The Flower Net by Lisa See Read Free Book Online Page B

frustration, hit the wall with his fist, and resumed his metronomic gait. David flicked his pen open and shut. Then Zhao said in a flat voice, “I don’t know how to say these words.”
    Mabel set down her knitting, and the two of them spoke for five minutes in Chinese. Occasionally, Mabel would say a word in English—
dragon, bear, phoenix, rat, mole
—and Zhao would repeat it. As their chattering came to an end, it seemed as though the two of them had reached some sort of agreement. David looked questioningly from Mabel to Zhao, then back again. Mabel wordlessly picked up her knitting and Zhao hunched back down in his chair, his eyes focused on the bare table in front of him. Milton Bird pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. Gardner stretched his neck from side to side, then flexed his arm muscles.
    “We have a saying in China.” Zhao’s voice was heavy with resignation. “Dragons bear dragons, phoenixes bear phoenixes, and moles bear sons good at digging holes.”
    David waited.
    “This man, he is a dragon’s son,” Zhao continued. “I am a mole’s son. Do you understand?”
    “No, no, I don’t.”
    Now that Zhao had broken his silence, he couldn’t stop. “On the ship, we know the man is in the water. That water was for drinking. By the time the crew tells us to get our water from that place, that man is stinking inside there. We open the water crank at the top of the tank and that smell comes out. Most of us are peasants. A farmer, he floods his fields to grow rice. There is no way to warn the animals that the water is coming. Animals sometimes get trapped in there. Sometimes they swim away. You see rats swimming with their noses just above the water. Sometimes a rat gets caught in the plants. Days later, weeks later, I would smell it. This happens sometimes, so on the boat we know something dead is in that place.”
    “What did you do?”
    Zhao slowly lifted his eyes to meet David’s. “No one wants to look inside that place. Some people, they are afraid of ghosts. Some people, they are afraid of the crew.”
    “Did the crew know?”
    “The crew is stupid. They see people getting weak. They see people getting sick. But they don’t ask questions. We gather rainwater. We…” He turned to Mabel and asked her a question.
    Mabel said, “Ration.”
    “We ration our good water. Then we are getting close to America. Now the crew has no water. Now they go to that place. They look inside and find the man. They get scared. They say, ‘Who is that man?’ They fight. Should we throw him away? What should we do? They say to us, ‘You tell us who that man is. You tell us who killed him. You tell us or we won’t give you food. You tell us, or we tell the gang when we get to America.’ Everyone is afraid, but no one says a word.”
    “But you knew who he was?”
    Zhao nodded. “He is from the special class, the son of a senior cadre. He is a Red Prince, a
Gaogan Zidi
.” Zhao took a breath and continued. “That first day, when we went for water, everyone was afraid. But some of the men said they would look inside. If it was just a rat, they would pull it out. We would boil the water. They climb back up to the top of the tank and open it again. They find a package wrapped in plastic. Inside is the man. He has been dead and in the water already a couple of days.”
    “But how did you know who he was?”
    “Those men, they look inside his wallet. He had papers saying he was Guang Henglai.”
    Jack Campbell let out a whoop of triumph.
    David shot him a look, then asked, “What did they do next?”
    “They put the body back.”
    “They didn’t tell the crew?”
    Zhao snorted. “No, they put Guang Henglai back. Then they come and talk to the rest of us. What can we do? We are moles on that boat. Even those men in the crew are moles. Who would take responsibility for telling the crew? What if they thought one of us killed him?”
    “What are the names of the men who found the body?”
    “It