Narcopolis

Her lips curved upwards as if she was smiling but she started to weep. She turned to the mirror and looked at herself. She stretched her big lips and lifted them on one side to show the broken teeth that jutted out of her mouth. The boy realized that she was trying to make herself ugly and that he had never before seen her tears. He became frightened.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be a good labourer.’

‘Look at me,’ said his mother, her cheeks blotched. ‘I should have concentrated my vigour on speeding up our country’s modernization. Instead, I’m a class dissident. I want to go to university.’

*

She woke at an odd hour, having slept in snatches. She was no longer able to sleep uninterruptedly through the night. Anxiety would pull her awake and keep her up, her eyes wide and a pulse thudding in her ears. She woke and lay still, listening to the noises of the night and her husband’s steady breathing in his bed near the window. She heard her son in the next room, talking in his sleep. What was he saying? The words were too muffled to make out. She pinched her fingers and thought about the White Lotus Society, the group of rebels and mystics whose descendants became the heroic patriots of the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists. The Fists won fame for taking up arms against the foreign conspirators who tried to partition China, but for her their significance was much greater. She revered them for the simple fact that they continued the great work of the White Lotus, a secret society led by the peasant who overthrew the Mughal armies, declared himself Emperor and founded a dynasty. The dynasty, like all dynasties, eventually became decadent and corrupt, but not so the White Lotus, which, according to her, was the single pivot on which Chinese history turned; it was the fount from which all greatness ensued. She repeated to herself the alternative names the White Lotus had used to disguise itself in the years in which it was forced to go underground. She said the names very softly, because to say them aloud was to invite catastrophe. White Clouds, she said, and waited. She said, White Fans, and waited. Then, because this was the most dreaded one of all, she mouthed silently the name, White Eyebrows. She sat up and put her feet on the floor and listened. She listened and walked through the house in the dark. It was a bright night and snow was falling. Moonlight dropped straight onto the kitchen floor with a curious sound, a sound it took her a moment to recognize, and then she felt the hair rise on her arms. It was the sound of money. She placed her fingernails against her neck and pressed until she felt the skin break. She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on the pain, but it wasn’t sharp enough. She found her nail file with the flat steel hook. She put the hook into her mouth, wedged it between her gums and teeth and twisted until she tasted copper. Then she went into the front room where her son slept. He lay on his side with his hands propped under his face. He’d placed his sleeping mat against the front door as if to guard the house against intruders. She tiptoed up to him until she was close enough to hear what he said. It was a prophecy meant only for her ears. He said, ‘Nothing.’

*