The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

10

Neal thought about escaping at first.

It should have been easy-his guards were a lunatic boy and an ancient man. Neal came up with clever nicknames for them. He called the boy “Marvel” and the old man “Old Man.” Neal almost tried to bolt when they stripped him, when Marvel stood close by with the chopper raised as Old Man took Neal’s shirt, pants, socks, and shoes. Neal thought maybe he could grab the chopper, overpower Marvel, and make his break. But he didn’t expect that the old man would be that quick and he also didn’t expect the handcuffs-rusty bracelets that were comically large and looked like props from an old vaudeville bit. And he didn’t know that handcuffs could be so heavy. Cuffed, weighted down, and stark naked, he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance, so he went docilely back to the cave as the boy nudged him up the ladder.

He thought maybe he could wait it out. Simms must be poring over the city for him, tracking his steps, figuring out that he was somewhere in this no-man’s-land. Surely, any minute, the door would come crashing in, and Simms, leading a band of efficient killers, would rescue him. Any minute now…

Any minute turned to any hour turned to any day now as Neal tried to keep track of the time. It must have been during the second week when he got sick. He had taken to counting his days by the rice bowl, because they gave him one a day. It wasn’t exactly rice, either, but more like rice gruel, a runny, dirty mixture with some rice grains and God only knew what else floating in it. He had always had trouble with chopsticks, and with the handcuffs on it was a lot worse, especially since his wrists were raw from the weight of the rusty metal. But he forced himself to raise the bowl to his mouth and shove the food down. And he made himself use the bucket they gave him as a lavatory, the bucket that Marvel emptied once a day for him when he remembered.

So by counting rice bowls, he figured that it was the second week when his guts turned to napalm and the violent, uncontrollable emissions of the green, watery shit started. He couldn’t stop it, all he could do was double over from the fierce cramps, and after a while he couldn’t even do that. All he could do was writhe in it, then lie exhausted until the next spasm hit.

Marvel thought it was funny, but Old Man got pissed off, yelled at him, and took away the bucket on the old “use it or lose it” theory, Neal supposed. And he supposed that the stench he made was his only form of vengeance, and maybe it would provoke them into killing him, which seemed like a decent option by the end of the second week. Because by the end of the second week he had given up all hope of escape or rescue.

He tried to fight it at first, tried to make himself eat, even though every mouthful meant another spasm of dysentery. He tried to make himself at least sip on the weak tea they gave him, because he knew he was getting dehydrated and that was what would kill him first, but each sip was like liquid flame, and there was that day-which day was it? how many rice bowls?-when he soiled himself and just lay there sobbing while Marvel danced around beneath him mimicking his sobs between peals of laughter and cries of “Red Kryptonite! Red Kryptonite!” and Old Man screamed at him. That was when Neal stopped eating, and the next day he stopped even trying to drink, and started the conscious process of dying. He thought about Li Lan and Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy, and where were they now? He thought about Simms, the incompetent son of a bitch, and then about Joe Graham.

Then he started crying again. Please, Dad, come get me. Dad. Come get me. Please.

The diarrhea stopped, because there was nothing left, and the cramps became worse. The dry fire in his stomach wrenched him upward like an inchworm crawling. The fevers came and hit him hard, twice a day. He shook with cold, the chains between his hands rattling like Marley’s Ghost, his teeth chattering. He felt as if he were being poked with thousands of icy needles. The fever would suddenly stop, and he would be rewarded with unconsciousness. The dry heaves and cramps were his alarm clocks, and the cycle would begin again, and after a while he lost track of time because there were no rice bowls to count anymore.

So he wasn’t sure when it was that Honcho showed up and threw the fit. Neal was lying in the cave, racked with cramps, when he opened his eyes and saw Honcho standing on the ladder peering at him intently. Honcho grunted with disgust, got off the ladder, and began screaming at Old Man, punctuating his major points with kicks at Marvel, who scrambled into a corner and huddled up. Honcho kept putting the boot into him as he argued with Old Man, who didn’t take the diatribe passively, but also came over and started kicking the kid.

Honcho came back up the ladder, grabbed Neal by the back of the neck, and lifted him into a sitting position. Then he launched into what seemed to Neal like a critique. He jabbed his fingers at Neal’s ribs, pointed at his eyes, and then pinched his own nostrils and made an exaggerated snorting sound. He let Neal drop, came back down the ladder, and pointed back up at him and asked what sounded like a single question.

Neal didn’t need to be a Chinese language scholar to know what the question was: Who’d want to buy a piece of shit like this?

I would, Neal murmured. I have at least eight thousand pound sterling in a bank in London, boys, and if you’ll take me back to my hotel, I’ll write you a check. And I won’t stop payment, I won’t. I promise. We can go to the bank together and cash it. You can have it all, guys.

But Honcho went on like he didn’t even hear him, like Neal was just moving his lips and babbling. Honcho pointed to Marvel, and then back to Neal and asked another question, something like: Maybe you’d like to trade places with him?

Honcho leaned over and slapped Marvel in the face a couple of times and then issued a general order: Take care of the merchandise!

He slammed the door on the way out. Old Man started to grumble, relieved his frustration by slapping Marvel, and then sent the boy out. Marvel came back a few minutes later with a large bowl of water and a rag. It took him a long time to wipe the encrusted filth off Neal. He was careful about it, turning Neal over as gently as he could and wiping Neal’s forehead when the cramps hit.

In the meantime, the old man swung into action. He dug around under his kang and came out with a lamp that looked like a large sterno stove, a long-stemmed pipe, and a tin cigarette case. He lit the lamp, and when he had a nice glow going, he used a long needle to spear a tiny ball of opium, a blackish green nugget. He held it over the burning lamp.

Fondue, Neal thought. Hell of a time for fondue.

The old man screamed at Marvel, who scrambled down the ladder and stood in waiting. The old man ignited the opium, stuck it into the pipe, and handed it to Marvel, who climbed back into the loft and held the pipe to Neal’s lips.

“Kryptonite?” Neal mumbled. He brushed the pipe away.

“Kryptonite,” Marvel said, and pushed the pipe back to Neal’s lips.

“Red Kryptonite or Green Kryptonite?”

“Green.”

“Okay, then.”

Neal took a short draw on the pipe as the old man fried another ball of opium. Marvel went back down and fetched in the pipe and went back up to Neal.

“Flash,” said Marvel.

Neal didn’t fight the pipe this time or the next. The fourth time Marvel came with the pipe, Neal reached up for it and held it to his own lips.

Neal floated to the ceiling and then through the roof. He drifted up over the Walled City into the blue sky and then he flew right into Li Lan’s painting, the one on the mountainside above the abyss. He sat down with Li Lan on the precipice and looked down at the other Li Lan in the canyon beneath them.

“I found you,” he said.

She set her brushes down and took his hand. “No,” she said gently, “I led you here.”

“Why did you leave me?”

“I knew you could fly.”

He felt the tears well up in his eyes and then spill over onto his cheeks. It felt good, so good to cry, and he let the tears pour into his open mouth and they tasted sweet, and she must have known that because she took a single tear with her tongue, swallowed it, and smiled.

He recognized her then.

“Kuan Yin,” he said. “You are Kuan Yin.”

His eyes flooded with more tears and she lapped them off his face. She opened his mouth with her tongue and drank more tears as the sky became a brilliant blue and she took him inside her and gently rocked him. She wrapped her hands around the back of his head and pushed his mouth to her nipple and fed him. She softly chanted his name and the pain receded and then it was only pleasure, only pleasure, only pleasure, and then she was weeping and he soothed her straining neck with his lips as the wet and warmth of her moved on him. And then her reflection floated up from the abyss and reached out her hand and Li Lan took it and held it tightly and drew her reflection into herself and Neal saw his own reflection in the mists below-his eyes sunken, his face pale with pain and hunger-and he reached out and took it and drew it into himself and then they were all together, all inside each other, and they fell off the edge of the cliff and into the mists.