Dragon Dance Read online

  “Grateful? Is that what you feel?”

  “Yes. I’m really grateful.”

  A hot current surged through Martine’s body, starting in her stomach and finishing behind her eyes. “In that case this conversation is over. Forget I ever said anything.”

  She slammed down the phone. When it started ringing again, she pulled out the jack. She was still fuming half an hour later when she walked into the karate dojo. Saya Miki, the tall cop, glanced at her curiously.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Man trouble again?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Maybe you should do like me and get a dog.”

  “Maybe I will,” replied Martine, yanking off her T-shirt. “What breed do you recommend?”

  Peng Yuan was in high spirits. It wasn’t often that he could take time off from his work at the institute. Still rarer was the opportunity to enjoy some of the country’s finest tourist spots in the company of a beautiful woman. The people in the guest house looked at him in envy when he came down from the bedroom with Ling-Mei following after him dutifully and correctly. She was tall and elegant, her hair as fine as silk, her eyes shining with devotion, and she showed everyone that Peng Yuan was a man of taste, just as the chauffeur-driven Mercedes outside showed that he was a man of power.

  The benefits of success were such that they allowed men to develop interests that would otherwise have remained hidden. Peng Yuan had become a connoisseur of women late in life. In his younger days he had been shy, and too wrapped up in academic pursuits to waste time on female company. At the age of twenty-two he had married a fellow student, the daughter of a lecturer at Beijing University. Even then she had not been attractive—extremely unattractive in fact, with her squashed-up face and foul-smelling breath—but that hadn’t mattered to Peng Yuan. His wife had satisfied his sexual needs in the same way as she had satisfied his stomach—quickly and efficiently, allowing him to focus his energies on his career. At that stage of his life he had never been close to a beautiful woman, let alone spoken to one or touched one.

  [133] After ten years of marriage Peng Yuan’s wife was sent to teach political theory at a junior school near the Vietnamese border. Peng Yuan wasn’t sorry to see her go. Her father had been dismissed after a series of ideological blunders, and anyway she had failed to provide him with a son. Instead there was a daughter who was the exact image of her mother—the same piggy little eyes, the same stubby legs, even the same rancid breath. For years Peng Yuan had rarely thought about women at all. Sometimes, close friends from the institute would return from overseas trips with forbidden videotapes, and they would watch them in the dead of night in the institute’s screening room. That was a dangerous, thrilling activity. In those days betrayal would have meant the labor camp, perhaps even the death sentence. “Moral deviation,” “bourgeois decadence”—these were crimes for which every year tens of thousands of men and women were hauled into sports stadiums and executed before jeering crowds. They even made your family pay for the bullet, just as with common thieves. But the images of these women—American, Japanese, European, black and white, in every type of position—were extraordinarily addictive. They stayed in your brain. They were there when you closed your eyes at night, or when you stared blankly into your computer screen. Peng Yuan soon started his own collection, and showed it to promising students whose loyalty he wanted to strengthen.

  It was only after Peng Yuan had developed his connection with the old general that he felt secure enough to indulge himself with real women. Several attractive women came to work at the institute, and it wasn’t difficult to persuade them to do the same as the women in the videotapes. All he had to do was offer promotions, better housing allowances, or job recommendations for their husbands. From there Peng Yuan expanded his interests to students, and actresses like Ling-Mei. Some of them he set up as mistresses, living in apartments paid for with money diverted from the institute’s central budget. In the old days this would have been doubly dangerous, but with the old man’s influence behind him Peng Yuan felt safe enough.

  Ling-Mei was Peng Yuan’s current favorite. Her skin was flawless, like the finest satin. Her breasts were high and heavy, and she had the poise of a trained actress. In her presence, Peng Yuan felt proud, strong, totally at ease. She held the door of the Mercedes open for him, and he stepped inside. In truth he wasn’t all that interested in the schedule of tourist locations she had prepared, but it made a change from the daily routine at the institute. It was the old general’s son who had suggested that Peng Yuan take a holiday in the mountains. He had even arranged for the car and chauffeur to be made available. That was the measure of Peng Yuan’s rise in the world. He had become the trusted associate of a national hero, the recipient of personal favors that he had never even asked for.

  [134] “Where are we going now?” he asked, running his fingers through Ling-Mei’s long flowing hair.

  She turned and patted him lightly on the upper thigh.

  “To the mountains. There is a famous place called the Dragon’s Door.”

  “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “It’s a crack in the mountain. You’re supposed to shout your dreams into it, and if you hear the echo it means they will come true. Isn’t that right, driver?”

  The driver nodded, eyes fixed on the road ahead. He was a local man in his mid-forties, possibly an ex-soldier. He rarely spoke, and when he did the accent was so heavy that Peng Yuan could barely understand a word. Peng Yuan gazed out the window at the people working in the fields—hundreds of them bent over in the sunshine, from young children to wizened old women. This hadn’t changed for two thousand years. Perhaps it would never change. Regardless of the regime or the ideology or the state of international relations, there would always be hundreds of millions of Chinese living and dying in places like this. There would always be the fields, the rice, the back-breaking work.

  The car left the fields behind and began to climb the winding road that led up the mountainside. Progress was slow as the road was broken and rutted. Gradually the terrain became rougher and wilder. There were beds of baked mud, dead trees with their roots in the air, gulleys of bare rock where the top-soil had been washed away in landslides. The people were different too, leaner and darker. There were children sitting at the side of the road, their sunken cheeks smeared with dirt and dazed looks in their eyes. When the car passed they turned their faces away, as if frightened to be seen. Enormous buzzards, the biggest Peng Yuan had ever seen, were swooping over the scrubby ground, casting dark shadows.

  “What happened here?” asked Peng Yuan, pointing at the blackened ruins of some huts. “It looks as if they were hit by an earthquake.”

  The driver made a low gurgling sound that was barely recognizable as a laugh. He muttered something incomprehensible underneath his breath, then swerved violently to avoid a deep crater in the center of the road.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said there was a kind of government earthquake,” said Ling-Mei, who had a good ear for the man’s accent.

  “What does that mean?”

  Ling-Mei shrugged. “I think it means trouble with party officials. The people here are very stubborn.”

  As they ground their way up the mountainside, they passed hundreds of burned-out huts. There were no animals, no crops. Peng Yuan couldn’t help [135] wondering how the people lived. There were grisly stories about what happened in these remote areas when food was short. In some villages, it was said, half the female population under the age of twelve would disappear during the winter months.

  “From here we have to walk,” said Ling-Mei, pointing to a pile of rubble that marked the end of the road. Again Peng Yuan was surprised at how well informed she was. She must have gone to great trouble to memorize the details of these tourists spots. It was another proof of her devotion to him.

  “How far is it?”

  “Not too far.”

  Peng Yuan was relieved to hear that. He was we
aring one of his best pairs of shoes, made of supple brown leather with little tassels. It would be a shame to scuff them on the sharp stones that littered the ground. Ling-Mei held the door open for him, and then they walked arm in arm along the path, the chauffeur following a couple of yards behind. At first Peng Yuan had felt rather inhibited in the man’s presence, but now he was used to it. He patted Ling-Mei on the buttocks and ran his fingers through her hair as if they were alone.

  They were quite high on the mountain now, well above the last of the burned-out shacks. Being so far away from the eyes of other human beings was a strange feeling, liberating and also disturbing. There was so much silence. The path narrowed until they had to force their way between the bushes. Peng Yuan gave a cry of anger as a bramble snagged the sleeve of his silk shirt. Fortunately he managed to free it without any damage.

  “We’re almost there,” said Ling-Mei, clutching his arm.

  The path emerged onto a plateau of bare rock split by a jagged fissure, about fifteen feet wide. It was hard to imagine that the place was any kind of tourist spot. It was harsh, empty, ugly. The buzzards had followed them up the mountain and were wheeling overhead. They were low enough for their claws to be visible, curling downward like grappling hooks.

  “What was the legend again?” asked Peng Yuan, taking out his camera.

  “You have to stand on that rock and shout your dreams into the crevice.” Ling-Mei was pointing to a rock right at the edge of the gorge.

  “Oh yes—then there’s supposed to be an echo.”

  “Yes, if you’re lucky there should be an echo.”

  “You go first. I’ll take a photo.”

  Ling-Mei giggled and tried to refuse, but Peng Yuan insisted. He wanted to hear her dream. The driver helped her scramble up onto the rock. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted out “Good marriage and long life!” Peng Yuan took a photo of her bending forward, buttocks in the air. A split second later a faint echo could be heard, then another, then another, as the sound waves bounced from side to side of the crevice.

  [136] “Now it’s your turn.”

  Peng Yuan walked up to the rock, then stopped. The problem was that he couldn’t decide what his dream should be. He wasn’t sure he had one any more. Everything he wanted was already within his grasp. Status, connections, women, expensive clothes and food—what else was there to dream of?

  “Go on,” said Ling-Mei. There was a surprisingly harsh tone to her voice, usually so soft and sensual.

  The driver gave Peng Yuan his large, rough hand. Peng Yuan mounted the rock and peered down. The crevice was dark, with sheer sides. Peng Yuan wondered how deep it was, and what lay at the bottom. He shivered, feeling a sudden compulsion to scramble back down from the rock and rush back to the car. But he couldn’t do that—Ling-Mei would take him for an old fool. So instead he bent forward and cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Victory to the Chinese people!” he shouted, without much conviction. He waited for the echo, but none came.

  “Let me try again,” he said, turning to face Ling-Mei. Strangely, though, she was ignoring him, walking back toward the path. What was the matter with the girl? Was she deliberately trying to offend him? She should have realized by now that Peng Yuan was not the kind of man who could be insulted lightly.

  “Come back here!” he yelled.

  She didn’t even turn her head. Peng Yuan let out a long sigh of anger. He held out his hand to the driver and hopped down from the rock. Except that his feet didn’t touch the ground. For some reason the driver was hugging him tightly, turning him around to face the crevice.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” growled Peng Yuan impatiently.

  The driver made the same gurgling sound he’d made in the car. He had a strange sense of humor, thought Peng Yuan. It wasn’t at all funny to be so close to the edge of the crevice, hanging over it, looking down ... and then rolling forward, clutching at the empty air, tumbling into the blackness, letting loose a yell that carried on bouncing between the crevice’s rocky sides long after Peng Yuan had crashed to the bottom and was no more.

  “Yaaah!”

  Peng Yuan never heard the echo, but the mountains heard it and the bushes heard it. The buzzards heard it too. They tilted their wings and descended in slow, lazy circles.

  THIRTEEN

  Martine watched as Nozawa crept along the verandah, opening the sliding doors one by one. He was dressed in a loose black kimono, with a silk cloth covering the lower half of his face. His eyes were bulging with tension, and in the middle of his forehead a single bead of sweat glistened in the moonlight.

  All the rooms were empty except the last, where a young geisha lay trussed up on the floor.

  “Help me,” she moaned, tossing her head from side to side.

  Nozawa darted into the room, then stopped just in time. The floor panel between them had dropped away to reveal a pit of writhing snakes. Then another floor panel swung open. Underneath was an array of steel spikes, the points dripping with poison. The geisha started giggling hysterically. Nozawa whirled around just as the doorway burst into flames and the floor panels on either side of him fell away.

  Trapped! No way out! But a huge leap took him clean over the geisha’s head. Then he ran up the pillar at the far end of the room, scuttled upside down across the ceiling, and somersaulted through the tiny window into the garden outside. Three monstrous soldiers with scowling red faces, long noses, and straggly yellow hair were waiting for him, muskets at the ready. Nozawa disarmed them with a hail of throwing stars. The soldiers roared in comical panic as the razor-sharp metal went slicing into windpipes and lopped off fingers and ears, spattering gouts of crimson blood over the paper screens. Then he finished them off at close quarters with flashing sword and whirling chain.

  With the bodies lying inert on the ground behind him, Nozawa pulled the black cloth from his mouth and picked up a shamisen leaning conveniently against a nearby barrel. He plinked out a scurry of notes, then the riff was [138] picked up by a chorus of saxophones and Nozawa launched into the first verse of “Born to Sweat,” his soulful lament for the unemployed.

  The screen went dead, and the real Nozawa turned to Martine.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “The picture quality is excellent.”

  “Of course! Softjoy Corporation uses the world’s finest imaging technology. That’s why we always ask them to make our games. No other company could do it.”

  They were sitting in Nozawa’s personal recording studio, a squat windowless building in Harajuku. Getting inside had been no easy matter. Martine had had to fight her way through the crush of fans surrounding the entrance, hoping for a glimpse of their hero. They would be lucky to get one, since Nozawa’s people were adept in the uses of decoy and disguise. The hooded figure in the back of the accelerating limo could be anybody.

  Nozawa was here to add the finishing touches to the soundtrack of the “National Regeneration” videogame. In a week’s time the new game would be in the shops, and in two weeks it would be heading the popularity rankings, as had all his previous games. People would be playing it on home consoles, in virtual reality pods in Softjoy’s high-tech amusement arcades, in handheld versions on trains, in a multiplayer version on the internet. Sales of five million units were expected in the first month. Nobody would be able to escape “National Regeneration.”

  Martine had spent the past hour watching the production team fiddle with the mix of “Born To Sweat,” replacing the saxes with an accordion, speeding up the shamisen solo, and drenching the vocal track in echo to give it a karaoke feel. Nozawa himself had favored the basic version, but Yamazaki, his chief producer, was not satisfied. And it was Yamazaki’s opinion that counted. Now they were taking a break while Yamazaki sat at the mixing desk with his headphones on, hands silently working the switches and dials.

  Martine glanced over at Shimizu, who was sitting on a table swinging his legs and looking totally out of pla
ce among the scruffy sound engineers and musicians.

  “When shall I start the interview?”

  “Start when you like. This is all on the record, nothing to hide.”

  Shimizu was always relentlessly upbeat, but today he sounded as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Very well,” said Martine, turning to Nozawa. “First of all, let me express my gratitude for your cooperation. I’m sure our readers will find your views extremely interesting.”

  Nozawa’s lips curled.

  “Interesting? That’s too weak, Meyer-san. I don’t want to be interesting, [139] like some little monkey riding a bicycle. I want to be taken seriously. I want this country to be taken seriously.”

  “You think you’re not being taken seriously at the moment?”

  “Of course not. The world is laughing at us. Foreigners buy our products and accept our money, but behind our backs they’re laughing. Do you know why they’re laughing?”

  “Please tell me,” said Martine, although she had a good idea what he was going to say.

  “Because we can’t defend ourselves, of course. A country that relies on another country for protection isn’t a real country. A country that has no pride in its own history isn’t a real country. It deserves to be laughed at!”

  “And this is why you want to scrap the US bases?”

  “It’s one big reason, but it’s not the only one. The fact is, we can’t rely on the Americans anyway. They are unpredictable and actually very dangerous. They believe that what is good for them must be good for all human beings everywhere. We Japanese don’t think like this. We believe that what is good for Japan is good for Japan only, not for others. Most of our economic problems come from obeying the Americans’ demands. This was a big mistake for us.”

  Martine nodded. It was a view she was hearing everywhere these days—from young and old, reactionaries, progressives, and moderates. And it wasn’t completely wrong.

  “American people should do things the American way, the French should do them the French way, and the Japanese should do them the Japanese way. This is best for everyone, I think.”