The Golden Mountain Murders

by David Rotenberg

  Slowly he nodded.

  Chen looked at me and smiled. I’ve grown used to his smile. I see well beyond the bones and skin – all the way to the very fine man beneath.

  “But we still needed more money for the house and the season for herbs was quickly ending. It would be a full six months before the herbs would sprout again. And we were short.” He turned to me as if pleading for my understanding. “We were so close but we were short. We were short so she . . .”

  “She sold her blood?” Chen prompted gently.

  Again the man’s heavy head nodded. “To a blood head. Those men were always coming through our village. Always with money. How do men like that have money and men like me never have any?”

  Chen avoided the man’s eyes.

  “Did she get re-injected after she gave her blood?” I asked.

  “Of course, how else would she get her blood back?”

  I nodded. It was the common belief in the country. No amount of effort could convince peasants that in time their own systems would regenerate the blood they needed. So the blood heads took the peasants’ blood, removed the most valuable components, sold them to the West and a week or two later returned to the village and reinjected the peasants with diluted blood drawn from a common pool – an AIDS-infected pool this time.

  Chen looked at Dong Zhu Houng, “Was the money she got for her blood enough?”

  Again the man’s hands fluttered up in the air like two exhausted pigeons that had flown far out to sea and now could find no place to land, no place of rest. Finally he said one simple, flat word: “No.”

  “How soon after she sold her blood did she get sick?”

  The peasant looked at his hands as if somewhere in the grime-encrusted crevices of his palms was the answer to a riddle that would take it all away – make it yesterday, when his wife was still alive. “I don’t know for sure. She hid it from me. At first I thought she was pregnant. She vomited so much and when I checked the privy after she used it, her stool was so soft, like dark water. She began to clean her clothes every day. Sometimes twice a day. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked her. ‘Trying to stay pretty for you,’ she said. ‘I wish I had a new dress for you to see me in.’ I told her, ‘I don’t need anything like that.’

  “Then I said something to her that I’ve never said before. Now I’m happy that I said it. At the time it made me feel . . . I don’t know the word for what it made me feel.”

  “What did you say to your wife?”

  “I said, ‘You are more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen. I wake up at night to watch you sleep. I’m frightened that in the night you will vanish, like a dream.’ Then she touched my face.”

  He paused for a moment and then smacked his calloused hand hard against the wall. “I should have seen it then. Her skin had begun to change colour. To be almost clear like glass.”

  Chen looked at me. I nodded. It was an earlier indicator in certain Han Chinese.

  “She was like that for two, maybe three months. I was worried but didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t pregnant. She began to cry in her sleep, and cling to me. So tight. So tiny. I begged her to tell me what was happening to her. She told me it was nothing. Just woman’s things. Why would she do that? She told me everything else – everything else. Why wouldn’t she talk to me about this?”

  “She was ashamed,” I said. He looked at me as if for the first time seeing that I was a woman.

  “Why would a woman be ashamed to be sick?”

  “She wanted to be perfect for you.”

  I caught Chen’s glance. This was important but threatened to derail the man’s story. I retreated a step and pretended to busy myself with a report on my desk. Chen knew what he was doing.

  “Things got worse?” Chen prompted.

  “Yes. One day near the second harvest she came into the paddies with me. I was surprised but pleased. We were pulling shoots near the eel pens. I looked over at her. Her jacket had ridden up her back. There was a large black leech on her spine. I called to her and she came over to me. I smiled, turned her around and pulled hard at the leech.”

  He took a deep breath, trapping a sob in his throat.

  “She screamed.”

  Silence filled the room. He looked up at Chen then at me as if he was looking for forgiveness from us. Then he spoke quickly.

  “I thought she had suddenly become squeamish about the foul things but it was not that. I had hurt her trying to pull the thing from her. I hurt her. These hands hurt her.”

  Chen said gently, “But it wasn’t a leech, was it?”

  The peasant looked at Chen as if in wonder that this city cop understood. “No. No, it wasn’t a leech.”

  “A lesion?”

  “I don’t know that word.”

  “A cut that scabbed over.”

  “Yes. A lesion.” He said the word as if it had no meaning. “I wanted to bring her to the village clinic but she wouldn’t let me. That night after she was asleep I awoke and lit a candle. I pulled back her sleeping clothes. There were more of these marks down her front. Three were very big and blood seeped from some of them. I picked her up and brought her out into the moonlight. She whimpered but she didn’t wake. I took off her top and lifted her in my arms. I carried her out into the deepest paddy then held her up over my head to allow the moon’s rays to cleanse her skin.

  “I don’t know how long I held her. The frogs sang and there was a gentle wind from the mountains. The moon was almost full. I held her and held her and held her. She was so light. She was always tiny but now she seemed to weigh almost nothing. Finally I held her to my chest and walked out of the paddy. She rolled over in my arms and whispered, ‘Tell no one. No one must know my shame.’

  “The next day I promised to seed our neighbour’s farthest paddy if he lent me his cart. He agreed after I agreed to also seed his near paddy. I put my wife in the cart and took her to the clinic in Luo Tien. We travelled from before dawn so that we could be seen first. But there were many people from Luo Tien already in the outer room when we arrived. The people of Luo Tien looked at us as if we were grubs that had gotten into their beds. Like cockroaches in their rice. The sun was already high in the sky before it was our turn.

  “We went into the inner office. The old lady there smiled at us as we came in, as if we were there because I could not get my wife pregnant or something. Her smile vanished when my wife removed her jacket. The old lady stared at the sores then backed off a pace. She did not touch. ‘Do you have fever?’ she asked. My wife nodded. ‘How long?’ the old lady’s voice was becoming like stone. ‘A month perhaps.’ ‘What village are you from?’

  “I wondered why she needed to know that, but wasn’t sure I was allowed to ask. My wife gave her the name of our village. She jotted it down carefully. Then she nodded and said, ‘You go back there now.’ ‘No medicine?’ I blurted out. ‘No. You go. You go now.’ ‘What are these sores? What makes them come? Will they go away?’ I was too frightened to ask if the sores were serious. But it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t ask. The old lady ignored me and yelled for her assistant. Then I saw her eyes. They were examining me. Every inch of my exposed flesh. I took my wife by the hand and we headed out of that office.

  “Before her assistant closed the clinic door I saw the old lady reach for a cell phone. My wife was exhausted and very frightened. We headed towards the building’s main entrance then I stopped. ‘What?’ asked my wife. ‘Nothing. But let’s go out the side door, okay?’ She gave me a little smile as if it were some kind of game. I led her down a long corridor. At the end there was a locked door with a sign. I asked my wife what it said. She told me it said that this door must remain shut. I pushed on it but it was locked. I kicked it open. It was the first rule that I ever broke. The very first.”

  He looked at Chen as if perhaps he was going to be punished. Chen said, “How long ago was that?”

  “Over seven moons ago.”

  My god, had they been travelling for seven m
onths?

  “Were there soldiers waiting for you in the front of the clinic?” Chen asked.

  “Yes. We slipped out the side door and I peeked around the corner. There were four soldiers with rifles on the steps. We waited for dark in the basement of a laundry on the edge of Luo Tien. Then we headed home.”

  “Weren’t soldiers waiting for you there too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why go?”

  “We needed the bags of dried herbs my wife had collected. They were the only kind of money we had and Beng Pu was a long way away.”

  “You were heading towards Beng Pu?”

  “Yes. There’s a big hospital there and I thought . . .” Again his voice dried out.

  Beng Pu is a city of 9 million people whose sole claim to fame as far as people from Shanghai are concerned is that it is the only stop on the express train from Shanghai to Beijing. No one is allowed to get on. No one ever wants to get off. The place seems like one large factory with holes for people to sleep in. It’s one of the old Soviet cities. Practical. Sterile. Idiotic. Like Beijing Lu in Shanghai. Miles and miles of hardware stores side by side. Only a Russian could think this made any sense. I assume the train stopped in Beng Pu to restock. I never asked. No one ever asked.

  “Were there soldiers at your parent’s house?”

  “Yes. My parents were serving them tea. My wife and I made a plan. She hid while I walked right into the house. Before anyone could speak I cursed my wife. ‘You were right, Mama, she’s a whore. I am sorry I brought such a person into your home.’ I really can’t believe I was able to say those things. But I did. You understand that I had to?”

  Chen nodded.

  “‘Where’s she now?’ my father asked. ‘I don’t care. I threw her off the cart just outside of Luo Tien.’ The soldiers all looked at me and nodded their approval but wanted to know exactly where. I made up a story. They began to pack up to go. I thought my mother was going to hug me. Over their shoulders I saw my wife dart from behind the neighbour’s hut and race towards ours. I saw her duck down and enter the crawl space beneath our home where we hid the dried herbs in three canvas bags.

  “I went to bed that night alone. Just past moonset I crept out of the house and raced across the highest of our rice paddies to the forest where we had arranged to meet. She held me and drew me to the ground and we . . .”

  Chen looked at me. I knew we had to test him before he left. Then he said the most surprising thing. This rough man. This man who couldn’t even say the word “sex” or “love.” This man who never used his wife’s name said, “It was so sweet, so very, very sweet.”

  “The next morning we set off through the woods and into the mountains. She knew the way from her times spent there searching for herbs. We travelled in the early morning while the mist kept us safe and then rested deep in the forest until dusk. Then we set out again. The mountains at night catch the moonlight. Did you know that? I didn’t. We ate berries and mushrooms. We used the bags of herbs as pillows at night. By the third morning we were very high up. It was cold. I had trouble waking her that morning. She seemed locked in her dreams. She had vomited on her clothes.”

  He stopped. He was sweating. For a moment I wondered if he was going to vomit too.

  “You cleaned her clothes,” said Chen.

  “Yes. In a cold stream. I tried to bath her but she didn’t want me to see her body. I carried her for several miles. We moved that whole day in the light. We were high up. If the army had sent out patrols looking for us I hoped they wouldn’t have come this far. Around noon she was regaining a little of her strength and she slid out of my arms and began to walk. And she talked, talked, talked. She talked about her childhood and her friends. The monk who had taught her how to read despite her parents objections. She talked about wanting children. ‘Hundreds and hundreds of them. All over the place. All over the grass. All over you and all over me.’ Just before sunset I heard something in the brambles at the side of the path. I signalled for my wife to move back and hide in the trees. She did. I carefully walked towards the sound. The bamboo was thick here. There was a scuffling sound. Then a moan or a cry I couldn’t tell which. I pulled aside a thick stand of bamboo and a small deer was there. Caught in the thicket.

  “Its huge eyes looked right at me. It was crying. Its right foreleg had snapped cleanly between its knee and its hoof.”

  He looked at Chen carefully as if he wasn’t sure if he should tell him what happened next. He needn’t have worried. “Deer meat is very healthy,” Chen said.

  “Yes. I made a fire. For the first time since we left our village we were warm. I put chunks of the flesh on sticks and heated them over the flames. I burnt most of them but I don’t think I ever tasted anything as good as that meat – ever, in my whole life.”

  “Did your wife like it?”

  He looked away then said, “She cried for the thing. She said it was just a baby that it had its whole life ahead of it and all the lives it would help make. I looked at her. So sick. Yet she was concerned for this deer. ‘Its leg was broken,’ I said to her. ‘It would have died in the bamboo even if I had not found it.’ She looked at me. Her eyes were like the deer’s but angry. ‘Do not lie to me.’ ‘It is no lie. It would have died with me or without me. Animals would have eaten it, not us.’”

  “Only then did she eat a little of the flesh. I begged her to eat more. She wouldn’t. She did help me cut the remaining flesh into thin strips and put it over the branches I’d spread by the side of the fire to start the drying.

  “The next morning we packed our meat and began our descent. It was harder going down than up. The heavy mist clung to the rocks and I slid and fell many times. She, even that sick, had extraordinary balance and moved from one rock to the next like the jugglers that came through our village. No, that’s not right. She was more graceful. More beautiful. She was like a ghost in a dream.

  “That night, our sixth, we lit no fire. We were closer to the east end of the mountains. The mouth to a large valley was to our east. There was a small village at the end of the valley. I put my jacket around her and told her to rest. I needed to go ahead and see what was what. I couldn’t imagine that the soldiers would have come this far. But they may well have called ahead. Besides small villages are suspicious places. Dangerous places for outsiders. Outsiders are not welcomed and when they do arrive the Party official is notified right away. I waited until the darkest time of night then approached from across their rice paddies. The night had gotten very cold. There was smoke coming from the chimneys of several of the larger huts. I moved from one to the next, avoiding the windows, then stepped into the mud street. At the far end of the row of huts was a wooden sign hung from the curved eaves. I can’t read but I recognized the character. An apothecary.

  “The next morning we buried most of our herbs under a pile of rocks. Then we waited until the sun was high in the sky and entered the village. Wary eyes followed us as we made our way to the apothecary’s shop. Inside an old man was surrounded by dozens of jars of herbal medicines. The man looked away. He didn’t say a thing. ‘We have ylang-ylang for sale,’ my wife said. The man spat. ‘No, this is the real ylang-ylang.’

  “He looked at us for the first time. His right eye was clouded and milky. He tilted his head to get us in focus with his left eye which was dark and very very clear. He held out an ancient claw. My wife reached into her pocket and pulled out a small piece of cloth. She unfolded it on the counter and put the small portion of ylang-ylang in the old apothecary’s hand. He held it, as if weighing it in his palm. Then he took one bud and crushed it between a yellowed thumbnail and his index finger. He brought his hand to his nose and sniffed. A surprised look crossed his face. ‘Ylang-ylang.’ ‘Ylang-ylang,’ my wife agreed. ‘How much?’

  “Twenty minutes later we had agreed on a price. We returned to our hiding place. Took out the agreed-upon amount of ylang-ylang that we were going to sell to the apothecary. Put the rest of the herb inside my wife
’s jacket – it made her look fat. It made me smile. My wife fat. How odd. An hour after that we had given the apothecary the amount of the ylang-ylang he had wanted and he gave us both the information about bus service to Beng Pu and more than enough money to buy two bus tickets.”

  “We sat at the very back of the bus. My wife kept the bags of ylang-ylang safely inside her clothing. She slept. I watched. I’d never been east of the mountains before. There are great flat fields planted in wheat. Flat fields. No need to make paddies! And great temple gates outside some of the cities we passed. Have you seen them?”

  These were common enough features in the country but he had evidently not seen them before, Fong. They were stone structures often four or five storeys in height. Usually three or stone four pillars supported a large slab crosspiece. On the crosspiece there was often an inscription honouring a person of significance from the region. The Red Army often had the tributes rewritten so that they praised the army or peasants in general but some of the original inscriptions still remain. Some are quite ancient. Many have been restored recently. These free-standing tributes to special people from the towns were often as close to shrines as China now has. Few were very impressive to us from Shanghai but to this man they were plainly special.

  “Yes,” said Chen. “My village has one honouring a fisherman from long ago who taught us all how to fish with cormorants.”

  The man smiled. “The bus passed many wonders. A huge raised bridge across farmland. Not across water. A bridge with no water beneath. Just fields down below.”

  He was referring to one of the many viaducts that stretch across the best of our farmlands. A wise thing. China needs every available field to feed our population so the roads are lifted up over the most fertile farmland and the fields are planted in and around the posts of the raised roadway. That way very little arable farmland is wasted to road ways. But you know this already, Fong.