Plants of The Estate - Part 2 of 4

‘Agh, taoyan,’ exclaimed Alice, sloughing the mucus like substance off her face and then her arms and hands, ‘what is it?!’

‘By the feel and smell, I would say it was bog slime of some sort.’

Alice’s expression became despairing, it nearly broke my heart. She was surveying the damage done to her apartment, and I knew that she must be devastated. ‘My home,’ she sobbed, wiping slime and tears from her cheeks.

‘I’m so sorry, Alice. I will get this fixed up. I will find out why this happened and make it better.’

She sat down on the couch, which squelched, and began to clean.  From the low coffee table she picked a large hard cover library book and wiped the muck from the cover onto the table. I think she was just overwhelmed.

‘Look, don’t stay here, ok?’ I told her, the place was too messy and smelled awful, and she could take some clothes and get cleaned up in my apartment. I should have offered her my hand, but I didn’t.

The Widow Chang was at her door as I whisked Alice down the corridor, ‘Fashengle shenme shi?’ she demanded.

‘Nothing Mrs Chang, please go back inside and I will come check on you in a little bit. I’ll tell you all about it.’

‘You want not talk to that girl,’ called Mrs Chang, ‘she bad to you.’

‘Don’t be cruel, Mrs Chang,’ I called.

It took longer than I had hoped to retrieve the key from my trousers and unlock the door, the slime seemed to be affecting of my skin, and my fingers were feeling numb.

Inside I offered her a towel, but she just held it in front of herself, bewildered. I had to call her name several times to snap her out of her trance and lead her into the bathroom where she could take a shower. I left her some loose but clean clothes from my sparse collection, a pair of beige trousers with a belt she could use to make them fit at the waist; a faded shirt with green pin stripes and pair of brown business socks, the newest pair I had. I washed up in the kitchen sink and changed my shirt and pants.

I visited Mrs Chang to see if she was having any trouble with her ceiling. I inspected her apartment while she fussed in the kitchen and told me I was too thin and needed a good woman to look after me. The plaster seemed fine at first glance, however when I knocked the sound what no hollow, it was muffled and dense. When I applied pressure to a spot with my thumb I felt the plaster beneath the paint give way slightly. I could only guess the same slime was corroding the plaster and that soon it would sag and fall as well.

‘Mrs Chang, I am sorry, but you can’t stay here. There is a problem with the plumbing, and the roof might come down.’

‘Oh no, roof good,’ she said, ‘I make you some hot soup.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, and took the bowl of noodle soup, ‘but we both need to go now.’

She was smiling and nodding up at me, when she smiled her face wrinkled around her features. She gestured that I should eat. There seemed to be no choice but to eat. While I ate she told me I looked sweaty and red faced; that I should look after myself and not run around with bad women. It was a small bowl, but so hot that when I slurped it up I burned my mouth badly. In between painful sips I tried to explain, even resorting to mime, and finally she understood, but still she refused to leave, reassuring me all would be well.

I left her apartment reluctantly. Her ceiling seemed fine, but who knew how long that would be the case. I would just have to check back with her later. 

Because Alice had finished her shower I was able to tell her that I was heading down stairs to the payphone to call Xu Lu the caretaker and let him know what had happened, I yelled it through the bathroom door.  There was no reply.

‘Are you ok?’ I asked, and I listened hard, nearly placing my ear to the door before realising how that might appear. Finally I heard her tiny acknowledgement, and so I set off downstairs.

I bypassed the elevator, which was treacherous on good days, and entered the stairwell. When the door shut behind me I was surprised how dark it was today, and realised none of the lights were on, the only light coming from the small frosted windows on every second floor. During that moment I had the sense that things were very wrong in the building. There were murmured voices, and running foot falls, just ghostly reflections after echoing off a hundred hard surfaces.

The smell started at about the same time as the humidity. Like a steam room with an open sewerage pipe. I made my way down slowly and carefully, the cheap marble was slippery wet. When I reached the voices I was dripping sweat, but accustomed to the smell, which I had decided was more like the smell of a swamp, that of decay and pungent gasses.

There were several people on the fifth floor landing, three whom were arguing in rapid fire Chinese, and another two pointing a torch down into the gloom of the next flight of stairs. I moved around the arguing group and joined those gawping at some dark mass blocking the well. They shone their flashlights over a shining surface back and forth, but I could not make out what it was, and they were pointing and making shocked gasps as more detail was revealed by the tight beams. I asked them what we were looking at in Cantonese, and they pointed down repeating the words ‘body in the wall.’

I strained to see what they saw, and eventually the image resolved itself in my mind. It was a bulbous mass of some matter that appeared to have grown from several points on the stairs, walls and ceiling all at once; it was revealed to be bright yellow by the touch light, and it sparkled as the light moved. The men’s touches kept coming back to one spot near the stairs on the right, where a dark shape bruised in the mass. One of the onlookers pointed out a tuft hair, and then the dark green military surplus coat that was familiar to me. I think I saw what could have been a hand shape protruding out, covered in veins of the shimmering yellow growth.