The door

A story

There was only one rule: don’t open the door.

The words were posted above the doorway in the bare hotel room. The spelling was wrong. ‘Don’t open the Dor’, it stated, in awkward print, underpinned with flowing Chinese characters.

Morris knew instantly where his brother was. If instructed to walk, Arthur would run. If requested to sit, he would immediately stand. Fearless, his brother would certainly open the door.

He considered his next move. The sign, this whole situation, was ominous. He felt ill.

With borders now open, they had been on the road for a month. Arriving in the high west the atmosphere had changed. The street food of Peking had given way to plain rice. Lonely Planet China, that green bible of all truth, was consulted ever more frequently, in the search for clean water and a foreigner-authorised hotel.

But this place was not an Open City. ‘To be avoided’ was its notation. ‘The place is known locally as the Silent City.’

Arthur had laughed it off for them both.

They had arrived by train across grassland and dune. The single-track railway had delivered them from the more famous southern site. Discovered just two years ago — busloads arriving now to see that archaeological marvel — the terracotta warriors. Buried in a cold tumulus, each face a unique and frozen moment, so many thousands of clay soldiers stand in formation, faces snatched from life, created and buried for an emperor’s immortality.

Few tourists came north, to this smaller outpost. Morris could see why. The brothers had been met by raw concrete sprawl - half city, half nomadic pasture - an urban grit centred on the forbidding monument of an empty railway station.

They had been struck by the silence. Chinese cities should throb with commerce and clamour with crowds. Here, all was still, the mood quiet. There were no pigs slung on bicycles, no hanging yaks’ heads dripping blood from butchers’ tables, no life.

A fine dust hung in the air, itching the eye. People avoided them and each other, their gaze downcast.

Arthur scanned the passers-by. As ever, he was direct. ‘Not quite the warriors, are they?’

There was some activity. Patrols in Mao-style uniforms circled: the threatening public security officers of 1980’s China.

Morris absorbed the flat red faces and noted the pattern of shadowed eyes under dipped caps. He was uneasy. These officials of the People’s Republic could be arbitrary. Invasive, impersonal, incomprehensible.

In the upstairs stillness the hotel room too was hard to work out. Just the single instruction, none other. Don’t open the door. The room had a hiss, a tinnitus of loud silence.

A flimsy table held a water jug and two cups. The beaded tea-protectors were elegant, incongruous in the high damp-walled room.

When they had reached the hotel, their only allowable accomodation, a guard watched them, leaning on the farthest column of the wide entry steps. A weapon, some kind of heavy-stocked rifle, hung loosely across one shoulder, and cigarette smoke clouded his face. As they approached his head turned from them.

Morris was nervous about the paperwork. ‘You know it’s not an open city,’ he said.

Arthur led the way. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Just flash your student card.’

Sometimes Morris feared his brother’s recklessness. The thought conjured up their mother, waving them off. ‘Don’t do anything foolish, will you?’ Was that last week, or last year?

The decor was Sino-Soviet ‘50s, marble-cold and colourless. Their feet tip-tapped on the smooth stone floor.

‘Silent City alright,’ Morris said. ‘I’m not sure …’ He didn’t finish his sentence.

‘Communist chic’, said Arthur, and dropped his pack on the lobby floor. The tin mug, the mug that he stored backpacker-cool on the outer straps of his pack, clanged and echoed.

They waited.

Perhaps there would be a room, perhaps not. ‘Mei-you,’ a desk clerk would say. ‘No have.’

No room. No have. A hotel could be utterly deserted, but the winning of a room would take time: you had to engage in the passive battle, out-wait the desk staff. To give a room, to not give a room, no difference to them. ‘Mei-you.’ A mantra. China was tough.

The waiting area was deathly, heavy with industrial detergent, harsh on the throat. Two square-armed twenties armchairs. An occasional footstep sounded in a corridor out of sight. Chinese voices could be heard, but they were thin distant sounds. Arthur’s eyes flicked around the lobby. Morris coughed.

A soldier appeared above them. He was weather-cracked, with a crumpled red head like a broken shop mannequin. Plasticine, almost, but dry. He proffered a plastic-tagged room-key with his left hand and held out a flat-fingered palm with his right. His voice was even: ‘Passport.’

Morris looked at the outstretched hand. With stiff Pan pipe fingers, it was indeed the hand of a terracotta warrior.

Arthur grabbed the backpacks and headed to the staircase. ‘Your turn for the paperwork,’ he called over his shoulder.

Ten minutes passed before Morris too climbed the sharp-edged steps to the room. Perhaps longer, clocks count slowly at the end.

Don’t open the Door. The sign is hand-painted. Yellowed curtains hang long and pool on the floor. The narrow beds have been shoved together, like parallel tombs in a chapel crypt. The room key lies there on a thin embroidered quilt.

Don’t open the door.

Like a moth to a flame. He can almost hear him. ‘Don’t open? Just watch me.’ That laugh.

Morris is more bookworm than bold, more settle than surge. Again, don’t do anything foolish. He places his backpack carefully. Looks at the doorknob, the sign, the doorknob again. He blows out a deep breath.

Now he hears it, Arthur’s voice distorted and muffled, under the blankets, he thinks, their shared bedroom, they are building a den. Sticks and soldiers and laughter.

The door is open, he is beyond, he releases the knob. The light is dim. Underfoot he feels the scratch of gravel and - wait - no- I’m outside, I came upstairs. The ground is grassy now, sticky, his boots are thickening as they grab and hold to the clay.

Arthur are you there? pathetic nervous call. His breathing is shallow. His toe stubs and he bends and picks it up. Too hard to see. It’s part of a statue, dark clay hand, dark clay wrist. Fingers splayed. a strong hand: a senator, a General perhaps. He throws it aside, creeps forward into near darkness.

Across his path is a full figure, the torso of a soldier, spear and wooden shield long earth-rotted. Headless, shards of a neck, shoulder and arm part-smashed, arm extended. It is a dead china arm, reaching upwards from a millennial China death.

A whisper, Arthur. There is the tin cup. On the ground, in the clay.

Now him, Arthur. His mouth is moving, go, go, his eyes are staring but there is no sound, deafening head noise admits no words. Go. Morris’s feet are sinking. He looks down and sucks feet from the mud and backs away.

All movement has ceased. Arthur’s face has frozen, he’s a lost brother. Terracotta memory.

Go go. Up and backwards into flickering yellow light hotel room. Curtains tear and fall. He smashes through the hallway clatters stairs soundless lobby. A green uniform blocks him, weapon raised.

Now he sees. It’s not a rifle. It’s from his history books, from a long-room painting, it is an ancient something, what, a halberd, a heavy pike-axe, a death. The warrior has no cigarette but there is smoke rising from head cracks and there are shattered holes where the cheek and throat should be. All is clay. The head is caved in, it is just half a face. No one at the desk, door, don’t open the door.

Now the hotel floor is mud, thick, wet, a battlefield. The warrior is swinging his weapon. Morris tries to lift one foot any foot. All is red clay red. He is waist deep. His head his jaw are twisting and jamming. He is locked. He holds up an arm to stop the swinging axe.

His arm smashes apart and falls. His blood, his body, his death, his life. He is strong.

A warrior must be strong he should look strong he is eternal. His face is a proud warrior.

The massive butt of the halberd axe swings at his fragile clay head.