by Andy Oakes
Placing the container into his pocket.
“Oryza sativa is rice. The scientists’ daughters were murdered for un-milled rice seed.”
Chapter 42
The sun is in the east, and that lovely girl is in my chamber.
She is in my chamber.
She treads in my footstep, and comes to me.
The ode, Dong Fang Zhi Ri, from the Shijing, ‘The Book of Songs’.
“Not a good idea, Boss. You know that. It was arranged so neither of us would know. Security. Fucking security.”
“I need to see her.”
“Why?”
“I have a bad feeling about the future.”
“A bad feeling? How bad, Boss?”
No words. Just his eyes, beachball blue. But something gnawing, at depth.
“That bad, eh? Okay, Boss. Bad feelings are to be trusted. I’ll arrange a fucking meeting.”
*
The street market, Jiankanglu, Nanking.
Early, 45 minutes to whittle away. Walking in the ‘Capital of Heaven’, in the lands where ‘the owl and the phoenix do not sing together’. Inside the Ming Gate, Lake Xuanwu’s willow-shaded banks with views to the Changjiang, the Yangtze, the Blue River, with its slumbering meander under the Great Bridge.
“Thirty minutes, Boss. No more. It will be in a public place, a street market. Safe. Don’t fucking worry, I’ll make sure no one is trailing us. There are many stalls in Jiankanglu selling local fabrics. The last sells silks, thousands of them. She will be at the rear of the stall, you at the front. Silks between you. You will not see each other. But you will hear each other’s words. If you see her, and she sees you, then someone else could see the both of you together. We can’t take the risk.”
Entering the market and its chequerboard pattern of stalls, with pottery, as glazed red as hot coals, brushwork paintings of bold black slash washing into grey-blue, calligraphy, with the words of Confucius, brushing against the lyrics of the Beatles, cages of chickens, canaries and runt pigs, calling out their lives and their deaths. And at the very heart of Jiankanglu, a dog squashed dead in the centre of the road, caught in a sideways’ chase and run; still in its eye, the darting cat’s leer. At the very far frayed edge of the market, the silk stall. Tumbles of kite tails living out the breeze’s life folding from the river, across the canaries’ bones of rust. Each heartbeat of wind, carrying a fish’s soul on its humped back.
Just standing there, the soft embrace and flick of the billowing silks across his face, hair. Their gentle rasp against his stubble. And then her voice.
“I am here.”
Breeze through gossamer weaves, stealing his words.
“I am here.”
So close to him. Able to smell the lemon and almond oil that she had used on her hair. Her hand across silk. His hand meeting its span. Each finger met in equal caress. Her heat against his. His against hers. At that instant the universe in balance, perfect and just.
“It is how it should be …”
“Yes. It is how it should be.”
His fingers travelling down her fingers. Encircling her wrist in a turquoise bangle, as the sea embraces the island. Feeling her life, her pulse. Her past, present, but only the ancestors able to know her future. Pulling her closer to him and him to her. Vague glimpses through lavender, corn yellow, ruby. Her eyes, vermilion softened. Lips, cadmium kissed.
“I needed to see you. To tell you. I have an uneasy feeling about the future. I have no one else in my life, not any more. No one else to tell who will listen. Just you …”
Pulling her closer, into the breeze’s soft ballet.
“Just you. I feel a link between us …”
Falling into her, body and soul. Lips meeting, tasting her, and the famine fed.
“I know …”
Her fingers running down the insides of his. Soft wing flutters matching his heartbeat. And with it a knowing; but not daring to name it.
“Ni-ai … ni-ai … ni-ai.”
And then a voice that he did not recognise, calling her to sanctuary. A voice that he knew, the Big Man, calling him back away from such sanctuary. Watching the hue of the silks lighten as she withdrew from them.
‘Ni-ai’, the only words on his lips.
‘To drown with love’.
Chapter 43
CAAS … CHINESE ACADEMY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES, ANYANG, HENAN PROVINCE.
Always the back door …
The comrade who met them was joss-stick thin. More meat on the Big Man’s tie, than on the geneticist’s bones.
“The money. You have the money?”
Greenback dollars from Piao’s inside pocket. Counting them out onto the pallid outstretched palm, as the geneticist smiled apologetically.
“I have a wife who demands the better things in life.”
“The better things in life, Comrade, might not include a wife such as this.”
An acidic smile from the geneticist.
“You have what you wish to be tested?”
A small cotton pouch from his pocket to the scientist’s hand.
“Two days. You come back in two days and I will have the results.”
Already closing the door, but Yaobang’s foot blocking its arc.
“We fucking need it done tonight, Comrade.”
“No, no, no. This is delicate work. Precise work. Impossible.”
Piao reaching roughly into the man’s jacket pocket. His fingers to the dollars.
“Okay. Okay, I will go to work on it immediately.”
Looking up to the heavens, as if for divine intervention from the ancestors, but none coming. Shaking a matchstick head.
“My wife was making my favourite meal tonight.”
Digging him in the ribs with his elbow, the Big Man.
“And what were you going to give her for desert, eh Comrade?”
A look as if something had just shit in his pocket.
“2 a.m. Come back at 2 a.m. Not a minute before, not a minute after, and you shall have preliminary results.”
The Big Man removing his foot. The door closing.
*
There is little to do in a village on the outskirts of a big city in Henan Province, except drink. But first, you listen for where the song comes from, good song, well sung, loud and brimming with renao.
‘I raise my cup in salutation to the moon.
With my shadow we are three …’
In wood smoke you drink, eyes bled to tears with Wuliangye, one of the wonders of Sichuan. Distilled from the land’s fruit … millet, sorghum, rice, maize, and paddyfield grass, or the child of Henan itself, Dukang. Named after he who is credited with inventing the distilling of spirits, Du Kang, spirit of fire, deriving its justified fame from the prawn inhabited waters used in its manufacture.
‘Yet drinking is unknown to the moon, and the shadows follows in my wake in vain …’
You drink, you sing, you talk to the old granddaddies, not a tooth in their heads between them. But such stories to make you laugh or make you cry into your draft of poison. And passionate discussion also. 13th Century Opera, who should be feted the most? Guan Hanqing, with over sixty theatre pieces to his name, able to enter the female psyche at will, her pain, distress, a canvas richly painted. Or Wang Shifu, writer of ‘Xi xiang ji’, ‘The West Room’, with melody and a theme to melt a heart of marble. Discussions also about Ming Dynasty art. Wu Wei, master of landscape and of people, Lu Ji, lord of birds and flowers, Zhi-jiang, Southern Song painting reawakened in the spirit of Mai Lin. Intelligent compositions with a powerful use of ink.
And through it all, as DNA helix through life and the living of it, songs, and the singing of them, until your heart fills, your life is put right and you have cried your sorrow away.
‘Let us honour moon and shadow nonetheless.
For joy will last no longer than the spring.’
*
The office of the geneticist, with framed, ornate certificates in red and gold, framed phot
ographs taken at conferences standing next to other joss-stick thin geneticists, and another photograph, pride of place, overlarge and garishly hand coloured, of the wife, ‘who demands the better things in life’. A woman, eyes as coldly black as lumps of coal, and a mouth that looked capable of hoovering-up a fen from fifty metres away.
Animated, the geneticist, smiling broadly with teeth too white to surely be his own.
“Who put you up to this? Cuan? Liao? No. No. I will wager that it was, Su. Yes, Su, the old bastard.”
“I am sorry, Comrade Scientist, I do not know what you are talking about. Are these the results of your test?”
“Yes. The results. But you are joking. This sample is from America. I heard that they were working on it, but that they were many years away from a result such as this. This is stolen, or purchased? Then you must have very wealthy backers. Very wealthy indeed. Perhaps I should ask for more American dollars?”
The Senior Investigator fanning through the report. Folding it and stuffing it into a deep inside pocket, and then tipping the contents of the cotton pouch onto his palm. Black husked seeds, now milled, polished. Seeds, strangely gold in hue. Counting each of them.
“Oryza sativa. I gave you fifteen seeds. There should be fourteen seeds returned to me, Comrade Scientist. You only used one for DNA and gene analysis.”
Holding his hand out, moving toward the geneticist, Yaobang, whispering embarrassedly into the Senior Investigator’s ear.
“Boss, it’s only rice!”
The geneticist falling back into his black leather chair.
“This is not a joke, nor from America? And your Deputy, he doesn’t know, does he?”
“Know what, Boss?”
“Three seeds, Comrade Scientist.”
“But you do know, don’t you, Senior Investigator?”
Opening a drawer of his desk he produced a small plastic phial.
“What you have here is incredible, billions of years of evolution turned on its head …”
Unscrewing the lid and reluctantly pouring the contents onto the Senior Investigator’s palm.
“An answer to many millions of prayers. What you have here, Senior Investigator, is ten years in the making. Very special, and worth about 2 billion US dollars in investment costs I would wager. Ta ma de. And what billions you could harvest in licensing this seed’s secrets. Billions, enough to buy heaven itself …”
Piao, walking to the door, the Big Man trailing behind him.
“To buy heaven, and to paint it any colour that you wish.”
*
A different route back to Shanghai, the path of the snake, taking no obvious or major roads. Any eyes which were seeking or watching, were lost in the maze of orchards and the paddies hemmed in by the dykes.
Piao engrossed in reading the report and soon lost in its technicalities, but understanding enough to chill him even in the stifling heat of the Sedan; goose pimples running down his spine.
“I will get a copy and once I have fully deciphered the report I will make some notes. You take it to the Wizard, along with the other data. He will know what to do.”
“Sure, Boss, and what is he going to do?”
“He is preparing a hammer, a very large hammer to come down upon a very large egg.”
“Sounds messy, Boss.”
“Be vigilant, as walls have …”
“Ears. I know, Boss.”
“Anything that you have to communicate to the Wizard, write it down, and then burn and scatter the evidence. We take no chances. We take no risks. In the meantime I want you to set up surveillance at the Hotel of Peace. Use a little guan-xi, a little persuasion and your innate charm. Citizen One, I want to know his movements.”
“Sure, Boss. I know. When he eats, when he sleeps, when he shits, the usual. Planning to pay the comrade a visit?”
“We throw our harvest of rice into the air and see where the wind blows it.”
“With the storm that’s been blowing on us, it could be swept all the way to fucking Taiwan.”
Piao, his eyes fixed to the rear-view mirror, far behind them, a diamond glare of fullbeam headlights making him wince.
“Pull over. Quick.”
Yaobang wheeling the Sedan off the road, turning off their lights and the engine. The car passing playing American rock and roll music through its open side windows. Minutes before the Senior Investigator gave the nod. Greasy fingers turning the ignition key, the Sedan coughing into life.
“What’s up, Boss, I’ve never seen you so jumpy?”
“We have ‘a dam to an ant’.”
“You mean a big fucking problem Boss. But perhaps this Citizen One can get us out of it?”
Piao, with a deep exhalation, winding the side window down and watching the cigarette smoke sweep into the night.
“If he has a will to. If, as we have been told, the shining path still gleams as brightly in this tong zhi’s eyes.”
Chapter 44
Oryza sativa.
Rice, the staple diet of the population: of many populations.
Rice straw used for roofing and packing materials, for feed, fertilizer and fuel.
Rice seed used to treat breast cancer, stomach and abdominal ailments, diarrhoea, dysentery, fever, jaundice, psoriasis.
Rice stems for treating nausea.
Rice stem ash for infections and wounds and for use as a shampoo.
Rice flowers dried for cosmetics and toothpaste.
Rice water for ulcers and applied externally for gout.
Rice, boiled, used in a poultice for sores.
Rice root used as an astringent.
The most populated country on the planet, the People’s Republic of China with its 1.3 billion people. 1.3 billion ‘mouths with stomachs attached’, 20% of the world’s population, to be fed using only 7% of the world’s arable land, a constant challenge for food production.
For this reason the highest concern of the Party hierarchy … food security, crop yields. Essential, the staple diet of rice, its consistent and continued flow central to law and order and to the pyramid power structure of the People’s Republic. Central to the Party’s hold on every element of daily life and its routines. That sense that the sun will still rise tomorrow, that the moon will still sail in the night sky, and that the Great Helmsman’s words will still order the steps that are trodden.
Chapter 45
THE BRIDGE OF NINE TURNS, YU GARDENS.
Piao stood at the exact epicentre of the Bridge of Nine Turns, at the apex of the fifth turn. From either end, safe from hostile spirits, queuing and unable to negotiate the zigzag structure of the bridge. Standing there motionless as if he had always been in this place, just waiting for her, as he had done, before, and even after all this time still able to taste the soft fruit of her earlobes.
With effort moving from the bridge and into the penumbra of risk. On the bank of the lake, allowing reports and books to fall to the grass. The geneticist’s report still with the faint acidic odour of fresh printout. Sheets of remote sensing data. The report that the Wizard had unlocked from FILE TWENTY.
Reading and cross referencing with a highlighter pen marking passages of special interest. Re-reading the various highlighted passages as if unable to free himself from their implications. Rice, Oryza sativa, equalling so many torn from their lives.
‘This is a highly developed cultivar of rice. It is a transgenic crop, formed by isolating genes that control specific characteristics in one kind of organism, and transferring these genes into other quite different organisms, which will then inherit those characteristics.’
On the lake’s edge, in black silhouette over dull silver, an old man, a small boy. Moving through shadow, out of shadow.
‘Artificially inserted genes give this cultivar improved characteristics. Better tolerance levels to heat, cold, drought. Better yield; its seed bearing head is 50% larger than other cultivars. Better growth rates. It will provide two more harvests in a one yearly cycle than any ot
her known cultivar.’
From wooden boxes, preened and pampered cooing pigeons taken to hand. Feathers of every grey graduation smoothed by caring fingers. Attached to the pigeons’ feet, small bundles of tiny reeds. Whistles fashioned from miniature water bottles … held, tail end to string by a full stop of carved ivory ornament.
‘Transgenic techniques enable us not only to insert genes from unrelated plants into another, but in the case of this particular cultivar, to cross the divide between species: between plant life and bacterial life. This cultivar is a Bt insect resistant crop (Bacillus Thuringiensis – a soil bacterium). If an insect, such as a Yellow stem borer consumes these spores, a delta-endotoxin is released into the insect’s gut. Within a few days that insect will die. Recovery of just 5% of our crop yield that would normally be lost to Yellow Stem Borer or Striped Stem Borer larvae will be able to provide food, for one year, for around 140 million of our fellow comrades; that makes this cultivar priceless throughout the rice-growing regions of the world.’
A boy’s whisper, an old man’s whisper, to warm pigeon’s head against cheek. In open handed prayer to heaven, pigeon’s flight to sky. Traced patterns of circles, ovals, figures of eight. Reeds catching the breeze. Whistles singing their songs. Harmonized … flight, rushing air under pigeons’ wings.
‘Normal rice, our staple diet and that of our neighbours, contains no beta-carotene, the precursor of vitamin A; thus creating high levels of vitamin A deficiency amongst our population, and causing an alarming set of costs to our health care institutions. It should be noted in this context, that worldwide 400 million people are at risk from vitamin A deficiency. In addition, it is the world’s major cause of blindness, with 500,000 children alone becoming blind because of it, and 1.5 million children a year dying from vitamin A deficiency. This new cultivar which contains a total of four new enzymes which have been engineered into it, can put an end to this major problem.’
