Dragon's Eye (57 page)

Digging deeper. Food, clothes, furniture vouchers … to be spent at the Friendship Store. Deeper still. A purchase voucher for a car, second-hand. Of course! A slip to draw his wages, his backpay. Another slip, informing him of his promotion of two grades. Waiting for him, an upholstered chair, velour covered. Another slip … noting his promotion and awarding the relevant rise in pay. One hundred yuan a month. Zhiyuan, the old bastard, how right he’d been. And on yet another slip, an address of a new flat rented on his behalf. His new home. A road just off of Wenmiao. Views of the river, if you went up onto the roof and stood on tiptoes. A road off of Wenmiao. He was going up in the world, or was it down? A road off of Wenmiao, an area littered with middle-ranking cadre and nodding Party brown-nosers. A road off of Wenmiao … they were already trying to block him in. Package him up. Keep him safe. Keep him sweet. A last draw on the cigarette, flicking it out of the car window. A fury of sparks, before it faded and died.

Deeper still. A floppy disc. Removing it. Turning it over and over in his fingers. Its blunt, rounded corners. Its safe edges. Its inoffensive demeanour. How could death come in such a neat and innocent looking package? He lit another cigarette. It tasted better than the first. It always did. Always would.

In the bottom of the envelope, a smaller envelope. So different from everything that had surrounded it. Pastel against harsh monotones. Handwriting against type. Perfumed page against the hints of ink and stationary cupboards. Lingling. For an instant, the thought, the constant question within himself … is she coming back, does she really want to come back home? Reading it, and as he did, instantly aware that there was nothing at the bottom of the page about her wanting to come back.

‘… the blood tests, the doctor’s reports, the files from the hospital. They were prepared at our request. They were lies. You do not have HIV. You never had HIV.”

Cold. Numb. For seconds, not able to move. Not able to breathe. And then the slow thaw of relief. Of release. As soft, as warm as a deep swelling wave of morphine.

The car coughed into life, settling into an uncomfortable shiver. Yaobang finishing his second cigarette to the last strands of tobacco.

“So, Boss, good trip?”

‘Good trip’ … a question to be answered, but not yet.

The car rolled and Piao wound up the window. He would be going to the flat now, on a road just off of Wenmiao. A home that he had yet to know. Behind the door, nothing but the mechanics of a life. Behind the door, no perfumed letters. A life, re-visited. In his fingers, the floppy disc in idle orbits. Taking hold of it more firmly. Bending it, until the black casing bruised grey … snapping with the caustic high note of plastic.

His last link to the man who was Haven. His last link to the woman who was …

Winding down the window. In two separate jig-saw halves, letting the plastic, now valueless, slip from his fingers. Death, sentenced by data, in tumbled falls into the stained gutters.

Cold. So cold. But leaving the window down. Pulling the jacket on the back seat around himself. Reaching to fasten the collar, but the button missing. The button still missing. And who was there to put a new one on? Moving toward Yichuan Park … the spike of the trees, the carve of the walls, softened, blunted by the early morning smog. The breath of the Yellow Dragon. Gleaming cities. Gleaming people. Never further away. For a second, closing his eyes as the soundless, matt landscape, fell past his window.

A button missing. He would have to learn to sew.

Published in the UK by Dedalus Ltd,

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ISBN printed book 978 1 903517 21 5

ISBN e-book 978 1 907650 84 0

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Publishing History

First published by Dedalus in 2003
First ebook edition in 2012
Dragon’s Eye copyright
©
Andy Oakes 2002

The right of Andy Oakes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Printed in Finland by Bookwell

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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