Riding the Snake (1998) (16 page)

Guangdong was a madhouse of activity. Even in the late evening, cars from Europe and Japan roared down the streets, honking their horns. Police patrolled everywhere in their bright green uniforms. He marveled at the new architecture going up everywhere. He could see the wealth and power, feel the vibration of economic growth. He realized that he stood out terribly. One look at his shabby clothes and haircut and the police would know he didn't belong.

Fu Hai was soon spotted by a policeman, who yelled at him from the other side of the street. He ran and the policeman chased him, blowing the gold whistle around his neck. Fu Hai dashed downhill toward the vast Pearl River. Halfway to its bank, Fu Hai spotted a "honey cart" full of human excrement. The night soil collector had gone into a latrine to empty the trench, and Fu Hai realized instantly that dressed as he was in peasant clothes from the provinces, he could easily pass as the workman who managed the cart. He grabbed the old worn handle of the reeking conveyance, turned it around, and began pushing it back up the hill, toward the pursuing policeman, who ran right past Fu Hai without even looking at him.

Later that night, he abandoned the cart and found his way across the bridge over the bay to Shamian Island. He moved down the crowded street to the huge Ching Ping Market. Even though it was almost midnight, the market was still buzzing. Fu Hai gawked in wonder at what he saw there. Headless haunches of skinned dogs hung from hooks out in the open, still dripping blood onto the sand. Cats, not yet old enough for slaughter, meowed loudly from tiny cages. The vendors had all painted their booths the same deep shade of green, and Fu Hai marveled at the vast array of products on sale there. Everything from badgers, to monkeys, to rare pythons in circular wire-mesh cages. There were hard
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shelled pangolins, which were armadillo-like beasts whose ground scales were thought to be good for rheumatism. The cages that contained the hapless animals were only a few inches wide. He saw aquariums full of colorful, grotesque, celestial telescope goldfish with their eyeballs at the ends of long swiveling stems that came out the front of their heads. Fu Hai continued to wander, not sure what he was looking for. He had been told that one might find a Snakehead in the Ching Ping Market, but he didn't know whom to ask. Which of these people could he trust to tell that he was a traitor to the Revolution, looking to escape China?

He saw a flight of stone steps that led down to the terribly polluted Pearl River. He moved halfway down and sat on the cold stone and watched several vegetable vendors wash cucumbers and ginger roots in the reeking water.

Fu Hai did not know what to do. He looked off across the river at a huge structure lit like a Chinese festival. As one of the vegetable vendors carried his basket of "clean" produce up the steps, Fu Hai spoke to him in Mandarin.

"What is that beautiful lit building across the river?" he said, trying to pick a subject that wouldn't be dangerous.

"Who are you that you don't know that building?" the man asked accusingly. Then he stared at Fu Hai's clothing, his cloth shoes, light linen pants, and frightened eyes.

"I ... I am . . ."

"You are a peasant from the provinces. You are looking to steal a job from a Guandong citizen."

"No, I ... I want to go east to America," he said, standing in case the man should call the police and Fu Hai had to run.

"I understand," the man finally said, his expression softening. "I have many times dreamed of leaving this place . . . but now I am married with a child. My lot is fixed."

Fu Hai was not sure what to say next, afraid to ask how to find a Snakehead.

"That building you asked about is the Pearl Hotel," the man continued. "It is the most luxurious and beautiful hotel in all of China."

Fu Hai nodded.

"If I were you, I would not stay here, dressed like that. You will be arrested."

"Where should I go?" Fu Hai asked.

"Go to the Catholic cathedral. Ask for John White Jade. He will help you." And then the man picked up his basket of vegetables and climbed the steps. Before he got to the top he turned and looked back at Fu Hai. "If you are looking for a Snakehead, be careful," he warned. "Tigers and deer do not walk easily together." Then, without waiting for Fu Hai to respond, he continued up the steps with his basket and was gone.

The Catholic cathedral was not hard to find. Fu Hai stood on the steps and looked at the place. Most of the first-floor windows were boarded up and several of the religious statues in the niches of the cathedral wall had been knocked down.

Fu Hai walked up the steps and entered the huge, cold place. He sat in a back pew and looked at the cross on the distant altar. The cathedral was magnificent, with high arched stone ceilings. The boarded-up windows made it very scary; the only light came from flickering candles. His head ached from lack of sleep. His body was sore from fighting and running. His broken teeth throbbed. He wanted nothing more than to get some sleep, but was determined to stay awake. In consciousness, there was control--in sleep, only danger.

He was awakened when a hand shook him gently. He sprang to his feet and was looking into the face of an old Chinese man who was not dressed in religious vestments.

"Who are you?" the man asked, his voice soft and nonthreatening.

"I am ... I . . ." Fu Hai was afraid to reveal his name, afraid to say anything. Then, almost without thought, he added, "I came to see John White Jade."

Father John White Jade stubbornly used his Christian name despite years of persecution. He was maybe a few years older than Fu Hai. They were seated in the rectory office on hardwood furniture that had no padding. Father John, in a black robe and clerical collar, was exceedingly thin, with a nose that appeared as if it had been broken many times.

"You have come a long way," he said.

The old man who had found Fu Hai asleep in the cathedral returned with a platter of steaming rice and chicken from the church kitchen.

"I feel strange being here," Fu Hai said, not knowing how to begin. "I do not believe in God."

"That is never a prerequisite for kindness," Father John White Jade said. Then he reached over the desk and pushed the plate of food toward Fu Hai, who was starving, but had not looked at the food. It was at this moment that Fu Hai noticed that the priest's hand was misshapen, frozen into a withered claw. The bones had all been broken, just like his father's.

"Were you a class enemy during the Cultural Revolution?" Fu Hai asked as he began to eat with the bamboo chopsticks that had been brought with the meal.

Father John held up both hands and showed them to Fu Hai. "The Cultural Revolution was not an easy time. The Red Guards attacked this beautiful place, swinging their hammers, breaking our stained-glass windows and the statues outside. I was eighteen. I had just taken the Sacraments of Priesthood. I was foolish and tried to prevent it. My hands were held down on the stone steps of the cathedral and beaten until no bone was left unbroken. Now I cannot administer the Sacraments. I cannot even hold the body and blood of Christ in these broken hands."

"The same thing happened to my father for violating the Four Bigs," Fu Hai said, instantly feeling affinity for the priest, knowing they had shared some of the same terrible evil. He told the story of the persecution of his father, Zhang Wei Dong. When he finished, Father John White Jade nodded.

"Men do strange and ugly things in the name of politics and culture," he said. "But it cannot be helped. I have learned that rivers and mountains are more easily changed than some men's natures."

Fu Hai knew this was true. He had decided to spill out his needs to this kindly priest.

"I need to find a Snakehead," Fu Hai said, "but I have no money. I'm sure I will need money."

"You will need a down payment, but this can be arranged. I have some Guan-Xi with these people."

"Then you know a Snakehead?" Fu Hai said, his hear
t q
uickening.

"I know a man who does these things. He is a tou she." The Chinese words for Snakehead. "They call him 'Big-Eared' Tou. He works for Henry Liu, a powerful White Fan of the Chin Lo Triad in Hong Kong."

"I must get to America. I must find a way to get my beautiful little sister and her family there." When he spoke of Xiao Jie, he tried to remember her as a child, blotting out the memory of the prematurely aged crone with the brown teeth and skinny body who had looked into his eyes and cried.

"I will talk to some people. In the meantime, you must get some sleep. You look as if you have gone many days without rest."

Finally, Fu Hai felt safe, and after he finished his meal, he lay down on the hard bench where he was seated and immediately fell asleep. The polished oak felt as soft as a mattress of clouds.

He was awakened after dark by Father John and led out into the cathedral, where a young, ugly girl with big teeth and a fiat nose waited. She spoke in Fukienese, a dialect that Fu Hai couldn't understand. Father John talked to her for a minute, then turned back to Fu Hai.

"She will take you to meet the Snakehead. Good luck." And then Father John White Jade said a prayer over Fu Hai in a strange language he couldn't understand, but assumed must be Latin.

Without looking back at him, the ugly girl led Fu Hai out of the cathedral and down the wide steps. She led him back to Shamian Island, and finally, after going down many narrow streets, she stopped, turned to him and put her hands on his shoulders, then pushed him down onto a stone bench. She didn't talk to him, but he knew he was supposed to wait. She left him there.

An hour passed and then she came back and led Fu Hai down several more narrow streets into a crowded restaurant at the edge of the Ching Ping Market. She pointed to a man sitting alone at a table in the back of the murky, dark place. He had huge meaty ears, an undershot jaw, and big teeth. Three black hairs, nearly a foot long, grew from a large wart on his chin, and he stroked them as he sat waiting. As Fu Hai approached, he guessed that the man was the ugly girl's father. Fu Hai stood at the edge of the Snakehead's table, with his eyes down, and waited respectfully.

"You want to Ride the Snake?" Big-Eared Tou asked in Mandarin, without introducing himself.

"I am determined to get to America."

"It is very expensive."

"I have heard this."

"Over thirty-five thousand American dollars. Do you have enough money?" he asked, smiling for the first time, showing big teeth.

"No, sir, but I will do anything to earn my way."

"You would kill? You would wreak havoc on my enemies? Commit violent crime?" Big-Eared Tou said, looking intently at Fu Hai.

"I have never killed or done any of those things."

"But you said 4anything.' A man willing to do anything could have great value, if this is not just a boast to impress me."

"To get to America, I would do anything," Fu Hai said, again thinking of his little sister and her plight.

"There was a time when I would ask you to give me a hostage to secure the debt, somebody in your family who would be my slave and work if you should flee. But Father John White Jade is my countryman. We come from the same village in Fukien. He has spoken highly of your honor and trustworthiness and he has Guan
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Xi with me, so I will take you at your word. You must work seven days a week until your debt is paid. However, if you fail your responsibilities to me, I will collect your life as payment. You agree with this?"

"It is a fair bargain," Fu Hai said.

"I am a man of great patience and understanding," the ugly Triad mobster said piously. "I perform this service not so much for money as for the love of my fellow man."

"That is very noble," Fu Hai said.

"Then it is a bargain. I will get you to America and you will do what I ask," the Snakehead concluded. He motioned to a waiter, who stepped forward holding a wriggling black indigo snake with a flickering tongue. The mobster nodded, and the waiter severed the snake's head with a single chop of his cleaver and cast the still wriggling head into an enameled basin. Blood oozed from the twisting coils. With a sound like a zipper, the waiter pulled back the serpent's skin, exposing the pink pearly flesh. He fished amid the glistening meat for a small black pill-shaped organ and placed it in a glass of rice wine at the gangster's elbow. Big
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Eared Tou swallowed the wine and the snake's gallbladder at a gulp, eyeing Fu Hai as he did so.

"You must be very careful I don't swallow you too," the ugly Snakehead said with a horrible grin.

Chapter
14.

Would You? Could You? Should You?

It was Wednesday afternoon and Wheeler was in his brother's den helping his sister-in-law straighten up the mess. Wheeler was by the bookcase, teetering on his crutches, rearranging volumes, while Liz and Hollis crawled on the floor gathering up and reshelving Prescott's priceless leather
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bound editions. Full first-edition sets of Emily Dickinson, Poe, and Herman Melville, which Prescott had collected. Some volumes ran as high as ten thousand dollars. The perfect gift for L
. A
.'s most promising young lawyer. Each one unwrapped to a chorus of "aahhhs" on Christmas morning.