Ma Jian - Red Dust

But the waiter assumes I am drunk and takes no notice.

I turn round. They are talking to each other, and don’t suspect a thing. I walk to the table with a bottle in each hand and smash them on their heads. As the tall one lurches back I pull the stool from under him and thrash it across his face, then swing it round and knock the short one to the ground. They are both lying on the floor now, completely rigid. I drop the blood-stained stool, open their bag and retrieve my camera.

Everyone in the restaurant has risen to their feet. ‘What are you staring at?’ I shout at the waiter. ‘Why haven’t you called the police yet? Don’t just stand there!’ I march out of the door. Back in the hostel, I pack in the dark, then slip out through the back door, run to the station and catch the first train out.

The train sets off for Xining. The carriage is so full, there is no room to stand, so I crawl under a seat and stretch out next to some clucking hens and a pile of dirty socks. I forget how far this six yuan ticket will take me. Never mind, I can sort that out later. I wonder if those guys are dead or not. They will kill me if they ever see me again. Tibet will have to wait. This train will pass Qinghai Lake in a few hours. There is an island in the middle inhabited by wild birds. A tangle of thoughts races through my mind, then everything becomes a blur.

Two stops before Qinghai Lake the train comes to a halt. I decide it would be wise to leave now before the conductor comes to check the tickets, so I push my way to the window, fling my bag out and jump. A fresh breeze wipes the stale smells from my face, the night is cold and clear. I follow the tracks for a while, but when the train pulls away I am plunged into a well of darkness.

The lake lies south of the railway. I strike a match, check my compass and glance at my watch. It is three in the morning. I can’t sit here all night. I grit my teeth, step off the tracks and head into the night.

The soft ground underfoot dips and rises. I can tell it is grass — my plimsolls are wet through. I stagger forward, pivoting my body back and forth, trying to keep my balance. My arms are probably stretched in front of me, but I can’t be sure, my mind has scattered into the dark. I try to walk in a straight line, but the constant fear of falling into a pit drains my energy. After an hour or so, I am too tired to know whether my eyes are open or shut. My legs grow weak, and slowly, just as I did as a child when my father walked me home from the beach at night, I walk myself to sleep. My next step treads through thin air. I fall and feel my shoulder and pelvis ram into damp earth. I pat the ground, discover I have landed in a pit, then close my eyes and sleep.

At dawn, I wake to a monotonous landscape of grass mounds and sandy pits. Along the side of a dirt track an electric cable coils feebly from one pole to the next. The sweep of water in the south must be Qinghai Lake. I strain my eyes but cannot see the further shore. It looks like an ocean. With a glad heart I leap to my feet and head down to the lake.

The sun reddens on the left and transforms the surface of the lake into a vast mirror. I see a tent by the shore and walk towards it. A dog charges out. There is no time to look for sticks or stones, so I swing off my pack and use it as a shield. The dog stops at my feet and barks wildly until someone leans out of the tent and shouts.

There is a fire in the middle of the tent. An old man lives here with his son. Steam from a pot of freshly cooked noodles rises into the thick woodsmoke. The old man pulls on a pair of waterproof trousers. His son whistles to the dog and walks in with a bundle of kindling. I tell them I have come to see Qinghai Lake.

‘Not many people visit this side. We’ve been fishing here since spring, and in six months we have only seen two other people.’

I tell the old man I got off the train last night at Shatasi station.

‘That’s a thirty-kilometre walk away,’ he says. ‘You were lucky you didn’t fall into a pit.’ We laugh. He serves me a bowl of hot noodles and a piece of fish left over from their supper.

After the meal, they go out to prepare the raft and nets. I lift the door curtain and walk outside. The morning clouds have flooded the air with a yellow light, the margin of the lake is a band of rippling gold.

The old man says, ‘Our home is simple, but you are welcome to stay if you like. No one will disturb you. You should rest a while before you continue your journey.’

‘Thank you, it would be nice to get some sleep. He doesn’t bite does he?’ I ask, pointing to the dog. ‘What’s his name?’

‘No name, just call her yellow dog. My son here doesn’t speak Mandarin but he can understand a little.’

The boy looks about twenty. I smile at him and then call out to yellow dog. She walks over and sniffs my trousers. The horse tied outside the tent throws its head back and shudders.

After they leave, I decide to walk around the lake for a while, and drink the calm of the open space.

When I return, the sun is overhead and the lake is the colour of the sky. I enter the tent and lie down. Yellow dog rubs her head across my thigh. I watch her for a while, then fall into a doze. In my dream she smiles at me.

The next day I ask to join them on the lake. I borrow some waterproof trousers. They weigh a ton. If I were to fall in the water they would pull me straight to the bottom. The raft consists of two rubber tyres and four wooden planks bound together with rope. We carry it to the shore and jump on. The raft is too small for the three of us, so the boy gets off and his father and I row into the middle of the lake. Even through the waterproof trousers the water feels ice cold. The old man casts the net and I help straighten it. Now and then I ladle water from the raft with a large wooden spoon. The surface of the lake is smooth and the air is perfectly still. A flock of bar-headed geese fly past in the distance.

‘Is it easy to get to Bird Island?’ I wait for the old man to dry his hands and pass him a cigarette.

‘It’s been open to tourists for some years now. The birds have been frightened away.’

‘What goes through your mind when you are out here all day on the lake?’ There is water as far as the eye can see. It would be nice to float here for a day or two, but a lifetime would be unbearable.

‘I dream about the day I won’t have to come here any more.’ He crushes the cigarette with his large callused hand. ‘I’ll fish here a few more years, save some money, then find my son a good wife.’

I remember the young man from Sichuan who was looking for his sister, and I let the subject drop.

In the afternoon, when we haul the lines in for the second time, I see a large yellow carp trapped in the net. I tug it out and throw it down, and it jumps across my feet. ‘We’ll have that for dinner,’ he says. I ask if there is any beer left and he says he has a few more bottles stashed away. I remember how we sat up in the tent last night without a care in the world, safe, warm, talking and drinking by the fire, and I feel a strange pang — the joy of entering their simple lives mixed with a sadness that I don’t belong.

On the third day I tell them it is time for me to leave. The old man, the boy and yellow dog walk me to the main road. They stop a truck and offer the driver eighty jin of yellow carp for half the usual price on condition that he drive me to Xining. He agrees to this, but later, when I get down for a piss at the edge of a small town, he hurls my bag out of the window and drives off without me.

I leave Xining on the morning of 12 June and reach Xunhua, a small town high in the mountains, late in the afternoon. From here I plan to follow the Yellow River east for a while, then proceed south to Chengdu. The director of Xunhua cultural centre invites me to stay in his flat.