Apocalypse Now Now (13 page)

Dwarf Fist has also been called Relentless Drunk Immortal Fist, a term that refers to its unsteady, swaying posture that hides an ability to generate an immense force in striking. Not much is known about the actual history of
Zhuruquan
but, as with so many of the Chinese martial arts, myths and legends abound.

According to legend, the story begins with the Buddhist monk Han Wukong at the Shaolin temple in China’s Henan province. Han Wukong was a formidable Shaolin fighter and had achieved great mastery of the traditional Shaolin forms of meditation, qigong and gong fu, but was notoriously rebellious and contemptuous of the temple’s strict monastic code.

The legend says that Han Wukong was a superlative fighter but a horrible monk, drinking ferociously, sleeping with many men and women, and going out of his way to taunt and embarrass the abbot of the temple.

After Wukong embarrassed him in front of visiting dignitaries the abbot expelled him from the temple and a still drunk Wukong stormed out, famously responding that ‘pious white-arsed virgin monks can never reach Nirvana’.

For many years after his expulsion he wandered the countryside fighting, teaching meditation, drinking and sleeping with farmers’ daughters. He also produced a voluminous amount of poetry, many poems being regarded by contemporary Buddhists as important works within the Buddhist canon. Perhaps most famous of these is his ‘Drunk Vagrant on a White Lotus’ verse in which he gives a lucid account of his philosophy:

Outwardly I’m a ragged, wandering fool

but inwardly I live with a diamond mind

Outwardly, I enjoy drinking wine,
penetrating women with my jade
stem, and singing lecherous songs

but inwardly I work for the
enlightenment of all beings

Who is crazy, and who is wise?

Only time will tell.

The next account of Han Wukong sees him travelling to the Himalayas where he encounters a village of ‘dwarves’ while seeking a cave to drink wine and meditate in. Although no records exist of such a village, these ‘dwarves’ may well have been an isolated tribe of smaller people, possibly of Tibetan or Nepalese descent.

Han Wukong stayed in the village to teach meditation, brew wine and sleep his way through the local female population. To the villagers he became known as the ‘Divine Dragon Madman’ and was gradually adopted as their resident holy man.

During this time his teachings deviated from the traditional Buddhist training of his youth and became a mix of Buddhism, Hinduism and the Tibetan shamanistic Bon religion. Primary in his teachings was the worship of the praying mantis as a theriomorphic form of the Buddha Amitaba. He began building a following, and soon people from all over China, Nepal and Tibet came to listen to his teachings.

He instructed his new followers to build a temple near to the village, a large but simple stone structure that became known as the Jade Stem Temple. At the centre of the temple was a mandala of the Great Cosmic Battle that showed the eternal struggle between the mantis and the many-armed demon, an image that was said to represent the battle between humankind’s higher and lower selves.

Raids by mountain bandits may have resulted in Han Wukong teaching his disciples the forms of Shaolin
gong fu, forms that gradually changed and shifted due to the need for a self-defence system that was practical, particularly for the smaller villagers.

Legend says that the influence of Tibetan shamanism resulted in the formation of an elite group of fighting monks called ‘Battle Shamans’ who were said to have supernatural fighting abilities. Esoteric magical practices involving sex, drugs and music were certainly part of Han Wukong’s system, but no record of the specifics of the Battle Shaman system remains.

The Jade Stem Temple became famous for the vicious fighting style of
Zhuruquan
but raised the ire of the Chinese Emperor. The temple was reportedly destroyed by giant crows, commonly thought by historians to be a reference to the Tengu, the mythical Crow demon that is associated with the Japanese ninja. How or why ninja came to attack the Jade Stem Temple is a matter of historical conjecture, but some say the Chinese Emperor was suspicious of the warrior training at the temple and sent foreign agents to make sure the threat was neutralised.

Legend says that a few Battle Shamans escaped, carrying the secrets of the Relentless Drunk Immortal Fist and the practices of the Jade Stem Temple to India, Japan, Vietnam and perhaps even further afield.

Whatever the true roots of
Zhuruquan
, the legendary history – a heady mix of myth, religion and tall tales – remains a unique and compelling narrative within the broader framework of the Chinese martial arts.

RONIN HAS JAMMED
an old cassette tape labelled ‘Cruising Tunz’ into the car’s tape player and is manically tapping the steering wheel to a compilation of surf rock. His powder-blue Ford Cortina is as messy as his office and smells of alcohol and cigarettes.

We screech to a halt at a set of traffic lights. ‘I’m not cheap, kid,’ Ronin says, leaning back in the seat and playing an intricate air-guitar riff.

‘Great, I’m not poor,’ I say, and I mean it. Spider profits make me twenty times what my folks give me as an allowance.

‘Have you got your parents’ permission to be hiring a bounty hunter?’

‘What does it matter to you? The rent isn’t going to pay itself and you look like you have more than a few debts to cover.’

He snorts. ‘I bet you’re a real little bastard at school.’

‘You have no idea.’

‘A thousand up front and five hundred a day after that.’

He puts his fist out and I bump it with mine. It’s like punching a slab of knobbly iron.

‘As good as signed in blood,’ he says. ‘I just need to finish one last job and then I’m on your case like a chihuahua in heat.’

There’s a hoot from behind us as the lights turn green. I look in the mirror and see a guy in an SUV gesticulating wildly for us to move.

‘Excuse me for a second,’ Ronin says and opens the car door. He walks over to the driver’s side of the SUV, sweeps Warchild from underneath his coat and slides it through the open window.

I walk up alongside the car and see the weapon’s twin barrels pressing into a balding suburban dad’s throat. Ronin reaches in with his free hand and pulls a cigarette from a pack on the dashboard, pops it into his mouth and then lights it with the guy’s Zippo.

‘You see those lights up ahead?’ Ronin says, holding the cigarette between his teeth. The guy nods weakly. ‘You would have gained about two seconds. What would you have done with those extra two seconds?’ The guy gulps and the gun pushes into his Adam’s apple. ‘I’ll tell you what you would have done,’ Ronin says. ‘You’d have used them to get pissed off about some other insignificant thing in your life. You’d have complained about your fucking Internet speed or your garden service. All the while a little more of life would have passed you by. Your arrogance is so heavy you need this SUV to pull it.’ He blows smoke into the suburbanite’s face and then slides Warchild back under his coat. ‘If I hear anything more behind me, I’m coming back and performing a buckshot amputation,
comprende
?’

‘Part of my suburban re-education programme,’ Ronin says as he gets back into the car.

We pass through Observatory and are heading onto the N2 when there’s a
whoop
and a flash of lights behind us.

‘Great,’ I say. ‘Your little suburban re-education programme is going to get us arrested.’

Ronin pulls over and adjusts the rear-view mirror and watches as a large form walks slowly toward us. I turn my head around and see the large form of Sergeant Schoeman blotting out the sun behind us.

‘Fuck,’ I say.

‘Something you want to tell me, sparky?’ Ronin says, arching an eyebrow.

Schoeman lurches up next to the passenger-side window and taps on it with his large, meaty paw. I roll it down slowly.

‘Impressive little display back there,’ Schoeman says with a smile that makes his jowls dance the cancan. ‘Although I admit I was waiting for you to help your buddy out by cutting his throat and carving an eye onto his forehead.’

‘I told you I’m not the Mountain Killer,’ I hiss.

Schoeman snaps his fingers like he’s just had a eureka moment. ‘Gee, well, in that case I’ll leave. Thanks for sorting that out for us.’

Ronin leans across me. ‘Don’t you have a sumo match to get to, Detective? Either arrest us, eat us or let us go.’

Schoeman chuckles. ‘Jackson Ronin. Code name Blackblood. Former MK6 operative and member of an apartheid security forces biological weapons unit. You’re certainly no stranger to killing. Are you giving our little buddy here a few pointers?’

‘You’re strangely well informed for a pig,’ Ronin says with a smile. They stare at each other for a long moment before Schoeman give a nonchalant shrug.

‘I’ll let you be on your way,’ Schoeman says. He looks at me. ‘Try not to kill anyone.’

Ronin starts the car and pulls back onto the freeway. ‘You could have told me that there was a cop on your ass,’ he says as the surf rock gurgles back to life.

‘And you could have told me that you’re some kind of agent and apartheid spy.’

‘
Was
an agent. Things changed.’

‘What happened?’

‘None of your fucking business. It has no bearing on this case. What does, however, is that there are cops on our tail apparently trying to prove that you killed your girlfriend.’

‘I didn’t fucking kill her,’ I say.

‘You’re weird, sparky, but it’s a bit obtuse, even for a punk like you, to hire me to find someone you’ve cut up and are storing in your refrigerator.’

‘Thank you,’ I say.

He reaches across and grabs me by the T-shirt. ‘And if you did kill her I’m going to pistol-whip you, drag you into the cop shop and claim a reward. Are we clear?’

‘Crystal,’ I say. ‘Just help me find Esmé.’

He releases my shirt. ‘First we have to get rid of this tail.’

We coast between the buildings until Ronin finds an alley next to a Chinese import–export warehouse. There is a mountain of refuse in the middle of the alley, fed by two battered and overflowing dumpsters. Wind caught in the alley whips the refuse into little junk devils that leap and spin through the air.

We climb out of the car and are immediately assailed by the stench of grime and dead animals.

‘This place stinks,’ I say, holding my sleeve up to my nose. Ronin shrugs as he produces his mojo bag from beneath his coat and pulls a vial of fine white powder from it.

He kneels on the ground and sprinkles the powder in the shape of three intersecting triangles.

‘What’s that?’ I say. ‘Some kind of hoodoo powder?’

‘No,’ he says, replacing the vial in the bag. He retrieves the domino from the bag and places it in the centre of the middle triangle. ‘It’s cocaine. Make sure it doesn’t blow away.’

I huddle over the lines, trying to shield them from the wind with my body. Ronin pulls a thin, black-bladed knife from his boot and stalks into the mountain of rubbish. ‘Here little buddies,’ he calls softly. ‘Don’t worry, I just want to talk.’ There’s a skittering of claws on tar as a large grey rat bolts from the refuse toward a dumpster. Ronin leaps forward and scoops the rat up in his hand, holding it tight as it writhes and squeaks frantically.

He carries it over to the triangles on the ground.

‘This is the part where you tell me what the hell you’re doing,’ I say.

‘Guess,’ Ronin says as he quickly draws the black blade across the rodent’s throat. The blood drips down onto the triangles, slick and bright.

Cocaine and blood mix, forming a grimy design on the tar. Ronin hawks and spits into the centre and makes an elaborate gesture, mumbling a jumbled string of words that sound like a record being played backwards. He drops the rat corpse and then reaches down and retrieves the domino, placing it back into his mojo bag.

The whole process has stunned me into a bewildered stupor. Ronin is insane, and I’m insane for hiring him. Ronin turns to me with a grin and wipes his bloody hand on his trench coat. ‘Cheer up, sparky,’ he says, clapping me on the shoulder with a still bloody hand. ‘This is just a minor evocation. Wait until you see the higher-grade stuff.’

We drive around backstreets until Ronin is sure we’ve lost our tail. Whether the ‘spell’ worked or whether Schoeman just got tired of following us is up for debate, but Ronin can’t get rid of the smug grin on his face.

We get back onto the freeway and drive, the houses flanking the N2 becoming increasingly dilapidated the further we go. Emaciated cows graze on weeds on the sides of the road watched by kids balanced on plastic milk crates. We take a turn-off to the left and follow the road round into the township.

The road takes us through a neighbourhood of shacks made with corrugated iron, cardboard and old wood. We get to a T-junction and Ronin stops the car and leans out of the window to hail an old man sitting on a bright yellow chair next to rows of broken appliances.

‘Sorry,
tata
,’ Ronin says. ‘We’re looking for the First Baptist
Church.’ The old man stares at us with watery eyes. ‘First Baptist?’ Ronin repeats.

The old man raises a finger and points toward a spaza shop on the corner. We turn the corner at the shop and pull up alongside a red face-brick church. ‘First Baptist Congregation’ a sign says in bright colours.

Ronin gets out of the car and pops the trunk, motioning for me to follow. I climb out and watch as he hauls a mess of equipment out of the back. First a long plastic square that looks like a remote control. He flicks a switch on it and it begins to emit a low keening noise. Next, a long electrical cord that he loops around his shoulder. Finally, a rusty, bent metallic implement that looks like a cross between an old TV antenna and a trident.

If the ‘spell-casting’ eroded any faith I had in Ronin, then this smorgasbord of junk-shop trinkets dissolves it like hydrochloric acid. All he needs now is a tinfoil hat and a book by David Icke. My only ride home is going to be wandering through the townships hunting goblins with a TV antenna. Brilliant plan, Baxter.