The Wounded Muse

by Robert F Delaney

  Jake calls Qiang’s number again. This time there’s no ring. Just solid nothing.

  11:42 a.m.

  Jake bangs on Qiang’s door and waits a few seconds, hearing only his own laboured breathing. He pounds again, this time so hard the doorframe rattles. Straining to detect anything other than the whisper of a nearby HVAC register and the low hum of electrical currents powering the corridor’s light fixtures, he clenches his fists. Jake pulls Qiang’s spare key out of his pocket. The lock is sticky, or maybe he just needs to calm down and finesse it. Jake jiggles the key, up and down and side to side, until something clicks. The door opens. With the curtains drawn, the sparsely furnished living room is dim. Jake hits a switch, lighting two lamps, one on each of the white cubes that bookend a tan sofa facing a television that sits on a low-slung, white stand. A recent issue of The New Yorker lies on the floor, splayed open, front and back cover facing up with about half of its pages turned underneath.

  “Qiang? Are you here? Please say you’re here.”

  The bedroom door is ajar and there is no light on in the room. Jake pushes the door open and flips the switch on the wall just inside. Qiang’s desk is bare except for his printer. His computer is gone. Each of its drawers is open and empty.

  “Those fuckers.”

  Jake pulls his phone out of his pocket. He dials nine of ten digits, pausing before the last one because he can’t bear to hear the line go dead again. He sits at Qiang’s desk, numb.

  He thinks about the organizer that Qiang was planning to interview, a business innovator Jake heard about in the course of his business reporting. Something about solar panels. Qiang had suggested to Jake that the guy is worthy of a feature story for anyone covering business in China. Jake logged the story idea into his news agenda for the upcoming quarter. If the editors like the story enough, Jake might have been able to work in a side note about the financial arrangement he has been proposing for displaced residents. It was a financial story after all. But, as always, rumours about currency policy and interest rate changes kept the story about Qiang’s hero, and the proposal to give existing residents a chance to buy into the new developments, perpetually in planning mode. If Jake had written that story, though, giving the organizer a higher profile among investors worldwide, perhaps his proposal would have an audience within the government. Perhaps the organizer wouldn’t have disappeared. And Qiang would have wrapped up the interview weeks ago, before he wound up on the PSB’s watch list. And Jake wouldn’t be sitting in an empty apartment, staring helplessly at a wall.

  “Why didn’t I just write the story?”

  Jake asks the question out loud to let it go. The question that has lodged itself inside him, pressing against his heart.

  The pounding of steel across the street rattles the living room windowpane. Jake stands up, walks to the window and surveys the construction, noting how much it’s grown since the last time he’d been at Qiang’s place just a few days earlier. Perhaps the speed of the construction helped to drive Qiang’s determination. Every new floor constructed spurred him to move faster.

  Jake raises his head and scans the walls and ceiling and yells as loudly as he can.

  “You fucking goons!”

  He doesn’t care who hears him: the neighbours, whoever is on the other end of whatever device is monitoring the apartment or the security guards downstairs who probably looked the other way as unidentifiable men marched Qiang and his belongings out of the building.

  MACAU

  July, 2004

  Holding an empty plastic tub, Dawei kicks the door open, pulling a blast of the dining room’s cool air around him. The sweat on his forehead and temples suddenly feels frigid. He heads toward the evening’s last table. Another group of well connected Mainlanders throwing money around. Money flows to China from everywhere it seems. He’s seen the news broadcasts about how China is rising. Americans and Europeans buy more and more goods made in China. Goods get shipped out on gigantic ships and, sometimes, Dawei can see the hulking silhouettes, looking impossibly top-heavy on the water as they move into the South China Sea. And then money returns to China. Money that winds up in the pockets of people who come here to Macau where they order expensive meals and gamble.

  Yiming, his uncle in Harbin, works for one of these companies. He’s an engineer at a state-owned firm that exports things to North America and Australia. He’s not rich – not like the ones who drive black cars imported from Germany with windows tinted completely black – but Uncle Yiming and Aunt Dongmei have a nice apartment, one with hot water 24 hours a day. They told Dawei that if he worked hard to catch up with the other students in Harbin, he might also have a chance to work in a big state-owned enterprise.

  That didn’t happen, though, because he was stupid. Not stupid like his teachers said. It wasn’t about the trouble he had writing characters and sentences the way the other students in Harbin could. It wasn’t even about his persistent stutter. It was the lapse of reason that derailed his life in Harbin, his second chance, so abruptly and so soon after it started.

  He was stupid to think a few hundred kuai would go unnoticed. He was only borrowing the money he used to buy tickets to a film. Just a few kuai. Easy to replace. But it was the book that caught his attention, a glossy hardback volume showcasing all of the most popular Hong Kong films over a decade and his common sense disappeared like a drop of water evaporating on a sun-baked pavement.

  The book stood upright on top of a display case, guarded by an expressionless attendant. The case held an assortment of paperback books and other magazines, many of which Dawei would have paged through, month in and month out, until they were rags. The cost of admission and a magazine wouldn’t have been so bad. But this hefty book of at least 200 pages, drenched with sharp cinematic colour, diminished all of the other books and magazines. Its cover was a collage of countless movie scenes that magnified the importance of each story, turning them into a universe of intrigue. It was almost as good as a private cinema, one that could be carried around in a backpack.

  Dawei stopped and glanced at the book as he headed into the darkened theatre. The employee behind the counter, a middle-aged woman with a frizzy perm and a drab uniform, lay the book down, opened it and fanned through the pages, slowly enough for Dawei to recognize some of the faces flashing by, each one heightening his excitement. The price tag though – 110 kuai – left him no option but to continue into the theatre.

  As he watched the film, a rags-to-riches story about a woman who works her way up from the factory floor to take over the management of a manufacturer in Guangdong, using her smarts to outwit incapable cohorts bent on padding their paycheques, Dawei saw himself as the hero, standing up against corruption and injustice. Dawei would always play this role in real life, so why shouldn’t he be able to own a book documenting so many stories about good characters. No one else could be as moved by stories about justice as himself. It could become a talisman of sorts, a constant reminder of the importance of prudence and decency.

  He would buy the book and replace the money. His parents were supposed to arrive from Yongfu Village a day later. They would bring with them a few hundred kuai, something for Dawei to start the New Year off right.

  But whenever he thinks back on that decision, Dawei wonders what gave him the idea that his parents would give him so much. Spent wisely, that amount would have fed them for a month back in Yongfu.

  His parents did arrive the following day, with nothing but pickled beets and a few heads of cabbage. They had nothing else because they had to pay for repairs to their house, repairs that they might have been able to manage themselves had Dawei been around to help.

  He only realized later how it all looked. Later, after he stuffed his belongings in his backpack and left to find a job on a construction site.

  Many years on, Dawei’s not much closer to his dream of returning to his family as a success, ready to explain himself, apologize and make amends. He doesn’t know how many more tables he can cle
ar here in Macau before he will try a new plan.

  As Dawei approaches the table with his plastic tub in one arm and the bill tucked in the crook of his other arm, Zhihong and his colleagues are dislodging remnants of curried squid from their teeth. Dawei starts putting plates and chopsticks in the tub, making room to set it down, and then pulls out the bill. Unsure who will pay, he places the bill dead centre. The other waiters have gone home, leaving Dawei and the restaurant manager to close. Zhihong’s division head throws down several hundred Hong Kong dollars. The others slide into their suit jackets, grab their attachës and chatter about good luck while Dawei begins clearing the dishes. Zhihong tells his colleagues that he won’t join them, that he’ll call his wife in Beijing and then turn in for the night. He grabs an unfinished bottle of baijiu from the centre of the table and fills his glass while the others leave.

  The restaurant manager, a wiry man with wispy hair dyed black and combed over a shiny scalp, switches some lights off and squawks in Cantonese about the late hour.

  The dining room smells like cigarettes, seared garlic, curry and baijiu. Zhihong sits under the only set of fluorescent ceiling fixtures still on, lights that create an electric bluish haze above him and make him stand out from the rest of a dining room defined only by shadows. Dawei continues clearing. He looks at the money and then at Zhihong. He can’t tell if the man is drunk, lost in thought or both. Zhihong pours the remaining few ounces of baijiu into his glass, which he empties as Dawei puts the last of the table’s plates into his bin.

  “Sir, can I take this for you?” Dawei asks in Mandarin, while gesturing toward the money. Dawei knows from the dark suit worn over a polo-style shirt and file-sized black leather clutch that Zhihong and his group are from the Mainland.

  The manager switches off the pop tunes that play from speakers rigged precariously into two corners of the ceiling, leaving the hum of air conditioning units and the sound from an occasional car passing just outside to fill the room.

  Zhihong looks up at Dawei, holding his stare. “Sorry,” he says, picking up the cash and presenting it with two hands, a move that Dawei finds uncomfortably ceremonious because he isn’t sure if Zhihong is mocking him. “Keep the change,” Zhihong says.

  Taken off guard, Dawei begins to stammer. The change is probably more than 50 Hong Kong dollars, but Zhihong overrides the refusal by waving him off. Attempting to stand, Zhihong lurches forward and puts his hands on the edge of the table to push back his chair. He loses his balance and lands on his ass as the chair’s metal frame smacks against the tile.

  “Are you okay?” Dawei asks as he helps Zhihong to his feet, handing him the file clutch. Giving his head a quick shake to refocus, Zhihong takes it.

  “I guess I had more than I thought,” he says with an embarrassed chuckle.

  Dawei takes the cash to the manager, who pulls 45 Macanese patacas in change out of a pouch in the cash register for Dawei to return to their intoxicated patron. Dawei doesn’t shove the money into his pocket right away. He’s annoyed that the boss is making change in the local currency when Zhihong paid in Hong Kong dollars. Zhihong has treated Dawei with respect and now he must repay with change in a currency that’s worthless anywhere else. He wants to say something to the boss but knows he will just wave off anything Dawei has to say. The old man has doled out these sleights for decades, small measures that have kept him in business while establishments run by more conscientious managers have closed. They’re as ingrained as the wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes. The manager tells Dawei to walk with the intoxicated patron until he’s inside a cab.

  “I don’t want to have to answer questions from the police,” he mutters.

  Dawei grabs a small backpack from behind the register and unbuttons his white shirt, speckled on the front with curry sauce. The oily mess on the final dishes he’s just plonked into the sink will solidify overnight, adding to tomorrow morning’s work. The manager won’t care. Dawei puts a hand on Zhihong’s shoulder and leads him to the door.

  Outside in the humid night air, Zhihong steps unevenly as they walk through the stillness of Macau’s Coloane Village, alongside the walls of weathered yellow mortar streaked with mould. The gnarled root system of a Banyan tree that’s probably been growing for a century has broken up the old sidewalk. Bunches of filament vines hang down.

  Dawei puts his arm around Zhihong’s back and holds his waist. Zhihong lays his arm across Dawei’s shoulders. A cat jumps from the darkness of an alley into the street where it hesitates for a split second before darting over to a shadowy corner ahead of them.

  With his free hand, Zhihong roots through his pocket, pulls out a 100 Hong Kong dollar note, and slides it into the pocket of Dawei’s stained shirt.

  “For your trouble,” he says.

  Dawei reaches for the note. “Mister, you’re too kind. Th… th… this isn’t necessary,” he says.

  Zhihong grabs Dawei’s hand with a tight grip. He stares at Dawei as though the money is a burden. “Take it,” Zhihong says. “And don’t call me sir. I can’t be that much older than you. My name is Zhihong.”

  “I’m Dawei.”

  They walk in silence as Dawei looks ahead and behind for a cab.

  “Where are you staying?” Dawei asks.

  “We’re supposed to be staying in Hong Kong but my colleagues and I came over here for some business,” he says, raising an index finger in front of his mouth and looking at Dawei. “Shhhhh...Business.”

  Dawei looks at him, puzzled.

  “We’re not supposed to be gambling,” Zhihong explains. “But our division head always finds some extra in the budget to get a couple of cheap rooms here.” He laughs. “I’m usually the one who ends up sleeping on the floor when we take these side trips and I don’t even like gambling. So, I figured I’d let them go ahead. They’ll be there for hours. I’ll be in the bed tonight.”

  Zhihong stops. His expression suddenly becomes contorted. Putting a hand to his mouth, Zhihong wheels around and hurries to a nearby alley where he crouches, arches his back and lets a stream of vomit spill out against a wall.

  Dawei walks over to Zhihong, pulls a half-empty bottle of mineral water out of his backpack and hands it to him. Zhihong guzzles the rest of the water and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. A mangy dog rushes over to inspect the regurgitated seafood which has been marinating in forty-proof baijiu and bile. After a tentative lick, the dog runs away.

  “I’ll walk you to the roundabout. There should be cabs there,” Dawei says, helping Zhihong up.

  “Walk me to the embankment. My head will clear up if I just get some fresh air.”

  The embankment in Coloane Village runs along an inlet that separates Macau from Mainland China, a strip of water leading to the South China Sea. It’s just wide enough to soften the constant clanging of construction noise coming from the new developments on the other side.

  Dawei had worked on some of them before he figured out how to find an agent who could get him a job in Macau washing dishes. Twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, but at least no backbreaking work. No risk of falling.

  Sometimes, after his shift in the restaurant, Dawei is too tired to sleep so he goes to the embankment to look at the construction lights from Zhuhai. Staring at them and the reflections they cast on the water, Dawei can feel some pride about his improved circumstances and gathers some inspiration to continue towards something even better. He doesn’t know what form “better” will take, or how he will get there, but looking across the water at Zhuhai helps him put things into perspective. It’s better to look at construction sites he’s escaped from at a distance than to look at dishes he must clean and floors he must mop.

  Zhihong has obviously been to the embankment before. Maybe he’s also looking to escape the Mainland. But why? He obviously has a good job. At least he has enough money to tip well.

  At the railing, just above the small waves lapping at the stones, Zhihong pulls out two cigarettes.

 
“You have the look of a monk, my friend, forlorn and serious,” he says, handing a cigarette to Dawei.

  Dawei runs a hand through the stubble covering his head and then takes the cigarette. It feels odd, Dawei thinks, to want to stroll through this silent corner of Macau with someone he barely knows. The long hours in the restaurant always leave him with sore feet, ready to return reluctantly to the dormitory he shares with seven other workers. He flops onto his bunk, smelling his own stale sweat, and the peace he gathers on the embankment pulls him to sleep, unaffected by the chatter among the other roommates.

  “What kind of work do you do in Hong Kong?” Dawei asks.

  “I’m an advisor to some film production companies there,” Zhihong says, exhaling a puff of smoke.

  The idea of film production shifts Dawei’s thoughts. What started as a vague appreciation of this random stranger’s generosity becomes a focused curiosity.

  “Really? Film production? Does that mean you work in movies?”

  Zhihong chuckles.

  “I’m no director. I have barely anything to do with production. I just compile research on what the domestic broadcasters are looking for, what audiences want, what sort of policies are in force.”

  Dawei doesn’t absorb much beyond the fact that Zhihong works with film producers, with a direct connection to films made in Hong Kong. He imagines Zhihong on the set of a Tang Dynasty drama, with actors dressed as regents, generals and concubines. Dawei has dreamed of being on a set, any set, yet has rarely had the opportunity to be part of an audience.