrist the head of a dragon
tattoo
. The dragon’s body curled up the sleeve and out of sight. Its lips were curled back in a snarl and its boggling eyes seemed to be staring straight at him.

Jian stiffened and the nails of clenched fingers dug into his palm. But the man pushed himself away and pitched back
onto the pavement, dragging his friend with him. The
baseball
cap fell off and the hoodlum caught it and put it back. His friends laughed. In happy self-absorption the hoodlums passed.

Jian let his breath slip between gritted teeth and came away from the wall. Minutes later the waitress came out, with a bulky jacket over her uniform. She was talking to two men Jian hadn’t seen before, presumably the kitchen staff. They walked away and the ticking of the girl’s high heels faded. Jian lowered his head, hurried across the road and slipped into the restaurant.

The lights were off, but an orange glow filtered in from the street. Chairs were stacked on tables and their jutting upright legs cast jagged shadows. The manager stood
counting
money. He looked up and slammed the till shut.

Jian crossed the room quickly, saying, ‘I don’t want your money, I just wondered if you had a cigarette,’ and watched fear, then dismay, cross the man’s features.

As soon as he was close enough, Jian lunged. He hit him just under the jawline on the side, but without getting much weight behind it. He felt the keys pierce the skin and scrape along the line of the jaw, and the impact sent a shudder up his arm. The old man’s head snapped to the side. Jian leaned over the counter, grabbed his collar and yanked him
forward
. Glasses toppled and shattered. This time he was
balanced
and could have got his weight behind it but he pulled a punch to the nose. It was just a tap really, to make his eyes water. The shirt tore and buttons popped. The manager’s flailing hand knocked down a bottle of spirits.

Jian let go, thinking that he’d done enough. It occurred to him that he was too old for this kind of nonsense. He hadn’t personally roughed anyone up for years, he always got the keen young guys to do it for him. Obviously he was rusty,
because the old man clambered to his feet, fumbled a door open and ran into the kitchen.

Jian followed. The only illumination came through the open door. The owner was a silhouette. He turned, an edge gleamed and Jian realised with consternation that the man was holding up a chopping knife. He was breathing
heavily
, talking in a panicky fashion in Cantonese, and backing away.

The restaurant door swung shut and now the kitchen was completely dark. Jian could hear the owner retreating. Not fast, but faster than he could move, as he didn’t know the layout. He sidestepped and opened a fridge. Yellow light revealed the owner bent before a back door. Keys tinkled as he groped through them with a shaking hand. With the other he waved the chopper.

Jian dragged a bin across the floor and used it to prop open the fridge. He picked up a wok and held it before him, bent his head and charged. The chopper swung and hit his shield with a clang.

Jian slammed into the old man and kept pushing, and felt the man hit the door and tumble. Jian straddled him and lowered the wok until the thin metal edge was against the scrawny throat. He pressed down, and the skin of the neck went white. The old man squawked and cried. Jian tossed the wok aside. He could not help but note how the man’s wrinkled brow resembled his own.