The Second Wave (8 page)

Alas, it was not to be. Just when they were
to get married, the emperor’s soldiers arrived at the village. They
found Fan Xiliang and captured him, before the two lovers could so
much as share a first kiss as husband and wife.

Months went by like centuries. Meng Jiang
waited for word from her husband, or, better yet, his return home.
But nothing.

When one year was over and there was still no
word from Fan Xiliang, Meng Jiang decided on a reckless plan of
action: she wished all four of her parents good-bye, and journeyed
to the building site of the Great Wall herself, desperate to see
her husband.

The Great Wall, she saw when she came close,
was almost finished, but at what price? The land around the wall
was all but covered in dead bodies. Workers who couldn’t endure the
whippings, who had starved, or had worked themselves to death.

When Meng Jiang couldn’t find her husband
among the living, she turned to the dead. With tears in her eyes
she turned all of them over to look into their faces, but none of
them wore the features of her beloved.

Word got out to the emperor that a woman too
fair for words was wandering along the Wall, crying. Meng Jiang
cried for three days and for three nights, wailing and screaming
and howling her husband’s name. The echo of her sobs travelled up
into the heavens, and deep down into the earth, and was carried
across the land by the wind. Her misery was so heartbreaking that
the Gods couldn’t bear to watch her suffer. They shook the earth so
that the Great Wall crumbled.

And what should Meng Jiang unearth from the
rocks and the mud but the long dead remains of Fan Xiliang. The two
lovers were finally reunited.

She cradled his lifeless body into her arms
to carry him all the way home, so she could bury him properly.

But the emperor had already made up his mind;
he wanted to possess the woman whose passion was so strong that it
could move heaven and earth.

He followed her to the village and forced her
hand in marriage. If she didn’t comply, he said, he would punish
her and her family for the crime she had committed: the destruction
of the Great Wall. But Meng Jiang was not merely beautiful, she was
also bright. She told the emperor that he had to do three things
for her ‘ere she would marry him. If he abided by them, she would
forever be his and would love him with all her might.

Such were Meng Jiang’s conditions: Fan
Xiliang should be given a luxurious burial, one that was fit for an
emperor. Meng Jiang should be allowed to mourn her deceased husband
for one year, during which no one was to touch her. After one year
had passed, the emperor was to take her to the ocean. Only then
would she marry him.

And so it came to pass. Fan Xiliang was given
a lavish burial. Meng Jiang mourned him for one year, during which
no one made physical contact with her.

When the year had passed, the emperor
arranged for a carriage for Meng Jiang and himself to bring them to
the ocean. He wanted to marry her then and there, on the highest of
the cliffs.

But when they came to the cliffs and the
horses stopped, Meng Jiang jumped out of the coach and quickly
hurled herself off the cliff without so much as a glance back.

Her body sank to the bottom of the sea, where
the Dragon King had pity on her soul. When the emperor’s men tried
to fish Meng Jiang’s body out of the water, he unleashed a flood to
chase them away.

But Meng Jiang died at the bottom of the
ocean. Her last thoughts belonged to the man she had loved with all
her heart and who she never had had the chance to kiss even
once.

* * * *

When John ended his account. the tea in the
samovar was long cold. The only hot liquid in the room were the
tears that soaked the cloth on Celem’s eyes and streamed down his
face.

“An exquisite tale,” he sniffed unashamedly.
“And told with much grace. You are one skilled storyteller, my
multi-faceted, old partner in crime. My friend will do the job for
you. And because it was so moving a story, I feel I want to give
you a gift. Tell me where you are staying, and I will send you
someone beautiful and experienced to while away the lonely hours of
the moon.”

“I’ll be staying at Malik’s han tonight.”

“Male or female? I remember you were never
particular about such matters.”

John shrugged, realizing too late that Celem
couldn’t see him, then said aloud with an audible smirk, “Since
you’re feeling so generous—I’ll have one of each.”

Celem’s creative curses followed John out
into the streets like a lover reluctant to let go.

Night had fallen while the two men talked;
John found himself in the eerie presence of memories he had pushed
away for too long. To chase them away he went straight to Malik’s
little inn. He downed his first drink before he had even exchanged
greetings with his old acquaintance Malik. Yet Malik wasn’t the
only old acquaintance of John’s, and by the time the latter was
light-hearted from raki and hot-blooded from his lascivious
company, a man entered the shady tavern who had some unfinished
business with Yahya he was keen to finish tonight.

It was a nasty fight, but over quickly. The
inn was wrecked, four people mysteriously lost their wallets in
addition to several teeth, the police couldn’t make heads or tails
of anything because everyone involved in the brawl pretended like
nothing unusual had happened, and John, on top of paying his debt
in lead, got to spend the rest of the night undisturbed in the
presence of his two lovers.

Yes, he had definitely missed nights like
this.

* * * *

Some say that we choose our life before we
come to this world. Our souls select where and to whom we are born
to from another plane of existence. Our paths are therefore
pre-determined in a way. What we cannot determine is whether we
indeed go on to walk the path we have selected for ourselves,
because once we are born into this world, we forget about what was
before. That is what makes us human. Some say that is a good thing.
Perhaps those who say that are the ones who do well for themselves.
Certainly not the ones who end up locked in a cupboard in a
run-down orphanage by the Black Sea.

Like the twelve-year-old boy who sat huddled
in the darkness, knees drawn up to his chin, his skinny arms
wrapped tightly around them. It was cold, but the boy was used to
it by now. He spent more time in here than he did anywhere else.
The nuns who ran the orphanage didn’t know what else to do with
him. John usually didn’t mind too much; at least it was quiet and
he could plan his flight undisturbed. Also, he knew he probably
deserved being punished, he could accept that. Only
this
time it wasn’t his fault!

He gave the closet door an angry kick. It was
that idiot Yegor’s fault. And as soon as John was out of here, he’d
put a snail into that fool’s sock, or smear soap on his toothbrush,
or do something equally nasty to him.

A soft rustle startled him out of his revenge
plotting. He tried to see something, but it was completely dark in
the cupboard.

“John?” a timid voice peeled itself out of
the darkness. He recognized it at once as Vladimir’s.

“Vladik? How long have you been in here?”

“I don’t know. When did we have leftover
blinis for breakfast?”

“This morning.”

“Since then, then.”

John remembered breakfast; he remembered Paul
tickling Vladimir until he fell from his chair. Sister Magda
dragged him out of the hall and that was the last time he’d seen
his roommate.

“What did you do?” Vladimir asked.

Another angry kick at the door. “I punched
Lena in the face.”

“Wow! Why?”

John’s hands curled into fists. “Because
yesterday she says she likes me, and today she kisses that idiot
Yegor.”

“Really? Man, you miss out on everything when
you’re locked up in here!”

John rested his chin on his knees, seeking
his own physical contact to protect himself from the cold that
crept through the cracks in the wood into their little prison. The
cupboard was outside in the backyard, which was all right in
summer, but it was snowing outside and John was freezing now.

“I’m running away,” he huffed. “I hate it
here.”

“You can’t just run away!” Vladimir cried
out. “They’ll catch you, and then you have to stay in the cupboard
forever
!”

“They’ll never catch me. No one will!”

He’d be gone before anyone would notice
anything, and then, he decided, he could do whatever he wanted and
punch whomever he wanted. He’d learn how to fight and how to kill,
and then no one could lock him up in a cupboard anymore. He’d be
free forever.

The two boys were silent for a while, until
Vladimir announced quietly, “I’d miss you.”

Before John could reply to that, he heard the
other boy moving; something soft and wet landed on his ear. John
felt his intestines twist into a knot. He stopped breathing for a
moment.

“Did you just kiss me?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

A small hand materialized on John’s shoulder.
Exceptionally carefully—he was afraid he might rip the air between
them apart, if he moved too hastily, and then the sudden magic
would be over—he turned his face around to try and make out
Vladimir’s silhouette in the blackness.

“Are you just saying you like me now, and
tomorrow you’ll kiss someone else?” He wanted his voice to sound
sharp, but it betrayed him and came out hoarse, frightened
even.

“No,” Vladimir told him with the seriousness
of a twelve-year-old who would never tell a lie until he would. “I
really
like you,” he emphasized.

It was decided then. “Then I like you,
too.”

Their hands searched and found one another.
They huddled closer together. It was already much warmer than
before. John could almost feel his toes again.

“I want to kiss you,” Vladimir mumbled under
his breath and right into John’s ear, sending unfamiliar shivers
down his spine.

John found enough strength in him to form a
coherent sentence. “But you just did.”

He sensed rather than saw the other boy shake
his head. “I mean a proper kiss. Nelly showed me how people kiss
properly. It’s super fantastic.”

And it was super fantastic indeed, John
fancied; amazing even, with the potential to be ground shaking. It
made his skin crawl and his fingers flex and his eyelids flutter.
It turned the cold air in the cupboard into a hot, sticky mess.

It made John beg Vladimir to run away with
him. He had everything planned out, had collected bits of food over
the months that he had stashed in his mattress; in this warm,
magical moment he told Vladimir everything, because all he wanted
was a better life for both of them.

Two nights later, the Reverend Mother shook
him out of his sleep, slashed open his mattress, took away the
half-rotten food and flogged John hard enough to leave permanent
scars on his back. She made Vladimir watch, whose eyes were wide in
terror. She left John a bloody, whimpering mess in the middle of
the dormitory. All children had to get up, the girls too, to come
and see what happened to naughty boys who stole food and talked of
running away.

When his tears dried later in the cupboard,
John promised himself two things, promises he kept to this day: he
would never cry again, and once he got away, he’d keep running for
the rest of his life so no one would ever catch him.

Never had he been made to stay in the
cupboard for such a long time, and never did the time go by more
slowly. One night, one day, and another night he was in the closet.
It was freezing cold, but all the while he sat crouched opposite
the door, like a long-distance runner waiting for the gunshot.

The sister who unlocked the door late in the
second night didn’t see it coming. As soon as he heard the sound of
feet trumping through the freshly fallen snow, every fibre in his
body tensed. It didn’t matter that he was hungry, thirsty, and
still black and blue from the flogging. The key turned, the door
opened, and John pounced into the sister’s knees like a human
cannonball. He didn’t stop to look who it was; it was vital that he
got a head start. Still in his pyjamas, he bolted across the
courtyard, squeezed himself through the barbed-wire fence, darted
into the starlit wood, and ran without looking back for what felt
like an eternity.

Maybe it was the path his soul had chosen for
himself long before he was born. Or maybe he had missed the right
path and was just struggling not to drown. Whatever it was, the
little boy kept running.

* * * *

Like every coastal city, Byzantium’s everyday
life was ruled by the sea. Its slow, tireless tide washed in ships
and filled the fishermen’s nets. When the sea’s surface was calm,
and the waves rolled almost casually to the shore, life in the city
was tranquil. People went about their daily business with a certain
laziness, undisturbed by any rush.

During high tide, a busy hectic washed over
the people of Byzantium. Not enough to affect their temper, but it
seemed that the squeaks of the donkey carts resonated through the
streets more quickly than they did a few hours earlier, especially
when the tide was accompanied by a refreshing breeze.

John came to town during the months of the
undertaker’s breath. When at night the land chilled down sufficient
enough to ghost away the sea breeze. It was a time when
thunderstorms haunted the coast, not only at night. The air that
hung over the buildings and in the streets was heavy and reeked of
rotting seafood. Work was cumbersome, the animals stubborn. The
women were cranky, the men morose and the children hysterical; a
dangerous mixture at the best of times. Now that word got around
about the return of Yahya, the city’s criminal movement was one
shoot-out shy of becoming a powder keg.