Dragon Games

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  “Come on.” It sounded like a plea.

  “What is he supposed to help us with?”she asked suspiciously.

  “To find a lawyer. If you want to get compensation for your mother you have to get a lawyer. To threaten to take them to court, not necessarily to really do so. Otherwise Sanlitun will never take you seriously.”

  She said nothing.

  They met Wang Cai Hua in a modest noodle-soup and dumping restaurant near his office. He was on the late shift and did not have much time; they were the only diners. He was tall and thin and wore a white shirt and jeans; a few golden highlights glinted in his black hair. Yin-Yin was glad to see him; he had been one of the top students and at the same time the class clown, taking neither the teachers nor his grades particularly seriously. He made her laugh often. Many lessons had been made reasonably tolerable by his jokes. She had admired him because he was the only student who every now and then had dared to object to the rules. She suspected that he was not frightened of authority, not even deep down.

  “He’s too old for you,” he said to her in a low voice when they met, gesturing at Paul with his head.

  “It doesn’t matter if a cat is young or old. As long as he catches mice,” Paul replied. “An old Chinese proverb.”

  Wang looked at him amazed – Paul understood Mandarin – then started laughing so hard he almost choked himself. Even Yin-Yin laughed in relief; there would have been no better way for Paul to win Wang’s trust and respect.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “Good,” he said with his familiar impish smile which had always left her wondering if he was being serious or not. “In the last few weeks I’ve lost all the money that I made in the twelve months before that on the stock exchange.”

  “How did you do that?” Yin-Yin asked, still suspecting that he was kidding.

  “I was in Macau.”

  “You gamble?”

  “We all do. Don’t you have any shares? The whole country is in a fever of gambling,” he said, laughing. “But tell me, how are you?”

  “Not too good,” Yin-Yin said.

  “Have you also lost money or it is love-life troubles?” Wang asked, casting a mischievous look at Paul.

  “Mama is very sick,” Yin-Yin replied, telling him briefly about her mother’s illness without mentioning the possibility of poisoning or the name Sanlitun.

  “I’m so very sorry to hear that,” Wang said in a serious tone. “And the doctors don’t have the faintest clue what could have caused it?”

  “No,” she said quietly, noticing how torn she felt. Something in her resisted telling him about the poison in Mama’s body.

  A bicycle bell rang on the counter. Their food was ready. Paul got up and carried the tray with the soup and the dumplings through the empty rows of seats.

  Wang looked at her intently. “Are you not feeling well?”

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “Just a bit tired.”

  Paul spoke up. “You must know Sanlitun?”

  “The chemicals company?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course. It’s one of the biggest companies in the province. Why are you asking.”

  “Yin-Yin’s mother was poisoned. There’s so much mercury in her body that it’s a thousand times more than the maximum level considered safe. There are more sick people in the village. We suspect that the poison is in the fish from a lake nearby. There’s a Sanlitun factory by that lake . . .” Paul stopped there.

  Wang had let a dumpling slide away from his chopsticks and fall into the dish of vinegar, splashing his own as well as Paul’s shirt with black spots. Yin-Yin had never in her life seen a face change so dramatically. Wang had grown pale and looked as shocked as if someone had told him he was being arrested.

  “Are you okay?” Paul asked, surprised at his reaction.

  “I’m fine.” He was a clown, but not a good actor.

  “Wang, what’s wrong?”

  He put down his chopsticks and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. His eyes wandered from Paul to Yin-Yin and back again. He leaned forward and whispered, “Are you a reporter from the West?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Who are you then?”

  “He’s a very good friend of mine. You can trust him,” Yin-Yin said.

  “Have you known him long?”

  “Yes, for a long time.” She did not want to explain anything now.

  Wang picked up his cellphone, which was lying on the table, switched it off and took the battery out.

  “Where are yours?”

  Paul and Yin-Yin took their phones out of their pockets.

  “Switch them off and remove the batteries.”

  “Why?” Yin-Yin asked, disconcerted.

  “For safety,” Wang replied curtly. Any hint of jokiness had vanished from his eyes. “A few months ago I got a call from a friend and colleague in one of our offices in Hubei province. There was some trouble with a Sanlitun factory there. They had channeled toxic wastewater into a river that supplied water for a pond where fish were farmed. All the fish died. I don’t know how many tons of them. My colleague asked me to do a bit of research here. We have two factories in the Yiwu area and the Sanlitun headquarters are in Hangzhou, only an hour from here.”

  He paused, as though he was trying to keep them in suspense.

  “And?” Paul asked impatiently.

  “I wasn’t allowed to. Orders from Beijing.”

  “What do you mean you weren’t allowed to?”Yin-Yin found it difficult to imagine that Wang would obey blanket orders like that.

  Wang looked around the restaurant to make sure that the cooks were playing cards and that the two waitresses were sitting in front of the television before he continued speaking. “No one asks about Sanlitun. The end. You’ll find loads of positive stories about them in the financial news; they’ve exceeded their growth targets and revised their budgeted profits upward. Their market share is growing and all that stuff. Their share price goes up and up. You won’t find anything else.”

  “Why is that?” Yin-Yin asked, amazed.

  “The majority of the shares is owned by the state and the government of the province. The father of the company chairman was a close advisor of Deng Xiaoping. They are so well protected from on high that their factories aren’t even inspected.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My colleague in Hubei told me. We have strict regulations about environmental protection and authorities who are supposed to supervise adherence to the regulations; that’s all very well, but what’s the use of it when everyone who has good contacts is able to get special exemptions? My friend told me that there were problems with Sanlitun factories in three more provinces. I heard from a colleague in the Beijing office that the People’s Daily had received several dozen letters from readers complaining about the company. But those are all rumors.”

  “Can we talk to your colleague in Hubei?” Paul asked tentatively.

  “He’s not talking to anyone any longer. He’s been transferred to head office in Beijing and now works in the basement. In the archives.”

  “Do you know a lawyer here who would take up the case?”

  “In Yiwu? Very unlikely.” Wang looked at Paul sharply. “Are you sure that you want to get involved with this?”

  Yin-Yin turned to Paul as well. In his grave face she did not find the grim determination that she had expected. She saw faint lines around his mouth. She saw deep blue eyes in which more than the shadow of a doubt lay.

  “No,” he replied hesitantly. “I’m not. Yin-Yin’s father is understandably outraged and is considering taking the company to court. I, we, wanted to help him find a lawyer. Nothing more.”

  Wang thought for a moment then took a pen out of his pocket. He picked up a napkin and wrote two telephone numbers and two names on it.

  “The first one is an old lawyer in Yiwu and the other one is a lawyer in Shanghai. Both of them are unusual in their own ways. One of them may be
able to help you. But you’re not to breathe a word about where you got these numbers, not to anyone, promise?” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the office now.”

  He picked up his cellphone, put the battery back in, and switched it on. “Don’t forget. Always take the battery out.”

  “Why?” Yin-Yin asked, although she knew the question betrayed how naïve she was.

  “Because they can not only eavesdrop on every conversation via these things, but they can also switch them on remotely.”

  “Who?”

  “Who’s eavesdropping on me? All the jealous men whose wives I’m fucking!’ he said, so loudly that the cooks stopped playing cards for a moment and the waitresses turned around to cast curious glances at him. He responded to their looks with a mocking laugh, said goodbye to Paul and Yin-Yin with a wink, walked out of the restaurant, and disappeared into the stream of passers-by within seconds.

  Paul smiled at Yin-Yin. She read the name on the napkin and pushed it over to him. The lawyer in Yiwu was called Gao Jintao.

  “Shall I ring him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said uncertainly.

  He switched his cellphone on again but there was no more battery power. She passed him her phone and he called the number in Yiwu. The connection was bad; it crackled and popped before breaking down altogether. He was able to make out what the lawyer was saying better the second time round. He was booked up. Paul gave him a brief account of a sick woman, a misdiagnosis, and polluted water. Gao interrupted him and told him that he had no time for them this evening but that they could go to his office at nine the next morning and discuss everything with him.

  Paul gave Yin-Yin a questioning glance but she felt unable to reply. He agreed to the appointment and ended the call. “Is that okay?”

  She nodded, glad that the decision had been made for her.

  “I suggest we book two rooms at the Grand Emperor Hotel, go and see him tomorrow, then travel to Shanghai after that. What do you think?”

  “There are cheaper hotels in the city.”

  “It’s on me, don’t worry. It’s not very expensive.”

  Yin-Yin went to bed feeling uneasy and was woken in the middle of the night by a sound that she could not identify. It sounded like someone carefully opening a drawer or a closet door. It was pitch black in the hotel room; she had pulled the curtains so tightly together that no light came in; she had also put the alarm clock on the floor and covered it with a towel so that the red light from the time display did not illuminate the whole room. Sensing that she was not alone in the room, she lay stiff as a board under the blankets, not daring to move, and listened, heard her shallow, tense breathing, and another person breathing too. Her heart was pounding with fright.

  She held her breath. Was someone moving around in the room? Who was it and what did they want from her? She had no valuables with her, apart from the expensive watch that Johann had given her for their anniversary; it was lying on the desk. Or was this connected to the meeting with Wang and the phone call to Gao the lawyer? She heard a movement; a crack of the joints or something like that. She tried to remain still and considered her options. She could pretend to be sleeping and hope that the intruder would creep out again very soon without harming her; she could scream for help and hope that whoever it was would run off in fright, though he could just as easily attack her to keep her quiet. She could switch on the light, scream, and defend herself, or, depending on where the attacker was, try to get to the door and out into the corridor. She would be safe there. She felt the paralysis of fear creeping over her; she had to decide quickly, before she was completely overcome by panic.

  Yin-Yin pretended to be turning in her sleep and rolled to the edge of the bed. She stretched a hand out to the nightstand, found the light switch, waited a second, pressed it and stood up at the same time, screaming.

  The room remained completely dark.

  She heard the door being wrenched open and closing again immediately. She tried to give chase, but banged her knee against the chair by the desk and jabbed her heel on the corner of the alarm clock, crying out in pain before she hobbled to the door. There was no one to be seen in the corridor. The card key for the room, which had to be slotted into a holder by the door to turn the power on, had been pulled out, and was lying on the floor; that was why the light had not come on. Yin-Yin put it back into the holder, closed the door and looked around the room. The intruder had left no traces; her watch was on the desk and next to it was her cellphone, her notebook, and her small handbag.

  Only then did she realize that she was trembling all over. She went into the bathroom and threw up. Then she rang Paul.

  “Hello?” The sound of his sleepy voice calmed her a little. A couple of minutes later, he was in her room, wearing only his jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Are you sure nothing’s missing?” he asked, concerned.

  She sat on the bed cradling her knees close to her body, shivering.

  “You probably interrupted him; otherwise he would have taken the watch,” Paul said, beginning to tidy up by putting the alarm clock back on the nightstand, folding the towel and taking it into the bathroom.

  Yin-Yin nodded. “Do you think he wanted to steal something?”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe it had something to do with our meeting with Wang and the appointment tomorrow morning.”

  He looked at her, surprised, then shook his head. “I can’t imagine it’s got anything to do with that. Who would be interested in what we’re doing? Even if that were so, how would they have found out about the business with Sanlitun? Do you think Wang could have told someone?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said. If there was anyone that she did not think capable of such betrayal it was her old school friend the class clown. She had read somewhere that comedians were actually deeply unhappy people, and now she wondered if it was possible to misjudge friends. But she was tired, much too tired to follow that train of thought. Paul was probably right. It had been a common thief whom she had managed to scare off before he stole her watch.

  “I can call reception,” Paul suggested. “I bet all the corridors have CCTV.”

  “Yes, try that.”

  He put the phone on loudspeaker and asked for the duty manager.

  “What can I do for you?” a sleepy voice murmured.

  “My name is Paul Leibovitz and I’m in room 882. I’d like to know if all the hotel corridors are fitted with CCTV?”

  “Of course. Why are you asking?”The manager was suddenly wide awake.

  “Do you record the images?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?” His irritation grew.

  “Can I come down and look at the film of the previous half hour for the eighth floor?”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  He heard voices in the background before someone put their hand over the receiver on the other side.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve just been told that there’ve been technical problems with the CCTV. It hasn’t been recording.”

  Yin-Yin felt nausea rising again; she took deep breaths in and out.

  Paul put down the phone, kneeled down next to her and put his arms around her. “If you like, I can stay the rest of the night here.”

  Yin-Yin wanted to say that it wouldn’t be necessary, but the idea of being alone in the room again in a moment was intolerable. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I think that would help.”

  Paul brought the blanket over from his room, turned off all the lights apart from the one in the bathroom, tossed aside the scatter cushions on the two-seater couch and made himself as comfortable as he could on it. She had offered him the bed; it was wide enough for two, but he had thanked her and refused. She turned onto her side, appreciating the feeling of safety that his presence gave her, and watched him in the half-darkness until her eyes closed.

  The lawyer Gao Jintao had his office on the first floor of an unremarkable building in Yi
wu’s “sock quarter”. Paul and Yin-Yin walked through streets that seemed never-ending, with shop after shop selling only socks, which had clearly all been produced in Yiwu.

  The stairwell was full of bicycles and boxes and the doorbell did not work. Paul knocked on the door.

  Gao opened the door by just a crack and sized up his visitors thoroughly before letting them in. His office was a small dark two-room apartment with piles of books, files, and papers in all the shelves, on all the tables and chairs and spread out over most of the floor space, dotted with full ashtrays. It smelled of cigarettes and cold tea. Gao was a little man with salt-and-pepper hair, yellow teeth and paw-like hands that seemed out of proportion with his small stature. He wore thick black glasses with dirty lenses and a faded Mao jacket, and was barefoot. Yin-Yin guessed he was in his late fifties. She checked that she had taken her battery out of her phone; Paul’s battery was dead.

  Gao cleared two chairs for them and invited them to sit down. He fetched three glasses and a Thermos flask with hot water, put a few tea leaves in the glasses, poured water over them, and sat down.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked in his deep voice, lighting a cigarette.

  While Paul explained what had brought them here, the lawyer watched him intently, swaying his upper body back and forth; he farted quietly twice.

  Paul finished his account and asked, “Do you know anyone who would be willing to take this case on?”

  At first Gao responded with a smile that Yin-Yin could not read. Was it meant sarcastically or was he making fun of them?

  “How do you like my office, young lady?” he asked abruptly. “It’s nice but a little small, isn’t it?” he continued.

  She nodded.

  “It wasn’t always like this. I used to have an office with four rooms, a secretary, and a colleague who did research for me,” he said in a tone of voice that implied that his visitors must surely know where he was heading with this story.

  Yin-Yin and Paul gave him questioning looks.

  “I had a car too. And a wife,’ he went on. There was no self-pity in his voice. “Until I agreed to defend three families whose land was taken away from them to build a new housing development on. They were poor farmers who came to my office one day. It was an open-and-shut case. The land seizure was so clearly against the laws of our People’s Republic that I was convinced I would be able to help them. But I did not know our opponents well enough. That’s always a terrible mistake to make, especially in our country. The other side had connections high up in the Party in the province. We had no chance,” Gao said, his voice still uncomplaining. “Have you been involved in a court case in China?”