I Am China (41 page)

The fisherman, who is first-aid trained, claimed that he and his grandson pulled the body out of the water and that chest compressions were performed. Medical staff confirmed the man was dead on arrival. Further details will be released by police once family have been found and informed.

What? Iona reads the first line again:
At 5:18 p.m. on 15 November?
Yesterday afternoon. Yesterday afternoon when she was sitting in this lonely terrace cafe by the sea, looking at the snow-capped mountains while drinking a Mythos beer.
The victim is an Asian male
. He was drowned only some hours before Iona wandered around the island, or probably he was sinking down while she switched off the lamp in Kazantzakis Inn. She scans the article again: … 
a ten-euro note, a
Chinese passport, a French health insurance card and a diary written in Chinese …

It cannot be! Oh fuck. Iona puts down her piece of toast, pushes away the pot of mango and strawberry jam, her plate, her coffee. Grabbing the newspaper, she stands up and rushes out of the hotel.

10
CRETE, NOVEMBER 2013

Two and an half hours later, Iona jumps off a bus in Rethymno, and finds herself at the Crete West Coast Police Station.

“What’s your relation to the victim?” the female police officer asks her in English with a heavy Greek accent.

Her young male colleague squints at Iona from time to time as he takes notes.

“Well, I’m his friend. But—look. Um, first—has the body been identified? I need to know. Can I have a look at his passport?—then I can be sure if he’s someone I know …” Iona mutters, still holding the torn page of the newspaper she took from her hotel this morning.

There are no systems or rules here, it seems. The officer behind the desk is completely uninterested in Iona backing up her claims to be the victim’s friend. Instead she opens her desk drawer, and throws an old passport onto the table in front of her. A People’s Republic of China Passport. Oh God, Iona thinks.

She opens it at the identification details section:

Surname: Jian

Given name: Kublai

Birth date: 10 November 1972

Birth place: Beijing, China

Then the face of a Chinese man, a man whom Iona has imagined hundreds of times—Kublai Jian with his eyes uncovered. There is something indefinable in those dark eyes under his straight, thick eyebrows.

“So, is he someone you know?” the female officer asks, taking back the passport.

“Yes. I am his … his translator, you could say …” Iona feels her heart beating fast, and she is shaky and sweating. She needs a glass of water, or perhaps something to eat, to calm her down.

“You are his translator … Yeah. OK, right … and where do you live?” The officer’s tone is monotonous. She has a form and a pen poised to take down details. She tilts her head to the side, waiting.

“I live in London, and I’m working on the translations—” Iona is about to say more but realises that it just doesn’t matter. This policewoman doesn’t care who Jian was and what her connection to him is. It’s all procedure. Iona says, “He is, or was, a musician.”

“Right …” The officer writes something on the form and looks up again. “Do you know if he used any other name? Like a Western name?”

Iona shakes her head. “I’m not sure, but he might have a French health insurance card with a different name …” She hears her own voice trembling slightly.

“Yes, we’ve got that. A—” she takes the plastic card out and reads the name badly in Greek-accented Chinese—“Mr. Chang Linyuan … Yes, that was also found in his bag.”

“I think Chang was a chef Kublai Jian met in France.”

“We can lead you to the morgue to check the body, but before that you have to fill in all your personal details here.”

In the morgue, Iona’s eyes rest on a seawater-washed body. His face is pale, swollen, although it still retains the traces of youth, and a vague sense of some original character. His eyes are closed, those eyes Iona has never seen, and now, as if they completed their final statement, the secret is sealed forever. A certain horror creeps from the corpse lying there on the slab to Iona’s body.

“So is this the man you say you know? A Kublai Jian?” the female officer asks.

A few seconds of silence, then Iona breathes out. “Actually I have never met him. I only know his writing, and I am not certain this is him.”

“What do you mean?” The police officer is not happy with Iona’s
answer. Her face becomes rigid. “When we were upstairs you told me you were this man’s friend, you were his translator.”

“Yes, but I have only been translating the documents about him, I have never actually met him in person.”

The cool gaze of the policewoman chills Iona. Neither of them says a word. There is only sickly heavy air hanging around them.

Back upstairs Iona is handed a diary and a letter. A letter with familiar scrawly handwriting. This time, it is not a photocopy, but an original.

Under the gaze of two police officers and a secretary, Iona silently reads the first four lines of the letter. Then she stops. She can’t bring herself to believe what she is reading.

To the ones in this world who will eventually read my words
:

And to Mu:

The sea here is the bluest and purest I have ever seen. It’s the last blue I will see. They say planet Earth is a blue planet when you see it from space. So I want to go out with the blue
.

Iona takes a deep breath, and reads a few more lines.

And the air, too. As much as I like to breathe the fragrance of the gum trees and the dried sunflowers, it’s not going to win me back. It’s not an argument that can convince me to stay. It’s just a smell in my nostrils. So what? There is something in my head that I can’t swing out of, and now that thing in my head has spread to the whole world. It saturates it all. So there is no space left for me
.

I have sung my songs and there’s no longer a place for me to sing them, either in the East or the West. There never was a punk culture in China. Punk isn’t an illusion. It’s the masses who suffer from the illusion. They cannot escape to see through the veil of commodification and the advertising slogan. I do not regret, or think I was wrong in, the manifesto I wrote. But maybe there was never a manifesto in the end: it is me, becoming what I wrote
.

You are in my mind every day. I am talking to you every day of my life, but our life in this world has ended. I am already with those who have taken the other path. My dead mother, my deceased grandparents, and our baby boy Little Shu. Whether the end is now or in the future, since time has stopped flowing forward, it’s all the same. I don’t have dreams of living in an afterlife. I am not for life. I know I have disappointed you, my dearest
.

Time is flowing backwards here. Leaves are leaping from the ground and attaching themselves to the trees, and waves are going back out to sea. The wind is dropping sand from the sky onto the beach; but I am not growing younger …

Best to draw a line in the sand. No more than this
.

Don’t forget, my love for you is beyond this life
.

Jian

11
LONDON, NOVEMBER 2013

When the plane lands Iona switches on her mobile and rings Jonathan. As she waits for the line to be connected, she realises it is Friday night, nearly eight o’clock.

“Listen, Jonathan, I know the timing is shitty, but is there any way I can see you this evening?”

“This evening? I’m busy right now, Iona. We’re actually having a little celebration in our office for—”

“It can’t wait, Jonathan. It’s really urgent. Please, it’s about the work—about Kublai Jian.”

Iona can hear background noise from the other end of the phone. “Well, if it is about work, how about you come into the office on Monday morning and we can talk about it then?”

“No, I need to see you. How about tomorrow morning?”

“Tomorrow morning? You mean Saturday? OK, if you want. But you know, as I said, Iona, I’m not going to publish this book for a while—”

“Yes. I heard. So, where can we meet?” Iona keeps it brief.

“How about lunch? I can cook something simple at my house, if you don’t mind coming to Shepherd’s Bush.”

For a second, Iona thinks she has misheard. Go to his house? What about his wife and children? But she hasn’t misheard, for then he says, “I’ll text you the address. Say around one o’clock?”

Iona is surprised, confused perhaps, but she answers a weak “Yes.” The phone is hot against her ear. She doesn’t really know how she should feel. The London sky is dark and starless, the concrete pavement frosty under her sore feet. It must be reaching near-freezing.

12
LONDON, NOVEMBER 2013

Saturday morning. Waking up from a series of feverish dreams with the faces of men she’s slept with—even the face of a peaceful, dead Jian—Iona opens her eyes. She looks at the clock; it is already ten thirty.

In the shower she lets the warm water run through her hair and down her body. She dimly remembers an episode of her dream—first there was an urgent doorbell, twice, very impatient; then, as she opened the door, two Chinese policemen stood before her with inscrutable faces. They pushed her away, entered the room and walked straight to her desk, where they snatched her computer, along with all the Chinese documents laid beside it. Then suddenly, in that inexplicable way that things happen in dreams, the figures disappeared, leaving her alone and confused standing by the open door, looking back at her empty desk. When she realised what was happening, she tried to run downstairs, but her body was so heavy she couldn’t lift her legs—her dream had chained them together, she had no strength and she struggled, forcing her legs to move until she was exhausted. And then she had woken up.

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she did was sit up instantly and stagger towards her desk. And there was her computer and all the Chinese files. They were there like a pile of fossils, untouched, secretive, but safe. In her pyjamas she had sat down at her desk for a moment, just laying her hand on the pile of papers for a few minutes. A verification. A prayer. Until she was properly awake.

Two hours later, Iona comes out of Shepherd’s Bush Tube station, crosses the main road and checks the map on her phone. She walks down the street scanning the house numbers. It doesn’t take her long
to find Jonathan’s place. It is a typical Victorian family house, with wisteria growing up the side of the heavy door and a broken child’s bicycle in the front garden. As she presses the doorbell, a dog starts barking inside; then Jonathan opens the door. He is wearing a T-shirt and low-slung jeans, and has a cooking spoon in his hand. They kiss on both cheeks. Iona feels slightly disappointed.

“Come on in. Are you hungry? I’ve just finished making some soup.”

She shoves herself, curious and yet unprepared, into a house she has imagined for a long while. There is a strong smell of roasted onions coming from the kitchen. As she takes off her winter coat and scarf, she doesn’t hear the expected noise of children, and nor does a woman emerge to greet her. The house is quiet and spacious, but very messy. Newspapers and books are piled everywhere, as well as some manuscripts. Iona spots the early pages of her translation which she sent to Applegate Books all those months ago. Well, here we are, we are on the same page now, she mutters to herself. At the back of the kitchen, the garden is wild and the grass untrimmed, a leafy old apple tree standing in the middle. In a corner of the garden lies a pile of sun-bleached children’s toys.