Citizen One

by Andy Oakes

  On the first floor, the child’s bedroom. Through the window, ink sea and sky, in a continuous wash. Watching as she cared for the child, prepared him for night’s voyage. A kiss. The child watching her shadow decrease as they moved from the room. His universe, and she the only thing within it.

  Her bedroom was large. A woman’s room, softly vulnerable. On an antique dressing-table, a cluster of silver and gold framed photographs. Each photograph of her, Lingling, arm-linked with a man. Each man, arm-linked with power; a member of the Politburo, a captain of industry, a provincial leader, a government minister.

  Double doors led onto a balcony. The night alive with the sound of sea, invisible waves breaking themselves onto an invisible beach. Curtains billowing in a night-breeze tinged with camphor wood fires and the perfume of jasmine. On the large satin-sheathed bed, beaded Indian pillows, Thai silk pillows. On the wall above the bed, another Yun Shouping original. Its worth enough to keep Piao and the whole of the fen-chu in Tsingtaos for the next ten years. But the only thing truly catching his attention, against the far wall, more boxes. More tissue paper waiting to wrap memories in their soft folds. On the top layer of the box, half-wrapped, a small solid antique silver frame containing a photograph of Lingling and the child … the family that could, should have been his. Between them, a striking-looking man, pristine in every way. One arm around Lingling’s shoulders, his other hand on the boy’s head. The long, soft, gold-ringed fingers of a cadre through the child’s hair. Even after so long surprised by the deep brand of pain. Pushing it down, as he had always done. Pushing it down.

  When he looked up, she had sat on the edge of the bed, her beach sarong falling open showing her legs. Honey-hued grains of sand in static waves across her calves. Hardly able now to remember the times that he had run his hands up the silky smoothness of her legs, his lips following in an eager breathlessness, to where inner thigh met inner thigh in a salt sweet kiss. Hardly able to remember anything about how they had been together, except pain. Yes, pain. Remembering that. The first memory, the last memory.

  “Ankang.”

  She smiled reaching for a bowl of lychees. Scarlet manicured talons plucking from gold, rose, tan. Her other hand fending off the word as if it were disgusting to her.

  “I will talk of no such thing.”

  “I need to know, and you should tell me because …”

  “Why, because I am still your wife?”

  “Yes, my wife.”

  The lychees soft flesh to her lips.

  “In name only, Sun. And marriage is more than just a shared name, or had you not realised that?”

  From the inner sanctum of her mouth, the lychee’s stone.

  “You will get no answers here. Am I am supposed to thank you, Sun, for scaring me, my child? Waving your pistol around in front of us. To thank you for entering my house on the pretext of asking me questions?”

  Dropping the lychee stone to the carpet, knowing that it would anger him. A man, Sun Piao, who would always think of those who would have to labour and clean up the mess of others.

  “I thought that you had come to kill us.”

  Piao, moving to the window. In pale reflection, his face, a creation of darkness.

  “You can think such things of me?”

  She did not answer.

  “Why I am here, it is not about who we once were. That is in the past …”

  “In the past, Sun? You are sure of this, in the past?”

  The intense darkness of her gaze piercing him.

  “There are many questions that I need answered. I will ask you these here. If you do not answer them, I will ask you them again in Shanghai, in the fen-chu.”

  “If only you had been so strong when you were truly my husband, Piao. But you overestimate your authority in such a place as this. In Beidaihe you are one investigator in a sea of those who do whatever they wish. You may pass for clever amongst those who you normally investigate, who live in the longs and who smell of the gutter, but in my world, with the kind of people with whom I associate and call my friends, you are merely naïve.”

  Smiling, but not her eyes. Never her eyes.

  “In the zhau-dai-suo next door, beyond the trees, is a member of the Central Committee. He walks on the beach with me and talks about how little his wife enjoys sex. Beyond that, the zhau-dai-suo near the headland. That belongs to an esteemed government minister. They have three Red Flags and four a-yis. I play mah-jongg with his wife and she talks with tears running down her face of the young boys that he likes to play more intimate games with. The two zhau-dai-suo beyond the hill. The Provincial Head and the home of his Deputy. I shop with their wives and their mistresses. I have influential friends, Sun. You would not get me within 100 miles of a fen-chu.”

  Piao standing, not knowing what to do with his arms, with his feet. Feeling put in a place stinking of piss and vomit, and knowing that he belonged and would never leave there. Not a life of silks, of views that caress the senses, of painted originals, of the smells that come in gold-topped bottles. No, not a life like this one.

  “I will answer only what I want to answer.”

  Thinking even as she spoke that, ‘those who sacrifice their conscience for ambition, burn a picture to obtain the ashes’.

  “Ankang, you had me released?”

  Silence.

  “The questions that I am asking you are a part of my investigation into murders. Many murders. Friends in important places can provide powerful guan-xi. But friends in high places do not wish to be associated with murder.”

  A step closer.

  “My release from Ankang coincided with this investigation. It all dovetailed too neatly for it to be a coincidence. You had me released from Ankang which tells me that you are somehow linked to these murders.”

  She still smiling, but in her eyes calculations, balances, a weighing-up.

  “Ankang. Yes, I was influential in your release.”

  “Why?”

  Silence. Just the sea. Just his heart.

  “Why?”

  “There was no reason. It was just something that I did.”

  “No, Lingling. You are a person who always has an agenda.”

  She shrugged.

  “It is not like that, Sun.”

  “It is not? Look at the facts. Two Comrade Officers crucified and played over with an oxy-acetylene torch. An old comrade, a vagrant, decapitated. Three young women, slashed to death by cut-throat razors. A fourth left for dead in the Wusong. A young woman raped. Her throat cut, as if she were a sow to be roasted. Buried in a hole that was filled with concrete …”

  A step closer, his shadow falling across her.

  “And into this I am released from Ankang. I repeat, what is your involvement?”

  Next door a child crying. Instantly it calling her. In her breeze, perfume, sea, secrets. Lychees, shells, stones, falling to the floor. Piao on his knees picking up the debris. Her fingers, lips, across them. His wife, yet the closest that he had been to her in years. And in the act his anger wanting to dissipate. Needing to dilute itself.

  Coming back into the bedroom, she smiled, noticing that he had cleared the debris from the floor.

  “Always so neat, Sun. Almost compulsive. Obsessive. In your work also.”

  And a whisper, an aside, lost to the night. Lost to Piao.

  “Such obsession. It will cause the death of you.”

  Moving to the balcony. Across his face breezes from Africa, Russia, and India. Places that he would never visit.

  “Your a-yi has a bent back, I just wanted to help her.”

  Not hearing his words, not ever noticing the bend of her a-yi’s spine. She moved back into the room from the balcony.

  “Why was I released from Ankang? The timing, it is too perfect. My first case, a tangle of PLA, state involvement, hidden agendas, and so many who life no longer possesses.”

  “I thought that was how you liked your cases, Sun?”

  “Do you have knowledge of the t
ai zi, Colonel Zhong Qi?”

  Silence.

  “Do you know this cadre?”

  “Be careful my husband. It will not be so easy to resurrect you from Ankang next time.”

  “What do you mean? Is this a threat, wife?”

  Standing, pushing past him to the balcony. Moving with her, Piao into her ear, his whisper mixed with the sea’s voice. As if wanting nobody else in the universe to share it. Just her, just the breezes from far-pitched continents.

  “Your dangerous games will bring about dangerous situations wife. This tai zi, this PLA, what do you know of him?”

  Trying to move away, but his arms braced either side of her, snaring her hard against the balcony and his body. Feeling her ragged, torn breaths against his chest, at odds with the rhythmic exhalations of the sea.

  “Just his name and that he is dangerous. Sun, he is very dangerous.”

  Struggling against the wall of his body.

  “All of these PLA are very dangerous. They care for nothing except their wealth, their power.”

  “The same could be said of you wife.”

  “No, they are different. They create another country within the People’s Republic. These are difficult times, very difficult times.”

  “What do you mean? All of our times are difficult in this People’s Republic. Alive in the bitter sea, that is the fate of most of our comrades.”

  Exhausted by the struggle, falling limp against him. Her words as a breeze too weak to hold the kite’s long-tailed flight.

  “The Ministry of Security, it is … it is attempting to cut back on the PLA’s power. And also on the influence of the tai zis, on levels of corruption, drug trafficking, prostitution, the abduction of children.”

  A fleeting dark-eyed glance towards the bedroom next door. A child, her child, so safe.

  “But the Ministry is meeting strong resistance. To challenge the PLA in any fashion. To bring into question any actions of a tai zi at present. These are dangerous things, Sun.”

  “So, I am to turn my back on my investigations and let sadistic serial killers go free?”

  Her finger across his lips, so cool and soft, so perfumed. An urge, bottomless, to take it into his mouth.

  “That I know is not in your nature. You are the storm that rains on every roof. I know this. So do your superiors. That is what frightens them so much, especially in the extraordinary circumstances that prevail at present.”

  Not removing her finger. His words sealed in crimson by its presence.

  “You just need to be very careful. If I can assist you I will.”

  His lips, shaping to speak. But a second finger silencing them.

  “You have had your say, Sun. Now is the time to listen to the sound that your rain makes on others’ rooftops. Yes, I had you released from Ankang and returned to the PSB, in what I thought would be a safe place for you. I spoke to Zoul and he promised me that he would keep you safe. He failed.”

  Her eyes on his.

  “But how can you stop the wind from blowing.”

  Her eyes on his and ten thousand memories brought back to life.

  “You have enemies, Sun, from past investigations. Many enemies in high places. Not all appreciate the storm’s rain falling on their rooftops. It loosens tiles, floods basements. Your enemies, they were almost upon you. They were so close that you did not see them.”

  Across his lips her fingers, but not able to still the question, like the seventh wave, rearing up from deep within him.

  “It was you, wife. You were the one who put me in Ankang in the first place?”

  In her eyes, reluctance, secrets in dark-cornered hiding places.

  “Ankang was hard, I know. But it offered you a sanctuary, a place where not even their arms could reach and people within it to keep you safe from Ankang’s worst horrors. I have no other involvement, Sun. I know nothing of these deaths or of this tai zi.”

  Still her fingers, calming the fever of his lips, holding back the questions.

  “Shh. There is no agenda here, Sun. There has never been an agenda.”

  Slowly her fingers leaving his lips. An instant sense of loss. Wondering if she would ever touch his lips again. About to speak, but she interrupting.

  “I will allow you one more question, Sun, and I will answer it truthfully.”

  And he, realising that he was no longer an investigator, but a husband asking the simplest, yet most complex of all questions.

  “Why?”

  She smiling, and in his eyes seeing all that was to be seen, and that which was hidden. Half turning her face, eyes hidden by the night. Looking out to the blackness of the sea and sky. No witness as to where they kissed. Some minutes before she spoke. The one question, answered truthfully.

  “A relationship is not like signing off a report. Or did you not know that, Senior Investigator Sun Piao?”

  *

  Beyond the Shandong Peninsula, moving from the Sea of Bohai, shadowing the Yellow Sea, the rain as grey spears, streaking the darkness. Piao falling asleep to the windscreen-wiper’s fretful lullaby.

  Waking with a jolt as they crossed the Great Bridge. The Yangtze the colour of worn coins. The light, at an obtuse angle, hitting the windscreen through the spread of plane trees, as if the very world itself were sliced into manageable slithers.

  Yaobang only now daring to speak.

  “So Boss, what exactly would you say is the secret of a successful marriage?”

  Chapter 26

  In the People’s Republic of China three overlapping components provide the Party, the state, with radar that can pick any comrade up wherever they decide to go. Whatever they decide to do. The Party, the state, organising society as a security system, as much as a social or an economic system.

  The danwei, cradle to the grave, providing the housing where you live, the school where you are educated, the clinic for when you are sick. The purchase cards for rice, cooking oil, soap. You will need their authority, their written permission, to get married, divorced, to have a child. A travel permit to go beyond the city limits. A docket to purchase, if you are well off, a car, a refrigerator, a washing machine. A docket to bury your dead. A docket to register the living.

  The xiao-xu, the ‘small groups’. These, based on the techniques developed in the Communist’s cave headquarters of Yanan in the 1940s, to indoctrinate the thousands of disparate new adherents flocking to the cause. Thousands split into groups of no more than ten, undergoing months of what the Communists called ‘thought reform’. Stage 1, specific Party documents to study. Stage 2, mutual criticism of past attitudes and activities. Stage 3, a time for submission and re-birth. Not unlike a religious conversion. Each individual writing, rewriting a personal confession. Over and over again, until the Party accepted it.

  And now? The ‘small group’ will meet in your school, your university, your neighbourhood, once or twice a week. Central Committee documents and dictates will be read out and studied. Each member of the xiao-xu, at designated times, will write a report on themselves to the Party. It should contain the ‘three levels’ of consciousness. The first, what you think about yourself. The second, the things that you tell only your closest friends. The third level, the feelings that you hide even from yourself.

  The third component of control, the ‘Street Committee’, providing the Party, the state, with a mechanism to watch each comrade at home. Their members a cross between building inspector, police informer, social worker and spy. In each long, in each tenement building, they will sit. They will note each coming, each going. They will keep a strict eye on their residents’ neatness, reprimanding you if your shoes are dirty, if you do not sweep your hallway. Entering and searching your flat wherever they wish. Inspecting your hu-kou, your household refrigeration certificate. They will count the members of your family, searching for relatives from the countryside who you might be trying to smuggle into the city. They will berate you if you do not wash your dishes and plates after a meal. A written report t
o the Party, if you do not have a photograph of the Party Chairman in a prominent position in your living room.

  Each province, each city, are awarded quotas for the numbers of babies which they are allowed to sire every year. Street Committee Members decide which family should have a child and which family should not. A person from the Street Committee assigned to monitor each woman’s menstrual cycle. If a period is missed by a comrade who has not been given permission to have a baby, an abortion is ordered. A Street Committee Member nominated to escort you to the clinic. To be present with you while the procedure is carried out and then to escort you back to your long.

  Chapter 27

  ‘His eyes upon your face. His hand upon your hands. His lips caress your skin. It’s more than I can stand.’

  Dark, darker, moving through the Yanan East Road Tunnel. Nixon, the black Beijing, six cars back. At the exit, north river side, traffic lights on red. Cars backing up. Everything the colour of sun-dried tomatoes. Piao squeezing through the narrow gap of door and pressed steel. Keeping low, rolling behind the concrete parapet. In its faded khaki slip the handprints, boot marks, of the workers who had toiled to build it. The lights to green and Nixon passing in a belch of diesel fumes. Eyes watering, moving out of the tunnel, the Big Man would keep them running west, Piao running east. A Friendship Taxi picked up on the Bund, its dead-eyed driver moaning incessantly about the weather and the wait for his wife’s hysterectomy operation. Piao tossing a crumpled 10 yuan note and jumping out north of Daminglu. Moving into the longs around Haininglu. River mist skirting the confluence of the Wusongjiang with the Huangpu, smoothing cracked walls, dulling every sound. Following the Big Man’s instructions; biro drawn onto palm. The Shanghai Stadium, a bowl of light, a crucible of sound, not executions tonight, just football. A goal, 60,000 voices in joyous unison. Moving through the rabbit warrens, away from the stadium’s leggy shadow. Single sounds now, a mosaic of identifiably tenement life. Fretful babies, playful lovers, ill drunks. Mah-jongg tiles snapping down. Renao, life, hot and spicy.