The Trail to Buddha's Mirror (31 page)

The soft night took the edge off Neal, and the urge to get drunk left him as suddenly as it had come. He felt a little ashamed, too, about leading Wu into trouble. Better just to have a couple of beers, talk a little Mark Twain, and leave it at that.

Anyway, he thought, the kid isn’t used to alcohol, and you’re not in drinking shape anyway. Maybe they’ll let you take a scotch back to your room.

He knocked back a long slug of the domestic Chinese beer and found that it wasn’t bad. Wu didn’t seem to mind it, either, sipping at it steadily as he drank in the view.

“Can we see your house from here?” Neal asked him.

“Other direction.” He was still smarting from the scene at the door, nursing a grudge along with the beer.

Maybe that isn’t all that bad, Neal thought. If I were him, I’d have a hell of a grudge, too, and it might be better to nurse it than to forget it. Come to think of it, I
do
have a hell of a grudge, and I’m not going to forget it either.

“Beautiful city,” Neal said.

“Fuck yes.”

“You want another beer?”

“I’m not finished this one yet.”

“You will be by the time I get back.”

Neal held up his empty bottle in one hand and two fingers in the other. The bartender responded with the requisite two brews and even made change for Neal. The cadres at the one table stopped their conversation to stare at Neal as he walked past.

“Hi, guys,” he said.

They didn’t answer.

Neal handed Wu his fresh bottle. “Here’s to Mark Twain.”

“Mark Twain.”

“And Du Fu.”

“Du Fu.”

“And here’s to Mr. Peng, who’s coming through the door.”

Peng nodded a hello to the boys at the table and came out on the terrace. He looked pissed off, and the sight of Wu with a beer bottle in his hand didn’t do anything to improve his mood. He spoke rapidly to Wu and then stood looking at Neal.

“He is happy you are enjoying your evening.”

Meaning exactly the opposite, Neal thought.

“If he’s happy, I’m thrilled,” Neal answered.

“He says to pack your bags tonight.”

Neal felt his heart racing. Maybe they were going to put him on a plane.

“You will be gone for three days,” Wu continued.

“Where?”

“Dwaizhou Production Brigade.”

“What’s that? A factory?”

“No. It is in the countryside, perhaps one hundred miles south of Chengdu. You would call it a commune.”

“A collectivized farm.”

“As you say.”

“It’s a tourist thing?”

Peng spoke quickly.

“Foreign guests love to see production brigades,” Wu translated. “This is one of Sichuan’s best. Highly productive.”

Swell. They’re finished displaying me in the city, so we’re taking a weekend in the country. What for? More Mr. Frazier bullshit?

“How are you going to keep me down on the farm, after I’ve seen Chengdu?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Do me a favor, Xiao Wu? Last call is coming. Go to the bar and get us three beers?”

“I don’t think—”

Peng told him to go. He and Neal stood staring at each other for a few seconds.

“Let’s cut the translation crap, okay?” Neal said.

Peng smiled narrowly. “As you wish.”

“What’s the game here?”

“I have gone to great lengths to explain that.”

“You have gone to great lengths to avoid explaining that.”

“Things are not always what they appear.”

“Grasshopper.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing. Come on, Peng, what’s the deal? Why are we going to the country?”

“You do not wish to go?”

“What are we talking about here?”

“Your returning home. The sooner you go on this trip, the sooner you can go home. Of course, if you wish to delay …”

“I’ll be packed and ready.”

Wu returned with the beers and stood on the edge of their conversation. He edged forward when he saw that they had stopped speaking, and offered the beers.

“I do not drink beer,” Peng said. It wasn’t a comment, it was an order.

“Yes,” said Wu, setting the beers on a table, “it is late and we must start early in the morning.”

Neal scooped up the beers. “I’ll just take them to my room, then.”

“That is against the law,” said Peng.

“Arrest me,” answered Neal. He popped Wu on the shoulder and walked out the bar. He could feel Peng’s glare on his back, and it felt great.

Peng was furious. Until his conversation with the arrogant, rude young American, his evening had been going quite well. Persuading Comrade Secretary Xao to send Carey into the countryside had been ludicrously easy.

“I think we had better bring him closer to the asset,” he’d told the secretary.

“Yes? Why? It seems he has attracted no attention at all.”

Peng had furrowed his brow and stared at the floor.

“That is just what concerns me,” Peng had said. “Perhaps they are waiting to be sure. Perhaps the young fool is even working for the opposition. He is, after all, the only one who could actually identify China Doll.”

And that was the problem. Peng would have liked to put a bullet in the back of Carey’s skull right away, or, better yet, seen how he enjoyed a decade or two in the salt mines of Xinxiang, but the rude young round-eye was the only one left who could point a finger at Xao’s precious China Doll. Or bring her out of hiding, her and her American lover.

And the beauty of his own plan, to put that fear into Xao’s head. Manipulate him into sending Carey out as a test, and find that the test would turn into the real thing. And Xao had fallen—no, not fallen,
leaped
into the trap.

“Yes,” Xao said. “Send Carey down to Dwaizhou—”

“Is China Doll there?” Peng tried to keep the eagerness from his tone, and prayed that Xao hadn’t noticed the trembling in his voice.

“Yes.”

“Is Pendleton with her?”

Xao took a long time to light his damned cigarette.

“No,” he finally said. “Do you think I would put them in the same place until we know that it is safe?”

Peng bowed his head. “You are always the wiser.”

“So take Carey to Dwaizhou. If he sees her, observe how he reacts. If the police swoop in, we have lost China Doll and we shall have to keep the Pendleton hidden longer than we had hoped.”

“Surely China Doll would talk.”

“She would never talk.”

In
my
hands, Peng thought, she will talk.

“And Carey?”

“I would then rely on you to see he does not get the opportunity to tell what he knows.”

“And what if he sees her and keeps quiet?”

“Then we will know it is safe. You then take him on more touring to confuse the issue and send him home. End the howling of his American friends.”

“And if he doesn’t see her?”

“Then it doesn’t matter.”

So the conversation had gone precisely as Peng had wished, and he had been in such a fine mood until he found Carey and Wu, inebriated and still drinking on the hotel terrace. The rudeness of the American bastard, the foolishness of Wu, to be running around outside the prescribed schedule! What if Carey had spotted the other American? What then?

Xao wasn’t furious, but he was sad. The plan would work, of course, his plans always worked, but now he would have to put in effect the operation he had so hoped wouldn’t be necessary. He had hoped to do this all without more loss of life, and now there would have to be a sacrifice.

Because of poor, stupid, disloyal Peng. It would be different if Peng had betrayed him out of political conviction, but that was not the case. Peng was merely treacherous and ambitious, with the poisonous jealousy of small minds. He had set his paltry trap, just as Xao wanted, but the trap would need bait, and Xao saw no way for the bait to survive the springing of the trap.

Neal drank two of the beers in the bathtub and sipped on the last one while he packed Mr. Frazier’s country clothes. His big night out on the town was over, and in the morning they were going to haul him down to some bucolic commune and show him around. Or show him off. So what was on the farm? What’s on any farm? Farmers, of course, pigs, cows, chickens, manure … crops … fertilizer …

Fertilizer? Super chickenshit? Pendleton? Li Lan?

He worked on the beer and
Roderick Random
for another hour before falling asleep.

16

His breakfast arrived shortly before dawn, so whatever they were going to do with him, they were in a hurry to get started.

The coffee went right to his head, grabbed his hangover, and slapped it around a little. The throbbing stopped, and there was enough Catholic in him to feel better for having endured this act of penance. It’s hard to tell which an Irishman enjoys more, he mused, the high or the hangover.

Wu looked green around the edges when he came through the door, and his smile was somewhat constrained. He was decked out for the country in a white short-sleeved shirt and brown cotton trousers, although he was still wearing the stiff black leather business shoes. He carried a blue nylon windbreaker and a bright yellow nylon tube bag.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Some night.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You want some eggs?”

Wu made a face of horrified disgust.

“Coffee?”

“I’ll try some. But we must hurry.”

They hurried, and were down in the car in ten minutes. Neal was surprised to see Peng in the backseat. Wu got in front with the driver.

“Do you own a car?” Peng asked Neal, apparently as a form of greeting.

“No.”

“I thought all Americans owned their own cars.”

“And I thought all Chinese played Ping-Pong. Do you play Ping-Pong?”

“I am quite good at it.”

“Well, I am quite bad at driving.”

“You joke.”

“Okay, let me take the wheel.”

The driver put it in gear and pulled out of the parking lot before Peng could take Neal up on it. He eased onto South Renmin Road and headed south. The route took them through some industrial suburbs, past the airport, and quickly into the countryside.

“How long a drive do we have?” Neal asked.

“Perhaps three hours,” Wu answered automatically before looking deferentially at Peng.

“Three hours,” Peng said.

“Three hours it is,” Neal said. “Who brought the cards?”

“Perhaps,” said Peng, “you would do better to learn from the peasants than waste your time in decadent bourgeois pastimes.”

Man, you have some vocabulary for a guy who didn’t speak English just a day ago. And don’t call
me
bourgeois. Where I grew up, the bourgeoisie was anybody less than two months behind on the rent.

“Sure. What would you like me to learn?”

“What it means to labor for your food.”

You never worked for Joe Graham, pal.

“Do
you
know, Mr. Peng, what it means to labor for your food?”

“Both my parents were peasants. And yours?”

Wu jumped in. “Have you noticed the mulberry trees, Mr. Frazier? The silkworms feed—”

“I suppose your parents were intellectuals,” Peng said, pronouncing
intellectuals
as if the word had a bad smell.

“Sure. My mother graduated Summa Cum Stoned from Needle U., and my old man was an overnight success.”

“You are very rude, Mr. Carey.”

“Frazier. The name is Frazier.”

Peng hit him with one of those laser looks, the kind meant to burn right through you. Neal was discovering that people in China were either very calm or very angry, without a lot of middle range. He intended to push Mr. Peng into the very-angry zone. Very angry people make very stupid mistakes.

“Thank you for correcting me,” Peng said, “Mr. Frazier.”

“Don’t mention it. I just don’t want to get fucked up again by someone being careless.”

Wu started to do little hops in the front seat. He was trying to think of something to say to change the subject, but nothing very clever was coming to him.

“Pretty country,” Neal said as he turned his back on Peng and looked out the window.

The terrain was flat for a mile or so on each side of the narrow road. Low dikes, with tall, spindly mulberry trees, divided rice paddies into neat geometric patterns. In the background a range of hills rose from the plain. Their neat rows of terraces made them look almost like Central American pyramids overgrown with vegetation.

“Tea,” Wu explained. “Some of the very best tea in the world comes from the hills. Have you heard of Oolong tea?”

“I think so.”

“It is grown there.”

“Is that some of the stuff we used to trade you dope for?”

Neal watched Peng squirm a little.

“‘Dope’?” Wu asked.

“Opium.”

“Ah, yes.”

“You guys had quite a little jones—addiction—going there, didn’t you?”

Peng stared straight ahead as he said, “The problem of opium addiction—created by foreign imperialists—has been eradicated in the People’s Republic of China.”

“Yeah, well, if you just shoot them instead of shooting them
up . .
.”

“We treated them in much the same manner as we treated you after you had acquired the disease of addiction in the capitalist enclave of Hong Kong.”

“I didn’t think you had that many hotel rooms.”

“Oolong tea is exported all over the world,” Wu said.

The landscape was dotted with oval ponds about the size of large swimming pools.

“Fishponds,” Wu said. “An excellent source of protein.”

“No space can be wasted,” Peng elaborated.

This is certainly true, thought Neal. As far as he could see, every bit of ground was being used in some way. Most of the flat land was flooded for rice cultivation, and the hills were terraced to the very tops. Every hollow seemed to hold a fishpond, and vegetable patches clung to the ground in between.

“China has four times the population of the United States, but only one-third the arable land,” Wu said. “Much of China is desert or mountain. So we must make the best use of all the arable land. Sichuan Province is often called the Rice Bowl of China, because it is a fertile plain surrounded by high mountains. You are now in the middle of the Rice Bowl.”