“You’re a prisoner, Zhong Fong. You will always be a prisoner, Zhong Fong. As I said, it is important to remember one’s place in China. And you, Zhong Fong, are not only a traitor, but you are also a homeless vagrant. You stink like a street person. Decent people can smell you coming. They catch the whiff of Shanghanese shit stuck to your ass.”
“So that was it,” Fong thought. This man hated him because he was from Shanghai. Because he understood the special reality of growing up in the largest city in Asia. A city that knew and was influenced by the best of foreign cultures. A city that never slept. That gloried in being alive. Fong had met bureaucrats like this back in Shanghai. They were often from the north. They never bothered to learn Shanghanese despite the fact they’d lived in the city for twenty years. They were good party stock. That was all. Like this one. This guy was all dressed up but he was nothing more than a hick with power. A hick who hated Fong because he came from a great city. Because Fong understood it. Loved it.
The leg irons bit into Fong’s ankles. The water buffalo half-carried, half-dragged him out of the hut. The politico ran ahead and climbed into the driver’s seat of the large, black, Russian-built Chaika. He turned on the high beams. They were badly aimed. One lit the roof of a row of huts across the way while the other pooled on the dirt road inches in front of the fender. The northerner pressed hard on the car’s horn. The thing spluttered into sound and soon awoke the villagers. As he intended.
The politico took a bullhorn and, standing on the Chaika’s fender, shouted, “Come out, honest comrades, and see the traitor, Zhong Fong.” Bleary-eyed peasants emerged from their huts. Mothers clutched children. Old men attempted to stand straight.
“Now is the time, comrades, to lodge your complaints against the traitor. Your government is here to help you. This man is a disgrace to China. Tell us how he has harmed you and he will be punished accordingly.”
Something hit Fong in the chest. It was a rotten turnip. Then more things followed. And screams. These people whom he hardly knew seemed to hate him. Then he reminded himself that they were only acting their part in this little morality play.
The big man stepped in front of Fong, lifted him off his feet and carried him to the back of the Chaika. He unlocked the huge trunk.
“The traitor will ride in the trunk like common baggage,” the northerner announced.
The thug threw Fong in.
Fong twisted his body just in time to avoid the large metal latch on the car’s frame and he landed with a thump on his back. He turned to look out into the night. As he did, the two farmers he’d tried to help both began screaming complaints at the politico. Behind them stood his old assistant, Mr. Fen. He was shrugging his shoulders and looking at Fong. He mouthed the words, “I told you.”
Then the trunk lid slammed shut, blotting out the stars.
Fong felt the car’s ignition engage and the wide heavy vehicle, more tank than car, start to move.
Sound boomed off the surfaces of the confined space as it picked up speed. “Well, I’m finally out of the village. That’s positive,” he thought. But where were they taking him? And what was the shit coming down on him so hard that he needed a hat?
He consoled himself with one thought: “They wouldn’t have come to get me unless they needed me. They need me for something – to do something for them. And if they need me to do something for them I might be able to broker a trade. My services for a way back to Shanghai – a way home.”
CHAPTER TWO
The darkness in the trunk of the Chaika was almost complete. It was getting colder. Fong slowed his breathing and ordered himself to think. As the head of Special Investigations, Shanghai Division, he’d come across more than one body that had suffocated in the trunk of a car. His eyes slowly adjusted. Murky shadows took on shapes. He reached upward and felt the rusting inside of the Russian-made car’s trunk lid. He had some room above him. He propped himself up on his elbows and his head touched metal. Flakes of corrosion fell into his hair and down his neck.
Then the Chaika hit a bump. The rocklike shock absorbers did little to cushion the blow inside the car and nothing for Fong in the trunk. His head smashed against the lid then his elbows slammed to the floor. Blood quickly matted his hair and dribbled down his forehead. One elbow was skinned almost to the bone. He curled into a ball on the floor of the trunk, ignored the bleeding and tried to think.
Another bump.
His whole body went straight up, hit the lid and then thumped back down.
The car accelerated and took a hard right. He shoved his hands straight out over his head as he slid along the floor of the trunk. He hit hard. As he did, his hands scraped across a cavity in the metal sidewall. He reached in and touched rubber. A small spare tire. He yanked it free of its strappings and skittered back to the centre of the trunk. The tire could protect his head like a cushion.
The air in the confined space was already rank and Fong knew that carbon monoxide was probably coming up from the tailpipe. Chaikas were not famous for their fine workmanship. He turned over and using his fingernails scraped at the edge of the trunk’s shredded carpet. He tore a large patch of skin from the back of his right hand but ignored it as he wedged his hand beneath a corner of the coarse material. Then he leaned back and pulled with all his might. Several square feet of the mouldy stuff came up. He reversed himself so he could work on the section where he’d been lying. It took him time – and two substantial bumps – to make the shift. This side of the carpet came up quickly. Fong gathered it together and pushed it as far forward as he could.
He was breathing hard and his sweat was already mixing with the blood from his head, elbow and hand. He stank of fear.
Another bump. Fong’s head snapped back and he took the blow on his forehead. When he landed, his hand caught on the corner of something on the floor. He yanked it open. He reached in and found a partially inflated inner tube.
He looked into the tire well. The metal was so rusted that it was almost translucent. He searched desperately for something to poke a hole in the metal. Finding nothing, he got himself into a half-sitting position, leaned back on his elbows and stuck his foot into the well. Several kicks later he had a hole – and enough air to stay alive. He repositioned himself beside the air hole and drew his knees up. He put the small tire beneath his head and the inner tube on top of him. Then he covered the mound of himself with the shredded carpet.
Through the hole he watched the road whiz by – China whiz by. He’d been confined to that village west of the Wall for over two years. Before that he’d been in Ti Lan Chou prison for . . . it felt like a very long time. But now he was travelling. Moving. He watched China through the hole. Pebbles and dirt, then moments of pavement, then pebbles and dirt, slush, pavement, dirt, pavement – and finally sleep.
And dreams.
He was on a palette on the ground, his mother standing over him. She was crying. He tried to speak but blood came from his mouth and a deep rattle sounded in his tortured lungs. Fong knew where he was. He was in their home in Shanghai’s Old City. He was a boy. It was before the liberation. He’d gotten typhoid from handling the night soil. He wanted to reach up and tell his mother that it was okay, that she mustn’t cry. But he couldn’t speak.
His grandmother came in and shrieked at his mother who bowed quickly then put on her “brave face” and hurried back to work in the dark streets. Fong looked at his grandmother’s lined, stern face. It betrayed nothing. She barked out, “You’re not going to die. Night soil has been the business of this family for twelve generations. We’ve all had what you have. Don’t be a coward and it will go away – or it won’t then it won’t matter if you are a coward or not.”