Spring/Present.
Jiao/Hong Kong/Miami/Kyoto/Moscow/Beijing/Washington/Karuizawa Amid the storm, with the pain that enwrapped her, this is what Qi lin thought: I am an animal. I have been an animal for months without end. If I am to survive now, I must become civilized.
Easier said than done. Qi lin raised one filthy hand to the wide purple bruise, the enflamed vampire"s kiss where Colonel Hu"s spatulate thumb had dug in and, in desperation, had snapped her collarbone. Pain throbbed through her but that was something she was used to.
Pain was her friend, her only constant companion, while Colonel Hu convinced her that black was white, love was hate, pain was feeling and comfort nonfeeling; that death was life.
Using pranadeep breathingshe a.s.signed the pain to a specific compartment of her mind while she tested the use of her arm. It was all right as long as she kept it below shoulder height. Beyond that point, she could feel the broken ends abrading, and from shoulder to fingertip, her arm went numb, which meant there was a nerve involved. She knew enough to understand that she needed to get to a doctor.
That, she suspected, would not be the problem. It was silencing the questions she would have to worry about.
But first the forest. She needed to rest but she was all too aware that she was a fugitive. On foot, in this weather, there was a finite distance she could travel before she pa.s.sed out.
Her pursuers would know that and certainly they would already have calculated a circle using the compound from which she had come as its central point. No matter where she went, they would eventuallyfind her. So the trick was not to fall into the trap of trying to outrun them. Better by far to outthink them.
She looked up and the rain beat against her fluttering eyelids. She grasped what she had to do. It meant using both her hands, her arms, lifting them up over her head. The alternative was death.
Gritted her teeth and, reaching up, grasped at a jutting branch. Went off the forest floor, high up into the arboreal foliage. On a limb, perhaps one hundred fifty meters off the ground, she stretched out and, holding her aching arm, fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
When she awoke, it was almost dawn. Scenting the air, she came down from the tree, swinging and half-sliding. She heard voices and froze, clinging to the bole until they faded away. Then she put her feet on the forest floor and got out of there as quickly as she could.
Just over two kilometers away, she broke into a farmhouse and stole clothing and some food staples. She knew that it was as good as leaving her spoor for the dogs but she had no choice.
Insinuating herself into a group of women working an enormous stretch of paddy fields, Qi lin worked all day pulling up the tender shoots of rice and, at day"s end, received a ride on a belching, rusted truck. She made friends with a woman and, on learning her name, moved off to another part of the field after lunch, introducing herself around as the woman"s fourth cousin. No one seemed curious and she was required to answer few questions.
It was after dark when she reached town, where bleak unadorned housing reminiscent of barracks stood brooding in militarylike rows. On the way they pa.s.sed a series of mills, sprawling factories, sparking ironworks and the like. She found the physician"s residence and knocked on the door. Because of the lateness of the hour, she was obliged to wait several minutes. At last, a small window on the second story opened and a head peered out. Streetlight flashed on round, steel-rimmed spectacles. In a moment, a hand beckoned her around the corner.
Qi lin followed the directions and was admitted through a small doorway hidden in the shadows of an alley.
"Younger Sister?"
He was a homely man, bandy-legged and pot-bellied. He wore an old-style coat and pajamalike trousers. His long mustache quivered when he spoke; his mouth was small as if echoing his soft voice. His spectacles shone in the lamplight, sending reflections batting off the walls like frightened moths.
She kowtowed in the old manner, intuiting that would impress him.
"Elder Uncle, a thousand pardons for my appearance. Early this morning I slipped on a root in entering the paddy fields." Her fingertip gingerly touched the bruise just below the hollow of her neck. "I think I broke a bone."
The stoop-shouldered doctor clucked his tongue. "You should have come right here then."
Qi lin made her eyes go big and round. "Oh, I could not, Elder Uncle. I could not afford to miss even an hour"s wages. You see, my boyhe"s only threeis quite ill. In hospital. I must travel constantly to see him. He cries for his mother. Isn"t it right that I should be by his side?" Bringing tears to her eyes. "But I have other children I must feed, Elder Uncle, and no man to provide for the family."
"But surely the State"
"The State, the State!" she cried, working herself up. "I would not be an orphan of the State nor suffer my children that fate either."
"Ah, Little One," the doctor said, "you know what Confucius said about pride." But he was obviously moved. He shuffled forward. "Now let me see how badly you have injured yourself."
Qi lin watched as he parted her blouse and began his work. "Tell me, if you will, exactly where I am, Elder Uncle."
"You are just past the shen dao, the way of the spirit, the Sacred Way down which the Ming emperors rode during their funerals. On their way to the tombs." His touch was light and deft. Nevertheless she made herself gasp when he was probing and he clucked his tongue again. "This village is known as Jiao zhuang hu. Perhaps you have heard of it. It has an important place in our modern history.
"During the war, the peasants here built a network of underground pa.s.sages in order to hide from and spy on the invading j.a.panese. They stand to this day, a monument to the ingenuity and courage of the Chinese mind."
He paused a moment, then turned and, swabbing the area with chill alcohol, inserting two long needles into her flesh. The pain was instantly gone. Qi lin looked at him as he said, "I must now set the break, Little One. Perhaps you will want to look away."
Qi lin laughed so hard to herself that she almost began to cry again. Oh, old man, she thought, if you only knew the blood I had seen. More in my short time on earth than even you. She averted her gaze because it was his wish.
"There," he said, after some time. "It is done." He began to apply an herb poultice, wrapping it with adhesive bandage, a true blendingof the old and new. Then he went over to a small gas stove and began to heat water.
She watched as he unscrewed bottles, jars, flagons, flasks, pouring first this liquid, then that powder into the pot on the stove. Out of one container, he produced a solid object from which he cut a piece and, using a mortar and pestle, ground it up. That, too, went into the pot. He hummed a little as he worked.
It wasn"t until after he had obliged her to down the foul-tasting concoction that he went across to his small, shabby desk. He took up a quill pen and produced an official-looking sheet of paper. "Now, Little Sister, I must have your name, address and work number."
The first two would not be an immediate problem, Qi lin knew, but the third would be impossible. He would require that she present her doc.u.ments. This, of course, she could not do. Other than the setting of her collarbone, this was the reason she had come here. Now that she was on the verge of civilization again, she needed the proper doc.u.ments to move about at will. That was not easy for a fugitive in Communist China.
"The tunnels," she said, slipping down off the examining table.
"I beg your pardon?"
"This famous underground labyrinth you spoke of." She approached him carefully. "So ingenious. I would like to see it. Will you take me?"
"When? Now?"
"But of course now." Pumping enthusiasm into her voice. "What better time? Isn"t this when our ancestors took to the tunnels in order to spy on the j.a.panese?"
"Well, yes, but"
"Then what good would it be to see them in the light of day?" She smiled. "Besides, right now I need something to take my mind off my shoulder."
After a slight hesitation, he nodded. "All right." She had hit all the right b.u.t.tons. Colonel Hu would be gratified to know that a significant part of him lived on within her.
The doctor led the way. He lit a magnesium torch as bas.e.m.e.nt stairs turned a corner into a blank wall. He pressed somethingan irregularity in the rock formationand they went through.
In the flickering semidarkness, she said, "I want you to show me the way to Beijing."
He paused. His old rheumy eyes looked into hers. "You will need papers in the capital," he said.
"Then you will provide me with them." .He shrugged. "I am no forger, Little Sister."
She smiled. "I saw the photograph of her on your desk. I saw her dress shoes in a corner of the room." Her eyes were steely. "Your daughter."
He held the torch higher so that the shadows danced like madmen along the seeping walls. "Who are you?"
"I am Chinese," she said. "I am not Chinese."
He heard the defiance in her voice. "You are not from anywhere around here."
"No."
"Not from the Mainland."
She watched him.
"Taiwan."
She laughed. "I am not the enemy. Not the Guomindang."
"But you would not hesitate to kill me."
"Elder Uncle," she said, "you would not want to have lived my life."
" *The heaven cannot help being high, the earth cannot help being wide. The sun and the moon cannot help going around, and all things of the creation cannot help but live and grow," " he said, quoting from Laotse.
"Then you will give me your daughter"s papers."
"It is futile to contend." The doctor squinted into her face. "I see that you have yet to learn that lesson," and he nodded. "You are older than I, Little Sister, yes, I see that. I yield to your desires."
Thus he took her back up to his office and conferred upon her all the identification she required to move about in the world outside. Back down in the labyrinth, he took her to the western edge of the warren of tunnels.
"Here," he said, pointing up at a rickety wooden staircase. "Through the copse of firs you will come upon a road. It is well traveled by vehicular traffic. No doubt you will get a ride to your destination."
Qi lin said, "I might still kill you."
Yes.
"You have seen my face. You know in which direction I travel."
"I have seen also the face of the fox outside my window," he said. "I know in which direction the wind blows. Others actively seek what I already know but they are defeated."
"Why?"
His gaze was penetrating and with a little shiver of recognition Qi lin saw that there was more to him than she had imagined. "They do not follow the Tao," he said. "They contend, therefore others contend against them."
"Like me."
"You have killed before, Little Sister. I see death in your eyes."
"I have killed to survive."
"And in so doing, you have killed yourself," he said softly.
She snorted, despite a growing pain gripping her heart. "You wish me to believe that you want to help me."
"I have no such power, Little Sister."
"But you do not believe me, "she insisted. "I killed out of necessity."
"Is that so."
The pain was strong within her, the blackness seeking to overwhelm her. It was the blacknessor more precisely the fear of itthat drove her to kill Colonel Hu. "He was my creator." Her voice had dropped to a whisper, reedy and ghostly. "And I destroyed him."
The old man watched her with black beady eyes. His face betrayed no emotion. Her inner agony was evident.
"He built me over, took the essential clay and He transformed me."
"Now he is gone."
"Now I am free."
"You yourself can see the folly of those words," he said.
Qi lin said nothing. She knew that she should strike him down where he stood and be done with it. Leaving him alive was risking a clear trail behind her in the moonlight.
"Perhaps this is what your creator did," the old man said. "Turned you into this soldier I see before me. Must I tell you that soldiers are the instruments of evil? The Tao knows the Way. One who controls others possesses muscular resources. The strength that endures comes from controlling one"s own nature."
She put a hand to her aching head. "I do not even remember what it was he was training me for. Something comes and goes. A shadow on the wall"
Something pa.s.sed across his face. "What has been done to you perhaps even the Tao cannot change."
Shadows chasing after shadows. The pain in her head! And coming after the shadows, the blackness. Qi lin gave a soft cry, hit the side of her head with her balled fist. "You are dangerous," she gasped. "Through you they can catch me."
"Then you must see that never happens."
He said it with such openness that Qi lin was taken aback. "Your death means nothing to you?"
"Oh, yes," he said, "it means something to me. But it is insignificant compared to the rivers that flow in the sea."
"Meaning?"
He was so calm. "Those who are able to cease action as well as initiate it will long endure. All others are doomed to die young."
Qi lin looked at him for the longest time. She was aware of her heart beating, the blood coursing through her veins. The flick and pop of the magnesium torch, close to guttering. Shadows extending themselves along all sides, sliding up the dank, curving walls, meeting at the arch of the ceiling. All others are doomed to die young.
Took one last look, drinking him in as she shoved the papers into her waistband. Up the rickety stairs, ascending out of the inconstant light. She would not kill him. Was that a victory or a defeat? From out of the darkness, she said, "Goodbye, Elder Uncle."
"Remember the rivers," he said into the s.p.a.ce she had just vacated, "that flow to the sea."
When Bliss closed her eyes she saw the gem. Its fire shone out across the bosom of the ocean, red, gold, a flash of bronze. And she thought, why is this opal so important?
On board her father"s junk, she arose from sleep and, hearing voices, pulled clothes around her body and went out of her cabin. On bare feet, she moved down the corridor. It seemed to her that she had heard these voices in her sleep, that they, in fact, had been the reason that she had woken. But they were so soft that she could scarcely believe such a thing.
Still, was it any odder than the episodes she had been having ever since Zilin had died. Putting the soft down over his sunken face, pressing down while some other voicehis voice!in her mind commanded her to do what she herself could never have faced doing.
Buddha will forgive you, bou-sehk, he said. As I forgive you. But could she ever forgive herself? That was still a question with which she grappled.
Voices in her head like time elapsing, a week, a month, a year. The eons spoke to her while her conscious mind slept. She felt, sometimes, as if an entire host resided within the recesses of her mind. She was not alone. And she was not afraid.
Zilinthe Jianwas with her. He had died, yes, and she had been his executioner. What had transpired between them at the momenthis mortal self had ceased to function, she could not say. Perhaps, she thought now, they had both somehow pa.s.sed through the resonant membrane into da-hei, the great darkness. In that magic, arcane s.p.a.ce, who knew what transformation had been worked.