The woman looked at Joan’s hands and nodded. “Good. They might pass. Open your mouth.” The woman took out a small vial with a dark liquid in it. Using a tiny brush she applied the liquid to several of Joan’s teeth. “Tooth black,” she explained as she put away the bottle. The woman then indicated that Joan should turn slowly. Joan did. The woman nodded, “As good as we can do for now.” She reached into her pocket and held out a badly torn and aged identity card. Joan took it. The woman began to pack up, scooping large hunks of Joan’s hair into her canvas bag. When she was done, she said, “Take five more minutes then come on deck.”
“How will I know when five minutes is up? You have my watch.”
“Count.” The woman was clearly not impressed with Joan’s first venture into peasanthood. “When you are on deck, don’t sit. Don’t look around. Get to the rail and stare at the water. When we land, you walk off. Give me the car keys and your other identity card.”
Joan did.
“Good luck,” the tiny woman said, “and if I was you I’d take a good dump here. It may be the last time you see a real toilet until you get back to Hong Kong.”
When the ferry docked, Joan joined a long line of peasants who waited patiently while all the cars from below left the ferry, then the passengers in first class, second class and third class. Waiting without complaint was a new concept for Joan Shui.
At the bottom of the gangplank there was a government official backed by two armed guards demanding papers. When Joan’s turn came, she held out her torn identity card. The man didn’t even look at it as he barked, “Move along.” This was new too. Not even a glance at her face, which was now dirt encrusted, or at her now seemingly non-existent chest, which thanks to the tensor bandage was beginning to really pinch.
She was used to being the object of much male and some female attention and for a moment it really threw her not to be thought of as attractive. Up until that moment she hadn’t realized how much, in the past, she had relied on the unquestioned fact of her beauty. “Sic transit gloria mundi,” she quoted to herself. A British education came in handy at the oddest of moments.
On the night train north, in the fourth-class hard-seat compartment, she met her land contact – she almost fell asleep against her shoulder before she knew. “Do the exercises in your mind, they’ll keep you alert,” the middle-aged woman whispered.
“I’m tired,” Joan said but was immediately sorry that she had spoken. The man across the way had ferret eyes. He was a common reality in mainland China. He and the millions like him were the natural product of a system that didn’t reward expertise but did reward those who rat on their fellow citizens. It was the only way that so few could control so many – Beijing had millions like this man working for them.
Joan fell back on instinct – charm your way out. Mistake! With her blackened teeth and cropped hair, her smile and head bob were hardly fetching. His response shocked her. “An ugly whore,” he shouted. “What’s an ugly whore doing on the same train with honest comrades?”
That was enough. Joan swallowed some air, as her younger brother had taught her to do many years ago at a family gathering, and belched right in the man’s face.
He spat on the floor at her feet. She spat at his feet.
He stared at her. She stared right back.
They made quite a pair.
Despite the fact that the train actually did go all the way to Shanghai, Joan and her escort got off as the sun was rising, some 200 miles south of the great city.
“This train comes in to the North Train Station in Shanghai. It is watched. Always watched,” her escort said ominously. Once off the train, the heat hit Joan like a moist blanket. At least on the train there had been the motion of air through the windows. But here the air just hung from the dawning sky like a living, sleeping thing. Joan reached to undo the top buttons of her Mao jacket. “Don’t,” the woman said, “peasants are very wary of showing their bodies.”
Joan took her hands away from the buttons. “These sandals cut my feet.”
“Good,” said the woman as they left the train station and headed toward the old section of the small city.
CHAPTER NINE
As the heat of the day began to mount, Fong and Chen climbed up on the stage. Behind them, several other cops lugged a large black bag into the auditorium.
“What now?” demanded the old worker from the far reaches upstage.
“Thanks for joining us,” said Fong in an effort to calm the waves of open aggression coming from the man.
The old worker looked at Fong then did a double take as he glanced at Chen. Chen was used to that. “What do you and your intensely ugly friend want?”
Fong started to defend Chen, but the younger man spoke first, “You work the fly rail here?”
“Some nights,” the old worker replied warily.
“Which nights?” asked Fong.
“Whichever they assign me. What is this? I was told I had to work on this shit. I don’t know squat about it. It’s ridiculous. I’m a rigger. A professional, not some stupid rope puller. I worked on skyscrapers in the Pudong then all of a sudden I’m told to go pull ropes for faggots. What’s that?”
“These ropes that you pull, they are all your responsibility?”
“Yeah, there are seven sets of lines and they are all mine to work – on the nights I have to waste my time here.”
“And each of the ropes . . . ”
“Lines. They’re called lines.”
“Okay each of the lines has counterweights on them?”
“Naturally. Some of the flying units weigh close to half a ton. Without counterweights no one could lower the thing in without smashing it to the ground, let alone fly it out.”
“Yeah, I get that, but whose responsibility is it to set the counterweights?”
“Mine . . . for the . . . ”
“ . . . nights you waste your time and talent here. Right. So this was the line Geoffrey Hyland was hanged from?”
“Who?”
“The director who was hanged. You may recall that incident.”
“Yeah. It was tied off to the pinrail when I arrived that morning.”
“How much counterweight was there on that line?”
“A lot.”
“More than usually is on the line?”
“Way more.”
“Do you know how much more?”
“I’m a professional, of course I know how much weight was . . . ”
“How much?”
The man went into the small production office in the back and came out with a well-kept leatherbound notebook. He turned to the date and pointed to a figure. The man’s handwriting was like a draftsman’s. The columns were perfectly in line. The whole thing was a work of mathematical precision. Fong looked at the man. Perhaps his talents were, in fact, wasted here.
“So there were three hundred and forty pounds of counterweight on that line that night?”
“That’s what it says, so that’s what was there.”
Fong nodded. “How much does that line usually carry?”
The man checked his notes. “Forty pounds when I work it and sixty when the other guy does.”
“Because . . . ?” Fong prompted.
“Because I’m stronger than the other guy who isn’t a guy at all but an old woman who needs the extra counterweight to move the damn thing.”
“What do you pull up and down on this line?”
“You mean what’s flown in and out on this line?”
“Yes, I guess I mean that.”
“Several vertical white panels. Used for the ghost’s appearance in the bedroom and for Ophelia’s madness walk with the flowers.”
“Just canvas panels?”
“That’s it. Pretty light but that director was very specific about how he wanted the panels flown in and out. It was in time to this real slow music so we needed enough counterweight to make the move smooth. When it worked it was . . . good, you know.”