The Lake Ching murders

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It wasn’t hard to find the local labourers who had worked on the excavation at the shoal, where the sculpture of the half-horse had been found. At first they were reluctant to answer Fong’s questions, but when it became clear that his only interest was in the cormorant fishermen they spoke more freely.

Over and over again they mentioned one specific elderly fisherman who came by the shoal. Who talked to Dr. Roung, as one of them put it, as if he owned him.

Through his binoculars, Fong saw the elderly fisherman sitting very still in his bamboo-wrapped boat as he waited for the cormorant to emerge from the deep lake. The lantern on the boat’s stern swayed slowly with the roll of the water. Fong thought the man looked like an aged bird himself.

Fong put down his binoculars and climbed cautiously into the boat that Chen had supplied for him. He rowed slowly out to the older man. By the time Fong neared the cormorant fisherman’s boat he was breathing heavily. He waved a greeting. The old man spat in the water and muttered, “City idiot.” Fong let it pass and smiled. The old man didn’t return his smile but did signal Fong to keep his distance. For a moment Fong didn’t understand, then he did. The cormorant was still beneath the water, fishing for his master.

About ten yards to Fong’s left, the cormorant broke the surface. Its elegant head swivelled to see who was in the new boat. The bird’s eyes found Fong and stared at him. Fong returned the gaze and watched the beautiful bird instinctively try over and over again to swallow the fish in its throat. Only when the cormorant broke its eye contact with Fong and headed toward the elderly man did Fong see the glint of the wire that had been twisted around the bird’s neck to stop it from eating its catch.

Some called the relationship between cormorant and fisherman symbiotic. Fong knew better. This was indentured servitude. The cormorant fisherman is present at the hatching of the bird. The first thing the animal sees is the grin on the fisherman’s face. For days the fisherman never leaves the baby cormorant’s side. The bird comes to know the fisherman as warmth, as the source of all food, as his master. After ten days the bird begins to walk. It follows the fisherman around like a gosling does a goose. It is two months before the fisherman takes the bird on his boat. It sits on the fisherman’s lap and watches the other cormorants work. After two years the slender wire is slipped around its neck and tightened so that the bird cannot swallow its catch. In return for two years of child care, the bird works its entire life for the fisherman. Twenty years of service for two years of apparent kindness. The bird will breed as well as fish. And finally, it will die in the lake.

Chinese, Fong thought. Very Chinese. But not kind. Fong’s two years in the country had taught him a lot about the rough realities of living, the rareness of kindness in the wilds.

The old man put his hand on the cormorant’s neck just above the tightened wire and squeezed. The bird gave up its catch and then was committed to the water once again. When the fowl disappeared, the old man looked to Fong. “What?” His voice was oddly high and singsong.

He’d already guessed that Fong was a cop.

“Can I ask you a few questions?” Fong began.

The old man didn’t answer.

“I could impound your birds.” That got the old man’s attention.

“I could tip your boat and no one’d know that your stupid ass had sunk to the bottom of the lake,” the old man growled. “Dumb flat-head.” The man lowered his lantern to the merest glow and began to row away.

Darkness quickly enveloped Fong. The old man could easily do what he threatened. Then anger swept through Fong. He was from Shanghai. He wasn’t some dumb country cop. He wished they’d given him a gun. Then he wished that he’d never been taken from the quiet dustridden village west of the Wall. Then he wished that he knew how to swim. Then he noticed that the ripples of the fisherman’s wake were disappearing, so Fong grabbed his oar, cursed the water and pulled.

After ten minutes of hard rowing Fong saw a lantern flare. The old man was going in a large circle. Of course he was! The cormorant was valuable and it was beneath the water fishing. If it emerged and the fisherman wasn’t there – well, Fong didn’t know what would happen in that case; but he did know that the fisherman was Chinese and Chinese people did not walk away from valuable investments, which is exactly what the cormorant was. So Fong turned his boat and backtracked. Sure enough, the shadowy presence of the fishing boat appeared only moments later.

The old man wasn’t pleased. His assumption of the basic urban dumbness of the cop had proven wrong.

“You row your boat like a girl.”

The man’s accent was so dense that it was difficult for Fong to understand him.

“A girl?”

“A girl, a whore, who’s just had every orifice filled.”

“Like the girl on the lake boat?”

A shadow crossed the old man’s face. Or was it anger? And what kind of talk was it for an old man to refer to women’s orifices being filled?

The cormorant broke the surface with a plop. The fisherman reached down and lifted the sleek bird into the boat, which rocked gently.

Fong changed tack. “It’s a beautiful bird.”

“It’s my last.”

Fong wondered if that was because of age or something else.

“Is it a good bird?” Fong asked.

The fisherman relieved the bird of the contents of its neck – two small fish – then recommitted it to the deep. The man’s hands trembled as he released the creature. Fong was surprised by the gentleness. But it fit somehow and led him to his next question. “Have you got a daughter, Grandpa?”

The old man turned so quickly that his boat almost tipped. The glow from the swinging lantern picked up the rage in his eyes. He reached over and slapped the side of his boat with his open palm. Two quick thwacks. Seconds later the cormorant surfaced and headed toward the boat. There were no fish in its throat. The fisherman lifted the bird into the boat then stared at Fong. “Go away, stupid man. Go home. Or to hell. Just go.” Before Fong could answer, the old man snapped the glass shut on his lantern. Instantly the darkness was complete.

Fong couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He strained to hear the man’s oar but couldn’t. The man must be sitting in the dark staring at him. Fong settled back and waited. An odd connection grew between the two men. Finally Fong repeated his question. “Do you have a daughter, Grandpa?”

The plunk of an oar broke the silence. Fong reached for his oar and tried to follow the sound, but every time he paused to listen the noise seemed to be coming from a different direction. Finally he stopped rowing and just listened. He didn’t hear anything.

Hours later Fong managed to reach a rocky point of land. He had no idea where he was. He got out of the boat and did his best to hook the bowline to a tree stump.

He sat on the smooth rocks and listened to the lapping of the lake.

Then, as if from the water itself, the fisherman appeared – a spectre from the nether worlds. He didn’t get out of his boat. He just sat there lolling with the waves and stroking the cormorant. Finally he spoke.

He told Fong everything. The small statue of the horse’s hindquarters he’d found in the cormorant’s throat. Meeting the archeologist. The man’s affair with Chu Shi. The coming of the foreigners. The resistance to them. The Beijing people. The acceptance. The taking of blood. The party high up on the island terrace. The wine. The typhoid. The death. The disinterment of Chu Shi. The celebration on the lake boat. Finally, of saving the whore, Sun Li Cha.

When he was finished, Fong sat quietly looking at the great lake with the island just coming to light in the dawn. All he could think of saying was, “Thank you.”

The old fisherman shrugged and began to row away.

“One more question?”

The old man stopped. “What more could you possibly want to know?”

“Just one thing – why did you tell me?”

A long silence followed. The old man looked away from Fong and stared at the dawn. When he spoke, something had broken in his voice. Something had given up. “You ask why I told you all this – because I have no children left. Because I’m old. Perhaps, because I’m a fool.” He patted the cormorant. The bird nuzzled its beautiful head into the old gnarled hand. Then the man sighed and finally unleashed his burden. “Because Chu Shi, the girl who died from typhoid, was my daughter. Her mother and I met – once – when I was young.” A smile softened his ancient features.

Fong nodded but didn’t speak.

The fisherman reached down and picked up something from the floor of the boat. Then tossed it to Fong. Fong caught the object and turned it in the light.

It was the small bronze of the hindquarters of a horse.

“What . . .?”

“I found that thing, down there.” He pointed vaguely toward the shoal. “I gave it to Dr. Roung. He gave it to Chu Shi. She arranged to get it back to me before she died. I think that thing killed her. No, I lie. My greed killed her.”

He sat very still for a moment then turned away from Fong, toward the rising sun. His shoulders lifted and dropped convulsively. Fong heard nothing but assumed the man was sobbing.