Bamboo and Blood (17 page)

“Her father called the Ministry to complain about you, and they told him to call me. We talked for a while, if you can call that research.
What if she was approached in New York? That could have some connection to what happened to her later.”

Sure thing, I thought. The long arm of New York. “There is no way to know what she was doing. The local security man only had a chance to follow her two or three times. He thought she might have been tailed by the locals. Nothing subtle, as far as I can tell. How many relays of people in blue scarves can there be, he asked me. Each time, she lost them for a while, but they picked her up again without much trouble because she went to the same place each time, that park. Going there she’d walk using a slightly different route; but each time she took the same cab home. He was sure it was the same cabdriver, a female. I thought that might be something, but it wasn’t. When I tracked the driver down, it turned out to be a young Pakistani woman whose father had sent her to the U.S. to go to school.”

Pak nodded. “A young Pakistani woman. Sure, there must be lots of them driving cabs in New York. At least she wasn’t a Jew. Tell me, please, O, that there are no Pakistani Jews.” He paused, turning this over in his mind. Then he went on. “This driver, she told you a story, I suppose.”

“She did. I got in her cab and told her to take me to one of the train stations. She said she was bored with school and started driving a cab. She was worried because her father was coming for a visit. If he found out she wasn’t in school, she said, he would drag her home. She didn’t want to go. Why not, I asked. Because he would arrange a marriage to a man who would treat her like dirt. He might beat her. What will you do, I asked. She turned around to look at me. ‘If he beats me? I’ll kill him.’”

“Maybe she was just making the whole thing up.”

“Nope. All you had to do was to look into her eyes. This was real. She wasn’t kidding.”

Pak took a last puff on his cigarette. “Get some sleep,” he said. “You should take up smoking again.” He pointed at my cigarette, floating in the soup bowl. “Might help your jet lag.”

“His name is Sohn and he’s from the party,” Pak said. The next morning, we were in my office, and Pak seemed a little ill at ease. It wasn’t unusual these days. All of us were that way—a little ill at ease all the time. Bad stories were coming in from the countryside. Here in the capital, people were disappearing from offices, food was scarce, heat was random, electricity was unpredictable and even when there was some, it didn’t last very long. No one pretended things weren’t bad, though we didn’t talk a lot about it. The question was whether we would get through it.

“Am I supposed to be impressed with his party status? Because I’ll tell you frankly, I’m not. Not these days. You know him, maybe?” As I spoke, Pak drummed his fingers on my desk. In better times, that would have meant he was impatient. Or in some cases, usually in the spring when it was possible to smell the earth again, that little gesture meant he was full of energy, ready to go for a long walk along the river. Now, more and more, he did it because he was nervous and depressed. “How much longer are we supposed to stand around and snap at flies?” I said. “He should have been here a half hour ago. I can’t wait all day. I have things to do.”

“Like what? That report you haven’t touched? Just relax, Inspector.” I almost laughed out loud—him telling me to relax. His fingers had settled into a slow, steady drumbeat, sort of funereal. I realized he might keep it up the rest of the week if I didn’t figure out some way to get him to move his hand. “Try not to antagonize him,” Pak said, and his fingers went
thrum thrum
. “You can annoy me all you want, but for him, I need you to sit quietly and listen to what he says. Let him throw his weight around.”
Thrum
.

“I’m losing track,” I said. “Who’s on top these days? I can’t keep score. Is the party up or down? Is the army the army of the party, or does the party emulate the military? Which is it this week? Why don’t you draw me a chart?”

“Forget that. This is no time to be choosing sides. Who knows where things will be in another six months.”

Six months, I thought. Long time. He must have been thinking the same thing. We just sat there for a minute or so, wondering.

“I’m not going to like him,” I said finally. “This Sohn character will rub me the wrong way, and you know how I react when that happens?” I’d just asked Pak if he knew the man. He’d heard me, but he hadn’t answered. I was getting a funny feeling about where this was headed. I didn’t need to look six months down the road to see trouble. It might arrive in only a few minutes.

“Let’s be clear, Inspector. Your personal evaluation of the man is at the bottom of my list of worries. Very near the bottom. I need you to let him say whatever he is going to say and then, without answering back or doing anything more than nodding politely, let him leave. Down the steps, out the door, good-bye Comrade Sohn. Got it? The phone call I received this morning from the Ministry said you were to be present when he showed up. You’re present. I’m just making a tiny addendum—behave.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I looked out my window. A car went by outside, and I listened to its tires on the snow. A cold, very gray day. The sound of a car slowly driving down an empty street. It was enough to put you to sleep, that and the drumbeat from the desk. I almost didn’t hear Pak. “… you’re staring off into space again. I don’t understand these mood swings of yours all of a sudden, Inspector.
Cut it out, will you? Things are bad enough without your constant moping.”

“What do you want from me? I don’t take to cheerful suffering.” I instantly wished I hadn’t said that. Pak’s life was worse than mine. The only suffering I had was watching other people driven to their knees.

Pak considered for a moment. His fingers went quiet, then resumed. “Not to repeat myself, but let Sohn do the talking. All you have to do is listen. That’s the sum total of what I need from you. Silence.” He picked up a pencil, which ended the problem of the drum. “Or am I asking too much?”

“So, you do know him. Is he the someone for whom you’re suddenly doing favors?” No response. “Alright, it’s not a problem. I’ll let him do the talking. I’ll be mute. I’ll be a stone. I’ll stare at his ears.”

“Don’t.” Pak looked alarmed. “Whatever happens, don’t do that.”

“Don’t stare? Why, will he disappear in a thunderclap? Who pushed me into this, anyway?” Silly question—it was fairly obvious by now that this man Sohn was behind it. “The Ministry has a whole roster of inspectors, a lot of them in the senior ranks. Good ratings, high marks in loyalty and performance. Why me?” Also a silly question.

“How should I know?”

I didn’t like the look that wasn’t on Pak’s face. “Ever since our visitor showed up, we’ve had nothing but trouble,” I said. “You think that has something to do with this party guy?”

“How should I know?”

“How should you know? You keep saying that. You know plenty that you don’t tell me. If you owe him something, that’s up to you to handle. Don’t drag me into it.” A horn sounded as a car pulled into our building’s driveway. I looked out the window. The car was black, and it had party plates. “It’s Sohn.”

“I need to be in my office,” Pak said, bouncing out of the chair and hurrying down the hall. A moment later he was back, with a tired smile around his eyes. “I just realized, he’ll be outside the gate for a while. The new guards are going to give him a hard time. He’ll show them his party ID and they’ll stare at it. There, see?” Pak pointed out my window. “One of them dropped it in the snow, and the other stepped on it.”

“Mind if I watch, too?”

“No. I don’t want him to look up and see you.” Pak stepped away from the window. “Actually, he shouldn’t see me, either. He’ll get out of the car”—a door slammed—“and start threatening them. Then he’ll demand to use the gate phone.”

The phone on Pak’s desk rang. Pak pressed a button and routed it into my office. He put the receiver carefully to his ear. “Yes, comrade. I’m happy to give them orders to let you in, but I don’t control them, as you know.” He listened, but not with any tension in his posture. “No, not at all; I’m not denying you entry. It’s just that I don’t control entry. They do. No, it wasn’t my idea to have it done that way. Who can I call to fix it? I can call the Ministry, but then they’ll have to call the army. That’s the new … yes, of course, I’ll be right down.” He hung up the phone. “The guards will back off when they see me, at least I hope so. Otherwise my feet will get cold in all that slush.”

It had started snowing again and was almost dark when I heard what sounded like a bear coming up the stairs. The door to Pak’s office slammed. There followed fifteen minutes of angry words and sharp barks. I leaned into the hall to hear better. Suddenly, Pak’s door flew open.

“There you are, Inspector.” He motioned to me, a slight warning. “Come in and sit down.” Pak walked back to his desk with that uneasy gait that meant he was going to tell me something I didn’t want to hear. “Close the door while you’re at it.”

I half expected the bear would be sitting across from Pak, but when I stepped into the office, the visitor’s chair was empty. Instead, in the far corner, a man lounged against the wall. If Pak wanted the door shut, it meant we were not going to have a conversation about the weather.

“Inspector.” Pak cleared his throat. “This is Comrade Sohn. He is from—”

“Never mind where I am from.” The man barked to clear his own throat and then coughed to make sure the job was done. His ears were exceedingly small and perfectly shaped. It was as if the old ones had been surgically removed, replaced by a new pair from a child, and pasted
to the side of his head, but slightly too low. On a woman, they might have looked good. Like shells. On him, it made you wonder if he was underdeveloped from the neck up. I tried not to stare. No wonder Pak had been so upset at the mention of ears.

“We can skip where he is from.” Pak indicated I was to sit in the vacant chair. “But I believe he has something to tell you.”

As far as I was concerned, Sohn had stepped off on the wrong foot. “I’m all ears,” I said. I cleared my throat, not to be left out.

The man looked closely at me, weighing whether I was going to be trouble. Then he grunted and glanced around the office. It wasn’t exactly disdain on his face, but he managed to convey that he was not usually to be found in this type of unimportant setting. Maybe that’s why he was standing, to make clear he didn’t feel completely comfortable in such a place. “Normally, our conversation wouldn’t be held in offices like this,” he said at last and coughed. “Normally, your supervisor would have nothing to do with it. Normally”—he paused to emphasize how abnormal everything was—“I would just borrow you for a while. You’d be put on leave from your duties, and then when everything was done, you’d drop back into this place. If all went well, you wouldn’t drop back from too great a height.” He stopped to make sure he had my attention. He did. “But your Minister has recently made clear he doesn’t want his people disappearing like that these days. ‘Too disruptive,’ he complains. Your Minister has a reputation for complaining overmuch sometimes, did you know that?” The little ears waited for either of us to respond, but we knew enough not to.

“Naturally.” Sohn barked twice and then continued, “Things being what they are, I try to help out where possible. Your ministry is important to us in these troubled times. That’s the reason, and the only reason, I’m including your supervisor in this conversation.” So it wasn’t that I was supposed to be present when Sohn talked to Pak, it was that Pak was to be present when Sohn spoke to me.

I waited for Pak to say something. It was his office, it was his status being knifed. He sat back, subdued, very unlike the way he had been with the crowd from the special section not so long ago. There should at least have been some tension in his eyes. There wasn’t. All I could detect was a quiet amusement, as if over a joke told long ago.

“What do you want from me?” If Pak wasn’t going to say anything, I might as well speak up.

Sohn looked at Pak and smiled. “Your Inspector has asked what we want from him. Will you tell him, or shall I?”

Pak looked out the window. “It’s your game, comrade.”

“Fine.” Sohn turned to me. “Plenty, Inspector, I want plenty.” He barked and grunted, which I figured meant he was going to say something important. “So listen carefully. Don’t take notes; don’t ask questions. Just listen.”

I nodded and barked to show I was on his wavelength. Pak shot me a sharp look.

“These are perilous times. It is not clear that we will survive another year.” Sohn said this in a normal tone of voice, like the one normal people used when they talked about normal things—the cost of bus fare, or the price of a movie ticket. “Does that shock you, Inspector? That I should be candid about something so sensitive? But, why? Everybody thinks we’re on the edge of the precipice, don’t they? Don’t you?”

If the man imagined for an instant I was going to answer a question like that, he was crazy. “I’m still waiting to hear what you want,” I said, with less humility than Pak had indicated he wanted from me during this session.

Sohn moved so he was standing over me. I tried not to notice his ears. “I know you, Inspector. Believe me, I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t know you inside and out, top to bottom. Your type worries a lot, but you also know how to act when the time comes. This is it—time to act. Things will get worse, maybe a lot worse. Those who cannot take the pain this winter, cannot drag themselves through the final few months, they’ll fall by the side of the road. We’re better off without them.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Pak shift in his chair. “And I’m not talking theory, Inspector. I know what things are like in the provinces. I just got back from there. They are as grim as everything you’ve heard. They are as grim as our enemies say. This is the fight for survival. But do you know what? We will survive. Despite what everyone thinks, or fears, or hopes—we will survive.”