Grotesque (41 page)

I took up my position right behind the man. Maybe it was the exhaustion of the journey finally catching up to me, but I fell asleep right where I was with my arms wrapped around the shovel.

I was awakened by the cold and the sound of people talking. Day was dawning, the blue sky spread directly in front of my eyes. I was surprised to find that I had slept straight through the night on the cold hard surface of the retaining wall. I staggered to my feet and found that several hundred men were milling anxiously around as if the work crew selection would begin any minute. I rubbed my eyes and took a drink of water from the bottle. Just then a truck came barreling toward us at top speed.

“Carpenters and coolies for bridge construction!” the man standing on the bed of the truck called out in a loud voice. “Fifty men.”

As soon as they heard him, men began to run in his direction waving their hands. Using a long pole to keep them at bay, the man continued, “Only men with shovels or pickaxes.”

I ran to the front of the crowd. The man took one look at my size and the shovel in my hand and nodded. Then he motioned me aboard the truck with his chin. Once he did all the men surrounding the truck 2 5 7

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started to clamber onto the bed, pushing and shoving, each determined to secure a place for himself. There was little the man could do to control them. The truck bed shuddered and shook. A number of men fell, or were pushed, and tumbled to the ground. It was just like the train. The truck bed was packed with people, and when no one else could squeeze on, the truck took off. A number of the men fell off when the truck pitched and swerved, but no one seemed to care. I clutched the shovel to my chest, careful so no one else would make off with it. The cool morning breeze off the river stung my cheeks.

I did construction work for three months. It was simple work but physically demanding. I’d work from seven in the morning until five at night.

I’d mix concrete on-site or else help carry iron girders. I worked with every ounce of strength I possessed and made seventeen yuan a day. I didn’t think that was enough, so as soon as I finished for the night, I’d head to town and get parttime jobs cleaning or picking up trash. I was satisfied with the way things were going because I was earning seventeen times what I’d made at the straw hat factory. There was just no way to compare the opportunities I had in the city with what I’d had back home, and I was delirious with joy.

In order to save money I’d picked up scrap lumber and plastic on the job sites and used the materials to make my own little shack back at the laborers’ pickup place. I would stay there all night so when the truck came in the morning I was able to run out and line up. The other men who lived on the grounds were kind. If they made a stew of pig entrails, they’d give some to me. Or they’d call me over when they were sharing a bottle of cheap wine. But only the men from Sichuan Province did this.

That’s because we only trusted those from our own region, those who spoke the same language.

When I’d saved up one thousand yuan, I decided to quit working construction.

I’d had enough of life in the barracks. Moreover, whenever I went to town for some entertainment, I’d see other men my age out with girls, and they seemed much happier than I was. I wanted to find a job in the city—something that would be easier and more attractive. But the kind of work a day laborer could do was just about limited to what they 2 5 8

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now call the Three Ds: anything that was dangerous, dirty, and difficult.

This was true of work in the cities as well. In this respect, China is no different from Japan. In order to get advice about finding a job, I decided to try to find my sister. I hadn’t done so until then because I was still angry about the way she had abandoned me.

I went to Zhongshan Avenue and bought a new T-shirt and a new pair of jeans. I didn’t want to embarrass her by showing up in my tattered work clothes. Because I’d been working in construction, my skin was tanned and my body had grown muscular. I imagined that when my sister saw me looking masculine and urbane, she would be impressed. I was itching to confront Jin-long, as I was still angry with him for taking my sister away from me. I hadn’t forgotten for one second how strong he had looked, how in control.

It was a hot day in early June. I carried a bag with a pink T-shirt in it, a gift for my sister, and headed down Huangsha Avenue alongside the Pearl River toward the White Swan Hotel. The hotel towered over the Pearl River side of Shamian Island. It was massive, at least thirty stories high. As I gazed up to the top of the chalk-colored building, I felt myself flush with pride to think that my younger sister, Mei-kun, was working in such elegant surroundings. But I felt so uncomfortable when confronted with all the foreign tourists walking in and out of the hotel and strolling around the grounds that I found it hard to step through the magnificent front doors. Four stocky doormen were standing alongside the driveway in front of the hotel, each dressed in matching maroon uniforms.

They glared at me suspiciously. The doormen skillfully greeted guests arriving by taxi and guided them inside. And when foreign guests returned to the hotel on foot, the doormen spoke to them in fluent English. These doormen didn’t look as if they would welcome an inquiry from me, so I approached a man who was tending a patch of garden to the side of the entry doors. From his appearance and attitude, I could tell he was a migrant.

“Zhang Mei-kun is working here, and I was hoping you could tell me how I might find her.”

“Shall I ask for you?” the man replied in the northeastern accents of Beijing. He put his rake down and went off. I waited and waited but he did not return. I gazed at the rays of the sun glittering off the Pearl River and grew more and more apprehensive. At last I felt a tap on my shoul-2 5 9

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der. It was the gardener. He spoke to me sympathetically. “There doesn’t seem to be a Zhang Mei-kun working here. I asked one of the personnel staff to look the name up, and she’s not listed anywhere. I’m sorry.”

I was shocked, but in fact I had suspected as much. No one is that lucky. I had come to feel more and more certain that my sister had been tricked by Jin-long, but what could I do? Realizing I would never see Mei-kun again, tears began to roll down my cheeks.

“Well, what about a guy named Jin-long? He’s a big guy who looks like a gangster. He said he had a friend who worked in the kitchen here.”

“What’s his family name? Do you know which restaurant he works in?”

I had no idea. I just shook my head from side to side.

“The cooks here all make good wages. It’s not likely they’d run around with gangsters.”

The man shrugged his shoulders as if to laugh at my ignorance and returned to his work. I was crestfallen. I followed the sidewalk around the hotel and walked off in the direction of Shamian, a natural island at a fork in the Pearl River. I’d heard that before the Revolution it had been a foreign settlement, and no Chinese were even allowed to set foot on the island. Now it was public land and anyone could enter.

This was my first trip to Shamian. A wide avenue spread out alongside rows upon rows of European buildings. Down the center of the avenue was a green median bursting with the bright red blooms of salvia and hibiscus. The houses lining the streets were even more beautiful than the tidy little houses I was so fond of in Guangzhou, one of which I intended someday to make my own. I sat on a bench and gazed along the avenue. Each day, it seemed, I discovered something that was even better than what I’d seen the day before. My thoughts returned to Mei-kun.

Why hadn’t I stopped her from leaving me?

“Hey, you!” A man’s voice interrupted my thoughts. I turned to see a man who looked like a police official. He called to me in an arrogant tone. My heart froze. I’d come out with neither a residency permit nor any identification papers. The man was dressed in the kind of blue suit a government official would wear. His build was slight, but he walked with self-assured determination. Surely he was involved in some high-level position. The last thing I wanted to do was get nabbed for something, so I decided to act like a witless country bumpkin.

“I’m not doing anything wrong.”

“I know. Just come with me for a minute.”

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The man took my arm and pointed to a black car parked beside one of the European buildings.

“Get in.”

I couldn’t get away. The man had me by the arm and was leading me to the car. It was a large Mercedes. The driver looked at me through his sunglasses and smirked. I was pushed into the backseat. The man in the suit got in the front passenger seat and turned around to look at me.

“I have a job for you. But you have to agree not to talk about it. That’s the condition. If you can’t agree to my condition, I’ll let you out right now.”

“What kind of job?”

“You’ll see when we get there. If you aren’t up for it, get out now.”

I was terrified, but I was also intrigued. What if this was just the break I’d been waiting for? I couldn’t get out. I’d had enough of fife as a coolie, and I’d lost my beloved little sister. What else did I have to lose? I nodded in agreement.

The Mercedes headed back to the White Swan. When I’d left the hotel earlier, I never imagined I’d ever go back. The car pulled around to the front and the doormen who had earlier menaced me dashed out to greet us, opening the car doors adroitly. When the doormen saw me get out of the car they were not able to conceal their surprise. My spirits suddenly soared. No matter what land of fate may be in store for me, it would have been worth it just to have experienced that feeling.

I entered the hotel for the first time, following the man in the suit.

The lobby was crawling with wealthy people dressed in elegant clothes.

I stopped in my tracks and stared, unable to help myself. The man grabbed my arm and tugged me roughly. He shoved me into the elevator and took me up to the top, the twenty-sixth floor. When the doors opened, I was assailed with anxiety and unable to move. If I step off the elevator now, I told myself, I can never go back to my old life.

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• 3 •

“Hurry up and get out,” the man ordered impatiently. I stared at him in a daze.

“I don’t think I can go through with this. I don’t have my papers with me. Please, let me go home.”

Heedless of my wishes, the man grabbed me roughly by the arms, yanked me out of the elevator, and forced me to walk alongside him. He was strong; I had little choice but to follow. My legs trembled in fear.

The man dragged me off to a dimly lit corridor and pulled me along deeper and deeper into the hotel. No one else was around.

The hallway was covered with a thick beige carpet woven in an ornate design of water lilies and phoenixes. It was so luxurious I felt it wrong even to step on it. A dim lamp illuminated a far corner of the corridor, and from somewhere came the strains of elegant music. A marvelous scent wafted along the hallway. My fear gave way to a sense of gentle ease. I found the abruptness of the shift incredible. Had I never left the countryside, I would have died without ever even realizing such a wondrous place existed.

The man knocked on the last door. A woman’s shrill voice called in answer and the door opened immediately. A young woman stood in front of us, dressed in a navy-blue suit and wearing bright red lipstick. “Come in,” she said, as if it were a command. I looked around nervously and then drew a sigh of relief. There were three other men in the room. They looked to be my age. I suppose they had also been picked up, as had I, and brought to this place. They were sitting nervously on a sofa watching television.

I sat down gingerly on the edge of the sofa. The other men were migrants, just like me. I could tell at a glance from the clothes they wore.

They were also nervous, having been dragged by a strange man and 2 6 2

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woman into a room more elegant than they could have ever imagined.

They too were uncertain what would happen to them.

“Wait here,” the man said, as he stepped into the adjoining room. He was gone for a long time. The woman with the bright red lipstick did not open her mouth once. She just sat there watching TV along with the rest of us. Her eyes were so cunning and sharp, I assumed she was either a police officer or a government agent. I’d been in the city now for three months, toiling as a migrant laborer; it didn’t take me long to sniff out one of their kind. They gave themselves away with their haughty manner and high-handedness.

The television was tuned to a news story, covering some kind of riot.

Young men were shouting with blood streaming down their faces; tanks were rolling in the streets, and people were running for cover. It looked like a civil war. Later I learned that this was the day following the killing in Tiananmen Square. I had not heard anything about the demonstrations, and had a hard time believing what I was seeing. The woman with the crafty face took up the remote control and turned off the television.

The men, looking nervous, quickly averted their eyes, trying to avoid the woman’s gaze, and exchanged uneasy glances.

The room we were in was massive. It looked like it could sleep up to twenty or thirty people. I suppose it was done in what you would call the rococco style. There was a lavish Western-style sofa set in the room and an enormous television set. In the corner of the room was a bar. The curtains across the large window were pulled back and I could see the rays of the afternoon sun glittering over the Pearl River. It may have been hot outside, but the air-conditioning was on in the room and it was cool and dry. In a word, refreshing.

The woman pierced me with her keen gaze but, undeterred, I stood up and stared at the scene outside the window. Off to the right I could see makeshift shacks that a group of migrant workers had slapped together. What a filthy sight. They shouldn’t be allowed to build their shacks in such a beautiful place as this, I thought. Tiananmen Square seemed far away, like something completely unrelated to me.