He kicked an old tin can and sent it rattling across the dried ground and looked up to see the twin towers of the Double-pagoda Temple dominating the skyline. It would have been impossible to have lived here and not recognise them.
But there was nothing here for Li. Nothing but ghosts and memories. Other people’s memories.
The taxi took him back to the city in about twenty minutes, and he killed the next hour sitting in Yingze Park, drinking a three-yuan can of beer and watching small boys sailing tiny boats in the wind that ruffled the surface of the lake. He let the world pass him by and tried to think of nothing, to keep his mind empty, free to be full only of things that mattered. But despair kept leaking in.
He made his way back to the public records office and got there a little after five. The woman from the citizens’ registry was waiting for him at the top of the steps, wrapped up in a large padded jacket and carrying a deep denim bag. She nodded through glass doors to the large reception hall. ‘That’s him. I told him you’d be looking for him.’
Li saw a wizened old man in faded blue overalls, with a bucket and mop, cleaning the marble tiles on the vast expanse of floor inside. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and pushed open the door into the lobby.
As Li approached him, the old man glanced up and then returned his gaze to the sweep of his mop across the shiny surface of the tiles.
‘Mister Meng?’ Li said.
‘You’ll be the cop from Beijing,’ old Meng said, and Li glanced toward the glass entrance to see the lady from the citizens’ registry watching them with unabashed curiosity.
‘That’s right.’
‘I had nothing to do with that fire.’ Still the old man did not look up.
‘I don’t think for a minute that you had,’ Li said.
The old man gave him a long, appraising look, decayed stumps of teeth gnawing on a piece of his cheek. ‘What do you want, then?’
‘The lady from the citizens’ registry told me that you worked at the orphanage from the mid-fifties.’
‘Nosy old bitch!’ old Meng complained. ‘None of her bloody business.’
‘Did you?’ Li asked.
The old man nodded. ‘I loved that place,’ he said. ‘Knew every one of those kids as if they were my own. Poor little bastards. The place was run by women. There was hardly a man about the place. No father figure, only matriarchs. Broke my heart when it burned down.’
Li said hesitantly, ‘Would you remember one of the kids from back then? I know it’s a long time ago, and all I’ve got’s a name…’
‘Try me.’ Old Meng sloshed water from his bucket on to the floor, and Li smelled the bleach in it.
‘Cao Xu.’
The old man stopped in mid wipe and looked at Li, a strange light in his eyes. ‘Why do you want to know about little Xu?’
‘You remember him, then?’
‘Of course I do. He was a great kid. One of the favourites at the orphanage. Everyone loved him. He used to call me papa.’ Li tried to keep from getting excited. His hopes had been dashed too many times in recent days. ‘Always had a twinkle in his eye and a quip on his lips.’
It certainly didn’t sound like the Cao Xu that Li knew.
‘Have you come to visit him?’
Li was aware of stopping breathing, and it took a conscious effort for him to draw breath again. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do you know where I can find him?’
‘Of course.’ Old Meng glanced at the big clock on the wall. ‘But you’ll need to wait until I finish at six. And then I’ll take you to him.’
Li had never known an hour to pass so slowly. He sat on a low wall in the courtyard outside the municipal building smoking cigarette after cigarette. More for something to do than anything else, he had crossed the road to a small general store on the corner and bought a pack. Now he was nearly halfway through it, and his mouth felt dry and kippered. It was ten past six and almost dark before the old man pushed open the door of the main building and came down the steps toward him, dwarfed by his big coat and wearing a thermal ski cap. He made Li think of his father, and his heart lurched with the memory of the old man abandoned in Lao Dai’s apartment. He must be wondering what had happened to his son.
‘You got a car?’ old Meng said. Li shook his head. ‘We’ll need a taxi then.’
The taxi ride took less than fifteen minutes. Li sat in the back, while the old man sat up front with the driver arguing about the best route to take, a constant dialogue. Li watched the city slip by him as darkness fell. It was darker than Beijing. Here there were fewer lights. They did not have as much power to waste. Li had no idea where they were, or where they were going. He heard the name Taigang mentioned several times, but it meant nothing to him. And then through the windscreen he saw a huge floodlit tower like a cut-down Washington Monument reaching into the blackness. The taxi drew up on the side of a small square dominated by the stone needle, and old Meng climbed stiffly out. Li followed him and looked around. This was no residential area. An area of parkland brooded darkly behind a high fence. The gates to it stood opposite the tower.
‘We’d better hurry,’ the old man said. ‘They’ll be closing up shortly.’
Li followed him across the cobbles and through the gates. There seemed to be one long, treelined avenue washed by the light of ornamental street lamps, and small paths led off at right-angles to left and right. ‘Where the hell are we?’ Li asked.
‘Tomb park,’ said old Meng. And he pointed ahead to a large, floodlit monument. As they approached it Li saw that it was a memorial tomb to the soldiers who died fighting to liberate Taiyuan from the grip of the Nationalists in 1948. It was inscribed, Niutuozai Soldiers’ Tomb.
Li turned away from the glare of the floodlights and looked around him. And as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the poorly lit pathways that criss-crossed the park, he suddenly realised where he was. ‘It’s a cemetery,’ he said. In the cities no one buried their dead any more. Land was at a premium. Cremation was the only permitted form of disposal.
‘This way,’ old Meng said. And he headed off to the left down a long pathway strewn with leaves. Small posts with built-in lights every few metres cast feeble illumination across their route. Li could see the mounds on either side, and the stone tablets raised in the memory of the dead. He had seen graves in the countryside, where the peasants still buried their dead on the land. He had attended many cremations. But he had never been in a city cemetery like this before, hundreds, maybe thousands, of bodies interred all around him. He pulled his coat tight to keep out the cold, damp sorrow of the place. Old Meng stopped and took out a small flashlight from a bag slung across his shoulder and flashed its beam from one headstone to another. ‘Somewhere around here,’ he mumbled. Then, ‘Ah, here he is.’
Li’s mouth was dry, and he felt the blood pulsing in his throat, as he knelt down beside a small, plain headstone lying crookedly at one end of a short mound. The municipal authorities clearly made some attempt at keeping the cemetery from falling into total ruin, but still the grass grew up around the tablet, almost obscuring it. He pulled it aside, and by the light of Meng’s lamp rubbed away the layer of moss that concealed the inscription.
‘Scarlet fever,’ Meng said. ‘Took him in a matter of days.’
Li took the flashlight from him and peered through its light at the faded characters carved in the stone. It said simply, Cao Xu. 1948–1962. He had been only fourteen years old when he died.
Chapter Thirteen