Antonio Garrido - The Corpse Reader

It’s my only way out.

He let go of the barge, and a torrent of water whipped him downriver, tossing and buffeting him around. Once he was through the first sluice gate, the main danger was being smashed against the side of a barge. He was carried toward the second gate, convinced that any minute he’d be crushed. But he got through the second gate and then managed to grab onto a loose cable. The water level rose rapidly around him, and the barges and boats squeezed close together, threatening to squash him.

He tried to use the cable to climb up one of the canal walls, but his right leg wasn’t working. Lifting it just above the surface of the water, he saw how bad the bite was.

Damned animal!

Using only his left leg and his arms, he scrambled up to the edge of the dock. He turned and collapsed, then saw Kao on the far side. With no way of reaching Cí, Kao kicked the ground in obvious frustration.

“Run all you want! I’ll find you! I’ll get you! No matter what!”

Cí didn’t reply but dragged himself up and went off, half-hopping, into the crowds of Lin’an.

12

Limping along backstreets, Cí cursed his bad luck and worried about Third. With the Great Pharmacy no longer an option, he had to find a private herbalist, and the medicine would be expensive. He stopped at the first he came upon. The counter was cluttered with dried roots and leaves, mushrooms and seeds, chopped-up vines and stalks, and minerals, but there were no customers. Although the shop was empty, the two owners barely acknowledged Cí. He asked if they had any of the medicine, and the men whispered to each other before telling him—at some length—how scarce that particular root had become recently. It came as no surprise to Cí when they claimed that the price had gone up to 800 qián for a handful.

He tried bartering. All he had was the 100 qián from the old professor. He showed them his money.

“I don’t need a whole handful. A quarter’s enough.”

“That will be two hundred, then,” said one of the owners. “And here,” he added, pointing at the coins, “I see only a hundred.”

“It’s all I have.” He looked disdainfully around the run-down shop, as if to suggest business clearly wasn’t very good. “It’s better than nothing!”

They didn’t look impressed.

“And bear in mind I could get it for free at the Great Pharmacy,” said Cí.

“Look,” said one of men as he began to put the medicine away. “Do you honestly think we haven’t heard it all before? If you could’ve got it for less, you would have. It’s two hundred qián , or you can go back under whichever rock you crawled out from.”

Cí took off his sandals.

“They’re good leather, you could get at least a hundred qián for them. Really, it’s all I have.”

“Do we look in need of footwear? Go on, get out!”

Cí thought about grabbing the medicine and running, but he knew the wound to his leg would make that impossible. Leaving the shop, he wondered how things could possibly get any worse.

It was the same story at the other herbalists he visited. The last, a godforsaken place near one of the city gates, tried to sell him some powdered bamboo. But he’d bought Third’s medicine so many times before that its sticky texture and bitter taste were unmistakable to him; he dipped a finger and knew immediately that the owners were cheating him. He managed to get his money back but then had to flee because the owners, cunningly, tried to accuse him of breaking the sale agreement.

Not knowing what else to do, he spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find work—even though he knew he’d probably be paid only in rice. He went to all the nearby stalls asking for a job, but seeing how worn-out he looked and the way he was limping, no one was even remotely interested. He went to several of the smaller jetties, but they were crowded with people clamoring for jobs.

He asked anyone he could for work, and said he was willing to do anything, but no one listened. All the while, he knew, Third would be deteriorating.

He became so desperate it seemed difficult to breathe. He thought of stealing, or even selling his body down by the canal bridges like other paupers did—but for that, he’d need connections with the gangs.

He sat on the sidewalk and tried to pull himself together. Looking up, he spotted the fortune-teller who had tried to sell Third the candy. He still wore the donkey skin but had swapped his stool for a small stage on which he now stood, offering people a chance to win some money. A small crowd was gathering, and Cí, though extremely skeptical of such displays, drifted over.

The fortune-teller had quite a setup. On a table behind the stage lay a huge assortment of knickknacks and trinkets: old turtle shells used for fortune-telling, badly painted clay Buddhas, cheap paper fans, kites, rings, belts, sandals, incense, old coins, lanterns, spiders, and snake skeletons. It looked to Cí as if someone had spilled a bag of the strangest trash on the table and was trying to sell it off. But he couldn’t imagine the pile of junk was what was attracting the crowd.

As Cí came a little closer, it became clear.

The fortune-teller had set up a cricket race: a table with a maze of concentric marks on it, and six channels, each painted a different color, each ending at the mound of sugar in the center of the table. Bets were being laid on which of the crickets would reach the center first. The citizens of Lin’an loved to bet.

Cí pushed his way to the front just as the fortune-teller was announcing the last chance to bet, egging on the crowd.

“Come on! Money to be won! Your chance to escape your misery and your poverty! Win, imagine it, and you’ll have so much money you can marry the woman of your dreams—or go out whoring instead!”

The mention of flesh prompted a few more bets. The crickets waited in their boxes, each daubed on the back with paint matching the colors of the channels.

“Is that it? No one else has the balls to challenge me? Bunch of cowards! Afraid of my old cricket? Fine…I’m feeling crazy today!” The fortune-teller picked up his cricket, which was marked with yellow paint, and pulled off one of its front legs. Then he put the insect down in the labyrinth so everyone could see it stumble around. “What about now?” he cried.

A few people found this to be sufficient proof that the fortune-teller had in fact lost his mind, and they raised their bets. He knew it was a bad idea, but Cí was also seriously considering betting. All he could think about was getting enough money for Third’s medicine.

The bets were about to close when Cí slammed his money down.

“A hundred qián ! Eight to one.”

And may fortune protect me.

“Betting closed! Stand away!”

The fortune-teller placed the six crickets at their respective gates and checked to make sure the silk netting that prevented the insects from hopping away was secure.

“Ready?” asked the fortune-teller.

“Ready yourself?” echoed one man. “My red cricket’s going to destroy yours.”

The fortune-teller struck a gong and lifted the gates. The crickets hurried into their respective channels—all except the yellow one, which tottered feebly forward. Soon the men were roaring with excitement, growing even louder if one of their crickets stopped. The red cricket was doing well, charging ahead of the others, but then, barely a hand’s length from the finishing line, it stopped. The men fell silent. The insect hesitated, as if some invisible obstacle had sprung up in front of it. Then, in spite of its owner’s cries, it went back the way it had come. At the same time, the fortune-teller’s cricket was miraculously scurrying forward at top speed.