Rock Paper Tiger

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

WELL, OKAY. IT’s not like I suddenly trust Creepy John, who did, after all, drug me and stalk me and wash Chuckie’s and my dishes, which is just perverse. But I’ve already let Cinderfox and his buddies lead me from one side of China to the other. Am I really going to stop now?

Besides, I’m tired. It’s the middle of the night, and I don’t have time to think about what to do.

“Okay,” I say, shouldering my backpack. “Let’s go.”

John puts a finger to his lips and helps me down from the top bunk, slides the compartment door open quietly as he can. We step into the narrow corridor that runs along the sleeper compartments. One guy sits on the jump seat at the end of the car, toward the train engine, reading a magazine in the passage’s dim light. He looks up as we head the other way, toward the rear of the train.

The train slows. Sways like a snake. We reach the end of the corridor, and John opens the doors that lead to the vestibule between the cars.

Behind us, a compartment door opens and slams shut. I look over my shoulder. Two men. Jogging toward us.

The steel plates where the cars are hitched together move in opposite directions, and I step wrong and stumble, see the diamond patterns in the metal outlined in grime as I start to fall. John hauls me up and drags me into the next car. Another soft sleeper. We push past a conductor as the train continues to slow, make it to the car after that. A hard sleeper. Passengers stir, grab their bags, their jars of tea, ready for a quick exit. We keep going.

“Do you have your ticket?” John hisses.

“I, uh-”

“Just follow me.”

Cheery arrival music plays. The ubiquitous woman’s voice comes on, announcing the stop. John pushes past a couple of peasants clutching faded striped totes and ripped canvas duffels, dragging me with him into the next vestibule and down the three iron steps onto the station’s platform.

Knots of people push past us, getting on the train. I glimpse dreary cement, peeling white pillars, a vendor with a cart piled high with packaged noodles and sugared nuts and bottled water. John keeps his hand clamped around my wrist, and I follow him down the platform, toward the back of the train and the hardseat cars.

“Ticket,” he whispers, steering me back toward the train. I try to remember where I put the fucking thing. In my wallet? My backpack? John already has his out to show the railway worker standing at the compartment’s entrance, the usual neatly made up young woman in a peaked blue cap. He starts up the three stairs, pulling me with him.

“Your car is up front,” I hear the ticket-taker say.

“Meiguanxi,” John mutters.

“Xiaojie, nide piao,” she demands crisply, pointing at me.

Your ticket.

“Ta you, ta xianzai bushufu le!” John snaps. She has it; she’s not feeling well. Which is not too far from the truth.

Pants pocket, I think, and there it is, my little pink ticket, stuck between a couple of ten-yuan notes.

“Duibuqi,” I say automatically. Sorry. We board the train.

The compartment to our right is a hard sleeper. Inside, only a few passengers stir: a couple of new arrivals settling in, a group of guys playing cards in two of the lower bunks, a girl texting on her cellphone.

We make our way through the car, go on to the next and the one after that. As we pass the toilet compartments, John jiggles the handles-locked, as they generally are for arrival at a station.

In the third car, the door opens.

John silently gestures for me to go inside. I do. He follows me, closes the door, and locks it.

The two of us stand in the tiny cubicle, me with one foot on the step of the squat toilet, which by this time in the trip is spattered with piss and shit and hunks of sodden toilet paper.

Did we lose those guys? Did they follow us back on the train? I don’t have a fucking clue.

The train slowly starts to move.

“We stay here,” John whispers. “Another stop in a quarter hour.”

I clutch the iron bar by the toilet as the train lurches forward and picks up speed.

We’re standing inches apart from each other but barely say a word. I listen to the rhythm of the wheels on the tracks and think of how seductive the sound is, how much I’d like to find a bunk and crawl into it and sleep. Just sleep.

Somebody comes and rattles the door handle once, but they leave.

Fifteen minutes go by. It feels like hours. The train slows.

“Okay,” John says, unlatching the door. We step out into the passageway.

The omnipresent woman’s voice announces the stop. Some town that, if I heard correctly, is called “Treasure Chicken Village.” I think: that can’t be right.

We exit the train. No one follows us. No one I see, at least.

A little station, not much more than a platform and tracks, dark except for flickering halogen lights. Steam rises from the train, smelling of diesel and rain. The station is pushed up against the base of a hill or maybe a mountain, a dark mass that rises to some indeterminable height.

A few people climb onto the train. A couple of ticket-takers stand around in their blue uniforms and peaked hats, looking bored.

“This way,” John says.

I follow him past the red-brick station building, glimpse a couple of people inside, sleeping amongst their bags, stretched out across the orange plastic seats beneath the dim fluorescents.

We follow the tracks a ways at a half-jog.

“Where are we going?” I ask in a whisper.

“Don’t know.”

Up ahead, there’s a break in the hills, and a road, a darker black against the gray.

We pick our way along the side of the road in the dark, heading downhill. I’m glad that I don’t have any real luggage. Only my little daypack and my shopping bag. “I can carry that,” John offers. He too has a small backpack. He’s wearing that cheap leather jacket. I keep glancing over at him in the dark, trying to get a glimpse of his T-shirt to see if it’s that same Beijing Olympics one. I don’t know why I care, and, anyway, I can’t tell. Everything’s faded to grays and blacks, the color leached out by night. It’s quiet except for an occasional car or truck rattling up the hill to the train station.

“Okay, Cinderfox,” I say. “That night. The night of the party. What the fuck was that about?”

John gives me his best wide-eyed, innocent look. “That night? You were sick.”

“Would you stop bullshitting me?”

I’m surprised at myself, at how loud my voice is. How strong. It’s like somebody took the gag out of my mouth, like I’m waking up after a long sleep.

“You put something in my beer. You drugged me and you asked me a lot questions. How come?”

John hunches in his leather jacket. I think maybe he’s blushing. “We just need to know, can we trust you?” he mumbles. “Some people think maybe you are not reliable. Maybe you would betray us. Maybe you don’t really care so much for Upright Boar.”

I feel a surge of bile in my throat. “Did he think that?”

“Upright Boar?” John shakes his head. “No. I don’t think so. He worry about you. He does not want to ask you to do something that is too hard for you. He only says we should ask you if you can do this favor for him.”

I stop. Just stop. Stand there in the middle of the road in the dark, somewhere out in the Chinese countryside.

“And that was your way of asking?”

John hangs his head. “Not everyone agrees with Upright Boar.”

I want to sit down, find some patch of grass or boulder at the side of the road and sit there like Little Mountain Tiger in front of the red gates of the Yellow Mountain Monastery. Wait there until I get some real answers.

But apparently this is as good an answer as I’m going to get.

“What’s wrong with you people?” I mutter. I straighten my pack and start walking.

John grabs my arm.

I whirl around, my hand closed in a fist, and I start to swing, but he pulls me down with a little move that knocks me off-balance, and I land on top of him by the side of the road. We’re face to face, and he says, “Car!” and points uphill, toward the train station. I roll off him, and we scuttle into the brush, bellies down on the dirt.

I hear a car engine, and headlights sweep past us, slowly, silhouetting the bushes in front of us so they look like black paper-cuttings.

Finally, the engine noise recedes and the road is silent again.

“Sorry,” John says, his face inches from mine.

“What the fuck was that?”

“I thought it could be those guys,” he mutters.

“It was a car. We’re on a road. Where cars drive!”

I stand up. My leg wobbles and I stumble a little. John scrambles to his feet, steadies me. I shake him off. Dust off dirt and grass and head down the road.

We walk a while in silence. I don’t want to look at John, but I’m aware of him next to me, carrying my shopping bag. He doesn’t want to look at me either.

“How do you know Upright Boar?” I ask.

“The Game.”

“You met online?”

He nods. “I get an invitation,” he says. “From the Great Community. I play for a while. For a long time.” He shrugs. “Finally they accept me.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I know some. But not many. Just the screen names.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why did you join them?”

For a few minutes, all I hear are our footsteps, and then a distant train whistle.

“I have a sister,” he finally says. “She is, you know, a blogger. Just writes about her thoughts and her feelings. And then about some historical incidents. Just things she has learned. She lived in London for a while. And when she came home to China, she still is thinking like that overseas person. Like she can say what she wants.”

“She got in trouble,” I conclude.

“Yes,” he says very quietly, like he’s still afraid of being overheard. “This is… maybe six years ago. One day, the PSB comes and takes her away. I am her brother. I think it is my duty to look after her. I think, there must be a mistake. She is not challenging the government. She is just talking. I talk like this with my friends, all the time. We don’t know why her. No one will tell us. She isn’t charged with anything. We cannot see her. We cannot talk to her. I go to the PSB. I go to the Ministry. To the Municipal Government. I fill out forms. I am only following the Chinese Constitution. I do all these things.”

He laughs. “I am young. I am graduated from college. I have a good job. I am making money. I have a fiancée. A nice apartment. A car. I believe in a prosperous future. I believe in China. I think: this is a mistake, and I can correct it.”

I want to laugh myself.

“So what happened to your sister?” I ask.

“She is in our home town now. She was gone for two years. Two years!” He stops in his tracks and swings my shopping bag in the air, in utter frustration. “For the first two months, we can’t find out anything. Then they charge that she is disturbing the social order. I got a lawyer. They followed him. Called his office and made threats. He still tried to present her case, but it doesn’t matter. The court says she is guilty. They send her to labor camp. Then one day they just let her go. They don’t say why. They just let her go. No apology. Nothing. And I think, where is the justice? Where is the right? Not with my government. But some of her friends here in China and some of her foreign friends, other bloggers, they are writing letters, they are writing every day, and I think, who are my friends?”

He stares at me. I can only imagine his face, his expression, because it’s too dark to see it. “Do you understand, Ellie?”

I shrug. “I guess.”

We start walking again.

“I am Chinese,” he says, almost to himself. “I am a patriot. I love China.”

At the bottom of the hill is a cluster of lights-a gas station, some square darkened buildings. I guess this is Treasure Chicken Village.

“What happened to your fiancée?” I ask.

I can see John’s face now, and he looks embarrassed, almost hurt, like a kid who’s been slapped and told he’s a fuckup.

“She does not like that I am angry. Spending so much time on my sister’s case. I explain, this is my family. Don’t Chinese people care about family any more? But my fiancée says, your sister is a bad social influence. Maybe she needs this lesson. And anyway, if you complain too much, you won’t have success.”

Then it’s his turn to shrug. “Actually, she is a bitch.”

I laugh. I think this is maybe the funniest thing I’ve heard in years. I just keep laughing until I’m out of breath and my stomach hurts and I have to stop and rest my hands on my thighs for a minute.

John gets that scrunched-up, confused look on his face. “Is that word… does that offend you?”

“Fuck, no,” I say, catching my breath.

“Because she really is a bitch,” he explains earnestly.

“I believe you.”

And I do. Finally.

Up ahead, the road widens into a square. A collection of anonymous buildings are strung out around us along a few anonymous streets: Treasure Chicken Village.

There’s not a lot to see in Treasure Chicken Village-and, since it’s after midnight, what there is to see is mostly closed: a market, a restaurant, a car-repair place. The main street has a fresh asphalt glaze; my sneakers stick on the blacktop, and the air smells like oil. There’s what looks to be a karaoke bar that’s open; a neon sign glows outside of it, at least.

“I think maybe I can go there,” John says. “Find someone with a car. Those guys, maybe they can figure out we got off the train here. We should not stay.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But, I mean, if some guys are chasing us, if they’re State Security…”

I look around at the little town, at the dark hills rising up around it. I don’t know where we are, other than someplace between Chengdu and Beijing, but it’s cold in these hills.

“… where are we going to go? Where’s safe?”

John hesitates. “Maybe, since you’re an American, we can go to your embassy.”

I think about the Suits and shiver in my light jacket. “I dunno, John. That might not be the best place.”

Which reminds me of something.

“What do you know about the Uighur? Hashim… somebody.”

“The Uighur?” John gets that confused look again. “What Uighur?”

“Never mind.”

I gesture in the general direction of the karaoke place. “So, let’s go check out Treasure Chicken’s nightlife.”

“Maybe this is not a good idea, Ellie. That kind of place… maybe it’s not a nice place for you to go.”

Coming from a guy who drugged me and who’s seen my tits, I find this concern for my delicate sensibilities a tad annoying.

“What am I supposed to do, just hang around outside? What if those guys show up? Wouldn’t I be safer inside with you?”

John frowns, thinking it over, and then he nods. “Okay. I think so.”

I’ll admit, when we walk into the karaoke bar, I do have a few second thoughts.

This place is about as low-rent as they come-cheap plastic tables, Christmas lights for decoration, some tattered posters of Korean pop singers and, of course, the Beijing Olympics. A drunk guy yells into the microphone over a cheesy synthesized karaoke track, following the words on a video shown on a flatscreen TV sitting crookedly on top of a table. Most of the couple dozen people in the bar are men, and if the few women who are here aren’t hookers, they must play them on television.

We go up to the bar, which is really just a counter with some bottles displayed on a couple of wall shelves behind it.

Everyone in the bar stares at us.

It’s way more common to see Western men with Chinese women than the other way around. When it’s a Chinese guy with a white girl, a lot of times you get the feeling the guys are going to high-five behind your back. Everyone knows about those insatiable white chicks. Way to go, dude!

People don’t seem hostile. It’s more like we’re Martians, because how many times has a mixed-race couple walked through the door of this dive in Treasure Chicken Village in the middle of the night?

Great, I think. Like we’re not going to stand out here. Like we wouldn’t have been better off staying on the train till we got to someplace larger, more anonymous.

I’m feeling like this whole thing might be some weird number of John’s and I fell for it.

I look at the people staring at us: the young drunk guys gathered around the karaoke mike, the railway workers, faces seamed and tanned from endless days working outside, the chicken girls in their sequined baby T’s, and I think any one of them could be working for somebody. For the PSB or State Security. For whoever John is really working for.

“Two beers,” John tells the woman working behind the counter, which on the one hand is annoying, because he didn’t ask me what I wanted, but on the other hand, he does know I like beer, and I could sure use one right about now.

Undrugged, preferably.

He gets the beers and pays, and we find an empty table behind the karaoke speaker where it’s not quite so loud.

“Okay, Ellie,” John says, after a few sips of beer. “I try to find us a car now.”

He goes back to the counter and starts talking to the barwoman.

Meanwhile, one of the chicken girls sidles up to my table.

“Hello,” she says brightly.

“Hello.”

“Is that your husband?” she asks.

I shudder. “No, he’s not.” Then I think, that sounded a little harsh. “Good friend.”

“Not too many foreigners come to Treasure Chicken Village.”

“Right,” I reply. “We’re… sightseeing. And we heard… the temple near here is really beautiful.”

There’s always a temple around someplace.

A puzzled frown creases the girl’s powdered forehead. “Temple… Oh! You mean Moon Hill Monastery!”

I nod vigorously. “Yes. That’s what I mean.”

“But you should stay in Yilin Village, not here. Much closer.”

“Oh, is that right? I guess we didn’t read the guidebook carefully enough.”

The girl pulls out one of the plastic chairs and sits.

“There’s really nothing interesting around here,” she confides.

“So, if we wanted to get a ride to Yilin Village, is that possible?”

“Bus goes three times a day.”

“What about now?”

“Oh, it’s too late for the bus now.”

“Do you know anyone who has a car, or…”

“Long drive. Maybe two hours. Maybe no one wants to go there so late at night.”

“We can pay,” I said. “It’s just that… we don’t have a place to stay tonight. And Treasure Chicken Village looks… very small.”

She giggles. “Oh, Upper Treasure Chicken Village isn’t very interesting, but Lower Treasure Chicken Village is more fun. More things to do. Bus runs from here to there all night, and I think you can find a place to stay.”

Right about then, John returns to our table.

“John,” I say brightly. “We should have gone to Yilin Village. It’s much closer to Moon Hill Monastery.”

I give John some credit. He closes his eyes for a couple of seconds, but it’s more like he’s suffering from allergies than, say, he doesn’t have a clue what the fuck I’m talking about.

“Oh, really?” John says.

“Yes. And it’s too late to get there tonight, but we can go to Lower Treasure Chicken Village and find a place to stay.”

“Ah.” John sits down in the vacant plastic chair. “Yes. That’s what the bartender told me as well.”

This is what we learned: that Upper Treasure Chicken Village is essentially a railroad stop, that there’s nothing much up here that isn’t connected with the train, that the patrons at this karaoke bar are mostly railway workers, and as for the girls, they commute from Lower Treasure Chicken Village, which apparently is where the action is.

So, we drink a couple of beers to be polite, and after that, we catch the 2:15 A.M. bus to Lower Treasure Chicken Village with our new friend Madonna.

I can’t really say what sort of expectations I have about Lower Treasure Chicken Village, because honestly, I’m not thinking much. I’m stressed out, I’m sleep-deprived, and luckily I’m a little drunk, which makes the being-in-fear-for-my-life thing seem kind of laughable. But what I’m not expecting-and I should know better, given how long I’ve been in China-is that as our bus trundles down the mountain road, me feeling every bounce and pothole thanks to the non-existent suspension, I look out the window, and spread out below us in the valley is Lower Treasure Chicken Village, and it’s not some little Podunk town. It’s this fucking city in the middle of Bumfuck China. A million people, maybe? Who knows? Who’s ever heard of Lower Treasure Chicken Village? Is it in my Lonely Planet Guidebook? Hah! Why would it be? What’s here? Why would anybody in his right mind come and visit this place? It’s just another anonymous white-tileinfested Chinese city in denial, pretending it’s a village. There’s nothing charming about it. No sights to see. Why would anyone ever go to this pimple on China’s backside of beyond?

And yet here we are.

The lights twinkle and wink and seem to ripple as swaths of the city suddenly go dark.

“Oh,” says Madonna, “another blackout.”

I stare out the mottled Plexiglas bus window, etched with graffiti that I can’t read. Outside, the lights stutter, like an engine misfiring and then suddenly catching hold.

“Okay,” Madonna says, resting her manicured nails on my unkempt hand, “I have a recommendation where you can stay.”

I turn to John. He’s hunched over, hugging himself, looking almost sullen.

“What do you think?” I ask him in English. He shrugs silently.

We get off the bus three stops into Lower Treasure Chicken Village. I have no idea where we are, what part of town this is, what any of it means.

“This is a friend of mine’s place,” Madonna babbles. “You can stay here. Very private.”

We enter through a storefront that I think is a beauty salon or something like that-there are mirrors and chairs and plastic tubs that look like foot-baths, anyway.

We walk up a staircase to the faint sound of Taiwanese pop.

Here’s a narrow dark hall with doors on either side. I’m not sure what I’m hearing-a TV, maybe. Somebody laughs.

“No one’s using this room,” Madonna says, jiggling a doorknob. “You can stay here.”

A dark little room with a window overlooking the street. A hard mattress on the floor. It’s stuffy. I go to the window, which is covered by a dust-coated shade, brittle and yellowed from sun and age.

“How much do we owe your friend?” I hear John ask.

Madonna murmurs a figure. “Ah,” John exclaims, “are you trying to cut me? Come on. Be reasonable.”

I open the window. The streetlights are out, but there’s a big neon sign for a karaoke place across the way that casts a dim green light. I hear it buzz and crackle.

After Madonna leaves, I kick off my shoes and sit down on the narrow mattress. John does the same. “I think her friend will demand more money from us tomorrow,” he mutters, disgusted.

“I’ve got some money.”

“People have no morals. They just care about making money.”

I shrug. “Yeah.”

“There is no trust. That is the biggest problem in China today.”

“Right.”

We sit there in the dark, side by side, for a long, silent moment. “We should get some sleep,” I finally say. “And get out of here as soon as we can in the morning.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

I lie down and roll over to face the wall. John lies down too. I think he’s facing away from me, but I don’t look. I’m going to sleep in a bed with Creepy John, and I’m thinking some weird things. Like, if John is just some young businessman with a tragic dissident sister, where did he pick up this weird skill set he has, knowing how to drug people and interrogate them and press his fingers into your neck so it hurts so bad that you can’t move?

I stare at the wall, which is tinged green from the neon across the street. I hear John breathing behind me.

He’s Cinderfox, I tell myself. And even if I don’t really know what that means, he’s a friend of Lao Zhang’s.

I think.

I reach into my daypack and feel around for my Beanie squid. Here it is. I feel its familiar weight in my hand, the little pellets it’s stuffed with beneath the neon orange-and-red plush. Here, around its neck, is the Taoist scroll. And Lao Zhang’s letter, naming me manager of his art.

Okay, I think. Okay.

I press Beanie to my chest. I curl in on myself. I will make myself small. I will hide. And I will be safe.