Hour of the Rat (11 page)

“Sorry,” I say, because I know what it’s like to get dumped.

“She thinks he take her to America!” he bursts out. “That’s all she cares about, wanting to leave China and go to America. More opportunity there, she says. I say they have economic crisis, why you think more opportunity? I can have more freedom there, she tells me. Freedom for what? To do what? She doesn’t even know. It’s just a word.”

He slumps over his beer. “She thinks she can be a Wendi in the US, that’s all.”

Sleep her way to the top, in other words.

“Look,” I finally say, “if I find her, I’ll do what I can. I’ll tell
her you want to talk to her. But if she’s not coming back, she’s not coming back. Trust me. It’s better to let go.”

Yeah, look at me being all “If you love something, set it free!” I’d still rather hunt it down and kill it, you know? But I’m trying.

S
O IT IS THAT
Mom, Andy, and me end up the next day at the Yangshuo Ancient Village Artist Retreat Inn.

I pitched it to them like this: “How would you guys feel about moving to a place that’s more out in the country? It’s, like, this converted farmhouse. In the middle of some rice paddies and … stuff.”

“Like where we were today?” my mom asked Andy. “With that big banyan tree?”

Andy seemed to consider. Then he nodded slowly. “The countryside is much more peaceful.”

A Yangshuo taxi takes us there, after the driver has sworn that he knows the place and still gets lost a few times, bumping over axle-busting dirt roads where the ruts are almost as jagged as the crazy mountains surrounding us. We go through what definitely looks like an old village: blond and grey bricks, tiled roofs in various stages of collapse, a few open-air stalls selling bottled drinks and snacks, a “farmers’ restaurant” advertising beer fish, a ragged basketball hoop where a couple of would-be Yao Mings practice their jump shots. For a while we get stuck behind a farm tractor called a “mosquito” whose engine sounds like a banging hammer on
a sheet of tin, until at last it turns off into a rice-paddy path and we continue on.

“
Women daole!
” the cabbie says proudly. We’ve arrived.

If this is the Ancient Village, I figure we’re in the suburbs. There’s a tumbledown clump of houses, scattered clotheslines, a woman leading some kind of cow—or an ox, or a water buffalo, like I know the difference—and a baby one of the same variety down the rutted path, copper bells around their necks. Beyond that, rice paddies, surrounded by magician’s-hat mountains.

Our cab pulls in to a gravel drive, leading to a complex that might have been a rich peasant’s farm once. Maybe even a landlord’s.

Several buildings look like they’ve been restored: a central hall with a Qing-dynasty roof that has the swooping angles of a fishhook, flanked by plain lower wings. Mountain bikes lean up against a railing and a big tree in a courtyard out front. A half dozen Westerners wearing yoga pants hold wooden staffs and do some mutant tai chi routine there. Another group cluster around a potter’s wheel. Several more sit at a rustic wooden table with ink brushes, watching a Chinese dude with chin whiskers and long straight hair demonstrate how to draw bamboo. I swear I spot some tie-dye.

“Oh, how cute!” my mom says.

I’m ready to slit my wrists, and we haven’t even checked in yet.

“W
ELCOME TO
Y
ANGSHUO
A
NCIENT
Village Artist Retreat Inn.”

The person behind the minimal counter is a young Chinese woman—I’d say girl, but she’s probably older than she looks. Her name is Heather, according to her name tag, and when I go up to check my mom and me in, she’s texting someone on her cell.

“If you want to rent bicycles, go on Yulong River for rafting, take painting class, study Chinese cooking, all other activities, I can arrange for you,” she says after handing me back our passports.

“Great. Thanks.”

What I really want to do is pull out my photo of Jason and talk to her about it, but I figure I’d better get Mom and Andy settled weaving baskets or whatever before I start playing Nancy Drew.

The wings are mostly two stories high, built of yellow brick, curved charcoal roof tiles, and old wooden doors and windows. We’re on the second floor, in two rooms. They’re both pretty big, with double beds and, in one, an extra twin.

“Look,” I say to my mom, “if you want to share a room with Andy, I mean, that’s fine.”

My mom blushes a little. “I don’t know if we’re really at that point yet.”

Great. The one time I want her to sleep with some weirdo and she’s getting all Purity Ring on me.

S
O AFTER LUNCH AT
the local “farmers’ restaurant” (including beer fish, because Andy’s on a mission to find the best beer fish in Greater Yangshuo), Mom and Andy decide they want to try the mutant tai chi class. “Wow, great,” I say. “You guys go ahead. I’m going to just hang out for a while.”

What I do is, I go up to the front desk. Heather sits behind the counter, going over receipts.

“Is Alice around?”

“She comes later today.”

“Oh.” Thinking, Okay, on to this Russell guy, then.

“I can help you, though. You want to maybe take river raft?”

“Actually, I’m looking for a guy named Russell. He’s … he’s the friend of a friend of mine.”

“Hmmm. A foreigner? Maybe British?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

“I think he is working on art space today.”

“Great! So where is that?”

Turns out the art space, whatever that is, is a couple rice paddies and a mountain over from the Ancient Village Artist Retreat. “Can I walk there?” I ask.

“Sure! Maybe take you a little while.”

“How long?”

“Maybe … three-quarters hour?”

What I end up doing is renting a mountain bike.

It takes me a while to get the hang of it—I haven’t ridden a bike for fun in years. Lately it’s all been about PT, strengthening the fucked-up leg, and my one leg is still way weaker than the other, and it doesn’t take long for it to start hurting. But I keep riding, on rutted dirt paths that run along rice paddies tucked among the hills, and I can almost forget the pain, part of the time. It’s so beautiful out here that it comes over me like a rush—the crazy mountains, the deep blue sky, the air that smells like … well,
air
, instead of exhaust and chemicals.

I pedal down the dirt road that winds among the fields, through another tiny village, following the directions the girl gave me. It’s cool out but I’m sweating like crazy. The path turns abruptly to the right, through a narrow pass, the mountains rising on either side of me, and it’s so quiet, I think, this can’t be China. No one out here but me and the wind.

I come out the other side to more fields, pedal a little further, past a cluster of ramshackle farm buildings, and then I see it.

If this isn’t the art space, then I don’t know bad contemporary art. Or, I’ve entered some weird parallel-universe China where it’s normal to see a huge deconstructed farmhouse surrounded by some crazy Zen garden with giant
sculptures made out of crushed soda cans out in the middle of a rice paddy.

The house itself looks like pictures I’ve seen of traditional wooden buildings in southern China, except it’s like the whole thing was taken apart and buffed and polished and put back together again. It’s as big as a barn, with a steep shingled roof, a carved door and window frames. There are a few Chinese workers carrying buckets of stones and two-by-fours, a young European woman sitting on the stoop wearing a gauzy scarf and, I swear, a beret, smoking a cigarette. Maybe she’s supervising.

I pedal up to the zigzag wooden walkway, which is framed by smooth stones, and get off the bike. And practically fall over, my leg spasms so bad. I lean my bike against a tree and limp up the path. I wish I had a Percocet. Or at least a beer.

The bottom floor of the house is open in the middle. Maybe it was originally a barn. I hear hammering, an electric drill.

“
Ni hao
,” I say to the European woman.

Her eyes drift up in my direction, like it’s almost too much effort to raise her head.

“I’m looking for Russell,” I say in English.

“Inside.” She indicates with a languid wave of her cigarette.

All righty, then.

Inside, it’s light and airy and smells like sawdust. The walls and floors are mostly blond wood, with one end framed in painted white wallboard. An exhibition space, I figure. On the other end, one of the Chinese guys is working on a wooden staircase to the second floor. And back in the corner, there’s a slight white guy crouched by a workbench, bolting some piece of electronic equipment onto a shelf built into the wall. He straightens up, retrieves an electric drill from the workbench.

Interesting thing about Russell. He’s limping. As I hobble closer, I see that he has a bandage wrapped around his right hand.

“Hey, Russell,” I say. “Can I talk to you a sec?”

He looks up. He’s got sandy brown hair, already receding, a bony face, a prominent Adam’s apple. Which bobbles up and down as he gets a look at me.

He doesn’t say a word. He drops the drill and bolts, pushes past me and heads for the exit.

I don’t say anything either. I take off after him.

Okay, I’m pretty stupid. Here’s a guy I’m reasonably sure attacked me, I don’t have any weapons, and it’s not like I’m some kind of action hero.

On the other hand, he’s freaked out enough by me to run, which feels oddly cool.

I get to the double doors, see him fleeing back the way I came. “Hey!” I call out. “Hey, I just want—”

He keeps running.

I head for my bike, passing the European woman, who hasn’t moved and doesn’t bother to. Just sits there, smoking her cigarette.

“Nice meeting you, too,” I mutter. I haul my sore ass up onto the bike seat and start pedaling.

Russell has a pretty good head start on me, and I’m not that fast on a bike. But he has bruised balls and a bad foot, and maybe he’s one of those Westerners who come to China and think it’s so cool that you can smoke anywhere you feel like it, because he’s in crappy shape and it doesn’t take long for him to tire. We’re on the path going through the pass that leads back to the Ancient Village, and if he had any sense, he’d run off the road, because even with a mountain bike I’m not going to be able to follow him if he hoofs it up the hill. But he’s not thinking clearly, I guess, because he just runs on the path like it’s a train track and he can’t get off it.

When I’m almost on top of him, we pull a hard left out of the pass and into the next patch of rice paddies and farms, and all of
a sudden there’s this peasant girl wearing a T-shirt that says
TOO SEXY
! outlined in rhinestones, driving two of those cow/water-buffalo things, a gigantic one and a half-grown version. And the baby one sees the two of us hauling ass in its direction and just loses its shit and charges at us.

“Fuck!” I yell, swerving around it, barely keeping my balance.

Russell isn’t so lucky. I think my front wheel clips his heel, but even if it doesn’t, he’s already windmilling his arms, stumbling forward as though he’s going to take off into the air like some awkward fledgling bird.

Instead he does a header off the path, crying out in a shriek of pain as he lands hard in the ditch.

I hop off my bike, letting it fall on the side of the road.

“Oh, sorry!” the girl says, her hand to her mouth. “So sorry!”

“Not your fault,” I say in Chinese.

Russell rolls over onto his back, pulls one leg to his chest, moaning.

“Can I help?” the girl asks, whipping out what I’m pretty sure is a
shanzhai
iPhone, a counterfeit.

“
Mei wenti
,” I assure her. “Your
xiaoniu
is running away.”

“
Aiya!
” And she hustles down the path, trying to catch up to her calf.

Meanwhile the big cow stands in the middle of the road staring at me with its placid brown eyes.

“Hey,” I say to Russell, who still lies flat on his back, pressing his thigh into his chest. “You okay?”

“What the fuck do you care?” he says between clenched teeth.

“Hello? You’re the one who attacked
me
. What the fuck’s your problem anyway?”

I scoot down into the ditch next to him. He backs up to get away from me, his shoulders pushing into the dirt and gravel. But aside from whatever’s going on with his leg, he’s holding
his left arm against his chest, like he’s splinting it, and as I get closer, I see that his wrist has already started to swell.

“Get the fuck away from me!”

“Fine.” I shrug. “You wanna lie in the ditch with the cow, go for it. Seriously, does your paranoia go to eleven? If this is because I was asking questions about … about David—”

“He said they’d send people,” he spits.

“Who’s ‘they’?”

His face twists. “You think I’m stupid?”

Well, yeah, but I’m not going to say that.

“Look, the only ‘they’ who sent me is David’s family. They’re worried about him.”

That’s when he reaches behind his hip with his good hand. I back away. Especially when I see that he’s reached for a knife. It may be a cheap Chinese knockoff of a Ka-Bar that he fumbles out of its sheath, but it looks sharp enough to do some damage.