The Golden Mountain Murders (17 page)

“The dawn was even colder than the night. It was hard to rouse my wife. I finally did and we went to the platform. I told her the plan and made her repeat it to me several times. We watched the early-morning train heading to Beijing, then the late-morning train heading to Shanghai. Both times we talked through what we would do. Then we retreated to the railway yard and waited for the last train. I figured that the later train would be in the most hurry. The least likely to scrutinize things. We didn’t sleep well. I dreamed of lightning in the sky. Large forks of lightning, hitting the land and ancient trees sparking into fire.

“At sundown we moved carefully towards the railway platform. As the huge train blew its whistle to announce its arrival I slipped behind the train station and put on my porter’s shirt. The other porters were already running towards the platform. I kept my head down as I picked up my carrying basket from the far side of the train station.

“The huge train squealed on the tracks as its brakes began to slow. It was getting cold quickly. As I passed by her, I noticed that my wife was shivering violently. Our plan was for me to go on board the train as a porter carrying supplies, then make my way to the back of the train and open a carriage door for my wife.

“I stepped into line with the dozens of porters who were ready to carry their supplies onto the train through one of the forward doors. It was already getting dark when the train finally pulled to a full stop and the front door was flung open.

“Inside, the train’s lights were off. Many of the passengers were asleep. I followed the line of porters through the front three cars then into a fourth car that was free of seats. Boxes and sacks were piled high on both sides. I placed the supplies I was carrying beside the goods that the porter ahead of me placed on the floor but didn’t turn and follow him back to the front of the train to pick up more supplies. I knelt down and pretended to roll up my pant leg. Finally the guard in charge of the storeroom stepped out onto the platform to have a smoke. I snuck out the back of the car and ran as fast as I could through the train cars filled with sleeping city people. I had counted the cars as they came into the station. There had been thirty-seven. I counted as I ran. I was trying to get to one of the last five cars. That’s what we had agreed on. That I would open a door in one of the last five cars for her – my wife.”

He went silent as if that choice of the last five cars had somehow caused his wife’s death. I looked at Chen. He nodded and prompted, “What happened next?”

The peasant looked up at Chen and stared at him for a long moment as if he couldn’t place his face. Then he smiled. He was missing a front tooth. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?

He sighed deeply then spoke. “I was running through the cars trying not to trip and wake people. Some were still awake, especially in the hard seat compartments. They were drinking and smoking and playing cards. They yelled at me. Things they thought were smart, I guess. ‘Got to pee bad, buddy?’ ‘Lose your girlfriend?’ ‘Where’s the fire?’ Some said things I couldn’t understand.

Those would be the Shanghanese, I think, Fong. Our dialect is so filled with clichés and idiomatic expressions that many outsiders haven’t got a clue what we are saying. It’s the way we like it, isn’t it, Fong?

“I ignored them but their yelling made me lose count which car I was in. I knew I was somewhere in the twenties when the train began to move. I couldn’t believe it. The thing clanked and rattled then began to pick up speed. I raced to the nearest door and flung it open. My wife was the only person on the platform – she was already twenty yards behind the last car of the train. Even from that distance I could see her tears. I jumped off the train. I hit my head. A tooth came out.”

He said it all so simply. He jumped. He hit his head. A tooth came out. When I was young my mother came home with a small dog. I loved that dog nearly to death. I squeezed him all the time. Do you know that it’s a law in Shanghai now that you have to have an electronic implant for your dog or they can take him and kill him. There are over 100,000 dogs in Shanghai – that’s a lot of implants. I bet some city official owns the lab that implants the stupid things. At any rate I thought of that dog of mine because it got run over by a pedal bike on the sidewalk. It mangled one of his front legs. He cried and did a lot of lying in my lap for several days then he just got up and began to walk – with a limp. But he was the same as before, just that now he was a dog with a limp. He never regretted that he couldn’t run fast anymore. That was before. Now he was a dog who limped. This man was a man who bumped his head and now was missing a tooth. No regret, just moving forward. I wish I could live my life that way, Fong, I really do. Just looking forward, never back at what could have been or what was.

“That night I found an abandoned railway car and we slept. Before sunrise they came.”

“Who?”

“Bandits. They robbed us of all the money we had. They beat me up and two of them dragged me to the corner of the car and sat on me.”

He stopped talking. Dear God they didn’t rape his wife, did they? I didn’t even know how to broach the question.

Chen did. “Was your wife attacked?”

Dong Zhu Houng looked away. After a long silence he said, “They ripped off her clothes but a train pulled in, and in the train’s front light, they saw the sores on her body. They cursed her and ran away. But not before I saw one of their faces in the light.

“It was the porter who sold you his shirt, wasn’t it?”

The peasant nodded.

A silence fell on us all. Dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern horizon.

“So what happened next?” asked Chen.

“We went back to the Beng Pu market and sold more of the herb, then took the money and bought train tickets south, towards the Yangtze.”

“Why not just sell all the herb and buy firstclass bus tickets all the way to Shanghai?”

“We didn’t know if we could get onto a bus with her being so sick. At least on a train we could get on at night and go hard seat. Everyone looks awful in hard seat. Besides we didn’t know how much money we’d need to get her treated in Shanghai and that herb was the only source of money we had. We couldn’t spend it all before we got her treated.”

Chen nodded. “So you headed south?” The man nodded. “How was that train ride?”

“Lonely.”

I didn’t expect that – hard, boring, painful – sure, but lonely?

As if he could read my thoughts he said, “She slept the whole way. And so deeply. I couldn’t wake her even to feed her.”

“But you finally got to the river – the Yangtze?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At Chungking. I wanted to rent a place for us so she could stay in a bed for a bit. Until she was at least a little stronger. I thought she was dying.”

He looked up at us. Both Chen and I nodded.

“I found a very long alley and put her in the darkness at the end of it, then covered her with both our coats. I couldn’t have her with me when I went to find a place. People would look at her and close the door on us. I needed to find a place that didn’t have an old lady with the keys sitting in the front. A place where they wouldn’t report us. We had no papers allowing us to travel, let alone to be in Chungking.

“There were building projects down by the river. Lights on tall towers lit up these huge pits where hundreds and hundreds of men lifted and toted heavy muck on their backs. I stood and watched. I’d never seen anything like it. It was raining and the men were the same colour as the mud. It was as if the ground itself was lifting up and moving up the walls of the pit. But even as I watched, I saw that the men working were being replaced by newer workers. I looked in the direction from which they had come. There were many low huts made from that wavy metal.”

“Corrugated iron,” Chen said.

The peasant looked at Chen, grateful that Chen had supplied this bit of information but also surprised that anyone would need more explanation than “wavy metal.”

“I went there. The man at the door was from Anhui Province. I told him I was looking for work and needed a place to stay for me and my wife. He shrugged. I offered him money. He found me a place in the back.”

There it was again. Simple facts. No judgment.

“Just before sunrise I settled my wife into the bed and fell asleep on the floor beside her. I don’t know how long I slept but I awoke like someone falling off a cart. It felt like I had rolled over on a large stone or something. Then I felt the pain in my side again but sharper this time. This time I also knew it wasn’t a stone – it was a boot. A heavy boot was kicking me in the ribs. I jumped to my feet and immediately stood between my attacker and my wife. ‘Morning, princess. No work for the princess this morning?’

“At first I thought he was talking to my wife. Then I looked at her bed. It was empty. He was talking to me! I was princess. ‘No work, no pay. No pay, no place to stay, princess.’

“It was raining and cold. I had only my sandals.”

Fong, he looked us straight in the eyes. A kind of pride blooming there.

“I have worked in the fields every day from dawn until sometimes late into the night since I was a little boy but I have never been forced to work like that. Been punished by work like that. And I was desperate to find my wife. Where was she? Why was the bed empty?

“When my shift finally ended I ran back to the hut. My wife was sitting on the side of the bed. She had made tea somehow. She stood as I approached. ‘You have worked hard, husband, you rest now,’ she said to me. I don’t remember falling asleep. But I think she held me and rocked me. She, so sick, did that for me.

“I worked there three more days. I wanted her to get as well as she could because we had a long journey ahead of us. Before sunrise on the fourth day she awakened me and we snuck out of the hut and headed towards the river, the Yangtze.”

He looked up at us. “Have you seen it?” I almost laughed, but then I saw the awe in his eyes and swallowed my giggles. “Is it not magnificent? All the way from the Yellow Mountains to the sea.” He was looking at the rising dawn out the window. The first day he would spend without his wife – on this earth. A shudder began at the base of his spine and worked its way up his back.

Chen crossed over to him and put his hand on his shoulder. I assumed that Chen was going to offer sympathy to the poor man, but I was wrong.

Chen turned him away from the window and asked, “With your money situation you couldn’t have taken a riverboat. So how did you get down the Yangtze all the way to Shanghai?”

“On a raft.”

A raft! Like Huckleberry Hound? Chinese people don’t use rafts.

“Just short of four moons.”

They had been on a raft for almost four months!

“We floated and stopped. Sold some of the herb for food, then got back on the raft. I built a small shelter on it to keep out the rain. In the second week we spent a lot of money and bought a small brazier and some coal. I brewed her tea and she drank the last of her medicine. We watched the great ships pass us by and we floated. We floated. Until finally we came here. She was weaker every week but we were together and we were safe and we were floating as if we were already in the other world.”

“Finally, you landed in Shanghai?” Chen asked.

“At the mouth of the Huangpo River. That was the hardest part. Landing the raft and walking to Shanghai. And we had no money left. None.”

“Had you sold all the herb?”

“No. We were not foolish. Not foolish.” He was suddenly vehement.

“Then why did you have no money?”

“Because no one here would buy it.”

For the first time, Chen was confused – but I wasn’t, Fong. Generic Viagra is cheap and plentiful in Shanghai. Their herb’s value was totally supplanted by modern medical research. The carefully stored and lovingly picked source of their wealth was no more. I didn’t need to hear the rest. I already knew, Fong. They must have wandered desperately in Shanghai and eventually found their way here to the Hua Shan Hospital, where they were turned aside until they knocked on my office door and I got her admitted.

He ended his story and stood very still. Chen approached him and put a hand on his shoulder, “Thank you, sir, for the honour of telling me your story.”

The peasant grunted.

“Where will you go now?”

For a moment, Fong, I thought he was going to ask to stay in my office, but again I was wrong.

“Home,” he said. “I will go home.”

With that he left the room and took the first of thousands upon thousands of steps in his journey to the west.

Fong stared at the last words of Lily’s missive on the flimsy pages. A few digital who-knows-whats was all that remained of this poor man’s story.

Then some of those last words blurred as if a piece of flawed glass had been put in front of them. Fong tilted the pages – and the flawed glass moved and finally dripped over the edge of the sheet.

Tears do that.

Fong very slowly reached for his cell phone and pressed the speed-dial key. Then he paused, knowing full well that if he set things into motion neither he nor anyone else would know where they would lead. “Fuck it,” he mumbled and hit speed-dial selection nine. With lightning speed the thing dialed seventeen numbers – three for overseas long distance, three for China’s country code, three for Shanghai’s city code and the eight digits of the local Shanghai phone number that connected him with the two young officers he brought to the late night meeting he had convened just before he left for the Golden Mountain.

“Wei.”

“You know who this is?” Fong asked.

“Yes, sir,” the young cop answered, the tension clear in his voice.

“Good. Be ready to execute the plan that I gave you before I left.”

Fong heard the young man take a deep breath and finally he said, “We’ll be ready, sir.”

The phone disconnected without the usual thunk. Down the beach the old man was still standing on one leg. Momentarily, Fong wondered if the chaos his plan would set in motion in China would make the ground here on Jericho Beach tremble enough to unbalance the old man.