Dragon in the Sky - excerpt 2

Xi River, Guangdong Province, China
Thursday morning, August 19, 1999

Lam San-Ming removes his footwear and rolls up his pants. The body, clad only in a white T-shirt, is a few meters from the shore, still in the shallows, its head resting against a rock as if it is a pillow. The body is a bad omen, San-Ming fears, one that will turn worse if he left it to drift seaward. Perhaps the dead man’s spirit will look favourably on him if he rescues the body and buries it in a good place. Cautiously he reaches out and touches it; the flesh is still firm, not yet decomposed. First he tries dragging the body by the arms, but it is too slippery, necessitating him to reach under the arms and lock his hands together around the dead man’s chest to lift him. This way he as able to half-drag the body over the rocks and stumble backwards to the sandy shore where he collapses, tripping over his feet, the body half on him. Its nakedness discomforts him; he tries to pull the man’s T-shirt down to hide it, but it reaches the waist and no more, so he removes his own shirt and drapes it over the man’s body, giving him dignity. It is a young man, Lam San-Ming realises, about the same age as he. Tall, pleasing in face but for the scraggly moustache and sparse goatee… he turns over the man’s hand; it is wrinkled and waterlogged, yet soft and delicate, nails clean and neatly trimmed – this is not the hand of a man who works in the fields. He pulls the man’s collar down to check if he wears something around his neck and doing so feels a slight movement of air on his hand. He is alive? He puts his cheek against the man’s lips, and again feels movement. His hands go to the man’s throat, fingers digging in to flesh, beside the windpipe, feeling for and finding a faint pulse. San-Ming’s eyes widen, registering surprise. He taps the man’s cheek, anxious for a response. “Do you live?”

The man opens his eyes and gazes at his rescuer as if in a dream.

“Can you hear me? Are you hurt?”

“Where am I?” The man’s voice is barely more than a scratchy whisper.

“You were in the river. Who are you?”

He frowns, and then, as if the thought too taxing, closes his eyes and lets his head fall to the soft sand again.

“Wake, wake,” Lam San-Ming shakes the young man. “Who are you? Where do you come from?”

Eyes half-focussed, he looks through San-Ming as if he is not there and mutters: “I do not know.” Then he closes his eyes again, and this time does not wake to San-Ming’s touch.

“Come.” The farmer picks him up and staggers over the soft sand and into his field beyond. It is a fair distance to his house and many times he has to rest, each time listening for a heartbeat.

“Mah-mah!” San-Ming staggers into the courtyard. “Mah-mah! This man is almost drowned!”

San-Ming lays the man on his bed, shooing his grandmother out the room. “Do not look Mah-mah! He wears no trousers.”

The old woman peers at the man. “Silly boy!” she admonishes with a smile. “You think I have not seen that before? Here, let me help you.” San-Ming is struggling to put trousers on the unconscious form, the process hampered by the man’s anatomy. Grandmother has no such inhibitions. She tucks away what San-Ming will not touch and fastens the waistband and fly. “He seems fine in face. Who is he?”

“I do not know, Mah-mah. He awoke briefly and then became unconscious.”

“Hmmm, very well. Are you finished your work in the field?”

“No.”

“You should return. Go. I shall watch over him.”

“Should I call the doctor?”

“Hah!” The old woman’s voice is thick with scorn. “That old fool? He is probably drunk by now. No, leave him with me; I will tend to him.”