I stepped up and secured the rope around my neck. I kicked away the stones and felt my body plummet, only to then get jerked back up again, as if the lift I’d be been riding had lost control. It all happened in slow motion, but before I knew it I was hanging, the rope digging into my neck. I felt the blood surge upwards, but it quickly sank back down. Then a pain and itch in my extremities, followed by numbness. The only thing I could feel was above the neck. It was as if my insides had been squeezed out of my body by a car.
The sky was receding ever higher as I swung from the branch. In the distance I could hear the sound of splitting wood. I continued to hang for a few moments and then dropped like a bag of pork to the ground. I lay there, trying to catch my breath, before ripping away at the claws around my throat. But I couldn’t loosen the rope, so I scrambled to my feet and stumbled on. I wasn’t dying but it had to come off. I was going crazy.
I don’t remember who cut the rope, someone with a knife. But I recall my body’s first reaction to freedom was to erupt in a violent fit, calmed only as the blood returned to my limbs. I stood up. The sweat poured off me and my trousers were weighed down with shit, but I pushed through the crowd of tourists and made my way down the hill. I was starving. I washed myself in the cold lake water and decided never to do that again.
Midway down the hill was a small village. Shop flags fluttered in the wind and plumes of steam from baskets of buns filled the air. Locals were laying out displays of walnuts and almonds by a line of parked buses, with tour groups poking at their wares. I’d stepped out of a cold and desolate world into one of warmth and sensuality. They knew nothing of what I’d been through, the horror that had just befallen me.
Breakfast restored me and I went to find a telephone kiosk.
‘Who is this?’ the voice from the other end said, clearly shaken.
‘Li Yong, it’s me.’
‘Who?’
‘Me.’
His silence told me he knew.
‘Don’t worry. I just called to say one thing. Remember this day and raise a glass to me every year. I’ll be your brother in the next life too.’
The idiot started crying. ‘Of course.’
I had planned to ask him what people were saying about me, but I decided I could well imagine. So I hung up.
I found a shady billiard shack, picked up a cue and started playing. The boss wanted the business, so he came over to play with me. I took out my last three hundred and placed them under a stone at the edge of the table. ‘One hundred a game.’ The boss looked me up and down and said we should play a game first.
It was just as well, as he was an impatient guy who didn’t put any thought into his shots. Balls that needed only the lightest nudge, he’d thwack. I played carefully, trying to prolong the game with tactics. It wasn’t my usual style, but right now I thought it might not be a bad option. It was like playing mah-jong with the boss; you had to let him win, but not too easily. He accused me at times of taking too long. He had a dirty mouth and after a while I too started recklessly smashing balls. At least that way he stayed and played.
I was controlling him and I wasn’t going to let the game finish just yet. Only when a group of guys came in did I let my real skills show, leaving the boss reeling in shock.
‘I just wanted you to help me kill time.’
He looked insulted, picked up the cue and started thumping it against the table. I didn’t look at him but went over to the refrigerator, took out a cola and a packet of cigarettes and dropped a hundred note.
‘Keep the change.’
I drank a long gulp of the cola, puffed on a cigarette and examined the suits who had just strode in. They looked over a few times, but dismissed me.
‘Who you looking for?’ I asked gruffly.
They came over. One took out a photo and showed it to me. I was looking at a picture of myself with a grisly beard and messy hair. I was staring down the lens. I don’t think I’d have recognised myself either.
‘What a bunch of novices.’
They looked insulted and turned to leave. I blew out a curl of smoke and reached out as it clouded my eyes.
‘I killed Kong Jie.’
I only said it because of the smoke in my eyes.
They looked at each other and then swarmed around me, pushing at my shoulders, stamping on my legs, trying to wrestle me to the floor.
‘I could have been long gone, if I’d wanted to.’
Once in the back of the car, they treated me with a bit more reverence. I was a murderer, after all, not just some tramp. In fact, they handled me like an expensive ceramic vase, afraid I’d break. They couldn’t hide their latent narcissism, though.
‘How did you know who we were?’
‘The leather belts.’
They looked down at their waists. The buckles were printed with a police crest.
‘I want a KFC,’ I said, and then dropped off to sleep.
The Interrogation
They covered my head. The sound of their voices was distant; it felt like I was the only one in the car. We drove faster and faster until suddenly we came to a stop. Firecrackers were exploding outside the window and a commanding officer barked some instructions. I was pulled out of the car and made to walk. I heard the pa-pa-pa of camera shutters. Everything was sharp, bumping into me, until up ahead the road emptied, where it was like being pushed towards the lonely night.
They lifted the cloth from my head and I saw walls. A metal door. A window pulled shut. They pushed a piece of paper towards me to sign and then attached me by the hands to the metal loops fastened to the wall. I couldn’t stand properly, only on my tiptoes. I protested and their response was to fetter my feet. I decided not to make any more requests.
My body kept sinking and I had to fight for the right to rest. Sometimes my poor hands would let my feet take the burden, sometimes the other way round.
‘I need a pee!’ I shouted at one point, the response to which was the sound of clanging from outside and then, ‘Go on then.’
The urine ran down my trousers and thighs and out between my toes, like a bottle of warm, spilt milk. There must have been a camera. I was being watched. I figured I might as well fart a few times, spit on the wall, talk to myself. I wasn’t going to get to sleep. I was starting to feel jealous of people who were free to hang themselves from bridges, or get beaten up.
As the light disappeared, they came to undo my handcuffs. I flopped to the ground. They dragged me into a dark room, placed me on a low chair and then disappeared. Just as I drifted into sleep a terrifying light shone in my face. It looked like one of those lights photographers use that burn your skin. I squinted. A fluorescent lamp above followed, its dim light falling like a waterfall onto a head of dense silver hair before me. I could only make out an outline of the man, sitting proudly. He was chewing. I could hear the sound of his tongue slurping as he licked his fingers.
‘You should always eat chicken wings while they’re still hot, or the fat coagulates as they cool and they lose their taste.’
I wasn’t unsympathetic to this opinion.
I felt the heat pulsing through my brain like an electrical current, but I wasn’t sweaty. I just wished I was dead, to be honest. I tried to ask a few times when we could start, but it was no good. That was like a woman asking a thug, ‘When are you going to start raping me?’
He ate twelve chicken wings in all (he was definitely going to have a case of the runs when he got home). Then, finally, he spoke.
‘Name.’
Then the questions came ringing out one after another.