The Golden Mountain Murders

by David Rotenberg

  “Before I could nod, there was a loud knock on the door and a command to open it. I saw the young doctor’s face grow pale. I looked around the room. There was a storage room in the back. I grabbed my wife’s hand and we ran in there and hid behind the boxes. From the next room we heard hard voices questioning the doctor. Why was he here? ‘To check on our autopsy facilities.’ ‘Why, are you a forensic doctor now too?’ ‘No. I’m just trying to familiarize myself with the hospital’s capabilities.’ Then an old man’s voice said, ‘He came in with a young girl.’

  “So that was it. The old man thought the young doctor had dragged my wife into the hospital’s basement for some illicit reason. I looked at my wife. Her face was stained with tears. She whispered in my ear, ‘I don’t want them to hurt him.’ Then I heard a dull thud and the sound of a body crashing to a concrete floor . . . then the sound of it being dragged out the door and down the hallway.”

  “Two hours later we snuck out of that room and out of the hospital. Beijing or Shanghai? We made our way that night all the way across the city and in the cold morning finally got to the train station. We waited until well after sunrise before I went into the depot. I thought, I have money, I’ll just buy tickets to Shanghai. I looked carefully at the soldiers around the station. If they were looking for someone it would be a couple, not just an ordinary countryman like me. I stood in a line that was surprisingly short. When I got to the window I asked for two tickets hard seat to Shanghai. The man laughed at me. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘The train stops here to refuel but no one gets on or off.’ ‘Where’s the train from?’ ‘Depends on the direction. Going south it starts in Beijing and ends in Shanghai. Going north, the reverse.’ ‘Are there other trains?’ Going west, yes, but nothing going east, to the coast or north. You want to go west, give me your money, otherwise step aside.’

  “I stepped aside. No wonder there really wasn’t much of a line for tickets. This station sold tickets to go west back into the countryside, not east to the city. I went back out and told my wife. She nodded but seemed almost in a daze. I put my coat around her and hid her back behind a row of parked railway cars. Then I went towards the platform and watched.

  “The trains heading west were small, with three, four, five cars. The first trains from Beijing amazed me. More cars on one train than I’d ever seen. The train came just before noon. As it approached I saw many men running towards the platform with carrying rods and baskets on their backs. They all had the same kind of shirt with a crest on the right sleeve. I guessed it identified them as train personnel. As I watched, the train stopped and the men with the train shirts filled their baskets and headed onto the train. As soon as they entered the first car I began to count. I was up to just over nine hundred counts when they began to leave the train from the rear cars. Their baskets were empty and already the train was beginning to pull out of the station heading towards Shanghai.

  “Two hours later the process was repeated on a train coming from Shanghai and heading towards Beijing. This time the porters were off in just over eight hundred and fifty counts and the train was already picking up speed as it headed out of the station. Neither time did any passengers get off the train.

  “I watched two more trains, one in each direction. The last one pulled out just before sundown. For those last two times I wasn’t counting. I was watching the porters. Finally I found what I wanted. A thin young man with an angry face. As he left the last train I fell in beside him and offered him a cigarette.

  “He took it, but said, ‘What do you want, old man.’ He called me an old man.”

  I could see that being called an old man really hurt him, Fong.

  “At first I didn’t say anything to him, just walked by his side. ‘You not able to talk, old man, or what?’ ‘I can talk,’ I said. ‘Good. Talk.’

  “I told him I wanted to buy his shirt. He didn’t act surprised. The first price he named made me laugh out loud. My counteroffer made him cry out loud. Eventually we settled on a price and he gave me his shirt. I had never spent so much money for anything ever before in my life. I returned to the railway car and wrapped my wife in my arms and sang to her. It was all I could think to do. I sang. She cried.

  “The dawn was even colder than the night. It was hard to rouse my wife. I finally did and we went to the platform. I told her the plan and made her repeat it to me several times. We watched the early-morning train heading to Beijing, then the late-morning train heading to Shanghai. Both times we talked through what we would do. Then we retreated to the railway yard and waited for the last train. I figured that the later train would be in the most hurry. The least likely to scrutinize things. We didn’t sleep well. I dreamed of lightning in the sky. Large forks of lightning, hitting the land and ancient trees sparking into fire.

  “At sundown we moved carefully towards the railway platform. As the huge train blew its whistle to announce its arrival I slipped behind the train station and put on my porter’s shirt. The other porters were already running towards the platform. I kept my head down as I picked up my carrying basket from the far side of the train station.

  “The huge train squealed on the tracks as its brakes began to slow. It was getting cold quickly. As I passed by her, I noticed that my wife was shivering violently. Our plan was for me to go on board the train as a porter carrying supplies, then make my way to the back of the train and open a carriage door for my wife.

  “I stepped into line with the dozens of porters who were ready to carry their supplies onto the train through one of the forward doors. It was already getting dark when the train finally pulled to a full stop and the front door was flung open.

  “Inside, the train’s lights were off. Many of the passengers were asleep. I followed the line of porters through the front three cars then into a fourth car that was free of seats. Boxes and sacks were piled high on both sides. I placed the supplies I was carrying beside the goods that the porter ahead of me placed on the floor but didn’t turn and follow him back to the front of the train to pick up more supplies. I knelt down and pretended to roll up my pant leg. Finally the guard in charge of the storeroom stepped out onto the platform to have a smoke. I snuck out the back of the car and ran as fast as I could through the train cars filled with sleeping city people. I had counted the cars as they came into the station. There had been thirty-seven. I counted as I ran. I was trying to get to one of the last five cars. That’s what we had agreed on. That I would open a door in one of the last five cars for her – my wife.”

  He went silent as if that choice of the last five cars had somehow caused his wife’s death. I looked at Chen. He nodded and prompted, “What happened next?”

  The peasant looked up at Chen and stared at him for a long moment as if he couldn’t place his face. Then he smiled. He was missing a front tooth. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?

  He sighed deeply then spoke. “I was running through the cars trying not to trip and wake people. Some were still awake, especially in the hard seat compartments. They were drinking and smoking and playing cards. They yelled at me. Things they thought were smart, I guess. ‘Got to pee bad, buddy?’ ‘Lose your girlfriend?’ ‘Where’s the fire?’ Some said things I couldn’t understand.

  Those would be the Shanghanese, I think, Fong. Our dialect is so filled with clichés and idiomatic expressions that many outsiders haven’t got a clue what we are saying. It’s the way we like it, isn’t it, Fong?

  “I ignored them but their yelling made me lose count which car I was in. I knew I was somewhere in the twenties when the train began to move. I couldn’t believe it. The thing clanked and rattled then began to pick up speed. I raced to the nearest door and flung it open. My wife was the only person on the platform – she was already twenty yards behind the last car of the train. Even from that distance I could see her tears. I jumped off the train. I hit my head. A tooth came out.”

  He said it all so simply. He jumped. He hit his head. A tooth came out. When I was young my mother came home with
a small dog. I loved that dog nearly to death. I squeezed him all the time. Do you know that it’s a law in Shanghai now that you have to have an electronic implant for your dog or they can take him and kill him. There are over 100,000 dogs in Shanghai – that’s a lot of implants. I bet some city official owns the lab that implants the stupid things. At any rate I thought of that dog of mine because it got run over by a pedal bike on the sidewalk. It mangled one of his front legs. He cried and did a lot of lying in my lap for several days then he just got up and began to walk – with a limp. But he was the same as before, just that now he was a dog with a limp. He never regretted that he couldn’t run fast anymore. That was before. Now he was a dog who limped. This man was a man who bumped his head and now was missing a tooth. No regret, just moving forward. I wish I could live my life that way, Fong, I really do. Just looking forward, never back at what could have been or what was.

  “That night I found an abandoned railway car and we slept. Before sunrise they came.”

  “Who?”

  “Bandits. They robbed us of all the money we had. They beat me up and two of them dragged me to the corner of the car and sat on me.”

  He stopped talking. Dear God they didn’t rape his wife, did they? I didn’t even know how to broach the question.

  Chen did. “Was your wife attacked?”

  Dong Zhu Houng looked away. After a long silence he said, “They ripped off her clothes but a train pulled in, and in the train’s front light, they saw the sores on her body. They cursed her and ran away. But not before I saw one of their faces in the light.

  “It was the porter who sold you his shirt, wasn’t it?”

  The peasant nodded.

  A silence fell on us all. Dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern horizon.

  “So what happened next?” asked Chen.

  “We went back to the Beng Pu market and sold more of the herb, then took the money and bought train tickets south, towards the Yangtze.”

  “Why not just sell all the herb and buy firstclass bus tickets all the way to Shanghai?”

  “We didn’t know if we could get onto a bus with her being so sick. At least on a train we could get on at night and go hard seat. Everyone looks awful in hard seat. Besides we didn’t know how much money we’d need to get her treated in Shanghai and that herb was the only source of money we had. We couldn’t spend it all before we got her treated.”

  Chen nodded. “So you headed south?” The man nodded. “How was that train ride?”

  “Lonely.”

  I didn’t expect that – hard, boring, painful – sure, but lonely?

  As if he could read my thoughts he said, “She slept the whole way. And so deeply. I couldn’t wake her even to feed her.”

  “But you finally got to the river – the Yangtze?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “At Chungking. I wanted to rent a place for us so she could stay in a bed for a bit. Until she was at least a little stronger. I thought she was dying.”

  He looked up at us. Both Chen and I nodded.

  “I found a very long alley and put her in the darkness at the end of it, then covered her with both our coats. I couldn’t have her with me when I went to find a place. People would look at her and close the door on us. I needed to find a place that didn’t have an old lady with the keys sitting in the front. A place where they wouldn’t report us. We had no papers allowing us to travel, let alone to be in Chungking.

  “There were building projects down by the river. Lights on tall towers lit up these huge pits where hundreds and hundreds of men lifted and toted heavy muck on their backs. I stood and watched. I’d never seen anything like it. It was raining and the men were the same colour as the mud. It was as if the ground itself was lifting up and moving up the walls of the pit. But even as I watched, I saw that the men working were being replaced by newer workers. I looked in the direction from which they had come. There were many low huts made from that wavy metal.”

  “Corrugated iron,” Chen said.

  The peasant looked at Chen, grateful that Chen had supplied this bit of information but also surprised that anyone would need more explanation than “wavy metal.”

  “I went there. The man at the door was from Anhui Province. I told him I was looking for work and needed a place to stay for me and my wife. He shrugged. I offered him money. He found me a place in the back.”

  There it was again. Simple facts. No judgment.

  “Just before sunrise I settled my wife into the bed and fell asleep on the floor beside her. I don’t know how long I slept but I awoke like someone falling off a cart. It felt like I had rolled over on a large stone or something. Then I felt the pain in my side again but sharper this time. This time I also knew it wasn’t a stone – it was a boot. A heavy boot was kicking me in the ribs. I jumped to my feet and immediately stood between my attacker and my wife. ‘Morning, princess. No work for the princess this morning?’

  “At first I thought he was talking to my wife. Then I looked at her bed. It was empty. He was talking to me! I was princess. ‘No work, no pay. No pay, no place to stay, princess.’

  “It was raining and cold. I had only my sandals.”

  Fong, he looked us straight in the eyes. A kind of pride blooming there.

  “I have worked in the fields every day from dawn until sometimes late into the night since I was a little boy but I have never been forced to work like that. Been punished by work like that. And I was desperate to find my wife. Where was she? Why was the bed empty?

  “When my shift finally ended I ran back to the hut. My wife was sitting on the side of the bed. She had made tea somehow. She stood as I approached. ‘You have worked hard, husband, you rest now,’ she said to me. I don’t remember falling asleep. But I think she held me and rocked me. She, so sick, did that for me.

  “I worked there three more days. I wanted her to get as well as she could because we had a long journey ahead of us. Before sunrise on the fourth day she awakened me and we snuck out of the hut and headed towards the river, the Yangtze.”

  He looked up at us. “Have you seen it?” I almost laughed, but then I saw the awe in his eyes and swallowed my giggles. “Is it not magnificent? All the way from the Yellow Mountains to the sea.” He was looking at the rising dawn out the window. The first day he would spend without his wife – on this earth. A shudder began at the base of his spine and worked its way up his back.

  Chen crossed over to him and put his hand on his shoulder. I assumed that Chen was going to offer sympathy to the poor man, but I was wrong.

  Chen turned him away from the window and asked, “With your money situation you couldn’t have taken a riverboat. So how did you get down the Yangtze all the way to Shanghai?”

  “On a raft.”

  A raft! Like Huckleberry Hound? Chinese people don’t use rafts.

  “Just short of four moons.”

  They had been on a raft for almost four months!

  “We floated and stopped. Sold some of the herb for food, then got back on the raft. I built a small shelter on it to keep out the rain. In the second week we spent a lot of money and bought a small brazier and some coal. I brewed her tea and she drank the last of her medicine. We watched the great ships pass us by and we floated. We floated. Until finally we came here. She was weaker every week but we were together and we were safe and we were floating as if we were already in the other world.”

  “Finally, you landed in Shanghai?” Chen asked.

  “At the mouth of the Huangpo River. That was the hardest part. Landing the raft and walking to Shanghai. And we had no money left. None.”

  “Had you sold all the herb?”

  “No. We were not foolish. Not foolish.” He was suddenly vehement.

  “Then why did you have no money?”

  “Because no one here would buy it.”

  For the first time, Chen was confused – but I wasn’t, Fong. Generic Viagra is cheap and plentiful in Shanghai. Their herb�
�s value was totally supplanted by modern medical research. The carefully stored and lovingly picked source of their wealth was no more. I didn’t need to hear the rest. I already knew, Fong. They must have wandered desperately in Shanghai and eventually found their way here to the Hua Shan Hospital, where they were turned aside until they knocked on my office door and I got her admitted.

  He ended his story and stood very still. Chen approached him and put a hand on his shoulder, “Thank you, sir, for the honour of telling me your story.”

  The peasant grunted.

  “Where will you go now?”

  For a moment, Fong, I thought he was going to ask to stay in my office, but again I was wrong.

  “Home,” he said. “I will go home.”

  With that he left the room and took the first of thousands upon thousands of steps in his journey to the west.

  Fong stared at the last words of Lily’s missive on the flimsy pages. A few digital who-knows-whats was all that remained of this poor man’s story.