The Stone-Father

1. So the story goes that the Elena Kazoglou and her children fled their home in time to avoid a massacre, and ran towards the south-east. Where initially the enemy, the boys of Shurikoi, were close on their heels to kill any Permyaks who had escaped their ambush, the journey then evolved into a fleeing towards, more than a fleeing from; for Elena was so possessed by the belief that a place of refuge lay beyond the three Griadas, three mountain ranges separating the north and south of the country. 

The daughter, Chrysanthi, developed at this time a habit of picking up random trinkets from the ground, carrying them for a distance, studying them with an odd intensity, then discarding them; this she did until settling on a long, flat piece of shale from a dry river bed which they passed in the summer. Chrysanthi did not throw away the shale after a few days, like the usual, but seemed to have developed an emotional attachment to it. She did not mind that the weight added to the difficulty of her trip. Whenever they found a place to rest for the night, she set up the stone next to her mother before falling asleep murmuring beside it. 

When Nikolaus asked her about her curious practice, she replied: This is Father. Father died when he fought our attackers. He had left in such a hurry, there is still so much to be said to him, I miss him so much... and Nikos could only gape incredulously, convinced that his sister had gone mad from the grief.

There came a point, after the crossing of the second Griada, that the three had to ford a wide river. When that was happening, the water, which up till then went halfway up their shin, rose gradually until it threatened to reach their waists, and thus to wash them away; a storm far upstream had swollen the river. The three picked up their pace to reach the opposite banks, with increasing urgency. Nikolaus jettisoned his supplies, as did Elena, but Chrysanthi refused to give up her charge to the river, and she trudged on while the distance between her and her mother and brother grew. 

Fuming, Nikolaus turned back to reach Chrysanthi. "Sister," he commanded. "Get rid of your load." 

When he found that his persuasion was to no avail, he untied the cloth knot that fastened her luggage around her forcibly, ignoring her protests. "Baba!" she shrieked, as her belongings was taken away in the current, and she had to be dragged unwillingly and bodily to the opposite bank, first wading, then swimming, as the water had gone up to their chests by the time all had successfully crossed.

Chrysanthi was brought to shore inconsolable. "We have to find Baba," she wept. "we lost Baba in the river."

"Don't worry, my bird," cooed Elena, trying to be reassuring. "you only lost a stone. The stone is not Baba. The real Baba is up in Heaven, watching over us."

"What a big deal to make over a piece of stone," snapped Nikolaus, who had become impatient and resentful that his rescue efforts were not acknowledged.

"Oh, but it is him, it is," insisted Chrysanthi, stamping her feet.

"Come on now! We will find a new Baba somewhere along the way."

"What?"

Nicolaus repeated. "Find a new Baba—" and fell backwards, his head hitting the graveled bank. When he came to he felt a warmth streaming down the front of his face, and the taste of blood in his mouth: His sister had knocked him over with a punch square in the nose. "How dare you say such a thing? There is only one Baba!" she hissed, scandalized, her voice trembling. Her fist was still clenched, but a look of profound loss had washed over her. Nicolaus came vaguely to a understanding that he had said something unforgivably foolish.

The decision was made, on Mother's immovable authority, to wait for the floodwaters to subside and to find Baba on the exposed river-bed, as far as that could be done. The water level receded the very next day in sunny conditions. The three combed the river-bed again, starting where they had crossed and moving downstream, hoping to find Chrysanthi's piece of slate or any other useful tool or trinket they had cast into the river during the crossing. In the afternoon they came to a cataract, and found about half of their things in the plunge pool. The surprise find, however, was when Elena found Baba himself.

"But how did you tell?" asked Nikolaus, puzzled. "Baba was stone, and the river bed is all stone. They would have been all mixed up by now."

But it was not all the same stone. The rock that Elena had picked up was shale, but by a fortunate turn, the rock found in this river bed was different from earlier; a light-colored aggregate. And so Baba-rock was easy to pick out from the rest of the pebbles, even though he had disintegrated. After a meticulous search leaving no stone unturned, the trio collected about ten pieces of shale in all, which they brought to the monastery.

2. Young Arkadius found Makarios at his work bench, leaning against it and staring intently at ten pieces of shale laid out upon the desktop. He was amused at the bishop's earnestness.

"Are you debating with yourself, if you would fashion an idol for this poor child?" asked Arkadius after some time.

"I'm not sure if this would count on the same rank as a golden calf at all," replied the bishop. "Chrysanthi Kazoglou has all her wits about her. If you mean that she thinks that these pieces of shale are literally her dead father, I would argue that this is not the case."

"What do you make of it, then?"

"If you imagined yourself going through what she has, you might be able to understand why she had risked her life in the river to keep it," said Makarios. "You are working through the loss of a loved one. You are thinking of him day and night. Someone whom you have poured yourself out for for much of your life is gone suddenly. For someone in this situation, it would mean having to think of their loved ones not just as dead, but diffuse; Even with the assurance of heaven, her father occupies the space of everywhere and nowhere, an abstract, cerebral state as yet out of reach of normal human interactions. This unpalatable state of affairs is what got Chrysanthi so attached to the rock." He swept his hand over the shale. "And this is my cure for her."

In a sand cast, Makarios-Aspag arranged the shards of shale into what he imagined to be the flat, oblong shape of the original rock. He melted down tin in a crucible and poured it into the case, so that the tin filled the cast and seeped into the gaps between the shale pieces. Then, from a piece of tree stump, he fashioned a base for the restored tablet, so that it could stand on its own and be placed anywhere, and not need the use of another structure to lean on.

"Chrysanthi, if you would have your father's name written into the tablet, then others will know what your tablet stands for," proposed Makarios, when the project was near completion. "Will you like me to do it for you?"

But the girl only declined. "No, thank you. There is no need," she said. After perusing the restored Stone-Father in her hands with an air of placid resignation, she took him with her to be installed in her own room.

Source: Kintsugi Australia

Notes

1. The story is a meditation on the role of the spirit tablet (lingwei 靈位 / ihai 位牌, etc.) as a common method of ancestor reverence in East Asian societies.

2. The Aspag's method of restoring Baba's tablet is a very crude re-interpretation of the fine art of kintsugi 金継ぎ (pictured above).

3. The geology of the Taymyr Peninsula takes reference from this survey (Zhang et al. 2013; Geosciences 2013, 3(3), 502-527, see extracted Figure 1 below). The shale tablet was collected by Chrysanthi from the first river bed in the area shaded orange ("Riphean to Carboniferous carbonates and shales"). The flash flood occurred further to the south-east, in the white region where sedimentary rock is found instead, which is important to how the tablet was recovered afterwards.

Detective Crawford and the Tragic Case of Dr. Nately Huang

[People, places, and events in this story are fictional or have been fictionalized.]

Detective Crawford Shyu, who had scarce taken a vacation for the previous three years due to factors entirely outside of his control, had some relief from his official duties that was a long time coming. The way he chose to spend the time was to go to a place as far and remote as possible, from his home in Northeast Ohio, a place where he has already counted the number of floorboards and roof tiles many times over, in times of quarantine, and head to the hometown of a dear old friend in China, the great Dr. Nately Huang, hero of the country's pandemic response and head of the virology lab in the University of Zhejiang.

Dr. Nately had accrued a notable measure of celebrity and prestige due to his work. The man whom Detective Crawford met when he went to town to meet him, however, was the same humble man with which he went to medical school in Cleveland, many years ago. Nately Huang Zhengxi was then and now a clean-living individual, fastidious, studious, and very introverted; a student who easily topped his classes, with Crawford always trailing behind, settling for second place. Nately was dressed in a simple T-shirt and an earth-colored jacket, in a manner that was indistinguishable from the style of a common peasant that one would find only an hour's drive out of Hangzhou city. Such was a person determined to put the years of fame out of the way of the reunion. Crawford was gratified by the sight of his old friend, whom he had not met for many years.

"Nately!" cried Crawford. "You have not changed one bit, starting from that dang jacket of yours."

In the school where they had met, Nately had been a foreigner, fresh out of Hangzhou, while Crawford was a native of Akron, and a child of the Rust Belt born to Taiwanese parents. The two were very similar in character, despite the difference of backgrounds; in addition to their shared reserved nature, they had very obscure interests and no dress sense worth mentioning. Nately then took a natural attachment to Crawford, the latter being one of the first and the only few friendly Asian faces that met his eye. Crawford helped his English and his integration to the community, and in return he helped a very expectant and very curious Crawford find his Chinese roots. It was an ideal match.

"Do you still go by the name Nately, by any chance?" asked Crawford.

"No, not so much anymore," replied Nately. "Most people just call me Huang yuanzhang, since I became head of that lab down here. I'm tired," he sighed, pensively, "no one after you has treated me right. I always seem a mythical being, like someone to be looked up to, an idol, or a model for the public. It doesn't sit right with me. Do you feel that way towards me as well, Crawford?"

"No, of course not, you shit-arse," laughed Crawford, giving Nately a shove. "You are the same old chump I met eight years ago. Shall we find somewhere to grab a bite real quick? I'm hungry."

"I know a place," replied Nately without delay, as though the decision had been made long in advance. "a Halal restaurant right by the West Lake parklands. It has the best food and the best views too. Let's go there!"

The walk was about a mile along Nanshan Road. Nately led the walk, picking up a brisk pace. Crawford, native of Akron and son of the Rust Belt, was not used to walking, and the time that he had spent in quarantine was of no help. "I could have used a car," he thought inwardly, dismayed by the distance that they had to cover on foot. Outwardly, the conversation with Nately was a spectacle in linguistics: Crawford, who was taught Mandarin only at home, insisted on speaking in Mandarin with Nately. In return, Nately gave short replies in Mandarin, and started the next sentence in English. This strange tug-of-war persisted for the entire duration of the journey.

"I would really like to practice my English," said Nately. "It's use-it-or-lose-it. I don't find much use for it here at all. Maybe, just for writing papers?" 

Like many other Chinese students studying abroad, Nately had had to find a name which was tame and pronounceable by English speakers, and "Zhengxi" definitely was not it. When pressed to come up with one during one of his first-year courses in medical school, he had muttered, "I have been thinking of getting one lately." Or so he thought, because the lecturer and everyone around him had heard "I have been thinking of Nately", thus dooming him to this absurd moniker for life. "I keep saying, it's Nately, like the guy in Catch-22," he always used to complain. "But people keep calling me Natalie, like they're all twelve."

They arrived at the restaurant, neatly furnished but humbly disposed, at the corner of a four-way junction. Crawford squinted laboriously at the sign. Authentic Tastes of Kashgar, Xinjiang: Beef Noodles and Big Plate Chicken, it seemed to say. 

"Uyghurs," explained Nately. "Uyghurs run this restaurant. This is us." The heavy glass door opened with a yank, and they both stepped in. The restaurant was minimally decorated, with a nod to a clean, Islamic design sensibility: Plain white tiles paved the floor, while the walls were painted with a gentle green paint. The hall was decked with a parade of small café tables and black plastic stools, and on the wall hanged only two decorative pieces: to the left, a calligraphic scroll of the Shahada, in the style of Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang; to the right, a faded picture of the Dome on the Rock in Jerusalem, framed. 

Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang 米廣江, calligrapher [source]

The kitchen was situated at the far end of the hall, as a separate room, although a glass window allowed you to watch the chefs at work; a typical arrangement, since the pulling of the dough into thin strands of noodle, when done masterfully, is considered quite a spectacle. Nately and Crawford could not see anyone at the window initially, but a small, mousy face topped with a white cap soon emerged from the side, peering at them curiously. He was joined by a second chef.

"Assalamualaikuuum," they greeted, in heavily-accented Arabic, "peace be upon you."

"Where has Mr. Abdulrehim gone today?" asked Nately.

"Laoban has some other matters to attend to."

Nately grunted in acknowledgement, somewhat visibly disappointed. Nevertheless he found some amusement demonstrating the digital ordering kiosk to Crawford. After keying in the orders on the touchscreen, Nately selected the check-out button, whereupon a window opened on the screen with Nately's face looking back out at them; a camera is now trained on him. A glowing green line descended across the portrait, for stylistic purposes. After a brief pause, the display switched to the words:

Welcome, Dr. Huang Zhengxi of Yongjinmen Neighborhood. A charge of ¥45.00 has been deducted from your WeChat Wallet. Thank you for your patronage, and please come again!

Nately turned to the amazed Crawford, grinning proudly. "Isn't that great? Mr. Abdulrehim here knows my face, because I come here to eat so often; Now they know me even when he is away." After some thought, he added: "But it won't fly in America, this idea. You guys value your privacy too much."

"It's the privacy, yeah," shrugged Crawford, and resigned to speak nothing more about the matter.

From this time on, Dr. Huang Zhengxi spoke entirely in English instead of Mandarin, even after Crawford's repeated attempts to the contrary, and the latter had to concede the fight to his host.

"They are probably nicer restaurants out there, if you'd like to try in your free time here," said Nately apologetically. "but this is the only place I can come to have lunch or dinner and be completely sure that everything is... clean, and safe."

"You have always been a very singular-minded individual, wherever you go" said Crawford. "You were not like the others, who join a clique and go everywhere with the same gang of students. You had one friend and that was me. You only ate at one place and that was a tea shop off campus in Little Italy. You went there so often that you knew the owner and the names of all his children."

"I just despised most people there or anywhere," said Nately. "Still do, in fact. It doesn't matter if it was America or China. People are all messed up in different ways. My God, I can never have a normal conversation with your people. It's like there is always a commonly-used word that is also a dog-whistle that I don't know about, and that starts a fight. Your entire country has got politics too much in the brain."

"What about me, in particular?"

"You were barely tolerable," Nately smirked mischievously. "Sometimes."

They laughed. Crawford took a swig of tea. "Ya jagoff. If you can tolerate me, you can tolerate anyone. Have you even tried?"

"I tried here, too," sighed Nately. "Even though this is my home and where I grew up, I don't think I will ever get used to the people here. Of course you remember that I took specializations in virology and infectious diseases. I left that school with the feeling that everything everywhere is coated with a layer of filth, and I could never rub it off me again." 

He looked forlornly out of the glass doors, where neon-lit skyscrapers shimmered.

"We think of ourselves as a country that has made it, a billion-strong version of Singapore, something to be envied of the erstwhile powers of the world: the Americans, the British, the Australians. But every day people roll in and roll in again into our proud city, and they bring the country with them. They spit everywhere on the streets and alleys, they get in each other's faces, they pick fights over any stupid trifle. If there is any reason the country can never be truly great, it's the unwashed masses."

Crawford was gripped by a pang of sobriety, and said nothing in return.

"Do you see a connection to that and why I brought you here?" asked Nately, rhetorically. "It is not as common a term, but we Chinese have our own way to refer to the religion of Islam." Taking a piece of napkin and clicking his ballpoint pen, he wrote:

清 qīng "Purity"
真 zhēn "Truth"

"Qīng for purity, zhēn for truth. Such are the values that Muslims, good people like Mr. Abdulrehim, hold supreme," explained Nately. "When Laoban explained it to me, I was so impressed. A few things that I had been puzzled with over the years fell and fit together neatly. He never takes more money than what was on the menu; in fact I think he often gave more change than was due, on purpose. He treats all the customers with a level head and with respect. And, most importantly," he gestured to the immaculate interior of the restaurant. "he keeps this place spotless. What a pity it is, that people could say that people like him has no place in our country."

"And the city folk, they are alright then?"

"You'd be surprised," answered Nately, after some thought. "I've suffered the most with them. In the world of the power-gorged elite there is no Purity and no Truth."

"The party secretary of my university was an evil man," he continued. "You have missed it after all these years, but I was with a wife for a short time after I came home to Hangzhou. The party secretary took a liking to her. I, on the other hand, liked to put long hours working in lab, all the way up to the wee hours. And every time I did that, he would force his way into my house, and onto her. I have two daughters and no idea if they are mine."

"And she never told you about it at all, while it happened?"

"She did, but surreptitiously, and only when the bastard was promoted and moved out of here. Otherwise he would have killed her and the baby, she said," Nately sighed, but with his teeth clenched, so that it manifested as a long, snarling hiss. "What would you have done in my position? City people! City people don't ever have a moral cell in their bodies, not even one of them."

"Now, we can't say that your wife is at fault," said Crawford, trying to console his old friend. "I certainly hope she is doing better now, in any case."

"Ex-wife," explained Nately. "I divorced her on paper so that I could move her somewhere safe, outside of the country. It's not that I do not love her anymore. It was just a bureaucratic maneuver, not a real divorce the way that you Americans do it. The plan is that I can continue my work here and she can live and raise the kids with my earnings tucked away in Connecticut. However, with all that time we have spent apart since then, we might as well be really divorced, I think."

He hissed again, despondently.

The glum moment was interrupted by one of the restaurant's attendants, who laid out the dishes and sounded out their names: A bowl of beef la-mian on Nately's side of the table; a rich plate of chicken stew, laden with spices, on Crawford's; peanuts as appetizer; mugs of hot tea; a side of rice.

The mood has lightened at the prospect of a full dinner. Nately nudged the rice and the stew towards Crawford. "You know the post-Covid habits. No sharing!" he said. "You get to have the dapanji. Big Plate Chicken. A Xinjiang favorite."

Crawford studied the dish closely. "I'm no expert, but this does look like a big ol' plate of chicken. With chili peppers and cumin and a whole lot of other things."

"You've always complained about all the tasteless food in Ohio. Well, here's your treat. It is made with all the spices you have ever wished for."

Nately's beef noodles, in contrast, seemed as if it was made without the use of any spice or flavoring, save for a few inconspicuous slices of leek. The noodles, so thinly stretched as to appear almost translucent to the sight, swam in the clear broth with the beef slices, and the only indication otherwise on the presence of meat is the few bubbles of fat on the surface, reflecting the ceiling lights. Nately leaned forward so that his face was caressed by the rising steam from the bowl, and took a deep breath, breathing in Purity and Truth.

Crawford found his old friend intoxicated with his bowl of noodles. This had been the case even in university days; the guy had always put all his attention on eating, whether they were alone or when Crawford brought his other friends to sit with them. Today, in addition to that quirk, the worldly problems of Dr. Nately Huang seemed to have dissipated into the sanitized ambience that characterized every feature of the restaurant. Crawford was amazed that the doctor, in his usual self so given to dark and lonesome brooding, could put such an injustice behind him so effortlessly.

"I'm glad to see you have gotten so good at getting over this grudge," said Crawford, when they were almost finished. "I wouldn't have thought it possible, if it were ten years ago. Maybe, you just got too busy being crowned Hero of a Nation, eh?"

"Oh, on the contrary!" replied Nately. "I got back at Mr. Party Secretary personally. I got him good. It was the proudest moment in my life, and still is, too."

"How so?"

"I got him demoted from the provincial party committee. He mishandled the pandemic response in Hubei; covered it up before it was too late. His entire team was low-key sacked, and stripped of their party membership. He himself caught the virus and died in disgrace, along with his entire household."

"I understand, but what has it to do with you?" asked Crawford. "The virus got him. You didn't get him"

Nately was momentarily distracted, having raised his bowl to drain the last morsels of his bowl. After he was done he gave a start, apologizing: "I'm sorry. You know what it is when you know about some knowledge special to your field— you start assuming that everyone else also knows the same. My bad." He wiped his lips on a napkin. "The pandemic was my doing. That's how I got him."

"That ain't true," laughed Crawford. Nately, however, was not laughing. "Now, I'm not going to come all over to your country and say that the virus started here—"

"Do you remember when people over on your side were saying that we started the pandemic in Wuhan by eating bats? And after that, when it was a bioweapon released in a lab, also in Wuhan?" recalled Nately, still dead serious. "None of it is true. It is baseless!" He thumped the table dramatically. "A fantastical, racist, malicious falsehood, fabricated to discredit the good people of Wuhan and the entire province of Hubei, who now carry the stigma of the plague on their backs, no matter where they go in this wide land. No... It started with me. In Hangzhou."

"The outbreaks did not start right here, of course, for the simple fact that my team and I know about the monster we have created, and could treat it with respect... but, not so my gormless ex-student, who received my package over in Wuhan," continued Nately. "It worked way, way better than I could have anticipated. When it spread, the butt-wipe who had slept with my wife was faced with the choice of shutting down transport routes out of the city boundaries of Wuhan. If he did that for just two weeks when the first signs of the illness appeared, the pandemic would be history. But he demurred, because it was too close to Lunar New Year, when basically everyone travelled out of town, and doing so will cost him his political career."

He cast a sidelong glance at Crawford, who gawked back at him. "In my defense, though, I was counting on him to shut down the city and take the fall for the consequences. He was worse than I imagined. He let ten thousand people die and then died himself. I've overestimated him by that much, the fool! They are all fools."

"Americans died too," whimpered Crawford.

"It's all on him," barked Nately dismissively. "Let him burn in hell in with the vengeful dead."

"You were the one who ruined the lives of my friends," Crawford protested. "their work, their sanity, their sweet old gramps and grandma.." 

Nately remained insensitive to Crawford's distress. "But, don't you think it was great? The pandemic got rid of all of the worst people, in your country and mine. Go out into the streets here and see if you can catch anyone clear their throats onto the sidewalks like they always did in the before times, or find news of people licking handlebars and doorknobs for no reason. We have finally bred the filth out of us. Those among us who lived those disgusting habits are now gone."

Crawford said nothing, quietly fuming.

"And you? Do you not remember your ill-tempered compatriots who let politics and conspiracy fantasies override their common sense, such that they could not even bring themselves to do something as simple as wear a mask? Don't you remember the same buffoons who brutalize Asian Americans, people like yourself, for the virus, and then turn around to declare the pandemic a hoax the very next second?" said Nately. "What luck! They are gone from this sweet earth too."

"I was hoping that the misanthropy would never translate into action with you," said Crawford. "I don't like it at all that this pandemic has happened. Please tell me just once that this was all a joke."

Nately only chortled at this earnest request, and sipped his tea coolly.

After a tense stretch of silence, Crawford started to speak again. "I hate to break this to you, but... this goes beyond our friendship." He reached into his coat pocket, producing a small, card-sized wallet, and revealed its contents. The doctor leaned forward to look at it, his eyes squinting.

"United States Foreign Serv—" mouthed Nately, then his lips clamped shut.

"The Consul General of Shanghai would like to have a word with you," said Crawford, slipping the wallet back into his pocket.

Nately's face had turned ash-colored, all the blood having been drawn away from his cheeks. He lowered his head such that to Crawford, his facial expressions were hidden. With stately, deliberate motions, he moved his bowl of noodles a half-inch across the table, and perched his chopsticks upon the porcelain rest. 

"What evidence do you have?" he asked, his voice low and trembling.

"All the evidence about the nature and provenance of the first outbreak are in order," said Crawford. "we are only missing a spoken testimony. That will be yours."

"I ain't comin'," blurted Nately. He turned and left through the glass door, leaving it swinging.

Crawford rose and followed him out of the restaurant. Dr. Nately Huang's jacket was still visible, and very much distinguishable due to its incongruous style, contrasting with the rest of the city-folk of Hangzhou. The difference now was that Nately wore the jacket with the collars turned up, covering the side of his face. Crawford trailed behind the doctor, struggling to maintain the distance between them, for the doctor's pace had turned brisk. After fording a few intersections northward along Nanshan Road, Nately ducked right, onto Xihu Avenue. A few moments after he turned right again, into an alley, then left, into a slip road, then left again, into a different alley which led back to Xihu Avenue. Clearly, Nately was still trying to shake off his pursuer.

Aerial view of Hangzhou in the evening [source: Xinhua]

With each turn that Nately took, Crawford could feel the landscape slowly changing around him. Large, enclosed shopping malls and high-rise office buildings dominated the arterial thoroughfares of downtown. Smaller roads and intersections formed the next rung in the hierarchy of streets, giving room to sleepy inns, cafés, small corner stores, and boutique outlets which did not tolerate more than a trickle of foot traffic. Presently they arrived, through an alley, to an apartment complex, a cluster of four towers of about fifteen or sixteen stories in height. The raised faux-metal characters on a nearby plaque said Yongjinmen. "I've followed him home!" thought Crawford.

Nately did not seem as if he had let his guard down. He pressed the up button at the lift lobby, and then found that he had to wait. Without looking back to check for Crawford, he changed tack and ducked behind a white door on the far end of the lift lobby. Crawford followed suit, and found himself in a stairwell, with the pitter-patter of Nately's footsteps receding into the distance above him.

Crawford gave chase without delay, and followed for an innumerable number of floors up the stairwell. But, alas, while the doctor had trained himself physically with commutes on foot, the detective had gone soft in the car-heavy workday of the Akron Police Department, compounded with a diet largely consisting of donuts. Gradually, Crawford found that he had to slow down to a stop, as Nately's footsteps became more and more distant. He collapsed into a sweating, panting heap, leaning against the banister. "Ya jagoff," he cussed, weakly.

The footsteps seem to have stopped. A face appeared in the well hole, staring angrily downwards at Crawford from several floors above. Nately.

"Jagoff yourself," spat Nately, his voice echoing down the stairwell, amplified. "you're going to snitch on me to the CIA. You snitch."

"Look, none of us are going to do you any harm. You only have to come clean."

"None of us," repeated Nately, wincing with hurt, "No, you and them, in cahoots! What happened to loyalty between friends?"

Crawford found his breath again. He stood up, his chest swelling. "A detective gives himself in service of the Truth," proclaimed Detective Crawford. "My loyalty is only to the Truth!"

The distant face of Nately nodded slowly, almost showing a momentary sign of relenting, and then it disappeared again, while the sound of his footsteps resumed. Crawford took off, more slowly this time, wondering if at any juncture Nately would be able to reach his floor and throw him off the chase, since there would be no way he could know for sure where the doctor could have ducked to, just by listening for the footsteps. Eventually, the footsteps did stop, but was followed by loud, metallic creak and the sound of a heavy door opening. Crawford picked up, and reached the unmistakable source of the din. It was metal door that opened up to the roof.

When Crawford himself reached the roof of the apartment, he was greeted by a wondrous sight of the Hangzhou skyline, the ubiquitous presence of skyscrapers decked in lights like so many Christmas trees, and the light diffusing through a blanket of haze, hanging heavily over the city. Nately stood at the far end of the roof area, looking serenely out across Hangzhou, the tenseness in him seemingly dissipated once more. Despite the lack of lighting here, his silhouette stood out starkly to Crawford.

"Oh, what dismal coincidence it is, that both the Party and the CIA have caught up with me on the same evening. I guess my time has come," Nately chirped, sensing Crawford's presence.

"What do you mean, the Party?" asked Crawford.

"Crawford, you are a shitty spy," jeered Nately, turning around to face him. "On the way here, when I was running away from you, I was thinking that there was something wrong with that restaurant we ate in. Do you know why?"

Crawford perked his ears metaphorically.

"Mr. Abdulrehim is usually around whenever I show up at the restaurant. If he isn't, which is rare, then two of his employees are able to hold fort for him," said Nately. "There is nothing wrong there. The only thing was that the way he and all of his employees greeted their customers was with Uyghur: Qarshi alımız! This applies whether the employees are Uyghur or Hui, who have no language other than Mandarin. The fellows we met today, on the other hand, said As-salāmu ʿalaykum, in Arabic. The real employees never do that."

"Are you saying," said Crawford slowly, "that Mr. Abdulrehim and all his helpers have been switched out for people who were there only to spy on you?"

"I think so," said Nately. "Poor Mr. Abdulrehim could be breaking rocks somewhere in Turpan right now, for all we know," he sighed, his mood having took a darker turn. "He was closer to me than even my wife."

"And they know where you stay as well," noted Crawford.

"Oh! They always know where I stay. Nothing is new there," said Nately. "The difference is that this detail has become significant only today." He hissed. "They've been on to me for a long time. Their greatest fear is that if my true story goes out to public, the prestige of the country would suffer. They would much rather I remain a celebrated National Hero at any cost. It's wonderful what benefits you can extract from such an insecure bunch of people."

"So that was why you refused to talk to me in Mandarin while you were there. You were not insisting to refresh your English language, but to make sure that the men did not understand what you were going to say!"

"I am no spy, Nately," Crawford went on, shaking his head. "I am only a humble detective, sent on here on a holiday with a side assignment to sniff out some leads. I did not expect to have gone this far, such that you have laid out your crimes barely before me, only because you trusted me as a friend. Since I now have you cornered, will you come to join your wife again in America? Maybe we will not be friends anymore after this. But I will see to it that the consulate will treat you well, and put in a good word on your behalf. Do you accept this from an erstwhile friend?"

"I respectfully decline," responded Nately with a slight nod. "I made the mistake of blabbing to you out of a sense of pride. There is nothing you can do to save me from it, as a humble detective. You are right: I already have the blood of millions on my hand. If your colleagues do not lay their hands on me, the Italians will; if not the Italians, the Brazilians; and if not the Brazilians, the French... The nations of the world will fall in line for their turn to tear me limb from limb—" he drew a sharp inward hiss. "You know, Crawford, there's just no good way out of this."

"The process of law is fair and based on the truth, Nately," said Crawford. "I don't know how it is in China, but this is how we do it in the United States."

"Nothing in this world is fair and based on the truth," retorted Nately. "Think! What will the consulate do with my testimony, Crawford? This is just a damned excuse for another war."

Before Crawford could think of a rebuttal, they heard a flurry of footsteps echoing in the stairwell, and wafting to the rooftop in an urgent crescendo. "The men from Mr. Abdulrehim's restaurant," Crawford yelped.

"I was spot on about those guys," noted Nately laconically. "Welp. This is me."

Crawford's mouth ran dry as he came to the horrific realization of what Nately was about to do. He dashed to the metal door to the stairwell, slammed it shut, and bolted it tight. "Nately!" he screamed. "You'll do no such thing!"

"Aint' make a difference seeing what they will do to me, mate," Nately shrugged, gazing into the hazy sky. "But there's something you can do for me right now. Will you promise to take care of my widow and daughters in Connecticut?"

"Your what?" screeched Crawford hysterically. "How am I supposed to find them?"

"You're a smart guy, Crawford. You'll figure it out. Goodbye."

Still facing Crawford, the silhouette of Dr. Nately Huang bowed, and took a half-step backwards. For a moment or so the figure seemed to hobble comically, as if it were tripping over a rock. But, before Crawford had time to react, it had disappeared without a sound over the ledge. And the skyline and hazy sky shimmered as indifferently as before.

Crawford's knees began to grow soft as jelly; he found it hard to remain standing. He was overcome by a feeling of nausea and lightheadedness. Falling on his hands and knees, he let hurl the contents of his stomach from the dinner, a porridge of half-digested chicken stew, Nately's last treat. When he had recovered, he rolled himself to the stairwell entrance, where he leaned against the bolted metal door, The men from Mr. Abdulrehim's restaurant presently arrived, and set themselves to banging against it, in a way that made Crawford sick again. "Huang yuanzhang! Huang yuanzhang!" they shouted. "Where are you? We need to talk!"

"Huang yuanzhang not here," mumbled the grieving Crawford in broken Mandarin. "He gone. Ya jagoffs."

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Glossary of names and terms
Huáng Zhèngxī 黃政錫: Nately Huang's given name at birth (fictional)
Shyu I 徐乂 (Xú Yì): The Chinese part of Crawford's given name at birth (not specified in story)
Yuànzhǎng 院長: Head of an institute
Kashgar قەشقەر 喀什 (Kāshí): City in southwest Xinjiang Region (pop. circa 800 thousand)
Xīnjiāng 新疆: Autonomous Region (province-level jurisdiction) in northwestern China
Uyghur ئۇيغۇر 維吾爾 (Wéiwú'ěr): Ethnic group native to Xinjiang
Haji Noor Deen Mǐ Guǎngjiāng 米廣江: Ethnic Hui lecturer and calligrapher specializing in the Sini style of Arabic calligraphy, Islamic College of Zhengzhou, Henan
Abdulrehim 阿布都熱依木 (Ābùdūrèyīmù): Transliterated name of Mr. Abdulrehim; although, in colloquial, non-Uyghur speaking settings, his name is likely to be shortened
Lǎobǎn 老闆: Boss
Yǒngjīnmén 涌金门: residential neighborhood in Hangzhou (the name is real, but the detailed setting is my own imagination)
Zhèjiāng 浙江: Province in Eastern China
Hángzhōu 杭州: Largest city in Zhejiang (pop. circa 10 million) and seat of provincial government
West Lake 西湖 (Xī Hú): Freshwater lake adjoining Hangzhou city
La-mian 拉麵 (Lāmiàn): Noodles made with pulled dough. Cognate with Japanese ramen ラーメン (a street cuisine delicacy), Korean ramyeon 라면 , and English ramen (a kind of junk food)
Dàpánjī 大盤雞: Chicken stew dish from Xinjiang Region
Húběi 湖北: Province in Central China
Wǔhàn 武漢: Provincial seat and largest city of Hubei (pop. 11 million)
Nánshān Lù 南山路; Xīhú Lù 西湖路: Road names in Downtown Hangzhou
Hui 回族 Huízú: Ethnic Chinese Muslim (designated as an official nationality in China)
Turpan تۇرپان 吐魯番 (Tǔlǔfān): City in northeast Xinjiang (pop. circa 630 thousand)