Chapter Six

The first thing is, I purchased a copy of Mao’s little red book yesterday from the guy now dozing just outside my window at Dali Guesthouse Number Four. I’d seen the stack of rain-stained Condensed Maos from this lumpy bed whose window opens to the upper reaches of Foreigner Street where hemp halter blouses swing in a wind straight off Zhonghe Peak and a half-dozen trinket merchants nod off at most hours of the day.

Second, there’s a badly broken bone in my right hand, and I’ve no idea why. From time to time, I gaze longingly at my backpack on the dresser, a full water bottle visible in one pocket. I’ve ached for a drink for hours, but my legs haven’t quite arrived yet. I don’t know where my wallet is, or my passport.

I’d never gotten around to reading Mao, which felt increasingly wrong, as here I was writing articles on modern China—or fully intending to. I’m not that kind of writer. So I fed fifteen yuan through the steel bars of this window and received in return my own English pocket edition of Quotations, whose frontispiece contains thirty-one pix of Glorious Chairman in wool hat, Glorious Chairman in bathrobe, Glorious Chairman in gray wool suit, on and on, the same face-splitting smile on every page.

Someone’s knocking. At the room next door, I believe.

I then passed another four yuan through the bars in exchange for a butane lighter that caught both the sun and my eye. The lighter bore the image of a slender, swaying woman, her colors iridescent in the bright midday. It was Quan Yin, Goddess of Mercy and Inflammable Petroleum Byproducts and spiritual matriarch to this atheistic patriarchy.

The knocking continues. Finally the guy next door answers hoarsely. He and his companion have overslept, having spent the night alternately arguing, watching TV at maximum volume, and slamming their bed against our common wall.

My eyes go to a scrap of cardboard in the wastebasket, and I ask myself once more whether I might fashion a splint from the cardboard and a few turns of dental floss—but how to tie the knot? It’s challenge enough just stringing subject and predicate together in my armored journal while awaiting the return of my legs, if indeed they come back this time. I keep thinking I’ll just this moment emerge from the gray-purples and shit-browns of this decidedly non-lucid dream and—

And what?

I often lucid dream, if you must know. I generally find it agreeable despite the sorting out process that accompanies re-entry. It may require a half-hour of tormented puzzlement to finally determine whether I’m in a room or a room. It’s nearly always one or the other.

This particular habitation I call the Marigold Suite because of the yellow-gold–flowering plant erupting from a crack in the concrete just outside the door, beyond which a row of porcelain sinks and dim, flaking mirrors summon humorless men and women by dawn to comb and shave beneath a vanished sky. The Marigold Suite has a water boiler that doesn’t work and a reading light with no switch, though you can turn off the latter by yanking the in-series extension cords stretched knee-high all the way across the room—which I found strangely satisfying, as I did reading the hand-lettered sign on my bathroom door (“Keep the ground towel in order be careful for slippery floor otherwise accept the result”). Then there are the blue batik bedspreads tacked over the crumbling bedroom walls and the two used condoms stuck as though glued to the lower shelf of the nightstand. It all comes together in a statement of some kind.

I was resting here yesterday, browsing my newly purchased Quotations and its thirty-one pictures of Cherubic Chairman, when I came upon two black-and-whites of a lean young Zedong, unsmiling, brooding, as though behind the broad, clear eyes, the inner landscape were already rent like the severely parted hair. Turning the pages, I watched the two hairlines recede ever farther. When I was a child, I couldn’t get past the ‘do and the mole. Now I couldn’t get past the ‘do and the mole and the smug self-delight, the pudgy, seemingly rouged relief-map of monstrous conceit that somehow passed for a human face. I saw all the Caesars in that face, I saw Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price, I saw the perfected Las Vegas Elvis of the final Babylon.

I see that the trinket merchant has snored himself awake. As I watch, he takes a sip from his jar of tea, re-secures the lid, and rolls up a shirtsleeve, exposing a long line of junkie welts. He ties off with a woven belt and disinterestedly gives himself an injection. Within a minute, he’s nodding again.

What really dotted the i for me about the Marigold Suite was the moment I opened my nightstand drawer to browse the tourist information, and there between the brochure offering tour packages up the Cangshan Mountains and the menu of the nearby treehouse café was a Polaroid taken in this room of a young Bai woman wearing pink bikini panties and a Mona Lisa smile. She’d been photographed lying on this bed. So much better than discovering the Gideon Bible, I noted, closing the drawer.

I wish I’d left it at that.

Now through the wall comes the day’s first argument from the couple next door. Mostly it’s the guy who argues. The woman just bleats every now and then. Now the TV comes on. It can only be a matter of time before the bed starts up. At one moment last night, they had it revving so hard that my bed was in motion, the in-series extension cords bobbing like a rope bridge.

Neither of them uttered a sound.

I lift my trembling right hand and take a good look at it. Could take Best Overall at the Iowa Rutabaga Show. What the hell is happening to me. I close my eyes and sigh. My legs will come back as they always do, and so will the memory of last night, at this point a badly haunted landscape of glimpsed grotesques. A woman pacing with an antenna-ed telephone. A recurring beeping sound. But the dots don’t connect.

Head in his lap, the trinket merchant is in danger of tipping over. This corner of China, often called the Burma Triangle, was deeply invested in drug trafficking before Jessie James robbed his first train. It remains a clearinghouse for most of the world’s opium, flowing to processing centers in Hong Kong then shipping points in northern China—none of which I have mentioned to Miriam, telling her only that Yunnan Province is a treasury of one-third of China’s ethnic minorities and half of its remaining plant and animal species. Though the Han race accounts for ninety percent of China’s population, fifty-eight tribal peoples—conquered peoples, actually—still cling to their old ways along the indifferent borders. It’s a China I’d never thought to inquire about.

From the first moment, the pristine peaks and pines of Yunnan Province have been a surprise, as have the hewn-stone villages and rippling rivers, the mingled Brazilian smells of horse shit and strong coffee in the alpine air, and the disparate strands of Tibetan, Burmese, Vietnamese, and Han traditions that weave a coat of many curiosities. Stepping off the train in yesterday’s dawn just outside Dali, I sensed all of that swirling in the chill mist and felt, too, the vague apprehension that I was drawing very close to something.

That’s the third thing. I’m getting close to something. Or maybe I encountered it somehow last night. Maybe that was the problem.

Next door, the bed is beginning to rev once more. Outside my window, the s-shaped fellow mimics Beijing politics by leaning ever farther to the right without quite falling over. I wonder if he has tied himself upright somehow. His tribe, the copper-skinned Bai, have hung tough in these mountains for millennia, even whipping the ass of Beijing’s imperial army seventeen centuries ago. The Bai still speak their Sino-Tibetan language, bear their woven baskets on their backs, and practice a casserole religion that simmers native polytheism, Buddhism and Roman Catholicism with a little yam and wild onion. Hopefully all this will come together in a magazine article of some stripe, as Miriam still dangles airfare by the finest of threads.

I gaze achingly at the water bottle across the room. Everything sparkled with such promise yesterday when I tucked the book of quotations into my daypack and mounted a shaggy pony en route to Zhonghe Peak, two Bai guides leading the way on foot. It was to be a working day, one of clear-headed research beneath a cobalt sky, accumulating field notes with tidy vertical margins and clear pronoun reference. I would be proud of myself.

As my pony traced the raw edges of Dali, the two men hollered helloes to distant farmers hoeing fields of corn, squash, and cabbage, my pony reaching for the occasional mouthful of a star-shaped leaf I was certain I’d seen before. True enough, cannabis sativa lined every stray ditch bank, providing new teeth for the old saw, “The sky was high and the emperor was far away.”

At midmorning, the trail turned sharply upward into mature stands of short-leaf pine where muddy switchbacks led into a rude cemetery, slowly toppling east-facing vaults mutely awaiting the next sunrise. At the summit, a paint-flaking Buddhist temple offered a tilted, dizzying view of Dali.

The temple I found to be entirely innocent of structural agendas, a definite comfort after Beijing and its many examples of intentional architecture. Lil, Tree, and I had toured one centuries-old Buddhist complex widely known for its thousand carved human figures, each expressing a different shade of emotion. I found that less intriguing than the string of adjoining structures that led quite purposefully, I thought, to a hill’s summit. That series of structures connected the collection of carved figures to a ponderous hilltop tower that jutted skyward, topped by odd protruding masonry orbs that suggested clumsy antennas. It’s probably just me. In fact, I’m sure it’s me, but that place certainly looked the part of a brick-and-mortar broadcast station designed to depict and disseminate highly detailed information about the vagaries of human feeling.

The earthling channel.

Before heading back down the mountain yesterday, I joined my guides for a simple lunch of rice and veggies in the shade of a red masonry wall. Afterward, I had the guides arrange an interview with the head monk, a smiling old man with a silver crewcut. I dutifully jotted down his nonsense, the elder guide serving as interpreter. At one point, the guide registered surprise before telling me, “You come here receive the teaching. Quan Yin give this teaching to you.” At that, all three men gave me a significant gawk. Whatever. In truth, I was distracted by the memory of a certain star-shaped leaf. Clearly, additional field research would be in order once I touched back down on Foreigner Street.

In this country, one joint equals a pistol bullet above the left ear, after which you are gutted like a pig, every transplantable organ is harvested for resale, and a letter is composed on a manual typewriter dunning your family for the cost of the bullet. Which is to say, pot-smoking isn’t particularly widespread. Personally, back in Memphis, I usually keep a small pinch on hand. I find it to be a great comfort during serious life crises such as waking up each morning. And later on, when the arc of the day has flattened out a little, say around two or three p.m., a puff or two oftentimes helps one regain the necessary traction. And then there’s the weary eventide and the often lonely bedtime experience, not to mention those nasty moments when one awakes in the horse latitudes of night. In general, I’d have to say that marijuana handsomely finishes the business that alcohol begins. Or is it the other way around?

Anyway, no sooner was I down from Zhonghe Peak and freshly showered than a gaggle of Bai women was trotting beside me along Foreigner Street flashing laminated pix of saddled horses and penile temples and glass-bottomed boats, and finally someone uttered my favorite Sanskrit word.

“Ganja?”

Minutes later, that woman and I stood before a wooden door whose knob rattled as it turned. A dark eye appeared in the crack. Words were whispered, and the door closed once more. My accomplice, a hefty Bai woman in blue homesewns, said, “Wait,” and wait we did. Finally the door opened wide and we entered an airless space incongruously brimming with shelves of brightly painted native handicrafts. A slender woman in a towering headdress triple-bolted the door behind us and dragged two wooden stools to a spot between twin beds. I watched her take a seat on one stool and gesture toward the other. As quickly as I seated myself, a cardboard box appeared from beneath the bed. “Ganja,” said the woman, untying a black garbage bag. “Very good.” Placing a sprig of marijuana between her palms, she rubbed her hands together vigorously and thrust the crushed leaves beneath my nose. I sniffed and shrugged. Crap weed. Seeds galore. But there is a thing called supply and demand, and in the end the lady in the headdress had some twenty bucks of my money and I had a quarter ounce of crap marijuana plus a rough biscuit of hashish that looked like it had come off the underside of a lawnmower. There was also a dark sticky nugget of opium that looked somewhat promising.

Field research.

At that point, the woman in the headdress leaned closer and said, “Peeee-nis. You want?”

“Peeeee-nis,” cooed the other woman, handing me a length of bamboo covered with Kama Sutra engravings. Her long fingernail indicated a man and woman copulating with disinterested expressions.

“Okay?” asked headdress woman. “You want?”

I glanced from pair of eyes to pair of eyes, wondering exactly what I was being offered by whom.

“You are an utter addict,” my sister enjoys telling me from time to time. “Alcohol, gambling, sex, hard drugs, soft drugs—is there anything you aren’t hooked on?”

Phonics.

Again, knocking. No answer comes from the couple in the next room. Apparently they’re dozing.

Actually, I occasionally have my moments, such as yesterday when I pulled the brim of my cap a little tighter and told the two Bai women, “No, thank you,” and rose to leave.

I should have left it at that.

I remember returning to the Marigold Suite as dark clouds abruptly gathered. I remember barely making it back before the sky broke open in a fragrant thundershower. Beyond that, I can’t say. If I could get to that water bottle, my mind might clear. I just recall seeing, through the barred window, tourists giddily running toward shelter and vendors hurrying to unfold patched canvas tarps. After that, I think I must have poured myself a maotai and cleared the wooden table. There was a quarter ounce of grass to clean. Then there was the question of rolling papers. You can’t find them in this country. And then—

And then I remembered Mao’s little red book.

Examining Quotations with new eyes, I noted that its pages were admirably thin. I chose the page that read “Workers of the World Unite!” in revolutionary red, carefully worked it free of the binding, and creased it along the center. Then I applied a generous amount of freshly cleaned buds, sprinkling in a few crumbs of lawnmower gleanings for good measure. Before sealing my work, I decided a pinch or two of opium probably wouldn’t hurt anything. I remember the dull taste of the paper as I licked and sealed a joint shaped more or less like Chairman After Banquet. The revolutionary slogan was displayed in bright red along the side. Pleased with myself, I placed the joint in my mouth and patted myself down in search of a lighter bearing the image of Quan Yin, Goddess of Mercy and Inflammable Petroleum Byproducts.

The knock comes again, and I lift my head to see the silhouettes of four feet beneath the door of the Marigold Suite. Two people. Double the reason to pretend I’m not here. Which arguably I’m not, though I do seem to be leaving a recognizable number-two graphite trail along the pages of my journal. I fear that trail may be leading me ever closer to a recollection I’d prefer not to have. I’m likely better off with random shards and stray shrapnel bursts.

Again I look up from my bed. The silhouettes have vanished from beneath the door. Good.

I’m sure I promptly smoked Unite!. Then it doubtless seemed a good idea to burn the World. At that point, I probably celebrated with another maotai and attempted to produce a couple more joints. Problem was, there was only a single decent page remaining. Minutes later, I was admiring a slightly bent doobie that read, “Our Glorious Chairman Mao Zedong” along one side. But now what? I certainly wasn’t smoking Chairman in Bathrobe. I seem to remember rummaging through the nightstand drawer, looking for any description of blank paper, when—what should fall into my hands but the Mona Lisa smile?

It’s all coming back to me now.

Again the knocking, this time more insistent. The four silhouettes re-materialize beneath my door. Now comes a man’s voice, chillingly authoritative as he mispronounces both my name and the word “police.”

Shit.

Setting the journal aside, I place one bare foot then the other on the cold plank floor. Rising unsteadily, I tilt my weight forward and shuffle past the backpack and its full water bottle, limping a bit from an unexpected aching in my ass. I open the deadbolt with my good left hand and peer into the sober gazes of two police officers. Some part of me recognizes the face on the left and a bolt of fear crashes through me. I have to struggle to not pee myself. The other officer taps his wristwatch and says, “Bus.”