Nine Stories, Season Two | Shahtoosh
Welcome to *Nine Stories*, Season Two. This is a private writing project. As before, I will personally invite Fanfou friends to take part. Requirements: a short story of 1000 to 1500 words, containing the sentence "So we went to get the blankets." Genre unrestricted. Please submit within two days after the New Year holiday ends, publish it on your blog, and announce it through Fanfou. Together we are creating a mysterious plan.
We had already been trapped in the frozen wasteland for three days. Other than half a sheep’s leg and a barrel of gasoline, there was nothing left.
Outside, the blizzard roared. The tent was being shaken so hard it looked ready to collapse at any moment. Powdered snow burst through the seams again and again, baring its teeth as it stung our faces, leaving every inch of skin turned blue with cold. Chill rose from the iron-hard permafrost beneath us, and even the thickest yak-hide boots could not keep out the biting frost.
Little Zhaxi had begun to run a fever. His forehead was hot enough to melt snow, yet still he shivered without stop. Dawa Zhuoma held him tightly in her arms, warming him with a skin bag filled with boiling water. “Ledebo, they’ll definitely come, won’t they? The little one’s not going to hold on much longer! Have you really got the heart for this?”
I sat by the tent flap, the tip of my cigarette flaring in the wind. “They’ll come. Wait one more day.”
Barbier checked herself in the mirror one more time, adjusted the pendant on her chest, and only then slowly emerged from the lavatory and walked toward the first-class cabin door. She had just returned from the annual Victoria’s Secret show in America. This time she had stolen all the attention, to the point that even that insufferable Cui Ji had bowed before her. Barbier had always believed that the whole New York fashion crowd were nothing but big-breasted idiots.
January was the coldest season in Milan. Thick snow lay on both sides of the runways at Linate Airport, and dozens of snowplows worked day and night without pause. Barbier descended the gangway and looked at the heavily bundled crowd with a cold snort. She wore an outrageously colored Anna Sui outfit, with only a shahtoosh draped around her shoulders. Italian law had long since explicitly banned the trade in smuggled Tibetan-antelope shawls, but for the luminaries of the fashion world, border inspectors usually chose to turn a blind eye. Milan was the capital of fashion, after all.
Songban accepted the pack of Zhonghua cigarettes respectfully offered with both hands by Magistrate Zong, but merely waved to show he would not smoke just yet. Tossing the cigarettes onto the tea tray, he said with a grin, “Magistrate Zong, the magnesium chloride factory and handicrafts factory our company is investing in will be ready to start production after the New Year. When the time comes, we will inevitably need the county’s help in many matters.” Songban’s Chinese was excellent, even carrying a touch of the local Haixi accent.
“Of course, of course. You are too polite, Mr. Songban,” Magistrate Zong replied with a face full of smiles, twisting his whole body toward him in the chair. “If the county can meet its fiscal targets, if we poor officials can keep ourselves fed, it is all thanks to your factories investing in our county.”
“A matter of mutual benefit. In business we believe in win-win results. On that point, Magistrate Zong may rest assured.” Songban made a slight motion with his right hand beneath the table. The secretary seated beside him stood and hung a black leather bag on the back of Zong’s chair. “Magistrate Zong, this is your consulting fee. Mr. Songban’s enterprise has been able to take root in China only thanks to enlightened local guardians like yourself, men who understand modern industrial development.”
Magistrate Zong accepted the bag without comment. Inwardly he was sick of this fake foreign devil. “Mr. Songban, the county public-security bureau has another batch of confiscated ‘good stuff.’ Any interest?”
Songban’s drooping eyelids instantly brightened. “How much?”
Magistrate Zong leaned forward until their heads nearly touched. “One hundred kilos. Pure Tibetan-antelope wool.”
The snow outside seemed to have lightened somewhat, but Little Zhaxi had not improved at all, and the coal in the stove was almost gone. “Zhuoma, I’ll go look in the truck for some more coal. I think there are still a few flatbreads too.” He lowered his eyes to Zhaxi, who lay asleep. “There are some sheepskins in the trunk. I’ll bring them over to cover the little one.”
“No!” Dawa Zhuoma glared at me. “Captain Ritai said the confiscated sheepskins are not to be touched. That rule can never be broken. Ledebo, do you even remember which generation captain of the Yak Team you are?”
I said nothing. I only tightened my left hand around the stock of the hunting rifle.
“That tractor that flipped into the ditch might still have a few blankets in it,” Dawa Zhuoma suddenly remembered, laying Little Zhaxi down by the stove wrapped in a coat. “Come on, let’s go get them. Maybe we’ll find something to eat too.”
I seized her arm. “There are dead people in that truck!”
Dawa Zhuoma shook off my hand with force. “Ledebo, are you even a man? Are all the men you Han people teach like this so spineless?”
“Fine, have it your way.” My face darkened. So we went to get the blankets. And food too. I slung the rifle over my shoulder, lifted the tent flap, and plunged out into the storm, with Dawa Zhuoma right behind me. The wind hit both of us so hard we nearly fell.
I stretched out my right hand and took hers. She gripped me tightly in return. The crashed tractor was at least half a li away. We had to return to camp before the next, worse blizzard arrived.
A black Chrysler 300C sped through the night toward Naples’s rich district. Barbier sat in the rear, on the right side. No one else was in the car but her and the driver. One of the neighboring tycoons might be throwing a party that night, a perfect chance to use the afterglow of her recent triumph to put those mountain nouveaux riches of Naples in their place. The thought of appearing before others in all her brilliance filled Barbier with delight.
She took out her makeup case to touch up her face when suddenly her phone rang, the ringtone being the title track from the EP she had just released. She drew a golden Bluetooth earpiece from inside her bra and fixed it in her right ear.
“Miss Rossi, I am terribly sorry to disturb you so late,” came the voice of an Asian man on the line.
“Mr. Songban,” Barbier said, picturing a balding little man barely four feet tall. “Working so late and still taking care of business. What good news have you got?”
“Indeed, Miss Rossi. Another shipment has arrived. First-rate quality. About ninety kilos.” Songban trimmed off ten percent without changing his tone.
Wonderful. How many exquisite ring-shawls of shahtoosh that would make, Barbier calculated.
“And when do you think you might have time to come…” Songban’s voice broke off abruptly.
At that exact moment, the car lurched violently.
Songban and Magistrate Zong lay half-reclined in a sauna, steam billowing around them, while four graceful young women massaged them.
Magistrate Zong seemed somewhat unable to hold his liquor. His neck lolled to one side as he snored. Songban’s gaze rested on the girl nearest to him.
The charcoal basin gave off a faint sizzling sound. The girls’ feet and knees made the wooden boards creak.
A sound pierced through the mist, like an electric drill boring through planks. By the time Songban raised his head, it was already nearly between his brows.
Through the curtain of snow one could still just make out the red paint of the tractor not yet entirely buried. I pulled Dawa Zhuoma’s hand tight and crawled toward the red.
At some point my left foot had been cut open by ice, and waves of piercing pain kept surging upward. I could not let Zhuoma know, because her own steps were already so heavy that she was plainly injured too.
The snow curtain was thick. Thick enough to block everything.
When we were only five steps from the tractor, we finally saw clearly that there were five men beside it, and a white double-cab truck.
Red icicles hung from the side rails of the truck bed. The truck was piled full of Tibetan-antelope hides.
Piled full. A single Tibetan antelope yields only a couple of ounces of wool.
I felt Zhuoma’s grip tighten around my hand. She had seen it too.
“Ledebo, the people you’ve been waiting for are here,” Dawa Zhuoma said. She too carried a short-barreled small-caliber hunting rifle.
“Mm.” I nodded toward her face, purple from the cold, and brushed my chin lightly against her brow. “We can’t let these bastards leave alive with the hides.”
The five men saw the two Tibetans emerge suddenly through the storm and all reached for their AK-47s.
I fired first. I had four rounds. Zhuoma had only two.
Captain Ritai had said that even if you have not a single bullet left, you still fight the poachers to the death.
Ledebo’s first shot spat out a foot-long tongue of flame, a shot fired in fury. Yet the flame seemed to be swallowed by the ice and snow and vanished at once.
The black Chrysler 300C suddenly seemed to lose control and skidded off toward the right side of the road. The windshield was struck by a bullet hard enough to punch a crater into it, and the spider-web cracks blurred the whole field of vision.
Inside the car came the explosive crack of a small-caliber hunting round leaving the barrel.
Barbier had no time to make any response. A tongue of fire that had appeared from nowhere, wrapped around bullet fragments and bits of flesh, ripped open her delicate cheek, bored in between her right cheekbone and lower jaw, and tore the entire cavity into more than thirty pieces. The golden Bluetooth earpiece fell to the floor, still broadcasting the panicked screams of the girls on the other end.
It was a black bullet, spinning at high speed as it drilled out of the fog. Songban had no idea why he saw that bullet so clearly in that instant, nor how it had reached him.
With a wet thud, it slammed straight into his chest and left a hole ten centimeters wide. Blood from the artery gushed outward through the opening.
The bullet did not pass through Songban’s body. It vanished inside him in an instant, just as inexplicably as it had appeared. Along with it vanished a portion of his flesh.
The tremendous force hurled Songban to the floor. His consciousness had not yet fully blurred; he gasped in great mouthfuls, but everything could last at most another dozen seconds.
Magistrate Zong, startled awake and not yet understanding what had happened, was likewise flung to the floor by a shot that had appeared out of nowhere. He died even more quickly.
The five men, guns in hand, gathered around the corpses of the Tibetan couple.
The marksmanship of those two Tibetans did not seem very good. Of the five poachers, only one had been wounded, and only in the forearm.
“Yak Team,” one of them said, looking at Ledebo’s face. “I recognize this one. Last time it was him who impounded our truck.”
“Forget it,” cursed the leader as he turned away. “Let’s dump them in a snow hollow and leave them. Fuck it, I make five yuan on a hide. You think that’s easy money? If you’ve got guts, go block the roads in the county seat.”
In his dream, Little Zhaxi tossed and turned. He dreamed that his father and mother had gone to the People’s Park in the provincial capital to ride the bumper cars, eat at a Han restaurant, and buy new cloth.
[Nine Stories, Season Two] Sequence links:
quills: "Purity"
Rose Cat: "Untitled"
Jiashu: "Little Wood Splinter"
casa: "Tihu's Empty Room"
tihu: "Shahtoosh"
Mile: "A City Without Snow"