I looked back at the park through the binoculars from a hill in the distance. The lake, the square and the shimmering branches. A man emptying the bins. The next few glimpses were the same. I took a nap in the fading light. When I woke I reached straight for the binoculars. Rushing cars, crowds of people. I could feel their anger even from this far away. Their eyes were like flames sweeping across the park. They shook sticks as if waiting for me to come running out. A police dog pulled its masters, panting and dribbling, like a horse yanking on its reins. The officers followed behind it as it sniffed.
Before long they’d covered the entire park.
I stood up and ran down the hill. My feet pedalled hard against the ground, my teeth clattered, my brain rattled in my skull. Once at the bottom, I hailed another three-wheeler and told him to take me to Benefit the People Guest House, quick. I paid before we got there, but just as he was about to stop I told him to keep driving. I’d spotted a white van was parked out front. I’d never seen it parked there before.
‘Where you going, kid?’ the driver said.
I wasn’t about to argue, so I told him to swing by a public toilet and ducked inside, from where I watched the door to the hostel. After a while, two puffy crimsoncheeked guys emerged, picking at their teeth. They sauntered towards the car, pulled up the windows, switched on the air-con and waited a while before driving off. I checked there was no one else around and approached the hostel. The lobby was empty, the only movement coming from papers fluttering on the desk, blown by the air-con. They couldn’t have been gone long. I made for the stairs, walked down a corridor, unlocked a door, went in, closed it and pulled across the bolt. All without making the slightest sound. I threw my mobile and binoculars into my bag, swung it onto my back and stood in front of the door. It was so dark and quiet outside that it creeped me out. I didn’t move. But
before long I heard the sound of a man’s footsteps. They were slow, yet purposeful. He was approaching the top of the stairs. I expected him to carry on up, but he paused on the landing before starting down the corridor towards me. Maybe he was staying in the next room. The footsteps disappeared. I waited for him to open the door, but there was only silence.
I took a step back and saw the shadow of two feet in the crack beneath the door. A man wearing a pair of enormous leather shoes was standing on the other side. I felt my breathing stop. Then, as if a gust of air had taken him, his shadow disappeared. He sure was patient.
After a short time a thudding came up the stairs.
‘What’s taken you so long?’
‘Didn’t I tell you keep a watch downstairs?’ the first man hissed.
‘Watch for what?’ The second man trundled towards us. Then came a thumping on the door and the knocking hammered into my heart. ‘No one’s in,’ he snarled.
‘How do you know? Have you opened the door and looked?’ the first guy said.
‘Get the fuck out here!’
The second man started kicking the door as if he was stamping on it. The screws that secured the lock to the doorframe began to loosen. I moved – the place was suffocating, I was about to explode – and opened the
window. I was panting hard. The yard at the back was empty, apart from the particles of dirt on the ground illuminated by the sun.
I swung my bag onto my back, climbed out onto the windowsill and felt my way onto the ladder. I wanted to get down quickly, but my legs felt unsteady. They would probably be waiting for me at the bottom. But they weren’t and I didn’t see them in the lobby either. I threw my bag over the wall and started scrambling up.
I looked back and saw two eyes as big as a bull’s staring at me. It was the chef. His arms hung by his sides, his mouth opening and closing as he searched his thoughts. I could hear the door being blasted open upstairs.
‘Shhh!’ I said, feeling something in my pocket.
He looked scared. I jumped down and tried to stuff the two hundred
yuan
from my pocket into his hand. He looked down at the money, shook his head, but I grabbed his hand and pressed his palm shut. I then pushed him away. I thought he was going to cry, but he retreated into the kitchen.
I jumped over the wall, picked up my bag, threw it onto my back and ran into the bushes.
T
he car’s headlights swept across the sky like the Monkey King’s golden staff, a wolfhound howled and the city’s dogs replied. Everything went quiet and all that was left was the sound of croaking toads. I curled up under a pile of corrugated asbestos tiles behind the duck pond and watched as the last people left.
The lights of the town shone in the distance as I walked around the mountain. Where there was no footpath I followed the main road, making my way back to the foot of the slope. I walked for hours, as if lost, until I came to a river. The water’s gurgling calmed me. I untied a petrol drum and with great effort rowed it downstream. Tired, I realised I didn’t have to row it and instead I floated in the darkness, deep into the belly of the universe.
As dawn crept across the sky, I spotted a tidal bore spitting white bubbles like a swimmer churning through the water. The fishy smell of the day’s first boat came next. I ate my breakfast, which roused my spirits, and felt my strength returning. A whistle sounded, beautiful, like a giant, his feet planted in the centre of the river, inhaling and letting out a sonorous cry. I went to buy a
ticket and then took up my place on the deck, waiting for the waves to crash against the side of the boat and splash against my face. But I couldn’t stop sleep from taking me. I copied the guys from
The Outlaws of Wulong Mountain
and lit a cigarette before drifting off to sleep so that I would wake as it burned my fingertips.
But I opened my eyes to find my hand empty. Dead to the world, I must have flicked the cigarette away in my dream. My bag was still wedged between my body and the deck’s barrier. The rest of the passengers were similarly squeezed between luggage. The sun was high in the sky, melting us like in a furnace. I was grimy with oil and stank like hell.
I arrived, along with the boat, in a city that reeked of fish. Using my fake ID, I checked into a love motel and went to sleep with my shoes on, as if I was at home in my own bed. It was dark by the time I awoke. I’d probably only been asleep for a few hours, which the clerk confirmed when I checked out, as he charged me for four. So I made for the university to find a student room for the night. I felt safer there than in a hotel.
A few days later I bought a T-shirt, shorts and a massive cap much like the ones I’d worn before and took an illegal cab to the bridge over the Yangtze. There, I crossed into the next province. I told the driver to stop by the police station.
I walked in and charged my phone. A woman sat at the window, quietly stamping papers. With my eyes on my screen, I spoke.
‘What time do you close?’
‘At 5.00,’ she said, without looking up.
I switched off my phone and went outside to find another taxi. Another illegal cab took me back to the bridge. I had twenty unread messages, all from Ma, all saying the same thing:
Son, come back and give yourself up.
It was an obvious police tactic and I was indignant. She could have refused to let them use her phone. How could she betray her only flesh and blood? What kind of mother was she? Then it struck me that she might not have been forced, but had thought of it herself. She felt guilt towards the family of the girl and society as a whole. That’s my mother all over.
I bought a ticket for the TV tower. As the lift rose higher, I saw the first neon lights going on in the town on the other side, car lights moving, starting and stopping. The details were fuzzy, so I got out my binoculars. They’d be looking for me down there, exhausted from chasing me. Maybe they’d stop and look up at the tower.
He’s on the other side!
they’d realise. But it wasn’t just a question of crossing the river. The county, city and provincial authorities would have to inform the local police, as well as coordinate with the relevant
bodies on this side. Maybe they’d think it too much trouble and wait for the police back home to arrive.
This one’s ours, guys.
I wanted to get a boat to the next place, but then I thought, why run if they’re not coming for me? So I stayed a few more days.
I
got to know a spindly kid of twelve, his limbs like twigs. He wore baggy green army gear. I was eating some wonton at a place near my hostel at the time, when he approached looking anxious (I swear, looked as if he was about to die). His face twitched and he came running up as if moved by a gust of passing wind. I stood up to watch, but he pushed in behind me, pressed against the wall. Four young guys with leathery dark skin and fierce eyes came running in. They were covered in dragon tattoos and carried knives.
The hand clutching my T-shirt was shaking, I could feel it, but after a while he came out from behind me and sat down in front of me, this time with feigned confidence. I carried on eating my wonton, but I didn’t feel too comfortable. He watched me like a mother watching a baby nestled at her bosom, or like a boy from the village looking at his older cousin from the city. It was intimate somehow.
‘You still here?’ I said.
‘You’re not from around here,’ he said, and smiled, stroking my newly laundered white T-shirt. ‘Nice stuff.’
I felt disgusted, so I got the bill and left. But he followed me.
‘Go home,’ I said.
He laughed.
‘I’m busy. Don’t follow me.’
He stopped. I started walking in the opposite direction to my hostel. But I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Maybe he was an orphan? Maybe we could be brothers? Maybe he could help me out? But I told him to get lost.
The next day I went back to the same wonton place and again he appeared. We didn’t think it was strange.
‘I knew you’d come back,’ he said.
He watched me eat. I looked out to the street and ordered him a bowl. But he kept watching me. It was as if I ate funny, not like the people from around here. It was something to see.
Once we’d finished he asked, ‘Where to next?’
I didn’t know what to say. He was a bad kid, but cute. We went to the market, where he stroked the water pistols, his eyes looking up at me. I made to leave, but he tugged on my T-shirt, kind of embarrassed, like a spoilt little girl. Until I got my wallet out. We bought a few things and then went to the arcade. He flew a plane, his right hand jiggling the joystick anxiously, his left
occasionally slapping the machine, his eyes transfixed and unblinking. I played a few times and kept getting killed off. I said I wanted to go, but he ignored me. I repeated myself, but he continued exploding bombs,
pa-pa-pa,
before eventually tearing himself away.
Outside, a crowd had gathered around a noticeboard. I went to take a look. A new wanted poster had gone up, the face of a coarse middle-aged man with droopy eyes who’d killed seventeen people. In the corner beside it was a small poster, a side dish to his main course: a young man who’d murdered his classmate. He may have only had one victim, but he looked more creepy, his hair fluffy, his beard stubbly, dressed in a dirty T-shirt, biting his cheeks, his chin turned up. His expression was detached, yet provocative. It was the first time I’d seen myself in three weeks.
HE WAS DRESSED IN FLIP-FLOPS AND GYM SHORTS AT THE TIME OF HIS DISAPPEARANCE.
I was worth fifty thousand.
‘Hey, he looks like you,’ the kid said with excitement, as if he’d just discovered the secret connection between all living things.
I patted him on the back of the head, batting him away. Having eaten, we went our separate ways. But I
didn’t go far before turning around and, with darkness as my cover, following him. He seemed to be ruminating as he walked, until suddenly he laughed. He came to a slope, jumped down onto the half-finished road and climbed through an open window. The heaps of soil on either side were covered in weeds that were almost as tall as the old house. I climbed down onto the rooftop, moved some of the tiles and peered through the small crack.
A decrepit old man sat in a large armchair with his feet placed in a bucket of cold water. His eyes were closed. He held an old radio to his ear and was tuning the stations, pulling occasionally on the aerial. A cat lay quietly on the table. When the kid approached, it flew off and found another place to lie back down. He didn’t make a noise, but he had a definite swagger. He strode around with his hands on his hips, occasionally knocking himself on the head in frustration.
The kid then went to the cupboard and pulled out a leather suitcase. He moved the lamp to the table and started fiddling with a long piece of wire. He had his head cocked, just like me, listening. His shadow reached out across the floor. He went to the kitchen and emerged with a spoonful of oil and carefully poured it into the lock. Then in went the wire again. Before long, the lock pinged open. Instead of looking over at the old
man, he looked straight up at me. He seemed nervous. I froze and was going to pull back, but then I thought, if he’s seen me, he’s already seen me. So I continued to watch. He removed a bag tied with a rubber band and in it found a bunch of notes. He licked his fingers and counted. Then he put the stool up against the window. I was still lying on the roof. I waited for him to climb out and disappear into the night.
But instead he climbed back in. He went for the cat and, as if they were intimate friends, he took hold of it, cuddling it in his arms. He then took something from his pocket. Food, I thought. The cat closed its eyes and yawned, as if human in that moment. But it was a rope. The kid tied it around the cat’s neck. Then he tugged, pulling the two ends in opposite directions, strangling it. The cat’s mouth opened, its cries became a thick panting that floated on the air. He pulled the cat up so that it was standing, just to make sure it was really dead. Its back legs reached for the boy’s thighs. It scratched, like a mouse running in mid-air. Its fur was spiky. By the time the boy let go, exhausted, the cat was stiff like wood.