Dragon's Eye

by Andy Oakes

“… so, Senior Investigator, this is how it looks. You were obviously acting out a vendetta towards your Comrade Officer, Chief Liping. It was well known that he was looking into very serious charges against you. You saw it as personal. You lured him here on the pretext of making a full confession. Yes, that sounds promising, we’ll keep that bit in, shall we? But, of course, your Chief was no fool, he brought two men with him. There was a fight. Terrible. Bloody. Violent stuff. Nobody survived. No loose ends …”

  The Englishman checked his watch. Still ahead of schedule. The night sky, a confetti of stainless steel sparks.

  “… I have a lady to meet. A flight to catch. And you, Senior Investigator, you have a death to die. Just like your fat friend …”

  He kicked Yaobang’s feet.

  “… as dead as a fucking dog.”

  Without looking back, Haven moved across the stagger of barges, the Senior Investigator watching their rise and fall; the hurdles of smoke icing the water, drifting across the rust of iron pontoons. A passage slicing through primary colours. Watching him. Watching until there was nothing left to watch. Piao’s head fell back against the Big Man’s leg, eyes filled with sky and a glimpse of Yaobang’s face. As white as the full moon … unconsciousness smoothing out each feature. And the rain still driving in spears. And the blood … everywhere he looked. The blood.

  The New Year was coming to an end. Rockets falling to earth. Crowds dispersing. Beer bottles in the kerb. The odour of sweat and of money spent that couldn’t be afforded. The sky now darker than any other that Piao had ever seen. Looking up, hearing himself say,

  “See the stars, they’ve come out tonight …”

  The pin-pricks becoming smudges, as his eyesight failed. Only the pictures already in his head illuminating the black desert that reached out towards him. Her eyes. Her smell. Her hair. The way that her lips slumbered in a half smile … the secret that she alone seemed to know and would never give up. And through it all, a silver jet slashing toward a silver life, in a silver city, inhabited by only silver people.

  Go and get your flight to New York Mr Haven … before I change my mind.

  The palm turned to a fist … Piao at its centre. So dark, so black the night. Fathomless, and with nothing left in it for him. And all of the time the rain falling, a constant stream. As if God was pissing on him.

  Chapter 37

  Can you not see the waters of the Yellow River descending from the Heavens, hurrying irrevocably down to the sea? Can you not see that the high hall’s gleaming mirrors are saddened at the sight of your white hair? Silken dark at dawn, by dusk it is like snow.

  Fragments of unconsciousness, blunt, safe edged. Shards of consciousness, honed razors. Words shunting into place, as if snipped by shears from tinplate. Vague images, thoughts. His mind, a butterfly on the breeze, unable to settle on the bloom of any one idea. And then the morphine kicking in; carrying him on its warm roller, further, further out to sea. Away from the rocks of reality and the hard beach that had stranded him.

  Looking up at the sky … stars and paramedics faces. Being carried across the buck of barges, the movement seizing his head, entering it in a sickening swirl. A glimpse, like a snapshot, of Yaobang being carried beside him strapped into a steel framed crib; his face, like crumpled paper. Across his forehead, a black crescent moon of a scar … no longer bleeding. And all of the time the rain. On his tongue. On his eyes. A sweetwater baptism. Reaching out to hold the Big Man’s hand, the rain dripping from his knuckles, but the nylon straps denying him.

  “Get your arm down, you’ll hurt yourself.”

  Everything in degrees of blue. High on the embankment the ambulances, the patrol cars, lights revolving. Sirens opening their mouths. Doors slamming. Body bags zipping. Buildings racing through the smoke grey of the ambulance windows. The paramedic’s face, bone and canvas taut skin, watching over Yaobang. So close that you could smell his life. His attentions turning to Piao. A sting as he put a line into his arm; taping it into position. The Senior Investigator reaching out his hand again, across the Big Man’s forehead. The paramedic forcing it down, tucking it under the nylon straps.

  “Don’t care about him. You’re dying … care about yourself. Understand? You’re dying.”

  *

  A holding room of light and fogged pain. The bed hemmed with rails. Tubes into him. Tubes out of him. Next door, through the glass, in the hours between the minutes … the theatre being hurriedly prepared. A surgeon, masked, waiting … smelling of hibiscrub. Arms reaching down to examine him with latex coated fingers. Running across his cheek to where his ear had been. Traversing his back and probing with a lover’s gentleness at his stomach, his diaphragm. The lights in fierce strips, as intense as an August noon in Kunming … throwing blade-edged shadows across the surgeon’s face, side shifting his features as he pulled down the mask. Haven. Golden and whispering words as if they were secrets, in breathy gaps across Piao’s face.

  “You should be dead, Senior Investigator. Tough little bastard, aren’t you? But let me assure you … you are dying. Severe internal damage, kidneys, liver, stomach. So much chaos from two little bullets …”

  The words stopping for a few dripping seconds. Piao praying that they would start again for the coolness of their breath across his brow.

  “… you made me miss my flight after all. Somebody wants you to live very badly. They insisted on the very best surgical team that money can buy, and so here I am. Very, very inconvenient …”

  Haven so close, cheeks brushing. The whisper as soft as the breeze through the topmost branches of the trees.

  “… so, Senior Investigator, what is it to be, should I help you to live or should I help you to die? The latter is easier and more accommodating. I could catch the next plane if you die. But to live, the repair work necessary … it could mean that I would miss tomorrow’s flight also. What to do, what to do? Perhaps a little of both, eh?”

  He turned his face and it glowed. Looking back to Piao, tongue tracing the inside of his cheek. Eyes as blue as a schoolboy holding a bag of sweets.

  “Are you worth that much, Senior Investigator, another cancelled flight?”

  Opening the door. Outside in the corridor, PSB officers seated, pistols slumbering across their laps.

  “If the darkness has no end, then you will know that I decided to catch the next flight.”

  He left, a nurse entered, hypodermic in her hand. A needle fashioned from light. Feeling the darkness travel up his arm, to his shoulder, his neck, to the epicentre of his forehead. Expanding its warmth. The darkness filling his head. Black swirling black. And with it, the words … ‘as dead as a fucking dog.’

  *

  Black. Red. Orange … yellow. White. The darkness blistering in episodes of unrelated consciousness. White. Yellow … orange. Red. Black. The light in agonising fades to timeless continents of unconsciousness.

  He was a siphon. Tethered by tubes in … delivering blood, sustenance. Tubes out … flushing away piss, puss, waste. The hours measured by the puncture of hypodermics into his arm. The minutes, by the drips of the colourless liquids down the lines from the bottles suspended above him. Body, mind … separated. Only coming together in the clashes of panic as he felt the tide of morphine that held him, wane. The knives of pain, unsheathed, and carving at him. And then the release of the hypodermic. The slow float of the mind separating from body. Thought separated from action. Finding a part of himself in the far corner of the room, high against the ceiling; looking down on that other part of himself, that part held together by sutures. And in some islands of consciousness, aware of the change in the light, as a parade of faces that he once knew, gathered around the bed. Splinters of conversation stranded in mid-air. Barbara’s fingers running through his hair, as cool as stream water. Remembering her holding him. Guiding him inside of her. The flex of her pupils as he had come. Her hair across his face. The smell of shampoo and of a cold bed made to sweat.

  “You’ll be all right now. Char
les has done his best. It’s up to you now. Fight, Sun. Fight.”

  Her long walk to the door, its sigh as it closed. Wanting to shout, but nothing coming out except for a string of echoes in his head. And again, the blackness gathering him into its deepest pocket.

  *

  Time, as syrup. Days losing order.

  A group around the bed. None of them shadows that he could recognise. But knowing that they were officials. Cadre. Their smell of paper clips and foreign shoe leather. Clasping hold of some of their words as if they were lifelines in the storm of a sea.

  “You should make a statement, Senior Investigator Sun Piao. Your record is exemplary. A statement would be in the spirit of your service with the Public Security Bureau …”

  The nearest had leant forward, a gold tooth set at the front of his mouth. A convex reflection of the world with Piao, bandaged, at its centre.

  “… you are dying, clear the good reputation of Comrade Officer Liping. You still have family alive, do not let your shame spill onto them. Come, whisper your confession to me now.”

  Raising his head from the pillow. Blood on his lips. Lips to the cadre’s ear.

  “Fuck off,” Piao had said.

  Remembering their panic as he had fitted, haemorrhaging. The lines flushed full … a glorious red. An alarmbell cutting across the chaos. The nurse’s footsteps. The injection. The sleep, thick and troubled.

  *

  Aware, over time, that they were cutting back on his medication. The sea of morphine receding. The pain roosting, feasting on him. More conscious of the procedures that he was the focus of. Dressings around his head, his torso, being changed. Drips removed. Sutures snipped and pulled adrift. Slowly, a feeling of turning out from himself. Noticing his surroundings and a myriad of little details. Aware of the empty thirty bed ward, that only he occupied. Three exits. One opposite his bed … twelve paces of the sturdy nurse’s legs away. The other two exits at either end of the ward, both over forty-five steps away. Outside each, PSB Officers. Brief glimpses of them as the doors swung. And their smell … of cold tea and hot crutches. And sometimes he could even hear them. In-depth conversations about nurses’ tits. And stories about himself also … Sun Piao, who was once a Senior Investigator with the Public Security Bureau. And their summing up of his situation, an instant before one broke wind …

  “Why bother fixing him up, they’re gonna fucking shoot him anyway?”

  *

  “You have surprised us, Officer Piao …”.

  The Doctor pulled the drapes around the bed. Privacy, although the other twenty-nine beds in the ward were empty.

  “… you will live and make a good recovery.”

  He drew the blind, the sunshine across his face making Piao wince. “How good a recovery?”

  The voice that he now owned, foreign to Piao.

  “A good recovery, for someone who had complete renal failure. One kidney shredded, the other detached and severely damaged. You were lucky. You are strong and had the benefit of a first class consultant surgeon …”

  He turned, adjusting the tempo of the drip.

  “… he called a specialist in to attach your ear using microsurgery techniques and carried out the repair work to your colon, stomach and diaphragm himself. He was even able to procure the organ for you. Most people, including high cadre, would have died on the operating table waiting for it.”

  “Organ?”

  The Doctor smoothed his hands across his white coat and adjusted his stethoscope. A ritual that every doctor that Piao had ever come into contact with practised.

  “The organ. The kidney! You have been the recipient of a living renal donation. The match was perfect and the transplant went well. You are a very lucky officer. Very lucky indeed, Piao. Do you not think so?”

  It was some seconds before he could speak. The young doctor’s white coat already disappearing through the double doors opposite.

  “Yes, doctor. Very lucky.”

  *

  Another five times the group of officials came. Never giving their names. Never answering questions. Just asking them.

  “Your investigation into the murders of the eight found in the Huangpu was a farce. You were looking for state security involvement and the complicity of high-ranking officials where there was none.”

  “It is all in my reports.”

  “You fabricated evidence and bullied witnesses to say things that suited your arguments. That suited your own views and ideologies. And you befriended a foreigner, a woman, an American government official, in the hope that this would enhance the authority of your stance.”

  “It is all in my reports.”

  “You attempted to taint the venerable reputation of Comrade Officer Chief Liping when you realised that he had seen through your traitorous accusations against the State, its officials and its people.”

  “It is all in my reports and at the bottom of the garden in Liping’s zhau-dai-suo.”

  “Words, words. Your reports just condemn you. Charges against you for the murder of Comrade Zhiyuan were about to be formulated and pressed. You blamed your Commanding Officer. You lured Comrade Officer Liping to the river and shot him. There is no argument … the weapon was in your hand when you were found.”

  The statements and tirades had continued. On his state of mind. On his methods of interrogation, signed affidavits from the criminal, Zhen, and the prisoner, Xie. Comments on his unorthodox methods from Chief Warden Hua and Detective Yun. Another signed statement from the city’s Senior Police Scientist, Doctor Wu … words that spoke of the ordeal that Piao had put him through. Of the Senior Investigator’s psychotic behaviour. Of his apparent death wish. They cited his failed marriage and the loss of his wife to a senior Politburo member as the basis for his disenchantment, his traitorous thoughts. She was now pregnant, having the child that Piao had always wanted … it was no secret. The shame. The intense upset and loss of face; powerful enough to unhinge the most responsible of citizens. All were given as proof of the Senior Investigator’s mental breakdown. His violence increasing as the psychosis deepened. It could not be denied. It was all a matter of record. Catalogued. The Senior Investigator had used his illness and its accompanying violent behaviour to great effect, acting it out on a Comrade Officer who had done nothing but support and promote his protégé. And the woman, the American whore … what had Piao acted out between her milky thighs, between the yang-gui-zi’s perfumed sheets?

  Again, the gold tooth taking the lead.

  “Confess, Senior Investigator. You will feel better for it …”

  The other officials nodding, like so many little trained dogs.

  “… we know everything. A confession is for you, your family. It is not for us. We are offering you a chance to save your family’s face. Why should they suffer a lifetime of no privilege’s because of one like you …”

  The gold tooth closer; the universe in its reflection.

  “… come, speak, Senior Investigator. There is nothing that we do not know.”

  “It is all in my reports …” was all that Piao replied.

  They left. Twelve paces to the double doors opposite his bed. Piao counting each one. He never saw them again.

  A week later, he was walking. Doubled over. Catching his reflection in the orb of a polished door knob … a question mark in a painful shuffle to the window. His strength in an unpredictable ebb and flow. One instant, in celebration of the vigour flowing into him. The next, in tears, as weak as a baby as he was lifted back into his bed.

  *

  The windows of the ward looked out onto Hongkou Stadium. Beyond, the Gonghexin Road lined on both sides with factories panting sallow breaths into the evening sky. He was unaware of any hospitals in this area, only the occasional rumour of a military hospital that was used for ‘special cases’. Psychological cases. Another term for ‘forced re-education’. Perhaps this was it?

  In Hongkou Stadium the floodlights were alight. Brash, bullying, bleeding mercury onto
the substantial crowd ringing its interior, surrounding the patch of green. The football players, dots. The game already started. A hazed mushroom of light glowing above the stands, pushing against the hospital building; nose to glass, across Piao’s face. The window was locked but he tried to open it, again and again. The nurse, less sturdy legged than the others, stopped re-making the bed.

  “We lock them. Patients throw themselves out.”

  Piao backed away from the glass and into the deep, high-backed easy chair, hearing it huff as he sat, taking up the contours of his body. Closing his eyes. Smells, sounds, colours. It was all there … the roll of the river under the flat hull of the barge. The blade down the side of his face. And the Big Man, crumpled, discarded, now only so much waste. His deputy, his ears, his eyes, his friend. Dead.

  “I didn’t want to jump. I just wanted to listen to the crowd, to other voices.”

  The nurse turned, uninterested. She’d heard those words many times before, but still they jumped. Now they locked the windows.

  *

  Another week. Another. No newspapers, books. No radio. Watching people in the streets below. Counting the minutes to the nurse’s next round. Rehearsing the usual exchange of words with the doctor as the dressings were removed. His ear healing, but still as blue as his eyes. The scars across his back in haphazard and organised train lines, running into junctions; red and raised. The dressings changed. Smudged brown to white. The doctor walked away. Last words before the night crashed around Piao. The last words for thirteen hours.

  “You’re well, Senior Investigator. Very well.”

  Looking out from the window, people in the street walking on stilts of fragile, elongated shadows. Quick footsteps, taking them on their way home.

  “Very well. How well is very well, doctor?”

  The door pulled open.

  “Well enough to be executed?”

  The door pulled closed, question unanswered.

  *

  Comrade Prosecutor Weishi knew him; he knew Comrade Prosecutor Weishi. Nods in corridors. Faces across polished meeting tables. Names falling within the same sheaths of reports. A relationship of shared points of contact, shared criminal targets … the rituals and niceties of being on the same side. But never bottles of Tsingtao clinked together. Never arms over each other’s shoulders as drinking songs were bawled out. Prosecutor Weishi was not that sort of man. Neither was Piao.