The Concubine's Secret

10

Chang An Lo had not expected to see blood, not here, not now.

Alone with his own thoughts, he had been taking pleasure in the long ride through the jungled mountains of Jinggang. His horse, a small and attentive mare, picked its way with skill along the rough tracks up towards the town of Zhandu. The air was heavy and humid, thick with insects and the sound of whirring wings, the temperature rising with each mile south. He brushed aside the thick undergrowth that stank of decay and rode at a gentle pace that satisfied both his horse and himself. Neither was in any hurry. Underfoot the trail was treacherous, as muddy and slippery as a monkey’s arse, so that time and again a hoof skidded from under them.

‘Calm your spirit, little one,’ he murmured to the horse.

He laid a hand on her muscular neck and clicked his tongue at her. Only once had he needed to dismount and lead her off the track, down into the dense vegetation of a steep hollow shrouded in mist. She had made no sound but stood silently at his side, ears laid back, his grip steady on her mane while a troop of riders passed by. They might be Red Army soldiers but Chang took no chances. This was bandit country.

It was on the dirt road just outside the mountain stronghold of Zhandu that he reined his horse to a halt. A fork-shaped wooden frame had been driven into the ground at the side of the road and a man lashed to it with rawhide thongs. He was naked above the waist and his head hung down, eyes closed as if he had dozed off, bored by the enforced inactivity and the unrelenting glare of the sun. But Chang knew he wasn’t asleep. Flies had settled in a black iridescent crust that moved like a spill of oil over the man’s chest.

How long he’d hung there as a warning to other Red Army deserters before he died was impossible to tell, but the three wounds in his chest where sharp-pointed suo-biao had been thrust in must have put a welcome end to his agonies.

Chang breathed deeply to still the rising tide of anger, and commended the worthless soldier’s spirit to his ancestors. Up here in the mountains the gods were close, almost visible in the mists, their voices echoing in the bamboo forests. When a man’s time came, this was a good place to die. He bowed his head to the dead soldier, picked up the reins and heeled the young mare onward into the town.

The main street of Zhandu was cobbled and busy. Along it rolled a cart laden with boulders among which scuttled lizards, shiny yellow like leaves. As Chang rode past, the stink of the two oxen hauling it drew clouds of flies to their moist muzzles, while the rumble of the wooden wheels sounded like thunder in his ears. He had grown too accustomed to silence.

The small town had been carved out of the mountain’s rock face and its people fought a daily battle with the jungle for possession of the surrounding land. Precious crops of rice and papaya tumbled over terraces in splashes of vivid green, in sharp contrast to the more sombre hues of the jungle that encircled them. Its hot breath scorched their young shoots.

The houses were single storey, constructed of wood and bamboo with grey clay tiles on the roofs, a bustling, jostling jumble of them clustered around the cobbled streets. A clutch of rickshaws trundled past Chang, the pullers sweating under their wide coolie hats and glancing with interest at the stranger on the horse. Chang ignored them. It was always the same when he entered a new town, or tasted a dish that was unfamiliar to him; that sharp tug under his ribs, as if someone were trying to pull out his liver. He knew what it was.

It’s you, my love, my fox girl. You. Your small fist inside me, giving me no peace.

Anything new, he felt the need to show her. To let her see the elements of China she didn’t know. To watch her tawny eyes widen, her fanqui nose wrinkle up in delight at the sight of the wild, sweeping curves of the roof lines, at the carvings of gods leering out from the beams, the fretwork painted a gaudy scarlet and gold. Everything in the south of China was brighter, more elaborate, fiercer than anywhere else, and he longed to see it through her eyes.

Abruptly he sat straighter in the saddle and surprised his horse with a sudden jab of heel. His loose black tunic clung to his back with sweat and he pushed the images of her out of his mind, closed his eyes to her full warm lips. Such desire weakened him. But he could not stop her laughter, like the song of a river, flowing into his head and making his heart float.

Chang dismounted at the stone water trough. He tossed a coin to one of the bristle-haired street urchins to hold the reins and watch over his horse. He doused his head under the water pump, hitched his saddlebag over one shoulder and moved away down the street.

A barber was wielding his razor with grinning delight over the jaw of a customer on a stool outside his shop, and next to him a storyteller’s booth was keeping them both entertained with tales of a rat king. Chang liked this town. The feel of it was… settling. He imagined staying here. His fears that it would be in turmoil were groundless; it was clearly more robust than he’d expected. He walked with a smooth, easy stride, not disturbing the hum of workers and traders that ebbed and flowed around him. He had learned that the way you walk can make you visible or invisible, whichever you chose.

Today he was invisible.

‘Your fingers grow as clumsy as an old woman’s, my friend.’

The shoemaker was middle-aged. He was working in the shade on a bamboo seat outside his shop, engrossed in sewing a long strip of leather with exquisitely intricate stitches. His fingers were figuring in fine detail a scene of a snake coiled round a monkey and, at the end of the strip, a lion waited patiently with open jaws. The shoemaker looked up from under his wide-brimmed hat woven from bamboo leaves, and for no more than a second his sharp black eyes were taken by surprise. They gleamed with pleasure as he peered at the figure against the sun, but then his long-boned face drooped into a frown.

‘Chang An Lo, you piece of dog meat, where have you been all this time? And to what does this worthless town owe the honour of a visit from one of our leader’s trusted servants?’

‘It is not this worthless dungheap of a place I come to see. It is you, Hu Tai-wai, I need to speak with.’ In a movement as silky and silent as a cat’s, he crouched down on a patch of dirt next to the shoemaker and lifted the tail of the leather strip, running it through his fingers. ‘I hope I find my good friend in fine health.’

The needle resumed its work. ‘I am well.’

‘And your family too? The honourable Yi-ling and the beautiful Si-qi?’

The lines of the man’s face softened. ‘My wife will be overjoyed to welcome you to our humble house. She has not seen you for two years and berates me that you stay away so long. She blames me.’

Chang laughed softly. ‘A wife blames a husband for everything, from a plague of rats in the paddies to the loss of an elegantly painted fingernail while cooking his meal.’

Hu Tai-wai grinned and treated Chang to a long, affectionate inspection, taking in the state of his clothes and the stillness of his eyes. ‘And what do you know of wives, my friend?’

‘Nothing, thank the gods.’

But his voice must have betrayed him because the shoemaker didn’t laugh. For a while neither spoke but the silence lay comfortably between them while they observed the needle flying in and out of the leather as if it had a life of its own. A woman with pox scars shuffled past in the street, a yoke balanced across her drooping shoulders, cutting into her flesh. In each of the two buckets that dangled from it squirmed a black piglet, both squealing as piercingly as if someone had stepped on the toes of the gods. The heat and the noise lay heavy on Chang, and he leaned back against the wall behind him.

‘The town has recovered?’

Hu Tai-wai turned and studied him intently. ‘From the honour of Mao Tse Tung’s visit, you mean? You’ve seen the dead soldier?’

Chang nodded.

Hu Tai-wai sighed and Chang felt the weight of it. ‘There were more of them.’ The shoemaker gazed out in the direction of the wooden frame, hidden from their sight by a brightly decorated tearoom. ‘We took them down but one had to remain.’

‘A warning to other soldiers who think of deserting the Red Army. Yes, Mao Tse Tung insists on it. But it is an army of peasants who cling to the belief that Mao will bring about the redistribution of land throughout China. That’s why they fight for him. They long to own the fields they work, fields they want to pass on to their children and their children’s children. When they discover that our Great and Wise Leader is more interested in power than in people, they try to return to their villages to harvest their crops but…’ Chang silenced his tongue. Let his heart bleed in private. ‘Was he here long?’

Though seated, the shoemaker gave a deep bow over the leather work on his lap. ‘Yes, Mao was here long enough.’

Chang glanced at the guarded face and murmured, ‘Tell me, my friend.’

Hu Tai-wai resumed his stitching, meticulously outlining the twitching tail of the dying monkey. ‘He stayed here a month.’ His voice was low. ‘A section of his army camped outside on the terraces, spoiling our crops, but the men had nothing to do while their leader lazed in the best house in town, so they drank maotai and swaggered through the streets. They scared the girls and took whatever they wanted from the shops.’

Chang hissed through his teeth. ‘Mao Tse Tung was a schoolteacher. He is not a military man and does not know how to control an army.’

‘No, unlike Zhu. With Zhu in command, that army was disciplined. ’

‘But Mao stole Zhu’s army from him. He humiliated Zhu and lied to Communist Party Headquarters in Shanghai. You have to admit, old shoemaker, our leader is clever. His lust for power is so great and his ways so devious, he may yet conquer China.’

Hu Tai-wai grunted.

‘Was his latest wife, Gui-yuan, with him?’ Chang asked.

‘Yes, she was. As delicate as a morning flower. Together they took over the grandest and biggest house in Zhandu, spent each day in bed supping rich stewed beef and drinking milk.’ Hu Tai-wai abruptly snapped his thread with disgust. ‘Who in their right mind drinks milk? Milk is only for babies.’

Chang smiled. ‘In the West I believe everyone drinks milk.’

‘Then they are sicker in the head than I thought.’

Chang chuckled. ‘They say it is good for you.’ He had a moment’s flash of a cup at his lips. The unpleasant fatty taste of milk in his mouth. A gentle fanqui voice telling him, ‘Drink.’ For her, he drank.

‘It is better,’ he told the older man, ‘when Mao travels with his wife. Better for the towns he stays in.’

‘Why better? She was an expense to us each day she was here, demanding the best of everything.’

‘Even so, it is better.’ He stared at a young woman sweeping the doorstep of the rope seller’s shop on the opposite side of the road. Her hair was long and braided prettily. ‘It is better for the town’s girls,’ he said.

‘I’d heard rumours,’ Hu Tai-wai scowled, his thick eyebrows swooping together in a black line. ‘I kept Si-qi locked in the house.’

‘A wise decision.’

‘So.’ Hu Tai-wai jabbed his needle into a scrap of leather that was tied round his wrist and left it there. ‘Tell me, whelp of the wind, why has the Chinese Communist Party sent one of their best code breakers to the lazy town of Zhandu?’

‘No one knows I am here.’

‘Ah.’

‘I have come to speak with you in private.’

‘About what?’

‘The Russians.’

Hu Tai-wai gave him a slow, amused smile. ‘Then you are a fool. You’re too late, my young friend. The years when I was an adviser and negotiator with the Russians, the bearded ones, are long gone. You know I gave it up. Now I am just a poor country cobbler.’ His black eyes glittered, the lines around his mouth contented in the sunshine. ‘I value my life and my family too much. With Mao, as with Josef Stalin, that other power-crazed vozhd, you never know when he will tire of you. You blink and the next thing you know your head is raised on the point of a stick.’

‘But you’ve been to Soviet Russia.’

‘Many times.’

‘I fear we all dance to the tune of roubles now. So tell me about them, Hu Tai-wai. Tell me what I must prepare for.’

Hu Tai-wai’s house was modest. Nothing like the elegant home Chang recalled that he used to possess in Canton, with its numerous courtyards and an abundance of jade and ancient carved furniture that had once belonged to his father and his father’s father. Here everything was plain, sturdy and adequate for a shoemaker’s family. Only in the hallway a shrine to his ancestors boasted of what once had been. Pearls and gold adorned the paintings of his parents and his grandparents. Silver platters offered up carefully cooked slices of veal and dolphin along with colourful fruits and sweetmeats. On a marble stand an engraved glass goblet, so fine it was barely there, contained thick ruby wine.

Chang experienced a tug of envy when he set eyes on the shrine, and a spill of guilt flowed that he had created nothing similar for his own dead family. He dipped his hand into an onyx dish of azalea petals and sprinkled them over a bowl of pomegranates and mangoes, murmuring words that bound him to his father’s spirit. He lit an incense burner and watched the fragrant smoke coil up in a thin wisp of faith.

Communism decried faith. Just like it decried the individual. It was designed to train the human mind to produce a new and improved version of man. That was the future task of Communism and that was the battle that Chang was committed to. He loved China with all his soul and was convinced that Communism was the only way forward for his country. He believed its ideals could bring peace and equality to an unjust society in which fathers were forced to decide which child to sell in order to feed the others. At the same time glossy fat overlords bathed in goats’ milk and burdened their tenants with land rents that crippled their backs and shortened their lives.

Chang gazed at the flame in the burner. His black eyes swallowed its fragile flicker and he felt the familiar lick of rage in his gut flare alongside it. It was a fire he fought to control, but time and again it blazed unchecked, beyond his reach. Scorching him.

‘Chang An Lo, you bring light to our humble home and joy to my unworthy heart.’

Chang bowed low to Yi-ling, wife of the shoemaker. ‘It is an honour and a pleasure to see you again. I have travelled far and your home is as always a bed of rose petals for my weary bones.’

He bowed again to emphasise his regard for her. He was always tongue-tied and awkward in her presence, uncertain of how to express his gratitude to this woman. She was broad-hipped and broad-cheeked, with a high forehead, but it was the warmth in her eyes that made her beautiful. He would not presume to guess her age, but she was old enough to be his mother and kind enough to have taken him into her home during that desperate time when his parents were beheaded in Peking.

Yet it was Yi-ling’s husband, Hu Tai-wai, who widened his world. He was the one who had introduced the young Chang, son of a court adviser to the Empress of China, to the ideals and aims of Karl Marx and Communism; the very reverse of all he had previously been exposed to. But Chang had not stayed long, unwilling to endanger their lives by association with him. So he had moved on and that had become the recurring pattern of his life, but a part of his heart had always remained in this woman’s pocket.

She poured tea for him now into small, handle-less cups. ‘The gods have kept you safe. I thank them for that and will take a gift to the temple.’

‘They have been kind to you too. I have never seen Hu Tai-wai so fat and relaxed. He sits out front there at his work, as contented as a cat in the sun.’

She smiled. ‘I wish I could say the same for you, Chang An Lo.’

‘Do I look so bad?’

‘Yes. Like something a dog has spat out.’

‘Then I’ll take a bath, if I may.’

‘You’re welcome. But that’s not what I meant. I was looking only in your eyes, and what I see there tears at my heart.’

Chang lowered his gaze, sipped his tea and for a moment silence settled in the small, humid room, where the air moved sluggishly and reluctantly each time they spoke. Eventually Chang raised his eyes and they both knew that part of their conversation was over.

‘How is Si-qi?’ he asked.

‘My daughter is well.’ Yi-ling’s face lit up, as if the sun had rolled over it. Her eyes met his, intent and hopeful, and instantly he realised what plans blossomed behind them. Si-qi was sixteen, of marriageable age.

‘Go,’ she said and flicked a delicate hand to urge him on his way. ‘Go and speak to her. She’s in the courtyard.’

He stood and bowed with respect. She snorted gleefully.

‘Before I go, Yi-ling, I would like to give you a gift.’

Her thin straight eyebrows rose and she brushed at her black skirt uncomfortably. ‘That is not necessary, Chang An Lo.’

‘I think it is.’

He opened his leather saddlebag and removed something bundled up in an old shirt. He held it out to her. She rose to her feet and accepted it, but when she felt its weight, her smile grew full of curiosity and she unwrapped the gift.

‘Chang An Lo,’ she whispered. Her breath shuddered.

In her hand lay a gun.

‘Yi-ling, I know that your husband refuses to own a firearm any more because he says he is finished with violence. But I fear violence has not yet finished with him, nor with China, so I want you to have -’

Her eyes darted to the door, but Hu Tai-wai was still outside with his leather and needles. Deftly she rewrapped the pistol and slid it into the embroidery workbox beside her chair.

He stepped nearer to her. ‘This is just between us,’ he said. ‘For you.’

She nodded and for the first time in his life she leaned close, smelling of sandalwood, and kissed his cheek. An intense little brush of her dry lips.

‘And for Si-qi,’ she breathed.

Si-qi was tall, with long skinny legs and one wooden foot. But it was hard even to notice her foot because her face drew men’s eyes the way a pot of honey draws bears. Whereas her mother’s face was broad, hers was slender and delicate with skin pale as fresh cream and eyes that were soft and patient. She was wearing a pale blue dress and was seated on a bench under a fig tree, her dark head bent over sheets of paper.

At the sight of Chang she started to cry.

He bowed a greeting to her. ‘No tears, my beautiful Si-qi, look what I have brought you.’ He laughed and took out a book from his saddlebag. ‘It’s to improve your English.’

Each time he’d visited Hu Tai-wai during the years spent in Canton, he had laboured diligently on teaching Si-qi to speak English. Without a strong foot, lost as a baby to a snakebite, her choice of work would be limited and neither he nor her father wanted her to be dependent on a husband. So their plan was that she would become an interpreter. She was quick; her mind retentive, eager to learn. Though sometimes he wondered if she was doing it for herself… or for him.

‘Xie xie,’ she said shyly. ‘Thank you. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.’ Her eyes shone with pleasure and he wished he’d brought her more than one book.

‘It’s about a boy who is brought up in the jungle by wolves.’

She slid a glance at him under her long black lashes. ‘Is that what you feel happened to you? Brought up in our household by Communist wolves?’ She laughed and something about the sound of it shortened his breath.

‘If your parents’ house was a jungle, then you were always the golden flower that enchanted us all with your perfume.’

She laughed again, delighted, swaying her long hair in a luxurious ripple of velvet, and opened the book. He sat down beside her and together they began to read, word by word, page by page, and all the time he was aware of the nearness of her, the softness of her, and what a perfect wife she would make for him.

Only once did she turn to him and enquire in a whisper, ‘Have you news of my brother, Biao?’

‘No. None.’

Her eyes clouded with disappointment and she returned to the book.

A flicker of movement inside his mind. That was all. As though Kaa, the snake, had slid off the pages, silent and stealthy. Chang raised his head, listening.

‘What is it?’ Si-qi asked softly.

He shook his head, attentive to every sound. The sky was leaking colours on to the roofs, reds and yellows and secretive misty purples. The day was changing, preparing for evening, insects thickening the air, strange harrowing sounds rising like ghost-spirits from the jungle.

Was that what he’d heard? That shift in the day?

Si-qi touched his hand, warm and weightless on his skin. ‘What is the…?’

But Chang was on his feet, saddlebag over his shoulder, and moving fast to the far end of the courtyard where a black wooden door would open on to a back alleyway. He turned the handle. It was locked. As he took two steps backwards, giving himself the impetus to spring to the ridge tiles on top of the wall, the door to the house burst open. Hu Tai-wai and Yi-ling were marched into the courtyard by a troop of five soldiers. The red band of Mao’s army was emblazoned on their sleeves.

‘Chang An Lo,’ their leader said firmly, but with unmistakable respect. ‘I apologise for disturbing you, but you are summoned to Guitan.’

‘Summoned by whom?’

‘By our Great Leader, Mao Tse Tung.’