The Book of Crows Read online

  A Delicate Matter of Phrasing

  PART 1 · 22 FEBRUARY 1993 CE

  It was raining. Hard. Pissing it down. Raining like … like … like I don’t know what. Li Yang would say it was raining down like a stream of shooting stars or some crap like that. Something stupid that tells you nothing. I can’t play with words like Li Yang, making them mean a hundred different things at once. I hate that kind of crap. I reckon you ought to either say what you mean or keep your mouth shut. Words ought to mean something hard, something real, something you can wrap your hands around – or else nothing at all. None of this mucking about in the middle. Fuck Li Yang. Fuck the rain.

  It was raining. Hard. Pissing it down. I leant back in my chair and watched it spitting against the windows. There was a stack of papers on my desk, but it wasn’t worth picking through them now. Fishlips came out of his office at the end of the hall. It isn’t hard to guess why we call him that. He made a show of taking out his key and locking the door behind him.

  ‘You still here?’

  ‘Guess so.’

  ‘You’ve got to go home some time.’ He laughed. ‘I’d call it a day if I were you.’

  I shrugged and turned back to the pens in front of me. I was trying to get them to stand up with their tips touching in a tall triangle. But I wasn’t having much luck. I stole a look over at Wei Shan’s desk. Where the hell was he? I hated being the last one to leave – may as well stick a sign on your forehead saying nowhere else to go. Pathetic. A crack of lightning lit up the empty room. I wouldn’t want to be caught outside in that. What was he playing at? He’d said an hour, at the most. That was two hours ago. Stealing a crafty one on the sly? I wouldn’t put it past him. There was no way I was going to sit here like some chump and wait for him, even if it was his turn to pay. I’d rather go home to my wife. On second thoughts, maybe I could hang around a little longer.

  Once I was sure Fishlips was gone, I made my way over to Wei Shan’s workstation. He had the same tatty pile of case files, project histories and blueprints as I did. A glass jar full of green tea. A photo from his wife in a cheap, tacky frame. The obligatory untouched copy of the Public Safety Office rulebook, full of statutes and decrees that no one ever bothered about. I was going to kill him. Every Thursday, we went to the Golden Dragon Seafood Palace for a few drinks and dishes. It was a grotty little place, but it was usually empty and it was always cheap. He’d better not be playing some joke on me. I wasn’t in the mood.

  It wasn’t like he was great company either. All he ever did was complain, the boring shit. But then he’d probably say the same of me. It still beat drinking alone. My wife once asked me what we do all evening. I guess she was worried we spent all our time in some karaoke bar or in a massage parlour. I’m not sure she believed me when I told her that all we do is talk. But then sometimes nothing is harder to believe than the truth.

  ‘So you just sit in that mangy old dump drinking cheap rice wine and chatting for two or three hours?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ I said.

  ‘So what do you talk about for all that time?’

  That was harder to answer. ‘This and that.’

  If I was going to be honest, I’d have to say the thing we talked about most often was how shitty life could be. Our crappy jobs. The catalogue of dim-witted things the boss said. Our nagging wives. And our prissy bits on the side – though I never mentioned Li Yang by name, and I’m not sure Wei Shan ever told me much about the young woman he was seeing on the sly, except to moan that between her and his wife he was being bled dry. I mean, a man’s got to have some secrets. What else did we talk about? Hard to say. Our sarcastic children. How things used to be different. The usual. But I didn’t tell my wife that. She used to interrogate me about every little thing I did as though I was some badly behaved schoolchild. Though not so much anymore.

  I rifled through Wei Shan’s desk drawers absentmindedly. He kept them pretty tidy. A few unopened packets of paperclips, a stapler, a couple of binders spilling their crumpled bounty. I spotted a hastily scribbled note poking out from under one of the files and I tugged it loose. His handwriting was abysmal, but I could just about make it out: Jawbone Hills, approx. 30 km west, Highway 312. Foreman = Jing Ren?? So that’s where he’d gone. I checked the logbook to make sure – yep, a call had come in from Jawbone Hills just before four. I wish I’d picked up the phone instead. It always works the same way. Some nosy village busybody calling up to complain about dangerous or suspicious activity near their home. We pretend we give a shit and tell them we’ll be right over to check there’s no illegal activity and to make sure that everything conforms to the Public Safety Office guidelines. Then a short drive out to the countryside or the edges of town (because if there’s something going on inside Lanzhou, chances are we already know about it) to see what’s happening. Half the time we find some sneaky company involved in drilling, mining or building, trying to cut costs by ignoring all those pesky legalities like planning permission or permits. Invariably they are none too happy to see us, though the guy in charge is usually all smiles and handshakes, apologising for the oversight and conjuring up excuses. Then we tell them sorry, rules are rules, we’re going to have to write it up and that means you’re going to have to shut down business until everything has gone through the proper channels. Terribly sorry, I wish there was something I could do … and soon enough you’re driving away with a fat envelope stuffed inside your jacket pocket. If the boss asks, it was all a misunderstanding. Saves on paperwork too. A half-hour drive and a bit of play-acting in exchange for more than we usually make in a month. It beats sitting at a desk all day.

  So that’s why he was late. Instead of a simple envelope, the manager of whatever-it-was over in Jawbone Hills had no doubt taken Wei Shan out for a fancy meal and bought him a few drinks to encourage him to turn a blind eye. Lucky bastard. It was months since I’d got one of those tip-offs. Well, there was no way I was going to wait around in an empty office while he was stuffing himself silly at some extravagant restaurant. Some friend. Fuck him. I hoped he got caught out in the rain and that it soaked through the lousy piece of second-rate tat he called a suit. If he wasn’t going to bother coming back, I’d just go to the Golden Dragon on my own.

  The Golden Dragon Seafood Palace was little more than a poky backroom with three or four tables topped with dirty plastic covers. The walls were bare brick and a single naked bulb swung precariously from the ceiling. The wind flapped the warped front door against its frame as I made my way inside and settled at my usual table, on the off chance that Wei Shan might still join me. Through an open door I could see the chef hunched over a dented wok, a cigarette hanging from between his lips as he furrowed his brow and poked at the dark and stringy substance he was stir-frying. The manager was sitting on a wonky stool next to a shelf of dusty bottles, picking his nose while staring up at the tiny black-and-white TV balanced on top of one of the tables. Like I said, the place is a dump.

  ‘Bowl of pork noodles and a bottle of baiju.’

  The manager nodded but didn’t get up.

  I looked at the TV. The antenna was held together with elastic bands. The manager was watching some local news programme showing the grand opening of a new primary school in some village up in the mountains. Grinning local cadres and dumpy little red-faced children waving flags. Big deal. I took out a Double Happiness and lit up. I hate the countryside. It gives me the creeps. I spent six long years driving sheep across the ragged grassland north of Hohot, and that’s more than enough for this lifetime. I’d rather have a slab of concrete any day. Something steady under your feet. Something that won’t get washed away every time the clouds let rip. Some folks these days are nostalgic for the old Cultural Revolution. Say it made them men. Say they have a real affinity with the peasants now. What a load of crap. No one stayed out there a day longer than they had to, especially after the old Chairman finally wheezed his last. If they found it so enriching, why are they sat at their plush desks, padding about
on brand new imported carpets instead of still shovelling manure in the provinces?

  Wei Shan was one of them. Give him enough glasses of the cheap stuff and he’d start getting misty-eyed about his time in Mizhi County, up near Yulin. Said he loved it, living on a farm up there, not having to think about anything but the fields and the goats. Yeah, right. Said he could lose himself in that kind of work, staring off into the unbroken horizon for hours, and that he missed the contented glow he felt when the red sun finally touched down amid the long grass. Uh huh. Said he would have stayed on too, maybe even married the daughter of the farmer he worked with, that is if his mother hadn’t keeled over and he’d been called home – by the time the funeral was over, Mao had finally croaked and everyone was coming back. And so on – blah blah blah. I didn’t believe him, but I nodded along nonetheless. I’m not even sure he believed himself. Things have got to be pretty shitty when you start looking back fondly on your exile and re-education. Sometimes I think that’s the only reason we bother looking back – so we can pinpoint the exact moment and say, that’s it, that’s when I was truly happy, and everything has been downhill since then.

  My bottle arrived and I filled my glass. I drained it in one go, then poured another. At least I didn’t have to listen to Wei Shan droning on. Or stealing half the bottle. I helped myself to another glass. The manager set down my noodles and I checked my watch. It wasn’t worth going home yet. Maybe I could call Li Yang. I started cramming the scalding noodles into my mouth as quickly as I could. I was so focused on finishing my food and getting out of there that I barely noticed the TV until the manager cranked up the volume.

  I stopped chewing mid-mouthful, a few loose strands of noodle still hanging from my lips.

  ‘… it is thought that the unstable terrain was weakened by recent storms, though the primary cause is as yet unclear. Police and local army units are already at the scene, working diligently to clear the area. A mixture of rocks, soil and other debris all but stripped the hillside bare as the avalanche gained force. Fortunately, no one has been hurt, thanks to the efforts of the local government, though the public are advised to stay away from the area surrounding Jawbone Hills until …’

  I didn’t hear the rest – I was already running for the door.

  The drive took forever. Time doesn’t work the same way outside the city. Once the last high-rise fades out of sight in your rear-view mirror and you cross the bridge over the river, the clocks seem to slow down and stutter uncertainly through each minute. With every kilometre I drove it seemed as if I travelled back another decade until I had left the present far behind me. I’d grabbed the half-finished bottle of baiju as I legged it from the restaurant, and I had it balanced between my knees as I drove. I took a swig and peered out into the darkness. Tall, tree-lined hills rose up on either side of the highway, their shapes shifting and fluctuating in the downpour like dancing shadows. The road was all but deserted, and as I sped on deeper into the valley I thought I could make out a helicopter soaring through the night far above. I listened to the hiss and haw of the creaky windscreen-wipers. Rain was trawling down off the mountain range. Trees keened against it, their branches flung out wildly in distress. A few desperate farmers with quotas to meet were braving it in the fields dotted across the slopes. Their slack waxy raincoats fluttered in the wind.

  I wasn’t sure why I was driving like a devil towards the scene of the accident. What was I going to do – dig through the debris till I found Wei Shan? Fat chance. I had to make sure he was all right, though I doubted he would have done the same if the shoe had been on the other foot. He’d have probably just crept back home to sleep off his groggy head. But I’d had the best part of a bottle by then, and there was no way I could skulk back to my wife and pretend to myself that I hadn’t heard the news.

  I spotted the exit at the last second and swerved across, following it out onto a smaller road that seemed barely finished, as if the construction workers had grown bored and downed their tools halfway through the job. I passed an abandoned tractor, a little temple of rust that had already been picked apart for scrap. The road curved around to the east and began to rise up one of the hills. Soon I could see the whirring lights of police cars on the summit high above, and it occurred to me then that the landslide had to be on the other side of the slope. My heart leapt into my mouth, and I fumbled for the last dregs of the bottle. What if more of the cliff collapsed? I found myself driving slower, wondering how much further the point was where the slope tumbled over into darkness. It wasn’t long before I could make out police cars lined up in a roadblock, and before I even had time to think about what I was doing I turned off my headlights and made a sudden turn off the road and into a field. I parked beside a disused trough and opened the car door. My suit crinkled in the downpour. I squinted up the hillside. Even from here I could hear the churn of diggers pushing through the deep debris that had come tumbling down the other side. A great cloud of smog seemed to hang motionless above the peak up ahead, like the breath of some giant dragon. I tried to ruffle some of my soaking hair forward to cover the bald patches at the front, then started off through the field.

  With every step I took up the slope towards the flashing lights and frantic commotion, my shoes sank deeper into the wet soil. It wasn’t long before I had mud splattered all over my trousers. I thought about what I’d seen on the news. No one had been hurt – that’s what they always said, regardless of how many corpses had been found. The bigger the accident, the more likely it was that nobody ever heard anything about it. There’s no way the government would want to scare everyone with the truth. Get them thinking that something similar could happen to them. No way. That was another part of the Public Safety Office, ensuring the wall of silence. Of course, some big stories had to be tossed out occasionally – otherwise people might get suspicious. Most journalists know the rules.

  It made sense to me. Why worry people needlessly? The world’s a harsh place, and if everyone knew the kind of shit that went down on a daily basis I reckon some of them would be too scared to ever leave their homes. You’ve got to protect them. Especially the women and children. You wouldn’t want them running round in a panic. People are like sheep: ignorant, impressionable and liable to do something stupid if you let too many of them gather together in one place. Plus the majority of them stink to high hell.

  I passed close by a farmhouse, and I could see another two or three scattered across the hillside below. I bet those families were thanking whatever grubby little feudal gods they prayed to that they hadn’t built their homes on the other side, where there’d probably be little left but piles of bricks and mud. Perhaps it was someone living here who had made the call that Wei Shan took. But I doubted it. I couldn’t see a phone line anywhere. Probably no electricity either. They most likely didn’t even know what year it was. I reached the end of the field and made my way along the border until I rejoined the road, some way above where the police were ordering everyone to turn around. I jogged further up, and I was soaked through by the time I reached the huddle of jeeps and station-wagons parked a little way off from the line of policemen.

  Though the last few vehicles had been left haphazardly in odd formations, it was obvious that this little bit of cleared land had served as a car park for whatever had been going on up here before the landslide: partitions had even been marked out in white paint on the grass. A few policemen were milling about, chatting to each other and smoking cigarettes, so I kept my head down as I wandered between the cars. I soon spotted Wei Shan’s old clunker and sidled over. It was mud-splattered and still dented at the back from a collision a few months back. We’d only had them a couple of years – last government department to get them, of course. As I tried the front door I overheard a couple of cops yakking about the accident.

  ‘At least twenty metres of shit at the bottom.’

  ‘No way we’ll clear it all before morning.’

  Well, I could have told them that. Especially with all thos
e cigarette-breaks. Still, twenty metres was a lot of debris. Surely it wasn’t raining that hard?

  The car door was unlocked, so I slipped into the front seat before anyone had time to spot me. An old newspaper was on the passenger seat, along with a half-empty carton of cigarettes. I rooted around for something to dry my hair with, but found nothing but a few wrappers and empty bottles on the floor. Ridiculous as it sounds, I was hoping I might find Wei Shan himself, taking a kip on the back seat perhaps, or waiting for the cars behind him to clear off so that he could drive back home. No such luck. In the wing mirror I could see Fishlips talking with two men in dark suits. He’d got here pretty sharpish. Hadn’t he gone back home? I didn’t have time to think about that now though. It was then that I realised why I’d crept into Wei Shan’s car. I was steeling myself. Trying to put off making my way to the edge and looking down. I wished I’d bought another bottle.

  I stepped out and took a deep breath. As I drew closer to the line of policemen keeping the locals away from the edge, the noise of it all grew louder and more disconcerting. The echo of drills, and the revving of trucks and diggers. The competitive clamour of car horns. The chattering rain and the angry, sloshing growl of wheels caught in the mud. The frantic sobbing and shouting of a group of peasants being herded back from the edge by a gang of policemen. And beneath it all, the relentless groan of machinery booming up from somewhere far below.