Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [136]
“No!” Palestrina said out loud, then deliberately turned from his perch and left, walking back down the stairs and out into the gardens. He would not allow himself to think of the spirits, now or ever again. They were not real but rather of his own imagination, and he would not let his own imagination destroy him.
104
Hefei, China. Wednesday, July 15, 11:40 A.M.
BUREAUCRACY AND CONFUSION AND HIS OWN position as water-quality inspector had delayed Li Wen from leaving the filtration plant. But finally he had done so by simply walking out of the angry turmoil of arguing politicians and scientists, and leaving. And now, heavy briefcase in one hand, the other pressing a handkerchief against his nose in a futile attempt to keep out the stench of decaying bodies, he worked his way up Changjiang Lu. Walking in the street one moment, on the sidewalk the next. Alternately moving between a flow of backed-up ambulances and emergency vehicles and the hordes of frightened, confused people desperate to find a way out of the city, or looking for relatives, or waiting in dread to feel the first chills and nausea that meant the water they had drunk earlier, that they had been told was safe, had poisoned them, too. And most were doing all three at the same time.
Another block and he passed the Overseas Chinese Hotel, where he had stayed and left his suitcase and clothing. The hotel was no longer a hotel but now Anhui Province’s Anti-Poisoning Headquarters; it had been taken over in a matter of hours, with guests abruptly thrown out of their rooms, their luggage hurriedly stacked near the front of the lobby, some of it spilling out onto the street. But even if he had time, Li Wen would not go back there anyway. There were too many people who might recognize him, stop to ask him questions, delay him further. And the one thing Li Wen could not afford was further delay.
Head down, doing his best to avoid looking at the horror-stricken faces of the people around him, he walked the few remaining blocks to the railroad station, where army trucks waited in long lines to pick up the hundreds of soldiers arriving by train.
Soaked with sweat, lugging his briefcase, he pushed around soldiers and dodged military police, each step becoming more laborious than the last, as his decidedly out-of-shape forty-six-year-old body battled the strain of the last days, the persistent heat, and the putrid, inescapable odor of rotting corpses, which, by now, permeated everything. Finally, he reached the jicun chu, the left-luggage room, and collected the battered suitcase he’d checked early Monday when he’d first arrived; a suitcase containing the chemicals he would need to prepare more of his “snowballs.”
Doubly weighted now, he went back into the station, pushed through the platform entrance gate, and walked another fifty yards to the track area already jammed with refugees waiting for the next trains out. In fifteen minutes his train would come. The soldiers arriving on it would pile off, and he and the others would rush on. Because he was a government official, he would have a seat and for that he was extraordinarily grateful. After that, he could sit back and for a time relax. The trip to Wuhu would take nearly two hours, and then he would change trains for Nanjing, where he would spend the night at the Xuanwu Hotel on Zhongyang Lu as planned. It was there he would rest and