The Dog (6 page)

The barber stared back at him.

“Look here,” Anwher said, crowding the barber, “I don't go looking for fights.”

“No one's looking for a fight.”

“You should keep her on a leash,” Anwher said.

“Beg your pardon,” the barber said, backing away. “Beg your pardon.”

“That's all you have to say about it? You're a shitty son,” Anwher said. “Worthless.” Anwher couldn't abide weakness. “Your mother is a whore,” he said.

The barber nodded.

“She's a whore,” Anwher said.

The barber said nothing.

“You're not telling him anything he doesn't know, boy,” the old woman said.

“Shut up,” Anwher said. Looking back at the barber, he said, “How much? It's by the hour or what? Doesn't matter. I'll just take my whore right here. That okay with you?”

The barber remained bent at the waist. It was a while before he spoke, and when he did, he addressed himself to the hard earth. “Discuss business matters with her.”

“Unbelievable,” Anwher said. “Can you believe this?” Anwher looked around for an answer, but the fat man appeared to be engrossed in his newspaper, and the old woman had a crazy grin on her face, so he looked back at the son.

Eventually the barber said, “I know. Hard to believe.”

“You need to have your head checked,” Anwher said.

“Haircut's on the house,” the barber said. He forfeited the bill without looking up. “Please go.”

After spitting twice on the ground at the barber's feet, Anwher left. The barber's mother, still grinning ever so slightly, turned to the fat man, that seemingly permanent fixture atop his stool. “That was quite a performance, hm? Did you see that? He walked off without paying. Those people would rob their own kin.”

“Ma,” the barber said. “Don't.”

The fat man shook his head and hauled himself off the stool.

“Ma,” the barber said.

“I could give you more than a haircut on the house, you know,” she said to the fat man.

He made a show of shuddering.

“You're not much to look at yourself,” she shot back.

“I have my charms,” he said.

“So does a rattlesnake,” she said.

“Aw, you don't mean that,” the fat man said. “Come file a report in the morning. We'll take care of the rest.”

*   *   *

They came for Anwher while he slept and dragged him from his low bed by a rope twisted around his neck. When they started to beat him the garrote slipped a bit, and in this way he avoided asphyxiation.

They threw him in the backseat of a Volkswagen sedan, a standard unmarked PSB vehicle. Two men sat on either side of him, their large thighs pinioning him. He tried to screw open his swelling eyes, but couldn't see a thing. His ears rang and his face throbbed in time with his heartbeat. They were rolling now, the compartment filling with cigarette smoke that stung the raw tissues of his esophagus. Something cold and hard was in his mouth. One of the men began to punch him in the head.

He awoke in a cell, which in the darkness he first mistook for his room at home. The confusion didn't last long. The scrape of metal buckets on concrete echoed through the cellblock as prisoners passed around the pot to relieve themselves. His body was numb until he moved against the concrete floor and the net of agony tangled around him tightened. He remembered where he was. He drew into a ball and wept.

*   *   *

Omar had stood in the doorway and watched them take his grandson. He could have screamed and waved his arms like a woman, but what good would that have done? Gotten him a broken jaw, probably. He knew how this worked and he kept his distance. Just to be sure, the Chinese had stationed one of their thugs by him, and weapons were made obvious, but he wouldn't have moved even if he'd had an army behind him. It was everyone's fate to be dragged off by the Chinese. Omar, of course, viewed fate as little more than a starting point at which one began his negotiation with the universe. Everyone but Anwher, it seemed, knew how this worked. He'd struggled and made it worse for himself.

Omar went to the slot in the floor and counted out a decent payoff. They'd be sure to liberate him of anything valuable he carried in, so he removed his watch and gold chains and dropped them into the hole.

Then, outside to have a smoke and wait for daylight. He blew out his nostrils and packed the pipe. The monkey across the street was curled on a blanket beneath a window. Omar squatted down and watched the sleeping animal's dim form.

*   *   *

Alone in the cell, Anwher had backed his spine tight against the concrete seam of a corner. His face had become a mask of dried blood and sweat. The unrelenting ammoniac stench of urine was thick on the air. Guards' voices echoed through the corridor. When the prisoners moved, they moved in silence while the guards stamped beside them, shouting, “March, convicts!” Anwher envisioned his own grotesque death, but stripped of the chorus of sympathy usually humming in the background. Allah, mercy, I beg you. Despite the heat, he was freezing, so cold that he felt his hands might snap off like twigs. He knew he was waiting to be retrieved, and that alone kept him awake, his eyes sweeping the dim cell for movement. Finally, the door opened and two guards dragged him to the washroom, where they told him to strip, which he did, as they dumped bucket after bucket of stinging water over his head. He dressed with the deliberation of an eighty-year-old, and they dragged him off to another part of the prison. The barber and his mother were there.

When he came into view, the old woman did a little dance. “That's the one,” she said. “Hey, there, Uyghur. How's life?”

“Cut it out,” a guard said. “That's inappropriate.”

Another guard shook Anwher by the arm. “You stole from these people?” Anwher tried to catch the barber's eye, but the man wouldn't comply. He'd made his decision. Anwher let out a low moan.

“Oh, that's definitely the one,” the old woman said. “Coward.”

The barber lifted his head to say something, but she cut him off. “You had your chance,” she said.

The guard directed himself at Anwher. “You've stolen from a Chinese citizen,” he said, “and have damaged the reputation of your minority group.”

The old woman laughed.

From behind them a voice boomed, “Behave, all of you.” A round man filled the doorway and moved slowly into the room. His face was slick with sweat and the top of his coat was unbuttoned to reveal a roll of flesh at the base of his neck. At first the face was only vaguely familiar to Anwher. This was the commanding officer, that much was clear, and when Anwher placed him, he shrank back against the guard, who pushed him away. It was the fat man with the newspaper. “This is a crime against the People's Republic,” the fat man said, “and it will be dealt with according to proper procedure.”

“They said it was on the house,” Anwher whispered.

“On the house?” the fat man said to the barber. “Is that right? For the record, did you say that?”

“You were sitting right there,” said his mother.

“We need to establish the facts.”

“Do we look like we're running a charity?” she said, then paused to consider the rules of the game. She had to be sure no traps were being laid for her before proceeding. “Did you hear me say it was on the house?” she asked the fat man.

“I don't recall,” he said, his face impassive. It was enough to satisfy the woman that she wasn't going to land in a cell herself. “You understand this kid is connected?” the fat man said.

“Like I care. He walked a tab. And he insulted me.”

“Besmirched your good name, did he?”

“You were there,” she said. “You heard what he said.”

“For the record,” he said.

“A whore. He said I was a whore.”

“Imagine.”

She crossed her arms and gave the fat man the evil eye.

This went on for a while, the fat man extracting his pound of flesh, Anwher attempting invisibility, the old woman needling them both. The barber watched dumbly from the side. Eventually the fat man got bored.

“I'm sure he'll gladly pay a fine plus what he owes you,” he said to the barber's mother. “Justice done?”

“He steals from me. He threatens me. He calls me a whore in the open market, and you let him go free?”

“I'm sure you've been called worse,” the fat man said. “Don't push your luck.” He waved at the door. “Take him back to his cell and get this citizen her money.”

*   *   *

The fat man had been promoted hastily in the wake of the corruption sweep. His ascension to the rank of commanding officer was the result of good timing and the luck enjoyed by those who kept their mouths shut and carried out orders. But his men made farting noises when he walked by, and some still called him Fatty Bo to his face. This bothered him.

He had his orders from the new regime and had been waiting for an excuse to move against the old gangster. One could never be too careful. Things had to look right. He'd told the old woman what to do: make your claim, file a report, allow the process to take hold.

Of course, these civilians don't take orders. She'd crashed into the station like it was 1967, invoking revolutionary slogans and a bunch of stuff she'd heard on the radio. “Seek truth from facts,” she kept yelling. Before he knew it, the entire station was peering around doors and over the tops of their reports to see what was going to happen next. His men didn't bother to hide their snickering faces. “They're taking over,” she screamed. “Threatening old women!”

He had bellowed at the corporal to escort the old woman to a room where they could question the prisoner. The man took his time leading her away, and Fatty Bo had to yell at him again. The corporal's hangdog face hardly registered the abuse, which the other men found hilarious. And the son—there he was, trying to put enough distance between himself and his own mother to signal that their simultaneous arrival had been a coincidence. Fatty Bo motioned him over.

“She's really got a wire up her ass,” Fatty Bo said.

“It's the heat,” replied the barber. Fatty Bo waited, but that was all the son had to say on the matter. Why she wanted the Uyghur strung up was a mystery, but it sure wasn't because the Uyghur had called her a whore. She wanted this kid out the back door in a body bag. So be it. Embarrassing, yes, to be subject to a crazy old woman's whims, but good luck all the same. Fatty Bo was self-sufficient enough to summon some intellectual appreciation for the situation. It was a blessing, was what it was. Bastards wouldn't call him Fatty Bo after he burned Uyghurville to the ground.

*   *   *

Omar went to the PSB station alone, having left the payoff with one of his toughs stationed down the street.

Every cop in the place jammed into booking to eyeball him. It took two hours to fill out the forms because his Chinese was far from perfect and one of the cops dumped tea on the papers just as he was finishing. This was part of the process and Omar dutifully requested new forms, for which he was charged a yuan and a half. Hunched over like a schoolboy, he began again, pausing occasionally to brush their cigarette ash from the backs of his hands. After the forms, they made him strip and open his orifices in front of everyone before handcuffing him to a radiator in a stifling reeducation classroom. None of this was new to him.

After an hour in that swampy air, his skin had the consistency of boiled chicken and his tongue was so swollen he had to hang his mouth open like an imbecile. A young officer came to fetch him. “Here, now, Uncle, take my arm,” the officer said gently, “and we'll go see the prisoner.” He led Omar through a series of iron doors, until finally, through a forest of bars, Omar spotted Anwher slumped against the wall, lifeless as a coat left on the ground overnight.

Fatty Bo appeared and offered Omar a thermos of water, which the old man guzzled. Anwher watched the men from his corner of the cell. “This can't be pleasant for you to see,” Fatty Bo said.

“It's a shame,” Omar said. He had developed a nonchalance when dealing with the authorities that was by this time as automatic as breathing. A man had to wait out the Chinese, figure out their game. Only after carefully considering the options would Omar step forward to engage them.

“Prisoner, hup to,” shouted Fatty Bo. He took the young officer's baton and dragged it across the bars. “Up! Up! You have a visitor.”

“Go in and get him,” Fatty Bo said to the young officer, handing back his baton. A few bold prisoners strained to see from their cells, but the majority hung back, out of sight of the officers. A sidelong glance from a PSB, and you'd be carrying rocks for a month.

The young officer nudged Anwher with the baton and said, “Come on, now. Don't try Fatty Bo's patience.”

“Use the proper form of address in front of the prisoner,” Fatty Bo shouted.

The young officer shrugged. “Come on, now,” he said. “Quit playing.” When Anwher refused to budge, the officer, embarrassed to find his kindness rejected, jammed the baton into the prisoner's ribs. “Up,” he demanded. Still, the prisoner refused.

Fatty Bo's nostrils flared at this display of ineptitude. Bands stood out in his neck. “Get out,” he said, shouldering the young officer aside.

“Boy, don't be an idiot,” Omar said under his breath. There was nothing he could do. Fatty Bo pinched Anwher's ears with his thick fingers and wrenched him into a standing position.

“He's got spirit,” Fatty Bo said, as if holding up a prize piglet.

“He's an idiot,” Omar said.

“If you say so. We should discuss his case.” Fatty Bo unsnapped the leather holster on his hip and patted his pistol.

“What's that all about?” Omar said.

“Just watch yourself, okay?”