Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘But I want to understand .’

Tu sighed and stroked his bald head.

‘Let’s just say I help Yoyo to understand her father. Or, that’s what she hopes to get from me in any case.’ He raised a finger. ‘And don’t ask what there is to understand. That has nothing whatsoever to do with you!’

‘You speak in puzzles just as much as Chen does,’ boomed Jericho, aggravated.

‘On the contrary. I’m showing you an excessive amount of trust.’

‘Then trust me more. If I’m going to find Yoyo, I need to know the names of the other Guardians. I have to find them, question them.’

‘Just assume the others have gone underground too.’

‘Or were arrested.’

‘Hardly. Years ago I had the opportunity to get a close look at the cogs of the State welfare services, the places where they look inside your head and declare you to be infested with all kinds of insanity. I know those types. If they had arrested the Guardians, they would have been boasting about it at the tops of their voices for a while now. It’s one thing to make people disappear, but if someone’s running rings around you, making you look like a fool in public, then you put their head on a spear as soon as you catch them. Yoyo has caused the Party a great deal of grief. They won’t stand for it.’

‘How did Yoyo even get into all this?’

‘The way young people always get into things like this. She identified with zi you , with freedom.’ Tu poked around between his shirt buttons and scratched his belly. ‘You’ve been living here for a good while, Owen, and I think you understand my people pretty well by now. Or, let’s put it this way, you understand what you see. But a few things are still closed off from you. Everything that takes place in the Middle Kingdom today is the logical consequence of developments and breakthroughs throughout our history. I know, that sounds like something from a travel guide. Europeans always think this whole yin and yang business, this insistence on tradition, is just folklorist nonsense intended to disguise the fact that we’re just a band of greedy imitators who want to make their stamp on the world, continually damage human rights and who, since Mao, have no more ideals. But for two thousand years, Europe was like a pot which continually had new things thrown into it; it was a patchwork of clashing identities. You’ve all overrun each other, made your neighbours’ customs and ways your own, even while you were still fighting them. Huge empires came and went as if in time-lapse. For a while it was the Romans having their say, then the French, then the Germans and the Brits. You talk of a united Europe, and yet you speak in more languages than you can possibly understand, and as if that weren’t enough, you import Asia, America and the Balkans too. You’re incapable of understanding how a nation that for the most part was entirely self-sufficient and self-contained – because it felt the Middle Kingdom didn’t need to know what was outside its borders – finds it hard to accept the new, especially when it’s brought in from the outside.’

‘You guys certainly know how to brush that one under the carpet,’ snorted Jericho. ‘You drive German, French and Korean cars, wear Italian shoes, watch American films; I can’t think of any other nationality that has turned more to the outside in recent years than yours.’

‘Turned to the outside?’ Tu laughed drily. ‘Nicely put, Owen. And what comes to light when you turn to the outside? Whatever’s inside. But what is it that you see? What exactly are we turning towards the outside? Only what you recognise. You wanted us to open up? We did that, in the eighties under Deng Xiaoping. You wanted to do business with us? You’re doing it. Everything that Chinese emperors didn’t want from you over the centuries, we’ve bought from you in a matter of a few years, and you sold it to us willingly. Now we’re selling it back to you, and you buy it! And on top of all that you have a fancy for a good portion of authentic China. And you get that too, but you don’t like it. You get all worked up about us walking all over human rights, but in essence you just don’t understand how anyone can be imprisoned for his opinion in a land that drinks Coca-Cola. That doesn’t compute to you. Your ethnologists lament the disappearance of the last cannibals and plead for the preservation of their living space, but woe betide them if they start to do business and wear ties. If they did, you’d want them to downgrade back to chicken and vegetables in the blink of an eye.’

‘Tian, with the best will in the world, I don’t know—’

‘Do you realise that the term zi you was only exported to China in the middle of the nineteenth century?’ Tu continued obstinately. ‘Five thousand years of Chinese history weren’t enough to create it, nor were they enough for min zhu , democracy, or ren quan, human rights. But what does zi you mean? To stay true to yourself. To make you and your point of view the starting point for everything you do, not the dogma of how the masses think and feel. You might argue that the demonisation of the individual is a Maoist invention, but you’d be wrong. Mao Zedong was merely a dreadful variant on our age-old fear of being ourselves. Perhaps a just punishment, because we had cooled off in our conviction that all the people outside China were barbarians. When China was forced to open itself up to the Western powers, we were completely ignorant of what every other people with experience of colonialism knew intuitively. We wrongly believed we were the hosts, whereas in reality the guests had long since become the owners. Mao wanted to change that, but he didn’t just try to turn back the wheels of history, as the Ayatollahs went on to do in Iran. His efforts were focused on undoing history and isolating China on the summit of his ignorance. That just won’t work with a people who think, feel and criticise. That only works with robots. Pu Yi wasn’t our last Emperor; Mao was, if you see what I mean. He was the most horrific of them all: he stole everything from us, our language, our culture, our identity. He betrayed every ideal we had and all he left behind was a pile of rubble.’

Tu Tian paused, his fleshy lips twitching. Sweat shimmered on his bald head.

‘You asked how Yoyo could have become a dissident? I’ll tell you, Owen. Because she doesn’t want to live with the trauma that my generation and my parents’ generation will never be able to come to terms with. But if she wants to help an entire people find their identity, she can’t quote the spirit of the French revolution, nor the foundation of Spanish democracy, nor the end of Mussolini or Hitler, the fall of Napoleon or of the Roman Empire. History may have equipped Europe with the inconceivable eloquence it needs to formulate its demands, but we have long lacked even the simplest words to do so. Oh, sure, China sparkles! China is rich and beautiful and Shanghai is the centre of the world, where everything is permitted and nothing is impossible. We’ve drawn even with the United States, two economic giants neck to neck, and we’re on our way to becoming number one. But amidst all this shine our lives are impoverished on the inside, and we’re aware of this poverty. We’re not turning to the outside, Owen, it just seems like that. If we did turn to the outside, you would see the emptiness, like a transparent squid. We look to abroad for examples to follow, because the last Chinese example we had betrayed us. Yoyo suffers from being a child of this hollowed-out age more than the self-satisfied critics of globalisation and human rights infringements in Europe and America could ever imagine. You only see our transgressions, not the steps we’re taking. Not what we’ve already achieved. Not the unimaginable toil necessary to stand up for ideals, to even formulate them, without any moral legacy!’