Читать книгу Pyramid Asia - Ian Purdie - Страница 5

Ping’s mother stood beside her father, like a delicately scented flower growing beside a gravel pit. Ping’s father looked like he’d had a bad day. Sweat filled the wrinkles on his brow as he contorted his unwelcoming features into something most smiles would be afraid of.

“Welcome to Hong Kong,” he said extending a paw designed to crush walnuts.

“Hello, thank you,” said Tashi, surrendering his small, innocent appendage into the patriarch’s formidable grip.

“So lovely to meet you,” said Ping’s mother after she and Ping had finished hugging and kissing each other. Her smile was warm and she appeared to be teetering unsurely on the verge of another embrace before checking herself and resuming her place beside the gravel pit.

An anonymous little man in a black suit scampered about, silently insistent that he was going to carry their bags. Outside in the car park, a large black Mercedes swallowed them up. The driver piloted the formidable machine through the streets of a city even bigger and busier than Xi’an.

Ping’s happy laughter filled the car as she brought her parents up to date with her scholastic progress and most recent purchases.

The car was ushered through an impressive wrought iron gate by two uniformed impressive wrought iron gate attendants.

The house was enormous. It formed the centre piece of an estate that could have fitted the entire Potala Palace comfortably into one small corner.

Somebody opened the car’s doors and they climbed the front steps of the mansion into an entrance hall as vast and spacious as the lobby of a museum. Marble was its dominant feature, making it seem cold. There were many, no doubt spectacularly expensive vases overflowing with professionally arranged flowers. Modern art hung on white walls. Above it all was an enormous crystal chandelier.

A large staircase drew them upwards.

When they reached its summit they were ushered into another large room filled with furniture that seemed far too precious to sit on. Tashi did his best to make himself less uncomfortable, contributing as much as he could to a stunted conversation gasping for life above the room’s intricately patterned rugs.

Tashi was certain he must be the poorest person ever to be allowed to set an ill-shod foot inside this temple of unbelievable opulence.

Then he noticed it.

On the wall behind his host and hostess perched an ornately framed oil painting. It depicted an object that Tashi recognised; an object he hadn’t seen for many years, since he’d consigned half of it to a box stored in the roof of his parents’ humble peasant dwelling back in the real world.

“What’s that?” he asked, realising too late he’d interrupted Ping’s father in mid-sentence.

Ping’s father stopped speaking and turned to consider the subject of his daughter’s young suitor’s curiosity. An awkward silence, punctuated by the ticking of a large clock, wallowed in the freshly created void.

“It’s a painting by a monk,” Ping’s mother interjected nervously as her mouth attempted to smile.

“That old thing?” asked Ping’s father. “I got it at an auction on the mainland. It used to belong to the Governor of Amdo Province.”

“That’s where I come from. What’s it supposed to be?”

“It’s a pleasing shape,” soothed Ping’s mother.

“I think it’s ugly,” said Ping.

“I don’t know,” answered Ping’s father. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be anything real. Why do you ask?”

“I find its shape interesting,” said Tashi, attempting to emulate their nonchalance. “I’m sorry. I interrupted you.”

Ping’s father turned and readjusted his focus. The abandoned conversation was tactfully revived by Ping’s mother.

The rest of the afternoon merged seamlessly into the evening and after what Tashi considered a banquet that could have fed his entire village for a month, he and Ping were escorted up another staircase and shown into two adjoining bedrooms.

Tashi entered a sumptuously appointed boudoir. It was the type of room he imagined an ancient Chinese emperor would have felt at home inside. The bed was ornately carved teak with silk and lace bed clothes. A large bay window afforded a panoramic view of Victoria Harbor dotted with the lights of more ships than he had ever seen in any book.

His bag looked like a souvenir from a garbage tip amongst the room’s other contents. It had been placed on a velvet chair near the bed. Savouring the fact that he was alone for the first time since he’d left his dormitory that morning, Tashi fell backwards onto the bed, kicking off his sandals.

Just as his normal peasant persona was bravely reassembling itself amid the prosperity, the door swung inward. Ping entered the room. Her scent invaded him.

“I’m sorry about all that,” she said, sitting on the bed beside him.

“All what?” he asked as if luxury was a normal feature of his life.

“You know, the Chinese, Tibetan thing. My parents like you, I could tell.”

“What Chinese, Tibetan thing?” he asked, feigning cultural ignorance.

They both laughed.

“I couldn’t help noticing your family photos. You didn’t tell me you have an older brother,” said Tashi.

“He died when I was sixteen,” answered Ping. “He had a motorbike accident.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My father still hasn’t forgiven himself for letting him buy a high powered bike. He smashed himself into an oncoming car.’’

After a furtive hug, Ping was gone.

Tashi was exhausted. It had been one of the most eventful days of his life. He felt very strange as he displaced the immaculate bedding and buried himself amongst it. Sleep arrived almost instantaneously, a complete waste of the settings he occupied.

Tashi incorporated the first thud into the dream he was having. It didn’t really fit in with the wide open countryside and various chattels that were dominating his sleeping mind. The second thud woke him. The third thud was accompanied by the sound of wood splintering and was followed by footsteps that got louder until the bedroom door burst open. A bright light shone around the room before fixing itself blindingly onto him.

“What’s happening?” he muttered feebly as several more lights flooded into the room. Then he became aware of the barrels of what appeared to be very sophisticated weaponry.

“Don’t move!” commanded a gruff male voice.

“What’s happening?” he repeated.

“Shut up!” commanded the voice.

“All clear!” barked another voice before some of the lights were redirected, illuminating the silhouettes of several men leaving the room.

“Get out of bed!” commanded the voice.

“Get out of bed now!” it commanded from behind three gun barrels.

“What do you want?”

A sharp pain erupted inside his head. It was the last thing he remembered before everything went dark black.

* * *

Ping was holding Tashi’s hand. He was in bed in a room that smelled far cleaner than he was.

“Where am I?”

“You’re in hospital,” answered Ping, squeezing his hand.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” declared a female voice Tashi didn’t recognise.

“This is my friend, Aixia.”

“How’s your head?” asked the beautiful young woman behind the unrecognised voice.

“Not very good. What happened?”

Ping was uncharacteristically silent. She averted her eyes.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” repeated Aixia, executing a tactical retreat.

Ping and Aixia had been friends ‘since they were born’, as they were fond of telling anybody who asked. They had no recollection of a first meeting and for both of them their relationship had simply always been. They attended St Clare’s Girl’s School together and had only been separated by Ping’s decision to pursue a tertiary education on the mainland. Aixia’s family weren’t as affluent as Ping’s and her choices of vocation weren’t as expansive or expensive. She worked as a chemist’s assistant.

“The police raided my father’s house,” Ping replied after Aixia had left the room.

“What? Why?”

“They arrested him and took him to the police station.”

Tashi wondered what kind of strange universe he’d awoken into. It bore very little resemblance to the one he went to sleep in. Ping’s eyes met his and she began to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I don’t know why they did this to you.”

“Don’t worry,” he tried to reassure her. “It must be a mistake. I’m sure everything will work out fine in the end. Where’s your mother?”

“She’s in another room. They had to sedate her. She was hysterical.”

Tashi tried to sit up but his head exploded with pain.

“Don’t try to move,” said Ping. “They nearly broke your skull.”

“I don’t understand how this could have happened,” he said feeling his bandaged head.

“They were looking for my father.”

“Why?”

Ping turned away and began sobbing again.

“Don’t cry,” said Tashi. “I’m sure they’ll sort it all out.”

“They accused him of being a heroin smuggler.”

“What?!”

“They said he was the leader of an international drug trafficking cartel.”

“There has to be a mistake,” said Tashi incredulously. “Your father wouldn’t do anything like that! Would he?”

“Of course not. He’s a businessman.”

“What kind of businessman?”

“He’s an exporter.” Ping’s answer merged with the throbbing pain in his head.

* * *

Tashi was discharged the next afternoon. His head was still bandaged and he felt dizzy every time he tried to stand up. He and Ping caught a taxi back to her father’s house.

The police had deleted a lot of the mansion’s former magnificence, dismembering several pieces of furniture and even ripping up some slaps of marble. Despite the best efforts of a veritable army of staff, it bore scant resemblance to the palace they’d been welcomed into three days earlier.

As they sat in the wreckage of the room they’d occupied with Ping’s parents the day they arrived, Tashi’s eyes strayed onto the painting that still hung defiantly in what was now a place of dishonour above the fireplace.

“Have you any idea what that’s supposed to be?” he asked.

“You asked that the other day. Why do you care about an ugly old painting?”

“I found something that looks exactly like that thing in the picture when I was a boy climbing the mountain behind my village”

“Really?” said Ping suddenly interested. “Do you still have it?”

“It’s at my parent’s house. It had two parts and my friend who was with me when we found it, took the other half. They fitted together and formed a kind of pyramid, just like the one in the painting.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Ping.

* * *

Ping’s mother came home, became hysterical again and had to be sedated and re-admitted to hospital. Ping’s father was charged with heroin trafficking and denied bail. They didn’t see him again before they had to fly back to Xian’yang to continue their studies.

Otherwise there was Aixia. She was determined to inject some frivolity into the tragic mess her friend was being forced to endure. Most of her solution involved alcohol. The rest relied heavily on ad-lib declarations of undying love whilst intoxicated and giggled reminders of past transgressions, the exact nature of which Tashi was too frightened to attempt to guess.

Aixia was able to create the temporary illusion of being back in school, teenagers getting ready to go to a party. Everything was in front of them. Anything and everything that had nothing to do with heroin, police, drug couriers or jail cells.