by Barry Lancet
“My captors are nine. Seven dwarf bandits and two Chinese. All of them are vicious men. They carry special poisons. One poison is no-taste, slow-action poison. They drop it in village wells before morning water is taken. Around midnight, the horrible screamings begin. Men and women shriek and moan. Stronger men sometimes run into streets, clawing at their throats until blood flows. Then they collapse squealing and thrashing in middle of muddy village road, dying like slaughtered pigs. I am doctor. I want to run and help. But I am always bound to tree. Watching from woods, my captors laugh and laugh.
“Like this we visit one or two villages every week. Nightly, they tie me to tree and they watch dying with great happiness. Sometimes, when village is small, my captors do killing by hand. I can always tell when those days approach because joy dances in their eyes, and when they return I can see sleepy satisfaction on their faces.
“Strapped to tree, I watch their shadows move in moonlight from house to house. They circle first and kill village dogs, then enter each hut of mud bricks and straw and kill all family members.
“In two minutes, one Black Wind fighter destroy lifeblood of family maybe fifty generations old. In ten minutes, five families. In fifteen minutes, nine men butcher whole sleeping village.
“One morning, after their hand murdering, I am fixing rice porridge with pickled plums from dwarf-bandit homeland. Suddenly village gong is pounding loudly in craziness.
“A Black Wind man say, ‘We miss one,’ and they all laugh.”
“The gong sounds twice more and then old man comes running down dirt road right by our hiding place. His feet are bare. He is howling at heaven. My captors creep to edge of trees. The old man runs away, still yelling to skies, ‘The devil has risen! The devil has risen! They are all dead!’
“I have nicknames for my captors like Snake Eyes, Crazy Fingers, Silent Knife. There is baby-face soldier I call Young One. He say, ‘That was good’ and they all snicker. Then strange conversation start.
“ ‘Someone was sloppy.’
“ ‘He must be punished.’
“ ‘Severely.’
“ ‘We need to train harder.’
“ ‘Punishment is must action.’
“ ‘No,’ says Snake Eyes, their leader, ‘reward is. Our guardian is teaching us new good thing. From tomorrow we leave one alive.’
“ ‘But why?’ Young One asked.
“ ‘Because this new thing help our work. Rebel guerilla groups from these parts are killing our soldiers. They snipe them at night, then run into hills and villages to hide. Our job is to return powerful message: you kill soldiers, we kill your families. Our guardian is showing us a stronger way to spread message.’
“And so they do as Snake Eyes command and his devil wisdom is powerful. Soon Chinese people think Japanese demons ride Black Wind sent by angry gods. They see nothing. They hear nothing. But whole villages wake up dead.
“I am only Chinese who know real truth. Then one day I understand bigger truth. Black Wind kill unlucky Yang family. Not plague. It happened after Xeng’s daughter marry big dwarf bandit. Next I see biggest truth. To keep their secret, Black Wind must kill me too.
“Five weeks later we arrive at big waterway. Bodies float down it like fat gray balloons. Men, women, children, Old Honored Ones also. Dwarf soldiers make their Chinese servants throw bodies in water. To put Chinese bodies inside ground is much trouble. Inside river is easier.
“That day I guide men to last village. Talk is softer that night. I cannot hear their words. Next morning they send me to wash laundry by river.
“When Young One walk toward me, he is jumpy. He never smile at me, but on this morning he give me big grin. Other men are all older and better at hiding feelings. They flatter me, give me good food and sweets, even though I am dog in their eyes. Young One never hide his disgust for Chinese. But on this morning he is stretching his lips wide, giving me a smile warped like old cartwheel too long in sun.
“The hairs on my neck tell me why he is coming. I smile and go back to washing. I watch him from my eye corner. When his gun comes out and his aim is ready, I let myself fall in river. He fire three times but only one bullet hit me. A body is passing and I fall on top of it. It is slimy and cold and fat with bad air. My body slides over to far side. I can see V-shaped bites on corpse where river snakes feasted. The water is fast and pink with blood. Some of it is mine. Strips of flayed gray flesh float on surface around me. The smell is like thousand sewers and my stomach insides pour out, lumpy and bitter, but I lay still. Body smells and my stomach stink gather round me. I can hear Young One chuckling. His sound is close.
“I cling to underbelly of dead body. I keep my eyes mostly closed. I hide my breathing. Fat carcasses with balloon bellies are everywhere around me, washed ashore or snagged by reeds. A teenage boy corpse is beached on a sandbar. Crabs scuttle over him. Greedy little pincers nip his young flesh. I know my new blood might draw river snakes, so I must escape water soon.
“Young One calls to me in his baby Chinese. ‘Wu, I am sorry. You know me. I like games. This is bad game. Big mistake. Come back. I fix you sweet bean cake. Come back.’
“His voice is near. When I no answer, he fire gun and I feel a bullet enter Thousand Sewer Body. I make my body jump. He fires again. I jump again. I hear Young One laugh. ‘Now, you really dead, Wu. One more mongrel gone.’ ”
Abruptly, Wu fumbled for a cigarette. His hands trembled. It was a long moment before he could pull one out.
“You poor, poor man,” Rie said.
Wu blew smoke out with a deep sigh. “You are kind to consider this old man, Miss Rie. Retelling is like reliving.”
“What terrible, terrible things you saw.”
Wu blinked. “Yes, very big unlucky. But what come after haunts me more.”
CHAPTER 44
AFTER safety is certain,” Wu said, “I leave river. I collapse onshore and wake up in farming village I know. I am conscious long enough to teach my rescuers how to bandage wound, then I wedge bullet from hip and pass into blackness.
“For ten days I live in deep fever. I dream of my wife and child. Their smiling faces beg me to return. I tell them soon soon. Once I am home again I will run my hand over my son’s smooth cheeks and enjoy my wife in her lucky dragon dress. We will feast with duck eggs to celebrate our reunion.
“When my fever flies and my strength rebounds, I travel to my village. In two weeks, I reach home. Every night I dream of my family, and every morning I wake with smiling face.
“My escape is miracle number one. Our reunion will be miracle number two. For one lifetime, that is enough. After I reach home, I vow to live a quiet respectful life.
“When I appear at village entrance, the children run off screaming. In the marketplace no one looks at me.
“My mind is greatly confused. First I think I did not survive and have turned into ghost-spirit. But I pinch my arm and feel pain. Next I think they know my shame. But learning Black Wind secret is impossible. Then I think Snake Eye’s men spread lies about me. But they planned to kill me, so this cannot be.
“Suddenly, I read in villagers’ avoiding looks most horrible truth of all and I run.
“But of course I am too late. Only ash is left of my home. Wild dandelions already sprout from the cinders. My neighbors tell me my family woke up dead one day after my leaving.
“The pain in my spirit has no bottom. A big storm rises in my head. I will never more feel my son’s smooth cheeks, never more see my wife in her dragon dress. These are heart-cracking matters.”
No doubt, I thought as I watched Wu reach yet again for the comfort of his cigarettes. For hundreds of years, including much of the twentieth century, China had been rocked by endless political turmoil and civil wars. Wu was tripped up by the Japanese, but the number of tragic stories offered up by his countrymen and -women involving vicious politics and wholesale slaughter between warring Chinese factions amazes me to this day.
“But yo
u were home, so you were safe at least,” Rie said.
“It is true I had some small good luck.”
Mining the undercurrent in Wu’s voice, I understood his comment was a token gesture of politeness for Rie’s sake, and nothing more.
We were headed down still darker roads.
* * *
“My head storm show me monstrous vision.
“Row and row of people I see standing in deep valley. They have white-powdered faces and white mourning clothes. Their mouths are opening and closing, making big O shapes like ten thousand hungry goldfish. They speak angry words I cannot hear. There are children and parents and Old Honorable Ones. Many are my old patients. I wake up screaming.
“I am in dark room with candles burning all around me. Old Green Tooth Meng flies to my side, saying ‘Finally, finally, fever is broken.’ It is first night of my consciousness but sixth night of my head storm. I am with my village again, but ghost-spirits have followed me home.
“At first light Green Tooth Meng’s son wheels me to village temple in a donkey cart. I am too weak for walking. I burn spirit money and incense for ghost-spirits in my dream, but when I close my eyes they appear immediately. I burn double spirit money and pray to Goddess of Mercy.
“But no matter what I try, they haunt my every night with same open-closing mouths. Same white faces. Same white clothes. I pray more. I burn mountains of money. Still they come.
“On my fifth dreaming night, ghost-spirits no longer show angry faces. On sixth night they beckon me. When I go to them they part, a white sea of bodies, their goldfish mouths opening and closing, opening and closing. They are calm, showing me same suffering I can feel in my own cracking heart. Up close I see their clothes are not white suits of mourning but everyday wear of farmers, housewives, butchers, and peddlers. They are trapped between life and death. I see ghost-fathers and ghost-mothers and ghost-children with big questioning eyes. I see ghost-women with ghost-babies in their bellies who have bigger questions.
“The ghost-spirits speak every village name I visit with Black Wind. They are unsleeping souls of murdered villagers. They call me. They see I keep their secret. This is my . . . my . . . ming yun. Danny, what is ming yun in Japanese?”
“Shukumei,” said Danny. Fate.
“Yes, shukumei. I know they are my fate because I feel them alive in my heart. They live next to heavy sadness for my family. After wartimes end I tell their story but find no open ears. For many years I try. Communist Party people do not like my story. They tell me to stop talking about old war business.
“But ghost-spirits press me so I continue. One night my house burn down. I make lucky escape. In its way of killing new Chinese government is same as old. I know they come again if they see me alive. My time in motherland is done.
“So I take money in my garden-bank and travel across land for many days. I sneak into Hong Kong, then into dwarf bandit land. Here I can voice ghost-spirit story because Japanese people share much war suffering with Chinese people. But I find old Japanese soldiers have same problem. No one wants hear their nightmares.
“We Chinese know how to eat bitterness. Our own rulers kill more of us than any foreign power ever did. We endure. We are patient. But I cannot live forever. I try many years. I help many in motherland but I have no success for ghost-spirits. When I see no more ways, you are sent to me, Mr. Brodie-san. This meaning is clear. So I give you what you seek, but from you I need two promises.”
I couldn’t imagine what I could offer Wu, even though after all he had been through I felt bound to help if a way could be found. I said as much.
“That is heartful answer,” he said. “First, you must do nothing to make more killing of Wus.”
He didn’t want his people compromised. “Fine,” I said. “No names. What else?”
“You must . . . expose what I reveal today in your most big public way. This is what ghost-spirits beg of me.”
I glanced at Danny, then Rie. Both looked back expectantly.
“Again,” I said, “there is nothing I would like better than to help, but I don’t see how.”
“Danny say you climb out of big trouble in this land. Are his words true?”
“Yes.”
“Your power is this climbing. You climb up and tell ghost-spirit story. Not angry telling. Not revenge telling. Compassion telling. In revenge the world darkens. You must make new light when you speak.”
I took a deep breath. I gazed up at the summer sky. Night had come and the stars were shining. The air was thick with heat, and the firmament was blue and cloudless. Below us, the homes of carpenters and truck drivers and laborers fanned out over an undulating landscape. People stepped off buses. Others headed home with plump vinyl shopping bags of groceries for the evening meal. You must make new light when you speak. Whatever I did, would it make a difference? People would still take their buses. They would still carry home their evening groceries.
Drawing heavily on a fresh cigarette, old Wu watched me with an ageless patience.
Maybe one night, around a dinner table, a family would see a news item. It might excite them. Even startle them. They would discuss it. Perhaps the scene would repeat itself in households around the world. Not in all of them, but enough of them. Maybe only one in ten. Or one in fifty. Still, ripples of understanding would spread through the collective consciousness and the understanding of past events would deepen. A small awakening might be born.
Life would move on, corrected. Perhaps only minutely, but corrected nonetheless. Life might become a little better in some quarters for some people. And possibly, those ripples would affect the thinking of decision makers dispatching men to do undesirable deeds that could be better accomplished in other ways.
This was what Wu desired.
This was what the ghost-spirits required of him.
He was their last hope.
And I, it appeared, was his.
He speaks for those who have no voice.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll find a way.”
Wu smiled. “Thank you. The people you must seek for your trouble are Chinese spies.”
“Not Triads?”
Wu shook his head. “Triads not do your killings.”
“How do you know?”
Wu’s smile turned enigmatic. “I know.”
“Where can I find spies who would help?”
“You know many peoples in this land. Seek for them among many you know.”
“Why a spy?”
“Because that is where your answer is.”
Great. A verbal Möbius strip. Endlessly twisting and circling.
Rie looked as unhappy as I felt. “A spy? Are you sure?”
Wu’s nicotine-stained finger jabbed the air. “Chinese spies often imitate Triad butchers to hide their own doings. You find right spy, you find right answer. This I guarantee. Then you tell world about ghost-spirits. Wu is waiting.”
DAY 7
THE END OF “ONCE”
CHAPTER 45
SLEEP did not come easily after Chinatown.
When I finally dropped off, ghost-spirits in white apparel appeared, silently mouthing words, their lips forming perfect Os. I woke with a start and, unable to get back to sleep, replayed Wu’s story, then a brief exchange with Rie on the train back to Tokyo.
“You know,” she’d said, “you can follow-up on Wu’s idea, but the MPD can’t pursue such vague insinuations without risking a diplomatic incident.”
“You have a point,” I said.
“Do you think Inspector Kato knew?”
Two-way streets are not toll-free. The good inspector suspected I might prove useful.
“He knew,” I said.
* * *
My talk with Jenny early the next morning lifted my mood considerably. She’d jumped into the new school year with fervor. Classes didn’t start for another three days, but she was already kicking the soccer ball around with her new teammates, discreetly shadowed by one of the Brodie Security men.
Jenny bubbled over with enthusiasm when she mentioned her two goals in practice yesterday, which impressed me. Or maybe that was just a proud father’s point of view. Questions about my return were uncharacteristically absent due to her excitement, and I hung up, relieved that things were going well on one front, if nowhere else.
* * *
I called Hiroshi “Tommy-gun” Tomita’s cell phone and the Tokyo Seikei Shimbun reporter answered on the first ring.
In Japanese I said, “Can you talk?”
“Buzz me back in two,” he said, and disconnected.
Tomita was a hard-nosed Japanese journalist in his forties whose scoops regularly blasted corrupt pols, shady developers, and other scurvy lowlifes off their feet. Hence the nickname. Last time, I’d rung him on the paper’s landline and he’d scolded me for my carelessness, telling me incoming calls were monitored. The big Japanese newspapers, with a nudge from the powers-that-be, kept their newshounds on tight leashes. Having learned my lesson, I reached out to him on his mobile, knowing I would need to wait for him to find a quiet corner away from prying ears.
In two minutes I hit the redial button and he answered swiftly.
“Hey, Brodie. How’s Jenny-chan?”
“Good. She came for a short while this trip. Yours?”
“Did you know that two teenage boys can pack away more kilos of rice a month than a full-size sumo wrestler? And then there’s the meat and the fish and the noodles. We buy Cup Ramen by the truckload. I don’t cash my paycheck anymore. I just donate it to the local grocer.”
“Heard that can happen.”
“At least you have a girl. They eat less.”
“Time will tell. Can you meet?”
“Business?”
“Yes.”
“Got two deadlines, so it’ll have to be later, around midnight. Will that work?”
