David Rotenberg - The Shanghai Murders

The rain slashed down on him. His tears mixed with it. His sobs came up from the earth and roared out of his mouth. His sides cracked and suddenly he was on the ground, digging in the mud. Throwing it over himself. Burying himself in the cold obstruction. Trying with all his might to avoid the laughter of the heavens that drowned his sobs.

And there he lay until a thought grew in his mind. A thought that warmed his being. Set his mind strangely at rest. Knowing what Fu Tsong had being trying to say to him as she fell allowed him, for the first time in his life, to fully accept that Fu Tsong had loved him. Loved him enough to thank him for a death that was surely his fault. With her arm movement she was not being set free. She was setting him free.

He arose from his would-be grave and stood in the pelting rain for a moment longer. Then he stepped toward the charred body of Loa Wei Fen. There was a smile on the dying man’s face. Scraping the mud from his hands, Fong reached forward and pulled the knife from Loa Wei Fen’s chest. A bubble of blood came up with the blade, “Thank you,” bubbled from his shattered mouth as Loa Wei Fen, still smiling, repeated his hand gesture.

Then the man’s eyes opened wide and he exhaled one long breath. The smile on his face became luminous.

In Ti Lan Chou Prison, Fong never knew if it was day or night, winter or summer, time for another brutal work shift or time to confess his political sins once again. On occasion a cellmate left and did not return. He accepted that. Like all modern prisons, Ti Lan Chou echoed with the clanging of metal on metal. But it also possessed a strange stillness. A stillness wherein meaning loses its potency and memories fade.

Fong used the stillness to find some peace. Finally, his dreams calmed.

On the one hundred and forty-ninth day of his third year in Ti Lan Chou Prison he was awakened by two guards and led down corridors that he had never seen before. Then, out a door into a courtyard. Into the night.

Above him were the first stars that he had seen in more than two years. Real stars. And a night breeze. He forced himself to face the cold wind. Then he forced himself not to cringe as he fought down the urge to beg to go back to the stillness of the prison.

A gate opened and an ancient man in a heavy overcoat ambled toward him.

The man stopped five feet from Fong and stared at him for a very long time.

“You have strong friends, Inspector Zhong.” The voice was hoarse, blood filled, near its end.

“I have no friends.”

“No friends here, perhaps. But you have a friend in the West. A writer whose book Letters from Shanghai has made her a powerful woman. She has, as the West is fond of saying, championed your cause.”

Remembering Amanda hurt him.

“I’ve looked forward to meeting you,” the man croaked.

“Have you really?” It came out feebly.

“Yes. As have my many associates in this great venture. All send their regards.”

Fong lifted his chin and felt the wind on his cheek. He savoured the smell of the living earth. Then the old man put his hand on Fong’s shoulder and walked him to the courtyard door. “Now I expect you want an explanation as to what all this was about.”

“It was about ivory,” Fong spat out.

“Nonsense,” spat back the hoarse-voiced man. “Who could possibly care about the tusks of elephants enough to murder men? It’s about that.” He opened the door, revealing a breathtaking view of the night lunarscape of the Pudong, the planet’s largest construction site. The place of Fu Tsong and Loa Wei Fen’s deaths.

“But. . .” Words refused to come to him.

“Once a child is born it must be fed. Once a city is reborn it must be fed. Once a nation arises from the ashes it must be fed. Those buildings grow on a very special diet, a diet of money and trade. Both from the West. The West that is so sentimental about the health and well-being of large tusk-bearing mammals.”

He handed an official-looking envelope to Fong.

“You’re a talented individual, Zhong Fong. China may need your skills again at some future time.” Fong opened the envelope. “It’s a promotion, Zhong Fong. You seem to like playing sheriff. Well, there is a town on the Mongolian border which needs a sheriff and we have decided that you are just the man for the job. Your train leaves from the North Train Station at dawn. It’s an eight-day train journey. Unfortunately in these tight economic times we could only afford a hard seat for you. Safe journey to the west, Zhong Fong.”

Shock saves the body from experiencing pain too great to bear. Numbness saves the mind from a similar fate. So it was in a numb stupor that Fong approached the apartment that had been theirs, then his, and now not theirs or his. To his surprise the place was empty.

No. They had emptied it. They had known he would come here.

The furniture was gone, the paintings, all of Fu Tsong’s things. How small a place seems without furniture. On the bathroom floor he found Fu Tsong’s complete Shakespeare.

They knew him. They owned him.

He picked up the book. The smell of fresh urine rose from the pages. The acidity momentarily brought a welcome pain back to him.

His scream shook the windows of the bathroom, scared the snotty theatre students pretending to be angry in the statued courtyard and only faded when it reached the din of the traffic on Yan’an.

As Fong made his way through the throngs to the North Train Station he walked by a restaurant window with live snakes on display. As Fong passed, a large cobra raised itself up to its full height and flared its hood. For a moment Fong paused. Then he laughed. Here was an animal that thought it was important. Thought it was power itself. Fong stepped up to the windowpane and stared into the cobra’s unblinking eyes. Then he rapped the glass sharply enough to make it ting. As the snake darted away in fear, Fong hissed, “You’re only important and powerful until some man comes along with enough money to skin and eat you live.”

On the eighth day of the train ride, hard seat, Fong opened Fu Tsong’s Shakespeare for the first time. He read through Twelfth Night , hearing Fu Tsong’s voice in every one of Olivia’s lines.

He searched in vain for his voice in the play. If we are all in the play, who am I?

At last, as the train pulled into his new town, he came to the very end of the play. To his surprise it was Malvolio who had his voice. His pain. And as the train whistled to a dusty stop he shouted Malvolio’s final line, “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.”

It felt good on his lips in both English and Chinese.